Читать книгу Master of the Ghost Dreaming - Mudrooroo - Страница 9

‘It’s often when in slumber I have a pleasant dream

A’lying in old Ireland beside a purling stream,

With my true love upon my side and a jug of ale in hand,

But I wake a broken-hearted man far in this dismal land.

‘That true ghost song. Contain whole meaning of ghosts. Learnt it from ’em way way back, when a lit’le, lit’le fella. Just like you two ’uns. Maybe smaller, ’cause you getting ready to be men. That time, I was one two year off that. Just lit’le fella, just off me mummy’s tits.’ A burst of coughing interrupted Jangamuttuk’s voice, and he hawked, then spat before continuing: ‘Saw ’em when they first come from that “Ireland”. One of their homelands, ’nother one called London, then England – maybe more ’cause there’s lots and lots of ghosts. Dunno why they not stay in their country. Too cold. When I go there always find it too cold. Foggy, boggy – all of those things. It far from here. So far that only clever man, mapan, can go there. Anyway, they must’ve had a fight, somethin’ like that and had to flee. Came over this way. Sailed by my country, then came back and took it, just like that. No shame; but they don’t think like us. Different skin and different way. They almost finished us off there. But us, the ones who were left, they put us on one of their big whatchamecallits – ships and brought us here. They try to make us like they are. Keep us here until we are all like them.

‘The huts that we must live in are built of sods and clay,

With dampened straw for bedding and we must not say nay.

Our cots are fenced by mist, we slumber when we may,

And I wake a broken-hearted man and sing this my lay.

‘Well, when I first saw ’em, didn’t know what it was.’ He stopped and snapped his fingers in six directions, then went on: ‘Talk about ’em, think about ’em and next thing you know they flockin’ all about you, wantin’ to learn your secrets. Well, this is one of ’em. Keep it in mind; that snappin’ of the fingers. It keeps all the devils away. Ship – you know, I thought it was a log of wood. Big log of a tree with boughs poking up floating in the sea. Funny leaves like clouds. Caught the wind and moved it along. Lit’le ignorant fella then, not been through manhood ceremony. An’ then, you know, there came this thunder sound. Not lightning though, just great big sound. Louder than the crack a bough makes as the wind hits him and snaps him clean off. Then lots of smoke. Lots and lots of smoke and I knew that it was ghost sound, ’cause Lightning man, he belongs to us, brother to our Dreaming. He would’ve come and showed himself , reassured me, that lit’le kid. But he didn’t, and that sound and that smoke made me a bit strange, lit’le bit funny in the head, sorta changed it around so that I saw more things than was good for a lit’le kid. An’ when I got back to the camp, the ol’ fella knew right away that I had been gifted, that I had received my callin’, my Dreamin’, that Ghost Dreamin’ which is so powerful when you use it right. Anyway, we better hush now, for I see a woman comin’. None of this woman’s business, though maybe that Ludjee has received the Ghost Dreamin’ too. Maybe, for she knows them ghosts deep down and through and through. Listen to this song verse, you two, then hide yourselves.

‘There was a girl from Dublin Town, Rosanna was her name

For fourteen years transported for aplaying of the game.

Our master bought her freedom and kept her in his hand,

But she suffered deep deeper down in this dismal land.’

The two novices, all big brown eyes and scrawny near adolescent bodies, did not acknowledge Jangamuttuk’s comments. They were forced into silence by their coming ordeal. Now they had to keep quiet and think over and over what the master was saying. They had been chosen by him to carry on the culture and they had to learn. What with the exile of their people, few of the adult men bothered to take care of the kids. Many had languished and died. They might have too, except for the mapan selecting them and keeping them strong for the ceremony. They were not to go near the mission until they became men.

Jangamuttuk still believed that the old ways could be saved from the hands of the ghosts. Most of his people on being exiled had fallen into despair, their minds fixed on their faraway homelands; but while they pined, he roamed the island seeking for the net of power that kept the entire Earth together. There were few places of strong power. Only a few ancient nodes that flickered in his awareness. These he accepted as the footprints of his Dreaming ancestors who had passed through the island. Many places along the coast and beaches he found overprinted with the recent remains of the ghosts. Here a broken bottle, there a rusted hoop, a shattered barrel, pits filled with the skeletons of butchered animals. To protect himself as he wandered, he sang out verses from his Ghost Dreaming cycle which seemed to fit the topography of the island. Now all had been arranged in a song cycle which he would pass on to the novices. It would have to do until the old ancestors revealed to him a new song series.

One place which still retained traces of power was high on the hill overlooking the bay where the ghosts had deposited them, and where Fada had ordered them to stay. Stone tools and chips were cemented into the stone floor of the deep rock shelter and impressed in the back wall, and now part of the surface of the stone were the painted imprints of ancient hands. Jangamuttuk felt the power of his ancestors residing there. He chanted softly to the nascent power, feeling it stir, but it had been so long ago that it might no longer quicken.

