Читать книгу Underground - Mudrooroo - Страница 7

Don’t look askance at me, I was one of the first to reach these goldfields and dig for the metal. Yes, I may not be of your colour, but we’re all the same underneath – or are we? Still, what does it matter when the night’s fallen like a thick blanket over the diggings and there’s nothing much to do until the dawn comes in with a scramble and the heaving of dry dust, and you cough and cough and you wonder what you’re doing. But you all know that, don’t you? Just adigging, just adigging for the precious metal.

See these two bits of stick, how smooth and worn they are. Real native artefacts. Listen to the sound, how clear it rings. Crack-crack. You know, they belonged to my ‘once father’. ‘Once father’, I’ll get to that in due course, for there’s a bit of old England in me, and how it got there, well, I’ll make it part of my yarn if the darkness holds up.

I’m here to entertain you, to make the night slide away easy and not too slow, for I know you’re raring to get at those slugs of metal and collect enough to flee this desolate country where the willy-willies swirl up the dust until you curse the day you thought to roam – to here, where time hangs heavy on your minds and you get to thinking of the girl you left behind. Maybe, eh? Well, I remember a girl, but she left me behind. Left me behind: a stranger in a strange land. I don’t hail from these parts. Who does? Just a blow-in like the rest of you lot. I come from far to the south east, from an island and now I’ve become a nomad, a wanderer seeking to find fortune. Strike it rich and we’ll all be home, eh?

Strike it rich! We roam the earth afire with our quest, with our thirst. Drifters, driven here and there by idle rumours, and when the colour’s gone from the soil and the big companies come in to rip deep into the guts of the earth, following down that reef which we just pecked at on the surface, well, we up stakes and off we wander seeking always that lode of gold at the end of the rainbow. Wandering, that’s what we’re good at; but then the land’s wide enough for our roaming and there’s gold for the taking if you get in first or second. Hear tell there’s another strike far to the north, gold for the picking rather than the digging. A mob upped their stakes, packed their swags and lit out for there just the other day where, I hear, it ain’t dry all the year round; every six months or so there comes a mighty flood, just like in the Bible, and when the water subsides there shines the gold. Well, Noah was a nomad too and he circumnavigated the whole globe, just sailing, sailing on that wooden boat of his which didn’t handle too well against the wind, so he drifted rather than sailed her hard; but when the flood went down, he saw the glitter of that gold shining, telling him to leave his ark and rejoice at his strike, for it was the mother lode.

Well, like old Noah I left a ship, though I didn’t rejoice at leaving her. She rather left me, falling apart from under, so to speak, and I was washed up on these shores. Been in the west a long time now, following the strikes from the south to the east and soon it’ll be north for me. But, you know, there’s times when the ocean surges in my brain and I’ve got to head for her and gaze across the waters, remembering that long ago voyage much as you might recall that day you took to the gold trail, much as I dream recall that voyage my friend’s mother made on a shit of a ship. That still rankles in me, but never mind, it wasn’t our mother, was it; but still I feel her suffering as I stare over the tumbling waves and feel the wheel again quivering in my hands like a live thing, and female at that. It’s then that I think of forsaking this land and getting on a vessel with a course set towards the pole star, maybe a brig, not one of those ones that now go charging through the waves, battering them down where once we danced light as a feather.

Yeah, they say we’re in the age of steam and iron. Well, let that be, I still prefer the old ways, which once were new to me. Get on some craft under full canvas and sail north west. Up there lies Africa, and did not the Queen of Sheba come from that continent laden with gold for that old Israelite, Solomon, who it’s been said was a bit of a wiseacre in his time. Gold there just for the collecting, at least that’s what I’ve heard and the voice is getting louder and louder. Once, you know, I had a friend from there and never once did he mention this yellow metal. Yeah, but he was worth his weight in gold to us. He was one of those Africans. Caught, enslaved, fought and escaped, and became a hero of sorts before he took to the sea and became a sailor, sailing, sailing over that lonesome ocean. Guess he’s on her still, between one port or another ...

