Patrick White
VOSS
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
By Patrick White
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781446435366
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Published by Vintage 1994
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Copyright © Patrick White 1957
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain by Eyre & Spottiswood, 1957
Vintage
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 09 932471 7
FOR
MARIE D’ESTOURNELLES
DE CONSTANT
VOSS
Patrick White was born in England in 1912; and taken to Australia (where his father owned a sheep farm) when he was six months old, but educated in England, at Cheltenham College and King’s College, Cambridge. He settled in London, where he wrote several unpublished novels, then served in the RAF during the war; he returned after the war to Australia.
He became the most considerable figure in modern Australian literature, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. The great poet of Australian landscape, he has turned its vast empty spaces into great mythic landscapes of the soul. His position as man of letters was controversial, provoked by his acerbic, unpredictable public statements and his belief that it is eccentric individuals who offer the only hope of salvation. Technically brilliant, he is one modern novelist to whom the oft-abused epithet ‘visionary’ can safely be applied. He died in September 1990.
BY PATRICK WHITE
Fiction
Happy Valley
The Living And The Dead
The Aunt’s Story
The Tree Of Man
Voss
Riders In The Chariot
The Burnt Ones
The Solid Mandala
The Vivisector
The Eye Of The Storm
The Cockatoos
A Fringe Of Leaves
The Twyborn Affair
Three Uneasy Pieces
Memoirs Of Many In One
(Editor)
Autobiography
Flaws In The Glass
1
‘THERE is a man here, miss, asking for your uncle,’ said Rose.
And stood breathing.
‘What man?’ asked the young woman, who was engaged upon some embroidery of a difficult nature, at which she was now forced to look more closely, holding the little frame to the light. ‘Or is it perhaps a gentleman?’
‘I do not know,’ said the servant. ‘It is a kind of foreign man.’
Something had made this woman monotonous. Her big breasts moved dully as she spoke, or she would stand, and the weight of her silences impressed itself on strangers. If the more sensitive amongst those she served or addressed failed to look at Rose, it was because her manner seemed to accuse the conscience, or it could have been, more simply, that they were embarrassed by her harelip.
‘A foreigner?’ said her mistress, and her Sunday dress sighed. ‘It can only be the German.’
It was now the young woman’s duty to give some order. In the end she would perform that duty with authority and distinction, but she did always hesitate at first. She would seldom have come out of herself for choice, for she was happiest shut with her own thoughts, and such was the texture of her marble, few people ever guessed at these.
‘What will I do with this German gentleman?’ asked the harelip, which moved most fearfully.
The flawless girl did not notice, however. She had been brought up with care, and preferred, also, to avoid an expression of longing in her servant’s eyes. She frowned rather formally.
‘We cannot expect Uncle for at least another hour,’ she said. ‘I doubt whether they have reached the sermon.’
That strange, foreign men should come on a Sunday when she herself had ventured on a headache was quite exasperating.
‘I can put the gentleman in your uncle’s study room. No one ever goes in there,’ said the servant. ‘Except, there is no knowing, he could lay his hands on something.’
The squat woman’s flat face suggested it had experienced, and understood, all manner of dishonesty, but was in the habit of contemplating such behaviour from a dull distance since she had become the slave of virtue.
‘No, Rose,’ said the girl, her mistress, so firmly at last that the toe of her shoe thumped against her petticoats, set them sawing at one another, and the stiff skirt, of a deep, lustrous blue, added several syllables to her decision. ‘There is no avoiding it, I can see. It would not be civil. You will show the gentleman in here.’
‘If it is right,’ her thoughtful servant dared to suggest.
The young woman, who was most conscientious in her needlework, noticed how she had overstitched. Oh, dear.
‘And, Rose,’ she added, by now completely her own mistress, ‘after we have talked for a little, neither too long, nor too short, but decently, you will bring in the port wine, and some of my aunt’s biscuits that she made yesterday, which are on the top shelf. Not the best port, but the second best. It is said to be quite nice. But make sure, Rose, that you do not wait too long, or the refreshment will arrive with my uncle and aunt, and it would be too confusing to have so much happen at once.’
‘Yes, miss,’ said Rose, whose business it was not. ‘Will you be taking a glass yourself?’
‘You may bring one,’ said the young woman. ‘I shall try a biscuit, but whether I shall join him in the wine I cannot yet say.’
The servant’s skirts were already in motion. She wore a dress of brown stuff, that was most marvellously suited to her squat body.
‘Oh, and Rose,’ called the young woman, ‘do not forget to announce Mr Voss on showing him into the room.’
‘Mr Voss? That is the gentleman’s name?’
‘If it is the German,’ replied the girl, who was left to consider her embroidery frame.
The room in which s
he sat was rather large, darkened by the furniture, of which the masses of mellow wood tended to daunt intruding light, although here and there, the surface of a striped mirror, or beaded stool, or some object in cut glass bred triumphantly with the lustier of those beams which entered through the half-closed shutters. It was one of the first sultry days of spring, and the young woman was dabbing at her upper lip with a handkerchief as she waited. Her dress, of that very deep blue, was almost swallowed up, all but a smoulder, and where the neat cuffs divided it from her wrists, and at the collar, which gave freedom to her handsome throat. Her face, it had been said, was long-shaped. Whether she was beautiful it was not at first possible to tell, although she should, and could have been.
