The Naked Country

by Morris West

  ‘Crocodile, boss!’ said Billy-Jo, quickly.

  But Adams already had the rifle in his hands and the bolt cocked, while he stared at the pool of shadow on the farther side of the river. Mary Dillon watched, admiring the swift, automatic reaction.

  ‘Over there, boss, by driftwood.’

  The tracker’s sharp eyes had caught the sheen of moonlight on squamous skin.

  ‘I’ve got him. He’s a big fellow.’

  Three seconds later, Adams fired, and the next instant the big saurian was thrashing and heaving in the water, his tail clouting the piled debris and sending it flying in all directions. After a while, the thrashing ceased, the crocodile rolled over, exposing the pale underbelly, and drifted into a backwater under the pandanus roots.

  Without waiting to be told, Billy-Jo plunged into the shallows and began wading across the stream. Crocodile skins were worth money and since a policeman could not engage in private trade, this was the tracker’s perquisite. Before he reached the backwater he halted, waist deep in the water and they saw him fish something out of it. Then he headed away from the dead beast and back to the pile of driftwood. They saw him tear it away with his hands, scrabble among the debris and then stand a long time probing in the dark recesses behind it.

  Five minutes later, he was back at the camp-fire, sodden but triumphant, holding Lance Dillon’s shirt and trousers and the long, serrated head of Mundaru’s spear.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MARY STARED at the tattered garments in horror; but Adams spread them on the sand and examined them with professional care. After a few moments, he gave a low whistle and a gleam of admiration showed in his pale eyes.

  ‘Your husband’s quite a man, Mary.’

  ‘I – I don’t understand.’

  Item by item, he pieced out the deductions for her.

  ‘We lost his tracks just here, remember? He must have crossed the river and hidden himself behind that driftwood over there. He was wounded in the shoulder…’ Mary gave a small gasp of fear as he showed her the rent in Dillon’s shirt, and the brown bloodstains around it. ‘He got the spearhead out, and dropped it in the pool. He probably tore strips of the shirt to bandage himself…’

  ‘And then?’ There was tension in her voice. ‘What happened then? Why did he leave his clothes?’

  Adams laid a restraining hand on her arm.

  ‘Take it easy, Mary. Let’s think it out in sequence. He would have reached the river in daylight, yesterday afternoon. He would be wounded and weak. He would know that he had no hope in open country by day. What did he do? Settled himself into this place and waited for darkness. We know the myalls looked for him. They didn’t find him, so they slept on the river-bank and waited till sunrise. Lance probably made a break during the middle of the night.’

  ‘But why without his clothes?’

  Adams rubbed a reflective hand over his stubbled chin.

  ‘I don’t know. It puzzles me. What would you say, Billy-Jo?’

  The tracker shrugged.

  ‘Boss Dillon cut holes in bank. Climb up. Maybe clothes snag on roots. Maybe wet and heavy for sick man. I dunno. Anyway, big mistake.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Night-time, no clothes, fine. Daytime, hot sun, white man burn up, finish.’

  Adams frowned. The thought had occurred to him, but he would have preferred to leave it unspoken.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe he hoped to work his way down-stream and take to the river again. We’ll know better when we try to pick up his tracks in the morning. At least we know two things – he was alive when he hit the river. He was alive when he left it.’ He turned to Mary with a grin. ‘Now, can we eat, please? I’m hungry.’

  His casualness was disarming, even though she knew he was using it only as a gambit to gain thinking time. But that was his right and she was too tired to dispute it. She began ladling out the meal; tinned stew, thick slices of damper – the bushman’s bread, pannikins of coffee laced with condensed milk. While they ate, Menyan stirred and muttered in delirium. Adams got up to force more water and whisky into her mouth and draw the blankets closer around her. He hoped she would last till daybreak. A death in the night would add the final macabre touch to the complex little drama – and Adams, a good policeman, had no taste for theatre.

  When the meal was over, they washed the dishes in the river, spread out the blanket-rolls and lay back, heads pillowed on their saddles, smoking a last cigarette. Mary noticed that Adams chose the place between herself and Menyan and that he was lying without a blanket, on his ground-sheet. She offered him one of her own, but he refused it, smiling.

