The Tree of Man

by Patrick White

  As she had wrung the necks of ducks, and thrown a calf, and cut the pig’s throat once, at a pinch, riding its back until enough of life had gushed from it. She had let it out, who now must be let.

  The two women stood awkwardly gulping at the callous air, unwilling to part, though they could not unite.

  ‘I will harness the pony to the trap and run you home,’ Amy Parker said.

  To oppose some small act to great facts. It is, besides, less difficult to die than to watch the dying.

  ‘I would not put you to the trouble,’ Mrs O’Dowd said. ‘I came up here on foot for a little stroll and diversion. I will continue that way. There will be ladies all along that will be yarnun to me at their fences. The distance is easy passed now. Remember how we had to speak our own thoughts to get an answer once?’

  So the two brown women walked a little way together, over the ringing earth, under the penny sun, and eventually parted. They were the colour of dead leaves.

  When Amy Parker went inside she said, ‘I am that upset, Stan, Mrs O’Dowd has the cancer.’

  The old man replied, ‘Go on!’

  And put his head inside a newspaper, from which his ears obtruded. He began to think about his youth, how the mornings had predominated, the morning, in fact, was almost the whole day. Anything that must happen must happen in the morning.

  ‘When did she tell you that?’ he asked, on becoming reconciled to the shocking brevity of his own life.

  ‘Just now,’ said his wife.’ She is looking terrible.’

  Her own skin would still glow at times, and to see whether this miracle might take place, she walked alongside the mirror, slowly, prolonging reflection, but barely noticing her face because her rudimentary eyes were looking inward.

  The room in which they sat was puzzling to them that evening. Each hoped that the other understood their position.

  Late that night it began to rain, and persisted for several days, wrapping the small house in grey rain. Then, when it had stopped, and the yellow water was no longer running at the sides of the road, and the country was emerging tentatively, colourlessly, the old woman began to sneeze. It was obvious that she had caught a cold. It was obvious also that she could not visit her neighbour in this state. But must cosset herself, putting on a thick black comforter, that she had knitted once and forgotten. Taking onion gruel. And feeling sorry for herself.

  This way she was more or less released from her promise to visit Mrs O’Dowd. Though she would, of course, later on, with something nice, some soup, or a basin of veal knuckle. In the meantime she substituted pity, for mankind, and more particularly for women. But the evenings were sad, when the black, the almost blue-black shadows lay around the well head, and the fine claws of possums could be heard in chimneys. Then the knowledge of her own powerlessness, that had become active treachery, drove Amy Parker about her house. She became nervous, suffered from indigestion, and would sometimes hiccup out loud, though as she was usually alone it did not matter. Once even she thought about her friend in the position of death. She visualized it in some detail. Then if she is dead, she said, we shall not have to talk of things that are too terrible and wonderful to mention, we shall not mention our past lives or, speak in any way of suffering. She will be dead. But the survivor was not pacified.

  And was relieved one day at the turn of the season, when she was called to the door by a little girl standing there. She was wanted, said the child, she was wanted at O’Dowds’. It was little Marly Kennedy, Mrs Parker saw, whose mother Pearlie Britt had once called her to O’Dowds’ on other business.

  ‘Is she bad then?’ Mrs Parker asked as she held the struggling door.

  But the little girl took fright at words and ran. She ran showing her bare heels and the bottom of her drawers, and her hair was blown back.

  Mrs Parker did not wait long, but harnessed the pony to the trap.

  She drove down through that wind which was coming from the west and filling her up. Great gusts of wind rocked her in the little trap. Her cheeks were soon plumped out. Down the funnel of her throat poured the wind, till she was big with her mission. She was a busty woman still. As they ran smoothly or lurched across a stone she got courage. It was possible that all her faults, of which there were many, would be ignored. She drove on, and it became evident that she had in no way neglected her friend, except to wait for a moment on this scale. So she was driving down towards O’Dowds,’ and the heroic wind bent the mighty trees, and the old woman in the trap was truly moved by anticipation, and anxiety, and love.

