The Tree of Man

by Patrick White

  Then they came out on to the half-landing and felt the first tongue of fire. The breath left them. Now Madeleine’s beauty had shrunk right away, and any desire that Stan Parker might have had was shrivelled up. He was small and alone in his body, dragging the sallow woman.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’

  She would have fallen down and burned, because it would have been easier.

  Till he picked her up. It was not their flesh that touched but their final bones. Then they were writhing through the fire. They were not living. They had entered a phase of pain and contained consciousness. His limbs continued to make progress, outside himself. Carrying her. When her teeth fastened in his cheek it expressed their same agony.

  ‘Look! He is there,’ they were crying. ‘They are there. He has her.’

  The people who were gathered round the burning house, watching that sight of fire, and who had reached the climax of their emotions, began to scream out affectionate and encouraging words, or just to scream, as they saw Stan Parker stumble out, carrying the young woman. They were blackened, but how burned it was not yet possible to tell.

  Stan Parker came on. He was holding the body of the woman curved and rigid in his arms. He came on. The cooler air had returned him to his senses, and with them a certain sheepishness for all that had happened.

  Is she dead then?’ the people asked each other in quieter voices. But she was not. She was holding her face in the hollow of his neck, from which she could not yet bring herself to look out. Till she began to rub her face against his neck, waking almost, and coughing, and crying.

  Then young Tom Armstrong, who was her lover, and who had come from Sydney on hearing of the fires, ran out to take possession of her. He looked handsome and clean, with his white cuffs, and was smelling of bay rum.

  ‘Madeleine,’ he called.

  But she continued to cry and cough, and when she was put down, said, ‘Leave me now. I’m all right. Only it was a terrible shock.’

  Then she fell on her knees and began a kind of dry retching, holding her head, and falling even to all fours. Most people were silent, from surprise and pity, but one or two let out loud explosions of laughter.

  ‘Madeleine, darling,’ said young Tom Armstrong, overcoming his disgust, and putting out his hand, in front of everyone.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Leave me. Not now.’

  And got to her feet and staggered farther into the darkness. Her hair had been burned off.

  Is this Madeleine? Amy Parker asked without regret. Her novelette was finished.

  At this point the holocaust at Glastonbury could have consumed even the spectators, only there were fresh developments. Much had been taking place above the smoke and the emotions. Other clouds, hanging above the furnace, began to spill their first heavy drops. A child held out his hand to collect these jewels, and laughed as the big rain fell into his hand. And doubted as the lightning split the bungling fire. And finally cried in terror as thunder crashed and the grey scene of ashes, in which they were all standing, shook.

  Storm’s broke all right, they laughed, drinking it, and steadying themselves against the thunder.

  And the water poured down, proving that even fire is impotent. People wandered in the rain, themselves rivulets. It ran between the breasts of the women and filled the pockets of the men. They were saved. They smelled the ashes and knew. It was doubtful that there would be a tongue of fire left this side of Bangalay, or on the other, as far as Wullunya.

  So the people began to creep back into the world they knew, and from which they had only been forced out by smoke at the openings.

  Amy Parker, who had laid hands on her husband again, could have asked him many things.

  ‘Let us go, Stan,’ she said. ‘Are the burns bad? We must dress them. Tell me,’ she said, ‘do they feel crook?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They are not bad.’

  Wincing as he felt the rain sting the burns on his shoulders and arms. But these were the superficial wounds of the flesh. If he was trembling, it was because he had come out of the fire weak as a little child, and had seen his first faces by flashes of lightning. But he did not return to the woman with whom he had been standing at the head of the stairs. He put this away and did not think about it.

  But his wife did, as they walked through the rain.

  ‘She was frightened, poor thing,’ she said, looking at him through the darkness. ‘Such an experience.’

  What this experience was she would have liked to live, and could not. It was nagging at her. What could Stan have said to Madeleine when he found her in the burning house? She longed to take possession of her husband by honest lamplight, and hold his face in her hands, and look into him.

