“Here’s Cyril, who was hit on the head with an iron bar, and comes to mass every day, and does the gardens. There’s Brother John over there – I wonder if he’s had any more communications from Our Lady about his dog. And that’s Brother Tomas, who’s visiting from Poland, and doesn’t speak much English – dinner can be a bit tricky if you get stuck next to him.”
A handful of young mothers, tall, in bright-coloured dresses, holding their babies on one arm, stood in the doorway of the stone-fronted church. I followed Susan in, sat beside her in the back pew and examined the interior. Above the arched entrance was a fresco executed in a wild profusion of conflicting styles, incorporating Wandjina faces, hieroglyphs and occasional biblical scenes. A wooden head of Christ, carved with disquieting verismo, stood on a plinth before the lectern. Behind the altar hung a painted image of a black Madonna, posed before a lush rendition of the Mitchell Falls. The service unfolded: prayers and gospel readings came and went, but it was hard to keep one’s thoughts focused on the mysteries of the divine, so noisy and protracted were the struggles between the little children playing on the low steps outside the entrance, or running up and down before the altar.
“What’s that odd contraption over there,” I asked Susan, after some while.
“An overhead transparency projector, of course,” she whispered back. “For displaying the texts of the hymns. It may be a bit noisy now – but when we get to the singing, the voices are beautiful. Just go with the flow.”
“And who are those two?”
I pointed at a couple of figures, hunched, kneeling at the front of the congregation.
“Can’t you tell? That’s Father Sanz, and Sister Scholastica: she came up on her quad. I thought I described everyone to you so well you’d have no trouble recognising them.”
I spent the rest of the service studying the man before me, bent, hands clasped together, at the altar rail. He was wearing vestments of gold and turquoise; his hair was white, and combed back from his broad forehead; his eyes were veiled by thick, lantern-like glasses. And how did the decades figure in his thoughts, I wondered: what of those days I had heard recounted in such detail, when he was the arbiter of inter-tribal spear fights and he mounted boat trips to save the crews of crash-landed American bombers; or his two years of pure solitude, in the bush at Pago, tending the black luggers, on the wide, humid coastline of Mission Bay? Were they the clues to any understanding now: did they make a pattern or shape of the past?
“Wasn’t that a wonderful, uplifting mass?” said Susan as we filed out. “Although I do sometimes ask myself what the locals think of the more obscure passages in Father Anscar’s sermons. I couldn’t see what he was getting at with all those comparisons between Nelson Mandela and the leaders of the Kalumburu Council.”
“Nor me,” I said, absently. “And there was that odd lesson from the New Testament: dying to oneself?”
“Absolutely,” Susan replied. “I’ve often thought there should be a slight revision of the Christian scriptures, in favour of ease of understanding. It’s lucky, isn’t it, that we’re able to have dinner tonight with so many experts on Catholic doctrine. I’ll make sure to seat you beside Father Sanz.”
And she was as good as her word. Half an hour later, the monks, the nuns and their guests were gathered round a long veranda table, with Susan at its end and Father Sanz between us, holding court. I bent my head, and listened to him speaking, and tried to screen out all other sounds – but his voice was high, and his Spanish accent strong, and his words were like the rustle of reeds in the wind, so that it was only late in the proceedings, long after the arrival and departure of the plates of dark boiled beef and pale vegetables looking like deep-sea creatures, that I began to decode anything of what he had to say. We seemed to be in the midst of a story of religious ordeal, relating to the early years of the Benedictine mission, when it was still located near the mouth of the winding Drysdale River.
“Did you just mention something about levitation?” I asked him. Everyone, by now, was leaning over and listening to his monologue.
“That’s right: the founding missionary father, Father Vincent, had the misfortune to shoot, with a warning shot, one of the marauding Aboriginal warriors during the first days of settlement, when attacks on the monks were still very common. He said prayers of penance every day for the rest of his life, and slept in a coffin every night, and very regularly he would levitate, and his brother monks would see him, and this proof of his holiness, and God’s approval of his penitence.”
