Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 9

Prologue

January 16, 2016

The shadows in The Wall have voices that never go away. When no one’s there, they don’t lie dormant, but travel, seeking out safe passage with any Wuku, young, old, sick or well, near and far. For the first 50,000 years, the songlines bounced happily in and around the maze of basalt walls. But for the last hundred or so, they have echoed the world, searching, searching, rarely finding a place to rest; and as far as I know, these days, they pretty much have to settle for me.

To help them rest back home, I mind-travel my way behind the main homestead and follow the track around to where the trees start to meet overhead. I love this part where the air turns cool and leopard trees puff breezes at each other. Around a few bends, the trees turn into paperbarks, tempting you to follow them downhill to the creek. But if you take the track north, through the gate and skirt Styx Lake, Burdekin plums promise sweet treats and lure you up a pretty sandstone rise and straight into the clutches of our endemic can’t-go-back-bush. These days, this clump is mostly hacked away from the path, so you can travel freely. But it heralds the start of basalt land and the lava tubes that 190 millennia ago collapsed to form God’s own country for the Wuku, and Hell on earth for everyone else.

You are the only one I can trust with this. I’m so full of a weird mixture of self-doubt imbued with an arrogance in the belief that so few have the capacity to understand, appreciate really. But I know if there’s something there to be understood, something to be found out, you will help me find it, and you will judge me kindly; not condemn, at least.

So many memories implore me to start with them. There’s the memory of first light every day touching the mint green walls. The memory of travelling through time with my mother, learning about The Wall, learning about the shadows and my wallabies, my very own bridled nailtail wallabies. I remember the feeling of water, so much water, deliciously touching me all over, selflessly.

Then there’s the memory of his sweat, the smell of his sweat—sweet rancid cow manure caught in synthetic trousers. And of the dust, lingering a long time after he drives down to the road, and warning long before his return. And the chorus of floorboards from the kitchen promising a lot, but always veering to another agenda. And fear, always fear. The latter isn’t an isolated memory, more a general permeation, flavouring everything, for me; distorting perhaps, shaping definitely.

Memoirs are really stepping stones of our lives. They pinpoint our journey down to a few isolated events, occasions, reflections. But I’ve never felt that any few of these or even a million can tell it properly. There are always too many people involved: too many tangents, too many perspectives. All the pivotal points in our lives involve others—in some cases involving their pivotal points too; in others, some mundane decision about some random thing equates to a pivotal point for us.

After she left The Styx, after my mother Rose left home, in the earliest of early days before I could type, I saved her life through my thoughts, remembering as much as I could of her every day, of our life together. But that wasn’t enough. Just in case I forgot something, I dreamt my memories too, and I swallowed my dreams. Then I was sure I’d done all I could to save her.

Since then, I’ve spent years, more than a decade now, mulling over what to use, what to say, what not to say, how much damage the truth will cause, how much I really care, or why I should. It’s become a mire of shifting uncertainty. I’m determined to publish this memoir, but in terms of facing the world with it, you are the only one I feel I can trust. You know what you’ll be dealing with. I feel you are the only one who would be prepared to let my truth speak—but I will understand if you’d rather not.

Thank you again for your flowers. I think of you often,

Love, Sophie