Taboo

by Kim Scott

  ‘Our totem, that it.’

  ‘See it?’

  ‘Jumped up like a genie . . .’

  ‘Took off.’

  ‘We might make something like . . .’

  ‘Something like,’ Wilfred continued. ‘Something that jumps up from a pile of sticks. Life not just in us, you know. Not just flesh and bone, but something sparks us. Call it spirit. Gotta be more than just very clever to help something like that grow.’

  He said they might take their work with them, their bit of tree. Or throw it on the fire or woodheap.

  Flame licked Tilly’s piece of timber. She stayed long enough to watch its transformations. Dead timber coming alive. Coals and bones.

  Wally and Ruby suggested a cup of tea, a feed. Then they’d move on.

  RECONSTITUTING

  Gerald, at the centre of a circle that included Nita, Milton, Angela, Kathy, Wilfred, Beryl . . . There would have been that number twice again and Gerald, at their centre, might have been a sacrifice, something being tortured. He twisted, he kneeled, he crawled among strange words writ large on sheets of paper spread across the floor and spoke them aloud. All words seem strange if put like this, and at first the sounds fell into a vast silence. But then, like small echoes, they began to emerge from within the bodies of those listening.

  Beyond, at a little distance again, even those pretending their attention was elsewhere began to move closer, drawn. Shivering in resonance, the little group became instruments of an ancient sound, were bringing an old tongue to life.

  ‘Yeah, this . . .’ Ruby smiled. They were watching from the doorway through which people kept coming to join the circle which had some kind of small, contained energy at its centre.

  And it was not just words and books written on the paper, Ruby whispered, and it was not just paper. Milton had said, ‘I’m gunna take these songs to my grave, and I don’t want to. I wanna give it to grannies that aren’t born yet.’ Now some of them had those songs on their phones. Once upon a time, Milton’s brothers and sisters and parents would have been wild with him. They were punished for speaking that. And jealous they never learned. ‘It was hard. Even I wasn’t so interested then.’

  ‘All that Native Title evidence, what our family give,’ said Ruby.

  Fragments of story and song, wordlists and genealogies, maps and photos and . . . They were working out how to share and grow. Ruby gestured toward Tilly’s phone, then paused.

  ‘That NAIDOC thing at the prison. Your dad, Jim. You go?’

  No. Tilly thought of her father as she’d last seen him. Large head ponderously balanced on thin neck, shoulders broad and thin above the ribbed barrel of his chest. He was propped up in bed, legs folded beneath the blankets. Might have been a puppet. Except the head had turned, the eyes caught hers.

  Ruby said, ‘Something like that NAIDOC thing would be good for the Peace Park opening, but I think your father was the only one could get people doing it.’

  Her father danced, his bones rattling an accompaniment to Gerry, soulmate and brother, who writhed on the floor; spoke, listened, wrote.

  Gerry led them through an old story, though sometimes it was a song. Bits of language, then he’d explain. Human bones laid out in ash. Burnt, he said. Burnt and eaten, maybe, but this story starts here, with the bones laid out just so, in the ash, a perfect skeleton. There must’ve been a tongue, or something, because a little willy-willy, a little whirlpool of ashen air formed just above the mouth. He sang the refrain. Then the head is there, hovering just above the ash. Sang again. The head, and then shoulders, and bit by bit, singing bit by bit, body part by body part, the skeleton rose, ash become flesh, and came alive again . . . Gerry sang the refrain nervously the first time, but each time more joined in. Tilly would’ve liked to, but she was shy and didn’t know the song anyway: not the words, not the tune. Not at first. Kathy’s voice joined enthusiastically the second time through, and Gerry sang like he was in one of the American churches on TV. Speaking in tongues, maybe they were in a way. There were many refrains; the whirlwind of ash, the air moving and giving body. Wilfred sang with abandon, buoyed by the many voices. Beryl moved her lips, was smiling, looked defiant and proud. Everyone was singing and the body hovered above the ash, upright and swaying, finding its balance in their attention. There were more voices than you could see.

