Her disappearance the night before had unsettled him; an unfamiliar emotion had taken hold and would not let go. He lay in her mother’s car with eyes wide, staring at the blackness, hoping for a tap-tap on the window. But no sound came. Jessica: she was no passing member of a guild, no casual player. She was a companion, a fellow traveller, a princess of sorts. It now seemed so obvious: she was important to him.
But standing in the middle of nowhere, he suddenly felt foolhardy; this was one mission he was not equipped to complete. From the still atmosphere he took a deep breath and bellowed her name. Again he called. Again. And once more. A bee arrived, buzzed him menacingly and departed. His throat was dry; he had no water. He sighed and spat gummy saliva into the dust. He never spat, but somehow it seemed appropriate, a demonstration of contempt for the land that had swallowed his best friend.
He had failed. And he had just begun the return climb when a thin but distinct call came back to him.
CHRIS BELLAMY climbed a ladder onto the caravan roof, stepping carefully in his leather boots. The ash-covered aluminium clunked and buckled, bouncing gumnuts and possum droppings. Standing legs spread and arms folded, he rotated his body slowly, allowing his eyes to rest on objects of interest: a burnt-out stump, the wall of a dry dam, a raven careening into the gully. He traced the distant boundary fence, mostly gone now but for a dozen charred posts jutting like terrestrial splinters. Beneath his feet, Adele was cleaning up in his mobile home. Mobile home: neither word seemed applicable. He could hear his sister closing cupboards, banging pots, dropping cutlery into the drawer; keeping busy.
He tried to concentrate on the missing trio, but an incoming idea cut clear through it: where he was standing would make a great upper deck for a new dwelling – a rail in front and a bedroom behind, with large, double-glazed windows. But how could he allow himself such ruminations at a time like this? Was he that callous? Could he not attend to the serious matters at hand?
With these thoughts held, he detected an unfamiliar sound some way off. He turned to the west and there, coming up the gentle grade, was the unmistakable form of a human being. He called to Stef and Adele, and all three ran to the edge of the unburnt grass. Unquestionably, a distant figure was approaching. It seemed distorted in some way, too much bulk, too many limbs, and there was a noise, not shouts exactly but neither was it conversation. The polymorphous lump in the distance fell down, collapsing into a tangle of irregularity, and then came the sound again. Moments later they realised it was laughter.
They hurried down the slope to find Elton trying once more to lift Jess onto his back, only to collapse again into the dust, the pair utterly consumed by the hilarity of it all. Elton’s flushed face beamed. His clothes were streaked with black ash, his shirt torn and strips of it had been bound as a tourniquet around Jess’s left knee. The pair sat on the hard earth, ignoring the parent figures standing before them. Chris was clearly relieved but Adele and Stef were simply speechless: was this really their city offspring sitting in the dirt, so dusty, so dishevelled – so relaxed?
RAIN WAS COMING, perhaps no more than a few hours away; the boy could smell it. Another good sign. Shaun read the signs. There were always alternatives in life, and people made their choices – some good, some not so good. They should read the signs, he believed, note the patterns that suggested a variety of paths. The first choice was not always the best, his father had said.
Shaun sat by a small creek and knocked the ash and dust out of his worn sneakers. He slipped them back on and appraised the holes, the broken laces and the blackened canvas. Jess sprang to mind. Nature is trying to kill us, she’d said. How could he explain the opposite, that nature replenishes? Nature is people too, he’d tried to tell her. For Shaun, it confirmed the exact source of everything fundamental about us, who and what we are. Without nature, Elton’s digital world couldn’t exist.
Sitting by the riverbank, Shaun could feel the peace, the silence and the space, things that were not always present in the world of men and women. In the human sphere, relative size had been misplaced – Man loomed large – whereas in nature his proper scale was more evident: just a tiny speck angling across the face of time. He looked up and saw the sun glint on a miniature cross in the sky: a passenger plane heading north. Boeing 747, the second largest plane in use today. It was so far off that the sound trailed far behind it, from an earlier point on its flight path. What was his flight path?
