Читать книгу Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the End of the World - Mudrooroo - Страница 7

I

Many things had happened to the good Doctor Wooreddy since he had left his island home to flee to the South West Nation. Travelling along the coast road towards Poynduc he saw everywhere signs of the num. The Derwent River valley had been taken and from this they surged out to claim all that they wanted. Poynduc, a wide, shallow lagoon of a drowned river valley, was free except for a few timber-cutters, and the surrounding land of deep valleys filled with tangled undergrowth did not attract them.

The population of the South West Nation lived in villages scattered from Poynduc to the northern frontier at Parralaongatek, a large, shallow harbour like Poynduc, where a num enclave existed. The villages were linked by a network of narrow coastal roads and the young man passed along these until he came to a village which knew his family. The future good doctor found the people too welcoming. He was accepted at once into the community as a full adult and even allowed to sit at the feet of the elder men who, even if they did not know everything, certainly projected that feeling. Their religion was much the same as that of the Bruny Islanders, though the presence of the num had modified it somewhat. The world extended far across the forbidden sea to the Islands of Ghosts, and around them, in the gloomy forests, lurked the many shadows of Ria Warrawah waiting to rush towards the humans if the fires began to go out. Ria Warrawah – they emphasised the collective rather than the he, or it, or she – had brought the num from their far islands to plague the humans. This was how things stood!

Wooreddy listened and made notes in his mind. It all seemed plausible and a variant of traditional theology. He was pleased with the knowledge of the older men and they were pleased with his interest in the old teachings. When he wasn’t taking theology lessons, he went hunting. The Elders did not part with their knowledge freely; it had to be paid for with gifts of soft-meated wallaby (if possible) or possum. Wooreddy, an excellent hunter, earned enough to pay his fees as well as to support himself. This proved his undoing, or rather because he appeared to be settling down, it was natural that a woman be linked with him. This would keep him from pestering other women and also supplement his diet with seafood which only women were allowed to collect. One day, Wooreddy became conscious of a girl. How and why he did and why he continued to, he did not know. The girl, on her part, appeared not to be aware of him. His more and more frequent glances found her eyes elsewhere, never on him, and if he moved towards her she ran gracefully away to her home. But somehow she was often in his sight, and he could not help noticing that when she returned from the coast her bag was overflowing. Wooreddy’s education had had nothing to do with women and their ways. He knew that a man and a woman came together to form a basic social unit and he had often felt the physical need of a woman – these were the only two things he knew. Now he found himself noticing a girl, so much so that she was beginning to dominate his mind. He felt that she was wholly or partly responsible for this, though he had no evidence to support this supposition. One thing that he was aware of was that she was a foreign woman and therefore dangerous!

Knowing that the older men knew everything, Wooreddy, finding one of them in a good mood, added to it with the gift of a few plump possum, then casually raised the subject of women. He waited for the answer expecting some sort of involved discourse on the sixteen attitudes of the mind as applied to women or perhaps just a grunt. He received the grunt, but this was followed by the older man shouting in the direction of his house, ‘Lunna!’. His daughter reluctantly appeared and slowly came towards them. Her father smiled and whispered in her ear. This caused her to fling a particularly nasty look at Wooreddy before fleeing to a distant group of women. The father laughed and invited Wooreddy to sit with him. They sat in silence. Wooreddy had been disconcerted to see that the man’s daughter was the one which had been the object of his attention, or the one towards which his attention had been directed.

He did not know, but it had all been arranged. Wooreddy was a good catch. A successful hunter and a thoughtful man who would think twice before putting himself in the forefront of the battles which were becoming more fearful and bloody as the ghosts took more and more land. The South West Nation resisted and were losing too many men. Eligible mates were becoming scarce; the man’s daughter was at the age to be married, and Wooreddy, though a foreigner, available and a proper choice.

The older man kept Wooreddy with him all that afternoon and that evening invited him to spend the night. He accepted the invitation and, when the fire died down to a heap of glowing coals, the girl came quietly to his side. But she only sat beside him for a few minutes before going to sleep with the other women. Wooreddy stayed on and after a few nights the girl remained by his side. He found himself with a male and an extended family. Time passed gently in the village. Changes for him and the South West Nation (except for the constant loss of men on the frontiers) were rumours rather than actualities.

Wooreddy entered into full manhood as the regular rows of scars on his chest and the two irregular healed spear wounds on his side showed. Then, after seven years away from his island home, he decided to return. He longed to see the earth of his birth. The troubles there had become half-forgotten memories. He grimly smiled as he remembered leaving Bruny Island with scarcely a smear of red ointment on his head. Now his hair, plaited into many small rat-tails which swung about his face as he walked, was red with ochre. He had passed through combat and was entitled to hold the short, thick club in his right hand and clutch the long, clumsy spear in his left. Before the num spears were seldom carried, but now, since the crazed blood-thirstiness had affected them all, only a fool went unarmed through the frontier districts.

The South-West men had always been plotting and arranging, postponing, cancelling or marching off to fight the intruders who threatened the borders of their land. Over the twenty or so years since ghosts had settled the Derwent River Valley, participation in an action against them had assumed the status of an initiation rite. A man was not fully a man until he had sunk his spear in or thudded his club on the body or head of some hapless num.

It was expected of Wooreddy that he too would go on such an expedition. After giving the subject some thought he settled on one which he believed would be cancelled or postponed for an unknown length of time. This did not happen, and next day he found himself part of a column moving through the rainforest. The dozen men left the jungle, climbed up through the mountains and descended into the foothills on the other side. They grouped on a ridge and surveyed the village below. A harsh bare clearing had been eroded out of the trees and in the centre stood the alien square of a ghost hut. Wooreddy had never seen such a dwelling place. He examined it, noting the rough slabs of tree-trunks which made up the walls and the roof of flattened bark pieces held down by a framework of poles. A strange animal trotted out and barked once or twice. He had heard about such an animal. It was a panoine, and the people living along the frontier had them. A ghost came to the door, looked out, then went back inside. The men waited for an hour before drifting down the slope to surround the hut. Each man held a bundle of spears in his left hand and one poised in his right. The leader of the squad yelled. His spear thudded into one of the rough, wooden wall-slabs. They waited. They could hear the frantic barking of the animal inside the hut. They flung more spears at the walls. Some embedded themselves and quivered, others bounced off. Wooreddy began to find the attack a little tedious. It could last all day and night. He leapt to his feet, ran a few metres and flung himself down just in time to escape a musket ball. A comrade followed his example and no shot sounded. Did this mean that there was only one gun inside? Another man raced towards the hut and dived to the earth in time to escape the shot. Yes, only one was inside! All the men raced in to fling blazing firesticks onto the roof. The dry bark burst into flame with a whoosh. The num and his animal came charging out. He rushed directly at Wooreddy with his gun clubbed. The panoine snapped at Wooreddy’s heels and tripped him up. This saved him from having his brains splattered across the clearing. The ghost did not get a second chance. Wooreddy lifted his club and brought it down. A sodden thud and it was all over. The panoine left off worrying his heels, sniffed at the fallen num and wailed. The men rushed into the hut, looted what they could find, then watched it burn before moving off. The animal attached itself to the party and followed after them.

On the return trip the men walked along carelessly. They bragged of past fights, heroes and cowards. Wooreddy did not join in the conversation. Then the talk shifted to tactics and weapons. Was it advisable or even permissible to use num weapons? This was a never-ending dispute and Wooreddy’s carefully considered opinion met other carefully considered objections. The debate had dragged on for years and would drag on until no one was left to take sides.

Wooreddy smiled as he remembered how happy his wife’s father had been to receive the strange animal as a gift. Now their village too had a panoine! He thought all this as he strode along the road leading south. Behind him followed his wife and children. She carried one in her arms, the other trotted at her side. It was a slow, leisurely journey and the woman had not once complained. Wooreddy, basing his opinion on what he had observed and heard about, found this strange. But he had no intention of being kept in a foreign woman’s basket like part of her harvest. No, this would not happen, as it had happened to others he had seen so long ago.