  ‘I’ve slept colder than this. Hang on to it. You’ll need it before morning.’

  ‘Let’s share it then.’

  ‘Bundling’s a risky pastime. I wouldn’t trust myself.’

  To which blunt answer she had no adequate reply, so she lay back against the smooth cool leather of the saddle and watched the smoke of her cigarette drift upward towards the pendant stars. After a while Adams said quietly:

  ‘You’re probably asking yourself why we’re not doing anything about your husband at this moment. I’m asking myself the same question; but I don’t see that there’s anything we can do. There’s a couple of square miles of swampland over there. The grass is higher than a man’s head. We could blunder about all night and find nothing. We could cross and re-cross your husband’s tracks a dozen times without seeing them. Besides, there’s Mundaru and the kadaitja men – they’d scent us like dogs in the dark…’

  ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Neil. I trust you.’

  ‘Thanks, Mary.’

  Her face was shadowed, so that he could not read it, but when she spoke again, her voice was shaky.

  ‘I – I’ve learnt a lot today. Don’t judge me too harshly. I’m mixed up, lost. But I’m still trying to go through the right motions. It’s the best I can do.’

  ‘You’re doing fine, Mary.’ His voice was gruff but oddly gentle. ‘Go to sleep now. Everything will look different in the morning. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, Neil.’

  He saw her roll over on her side, draw the blanket up around her shoulders and before his cigarette was finished the steady rhythm of her breathing told him she was asleep.

  Now that he was free of the problem and the provocation of her presence, free too of the need for constant movement and action, he could begin to pick up the jig-saw pieces and try to fit them into a coherent pattern…

  Lance Dillon first. A dour, driving man, tackling a problem bigger than his expectations, gambling beyond his collateral. A man not built for sympathy, who would either tame his land or break himself – but who had not yet learnt the elementary lesson of taming a woman. This was the tally up till twelve hours ago.

  Now…? A man cool enough to take a twelve-inch barb out of his own body, quick-thinking enough to find himself a lair in crocodile water, bold enough – or fool enough – to pit himself naked against the naked land and the naked primitives who lived in it. Where was he now? Half-way home, down the river valley? Impaled on a killer’s spear, like a moth on a pin? Or crouched out there in the swamp-flats, dumb with weakness or terror? The betting was all in favour of the last possibility.

  If he were dead the kites would be circling over his remains, but in the last hour of sunlight they had seen no carrion birds. Alive then… But how long could he stay alive? And where could he hide from Mundaru? If he were thinking straight, the swamp was still the best place. But leave him there till daybreak – what would be his condition after twelve hours naked in the sun, two nights of wounds and possible poison?

  Let him survive that too. Then ask could he survive the shock of financial ruin and the loss of his wife? Or perhaps he had already faced them, and found them both bearable. But if you, Neil Adams, had bundled with his wife tonight could you face him alive – or, worse, could you face him dead?

  Leave him then, a moment, and think about his wife, resentful, disc
ontented, afraid – hungry too, perhaps – yet with a core of honesty and courage that keeps her going through the motions of loyalty if not of love. She attracts you; galls you like a pebble in your shoe. She is frank about her unhappiness – a common symptom of the spring itch. But she is equally frank in blaming herself for it – and how does that weigh in the cynical balance of experience?

  You’ve never asked more of a woman than a happy tumble in the hay and a good-bye without any tears. Why should you care what goes on behind the brooding eyes of this one? She offered you a blanket. Was she promising more? When you refused it, were you afraid of yourself, or of her? If Dillon is dead, will you want to take over his wife? Or do you want to see first what is the truth of her? When you find Dillon with his eyes pecked out – or babbling on the edge of the last delirium will you be brutal enough to stand and watch how she reacts?

