To the Islands

by Randolph Stow

  ‘What?’ asked Heriot vaguely.

  ‘You look in water there. There, look.’ And close beside him he saw the body of a python, great pale coils and small head floating among the lilies.

  ‘Bin drown himself,’ Justin said, laughing.

  But to Heriot this death was too sad for comment, and he walked all day in a mist of love and grief, pausing to peer at a peering blanket lizard on a tree trunk, pausing to point out two grotesque, loose-bustled emus to Justin, who roared with laughter. ‘Wieri!’ he said, with ridicule and tenderness, loving them for their absurdity. ‘Like fat old woman, bum too big to carry.’

  And in the late afternoon Justin called softly: ‘Banar, there look,’ and slipped from the saddle with the rifle under his arm. And Heriot, straining his eyes, saw above the grass the long necks and flat heads of a pair of turkeys. ‘Don’t,’ he said, but the dark man was already intent on them and only answered with a shot which sent one bird to the sky and the other leaping and flapping about the grass. He plunged after it and wrung its neck, and came back to show it proudly to Heriot. ‘We have feed tonight, brother,’ he promised.

  ‘Yes,’ said Heriot. ‘Yes.’ He reached out and touched the pale-brown feathers, felt their crêpey texture and smelt the bitter body. ‘We’re very dangerous to the world,’ he said sadly.

  Coming towards the foothills where they camped that night their ears were attacked by the harsh throb of a kookaburra, and the light flashed on the brilliant blue of its wings. Simultaneously a flock of ibis crossed the dim sky, sharply and perfectly angled as in a Chinese painting, and one of them was white, but was washed rose in the light of the fallen sun. ‘My beauty,’ whispered Heriot, ‘my perfect one.’

  That night, lying by the fire, his eyes and ears were strained to overhear and interpret every sound and movement of the earth, so that the brief appearance of flying-foxes in the firelight was as beautiful as the soaring of a flock of parrots at dawn, and the howling of dingoes, that once had tugged at his nerves, was no longer predatory but wistful, and moved pity in him, for he thought they lamented.

  All the next day they climbed in the hills, but now there was no water, only the bare rock and the stunted trees, and all day, walking or riding, Heriot withered in the heat. After a time he could not find strength to talk, with his tongue dry and the breath short in the lungs, and Justin also was silent, perhaps afraid. In Heriot’s mind rock and tree, to which with eye and flesh he clung, needing their solidity to convince him of his own, wavered and faded, and he saw his bleak room at the mission and everything that was in it. He read the labels on bottles. He saw the room in the Ways’ house that had been their bedroom, his and Margaret’s, and he saw her, with the sheet thrust back in a movement of fever from her frail body, and her hair across the pillow. No one but himself had ever noticed the few threads of grey.

  ‘In these last years,’ he had said, holding her hand, ‘I’ve never felt there was any need to tell you—because I knew you’d know—that I love you, Margaret.’ His voice was shaking then, and it never had before. ‘My dear, my dear.’

  But she had only moved her head on the pillow and he had not been able to tell whether she was impatient with him or whether she was simply past hearing.

  And he had gone on in a rambling murmur, protesting his love, daring even to mention the child, consoling her as he had not once attempted before for the agony of her miscarriage and the rough ignorant hands of the black midwife and the kind, ignorant voices of the women year after year questioning her about her childlessness. But it was too late then to waken her to him, even with reminders of that ancient grief, and she wanted no sympathy or consolation, only relief from pain. So he had knelt by her and prayed, still holding her hand, but how could he pray with the pain twisting in her body, moving through her fingers and crying to him, how could he address God unless as an enemy?

  And when she was dead he had rested his cheek for a moment against her hand, and gone out blindly into the sunlight where Mark and Emily were waiting, he carrying the child on his shoulder, she leaning against a tree with the curve of her pregnancy showing under the grimy dress. They had no word to say to him, but they could speak without speaking. And Mark had held out the child to him, and said: ‘Stephen here, abula, look ’im, eh’; and he had taken Stephen, and when the terrible keening of the women began, the child’s wails of alarm had drowned it, drowned everything but the will to give comfort.

