Patrick White - Voss

‘Ennobling and eternal,’ persisted the German. ‘This I can apprehend.’

Because it is mine, by illusion, it was implied, and so the ornithologist sensed. By now, moreover, the latter had learnt to read the eyes.

‘Yet, to drag in the miserable fetish that this man has insisted on! Of Jesus Christ!’

The vision that rose before the German’s eyes was, indeed, most horrible. The racked flesh had begun to suppurate, the soul had emerged, and gone flapping down the ages with slow, suffocating beat of wings.

As the great hawk flew down the valley, Turner did take a shot at it, but missed. It was the glare he blamed.

During the afternoon Voss continued in his journal the copious and satisfying record of their journey through his country, and succeeded in bringing the narrative up to date. As he sat writing upon his knees, the scrub was smouldering with his shirt of crimson flannel, the parting present of his friend and patron, Edmund Bonner. If there were times when the German’s eyes suggested that their fire might eventually break out and consume his wiry frame, as true fire will lick up a patch of tortured scrub, in a puff of smoke and a pistol shot, on this occasion he was ever looking up and out, with, on the whole, an expression of benevolent amusement for that scene in which his men were preparing a feast.

‘Do you appreciate with me the spectacle of such pagan survivals?’ he called once to Palfreyman, and laughed.

For Judd had seized the lamb, or stained wether, and plunged the knife into its throat, and the blood had spurted out. Several of his laughing audience were splashed.

Judd himself was painted liberally with the blood of the kicking sheep. Afterwards he hung its still carcass on a tree, and fetched its innards out, while the others lay in the grass, and felt the sweat stiffen on them, and talked together peacefully, or thought, or chewed the stems of the fat grass. Although they appeared to ignore the butcher, they were implicitly but the circumference of that grassy circle. Judd was the centre, as he plunged his arms into the blue cavern of the sheep.

Watching from his distance, Voss remembered the picnic by the sea, at which he had spoken with Laura Trevelyan, and they had made a circle of their own. As he saw it now, perfection is always circular, enclosed. So that Judd’s circle was enviable. Too late, Laura said, or it was the shiny, indigenous leaves in which a little breeze had started up. All the immediate world was soon swimming in the same liquid green. She was clothed in it. Green shadows almost disguised her face, where she walked amongst the men, to whom, it appeared, she was known, as others were always known to one another, from childhood, or by instinct. Only he was the passing acquaintance, at whom she did glance once, since it was unavoidable. Then he noticed how her greenish flesh was spotted with blood from that same sheep, and that she would laugh at, and understand the jokes shared with others, while he continued to express himself in foreign words, in whichever language he used, his own included.

Laura Trevelyan understood perfectly all the preliminaries of Judd’s feast. It would be quite simple, humble, as she saw it; they would eat the meat with their hands, all of them, together, and in that way, it would become an act of praise.

As the day grew to an end, and preparations for the feast were completed, Voss grew angry and depressed.

The same night, after the fires had been lit, and the carcass of the sheep that would be eaten for Christmas was a sliver of white on the dark tree, Judd took fat, and tossed the liver in a pan, and when it was done, brought it to his leader.

‘Here is a fine piece of liver, sir, done as nice as you would see it.’

But Voss said:

‘Thank you, Judd. I cannot. It is the heat. I will not eat tonight.’

He could not. The liver stank.

When Judd went away, which he did as respectfully as ever, he had a glittery look in his eye, and pitched the liver to the dogs.

Left alone, Voss groaned. He would not, could not learn, nor accept humility, even though this was amongst the conditions she had made in the letter that was now living in him. For some time, he sat with his head in his hands. He did truly suffer.

Except for the dogs scratching and sighing, the night had grown silent, the fires had fallen into embers, when grass began to rustle, feet approached the leader, and there was Turner’s face upon the darkness.

Why did I bring the man? Voss wondered.

‘Look at this, sir,’ Turner invited.

‘What is it?’ asked Voss.

Then he saw it was the handle of the frying-pan.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How does this concern me? Is it of any interest?’

‘It was him,’ laughed Turner.

‘Who?’

‘The cook, or Jack-of-all-trades. Lord God Almighty!’

‘I am not interested. You are foolish, Turner. Go to bed.’

‘I am not all that foolish.’ Turner laughed in going.

He should have been drunk, but his stomach would sometimes turn sour without all that assistance.

As he prepared for sleep, Voss continued to feel incensed against the miserable fellow. Though it was Judd who had roused his anger. It is Turner, he said, but he knew that it was Judd.

And Turner knew, in the tent that was shared by several.

Some were already snoring as Judd lay fidgeting against the pillow of his saddle.

‘Listen, Albert,’ Turner said. ‘You are awake, I can hear that.’

He rolled over, so that his long thin body was close against the thicker one. His long face was very close.

‘Remember that there compass, that was lost at Jildra, or not lost, it was in your bag?’

Judd did not have to remember, for he had not forgotten.

‘It was put there, see, on a moonlight night, by a certain Prussian gentleman, who was innocent on account of he was sleep -walkin’.’

‘I do not believe it,’ Judd said.

‘No more do I,’ Turner continued. ‘He was as naked as moonlight, and bony as the Lord. But his eyes did not convince this one.’

‘You did not tell,’ said Judd. ‘Not till now.’

‘I have been caught before,’ Turner replied. ‘And this was valuable.’

‘I do not believe it,’ said Judd. ‘Go to sleep.’

Turner laughed, and rolled over.

Judd lay in that position until his bones had set, but did also sleep at last.

Then everyone was sleeping, or waking, to remember that it would soon be Christmas, and fall into a deeper sleep.

About midnight, however, wild dogs had begun to howl, which woke the dogs of the expedition, and these were soon moaning back in answer. The night was grown rather black, but with a flickering of yellow from a distant storm. A thin wind ran along the crest of things, together with the high yelping of the increasingly uneasy camp dogs.

Himself disturbed, Voss got up at last, and stumbled in search of their two native guides, tracing them by the embers of their fire, against which they were rolled like animals. Their eyes were open, he could see, upon some great activity of their minds. If only he could have penetrated to that distance, he would have felt more satisfied.

Dugald, the old man, immediately turned away his face, and said, before other words could be spoken:

‘I sick, sick.’

And was rubbing his belly under the remnants of his ridiculous swallowtail coat.

‘Have you heard something, Dugald, perhaps? Could it be wild dogs?’

‘No dogs,’ said Dugald.

These sounds were made, he explained, by blackfellows who intended mischief.

Just then there fell a few big drops of flat rain, and there was a sudden thumping of the earth, and protesting of grass.

‘That is cattle,’ said Voss.

It could have been the sound of cattle in motion, of frightened cattle, a little farther up the valley where the herd had been left to graze.