To the Islands

by Randolph Stow

  ‘No, no, brother—’

  ‘He killed her. In spite of everything I could do. And God knows I tried hard enough to stop it, tried to send him away, tried to talk her into sense. But there wasn’t anything I could do, was there?’ demanded Heriot, suddenly pleading. ‘Not when she was pregnant. I couldn’t stop it then. And he took her away, and she died. From neglect and hunger and his beatings. I know that, I know it from a white man. And yet you, Stephen, her own brother, you do what he tells you, you follow him round—’

  ‘He my brother,’ Stephen protested shakily.

  ‘The man who killed your sister. And will ruin you yet. I hear more than you think, Stephen. I’ve heard Rex talking about the wicked white man and the smart black man, and how to talk to the white man and how to get money from him without working. But Rex isn’t clever enough for that, and nor are you. You’ll end up in a filthy camp, like Rex, like Esther. Stephen,’ said Heriot, with grief in his voice, ‘don’t forget Esther.’

  Down the road the tall man came forward from the tree and stood watching them, trying to hear some words of the dispute which was indubitably about himself.

  ‘Brother, I go now,’ Stephen murmured.

  ‘Yes, go,’ Heriot said remotely. ‘I’ll talk to Rex.’

  He stepped forward down the road to the bright-shirted man. The sun stung his eyes bitterly, but he no longer felt old, only angry and grieved, and very strong. The man’s face, looking towards him, was bearded, and both beard and hair had been trimmed with moderate care. As he was tall and had features fairly fine for one of his race, and as there was arrogance in every line of his lean body, Heriot could see with his dazed eyes something of the force in him that had captured the dead Esther. Ai lewa, walwal, Heriot whispered; dog, foul man.

  Rex said quietly: ‘Good day, brother.’

  ‘You’ve come back,’ Heriot said, turning away from the sun and fixing his eyes on the man’s.

  ‘Yes, brother.’

  ‘The boat will probably go in again on Sunday night. You’ll go with it.’

  ‘I bin told I come here, brother.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Mr Henryson say if you don’t tell me I can come after them letters I write, I better go down and ask the white man on the boat when he come next time. And Brother Terry, he say all right.’

  Heriot said with contempt: ‘I know you get your reputation among your people from pretending to find all the white men at one another’s throats. But you’re not clever enough to make mischief between the Department of Native Welfare and Brother Terry and me.’

  ‘One time Harry and Maudie come here and you send them away, brother, and that Department Native Welfare, he real wild.’

  ‘Listen,’ Heriot said, ‘Mr Henryson is my friend. He knows me. He doesn’t know you. But I know you. I know you’re a troublemaker and a woman-stealer and a lazy, lying blackguard. When you go back I’ll write to him and ask him to keep an eye on you, for your people’s sake.’

  ‘Might be I make trouble now. All this people here, they my friends, they don’t like you send me away.’

  ‘Not many of them, Rex. Why did you come, anyway?’

  ‘This my country, brother.’

  ‘That’s not the reason. You’re looking for another wife.’

  ‘Might be, brother.’

  ‘Don’t call me brother, you’re no brother of mine. You killed my little girl, my daughter. I wish to God,’ said Heriot, ‘Stephen had killed you.’

  The tall man, who had been standing partly stooped, hoping to placate Heriot a little with this attempt at humility, straightened and looked at him uneasily.

  ‘I know,’ Heriot said softly, ‘that sounds strange from me. But I’m very bitter, I’m very bitter, Rex. And I’d see a thousand of you dead if it could bring back Esther. Yes, Esther! Why shouldn’t I say her name? I gave it to her.’

  In the sun they looked at one another. The light made brown glints in Rex’s beard and in his black hair, laid a polish on his skin. Under lids heavy with trachoma, his always wary eyes watched Heriot darkly.

  ‘You’re very well dressed,’ Heriot said, looking at the scarlet shirt open over his chest, the loose flannel trousers miraculously supported by his hipless body. ‘I advise you to go to a station and concentrate on cutting a fine figure of a man on horseback. This place is too poor to keep men who can keep themselves.’

  Rex said tensely: ‘Thank you, Mr Heriot.’