  An untimely thought, perhaps. An uncomfortable indication of what years of solitary living can make of a passionate man. Push this one away too. Turn a policeman’s eye on the drama which is even now being played out on the grass-flats. There is a rapist-killer out there. By law he belongs to you and you must take him. If you fail and the kadaitja men kill him, you must visit vengeance on them and the tribe – even though you know this will be a legality and not justice.

  That’s where Dillon complicates the issue. A tribal rape, a tribal murder, you can treat at your own discretion. Your report can say as little or as much as you choose and few will be any the wiser. But with a white man murdered, it is a matter for Headquarters, for ministerial reports, for questions on the floor of Parliament. Your career is at stake. Are you prepared to jeopardise it for the sake of an abstract justice? Twenty-four hours ago life was very simple. But now there’s a woman in it and you can’t read this one from a book of rules…

  Suddenly, out of the darkness, he heard the cry of a whip-bird, twice repeated. He sat up, every sense alert. It was night-time and the bush-birds were roosting. The black tracker sat up too and Adams stepped over Mary’s body to squat beside him.

  Billy-Jo’s dark eyes rolled in his head. He pointed out across the water.

  ‘Kadaitja men, boss.’

  Adams nodded.

  ‘I wonder if they’ve found him yet?’

  The tracker shook his head emphatically.

  ‘Not yet. When find him, hear Tjuringa – bull-roarer.’

  ‘But they know we’re here. Will they still use it?’

  ‘Sure, boss. Kadaitja magic stronger than white man. Tjuringa make spirit-song for death.’

  ‘We’ll move in when we hear it. We sleep in turns, an hour at a time. You sleep first. I’ll wake you.’

  ‘Good night, boss.’

  He tipped his hat over his eyes, stretched himself under the blankets, and was asleep in two minutes.

  The whip-bird called again, and this time it was answered by the squawk of a cockatoo and the honk of a swamp goose. The cockatoo cry seemed to be the closest of all – down-stream and near the river-bank. Adams picked up the rifle, loaded it and hugging the shadows, began to work his way down towards the ford where he and Billy-Jo had crossed the river earlier in the afternoon.

  When he reached it, he stepped in, planting his feet delicately one before the other, so that no splash disturbed the whispered rhythm of the current. It took him ten minutes to cross, and when he reached the other side he wormed his way up the bank and squatted in the shelter of a big thorn bush. The bird-cries were on his left, more frequent now. The man making the cockatoo call was very near the river fringe.

  Adams waited, his heart thumping, holding the rifle so that the barrel was covered by his arm, lest the glint of moonlight on the metal betray him to the hunter. Time passed with agonising slowness – five minutes, ten – then the kadaitja man came into view. He was a tall buck, daubed from forehead to knee with ceremonial patterns, between which the sweaty sheen of skin gleamed in the pale light. He moved with a swift, shuffling gait, favouring the right foot, and when he came closer Adams saw that his shins and his feet were covered with parrot feathers and kangaroo fur. In his right hand he carried three spears and a throwing-stick, in his left a short club, carved in totem patterns.

  Adams was not a superstitious man. He had lived a long time in the outback. But the sight of the painted man woke in him the old atavistic terror of the unknown. Death had many faces and this was one of them. He held his breath as the kadaitja man came abreast of him and passed on, his feathered feet soundless in the powdery dust. Twenty yards ahead he halted, at the sound of the whip-bird call. Then he turned aside, parted the tall grass stalks and disappeared. Adams waited a few moments longer, then eased himself out of his cramped position and slid down the bank to the ford.

  Half-way across it, he heard Mary’s cry, a long hysterical scream of pure terror. Heedless now of the noise, he splashed through the last twenty yards of water and went running to her along the sand.

  Mundaru, restless on the border of sleep, heard the scream, and the marrow clotted in his bones. He knew what it was: the spirit essence of Menyan, haunting the place where he had killed her, because there was no one to perform the ceremonies of singing her to rest. She would be looking for him now, eyeless in the night, ranging over the swamp. She would not be alone. The ‘wingmalung’ would be with her – the malignant ones who strike illness into the bodies of those who neglect their debts to the departed.

