Tourmaline (23 page)

Weeks passed. Nights of fire and singing, under the voice of the bell. Days when the town looked uninhabited, for the gold drew everyone away. Even some of the women. Even Byrne’s dog.

And the rapture held. Mary was converted. Only Tom openly persisted in his heresy. I let no one know of mine.

I felt the ranks close against us: against Tom and me, against old Boniface. Not that they wished to exclude us. But the sense of purpose that first woke in the church had strengthened in the field; this was no matter of singing, but of the employment of muscles and sinews for common gain, of sharing labour, of giving aid to whoever, wiping the sweat from his forehead, should say: ‘Take over, will you?’ and go off up the hill to the open cave there to rest. And we could take no part in that. We were the elders of the tribe, tolerated, but outside.

I said to Mary, looking about for Deborah: ‘Don’t tell me she’s gone too?’

‘She has,’ Mary said.

The degradation of old men, feeling envy for what a girl can do.

‘I’m surprised you don’t go with her.’

‘I’m younger than you,’ she said, smiling, ‘but no chicken, believe me.’

Yet she did go, once, plodding across the desolation in a broad straw hat.

Jack Speed worked at the mine, whistling. The gold flowed into my safe.

‘The town’s rich,’ I realized with surprise.

I told this to Tom.

‘What’ll we buy with it?’ he wondered. ‘How about some priestly robes for Michael?’

‘Don’t be like that,’ I said.

And he was ashamed of himself, and laughed. ‘But fancy dress is all that’s missing.’

Somehow I couldn’t confide my doubts, or my knowledge. I let him think me a believer—or a dupe.

It was some consolation, anyway, to see so much happiness, so much beauty. Nothing is more becoming to the human face than hope.

Rock, in his garden, in the dusk, lifted his head, listening for the bell. I noticed his brown forehead, rough with knotted veins, and his brown eyes turned to the church, full of plans.

I saw Jimmy Bogada sitting on the step of the store, and I went away again. I knew Dave Speed was in there with Tom, and I couldn’t face him.

I went back to my stone cell and waited, in the dying light. Then the bell began, with the first stars.

The diviner leaned against the altar, his elbows on it, as his custom was, and his head hanging, paying no attention to us. The firelight glinted in his yellow hair.

Over the weeks a kind of ritual had developed. There were actual songs now, or at least actual tunes, that Byrne and Charlie Yandana had put together. And the camp people would break out, from time to time, into their keening; so throbbing and so compelling that even I, knowing what I knew, could be moved by it to the point of joining in. Because the diviner, whom they praised, was only a symbol; a symbol for what I believed in, the force and the fire, the reaching unwavering spirit of man like a still flame. There were times, in the tumult of voices and instruments and tireless bell, under the white fire of the stars, when I felt, so surely, the presence of God, that my heart swelled. Then, for a while, I was one with Tourmaline, and the diviner was transfigured for me as he was for the brotherhood. He was our captain, our delegate, the son of Tourmaline, who had come to set flowing the holy waters locked in my rocky breast.

I write this, now, as coldly as I can. But you too will remember those nights of singing, the red fire on the hill, the white fires through the damaged roof, the clang of the bell. And the golden aureole, before the altar, of our delegate, our son, on whom we had settled everything.

On those nights I believed in him. Because he was no longer himself. On those nights we created him, dedicating him to the glory of God. If he had been an image, an anthem, a cathedral, he could not have been less his own.

‘I have sinned,’ said Deborah. She wept, for pure joy.

And old Gloria cried out: ‘Make it rain, dear God. Dear God, dear God.’

The bell and the voices went on saying it. Dear God, dear God, dear God.

All that for years no voice had spoken. Holy waters, locked in a rocky breast.

The diviner raised his head. All sound stopped but the bell.

‘Remember God,’ he said.

He stared out towards the fire, while we remembered.

‘God is peace,’ he said. ‘How did we know God was there? Because we were tired.’

Over his shoulder the red flowers glowed.

‘A kid couldn’t know God was there. A kid gets tired, and he goes to his mother or his father, and they know he’s tired and they take charge of him. They know his limits. They won’t let him break. But he grows up and he goes away. And he finds that no one knows any more what his breaking-point is, and no one cares very much. He goes walking round in all directions, trying to find the right way to go, and no one can tell him. And when he’s ready to break, he thinks: “This isn’t how life should be. This isn’t what I was brought up to expect,” he says. “Doesn’t anyone care? Where’s my father got to?” And that way he finds God.’

