Death of a River Guide (33 page)

If I am to die, and I am not saying that I will, believe me I am not, but if I do, there will be at least one good consequence of my death. It will mean I will no longer age, no longer be confronted with the daily and ongoing disintegration of my body. In this death seems to share a purpose, as well as a sensation, with aerobics - to stop ageing. Except that where aerobics is ultimately doomed to fail, death will always succeed, as long as you are fortunate enough to have it come your way at a young age.

But then I am struck by the heretical thought: what if ageing were preferable to dying? What if growing old and the accompanying decline of the body were accepted with grace? Would it not be possible to see the growth in wisdom and in the heart as sufficient compensation for the slowing down of one's physical attributes? Could it be that I might even enjoy slowly wrinkling up next to the one I love more than jumping, almost trampolining, from the bed of one young girl to an even younger girl in the hope that their firmness of flesh and clear eyes be catching, like some socially transmitted disease? The question that obsesses me at this moment of mortal peril is perverse in the extreme, and one that goes against all the strictures and nostrums of our time. I feel silly even thinking such a question, for it is evidently only the product of a greatly distressed mind, but I must put it into words.

Is there life after youth?

I ponder this question for some time, then think, Yes, there is, and I want it, want to enjoy it for what it is, not despise it for what it isn't. It seems ridiculous, valuing old age, but why not?

I want to age.

I want to live.

And yet … and yet
.

I am so very scared.

But it's getting harder to hang on to any thoughts. My mind pounds and wavers and feels so heavy, so very heavy, while my thoughts are so light and becoming lighter all the time. Just when I have nearly caught them, they swirl away with the bubbles above my face, away from me, upwards, towards life.

A woman's face, elderly, criss-crossed with lines that denote not only age but ongoing pain and incessant hardship, so deep and strongly defined that they look as if they have been gouged out of her flesh with a chisel, looks at a yellowed and brittle piece of paper upon which is scrawled the most curious message, the meaning of which still eludes her. Her husband, who is without teeth and without memory, comes into the poor kitchen in which she sits in front of the cooking fire with a rug over her legs. She folds the note. It has been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases have opened into tears, and only the infinite care with which she tenderly folds it back prevents it from falling into four separate pieces. She puts the note back into the book of prayers she is reading by the light of a kerosene lamp. Her husband apologises for interrupting and then asks her if she has seen his wife. She asks him to sit down and make himself comfortable, and he thanks her for the kindness she is showing to a stranger.

‘We are all unknown to one another,' she says, but he does not hear, for he has started speaking again, this time of his brother.

‘Successful bugger he is, mayor of Parramatta. You would like him, like him very much,' he says.

‘Has he a wife?' she asks.

‘O yes, my word. Has he a wife? Huh! O, yes. Beautiful woman. And a wonderful wife. Wonderful woman.'

A small red-headed girl runs into the kitchen. ‘Rose,' says the old woman, ‘what are you doing here?'

‘Auntie Eileen sent me over with a loaf of bread for you and Grandad,' says Rose, and she goes and kisses the old man on the forehead.

‘I am not your grandad,' says the old man. ‘Your grandad is the mayor of Parramatta.'

‘Pay no heed,' says the old woman to Rose, smiling, ‘he is not too well today.' The old man looks hurt and confused. After the child has gone, she looks across at him and says to him, ‘You remember none of it, do you?'

‘Remember what?' he asks. ‘Nothing wrong with my memory.'

‘How Ned died escaping. And how you then married me and raised his children as your own.'

‘But they are my own,' he says, perplexed.

‘Of course,' she reassures him, ‘of course.'

Within a few minutes he has fallen asleep, and starts snoring. The old woman takes the letter back out of the book of prayers and looks at it some more. Then looks into the fire and looks at the way the near-invisible red flames, as they so sensuously lick the coals, form into the image of her first husband, the father of all her children, Ned Quade, the brother of her second husband, Colum, who lies asleep in the chair opposite, an exclamation mark of dribble hanging from his slack lips.

Eliza looks at the letter and reads it yet one more time. Reads it for perhaps the thousandth time and still ponders its mystery.

My Esteemed and Most Noble Madame Elijah
-

Well say You in th. New Jerusalem
.

Your loving And humble Servant etc etc in Eyes of The lord

Ned Kwade His Mark

And below this message the outline of a Celtic cross, a cross enclosed within a circle. His mark, sure enough.

Well say You in th. New Jerusalem
.

