Death of a River Guide

by Richard Flanagan

  Harry knew he had to say something more.

  ‘A rotten branch of bloody myrtle,’ he blurted. Now he was a man, now that he had the respect of his uncles as their equal, he immediately wanted back the woman ways allowed a boy-child, wanted to hug George’s belly and cry and cry. But that was not possible. So instead he focused his eyes on the coal-red tip of his rollie, inhaled to make it flame, and then closed his eyes as the smoke unravelled in fern coils in his mouth. He thought he saw his mother coming toward him, a very powerful feeling it was, and she said, ‘I love you,’ and then was gone. Harry opened his eyes and spoke in a slow and quiet voice.

  Saying: ‘Six days ago.’

  Four

  I could, of course, be mad. That is a possibility. That is also a form of hope. If insane, this entire horror is nothing more than a delusion, a malfunction of nerve endings and electrochemical impulses. If sane, I am in true agony. In hell. If sane, I am dying. And being humiliated by memory at the same time. For I am none too happy with what this moving weight of water, this river is showing me. When I was a kid I wished for a set of x-ray specs like they had in the cartoons, that showed you the bird cooking in the cat’s mind while the cat croons sweetly to the bird, that showed the crook with moneybags for a heart who is telling the sweet old rich lady how much he likes her terrible cooking. I used to watch them with Milton, on the street outside Burgess’s electrical store where they had a grand display of televisions working in the front window, and everyone who didn’t have one of these new wonders - which was most of Hobart for a long time - stood in the rain and the heat and the traffic fumes, laughing and pointing and saying it was only a fad. Now my wish has come true and I wish it hadn’t. These visions are my x-ray specs - with them I see not the surface reality but what really took place, stripped of all its confusing superficial detail. Except what I see now exposed isn’t a cat or a comic crook. It is me. And I am not pleased about that, about the way the river is shoving my mind and heart about, pushing my body, forcing open parts that I thought closed forever.

  Because I could be mad, but I know I am not. And I know I can’t stop seeing what I am seeing, what took place back then - the bedroom filled with tears, which then spilt over into the small kitchen and the dingy bathroom and from there filled the bedrooms and the loungeroom, so many tears that we swam in them and began to drown in them. At which point I opened the door and the dam burst and out roared a river of tears, and being washed away with that river was me, to be taken in its turbulent waters in a crazy serpentine course through the next thirteeen years of my life all over this vast continent.

  A river of tears.

  Upon its banks, on a small beach of river sand, I spy Aljaz sleeping as the forest takes its forms and shapes for the day in the earliest of dawn’s dim light. Wet and pungent comes the smell of the damp black earth to my nostrils; of the forest dying, to be reborn as fecund rot and fungi, small and waxy, large and luminous; to be reborn as moss and myrtle seedlings, minuscule and myriad; as Huon pine sprigs, forcing their way through the crumbling damp decay, forked and knowing as a water diviner’s stick; as the celery top saplings, looking as if a market gardener had planted them there; as the small hardwater ferns and old scrubbing-brush-topped pandanni. Here, ensconced within the river’s waters I see it all, feel it all, sense everything that once was part of my recent life. It’s as if I am now lying there on the ground beside Aljaz on that morning so distant it seems impossible it was only three days ago. As if I too am beginning to drink the richness of that early morning into my body and soul. Aljaz sits up and sees that his sleeping mat and bag lie within the white sand perimeter of riverbank dried and kept dry by the campfire that lies at the hub of the circle, now reduced to a fine hot dust and a few pieces of charcoal. A kangaroo rat scavenging vegetable scraps at the fire’s edge bounds away the moment it senses Aljaz’s woken presence. Aljaz rolls over onto his stomach and looks at the black wet earth beyond the circle, at the mist above and around, and runs his fingers through the white river sand, dry and warm. He deftly kicks his sleeping bag off and naked walks to the site of the fire, upon which he place a few sticks as thin as string and upon which he then blows gently through pursed lips until a lick of flame begins that morning.

