Читать книгу Capricornia - Xavier Herbert - Страница 10

THE life of an infant is like a passage over a gigantic strip of carpet that rolls out ahead and up behind as one goes on, hiding the future and obliterating the past. While living with Fat Anna little Nawnim was aware of no other state of existence. Flying Fox and its associations had faded from his mind. The world was the region visible from the humpy, its people the crabs and snipe and occasional crocodile that haunted the shores of Devilfish Bay, and Anna herself, and her Japs an’ Chows, and the devil-devil of the railway-yards, and the few brave whitemen who worked there.

He spent with Anna what seemed to him a lifetime, but was in fact ten days. Then one night Jock and Mark and Chook came, appearing to him like monsters materialised out of a forgotten nightmare. That was the day before the mail-train’s fortnightly trip to Copper Creek. Next morning Anna woke him early, washed and fed and dressed him with more than usual care, then carried him up to and through the Yards to a whitewashed iron shed that bore on a board in great black letters the name PORT ZODIAC. He himself carried a newspaper-parcel containing a pawpaw and a huge beef-sandwich and a lump of toffee. He knew he was going somewhere, having been told so repeatedly by Anna, but cared about it not at all, supposing that she was going with him.

A noisy crowd of people of all the primary colours of humanity and of most of the tints obtainable by miscegenation was gathered about the train, moving freely, with neither platforms nor officials to impede it. Somewhat to Nawnim’s consternation, Anna shouldered through the crowds, chatting with people as she went, and pushed about till she found Mark and Chook and Jock Driver. While she was talking to these monsters, each vainly tried his hand at petting Nawnim, who would not take from any hand but Anna’s even the large bag of lollies Mark had brought him. At length Jock gave Anna some money and a pinch on the rump. Then she went off with Nawnim, past the three coaches provided for superior passengers, to the trucks at the front, where the crowd was entirely black. She squeezed him for a while, and kissed and petted him, then passed him to a blackboy. Before he was properly aware of his transfer, he was swung into the air. His heart stopped. A momentary glimpse of the jostling crowd, a last sight of Anna’s face; then he was dropped into an open truck.

A sense of desolation smote him. He would have bawled and hammered on the wall before him had he not suddenly become aware of the presence of three black naked piccaninnies and a large mangy mongrel dog, all of whom stared at him so hard that he forgot his forming purpose in staring back. Then the dog attacked him, writhing with friendliness, knocked him down, licked him, tore open his parcel, gobbled his bread-and-beef. The piccaninnies pounced on the rolling pawpaw. He had the wits to grab the sweets.

He had no time to recall the desolation. Scarcely had he recovered from the welcome when the locomotive came. It came horribly, rumbling and grumbling and clanking and hissing, all the more horribly because it could not be seen. All the piccaninnies stiffened. Their faces became blank. Their eyes widened and assumed expressions of sightlessness that told of full sensory powers flung into the one of tense audition. The locomotive stopped, so close that its hot breath choked the listeners and its frightful noises entered their very hearts.

A terrible voice——“Good-o——ease-up!”

Hsssssssssssss!

The voice——“Wha——ho there!”

Crash! The couplings clanked throughout the train. The children fell. The black ones howled at top of lungs. Nawnim was silent, clinging desperately to the struggling dog. They rose together, to stand huddled like yarded sheep. Hiss and bubble and clatter and chatter and bunkerlunk behind them and around.

Then to the sudden great delight of the black ones, their parents climbed over the side. Nawnim turned from watching wild embracings to look for Anna. He was watching when a bell clanged. One of the children shrieked, as though the brazen tongue had struck on flesh. Nawnim gasped.

The voice——“Aller—bo—ud!”

Sounds waxed louder, reached a climax, suddenly stilled. Then pheeeeeeeeep! And the voice——“Rightaway Fitz—ledder go!”

Dead silence—silence presaging a dire event. Nawnim’s knees knocked.

Then a Shriek——a Hssss——then Snort! Snort! Snort! The truck leapt under Nawnim’s feet. He reeled, clutching at the wall. Then the engine shrieked again, and hissed and raged and roared and filled the truck with smoke and steam and cinders.

Nawnim fell on the dog, which yelped and snapped. Chaos raged in the undercarriage. Wheels groaned and squealed and thumped. Chains and drawbars rattled and crashed. No piccaninny shrieked louder then than Nawnim. He thought it was The End.

A few sound whacks from a hard black hand soon told him that he was alive and with his kind. The black hand lifted him from the floor and dumped him in a sitting posture by the wall. Overhead reeled black and white clouds in a sapphire sky, and rocky walls and grass and trees, all dancing madly.

