Voss

by Patrick White

  If he had been given to irony, Palfreyman would have indulged in it at this point, but as he was not, he looked at the grass, and waited.

  ‘Yes, you are correct, Judd,’ said Voss.

  The birds were screaming and ascending in red riot.

  ‘It is tomorrow,’ said the German precisely.

  All round this group hung the heat in sheets of damp silence.

  ‘It did not occur to me to mention it,’ said Voss. ‘You know, in such circumstances.’

  He let his hand fall limply, as if his own body were as much to blame.

  ‘But if this festival will mean anything to you, Judd, personally, or to any of the other men, then certainly must we celebrate it.’

  ‘I would like to celebrate Christmas, sir,’ said Judd.

  Once he would have looked to Palfreyman, even last week he might have, but did not now. This rather massive man, sitting astride his caked horse, was not in need of support for the present.

  Instead, it was Palfreyman who felt the need to follow. He hastened to add:

  ‘I, too, would like to celebrate Christmas.’

  It was perfectly natural that any Christian should wish to join the emancipated convict at this season of complete emancipation, yet Voss, who feared union, most of all one in which he himself might become involved, suspected snares.

  ‘Good,’ he said, wetting his lips, and smiling painfully. ‘Then, what would you suggest, Judd?’

  He waited to hear something he would hate.

  ‘I would suggest, sir, that we call a halt just where we are. It is a pleasant spot,’ the convict said, and indeed, it was reflected in his face, a place of large leaves and consoling water. ‘If you agree, I will kill a sheep, that we will eat tomorrow. I will make a pudding or two, not the real thing, like, but to deceive ourselves. I am not going to suggest, sir, how we should spend Christmas Day. Every man will have his own ideas.’

  ‘We could read the service,’ he did add, as a careful after-thought.

  ‘Let us, at least, call the halt,’ said Voss, and, riding into the shadow of a tree, flung his hat down, then himself.

  Judd took command. His face was glad, Palfreyman saw. Calling to his mates as they approached, throwing out his thick, hairy arm, signalling to them to dispose of beasts and baggage in a final halt, the convict had become a man of stature. Little signs of hopefulness were playing round his mouth amongst the lively points of perspiration. The strength of innocence can but increase, Palfreyman realized, and was himself glad.

  Then, as he was exhausted by the luxuriance of unwonted green, by the habitual heat, as well as by the challenge of souls that he had just witnessed, the ornithologist went and joined the German in the shadow of his tree.

  ‘It is not splendid?’ asked Voss, admiring the prospect of sculptural red rocks and tapestries of musical green which the valley contained.

  Palfreyman agreed.

  ‘Ennobling and eternal,’ persisted the German. ‘This I can apprehend.’

  Because it is mine, by illusion, it was implied, and so the ornithologist sensed. By now, moreover, the latter had learnt to read the eyes.

  ‘Yet, to drag in the miserable fetish that this man has insisted on! Of Jesus Christ!’

  The vision that rose before the German’s eyes was, indeed, most horrible. The racked flesh had begun to suppurate, the soul had emerged, and gone flapping down the ages with slow, suffocating beat of wings.

  As the great hawk flew down the valley, Turner did take a shot at it, but missed. It was the glare he blamed.

  During the afternoon Voss continued in his journal the copious and satisfying record of their journey through his country, and succeeded in bringing the narrative up to date. As he sat writing upon his knees, the scrub was smouldering with his shirt of crimson flannel, the parting present of his friend and patron, Edmund Bonner. If there were times when the German’s eyes suggested that their fire might eventually break out and consume his wiry frame, as true fire will lick up a patch of tortured scrub, in a puff of smoke and a pistol shot, on this occasion he was ever looking up and out, with, on the whole, an expression of benevolent amusement for that scene in which his men were preparing a feast.

  ‘Do you appreciate with me the spectacle of such pagan survivals?’ he called once to Palfreyman, and laughed.

  For Judd had seized the lamb, or stained wether, and plunged the knife into its throat, and the blood had spurted out. Several of his laughing audience were splashed.

