To the Islands (23 page)

‘But I must now, there’s need for it. Justin,’ said Heriot rebelliously, ‘I don’t want to die. No. Now why is that?’

‘You won’t die, brother, not now.’ But the man was struggling, and his voice showed it, against Heriot’s conviction. ‘Go sleep, brother.’

‘Will my spirit go back and wait to be born? I’d like that. Wait at Onmalmeri, in the water deep under the lilies, and when some woman came, enter her body and be a child again. Would that happen, Justin?’

‘No,’ said Justin sadly. ‘That don’t happen.’

‘Where will I go, then? Only to the islands? And wait there forever, and be nothing? And never,’ asked Heriot, pleading, ‘never come again?’

‘No,’ said Justin, ‘you never come again. Never, brother.’ He was touched with grief.

‘What will you do with me? Put me high in a tree, and when I’m dry carry my bones away?’

‘No,’ Justin protested, ‘I bury you under cross and say prayer for you, and you go right to heaven, brother.’

‘
Alunggur njarianangga
,’ prayed Heriot. ‘
Arung ada bram. Manambara balngi
—’

‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. On earth, as it is in heaven—’

‘That’s hell where His will is done as on earth.’

‘Don’t say that, brother.’

‘What reason not to say it now? Justin—I want my bones to be buried at Onmalmeri. Or left here. Yes, here will do, this old burying ground.’

‘Please,’ Justin begged, ‘please, go sleep now.’

‘My spirit can come back, for a little time. Can’t it? I can visit someone I love?’

‘They say—’ said Justin. ‘They say spirit come back to his brother, if he a man, or to his wife. Or might be hang around the bush and come if someone say his name.’

‘But you don’t believe that. You say dead people’s names, you’re the only one who does. You don’t believe in spirits.’

The light flickering over his face, with its dark lines running across the forehead and from nostril to mouth: ‘Yes,’ Justin said, ‘I believe.’

‘After so long—’

‘My old man was real clever old man. He could send his spirit from mission to town, brother, and sit in tree like a bird, and talk to the people there. They didn’t see him, but they heard him all right, talking to them.’

‘Say my name, Justin. When I’m dead, go out some night in the dark and say my name.’

‘One time his spirit bring tobacco for my brother from the town. Might be you don’t believe that—’

‘Promise you’ll say my name.’

‘I can’t say you name,’ Justin said. ‘And I don’t know all you name.’

‘My name is Stephen.’

‘Stephen,’ said Justin. ‘Real nice name, that.’

‘Call me that. Say: “I’ll call your name, Stephen.”’

Hesitating unhappily: ‘I can’t say that, brother,’ said Justin. ‘It don’t sound right.’

‘No,’ said Heriot wistfully. ‘After so long—but we’re always foreign. That never ends.’

The fire leaped in his regarding eyes. ‘I’m not so small as I was. No, I’m growing now. There are powers in me. I have love, and courage, a little of it, and reason of a sort, and compassion. And I’m a very beautiful machine, Justin, and so are you, although we’re so fragile. And if I’m going to die—well, my life has been pretty long by the standards of moths. Why, if I were as big as a tree and lived as long, I’d be proud, sinfully proud. But I’m not proud now, not with the eyes of all these skulls on me...’

‘Brother—Stephen—’ pleaded Justin. ‘You go sleep now.’

‘In the morning you must go,’ said Heriot.

‘I not going. Not yet.’

‘Think of Ella, Justin.’

‘I been thinking of her. And my little kids. Ah, my little kids,’ said Justin, ‘they be real glad when their daddy come home.’

‘Then go,’ said Heriot violently. ‘Why have you come so far with me when your children need you? That was selfish of you. Of you, not of me.’

‘You need me, brother—Stephen.’

‘I don’t need you now. Why, man, do you think I want you standing round when I’m dying? Go, tomorrow.’

His skin shining in the red light, the brown man turned his face away from the eyes of Heriot, and from the eyes of the painted god and from the holes of the skulls. He hid from them, pulling up the blanket over his tangled hair.

‘I going,’ he said, ‘Stephen.’

When Heriot woke Justin was gone, and he felt a sudden panic at the thought that there would be no chance to say farewell to him and thank him and send back messages with him to the world. But when he came out of the cave-mouth Justin was below, squatting by the water, and at the sight of the familiar profile, the heavy, wrinkled brow, flattened nose and black beard, Heriot sighed.

