Voss

by Patrick White

  ‘Yes. The official journal,’ he repeated, in grave agreement.

  It was obvious that she would read it with that interest women took in the achievements of men.

  Ah, I must pray for him, she said, for he will be in need of it.

  He was inexplicably flattered by her no longer communicative presence in the darkness, and very contented.

  Then Mrs Bonner had emerged from the square light, and was puckering up her face at darkness, and trying to read its mind.

  She called:

  ‘Laura! Laura, dear, where are you? Laur-a.’

  So that her niece felt it her duty to approach. In leaving, she barely touched Voss upon the hand. He was not sure whether he was intended to go or stay, but followed immediately.

  They came out into the light almost together. Almost as if they had been sleep-walking, Aunt Emmy feared.

  ‘My dear child, you will be frozen,’ she began to complain, and frowned.

  But as if she did not see Voss.

  ‘In this treacherous wind.’

  With that wretched man.

  She half-arranged an invisible shawl as a protection against her own distress in such a situation.

  ‘Miss Hollier particularly wants to hear you play the Field nocturne, the one with the pretty tune towards the end, you know, that I so much like.’

  They went into the rosy room, where Uncle had built his hands into a gable, and was explaining to Mr Palfreyman, whose eyeballs had grit behind them, the dangerous hold the sectarians, not to say Roman Catholics, already had upon the Colony. It was strange that things spiritual should make Mr Bonner’s flesh swell.

  Laura Trevelyan immediately sat down at the piano, and gave rather a flat rendering of the Field nocturne.

  The German, who had followed the ladies into the room, stood biting his lips, unconscious of the awkward, even embarrassing attitude of his body, listening, or so it appeared, as if the music propounded some idea above the level of its agreeable mediocrity. Then he went and flung himself down, boorishly, Miss Hollier remarked afterwards to a friend, flung himself upon an upright sofa that did not respond to him. He sat or sprawled there, passing his hand intermittently over his forehead and his closed eyes, and remained more or less oblivious after Laura had left the piano.

  So he spent what remained of the evening. He himself could not have told exactly of what he was thinking. He would have liked to give, what he was not sure, if he had been able, if he had not destroyed this himself with deliberate ruthlessness in the beginning. In its absence there remained, in the lit room, a shimmering of music, and of the immense distances towards which he already trudged.

  5

  THE morning Johann Ulrich Voss and his party were due to sail to Newcastle on the first stage of their attempt to cross the continent, a fair number of friends and inquisitive strangers was converging on the Circular Wharf. It was a still, glassy morning, from which the wind had but recently fallen after blowing almost continuously for three whole days. It would rise again, however, said those who knew instinctively of such things; it would rise later that afternoon, and more than likely take the Osprey out.

  So there was a quiet conviction of preparation in the lovely morning, although at sight of green water lolling round the sides of ships and little blunt boats, all belief in oceans should have been suspended. Life was grown humane. No one would be crucified on any such amiable trees as those pressed along the northern shore. On all sides of the landscape there was evident at present a passionless beauty that recurred even in the works of men. Houses were honester, more genial, it seemed, in the crude attempt to fulfil their purpose. Then, there was the long, lean ship, smelling of fresh tar, of hemp, of salt, and a cargo of seed potatoes with the earth still on them. This ship that would carry the party on the first and gentle lap of their immense journey, and which had been evolved by some most happy conjunction of art and science, could never have known conflict of canvas, or so it appeared.

  Most tackle had already been conveyed aboard, either the previous evening, or early on the present day, before the drunkards had begun to stir on the ruts of the streets, while cows with full udders were still filing towards the fringes of the town. The stars were not yet gone when Voss stuck his head into his cold shirt. His skin was soon taut. His light-coloured eyes, which were often surprisingly communicative to simple people, had made Mrs Thompson cry as she stood in her nightgown at the leave-taking, though, of course, as on all such occasions, she was remembering the dead. Topp, in nightcap, still puffy, and also moved, shook his lodger by the hand, but would come at the last, he insisted, to the ship’s side. Then Voss climbed upon the cart of an Irish emancipist, and was driven to the water. The straggly grass, wherever the town had not suppressed it, was full of dew.

