by Sue Woolfe
But when Pat drove down a street of partially demolished houses with the walls ripped off and only rusty framework left standing for years, Diana struggled with disappointment.
‘Someone should clean this place up,’ she said as they drove to the next house.
She felt Pat stiffen beside her.
‘Not you, of course,’ Diana added.
Pat grabbed a new batch of pills and slammed the door behind her, her back protesting. Diana, chastened, listened to the way Pat spoke simple English to the people, throwing in a few words of their language. Sometimes she gently touched the forearms of the women, and often she held their babies. When she returned from her next delivery she had softened, Diana saw.
‘When a relative dies here, his house can’t be lived in because of his cranky spirit. It must be destroyed and the family must move on,’ said Pat, offering her this information in a conciliatory way.
She drove to the next patient.
‘I know the mess is awful but the whites here who run the services do nothing. The headmaster, for instance, says these are the most degraded people on earth,’ Pat said.
‘Why don’t the people have him sacked?’ asked Diana.
‘These are a gentle people,’ said Pat. ‘Not like a neighbouring tribe who wouldn’t put up with it. These people put up with a lot. They don’t do things white people’s way. And they’re preoccupied with family, huge families, all needy, all hungry. Rubbish is the last of their concerns.’
She swung into another street and laughed fondly.
‘Though an old man yesterday complained that his yard was messy. He said he’d have to move house. I thought he meant the rubbish. But he didn’t. They still track here. See how they’re all bare-footed? He meant there were too many footprints. He couldn’t tell who’d been in his yard.’
When she came back from her next delivery she said:
‘I’m sorry, but you can’t stay if you’re going to criticise. You’ve got to look below the surface.’
‘That’s why I came,’ said Diana. ‘I want to.’
Pat smiled, and the tension between them eased.
‘What are your plans?’ Pat asked as they headed back to her house. ‘Besides being my servant,’ she added with satisfaction.
‘I’m going to have real conversations,’ said Diana.
For a difficult, frowning month, Diana kept house for Pat, shopping at the only store (she winced at the extortionate prices), beginning a vegetable garden because the store didn’t sell vegetables, and relearning the language at the house of another white person, a Lutheran missionary, an earnest, patient man who spent long hours every day questioning people about exact meanings while he made them cups of black sugary tea. Diana had studied Italian and Greek at school and she’d learned the tape Pat had sent, but the local language turned out to be very different. She wouldn’t let herself be deterred. This language was demanding, with multiple cases and unexpected detail – there was an entire page in the missionary’s half-finished, often handwritten dictionary of the ways to say ‘we’. She counted thirty ways. She discovered that much of the time when she wanted to say that someone did something, she had to split the verb open like a New York bagel and fill it with a number of other words chosen from scores of possibilities that revealed where the speaker was in the journey of the day – and only then could she finish the sentence. ‘So,’ the missionary said proudly, for he’d spent several years working this out, ‘there were sixty-nine ways of splitting the word to hit. You split it to say you’re hitting while you’re going down a hill to home, hitting while you’re going up a hill, hitting while you’re walking away from the hearer, hitting while you’re heading towards the hearer …’
His voice trailed on and on as if they were both dreaming.
‘What if you’re not travelling?’ Diana asked, hoping for an easy way out. ‘Can’t you just miss out on all this?’ The new linguistic complication might put off conversation for weeks. ‘After all, there are lots of things you’d do when you were stationary – like cooking!’ she told him.
‘Even if you’re sitting at a fire and talking about the kangaroo you caught,’ said the missionary in triumph, ‘you have to split the verb.’
To her it seemed like the way Latin might’ve ended up if the Romans had been nomads.
After another month, she visited Pat at the clinic and sat in the waiting room to try a conversation. A beautiful young mother with her breast bared for her baby smiled at her.
‘What’s your country?’ the young mother asked in English.
‘I usually live in Sydney,’ Diana said in her new language and lurched to a stop.
She wondered if ‘usually’ ruined her answer.
