Voss

by Patrick White

  Their voices were somehow complementary to each other. Like lovers.

  Then Voss began to float, and those words last received. But together. Written words take some time to thaw, but the words of lilies were now flowing in full summer water, whether it was the water or the leaves of water, and dark hairs of roots plastered on the mouth as water blew across. Now they were swimming so close they were joined together at the waist, and were the same flesh of lilies, their mouths, together, were drowning in the same love-stream. I do not wish this yet, or nie nie nie, niemals. Nein. You will, she said, if you will cut and examine the word. Together is filled with little cells. And cuts open with a knife. It is a see seed. But I do not. All human obligations are painful, Mr Johann Ulrich, until they are learnt, variety by variety. But gold is painful, crushing, and cold on the forehead, while wholly desirable, because immaculate. Only resist the Christ-thorn. Tear out the black thing by the roots before it has taken hold. She was humbly grateful for it, however. In her kneeling position, she continued to bathe her hair in all flesh, whether of imperial lilies, or the black, putrefying, human kind.

  After one of those pauses, in which the sleeper dries up, in which his tongue is a little pebble, and the blanket is grafted on his side, he said:

  I do accept the terms. It was the sweat that prevented me from seeing them.

  You are in no position to accept. It is the woman who unmakes men, to make saints.

  Mutual. It is all mutual.

  It was his tongue that would not come unstuck.

  You have gained that point, the mouth was laughing.

  Two zusammen should gain by numbers, but lose in fact. Numbers weaken.

  The weaker is stronger, O Voooos.

  So that the sleeper sat up, the better to look into the mouth of the lily. Instead, he found darkness and the smell of a wick, for Palfreyman was finished, and had gone to bed.

  Then Voss lay down again, and pretended his sleep had not been interrupted, for he did not wish to be told that he had spoken during his dream. He was dubiously happy. He remembered whole lines of Laura Trevelyan’s letter. And her voice speaking. He would have liked to be told, in that voice, what to do next, since consummation is not an end in itself.

  Next morning, in a tunnel of red light and bowed grass, Voss took his leave of Boyle, who, as the cavalcade moved forward with a surge of sacrificial animals and dedicated men, stood for a long time looking sorrowfully like something that had been abandoned on the edge of life. An old boot, in fact.

  With very little warning the day opened like a square-cut, blazing jewel on the expedition, holding it almost stationary in the prison of that blue brilliance. Its progress and humble dust did begin to seem rather pitiable. The goats were obviously bewildered by the extreme imprudence of man. The sheep, on the other hand, could have possessed some understanding of foolishness, as they pushed on scraggily, staggily, through the tussocks, leaving bits of wool on the bushes, their pulsating throats already resigned. Round and about moved the magnificent men, correcting any blunders on the part of the cattle, in whose horns the long whips were frequently entwined. The men were impressing themselves, although towards noon their sense of purpose was less definite, and what had been a compact mob of moiling beasts had worn into a thin trickle.

  So that after the midday halt, which was spent in the shade of some brigalow scrub, Voss called his men and divided his strength into several parts, of sheep together with goats, of cattle, and of pack animals. Thenceforth they followed at their several speeds the river-bed which Boyle had identified for Voss as the C—. Voss himself rode forward with the two blacks, Dugald and Jackie, and in that way was freed momentarily from further responsibility, and strengthened by his vision of uninterrupted space.

  He was happiest with his loyal subjects.

  ‘You were foolish to bring along that fine coat,’ he said to the old native. ‘Now, if you lose your life, you will lose your coat too.’

  Then he laughed.

  The old native followed suit, bouncing lightly on his grey horse. No one had ever spoken to him like this. There was a certain absence of the expected in the white man’s words which made him shy, however.

  The white man was singing:

  ‘Eine blosse Seele ritt hinaus

  Dem Blau’ ent-ge-gen.…’

  He would pause, and think, and continue to sing.

  ‘Sein Rock flog frei.

  Sein Schimmel mit den Wol-ken

  Um die Ehre rrrann.…’

  He was very pleased with his song. He was singing it at the sky.