  ‘Irony doesn’t become you,’ Heriot murmured, and turned, and began to walk towards the Ways’ house. He felt that if for a moment he lost the consciousness of his rocky dignity he would soften and crumble and become an object of pathos and ridicule, calling laughter from the defiant figure behind him; and therefore he kept his shoulders stiff and his stride long and sure.

  But in the Ways’ garden, which was a jungle of poincianas, pawpaws, frangipani, bougainvillaea, and white-flowered creepers, haunted all day by minute finches as bright as any flower, he unveiled to himself his awakened grief for Esther, his disappointment in Stephen, his fear of Rex’s influence in the village. He remembered his age and his captivity. ‘I could lie down like a tired child,’ he said to the birds, ‘and weep away the life of care—’

  He laughed rustily.

  ‘Any,’ asked Djediben, ‘dea, abula?’

  ‘You’ve got your tea,’ Harris said irritably. ‘Go away, now. Bui!’

  She whimpered at him. ‘No dea. More dea, abula.’ Holding out to him her well-filled tea bag.

  ‘You’re a greedy one, Djediben.’

  ‘Ah, abula,’ she said, grinning hugely with her few tobacco-brown teeth, ‘money ’ere, aru ’ere.’

  From the dirty kerchief round her neck she produced a St Christopher medal, the gift of a Roman Catholic mission far away.

  ‘That’s not money.’

  She became angry then, and muttered savagely to herself of the avarice of white men, her fingers meanwhile working at a knot in the corner of the kerchief. It gave at last, and two shillings fell on the concrete floor.

  ‘Aru!’ she shrieked, chasing them, and now happy again. ‘I give you, abula.’

  He took them, hot from her flesh, and weighed out more tea. ‘You’ve got plenty this week,’ he said. ‘Better give some to the other people.’

  ‘Eh, nurumal, abula,’ she complained, rubbing her stomach. ‘Me ’ungry fella.’ But he knew she could be generous.

  He looked away from her and wiped his sweating forehead on the back of his hand. ‘You go now,’ he said. ‘You’ve finished, you’ve got everything.’

  ‘Djob, abula.’

  ‘Soap for how many fella?’

  She held up her fingers and counted: ‘Midjel. Old man Wunda. Old woman Ganmeri.’

  ‘Yourself, Wunda, Ganmeri,’ he muttered, wearily counting out the little blocks of soap. ‘That’s all now.’

  ‘Grimadada, abula. You put ’im in blour.’

  He wandered across to the bins and brought back a mixture of cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda, sprinkled it over the flour in her dirty white bag, and asked hopefully: ‘Now we’ve finished?’

  ‘Abula,’ she murmured in her throat, drawing out the last syllable blandishingly.

  ‘Well, go away,’ he shouted at her. ‘Bui!’ And she, without loss of dignity, gathered her bags and went.

  In the tin store the heat was stifling. He leaned sweating against his ant-eaten shelves and breathed deeply, longing for a cigarette but not having time, longing for a shower but having to wait till noon. A man of seventy, lean and dry after twenty years in the country, he longed at times for death, but could not die until someone had been found to replace him.

  Across the counter Mabel, tall and regal, watched him. She was as old as he and, when tired, sometimes stumbled carrying firewood on her back to the camp. ‘Abula,’ she said gently.

  When he looked at her he smiled faintly. Her dignity was striking, and on such days, coming to her after the demanding Djediben
, he loved her very dearly.

  ‘Good day, Mabel,’ he said, taking the bags from her. ‘How’s your old man?’

  ‘Ah, ’im good, abula.’

  He gave her flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, working through the list of the indigents’ allowance. Potatoes, onion, a tin of milk, some jam, rice, dried peas, porridge, soap. Outside he could hear the other women coming, two dozen of them about to descend on him en masse. ‘I’d better be quick,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something for you. You like wana, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  So he brought her his half-bottle of honey and put it in one of her bags. ‘You got matches?’ he asked, knowing how much they were prized, how much labour they saved these old women.

  ‘Madja, abula,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  He gave her half a box from his pocket, and she, gathering up her bags, smiled in her stately and reserved fashion. ‘Dang you, abula,’ she murmured. ‘Good day.’

  As she went out the crowd gathered at the door, the many old and pathetic, dignified or comic, grateful or parasitical women of his herd, waiting for the weekly rations. Now he would have to run from bin to bin, flat out, in a stream of sweat, for an hour or more in the sweating morning.