‘Your country is beautiful,’ Diana said after she’d worked it out.
The woman fell silent, looked away.
Diana tried again.
‘Your baby is beautiful too,’ she said in the language.
The woman smiled again, caressed the baby’s back, but still averted her glance.
Over dinner Diana tried to keep irritation out of her voice.
‘I was trying to make small talk,’ she said. ‘She didn’t help at all! I didn’t have the slightest clue if she liked me!’
‘They don’t do small talk,’ Pat said. ‘They say, those white people, always talking.’
‘That’s all right,’ Diana said, both to herself and to Pat. ‘Really, I’m not interested in small talk. I want deep, meaningful conversation. Big talk.’
Pat smiled at the intensity of her friend. She’d always been like this, even as a child, insisting on her own way, refusing to play with other girls if they didn’t play what she wanted. She’d refused sometimes to play with Pat.
‘What’s important to them is being together,’ said Pat. ‘Silent company. Marlpa, I’ve heard it called by another group.’
She saw how Diana’s lips shut in a determined line.
One morning at the end of the second month, Pat ran up from the clinic to tell her that some people had asked to be taken out to a stand of bush oranges now in season. Diana was in the middle of watering the vegetable garden; she was enchanted with the willingness of the green sturdy leaves to shoot straight out of the red dirt.
‘Almost as if the plants want to feed us,’ she told Pat. She’d never grown anything before. Perhaps she could teach the people and turn them from a nomadic culture into an agricultural culture. It might be good for them and at least inspire them to modify those terrible verbs.
‘Now,’ said Pat, because Diana hadn’t turned off the hose. ‘They’re ready to go now.’
‘Won’t tomorrow do?’ asked Diana. ‘It’s going to be very hot soon. I was thinking of putting up some shade cloth for the spinach.’
‘They don’t plan ahead here,’ said Pat, patiently. She was used to her friend. ‘They want to go now. Not tomorrow.’
‘They have cars,’ Diana said. ‘Why would they want me to take them?’
‘There’s no money for fuel,’ Pat said, still patient.
‘How far?’ Diana asked.
‘They must like you to ask you,’ Pat said. ‘Do you want to get to know them, or not?’
Pat filled Diana’s car with people – a slender old man with a bare chest and a black plastic leg, his two wives, one much younger than the other, and his two sisters. One sister sat in the front and smiled and then looked away. Diana did the same. She cast around for something to say but all the words in her mouth seemed like small talk and they dried up like leaves in the sun. No one spoke, so she put off her meaningful conversation for a while and concentrated on driving. It had rained recently and the red road churned by recent cars looked like a child’s finger painting. When they came to a fork in the road, she turned to her companion in the front seat. She had learned that the language didn’t have left or right, but twelve points north, south, east and west and she wasn’t exactly sure which way she was facing. But her companion didn’t speak, she just indica
ted the way with a graceful, economical gesture, her hand stretched out ahead with the fingers clamped together and slanting to the right. Diana drove for another hour.
‘Stop,’ one of the wives at last called in English from the back.
Diana stopped. Her companion was gazing out at the mulga. In the back, everyone else gazed in the same direction. It’s just undifferentiated trees, Diana thought impatiently.
‘What are we looking at?’ she managed to ask in their language.
No one answered her.
‘Rubbish,’ someone said at last, and in English.
‘Rubbish?’ repeated Diana.
‘These bush oranges rubbish,’ her companion said in English.
Meaning came to Diana slowly.
‘They are not good?’ Diana asked in their language. She had no idea of the word for ‘ripe’.
Her companion didn’t answer, but gestured onwards.
Diana drove. It was like city people going out for dinner to some distant restaurant because it’s had good reviews, she told herself. After another eighty kilometres, one of the wives called again.
‘Stop.’
Diana again saw only undifferentiated mulga, but her companion indicated with her hand that Diana should start the car again.
‘Slow,’ said the woman in English.