  ‘Nur der edle Rock zu Schaden kam,

  Die Fetzen fie-len,

  Den Hi-im-mel ent-lang.’

  All the time the young native was keeping up a chatter to his mentor, Dugald, who was lost between several worlds.

  The white man was laughing.

  ‘Ach, Dugald, Wörter haben keine Bedeutung. Sinnlos!

  ‘Nonsense,’ he added, and asked: ‘Do you understand non-sense?’

  Dugald smiled. He was shy. But they were happy together.

  By now the light had softened and was beginning to reveal more. Voss thought how he would talk eventually with Laura Trevelyan, how they had never spoken together using the truly humble words that convey the innermost reality: bread, for instance, or water. Obsessed by the struggle between their two souls, they had threatened each other with the flashing weapons of abstract reasoning, while overlooking the common need for sustenance. But now we shall understand each other, he said, glancing about. At that hour fulfilment did appear to prevail, in the dry river, with its recurring pot-holes of greenish-brown water, in the drifts of white flood grass tinkling on bushes, in the ugly, thumping lizards and modest birds. Through the marriage of light and shadow, in the infinite distances of that dun country of which he was taking possession, all, finally, would be resolved.

  His almost voluptuously hopeful vision was broken by the younger native, who had slithered from his horse into a saucer of bare earth, and was there belabouring something with a stick. The lights in his skin were flickering frenziedly.

  ‘Jackie kill lizard,’ Dugald explained.

  It was, in fact, one of the short, knobbly-tailed lizards. Surrendering up its life quickly and decently to the grinning Jackie, it lay with its paler belly exposed. A very little of its dark blood had trickled out of the battered mouth.

  The three men rode on. The two blacks were chattering to each other. The naked Jackie dangled the stiff lizard by its tail.

  ‘What will he do with the lizard?’ Voss asked of Dugald.

  The old man popped a bony finger into his mouth. All his grey stubble laughed.

  ‘It is really good to eat?’ asked the German.

  Dugald restricted that possibility by waving the same, long, black stick of a finger.

  ‘Blackfeller.’ He laughed.

  And Jackie joined in.

  The two blacks jogged along, a little to one side of Voss, as if the subjects of his new kingdom preferred to keep their distance. They could even have been rejecting him. Their voices were for each other, and twining with the dust.

  Other figures were beginning to appear, their shadows first, followed by a suggestion of skin wedded to the trunk of a tree. Then, at a bend in the river’s bed, the dusty bodies of men undoubtedly emerged. Dugald and Jackie averted their faces. Their cheeks were sulking as they rode. Once the old man did exchange words with some of those who had come, but tentative language, of a great formality and coldness. The strange natives looked at the white man, through the flies, and the whisks of grey leaves, with which they brushed them away. The explorer would have liked to talk to these individuals, to have shown them suitable kindness, and to have received their homage. But they disappeared. Once or twice he called to his escorts, who had decided, apparently, not to hear. They were riding faster now. The increased pace robbed the white man’s voice of its roundness: it flickered flimsily with the motion of his horse. If he turned in the saddl
e, and attempted to communicate directly with the strange blacks, he found himself beckoning to those same shadows which had accompanied their approach.

  This was, of course, a temporary state of affairs. New hope convinced him that he would interpret the needs of all men, the souls of rocks, even. In that more tender light the bare flesh of rocks was promisingly gentle.

  As evening was approaching, he resolved to camp there in the elbow of the river, and sent the natives back to convey his intention to the other members of the party. In consequence the leader was left alone for some little time, and then the immensity of his presumption did accuse him. The dome of silence was devoid of all furniture, even of a throne. So he began pulling logs together, smashing sticks, crumbling scrub, and was building their first fire. Sympathy, brilliance, warmth did not, however, immediately leap forth, only a rather disappointing flame. It was a very human fire. Walking up and down, its maker was overcome by the distance between aspiration and human nature. The latter, it appeared, was almost inescapable, like those men whose dust he could already see. Fidgeting in a similar dust, his spurs accused him of his own failures.

