Voss

by Patrick White

  After an interval, when the company was broken into groups in the tattered firelight, or dozed singly and fitfully between the flickering of eyelids, the German approached the convict, who was seated just a little to one side, and resolved to talk to him. Leaning with his forearm against the wall, and crossing his ankles in prim support, always leaning, and yet with a kind of awkward formality, he said:

  ‘Tell me, Mr Judd, you own this property, and yet see fit to leave it for so long a period as the expedition will require?’

  For he would offer the convict a loophole.

  ‘Yes,’ answered the solid man. ‘I have an able wife, and two boys who were brought up to hardship.’

  No shadow of doubt was revealed in this reply.

  ‘You must feel very strongly on the necessity for such voyages of discovery,’ said Voss, always looking down at Judd.

  The explorer recalled finding on his previous journey a mass of limestone, broken by nature into forms that were almost human, and filled with a similar, slow, brooding innocence.

  The convict said:

  ‘I have had some experience of the country to the north-west. As you have been told. And I consider it my duty to offer my services to the Colony on the strength of that experience.’

  ‘In spite of certain injustices of the Crown?’

  The German was honestly interested in such a conundrum of human behaviour. Although an expert in perversity, this had a strangeness that even he did not understand. So he continued to look at the emancipist, as though their positions were reversed, and Judd were the foreigner in that land.

  Judd was moving his lips.

  ‘In spite of – yes, in spite of it,’ he replied, and did not look at Voss.

  ‘I shall take pleasure in knowing you better in the course of time,’ the German said.

  The emancipist made a wry mouth, and sound of regret or doubt, of which Voss, preoccupied with his own deficiencies, remained unaware. Indeed, the pleasure he promised himself in learning to understand Judd did seem illusory, for rock cannot know rock, stone cannot come together with stone, except in conflict. And Voss, it would appear, was in the nature of a second monolith, of more friable stone, of nervous splinters, and dark mineral deposits, the purposes of which were not easily assessed.

  Judd excused himself, saying:

  ‘I am a simple man.’

  Which can read: most complex, Voss suspected.

  ‘But I am pledged to give of my best. If it is only with my hands. You see, I have received no education worth speaking of. I have not read the books. All my gifts are for practical things. Then, too, I have a “bush sense”, it has been proved. So there, sir, are my qualifications in a nutshell. Oh, I forgot to mention endurance. But that goes without saying. I have survived till now.’

  All these words were placed upon one another broodily, like stones.

  Voss, who was looking down all the time upon the man’s massive, grizzled head, could not feel superior, only uneasy at times. It was necessary for him to enjoy complete freedom, whereas this weight had begun to threaten him. So he was chewing his moustache, nervously, his mouth quite bitter from a determination to resist, his head spinning, as he entered in advance that vast, expectant country, whether of stone deserts, veiled mountains, or voluptuous, fleshy forests. But his. His soul must experience first, as by some spiritual droit de seigneur, the excruciating passage into its interior. Nobody here, he suspected, looking round, had explored his own mind to the extent that would enable him to bear such experience. Except perhaps the convict, whose mind he could not read. The convict had been tempered in hell, and, as he had said, survived.

  Mr Sanderson, who was very sensitive to the limits of human intercourse, now got up, kicked together the remainder of the burnt logs, startled a dog or two, and suggested that his guests should turn in, so that they might inspect his property in the morning with renewed strength. Young Angus at once jumped up, to return as he had come, on horseback, to his own station, and to avoid by an immediate start the company of Judd. For both these men had but ridden in for the evening, to make the acquaintance of the other members of the expedition, which would be camped at Rhine Towers at least a week, resting, choosing horses, and assembling the mules that would act as baggage animals on the journey.

  As the hoofs of the horse ridden by Angus spattered away into the darkness, Mr Sanderson stood on the steps of the house with a lantern to guide his other departing guest to the gate. Of the rest, only Voss and Palfreyman were with him, for Le Mesurier, by some radiant discovery of vocation, was helping their hostess carry sleeping children to their beds.