  All through that day he carried, as nagging as his thirst, the memory of Margaret and the futility of his love, and the memory of Stephen, and the dearer memory of Esther, waiting then in the dark womb of her mother to be his consolation and his despair.

  At night they were still in the hills and still without water. And Justin, in the brief dusk, went prowling among rocks in search of game, and came back at last, reliable as ever but unsmiling, with a dead euro slung over his shoulder. ‘You better drink that blood,’ he said curtly.

  Pity and love stirred in the old man for the delicate ears of the dead kangaroo, the deep soft eyes. He touched the fine fur, ran his fingers through it, and felt a tick under his hand. ‘What is there that isn’t preyed upon?’ he said, all his sadness wakened to find such filth feeding on such beauty.

  In the night they lay uneasily, sleepless, their fears colliding and rebounding in darkness.

  ‘Are you asleep, Justin?’

  ‘No, brother.’

  ‘I think—tomorrow—’

  ‘You go sleep now, brother.’

  ‘Promise you’ll leave me—take care of yourself—’

  ‘Nothing going to happen to you—’

  ‘Justin?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Promise me. Don’t let me prey on you.’

  ‘I sleepy now, brother.’

  ‘Yes, but promise.’

  ‘I promise. Brother—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There only two more bullets left.’

  ‘Keep them. For when you go back.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Go sleep now, please.’

  In the morning they were driven by thirst and insects to rise and wander on before the sun was up. And at dawn they crossed a steep ridge, and below them was a river, and on the river a town.

  ‘No,’ said Heriot. ‘This is not real.’

  And yet it was solid, its handful of shacks flanking a dusty, grass-grown road, its roofs shining a little redly with rust in the sun. There were two larger houses and a building with wide verandas. ‘That is the hotel,’ said Heriot.

  The river swept around it, between the hills and the short stretch of plain, and, shaded by baobabs, the piles of a small ruined landing-stage reached out of the brown water. Brown water. ‘That river salt water,’ Justin exclaimed.

  ‘No,’ said Heriot. ‘It’s not real.’

  ‘Come down, brother, quick,’ urged the dark man. He began picking his way down the rocky hill, leading the horse, impatient, driven on by thirst and a sudden rebellion against the futility of their wandering.

  And the old man, stumbling after him, had the same consciousness of futility hardening in him. He was weak, and sick, and tired, and here was an end to the journey for which he had planned no end, here was an unchosen goal. He said: ‘Justin.’

  ‘What, brother?’

  ‘I’ll finish here. I’ll go into the hotel and say who I am. They’ll know what to do with me.’

  There was silence from Justin until they reached the plain. Then: ‘You know best, brother,’ he said diffidently.

  ‘I do, Justin. This has been useless, all of it. I’ll be peaceful now.’

  They pushed on through the grass towards the road, and the grass was knee-high and drying, but in one patch it was tall and green. ‘There water there,’ Justin said, stepping towards it. But it was only a sort of crater that had held water for a time and lost it. ‘No good,’ he said, in the flat and stoical voice that had become habitual to him.

  Heriot had reached the road and was walking down it, strai
ghter now and stronger in his resolution. Here and there, withdrawn from the track, decrepit shanties stood deep in grass and silence. ‘Native houses,’ he said, ‘and all asleep. Everyone sleeping,’ a strange and gentle envy in his voice.

  But he was intent on the larger building, and when he came to it, with Justin slowly following, he stopped still in the road and his hands began to tremble. Two of its veranda posts were broken, floor-boards were missing, the wooden steps lay in the grass. He turned suddenly to Justin for reassurance. ‘Suppose nobody’s at home?’

  ‘You write them a letter then,’ Justin suggested, weakly attempting his grin.

  ‘Wait,’ said Heriot, ‘wait here.’ He stepped up on to the veranda, and an ant-eaten board gave way, so that he stumbled, dragging back his foot, against the door, and it opened on a long room. Dust lay over the holed floor and on a couple of wooden benches and on a collapsed table. But beyond that there was nothing, only a little dust that danced, stirred by the door’s opening, in sunlight falling obliquely through the steel-meshed window.