II

Wooreddy stood on the shore staring across the narrow stretch of water. He saw the familiar dips and swells of his island and recognised the few thin lines of smoke as those belonging to his people – but at one point thick foggy masses of num smoke hung in the air like a bad omen. As he watched, fog streaked in from the sea to unite with the thick masses of smoke from the fires used to render down whale-blubber into oil. Things had indeed changed since the good doctor had been away. The island vanished from his view, and muttering a spell of protection, Wooreddy set about building a catamaran large enough to transport himself and his children.

Using the sharp num hatchet which had been his share of the loot from the hut, he hacked away at the bottom of reeds. He cut and collected a large pile. After laying them out and separating them into three bundles, he bound them together with the thin grass-cord his wife was twisting together. He went to the trees above the beach and using his hatchet cut out long squares of bark which he trimmed to the length of the reed rolls. These he bound around the bundles. If the voyage had been longer, grease would have been smeared over the outer surface of the bark to make them watertight. Wooreddy placed the long three-metre roll in the middle of the two shorter ones, then tightened them together with the net his wife had roughly woven. Now the catamaran had a canoe-shape with the bow and stern higher than the middle. Wooreddy hesitated to push it into the water. He trusted his work, but he did not trust the sea with all its lurking demons or demon, depending on the viewpoint held. He evaded any urge to ponder on the mystery and set about the ritual to keep it or them at bay. After patting mud into a square-shaped fireplace on the high stern of the catamaran, he lit a small fire there while singing the appropriate spell. The earth and the square shape of the fireplace and of the netting held the magic and not the fire. Wooreddy carefully finished the ritual and spell. Everything had been just right. A mistake, even a tiny one, might cause disaster. Gingerly, he pushed the craft into the surf until it floated. After putting the two boys aboard, he scrambled on. The catamaran settled a little, but still rode high fore and aft. His wife, Lunna, protected by her femaleness from the sea, pushed the craft into deeper water, then clinging onto the stern propelled it forward with kicks from her powerful legs.

Wooreddy’s eyes clung to the shape of his approaching island. This kept his mind from the encircling water; it gave him solace, and then the earth, which had formed his body and given the hardness to his bones, did have the power to draw him back. This, in a sense, was what was happening now. He had not determined to return home, but forces had determined that he return home. One such force was that of the earth of his home. He dreaded what he would find there. Then he noticed that the catamaran, for apparently no reason, was making a wide detour around an open patch of water. His nervous eyes had glanced down for a second. Now they stayed on the water. Alarm thudded his heart. If he had been able he would have returned to the mainland at once. But then, what if he had returned to the mainland? Only the west coast remained free, and for how long? In the long run, to survive meant accepting that the ghosts were here to stay and learning to live amongst them, or at least next to them until – until the ending of the world! This was the only reason why Wooreddy wanted to live on – and in a friendless world! It was one of the reasons why he had left the relative peace and security of his wife’s village.

He let the sight in the water enter into his mind. A bloody patch slowly spreading in circles of pinkish foam as a drizzle of rain fell from the grey sky. He shivered, feeling the presence of Ria Warrawah. The patch of blood turned a dull red, the colour of the ochre smeared in his hair. Just below the surface of the water, the dark body of a man drifted hazily like some evil sea creature. It quivered and turned dead eyes on him as Lunna’s powerful kick sent the catamaran past and scooting towards what might be the safety of the shore.

At last they grounded. Wooreddy leapt out and raced to the shelter of the undergrowth. Behind him pelted his wife and children. Safely hidden, they stared back toward the beach. The waves marched in assault lines against the land. Wooreddy saw the smoke rising from the stern of the catamaran and remembered his vow always to protect fire. But he hesitated and caused its death. The waves had driven the catamaran broadside to the surf. Now they capsized it. Ria Warrawah killed the fire. Then he found that he had left his spear behind. It floated in the surf. He left it there. He still had his club, and a spear, these days, was too much like a broken arm. Calling to his wife and children, he walked along the remembered track leading off this side of the bay. They followed it up over a rise, through thick undergrowth, then around the edge of a small cove. There another sight struck them a blow. The island, Wooreddy’s own earth, had been taken over by ghosts. His wife and children huddled in terror at his side, but the good Doctor Wooreddy donned his cloak of numbness and observed the scene with all the detachment of a scientist.

On the soft, wet beach-sand a naked brown-skinned woman was being assaulted by four ghosts. One held both of her arms over her head causing her breasts to jut into the low-lying clouds; two more each clung to a powerful leg, and the fourth thudded away in the vee. Wooreddy could see only the cropped head of the woman and not her face. The ghost stopped his thudding between her legs and fell limply on her body for a minute, then jerked away, knelt and got to his feet. The doctor noted with interest the whiteness of the ghost’s penis. He had accepted the fact of their having a penis – after all they were known to attack women – but he had never thought it would be white. He filed this probably useless piece of information in his mind and watched on. The ghost hid his unnatural organ in his pants, then reached for the arms of the woman. The one holding them, possibly eager for his turn, released his grip and she had her arms free. She did nothing. Experimentally, the other two loosened their hold on her legs. She remained still. The three stood up and watched as the fourth jerked out his pale, bloodless penis, knelt, and lunged forward.

‘Hey, Paddy, leave a bit for us,’ one yelled. The sounds drifted up to Wooreddy. He wondered about the grammatical structure and idiosyncrasies of their language as the rape continued.

‘Arrh, Jack, got her all loosened up. Now she’s just lying there enjoying every minute of it’, Paddy finally grunted up, spacing the words to the rhythm of his body.

Wooreddy wondered if the ghosts had honorifics and specific forms of address. Perhaps it was not even a real language? – but then each and every species of animal had a language, and so it must be! The kangaroos, possums and even snakes – and though it was not universally accepted, the trees and plants – all had a language. Even the clouds and wind conversed together. Some gifted men and women could listen and understand what they were talking about. It was even debated that such men and women could make them carry them to see a distant friend and after return them to their starting point. It could be true, for he knew that the whole earth murmured with the conversations of the myriad species of things and to understand what they were saying would be to understand all creation.

Paddy finished with a grunt and got off and up. Another took his place while Wooreddy wondered about the necessity of covering the body with skins rather than grease. It was the way of these num and could be compared with the strange custom of the North West Nation where women did not crop their hair. He thought about how different peoples held and shaped spears. Variations based on the series of actions of holding and sharpening which were individual to each person, and as they were individual to each person so were they to each nation and even community. Another num came and went – to be replaced by another.

The circle circled while the day flowed towards the evening. Wooreddy knew that he and his family had to leave soon if they were to make the camping place by nightfall. He was beginning to find the rape a little tedious. What was the use of knowing that the num were overgreedy for women just as they were overgreedy for everything? He could have deduced this from the record of their previous actions and they did appear fixed and immutable in their ways. At long last the rape ground to an end. The num without a final glance at the sprawling woman walked off to a boat Wooreddy had not noticed drawn up on the beach. They got in and began rowing across the bay like a spider walking on water.

A few minutes after they had left, the woman got to her feet. The doctor parted the mists of seven years to recognise the youngest daughter of Mangana grown into a woman of seventeen years. She looked a good strong female with the firm, squat body of a provider. Unsteadily she managed a few steps, then stood swaying on her feet. Slowly her face lifted and her dull eyes brightened as she saw Wooreddy standing in the undergrowth. She glared into his eyes, spat in his direction, then turned and dragged her hips down to the waves subsiding in the long rays of the sun setting in a swirl of clearing cloud. He watched as she squatted in the water and began cleaning herself. Then he turned to his wife, told her to follow him, and waddled away with Trugernanna’s glare, that dull then bright gaze filled with spite and contempt, in his mind. It upset him and dispelled his numbness which, fortunately for Wooreddy (though he often didn’t realise it) was not the impervious shield of his theorising, and could be easily penetrated. Why had she looked at him in such a way? After all it had been the num who had raped her. He would never do such a thing! He thought on as he waddled along in that peculiar gait which had earned him the name, Wooreddy – ‘duck’ – and finally concluded that it was a waste of time to try to divine anything about females. What was important about Trugernanna, he recalled, was that she was a survivor. This was what made her important to him – though she did have the body of a good provider!