  Kathy took over from Gerry. She was a teacher, and so she gave a language lesson but there was a story in there too, and of course she translated as she went, else none of them would have known what she was saying.

  ‘Key Words,’ said Kathy, and they said the words after her. It was embarrassing; like a kids’ schoolroom, but for adults. They even repeated certain sentences. She had books. She had a computer, and images to help her. Even so, Tilly found it hard to make sense of it. It was almost like a children’s story that began, ‘Once upon a time . . .’

  Anyway, there was a young man . . .

  ‘Can we make it a woman?’ Tilly interrupted, surprising even herself.

  Kathy paused.

  ‘You’re right, this woman . . .’

  She was polite and curious, this girl, this young woman in the story and really it comes down to this: she trusted herself and her instincts, and found and followed some barely detectable trail that no one else could even see . . . It leads her among spirit creatures, among powerful strangers, among resentful and jealous family. She learns more of herself with each encounter, finds her talents and abilities, learns and grows. Might rise into the sky and orbit home, or be carried on the shoulders of her clan, celebrated.

  ‘Not likely any of us.’

  ‘But there are stories, too,’ Gerry joined, ‘of when you fail, or falter, or die like that body in the ash, and the river . . . The river?’

  He made the word a question, and looked to Nita and Wilfred. They nodded, yes, we will be visiting the river sites tomorrow.

  ‘We got a lot of problems, we’re not so strong.’

  ‘Close the Gap.’

  ‘Racist . . .’

  ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones . . .’ began Angela, chanting the old rhyme.

  ‘Sticks and stones will make my bones,’ Nita spoke over them, and Wilfred finished it off, ‘and words will animate me.’

  ‘The right words.’

  Wilfred whooped with delight.

  Nita smiled. ‘Not just Close the Gap,’ she said. ‘Poor fellow me.’

  Yes – paraphrasing still – these stories of when you fail, have been defeated and die, and the slow old river floods and finds the body or maybe just bones neat in the ash, and lifts them gently on rising waters, carries them across the plains, leaves them in a drying pool in the dunes, in damp sand. Sun-blistered mud and damp sand coats the bones, the figure snug in its imprint in the earth.

  Someone recognises him.

  Her.

  They touch you, pull you from the clutching mud, from the branches and reeds, and hold you in their arms – no breath, no blood, such clammy skin. Someone will put their mouth to yours, and breathe. A voice will fill you.

  Gerry said, ‘The eyelids roll back and show just white globes.’

  The body sits up. Even though it had seemed dead, it sits up. Is. A monster? Can it speak?

  ‘The mouth opens,’ said Kathy, ‘and . . .’ She gave the old word for hello, for yes.

  ‘It is hard to not step away,’ said Kathy, ‘even when a loved one comes back alive. But someone needs to cradle the body, listen to the voice return.’

  ‘Story like this really about all coming together, healing and making ourselves strong with language,’ said Gerry.

  They all looked around, stepped back from one another, suddenly shy. Where did that come from?

  ‘Too deadly,’ said Wilfred softly.

  ‘True,’ Milton offered.

  ‘Yes, we will go along the river,�
� said Gerry. It was as if he was trying to cool down, tightening up again. ‘There is the massacre site, the farm.’ They had planned it, he and Milton and Wilfred, Kathy and Nita and Wally and Ruby, too. Jim, when he was still alive . . .

  They would do it in sequence. One place, there is a rough and boulder-scattered gorge, its steep sides strewn with grasses, with everlasting flowers and ferns brushing the rocks, and jam trees and yate trees towering over them. Parrots and parakeets call and call, their voices bouncing above pools of water. Sometimes a small waterfall calls a journey to a halt. There was a skull there for a time, a human skull jammed in a deep stone crevice; too deep to retrieve, too deep to see the bullet hole.

  But we will not dwell on the skull, the bones and bodies and bullets.