  the third day

  That day, the third of their journey, they paddled their rafts on and their paddling took them further into remote country, more days away from any vestige of modern people. Took them past huge rocks that arose from the water like monsters, past sandbanks bearing traces of strange animal prints, took them through the sound of wind moving manferns in the most beautiful of motions, like sea anemones on the ocean floor. Not that the punters saw this or much else for that matter, for they only saw what they knew and they knew none of it, and recognised little, and most of that was the world they carried within their crab-backed rafts - their tents and dry camp clothes and coffee pots and routines and rules for ordering the crowding chaos that loomed over them and threatened them and which Aljaz felt as a caress. They felt consumed by the river, felt that they had allowed it to chew them up in its early gorges and were now being digested in its endlessly winding entrails that cut back and forth in crazed meanderings through vast unpeopled mountain ranges. And it frightened them, these people from far away cities whose only measure was man; it terrified them, this world in which the only measure was things that man had not made, the rocks and the mountains and the rain and the sun and the trees and the earth. The river brought them all these feelings, and of a night it brought worse: the most terrible blackness, the most abrupt and ceaseless noises of rushing water and wind in leaves and nocturnal animals moving. There were of course the stars, but their infinite space was no solace, only evidence of a further encircling world in which it was possible to be lost and never found and never heard.

  Some of the punters went quiet. Others began to talk more and more. They took photographs of streams that looked like wilderness calendars, and rocks they fancied looked like a human face or a man-made form - a boat, a machine, a house. On balance, Aljaz preferred the quiet ones.

  A cold zephyr raced past them, hurriedly announcing the cold front it preceded, and then like some youthful scurrying envoy of war was gone again, too soon for the punters to readily apprehend its message, long enough for Aljaz to stop feeling relaxed.

  They paddled on. Then two kayakers in boats of bright yellow and luminous blue were upon them and they said that their names were Jim and Fin and that they had left the Collingwood Bridge only the day before. Their kayaks were much faster than the plodding rafts and the kayakers were skilful and nimble in their handling of their craft. They played on the rapids like water creatures, darting back and forth as if they were freshwater porpoises. They talked a little to the punters and said that they were pushing on through Deception Gorge that very same day because the long-range weather forecast was for a huge low coming in from the west and they wanted to be well clear of the gorge before the bad weather really struck. They appeared a little drunk and every so often one would pull a bottle of port out of their kayaks and have a swig and then pass it to his companion. And then they were gone, vanished into the river beyond. The rafters paddled on.

  As they floated past Rafters Race and left Fincham Gorge and entered the long stretch of river known as the middle Franklin, the rainforest gave way to a more scrubby type of bush that had grown in consequence of repeated firing, all tall gums and silver wattles. Aljaz was no longer sure exactly where he was. A little past where the Walls of Jericho rose up white and striking on a close mountain tier, Aljaz sensed that the punters were unhappy. It was cold and drizzling, yet despite the rain that had arrived soon after lunch the river had not risen an inch. With the river so low their progress remained slow, there being little or no water running over boulders and logs, and the rafts constantly ran aground. Then the guides would have to jump out chest-deep into the river beside the rock or log, grab hold of the deck lines that ran around the pontoons, and reef the raft t
his way or that, getting all the punters to sit on one side so that their weight worked with the guides’ hurting, aching arms to free the raft up and get it moving again. It seemed the worst of both worlds, this paddling a shallow creekbed of a river while the rain fell upon them, heavy and mocking. After three days of hard work the punters were exhausted and wanted to know how far it was to that night’s campsite. But for the moment Aljaz did not know where he was. After a further hour’s paddling they had not arrived, and it was about then that he realised they had missed the campsite altogether. His eyes had searched the riverbank intensely, hoping that through the sweeps and drifts of rain the telltale little pebble bank with a log sticking out above would be obvious against the backdrop of dense dank greenness. But he had somehow missed it. Perhaps the log had washed away in a winter flood during his absence of so many years.

