Walkabout (6 page)

‘Look! Look! He's got lacy panties on. Sissy girl! Sissy girl! Sissy girl!'

Faster and faster he whirled his mocking fandango.

Mary was horrified. But for the bush boy, Peter's antics supplied the half-expected cue. He knew for certain now why the strange gift had been made, knew what it signified: the prelude to a jamboree, the dressing-up that heralded the start of a ritual dance. The little one had started the dancing; now it was up
to him to keep it going. He did so with wholehearted zest.

The joyful caperings of Peter were nothing compared to the contortions the bush boy now went into. He leapt and bounded around the billabong with the abandon of a dervish run amok. It was a symbolic combat he danced; a combat in which he was both victor and vanquished; a combat between life and death. He had no emu feathers in his hair, no moistened ochre streaking his face and chest; but he snatched up a stem of yacca-yacca for spear and a splinter of ironbark for club, and jabbing, dodging, feinting and parrying he fought his pantomime self to exhaustion. It was the only dance he knew: the war dance; the natural and inevitable sequel to dressing-up.

Brother and sister watched his act, first in amazement, then in unrestrained delight.

‘
Kup, kup, yurr-rr-rr-a! Kup, kup, kurr-rr-rra!
'

The bush boy's war cry started like the yap of an attacking dingo and ended in the bush-dog's throat-shaking growl. He became utterly lost in his battle; the pantomime became reality. First he was the triumphant attacker; in and out the yacca-yacca darted like the jab of a fish-barbed spear; round and about the ironbark flailed, battering, parrying, crushing. Then he transferred himself to the receiving end. He clutched at his chest, wrenching out the imagined fish-barbs; he smote his forehead, smashing himself to the sand; dazedly he staggered up. But with an ear-splitting howl of victory his assailant was on him. The spear stabbed through his heart. With a choking
cry the defeated warrior toppled from the crest of a sand-dune; in a grotesque, stiff-limbed somersault, he slid to the desert floor. Then he lay still. The battle was over; but the victory parade was still to come.

Like a phoenix rising, the victor sprang from the vanquished's body. His fists he clenched and knotted above his head – like a boxer self-acknowledging his prowess. His feet he pulled proudly up in a high-kicking march of victory – an ebullient, primitive goose-step. And after every so many paces he leapt high into the air and brought both heels up from behind, to strike himself on the buttocks with a resounding, flesh-tingling slap. At first the tempo of the victory dance was slow and measured: stylized. But gradually it quickened. The goose-stepping became higher, faster; the leaping more frenzied, more abandoned. The bush boy's body glistened with sweat. His breathing quickened. His nostrils dilated. His eyes rolled. Yet still the dance went on: ever faster, ever wilder. He was swaying now to a drumbeat that couldn't be heard, caught up in a ritual that couldn't be broken. On and on and on; though his muscles were aching, his lungs bursting, his heart pounding, and his mind empty as the cloudless sky. Then suddenly the climax: somersault after somersault, victory-roll after victory-roll, till he was standing, stock still and in sudden silence, face to face with the children.

And once again he was naked; for at the moment of climax the elastic of the panties had snapped, and
the gift – symbol of civilization – lay under his feet, trampled into the desert sand.

White girl and black boy, a couple of yards apart, stood staring one at another.

The girl's eyes grew wider and wider.

The bush boy's eyes widened too. He realized, quite suddenly, that the larger of the strangers wasn't a male: she was a lubra, a budding gin.

He took a half-pace forward. Then he drew back. Appalled. For into the girl's eyes there came a terror such as he'd seen only a couple of times before: a terror that could for him have only one meaning, one tragic and inevitable cause. He began to tremble then, in great, uncontrolled, nerve-jerking spasms. For, to him, the girl's terror could only mean one thing: that she had seen in his eyes an image: the image of the Spirit of Death.

T
O
the bush boy everything had its appointed time. There was a time to be weaned, a time to be carried in arms: a time to walk with the tribe, a time to walk alone: a time for the proving-of-manhood, a time for the taking of gins. A time for hunting, and a time to die. These times were preordained. They never overlapped. A boy couldn't walk before he'd been weaned; couldn't take a gin before his manhood had been proved. These things were done in order.