If only he could be up there in the sky beyond the pull of gravity, out of reach of earthly troubles. Up there he would not see the tragedy that had befallen him, he would not see the problems of the world, the sadness and the fear, the lost faith, the people bumping, pushing, falling down, the disappointed ones who desired so much that meant so little, yet overlooked the things they needed the most.
Beside him he noticed a tribe of sugar-ants carrying their eggs up the embankment towards a new nest. Yes, rain was definitely coming. Shaun watched the line of insects. If the fire had passed through there, those ants would have survived it – no parents would die, no young would suffer. Now they carried their next generation to higher ground and safety. They would be born in the wild just as he was.
Shaun’s focus suddenly sharpened. Was he? Was he really born in the bush? His mother had given birth at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Parkville. He’d been raised in the bush, but was he born to it in the same way that the ants were? Perhaps the insects were a sign as well, they were in their natural element, but human habitat was not really in nature. It was in culture. That was the typical setting for people, the environment to which they were best attuned. They could be enthralled by the natural world and they could be inspired by it. But, unsupported, they could not survive there any more than his kookaburras could survive the city. He looked again at the ants making their way up the rise. They were a community, driven by a common purpose. They were not operating selfishly, not in opposition; as individuals, they were one.
Adele and the others sprang to mind and he registered the emotion keenly. Arman’s brown face appeared: his kind eyes and dark visage, all beard and eyebrows. Shaun felt in his pocket and took out the smooth stone they had found together. It is precious, Arman had said, in the little bit left, precious things can still be found. That man knew grief; of all of them, that man knew. Shaun stared in the direction he had travelled, and then in the direction he was heading. And it was at that moment, with the clear-sightedness of someone much older, that the boy at last made his decision.
ARMAN TOLD Nikos of his fellow tenant’s demise. His landlord shrugged. ‘Ah, what the hell, never liked that long streak of a bullshit Englishman anyway. You think you can meet the rent?’
‘Yes I can,’ Arman replied. He would do it, no matter what. He would not look back, he would only look forward. Live the present, look to the future. The old world was behind him now, though he should never disregard it; never overlook the problems of his people. That sentiment had been reiterated the night before when he heard the news from eastern Afghanistan. A suicide bomber had driven up to the gates of the Jalalabad airport shortly after dawn and detonated a massive bomb. Nine were killed including six civilians; many were wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility – a retaliation for the burning of discarded material at a US military base, including copies of the Quran. The Taliban were Sunni Muslim Pashtuns just as he was, but he was not a supporter. They’d have killed him if he’d stayed, one group or another, though it would not have deterred his father. As the Quran stated: Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? Now his father would be sitting with Allah. Would the jihadists who died killing innocent people at Jalalabad also be there?
His sister had now married so he would soon arrange for his mother to migrate. He would take care of her and she could teach him to cook in the traditional way. He’d cleaned every one of Nick’s bricks – and stacked them too high as it turned out, the pile collapsing into the yard, spilling his diligence randomly.
Nikos had laughed. �
��What a bugger, eh?’ he had said, capturing Arman’s attention. That word; it seemed so common in the Australian vernacular, and weeks earlier he’d asked Benton what it meant. Well now, his flatmate had replied. Technically, we are talking about putting the penis into the arse of another. The anus, old chap, a penetration of the rectum. Arman’s eyes had widened and not for the first time during their short relationship. But since then he’d become much more a local.
‘Yes,’ he said to Nikos this day, ‘a real bugger.’
His landlord stood proudly on the cold concrete of his newly renovated room.
‘Time to start on the kitchen now, eh? What do you reckon? And listen, Arman, I was wondering: what do you think about leasing this front bit? You could put a nice little restaurant in here, an Afghan restaurant, the only one for miles around. Arman’s Place – sounds pretty good, don’t y’ reckon?’
