Voss

by Patrick White

  To Johann Ulrich Voss, lying on the iron bed in one of the two upper rooms for which he paid the music master, the music was also homage of a kind. At intervals he might lift a hand, graciously acknowledging a phrase, but out of that great distance to which he was so often withdrawn. Men came to see him now, going straightway up the narrow stairs, or waiting in the street, on step or mounting-block, if the German happened to be from home. He is about the business of this great expedition, the old woman Mrs Thompson would explain on such occasions, and did also let it be understood that she could have revealed the nature of that business, only discretion would not allow. Go up, though, my dear, and make yourself comfortable, we are long enough on earth, she advised those she favoured. Or: Wait, she would command of those she suspected; this is a gentleman’s rooms, let me remind you, not a cockpit; if you will rest a while upon the step, you will find it clean, God knows, scrubbed down every day, and the weather permittun.

  In the absence of the German, Harry Robarts was always forced to wait upon the steps. It was not that she disliked the lad, just that she could not take to him, poor fellow, with his wide mouth and reddish cheeks. Christian though she was, or hoped, she could not let her health suffer by sympathizing unduly with every simple boy; there were limits to what a widow might be expected to bear.

  One evening that spring, when the street was already dissolving, and amiable pedestrians were calling to one another in friendship, and Topp’s pupil had caught the brilliance of the sunset if only for a few bars, Harry Robarts came to Voss, and ran up the stairs unimpeded by Mrs Thompson, because her gentleman was there. The boy went in and found his friend examining a list, of ropes, and waterbags, and other tackle, as well as an increased quantity of flour, for which the German had yet to contract with recommended firms.

  ‘It is me, sir,’ panted the lad, twirling a cap of kangaroo skin that he had bought from a hawker on landing in the Colony.

  ‘What is it, then?’ asked the German, and continued to suck the end of a beautifully sharpened lead pencil.

  ‘Nothing,’ said the boy. ‘I came. That is all.’

  The German did not frown, as he might have in other circumstances, at other people. Poor Harry Robarts was an easy shadow to wear. His wide eyes reflected the primary thoughts. Voss could sit with him as he would with still water, allowing his own thoughts to widen on it.

  So that, if he was weak in wit, Harry did enjoy certain other advantages. And muscular strength too. He was white-skinned, but heavy-shouldered. For one instance, there was the mahogany box, the corners bound in brass, the hasps brass, and handles jangling with the same metal, in which the German kept his things. At the shipside on London River, in the stench of green water and rotting fruit, Voss had stood looking at his box. He would, in fact, often experience fits of humiliating helplessness in the face of practical obstacles. In the night, and light off green, lisping water, it seemed that he would never free himself from his inherent helplessness, when Harry came, uninvited, out of the darkness, asked what it was, swung the box – it could have been a canvas thing – upon his shoulder, glad to offer his services to someone who might think for him. He was all breathless, not from the weight, but from enthusiasm; was he not embarked for new worlds in that same vessel as the gentleman? All that night in the black ship, beneath the swinging lanterns, Voss felt weak with knowledge, and the boy beside him strong with innocence.

  Harry stuck to Voss. The German explained to him the anatomy of the flying fish, and named the stars. Or Harry would perform feats of strength, without his shirt, his white skin now ablaze with the tropics; he would stand on his hands, or break the links of a chain, not through vanity, but in an exchange of gifts.

  Harry was always present, until Voss accepted it, and afterwards at Sydney, when he was not at work – he had been taken on as a carrier’s lad – would run up the stairs, when the German was at his lodging, and say in one breath, as on the present occasion:

  ‘It is me, sir. Harry. I have come.’

  That same evening Le Mesurier came up. Voss always knew when it would be Frank. The latter’s steps were thoughtful. He was somewhat moody. He would be looking at a spider, or into the grain of the balusters, or out of a little, deep-set window that opened upon a yard at the back, in which were kegs, and iron, and long ropes of ivy, and a grey coat with a yellow eye. Frank Le Mesurier could not look too much, though what he did with what he saw was not always evident. He did not communicate at once. His skin was yellowish. His thin lips were dark in that livery skin, his hollow eyes had dark lids, his nose, less fleshy than most, was rather proud.

