Riders in the Chariot (49 page)

The Jew read, or heard: "... two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies...."

In spite of which he knew from observing. He could read by heart the veins of the hidden bodies.

Now the lips of the past blew the words a little faster, as if the mouth had adapted itself to the acceleration of time. Time, in fact, was almost up. Belts were tightening. Down in the workshop there was a thwack of leather, metal easing greasily.

But the reader could not interrupt his reading: "... and when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up...."

When the machinery in the workshop started up, the whole washroom revolted, but soon drowned, and floated gently enough. Against the noise from the machines, the voices of the tap and cistern were no longer audible.

But the voice of the Jew continued reading, now utterly his own, and loud, above the natter of the rejuvenated machines: "... And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creatures was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above...."

When the abo came in. Looking for something he had left.

Immediately on seeing how he was caught, he remained poised, rocking on the balls of his normally flat and squelchy feet. He could not decide what to do.

The Jew was shining.

"It is Ezekiel!" he said, forgetful of that convention by which he and the blackfellow refrained from exchanging words. "Somebody is reading Ezekiel I found here. Open on the bench."

The spit jumped out of his mouth with joy.

The blackfellow stood there, playing with a ball of cotton waste, backwards and forwards, from hand to hand. He was sulking now, though.

"It is your book?" asked the Jew.

Then the blackfellow did something extraordinary. He spoke.

"Yes," he admitted. "It's my book."

"Then you read the Bible. What about the other prophets? Daniel, Ezra, Hosea?" the same unmanageable enthusiasm drove the Jew to ask.

But it did not appear as though the blackfellow would allow himself to be trapped again. His lips were very thick and surly.

He said, "We better go down now."

And jerked his head in the direction of the workshop.

"Yes," agreed the Jew.

The abo quickly took the book, and hid it amongst what was apparently a bundle of his private belongings.

Himmelfarb remained spellbound. He was smiling that slow, inward smile, which could exasperate those whom it excluded.

"Interesting," he had to remark. "But I shall not ask any questions, as I see you do not wish me to."

"Where'll it lead?" The abo shrugged. "I was reared by a parson bloke. That's all. Sometimes I have a read of the Bible, but not for any of
his
_ reasons. I read it because you can see it all. And it passes the time."

All of which the abo spoke in a curiously unexpected voice, conjured up from a considerable depth.

After that the two men returned to their work, for the machines were deriding them as they belted hell out of Rosetree's shed.

Now the Jew began to wonder, as he sat at his drill, and stamped the sheet, and stamped the sheet, whether their relationship would be in any way altered by what had happened. But it did not appear to be. It was as though it had set too long in the form it had originally taken. A certain enduring warmth, established in the beginning, had been perhaps intensified. The Jew was conscious of it if ever the blackfellow passed. Something almost tactile took place between them, but scarcely ever again was there any exchange of words. Sometimes the younger man would almost grunt, sometimes the older one would almost nod. Or they would look for each other, even catch each other at it. And once the blackfellow smiled, not for his acquaintance of elaborate standing, but for anyone who cared to receive it. If the Jew did, that was incidental. It was, the latter saw, a demonstration of perfect detachment.

Yet Himmelfarb was heartened by his study of this other living creature, to whom he had become joined, extraordinarily, by silence, and perhaps, also, by dedication. On one other occasion, finding they had arrived simultaneously at the outer gate, and there was no avoiding it, they must go out together, he could not resist addressing the black.

"The day we spoke," the Jew ventured, "either I did not think, or have the time, to ask your name."

The abo could have been preparing to sulk. But changed his mind quickly, it appeared, on sensing there was no trap.

"Dubbo," he answered briskly. "Alf Dubbo."

And as briskly went off. He was gay on that day. He picked up a stone, and made it skip, along the surface of the green river. He stood for a moment squinting at the sun, the light from which splintered on his broad teeth. He could have been smiling, but that was more probably the light, concentrated on the planes of his excellent teeth.

