The Water Diviner (2 page)

And then, through the December mist, it happens.

Suddenly the raging Turks all stop in unison. The sound of gunfire peters out. The yelling subsides as perplexed soldiers stand in silence and look down into the enemy trench.

Jemal nudges soldiers aside as Hasan makes his way through his troops to the edge of the trench. From high up on a sandbag he looks down in disbelief.

There is no one there.

Hasan, conditioned to always expect the worst, is suspicious.

‘It’s a trap. It must be.’

Jemal shrugs. ‘If it was, we’d know by now.’

Hasan drops into the Anzac trench and Jemal joins him, both wary of booby-traps. Perplexed and confused, the men of the 47th watch on in silence.

A sudden blast from a rifle propped on the edge of the trench, and the men dive for cover. Jemal and Hasan barely flinch. The two men examine the unmanned gun, smoke still spiralling from its barrel. Hasan sees that it’s been set up to shoot at the Ottoman front line automatically. The .303 is fired by a clever system of water-filled tin cans punctured so that they empty gradually, until they pull the trigger. He can’t help but admire the ingenuity.

Jemal reloads the rifle and unscrews the stopper on his canteen, about to pour water into one of the cans. He pauses, looking down the barrel at a cluster of soldiers watching at the business end of the rifle, and waves them away.

‘Move or be martyred,’ he bellows.

The men have learned that an order from a man as rash as Jemal is ignored at their peril. They scramble out of the way as he empties his canteen into the can tied to the trigger. The gun fires with a loud crack. Jemal nods, impressed.

Hasan continues along the trench, passing a table set for a game of chess; one white pawn pushed two squares towards the enemy line. A note in English sits under the piece and reads, ‘Your move, Abdul.’ Hasan gives a wry smile. Another time, another place, he might have enjoyed meeting this chess player. Strange to think that in the midst of the dehumanising chaos of war, an enemy soldier found solace in such a civilised pastime.

Jemal appears, wielding a cricket bat like a club.

‘A weapon?’ asks Hasan.

‘I watched them play this pointless game near the beach, between barrages.’ Jemal holds the bat over his shoulder and swings it through the air before studying it intently. ‘Whatever it was, they took it more seriously than the war.’

They are interrupted by a distant cheer, and peer over the sandbags to see the bandleader waving his flag and dancing. He is pointing out to sea. Hasan climbs a ladder and raises his binoculars to see a white wake cutting through the ink-black Aegean and trails of smoke from the departing Anzac troopships as they make a beeline for Greece.

As Hasan’s men realise what has happened, shocked silence gives way to waves of celebration. Just moments before, they had resigned themselves to the inevitability of sudden and violent death. The release of tension ignites the gathered Ottoman troops like a lit fuse. Some men fall to their knees in silent prayer. Others weep and congratulate their friends for surviving. But most cheer and shoot their guns into the air, crying, ‘
Allahu Akbar
!
Allahu Akbar
!’

Today, Hasan thinks, after months of being a passive bystander, God truly is great.

Hasan sits on a sandbag and leans his head back against the trench wall. He takes in the significance of the moment, and doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. After 238 dreadful days of staring at each other across the ditch, strafing each other with machine guns, picking each other off on the way to the latrines, mining each other’s trenches, listening to each other’s wounded bleed out in no-man’s land, and finally tossing gifts of cigarettes and food from trench to trench, the invaders have skulked away in the night. He knew they must, before the winter floods washed them off the cliffs that they had clung to so tenaciously. This is a good thing; it is what they have been praying for. But for a moment he feels bereft – cheated. The enemy has defined him, given him his purpose. But now, to a man, they have suddenly stolen away under cover of darkness without giving him the opportunity to salvage anything positive from this cursed morass.

Yilmaz, the boy soldier, appears, running across noman’s land, out of breath.

‘Sir, your binoculars. I could not find . . .’ He trails off as he spots them hanging around the major’s neck.

With a half-smile Hasan replies, ‘Private Yilmaz from Mardin, today was not your day to be martyred.’

The band launches into a Turkish folk song as soldiers throw down their guns and start singing and dancing.

A
man paces across a vast paddock, under a vaulting indigo-blue sky. He performs an oddly choreographed dance; first striding in one direction, then sidling in another; backtracking slowly before turning.

From beneath a dusty brim his eyes scan the rust-red soil. He is blind to the beauty of the sunrise as the first long fingers of rose gold stretch across the Mallee plains, glinting off the strands of parched summer grass.

He stops abruptly, and peers down at his clenched hands like a churchgoer who has forgotten the words. How, he wonders, has he just noticed? Knotted, with skin like bark, they are hands much older than his forty-six years.

In each fist he clasps a short length of brass tubing, polished to a warm patina from years of use. A foot-long length of wire bent into an L-shape protrudes from each tube, like grasshoppers’ feelers. As the man moves, the antennae swivel and scout. He follows their lead, weaving across the paddock and watching for the moment when they converge and cross. It will be right there that he will find it, but he never knows how deep down it will be.

Joshua Connor is as tough and unyielding as the land he calls home. Tanned like hide, he is tall with the broad shoulders and well-muscled chest of a man conditioned to long days labouring under the Australian sun. He has neither the time nor the inclination to place any stock in life’s mysteries. To him, water divining is just something he can do – just as it was something his mother could do, and her father before that. Take it back a few generations and they would have been called water witches. A bit further back in time, and most likely they would have been burned at the stake. But here, today, in the dry and unforgiving Australian outback where water is life or death, Connor’s strange gift is as precious as it is inexplicable. Unyielding and irascible, he is not the most popular man in the district but no one would ever deny that Connor’s baffling ability to sense hidden subterranean water has saved many a local family.