  ‘Can you tell me,’ Le Mesurier had asked as they were standing on the white planks of the same ship, ‘if you are coming to this damned country for any particular purpose?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Voss, without hesitation. ‘I will cross the continent from one end to the other. I have every intention to know it with my heart. Why I am pursued by this necessity, it is no more possible for me to tell than it is for you, who have made my acquaintance only before yesterday.’

  They continued to look at the enormous sea.

  ‘And what, may I ask in return, is your purpose? Mr Le Mesurier, is it?’

  Some sense of kinship with the young man had made the German’s accent kind.

  ‘Purpose? So far, no purpose,’ Le Mesurier said. ‘But time will show, perhaps.’

  It was clear that the vast glass of ocean would not.

  The German felt himself drawn even closer to the young man, as they steadied themselves against the swell. If I were not obsessed, Voss reflected, I would be purposeless in this same sea.

  The dark, young, rather exquisite, but insolent fellow did not cling like Harry Robarts; he would reappear at intervals. Frank would stick at nothing long. Since his arrival at Sydney he had been employed by several business houses, had worked for a settler in the Hunter Valley, even as a groom at a livery stable, but at all times was careful to polish his boots. His waistcoats were still presentable, and would rouse comment in hotels from those who bored him. He did not listen long to the conversation of others, having thoughts of his own of greater importance, and would sometimes slip away with no warning at all, with the result that he soon became detested by those talkers who had their professional pride. He was a snob, too. He would go so far as to suggest that he had more education than others, which, of course, was true. Somebody soon discovered that he had written a poem on a metaphysical theme, for details of which nobody dared ask. It was known, however, that he liked to discuss God, after he was drunk, on rum for choice, ploughing through the dark treacle of seductive words and getting nowhere at two o’clock in the morning. Getting nowhere. If he had become coolly cynical rather than embittered, it was because he still entertained a hope that it might be revealed which part he was to play in the general scheme.

  Voss had encountered Le Mesurier one evening at dusk amongst the scrub and rocks gathered together above the water on the northern side of the Domain, and asked, as it seemed the time and place:

  ‘Have you discovered that purpose, Frank, that we have discussed already on board the ship?’

  ‘Why, no, I have not, Mr Voss,’ said the elusive Frank, and the goose-flesh overcame him.

  He began to pitch stones.

  ‘I rather suspect,’ he added, ‘it is something I shall not discover till I am at my last gasp.’

  Then Voss, who had sat down in a clearing in the scrub and larger, ragged trees, warmed more than ever to the young man, knowing what it was to wrestle with his own daemon. In the darkening, yellow light, the German’s arms around his knees were spare as willow switches. He could dispense with flesh.

  Le Mesurier continued to throw stones, that made a savage sound upon the rocks.

  Then Voss had said:

  ‘I have a proposition to make. My plans are forming. It is intended that I will lead an expedition into the interior, westward from the Darling Downs. Several gentlemen of this town are interested
in the undertaking, and will provide me with the necessary backing. Do you care to come, Frank?’

  ‘I?’ exclaimed Le Mesurier.

  And he pitched a particularly savage stone.

  ‘No,’ he said, lingeringly. ‘I am not sure that I want to cut my throat just yet.’

  ‘To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself,’ said Voss.

  He knew this young man as he knew his own blacker thoughts.

  ‘I am aware of that,’ laughed Frank. ‘But I can do it in Sydney a damn sight more comfortably. You see, sir,’ he added longingly, ‘I am not intended for such heights as you. I shall wallow a little in the gutter, I expect, look at the stars from a distance, then turn over.’

  ‘And your genius?’ said the German.

  ‘What genius?’ asked Le Mesurier, and let fall the last of his ammunition.

