Fireshadow

by Anthony Eaton

  Doctor Johnathon Alexander feels empty, drained, old. Almost too bereft to mourn. But he has to write this letter. He has promised his daughter and son-in-law and, even if he had not, the duty should still be his anyway.

  Finally, he puts down his pen and stands slowly, crossing to the window and looking out to the east. The first stars of night are starting to wink into life, pinpricks of heat, billions of miles distant. Is she out there somewhere? he murmurs to the empty room. He is not a religious man, the doctor. But tonight he wonders.

  The storm has passed completely, scrubbing the air and the land, settling the summer dust and washing it away, and the evening is crisp and clear. The doctor breathes in deeply, feeling the coolness of the air flowing into his old, tired lungs. He tries to imagine himself drawing energy from it.

  On the other side of the room, the cot that Anne gave Alice for Christmas sits empty. In a few days it will be occupied with life, and then, hopefully, the healing will begin. Anne had appeared at the hospital that afternoon, expecting to find mother and baby alive and well. One of the nurses told her before anyone else got a chance.

  Some kind of night-bird calls and the old man closes his eyes for a few moments, breathing in the night and remembering the sounds of the night forest in Marrinup, remembering his grand-daughter and the boy who was his orderly, gathering his thoughts, and his strength.

  Turning back to his desk, he begins to write.

  Perth, 7 April 1947

  My Dear Erich,

  I know that I told you I would not write again, but only I can send you this news, I am afraid. I am really not sure how to express this – all my years of medicine and working with people leave me totally unprepared for the news which I must impart.

  Firstly, congratulations – you are the father of a baby girl, Matilda Alice Andrews, born weighing nine and a half pounds yesterday, April 6th. You will no doubt be pleased to know that she is in perfect condition. Unfortunately, Erich, I have some terrible news which must come hand in hand with this joyful announcement. There were complications during the birth, and Alice suffered a great deal of internal haemorrhaging. By the time we managed to get her to hospital, there was little that the medical staff could do. The baby was delivered by caesarean distressed but healthy, but Alice died in hospital late last night, at about 11.30.

  Erich, it pains me so much to have to convey this news to you in a letter, but there is no other feasible way. I debated the wisdom of trying to telegraph you with it, but by their nature telegraphs are brief and impersonal, and there is little or nothing that you can do about the situation now, so I decided upon a letter, which will at least lend me greater clarity of expression.

  As you can imagine, everyone here is distraught. Alice’s mother, my daughter, is in shock and her father is only just in control. This is why I take it upon myself to be the bearer of this news. It is a terrible thing for a parent, any parent, to have to bury their child, and while their grief will, in time, no doubt be tempered by the beautiful little girl their daughter brought into this world, it will still be a long time before they will be able to fully come to terms with their loss. Of this, I have some experience.

  We will be holding Alice’s funeral tomorrow, and I have taken the liberty of having Günter organise flowers in your name. My son-in-law has also asked me to convey in this letter that he and my daughter will look after Matilda here for you until such time as you and your sister are able to make the journey back to Australia. This is what Alice would no doubt have wanted. They understand that it could be years until Mathilde is well enough to travel, but they will welcome both of you upon your return.

  I would also reiterate my own hope for your return. The gift I spoke of in my last letter to you will remain in place at Marrinup, buried fifty-three paces due south of the detention cells. Günter was kind enough to place it there for me during his visit to the site a few months ago, and even with his artificial limb I imagine that his steps will be roughly in line with your own youthful gait. I still hope that you will come to retrieve it, now more than ever.

  I will attach both the birth notice for your daughter and the death notice for Alice to this letter. With her parent’s consent I will also enclose Alice’s journal, which conveys her feelings about you with far greater clarity than I could ever manage. Please, Erich, accept my condolences for this terrible loss. She loved you greatly, and that is often a rare thing. I am very tired myself, and suspect that I too will not be here for your eventual return. I wish you peace.

  Your friend,

  Doctor Johnathon Alexander

  PART FOUR

  Twenty-five

  Vinnie

  The gas-lamp hissed a gentle whisper into the darkness as Vinnie, hands trembling, set the final letter down on top of the others, beside the tattered old notebook.

  ‘You have finished?’ The old man on the other side of the folding camp table looked up from his own reading.

  ‘Yeah.’ Vinnie shook his head slowly, trying to regain some clarity. ‘Yes. I’ve finished.’

  ‘Good.’ Helen’s grandfather climbed to his feet, slow and awkward. ‘In that case I will be packing up these papers and going to bed. It is a little past my bedtime, I am afraid.’

  Vinnie glanced at his watch. Ten-thirty. Time had slipped away with the daylight while the old man had been talking, telling the story of his time in the prison camp, and then setting Vinnie to reading Alice’s diary and letters. A gentle breeze filtered through the night forest and one of the old pieces of paper would have flown from the pile had Vinnie not caught it.

  Silently, thoughtfully, he watched the doctor gather together the leather-covered notebook and the letters, the paper yellowing and brittle with age.

  ‘I will see you in the morning,Vincent. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Doctor Pieters.’