  Now Palfreyman, who had been silentest of all those present since his weakness wrested him from their company earlier in the evening, was looking at the stars, and said:

  ‘I am glad that my knowledge of astronomy is very poor.’

  ‘Why so?’ asked Voss.

  ‘To understand the stars would spoil their appearance.’

  Voss snorted for the defencelessness of such a statement, which might permanently prevent him from taking Palfreyman into account.

  Yet the German himself appreciated a poetry of the stars, as did each of the other men, a different one. It was the simplicity, hence the ridiculousness, of Palfreyman’s words that caused Voss inwardly to rage, and those stars at which he happened to be staring, to flash with cold fire.

  ‘There will be frost again tonight,’ shivered Sanderson, and the lantern shook.

  ‘Are you all right then, sir?’ asked Judd, lowering his voice, and touching Palfreyman on the elbow.

  ‘Why, yes, I was never better,’ said Palfreyman, who had forgotten his earlier indisposition.

  The two men were speaking for each other, so the tone of their voices suggested. Something, Voss realized, had been established between them.

  Then he almost experienced a state of panic for his own isolation – it was never to him that people were saying good-bye – and he had come down another step in an attempt to see what was in the faces of the convict and the ornithologist.

  If he had but known, Palfreyman was remembering how, earlier that evening, the convict had brought him a shallow iron basin of water, and a lump of crude, yellow soap, and although this humble man had waited on him, they had gratefully sensed they were equal in each other’s eyes.

  Now Voss, looking from one to the other, was trying to trap their shy secret, but could not succeed. There was a flickering of light, of willow trees.

  In consequence, he said, with rather too anxious a warmth:

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Judd. I will come in search of you one day. Before we leave. I would see your land.’

  But the emancipist murmured, and got upon his horse, and went.

  Why, then, have I been foolish? the German asked himself; no man is strong who depends upon others. And as he went inside, he thought of the contempt he bore Palfreyman.

  He has been rubbed up again in some way, Sanderson saw, as they were saying good night.

  Indeed, Voss was scarcely present at any of that ceremony, nor saw the face of his host, who went away at last to his own room.

  ‘Do you think Mr Voss will be able to endure the sufferings of an explorer?’ asked his wife, who was brushing her hair by candlelight.

  ‘He subjects himself continually to such mental suffering, he well may,’ the husband answered.

  ‘But a great explorer is above human suffering, for his men’s eyes, at least.’

  ‘That is where he may come to grief. Not that his suffering is human. But other men will interpret it as such.’

  ‘I fear he may be ill,’ Mrs Sanderson ventured.

  She came and laid her cheek against her husband’s. That others did not share the perfection of their life would fill her at times with a sense of guilt, and now especially was she guilty, by such golden light.

  ‘Have you been watching him to that extent?’ laughed her husband.

  ‘It is not necessary to watch. One can feel it. I wish it w
ere possible to heal him.’

  ‘Rocks will not gash him deeper, nor sun cauterize more searingly than human kindness,’ said her husband with affectionate sententiousness.

  Going to bed in the best room the Sandersons could offer, between exquisitely clean sheets and a lingering scent of verbena, Voss was not long with his body, and those thoughts which had been buzzing like blowflies in his head. At once the hills were enfolding him. All that he had observed, now survived by touch. So he was touching those same hills and was not surprised at their suave flesh. That which would have been reprehensible, nauseating, frightening in life, was permissible, even desirable, in sleep. And could solve, as well as dis-solve. He took the hand to read it out aloud, whatever might be printed on it. Here there were hills, too. They would not be gone around. That is the hill of love, his voice said, as if it had been most natural. That, she pointed, was burnt in the fire of the kiln as I pushed the clay in, and, insignificant though it is, will show for life. Then, roughly, he threw away the hand, which broke into pieces. Even in dreams he was deceived by the appearance of things, and had taken the wrong hand. Here it is, she said without grudge, and brought him another, which had not been baked. It was of white grain. It still had, most terribly, most poignantly, its semblance of flesh. So he shut it up in his bosom. He was afraid to look at it again. Till she bent down from her horse. The woman with the thumping breasts, who had almost got trampled, and whose teeth had been currying black horsehair, began to shout: Laura, Laura. For assistance. All that happens, happens in spite of the horsehair woman, who is, in fact, stuffed. Laura is smiling. They are sharing this knowledge. Then, how are names lost, which the hands have known by touch, and faces, like laborious, raw jugs? Laura is the name. But the name, all is lost, the veil is blowing, the wind. Is it not the same stuff with which the hills are shrouded, and of which the white word is, ach, Musselin, natürlich, but what else?