  Until that moment it had hardly occurred to him, weary and sun-drugged as he was, to wonder what this town might be and why it was there. But there was a familiarity about the scene that troubled him, and slowly, through his early morning torpor, memory returned. He said: ‘But it’s a dining-room—’ And at the same time Justin called out: ‘Brother! Brother, this not a town. This Gurandja, brother.’

  Not a town, no, an abandoned mission. A ghost mission. Gurandja, fifteen years dead.

  He turned and crossed the veranda, stepped down to the grass and came blindly back to Justin. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

  He had never looked so old, standing there in the road with his white hair falling down and the dust caked in the ruts of his face and on his stiff, white beard. His hands hung down crooked as driftwood against the torn trousers, and his eyes were equally still, empty and unblinking, though the light stung them like smoke. ‘But this must be the end,’ he said, in wonder. ‘Must be.’

  Justin’s face above the black beard was a stoic mask. But beneath the jutting forehead his eyes, deeply glowing as always, deeply watchful, rested on the old man’s with a helpless compassion, and a quiet despair. In the dead town they were still as the dead. Only the horse twitched and stamped a little with tired, restless life.

  ‘Well,’ said Heriot with his wooden lips, ‘it may be all. Yes, it may. I’m very weary, Justin.’

  ‘We go look for water, eh? There be water somewhere here, I reckon.’

  ‘Water?’ said Heriot. ‘Yes. Yes, there’ll be water.’ He moved forward down the road, slow as a sleepwalker. ‘We’ll look.’

  Justin, following, leading the horse, searched with his eyes the long grass, the abandoned houses, but saw no sign of water, only the brown salt river in the distance. Yet there was luxuriance all around, young baobabs springing up even out of the road, giant greentrees pushing against houses, and here and there a sprawling oleander in full bloom. And the largest of the houses, the mission house, was being slowly torn down by a vast bougainvillaea smothered in purple bracts. Beyond, over a house at the edge of the village, the blue air stirred, distorting the hills behind it, so that they seemed to shimmer through a column of clear water. The brown man’s eyes widened.

  ‘Brother,’ he said, softly, it being now very important to him not to excite Heriot, ‘brother, you look there.’

  The old man followed the line of the dark finger, and found nothing. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Look at what?’

  ‘That smoke, brother.’

  ‘Smoke?’ said Heriot dully. ‘I don’t see it. Your eyes are tired.’

  ‘You come with me,’ Justin said, ‘you come.’ He turned off the road, the horse and Heriot behind him; and as they came towards the house the old man saw the smoke, and saw the green tangle of a vegetable garden around a fenced-off spring, and a mob of goats deep in grass farther away, and he sighed.

  ‘Don’t be sad,’ Justin said. ‘We all right now.’

  There was a fence around the shanty, and they climbed over it, as there was no gate to be seen. ‘Now,’ said Justin, half-whispering, ‘you go, brother. I reckon that white man there.’ He hung back, waiting for the old man to approach.

  Very slowly Heriot walked towards the hut. It was a one-roomed structure with a veranda shading the bare ground outside it, and had a blind look, with its closed shutters and door of warped packing-case boards. He reached out and knocked, hesitantly, with his blotched hand.

  The door swung inward with a long, weary sigh. There was a goat standing there, watching him with long, yellow eyes and an expression of uncritical pleasure.

  Crows were crying around the spring, but otherwise there was no sound, the world lay asleep in the still light and the goat stood as if carved out of some pale stone. Oh, God, thought Heriot, for a sound, someone chopping wood, a native singing. As if to answer him there was a sudden flap and crow of a cock somewhere near at hand. His nerves jumped.

  ‘Nothing?’ said Justin, coming behind him. His face was wet, he had been at the spring.

  ‘No,’ said Heriot. He burned in sudden anger, his dignity affronted. ‘What trick is this? The goat didn’t open the door. Not a goat. I am deceived,’ he said bitterly, turning and looking through the light towards the spring, green with lank cabbages and pumpkin vines. He yearned for the cool smell of leaves, the cooler run of water over his face. ‘Someone lives here,’ he said, ‘and doesn’t want us. Well, I’ll wash in his spring, let him come out then if he wants to stop me.’