‘Justin,’ he said, ‘don’t go—don’t go without telling me.’

The dark man rose and came towards the cave, his face earnest and sad. ‘I don’t go yet,’ he said.

‘It would be futile, wouldn’t it, to try to tell you how much your companionship has meant to me. And how deeply it’s touched me to think that I—had a hand in turning out a man like you.’

‘You don’t have to say nothing.’

‘No. Because you know everything now, don’t you. We’ve become—close enough.’

‘I never forget you.’

‘Nor will I forget you,’ said Heriot. And they held each other by the eyes, words being of no use to them at the time of farewells.

‘There’s something,’ Heriot said, ‘something I wanted to tell you. Look after Stephen. Watch him, Justin. Teach him. Make him like you. He’s a good boy, I want him to be like you.’

‘I do that,’ Justin said. ‘I watch him.’

‘And there’s something more,’ said Heriot, fumbling in his pockets. ‘There’s Rex. I’ll give you these things, you see, my knife and this watch. There’s not much, but take them, and say they’re for Rex, and the rifle, too. I know you’d like them, and you’ve earned them, and you’ll have them, too, but say they’re for Rex.’

‘I say that all right,’ Justin promised. ‘But why you doing this?’

‘I want them to know I didn’t hate him. I didn’t, Justin. It was because I loved him—loved all your people—that I did—that thing I did. They’ll understand that. They’ll know there was never one of them I hated. They’ll remember, some of them, loving a woman and finding she was no good and wanting to kill her. And if they realized then it was love, not hate, that drove them, they’ll understand me and forgive me. Tell them all of that.’

‘I tell them,’ Justin said softly.

‘It’s my only defence. It’s the world’s only defence, that we hurt out of love, not out of hate.’

‘Yes, brother.’

‘It’s a feeble defence,’ said Heriot, with sadness, ‘and a poor reconciliation. But we’ve nothing better.’

‘No.’

‘Well—you must go, Justin.’

The brown man turned his face towards Heriot, and his mouth was stiff with grief. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘I can’t leave you.’

‘No,’ said Heriot, ‘don’t say that again. Think of Ella and the children. You’d be doing me wrong if you made me responsible for taking you from them.’

‘Leave you here, all hungry, and let you die?’

‘Hush,’ said Heriot. ‘You have the rifle.’

‘Yes, it down there.’

‘And how many bullets?’

‘Just one,’ said Justin, with an unhappy laugh, ‘just one little fella.’

‘I’m sorry. But you’ll find something. There’s always been something to kill.’

‘Yes. Yes.’

‘Go now.’

‘You go inside,’ Justin said, ‘just a minute, brother. Please.’

‘Why?’ asked Heriot.

But the man’s eyes pleaded with him, and he went into the cave and waited. And when the shot came, he knew why it was, and he groaned in his throat. A long time afterwards he came out again, knowing he would find the horse well dead and past all pain.

Justin was hacking at the carcass with Heriot’s knife, his face tense and still.

‘You loved that horse,’ Heriot said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘This is the last death I’ll cause. The last, I promise you.’

‘I know that, brother.’

‘I didn’t want food. There was nothing I wanted now.’

‘You got to eat.’

‘No, I don’t, now. That’s the beauty of it.’

‘Hush,’ said Justin, ‘you be quiet now.’ He came up to the cave with chunks of meat in his hands and laid them on a ledge inside. ‘Everything ready now, brother.’

‘Stephen.’

‘Stephen.’

Slowly Heriot stretched out his hands and laid them on Justin’s chest. ‘This is how to say good-bye,’ he said, ‘among your people.’

‘I can’t touch you, Stephen. My hands all bloody.’

‘All our hands are bloody,’ said Heriot bitterly. ‘Say good-bye.’

Then Justin laid his hands lightly on the old man’s breast, and they looked at one another, dark sunken eyes into strained blue ones. The air was full of farewells, but they stood in silence.

‘Ah, Justin,’ said Heriot, turning away, ‘you’re my good deeds, my salvation from myself...’

‘I never forget you, Stephen.’

‘Look after your children, for my sake.’

‘I do that, always.’

‘You must go.’

‘Yes,’ said Justin. ‘I go now.’ He walked away past the pool, stooping to pick up his spears and the rifle, and vanished finally behind an outcrop of rock. A little wind stirred sadly in the leaves of the
gle
tree; and Heriot, at the mouth of his cave, turned, and hid his face against the body of the painted god.

