Voss

by Patrick White

  The white men in their twig hut were offered no alternative. In the silence and the course of the day they listened to the earth crack deeper open, as their own skulls were splitting in the heat.

  Frank Le Mesurier began to go through his possessions, flint and tinder, needle and thread, a button, the shreds of stinking shirts, the ends of things, the crumbs, the dust, all the time looking for something he had mislaid, and did eventually find.

  This book no longer bore looking at, although his life was contained in its few pages: in lovely, opalescent intaglios, buckets of vomit, vistas of stillest marble, the livers and lights of beliefs and intentions. There was the crowned King, such as he had worshipped before his always anticipated abdication. There was Man deposed in the very beginning. Gold, gold, gold, tarnishing into baser metals.

  During the afternoon, this wreck of an ageless man hobbled out through the crackling heat, out and away from the edge of the camp, as if called upon to ease nature. There was a skeleton of a tree, he saw, in white, bleached wood. He could see the distinct grains of dust. After he had sat a while, unoccupied, at the foot of the tree, he began to tear up the book, by handfuls of flesh, but dry, dry. His lips were flaking off. The blood must dry very quickly, he imagined.

  And that is exactly what it did.

  Bracing himself against the tree, Frank Le Mesurier began to open his throat with a knife he had. Such blood as he still possessed forgot itself so far as to gush in the beginning. It was his last attempt at poetry. Then, with his remaining strength, he was opening the hole wider, until he was able to climb out into the immense fields of silence.

  The body of Le Mesurier glugged and blubbered a little longer before lying still. Even then, one of the ankles was twitching, that had come out of the large boot. Everything was too large that had not shrunk.

  So Harry Robarts, who had been attracted by the paper blowing about, eventually found him, and was running, and stumbling, himself scattered, and crying:

  ‘I told yer! I told yer!’

  He was blowing about, but must, somehow, return to his leader.

  When he got in, Voss said, without raising his eyes:

  ‘It is poor Frank.’

  The boy was shaking like a paper.

  ‘And the blood running out!’ he cried. ‘Oh, sir, he has slit his throat!’

  It had not occurred to him that a gentleman might lie in real blood, like an animal.

  ‘We must see if we cannot go presently and bury him,’ Voss said.

  But both knew that they would not have the strength. So they did not mention it again. They were pleased to huddle together, and derive some comfort from an exchange of humanity.

  That night the boy crawled as far as the doorway and announced that the Comet had slid a little farther across the sky.

  ‘I am glad to have seen it,’ he said. ‘It was a fine sight. And soft as dandelions.’

  Voss suggested that he should return into the depths of the hut, for the night air in the small hours could be injurious to him.

  ‘I will not feel it,’ said Harry. ‘I will pull it up to my chin. Besides, I can protect you better from here.’

  Voss laughed.

  ‘There is little enough of me left to protect, and of such poor stuff, I doubt anyone would show an interest.’

  ‘I had a newt in a jar, did I tell you?’ Harry Robarts asked. ‘And a bird in a cage. It did not sing as it was supposed to do, but I grew fond of it. Until they opened the door. This thing, sir, in the sky, has it come to stay?’

  ‘No,’ said Voss. ‘It will pass.’

  ‘A pity,’ said the boy. ‘I could get used to it.’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ murmured Voss, who was irritated.

  ‘I cannot. There are some nights when everything I have ever seen passes through my head. Do you remember that box of yours, that I carried to the shipside, on London River?’

  The man would not answer.

  ‘Do you remember the flying fishes?’

  ‘Yes!’

  The man was maddened finally.

  ‘Are you not going to sleep?’

  ‘Oh, there is time for sleep. Sleep will not pass. Unless the dogs dig. And then they only scatter the bones.’

  ‘You are the dog,’ said the man.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ sighed the drowsy boy.

  ‘And a mad one.’

  ‘Licking the hands.’

  ‘No. Tearing at one’s thoughts.’