  He must remember to give them salt to share around, it was the small things that were forgotten on the list. And he would serve the blind woman first.

  ‘Come in, you ngalis,’ he shouted at them. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  Outside the meathouse, under the wheeling crows, an old stork-legged man was attacking a cow’s head with an axe. He hacked uncertainly at the bone below the horns, one foot on the muzzle, while the beast’s eyes gazed as placidly as in life towards the old women gathering up its less edible organs from the grass.

  ‘Here, Wandalo,’ Heriot said. ‘Give me the axe.’

  He held out his hand, and Wandalo, ancient and hesitant, gave it to him. Deadening his senses to the thud of the axe, the feeling of bone shattering under it, Heriot opened the head.

  ‘Now you’ve got him,’ he said, standing back and leaning on the axe.

  Wandalo pulled back the top of the head. He squatted with the brains in his cupped hands, dripping blood. The old women in the grass shouted to one another that Abula Arriet had clubbed the beast’s head and got the meat.

  ‘You ’id ’im dat bulaman longa bandi,’ Djediben remarked conversationally.

  ‘Yes,’ Heriot said. ‘Strong fella me.’

  From the hospital rose, suddenly, the sound of singing, the song wild and high, shouted from a strong throat. The old women sat up and listened, screaming excitedly.

  ‘Old man Galumbu,’ said Djediben around her grinning teeth. ‘’Im djingem now.’

  ‘What’s he singing?’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘Derby djong.’

  ‘About the time he was in the leprosarium?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘Derby djong. All time ’im djingem now.’

  ‘Till he gets tired, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she shrieked, ‘’im tired fella by-’n’-by.’

  Slowly the crows circled. In the heat the stench of guts struck Heriot a blow in the stomach. ‘I’m tired fella myself,’ he said ‘I’ll go and talk to him. Talk to that old man. And sit down.’

  ‘Ah abula,’ Djediben crooned automatically.

  The singing rising and falling tragically in the air, Heriot walked along a narrow path in the grass. Ahead of him a black snake, shining like brand-new pebbled leather, slid across the strip of dirt and disappeared. With each step he took, beads of sweat rolled down the crags of his face and into the damp handkerchief knotted at his throat. ‘Tired fella, all right,’ he told himself, standing at the gate of the hospital and watching the old man roar his songs from the bed on the veranda. ‘Weary, weary fella.’

  The old man stopped singing and looked towards him. He had the face of a pleasant child, happy and rather helpless, with his white hair cut by Helen in a fringe, his wide-set eyes staring innocently from below tangled brows. The innocence of the eyes was their emptiness, for he was three-quarters blind, whether from trachoma or from leprosy Heriot no longer remembered.

  ‘Bungundja?’ demanded the ancient child. ‘Gui!’ He was mistrustful of the still figure at the gate.

  Slowly Heriot advanced to the veranda, watching the milky eyes for recognition. ‘Ngaia,’ he said. ‘I. Abula Arriet. How are you, old man?’

  Galumbu laughed, gently, a child’s laugh. ‘Good, bodj, yeah. Good now.’

  ‘You always call me “Boss”. You worked on a station once, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, wargam dcidjin, bodj.’

  ‘Long time ago?’

  ‘Ah, long dime,’ the old man mumbled, his face touched with sadness. ‘Binidj now.’

  ‘You’re not finished yet. You’re good fella, strong.’

  The old man lay back with his cheek to the pillow and stared into the light. ‘No good. No good now.’

  ‘You’re not finished. You’ll live a long time with Sister Bond to look after you. Why, I,’ said Heriot, with an attempt at humour, ‘I’ll go to the islands before you, old man.’

  Galumbu was silent.

  ‘Mudumudu,’ Heriot translated. ‘Mudumudu-gu ngarambun wanggi ngaia.’

  With a sudden twist of his thin body Galumbu hid his face in the pillow and lay still.

  Oh, that I am such a fool, cried Heriot inwardly, such a fool. To mention death, the islands of the dead, here, to him. Oh God, let him not die now, let me not have killed him.

  ‘I was joking,’ he protested, ‘jagun ngaram, maoba. Joking,’ he said, his voice trailing away.