  When she got there, O’Dowds’ place had just entered on a further stage of its collapse. The wind was torturing the roof. It took a leaf of iron and tore it off. The iron, tingling and tinkling with rust, flung across the yard and slapped a pig’s arse fairly hard. This act committed, the iron sank into a pond, or spill of brown water, from which a white spray of ducks shot. There was such a quarking and groaning of animals, it was near murder, but unnoticed. The house, round which several loosely made cars and secured sulkies were gathered, children playing, and blue dogs lifting their legs, contained its own diversions.

  When she had hitched her horse Mrs Parker went inside the house which already smelled of death and a great many live bodies. They had tried to do something about it by scattering eau de Cologne from a bottle brought from Bangalay, and by burning something that had left a cloud in which the company was lost. But after Mrs Parker had pushed sufficient way in, doubting again in that room, she did eventually find her friend, or what remained of her, on the high pillows of a bed.

  For Mrs O’Dowd had sunk in, and was all for dying, now that her body was a strait space. She had suffered that day – was it the worst? – she did not yet know. Although weak, her gums could still bite on pain and draw the blood out of it. Her cheeks were quite gone. But her eyes, to which the spirit had withdrawn, were big cloudy things. They were not her own, or rather they were that part of man which is not recognizable in life.

  Some of those present treated her accordingly, as a stranger, or as one who had already gone, anyway from the body, which is all that they dared to count.

  ‘Let us hoist her up a little. She has slipped down,’ said one woman. ‘Take her, Mrs Kennedy. There. By the armpits. Poor thing. Tt-tt-tt. She is a weight even so.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘When will he come?’ she said.

  ‘Who is it now?’ they asked, tying her down with a crocheted quilt across her chin.

  ‘He said that he would come if it was necessary. It is most necessary,’ she said. ‘I will not be back by Tuesday if I cannot cut the rope. That young man will do it easy, though. Just one little touch, an it is lovely. I never walked but flew.’

  ‘It is the doctor,’ they said knowingly.

  ‘Dr Smith,’ said Mrs O’Dowd.

  ‘Dr Brown,’ they said, and would have laughed.

  ‘Dr Smith was the old doctor,’ said a small woman with a mole, bending close to the sick woman, so that she saw the mole as if it had been a gooseberry. ‘This new young one is a Dr Brown.’

  ‘What is in a name?’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘Those little bristles would singe right off of a pig’s back.’

  ‘Whatever will she say next?’ whispered the small sniggering woman as she withdrew her oblivious mole.

  ‘Dr Brown has been sent for, Mrs O’Dowd. Mr Doggett went down. The doctor is over by Fingleton delivering a baby for a young lady,’ said a woman, or another lady, as she had become by deed of nomenclature.

  ‘I do not believe you,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘Ladies do not have babies. They know a thing or two.’

  It makes you laugh, though, they said. Poor thing.

  ‘I had no baby,’ said Mrs O’Dowd, who closed her eyes to open them. ‘An am no lady. Not by a bloody long chalk. But I did not know enough. I was allus terrible iggerant,’ she sighed. ‘I was iggerant of life, and of death, for that matter. I did not believe in it till it had come. How could you? With the washun in the tub, an t
he bread risun in the tins, an all those little pigs suckun at the mothers’ tits.’

  ‘It was that way also with me father. He was a most disbelievun sort of man,’ said an individual who was sitting there in a big yellow collar of the stiff variety.

  This was a fellow called Cusack, a relative of some kind, from Deniliquin, it was believed, who had not seen Mr O’Dowd since passing from the landing jetty to the interior many years ago, but who happened to be in these parts, and had scented death, and come to be there, what more natural. All already knew the man from Deniliquin, and had given him a bottle of ale to keep him quiet, but this did not work. He liked best to talk about animals and money, for which he had a curiosity and respect, both for the domesticated animals and the wild ones, particularly alligators, that he had looked into the eyes of, and for money, which had eluded him, but which he had elevated by an unenvious worship and mysticism, even the colour of it.