After a while his terror subsided. Rain poured down and proved his condition earthly at least. Rain roared and raged down. The truck would have been filled to the top but for the gaping holes in its bottom. Then the sun beat down and charged the soaking truck with steam and the stench of sweating flesh. By now little Nawnim had found a crack in the wall he leant against. He examined it carefully to be assured that it was no inlet for danger, then set an eye to it, to see a world of trees go spinning by in a wild arboreal corroboree. A red wall leapt at him. He gasped and hastily withdrew. But nothing happened; so he peeped again, and stared and stared and was amazed.

The train roared over culverts rocking, clattered over bridges shuddering, panted up inclines clanking, raged down declivities rattling as though falling to pieces. Swollen creeks flew underneath; jungles flashed by; stony hills leapt out of grassy plains and plunged into forests; flocks of geese swept up from swamps; a herd of buffalo charged into the bush; while little Nawnim stared and stared and was amazed.

Back from the engine with the din and smoke and soot and steam were flung the chink of glass and the sound of whitemen’s voices raised in song; and similar sounds joined the whirlwind that followed the van; for the progress of the train to Copper Creek was not so much a business as a pleasure, not so much a journey as a locomotive picnic for the passengers and crew.

Sometimes the engine stopped for water, or to drop stores at fettlers’ camps, or to accumulate the steam to take it up a heavy grade. It was an old machine and badly strained and prodigal of its vitality. On account of the prodigality, stops were sometimes made to give the fireman a rest and a chance to damp with something from a bottle the fire he stoked within himself while feeding the greedy furnace. And at least two stops were made while the engineer went back with water to extinguish fires that had broken out in axle-boxes missed by the Inspector of Rolling-Stock. When the train was stopped, the clinking and singing could be heard to better advantage by the people in the trucks, who looked towards the source and licked their sooty lips.

So the hours passed. Little Nawnim, worn out in body and mind by buffetings and sights and sounds, at length fell asleep with head on the weary dog. And while he slept the niggers ate his sweets.

At two o’clock in the afternoon the train bowled over the Caroline River Bridge and rolled into the 80-Mile Siding, just as Mrs Pansy McLash, the keeper of the Siding House, was flogging a herd of goats from her garden. The goats surged on to the railway, intent on escaping the stockwhip whistling behind; and Mrs McLash went after them, intent on teaching them the lesson of their lives. The small crowd waiting before the Siding House yelled at the woman and the goats. The woman turned and saw the train, tripped on a rail and fell. The crowd, among which was Oscar, rushed to her assistance,

Finding that the chase had ceased, the goats drew up and looked to see what had happened. The track was packed with them. Mrs McLash screamed as she was raised, “My God—my goats!”

“Goats!” yelled the fireman to the engineer.

The engineer looked, then shot a hand to a valve and released a mighty jet of steam. The goats looked interested, but did not move. The engineer laid hold of the reversing-gear. Fireman and passengers rushed to the hand-brakes. The locked wheels raged against the strain. Every bolt and plate of the engine rattled. Coal crashed out of the tender. Water shot out of the tank. The engine halted in an atmosphere of goats. The goats themselves were well on the way to Copper Creek.

Mrs McLash came up to the engine fuming, vowing to report the engineer for neglecting to whistle on the bridge. He promptly silenced her by presenting her with two wet bottles of beer, saying winningly, “Tchsss! Off the ice in town, Ma, and all the way up in the water bag. All chilly and bubbly and liquidy—and all for you, my heart.”

She swallowed, and staring at the bottles muttered, “Don’t try to blarney me.”

“Now who’d do that!” cried the engineer. “But where’s young Frank? Ah! There he is.” He looked at a figure, clad in khaki pants and sleeveless cotton singlet, bent over the driving-mechanism. It was Frank, son of the widow McLash, or her Pride and Joy as she called him. He was a low-browed youth of about twenty, very big for his age, swarthy as a Greek, and shaped rather like a kewpie doll, having a rotund pendulous paunch and a distinctly egg-shaped head. He looked around.

“Good-o Frank,” said the engineer. “Water her up and have a look see what’s knockin’ back of the steam-chest there. There’s a couple of waggons to come off. Charlie’ll tell you.”