  As the two fell into sleep, or such a numb physical state as approximated to it, Voss believed that he loved this boy, and with him all men, even those he had hated, which is the most difficult act of love to accomplish, because of one’s own fault.

  Then sleep prevailed, and the occasional grumbling of the blacks, still at the mercy of the fiery snake, and the stirring of those earthly fires against which they lay, and the breaking of sticks, which break in darkness, just as they lie, from weight of time, it appears.

  While they were asleep, an old man had come and, stepping across the body of Harry Robarts, sat down inside the hut to watch or guard Voss. Whenever the latter awoke and became aware of the man’s presence, he was not surprised to see him, and would have expected anyone. In the altering firelight of the camp, the thin old man was a single, upright, black stroke, becoming in the cold light of morning, which is the colour of ashes, a patient, grey blur.

  Voss was dozing and waking. The grey light upon which he floated was marvellously soft, and flaking like ashes, with the consequence that he was most grateful to all concerned, and looked up once in an effort to convey his appreciation, when the old man, or woman, bent over him. For in the grey light, it transpired that the figure was that of a woman, whose breasts hung like bags of empty skin above the white man’s face.

  Realizing his mistake, the prisoner mumbled an apology as the ashy figure resumed its vigil. It was unnecessary, however, for their understanding of each other had begun to grow. While the woman sat looking down at her knees, the greyish skin was slowly revived, until her full, white, immaculate body became the shining source of all light.

  By its radiance, he did finally recognize her face, and would have gone to her, if it had been possible, but it was not; his body was worn out.

  Instead, she came to him, and at once he was flooded with light and memory. As she lay beside him, his boyhood slipped from him in a rustling of water and a rough towel. A steady summer had possessed them. Leaves were in her lips, that he bit off, and from her breasts the full, silky, milky buds. They were holding each other’s heads and looking into them, as remorselessly as children looking at secrets, and seeing all too clearly. But, unlike children, they were confronted to recognize their own faults.

  So they were growing together, and loving. No sore was so scrofulous on his body that she would not touch it with her kindness. He would kiss her wounds, even the deepest ones, that he had inflicted himself and left to suppurate.

  Given time, the man and woman might have healed each other. That time is not given was their one sadness. But time itself is a wound that will not heal up.

  ‘What is this, Laura?’ he asked, touching the roots of her hair, at the temples. ‘The blood is still running.’

  But her reply was slipping from him.

  And he fell back into the morning.

  An old, thin blackfellow, seated on the floor of the twig hut, watching the white man, and swatting the early flies, creaked to his feet soon after this. Stepping over the form of the boy, who was still stretched across the entrance, he went outside.

  *

  After a fearful night, Mrs Bonner insisted that Jim Prentice go and fetch Dr Kilwinning.

  ‘For such good as it may do.’

  Her husband said:

  ‘We would have done better to stick to the simple young fellow we had in the beginning, rather than waste our money upon this nincompoop in cuffs.’

  Each wondered who was to blame, but it could not be laid at anybody’s door at that early
hour.

  ‘He is very highly spoken of,’ sighed Mrs Bonner, who was wearing all her rings, as ladies do at a shipwreck or a fire, for this was the disaster of her orderly and uneventful life.

  ‘Silly women will speak highly of a doctor if they like the cut of his coat,’ complained the merchant. ‘There is nothing so fetching to some, as a tight, black, bull’s back.’

  ‘Mr Bonner!’ his wife protested, although she could enjoy an indelicacy.

  His shanks were very white and thin by that light, but his calves were still imperious, and the festoons of the nightshirt, between his legs as he sat, were of an early, pearly grey, and the very best quality material.

  Because he had been her husband, the old woman felt sadly moved.

  ‘There are times,’ she said, ‘when you say the unkindest things.’