  ‘To return to me father, though,’ said the man from Deniliquin, ‘or to start with um, because I do believe it is the first time I have mentioned the old gentlemun. Who died of an angina in doubtful circumstances. Mind you, he had been warned, but would not take heed, no more than that shilluns do not grow on bushes. He loved flowers too, and would walk amongst the roses, touchun them, just, he said, to feel their flesh, which is most beautiful. Even when some unpleasant individuals told him he was mad he would not believe, but went through life smilun at people he did not know, which they say is a sure sign. And me mother, drivun her near demented. She could not onderstand this love he had for people, and particularly for dark girls, with dark hair upon the upper lip. She, you see, was forever darnun. She would sit with a sock upon an acorn, frowning at it, because it was ever such fine work as me mother did it, no cobblun together and snippun off. She was the darner. But me father liked to make people happy, by touch, and by less tangible means, of illuminatun things that they had not noticed before. So with his genius for life, which even me mother had to admit, an her hatin him for love, he could not believe in ’is own death, which was waitun for um all unbeknownst on the second floor of a house in Corrigan Street. I was then a bit of a boy, that they sent for as bein the next to kin, an could not naturally tell me mother, she havun a headache besides. Me father was dead, they said, an the ladies were creatun like old Harry, especially Mrs La Touche. “What ladies?” I asked, I was a shy sort of boy then. “Ah,” they laughed, some of them was good enough to blush for me, “it is the whores,” they said, “your father was already stretched out, an now will you please come an fetch um, afore the ladies get hysterical.” Naturally I went, because there are some occasions when you cannot run, I was held by the seat of the pants, by circumstance, and pushed. Well, I got there, and some was cryun, because they got a fright, an some was laughun, because it was a rare occasion for a man to be carried stiff out of a bawdy house. Only Mrs La Touche, whose establishment it was, was going crook over the good name of her house. Well, there was much discussun of the situation, an some pinched me, an some kissed me, because I was a pretty sort of boy. Yes,’ he said. ‘An what with this an gyratin generally, we had carried me poor father to the top of the house, an never a thought of down. Even Mrs La Touche, who enjoyed a conversation, was surprised. So again we got to work, an was pushun, an was pullun, an was carryun the body of me late poor father, an sweatun, it was the summer, you must bear in mind, an one girl told of new milk in the pail, she would never be forgettun the cows’ breath, she was a big yawny sort of girl, a country girl, with muscles on. Well, we got me late poor father down. As the day was breakun, his feet were through the door. “Well,” I says, “what am I to do?” “That is your business, Tim,” they laughs. “We cannot suckle babies as well, it is not at all in our line. Call a cab perhaps,” they says. An shut the bloomun door. Me poor father that was with me was sweet-faced and agreeable even in death. An disbelievun of the worst. He took all for granted. That the day would break, as it was then doin, an that some solution would present itself, as it alius does. Well then, up comes a water cart at last, rainun on the street in that shivery light. Me sweat was cold by then, and I musta been a long-faced boy that was wonderun there. “What is it that you have picked up, sonny?” asks the water man. “It is me father,” I says, “an he is dead.” Then the water man says, “Well, if he can hop up, I can take um on the next stage.” So we made me father hop up, after a fashion, though it near killed us, an soon he was ridun through the streets stretched upon a fall of water. It was lovely there. I will never forget it. The sound of soft water goin through the grey streets. “This is not a bad perfession,” the water man says. “This is how the streets will look after the Judgement.” “Have we been judged perhaps?” I says, like a cocky boy. But the water man did not hear. And I did not bother, it is not many things that will bear a second askun. So we drove on, shimmerun and yarnun pleasant enough, till it was the trumpets that became obtrusive, and I was avoidun these big brass instruments with me elbows, that would have swished us off, an the cheerun, of whores mostly, that was leanun out of most windows, in which long tables had been laid. Then one young lady opened her lips that wide I knewed I was a goner, an was straddlun the cart, an dodgun, an hangun on to me late father at the same time. When he sits up an says, “If you are to fall, son, then open your arms and legs wide, and imitate the sawdust, in that way no bones will be broke.” In that way me father took a header off the cart, and it was two streets from our own that I discovered the body, an me with a bump on me head from follerin him over the side. “That is a terrible corpse you have got,” says the water man, lookun down. The sun was up by then. People come out to look, men in their singlets and ladies in their papers, people that we knew too. “Why,” they says, “it is Tim Cusack and ‘is dad, who is dead drunk again, the old bastard.” That is the judgement we got. An because I knew better, I was above lettin on, while it was possible not to.’

  ‘Tt-tt-tt,’ said the woman with the hairy mole. ‘What a story to tell.’