  Further along, the river changes again, and high above the banks of the dry and rocky river bed there are clearings surrounded by old and dying sandalwood trees where the earth will drum with footsteps, and voices carry across a distance to nestle in the ears of each listener. And in each clearing Tilly will see a few stones in a small hollow in the ground and agree it is a grave. Those clearings are because of the many feet, because of the thousands of years plucking, because of the fires and the compacted earth.

  There is an ochre quarry, and some springs near the river mouth, inland from the dunes.

  Tilly will sip from a pool of fresh water in the bed of a creek which, when it flows, is salty. Small fires will be lit. People will say this is a culture camp and a rehab thing and it is family and Tilly is welcome.

  It will be men and boys, mostly. No, it will be women too. Mostly young ones, Tilly’s age is good. Families, the ancestors and the children, walk among the trees, take sand paths, paths of leaves and reeds and tread the stuff of time even, the occasions merging, the many many feet.

  Gerry walked on reeds, recently slashed.

  ‘Would’ve burned it old days,’ said Gerry.

  Young ones throwing stones, sticks. Hitting their targets: tree, rock . . . It was hunting, showing your skill. Come here with rightful anticipation.

  But the twins, the young men and boys, they’d hardly seen a living thing yet.

  ‘Won’t, noisy like that. Nothing let you get close.’

  Older men leading them – Wilfred and Milton – and so they move at a slow pace.

  ‘How far we gotta walk then?’

  ‘See if we can get close to kangaroo up ahead.’ Wilfred used the ancient word for kangaroo, and it was repeated. ‘But you gotta keep quiet.’

  ‘Got a rifle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We heading into the wind, unna?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘See how close you can get.’ Again he used the old word. ‘You say it. Might catch him with your voice, your bare hands maybe.’

  ‘Like that old story?’

  ‘No spears.’

  No spears.

  Anyway, need a spear-thrower.’ At a look from Milton he used the old word. ‘Like that one yesterday.’

  ‘But no spear?’

  ‘I got a . . .’ A hesitation, then the word for a throwing stick.

  ‘Good,’ said Wilfred in the old tongue.

  ‘Probably never see nothing, not get close, racket you mob make.’

  The boys quietened, sensing some purpose, and the long walk beginning to quell their energy. The wind and lay of the land helped them along, and the two old men kept near the shelter of trees. From a small clearing high on a slope they watched a mob of kangaroos grazing, maybe a hundred metres away.

  ‘Reckon you can get close enough, maybe get ’em with that thing?’ The old man pointed to the throwing stick.

  A Gerry uttered the old word for kangaroo, continuing, ‘. . . gunna die, boy.’

  The older men settled themselves down to watch. The kangaroos were grazing, regularly lifting their heads to scan their surroundings, scratching themselves absent-mindedly.

  The old men watched their charges, men and boys, move through the trees like noisy shadows. The kangaroos became restless, a number of them kept their heads up. A stick sailed through the air, bounced off the ground beside one of the kangaroos, and then figures were racing toward the animals, throwing stick and stones . . . The kangaroos nonchalantly bounded away. The old men began walking to join the rest of the party; some of the hunters had resumed their pursuit of the animals, incited by the way some of the kangaroos had stopped at a further distance and were looking back at their would-be killers. Pursued again, this time the animals went in among the trees and disappeared.

  Wilfred lit a small fire, and they waited for all to gather.

  ‘Old days they used fire, eh, to get them.’

  ‘Well, mainly so the new grass would bring ’em close next time, yeah.’

  ‘Everyone uses a gun now, so why you only giving us stick, expect us get them with our bare hands?’

  Well, it was because it made them think how to get close, notice the world around us.

  ‘There’ll be one just up here a piece, anyways.’

  Where a fence emerged the other side of the next copse of trees a kangaroo hunched with a cord tight around its neck.

  ‘Snare.’ People use wire, but Wilfred still liked to use sinew.

  The animal was weak, agitated.

  Milton approached the animal, and then moved so quickly they hardly saw the knife. Blood spurted, the animal’s head hung loose.

  ‘Someone wanna carry it? We’ll have to dress it too.’

  Some of the boys untied the snare, studied it.