The shelter itself was the very end of a narrow cleft cut into the broken edge of the hill slope. He made it a shrine and himself the Keeper of the Shrine. He made his camp at the mouth of the cleft. This formed a natural camp site. Long ago, a huge round boulder, a ball of the wind giants, had been tossed down to cover the top of the mouth of the cleft. It hung over the very edge and appeared ready to complete its journey down to the coastal plain. Jangamuttuk knew that only the power of the ancestors held it there. He sang softly of their action. In the Dreamtime, they had set up a camp for him, then entered the cleft to leave their essence there.

Now Jangamuttuk looked down the cleft towards the shrine and caught the inquisitive faces of the two novices peering out at him. Gruffly, he ordered them right back to the shrine. He followed this with an abrupt movement of his hand which left no room for argument. He expected instant obedience from the novices, but also some spark of fire. What use were yes-men to him and to their community? They were in seclusion and not allowed to be seen by any but initiated men. He stared down at the forested coastal plain. From this height, he could see the square ceremonial ground of the night before and nearby the double circles of the traditional ceremonial ground. He had tried to hide this as best as he could but from above it stood out. Still, it might not matter. Fada was the only threat to their secrecy, and he was as old as he was, and could not make the climb to his camp.

He tried to see the woman who was making her way to his camp, but she was in the lee of the hill and hidden. He continued staring down. His eyes flickered over the rough-hewn cemetery. So many of his people lay suffering in an alien soil. He sighed. He had tried with all his skill to help them. Had led soul after soul towards the silvery shining track snaking up to the skyland, but each had broken away to run wailing back to this island. Now, they tugged at his consciousness, and he let his mind relax. The ship tacking into the bay disappeared from his eyes. Pale, rounded souls squatted about him. They lacked mouths, but still were trying to tell him something. He concentrated. The words were whispers in his mind, garbled and in a language he might once have known, but since had forgotten. He concentrated in an effort to understand. The sea, the ocean heaved and spat at him. Old fears gripped his heart. Tradition made him flee from the ocean, made him believe it would swallow him whole. A huge snake writhed from the depths and turned, its jaws gaping at him. A huge snake that suddenly flashed with all the colours of a rainbow to turn into Dreaming companion. Goanna came up under him and sped away. He sported, diving deeply into the depths, turning and charging to leap high above the surface. Jangamuttuk clung on for dear life feeling the waters grabbing at him. Then he felt his power and relaxed. The waters flowed around him and beside him and in him. Now Goanna and the souls swam west towards the setting sun. He saw the sun writhe into the coils of the great serpent, and eyes reached out to give him an assurance that he was welcome.

The supply ship tacked into the bay. It tried to make its way towards a headland to shelter in the lee. The wind blew from the land and the ship, unable to anchor, ran out to sea. A small dot on the beach moved towards the tail of a thin white snake laying across the grasscovered sand-dunes. Its body twisted into the thick forest which covered the plain, changed colour and continued on as a red serpent with a bloated head which was the wide clearing in which the mission had been erected. There stood a line of wattle and daub huts for his people; a large low brick bungalow for Fada, his wife and two sons; a store with an office from which rations were distributed; and lastly at a short distance from the bungalow, a chapel in which Fada entertained them with incomprehensible sermons which hurt his head when he tried to reason them out. Then at the end of a short track leading inland, that poor patch planted with the corpses of his people seethed with restlessness. He sighed, distressed at the sight.

A cold feeling began at his chest and spread up into his throat. He coughed and spluttered, managed to bring up a great gob of phlegm, then lay back on his blanket. He became a sick old man as his young wife, Ludjee, stepped onto the platform of the camp and stood there getting her breath. She fanned her face with a piece of cloth, put down a basket, untucked the skirts of her shapeless ghost shift from between her legs, then took off the small cask of water she had tied on her back and poured a drink for the old man. Ludjee helped him into a sitting position to take the water, then gently scolded him: ‘You feeling poorly this morning, ain’t you? You an old fella always forgetting yourself and what happens. You become good for nothing.’ She set down the empty pannikin, sighing as she did so. ‘Like most of us just good for nothings these times; but today, most of us are feelin’ a little better. You really some kind of doctor, but you gotta watch out for yourself. Those ceremonies take a lot out of you. You gotta watch out for yourself. You get too sick and we all finished.’

Jangamuttuk, playing his role, weakly muttered: ‘Should’ve kept some of that medicine in that bottle for meself.’

‘You should’ve seen the missus this morning. Hunting high and low for it. She frantic, but she got two more and we need it bad.’