  ‘It passes the time,’ said the man from Deniliquin, who could feel the gas rising in him sadly from a great depth.

  Then Mrs O’Dowd, who had been asleep, or withdrawn by some other tongs of mercy, opened her eyes with the wideness of pain and said, ‘Now that there is too many ladies there is no more mulberry jam.’

  ‘That is so, Mrs Parker,’ she said to her friend, who was sitting there at the bedside, on a chair, in a hat. ‘You was always a one for mulberry jam. And brawn. I can remember that brawn as if it was me own face. And never a sign of those little bristles that gets into brawn. Do you remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ said Mrs Parker, nodding her straight black hat.

  They were recognizing each other, though one was a fat old woman in her disguise of time, and the other almost eaten away.

  ‘I have not made a brawn for some years,’ said Amy Parker, as if startled by the presumption of those acts which she no longer performed. ‘You stop something, then you have lost the habit.’

  All her words were strange, because she was hypnotized by the approach of death. She was looking into mirrors.

  ‘I can remember a man who had developed the habit of eatun a pint of treacle mixed with a pound of bran,’ said Mr Cusack. ‘Every mornun.’

  But they stopped him.

  Amy Parker looked at her friend’s face, which was closing again. She is dying, she said, and I cannot grasp it, not really. I have no understanding, she said, of anything. So began to nod her head. She could not stop.

  ‘It will be a mercy,’ said young Mrs Kennedy. ‘It will be over by tea.’

  ‘I would not gamble on anything in life,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘Ahhhh,’ she screamed, falling back. ‘They will have me all right, but when they are ready.’

  Amy Parker, who would have liked to bear some of this since she had been forced by her presence to have the courage, leaned forward and took her friend’s hand, in which the life was trickling still. And in this way their two streams did flow together a
gain, for a little.

  After the neighbour woman had lain there sweating and grey, she was the exact colour of her own hair, which had been loosened and hung in two wings, she began murmuring of what she was seeing, or had seen, it was difficult to tell which, for both wore the same grey glaze. Everyone in that room, which had dwindled with the growth of pillows, and the enormous pile of eiderdown, and the heavy chains of crochetwork, everyone began to feel the tug of those same grey waters which the voice of Mrs O’Dowd was pouring out into the room, and to bob and flow, sometimes upon the stream of their own now melancholy dreams, sometimes eddying round the objects that Mrs O’Dowd pointed out. But it was Amy Parker, who held the drowning hand, who was carried most frighteningly upon the stream of life, as their two souls navigated its jokes and perils.

  ‘Because there were seven of us,’ Mrs O’Dowd was saying, ‘if I am not forgettun the eighth, the little girl that fell face downward in a bog an was drownded, or suffocated, I should say, with being sucked under in the mud, a Mary too, we was all Marys besides, named for Our Lady’s sake. We would all of us children, or as many of us as was active together, row down some days in a little boat, it was a good stream, the weed in places, winch would make it brown, would row down and touch the bridges at Wullunya. They are all marble there, and cold to the touch. I can feel it now. Even with the sunlight on the bridge. An moving. It was the water, but you would have said the marble. Over this bridge the lady came drivun to market in a smart gig, that give me this plant, which you can see, Mrs Parker. Don’t tell me you can not.’

  ‘Which plant, Mrs O’Dowd dear?’Amy Parker asked.

  She was confused to re-enter the close room.

  ‘The red one,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘It is that pretty in the evenun. On the sill.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Parker. ‘The geranium, you mean.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mrs O’Dowd. ‘That is it. That is a present from a lady at Killarney. I would not recernize her now, for she is dead too, I expect. But it was on that bridge that we stood, Mrs Parker you will remember, to watch the sheep go by, and were pushed and pulled till our buttons were rubbed off, sleepy animals though they be. Will you remember how our hands were full of dreamy wool and the smell of wool? “We are not come for an outin,” you says, “but for a purpose.” “If we do not choose our purposes,” I says, “there will be no outins, an what better than a flood.” Oh dear, you nosun after your husband through the crowd. I love a crowd. I love to look right up the nostrils of strange people. I cannot see too much of um. I could run my hands through the skins of strangers. Do you know?’