Voss

by Patrick White

  Mrs Bonner was distraught.

  ‘When will she go?’ Laura asked.

  ‘We shall talk about it some other time,’ gasped Mrs Bonner.

  ‘Tomorrow at the latest,’ Laura replied. ‘I shall make a point of gathering all my strength, all the night.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Rest.’

  ‘So that I shall be strong enough.’

  Mrs Bonner was almost suffocated by unhappiness and the mysterious smell.

  Laura appeared to be sleeping. Only once she opened her eyes, and in a voice of great agony, cried out:

  ‘Oh, my darling little girl.’

  When, later, Mr Bonner came into the room, he found his wife in a state of some agitation.

  ‘Such a scene!’ Mrs Bonner whispered. ‘She has decided, for some reason, that she ought to give up Mercy, as a kind of sacrifice, to send her to the Asbolds after all.’

  ‘Then would it not be best to act upon her wishes?’ suggested the unhappy merchant. ‘Particularly as they coincide with your own.’

  ‘Oh, but she is out of her wits at present,’ said Mrs Bonner. ‘It would not be right.’

  Mr Bonner seldom attempted to unravel the moral principles of his wife.

  ‘Besides,’ she added.

  But she did not elaborate. On the contrary, she assumed an expression of cunning, to mask that secret life which she had begun to share with Laura’s child.

  Mr Bonner would have been content to preserve the silence.

  ‘Oh, but there is a most intolerable smell! Do you not smell it?’ the good woman burst out.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Bonner. ‘I expect it is the pears.’

  ‘Which pears?’

  ‘The pears that I brought home for Laura, oh, on that night, the first night of her illness, and put down. Yes, here they are, my dear. In the confusion they have escaped your notice.’

  ‘My notice!’ cried Mrs Bonner.

  There, indeed, were the black pears, somewhat viscid, in their nest of withered leaves.

  ‘Disgusting! Do, please, remove them, Mr Bonner.’

  He was quite relieved to do so, this powerful man who had lost his power.

  When she had dispatched the odious pears, and was alone except for her sleeping niece, Mrs Bonner was the better disposed for thought. I will think, she used to say, but in all her life had never discovered the secret of that process. It was a source of great exasperation to her, although most people did not guess.

  Now, all night she was ready in fits of waking to welcome thought, which did not come. Then I am an empty thing, she admitted helplessly. Yet, she had been pretty as a girl.

  By ashy morning, all joy or consolation seemed to have left the old woman, except their child, who was to go too.

  So she rose quickly when the sun was up, and bundling the rich sleeves back along her arms, blundered into that room where Mercy had woken in a sound of doves.

  ‘There,’ said the woman. ‘We are together now.’

  The child seemed to agree. How she fitted herself to the body. Beyond the window, all was now a drooling and consolation of doves. In the sunrise which was flooding the cool garden Mrs Bonner forgot those incidents of the past that she chose to forget, and was holding the flesh of the child against the present. All dark and dreadful things, all that she herself could not understand, might be waved away, if she could but keep the child.

  ‘How you do dribble,’ she said, almost with approval. ‘Dirty little thing!’

  So she would address her secret child.

  And Mercy clearly saw through the crumpled skin to those greater blemishes, which, in her presence, there was no necessity to hide.

  That morning, when she was again decently concealed beneath a clean cap, Mrs Bonner went in to her niece, and was very brisk.

  ‘I declare you have slept beautifully, Laura,’ she said, arranging the pillows with her competent hands.

  Laura did not contradict, but let things happen, for innerly she was inviolable.

  And soon her aunt was trembling.

  ‘Will you not let me brush your hair?’ she asked.

  ‘But I have none,’ Laura replied.

  Sometimes Mrs Bonner developed palpitations, which she would admit to her husband when it suited. Now, however, she realized that he had already left; the morning was hers, to arrange as she wished.

  Laura turned her eyes, in that face which there was no escaping since the hair was cut, and said:

  ‘You will see that everything is packed neatly, Aunt, because I would not like to create a bad impression. You will find almost everything in the small cedar chest. Excepting those six nightdresses – you will remember we had too many – and the gauffered cap which Una Pringle gave. They are on the top shelf of the tallboy on the landing.’