“It must be disappointing, in a way, Father,” I ventured, after this vignette, “that you don’t live in such hectic times, and see such proofs of divine intent.”
“Proofs!” Father Sanz turned to look at me with an air of indignation. “My life in Kalumburu has given me all the proofs I need of God’s will. I know how God made the world. Do you want to hear?”
“Of course. Who wouldn’t?”
“God is infinite goodness – and happiness, because perceiving goodness creates happiness. He was aware of himself, his goodness was by nature effusive – it spread out, and through his infinite power, in a single instant, he made the whole world, in its complexity, its interrelatedness and splendour: he is an eternal now.”
“It’s a kind of wave theory of creation,” I suggested. “An expanding Big Bang. Quite in tune with modern thinking.”
“It’s not a theory,” said Father Sanz in his papery voice. “Not at all! Sometimes I look up at the sky, and I see its beauty – sometimes I look up, and I see a kite, hovering in the sky, moving its tail, adjusting its flight, meticulous, still, and I marvel anew at the splendour of God: how could he have made such a wondrous thing? A single kite is enough to prove to me the splendour of creation.”
Those words might have been chosen to quiet the race of my imaginings. I waited – the talk flowed on: the richness of the mission’s banana harvests in former times; its lush orchards of orange trees; the duels with nine-foot hammerheads that were fought out in the shallows of Vansittart Bay. The stars wheeled above our heads; the candles burned down low. I was on the verge, repeatedly, of asking Father Sanz more about his memories and the days when a young Canadian named Lamourette came to Kalumburu – but something made me draw back, as if the past had found its place, and being there, where the story-line began, was completion enough. At length, Sanz rested his hands on the table and got up.
“Time,” he said, “for us young men to retire to bed.”
“One moment, Father,” I said, “before you go!” Intuitions seemed, in those seconds, to guide me; soft, light words came from my lips. “One moment more: I have a little challenge for you.”
“A challenge?”
“An arm-wrestling contest!”
He looked at me rather quizzically.
“I think you know something,” he said, after a pause, his eyes through his glasses magnified into an owl’s stare. “That was all a long time ago – a very long time!”
“But you just said you were young. One bout. Why not? I’m sure you’ll win: you always do.”
“You’re just humouring me,” said he, in a slow, suspicious voice. “You’re just trying to give pleasure to an old man.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe not.”
And at that Father Sanz sat down again, with all the gravity of his nine decades. He balanced himself in his seat, he assumed the poised position of an experienced contestant; he placed the broad, dry palm of his hand in mine.
“Ready?” he said, with a slight, sardonic smile. He gripped, tensed and applied a clean, sharp pressure, which I resisted for some seconds, until I felt my forearm trembling, weakening, yielding: an iron force pushed against me: it ground down on me with all the harshness and the strength of time.
Days went by, after this; we travelled further, across the Leopolds; my trip drew near its end. I drove on from Fitzroy slowly, making detours as I went eastwards, through the quiet expanse of station country, past Moola Bulla
and the hills round Springvale, until I came to the red escarpments of Turkey Creek. At the entrance to the roadhouse, just beyond the helicopter landing pads and the gaudy placards advertising Bungle Bungle scenic flights, I turned off the highway. A pair of campervans had drawn up along the verge, beneath the shade trees; marooned in front of the fuel bowsers was a small flotilla of Aboriginal cars: old Falcons and Kingswoods, Datsun hatchbacks, all of them in advanced states of disrepair, all empty of passengers. Country music was playing softly over the forecourt speaker system; the sun beat down. I wan dered in and soon lost myself among the shelves of intriguing bargain items: diecast toy fire-engines, beef and camel jerky value-packs, discount CDs of hits by Beyoncé and Tina Turner. The poetry of the roadhouse, I said to myself, in abstracted fashion.