‘I would need a licence.’
‘Not a problem! This is Australia, Arman. You’re a refugee. The gov’ment’s bustin’ to get you set up right. You might ask the Prime Minister over for tea.’
STEF PLACED a stem of dry grass between her teeth and went for a stroll around the perimeter of the unburnt grass. She noted how comprehensively the fire had torched the ground and then stopped, creating a sharp demarcation between vegetation and blackened earth. It took her twenty minutes to complete the circuit – and then she walked it again. She hated the waiting: far too much time for self-criticism and recriminations. She thought about James. Lately he’d talked of making new plans beyond the family home and she had detected a change in her son, a subtle shift in his demeanour. You might need to find another tenant, he’d said casually, which, for her, had only emphasised a disconcerting absence of shared time. What if they all took a holiday together? Not a trip to the beach – Jess would hate it – but a trip across Spain perhaps, a car journey through all the towns and cities. There was purpose to a holiday like that. When one place was exhausted they could move on, the next destination beckoning. She plotted the expedition on her way back to the campsite.
Jess remained seated, her leg straight out on an opposing chair. Chris had cut the leg from her jeans and now the bandaged knee looked grotesque, a tumescent gall on a white limb. ‘Can I get you an aspirin,’ he had asked her, ‘is it painful?’ ‘It’s okay,’ she’d reassured him, there seemed no reason to complain.
She picked up a stick that was lying across the table and snapped it. She inspected the sharpness of the exposed white wood and touched it to her forearm. It would not be difficult to pierce the skin until a pool of blood formed. Once, that idea would have appealed.
She was reminded of an incident half a dozen years earlier when the school had presented a documentary about disenfranchised Aborigines. The program had included a bleak black-and-white photo of a group standing with spears, bewildered, their glazed vision directed back at the man behind the camera. Across their chests, the dark men and women had ridges of scars. At the age of thirteen, Jess had been profoundly moved by the whole scene, and the next day she went to the kitchen, pulled the Wiltshire StaySharp from its plastic scabbard and pressed its razor edge into the white flesh above her heart. With certitude, confirmed by her quickening heartbeat, she drew the stainless steel sideways, opening a deep channel in her chest. On that lovely spring afternoon, she’d sighed and watched the blood flow copiously down either side of her budding left breast. She’d never felt so alive, so real, and all the bad things – the rage, the sorrow, the longing – faded from view.
But the healing had only added to her depression. The cut, which had seemed to reveal a hidden secret within some receptacle, had been sutured and returned to her newly locked. What else was there but open it again? She’d matched the scar with another deep cut over her right breast, the look comparing favourably to the ancient Aboriginal women she’d seen in the photo. Later there were two or three other cuts but those first ones had been the best; that pair of strawberry ridges that today rode high on her creamy, blue-veined torso, a permanent reminder of her formative years.
Again she pressed the sharp stick to her arm. There was a time when she would not have hesitated, when the experience of it – the blood and the intensity – would have taken away all the badness, offering exquisite confirmation of … of something; she could not quite remember. And what was the cause of it all? No one seemed to know, least of all, her. But it was all behind her now; there would no more drawing of blood – except, perhaps, for a few drops encouraged to the surface by the tattooist’s needle.
She looked past the caravan to where Elton and her uncle were standing side by side, hands on hips, a pair of bookends on a barren shelf. They were talking – a real conversation, she could tell – and every now and then they turned their heads left or right, dutifully scanning the hills. Again she studied the stick against her skin, before tossing it over the wooden table. It whipped through the air and disappeared. She felt older.
The mood had slumped since she and Elton had returned, since the Dark Knight had scrambled down the cutting to tend to her before attempting to carry her on his back. Perhaps they were going to be all right, but they had not recovered Shaun. He may very well be in the passenger seat of a truck heading for Sydney; he could have fallen into a ditch like her; he could be dead.