  In the grey light and first house-sounds, Voss woke and lay with his face against the pillow, whose innocent down was disputing possession of him with the day. For a while the man lay there, trying to remember what he had dreamt, but failing. Irritated at first, he then remembered that it is enough to have dreamt. So he continued to lie, and the faded dream was still part of him. It was, he sensed, responsible for the state of complete well-being which possessed him, at least for that hour.

  Sanderson himself brought a jug of hot water, and stood it in the basin. It pleased him to wait upon his guests in small ways, once he had learnt that this is the true way. But he did not address the German, as it was still too early. At that hour of day words might defile the pure pleasure of living.

  Voss lay and listened to the people of the house begin to go about their business. Some of the girls were exchanging the plain, country dreams they had dreamt. They were giggling, and slapping, and protesting, until their mistress hushed them, and told them to bring brooms and buckets. The man heard the scratch and slop from these utensils as industry increased. He heard the methodical skirts of the mistress ever passing in the passage.

  During the days which followed, the healing air of Rhine Towers worked upon Voss almost to the extent his hosts would have wished. In company with the amiable Mr Sanderson, he rode slowly about the paddocks, inspecting horses, mules, and a few head of cattle that they would take North for their requirements. (Additional beasts, a mob of sheep, and a herd of goats were awaiting them on the Downs, at Mr Boyle’s.)

  While their leader was thus engaged, other members of the party were occupied in different ways: mending their clothes, writing in their journals, snoozing, casting flies for fish, chewing the long juicy grass, or yarning to the hands and Mrs Sanderson’s disbelieving maids. When Voss appeared, however, they would jump to it, eager to obey what now seemed to them his perfectly reasonable commands. All responsibility was taken from them by his presence, a fact of which they were most appreciative at this stage. They did not have to think, but could screw up their eyes at the sun. He was the leader.

  At times the German was quite fatherly, too. This was a part strange enough for him to fancy. Authenticity was added by the first grey hairs which were appearing in his beard; those lines round the eyes were, of course, the signs of kindliness; while the eyes themselves encouraged confidences, of a sort that most men would think twice about giving into the keeping of anyone else.

  During the stay at Rhine Towers, some of them did tell the German. For instance, Harry Robarts confessed how his father had hung him by the ankles, with chains, above a fire of sea-coals, to watch the sweat run out of him. Turner was next. The sun slowed his voice dangerously the day he told of the house in Kentish Town, in which, it was suggested, he had lodged, in which some man had died, in which people were looking at himself, and looking at him, on landings and stairs, until he had run away rather than endure their eyes, and had come of his own free will to this country, where others were expiating their sins by force. After he had told, Turner looked at Voss, sideways, but the sun was too hot for him to regret possible rashness just then.

  Voss received these confidences, and locked them up quickly, both because they were valuable and because it repelled him to share the sins of human vermin on their infected wall. Yet that same disgust drove him to invite further confidences.

  There was one, though, who would not tell. There was Frank Le Mesurier.

  The German realized he had seen little of the young man since their arrival at Rhine Towers, and on one occasion went so far as to say so.

  ‘How you employ your time, Frank, is something of a mystery,’ he said, and smiled.