  In the meantime the rain poured as they walked, bumping against each other in the darkness, and the flashes of lightning lit her face in which the thoughts turned, but his face was closed.

  So she had to be content with the bravery of his act in rescuing the woman from the fire.

  Chapter 13

  THAT deluge which quenched the fire at Glastonbury was, in fact, the first of the late summer rains, so that the land was not long naked. The charred hills and the black scars of gullies were blurred again with green almost before the people could get out and have a look for what remained. Some people, of course, did not have the courage to return to a framework, and chose to live in other parts of the country, where they imagined the passions of fire could never rise. But those who did go back to their burned-out farms were on the whole glad. The green blur, which was increasing all the time, first in veins and pockets, then spilling over, made them feel young and hopeful. As they hammered and sawed, and rounded their cattle into rough yards of saplings, and untied bundles of fowls bunched together at the legs, they were full of resolutions. Because they had looked into the fire, and seen what you do see, they could rearrange their lives. So they felt.

  Bub Quigley did not rearrange his. Bub’s life was too plain. He rose and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He chewed big hunks of bread and dripping. He watched tadpoles in a jar. He knew that part of the country from earth level and treetop. He was both bird and ant. So his life continued to form instinctively outside his deliberate boy’s mind. So he felt the green blur grow, of grass and leaves, before anyone else, and was itching in his long palms, and rubbing his face against his shoulder, and could not rest, but had to go off on those long loping walks that other people, even children, would not have thought to go.

  But was out through The Islands before anyone else. He tore the first fronds of hickory and put them in his mouth. He stroked his nose with the brown down of bracken crooks. And laughed. Sometimes, to vary things, he would run downhill. Then his limbs almost came apart from his body, and his long feet struck the earth like boards. But he laughed. And plumped on his knees to look down a rabbit’s burrow, in which the tail of a snake had dawdled. His boy’s eyes were bright in his older face, looking for things.

  Bub visited all those human habitations which had been burned out and abandoned, to see what he could find. But there was not much. There were iron vessels and the skeletons of beds. In one place he lay on the framework of a bed and looked through the roof at a slice of cold moon that had got there early, till the distance to that moon began to make him feel afraid, and he threw down a tin in which he had put some beetles, that staggered out across the charred floor to freedom.

  It was livelier at Armstrongs’, where Bub went too. He watched the workmen hitting the bricks with their trowels, and drinking black tea. For Mr Armstrong had ordered a new house, just like the old one, of which he had been proud, and no expense spared. So it was being done by degrees, when the men were not sitting in the sun, telling of horses. One man, who made jokes, stuck his hat on the statue of the naked woman and did a lewd dance, of renunciation and possession. Bub Quigley laughed and clapped his hands. He loved to see horseplay of any kind, though he would have been shy to act that way himself. All such charades – boy
s squelching in mud and throwing handfuls at each other’s bottoms, young men wearing their girls’ coy hats, especially if feathered, the grotesque man in the embrace of the stone woman – these ventured into dreams. It made the laughter tremble on Bub Quigley’s wet mouth. His eyes were full.

  Other people went up to look at the new house at Glastonbury, though the Armstrongs themselves never went. It was enough to leave it to architects and builders. They were rich enough to ignore the process. But they had also, perhaps, been burned a little by the fire, and were afraid to visit the scene while it was still a ruin. They continued to live in Sydney, or to visit people in the country, provided they were of the same financial status.

  Although they were not seen at Durilgai, Mr Armstrong did write to Stan Parker, enclosing a handsome reward for his act of bravery, and adding the thanks of the young lady who was to become his son’s wife. At least he was sure, the butcher said, that the young lady would add her thanks to his, only at that moment she was visiting in another state, for health reasons.

  Stan Parker could afford to be a bit disgusted at the cheque, but his wife, who had not experienced exaltation by fire, considered the many things they might buy. In time she persuaded him to share her material pleasure, and they even kept the cheque for a while, to look at and show.