  ‘That remains to be seen. Every man has a genius, though it is not always discoverable. Least of all when choked by the trivialities of daily existence. But in this disturbing country, so far as I have become acquainted with it already, it is possible more easily to discard the inessential and to attempt the infinite. You will be burnt up most likely, you will have the flesh torn from your bones, you will be tortured probably in many horrible and primitive ways, but you will realize that genius of which you sometimes suspect you are possessed and of which you will not tell me you are afraid.’

  It was dark now. Tempted, the young man was, in fact, more than a little afraid – his throbbing body was deafening him – but as he was a vain young man, he was also flattered.

  ‘That is so much, well, just so much,’ protested Le Mesurier. ‘You are mad,’ he said.

  ‘If you like,’ said Voss.

  ‘And when does this here expedition of yours intend to leave?’

  It was too ridiculous, and he made it sound so.

  ‘One month. Two months. It is not yet decided,’ said the voice of Voss through the darkness.

  He was no longer interested. He was even bored by what he had probably achieved.

  ‘All right then,’ said Le Mesurier. ‘What if I come along? At least I shall think it over. What have I got to lose?’

  ‘You can answer that better than I,’ Voss replied.

  Though he did, he suspected, know the young man pretty well.

  As the moment of reality had receded, they now began to walk away, in soothing sounds of dark grass. Both men were somewhat tired. The German began to think of the material world which his egoism had made him reject. In that world men and women sat at a round table and broke bread together. At times, he admitted, his hunger was almost unbearable. But young Frank Le Mesurier was now thrilled by the immensity of darkness, and resented the approach of those lights which would reveal human substance, his own in particular.

  Later, of course, he was able to recover the disguise of his cynicism, and was clothed with it the evening he reached the top of the stairs, and discovered Voss at home in his room, with that miserable boy Harry Robarts, who was killing flies on the window-sill.

  Harry looked up. Because he did not always understand his speech, as well as for other reasons, he suspected Mr Le Mesurier.

  ‘Ah, Frank,’ said Voss, who dared at once to test his power while remaining occupied at his desk; ‘since you made up your mind, I believe you are afraid that I will give you the slip.’

  ‘I could not hope to be so happy,’ said Le Mesurier, and did in a sense mean it.

  For he was always halfway between wanting and not.

  Voss laughed.

  ‘You must speak with Harry for a little,’ he said.

  And began with some ostentation choosing a pen and a large sheet of very clean paper to compose a letter to a tradesman. He liked to feel that, just beyond his occupations, other people were waiting on him.

  ‘Well, Harry, what shall we discuss?’

  In addressing Harry, or any young person, or puppy, Le Mesurier would compose his dark mouth with conscious irony. For protection. Young things read the thoughts more clearly, he sensed. And this idiot.

  ‘Eh?’ he asked of the boy, holding his neck in a certain manner.

  ‘I dunno,’ said Harry, gloomily, and crushed a fly with his forefinger.

  ‘You were never helpful, Harry,’ Le Mesurier sighed, seating himself, and stretching out his rather elegant legs; ‘when we should stick together. Hopeful flotsam in the antipodes.’

  ‘You were never nothun to me,’ said Harry.

  ‘That is candid, at least.’

  ‘And I am no flotsam, whatever that be.’

  ‘What are you, then?’ asked Le Mesurier, though he had tired.

  ‘I dunno what I am,’ said Harry, and looked for help.

  But Voss was reading through his letter. Whether he had heard, it was not possible to tell.

  Doubting that he could count upon his patron’s protection, Harry Robarts grew more miserable. Many disturbing and opaque thoughts began to move in his clear mind. What am I? What is it necessary to be? His thick boots had become a weight of desolation, and his rough jacket suddenly smelled of animals. He was nothing except when near to Mr Voss, but this nearness was being denied him. Once he had opened his protector’s cupboard and touched the clothes hanging there, even stuck his nose into the dark folds, and been assured. But this was of the past. He was now faced with the terrifying problem of his own category propounded by Mr Le Mesurier.