He was our chief mate, not so much a captain which means something less than chief in our language. Well, he was the one that guided us as we sailed from the east on the ill-fated voyage which would eventually fling me up here, in this place where the dust demons roam, though I’m a bit of a devil myself and cannot abide the day. Still, forget that and just hold a picture of that schooner scudding along. Beautiful, isn’t she? A trim craft, saucy and dancehall smart, who could kick up her heels and lift her skirts high as she skipped across the ocean. A regular Lola Montez, until her bottom got too heavy with the barnacles and weeds. Still, she was as bonny a vessel as I’ve ever been on and charitable as well for she took all of us on without a protest and carried us on and on, ever westwards as we searched, much like those Jewish people travelling out of Egypt, for a promised land. We were like those Greeks too, them that sailed off to fight a war and then got lost on the way home. Yeah, ours was like the voyage of that Ulysses. It went on and on, though at the end there was nary a glimpse of home, let alone a promised land.

Well, it took a long time to get to where we were going. And what was that promised land I found myself in? This place, with its dust, with its flies that seek even me out, and dare I mention that awful sun which sheers away at my very skin, flesh and bone. You blokes, you diggers, y’know I lost my mob along with that schooner and too often do I imagine our mob in spirit up among those stars where the silver ocean glimmers – and there they are on that bonny vessel breasting the milky waves as they sail on, searching always for that promised land, our home away from home and perhaps on some planet where our ancestors sit and forget the dreadful doings on this earth.

Well, you’ve had enough of dust and heat, I dare say, and need a tale about the far cold southern ocean with its icebergs and strange werebears lurching above the snow, with its squalls and tempests and phantom ships petrified in strange frozen waves that take away the living temperature and render the whole crew, captain down to cabin scruff, stiff and dead. It’s cold, mates, cold as the death you dream as the sweat trickles down your backs and stirs the hairs as if you feel a phantom touch of a frozen hand belonging to someone who once loved you ...

No thanks, I don’t need that sort of drink to soften up my pipes. They say that grog is a curse to folks like me, but I have found other tastes curse enough. So now, to set the mood, hear these sticks sounding like spoons as I make the rhythm for this bit of verse.

They made of me

A ghost down under

Made for me a place to plunder,

Yeah, to plunder

Way down under,

Pardon me while I chunder.

Not so bright is it, but then neither is this night with the sky all obscured from the dust of your dryblowing. Perhaps I should give you ‘Roaming in the Gloaming’; but well, I don’t know what a gloaming is. What? Dusk y’say. Well, you learn a new word every day. Now another song to set the mood of our gloomy tale.

Our vessel was a doughty one

It ploughed the seas alone

And we huddled on the deck

And wished not to be a wreck

So far away from home, boys,

So far away from home, me boys.

Our captain, he was as black

As the startling thunder clap

He was as restless as the lightning

And struck out along with the wrack

Along with the wrack, me boys

Alone with the wrack.

Well, that’s more rousing than that old ghost dirge, though what is the night fit for, but the telling of ghostly yarns and phantom ships and ghoulies which wait for the shipwrecked sailor. Worse, I hear tell, is what lurks for you at the bottom of the sea, where the dead men swing in the currents and fish have lights in their heads to navigate about them. Remember those old, old stories of Ulysses and Jason. They heard the sirens singing and met ancient Neptune who had an underwater kingdom and loved you or hated you, saved you or drowned you, whatever took his fancy at the time. Never met him, though I’ve seen more than mortal men. Strange female things just as mean and bad as those sirens enticing men with their singing, along with their billowing tits and flowing hair, though not their fishy tails, what use are those?