  Mrs O’Dowd, who came to see Mrs Parker about this time, and who had been prevented from viewing the fire on account of an attack of the shingles all round the waist, as big as sixpences, and in other places too, sat holding the glossy cheque as if the paper itself had some intrinsic power from which she might benefit by touch.

  ‘There now,’ she said, holding the paper in a dainty loop, the better to see the writing on it. ‘Healthy is healthy, and wealthy is wealthy, but I would like to know which is the more worth havun, an never shall, most likely, with him down the road. But I am real glad, Mrs Parker, you have struck lucky, both with your man an the bank balance. But I am glad it is you. An no sour grapes. It is simply this, that I would’uv rather it was Stan an not O’Dowd to rescue ladies from the flames, an them in their nighties, or whatever it was I am told she was dressed up in for the occasion.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs O’Dowd?’ Mrs Parker asked.

  ‘I shall not say nothin,’ said Mrs O’Dowd, ‘for I was not present, an other people’s eyes never see so well. Only I am sayun, my dear, glad I am it was not O’Dowd come dawdlun through the fire, with a lady round his neck.’

  ‘There was no dawdling, I assure you,’ said Mrs Parker, who was put out. ‘There was a fire, see? And as for O’Dowd, he would not have been rescuing anyone, but in the pantry, making up to the bottles.’

  ‘That is nasty, from a friend,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘But I do not mean to part with bad blood. For that stuck-up thing too, ridun up the road as if you was the dust upon it, and no mention of the weather even, to pass the time. But they say,’ she said, and this perhaps was why she had come, ‘they say that it is all called off. I have had a letter from a lady of authority. If you must know, it was that Mrs Frisby, who was helpun at Armstrongs’ for some time, whose husband was at sea, poor thing, she was goin to give notice, but didn’t, I forget why, and may yet, for that Mrs Armstrong is a perfect cat. Well, Mrs Frisby says in her letter to me that young Armstrong, not a bad young feller neither, all considered, young Armstrong is ropeable since this Madeleine has gave him the slip. Nothun has been said, mind you. But it is known by all who know. Things become hazy, like. An Madeleine has gone on a prolonged visit, not on account of her hair being singed off, but because she was without feelun, Mrs Frisby says, an what little she had, got burned right up the night of the fire. So young Tom must lump it.’

  Then Mrs O’Dowd drew in her chin, and arranged her lips on her gums, and went. Amy Parker was glad. It was her intention not to see her friend again, though she did, in fact, that Thursday, on account of a side of pork they decided to share.

  But Mrs Parker did not encourage Mrs O’Dowd to elaborate the information she had given. This information Amy Parker took, and shut up, and picked over in cold pleasure, for Madeleine, since a burned thing, retching on all fours in the ash and grass, was exorcised. She no longer saw her riding coldly on her horse. This had belonged to a time of great foolishness. Now she stood above Madeleine, against the burning house, and could have practised some cruelty. If it had not been for her husband and the fire itself. Her husband’s silence propelled her perpetually into those flames, whether in sleep or at the sink, till she was herself turning and dancing in them, guarding her hair, while she looked for some sign obscured by smoke.

  Stan Parker, whose burns had soon healed, leaving only a few small scars, took the cheque to Bangalay one day, to bank. Stan had never loved that town, filled with hardware and the yellow jail. But by this time it was his town. He knew the Christian names of most of those men he saw. He knew their backs, and their habits, and who was to be found in which pub, with whom.

  That day Stan Parker went in search of a man called Moriarty, from whom he had borrowed a few shillings a few weeks before, and who would be found, if true to form, at the Grand Railway Hotel. So Stan went there, into the sour cavern, which on that day for some reason was filled with a momentous air, along with the slops of beer, and the smoke, and the faces. They were discussing some great news which had just reached the flash town, and which threatened temporarily to intimidate it, making its yellow paint and iron lace a degree less flash.

  Snatches of this news came at Stan Parker, gradually numbing him as he pressed through the pub, until finally he saw Moriarty and asked, What’s up?’