Jangamuttuk protested: ‘No that medicine not the right one. Anyways that Fada, he knew I had that bottle last evening. He must’ve been hidin’ and watchin’ us. Both of ’em’ll keep that medicine to themselves from now on. But never you mind, I find ’nother and better one.’

‘He always watchin’ us,’ Ludjee agreed, then added: ‘But we watchin’ him too. Now, I got you some food. Good stuff, what he eats himself. Took it from right under the nose of that, of that woman of his.’

‘Would like some kangaroo, just a little taste,’ Jangamuttuk whispered wistfully. ‘But most of all, a little bit of possum. Just a little bit. You remember, when we were getting together. You were a wild one then, just got your hair down below and scarcely broken in.’

‘And you were a stodgy one. Wonder how you got your goanna to raise its head,’ Ludjee replied with a laugh.

Jangamuttuk smiled as he answered: ‘My Dreamin’, woman. My Dreamin’.’

‘Those times, they just like a dream,’ the woman whispered. ‘All we have left, dreams of home, that’s all, dreams of home.’

Their own land was not so clogged with trees, with undergrowth, with the thickness of vegetation. Tall trees grew apart, their trunks only coming together in the shadows of the early morning or late afternoon. Grass grew in clumps and the people could walk where they wanted without having their feet torn by bindies. In fact so gentle was the earth to their feet that other communities called them: the people with soft soles.

But all this was long before the coming of the ghosts. They had arrived and everything had changed. The Earth raged with giant fires; kangaroos and wallabies began to disappear, and even the giant animals of the ocean were dragged ashore to be butchered. Their flesh was torn off their bones and flung into giant pots to be rendered down over the raging fires. The smell of boiling flesh rose with the smoke and a haze of death hung over much of their land. Such were the times, and everyone had to adapt to them. The girl Ludjee had been taken in by ghosts and used and abused as everything was used and abused. But then had come Fada with his promises to protect, and things had taken a turn for the better. This was before the time of the stolen children, and where hope bloomed so did marriage. It was only natural that after a grieving Jangamuttuk had seen his first wife safely off along the skyroad; that he felt the need for a woman. He saw young Ludjee who stood in the correct relationship to him. In fact, as men of marriageable age were scarce, her anxious father had settled the matter without asking for the customary presents. However, Jangamuttuk to show his observance of the old ways had scrupulously followed custom.

Ludjee smiled as she remembered the part she found she had to play, namely to enact the role of an innocent young thing towards the mature man who attracted rather than repelled. But it was then custom and Jangamuttuk, ever the conservative, would have thought her ill-bred if she had not gone through with it. So secure in her blooming womanhood was she, that she had taunted him with her ripening breasts and loins. She had enticed and repelled him until the full confidence of her womanhood flowed in her, and she could scoff at the aroused attraction of the person who was to be her man. So it had been and so it might never be again. On the island of exile, men and women mated hurriedly and without thought for the morrow. Why wait and follow custom when one might be dead? She sighed as she thought of Fada and the things she had to do to survive.

But then the memory of that last delicious time on their land with places still free from the influences of the ghosts removed her sadness. One morning, she had enticed (only a backwards glance was necessary now) her future mate after her. She knew where to go. Far inland towards the rugged backbone of their island was the place where, as custom demanded, all brides led their grooms. What happened there was supposed to be hidden, supposed to be part of woman’s magic. Sometimes more than one man followed a woman, and then when a couple returned, no one mentioned the other suitors who were seen no more. Sometimes, even a single suitor disappeared and only the woman returned. Such things happened, and they were accepted because they made the race strong. But this time, only the male Jangamuttuk alone remained in proper relationship to her, and so the marriage was ordained.

In a valley turfed with grass and shaded by evenly spaced trees, Ludjee lured her mate. It was woman’s country, and only his desire would protect him from certain destruction. She reached the pool which was part of all women’s Dreaming. And Jangamuttuk, a stickler for the rules, had come to stop beside the cool waters. His eyes reflected a rainbow as he watched her. She felt his eyes swarm over her body as she floated upheld by the strength of the dreaming waters. They caressed the deep brownness of her desire, outlined her breasts and made her nipples stand out like dark sweet swollen fruit. Then she felt the gaze withdraw and in her body she felt her soul withdraw a little, as the dreaming waters waited for her lover to return.

He brought the bodies of four possums which he placed gently down on the bank where lovers had camped as far back as the Dream time when the first female lover had been turned into a pool to eternally receive the downflowing passion of her lover. Jangamuttuk braved the water. Gingerly, he lowered himself and was swept towards the rainbow. She saw how his body glowed as it passed through the rainbow and moreover saw that he could not swim and was in danger of being taken into the depths. She swam to him and towed him into the shallows. Safely in her arms, he could resist her no longer. They merged oblivious of the dreaded present and future which was wrenching them from this past.