One of those sort it was that got into our chief mate’s brain and swung him away from us. He was never again one with us in spirit. It was then, about the time he changed, that he took it into his head to give our vessel a name. He called her the Kore, upsetting most of our mob who wanted a different vision. But he had ill-luck covering him and from him it spread so that we began to think that we were all doomed. All this happened after we had come upon a wreck that had been cursed from the day she sailed. And when she flung herself upon the beach, her curse waited for us to pull up alongside, for we looted her, but then finder’s keepers, or so we thought at the time. From then on, something came after us and then our chief mate, our captain, disappeared one night, and my then father and I had to seek him out again with direful consequences. We had to find him! He was the only one who knew how to keep our vessel happy. He rode her hard until she learnt to keep the course, but without him she wallowed slow in the water, fat arsed with weeds and barnacles.

He might have scraped her, but he let her be, for it seemed he had lost his wits along with his luck. He even carved a female shape from a log. Said it was to be our figurehead. It was then he called our schooner the Kore. A kore, a maiden with her fat white breasts on which you could rest a tankard, with flowing locks of yellow hair and evil red glaring eyes that were baleful enough to shatter any rocks and reefs in our way. But, alas, she was no longer our old craft. That wooden witch image possessed her, making her spiteful and mean. She challenged anything that stood in her way just like one of those haughty steamships made of iron, and like one of them her end came abrupt and sudden; but, but, why circle about that when it has nothing to do with the red maw of fright.

No, it is not part of this yarn into which I settle, as I lean back and gather what seems a breath. Relax, relax! The night is young and randy enough for us to take our time. She’ll enjoy more than her luck deserves, and with her cooling down will come a dew to lower the dust, so if your mug is empty, fill it. Drink up, mates, there’s a coin, gold gleaming, and time as long as the night enduring. Drink! There’s rum enough to help the ghoulies creep into my tale.

I’ll make it a regular story and begin with those of our mob who stood out from the rest. First, Mungkati, a big blackfellow. His name meant thickhead and he hated it and was easily led astray to take another name. Fada, you see, who did the naming was always one for the latest name of splendour, such as Victoria; but Mungkati could never be a Victoria so he had been called Hercules, which he liked much better, especially when he was given the story to it by Fada who was the bloke who one day arrived on our southern island with a mission to save us from devils such as himself. He saved us all right. He got us all together on a God-forsaken bit of rock where we quickly began to pine away. We blamed it on evil spirits who had been waiting for this opportunity to get us and so did Fada who battled to stop them from harming us. One of his subterfuges was renaming us so that the demons would be bamboozled. This didn’t help at all, and so he left us on that piece of rock while he went off to write a report on us which he had published as The Great Reconciliation. In it, he was the chief character and we were poor victims with hands upheld for succour. (There was no mention that we had stolen his schooner and went off in her.) But all this is another story and he doesn’t figure that much in this yarn, though he has turned up here to make the goldfields his home.

Well, I’ll tell you a bit about him. He is what is called a philanthropist and is a most Christian gentleman. You all know him, the Leader of the Legislative Council. Yes, good Sir George and there is even talk that he is to be our next governor. A local man is needed and there are those who say he will get things done for this colony, and as evidence will point to the church he got built here. As I’ve said, a most Christian gentleman, though he has a piratical side. Well, he did when he was master over us and also had a liking for what he called the stories of the old paganism and since he considered some of us still pagans, he gleefully gave those ones heathen names: Jason, Hector, Hercules and others I can’t recall, together with the promise that when the offenders had reconciled themselves to the Christian faith they too would be given proper names. I was a child then and baptized as George and this has remained with me. The others never used what they considered their ‘ghost’ names, for they saw white-skinned ones such as your good selves, as ghosts; but as I’ve said Mungkati became known as Hercules for ever more. So I’m George, named after the then reigning monarch and not after himself, even though Jangamuttuk my supposed father had declared: ‘He’s the king of the castle, and he’s a dirty rascal.’ I knew the English words, but being a kid what they were hinting at passed over me as did the laughter when Fada was coupled with ‘black velvet’.