The young woman, whose name was Laura Trevelyan, began to feel very hot as she listened for sounds of approach. She did not appear to listen, however, just as she did not appear nervous; she never did.
The keenest torment or exhilaration was, in fact, the most private. Like her recent decision that she could not remain a convinced believer in that God in whose benevolence and power she had received most earnest instruction from a succession of governesses and her good aunt. How her defection had come about was problematic, unless it was by some obscure action of antennae, for she spoke to nobody who was not ignorant, and innocent, and kind. Yet, here she was become what, she suspected, might be called a rationalist. If she had been less proud, she might have been more afraid. Certainly she had not slept for several nights before accepting that decision which had been in the making, she realized, several years. Already as a little girl she had been softly sceptical, perhaps out of boredom; she was suffocated by the fuzz of faith. She did believe, however, most palpably, in wood, with the reflections in it, and in clear daylight, and in water. She would work fanatically at some mathematical problem, even now, just for the excitement of it, to solve and know. She had read a great deal out of such books as had come her way in that remote colony, until her mind seemed to be complete. There was in consequence no necessity to duplicate her own image, unless in glass, as now, in the blurry mirror of the big, darkish room. Yet, in spite of this admirable self-sufficiency, she might have elected to share her experience with some similar mind, if such a mind had offered. But there was no evidence of intellectual kinship in any of her small circle of acquaintance, certainly not in her own family, neither in her uncle, a merchant of great material kindness, but above all a man, nor her Aunt Emmy, who had upholstered all hardnesses till she could sit on them in comfort, nor her Cousin Belle, with whom she did share some secrets, but of a hilarious nature, for Belle was still young. So really there was nobody, and in the absence of a rescue party she had to be strong.
Absorbed in the depths of the mirror and her own predicament, Laura Trevelyan forgot for these few flashing instants her uncle’s caller, and was at once embarrassed when Rose Portion, the emancipist servant, stood inside the room, and said:
‘Mr Voss, miss.’
And closed the door.
Sometimes, stranded with strangers, the composed young woman’s lovely throat would contract. Overcome by breathlessness, she would suspect her own words of preparing to lurch out and surprise, if not actually alarm. Then they would not. To strangers she was equable, sometimes even awful.
‘You must excuse my uncle,’ Laura Trevelyan said. ‘He is still at Church.’
Her full skirt was moving across the carpet, sounding with petticoats, and she gave her cool hand, which he had to take, but did so hotly, rather roughly.
‘I will come later. In perhaps one hour,’ said the thick voice of the thin man, who was distressed by the furniture.
‘It will not be so long,’ answered the young woman, ‘and I know my aunt would expect me to make you comfortable during that short time.’
She was the expert mistress of trivialities.
The distressed German was rubbing the pocket of his jacket with one hand. It made a noisy, rough sound.
He began to mumble.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
But grumblingly. It was that blundering, thick accent, at which she had to smile, as superior, though kind, beings did.
‘And after the journey in the heat,’ she said with that same case, ‘you will want to rest. And your horse. I must send the man round.’
‘I came on foot,’ replied the German, who was now caught.
‘From Sydney!’ she said.
‘It is four kilometres, at most, and perhaps one quarter.’
‘But monotonous.’
‘I am at home,’ he said. ‘It is like the poor parts of Germany. Sandy. It could be the Mark Brandenburg.’
‘I was never in Germany,’ said the firm young woman. ‘But I find the road to Sydney monotonous, even from a carriage.’
‘Do you go much into your country?’ asked Voss, who had found some conviction to lean upon.
‘Not really. Not often,’ said Laura Trevelyan. ‘We drive out sometimes, for picnics, you know. Or we ride out on horseback. We will spend a few days with friends, on a property. A week in the country makes a change, but I am always happy to return to this house.’
‘A pity that you huddle,’ said the German. ‘Your country is of great subtlety.’
With rough persistence he accused her of the superficiality which she herself suspected. At times she could hear her own voice. She was also afraid of the country which, for lack of any other, she supposed was hers. But this fear, like certain dreams, was something to which she would never have admitted.
‘Oh, I know I am ignorant,’ Laura Trevelyan laughed. ‘Women are, and men invariably make it clear to them.’
She was giving him an opportunity.
But the German did not take it. Unlike other men, English officers stationed there, or young landowners coming coltish from the country for the practical purpose of finding a wife, he did not consider himself under obligation to laugh. Or perhaps it was not funny.
Laura Trevelyan was sorry for the German’s ragged beard, but it was of a good black colour, rather coarse.
‘I do not always understand very well,’ he said. ‘Not all things.’
He was either tired, or continued to be angry over some experience, or phrase, or perhaps only the room, which certainly gave no quarter to strangers; it was one of the rich, relentless rooms, although it had never been intended so.