There was a cavalcade of customers: German tourists, old couples, passing government officials. I was pondering the array of soft drinks, and the dazzling illuminations that gave the refrigerator the look of a Times Square billboard, and the vast expense such facilities must entail, when a man with an open, easy face came across.
“Are you a regular?” he asked.
“In a sense,” I said.
“Dave – from Queensland,” he announced. “We’ve just taken over. We’re keen to expand.”
I noticed, then, that the sea-green polo shirt he wore had a stylish, neatly stitched logo: Turkey Creek – heart of the Kimberley.
“Expand?”
“Yes – you know: improve the operation. We were at Marlborough near Rockhampton before. You might have seen it if you’ve driven up that coast: they’ve got a tremendous little chrysoprase museum.”
“And are you thinking of a museum here?”
“Well, this place already is a museum, isn’t it? It’s full of history. Look at the bowsers, after all, and the paintings on them: they’re all masterpieces, and all by the artists from the community. I’ll bet you’re here for the art, aren’t you? You probably know those advisers, down at the art centre.”
“I was just drifting, really,” I said.
“Drifting! You need a purpose in life!”
“I find it can be quite purgative, not knowing where you’re going.”
“But you still need sustenance, don’t you? I’ll bet you’d like it if you could order a few lattes in the morning? We’ll have a good espresso machine soon. And look,” – he moved his hands, with sinuous, stroking motions – “I can see a whole new counter, there. Elegant Italian steel, running the entire length of the building. We’re going to remodel: it’s a new dawn.”
“Clearly,” I murmured.
Dave swept on: “We’re already baking our own fresh bread each morning, and we sell maybe two dozen rolls: we’re going to get into croissants, focaccia breads. You have to think big in the Kimberley. But of course, if you’re a roadhouse, you have to have the staples, too, don’t you? You have to sell grease in a roadhouse,” and he nodded, somewhat dismissively, towards the glass-fronted, steel-trayed hot-food counter, which was sheltering an array of batter-coated, shadowed, deep-brown shapes.
“I quite liked the old order, you know, to be truthful.”
“What about it?” said my companion, in a voice of mild incredulity. “I used to come here very often,” I went on. “This was very much a part of the old Kimberley – and it was always a special roadhouse for me. In fact I can still remember the first time I drove in here. I parked in the wrong place, in that engineering area round the back, where the forklifts and the pallets are. There was a big pile of rotting dairy products, and the air was full of that rancid, half-fermented, medicinal smell of industrial disinfectant: giant triple road trains were clattering past; the sky was a perfect blue; there was the faintest impress of a single cirrus cloud, like a fossil, or a feather, very high up.”
“And that’s a happy memory?”
“A clear one. I went inside, and there was nothing on the shelves at all to buy, except for yearling steaks, and impact wrench kits, and frozen presentation boxes of Milk Tray. It was the middle of the wet season. There was no diesel fuel: I had to wait for days – and there were kite-hawks everywhere – just like now.”
“They’re carrion, I know,” said Dave, grimacing. “There’s nothing we can do about them.”
“I’ve always loved them,” I said. “In fact, their being here is what makes this roadhouse into a version of heaven for me: perhaps its only rival is the fuel stop at Timber Creek.”
“What’s so wonderful about a bunch of hawks?”
“The way they’re always circling, hovering, swooping, spiralling, with the sun shining on them, catching the different patterns of their feathers as they glide and turn.”
Another Kingswood, midnight blue, dilapidated, its trunk held closed with elasticised ties and knotted snatch-straps, drove up at this point, spewing dark clouds of particulate from its exhaust pipe. Its back seats were full of children. They waved at us enthusiastically.
“What is this?” said Dave, in tones of outrage. “A bloody 1970s Holden convention?”
“You could take a more broad-minded view,” I said. “Don’t you think there’s something rather touching about the way all these unloved old cars which have been sold off and tossed aside come back for another stint of life in remote Australia, and get nursed and coaxed on for a few hundred thousand more kilometres – and then they die in the deep bush, and they’re abandoned next to some remote desert track, and they decay gently, into the redness of the soil.”