  Judd himself was painted liberally with the blood of the kicking sheep. Afterwards he hung its still carcass on a tree, and fetched its innards out, while the others lay in the grass, and felt the sweat stiffen on them, and talked together peacefully, or thought, or chewed the stems of the fat grass. Although they appeared to ignore the butcher, they were implicitly but the circumference of that grassy circle. Judd was the centre, as he plunged his arms into the blue cavern of the sheep.

  Watching from his distance, Voss remembered the picnic by the sea, at which he had spoken with Laura Trevelyan, and they had made a circle of their own. As he saw it now, perfection is always circular, enclosed. So that Judd’s circle was enviable. Too late, Laura said, or it was the shiny, indigenous leaves in which a little breeze had started up. All the immediate world was soon swimming in the same liquid green. She was clothed in it. Green shadows almost disguised her face, where she walked amongst the men, to whom, it appeared, she was known, as others were always known to one another, from childhood, or by instinct. Only he was the passing acquaintance, at whom she did glance once, since it was unavoidable. Then he noticed how her greenish flesh was spotted with blood from that same sheep, and that she would laugh at, and understand the jokes shared with others, while he continued to express himself in foreign words, in whichever language he used, his own included.

  Laura Trevelyan understood perfectly all the preliminaries of Judd’s feast. It would be quite simple, humble, as she saw it; they would eat the meat with their hands, all of them, together, and in that way, it would become an act of praise.

  As the day grew to an end, and preparations for the feast were completed, Voss grew angry and depressed.

  The same night, after the fires had been lit, and the carcass of the sheep that would be eaten for Christmas was a sliver of white on the dark tree, Judd took fat, and tossed the liver in a pan, and when it was done, brought it to his leader.

  ‘Here is a fine piece of liver, sir, done as nice as you would see it.’

  But Voss said:

  ‘Thank you, Judd. I cannot. It is the heat. I will not eat tonight.’

  He could not. The liver stank.

  When Judd went away, which he did as respectfully as ever, he had a glittery look in his eye, and pitched the liver to the dogs.

  Left alone, Voss groaned. He would not, could not learn, nor accept humility, even though this was amongst the conditions she had made in the letter that was now living in him. For some time, he sat with his head in his hands. He did truly suffer.

  Except for the dogs scratching and sighing, the night had grown silent, the fires had fallen into embers, when grass began to rustle, feet approached the leader, and there was Turner’s face upon the darkness.

  Why did I bring the man? Voss wondered.

  ‘Look at this, sir,’ Turner invited.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Voss.

  Then he saw it was the handle of the frying-pan.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How does this concern me? Is it of any interest?’

  ‘It was him,’ laughed Turner.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The cook, or Jack-of-all-trades. Lord God Almighty!’

  ‘I am not interested. You are foolish, Turner. Go to bed.’

  ‘I am not all that foolish.’ Turner laughed in going.

  He should have been drunk, but his stomach would sometimes turn sour without all that assistance.

  As he prepared for sleep, Voss continued to feel incensed against the miserable f
ellow. Though it was Judd who had roused his anger. It is Turner, he said, but he knew that it was Judd.

  And Turner knew, in the tent that was shared by several.

  Some were already snoring as Judd lay fidgeting against the pillow of his saddle.

  ‘Listen, Albert,’ Turner said. ‘You are awake, I can hear that.’

  He rolled over, so that his long thin body was close against the thicker one. His long face was very close.

  ‘Remember that there compass, that was lost at Jildra, or not lost, it was in your bag?’

  Judd did not have to remember, for he had not forgotten.

  ‘It was put there, see, on a moonlight night, by a certain Prussian gentleman, who was innocent on account of he was sleep-walkin’.’

  ‘I do not believe it,’ Judd said.

  ‘No more do I,’ Turner continued. ‘He was as naked as moonlight, and bony as the Lord. But his eyes did not convince this one.’

  ‘You did not tell,’ said Judd. ‘Not till now.’

  ‘I have been caught before,’ Turner replied. ‘And this was valuable.’