  ‘Why, don’t you know?’ said Moriarty, who was several minutes better informed, and for that reason inclined to despise the ignorant.

  ‘Why,’ he said, ‘a war’s just broke out, over the other side.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bob Fuller, ‘we’re all orf to fight the Hun.’

  ‘No bloody fear,’ said some. ‘It’s too far.’

  They downed their beer, to fill up quick, and feel better.

  ‘What’ll you do, Stan?’ somebody asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Which was true. He felt slow.

  In spite of moments of true knowledge that came to him, animating his mind and limbs with conviction, telling him of the presence of God, lighting his wife’s face when he had forgotten its features, bringing closer and closer a trembling leaf till its veins and vastness were related to all things, from burning sun to his own burned hand – in spite of this, Stan Parker had remained slow with men. It was a kind of unrealized ambition to communicate with them. But so far he had not done this.

  And now he said, ‘I don’t know.’

  He didn’t either, though he might soon. Problems resolve themselves, as day eases out of night.

  ‘That’s one way out,’ said Moriarty, scratching his short, sweaty hair.

  He was a fencer by occupation, a good enough cove, but one that you would not remember for anything in particular. He lived alone in a bark humpy, and hung his bits of washing on the scrub. Some years before, his wife had left with a shearing contractor and not come back.

  ‘Cripes, yes,’ laughed Bob Fuller, laughing as if he was shickered, which he was.

  Then the girl who was rinsing the glasses, and whose white, shiny indoor skin was smelling of soap, said, ‘You will, Mr Parker. You’ll look lovely in a uniform. I’m all for big men. They’re better-tempered. I was going with a little runt at Cobar, coupla years ago. It was like going with a barbed-wire fence. Look, I said, at last.’

  But what she said was not material.

  In the bar of the Grand Railway Hotel at Bangalay, though many men were talking, few were listening to anyone but themselves. They had to tell all that they knew, all that they had done, for fear that silence might discover nothing. So they talked, and some had come to blows, to show that they were brave, and one man could not keep his misery down, it rose up, and he vomited, and passed out. It was all very impermanen
t and inebriating in the Grand Railway Hotel the day the news came, with a train coughing at the platform outside, and the smell of trains, which made men feel they were going somewhere, that they had been waiting to do so all their lives, and whether it was to be terrible and final, or an exhilarating muscular interlude to the tune of brass bands, would depend on the nature of each man.

  Stan Parker slipped away after a bit and drove home. As he came down the last hill, and he saw the sticks of the willows by the dam, and the paths that his feet had worn round the house, the man supposed that he would go to war. He even wondered whom he would kill, and whether he could do so with the conviction that it needs. He saw the life fading from a face, from some Ted Moriarty. Or was it his own face? Sweating at the neck, he drove on, but now his own impermanence was in conflict with the permanence of all that scene, of bees and grass, murmuring and bending, murmuring and bending.

  Still, he was a bit of a hero within the limits of flesh, and he jumped down when he got there, and made short work of the harness, and felt that he would enjoy praise with the pudding, though it would not be decent to show it.

  When she was told, however, his wife Amy Parker went on cutting the bread.

  ‘When will you go, Dad?’ asked Ray, who was by now a big small boy, eager for events, so that he hung wide open on receiving the news, and his dinner would not go down. ‘And will you bring us things’, he asked, ‘from the war?’

  He wanted a sword, and a bullet taken out of a German.

  ‘Eat your food,’ his mother said to him, and to her husband, ‘How do we know that this isn’t something that they have made up to talk about in pubs?’

  But it was not, Amy Parker knew, and for this reason she threw the plates together harder than usual, and swept the crumbs with more vehemence, and called the fowls and flung the hateful crumbs, after which she looked up and saw that the landscape had survived the first ghastly tremor and resumed its natural glaze. Only she was still trembling and foolish, and had to hide herself from her children, sitting on the crocheted quilt she had made not long after Ray was born, on the bed she shared with her husband. Outside, the sounds of afternoon were no different, but made her desperate to hear.