The track ended in a clearing at the side of a long sweeping bay. Here he found Mangana much the same as seven years ago. He sat alone, smiling into his fire. Wooreddy waited until the older man glanced up and beckoned to him to sit. He sat and waited. Mangana looked across and smiled, not a smile of greeting, but one of resignation. To the old man’s despondency over the loss of his first wife had been added that caused by the loss of a second. Now he filled Wooreddy in with the details, using the rich language of an elder. It was part gesture, part expression, part pure feeling allied to a richness of words moulded together in a grammatic structure complex with the experience of the life lived. It was a new and full experience for Wooreddy. The white cloud sails bulged, fluttered like the wings of birds and collapsed in a torrent of rain; a baby boat crawled from the strangeness of its mother ship-island; tottered across the waves on unsteady legs; dragged its tiny body up onto the shore – and reached out insect arms to Mangana’s mate. Charmed, she enticed herself to it; charmed, she wanted the insect arms around her and her own arms around the soft body; charmed, she let herself be enticed by the infant-boat to the terrible mother-ship. Many legs walked the child to it and Mangana’s wife was taken along to where the sails fluttered like seagulls, and flew out to sea. The loss of the mate was conveyed by a terrible feeling of emptiness, of the lack felt by the absence of a good provider not filled by the presence of a single young daughter, fickle and strange with the times and often not to be found and not to be managed. Mangana took up the subject of his daughter. With a finger he painted in the soft ashes at the edge of the fire her symbol and her actions.

She spent too much time watching the num and being with the num. From them she received ghost food, two whites and a black: flour, sugar and tea. He himself had acquired a taste for these strange foods since he rarely hunted and relied on his daughter for provisions. He projected the death of a son at Wooreddy. They lived through it right to the final ashes. Mangana left mental pain to wander in physical pain. He relived the time he had been washed out to sea. His water-logged catamaran sagged beneath his weight and every wave washed over him. All around him the surge of the sea, the breathing of Ria Warrawah. A num boat came sailing along. Ghosts pulled him from the clutches of Ria Warrawah. This affected him even more than the other events as it involved a contradiction: why had the num, who allegedly came from it, saved him from its domain? Unable to formulate a theory to explain this, he now felt that he belonged, or at the least owed his very life, to the ghosts and thus existed only on their whim. They had claimed his soul and sooner rather than later would take it if he could not create a nexus to prevent them from doing so.

Mangana declared with more determination than he had so far shown: ‘The num think they have me – but an initiated man is never had. He knows how to walk the coloured path to the sparkling path which leads to where the fires flicker in Great Ancestor’s camp. There they are forbidden to come, and even now I am building up my fire there.’

Wooreddy nodded. He knew that the older a man grew the more he received and found. Sometimes the old ones had so much knowledge that they could make the very earth tremble. It was even rumoured that they could fly to the sky-land while still alive. Respectfully he kept his eyes lowered. Here was one of the last elders of the Bruny Island people famed for their spiritual knowledge.

‘My daughter, she is yours when I go,’ the old man said suddenly to him, smiling with a humour which showed that he knew a little too much about Trugernanna – and about Wooreddy!

Wooreddy lifted his head in surprise and lowered it in confusion. He tried to mask his thoughts from the old man. Thankfully Lunna returned with her basket filled with abalone and four crayfish which occupied all of Mangana’s attention. His daughter might have the body of a good provider, but she failed to live up to it. Mangana slavered for the succulent crayfish. His eyes flickered from them to Wooreddy’s motions in heaping up the coals of the fire. His eyes lingered on the dark-greenish body of a giant cray as Wooreddy gently and lovingly (at least so it seemed to Mangana) placed it on the coals. He watched as the dark shell began to turn a lightish ochre-red. He openly sighed as Wooreddy with two forked sticks lifted it off the fire, placed it on a piece of bark and put it in front of him. It was delicious, and the first bite freed his attention. He smiled as Wooreddy gave the next one to his wife, and the third to be divided between his children. The younger man felt the eyes on him and would have blushed if he could. On Bruny Island the custom was that first (or, in this case, secondly) the husband took what he wanted and left the remainder for his wife and children. He, without thinking, had done what he had done from the time he had been married and then a father. Ayah! Indeed he had been caught like the crayfish he was eating and put in the basket of this foreign woman without even realising it. He consoled himself with the thought that it must be the times.

III

Bruny Island had become a cemetery. When Wooreddy had left he had known that his community was dying. Now he found it all but gone. Only Mangana, he and a few females remained alive. The ownership of the island would pass to him, but this was meaningless. Bruny Island belonged to the ghosts. The land rang with their axes, marking it anew just as Great Ancestor had done in the distant past. He heard the crash of falling trees as he watched num boats towing to the shore one of the huge animals cursed by Ria Warrawah. Like all good animals, they had never got over their capture and often tried to return to the land. Ria Warrawah to prevent their escape had slashed off their legs, but this did not stop them from flinging themselves onto the beach. Huge and legless, they would lie helpless on the land, baking under the sun or wheezing under the clouds. They suffered, but never did they try to return to the hated ocean. These large animals, because they belonged to the land, could be eaten along with crayfish, penguins, seals and shellfish. The blubber provided the best oil for smearing the body and catamarans. After one came ashore and was eaten, the giant cradle of bones was flung back into the sea, not as an offering, but in contempt and defiance – to show Ria Warrawah that land animals would never belong to him.

Although Wooreddy went to the whaling station to get some of the flesh which the ghosts flung away, he took care that his woman did not go with him. Trugernanna and the other island women went there for both food and excitement. They often spent days at the station and when they finally came back to the camp, they carried with them ghost food. Mangana liked this food and had even begun to smoke the strange herb, tobacco, which his daughter had shown him how to use. He wore over his body a large soft skin which had been given to Trugernanna. He wore this as a sigh of surrender and urged Wooreddy to do the same. The num were provoked by a naked body so much so that they often killed it. Num skins protected a person and if one continued to go naked one courted death. With such a choice before him, Wooreddy took to wearing a blanket.

The ghosts had twisted and upturned everything, Wooreddy thought one day as he went a step further and accepted a num skin from a ghost he found with his wife. This did not upset him much as the woman had so increased her demands on him that he had found himself a typical Bruny Islander saddled with a foreign wife. He still consoled himself with the thought that it was the times, and the num skin did hide his manhood scars. Not so very long ago, Wooreddy had prided himself on showing the serried rows of arc-shaped scars which showed the degrees of initiation he had passed. Now they had lost all meaning, just as all else had lost meaning. Such alienation brought lassitude and the sudden panic fear that his soul was under attack. To counter this, he pushed his way into the depths of a thicket and made a circular clearing while muttering powerful protection spells. Then he built a small fire in a pit in the centre of the circle, heated a piece of shell in the smoke and opened a number of his scars with it. Blood drops fell towards the flames. Anxiously he watched each drop hiss into steam before touching any of the burning brands. This was good: his spells potent and protection assured. Lighting a firestick in order to preserve the strong life of this fire, he took it back and thrust it into the main campfire. His wife was still absent at the whaling station.