This was why the question of the girl's sex had never interested the bush boy. Didn't interest him now. For in his tribal timetable he had only arrived at the stage of walking alone: the stage immediately preceding the proving-of-manhood: the stage of the walkabout.

In the bush boy's tribe every male who reached the age of thirteen or fourteen had to perform a walkabout – a selective test which weeded out and exterminated the weaker members of the tribe, and ensured that only the fittest survived to father children. This custom is not common to all Aboriginal tribes, but is confined to the Bindaboo, the most primitive and least-known of the Aboriginal groups who live among the water-holes of the Central and North Australian
desert. The test consisted of journeying from one group of water-holes to another; a journey which invariably took some six to eight months and was made entirely unaided and alone. It was a test of mental and physical toughness far fairer – but no less stringent – than the Spartan exposure of new-born babies.

It was this test that the bush boy was now engaged on. He had been doing well: had covered the most difficult part of the journey. Yet he wasn't, it seemed, to be allowed to finish it. For the lubra had looked into his eyes and seen the Spirit of Death.

Death was the Aboriginal's only enemy, his only fear. There was for him no future life: no Avalon, no Valhalla, no Islands of the Blest. That perhaps was why he watched death with such unrelaxing vigilance; that certainly was why he feared it with a terror beyond all ‘civilized' comprehension. That was why he now stood in the middle of the Sturt Plain, trembling and ice-cold, his body beaded in little globules of sweat.

Peter looked in amazement, first at the bush boy then at his sister. He couldn't grasp what was happening; couldn't understand how things had gone so suddenly and terribly wrong. Afraid, his recently-acquired confidence quite drained away, he reached for his sister's hand. Then, unexpectedly, he started to cry.

To the bush boy the little one's tears were confirmation: confirmation of what the lubra had seen.
He turned away. He left the
worwora
at the edge of the billabong; he left the lace-edged panties by the ashes of last night's hearth. Slowly he walked away into the desert.

T
HE
children watched him. The girl was very pale and breathing quickly. The boy was whimpering; shocked; frightened; caught up in a cross-fire of emotions he couldn't begin to understand. But one fact did penetrate the haze of his bewilderment. The bush boy, for the second time since their meeting him, was deserting them: their life-line, once again, was drifting away.

Suddenly, violently, he flung off his sister's hand and rushed stumbling into the desert.

‘Hey, darkie!' His voice was frightened. ‘Come back. Come back.'

The bush boy walked on: unheeding, apparently unhearing: like a sleep-walker. But Peter wouldn't be denied. Blindly he launched himself at the bush boy's legs, clutching him round the knees.

‘You're not to go,' he panted.

And he hung on, like a leech.

The bush boy was jerked to a halt: was shaken out of his trance. He put his hands on the white boy's shoulders, pushing him gently away. But Peter wouldn't release his grip.

‘You're not to go' – he repeated it over and over again. ‘Not to go. Not to go. Not to go.'

The bush boy squatted down; so that his face was
close to the little one's; so that the little one could look into his eyes and see the terrible thing that was there. With their faces less than eighteen inches apart the two boys stared into each other's eyes.

But to the bush boy's astonishment, the little one didn't draw back; gave no exclamation of terror; seemed to see nothing wrong. He got to his feet. Puzzled. For a moment hope came surging back. Perhaps the lubra had been mistaken: perhaps the Spirit of Death had been only passing through him, resting awhile as he passed from one tribe to another: perhaps he had left him now.

He retraced his steps, back towards the girl.

But as soon as he neared her, all hope drained away. For at his approach the lubra again shrank back; in her eyes all the former terror came welling up.

The bush boy knew then that he was going to die. Not perhaps today, nor tomorrow, nor even the next day. But soon. Before the coming of the rains and the smoking of spirits out of the tribal caves. This knowledge numbed his mind, but didn't paralyse it. He was still able to think of other things. Of the queer strangers, for example – the lubra and the little one – of what would happen to them. When he died, they would die too. That was certain, for they were such helpless creatures. So there'd be not one victim for the Spirit of Death but three. Unless he could somehow save them?