Alf Dubbo was reared in a small town on the banks of a river which never wholly dried up, and which, in wet seasons, would overflow its steep banks and flood the houses in the lower town. The river played an important part in the boy's early life, and even after he left his birthplace, his thoughts would frequently return to the dark banks of the brown river, with its curtain of shiny foliage, and the polished stones which he would pick over, always looking for pleasing shapes. Just about dusk the river would become the most fascinating for the small boy, and he would hang about at a certain bend where the townspeople had planted a park. The orange knuckles of the big bamboos became accentuated at dusk, and the shiny foliage of the native trees seemed to sweat a deeper green. The boy's dark river would cut right across the evening. Black gins would begin to congregate along the bank, some in clothes which the white women had cast off, others in flash dresses from the stores, which splashed their flowers upon the dark earth, as the gins lay giggling and anticipating. Who would pick them? There were usually white youths hanging around, and older drunks, all with money on them, and a bottle or two. Once he had seen a gin leave her dress in the arms of her lover, and plunge down towards the river, till the black streak that she made was swallowed up in the deepening night. But that was unusual. And in spite of the fact that it was also exciting, he had gone away.

Mrs Pask had been standing at the kitchen door.

"Alf, where ever were you?" she asked.

And her cocky echoed from beneath the shawl, "Alfwheraryou? AlfwheraryouAlf? Alf."

Not yet sleeping.

"By the river," the boy answered.

"That is no place," she said, "to loiter about at this time of night. Mr Calderon has been looking for you. He is going to let you conjugate a Latin verb. But first there are several little jobs. Remember, it is the useful boys who are sought after in later life."

So Alf took the tea-towel. He hung around dozing while she splashed and talked, and hoped the Latin verb would be forgotten.

Actually, Alf Dubbo was not born in that town. He was born not so many miles away, at another bend in the ever-recurring river, on a reserve, to an old gin named Maggie, by which of the whites she had never been able to decide. There he would have remained probably, until work or cunning rescued him. That he was removed earlier, while he was still, in fact, a leggy, awkward little boy, was thanks to the Reverend Timothy Calderon, at that time Anglican rector of Numburra.

Mr Calderon and his widowed sister, Mrs Pask, took the boy to institute what they christened their Great Experiment. For Mr Calderon was a man of high ideals, even though, as his more perceptive parishioners noticed, he failed perpetually to live up to them. If it required the more perceptive to notice, it was because his failures up to date had been for the most part harmless ones. He was, indeed, a harmless man, with the result that he had been moved to Numburra from the larger town of Dumbullen. Such perception on the part of his bishop had caused the rector to shed very bitter tears, but of those, only his sister knew, and together they had prayed that he might receive the strength humbly to endure his martyrdom.

It was the more distressing as the Reverend Timothy Calderon was a cultured man, of birth even, whose ideals had brought him from the Old Country shortly after ordination. Quite apart from the Latin verbs, he was able to unravel the Gospels from the Greek. He knew the dates of battles, and the names of plants, and had inherited a complete edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as a signet-ring. If the souls of Numburra appreciated neither his gentle blood nor his education, that was something further he must bear. That he did bear it was due not only to fervid prayer, but also to the timely conception of his Great Experiment. On little Alf Dubbo, the parson decided, he would lavish all he could: fatherly love, and spiritual guidance, to say nothing of Latin verbs, and the dates of battles.

Alf Dubbo appeared from the beginning to be an exceedingly bright boy. Those who were interested in him were soon convinced that he might grasp almost anything, provided he wanted to. Only, where did his bent lie? That at once became the problem. He was bright, but he was lazy, the most sceptical of the rector's parishioners observed with tigerish satisfaction. Who but the rector would not have expected laziness from the bastard of an old black gin out at the reserve? It did not occur to the critics, of course, that the boy might have inherited his vice from some Irish ancestor. Propriety alone made them reduce Alf's Irish ancestors to the mythical status of the Great Snake.

The rector himself began to suspect his ward of indolence when on one occasion the boy asked, "Mr Calderon, what am I going to do with all these Latin verbs?"