Lunna finally returned from the embraces of the num. She carried a bag in which twists of cloth held flour, tea and sugar. Already she had learnt to boil the dark leaves in a shell-like container which did not catch fire and to make ‘damper’ by mixing the white powder with water and spreading it on hot coals. Wooreddy found that he liked the tea especially when some of the white sand-like grains were added, but the damper stuck in his throat. He preferred seafood, when he could get it, for sometimes when he ordered his wife to go and get some she appeared not to hear. Her large dark eyes would cling to whatever she was doing and she would ignore him. Once when he asked her she continued eating a piece of damper and he took up his spear and felt the tip. It was blunt. He went to the shelter for a sharp piece of stone, then remembered the hatchet and got that instead.

After sharpening his spear, he waddled off to the hunt without a word to his wife. She watched his bottom wobbling off into the bush and smiled. It was one of the things that had attracted her to him. It added a touch of humour which helped to soften his stiff formality of manner. They had had a good relationship, but not as deep as it could have been. Perhaps it was because he belonged to a nation noted for their stiffness. She sighed and began thinking of the num.

Wooreddy, not thinking of his wife or his problems, began prowling towards a clearing which had been maintained for a long time and was still not overgrown. With his senses straining for the slightest movement or sound, he achieved a state of blissful concentration which smothered all disagreeable thought. In the clearing three large grey kangaroos hunched, nibbling at the tufts of grass. He crouched behind the trunk of a tree, thanking Great Ancestor that the wind blew in his face, though as a good hunter he had allowed for this. Wooreddy inched forward. One of the animals lifted a delicate face to peer his way. He stopped and after a few moments the animal bent its back to eat the grass. The stalking continued until Wooreddy judged himself close enough to risk a spear throw. Slowly he lifted his leg to take the shaft from between his big toe. Ever so slowly his arm rose as his leg descended at an angle to support his throw. With a lightning-fast stroke, which contrasted with his previous slowness, his spear flashed toward the prey. The force of the blow sent it sprawling onto its side. It leapt up and tried to bound away. It managed only a stagger. The long spear aborted its bound. The kangaroo recovered enough to hop away. Wooreddy trotted after the animal.

In the sudden joy at his success, he had forgotten his club, but no matter. He ran on in his curious duck-like gait which appeared clumsy but was effective. He quickly came upon the animal. It turned to face its pursuer with its back protected by the trunk of a thick tree. Wooreddy picked up a piece of wood as he circled the animal. At bay, it was dangerous. One sudden upward rip of a hind leg could disembowel him. If only he had a companion such as Mangana! Alone, he devised a tactic and ran straight at the kangaroo. At the very last moment he bounded to the left. Animals were like human beings and usually favoured the right side – but not always. He breathed a sigh of relief as the animal brought up its right leg. A fatal move: before the animal could recover he had bashed the thick stick down upon its nose, then belted it on one side of the neck. Wooreddy flung the carcass across his shoulder and took it back to camp. He would feed his sons real food, and not that white junk their mother too often served up.

IV

The island and the people continued to suffer. The darkness of the night-hidden land allied itself with the hidden, green, deep fears of the ocean. Wooreddy could feel it lapping about his middle and touching him with chilly fingers, cold as the white wetness he had once felt in the inland mountains. What had that been called? turrana. Now always he could taste salt on his lips and deep down his throat. The sea had invaded his body! Th is knowledge hit him one day as he was about to step on a snake which had no right to be on the snake-free island. His foot hit the ground a metre from the coiled black body in a rush of fear imagining a hissing death. Ria Warrawah had extended the boundary of his domain to include Bruny Island. He knew this for certain as he watched the coughing demon attack the few remaining people. Ria Warrawah sucked up souls and amid the vast sighing danger what could he do but chant the old protection spells, gash into his body extra-potent strength marks, carry about relics of the long dead, and hope – hope and watch the sun rise on another cloudy day of hopelessness? Day fell into day, and his numbness became a kangaroo-skin bag to hold his ever-growing panic. He told himself over and over again that he was destined to be a survivor – but, as he cast a glazed eye over the half-dozen people still alive and suffering, even his survival came into question. To survive, yes – but into what future? It lay ahead of him as dead as a fish tossed from the ocean. Automatically, he stared at the sea as he tried to imagine that his life – though not the old traditions giving it shape and meaning – would continue on aimlessly. He sighed and stared bleakly at the num crawling like insects on the very body of the devil. Behind him he heard the coughing demon acknowledge the sigh of the ocean. The demon hacked at his wife’s chest and he could do nothing. She might eject the demon, but the odds were against it. For some reason he thought of the female, Trugernanna and this caused his mood to lift a little. She would never come to a quick end. The boat pointed in their direction. Its wooden legs swayed the body from side to side. She was every bit a survivor as he himself was. The num were coming to them. She would go on and on, just as he would go on, until the end.

In the bow of the boat a num stood and, although his body swayed unsteadily, he still managed to impart to it an attitude of eagerness and readiness for action. Wooreddy watched uncaringly. Most num sat in their boats, this one did not – so what! Still, as the boat entered the surf, he felt an urge to flee into the safety of the bush. He stayed where he was examining the crew. He saw no killing sticks. This relieved him enough to wait to see what the boat would bring.

The bottom of the boat touched the ground. This was instantly followed by a shouted order from the now-sprawling num at the grey-clad crew who grinned as they shipped their oars. At last, obeying the order, they slipped into the surf and manhandled the craft to dry sand. The head ghost scrambled up, assumed his dignity and shouted again: ‘Harder, you ruffians, pull harder there.’ The watching Wooreddy repeated the sounds sotto voce and wondered what they meant. If he had the energy, he might learn the language. The main num jumped dryshod onto the beach, saw the Aborigine and stamped toward him with hand outstretched.

The Aborigine waited for the strange intruder to reach him. The num was short with a soft body plump from many days of good eating without hunting. Short, stubby legs marched that pot-bellied trunk over the sand with dainty, precise steps lacking the finesse of the hunter. Still there was something of the stamp of a sacred dance in the steps and this gave Wooreddy an interest in the visitor. His eyes brightened as his numbness lessened. The ghost’s face, round like the moon, though unscarred, shone pink like the shoulder skin of the early morning sun. Sharp, sea-coloured eyes sought to bridge the gap between them. The ghostly eyes showed such an avid interest in him that he evaded those eyes by staring at the strange skin on the ghost’s head. From under it, his hair showed rust-coloured like a vein of red ochre in grey rock.

The num grabbed, and succeeded in capturing Wooreddy’s hand. It lay limply in the grasp, while the pink-petalled lips began fluttering out sounds which were gibberish to the man. ‘Such a poor, poor creature! Such a wretched being bereft of everything we civilised people hold dear. How right I was not to listen to my wife and friends who sought to dissuade me from this charitable and necessary task. No matter what hazard, it is truly the Lord’s work and I will persevere.’

Behind his back, the convict crew twisted their faces in mockery. Some of them had endured a visit from him in prison and were familiar with the style of his deliverance. They described it, in their colourful way, as a ‘load of shit’. Perhaps it was their felt contempt which had driven George Augustus Robinson to the greener pastures of Aboriginal welfare.

Wooreddy’s mouth hesitated on the way to a smile, then he saw the faces the convicts were pulling and grinned for the first time in months. The ghost still clung to his hand. Now he fluted: ‘Me, me Mr Robinson.’

Wooreddy’s agile mind discarded the pronouns and he repeated: ‘Meeter Ro-bin-un.’

While behind him the convicts mouthed the words and even went into a little dance, Robinson pushed his left index finger against Wooreddy’s greasy chest and, pronouncing each word slowly and distinctly, asked: ‘You, you, your, name, what?’ Loud snickers from the boat crew caused him to whirl around and shout: ‘Don’t stand around. Get that boat up on the beach’ – then he turned back to the Aborigine and repeated the words in the same fluting tone, though now edged with anger.

Wooreddy politely answered: ‘Narrah warrah (yes)’

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure, Narrah Warrah,’ the num burbled enthusiastically, not caring if he was understood by the poor matted-haired apparition which stood before him with its nakedness partially covered by a dirty blanket. He had come to save such creatures and they would understand this intuitively. Already, this Narrah Warrah knew that he was their friend.