Mrs McLash’s anger was gone completely, douched not nearly so much by the beer as by this attention to her son. She loved alcoholic liquor next to her Pride and Joy, but would have gone and lived for ever on salt-bush and dew in a desert for his sake. Indeed she had done something like that by coming to live in Capricornia, because she had forsaken a cosy little shop she had owned in her native city of Flinders and friends of a lifetime and a perpetual supply of cheap liquor, to save him from a life of crime. His last place of residence in Flinders was the Spring Hill Reformatory, where he was sent for the second time in his young life for committing burglary. His mother had secured his release by swearing to take him away to what they called down there The Land of Oppurtunity. She had done well. Two years before it had been his ambition to become a first-class criminal; now it was to become the engineer of the Copper Creek train.

People who had come to hear the siding-mistress assail the engineer, turned with the pair and followed them to the house. Oscar was not one of them. He had been at the brakevan getting his stores and the district mail. He met the others on the veranda.

When Jock Driver saw Oscar he shouldered his way to him. He and Oscar had lately quarrelled over a mixed-up train-load of imported breeding bulls. He bawled at Oscar, “Why—there’s the big Mister Shillingsworth——hey there, I wanner word wi’ you!”

Oscar looked and scowled. Jock was drunk. He tripped on the mat at the dining-room door, and staggering, crashed into the iron wall. After sprawling against the wall for a second or two, he stood erect and bawled at Oscar, “By jees Orscar—j’know you’n me’s relairted?”

Again Oscar scowled.

“Aye,” cried Jock. “S’blunny fact. I’m fawster fawther y’ lil nevvy No-name—so’m fawster brither t’you—aint it? Ha! Ha! Ha! You’n me gawstrewth—n’y’dunno it—Ha! Ha! Ha!”

He reeled against Oscar, who flung him off crying, “What’s wrong with you—gone mad?”

Jock laughed till he wept, and while doing so staggered to the wall. “Uncle Orscar,” he gasped. “Gawd—thaht’s it—Uncle Orscar! Hey guard—hey Chawlie—where’s lil yeller bawstid—lil No-name—bring’m lennim see’s grea’ big gennelmally Uncle Orscar—Ha! Ha! Ho!”

“Shut your meaty moosh or I’ll shut it for you,” cried Oscar.

Jock stopped laughing and glared, then lurched into a fighting attitude and bawled, “I’ll crack ye—big flash coo!”

Oscar blew out his big moustache contemptuously, snapped, “Rat of a Pommy!” and picked up the mail-bag and walked down the veranda to the little room at the end called the Post-Office.

In the dining room Jock attempted to make more trouble, choosing as his victim the half-caste waiter Elbert, a mottled-brown-faced youth of about the same age as Frank McLash, though of nothing like the same physique, as could be seen at once, because he wore a ragged khaki shirt and trousers that betrayed by extraordinary looseness at the waist the fact that they had belonged to Frank.

“Yeller scoom!” bawled Jock, making a rush at him. “By jees——”

Mrs McLash pushed Elbert into the kitchen and stepped in front of Jock and drove him protesting to a seat.

“Him!” bawled Jock. “Why thaht’s the yeller bawstid——”

“I know what he done, my good man. He pinched his wife back off you who pinched her off of him. I’m surprised at you. Sit down’n eat your dinner and leave the poor skelington thing alone. He never had a decent feed in his life till he come here.”

“I tell you——”

“Shut up or I’ll kick you out!”

Jock obeyed. For a while he mouthed about Elbert, then remembered Oscar and began to mouth about him, explaining why he had called him Uncle Oscar, while giving the impression that Mark had several half-caste children. His audience could listen with ease, because Oscar had gone off with his little daughter Marigold to avoid further contact with Jock. While Jock was talking, Oscar and Marigold were watching Frank McLash shunting trucks.

Just before the train left, while passengers were leaving the dining-room and Mrs McLash was occupied with collecting the money, Jock slipped into the kitchen and caught Yeller Elbert unawares. Mrs McLash came to the rescue with a broom.

“I’ll dawg him,” shouted Jock, struggling with the woman, “I’ll dawg thaht moongrel bawstid off face yearth I will—lemme at him——”

“Get on the train!” screeched Mrs McLash. “Think I want a thing like you on me hands for a fortnight? Get out or I’ll brain you—Hey!—Hey!—stop, you cheat, you aint paid me for your dinner!”

