Patrick White - Voss

‘We have that in common,’ the rather grey Mr Palfreyman replied, and would have continued, as a disguise, in that vein of enthusiasm which men tap for boys.

Then both of them knew that it did not convince. That they had become equal. They were perhaps glad. They would melt together more fiercely under that blue sky. Or burn to ashes.

They realized, standing on the wharf, that the orderly, grey, past life was of no significance. They had reached that point at which they would be offered up, in varying degrees, to chaos or to heroism. So they were shaking with their discovery, beside the water, as the crude, presumptuous town stretched out behind them, was reeling on its man-made foundations in the sour earth. Nothing was tried yet, or established, only promised.

Such glimpses are, of course, a matter of seconds, and Harry Robarts had shoved back his cap of somewhat scruffy kangaroo hide, and sliced his nose with a finger, and said:

‘Well, sir, this will not make us a shirt.’

He had begun to pile the cases, of fresh-smelling wood. By the strength of his body alone, he was a giant. So he was proud for a little. But the rather delicate ornithologist remained humble. While the boy’s animal nature enabled him to take refuge from revelation in physical strength, the man was compelled to shoulder the invisible burden of the whole shapeless future as his soul had briefly understood it.

Soon they were stumbling about below deck, looking for a place in which to lay the cases. The boy did not ask for more than to be led; the man, more sensible of strange surroundings, was also more noticeably diffident. Interrupting a conversation with the mate and boatswain over some matter of space and stores, Voss did glance for a moment at the incongruous pair, and recalled the scene on London River, which seemed to be repeating itself. Then Palfreyman, too, is weak, he realized.

Finally, the ornithologist and the boy stowed their cases in a dark corner beside the bundles of bridles and the mounds of pack-saddles. Their relationship was cut now. Harry, who had been set working, would return for another load. But Palfreyman began to wander in free captivity, amongst the blunt-toed, hairy sailors, all of whom had the power and knowledge to control unmanageable objects. It was only really through humility that his own strength was restored to him. Some of those sailors began to recognize it, and wondered how they could repair their error after they had shoved aside his apparently frail and useless body.

One man, apparently under the impression that restitution can only be made in a state of complete nakedness, resolved to part with a secret that he had told to no one. After thinking it over a while, and observing the gentleman’s face, and breathing, and spitting, he dropped the sail he was mending and took Palfreyman aside.

On that night of which he wished to speak, the sailor said, he happened to be full of the rum. It was not a habit with him, but it had occurred on some occasions, of which this was one. He had been walking on the outskirts of the town at no great distance from the house of a friend, whose wife, he suddenly noticed, was passing by. As his condition was not far enough advanced to give offence (he was never on no account so far gone as to be falling-drunk), he accompanied the wife of his friend a little of the way, making conversation that was agreeable to both parties. When, it seemed, they had lain down beneath a tree, and were taking advantage of each other’s bodies.

The sailor had fallen asleep, he said, in some quandary of pleasure or guilt, and when he had woke, the woman was gone.

Now it was his worry whether he had dreamed a dream, or not, for whenever he met the wife of his friend she made no sign. What was he to believe? the sailor asked, and looked at the convenient stranger, into whose keeping he was not afraid to give himself.

‘If it happened in a dream that was not distinguishable from the life, it is still a matter for your conscience,’ Palfreyman replied. ‘You wished to live what you dreamed.’

But the sailor was troubled.

‘Then, a man is caught all ways,’ he said, putting his hand in his chest, and scratching the hair of it.

‘But if it happened,’ he continued, and began to be consoled, ‘if it happened that the woman really had a part in it, then she was as much to blame, and never making so much as a sign.’

‘If the woman took part in it, in fact,’ Palfreyman said, ‘she is a bad woman.’

‘But in a dream?’ the sailor mused.

‘It is you that are bad,’ laughed Palfreyman.

‘Still, it was a good dream,’ the sailor said. ‘And she would have been willing, I know, if she was that willing in any dream.’

The sailor’s logic was made infallible by the dreamy accompaniment of green water soothing the wooden side of the ship.

I cannot blame the fellow, even if I condemn his morality, Palfreyman saw. The man had become more important than his ambiguous problem, which their association, elbow to elbow at the ship’s bulwark, did, in fact, seem to have solved.

It happened in this position that Palfreyman was reminded of his conversation with Voss as they stood in the Botanic Gardens at the rail of the little bridge. He realized that he did not wish to recall this scene, or that until now he had chosen to take refuge, as the sailor had, in a second possibility. Voss, he began to know, is the ugly rock upon which truth must batter itself to survive. If I am to justify myself, he said, I must condemn the morality and love the man.

The sailor had begun to sense some repugnance.

‘But you do not think ill of me?’ he asked. ‘Not altogether?’

Then Palfreyman, looking into the open pores of the man’s skin, wished that all difficulties might wear the complexion of this simple sailor.

‘I am glad to have heard your story,’ he said, ‘and hope to have learnt something from you.’

So that the sailor was puzzled, and returned to that work in which he had been engaged, of mending a sail.

Presently Palfreyman was addressed, and found that his colleague Le Mesurier had come up, somewhat dandified, considering the circumstances, in nankeen trousers, and a blue coat with aggressive buttons.

‘Then we are off at last to do ,’ Le Mesurier said, though without a trace of that cynicism which he usually affected.

‘Yes.’

Palfreyman smiled, but did not at once come out of himself to meet the young man.

The latter remained unperturbed. Whether it was the radiant morning, or the presence of human kindliness, Le Mesurier did feel that something might eventuate from such beginnings, and expressed his thoughts along those lines.

But the ornithologist cleared his throat.

‘It is early days yet to say.’

‘You are an old hand, and cautious,’ Le Mesurier replied; ‘whereas I am a man of beginnings. They are my delusion. Or my vice. I have never got very far beyond indulging it.’

Palfreyman, who could not easily visualize a life without dedication, asked:

‘But tell me, Frank, what have you achieved? I refuse to believe there is not something .’

‘I am always about to act positively,’ Le Mesurier answered wryly. ‘There is some purpose in me, if only I can hit upon it. But my whole life has been an investigation, shall we say, of ways. For that reason I will not give you my history. It is too fragmentary; you would be made dizzy. And this colony is fatal to anyone of my bent. There are such prospects. How can I make a fortune from merino sheep, when at the same time there is a dream of gold, or of some inland sea floating with tropical birds? Then, sometimes, it seems that all these faults and hesitations, all the worst evil in me is gathering itself together into a solid core, and that I shall bring forth something of great beauty. This I call my oyster delusion.’