‘I am your friend,’ he said slowly, his voice dropping to a silky softness which oozed. ‘Have no fear, Narrah Warrah’ – a snigger from the convicts whipped a snarl into his tone. ‘I have come to protect you from such scum as these ruffians behind me –’ and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Wooreddy intuitively grasped what the gesture meant. He suddenly realised that here was an ally. The self-assured, pompous little ghost before him could be used to help him survive until the end of the world.

He accepted Meeter Ro-bin-un as his very own num with the same readiness with which Robinson had accepted the fact that he was destined to save these poor, benighted people. Such a modus vivendi, lacking all the essentials of a properly understood relationship, held infinite possibilities from rich comedy to equally rich tragedy. At first, Wooreddy was overjoyed. He had found a protector and also a subject of study. He tested out the relationship by making a gesture and then walking off into the bush. He was happy to find the ghost following, but his happiness disappeared when the ghost marched past him and took the lead. Robinson was defining their relationship from the beginning.

In the camp Wooreddy’s wife, Lunna, sat naked and uncaring on a piece of blanket. The coughing demon hacked at her lungs. She didn’t even lift her head when the num bent over her, his face filled with solicitude. A short distance away, one of her sons sat chewing on a tough piece of kangaroo meat while the other sat waiting his turn. They glanced up; their eyes filled with the image of the ghost, and with a united single shriek they were away into the scrub as fast as their little legs could carry them. The father called out, ordering them to return, but the sound of their feet diminished into the distance. Now and not for the first time, he wondered how he had fathered such boys. He remembered when he was their age and the sudden deep thoughts that had slowed his feet so that he more often found himself facing danger rather than fleeing from it. They had none of the qualities he cherished. It was the fault of their foreign mother. Wooreddy refused to acknowledge that his own stuffiness and indifference might have had something to do with their behaviour patterns. He hardly ever spoke to them and often ignored his wife as well.

‘Meridee bidai lidinee loomerai,’ he said explaining the sickness of his wife, but not his lack of concern – a concern which was expressed on the face of the ghost. But even that concern vanished when Trugernanna walked into the clearing clutching in each small fist an arm of the boys. Wooreddy had not been the only one observing the num. Trugernanna, hidden in the scrub, had studied him and decided that he was unlike the ones at the whaling station on the other side of the island. There, all that they wanted to do was take her off somewhere. At first she had found it flattering, but now it was just one of those things.

Away from the num the girl often went naked, but now she wore a kangaroo skin wrapped about her full hips. This was a new style which the women had adapted. The old fashion of draping the skin over the shoulders was gone forever. Now demure in her rough skirt she shot a glance at the ghost and caught his look of approval. They liked females to be covered below the waist for most of the time.

George Augustus Robinson, destined by God to make the Aborigines the most interesting and profitable part of his life, leered at the forbidden fruits of the bare-breasted maiden who conjured up romantic visions of beautiful South Sea islands where missionaries laboured for the salvation of delightful souls. On this island and on the larger one of Van Diemen’s Land, he too would be such a missionary. He went into his ‘Me, Mr Robinson’ routine and this time received a better response. The girl had been around the whalers and sawyers long enough to pick up quite a few words of the ghost language. She replied that her name was Trugernanna and set Robinson right in regard to the name of Wooreddy. In return Robinson smiled an expression which held more than that of the good shepherd at long last finding an intelligent sheep.

She spoke to Wooreddy and enlightened him about the num. Finally he had the proof that the ghost was indeed an ally. As Robinson quaintly informed Trugernanna: ‘Me look after you, give you food, clothing – bad white man no longer hurt you.’ And as the girl just as quaintly echoed: ‘Bad num no longer hurt us’ as she took the protector’s hand and gazed up into his face with all the adoration of a child – though the fullness of her breasts belied the pose. Wooreddy found himself ignored. It annoyed him that the woman had captured all the ghost’s attention. After all Meeter Ro-bin-un was his ally too!

V

Wooreddy and Trugernanna helped Lunna and the two children to shift along the coast to where Meeter Ro-bin-un had had erected a ghost shelter. It was right on the channel and at night they could see, gleaming across the water, the lights of the main num settlement. Robinson wished to acquire a working knowledge of the Bruny language and took every opportunity to learn from the people. He did not offer to teach them his language in return. This would come later. But the Aborigines had realised that they needed to know the ghost language and they too took every opportunity to learn new words and sentences. They found that the main difficulty was in the pronunciation, unlike Robinson who floundered in the complicated grammar structuring Bruny. He never did advance beyond a form of creole, though by this time so few people were left who spoke the language that it did not matter.

The Aborigines soon discovered that their ally considered himself superior to them. They were to be ‘children’ to his ‘father’. The girl fell easily into the role expected and the word ‘fader’ constantly fell from her lips when Robinson was within hearing. But Wooreddy felt insulted. After all he was a full citizen, not only of his own nation, but of the South West too, and had he not collected, debated and even on one occasion refined a point of law regarding a custom of his people! He was a prominent citizen and a biological father to boot. What was this Ro-bin-un? . . . Then he saw and felt the sickness all around him and surrendered. It seemed a small price to pay for survival.

‘Fader’ gave him some white powder for his wife’s sickness. He mixed it in water and gave it to her to drink. It did no good. She was so weak that she could not sit up. Her body flamed with fever, and to ease her suffering Wooreddy took a sharp piece of glass (shell was a thing of the past) and slashed the most painful parts of her body. The bad blood ran out. For a few days Lunna seemed better, then she had a relapse and died. Wooreddy performed the last rites and sent her soul on the first stage of the journey to Great Ancestor. Then his eldest son caught the coughing sickness and followed his mother into the fire. Wooreddy looked at his youngest son, acknowledged his responsibility, and decided to help him to survive.

Meeter Ro-bin-un did not like anyone going around naked like a human. He wanted everyone to cover their bodies as the ghosts did. ‘Novillee, novillee’ (not good, not good), he repeated over and over again to them in his atrocious accent. Wooreddy could see nothing wrong in showing the maturity of his manhood. What was wrong for the male to do was to neglect the hair. He took great care in keeping his locks smeared with the heavy ointment made from whale oil and red ochre. But now as he was going to see ‘Fader’, he pulled on a long shirt and then stuck a feather in his hair.

‘Fader’ met him with the outstretched hand which Wooreddy politely touched. He explained that he wished ‘Fader’ to take care of his remaining child and almost recoiled at the avid joy with which the child was received. To Robinson this was an important breakthrough. He wanted to separate the few remaining children from their heathen parents so that they could be educated free from bad examples. Now he complained of those bad examples to Wooreddy. They were not to wander where they wished, but were to stay with him, their only protector. Wooreddy replied as best he could in a mixture of Bruny and Ghost. He was stripping his language down to the bare essentials in order to be understood. All the honorifics, family designations and different grammatical constructions he would have used in conversing with a person belonging to the highly stratified Bruny society were unnecessary. The result sounded barbaric in his ears, but it did serve the purpose he had designed it for. And so he replied in this broken Bruny: ‘Trugernanna, Dray, Pagerly maggera raege logana mobbali nunne’ (The three women have gone off to the other num for the last three nights). In the same style, though using a number of Ghost-words, he described the death of his wife and eldest son. He complained of the coughing demon and of how the island had become a place of evil. Meeter Ro-bin-un said: ‘Nonsense!’ Then he hinted (that is, if Wooreddy understood correctly) that they might be leaving shortly on a long trip. Wooreddy questioned him and verified it. They were indeed going on a long trip. How he longed to be away from this evil place! The tie between earth and man had been broken and he never wanted to return.