For some time after the train had gone Oscar stood on the track conversing with members of the fettling gang, while Marigold sat on the Siding House veranda on the knee of Mrs McLash, innocently listening to a low-spoken discussion of her Uncle Mark and Cousin No-Name. Mrs McLash’s companions were her son, Joe Steen, a settler of the neighbourhood, who was reputed to be her lover, and Peter Differ, who was employed by Oscar. While they talked they kept their eyes on Oscar, delighted to have the laugh on one they hated for his superiority. He stood there with the shabby grubby fettlers, tall and erect and neat and clean as ever. It was not clothes that made him so. He would have looked superior as a swagman. He wore a battered wideawake hat, faded blue tunic-shirt, rusty black neckerchief, grubby white moleskin pants, and spurred topboots that were colourless with dust. Nor was it means that made him so. Any of the fettlers were better off in respect of ready-money than he was.

The discussion stopped abruptly when Oscar left the gang and came across. All looked at him with something like respect, except young Frank, who looked at the landscape and snickered. Oscar glanced at Frank distrustfully. They were not friends, these two, having become rather too well acquainted as master and man in the early days of Frank’s residence in the district.

Mrs McLash began to talk at once of a piece of news that had come up with the train. There followed a pause, during which Oscar, leaning against a veranda post, rolled a cigarette, and Frank, lolling on haunches near him, bombarded an ant with spittle. Then Frank said in a thin drawling voice, “Eh Oscar—you hear about your yeller nephew?”

Oscar looked at him while licking the cigarette.

“That kid Jock Driver was tellin’ you about.”

Out of the corner of his eye Oscar saw Frank’s mother shake her head and glare. He asked, “What’s that?”

Gazing afar again, Frank said, “Jock had one of Mark’s half-caste kids with him on the train.”

“Don’t be a fool,” muttered his mother.

Frank looked at her and said, “’S fact—you’s been talkin’ about it last half hour yourself.”

She flushed and snapped, “Garn—bag y’r ’ead!”

Oscar flushed too, and said to Peter Differ in a rather strained voice, “What is it Peter?”

Differ, who had been studying the ground, looked up and for a moment held Oscar’s eye. He was himself the father of a half-caste, for which he knew Oscar despised him. Therefore he was pleased to tell the truth. He spoke quietly, in a rather cultured voice, saying, “Your brother Mark gave Jock one of his half-caste piccaninnies for a stock-boy. Jock had him on the train.”

Oscar looked astonished. After a moment he said huskily, “Bosh! Mark hasn’t got a—a half-caste.”

“Well that’s what Jock said,” answered Differ.

“He said Mark’s got two yeller-fellers at Flyin’ Fox,” said Frank, “and plenty more in the bush.”

Oscar carefully lit his cigarette, then said, “You can’t believe a drunken fool like Pommy Driver.”

“Jock’s a decent coot,” snapped Frank, “even if he is a Pommy.”

“May suit you,” said Oscar coldly; then he turned to Differ and said in an employer’s tone, “Got everything ready?”

“On the buckboard,” said Differ in the tone of a Capricornian employee.

“Good-o. Then let’s get going. Come on Marry.”

Marigold slipped from Mrs McLash’s knee, stood for a moment to be kissed, then went to her father. Mrs McLash then assumed an amazingly childish expression of goodwill and admiration and said, “Goodbye Mister Shillingsworth. I’m sorry for what Frank said. Goodbye lovey-ducks—tatta pretty dear. Please don’t take no notice of poor Frank, Mister Shillingsworth. I’m afraid he’s not all there.”

“Oh that’s all right Ma,” said Oscar. “Hooray.”

“Let Frank do his own polgisin,” Frank growled as Oscar went away.

His mother showed her few teeth at him and said with terrible emphasis, “You fool! Your mouth’s bigger’n your brains.”

“Where’d I get me mouth—and me brains too?”

“Not off me you poor galoot. And don’t you start young man.”

“Well you stop then.”

“My gawd—to think I ever took the trouble to raise it!”

“Who asked you to?”

“Damn you boy——”

“Shut up, Frank,” cried Joe Steen. “Don’t go upsettin’ your Ma or I’ll dong you one.”

“Try it!” yelled Frank, then rose because his mother rose, and fled.

Train-day was a special day to people living on the railway, particularly to the fettlers, to whom the train brought not only mail and stores and news from civilisation in the form of gossip, but wages for the past fortnight’s work and liquor for the next fortnight’s drinking. At least in the Caroline River Gang’s camp the night of the day was always one of carousal.

