Patrick White - Voss

‘In the beginning I used to imagine that if I were to succeed in describing with any accuracy some thing, this little cone of light with the blurry edges, for instance, or this common pannikin, then I would be expressing all truth. But I could not. My whole life had been a failure, lived at a most humiliating level, always purposeless, frequently degrading. Until I became aware of my power. The mystery of life is not solved by success, which is an end in itself, but in failure, in perpetual struggle, in becoming.’

Voss did not care to be told the secrets of others. He preferred to arrive at them by his own intuition, then to pounce. Now he did not have the advantage.

So he said:

‘You have developed a slight fever, you know. It is better that you should try to rest.’

Also he was trembling for those secrets of his own, of which it now seemed the young man might be possessed.

‘Rest!’ laughed Le Mesurier. ‘I must remind you again of the evening we spent together in the Domain, when we did more or less admit to our common daemon.’

The German was unable, then and there, to think of a means to stop the conflagration.

The sick man was burning on.

‘Of course, we are both failures,’ he said, and it could have been a confession of love.

They lay and listened to the long, slow rain, which did not quench.

‘If you were not sick, Frank,’ said Voss at last, ‘you would not believe your own ears.’

But now the young man’s eyes obviously saw.

‘It is the effect of the drug,’ explained Voss, who was himself fast succumbing.

‘You will not remember anything of what you have said. For that reason,’ he added, quite dryly, and wriggling his scraggy neck, ‘I will agree that it could be true.’

So that these two were united at last.

Le Mesurier, whose mission it was, he was convinced, to extract the last drop of blood out of their relationship, leaned forward, and asked:

‘Since I am invited to be present at the damnation of man, and to express faithfully all that I experience in my own mind, you will act out your part to the end?’

‘There is no alternative,’ Voss replied, addressing the grey-green body of his sleeping companion.

Not long afterwards the German, who had intended to examine the notebook, but refrained out of dislike, almost fear of reading his own thoughts, fell asleep, too, in the pewter-coloured light.

That morning the leader of the expedition resolved to take only the aboriginal boy and push on in search of a more suitable place in which to fortify themselves against the wet, and treat the sick. After only a couple of miles’ travel they were rewarded by sight of what appeared to be the entrance to some caves on the opposite bank of the river.

‘You go, Jackie,’ said Voss, ‘make sure this place good dry.’

But the black boy, whose naked body was shivering and chafing in a shroud of hard, wet canvas, immediately replied:

‘Too black. This feller lost inside.’

‘Dugald would not be frightened,’ said Voss.

‘Dugald no here,’ answered Jackie truthfully.

Voss cursed all black swine, but at once persuaded himself it was the rain that had made him lose his temper, for he clung to a belief that these subjects of his kingdom would continue to share his sufferings long after the white men had fallen away.

As there was no avoiding it, he spurred his unhappy horse down the yellow bank of the river, and into the flood, of which the breathtaking cold swallowed every thought and emotion. Otherwise, they were drifting deliciously. No dream could have been smoother, silenter, more inevitable. But the wretched horse, it appeared, was trampling the water, or swimming, for eventually he did scratch a foothold, heave himself up, and scramble out upon the opposite bank, there to shake his sides, until his bones and those of his rider were rattling together terribly. Jackie, who had followed, holding the tail of his brown gelding, soon stood there too, smiling and chattering with cold, his nakedness running with light and water, for he had lost his canvas cloak. Of bronze rather than the iron of most other blacks, fear and cold had refined him further into an imperial gold, so that Voss was reconciled to his slave, especially since the river had been negotiated by his own courage.

‘Now,’ he announced, ‘we will inspect the caves.’

The black boy did not refuse, but would not have gone ahead of that exorcizing magic the white man possessed. Night was terrifying, and was never quite emptied out of pockets such as these caves. He would not willingly have gone through darkness without carrying fire. Even moonlight was suspect, full of the blandishment of malicious fur, and treacherous teeth that snapped at black skin.

‘Blackfeller belong by these caves,’ said Jackie, beginning to scent something.

‘How?’ asked Voss.

The black boy could not explain his instincts, so he smiled, and swayed his head, and avoided the expectant eyes of his superior.

‘We shall soon see,’ said the German, stooping.

Immediately he entered, there was a flitting of bats. The bats flew out, screamed at the rain, circled, and for want of an inviting alternative, returned to their disturbed darkness. Alone in the landscape, the black boy began to feel it was probably preferable to follow the bats, and rejoin his master. How fortunate he was to have one. The rain was sighing with him.

It transpired that the caves were neither very deep nor very dark, for in addition to their general shallowness, a shaft descended through the cliffside into the most important chamber, and down this sleeve a dusty light poured. The floor was deep in dust, which deadened footfall, and made for reverence. There was a smell of dust and age, also possibly of human bodies, but ancient ones, and passionless at last.

Under the influence of the reverent light, the black boy was murmuring, but in his own tongue, because he was moved. Now the cave began to smell also of his live, youthful body. It appeared from his unguarded face and dreaming muscles that the place was full of a good magic.

Then Voss caught sight of the drawings.

‘What do these signify, Jackie?’ he asked.

The boy was explaining, in his own language, assisted by a forefinger.

‘ Verfluchte Sprachen! ’ cried the German.

For he was doubly locked in language.

As the boy continued unperturbed, the man had to recover from his lapse. He was looking.

‘Snake,’ Jackie explained. ‘Father my father, all blackfeller.’

‘ Gut ,’ added the boy, for the especial benefit of the German, and the word lit the whole place.

The man was yielding himself up to the simplicity of the drawings. Henceforth all words must be deceitful, except those sanctioned by necessity, the handrail of language.

‘Kangaroo,’ said the boy. ‘Old man,’ he smiled, touching certain parts.

These were very prominent, and befitting.

Although initiated by sympathy into the mystery of the drawings, of which the details fulfilled needs most beautifully, the German did retreat from the kangaroo.

He now said, rather primly:

‘ Ja. Natürlich . But I like these better. What are they?’

These appeared to be an assembly of tortuous skeletons, or bundles of bones and blowing feathers. Voss remembered how, as a boy, he had flown kites with messages attached to their tails. Sometimes the string would break, and the released kite, if it did not disintegrate in the air, must have carried its message into far places; but, whatever the destination, he had never received a reply.

Now, however, looking at the kite-figures, his heart was hopeful.

‘Men gone away all dead,’ the boy explained. ‘All over,’ he waved his arm. ‘By rock. By tree. No more men,’ he said, beginning to comb the light with his dark fingers, as if it had been hair. ‘No more nothink. Like this. See?’ He laid his cheek upon his hands, seed-shaped, and his eyelashes were playing together. ‘Wind blow big, night him white, this time these feller dead men. They come out. Usfeller no see. They everywhere.’