  Of which we must make the most, Laura Trevelyan implied.

  From where he was standing, he could watch the secret place at the nape of her neck, of infinite creaminess, and the swathe of greeny-white veil round the hard, dark crown of her hat. He had never yet dared to touch, except through those formal gestures society expects, or else, the formless, self-explanatory liberties of sleep. Human relationships are vast as deserts: they demand all daring, she seemed to suggest. And here was the little fire that he had made. How it flickered on the smile of this girl, or woman, as she was becoming. Her throat and shoulders were both convincing and convinced. He could not see the eyes, however. Because, she said, you cannot remember. It was true. He remembered her chiefly by the words and ideas they had offered each other, and by a certain poignance of her Italian hand. So that her form remained indistinct. While suggestive of hopefulness. As she turned her rather pointed face with the unremembered eyes. He did not encourage her to approach, for he was afraid that he might receive the impression of ungainliness, dressed as she was in her thick, travel-stained habit.

  Then the cries of men and animals began to break in.

  Ralph Angus had cantered up, and was at once correctly informative.

  ‘Mr Voss, sir,’ he said, and his brick-coloured skin was very respectful, ‘the sheep are quite done up. They are a mile back, still.’

  ‘Good, Ralph,’ replied the German. ‘You will take Dugald or Jackie and camp near them tonight. It is late now. We shall see in the morning.’

  Judd the convict was more reproachful, who came up then behind the spent cattle.

  ‘We did ought to camp earlier, sir,’ said Judd, but still respectful.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Voss agreed. ‘We have come far. It is a mistake not to camp earlier. You are correct, Judd. If you are offering me advice I shall take it for the next occasion.’

  Judd had not expected to be thus mollified by reasonableness and smiles.

  With the exception of Turner, who was grumbling because his thighs were chafed, everybody was contented at the sight of fire. Cattle lumbered to a standstill, holding their masks close to the ground. Horses rubbed their faces on their wet legs. A mule dragged at the branches of a tree. And the men, though white about the mouth from thirst, jumped down, and at once assumed ownership of that corner of the dusk.

  After Mr Judd had mixed flour and water, and hidden it in the ashes, and taken from that unpromising bed a huge, rude loaf, and they had cut themselves chunks of salt beef, an offering from Boyle of Jildra, and were burning their mouths on the red tea, there was little else to be desired.

  ‘Except that tea without milk,’ Turner grumbled, ‘is not much above medicine.’

  ‘If you will walk back a mile in the dark,’ suggested Voss, ‘to where the goats are camped with Mr Angus, you may have your milk, Turner, if you care to pull it.’

  Some people considered this a joke of the leader’s, and laughed accordingly, but Turner spat out the bitter tea-leaves, which tasted of metal, besides.

  ‘Poor old Turner,’ laughed Harry Robarts. ‘You are out of luck. Better turn in.’

  The boy could not stop, but continued to laugh beneath the stars. The apparent simplicity of space had deceived his rather simple mind. He was free, of past, and future. His hilarious body had forgotten its constricting clothes.

  ‘Turn in, Turner! Eh?’

  He was so pleased, this large boy, of laughing throat.

  But Turner had turned sour. He was harbouring a grievance, against no one in particular.

  ‘I will turn in, all right,’ he answered. ‘What else would I do?’

  For a long time that night Harry Robarts continued to enjoy the joke that he had heard and the joke that he had made. Lying with his head in the crook of his arm, he discovered, moreover, that he could draw a line through certain stars, and create figures of constellations. He was dazzled in the end, if not delirious with stars. Their official names, which Mr Voss had taught him on board, he had long since chosen to forget, for the stars themselves are more personal than their names. Then he who had been dazzled became puzzled. It seemed that he had not spoken with Mr Voss for several days. So that someone else fell asleep with a grievance, and in his sleep licked the hand, licked with the tongue of a dog, down to the last grain of consoling salt, but was fretful rather than comforted.