Jangamuttuk chanted out his memory: ‘And after, we roasted those possum over the fire.’

And Ludjee chanted a reply: ‘And they still are the sweetest, the most tender possums I have ever eaten ...’ Then her voice became as bitter as the salt sea: ‘Now all gone. All spoilt ... All that happiness, all that land, that Dreaming place which held us both.’

‘But we still together, Ludjee,’ the old man whispered. ‘We still together. No matter what happened. We still goin’ strong together.’

Suddenly, he broke into a fit of coughing, and Ludjee made him eat some of the salt pork she had taken from the mission house and the vegetables which she tended in a little garden of her own. It had to remain hidden, for if Fada knew, he would first commend her, but then take all the vegetables for his own table.

‘You gotta take things easy, old fella,’ she gently scolded him again as she watched him masticate the pork. ‘Take things easy, else I lose you.’

‘No, I ain’t a thing to be lost. When I go I know I go. I am a boss of that world. Time come to go, I know. And not from this island either. Almost got answer I been looking for. It almost come to me now. When I get it, maybe, just maybe, I take this sickness and fling it into Fada. Maybe I just do that.’

‘Not Fada, he good man,’ the woman protested. ‘He done his best for us.’

‘Maybe his best not good enough. Maybe his value is at an end,’ the old man said, flinging off his assumed weakness.

Ludjee was alarmed. She knew her husband was capable of hurting Fada and she didn’t want that, though sometimes for all the world, she couldn’t understand why she felt such tenderness for the ghost. Maybe, she had more than once thought he was the spirit of her grandfather come back. He had been thick headed like Fada and clubfooted as well, though Fada was not. This kept her from making a full identification of Fada with her grandfather, though she still felt protective about him. Now she raised her voice in protest and also indignation as she realised that her husband was not as weak as he made out and had been funning her. ‘What you mean?’ she almost shouted. ‘Don’t you go poking’ fun at Fada. Don’t you go planning’ to hurt him with that bone-pointin’ nonsense. If it wasn’t for him, where would we be? Answer me that, where would we be?’

The shaman stared down towards the mission compound. His eyes fastened on the graveyard as he muttered: ‘And yet that graveyard keeps growin’, and them souls keep callin’ to me. I see in vision, right in front of my eyes, that sickness comes from that ghost, and when we die, he binds us to him. He writes us down in that big book of his and we are trapped for ever. But I watch out, I know what he is doing, and I can free ...’

‘Old fella, you talkin’ outa your sickness,’ the woman said softly, feeling that the old fella had suddenly weakened. ‘You runnin’ aroun’ in that head of yours. Listen, old man, I work in his house. I know ghost talk good. I listen to what he say to Mada, his wife. He tells her that he has plan. Soon, we all up and goin’ to new land.’

The old man broke into a fit of coughing, then croaked out:

‘Tell me the old , old story,

Tell me the old, old story,

Of Fada and his love.’

‘You shut your mouth now. A body never knows if you sick, or lying’, or funning’ or crying’. You shut your mouth now and let things be until we know.’

‘Woman, you the crazy one,’ the shaman shouted in exasperation. 'You know how he got us to this island, you know full well. We was the ones that told them others to put their trust in him. He was going to take us to another place free from ghosts. And when we got here, them ghosts were still over us, and worse Fada was the com-mand-ant of this mission and he cut off our hair and he made us wear those clothes and ...’

‘He done the best he could. He still tryin’ his heart out.’

‘An’ so am I, an’ I got better skills than he has.’

‘Well, maybe you have,’ the woman answered somewhat reluctantly. ‘You do ceremony as it should be done. Fada’s medicine done us no good; your medicine better for us. Most of us well now; but we still here and Fada will take us away.’

‘Fada’s plan is my plan,’ Jangamuttuk declared. ‘I see it all in vision. New land and no Fada. We will go soon. I know.’

‘You old fella roamin’ too long in head. Sickness got you alonga balls. Squeeze the sense outa you. You not Fada ... Now I ’member he wants to see you. Told me to tell you to come quick smart,’ she replied before realising that the shaman had been speaking from a trance which he had fallen into. The state stirred things in her. Things which Fada’s teaching had put out of her mind. She smiled as she watched him return.

Jangamuttuk did not return her smile. He said: ‘He wanta see me ’cause I wanta see him. I, Master of the Ghost Dreaming, and he a ghost.’

‘Hush, don’t talk ’bout such things in front of your woman,’ Ludjee said quickly. This was a warning that the novices might be listening, for she had reached the age when things were revealed rather than concealed. Now she kept the smile on her face as she added: ‘Whichever way it is, he wants to see you. You go see him bye and bye. Okay, and put your pants on. He don’t want to see your thing dangling’ down. We civilised now, you know.’

In the cleft the listening novices wondered why the two adults continued laughing for so long.