  All that morning Voss was coming and going at the ship. Some spoke to him as he passed, asked for directions, asked to be commanded. Some did not see him, but took him for granted. He was there, the leader. He had grown thinner overnight from thinking of the future. From all angles, this was so immense, he would suddenly grow exasperated and turn his back on those of his followers who were simple enough to expect explanations. It puzzled those honest people. Others would catch sight of his head and shoulders as he disappeared below deck, and feel relieved, because they were unable to resolve their relationship with such a man, yet even these were glad of his presence, unseen and hateful though he was. Others still were racked by the spasms of a jealous love.

  Harry Robarts, who had got there earliest after his leader, to be ignored, would have felt lost in that perfect but oblivious scene, if later that morning he had not caught sight of Mr Palfreyman, the ornithologist, who was attempting to bring on board a number of awkward specimen cases, that a cynical carter had dumped upon the wharf and left. This kind of situation would rouse Harry’s gratitude and ardour. Only when serving was he purposeful.

  So he came down, as quick as his boots would let him, his simple soul open to receive the superior will of whatever master. He touched his cap, and rather jerkily, said:

  ‘Why, Mr Palfreyman, sir, I will lend a hand with these ’ere articles, if you is agreeable. It passes the time to be of use, when it is all strange, like.’

  Some would have taken Harry Robarts for servile. He had been sworn at, in fact, by certain individuals of that town. But the only concession made to the judgement of his critics was in the mottling and deepening of his skin, now a clear bronze, that had once been innocent pink. Otherwise, the lad continued to give of himself without shame, because it was in his nature to.

  ‘Yes, well, thank you, Harry. It is civil of you. If you please,’ said the ornithologist, who was taken by surprise.

  The latter was, after all, a stiff, insignificant man, it appeared. Certainly, if there were no reason why he should assert himself, he might go whole days without being noticed. During the recent interval of preparation and expectation he had withdrawn to his own thoughts, and was only now emerging, as ropes were being freed, the voices of sailors calling to one another, wagons backing, landsmen swearing, bodies sweating. His grey eyes were now looking about him, and at the boxes which the boy proposed to lift. One of the man’s cheeks twitched, but once, and very shadowily.

  ‘These are most impracticable cases for muleback, but I am taking them because, in other ways, they suit my purpose. Do you see, Harry?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy.

  He did not, but felt that he was being drawn into some confidence which was good and warm, and which promised contentment for the future.

  Or was this wrong?

  The boy looked over his shoulder, but did not see anyone. He had been guilty of a lapse, he suspected, in enjoying those moments of warm fellowship in the sun. Somewhere he had learnt that man’s first duty is to suffer.

  The gentlemen, however, appeared to be ignorant of that lesson, as he bent over his cases, opened their flaps, and explained certain advantages of their design, which was his own, he suggested, smi
ling.

  ‘And these sections are for the skins which I shall prepare,’ Mr Palfreyman was saying; ‘and these little compartments for the specimens of eggs. Where are you from, boy?’ he asked.

  The lad did not answer. He could have been absorbed.

  ‘You are not from London,’ the ornithologist pondered.

  Then Harry Robarts began to mumble.

  ‘From thereabouts,’ he said.

  As if it mattered. Now the blue sky was hateful.

  ‘We have that in common,’ the rather grey Mr Palfreyman replied, and would have continued, as a disguise, in that vein of enthusiasm which men tap for boys.

  Then both of them knew that it did not convince. That they had become equal. They were perhaps glad. They would melt together more fiercely under that blue sky. Or burn to ashes.

  They realized, standing on the wharf, that the orderly, grey, past life was of no significance. They had reached that point at which they would be offered up, in varying degrees, to chaos or to heroism. So they were shaking with their discovery, beside the water, as the crude, presumptuous town stretched out behind them, was reeling on its man-made foundations in the sour earth. Nothing was tried yet, or established, only promised.

