Corroboree (29 page)

By ten o'clock that night, Arthur was asleep, wrapped up in his blankets, in his own words, ‘as snug as a sossidge roll'. Eyre wondered how a man who had suffered so long and so acutely could ever sleep again, particularly since the danger of recapture was always close. He kept thinking about the ‘young pale fellow' who had impaled himself, and wondered if he would have been driven to seek the same kind of terrible escape, if
he
had been imprisoned at Macquarie Harbour. He though of the scarred gristle of Arthur's back, and tried to imagine what pain Arthur must have felt.

Christopher came and sat beside him with a fresh mug of tea. ‘Do you want some? Weeip's just brewed up some more.'

‘Yes, I will.'

‘You're not brooding,' said Christopher.

‘No,' Eyre replied, shaking his head. ‘I was just thinking about those penal settlements.'

‘Well, yes,' said Christopher.

‘Is that all you can say?' Eyre asked him.

‘What do you want me to say? That they're cruel, and barbaric, and that no man should ever be allowed to inflict such pain and indignity on other men?'

‘If you like.'

‘It won't be any use. The law is the law; a sentence is a sentence; and if a sentence is carried out more harshly than it ought to be, well, my only reply to that is, abide by the law. Which we haven't, of course, bringing Arthur along with us, and I must say that Arthur's stories don't make me feel any happier about it.'

There's nothing that Chatto can do now,' Eyre reassured him.

‘I wouldn't lay any money on it.'

They sat in silence for a while, and the fire flickered and popped and lit their faces in kaleidoscopic orange. Up above them, the sky was rich as ink and prickled with stars. Cicadas sang, even though a cool wind was getting up; and there was a fragrant smell of woodsmoke in the air. Eyre was beginning to feel very tired now, exhausted not only by the day's travel and by this morning's send off, but by the enormity of what he was doing. He was seeking out a strange Aborigine medicine-man in an unknown land; quite apart from whatever riches he could discover; and more than that he was also beginning that longest of all journeys—the journey to discover his own soul. To understand at last what he actually
meant
—why he was here, what forces and reasons had brought him here, with these companions, on such a night—that would be the greatest discovery of all.

While they finished their tea, Joolonga came over, and said that everything was ready for their departure at sunrise. Today was a slow day, Mr Walker-sir. Tomorrow we must make much more distance.'

Eyre said, ‘How far north have you travelled, Joolonga? What kind of country can we expect?'

Joolonga said, ‘I have travelled as far as the place they call the diamond-sparrow-water, Edieowie. The country is difficult; flat land, salt water; mountains on the east side, salt marshes on the west.'

‘And ahead?'

They speak of a lake there, Mr Walker-sir. Sometimes they say that it is a magic lake, sometimes they say that there is no lake there at all, but just the memory of a lake. They call it Katitanda. But I have never been there, Mr Walker-sir.'

Eyre emptied out the dregs of his tea on to the ground. ‘Well,' he said, ‘if we are to find this lake, magical or not, we had better get some sleep.'

Christopher said, ‘It would certainly solve some problems if there
were
a lake there. I'm not too keen on this bottled water, are you? It tastes as if it's been gently simmering in an unwashed stew-pot all afternoon.'

Joolonga took off his cocked hat. His hair was bound tightly with kangaroo-skin twine into a pigtail; and he looked to Eyre like a black-faced parody of a dandified lawyer he had once known in Baslow. What always struck him so forcibly about the Aborigines was that they did not resemble negroes in the least, in spite of their wide-spread noses and their thick lips. They were like an ugly variety of European; and Eyre always felt that they were far more intelligent and far more alert to what was going on around them than they ever allowed anyone to see.

Joolonga said, ‘Midgegooroo told me that one of his brothers' families came from the west to Katitanda; but that they died there, and that Katitanda became their
wand-alwallah
, their burial-place. He does not know why, exactly. It has become a story now, a legend, and his family have retold it so many times that nobody is sure what happened. All they know is that his brother, and his brother's two wives, and four of their children, all perished. Narahdarn swept his wing over them, and that is all they will say.'

‘Narahdarn?' asked Eyre.