  ‘Made that from the tail, sinew there,’ said Wilfred. ‘Show you later.’

  They were not back at the car when someone saw a racehorse goanna. Startled, the reptile scurried up a tall, very thin sapling. The sapling bent a little, and the animal was silhouetted against the sky. Milton motioned the group to sit. He whistled, walked a little closer. Whistled again. The goanna began to make its way to the ground again. Not quite back to earth it sidled along a horizontal branch, ceasing its movement altogether now and then, and came to a halt next to Milton. The old man stroked the reptile’s back with a twig.

  ‘Reckon we’ll let this one be, what you reckon?’

  ‘Got plenty of them already.’

  They were in separate cars, travelling single file on a narrow, thin track through plain country, with occasional clumps of trees and taller shrubs. The front car pulled up near just such a clump, and they waited. After long minutes, Milton got out on the driver’s side. He walked toward the other cars, grinning. Finger to his lips to indicate silence he had them get out of the car on his side and walk some twenty or so metres away from the track. Then he stopped and turned around. The shrubs had concealed what they now saw: two kangaroos, one close behind the other among shrubs up to their haunches. The one in front stared at them, clearly aware of their presence but not prepared to move away. She reached back over her shoulder and caressed the head of her partner behind.

  Milton used the old word for sex.

  ‘Couldn’t shoot them like that, unna?’

  Quietly they walked back to the cars. Quietly, they drove on.

  *

  Late that same day they all, women and men together, went to the ocean’s edge, west of where the river waits way back in the dunes. They walked through a gap in the thinly veiled mounds of sand, along a soft corridor of peppermint trees, finally emerging at a small beach made not of sand but – in this portion of its long curve – of rocks and pebbles.

  Milton’s hand on Gerald’s arm brought him to a halt. Milton picked up a rock and turned it over to show Gerald a bird’s footprint imprinted in the stone.

  ‘One rock on this beach,’ said Gerald. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Best place to keep it.’ He put it back among the countless other rocks, footprint down.

  A f
lat, walkable reef extended toward the waves, and within it a narrow channel where the water moved more forcefully. The channel was replete with small rocks and many, even this close to shore, moved and jostled against one another, compelled by the swell breaking onto the distant edge of the reef.

  Gerald balanced awkwardly on his haunches at the water’s edge, and watched stones sliding together. Reaching for one, he slid partly into the water, and scrambled to avoiding falling in. He clasped the hand Tilly held out to him, and turned back to the water and seized one, small, hand-sized rock.

  Smooth and cool, it sat neatly in his palm. Fingers curled around it.

  These were human-sized rocks. Rocks people carried, held in a hand. They found those of a size or shape that called them; those that were beautiful, useful or, if very lucky, both. Carried one away, took a special one with them. Here, now, the pebbles rattled, moved at delayed intervals by the distant, crashing waves.

  *

  That evening they viewed film of earlier trips and camps in which the old people, most now passed away, were singing. Old songs, all of them; traditional songs, mission songs, karaoke. There was a didgeridoo, a piano accordion, quite a few guitars.

  Ruby and Wally were forcing things a little at this late stage of the day. It is always hard when people are missing the familiar rubbery structure and brittle bones of their everyday existence.

  Ruby and Wally sang, some country and western song translated into the old language. ‘Was easier charged up,’ Wally said, and then sang one of their very oldest songs unaccompanied.

  Their inhibitions began to break; bit by bit, one by one taken by surprise, they began to sing.

  *

  Late in the night, by the fire, one of the twins said, ‘Tilly, come here.’ He led her into the darkness. She believed it was Gerald. She looked back to the fire and saw Wilfred watching them walk away from the light. Gerry put his arm around her, his face beside her own, and pointed up among the stars. She was sure it was Gerald. His cheek was all but touching hers. She felt his warmth.

  ‘Look between the stars,’ he said. ‘Not at them, at the dark patches. See that long skinny space? That’s the neck. Upside down, he’s upside down tonight. Be better soon when no moon.’