"Well," said the rector, "in the first place, they are a discipline. They will help to build character."

"But I can't see what use they will be," complained the boy, in his gentle, imitation voice. "I don't think I can be that kind of character."

Then he started, regrettably, to sulk. He would sulk, and scribble, and his teacher would have to admit that at such times little more could be done with him.

"Sometimes I wonder whether we are not being terribly unwise," the rector once confessed to his sister.

"Oh, but in some directions, Timothy, he has made visible progress. In sketching, for instance," Mrs Pask was vain enough to insist. "In sketching I cannot show him enough. He has an eye for colour. Alf is an artistic boy."

"Art, yes. But life."

The rector sighed, moody for his Latin verbs.

Alf Dubbo did love to draw, and would scribble on the walls of the shed where he milked the rector's horny cow.

"What are you doing, Alf?" they called.

"I was marking up the weeks since she had the bull," the boy replied.

That stopped them. He had noticed early on that Mrs Pask preferred to avert her eyes from nature. So that once more he was free to scribble on the walls of the shed, the finespun lines of a world he felt to exist but could not yet corroborate.

In the circumstances, he was always undemonstratively happy when Mrs Pask happened to say, "Dear, oh, dear, I have a head! But we must not neglect your education, must we, Alf? Bring out my water-colour box, and we shall continue where we left off last time. I believe you are beginning to grasp the principles of drawing, and may even have a hidden talent."

As a young girl, Mrs Pask herself had been compelled to choose between several talents, none of them hidden, it was implied; indeed, they had been far too obvious. What with sketching, and piano, and a light soprano voice, she had led rather a distracted life, until it was revealed to her that she must abandon all personal pretensions for the sake of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Reverend Arthur Pask. She did, however, retain a reduced interest in sketching and water-colour, and would, on days when the climate allowed, take her easel and dash something off. Her hobby--because, in spite of a technical facility, she would not let herself think of it as more--had proved a particular comfort in the hour of trial. For Mrs Pask was widowed early.

"Never forget, Alf, that art is first and foremost a moral force," she remarked once to her pupil, while demonstrating the possibilities of white as a livener of unrelieved surfaces. "Truth," she added, "is so beautiful."

He was, at least, fascinated by her brush.

"See," she said, dabbing, "one tiny fleck, and each of these cherries comes to life. One has to admit there is something miraculous in the creative act."

He could not yet, but became convinced of some potentiality.

"Let," he said, "let me, Mrs Pask, now."

He was so quick. He could do a bowl of cherries--highlights included--or plaster hand which she had in a cupboard, before his teacher had caught on to the thread of narrative she proposed to follow. It exasperated, even humiliated her at first.

"I hope you are not a vain boy, " she would remark.

Which was too silly to answer.

Once she put in front of him a vase of what she said were Crimson Ramblers--only a shadow of what they could be.

For him, they were the substance. He made them stand up stiff and solid. He drew a blue line round each of the crimson roses, so that they were forever contained.

She laughed. She said, "You cannot resist colour. There was never anything so red. You must learn in time, though, it is delicacy that counts."

Mrs Pask loved best of all to talk while her pupil worked. She would lie back in her chair, with her feet on an embroidered stool. Years afterwards, coming across a print in a public library, Dubbo was forced to realize that Mrs Pask, for all her virtue, had been at heart, one of the turbaned ladies of another more indolent age, leaning, figuratively in her case, on the shoulder of her little coloured boy.

There in the weatherboard sitting-room at Numburra, under the cracking, corrugated roof, Mrs Pask's voice would join with the drone of blowflies in unbroken antiphon.

"I must tell you, Alf, I gave up all for Mr Pask, even down to face-powder, though of course my skin being of the finest, and my complexion so clear and fresh, that was no very great hardship. And who would not have done the same! He was a lovely man. Of the sweetest disposition. And so slim. But"--she coughed--"athletic. I can see him jump the net at tennis. Arthur would never think of going round."