‘Narahdarn is the Bringer of Death. Many tribes have stories about him. Captain Sturt says the story is like the beginning of the white man's Bible-book.'

Tell me,' said Eyre.

Joolonga took out of his jacket pocket a small pipe made out of a crab's-claw, and filled it up with some of the sticky tobacco which he always carried with him. He picked a glowing twig out of the fire, and laboriously lit up. He was obviously considering at length whether he wanted to tell Eyre about Narahdarn or not.

Eventually, though, when the tarry fragrance of his tobacco was mingling with the smell of mallee scrub he said, ‘All of this happened in the days of Ber-rook-boorn,
who was the very first man to live in Australia. He and his wife had been made by the great being Baiame; and had been permitted by Baiame to eat and drink everything that they could find, except honey from Baiame's own sacred yarran tree. But the wife of Ber-rook-boorn was tempted by the honey, and tasted it; and out of the tree with great black wings flew Narahdarn, the monster of death which Baiame had charged with guarding his honey.

‘Ber-rook-boorn's wife hid in her
gunyah
, which in the northlands is what they call a
tantanoorla
, a brushwood shelter. But the harm was done. She had let out death into the world, and after that, men were no longer able to live for ever. The yarran tree was so sad that it wept, and some of my people still say today that the red gum on the trunk of the tree is the dried tears that it sometimes sheds for the dead.'

‘Adam and Eve all over again,' remarked Christopher. That's remarkable, isn't it?'

‘And the woman still gets the blame,' smiled Eyre, ‘no matter what her name is; and no matter what language they tell the story in, English, Latin, or Aborigine!'

Joolonga smoked his pipe in silence, staring at the fire.

Eyre said to him, ‘You don't seem particularly anxious to tell us much about the Aborigine.'

Joolonga frowned. He didn't seem to understand; or else he deliberately didn't want to.

‘You don't appear to have any desire to tell us about your people,' Eyre repeated. ‘Why is that?'

Joolonga took the crab's-claw pipe out of his mouth and spat into the fire.

‘What white people know, they destroy. Their knowledge is more dangerous than their rifles. You see what they have done to me? What manner of a man am I? Blackfellow, or white? I can speak like white, dress like white, hold a knife and fork like white. I can think like a white man, too, which is my worst punishment of all. And everything I know, I destroy, just like white men do. They have destroyed me, and in my turn I destroy my people.'

He looked at Eyre and Christopher for a moment with a fierce, almost frightening pride. It was the wasp, making a last noisy effort to escape from the jar of jam.

The dreamtime may be true and the dreamtime may not be true. It is not necessary for you to know about it. It is not necessary for you to hear about Narahdarn and Baiame and Priepiggie. You should close your ears to these things. And this expedition of yours to find Yonguldye … do you know how much you will destroy with this expedition? Thousands of years of sacred secrets. You may even destroy a people—a people who have no need of you, and who ask for nothing more than to be left to live their lives according to legend and tradition.'

Eyre stared at Joolonga for a long time over the leaping flames of the fire. Then he said, ‘You're wrong. You're wrong about me in particular and about the white immigrants in general. I have set out on this expedition to do nothing more than find Yonguldye, and bring him back to Adelaide to bury the boy Yanluga. That's all. If I find the inland sea that Captain Sturt believes in; if I find opals; or copper; or gold; or a cattle-route to the north of Australia: well, I shall be lucky, and those who invested their money in this expedition shall be rewarded. But my principal aim is to see that justice is done to a single young Aborigine boy, and if by chance the expedition has other more profitable results, then I can only be doubly satisfied. This is a huge land, Joolonga. There is space in Australia for all of us, white and black. If we white people seem to be selfish, and destructive, it is only because we are struggling to survive here, just as your people have struggled to survive here for centuries. You must forgive us for that.'