  Some of his strength was restored with her words, and he cleared his thick, thonged throat, and declared:

  ‘I will tell Jim to bring the doctor over in the brougham, so that there need be no fuss about harnessing other horses at this hour. Some people can make difficulties. And fetching the doctor’s man out. It is a different matter if the horse is not required, nor the man.’

  Mrs Bonner was blowing her nose, of which the pores had been somewhat enlarged by the hour and emotion.

  Now also, she glanced towards her niece’s sick-bed. If she did this less frequently, it was because her courage failed her. She had become intimidated by the mysteries with which her house was filled.

  However, by the time the groom had fetched Dr Kilwinning, and driven him through the shiny shrubs, and deposited him under the solid sandstone portico, the master and mistress were neatly dressed, and appeared to be in full possession.

  The doctor himself was remarkably neat, and particularly about his full, well-cut, black back, which Mrs Bonner determined in future not to notice.

  He was carrying a little cardboard box.

  ‘I propose to let some blood,’ he explained. ‘Now. Although I had intended waiting until this evening.’

  The old couple drew in their breath.

  Nor would Mrs Bonner consent to look at those naked leeches, lolling upon the moist grass, in their little box.

  As the day promised scorching heat, they had already drawn the curtains over the sun, so that the young woman’s face was sculptured by shadow as well as suffering. But for a painful breathing, she might not have been present in her greenish flesh, for she did not appear directly aware of anything that was taking place. She allowed the doctor to arrange the leeches as if it were one of the more usual acts of daily life, and only when it was done did she seem concerned for the ash, which, she said, the wind was blowing into their faces from off the almost extinguished fires.

  Once she roused herself, and asked:

  ‘Shall I be weakened, Doctor, by losing blood?’

  The doctor pursed his mouth, and answered to humour her:

  ‘On the contrary, you should be strengthened.’

  ‘If that is the truth,’ she said. ‘Because I need all my strength. But people have a habit of making truth suit the occasion.’

  And later on:

  ‘I think I love truth best of all.’ Pausing. ‘That is not strictly true, you know. We can never be quite truthful.’

  All the time the leeches were filling, until they could no longer twitch their tails. Mrs Bonner was petrified, both by words that she did not understand, and by the medusa-head that uttered them.

  Laura Trevelyan said:

  ‘Dear Christ, now at last I understand your suffering.’

  The doctor frowned, not because his patient’s conclusion approached close to blasphemy, but because he was of a worldly nature. Although he attended Church, both for professional reasons and to please his rather fashionable wife, the expression of faith outside its frame of organized devotion, scandalized, even frightened this established man.

  ‘You see,’ he whispered to Mrs Bonner, ‘how the leeches have filled?’

  ‘I prefer not to look,’ she replied, and had to shudder.

  Laura’s head – for all that remained of her seemed to have become concentrated in the head – was struggling with the simplicity of a great idea.

  When she opened her eyes and said:

  ‘How important it is to understand the three stages. Of God into man. Man. And man returning into God. Do you find, Doctor, there are certain beliefs a clergyman may explain to one from childhood onward, without one’s understanding, except in theory, until suddenly, almost in spite of reason, they are made clear. Here, suddenly, in this room, of which I imagined I knew all the corners, I understand!’

  The doctor was prepared to speak firmly, but saw, to his relief, that she did not require an answer.

  ‘Dear God,’ she cried, gasping for breath, ‘it is so easy.’

  Beyond the curtains the day was now blazing, and the woman in the bed was burning with a similar light.

  ‘Except,’ she said, distorting her mouth with an irony which intensified the compassion that she felt, and was now compelled to express, ‘except that man is so shoddy, so contemptible, greedy, jealous, stubborn, ignorant. Who will love him when I am gone? I only pray that God will.

  ‘O Lord, yes,’ she begged. ‘Now that he is humble.’

  Dr Kilwinning had to tear at the leeches with his plump, strong hands to bring them away, so greedily were they clinging to the blue veins of the sick woman.

  ‘That is clear, Doctor?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ he mumbled.

  The situation had made him clumsy.

