Patrick White - Voss

So that the walls of the cave were twanging with the whispers of the tangled kites. The souls of men were only waiting to come out.

‘Now I understand,’ said Voss gravely.

He did. To his fingertips. He felt immensely happy.

Why can it not remain like this, he wondered to the woman who was locked inside him permanently, and who would answer him through the ends of her long, dreaming hair. She suggested: the souls of those we know are perhaps no more communicative than their words, if you wind in the strings to which they are attached, and that is why it is arranged for those to break, and for the liberated souls to carry messages of hope into Bohemia, Moravia, and Saxony, if rain has not erased; in that event, the finders must content themselves with guesses.

The man in the cave should have felt wet, and aching, and cold, but the woman’s smooth, instinctive soul caressed his stubborn, struggling spirit. Secretly he would have liked — or why secretly, for the boy would not have understood — he would have liked to contribute to the rock drawings, in warm ochre, the L of happiness.

But time was passing, bats were stirring, the boy had tired of the drawings, and was standing at the mouth of the cave, remembering that substantial kangaroo, of which he had stuffed into his belly the last singed squares of hide ten days previously. He was hungry now.

‘Nun wir müssen zurück,’ said the man, emerging from his thoughts.

Language did not bother the black: that is to say, generally he would not listen. Now he waited for the man to act. Then he followed.

During the afternoon the main party was conveyed as far as the providential caves, Le Mesurier still very weak, swaying on his horse, with Turner, Angus, and Harry Robarts by now also debilitated, though to a lesser degree. Arrived at the point where Voss and the native had swum the river, it was decided to build a raft on which to ferry to the opposite bank any stores that could suffer from a wetting. Accordingly, Judd began to fell some saplings, of which there were few enough in the neighbourhood, and those none too straight. However, he was able to hew down a bare necessity of timber. Rain could not quench him. Water had become his element, as his shining axehead swam through the wood. The saplings were soon bound together, and upon floats of hollow logs, by means of thongs cut from a cowhide that Judd had saved against the day when such a situation should arise.

In the meantime, the men had begun to curse and bludgeon cattle, mules, and spare horses into swimming the river. The animals were begging for mercy in piteous strains, but did finally hump themselves, and plunge. Goats were next shooed into the water after a preliminary scampering. This operation was nearer murder, for the rational creatures were crying as though the knife was in their throats; indeed, some of the murderers promptly felt the blade in their own. But the goats were bobbing and swimming. Their horns were ripping up the air in vain. Then it was seen that at least five of the animals would not scramble out. As they were carried past and away, one old horny doe was beseeching Voss, who began calling out:

‘Mr Judd, have you not yet prepared the raft? We shall not be across and dried before darkness overtakes us.’

Because nothing could be done for the goats.

‘Mr Judd,’ he called, ‘are you aware that flour will turn to paste in water? Put it on the raft, man!’

To such an extent was the German distressed by the fate of the goats, he was determined to make every member of his party hate him, as he pretended not to watch those decent animals descending into hell.

Presently it was the turn of the raft. This was launched with difficulty owing to the steepness of the bank and weight of the green wood, Turner complaining that his guts were busted open, but eventually the craft was bumping on the water, and its cargo loaded, for the most part flour, ammunition, Mr Palfreyman’s ornithological specimens, and plants and insects which were the property of Voss himself. While several pairs of hands steadied the tossing timbers, Judd and Jackie swam their horses across the river, bearing ropes previously secured to the dubious craft.

At this point Voss did foresee the catastrophe that would overtake them, and did almost lift up his voice, but it was too heavy. Fascinated by the doomed raft, he continued to stare. That which he apprehended almost in physical detail had to happen, so he watched, with his chin sunk upon an old woollen comforter that the sharp change in the weather had persuaded him to wind round his neck.

Judd and the blackfellow had moored the raft to a tree on the opposite bank. The plan was that the remainder of the party should swim their horses across, and join in hauling in the ropes. But this was not to be. The current took the raft, once released by hands, and as it bobbed top-heavily at the end of the ropes, solemnly tipped it up. The scene was almost exactly as Voss, in that flash, had visualized, and by this time every member of the party, watching the ridiculous object of the raft, was convinced by his own helplessness that it had to happen thus.

‘Crikey,’ Turner cried at last, ‘there goes our flour, that we could at least have used to paper the walls of the bally caves, for what looks like being a lengthy visit.’

Voss, who had ordered the loading of the flour, did not say anything. Nor did Judd.

Some of the party appeared not to care, but were spurring their horses recklessly down the bank, for, in any event, this most personal river still had to be crossed.

‘Do you think you can manage it, Frank?’ asked Palfreyman, who had already forced himself to accept the loss of his specimens as some form of retribution.

Le Mesurier, who had dismounted during the foregoing operations, was seated on a rock, holding his head. He looked very ill.

‘I cannot sit any longer on a horse,’ he said.

‘You will have to. At least a few more hundred yards,’ Palfreyman replied.

‘He will hold to his horse’s tail, and be drawn across,’ Voss decreed, and continued to explain, and to organize.

Turner, Angus, and Harry Robarts, who were clearing the water from their dazed eyes, had formed a little group with Judd. They were sheltering against one another’s bodies, and watching from the other side.

‘If you are to die, Frank,’ said Voss, ‘it will be more comfortable to do so in the cave.’

‘I do not care if I lie down here and die,’ Le Mesurier answered.

But they got him to his feet.

Then the last of the party was streaming silently, slowly, across the flood. Somewhere on either flank floated Voss and Palfreyman, each holding to his horse’s tail. But it was the central figure, or head, rather, that cut the breath, that played upon the imaginations of those who watched. Le Mesurier was pale as water. Some of the spectators wondered whether they had ever known him. He had plaited the yellow fingers of his left hand into the sharp, blue-black horsehair, but with his right he held above his head a notebook wrapped in a piece of waterproof sheeting. More than anything, he suggested a man engaged in celebrating the most solemn ritual.

Such an emotional intensity underlay this mystic crossing, that the intrusion of solid ground beneath his feet was a violent shock to the invalid. As the horse lunged free, the man was wrested out of his entranced state, and would have fallen into the mud but for the hands that were receiving him.

Seeing everyone delivered safe, Palfreyman would have liked to offer up a prayer, only this, he realized, would not have been politic, and moreover, since his immersion in the water, he doubted whether he could have found the words, so cold was his body, and unresponsive his faculties. In his numb confusion, his mind began to grope after some substitute for prayer with which to express his thankfulness, when he happened to catch sight of a battered quart pot, and cracked and swollen saddle-bag. These objects, of simple form and humble purpose, that exposure to the elements had emphasized, strengthened his sense of gratitude and trust to the extent that he resolved to proffer their images to God, and was at once consoled to know that his intention was acceptable.