Meeter Ro-bin-un decided to go and save the three women from the ruffians at the whaling station. He dragged Wooreddy off with him. After he had slowed from the mad dash with which he started things, he pointed out shrubs and expected Wooreddy to give him their names in Bruny. After this he began to talk on things close to Wooreddy’s heart, though he would never realise this. He talked down to Wooreddy on religion and much to his surprise found that these children of nature had some faint inkling of a creator god. Wooreddy equated the Christian god with Great Ancestor and gave the name: Parllerde. Robinson tried to elicit further information on their primitive religious beliefs, but the primitive form of communication he was using collapsed under the weight of abstractions. He did manage to learn that they also had the concept of the devil, called Ria Warrawah. This gladdened his heart, for now he had the two necessary terms for him to begin preaching the gospel to them.

The whaling station was a clutch of ill-shaped wooden sheds about a few large iron pots used for boiling down the blubber. Robinson marched right into the centre of the station, recoiled from the smell of rotting whale flesh, then recovered himself as the manager bustled toward him. Wooreddy, forgotten, hung in the background, his eyes moving in search of the women.

‘Mr Robinson, I assume,’ the manager said in the direction of the on-coming Robinson who, steaming with all the righteous wrath of the Lord of Hosts, immediately began the offensive.

‘Sir, it is disgusting, too disgusting for words,’ he spluttered, fighting to control his pronunciation. ‘Sir, ‘ow can you allow your men to take advantage of these poor creatures? Sir, it won’t be permitted, I ’ave t’ear ob t’gov’nor –’ He paused to recover himself. ‘Never fear, it shall be in my report. It won’t be permitted sir, it won’t be!’

The manager, recovering from his surprise, replied coldly in a middle-class accent to which Robinson was practising to attain. ‘What won’t be, Mr Robinson, and what exactly are you talking about?’

‘Native women have been enticed into your station.’

‘Enticed, enticed, that’s a new word to describe it. Sir, we cannot rid ourselves of them.’

‘Sir, if you read the gazette you will know that His Excellency, Governor George Arthur, has placed me in charge of these creatures. I have them in charge, sir! It is my duty to look after their welfare and to protect them from such types as your men. It is my duty to protect them, and protect them I shall!’

While the ghosts shouted at each other, Wooreddy wandered off. He looked inside the hut where the women stayed, or were put, when they visited the whaling station. They were not there. He looked down onto the ground to find the newest set of tracks, but the dust was too smudged for him to read the time. He returned to the two ghosts and waited for a silent moment to break into their wrangle. At last he made himself understood that the women were not there. Meeter Ro-bin-un stamped off, streaming words to the effect that he would send letters officially to each European ordering them not to interfere with the native women, or men for that matter, Wooreddy caught the words ‘this letter’ and remembered that they referred to the strange lines of abstract shapes which the num drew on thin sheets of bark called ‘paper’. When ‘Fader’ had cooled down enough he tactlessly asked about ‘this letter’ and set him off again. He shouted out to the trees: ‘I’ll haddress ha circular letter to heach and hevery un o’ t’ese reprobates. I will not hallow t’em to co’abit wit t’a native females. I’ll put a stop to i, t’at I twill.’ Then he pulled himself together and in a clearer voice patiently explained to the good doctor that ‘this letter’ was magic and so was the bark called ‘paper’. ‘Put pen to paper,’ he declared, ‘and the waggon begins to roll and the house to be built.’ This mystified Wooreddy still further. Finally gesture and repeated num words got the meaning across. How childlike they were, Robinson thought while the good doctor politely acknowledged the magic of the symbols scratched onto a thin sheet of bark with a stick dipped in charcoal. They might well be magic, he thought, declaring: ‘Neire this paper, neire this letter; good this paper, good this letter.’

‘Extremely good, Wooreddy,’ ‘Fader’ agreed holding the man’s hand in his own pale paw. ‘We will put a stop to this immorality,’ he said squeezing the hand.

Wooreddy smiled in the warmth, nodded vigorously and urged: ‘send this letter, send this paper.’

Robinson returned to the hut and wrote and wrote. Nothing happened; the women did not return. Finally Mangana got up one morning and ambled off in the direction of the whaling station. His daughter had been gone too long and he missed seafood and num-food. Wooreddy wandered off after him. Both returned after a week, but the women refused to come with them. Wooreddy began to doubt the efficacy of ‘this letter’ and ‘this paper’. He began to pester ‘Fader’ with a continuing wail of ‘Send this letter; send this paper, Fader and they will come’.

The ghost had spent long hours in acquiring his style of writing; and though it had been some time since the Governor had acknowledged his report or sent instructions, he still believed in the power of the written word just as he believed that faith would move mountains. Still he decided that he would personally deliver his next report and stir things up. Already he felt bored at being stuck on the island for over three months. He was a man of action and longed to be up and about. ‘Things are about to happen,’ he assured Wooreddy, as he bent his head to continue scrawling the long words of a long and tedious report.

In their own good time the women finally limped back to the camp. After a day or so they planned to go fishing. Wooreddy had found to his dismay that the attractions of not having a woman were countered by the attractions of having a woman. In short, he needed a new wife. Women could brave the ocean and endure its cold pressure while they prised off abalone or grabbed the crayfish crawling along the very sea bottom. Trugernanna, young and agile, squat and strong, was a powerful swimmer who enjoyed her mastery of the watery element. She could fill this hole in his life. After thinking overlong in his usual fashion, at last he approached her father to see if his offer still stood.

Mangana seemed to have become all grey – his hair, his beard and even his skin was grey. He sat at his fire watching a few roots called ‘potatoes’, which Meeter Ro-bin-un gave out, darkening in the ashes of the fire. Wooreddy once had liked sitting with the old man, but since the ghost had arrived he had spent much less time with him. Mangana seemed senile and it was difficult to speak to him. In reply to sentences he usually grunted or muttered a single word or strung words together in meaningless sentences. Still he had to ask the old man’s permission – he did so and waited and waited. At last the old man shifted his eyes from the fat possum Wooreddy had placed next to him and began to speak without the ceremonial opening which tradition had once demanded.

‘Ahaha, Ria Warrawah, the darkness fleeing. My wives, my children – all but one gone! How dark the day is – and Trugernanna friends with those from Ria Warrawah. The Islands of the Dead! Does she wish to jump up over there where even the water is white and cold? Great Ancestor sits at his campfire in a sunny land and waits. Things are as they were, ever changing. They sicken and die on this island once our homeland. The dead roam whining in the night and it is best to leave them with the ghosts. That is right!’

Mangana fell into an ocean of sorrows and the younger man shared his pain. Then he began to speak again.

‘Trugernanna, an ocean girl, a sea girl, a lover of ghosts. A ghost girl, a pale girl, she will live on longer than all of us. Go and eat her food, go and love her loveless body, go and share whatever she will offer. You and she are both foolish enough to want life. It is for both of you and some of it will be enjoyable. Tomorrow is but a day away from Great Ancestor, he lives in me

The old man rambled on for an hour allowing the younger man to share the past of his life laid out in words and silences, gestures and feelings and things beyond Wooreddy’s ken. When he left he felt himself floating in the old man’s memories, but he had promised to bring him a fat doe kangaroo as payment for permission to court Trugernanna.

VI

‘MOTTO NYRAE PAKLERDI MOTTI NOVILEI RAEGEWRAPPA. PARLERDI MAGGERA WARRANGELLI, RAEGEWRAPPA MAGGERA TOOGENNA UENEE. NYRAE PARLEWAR LOGERNA TAGGERA TEENI LAWWAI WARRANGELLE PARLERDI NYRAE, NYRAE RAEGE LOGERNA TAGGERA TEENNI LAWWAI WARRANGELLI; NOVILLI PARLERWAR LOGERNA TAGGERA TEENI TOOGUNNA RAEGEWROPPA UENEE MAGGERA UENEE...’

‘Fader’ stopped his somewhat premature attempt at a sermon in Bruny and rose in eloquence and competence as he continued on in Ghost. His flow of moral rhetoric was directed at his convict servants carefully segregated from those he called his ‘sable friends’.

