Patrick White - Voss

‘It is me, sir. Harry. I have come.’

That same evening Le Mesurier came up. Voss always knew when it would be Frank. The latter’s steps were thoughtful. He was somewhat moody. He would be looking at a spider, or into the grain of the balusters, or out of a little, deep-set window that opened upon a yard at the back, in which were kegs, and iron, and long ropes of ivy, and a grey coat with a yellow eye. Frank Le Mesurier could not look too much, though what he did with what he saw was not always evident. He did not communicate at once. His skin was yellowish. His thin lips were dark in that livery skin, his hollow eyes had dark lids, his nose, less fleshy than most, was rather proud.

‘Can you tell me,’ Le Mesurier had asked as they were standing on the white planks of the same ship, ‘if you are coming to this damned country for any particular purpose?’

‘Yes,’ answered Voss, without hesitation. ‘I will cross the continent from one end to the other. I have every intention to know it with my heart. Why I am pursued by this necessity, it is no more possible for me to tell than it is for you, who have made my acquaintance only before yesterday.’

They continued to look at the enormous sea.

‘And what, may I ask in return, is your purpose? Mr Le Mesurier, is it?’

Some sense of kinship with the young man had made the German’s accent kind.

‘Purpose? So far, no purpose,’ Le Mesurier said. ‘But time will show, perhaps.’

It was clear that the vast glass of ocean would not.

The German felt himself drawn even closer to the young man, as they steadied themselves against the swell. If I were not obsessed, Voss reflected, I would be purposeless in this same sea.

The dark, young, rather exquisite, but insolent fellow did not cling like Harry Robarts; he would reappear at intervals. Frank would stick at nothing long. Since his arrival at Sydney he had been employed by several business houses, had worked for a settler in the Hunter Valley, even as a groom at a livery stable, but at all times was careful to polish his boots. His waistcoats were still presentable, and would rouse comment in hotels from those who bored him. He did not listen long to the conversation of others, having thoughts of his own of greater importance, and would sometimes slip away with no warning at all, with the result that he soon became detested by those talkers who had their professional pride. He was a snob, too. He would go so far as to suggest that he had more education than others, which, of course, was true. Somebody soon discovered that he had written a poem on a metaphysical theme, for details of which nobody dared ask. It was known, however, that he liked to discuss God, after he was drunk, on rum for choice, ploughing through the dark treacle of seductive words and getting nowhere at two o’clock in the morning. Getting nowhere. If he had become coolly cynical rather than embittered, it was because he still entertained a hope that it might be revealed which part he was to play in the general scheme.

Voss had encountered Le Mesurier one evening at dusk amongst the scrub and rocks gathered together above the water on the northern side of the Domain, and asked, as it seemed the time and place:

‘Have you discovered that purpose, Frank, that we have discussed already on board the ship?’

‘Why, no, I have not, Mr Voss,’ said the elusive Frank, and the goose-flesh overcame him.

He began to pitch stones.

‘I rather suspect,’ he added, ‘it is something I shall not discover till I am at my last gasp.’

Then Voss, who had sat down in a clearing in the scrub and larger, ragged trees, warmed more than ever to the young man, knowing what it was to wrestle with his own daemon. In the darkening, yellow light, the German’s arms around his knees were spare as willow switches. He could dispense with flesh.

Le Mesurier continued to throw stones, that made a savage sound upon the rocks.

Then Voss had said:

‘I have a proposition to make. My plans are forming. It is intended that I will lead an expedition into the interior, westward from the Darling Downs. Several gentlemen of this town are interested in the undertaking, and will provide me with the necessary backing. Do you care to come, Frank?’

‘I?’ exclaimed Le Mesurier.

And he pitched a particularly savage stone.

‘No,’ he said, lingeringly. ‘I am not sure that I want to cut my throat just yet.’

‘To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself,’ said Voss.

He knew this young man as he knew his own blacker thoughts.

‘I am aware of that,’ laughed Frank. ‘But I can do it in Sydney a damn sight more comfortably. You see, sir,’ he added longingly, ‘I am not intended for such heights as you. I shall wallow a little in the gutter, I expect, look at the stars from a distance, then turn over.’

‘And your genius?’ said the German.

‘What genius?’ asked Le Mesurier, and let fall the last of his ammunition.

‘That remains to be seen. Every man has a genius, though it is not always discoverable. Least of all when choked by the trivialities of daily existence. But in this disturbing country, so far as I have become acquainted with it already, it is possible more easily to discard the inessential and to attempt the infinite. You will be burnt up most likely, you will have the flesh torn from your bones, you will be tortured probably in many horrible and primitive ways, but you will realize that genius of which you sometimes suspect you are possessed and of which you will not tell me you are afraid.’

It was dark now. Tempted, the young man was, in fact, more than a little afraid — his throbbing body was deafening him — but as he was a vain young man, he was also flattered.

‘That is so much, well, just so much,’ protested Le Mesurier. ‘You are mad,’ he said.

‘If you like,’ said Voss.

‘And when does this here expedition of yours intend to leave?’

It was too ridiculous, and he made it sound so.

‘One month. Two months. It is not yet decided,’ said the voice of Voss through the darkness.

He was no longer interested. He was even bored by what he had probably achieved.

‘All right then,’ said Le Mesurier. ‘What if I come along? At least I shall think it over. What have I got to lose?’

‘You can answer that better than I,’ Voss replied.

Though he did, he suspected, know the young man pretty well.

As the moment of reality had receded, they now began to walk away, in soothing sounds of dark grass. Both men were somewhat tired. The German began to think of the material world which his egoism had made him reject. In that world men and women sat at a round table and broke bread together. At times, he admitted, his hunger was almost unbearable. But young Frank Le Mesurier was now thrilled by the immensity of darkness, and resented the approach of those lights which would reveal human substance, his own in particular.

Later, of course, he was able to recover the disguise of his cynicism, and was clothed with it the evening he reached the top of the stairs, and discovered Voss at home in his room, with that miserable boy Harry Robarts, who was killing flies on the window-sill.

Harry looked up. Because he did not always understand his speech, as well as for other reasons, he suspected Mr Le Mesurier.

‘Ah, Frank,’ said Voss, who dared at once to test his power while remaining occupied at his desk; ‘since you made up your mind, I believe you are afraid that I will give you the slip.’

‘I could not hope to be so happy,’ said Le Mesurier, and did in a sense mean it.

For he was always halfway between wanting and not.

Voss laughed.

‘You must speak with Harry for a little,’ he said.