Death of a River Guide (36 page)

They are arguing about God. ‘Is he a big fella?' asks one woman with a walleye.

‘He like hunting kangaroo?' asks another. ‘How he walk? Like an echidna walk, like a whitefella, or he walk good and quiet like black people?' They are goading the sealer, who until this point has been too drunk to bother responding. His immediate interest lies in his right arm, with which he has been stroking the woman wearing a red woollen stocking cap, rubbing her breast up and down.

‘The Lord God Almighty walks on water,' he says to her.

‘He's a bloody platypus then,' says the woman who wears the black beanie, and all three women cackle. Emboldened, the woman in the red woollen stocking cap pushes the sealer's arm away and asks, ‘How come white-fellas nail platypuses onto crosses?' The women laugh even more. The sealer's temper immediately changes from one of lecherous intent to anger at the jibe at his religion.

‘You blaspheming bitches!' shouts the sealer, whose patience with this conversation is now exhausted. His sharp blue eyes flash.
His
sharp blue eyes.

The sealer grabs the woman with the red woollen stocking cap. She says nothing, but stares into his face. Into those blue eyes. He cuffs her with a methodical violence that I recognise. He slaps her on one side of the face and says something, then slaps her on the other side and says something else. And his voice is fierce.

‘Learn this and learn it well.'

Slap
.

‘I was made in the image of our Lord.'

Slap
.

‘White.'

Slap
.

‘White.'

Slap
.

‘And God gave me dominion over all his creatures.'

Slap
.

‘Including you.'

Slap
.

‘Including you.'

Slap
.

Then he throws her onto her belly and takes her from behind, like he does with sheep, his right arm jamming her head back in a headlock, reducing her struggles to jerks and twists of her body. She feels a white face behind her and she knows that she will never forget the fear and humiliation of this moment, knows that she will never forget, nor will her children nor the children they beget nor their children, even long after they have forgotten from where their terrible fear comes, long after they cease to understand why they are afraid. She feels his breath upon the nape of her neck, hot, like the rainforest breath of Werowa announcing a death. And she wonders, But whose death?

Here I am, witnessing this strange and tragic event, feeling the greasy sand beneath my feet, so close that I can smell the seal blubber and cheap rum on the sealer's breath, yet unable to find adequate material evidence to prove that what is happening is a reality I share. I would pick up the sealer's fine sealskin jacket rimmed with wallaby fur which lies just to the left of me as material evidence, but the young girl beside me, Harry's grandmother, Auntie Ellie, my great-grandmother, has hold of my right hand, and I can feel through her palm and her fingers that I must not move, and when I so much as make a small bodily movement, my lungs immediately fill with fire.

And so I watch, mute, passive, horrified, as the other women start laying into the sealer, belting him in the guts and in the head, trying to wrench him away, and then backing off when he pulls a pistol out of his pocket and waves it wildly.

The woman being raped begins to sing a strange and forlorn song. Her song sounds the emptiness of the beach and the ocean, echoes the distant cry of the sea eagle, calls for the return screech of the black cockatoo. ‘Shut up, Black Pearl,' warns the sealer as he thrusts in and out. ‘Shut up.'

But Black Pearl continues to sing to her brother the blue-tongue lizard, her mother the river, her father the rocks, her sister the crayfish that smells of woman.

‘Shut up,' he says again, punctuating his words with blows to her head.

Still Black Pearl sings to her family. His blows having no effect, he looks around, then laughs with enlightenment. He places the barrel of the pistol in her mouth and rests the stump of a long lost finger on the trigger.

‘This'll fix you,' he says and laughs again.

But still Black Pearl sings and sighs the cold metal in her mouth, the fear in her guts, the searing pain between her thighs - none of it can smother her song. On and on the song goes, till the man, sated, hoists up his breeches, lets her fall upon her side into the sand, and staggers away to find his rum bottle.

On and on the song goes, and after the sealer pukes and then falls asleep in a stupor, the two other women come over and lie together with Black Pearl. They lie together on the land on which they once stood with pride. As they warm one another on the beach, they join in the low song that seems to cover all the sand. The song and the sound of the waves become as one and on and on it goes, and though the women are now asleep the black cockatoo and the sea eagle sing. The wind in the boobiallas passes the song on to the wind in the gums, who teaches it to the wind in the myrtles and celery top pines, who then sings it to the river and to the rocks.