Byrne was rapt. There were tears of self-pity in his black eyes.

‘This is what we pray. Take charge of my life, father. Because it’s too hard—too hard. And I’m close to breaking.’

The diviner’s voice was trembling a little, and his eyes were unfocused.

‘He is peace. He is joy, too. He’s every beauty you ever saw. Everything that ever made you go small and hard, in the heart or in the groin. Fire and stars and flowers and birds. And great lakes and streams of blue water.’

And everyone caught on the word, sighing. Water.

‘There’ll be water. There’ll be a sacrament. A sacrament with water.’

His voice was rising. The firelit tears on his cheeks were like blood.

‘Take charge of my life, father. I’m close to breaking.’

And the voices from all sides drowned the bell. ‘Take charge. Take charge.’

Then suddenly the diviner was frozen, staring. There was something outside the door; not the fire, something he had not seen before. And all the voices died, and the questioning heads turned, one by one.

The black shape in the doorway came lurching forward into the church. It was Dave Speed. And he was laughing.

‘What
is
all this crap?’ asked Dave, showing as many teeth as he had. ‘What’s it in aid of?’

Somehow the bell only underlined the silence.

‘You won’t find no water,’ Dave told the diviner. ‘You? You ain’t a diviner’s bootlace. You’re either a nut or a flicking con-man. Why don’t you hop on the truck and go home?’

The diviner stayed where he was, leaning on the altar. He glittered like ice.

‘Go to bed, you stupid bastards,’ Dave said, addressing the congregation. ‘Stone me, don’t you feel silly? Get up off that floor before you all get piles.’

But the only one who moved was Jack. I saw his face as he went towards his father. He was suffering.

‘Go home,’ he said, taking Dave by the arm.

‘I am,’ said Dave. ‘And you’re coming with me.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Jack said, quietly, trying to drag him away.

‘Here,’ Dave said, breaking free. ‘Don’t try to push
me
around, young fella.’

Jack said, in a tense murmur: ‘This is the house of God.’

‘House of God?’ said Dave. ‘House of
crap
.’

Then Horse surged up on the other side of him, and fastened his mallee-root fists on Dave’s arm. And between them, he and Jack hauled the old man away.

All this time the diviner had not moved; not even his head.

Outside, in front of the fire, Dave was still resisting. ‘House of crap!’ he was shouting. ‘Tell that half-baked bloody crook to get out of town.’

Then he was suddenly quiet. Because Jack had hit him.

Jack came back, and went up towards the front of the church, and stopped in front of the diviner. His young face was suffering.

And the diviner said nothing. Not even his expression changed. But we knew, all at once, that Jack had done well.

‘God is near,’ he said. ‘Maybe nearer than ever.’

Then the camp people broke into one of their dirges, and the guitar began, and the clapping, and everyone was singing, and over everything, louder even than the bell, Charlie Yandana’s shining bugle burst out in triumph. Frenzy. Fire and tumult. Because we had found an enemy.

Outside, between the fire and the oleander, under the cold stars, the diviner said: ‘He was put up to this. It’s nothing.’

And he went away, losing all his light.

And down below in the town, under his pale roof, Tom Spring was waiting for Mary. And who but Tom could have put Dave Speed up to anything?

‘He’s not,’ Mary cried. ‘He’s not an enemy.’ And no one contradicted her. But no one believed her, either.

I woke in the morning, in the blue pre-dawn, to the sound of the bell tolling as if it had never stopped. I thought it must be the tail-end of a dream I was hearing, or perhaps I had slept all day and it was twilight, and the evening celebrations were beginning up on the hill. But I got up and went to the window, and found bell and morning both real.

So it was reasonable to assume that the diviner, for some purpose, was summoning us. And I had begun to think it safer to do what the diviner said, for as long as conscience allowed.

It is, in any case, the best hour of the day, the only time when Tourmaline is beautiful. Washing on the cool veranda, a breeze on my wet skin, my youth came flooding back, and for a moment I was not in Tourmaline at all, but camped by some creek, under the river-gums, ready in a minute or two to go and look at the horses, and rouse my sleeping companions by the grey fire.