  But there was no persuading the white head to turn and look again at the man who spoke of death, and of his own death, with such lightness, defying the spirits to descend on him and send him on his last long journey to the far islands. Galumbu was turned to stone.

  Guilty, uncertain, Heriot moved quietly away and went to the dispensary, where Helen, unexpectedly, sat rolling bandages in her brown hands. He watched her for a moment, the hands and the dark head bent over them, and said: ‘Helen.’

  She looked up inquiringly. ‘Hullo.’

  ‘The old man’s not well.’

  She stood up, absently disposing of the bandages. ‘I noticed he’d stopped singing. But he seemed happy a few minutes ago.’

  ‘I upset him, I’m afraid. I talked about dying. Perhaps you could do something with him.’

  Because he seemed uneasy, even a little ashamed of the effect his joke had had on Galumbu, she was sorry for him, and glad to be, since all that morning his lofty cross-examination on the subject of Gunn had rankled, and sitting there with her bandages and with nothing to occupy her mind but Heriot she had felt herself growing steadily more resentful. So she said: ‘I’ll go and speak to him.’

  He sat down on the chair when she had gone out, picked up a bandage and idly began to roll it, feeling useless and old. Most of the men had gone with the tractor to get more stone for the new building; Dixon and Way were superintending the roofing of the finished part, Gunn was in his schoolhouse, Harris in his store. But for Heriot there was nothing to do but wander round his village and wait for the next schedule on the wireless. But tomorrow, he thought, he would go with the tractor, he would gather stones himself, he was strong, his heart was good, there was nothing wrong with him but this tiredness of the mind, this throbbing resentment and desolation. And tonight he would write a letter demanding more staff, two youngish men. He would say it was absurd, the only young man he had was Dixon, and if they were all young the place would still be under-staffed. He would say that he had had enough of being the forgotten man in the forgotten country, he wanted attention and cooperation. He would offer even to withdraw his resignation if only he could have two new men. Then perhaps he would have a chance of getting something done about the cattle. As it was, too much of his time was taken up with paper work, he had no opportunity to think of it. Oh, he’d explain to them, he’d tell this distant counci
l a thing or two.

  Helen came back and stood at the doorway, looking brown and cool. ‘Galumbu’s forgiven and forgotten,’ she said. ‘A bit of faith curing on my part. He’s shaken off his miseries.’

  ‘I’ll go back for a moment, then. Thank you, Helen.’

  ‘Thank you for the bandage,’ she said lightly, taking it from him.

  ‘Have you—I wonder if you could lend me a cigarette? I’ve left my tobacco, I’ve nothing to give the old man.’

  She pulled a packet from the pocket in her skirt and gave it to him.

  Outside on the veranda Galumbu was sitting up in his bed again, and watched without expression as Heriot dimly approached, and sat down on his bed, and lit a cigarette. His cloudy eyes watched the smoke drift from the white man’s lips into the sunlight.

  ‘You want a smoke?’ Heriot asked tentatively.

  ‘Djmog? Yeah.’

  Heriot lit a cigarette and pushed it between the open lips, and the old man, staring at nothing, his crooked hands on his chest, slowly puffed. Meanwhile Heriot watched the old women, across the grass at the meathouse, and thought of misery and hopelessness, of the wretched tribe of indigents. But it is their choice, their own choice...

  He became conscious of the smell of burning and turned back to look at Galumbu. The old man had not moved, still lay gazing into nothingness; but the cigarette had fallen from his mouth on to his hand, and the smell was the smell of burning flesh.

  ‘Old man,’ said Heriot, very gently, ‘I’ll give you your smoke.’

  He took the cigarette from the crooked hand, long paralysed by leprosy, and held it to Galumbu’s lips. The old man took half the cigarette in his mouth and puffed. It grew sodden, and his spittle ran down Heriot’s fingers.

  ‘All right, old man,’ Heriot said when the dry half of the cigarette was burned. ‘Finished now.’

  Galumbu, resigning it, requested, ‘Bumper, bodj,’ and Heriot, after stubbing it, placed the butt in the open mouth. The old man chewed it contentedly.

  To himself Heriot murmured: ‘You’ve been a fine man in your day, upright and intelligent, a fine man. And I don’t know that we can produce another Galumbu. That’s my fear.’ Galumbu ruminated, oblivious.