  He was lost now, without recourse. He had heard the calls of the kadaitja men, but he had counted on time to find the white man before they came to kill him at sunrise. Now he knew that even this hope was gone. There was no escape from the dead, no remedy against the malice of the ‘wingmalung’ except the tribal magic and from this he was forever cut off.

  The terror grew on him like a palsy. Death was all around him. But even against the terrors of the spirit world, the primal instinct of self-preservation asserted itself. Menyan’s spirit voice had come from the river. The kadaitja men were at his back. But all of them were still a distance away. If he ran, he might gain a little time – even though everything he knew told him he could not escape them utterly.

  He picked up his spears, and bending double, began to work cautiously through the grass, away from the river, away from the kadaitja men. His limbs were cramped, his belly knotted, his entrails full of water. He moved slowly and with great effort as though he were hauling against a heavy load. He knew what it meant. Magical influences were at work on him, draining his life fluid, dragging him back.

  He fought against them savagely, and after a while they seemed to grow less, although he knew this was an illusion. They were still there, still potent.

  Eastward the moon rose higher in the sky and its radiance filtered through the mesh of fibres, lighting up his course. But even this held no joy for Mundaru. Menyan was named for the moon. The moon was an eye spying out his movements, reading them back to the spirit essence and the ‘wingmalung’.

  He dropped to his knees and began to crawl, close to the ground, as Lance Dillon had done before him. He was a primitive without understanding of irony. He was doomed and beyond the temptation of triumph. But a faint hope sprang up inside him when, after an hour’s progress, he found that he was crawling in a set of tracks made by another man – a man bleeding, vomiting sometimes and leaving scraps and snippets of himself on the razor-edges of the grass leaves.

  Billy-Jo was piling a small mound of sand over the body of Menyan, the moon-girl. Neil Adams was sitting on a blanket, cradling Mary in his arms, soothing her like a child after a nightmare. Her shirt was stained with blood, her eyes stared, her whole body was shaken with rigors. The words tumbled out of her in disjointed narrative.

  ‘…Asleep and dreaming…I seemed to hear a cry. When I woke up, she was lying across me…her face on mine. She…she must have died just at that moment… It was terrible…

  She clung to him, hiding her face against his breast as if to blot out the memory.

  ‘Easy, girl…easy. I
t’s over now.’

  ‘Don’t leave me again, Neil! Please don’t leave me!’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘…Billy-Jo was down by the river. I thought you’d both left me… I screamed and…’

  ‘I know…I know. Now forget it, like a good girl. Did you bring any clean clothes?’

  ‘There’s a shirt in my saddle-bag, but this cardigan’s the only one I have.’

  He laid her down on the blanket, found the shirt and then peeled off his own cardigan and handed it to her.

  ‘Get out of those things. I’ll rinse them in the river.’

  But when she tried to take them off her hands would not obey and her fingers fumbled helplessly at the fastenings. Adams knelt beside her and undressed her to the waist. She shivered as the cold air struck her and he drew her white body against him for warmth, while he buttoned on the clean shirt and drew the heavy cardigan over her head. She surrendered herself like a child to the small intimate service, and Adams was glad of the dark that hid his own face from her. If love were anything but a fiction of the marriage-brokers, he was close to it now in this rare moment of tenderness and pity.

  Billy-Jo came ambling back from the crude obsequies and Adams tossed him the bloodstained clothes to wash. He tried to get Mary to lie down and sleep again, but she held to him desperately, and after a while he lay down beside her on the blanket, with her head pillowed on his arm and her arm flung twitching across his chest. He stroked her hair, and talked to her: soft tales of the island men, from Macassar and Koepang, who traded along the coast in the old days, quaint ribaldries from the miners’ camps and the bullock-trains, legends of the dream-people.

  Little by little the panic drained out of her, her body relaxed, her breathing settled into the easy rhythm of sleep. For a long time he lay wakeful, her hair brushing his lips, her breast rising and falling against his own. Then, finally, the cold crept into his bones; he huddled against her for warmth and they bundled like lovers under the same blanket, while Billy-Jo paced the river-bank and listened for the bull-roarers and the song of death.