In the dimness of the cave, days ran together and lost themselves, so that Heriot, sleeping, eating, or disjointedly thinking, felt time confounded, a twilight without divisions, and himself a simple plant of the sea’s floor, waving and dying.

He had thought there would be much to think about in this last solitude, but his mind was placid and empty. Justin faded in memory even on the first day, and on the second the features of his face became impossible to recall. Only faces of the past, Margaret’s face, and Esther’s, drifted now and then across the screen of his eyelids.

And on the third day, late in the afternoon, with the flies humming drowsily around the rank meat, the cave became at last insupportable to him. He got slowly to his feet and went out into the failing light.

There was nausea in his stomach, and his legs shook. But he made his way carefully over the rocks to the nearest hill, and then down, and on again. The light grew fainter, but the moon rose early and was close to full, and he went on.

Far away a dingo cried out. But he was not afraid.

But after hours, it seemed, of this clambering and stumbling his weakness struck him down, and he lay among the rocks and with one hand hid his eyes from the yellow moon. His hair was whiter than moonlight, and his face dark. The dingo howled again, but he was too feeble to build a fire, and had no fear.

Over his head a stunted tree waved, its leaves outlined with silver light. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful, and could have lain and stared at it all night; but his eyes clouded and he dropped suddenly into a black sleep.

Long and thin up the gully: ‘
Bau!
’ shouted a voice. And the riders on the hillside halted and turned, searching the rocks, the bushes.

The cry came again.

‘Ah,’ said Rex, deep in his throat. He turned his horse down a hillside and rode from his companions; who, watching him recede down the gully, became aware also of a dark, moving figure, a tired man urging himself on through the boulders.

It was the end, Gunn knew; and he had not expected this sense of bereavement which descended on him so belatedly.

Now the two figures were close, and Rex had dismounted; but Justin had stopped, his face turned to the other man, and would not approach him. It was left to Rex to advance over the last few yards between them, and even when they were face to face Justin would make no movement, but stood stooped and frozen, his eyes intent.

Then Rex reached out and touched his shoulder. And slowly the older man’s hand went to his pocket, and he brought it out again and laid it in Rex’s, and held out the rifle for Rex to take. Yet there was still a strange dream quality in their movements, neither moving his eyes by a fraction from the other’s. Until Rex, gently and humbly, bent his head and touched Justin’s shoulder with his forehead; and the other man’s hand appeared and lay lightly across his back.

On the hillside, sweating in the heat: ‘This is all,’ Gunn said softly. ‘You can go home now, Stephen.’

Stephen, his eyes fixed on the two dwarfs in the valley, nodded, his mouth taut and sad.

‘Hard to believe it’s over,’ Gunn said. ‘Hard to believe. Nothing will be the same again.’

High on the hill, overlooking the reconciliation of Heriot, his foster-father, Stephen bent his head. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing going to be the same,’ he promised.

The old man’s eyes came slowly open, and he saw the sun sitting half below the next rise. He was hot and choked with thirst, could not remember when the rocks had exuded such heat or when he had sweated so. It was intolerable. He rose shakily to his feet and stepped forward towards the sunrise. The hill grew tall in front of him, reaching up to hide the sun.

‘Who am I?’ he asked, dazed, half-blinded. ‘My name was Heriot. A son of the sun.’

He began to sing, in the midst of his stumbling, a wild corroboree song about himself.

‘
Ali! Bungundja bugurga, nandaba brambun?

Worai! Heriot ngarang, nawuru morong nangga
.’

And he asked: ‘Where are you going, old ghost? Going to the islands, are you? Going to Bundalmeri? He is your lord. His country is outside—outside.’

‘
Worai! mudumudu-gu ngarambun,

Gre-gu Bundalmeri nangga.

Bungama ngaia, beni brara.

Walawa gre beninangga,

Walawa ada bram.

Worai! Worai!
’

An eaglehawk hung over him, great ragged wings curved around air.

‘
Worai!
’ said Heriot. ‘Alas. The earth’s hungry.’

He was staggering then to the top of a rocky rise, and when he came there he stood suddenly still, his white hair blowing against the sky, his eyes dazzled with the sea.

It was the sea’s shine, and the sea’s noise, shattered against rock cliffs. Ultimate indeed, at last found. And the sun that had led him hung close over the sea, not rising but setting, not lighting but blinding.