  The punters were even more unhappy when Aljaz told them they would have to paddle for another hour to reach the next campsite, called Hawkins and Dean. He would rather have used the campsite in between, known as Camp Arcade, but there had been reports of it being infested with wasps that summer, so no one was using it.

  Another hour of dreary paddling in the growing gloom of late afternoon. The punters’ resentment faded into a dull determination to simply get to the campsite. Aljaz scanned the riverbank, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t miss this one as well. Suddenly he leant back and reverse-swept his paddle to swing his raft towards the riverbank. He yelled to the Cockroach’s raft, pointing at the bank. They landed, tethered the rafts, and Aljaz and the Cockroach went off to explore the site while the punters waited for their verdict. The guides climbed up the steep bank and disappeared into the rainforest. The Cockroach knew that something was wrong. There was no path up to the campsite, and the campsite, apart from a level platform of sand ten metres up from the river, was difficult to recognise.

  ‘Shit a brick,’ said the Cockroach. ‘No one’s camped here for years.’ It was true. In only a few short years the rainforest had reclaimed the tent sites. A hardwater fern grew up through a small patch of charred earth that Aljaz recognised as a firesite. Blackwoods and celery top pines and myrtle seedlings and freshwater ferns crowded what were once cleared areas. Here and there trees had fallen across the sites levelled for tents and new growth rose up from the fallen trunks staggering toward the distant sun.

  Aljaz shrugged his shoulders. ‘There’s nothing between here and the gorge,’ he said. ‘We’re stuck with it.’ The Cockroach was annoyed at Aljaz’s choice, and Aljaz sensed his annoyance and it only accentuated his own feeling of encroaching depression. For his memory of the river was being destroyed by the natural world of the river itself.

  They went back down to the punters and told them, inadequate as the campsite was, they were staying there the night.

  ‘And tomorrow?’ asked Sheena.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ said Aljaz. ‘Tomorrow’s a breeze. Tomorrow we are set up for a good run into the big one - Deception Gorge.’ Aljaz paused. He looked at the punters and thought he ought say something positive to make amends for the poor site they were about to spend the night in. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know it’s been hard. But the good side of a low level is that Deception Gorge can be got through easily. At high water it becomes difficult. Dangerous.’ He made a casual gesture with his hand indicating the low level of the river. He gave a theatrical smile. He said, ‘But we don’t have to worry about that.’

  With her good arm Sheena had been twirling her paddle back and forth in the water as Aljaz spoke. She looked up when he’d finished. She said, ‘What if the river rises?’

  I watch the sheets of rain blur the exhausted, depressed punters into small blobs of colour speckling the big red blobs of rafts; the weary, angry guides more recognisable standing in the shelter of the rainforest. One, the Cockroach, looking downwards and shaking his head, the other, Aljaz, looking not at Sheena but at the dark sky, fearful and not wishing to say so. And then Aljaz does something entirely unexpected: he begins to dance a crazed jig, a berserk cross between a polka and a bush dance, all legs at wild angles and shrieks and yahoos, presenting himself as a fool to the punters below. One by one, the punters begin to smile, and when Aljaz unexpectedly takes a flying leap out of the rainforest and hurtles himself into the bleak cold river they burst out laughing aloud, their depression exorcised in mirth.

  young Aljaz

  The tableau freezes at the moment Aljaz ought arise back out of the river spluttering. I realise that unlike then I am not now going to resurface, maybe never again open my big wet gob and gobble up huge gulps of beautiful air. Perhaps up there on the rock above they still half expect to hear a shriek and turn around to see me dance a soggy polka before them, as if it were all only part of a joke that ought not be taken seriously. It is an old trick, this playing the fool for the customers to divert their attention from their genuine worries. Or not even a trick, but a recognition that the whole thing, the entire trip, is so contrived, so idiotic, that an idiotic act is the only adequate response to the circumstances. I would like to say, looking back on my childhood, that I consciously resolved to always present myself as an idiot to a world I found idiotic, that from the moment Maria Magadalena Svevo sliced my umbilical cord with her green-handled kitchen knife I had already come to the conclusion that this world was one not worthy of trafficking with.