Joolonga smiled. ‘Of course. And shall I forgive you for my mother, who was cudgelled to death by British sailors because she refused to take off her
buka
for them? Or the friend with whom I grew up, whose name was Bundaleer, who was burned alive in his
tantanoorla
, he and his baby daughter, because a white bushman believed that he had taken his boots? Let me tell you something, Mr Walkersir,
I despise the Aborigine because he is ignorant and filthy, and scratches the ground to survive in a country which could give him so much more; I despise him because he cannot and will not fight back against the white people, and for that reason I also despise myself. I have become their flunkey, yes Mr Walker-sir, no Mr Walker-sir. I am full of hate and yet I have to remain polite, and I will always remain faithful to you, as long as you need me. But never expect me to believe that this land is a better place because of the white man coming here. The white man has a power which is more dangerous than a bush-fire, and consumes everything it touches. After a bush-fire, the burned trees begin to grow again; but after the white man has passed, nothing grows. In a hundred years time, Mr Walker-sir, there will be no, blackfellows here. The man I used to be has gone already. My father's son Joolonga has joined Ngurunderi in his place in the sky. This Joolonga who sits with you now is a white man's dog.'

Eyre took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I don't know what to say to you.'

‘It is not necessary to say anything. It is destiny.'

‘Joolonga—' Eyre began.

But Joolonga raised his hand to ward off whatever Eyre was going to say. ‘Say nothing, please, Mr Walker-sir. You will not hear me speak this way again. You will learn nothing from me; and come no closer to me. And whatever promises you make yourself, you cannot promise anything on behalf of any other white man. What has happened has happened; what is about to happen cannot be avoided. In this land it is better not to think of anything but your own survival. My mother's spirit rests in a certain rock; it will always be there. When the wind and the sun break the rock into dust, the dust will blow across the plain. My mother will always be there, long after the men who took her life are being punished by their own God.'

Eyre was silent. He turned to Christopher, but Christopher could do nothing but shrug. Joolonga finished his pipeful of tobacco, knocking the dottle into the fire. Then
he said, ‘We must sleep now. we have far to go tomorrow. I will watch first. Then Midgegooroo.'

Eyre brushed his teeth with dry liquorice-flavoured dentifrice, and then wrapped himself tiredly up in his blankets. The night seemed even darker and even windier when he was lying down; and the fire crackled like a fusillade of pistol-shots.

Christopher whispered, ‘Eyre? What did you make of all that? He's quite a philosophical chap, isn't he, for a blackie? Never heard one speak like that before. Didn't know they could.'

‘Well, he was well-educated,' Eyre remarked.

‘Somewhat bitter, though, what?'

‘Wouldn't you be, if your mother had been beaten to death; and everywhere you looked your lands were being taken over by strange people from a strange country?'

Christopher propped himself up on one elbow and stared at Eyre through the darkness. ‘What do you mean “strange people from a strange country”? We're English.'

‘Exactly,' said Eyre. ‘Now, let me get some sleep, will you?'

Christopher was silent for a while, although he didn't lie down straight away. ‘Eyre,' he said.

‘Mmph?'

‘Eyre, I beg of you, please don't get me wrong. I know that I've been complaining rather a lot today. You know—about bringing Arthur with us, and all that trouble we had with Chatto. But I wouldn't have missed coming along with you for anything.'

‘That's all right, Christopher. Now, please get some sleep.'

‘Very well. But just remember how much I admire you; how much loyalty I have for you. Just remember that in the final reckoning I dearly love you.'

Eyre was almost asleep. His mind was already beginning to swim in some deep dark silent
billa.
‘Yes, Christopher,' he said, and his voice sounded in his ears as if it were echoing across thirty centuries of lonely Australian nights.

It was a few minutes past five in the morning when Joolonga shook Eyre's shoulder and told him that they were being followed.

The day was chilly and grey, and there was a coastal mist over the landscape, so that Eyre felt as if he had been awakened into a world of phantoms. The fire had burned out, and Weeip was clearing away the ashes to build up a fresh one. Midgegooroo, stolid and silent, was feeding the horses. Arthur, already awake, was sitting on one of their packs, carefully scraping away at his scalp with a barber's razor.

Joolonga said, Two, perhaps three men are riding towards us from Tandarnya.' For some reason he used the Aborigine name for Adelaide. They are coming quickly, in the manner of riders who wish to catch up with us.'