Patrick White - Voss

So Harry Robarts, who had been attracted by the paper blowing about, eventually found him, and was running, and stumbling, himself scattered, and crying:

‘I told yer! I told yer!’

He was blowing about, but must, somehow, return to his leader.

When he got in, Voss said, without raising his eyes:

‘It is poor Frank.’

The boy was shaking like a paper.

‘And the blood running out!’ he cried. ‘Oh, sir, he has slit his throat!’

It had not occurred to him that a gentleman might lie in real blood, like an animal.

‘We must see if we cannot go presently and bury him,’ Voss said.

But both knew that they would not have the strength. So they did not mention it again. They were pleased to huddle together, and derive some comfort from an exchange of humanity.

That night the boy crawled as far as the doorway and announced that the Comet had slid a little farther across the sky.

‘I am glad to have seen it,’ he said. ‘It was a fine sight. And soft as dandelions.’

Voss suggested that he should return into the depths of the hut, for the night air in the small hours could be injurious to him.

‘I will not feel it,’ said Harry. ‘I will pull it up to my chin. Besides, I can protect you better from here.’

Voss laughed.

‘There is little enough of me left to protect, and of such poor stuff, I doubt anyone would show an interest.’

‘I had a newt in a jar, did I tell you?’ Harry Robarts asked. ‘And a bird in a cage. It did not sing as it was supposed to do, but I grew fond of it. Until they opened the door. This thing, sir, in the sky, has it come to stay?’

‘No,’ said Voss. ‘It will pass.’

‘A pity,’ said the boy. ‘I could get used to it.’

‘Go to sleep,’ murmured Voss, who was irritated.

‘I cannot. There are some nights when everything I have ever seen passes through my head. Do you remember that box of yours, that I carried to the shipside, on London River?’

The man would not answer.

‘Do you remember the flying fishes?’

‘Yes!’

The man was maddened finally.

‘Are you not going to sleep?’

‘Oh, there is time for sleep. Sleep will not pass. Unless the dogs dig. And then they only scatter the bones.’

‘You are the dog,’ said the man.

‘Do you really think so?’ sighed the drowsy boy.

‘And a mad one.’

‘Licking the hands.’

‘No. Tearing at one’s thoughts.’

As the two fell into sleep, or such a numb physical state as approximated to it, Voss believed that he loved this boy, and with him all men, even those he had hated, which is the most difficult act of love to accomplish, because of one’s own fault.

Then sleep prevailed, and the occasional grumbling of the blacks, still at the mercy of the fiery snake, and the stirring of those earthly fires against which they lay, and the breaking of sticks, which break in darkness, just as they lie, from weight of time, it appears.

While they were asleep, an old man had come and, stepping across the body of Harry Robarts, sat down inside the hut to watch or guard Voss. Whenever the latter awoke and became aware of the man’s presence, he was not surprised to see him, and would have expected anyone. In the altering firelight of the camp, the thin old man was a single, upright, black stroke, becoming in the cold light of morning, which is the colour of ashes, a patient, grey blur.

Voss was dozing and waking. The grey light upon which he floated was marvellously soft, and flaking like ashes, with the consequence that he was most grateful to all concerned, and looked up once in an effort to convey his appreciation, when the old man, or woman, bent over him. For in the grey light, it transpired that the figure was that of a woman, whose breasts hung like bags of empty skin above the white man’s face.

Realizing his mistake, the prisoner mumbled an apology as the ashy figure resumed its vigil. It was unnecessary, however, for their understanding of each other had begun to grow. While the woman sat looking down at her knees, the greyish skin was slowly revived, until her full, white, immaculate body became the shining source of all light.

By its radiance, he did finally recognize her face, and would have gone to her, if it had been possible, but it was not; his body was worn out.

Instead, she came to him, and at once he was flooded with light and memory. As she lay beside him, his boyhood slipped from him in a rustling of water and a rough towel. A steady summer had possessed them. Leaves were in her lips, that he bit off, and from her breasts the full, silky, milky buds. They were holding each other’s heads and looking into them, as remorselessly as children looking at secrets, and seeing all too clearly. But, unlike children, they were confronted to recognize their own faults.

So they were growing together, and loving. No sore was so scrofulous on his body that she would not touch it with her kindness. He would kiss her wounds, even the deepest ones, that he had inflicted himself and left to suppurate.

Given time, the man and woman might have healed each other. That time is not given was their one sadness. But time itself is a wound that will not heal up.

‘What is this, Laura?’ he asked, touching the roots of her hair, at the temples. ‘The blood is still running.’

But her reply was slipping from him.

And he fell back into the morning.

An old, thin blackfellow, seated on the floor of the twig hut, watching the white man, and swatting the early flies, creaked to his feet soon after this. Stepping over the form of the boy, who was still stretched across the entrance, he went outside.

*

After a fearful night, Mrs Bonner insisted that Jim Prentice go and fetch Dr Kilwinning.

‘For such good as it may do.’

Her husband said:

‘We would have done better to stick to the simple young fellow we had in the beginning, rather than waste our money upon this nincompoop in cuffs.’

Each wondered who was to blame, but it could not be laid at anybody’s door at that early hour.

‘He is very highly spoken of,’ sighed Mrs Bonner, who was wearing all her rings, as ladies do at a shipwreck or a fire, for this was the disaster of her orderly and uneventful life.

‘Silly women will speak highly of a doctor if they like the cut of his coat,’ complained the merchant. ‘There is nothing so fetching to some, as a tight, black, bull’s back.’

‘Mr Bonner!’ his wife protested, although she could enjoy an indelicacy.

His shanks were very white and thin by that light, but his calves were still imperious, and the festoons of the nightshirt, between his legs as he sat, were of an early, pearly grey, and the very best quality material.

Because he had been her husband, the old woman felt sadly moved.

‘There are times,’ she said, ‘when you say the unkindest things.’

Some of his strength was restored with her words, and he cleared his thick, thonged throat, and declared:

‘I will tell Jim to bring the doctor over in the brougham, so that there need be no fuss about harnessing other horses at this hour. Some people can make difficulties. And fetching the doctor’s man out. It is a different matter if the horse is not required, nor the man.’

Mrs Bonner was blowing her nose, of which the pores had been somewhat enlarged by the hour and emotion.

Now also, she glanced towards her niece’s sick-bed. If she did this less frequently, it was because her courage failed her. She had become intimidated by the mysteries with which her house was filled.

However, by the time the groom had fetched Dr Kilwinning, and driven him through the shiny shrubs, and deposited him under the solid sandstone portico, the master and mistress were neatly dressed, and appeared to be in full possession.