  The young man was embarrassed.

  ‘What can I say?’ he answered. ‘Whatever I do, I have nothing to hide.’

  Because, he had, of course, something.

  ‘I was joking,’ said the German, kindly. ‘This is a period of rest. You do right to use it.’

  But he looked at the young man, who went outside soon after.

  Already the evening of his arrival, upon scenes of splendour such as he had known to exist but never met, Frank Le Mesurier had begun to change. The sun’s sinking had dissolved all hardnesses. Darkness, however, had not fallen; it seemed, rather, to well forth, like the beating and throbbing of heart and pulse in the young man’s body, to possess the expectant hills. Only the admirable house resisted. Later that night he had gone outside to watch the light from the lamps and candles, with which every window appeared to be filled. Isolation made that rather humble light both moving and desirable. So the days began to explain. Grasses were melting and murmuring. A child laid its cheek against him. The sun, magnificently imperious, was yet a simple circle that allowed him to enter, with the result that he was both blinded and illuminated.

  Finally, on one occasion, he had run into the cool, still room that he was occupying during their visit, and rummaged inside his pack for an old journal which an insignificance of facts had caused him to abandon, and had sat there for a moment with the book held in his daring fingers. So he began.

  All that this man had not lived began to be written down. His failures took shape, but in flowers, and mountains, and in words of love, which he had never before expressed, and which, for that reason, had the truth of innocence. When his poem was written, it was burning on the paper. At last, he had done this. But although he was the stronger for it, he put his poem away, afraid that someone might accuse him of a weakness. Often he took it out, and if some of it had died, for then, there opened out of it other avenues of light. It was always changing, as that world of appearances which had given him his poem. Yet, its structure was unchanged.

  So, he was truly strong.

  Sometimes he longed to reveal his strength to some other man, but was held back from doing so.

  Frank is hiding something, Voss saw.

  Two days before they were to leave for the North-west, the German was compelled to take a horse and go in the direction in which they said Judd’s selection lay. For some of the distance a faint road led ac
ross bare flats. Silly sheep on wooden legs stood and stamped at the horseman from amongst the patches of rusty sorrel. A shepherd was watching from the doorway of his wattle hut. Then the grey road petered out into a bush track, which could have been a shallow watercourse carved between the boulders and the trees. On the night he had returned from Sanderson’s homestead, Judd must have trusted to providence and the instincts of his horse, though the track exhilarated Voss by day. He no longer rode consciously, but was carried onward by sensation. He was touching the bark of those trees that were closest to him (they were, in fact, very close; he could see the gummy scabs on healed wounds, and ants faring through the fibre forests). He was singing, too, in his own language, some shining song, of sunlight and of waterfalls. As the words of the song were few, or those with which he was familiar, they would recur, which stressed their shape, and emphasized their mystical errand in the silence of the grey bush.

  Presently the path, which had reached a razorback, bristling with burnt stumps, wound suddenly, violently, through a crop of shiny, black rocks, and plunged down. The saddle shot forward over the horse’s withers. The sober gelding propped on his four legs, before himself starting down. All was, indeed, headed downward. The world was slanted that way, a herd of goats clinging to it. The hoofs of these animals clicked, their horns slashed, their pellets spattered, as they slit the scrub open, or nibbled at the blades of grey grass. Yellow eyes looked only once at the rider. Then the goats were dashing down, down, down, deeper than all else. Soon their bobbing tails were lost.

  The horse had faith that paths do lead somewhere, and did follow, but the country itself was legendary. Birds plunged songless through the leaves in heavy flight. Dark birds, mostly. It was strange that such soft things could explode the silence, but they did, most vehemently, by their mere passage through it.

  Voss was jubilant as brass. Cymbals clapped drunkenly. Now he had forgotten words, but sang his jubilation in a cracked bass, that would not have disgraced temples, because dedicated to God.

  Yes. GOTT. He had remembered. He had sung it. It rang out, shatteringly, like a trumpet blast.