  There were questions to ask, things that needed to be said, but Vinnie knew this was not the time. Helen also rose from her folding chair, not quite assisting the old man up the steps into the campervan but standing close by in case she was needed. When the aluminium door had closed behind him, she turned and winked.

  ‘Come on. I’ll walk you back over to your tent with the lamp.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Neither spoke as they crunched across the ball-bearing gravel towards the pine tree. Somewhere deep in the trees an owl screeched and there was a brief skitter of noise from the undergrowth. As they came nearer, two grey roos, grazing, found themselves caught in the unexpected light and looked up startled before bounding into the darkness. Vinnie and Helen listened to their crashing passage.

  ‘It seems pretty incredible.’

  Helen simply nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ve got lots of questions.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that, too. He’ll answer them tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you know what he wants?’

  ‘I’ve got a rough idea, but that’s for him to tell you, not me. Tomorrow.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He wasn’t satisfied, but knew that it would have to do. ‘You wanna stay for a while?’

  In the soft glare of the lamp Helen smiled at him and shook her head.

  ‘Not right now if you don’t mind, Vinnie. I’m pretty much done in myself.’

  ‘Yeah, all right. Me too, really.’

  ‘Good.’ She waited a moment longer while Vinnie fished his own torch from inside the tent. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.’

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did he come back?’

  Another smile.

  ‘He’ll tell you in the morning, Vinnie. Sleep well.’

  Her footsteps faded across the gravel.

  Restless, Vinnie lay dozing for hours, a sleep plagued with nightmares until eventually he woke in the tremulous light of early dawn, bathed in sweat, scars tingling and itching. W
ith the safety of daylight growing every second, Vinnie crawled outside to light the fire and boil some water.

  Sitting in the cool dawn, Vinnie sensed in himself a restlessness. The still-dark gaps between the trees seemed alive with spirits, but not malevolent. There was something, some presence, watching and drawing him to itself. He sipped at his coffee and sat, quiet and restive, growing accustomed to the feeling.

  A more distinct movement at the uphill end of the clearing caught his attention. It was a large black cockatoo. Its belly and throat glowed fiery scarlet against the sable of its body. Vinnie watched it stretch its wings as though testing the morning and then emit an enormous screech – a call which echoed around the open space and off the trees – before leaping into the air.

  The black wings beat against the sky, carrying the cockatoo in one giant revolution around the clearing and then off, above the treetops, in the direction of the prison site.

  Pausing only to smother the flames of his tiny campfire with the dregs of his coffee, Vinnie followed.

  This early in the morning the grasslands of the abandoned camp were a hive of activity. Kangaroos grazed indolently between the concrete foundations, moving only when one patch of dewy feed was exhausted. In the scrub the scurry and bustle of other creatures marked their presence, ignorant or uncaring of Vinnie’s intrusion into their world.

  Sitting on the foundation of the hospital, Vinnie closed his eyes. Just for a few seconds. Immediately the sounds of the forest changed, almost imperceptibly. It was nothing Vinnie could identify, no alteration in pitch or pace, but somehow a shift occurred in the very fabric of the sound, and the familiarity, the secure, calming noise of waking forest, was suddenly and wrenchingly gone. In its place Vinnie found himself hearing the morning forest through alien ears. The rustlings became sinister, threatening, the screeches of the cockatoos cruel and mocking. With the change came the notion from deep in his brain that the very nature of the forest itself had changed, that it was now pressing in, crushing his thoughts, his belonging, his very identity. It was as if the trees and undergrowth would continue in upon him until they had choked and strangled and absorbed him back into the cycle of forest life.

  Vinnie sat holding his breath, caught in the utter helplessness of being alien in such a place, and as he sat there the fences and huts of Marrinup Camp Sixteen were once again erected. Searchlights probed rainy nights from atop guard towers and men huddled against the ferociously passive nature of the landscape in which they dwelled.

  And then it passed as quickly as it had arrived and Vinnie opened his eyes to the world as he knew it. He breathed deeply for a few minutes, still startled by the intensity of the experience, aware that his hands were shaking and glad there was no one to witness his weakness.

  The sun rose above the tree line and in the sudden warming glow Vinnie studied the wall of the forest and wondered what mysteries lay beyond it, in the living nooks and depressions and below the thick undergrowth and high in the dim greenness of the canopy.

  The morning became still, and hesitantly Vinnie closed his eyes again, expecting that alien hopelessness to sweep over him once more, but this time there was only darkness and silence and the briefest stirring of the air around him as the morning breeze dropped to a whisper. Lying in a patch of eucalypt shade that fell across the crumbling foundation, Vinnie slept.

  May 1947

  In the late afternoons they would wheel Mathilde and the other patients out and sit them in the sun; the pale light reaching through the usually heavy overcast and bringing wan warmth into the enclosed south-western verandah. Like all the others she was tiny and emaciated, skin barely clinging to a skeleton, twig-like in its delicacy.