  Such glimpses are, of course, a matter of seconds, and Harry Robarts had shoved back his cap of somewhat scruffy kangaroo hide, and sliced his nose with a finger, and said:

  ‘Well, sir, this will not make us a shirt.’

  He had begun to pile the cases, of fresh-smelling wood. By the strength of his body alone, he was a giant. So he was proud for a little. But the rather delicate ornithologist remained humble. While the boy’s animal nature enabled him to take refuge from revelation in physical strength, the man was compelled to shoulder the invisible burden of the whole shapeless future as his soul had briefly understood it.

  Soon they were stumbling about below deck, looking for a place in which to lay the cases. The boy did not ask for more than to be led; the man, more sensible of strange surroundings, was also more noticeably diffident. Interrupting a conversation with the mate and boatswain over some matter of space and stores, Voss did glance for a moment at the incongruous pair, and recalled the scene on London River, which seemed to be repeating itself. Then Palfreyman, too, is weak, he realized.

  Finally, the ornithologist and the boy stowed their cases in a dark corner beside the bundles of bridles and the mounds of pack-saddles. Their relationship was cut now. Harry, who had been set working, would return for another load. But Palfreyman began to wander in free captivity, amongst the blunt-toed, hairy sailors, all of whom had the power and knowledge to control unmanageable objects. It was only really through humility that his own strength was restored to him. Some of those sailors began to recognize it, and wondered how they could repair their error after they had shoved aside his apparently frail and useless body.

  One man, apparently under the impression that restitution can only be made in a state of complete nakedness, resolved to part with a secret that he had told to no one. After thinking it over a while, and observing the gentleman’s face, and breathing, and spitting, he dropped the sail he was mending and took Palfreyman aside.

  On that night of which he wished to speak, the sailor said, he happened to be full of the rum. It was not a habit with him, but it had occurred on some occasions, of which this was one. He had been walking on the outskirts of the town at no great distance from the house of a friend, whose wife, he suddenly noticed, was passing by. As his condition was not far enough advanced to give offence (he was never on no account so far gone as to be falling-drunk), he accompanied the wife of his friend a little of the way, making conversation that was agreeable to both parties. When, it seemed, they had lain down beneath a tree, and were taking advantage of each other’s bodies.

  The sailor had fallen asleep, he said, in some quandary of pleasure or guilt, and when he had woke, the woman was gone.

  Now it was his worry whether he had dreamed a dream, or not, for whenever he met the wife of his friend she made no sign. What was he to believe? the sailor asked, and looked at the convenient stranger, into whose keeping he was not afraid to give himself.

  ‘If it happened in a dream that was not distinguishable from the life, it is still a matter for your conscience,’ Palfreyman replied. ‘You wished to live what you dreamed.’

  But the sailor was troubled.

  ‘Then, a man is caught all ways,’ he said, putting his hand in his chest, and scratching the hair of it.

  ‘But if it happened,’ he continued, and began to be consoled, ‘if it happened that the woman really had a part in it, then she was as much to blame, and never making so much as a sign.’

  ‘If the woman took part in it, in fact,’ Palfreyman said, ‘she is a bad woman.’

  ‘But in a dream?’ the sailor mused.

  ‘It is you that are bad,’ laughed Palfreyman.

  ‘Still, it was a good dream,’ the sailor said. ‘And she would have been willing, I know, if she was that willing in any dream.’

  The sailor’s logic was made infallible by the dreamy accompaniment of green water soothing the wooden side of the ship.

  I cannot blame the fellow, even if I condemn his morality, Palfreyman saw. The man had become more important than his ambiguous problem, which their association, elbow to elbow at the ship’s bulwark, did, in fact, seem to have solved.

  It happened in this position that Palfreyman was reminded of his conversation with Voss as they stood in the Botanic Gardens at the rail of the little bridge. He realized that he did not wish to recall this scene, or that until now he had chosen to take refuge, as the sailor had, in a second possibility. Voss, he began to know, is the ugly rock upon which truth must batter itself to survive. If I am to justify myself, he said, I must condemn the morality and love the man.