‘Is it long since you arrived in the Colony?’ asked Laura Trevelyan, in a flat, established voice.
‘Two years and four months,’ said Voss.
He had followed suit when she sat down. They were in almost identical positions, on similar chairs, on either side of the generous window. They were now what is called comfortable. Only the cloth was taut on the man’s bony knees. The young woman noticed thoughtfully that his heels had frayed the ends of his trousers by walking on them.
‘I have now been here so long,’ she said almost dreamily; ‘I do not attempt to count the years. Certainly not the months.’
‘You were not born here, Miss Bonner?’ asked the German.
It had begun to come more easily to him.
‘Trevelyan,’ she said. ‘My mother was Mrs Bonner’s sister.’
‘So!’ he said. ‘The niece.’
Unlocking his bony hands, because the niece was also, then, something of a stranger.
‘My mother and father are dead. I was born in England. I came here when’ – she coughed – ‘when I was so young I cannot remember. Oh, I am able to remember some things, of course, but childish ones.’
This weakness in the young woman gave the man back his strength. He settled deeper in his chair.
So the light began to flow into the high room, and the sound of doves, and the intimate hum of insects. Then, too, the squat maid had returned, bearing a tray of wine and biscuits; the noise itself was a distraction, the breathing of a third person, before the trembling wine subsided in its decanter into a steady jewel.
Order does prevail.
Not even the presence of
the shabby stranger, with his noticeable cheekbones and over-large finger-joints, could destroy the impression of tranquillity, though of course, the young woman realized, it is always like this in houses on Sunday mornings while others are at Church. It was therefore but a transitory comfort. Voices, if only in whispers, must break in. Already she herself was threatening to disintegrate into the voices of the past. The rather thin, grey voice of the mother, to which she had never succeeded in attaching a body. She is going, they said, the kind voices that close the lid and arrange the future. Going, but where? It was cold upon the stairs, going down, down, and glittering with beeswax, until the door opened on the morning, and steps that Kate had scoured with holystone. Poor, poor little girl. She warmed at pity, and on other voices, other kisses, some of the latter of the moist kind. Often the Captain would lock her in his greatcoat, so that she was almost part of him – was it his heart or his supper? – as he gave orders and told tales by turns; all smelled of salt and men. The little girl was falling in love with an immensity of stars, or the warmth of his rough coat, or sleep. How the rigging rocked, and furry stars. Sleeping and waking, opening and closing, suns and moons, so it goes. I am your Aunt Emmy, and this is your new home, poor dear, in New South Wales, I trust that you will be happy, Laura, in this room, we chose the curtains of a lighter stuff thinking it might brighten, said the comfortable voice, which smelled beneath the bonnet of a nice carnation soap. It did appear momentarily that permanence can be achieved.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Laura Trevelyan, bending forward and twisting the stopper in the long neck of the decanter; glass or words grated. ‘I am forgetting to offer you wine.’
Then the visitor moved protestingly in his chair, as if he should refuse what he would have liked to accept, but said:
‘Danke. No. A little, perhaps. Yes, a half.’
Sitting forward to receive the full, shining glass, from which he slopped a drop, that Miss Trevelyan did not, of course, notice.
His throat was suddenly swelling with wine and distance, for he was rather given to melancholy at the highest pitch of pleasure, and would at times even encourage a struggle, so that he might watch. So the past now swelled in distorting bubbles, like the windows of the warehouse in which his father, an old man, gave orders to apprentices and clerks, and the sweet smell of blond timber suggested all safety and virtue. Nothing could be safer than that gabled town, from which he would escape in all weathers, at night also, to tramp across the heath, running almost, bursting his lungs, while deformed trees in places snatched at his clothes, the low, wind-combed trees, almost invariably under a thin moon, and other traps, in the shape of stretches of unsuspected bog, drew black, sucking sounds from his boots. During the Semester, however, he had a reputation for bristling correctness, as befitted the great surgeon it was intended he should become, until suddenly revolted by the palpitating bodies of men. Then it was learnt he would become a great botanist instead. He did study inordinately, and was fascinated in particular by a species of lily which swallows flies. With such instinctive neatness and cleanliness to dispose of those detestable pests. Amongst the few friends he had, his obsession became a joke. He was annoyed at first, but decided to take it in good part; to be misunderstood can be desirable. There were certain books, for instance. He would interrupt his study of which, and sit in the silence of his square room, biting his nails by candlelight. The still white world was flat as a handkerchief at that hour, and almost as manageable. Finally, he knew he must tread with his boot upon the trusting face of the old man, his father. He was forced to many measures of brutality in defence of himself. And his mother crying beside the stove, of which the green tiles were decorated with lions in relief. Then, when he had wrung freedom out of his protesting parents, and the old people were giving him little parcels for the journey, not so much as presents as in reproach, and the green forests of Germany had begun to flow, and yellow plains unroll, he did wonder at the purpose and nature of that freedom. Such neat trees lined the roads. He was wondering still when he stood on the underside of the world, and his boots sank into the same, gritty, sterile sand to which he used to escape across the Heide. But the purpose and nature are never clearly revealed. Human behaviour is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.
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