  But it wouldn’t be true. It is true that as a child I found the company of Milton, an adult idiot with an early Beatles haircut that predated the early Beatles by some years, far more congenial than that of either purportedly normal children or purportedly sensible adults. Milton had a big nose, an even more aquiline number than my own snoz, and he looked somewhere between a battered, crazed John Lennon and an enlightened Mo out of The Three Stooges. Milton and I would sit around the Hobart bus depot hanging out together, watching the busy shoes and legs of busy people go busily back and forth to destinations that seemed to us without purpose or reason. Milton would catch slaters and ants and spiders and we would place them in the gutters next to which clankered up the big diesel buses. We would watch the insects’ funny hasty movements, going first this way and then that, there being no reason for any direction because a filthy big bus would suddenly career over the top of the insects, ending their pointless harrying journey forever. And then Milton would laugh his crazed half-horse half-snort laugh, then sometimes he would cry until I could find him some more insects to watch.

  There were grand, wild stories explaining Milton’s idiocy. That he was fathered by Edward VIII while on a secret mission to Australia during World War II. That he was descended from a family whose line began with a flagellator who had been cursed. That the government had used his mother for secret tests while she was pregnant during the war. But the truth behind my idiocy was more prosaic. I was deaf, unable to talk because I was unable to hear much beyond the deep vibrations of the bus engines and Milton’s laugh.

  But these thoughts are getting ahead of my vision: of a small boy with a mop of wild red hair standing alone in the middle of a bitumen playground, which, along with the state school he attends, lies beneath the level of the highway that runs past the school’s northern border. The boy is small for his age, smaller than the children who play around him, who play hide and go seek, who play chasings, who play British bulldog and kick the footy. While the other children’s eyes are fixed upon each other, his eyes stare at the sky. And I know what that child is feeling, not because that child is me, Aljaz, but because I am watching not only the movements of the boy Aljaz’s body now, but the movements of his heart and soul.

  The boy Aljaz feels himself new. He feels his world around him to be alien. Sometimes he closes his eyes and then reopens them quickly and all the playground looks to be made of angles that make no sense. I say his world, but he feels nothing in it to be his. Everything belongs to everybody but him. The world has not shaped itself around him yet, nor he around this strange place lit by the cavernous sky with the china-blue ligh
t. He looks at the clouds in that sky, watches them wander past himself and where he is rooted by his body. He thinks that perhaps it might be possible to learn to fly like the comic characters. He thinks it might be just a matter of will and magic, like learning to walk and learning to talk, both events which he remembers clearly. Of the two, talking had been the harder. No one had understood him. He would say sweet things, beautiful things, funny things. People would look at him quizzically and then with pity. He didn’t want pity. He wanted conversation. He wanted to be understood. After a time his knowledge of words grew greater and greater. He now listened to the way in which words were used, the way one word could carry so many different meanings, how every word could be a tree full of fruit. But when he asked questions he was answered only with a quizzical shake of the head. Harry and Sonja worried that their son was simple.

  ‘Perhaps it was inevitable that he would be damaged goods,’ Harry said one day, saying it in front of Aljaz, thinking their simple son would not understand. Damaged goods. Aljaz had grown angry with the way no one understood his words and would burst into terrible rages, screaming and thrashing around the floor. Sonja took him to the doctor, who discovered that he was not simple but deaf, his idiot’s speech the consequence of hearing words only as shadows of sounds, as vibrations through the skull. According to the doctor the deafness was the result of an improperly treated pneumonia at an early age. The child was not so deaf as to be unable to comprehend, but deaf enough that his speech was severely impaired. Aljaz’s ears were operated upon. The operations were successful and his speech improved.