  The sailor had begun to sense some repugnance.

  ‘But you do not think ill of me?’ he asked. ‘Not altogether?’

  Then Palfreyman, looking into the open pores of the man’s skin, wished that all difficulties might wear the complexion of this simple sailor.

  ‘I am glad to have heard your story,’ he said, ‘and hope to have learnt something from you.’

  So that the sailor was puzzled, and returned to that work in which he had been engaged, of mending a sail.

  Presently Palfreyman was addressed, and found that his colleague Le Mesurier had come up, somewhat dandified, considering the circumstances, in nankeen trousers, and a blue coat with aggressive buttons.

  ‘Then we are off at last to do,’ Le Mesurier said, though without a trace of that cynicism which he usually affected.

  ‘Yes.’

  Palfreyman smiled, but did not at once come out of himself to meet the young man.

  The latter remained unperturbed. Whether it was the radiant morning, or the presence of human kindliness, Le Mesurier did feel that something might eventuate from such beginnings, and expressed his thoughts along those lines.

  But the ornithologist cleared his throat.

  ‘It is early days yet to say.’

  ‘You are an old hand, and cautious,’ Le Mesurier replied; ‘whereas I am a man of beginnings. They are my delusion. Or my vice. I have never got very far beyond indulging it.’

  Palfreyman, who could not easily visualize a life without dedication, asked:

  ‘But tell me, Frank, what have you achieved? I refuse to believe there is not something.’

  ‘I am always about to act positively,’ Le Mesurier answered wryly. ‘There is some purpose in me, if only I can hit upon it. But my whole life has been an investigation, shall we say, of ways. For that reason I will not give you my history. It is too fragmentary; you would be made dizzy. And this colony is fatal to anyone of my bent. There are such prospects. How can I make a fortune from merino sheep, when at the same time there is a dream of gold, or of some inland sea floating with tropical birds? Then, sometimes, it seems that all these faults and hesitations, all the worst evil in
me is gathering itself together into a solid core, and that I shall bring forth something of great beauty. This I call my oyster delusion.’

  Then he laughed.

  ‘You will think I am drunk, Mr Palfreyman. You will not believe in my pearl.’

  ‘I will believe in it,’ said the quiet man, ‘when you bring it to me in your hand, and I can see and touch it.’

  Le Mesurier was not put out. The morning, shimmering and floating, was for the moment pearl enough. Listening to the humdrum grind of enterprise, of vehicles and voices in the pearly distance, he was amazed that he could have hated this genial town. But with the impact of departure it had become at last visible, as landscapes will. The past is illusion, or miasma. So the leaves of the young Moreton Bay figs were now opening their actual hand. Two aboriginal women, dressed in the poorest shifts of clothing, but the most distinguished silence, were seated on the dirt beside the wharf, broiling on a fire of coals the fish that they had caught. And a little boy, introduced especially into this regretful picture, was selling hot mutton pies that he carried in a wooden box. He was walking, and calling, and dawdling, and looking, and picking his snub nose. The little boy would not have asked to live in any other surroundings. He belonged to that place.

  The nostalgia of the scene smote Frank Le Mesurier, who feared that what he was abandoning might be the actuality for which he had always craved.

  Palfreyman, irritated by the young man in spite of his intention not to be (he would make amends, he promised himself, at a later date), was watching with pleasure the approach of a party on horseback, that had negotiated the streets which petered out on the eastern slope, and had begun to cross the white space that opened out before the wharf.

  ‘I must leave you for a little, Frank,’ he said, with kindness covering relief, ‘and speak to some friends who are arriving.’

  Le Mesurier agreed, in silence, that this should happen. His dark, surly nature had resumed possession. Palfreyman, who had friends of his own, was no longer any friend of his. Human beings, like intentions, he could never possess for long. So, surlily, darkly, he watched the other descend the gang-plank towards an encounter which made him a positive part of that place. Even Palfreyman. Le Mesurier would have condemned his former friend’s neat and oblivious back, if he had not known that, for some reason, the ornithologist could not be thus wounded.