  Mrs Bonner’s face, that had been pretty in girlhood, was visibly swelling.

  ‘I do not know,’ she answered. ‘You must speak to your uncle. He would not allow it. One cannot dispose of a soul as if it were a parcel.’

  Again, in the afternoon, Laura said:

  ‘I expect they will hire a carriage, or some kind of sprung conveyance. They would not carry a little child in a dray. All the way to Penrith.’

  Mrs Bonner occupied herself with a piece of tatting.

  Towards evening Laura raised herself on the pillows, and said:

  ‘Do you not see that I shall suffer by it? I could die by it? But I must. Then he will understand.’

  ‘Who?’ cried Mrs Bonner, her breath rank from her own suffering. ‘Who?’

  And, laying down her work, she looked at her niece’s black eyelids.

  Laura Trevelyan, by this time at the height of her illness, was almost dried up.

  ‘O Jesus,’ she begged, ‘have mercy. Oh, save us, or if we are not to be saved, then let us die. My love is too hard to bear. I am weak, after all.’

  That evening, when Mr Bonner came in, unwillingly, he inquired:

  ‘Is there any improvement?’

  His wife replied:

  ‘Do not ask me.’

  There was some little consolation in the unexpected return of Dr Kilwinning. He was smelling of a glass of port wine that he had been invited to taste at a previous house, but which the Bonners forgave him in the circumstances.

  Dr Kilwinning controlled his rich breath, and announced that he proposed to bleed Miss Trevelyan the following day. As he left the room, an ill-fitting door of a wardrobe was jumping, and flouting the silence. It was not a very good piece of furniture, but Mrs Bonner did truly love her niece, in whose room she had put it.

  All the evening the old people were flapping like palm leaves.

  The sick woman conducted herself at times with such rational gravity that her hallucinations were doubly awful whenever she felt compelled to share them.

  ‘I think it better,’ she announced, ‘if I do not see Mercy again. After all. In the morning, that is, before she goes. You will be sure that she has only a light breakfast, Aunt, because of the jolting of the cart. And she must wear something warm that can be taken off in the heat of the day.’

  Then:

  ‘You will attend to it, Aunt? Won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs Bonner, who was wrestling with her conscience as never before.

  In search of air or distraction, she went and drew back the curtains. Such was her preoccupation with earthly matters, she did not often notice the sky, but there it was now, most palpable, of solid, dark, enamelled blue. Or black. It was black like well-water, so cold her body could not bear it. But the great gaudy jumble of stars did please the child in her. And a curious phenomenon. As she followed its broad path of light, she almost dared hope it might lead her out of the state of mortal confusion.

  ‘Look, Laura,’ she called, holding back the curtains, her eyes moist. ‘A most unusual and wonderful thing.’

  She stood, flattening herself ingratiatingly against the sash, in hopes that the patient might be able to see merely by turning her head.
/>   ‘Do you not want to look at it, Laura?’ she begged.

  But Laura Trevelyan, who was again with her eyes closed, barely answered:

  ‘I have seen it.’

  ‘Silly girl,’ said Aunt Emmy, ‘I have but just drawn the curtains!’

  ‘It is the Comet,’ said Laura. ‘It cannot save us. Except for a breathing space. That is the terrible part: nothing can be halted once it is started.’

  When Mr Bonner returned, his wife was still holding the helpless curtain.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and his eyes showed that he too had hoped to escape along the path of celestial light, ‘you have seen the Comet, about which they are all talking. It is expected to be visible for several days.’

  ‘I was drawing Laura’s attention to it,’ Mrs Bonner said.

  ‘In the absence of an official astronomer, Mr Winslow is recording his observations,’ the merchant revealed, ‘and will send a report Home by the first packet to leave.’

  Then the two old people stood rather humbly watching an historic event. In that blaze, they were dwindling to mere black points, and as the light poured, and increased, and invaded the room, even Laura Trevelyan, beneath the dry shells of her eyelids, was bathed at least temporarily in the cool flood of stars.