  ‘You are perhaps subtler than you know,’ the enemy sighed, and felt his own cheek.

  There were several nicks where the razor had sought out stubble in the early furrows of his face, which was almost the colour of a citron on that afternoon. Oh, Lord, why had he come? His own skin was repulsive to him. The young man remembered a haycock on which he had lain as a little boy, and the smell of milk, or innocence. Recognizing something of that same innocence in Harry Robarts’ harmless eyes, he resented it, as a refuge to which he might never again retreat.

  Now he too must rely upon the German. But the latter was reading and reading his wretched letter, and biting his nails, not badly, it must be said, perhaps one especial nail. Frank Le Mesurier, who was fastidious in some respects, loathed this habit, but continued to watch and wait because he was in no position to protest.

  ‘I will ask you to deliver this letter, Harry – not now, it will keep till morning – to Mr O’Halloran, the saddler, in George Street,’ Voss said.

  What did he know? It was not, however, his policy to expose the weaknesses of others unless some particular advantage could be gained.

  ‘You will be pleased to hear that I have received favourable news,’ he announced.

  He was speaking rather brightly, in a manner that he might have learnt, in a foreign tongue, from some brisk, elderly lady talking men’s talk to men. The fact that it was not his own manner did add somewhat to the strain.

  Harry Robarts pursued the situation desperately with his eyes in search of something he could understand. He would have liked to touch his saviour’s skin. Once or twice he had touched Voss, and it had gone unnoticed.

  ‘I cannot believe that this infernal expedition is really about to materialize,’ grumbled Le Mesurier.

  Risen to the surface again, he was indifferent to everything. His long legs, disposed in front of him, were downright insolent.

  ‘In less than two weeks we shall board the Osprey,’ said Voss. ‘The five of us. And set sail for Newcastle, with our fundamental stores. From there we shall proceed to Rhine Towers, the property of Mr Sanderson.’

  For reading and writing the German wore a pair of neat spectacles.

  ‘The five of us?’ said Le Mesurier, smouldering a little. ‘There is Palfreyman, of course. Oh, yes, one forgets Turner.’

  ‘Turner will be here presently, I expect.’

  ‘And we will be ridin’ horses as you said?’ asked Harry Robarts.

  ‘Or mules,’ said Voss.

  ‘Or mules.’

  ‘Though I expect it will be one h
orse to a man, and mules as pack animals. That will rest with Mr Sanderson, however, and Mr Boyle of Jildra.’

  So much did rest with other people, but these were the immaterial, material things. So he frequently deceived his friends. So also in the darkening room a man and a boy continued to wait for moral sustenance. Instead he chose cheerful phrases which were not his own. His sallow cheeks had even grown pink, as a disguise. But I shall lead them eventually, he considered, because it is intended I shall justify myself in this way. If justify was a plain word, it was but a flat occasion. Inspiration descends only in flashes, to clothe circumstances; it is not stored up in a barrel, like salt herrings, to be doled out. In the confused mirror of the darkening room, he was not astonished that his face should have gained in importance over all other reflected details. Cheerfully he could have forgotten his two dissimilar disciples. They were, indeed, an ill-assorted pair, alike only in their desperate need of him.

  Presently Topp’s old housekeeper sighed her way to the upper landing with a nice sweetbread for their lodger’s supper, and a glass of wine that the latter knew would taste of cork.

  ‘Sitting in the dark, almost,’ said Mrs Thompson, in the tone she kept for children and the opposite sex.

  Then she lighted a pair of candles, and set them on the little, rickety cedar table to which the German had taken his tray. Soon the room was swimming with light.

  Voss was eating. There was no question of his offering anything to his two dependants. They were so far distant from him now in the fanciful light that they gloated over him without shame, and the crumbs that fell from his mouth.

  ‘Is it nice, then?’ asked Mrs Thompson, who throve on the compliments of her gentlemen.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the German, as a matter of course.