Connor pauses and lets the feelers settle, then veers in an arc to his right. His thick-tailed sheepdog shadows him cautiously; he has long since learned to keep a reasonable distance. Any sudden change in Connor’s direction could earn him a kick in the ribs. Their boot and paw prints snake through the red soil behind them like plaits, tracing this strange ritual right across the paddock.

The man points to a lonely cluster of Mallee trees, bloated at the base with thirst like dead sheep in a drought. He talks to his dog as he would to a smart child.

‘It’s here somewhere. Those buggers don’t survive on air alone.’

The dog sits patiently in the dust as the sun scales higher above the horizon, the first sting of its rays burning the dawn chill from the air. Connor wipes a bead of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
You don’t need any special gifts to know today is going to be a scorcher.

‘Let’s get this over and done with, mate.’

Connor studies the wires as they slowly rotate, swinging one way and then the other. They settle, pointing along parallel paths to an outcrop of rocks.

‘See, soil’s different over there. Rocks close to the surface.’ He heads in the direction the wires indicate, adjusting his path as they sway to and fro. Now he takes smaller steps, barely shuffling, until the wires swivelling in the brass tubes converge and settle in a cross. Funny, he thinks to himself, how a cross can mean treasure, salvation or death – it just depends.

Connor marks the spot with his heel, digging into the earth four times – one for each point of the compass.

‘Right there, boy. Stay.’

The dog settles down on his haunches. He’s in for a wait.

Connor begins the punishing walk back to his horse and cart, squinting his blue eyes against the caustic morning light. There is nothing easy about this land. As the ground warms, a raucous insect orchestra strikes up; Connor strides out in time to its beat as the piercing trills cut through the air.

The mare stands patiently in the shade of a ghost gum, stamping her hooves and flicking her ears to ward off the black tide of flies that rises and falls around her. She knows the routine; it’s been a long time since Connor last had to tie her to a hitching rail. She’s not one to wander off. Wander where, anyway?

Dry as a temperance meeting, Connor sips from a canteen, jumps onto the seat and takes up the reins.

‘Time to earn your keep, you old nag.’ He pats her rump affectionately and flicks the reins. As the horse begins to move Connor turns her, swivelling the cart around to face the distant spot where the dog stands guard.

The mare picks up pace, casting a red wake of dust into the clear morning air. Connor enjoys the speed, the cool rush of wind against his face. He looks back – the airborne dust, thick as smoke, obscures their path. The cart clatters and jolts as the contents shift – gnarled branches tied in bundles, heavy ropes, a block and tackle, a square canvas bucket, shovels and a pick.

The dog sees them approaching, shifts nervously. It wouldn’t be the first time he ended up under one of the mare’s hooves.

‘Steady, girl.’ Connor draws the reins up, bringing the cart to a halt. He jumps down and bends to scratch the dog roughly behind the ears.

‘Good boy. No one’ll get past you, will they?’

Connor unloads the cart, carefully placing his equipment in neat piles, stalling. He straddles the marker in the dust and lifts the pickaxe above his head.

‘Let’s hope it’s not too deep this time, eh?’

The dog shifts quickly to the side. Connor brings the iron crashing down into the unyielding ground. The impact jolts him, reverberates up his arms, making his teeth clack together.

Connor lifts the pick again, smashes it down. And again. Begrudgingly the brick-hard earth begins to give; small red clumps shift aside as he drives the pick deeper. Enough loose soil now for the shovel. Connor plunges the spade into the dirt, ropey muscles along his arms and back tensing as he clears the first bucket of what he knows will be many more.

He peers down into the bottom of the shallow hole, anticipating the telltale darkening of the soil, the gradual seep of water into the dust, which he knows will tell him when he’s close.

Connor glances at the dog, who sits transfixed as always by his master’s every move.

‘A man can hope, can’t he?’

The sun lifts higher above the endless horizon. Connor feels the rising heat against his skin and the first trail of perspiration running between his shoulder blades, down his back and under his belt.

He bends and lifts the pick again.

‘Best make yourself comfortable. It’s going to be a fight today, mate.’

For Connor the day disappears like a mirage through eyes that sting with salty sweat. Down the hole, he reckons the hours in buckets of dirt, blisters and feet below the surface. One, two, three . . . Each time he emerges from the dark, damp well, blinking like a boobook owl, he tracks the shimmering sun across the sky, sees the shadows lengthening. Fourteen, fifteen . . . Gone is the midday cacophony of parrots and cockatoos as they swoop and soar across the plains. As dusk approaches, Connor is serenaded by the buzz of crickets and the mocking call of a kookaburra perched on a gnarled tree nearby. Night is on the counterattack.

The dog peers down at his master, at work deep beneath the surface now in a neatly excavated hole. The walls of the well are reinforced with a scaffolding of Mallee-scrub branches, interlocked and methodically lashed with rope to hold back the brittle, crumbling earth.

Aching and spent, Connor bends, his large frame restricted by the confines of the well. He winces as he lifts the canvas bucket full of muddy red soil, attaching it to the block and tackle. He climbs up the bracing timbers to the surface and lifts the bucket, hoisting the rope hand over hand, calloused palms raw. Connor empties the cool, damp earth onto the hot dust that still holds the warmth of the sun’s rays.

He pauses, hands on hips, bone tired. Looks down at the dog, now lying on his side, snapping at flies.

‘Don’t want to take over for a spell, do you?’

Connor breathes deeply, clambers back down into the pit. He crouches, feeling the soil between his fingers.
It’s wet. No doubt about it. Can’t be far off now. She’s a tease.

‘Time to show it who’s boss,’ he mumbles.

He grabs a long shaft of steel leaning against the wall behind him – almost as long as Connor is tall, and flattened at one end to a chisel-like point. He lifts it above his head and slams it into the mud.