  *

  Towards the end of the afternoon, when the rim of the horizon had again grown distinct, and forms were emerging from the dust, they seemed to have arrived at the farther edge of the plain, from which rose an escarpment. Slowly approaching its folds of grey earth, the party was at length swallowed by a cleft, furnished with three or four grey, miserable, but living trees, and, most hospitable sight of all, what appeared to be an irregular cloth, of faded green patchy plush.

  All the animals became at once observant. Moisture even showed in the dry nostrils of the dragging horses, whose dull eyes had recovered something of their natural lustre. Little velvet sounds began to issue out of their throats.

  Here, miraculously, was water.

  In the scrimmage, and lunging, and groaning that followed, the riders were almost knocked off, but did, by luck and instinct, keep their seats. The blackfellows, who were laughing generously out of their large mouths, ran whooshing amongst the animals to restrain them, but soon desisted, and just laughed, or scratched themselves. After the exertions of the journey and emotion of their meeting with the whites, they themselves did not much care what happened.

  It was their ant-women who were engrossed by the continuance of life, who wove into the dust the threads of paths, who were dedicated to the rituals of fire and water, who shook snake and lizard out of their disgusting reticules, and who hung golloping children upon their long and dusty dugs. For the moment, at least, it appeared that men were created only for the hours of darkness.

  As for the white men, dazed by so much activity, they accepted to be set apart, while hands, or swift, black birds made a roof of twigs over them. Soon they were completely encased in twigs, beyond which voices crackled. It seemed that an argument of procedure was taking place. Some of the blackfellows would, some would not. Some were tired. Others shone with a light of inspiration and yearning.

  Presently, Jackie came and sat down amongst the white men, whose ways he knew, but it soon became apparent, from his sullen manner, that he was but obeying orders.

  ‘What will they do to us, Jackie?’ Le Mesurier asked. ‘What ever it is, let it be quick.’

  Jackie, however, did not intend to understand.

  And Le Mesurier continued to sit, staring indifferently at the fragile, yellow-looking bones of his own hands.

  Various blacks came and went. A young girl, of pretty, barely nubile breasts, and an older, very ugly woman, seated themselves behind Jackie, suggesting a relationship recently formed. The boy, though obviously possessive, was insolent to the two women. They, in their turn, were rather shy.

  Some men came, who had painted their bodies, and who filled the twig shelter with the smell of drying clay. There was, in addition, the wholly natural, drugging smell of their bodies, and of ants. As the singing began, somewhere in the rear, in that cleft of the escarpment where they were encamped, round the trampled mud of the waterhole, under the quenched blue of the sky, the two women in the twig cage were playing nervously with the long hairs of their armpits; their eyes were snapping in the shadows.

  The singing, as monotonous as grey earth, as grey wood, rose in sudden spasms of passion, to die down, down, as the charcoal lying. The voices of dust would die right away. To rise and sing. One voice, alone, would put on the feathers of parakeets in gay tufts of song. The big, lumbering pelican voices would spread slower wings. There was laughter, too, of young voices, and the giggling of black women.

  ‘At least I intend to observe this ceremony,’ the German announced, remembering a vaguely scientific mission.

  He began to unfold his difficult legs.

  ‘No,’ said Jackie, in an unusually high, recovered voice. ‘No, no. Not now.’

  So they continued to sit. Through the chinks in the very black twigs, blue was poured into blue, until there was no measuring its depths. Sparks were flying, or stars. There was the smell of hot wood-ash, and cold stars.

  Before the end came.

  There was a definite end.

  ‘Do you hear, the heathen blacks have stopped?’ said Harry Robarts, the clumsy white boy.

  Jackie had gone from there, followed by his two women, now as cold as dead lizards.

  The silence seeming to allow their freedom to the trinity of whites, Voss went to the door, and was looking out.

  ‘Look, Frank, Harry,’ he called, ‘at this unearthly phenomenon. Whatever may happen, it is too beautiful to ignore.’