This spectre of my youth, like a phantom limb, stayed with me while I climbed the hill to the church.

Only Byrne was there, in the wooden tower, hauling on the bell. His tongue was sticking out with concentration. He had no time to speak.

I wandered to the edge of the hill that looks over Tourmaline. The eastern sky was like a ripening orange. The houses below were blue and metallic; the land sombre, shapeless. Then suddenly the sun was over the horizon, and the world took fire.

One could have warmed one’s hands at the glow that burst from the red earth. This is something like a miracle. I can understand all peoples who have worshipped the sun, indeed I can. Perhaps I do so myself, at certain moments; but I have seen so much of it in Tourmaline.

In the street people were moving, looking up, shading their eyes, at the church; and at me, too, I suppose, silhouetted against the sky. In twos and threes they began to climb the hill.

I counted them. They were all there, all the brotherhood. I went over to the tower and shouted at Byrne: ‘They’re coming. Take a rest.’

So he came out, swinging his stiff arms.

‘What’s happening?’ I asked him.

‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Mike’ll tell you when he comes.’

I wondered, feeling uneasy, if it had something to do with Dave Speed.

‘No,’ said Byrne. ‘Dave’s gone, anyhow. Him and Jimmy went back to their camp.’

Meanwhile the brotherhood had assembled on the hilltop, and waited, all red-ochre-skinned in the new light.

‘Here he is,’ Rock said. And the diviner came towards us, swinging his rod.

Is this it? I wondered. But I said nothing. Because no one else had any doubt that it was.

‘The time’s come,’ said the diviner, with burning hair. ‘I want you all to see it.’

He turned and walked round the church to the north side of the hill, where it slopes down to the lake, having no doubt that he would be reverently followed (as he was, of course) and not troubling to look back. And he went on down, through the broken rocks.

The hill was steep, on that face. Trailing the procession, I feared for my heart.

He went on, across the pink bed of the lake. It was firm underfoot, crisp with salt. There is nothing on this planet more desolate. That huge emptiness, that in good seasons, long ago, I have seen so crowded with birds that they blacked the sun out, wheeling above the water.

He is going to the other shore, I realized. It looked so far. Could I walk so far? I was glad it was early and cool.

And he went on. Presently I forgot the distance, watching my companions. They followed so eagerly. They trusted so much. I saw that there was no way to protect them.

We came to the other shore. And still he went on, up a little rocky gully now, one of the affluents of the lake. We seemed to tramp for miles along this, but I was not really thinking about it by that time. I was thinking of Jack’s garden, that he would never have, and of Deborah, and of Byrne.

Then everyone in front of me stopped; because, I saw, the diviner had stopped. He was hanging a little pill-bottle of water on the hook at the junction of his rod. Then he was holding the rod in his upturned palms, and moving forward, foot by foot, up the gully.

He was in a trance, it seemed; very tense. And so was everyone else. Even I. No one moved to follow him. We stood like anthills where he had halted us.

My mind drifted away from him, soothed by the silence. I thought about Tom and Mary, about Jack and Dave, about Deborah and Byrne and Kestrel. So many gulfs he was opening, for all his talk of unity.

Then, all around me, they were murmuring, they were breathing out heavy sighs of hope and trustfulness. Because the rod had dipped, and was straining against him, and went on bobbing and straining, while he stood in a trance, questioning it. And then it had mastered him, and was pointing straight downwards, and his thin hands had no control.

The brotherhood surged around him. He raised his head, and he looked limp; impotent.

‘Well?’ said Rock, stiff with suspense.

‘Dig here,’ the diviner said, wearily. ‘You’ll get it at one fifty feet.’

Then there were wild shouts, and they were slapping him on the back and embracing him, and Bill the Dill was singing out ‘Freezer, boys’ (meaning
Freezer Jolly Good Fellow
), and Horse, as one would have expected, was trying to hoist him on to somebody’s shoulders, or just lay hands on him. They were beside themselves, as the curious saying is; all but Byrne, who looked sad, and I, who repeated to myself: ‘A hundred and fifty feet,’ with scorn and disbelief.