“Hey you,” called out one of the girls in the back of the Kings-wood. She jumped out and came over, smiling. “Do you know me?”
Her face was familiar, in a distant way; she was poised, and angular; there were deep scabies scars on both her legs.
“Where are you from?” I parried.
“She’s from Bow River,” cried the other girls in the back of the car, in unison. “She wants you to drive her to Wyndham! Her cousin-brother’s there!”
“It’s only two hours away,” pleaded the girl.
I felt the strange, assertive harmony of chance again.
“Well, why not?” I said, almost to myself.
“You’re not going to take her, are you?” exclaimed Dave. “That far – you must be crazy!”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always had a soft spot for Wynd-ham: the salt flats, the tidal systems, the ruins and cemeteries.
And there’s a croc farm, with a breeding pair of komodo dragons, as well.”
I opened the door for my new passenger: we drove off. The music I had been listening to for several days without interruption clicked automatically on.
“What’s your name?” I asked her after a few kilometres.
“Don’t you know?” she said, reproachfully. “You know my family. You used to come to Bow River, when we were there: I’m Cherandra!”
“That’s a lovely name,” I said. “I’ve often wondered where the names come from up here – they’re so unusual.”
“We make them up,” she said, staring at me as if this was obvious. “We have to: we need new ones all the time.”
“Why?”
“Because we die so often! We die so much – and then all the old names have to go underground.”
“Of course,” I said. “That makes sense.”
I pondered the wreckage of the lineage systems of the East Kimberley, the mortality rates, the collapse of families and kinship structures, the frequency of the car crashes and catastrophes that sweep down on Aboriginal populations all across the North like biblical plagues. On our right, the red walls of the Carr-Boyd Range stretched into the distance; the stepped cuts of the Argyle diamond mine, as neatly defined as contour markers, shimmered in the air.
“What’s this music?” said Cherandra, wrinkling her nose in an appraising way.
“Don’t you like it?”
“It’s deadly,” she said in an enthusiastic voice.
“I’ve often felt that myself,” I said, and began telling her, in succi
nct fashion, the story of the Haydn string quartets and their place in Western music; how much they meant to me, how I first discovered them.
“And where did he live?” asked Cherandra.
“He came from Vienna,” I said, “in the heart of Europe – but he lived in a palace, for many years, in a town called Eisenstadt.
In fact, I loved this music so much I went there once, on a kind of pilgrimage. Shall I tell you about it?”
She nodded, rather uncertainly, and I began describing to her the journey I had made, one bleak winter morning, by slow train, through the empty backlands of lower Austria, along the shores of the Neusiedlersee, which seemed to my eyes as bleached and glittering as those of a desert salt lake, until I reached the little terminus at Eisenstadt. The sky was a grey monochrome; the landscape was flat; the town was ringed with high-rise blocks. I walked slowly up the main avenue to the Schloss, and inspected its gardens. They had been the envy of Central Europe, and the delight of the Viennese court – but much of the woodland and the streams and meadows that once stretched through the park had been destroyed, and modern houses thrown up in their place. The arches of the Gloriette and the Leopoldine temple now stood well beyond the surviving garden walls, while the front elevation of the palace, for all its scale and swagger, was very different from the façade I had pictured in my dreams. There was a sombre menace in the carved heads of the Magyar generals; the stucco was cracked and peeling; the false balconies and shuttered windows gave off an air of mournful neglect. Inside, up several flights of dusty stairs, in a corner of the building, were the Haydn rooms, where episodes from the composer’s years of creative fervour were recounted, amidst memorabilia and musical scores, displayed in squat, ill-lit glass cases. The museum was deserted: the floorboards creaked beneath my feet. There was a small side room devoted to the chamber music Haydn composed for his princely masters: it had his portrait and a handful of instruments from his day.
“I’d love to see those things,” murmured Cherandra.
The Red Highway Page 13