They pulled up underneath two trees that Diana hadn’t noticed. She looked up. Green bulbous fruit hung high like Christmas decorations. Everyone clambered out. Diana, wanting to impress with her helpfulness, climbed up on the Land Rover’s roof and threw the fruit down to waiting hands. This seemed to please everyone. When there was no more left to pick, she stood shyly amongst the seated group until one of the sisters patted the dusty ground. Diana sat compliantly, trying to cross her legs like them, though it hurt, telling herself not to fret over how she’d wash the red stains out of her trousers. She was glad they weren’t her best cream ones.
The bush oranges were not like anything she’d ever tasted. They seemed layered in flavour. At the first bite they tasted like mango, and then, as she neared the seed, like marzipan without sugar, and then, she thought, an aftertaste of kerosene.
‘Suck the seed,’ said her companion in English, breaking a long silence. Diana obeyed. The seed was almost bitter but she pretended to like it. Perhaps it was doing her good. She even threw the seeds down on the ground like they did, stifling her impulse to bury them so they’d grow for the future. She reminded herself that this was a language without a future tense that extended more than a few days. Besides, burying the seeds might make it look as if she was trying to perform magic. She’d learned a little about their beliefs. She didn’t want to do anything uncouth. Everything must aid her towards having a conversation.
‘Beautiful food,’ she said in their language when she could bear the silence no more.
Everyone laughed, and looked away.
So she put off conversation for later in the drive.
She was expecting to retrace their route but when they came to another fork in the road, her companion silently indicated a different way. Diana hesitated, then did as she was told.
‘Stop,’ one of the sisters called, after a while.
Everyone climbed out except the old man who had fallen asleep, and they bent over bushes at the side of the road, gathering handfuls of long fronds.
‘What is it?’ Diana asked in language.
‘Bush medicine,’ said her companion in English.
Diana wanted to help, so she found identical bushes on the other side of the road and gathered a big bouquet of fronds. Soon the back of the car was littered. Diana laid her own bouquet proudly on the dashboard for everyone to see. It might bring on a conversation.
‘What’s this for?’ her companion asked in English about Diana’s fronds.
‘Your bush medicine,’ said Diana, surprised.
Her companion reached over to the back, picked out from the pile one of the fronds and held it up to compare it to Diana’ fronds. The leaves were different.
‘No bush medicine,’ said her companion.
Diana laughed in some embarrassment, and the woman smiled gently.
They drove again in silence.
‘Stop,’ someone called again.
Everyone clambered out except for the old man, who had taken off his black plastic leg and laid it across the back seat.
Diana again could see only mulga but the group was pulling at the trees and filling plastic bags with elongated green fruit.
‘Bush pears,’ said one of the wives in English to Diana, who stood watching.
Soon the women ranged out of sight, coming back every now and then with plastic bags bulging with green pears, which they emptied into buckets. Diana didn’t want to walk away from the car. Her fears came back. What if there were snakes? The heat of the sun was beating on her head like a drum. She’d forgotten her sunhat.
She shaded her eyes and circled a few trees because she wanted to show her eagerness, but she could only find two pears. When one of the wives returned, bringing another bulging bag to the car and depositing it inside, careful not to disturb the old man or his leg, she touched Diana’s arm and walked away ahead, some distance off. She lay down on the ground, patting it, indicating that Diana should come over and lie beside her. But Diana didn’t want to rest. She wanted to be an impressive finder of bush pears.
‘Come,’ the woman called in English. Diana walked over reluctantly, half obeying the woman, half dazed by the sun. The woman patted the ground more emphatically. Diana sat down nearby, thinking that perhaps this wasn’t the right moment for conversation. She wouldn’t be able to split her verbs accurately, not in this heat. The woman banged the ground so hard that dust rose around her ample body. Diana didn’t like to sit so close to anyone. She hesitated, then thought better of it and wriggled over. But the woman still wasn’t satisfied. She insisted with her hand that Diana lie beside her rather than sit.
‘My mother taught me when she was growing me up,’ said the woman in English.