She adjusted her immobilised leg. It pointed directly at her mother, who could now be seen approaching through the trees. Still some way off, Jess observed her drawing nearer, the womanly shape of her surrounded by nothing but the grey-green of the trees. Her cropped hair was uncharacteristically disarranged, her narrow hips swayed, her arms hung lightly beside her. As Jess watched, for some reason her vision blurred. What was it? She did not feel unwell, no dust irritated, no bad thought came to her – but the sight of the approaching woman surrounded by nothing more than the soft virescence caused moisture to well in her eyes and tumble down her dusty cheeks. The nearer her mother came, the less Jess saw of her; until she suddenly found herself embraced. She pressed her face firmly into her mother’s midriff, her arms around her thighs, her body convulsing.
Elton saw it and tensed. It seemed that the girl now constituted a significant part of his life and, intuitively, he felt protective towards her. As he looked on he felt keenly the object of their distress: little Shaun. Beyond the campsite he saw his mother standing with her arms cradling her body, looking afar, her back to the group. She had raked up around the site, busied herself in the caravan and washed one of her brother’s shirts for Elton. Now she was scanning the horizon once again. She wandered back to the group and her approach seemed to prompt a statement from Chris.
‘I think it’s time we started being realistic,’ he announced. ‘The boy is not lost and he’s not stupid. He has gone away and clearly has no intention of returning.’
Jess held her mother and Adele faced the man before her. ‘That’s not what we want to hear, Chris. So unless you have something positive to say, I suggest you just keep it to yourself.’
‘I’m just saying, we should face the facts.’
‘Face the facts. That’s your whole life in a nutshell, isn’t it?’ she fumed. ‘Why don’t you ignore the facts for once? Why don’t you just drop all the statistics and do what your gut tells you? What’s your alternative, Chris? Give up? Is that your plan?
Elton addressed his mother. ‘What if he went home? To the city?’
‘I don’t think that’s likely, Elton. Not while he thinks that creep of a neighbour is around.’
‘And Simon would have phoned,’ Stef added.
‘We can’t leave,’ Jess wailed. ‘We can’t leave and we can’t stop looking. Fuck it!’
‘She’s right,’ Elton declared at last. ‘We should stay.’ He stepped forward with unusual authority, drawing everyone’s attention.
‘We should stay,’ he said again with added emphasis, as if somehow those three words summarised a precise and appropriate solution.
IT WOULD BE another five years before Elton wo
uld recognise that occasion as the defining moment of his life. Sitting in his office punching codes for a new algorithm, some sound or sequence on the screen would remind him of that half-minute of silence far out on a dusty knoll, when, surprising even himself, he had refused to capitulate to external forces. It was not his usual convention: Crap is inevitable, he’d once told Shaun. You get hit with it whether you like it or not. But on that hot afternoon far away from everything he’d come to trust, his words to Shaun had been deftly hijacked by something else.
Elton’s eyes met Jess’s. He believed that she too knew how unreliable life could be; it was one of the first things he’d recognised in her. Yet, a day earlier, she had tentatively reached out in an attempt to grasp something solid, something grounded. I might do a course, she had said. Perhaps those words of Jess’s were the seeds, and why, on this particular day, Elton had uncharacteristically made a stand.
His mother recognised it immediately, a response from her son more unlikely than a message from Mars: Elton accepting responsibility.
‘There are things we can do,’ he declared, pleased to have engaged them all so easily. ‘For one, we can spread the word – on the web, Facebook and Twitter. But in the meantime, we should just stay calm, and chill right here in the dirt.’
With that last unpalatable word still lingering on Elton’s blistered lips, the young man raised his eyes to the dome of the burnt hill. On its far horizon, over the charred ground and seared tussocks, he noticed a small dark smudge. A bird? Some wild animal? It moved, changed shape, and Elton stretched his body taller, shading his eyes with both hands. Jess managed to get to her feet and turned with the others towards the upward grade.
The Colour of the Night Page 25