We are now so close I can see that Black Pearl, though asleep, has not closed her eyes. Her pupils are black. There are no tear stains. I realise I am witness to the conception of Auntie Ellie's mother and to the genesis of all that I am. I feel afraid. The black eyes begin to fill with swirls and dancing bubbles. I realise I am entrapped, entombed in this all-encompassing water.

On a white quartz-sand beach the aqua-green waves pounding insistently. A woman's cry of pain, smothered partly by something in her mouth, a man's quickening groan and then cry of triumph, then stillness. Then nothing.

But everywhere the song.

On and on it goes, and here in this godforsaken water I cannot rid my mind of its infernal sound.

 

And now, joining the song, I feel a dull thrumming that vibrates the very rocks which grasp my body. At the same time as I feel these vibrations I am able to see the cause of them - a helicopter with the bright logo of a commercial TV station. Who knows how it came to be here? Perhaps it is a TV crew out shooting some stock footage of the south-west wilderness whom the Cockroach has managed to signal from the ground, and the crew, to their simultaneous horror and delight, have stumbled upon an actual news story in the middle of nowhere. Who cares? Least of all me, who can only watch as the helicopter hovers in mid-air, side on to the flow of the river, its side door open.

From the occasional glint of reflected sunlight in the dark open doorway, I know what it is they are doing. They are filming my death, the sight of my forearm and hand rising from the furious surging waters to my helpless and hapless would-be rescuers above, whose efforts have now been redoubled by the knowledge that they will be on national TV news in a few short hours. Their arrival has created an audience, and hence my death moves in their minds from the plane of hopeless futility to the altogether higher plane of tragic drama. None of which brings any solace to me. Their new-found energies are transmitted to me only as greatly increased pain in my raised arm and shoulder as they wrench it this way and that. And the knowledge of the helicopter being there only to record my fate rather than to act against it fills my soul with despair. The helicopter should be dropping men and equipment here, should be bringing its technology so that I might live, should abet my hope instead of recording my terrible, terrible despair. But as long as it remains, as long as the rocks pulse around me, then some chance remains. Surely after finishing filming they will come to my aid. Perhaps they are in contact via radio with another chopper which is at this very moment rushing the appropriate gear and personnel to this remote wilderness to ensure that I live. Perhaps they are simply assessing the situation thoroughly before taking action. No doubt they have some very clever plan to rescue me, but a plan which must be totally checked out before being put into action. My rescue can only be a few short minutes away now, maybe less. But my mind is already begin to drift again. I must stop it wandering.

What is a minute? How long have I been here? Minutes? Hours? Days?

How long can I stay here?

Not much longer.

No! No! Minutes! Hours! Days! I can last. I can.

I must live
.

They cannot leave me here to die.

Please! Please! I am here, a human being. Please don't go!

But as these words scream through my mind, I feel the pulsing of the rocks dying away. The helicopter has enough footage of my death and is returning to Hobart to file its report in time for the evening news.

All my hope and despair and pain seems to leave with the chopper. All that remains is an immense stillness.

For the first time the contours of my true country become clear in my mind as the clouds of life fall beneath me and the blueness of death beckons from above.

 Eliza, 1898 

Eliza closes her eyes. For a moment she has the most childish notion that there is a dinghy coming through the clouds to take her away. She opens her eyes and her old watery eyelids blink away the foolery of such a vision. For a second time, Eliza closes her eyes. For the final time.

Thinking:
Well say You in th. New Jerusalem
.

 Aljaz 

As I float a little above the river I can see a group of men trying to pull something out of a flood-swollen waterfall. Their work is difficult and dangerous. They stand on the edge of a greasy rock with a furious torrent raging down beside them. They wear blue overalls marked
POLICE SEARCH AND RESCUE
in bold white capital letters across the yoke. I can see a stiffened hand and forearm rising out of the whitewater. The men try all sorts of things with the body that is apparently connected to the hand, and which is underwater, submerged in the monstrous deafening roar of the river. They attach ropes to the hidden body, and radio in a helicopter that lowers a winch cable which they connect to the rope. The helicopter pulls gently.

‘If it pulls hard,' I hear one man say, ‘it might just rip the body's arms off, or, alternatively, it might pull the helicopter down from the sky.'