It was the habit of Joe Ballest, ganger of the Caroline Camp, to invite his men to his house to drink beer on train-day nights. He was one who liked company with his beer so much that although these parties always ended in a brawl he persistently gave them. And he was one who loved beer so much that, not having means to buy it in quantity sufficient for his needs, since beer cost two-and-six a pint and he could consume four pints for every working-hour of a day while he earned but three-and-six, he brewed his own. He was not particular about the taste of beer so long as it was strongly alcoholic and hopsy. He brewed with hops and sugar and yeast and mashed potatoes and any other likely ingredient he happened to have in hand, and fortified with a liberal dosing of overproof rum. Owing to the climate it fermented well and quickly; indeed it often frothed right out of the barrel, especially at night, since then it could work without interference, when it would even creep into the brewer’s bed and cause him pleasant dreams. In such a climate the use of preservatives in brewing was imperative; but Joe Ballest would use none but O.P. rum; he belonged to that backward school of drinkers which regards scientifically-preservatised liquors as All Chemicals and therefore harmful; hence his beer always turned out to be all clots and ropes and bacteria.

Ballest held his usual party this train-day night. His guests were his mate, Mick O’Pick, and the ordinary fettlers, Funnigan and Cockerell and Smelly. In and about the doorway leading to the back veranda lounged the lubras of the men, and behind them a crowd of natives from the local camp. Now and again a pannikin of beer would be handed to the lubras, who sometimes gave a sip to those behind.

When the party waxed lively the lubras came in and took seats, and the others took the doorway. When it became boisterous the lubras took liberties with their men, and the others sometimes slipped inside and snatched. Frank McLash came later, then Sam Snigger and Karl Fliegeltaub, who both lived across the bridge. The party was uproarious when Cockerell crept up to Mick O’Pick, who was laying down the law about politics, and poured a glass of beer over his head. All but old Mick and Ballest laughed loudly. Ballest shouted angrily about wilful waste. Mick gasped and groped till he regained his sight, when he leapt up bellowing, snatched up a large kerosene-lamp that stood on the table beside him, and dashed it at the iron wall. Flames shot up to the roof.

Everyone rushed out but Ballest and Mick. Ballest was sitting on his lounge when the lamp was smashed. He had risen and was shouting. Mick rushed at him and hit him on the jaw, sent him flying. Funnigan and two blackfellows rushed in with sodden sacks and tackled the flames. Cockerell and Frank tackled Mick.

Mick bellowed, “Strike an old man—strike an old man—hooligans—cowards!” and fled.

Thus the party ended, as usual.

An hour passed. The camp was silent save for clicking of music-sticks in the distant native camp and the drone of voices of Frank and Smelly and Cockerell in the house of the last-named and the incessant muttering of Ballest in his house—“Drink a man’s beer and murder him—ungrateful unsociable ill-bred ’ounds!” Old Mick was sitting on a chopping-block by his back veranda with a young lubra smoking at his feet, watching the moon rise over the bush and crooning an Irish folk-song.

Suddenly a wailing-cry rang out. Mick’s lubra turned her half-naked body quickly to the right. Mick turned too, listened for a while, then said, “An’ what was that m’ dear?”

The girl, with cigarette hanging from her lips and chin advanced, clicked her tongue for silence. A pause. Then the cry again, long and mournful. And again, this time in a different key.

“Dingo,” said Mick.

“No-more,” said the lubra. “Two-fella. One-fella dog no-more dingo, one-fella piccanin.” She rose, adding, “Go look see.”

She went off towards the railway with Mick at her heels.

Again the cry, this time accompanied by faint thumping sounds. “Him dere,” said the lubra, pointing to a rake of cars and trucks. She cooee’d, was answered at once by a burst of joyful barking.

They found that the sound came from one of the trucks. The lubra climbed in and found Nawnim and the dog he had travelled with. Nawnim rushed into her arms, thinking she was Anna. The dog whined and rubbed against her legs. She kicked it away. She lifted Nawnim and called to Mick and lowered the child to him, then picked up the dog and tossed it into the night. Back on the ground she took Nawnim from Mick and examined him, then said contemptuously, “Yeller-feller,” and gave him back.

Mick took Nawnim to Ballest, bawling as he entered the house, “Hey Joe—look’t I got!”

Ballest sat up on his bed and stared for a while, then said in a surly tone, “Where’d you get that?”

Smiling broadly Mick replied, “I found the little divil in a thruck.”

Ballest snorted, said, “Tell that to the marines!”

“Look at him!” cried Mick, excited. “Lil yeller-feller. Look at his pants like blue chicken-pox. I found him in a thruck with a dawg——”

“Bah—found it in the bulrushes!”

“In a thruck I said.”

“In the bulrushes! Take it away man, take it away. You can’t unload your brats on me.”