  His voice trembled from the effort of breaking the bonds of language. His woodenness was falling from him, and he was launching out into the fathoms of light.

  ‘Lord, sir, what is it, then?’ asked Harry Robarts.

  ‘It is evidently a comet,’ said Le Mesurier.

  Harry was ashamed to ask for further explanation, but bathed in his reverent ignorance. It was beautiful. He was hollow with it.

  Now the darkness was full of doubt and almost extinguished voices. The branches of trees, or black arms, were twitching, as Voss continued to observe the quick wanderer, almost transfixed by distance in that immeasurable sky. His mouth, thirsty for so long, was drinking down the dark blue.

  ‘Yes. A comet, evidently,’ he was gulping.

  Then Jackie was standing in the silence.

  ‘Why are you afraid?’ Voss asked.

  The blackfellow was quite cold.

  But, with his dark body and few words, he began to enact the story of the Great Snake, the grandfather of all men, that had come down from the north in anger.

  ‘And what are we to expect?’ asked Voss humorously. ‘This angry snake will do what?’

  ‘Snake eat, eat,’ cried the black boy, snapping at the darkness with his white teeth.

  Voss was roaring with pleasure.

  ‘Then the blacks will not kill us?’ asked Harry Robarts. ‘We are saved?’

  ‘If we are not devoured by blacks,’ Voss replied, ‘or the Great Snake, then we shall be eaten by somebody eventually. By a friend, perhaps. Man is a tempting morsel.’

  Harry, who could not understand, was comforted, rather, by his more immediate prospects.

  Voss addressed the aboriginal.

  ‘You want for white man save blackfellow from this snake?’

  The explorer, however, was still laughing. He was so light.

  ‘Snake too much magic, no good of Mr Voss,’ Jackie replied.

  ‘Then you do not believe in me,’ said the German, suddenly sober, and as if he had really expected to find someone to replace himself in his own estimation.

  The night was quiet as the blacks lay against their fires, under the coils of the golden snake. They would look up sometimes, but preferred that the old men should translate this experience into terms they could understand. Only, the
old men were every bit as unhappy. All their lives haunted by spirits, these had been of a colourless, invisible, and comparatively amiable variety. Even the freakish spirits of darkness behaved within the bounds of a certain convention. Now this great fiery one came, and threatened the small souls of men, or coiled achingly in the bellies of the more responsible.

  During the night, after Voss had crawled forward to put some sticks upon the fire that had been lit at the mouth of the twig hut, Le Mesurier asked softly:

  ‘What is your plan, then?’

  ‘I have no plan,’ replied Voss, ‘but will trust to God.’

  He spoke wryly, for the words had been put into his mouth.

  Le Mesurier was blasted by their leader’s admission, although he had known it, of course, always in his heart and dreams, and had confessed it even in those rather poor, but bleeding poems that he had torn out and put on paper.

  Now he sat, looking in the direction of the man who was not God, and, incidentally, considering his own prospects.

  ‘That is a nice look-out for us,’ spluttered the abject disciple.

  ‘I am to blame,’ said Voss, ‘if that confession will make some amends.’

  He sat humbly holding a little leaf.

  ‘If you withdraw,’ Le Mesurier began.

  ‘I do not withdraw,’ Voss answered. ‘I am withdrawn.’

  ‘And can give us no hope?’

  ‘I suggest you wring it out for yourself, which, in the end, is all that is possible for any man.’

  And he crumpled up the dry leaf, Le Mesurier heard.

  The latter had expected too much of hands which were, after all, only bones. As it grew light, he found himself looking at his own transparent palms.

  Meanwhile, what had become of the fiery snake? As they engaged in their various daylight pursuits, of hunting, digging for yams, mending nets, and paying visits, the general opinion of the sobered tribe was that the Great One had burrowed into the soft sky and was sleeping off the first stages of his journey to the earth. The whites were now ignored, as being of comparative unimportance. All men were, in fact, as wichetty grubs in the fingers of children. So the tribe remained entranced. Their voices spoke softer than the dust, their shoulders were bowed down with the round, heavy sun, as they continued to wait.