Well, all this naming business happened a year before the King carked it and Her Majesty ascended the throne. God save Victoria, though I cannot help but wonder what I would have been called if I had been born from her, so to speak. Victor or Victoria, or just Albert. He did and still does, that Fada, that Sir George, like the sound of royal names, even storybook ones. Why, he even called my mother, Lalla Rookh, some fabulous queen of oriental splendour, he assured her as he took his pleasure.

Anyway, Mungkati, or Hercules, was a big fellow with a big temper to match and when it overpowered him he hit out with what came to hand. One time, he even did a fellow in with an axe and I’ll tell you why later, but for now just imagine that axe flashing down upon your head. How it strikes with a sodden thud, digging in deep, clefting the skull in twain. Bits of bone and brain flying everywhere. The blood gushing out a regular torrent. Some drops splatter on your face and your tongue darts out to lick the ruby fluid. It tastes of copper with a subtle flavour of rum; but I get beyond myself. I am harmless and it is only the darkness of the night which brings such thoughts to mind, for I did not do the deed, but thickheaded Mungkati/Hercules did with his infernal temper. He split his man and splattered us with the gore of blood guilt for ever more.

Well that was Hercules, so unlike our chief mate, the African. He was a different sort of bloke – one who in his day had seen and had his share of cruelty. You know, he began his life as a baby born in the cramped confines of a slaver ship. He entered this world as his fellows died and rotted about him. Born on that ship, he never had a feeling for the solid earth of a land he could call his own, though perhaps he yearned for it. They sold him in the Americas, but always there was the call of the restless waters in his veins. Now he is out there this night, battling the elements somewheres; but enough of him we called Wadawaka, Seaborn. Let him rest while you fill your mugs to the brim, for the night is long and the grog is there for the drinking, as long as you’ve got something in your poke, for my coin is all done. Here’s to our chief mate, Seaborn. Lift your mugs high in homage and I break my yarn with a song and you settle back.

In these days of old,

When you dig up the gold

And the dust fills up your gob

And you need some grog

To make you believe

You’re a damned lucky sod.

There, there enough of that. Crack-crack, loud enough to wake you and the dead besides eh, these sticks which come from the dead and call the ghoulies down upon us. We need a parson to keep them at bay and we had such a sort on our schooner who had an affinity for such things. Not of your regular sort that dresses in black, his skin was black enough and he was handy with a song and spell when the going got tough and we got scared. Fada named him Orpheus after one of those ancient pagan fellows, but to us he was always Jangamuttuk, Ghost Conqueror. Well, like parsons are meant to do, he gave us strength when strength was needed, singing hymns to the land beyond the sun. He had a magic voice that could call the animals to him and even quieten the storms when they were raging, but like that Orpheus fellow, he suffered a similar fate when he sought out our mate to return his mind to him.

And perhaps you need to know of me, George. I stood next to Wadawaka at the helm and relieved him when he sought his bunk. Wadawaka, our African mate, taught me how to judge the schooner’s ways. She trembled with life, life that turned evil when he named her the Kore and gave her a figurehead. Yes, she was alive and many a time at night when I held the wheel, I felt her timbers twist under the touch of my hands and emit a ghastly groaning as she ripped apart the pellucid, placid sea.

And what and who were the rest, you may want to know. Well, our mob was twenty men and women, all that remained of us poor blackfellows after Fada had got through with his conciliating. Wadawaka it was who taught the men to furl and unfurl the sails and other things which were necessary to keep us on our course. The women, when our shrouds grew tattered and fluttered in the wind like deadmen’s rags, sewed them together again so that they might hold the wind. We kept her going towards the west, and as other voyagers we had adventures along the way, some of which were weird and strange. Now raise your pannikins high and toast all those who put to sea, while I finish off with a song my erstwhile father used to sing:

They made for us

A land to plunder

a land to plunder

Way down under.