  ‘I do not believe it,’ said Judd. ‘Go to sleep.’

  Turner laughed, and rolled over.

  Judd lay in that position until his bones had set, but did also sleep at last.

  Then everyone was sleeping, or waking, to remember that it would soon be Christmas, and fall into a deeper sleep.

  About midnight, however, wild dogs had begun to howl, which woke the dogs of the expedition, and these were soon moaning back in answer. The night was grown rather black, but with a flickering of yellow from a distant storm. A thin wind ran along the crest of things, together with the high yelping of the increasingly uneasy camp dogs.

  Himself disturbed, Voss got up at last, and stumbled in search of their two native guides, tracing them by the embers of their fire, against which they were rolled like animals. Their eyes were open, he could see, upon some great activity of their minds. If only he could have penetrated to that distance, he would have felt more satisfied.

  Dugald, the old man, immediately turned away his face, and said, before other words could be spoken:

  ‘I sick, sick.’

  And was rubbing his belly under the remnants of his ridiculous swallowtail coat.

  ‘Have you heard something, Dugald, perhaps? Could it be wild dogs?’

  ‘No dogs,’ said Dugald.

  These sounds were made, he explained, by blackfellows who intended mischief.

  Just then there fell a few big drops of flat rain, and there was a sudden thumping of the earth, and protesting of grass.

  ‘That is cattle,’ said Voss.

  It could have been the sound of cattle in motion, of frightened cattle, a little farther up the valley where the herd had been left to graze.

  ‘Blackfeller no good this place,’ Dugald moaned.

  Voss now returned to his tent, and fetched a gun. He called to the two natives.

  ‘You come, Dugald, Jackie. We go look cattle.’

  But the two men were fascinated by the fire. They turned their faces from the darkness, and stared closer into the coals, rubbing their cheeks against the dust. Darkness is a place of evil, so, wisely, they avoided it.

  Voss continued up the valley for what seemed like some considerable distance, encountering only a vast, dark humidity. Once a cow and calf propped, and snorted at him, and lumbered away. There was no further sign of cattle.

  ‘Nutzlos,’ he said, coldly furious, and discharged his weapon once or twice in the direction the herd must have taken.

  When he returned, Le Mesurier and Palfreyman had come out, awakened by the shots and a hysteria of dogs.

  ‘It is probable that blacks have driven off the cattle,’ Voss announced. ‘There is nothing we can do for the present.’

  Beside their fire Dugald and Jackie were listening to these words. The voice of the white man could have been issuing from the earth.

  So Christmas began.

  In the morning, it was learnt that more than half the cattle had been driven off. Dugald, who had resumed possession of his ancient grace and a kind of sad resourcefulness, said that Jackie would take his horse and search – Jackie had eyes for stolen cattle – and Voss accepted this suggestion as a temporary measure, if not a way out of their dilemma.

  The others were secretly glad that, for the moment at least, they need not exert themselves on such a radiant, pigeon-coloured morning. After breakfast – a subdued, though contenting meal – Harry Robarts fetched out a flag they had brought with them, and fastened it to a sapling-staff, from which it hung rather dank. At once somebody began to mumble, then almost all joined in, and they were singing ‘God Save the Queen’.

  The German in his crimson shirt observed them with amusement, but quite kindly, holding himself erect by instinct, if not from approval.

  Afterwards, Mr Palfreyman produced his prayer-book, and declared his intention of reading the Church of England service.

  Then Voss said:

  ‘It may not be the wish of everyone, Palfreyman, to be forced to worship in this way. It is preferable if each man does his own part, and reads in his own book. There,’ he concluded, looking at them.

  It was not altogether unreasonable, and Palfreyman made himself condemn certain of his own thoughts.

  Soon, one or two who possessed prayer-books had taken them out, and were attempting to follow the words, in that place where the wild jasmine was sweetly stifling a sense of duty, and the most dogged devotions were shot through with a glint of parrots. Turner, frankly, whittled wood, and recalled how the rum was far more efficacious than prayer as a means of refreshment. Judd went away.