This seemed to promise a conversation at last, at least about childhoods, so Diana lay down. Only then did the woman raise her arm and point. Diana followed the direction of the point. At last, from that angle, with the breath of the woman on her face, she could see pear vines as they twined from one branch to another high up in the tree against the blue, searing, endless sky, and big green pears hanging from them.
From out of her pocket the woman fished a crumpled plastic bag and handed it to Diana.
‘Get some,’ she said.
The car by now smelled sweetly of plants but Diana barely noticed. She turned on the ignition key in a trance. Again she expected to retrace their route but again the woman beside her indicated another way. They drove cross country, far from the road, over spiky blond spinifex and deep watercourse ditches, beyond an outcrop of orange rocks and then, suddenly in front of them, smiling at the sky, gleamed a narrow stretch of water.
Her companion touched her arm lightly, indicating they should stop. The women burst out of the hot car and waded in, fully clothed. They submerged themselves and then beckoned to Diana, who’d paused at the edge of the waterhole, just wetting her feet.
‘You too,’ said one of the wives in English. Her smile was full of friendship.
She followed them in until she was waist-deep. The water was about the same temperature as the air, not cold as it would be on the coast, but she didn’t mind. It was red with mud, but when she moved back to the shallows, her wet body discovered a breeze and almost sang in pleasure.
‘Beautiful,’ she said.
Everyone laughed and looked away.
She sank into the warm water then and let its soupy depths take the weight of her tired body. It was like yielding to a lover, the way it enfolded her. She turned luxuriously on her back and gazed at the torrent of blue sky and floated for a while in wonder at this unexpected turn of the day. She turned again and buried her face in the consoling wet warmth and almost slept. Whe
n finally she stood up, small animals brushed softly against her feet and legs but she didn’t care. She felt no fear. The water and the women would look after her. Afterwards she saw that the red mud had stained her clothes, but she didn’t care if her entire wardrobe got stained like this. Even her cream trousers.
She drove back into the community when the moon was so high it had drowned the stars. She took the women and the old man to their house. They disappeared into the darkness carrying their fruit and medicine fronds without saying goodnight or thanking her, but by now she knew that was their way. Greetings and thanks are small talk.
Pat had cooked dinner for once. It was waiting on the table, covered with a freshly washed tea towel. Diana slumped in her chair. She couldn’t find the energy to speak, but she lifted her fork and toyed with the food to please her friend.
‘You’ve had a good time,’ her friend observed.
‘The conversation I came for,’ said Diana.
The Dancer Talks
Magdalena had developed a squint. In a performer, a squint is unacceptable, especially when accompanied with a wrinkled forehead. Dancing, as everyone knows, should look effortless. In the new photographs, Nadina, the other woman in the little troupe of four, danced with an absorbed look of quiet ecstasy, not as if she was solving a tricky mathematical equation. Magdalena’s forehead showed itself to be furrowed asymmetrically, and her whole face was taut with concentration, with wrinkles making thorns around her squinting eye. The two male partners smiled through the performance, one passionately, the other enigmatically. Only Magdalena made tango seem arduous.
‘What were you thinking about?’ her dance partner, Greg, demanded. He was carefully amiable, and had such an air of certainty about him, he’d become the troupe’s leader, aided by his readiness to stake up money for the troupe’s performances. The photography, for a start, cost a lot.
Magdalena was in her early forties, and everyone said she was self-effacing and shy, but that was because she secretly but constantly heard the swishing of heavily winged archangels behind her back thundering down, to banish her forever from the earth. She felt doomed to appease them. Sometimes they wore hobnailed boots. She’d been pleased when she found out what hobnails are, with the pleasure of a chronically ill patient at last being diagnosed, however dire the illness. None of the medieval artists had painted angels with hobnailed boots. She didn’t know if other people daily awaited the angry angels. She kept her fear to herself. Not that, if pressed, she really believed in angels. But certainly she believed in imminent banishment from life as she knew it.