  ‘Piss in his spring,’ said Justin. He was grinning. Then his eyes came back from the garden and rested on the door, and the grin dwindled. ‘Brother,’ he whispered tensely.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Heriot, the imagined water already on his face, his skin sucking it in, his body relaxing in almost forgotten comfort. ‘What are you staring at?’

  The goat stretched its throat and bleated.

  ‘Someone eye watching us,’ Justin whispered.

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘In the door. There, look.’

  Heriot, turning, followed the pointer of the brown finger and found the crack in the door; through which, as the sunblind lifted from his sight, an eye became visible.

  ‘You come away,’ Justin said. ‘Quick. Might be he kill you, brother.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Heriot. He watched the eye with anger and dislike and said nothing. And the eye, faded blue and veined, was non-committal.

  ‘Man,’ said Heriot, ‘if you are a man, come out. I’ve come a great many miles and this is discourteous.’ He grinned with his crooked teeth. ‘If you’re mad, come out, we’ll be mad together.’

  Silence returned. The goat had retreated into the shack and was waiting, also motionless.

  ‘I’ll give you ten seconds,’ said Heriot savagely, ‘then I’ll come and put my fist in your disgusting eye.’

  Slowly, from behind the door, an old man appeared, shambling in bare feet, a length of rusty iron in his hand. He was the colour of dirt from the ragged bottoms of his trousers to the straggles of his hair. Above his dusty beard was a face marked like dry creek country, with deep and gritty lines. Only the pale eyes seemed made of living tissue.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Heriot.

  ‘You’ll black my eye, will you?’ the old man said venomously. ‘Call me mad? I could take the scalp off you.’

  ‘Put down that weapon,’ Heriot ordered.

  ‘Fists’ll do,’ said the old man, dropping the iron. ‘You try it, mate.’ He spread his feet and raised two bony fists, the aggressive stance making more obvious the emaciation of his body and its tremulous weakness. Heriot, moving away without loss of dignity, said gravely: ‘Please, be calm. Now that I see you in toto, I’m truly sorry.’

  They looked at one another, then slid their eyes away. Through the blazing light the spring showed cool and green, so that to look at it was, for both of them, peaceful. The old man, backing a few st
eps to lean against the mud-wall of the shack, said with sudden friendliness: ‘Ain’t me that’s mad. You’re the one.’

  Heriot bowed his head.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the old man demanded.

  ‘Heriot.’

  ‘What Heriot?’

  ‘Just Heriot.’

  The old man grunted. At the side of the shack the rooster crowed and flapped again. What sleepier sound could there be, thought Heriot, in the hot sun, when you’re tired to the point of dying? He came over to the old man and propped himself on the wall beside him. Justin was squatting ten yards away, watching them. ‘Cheeky bastard,’ muttered the old man, catching his eye.

  Heriot yawned. As if by arrangement he and the old man let their backs slide down the wall until they were sitting on the ground.

  ‘Have you lived here long,’ Heriot asked, ‘Mr—?’

  ‘Sam,’ said the old man.

  ‘Sam,’ said Heriot. Silence fell again.

  After a long lapse Sam inquired drowsily: ‘You wouldn’t—no, you wouldn’t have a smoke, would you?’

  ‘No,’ said Heriot with regret. ‘I’m trying to give it up.’

  ‘Haven’t had one for two years.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Heriot, ‘you have will-power.’

  ‘Come a long way?’

  ‘It’s seemed so.’

  ‘Been out a long time, by the look of you. Them clothes of yours—’

  ‘Yours,’ said Heriot, ‘aren’t elegant either, Sam.’

  The old man rattled two pebbles in his hand and rested his head against the wall, staring into the sky. ‘Who cares?’ he said, half-asleep.

  Justin rose and came cautiously towards the shade. He edged up to Heriot. ‘Ah, I tired now,’ he said, and lay down with his head across Heriot’s knees.

  Heriot yawned again. And from far away, Sam asked: ‘Where you going?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Stock?’

  ‘Here?’ said Heriot, smiling. ‘No. Two men and one horse.’