  The hospital was a converted Herrenhaus on a west-facing slope, well outside town, its manicured gardens stretching away to a line of trees at the bottom of the property. A few miles away, the uniform conifers of the forest stood aloof, turning the valley below into a deep cleft of green, so different from that of Marrinup, Erich thought.

  ‘How is she today?’

  The nurse, one of seven or eight who regularly did rounds of the wards, approached silently from behind. Her German was the same thick-accented speech that reminded him so much of Günter. Erich turned to meet her and shrugged.

  ‘The same as yesterday, and the day before that.’

  He knew this nurse. Maria. She seemed to come by more regularly than the others. Erich thought she was probably a few years older than him but unlike the younger nurses this one gave the impression that she was genuinely concerned for Mathilde. And for him.

  ‘Patience. She will improve.’ Her hand rested lightly on Erich’s shoulder as he stood motionless, staring out the broad windows at the distant, impassive pines. The gesture didn’t seem overly familiar, as some might have assumed; rather it was gently supportive.

  ‘Yes. In time.’

  Erich looked away from the window and back at the girl in the chair. The familiar, fine features he knew so well still lurked clearly behind the almost translucent skin. As he watched, she breathed in sharply and coughed, the effort wracking her body and sending convulsions the length of her back and legs.

  Instantly Erich was holding her hand as wave after wave spasmed through her, threatening to break the fragile body in two. Her hand in his was thin and bony, with no strength in it, and he had to be careful not to squeeze too hard.

  As the coughing spasm died away her eyes opened and she fixed him with a gaze as blue as his own.

  ‘Erich?’

  ‘I’m here, sister.’

  ‘I had the strangest dream.’

  ‘Shh. It is all right.’

  Mathilde smiled, even that brief effort seeming to tax her weakened body.

  ‘You are so good to me, brother.’

  ‘I have to be. I told you I’d come back.’

  ‘You did.’

  Her eyes closed and she eased back into the cushions, falling asleep again almost instantly.

  ‘The doctor says that she is coming along. Just slowly, that is all, but she will make it.’

  Maria arranged the blanket around his sister’s knees and legs as she spoke, tucking it well in to preserve what little warmth her body was able to generate.

  ‘I know. It seems so long, though. And so far away.’

  ‘Far away?’

  ‘From everything.’

  Maria paused in her arranging of the blanket. ‘You have heard from your sweetheart?’

  ‘Bad news.’

  The nurse finished and stood to face him again. ‘The baby?’

  ‘A girl. Born April sixth.’

  ‘But that is good news, surely?’ Maria was mystified. In their previous conversations it had seemed clear to her that the only hope in this ex-soldier’s life was the Australian girl and their baby. ‘You did not even tell me.’

  ‘There were . . . complications.’

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘No.’ Erich shook his head. ‘The girl. Alice. She died in childbirth.’

  ‘Oh.’ Maria’s hand lifted to her mouth. ‘Erich, I am so sorry.’

  Erich simply acknowledged her sympathy with a tiny nod.

  ‘You are all right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I feel empty. Like none of it is real.’

  Mathilde stirred against her cushions and the two of them, conversation interrupted, prepared for another coughing fit, but it never came and the girl settled again.

  ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘No. None of it. She has enough to worry about as things are.’

  ‘That is true.’

  The two stood either side of the girl asleep in her cane chair. Maria looked at the man standing opposite her, seemingly so young and so old at the same time, and felt the most tremendous sense of loss on his behalf.

  ‘What will you do?’
>
  ‘I do not know. Wait for Mathilde to get better.’

  ‘And then?’

  Another shrug. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘If there is anything I can do, if you need to talk . . .’

  ‘Thank you.’ Erich cut her off. ‘I will be fine.’

  ‘All right, then.’ She walked towards the next patient, a few steps down the verandah, but before reaching the man she stopped and turned back to Erich.

  ‘Erich?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am sure that your daughter is a beautiful little girl.’

  With a hesitant smile she continued her rounds.

  Twenty-six

  Vinnie

  The sun had heated the sand, turning it into a massive white hotplate. It seared the soles of Vinnie’s bare feet.

  ‘Ow! Hot.’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby.’ His fifteen-year-old sister pulled at his arm, impatient.

  ‘That hurts, Kat!’

  ‘Then stop complaining and hurry up.’ She hadn’t wanted to bring him along in the first place, her kid brother tagging along with her. What if Adam was here? What would he think? ‘Get a move on.’

  ‘Hey! Katia!’

  Shit. Adam. And the rest. The girl pulled her little brother close and whispered, ‘Listen, Vin, don’t you say a word, okay? Not a word to anyone.’

  She released him roughly, leaving fingermarks on his arm.

  ‘Hey, Katia, how you goin’?’

  ‘Yeah, Adam, not too bad.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This’ – a vague nod in his direction was the only indication that she was talking about him – ‘is my little brother, Vinnie. Dad said I had to bring him.’

  ‘G’day.’ The older boy stuck out his hand but pulled it away at the last second, leaving Vinnie with his own dangling in mid-air. He and Katia laughed. ‘Does it speak?’

  ‘Not if he knows what’s good for him.’