Patrick White - Voss

So they set out from the slatternly settlement of Jildra, to which Voss had grown reconciled, just as he had come to accept certain qualities of his host. The smoky setting of the early morning was not unpleasing, even touching. Columns of blue smoke were ascending, a long cloud was lying flat above them, and the wisps of smoky grass, suggested an evanescence of the solid earth, of shack and tents, iron and hessian, flesh and bone, even of the rather substantial Brendan Boyle. They rode out of the jumble of grey sheds, past several gunyas, at which black women were standing, and little, red-haired boys with toy spears. Over the skins of the natives, the smoke played, and through. A yellowish woman, of spreading breasts, sat giving suck to a puppy.

‘Dirty beggars,’ coughed Mr Boyle — it was the smoke, ‘but a man could not do without them.’

Voss did not reply to what appeared, in his host’s case, obvious.

The two men rode on, in hats and beards, which strangely enough had not been adopted as disguises. In that flat country of secret colours, their figures were small, even when viewed in the foreground. Their great horses had become as children’s ponies. It was the light that prevailed, and distance, which, after all, was a massing of light, and the mobs of cockatoos, which exploded, and broke into flashes of clattering, shrieking, white and sulphur light. Trees, too, were but illusory substance, for they would quickly turn to shadow, which is another shape of the ever-protean light.

Later in the morning, when the air was beginning to solidify, the two riders were roused from themselves by sight of the promised waterholes. These might have been described more accurately as mud-pans, or lilyfields, from which several grave pelicans rose at once, and were making off on wings of creaking basket-work.

‘There are the sheep now,’ said the station-owner, pointing.

These dirty maggots were at first scarcely visible in the yellow grass, but did eventually move enough, and mill round, and stamp.

‘They are a rough lot,’ said Boyle, ‘but so is your undertaking. I am glad it is you,’ he had to add, sniggering, because in very many ways he was a schoolboy.

‘It is almost always impossible to convince other men of one’s own necessities,’ Voss said. ‘Do you believe you were convincing to us last night when you attempted to explain yours?’

‘I? What?’ exclaimed Boyle, and wondered whether his obscurer self had been caught in some indecent confession, or even act; he suspected it, but could not remember. ‘What a man lets out at night, you know, is a different thing from what he would say by day.’

He was protesting, and redder, as he searched his mind.

‘I cannot think what you are referring to,’ he concluded.

On such a mild and bountiful morning, Voss would not reveal what it was.

All this time the sheep, in their yellow wool and wrinkles, went on milling round and round, trying to find, or to escape from one another. Two black shepherds, at a distance, gave no indication of wanting to come any closer.

‘There, I think, are the goats,’ indicated Voss.

‘What? Oh, yes, the goats,’ Boyle replied.

About a hundred of these animals had gathered on the farther bank of a second waterhole, where they were climbing and slithering on the hulks of fallen trees, stretching their necks to pull at the fronds of live leaves, scratching at remote pockets of their bodies with the tips of their horns, skull-bashing, or ruminating dreamily. As the horsemen approached, the goat-mind was undecided whether to stay or run. Several did remain, and were staring up, their lips smiling, looking right into the faces of the men, even into their souls beyond, but with expressions of politeness.

‘Descendants of the original goat,’ Boyle commented rather crossly.

‘Probably,’ answered Voss, who liked them.

One aged doe had searched his mind with such thoroughness as to discover in it part of his secret, that he was, in fact, only in appearance man.

He held out his hand towards her subtle beard, but she was gone, and all of them, with hilarious noises, and a rain of black dung.

‘Come on,’ said Boyle.

If he could have attacked or accused his guest in some way, he would have, but the German had assumed a protective cloak of benevolence. As they rode homeward, the many questions that the latter asked, all dealing with the flora and fauna of the place, were unexceptionable, expressed with that air of simple benevolence. His face wore a flat smile, and there were little lines of kindness at the outer corners of his eyes.

Yet there was something, Boyle knew. He rode, answering the German’s questions, but absently flicking at his horse’s shoulder with the skein of reins.

During the remainder of their sojourn at Jildra, Boyle tried to read the faces of the German’s men for some clue to their leader’s nature and intentions. But they, if they knew, would not be read, or else were spell-ridden in the hot, brown landscape. As they went about the tasks that had been allotted to them, such business as arises during an interval of preparation and rest, the men appeared to have little existence of their own, unless it was a deeply buried one. There was Palfreyman, in a cabbage-tree hat that made him look smaller, with a clean, white handkerchief to protect his neck and throat, but which exposed, rather, his own innocence and delicacy. There he was, riding out, an old woman of a man, with the boy Robarts perhaps, and one or two natives, to secure the ornithological specimens which he would then clean and prepare by candlelight. Nothing more simplified than Palfreyman. So, too, the others were tranquilly occupied. Judd had become an immense rump as he busied himself at shoeing horses. Others were oiling firearms, greasing leather, sharpening axes, or sewing on buttons.

Except once or twice, nothing untoward occurred. On one occasion, to give the exceptions, Boyle had gone into the men’s tent, admittedly to satisfy his curiosity, and there was Frank Le Mesurier, sprawled out upon his red blanket, writing in a notebook. As Boyle was a big man, he was forced to stoop to enter the rather low-slung, oiled calico tent, then to stand hunched. He was so obvious that he made no attempt to behave casually. The blood was too thick in his fingers. Le Mesurier stopped writing, and rolled over on his book, which he could not hide effectively, because it had been seen.

‘Where is Mr Voss?’ asked Boyle.

Although he had not been looking for Voss, it was true the German was always somewhere in his mind.

‘I do not know,’ answered the young man, darkly returning the intruder’s stare. ‘He has gone out somewhere,’ he added in a hollow voice, which suggested that the speaker had but recently woken.

Then Boyle squatted down, as an opportunity seemed to be offering itself.

‘Have you known him long?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Le Mesurier answered at once, and at once began to hesitate. ‘Well, no,’ he corrected, prodding at a seam of the tent with his stump of lead pencil. ‘Let me see now. I knew Mr Voss at Sydney.’

Then he blushed and was confused.

‘It was much longer than that,’ he said. ‘It was on board the ship. Which does make it a very long time.’

Boyle’s suspicion increased. What was this young man trying to hide? Had he, perhaps, participated, or was he still participating in the German’s crime?

Le Mesurier lay there blushing dark, and resenting the intrusion more than ever. Now, as on that evening under the scrubby trees of the Domain, he felt that he did share something of his leader’s nature, which he must conceal, as, in fact, he was hiding the notebook that contained the most secret part of himself.

Boyle suspected this, but could no more snatch away the book than tear out by bleeding roots those other secrets of personality.