  ‘The old beggar,’ Turner was quick to call. ‘What will yer ma say? Church is not out.’

  ‘I have things to do,’ Judd mumbled. ‘There is the mutton.’

  ‘Then, I will come and lend a hand,’ Turner proposed.

  But he was not encouraged by the convict, who went from there, shambling and mumbling.

  ‘There is no need,’ he said, surlily. ‘I have my own methods, and will be ready by noon.’

  So that Ralph Angus looked up from his dry book, and his mouth was full and moist in anticipation.

  Judd was soon hidden by the blessed scrub. He who could squeeze the meaning out of a line by pressing on it with his finger-nail, always hastened to remove himself from the presence of true initiates when they were at their books. All the scraps of knowledge with which he was filled, all those raw hunks of life that, for choice, or by force, he had swallowed down, were reduced by the great mystery of words to the most shameful matter. Words were not the servants of life, but life, rather, was the slave of words. So the black print of other people’s books became a swarm of victorious ants that carried off a man’s self-respect. So he wandered through the bush on that morning, and was only soothed at last by leaves and silence.

  Then he was glad again. He would have expressed that gladness, but could not, except by letting the smooth leaves lie upon his stubbly face, except by being of the stillness. In this way he offered his praise. For a short space the soul returned to his body, from which it had been driven out by whips, and he stood there looking through inspired eyes into the undergrowth.

  When Harry Robarts discovered Judd, the latter was already at work upon the sheep’s carcass. He was cursing the flies.

  ‘Urchhh!’ cried the disgusted boy.

  ‘Why, Harry,’ said Judd, ‘those are only maggots.’

  ‘And what about our dinner?’

  ‘Why, it will be on your plates, as promised.’

  ‘Maggots and all?’

  ‘Maggots knock off very easy,’ Judd replied.

  He was, even now, engaged in knocking them off.

  ‘Filthy stuff!’ cried the boy.

  Certainly the meat was already of rather a green appearance as the result of such a damp heat.

  ‘You wait and see,’ coaxed the convict. ‘You will be surprised. If you do
not eat your mutton, then I will eat my hat.’

  But the boy was not consoled.

  ‘My stomach is turned up,’ he complained.

  ‘Not everyone is queasy by nature,’ answered Judd. ‘Still, Harry, I will ask you not to mention this to anyone else.’

  Other incidents prevented the boy from breaking his promise.

  During the morning a party of blacks appeared, first as shreds of shy bark glimpsed between the trunks of the trees, but always drifting, until, finally, they halted in human form upon the outskirts of the camp.

  ‘Did you ever see such a filthy race?’ asked Ralph Angus, whose strength and looks prevented him from recognizing anything except in his own admirable image.

  ‘We do not understand them yet,’ said Le Mesurier.

  The latter’s doubts and discoveries could have been leading him towards the age of wisdom.

  ‘You are morbid, I believe, Frank,’ Angus said, and laughed.

  He was all for driving out the wretched mob of cattle thieves.

  The blacks were watching. Some of the men even grew noble in the stillness of their concentration and posture of their attenuated limbs. Their faces betrayed a kind of longing. Others, though, and particularly the old, could have been wallowing beforehand in the dust; they had the dusty, grey-black skins of lizards. Several of the women present had had the hair burnt from their heads. The women were altogether hairless, for those other parts which should have been covered, had been exposed by plucking. By some perversity of innocence, however, it did seem to emphasize the modesty of those who had been plucked. They had nothing left to hide.

  Turner, naturally, was provoked to immoderate laughter, and was shouting:

  ‘What will you bid for the molls, Mr Le Mesurier?’

  And when Le Mesurier was silent:

  ‘Or are they not to your taste?’

  Finally, he took the handle of the iron frying-pan, which he still had about him from the previous night, and presented it to one of the more impressive blacks.

  ‘You sell wife,’ he demanded. ‘I buy. But the pretty one. The one that has not been singed right off.’

  Everyone was by this time repelled by Turner, and by the blacks that had so inspired him.