One of his ‘sable friends’ had been stealing glances at another ‘sable friend’ throughout the attempt at Bruny. With the abrupt change in language, Wooreddy switched his mind off Trugernanna and onto the words he had heard. Within them must reside some sort of meaning. They seemed to mean that if you were good, that is, kept the laws of the Bruny Islanders, on death or after death you travelled along the sky-trail to where Great Ancestor had his camp; but if you were bad, that is, did not follow the customs, you stayed below in the sea or dark hollows with Ria Warrawah, All in all, if he had interpreted the mishmash of words correctly Meeter Ro-bin-un had just given a very simple account of the Bruny Island religion. ‘Fader’ also had seemed to imply that ghosts too could travel along the skyway, but this was wrong. Ghosts came from the Islands of the Dead {a halfway stop on the way to Great Ancestor) and when they left Bruny Island they would return there. But the good doctor, not content with the apparent meaning, sought a deeper and more esoteric meaning.

‘Fader’ could be relating a part of his own past as a human being. Then he had been ‘bad’ and thus after death failed in his attempt to reach Great Ancestor. Now his present life was a warning to all humans not to go astray. Using his excellent memory he recalled Robinson’s words to check if they fitted with his interpretation.

‘One good Great Ancestor; one bad demon. Great Ancestor, good! Great Ancestor stop sky; demon stop below fire (this must mean that he stayed in the dark places of the earth and ocean). Good men dead go road up sky. Good RAEGE (perhaps num or ghosts) dead go road up sky (perhaps this was a rhetorical question?). Bad men dead go road below (across the sea to the Island of the dead, this meant). Demon, fire, stop fire.’ These last words puzzled the good doctor; tentatively they meant that the demon (Ria Warrawah) hated fire and always tried to extinguish it.

‘Fader’s’ voice ceased its rolling and only the sound of the surf continued. Wooreddy left his musings and noticed that the num’s eyes glittered (he still could not think of the ocean without a qualm) like the sun shining off the sea.

Meeter Ro-bin-un was enraptured by the eloquence of his own sermon. He raised his arms and spread them as Wooreddy neared, and exclaimed into the blank faces of the convicts: ‘Come, my child, God has not forgotten you. Poor pitiful child from a pitiful race friendless and alone in a dark and hostile world. Now you too have a father just as I have a father in heaven.’

‘Yeh, fader,’ the childman replied, as the ghost’s rapturous eyes clung to him for some sign of recognition. ‘Yeh, fader,’ he repeated, taking the opportunity to try out his pronunciation.

If the man’s repeated two words were not enough for the ghost, Trugernanna’s seeming rapture equalled his own. She stood beside him, her face uplifted, her brown eyes fixed on his nose while her small body trembled under the sack-like dress she wore. Such obvious adoration elicited from Robinson a deep red flush which had little to do with religious ecstasy.

He found himself feeling the same temptation he belaboured in others – but, unlike the others (he told himself) he would never take advantage of the trusting natures of these child-like creatures. He moved closer to Wooreddy and was relieved that the woman did not follow him. Then in the need to put space between desire and the object of desire, he indicated to the man that he wished to go to the narrow neck uniting the northern and southern parts of the island.

Wooreddy picked up his spear as Robinson raced off at a fast trot into the undergrowth. The man would have liked to question the ghost about the sermon, but the fast waddle he was forced to keep up made his breath rush in and out of his lungs like, like – again a sea simile came to trouble him – seawater in a narrow inlet. At last, and none too soon for the gasping Wooreddy, ‘Fader’ halted his headlong plunge, which had rendered him as desireless as his companion breathless. Wooreddy flopped down beside a bush and to excuse himself told the ghost that kangaroos liked to eat it. Robinson too took the opportunity to catch his breath. Wooreddy, after giving the num the names of a few other plants, took the opportunity to get onto his problem. ‘Lubra logemer piggerder nene,’ he began in the pidgin dialect he had labelled ‘Ro-bin-un’ after its inventor. ‘Fader’s ruddy face assumed an expression of concern as he heard the man mention his dead mate, and Wooreddy, observing that he had aroused the correct feeling, continued on to explain how a human male without a female was lost; he felt like that and had fixed on Trugernanna for a mate.

‘Fader’ smiled, and his mood and expression switched to jocular. ‘You would like to have that one, eh? Can’t say that I blame you. Might be good for her too! Keep her away from those ruffians at the whaling station. She’ll make you a good wife,’ rambled Robinson, and unfortunately brought Trugernanna to mind. His evil inclinations returned, and instantly his short stubby legs churned, rushing him away from his goal. Wooreddy waddled after him. Luckily he had tied a charmed cord around his leg for energy – but not for speed, he found, as he lagged more and more behind Robinson as he charged towards the sea. The num came up against the steep slope of a hill and perforce had to slow his pace. He was clambering up as Wooreddy reached the foot. Higher and higher they climbed and slower and slower went Robinson until his companion caught up with him. They climbed up and over the summit, then down and along a wide crack below the lip of a cliff. Wooreddy shuddered and avoided glancing down at the lashing ocean which filled his ears, whooshing like his breath. His nostrils filled with sea-smell and his bare feet and ghost-skin leg coverings dripped from the hurtling spray. Then they were rushing off inland along a stream which rapidly became a swamp. Wooreddy became bogged in the clinging mud and left his trousers behind. Free of them he almost skimmed over the sticky mud. Now they scrambled up another hill, but this time the man had found his second breath and took the lead from the ghost. He even helped him over the steepest places and slyly when they reached the summit began a wide circle which would take them back to the camp. The sun was hidden by thick clouds and Robinson did not notice until the brush thinned, then he headed them towards the sea.

They came out onto the beach where a sharpened pile of rocks stood just offshore. The wind had died and Wooreddy felt that he could look at the stretch of water. It seemed less menacing. Tiny wavelets felt the sand grains and fell back. He saw three women standing on a low rock just above sea level. Each had a woven bag slung over the left shoulder. They climbed up the rock pile to stand sharply etched against the sky. Wooreddy recognised the lithe figure of Trugernanna – and so did Robinson! The woman held herself as straight as a child’s toy spear, and the man decided that her small, pointed breasts were large enough to feed a manchild just as her hips were wide enough to give one birth. Robinson pushed down any carnal thoughts and sought to see the scene before him as an idyllic painting.

The women, in formation, flung themselves headfirst at the sea. Wooreddy gave a gasp. Such daring, he thought. Though the scene was very familiar, it always filled him with dread. Few men, if any, would have the nerve, or the courage, or potent enough charms, to dive headfirst into the domain of Ria Warrawah. The very idea gave him goosebumps. The women did not appear and he grew alarmed. No one was safe in the sea! Then their three cropped heads bobbed in the water, and towing full bags, they slowly made their way towards the beach.

Robinson’s mouth went dry and his ruddy face paled as the women rose like succubi from hell to tempt him with all the dripping nakedness of firm brown flesh.

‘God, let this chalice pass from me, let me not succumb to temptation and the snares of the evil one,’ he whispered hoarsely as the dainty Trugernanna came to him, smiling around the wooden chisel clenched between her strong white teeth. The man with the ghost was more interested in the weight and content of the woman’s bag. It bulged with oysters, and poking up from the bottom a large crayfish quivered spasmodically.

‘Good, good, Fader,’ Wooreddy exclaimed to the ghost.

‘Very good,’ the num replied, meaning not the harvest of the woman, but her body.

The object of attention was very conscious of Wooreddy’s smile and the direction of his eyes. With his male gone to the fire, he would be after a replacement. She scowled into his eyes, then turned to the silent Robinson and mock-snarled: ‘No kangaroo, no possum, no man!’ The good doctor smiled after her retreating buttocks. These words marked the beginning of their courtship. After all, she knew his skill as a hunter!