Then in a moment of clarity he saw what he must do. He must lead the strangers to safety: to the final goal of his walkabout: to the valley-of-waters-under-
the-earth. And they must waste no time. For who knew how much time they would have.

He gathered up the
worwora
, and smoothed out the ash of the fire.

‘
Kurura
,' he said. And struck out across the desert. The little one followed him at once. But the lubra didn't move. He thought for a long time that she had decided to stay by the billabongs, but in the end she too started to follow, but keeping a long way behind.

T
HE
desert was neither flat nor monotonous; nor I was it like so many other deserts – the Gobi, the Steppes, or certain parts of the Sahara – featureless and devoid of colour. Its formation was varied: patches of sand, outcrops of rock, dried-up watercourses, salt-pans, faults, and frequent belts of vegetation. And its colours were strong: bold and harsh and sharply-defined: belts of yellow, blocks of bottle-green, patches of fire-flame red and fields of blood.

The bush boy led the way unhesitatingly: across the salt-pans, through the scattered yellow-jackets – poor relations to the gums – around the outcrops of quartz and granite. It was eight years since his tribe had last passed this way. He'd been little more than a toddler then; but small as he was his memory and instinct had been at work, recording landmarks, storing up information that might be of use for the future – information that was proving invaluable now.

Soon they came to a valley, gently-rising, coiling like a lifeless snake aslant a range of low granite hills. Here the country was heavily timbered: stately white-barked eucalyptus, tatty yellow-jackets, saw-leafed banksias, and occasional patches of sandalwood – source of the incense-shedding joss-sticks that smoulder beneath the images of a million oriental gods. And
as the trees increased in number, so did the birds. There hadn't been many beside the hill-that-had-fallen-out-of-the-moon; but here, in the shade of the eucalyptus, they were in their thousands: gang-gangs and finches; honey-suckers and soldier-birds; budgerigars (love-birds to the romantically-minded; tiny flitting gems of mauve and olive, gold, jade-green, and cobalt-blue); and, perched on the branches of the gum trees, row after row of wonga-wongas: sad-faced, motionless, silent as the desert itself.

After the children had pushed some way into the valley, another type of bird made its presence known: a strange, sorrowful bird that followed their tracks, hopping from branch to branch with piteous, heartrending cries.

‘It isn't yours,' he wailed. ‘It isn't yours.'

The children paused; looked back. At first they could see nothing. Then, with a sudden fluttering swoop, a red-breasted pardalote swept over their heads to settle on the branch of a nearby eucalyptus.

‘It isn't yours. It isn't yours.' The mournful cry echoed among the leaves.

The bush boy turned to Peter, explaining by mime the pardalote's behaviour. Ahead was water – thirstily the bush boy gulped – where the bird was accustomed to drink; and he was loath to share his private reservoir with strangers. For the pardalote was a bird with an abnormal thirst; he drank eighty to a hundred times a day, and not by the normal process of imbibing through the beak, but by settling himself on top of the water, spreading his wings and absorbing liquid
through the delicate membrane of his skin. No wonder he wanted to keep his pool to himself! Yet by his very loquaciousness he guided others straight to the water he sought to hide. The bush boy led on, knowing that should he take a wrong turning the pardalote's contented silence would warn him of his mistake. And soon they came to a small, fern-ringed basin, fed by an underground spring.

The pardalote, by now, had stopped his wailing. In angry silence he watched the children drinking his water, refreshing themselves at his pool.

It was midday. The sun was hot; and the boys scooped up great palmfuls of water and sloshed them over their heads. Mary too. But she wouldn't go near the bush boy; and whenever he looked at her, she shrank away.

For lunch they ate the
worwora
: uncooked.

During the meal Peter tried to comfort his sister: asked her what she was frightened of. But he soon gave up. She was, he decided, in one of her incomprehensible moods. Girls were like that. Sometimes the only thing to do was to leave them alone. He wandered across to the bush boy and lay down beside him, in the shade of an outcrop of rock.