  The country round them reduced most personal hopes and fears until these were of little account. An eternity of days was opening for the men, who would wake, and scramble up with a kind of sheepish respect for their surroundings. Dew was clogging the landscape. Spiders had sewn the bushes together. And then there were those last, intolerably melancholy stars, that cling to a white sky, and will not be put out except by force.

  After breakfast, which was similar to other meals, of salt meat, or of meat lately killed, with the tea they made from scum of waterholes, or from the same stuff brought on in canvas, Voss, attended by Judd, would take readings from their instruments, and attempt to assess their current position. Judd would bring out from their cloths those trembling devices in glass and steel and quicksilver. Judd was the keeper of instruments, Voss indulging his subordinate’s passion with the kindness of a superior being. He himself would sit with the large notebook upon his knees, recording in exquisite characters and figures, in black ink, the legend. Sometimes similarly black, similarly exquisite spiders replete from their dew-feast, would trample in his hair, and have to be brushed off. These small insects could affront him most severely. By this time the air was no longer smelling of dew; it had begun again to smell of dust. Men were buckling girths, and swearing oaths through thinner lips. As the sun mounted, the skin was tightening on their skulls. Some of them winced, and averted their eyes from those flashing instruments with which Voss and Judd professed to be plotting, in opposition to Providence. The sceptics would ride on, however, because they were committed to it, and because by now their minds and limbs had accepted a certain ritual of inspired motion.

  So they advanced into that country which now possessed them, looking back in amazement at their actual lives, in which they had got drunk, lain with women under placid trees, thought to offer their souls to God, or driven the knife into His image, some other man.

  Then, suddenly, Voss looked in his journal and saw that the following day would be Christmas. By some instinct for self-preservation, he would not have spoken of it, and most of his men, dependent on him for every judgement or calculation, would have ridden quietly by.

  Palfreyman realized, but as he was not a man to act, an observer, rather, or sufferer of life, he was waiting to see.

  If, in the case of Voss, it was the instinct for self-preservation that warned him to avoid Christmas, in Judd’s case it was the instinct for self-assertion that caused him to remember. Since his death by whips and iron, he had aspired longingly at times to be rebor
n, and when more hopefully than at that season, at which, he sensed now, they had arrived. If he had not succeeded all those years, in the loving bosom of his family, it was perhaps because he was shy of eyes that had witnessed something of his sufferings. But to these mates, and even to the knowing German, he was a stone man. Then it would be easier, given the opportunity, to crack open and disclose all manner of unexpected ores, even a whole human being.

  So the emancipist was expectant. He was always urging his horse forward, and hesitating, and reining it back. He must only choose the moment, but would speak soon, he knew. His shirt was shining and transparent with sweat, over the old wounds, and clumsy labouring of great ribs, as he tidied the edges of his mob of cattle, and watched the point at which the German was riding with Mr Palfreyman. The backs of the two gentlemen ahead remained quite flat and unconscious, while the figure of Judd, labouring always with his cattle and his thoughts, loomed like sculpture.

  They had entered, as it happened, a valley sculptured in red rock and quartz, in which a river ran, rather shallow and emotional, but a river of live water such as they could remember, through the valley of wet grass. Heat appeared to intensify the green of a variety of splendid trees, some sprouting with hair or swords, others slowly succumbing to a fleshy jasmine, of which the arms were wound round and round their limbs. These deadly garlands were quite festive in immediate effect, as they glimmered against the bodies of their hosts. The breath of jasmine cajoled the air. Platters of leaves presented gifts of moisture. And there were the birds. Their revels were filling the air with cries and feathers, rackety screams of utter abandon, flashes of saffron, bursts of crimson, although there were also other more sombre birds that would fly silently into the thoughts of men like dreadful arrows.

  When it was almost noon, and the valley had narrowed to a neck, the convict left his cattle, which were tired and unwilling, and rode forward.

  He said:

  ‘Mr Voss, I reckon it is near Christmas. If it is not tomorrow, it is soon after.’

  Then they listened to the silence.