But where? And when?

 the Cockroach 

The Cockroach turns around to face the cliff and slowly climbs back up the rope to the top, his body finding the work a relief after hanging in one position so long. At the top Aljaz grabs the Cockroach's wrist in a strong grip for the final haul to the track. But he does not immediately heave the Cockroach up. Aljaz realises he is staring into the Cockroach's eyes.

The Cockroach cannot tell Aljaz that Derek is dead, because he cannot verify the fact of death. But he knows what he has witnessed. Further, he believes himself to be responsible for what happened because he acted and failed. Aljaz knows by the Cockroach's lack of speech what has happened. And Aljaz believes himself to be responsible because he didn't act. It eats at them both. Neither can bear the other carrying the burden of what they see as their own individual crime. With a sudden sharp burst of strength Aljaz heaves the Cockroach up past where Aljaz stands on the track, and I can see that Aljaz does not look around at his fellow river guide but is continuing to stare at the place where the Cockroach had been hanging from the rope. Or, more precisely, that he looks through and beyond that position into the vast roaring moiling maelstrom, and, beyond that, at the cliffs and at the base of the mountains and at the gorge itself. And sees his face and it looks no longer separate from the world around it: it looks as if it has been dead and petrified for millennia. As if it and he were part of the gorge and the mountains and the cliffs and the maelstrom. As if he were rock so hard that the furrows in his face down which the rainwater is channelled have taken an eternity to be so eroded by the wind and water. As if he were so hard, as if he were. As if he were alone. That is what he is thinking, yes, now it is all coming back to me.

I am so alone and alone.

So it is that Aljaz and the Cockroach stop talking to one another, except to coordinate their search around the base waters of the Churn, and later further below in Serenity Sound.

They drift the half-kilometre down toward the Coruscades, the towering walls of the gorge enclosing them on both sides as they examine every eddy and every backwater. Aljaz and the Cockroach notice the water line on the riverbanks, which shows how high the water is, and how it is continuing to rise. They pull in at the Coruscades campsite, which is still a little above the water line. Aljaz orders his punters to stay in the raft, while he and the Cockroach check the campsite. But they do not immediately go to the campsite. The pair, one small and stocky, the other long and straight, scramble up the bank, then head around to the boulders at the river's edge to survey the large rapid known as the Coruscades. Scanning the cataract for Derek's body. Standing on a boulder as large as a house they look up and down the river, two twigs jutting out upon part of the gorge's huge grim profile, the edges of which are softened by the heavy rain. They are numb, their emotions suspended, because they have not found the body, and the brief hope remains that somewhere down the river Derek may have been washed ashore alive. Neither believe it, but neither can dismiss it.

‘So we camp there tonight?' asks the Cockroach, pointing at the riverbank campsite.

Aljaz nods his head.

‘We won't get flooded out?'

Aljaz shakes his head, but they both look up at the cliffs and wonder how, if he is wrong and they are flooded out of the campsite, they will camp ten people up there.

‘What does it matter?' says the Cockroach and turns to head back down to the rafts.

While the punters set up camp the two guilty men work their way back upriver to the Churn, scouring the waters and the rocks. They work like madmen, seeking to find where the body might be, pretending, as they must, that he might possibly be alive. They manage to climb back around to the boulders upon which Derek fell, and are able to identify the actual rock by the thin blood smear running down it to the water. They stand on a boulder directly opposite for some time, neither man talking. The boulder is round and smooth, and the rising river foam whipped up by the waterfall directly upriver banks up around the boulder's base. As the foam laps the edge of the rock the sticky blood loosens into drifting slags, then dissolves to stain the foam slightly pink, the whole like a bloom blushing at its centre then pale at its extremity, the rock the stamen. But there is no blood trail leading to the body, no body to be seen. Only a river made incarnate. They swim across to the boulder and they haul themselves up, their hair and faces covered in large tufts of pink and brown foam, like some malevolent creatures of the river. No body is to be felt in the water.

So they stand at the base of the roaring waterfall, deafened, foam-flecked faces slowly saturating and dissolving in the pounding mist thrown by the cascade above, the foam blown away by the wind gusts generated by the tons of falling water. Far below, Sheena looks up from the raft in which she and the other punters sit. What I notice looking at them now is how no one else looks back upriver except her. And what she sees at the base of the massive waterfall are two extensions of the boulder caught within the shadow of the gorge. She is no longer entirely sure who or what the figures are.

By the time it is dark they know that Derek's body must be somewhere in the river below the Churn. It is not visible in Serenity Sound, so it either has been washed by the flood waters further down the river, or it is snagged underwater, where it will remain till the waters fall and the gases of decay bloat the body and float it blimplike to the river's surface.

 Gaia Head