Trugernanna went to where her father sat cross-legged before his fire. She watched him watch a glowing coal fade and die. She only saw the coal fading, but he saw his people dying. One by one, two by two, three by three and more, they went, some quickly, some slowly to Great Ancestor or to Ria Warrawah. So Mangana thought, but his daughter had little concern for the contents of the old man’s mind and his morose lines of thought. Very much the physical person, she enjoyed things she could touch and affect, and ignored anything like the wispy mind-traces of the aging. Now she stoked up the fire, waited until the sticks had become glowing coals, then put on them the large crayfish and around it a number of oysters. When the shell of the crustacean had turned the red of the best imported ochre and the shells of the oysters gaped open like so many little mouths, she carefully removed them and put them on a piece of bark which she placed in front of her father. He stared at the food for an overlong minute, then broke off the tail and legs. He pushed the rest toward the girl. She ate, then went off to gather wood to last the fire throughout the night. Since that man, Wooreddy, the one with the funny walk, had given her father a num axe, she could even chop up the larger logs. Still they had been so long in this place that good, dry timber was becoming scarce. Carrying the last armful back, she found the man sitting with her father. This was not unusual, nor were the two possums roasting on the fire. She was surprised when she found that one of the possums was for her. Breaking the fragile body apart, she found inside a tiny baby. She popped the morsel into her mouth, enjoying the sweetest of all flavours.

Unlike other nights, Mangana retired early to his shelter. The two were alone at the fire. Trugernanna scowled into the flames, completely ignoring the man. They sat in silence for an hour, then the woman shot a hostile glance at Wooreddy and got up to make a fire in front of her sleeping quarters. She returned, put a large log on the main campfire, checked the supply of wood in front of her shelter, then went to bed.

The good doctor sat on at the fire. At last he moved. Not getting to his feet he hopped like a kangaroo towards where Trugernanna lay. The last few metres he covered in such exaggerated stealth that he managed to crack a twig. The sharp snap alerted the woman who was pretending to be asleep. She lay still until the man reached out a finger to scratch her on one firm breast, then she sprang up with a whispered string of curses: ‘Get away, you ghost, you demon, you evil spirit. My father will take his knife and make a woman out of you, you mistake of a man that cannot even find the carcass of a rotting kangaroo for the bride price. Go and find a man to fit your womanhood. Go, or I’ll scream for my father!’

Wooreddy’s teeth gleamed in the firelight. The good doctor knew the stages of courtship. On the first night should be only a slight touch, or if possible a scratch; on the second, the suitor might move his hand over part of the woman’s body; and on the third, he could try to lie beside her – though this (unless they were already lovers) should be met with lamentation, the woman should threaten to do away with herself rather than stay with him. On the fourth night, the woman flees to sleep beside her mother and father, and repeats this on the succeeding night. On the sixth night the couple finally lie together, but without touching, and after an hour or so the man should leave in mock dismay and anger. They stay apart on the seventh night, but at dawn the woman glides into the bush and after a time the man follows her. They spend a few days away from the camp with the male showing his prowess as a hunter by keeping the bride supplied with food. If all goes well, they return married. Such was the tradition and both had the theory down pat. Trugernanna found herself enjoying the rituals which were heightening her emotions to the final point of relief in surrender.

Mangana was too listless to play the role of both father and mother, or even just the father. His daughter, as custom demanded, needing someone who would listen to her bewailing her fate, chose Meeter Ro-bin-un. If Wooreddy appeared in her sight, she immediately sought out her protector, her cheeks wet with tears. She accused the man of being a demon and even of killing his first wife. ‘Fader’ became overheated with the excited girl hanging from his neck while she tearfully sobbed out some wild accusation. Constantly, he had, figuratively, to take himself by the scruff of that same neck and force himself to play the role of father. The good doctor had filled ‘Fader’ in on his part and Wooreddy himself also had a role to play. One moment he smiled meaningfully at the woman, the next he crept up on her unawares, gestured angrily and acted as if he would carry her off by force. At other times he would scowl and turn away if he so much as glimpsed her. The nights moved along until by the fifth everything and everyone had become entangled in the mock drama of the courtship. Wooreddy often found himself trying to hide a partial or full erection. The num trousers helped, but also hindered – the woman should notice in mock horror and show contempt for his erect penis.

The sixth and seventh nights were a time of trial for the good doctor. Fully aroused, he tried to grab his future mate, but she easily evaded his clutches. On the final dawn she ran off into the bush. Wooreddy filled in the waiting time by sharpening his spear or attempting to sharpen it. At last he raced off into the bush at the spot where he had last seen the woman. He found her tracks, lost them, found them again and eventually caught a glimpse of his prey through the trees. She had discarded her ghost wrappings and was her bare, lithe self. Now she disappeared and he could find no trace of her. Suddenly she materialised at his feet and sprang off. He followed closely.

Trugernanna came to the edge of a low cliff and scrambled down a narrow path which led to a shallow cave. This was to be the bridal suite. Num blankets had been spread over the rock floor for them. She sat down and ignored Wooreddy when he entered.

Finally, still looking at the floor, she muttered: ‘A strong man would have carried food; a clever man would have found food.’

‘A man in pursuit of game does not carry provisions with him,’ Wooreddy answered, giving the standard response. He left to hunt.

It was not until late afternoon that he returned with six young possums. In his absence she had made a fire, but he had to cook the food. He did so, passed her half, waited until she had sampled it, then ate also. After eating, she went to the nearby stream for water and came back with a filled container from which he drank – then, unable to keep his hands off her, he grabbed. She struggled as he pressed his body against hers.

‘Leave me alone, you’ll hurl me,’ the woman protested to no avail. She fell on her back as he entered her, then waited for him to begin as he waited for her. Wooreddy did not know that Trugernanna had only endured the rough embraces of ghosts, and so many older women had died that she had remained ignorant of the different sexual positions. The man, almost twice her age and having already had one woman go to the fire, wondered at her lack of knowledge and movement. He decided to use the ‘open legs’ variations. They were simple enough for a novice to master and later they could progress to such variations as ‘riding the canoe’, ‘climbing aboard’, ‘from the back’, ‘across’, and so on.

The good doctor moved onto his right side and kept the girl on her back. Now he twisted her hips towards him and re-entered her. He pulled her top leg towards his shoulder and began a slow rhythm. This was the first step and a modification of the classical beginning. The woman remained on her back, but now he squatted right against her buttocks with both her legs over his shoulders. Holding her around the shoulders he began a faster rhythm, slowed, and moved into another position. Now both lay on their sides facing each other. Leaving out further variations he returned to the first position and contented himself with varying the rhythm.

Trugernanna was bewildered by so much movement. She had not experienced anything like it before. It reminded her a little of dancing. Then the man, now her mate, gave a long sigh which pushed his body into a series of jerks. She felt his nails digging into her back and marking out a line of half moons. Wooreddy had chosen a straight line rather than a curved one, as this was the good luck sign for a future filled with food. A curve meant a wish for children; an oval, faithfulness – both these things meant little in these times.

The woman accepted her fate with a numbness worthy of Wooreddy. In the past she had found sex to be a weapon useful for survival and felt little pleasure in it. She gave her body in exchange for things and that was where the importance lay. Her husband’s love-making meant less than the rape that had been inflicted on her. She hated the men for doing that, and was indifferent to what Wooreddy could or would do.

Tradition ordained that the husband take his new wife over his land, explaining the landscape and earning her respect by showing his prowess as a hunter. Trugernanna watched her husband, armed only with a club, stalk a kangaroo, bring it to bay against a tree, then race in to deal the death blow. She appreciated the deftness that belied his seemingly clumsy gait. Each day Wooreddy made love to his wife, but her lack of response began to bore him. After all, he was a doctor with a knowledge of love-making and he had already been married. Now it all seemed for nought. Finally he accepted the fact that they were together, not for love, but for survival. One needed allies during the ending of the world, and he had coupled himself with Trugernanna and Meeter Ro-bin-un. This had to be enough, he thought, as he led his new wife back to the camp.