  ‘When man is truly humbled, when he has learnt that he is not God, then he is nearest to becoming so. In the end, he may ascend.’

  By this time Dr Kilwinning’s cuffs had acquired a crumpled look. The coat had wrinkled up his back. Upon departure, he said quite sincerely:

  ‘This would appear to be a case where medicine is of little assistance. I suggest that Miss Trevelyan might care to talk to a clergyman.’

  But when the eventuality was broached, Laura laughed.

  ‘Dear Aunt,’ she said, ‘you were always bringing me soups, and now it is a clergyman.’

  ‘We only thought,’ said Aunt Emmy; and: ‘All we do is intended for the best.’

  It was most unfair. Everybody jumped upon her, even for those ideas which were not her own.

  But Laura Trevelyan was temporarily comforted by some illusion. Or by the action of the leeches, hoped her uncle, against his natural scepticism. At all events, she did rest a little in the course of the afternoon, and when the breeze came, as it usually did towards four o’clock, a salt air mingled with the scent of cooling roses, she remarked in a languid voice:

  ‘Mercy will be there. They are taking her down out of the cart. I hope there are no wasps, for she will be playing a good deal, naturally, under the fruit trees. How I wish I might lay my head, if only for a little, in that long, cool grass.’

  Suddenly she looked at her aunt, with those eyes which saw more than others.

  ‘Mercy went?’ she asked.

  ‘That was your wish,’ said Aunt Emmy, moistening her lips, and forced her handkerchief into a tighter ball.

  ‘I am glad,’ said Laura. ‘My mind is at rest.’

  Mrs Bonner wondered whether she were not, after all, stronger than her niece.

  *

  Voss attempted to count the days, but the simplest sums would swell into a calculation of universal time, so vast that it filled his mouth with one whole mealy potato, cold certainly, but of unmanageable proportions.

  Once he asked:

  ‘Harry? Wie lang sind wir schon hier? How many days? We must catch the horses, or we will rot as we lie in this one place.’

  As if to rot were avoidable. By moving. But it was not.

  ‘We rot by living,’ he sighed.

  Grace lay only in the varying speeds at which the process of decomposition took place, and the lovely colours of putrescence that some souls were allowed to w
ear. For, in the end, everything was of flesh, the soul elliptical in shape.

  During those days many people entered the hut. They would step across the form of the white boy, and stand, and observe the man.

  Once, in the presence of a congregation, the old blackfellow, the guardian, or familiar, put into the white man’s mouth a whole wichetty grub.

  The solemnity of his act was immense.

  The white man was conscious of that pinch of soft, white flesh, but rather more of its flavour, hot unlike that of the almond, which also is elliptical. He mumbled it on his tongue for a while before attempting to swallow it, and at once the soft thing became the struggling wafer of his boyhood, that absorbed the unworthiness in his hot mouth, and would not go down. As then, his fear was that his sinful wafer might be discovered, lying before him, half-digested, upon the floor.

  He did, however, swallow the grub in time.

  The grave blackfellows became used to the presence of the white man. He who had appeared with the snake was perhaps also of supernatural origin, and must be respected, even loved. Safety is bought with love, for a little. So they even fetched their children to look at the white man, who lay with his eyes closed, and whose eyelids were a pale golden like the belly skin of the heavenly snake.

  In the sweet, Gothic gloom in which the man himself walked at times, by effort, over cold tiles, beneath gold-leaf, and grey-blue mould of the sky, the scents were ascending, of thick incense, probably, and lilies doing obeisance. It would also be the bones of the saints, he reasoned, that were exuding a perfume of sanctity. One, however, was a stinking lily, or suspect saint.

  It began to overpower.

  One burning afternoon the blacks dragged away the profane body of the white boy, which was rising where it lay. They let out yells, and kicked the offending corpse rather a lot. It was swelling. It had become a green woman, that they took and threw into the gully with the body of the other white man, who had let his own spirit out.