LOST
At evening he was still riding. But his horse lagged, and would not be spurred forward. Darkness came with swift persistence. He was looking anxiously for water, a burning thirst had made him empty his bottle.
As if directed by God, he felt the horse rousing up and pressing eagerly forward. In a few minutes it stopped. Darkness had fallen. He found the horse nosing a timber-lined Government well.
He got down and awkwardly drew water, for the well was low. He drank and the horse drank. Then with some difficulty he unsaddled, tied the reins round a sapling and removed the bit. The horse snorted, nosed round, and began to crop in the dark. Jack sat on the ground and looked up at the stars. Then he drank more water, and ate a piece of bread and dry cheese.
Then he began to go to sleep. He saw Easu coming at him with the axe. Ugh, how good it was Easu was dead. Dead, to go in the earth to manure the soil. Hadn’t Old George said it? The land wanted dead men dug into it, to manure it. Men like Easu, dead and turned to manure. And men like old Dad Ellis. Poor old Dad.
Jack thought of Monica, Monica with her little flower-face. All messed up by that nasty dog of an Easu. He should be twice dead. Jack felt she was a little repulsive too. To let herself be pawed over and made sticky by that heavy dog of an Easu! Jack felt he could never follow where Easu had been messing. Monica was no good now. She had taken on some of Easu’s repulsiveness.
Aunt Matilda had said, “Another scandal in the family!” Well, the death of Easu should make a good scandal.
How lonely it was in the bush! How big and weapon-like the stars were. One great star very flashing.
“I have dipped my hand in blood!” he thought to himself. And looking at his own bloody, hurting hand, in the starlight, he didn’t realise whether it was Easu’s blood or his own.
“I have dipped my hand in blood! So be it. Let it be my testament.”
And he lifted up his hand to the great flashing star, his wounded hand, saying aloud:
“Here! Here is my hand in blood! Take it then. There is blood between us forever.”
The blood was between him and his mysterious Lord, forever. Like a sort of pledge, or baptism, or a sacrifice: a bond between them. He was speaking to his mysterious Lord.
“There is blood between us forever,” he said to the star.
But the sound of his own hoarse, rather deep voice, reminded him of his surroundings. He looked round. He heard his horse, and called to it. It nickered in the loneliness, still cropping. He started up to see if it was all right, to stroke it and speak to it. The bush was very lonely.
“Hello, you!” he said to it. “In the midst of life we are in death. There’s death in the spaces between the stars. But somehow it seems all right. I like it. I like to be lord of Death. Who do they call the lords of Death? I am a lord of Death.”
He patted the horse’s neck as he talked.
“I can’t bear to think of Monica messy with Easu,” he said. “But I suppose it’s my destiny. I suppose it means I am a lord of death. I hope if I have any children they’ll have that look in their eyes, like soldiers from the dark kingdom. I don’t want children that aren’t warriors. I don’t want little love children for my children. When I beget children I want to sow dragon’s teeth, and warriors will spring up. Easu hadn’t one grain nor spark of a warrior in him. He was absolutely a groping civilian, a bully. That’s why he wanted to spoil Monica. She is the wife for a fighting man. So he wanted to spoil her. . . . Funny, my father isn’t a fighting man at all. He’s an absolute civilian. So he became a general. And I’m not a civilian. I know the spaces of death between the stars, like spaces in an Egyptian temple. And at the end of life I see the big black door of death, and the infinite black labyrinth beyond. I like to think of going in, and being at home and one of the masters in the black halls of death, when I am dead. I hope I die fighting, and go into the black halls of death as a master: not as a scavenger servant, like Easu, or a sort of butler, like my father. I don’t want to be a servant in the black house of death. I want to be a master.”
He sat down again, with his back to the tree, looking at the sharp stars, and the fume of stars, and the great black gulfs between the stars. His hand and arm were aching and paining a great deal. But he watched the gulfs between the stars.
“I suppose my Lord meant me to be like this,” he said. “Think if I had to be tied up and a gentleman, like that Blessington. Or a lawyer like Old George. Or a politician dropping his aitches, like that Mr. Watson. Or empty and important like that A.D.C. Or anything that’s successful and goes to church and sings hymns and has supper after church on the best linen table cloth! What Lord is it that likes these people? What God can it be that likes success and Sunday dinners? Oh God! It must be a big, fat, rusty sort of God.
“My God is dark and you can’t see him. You can’t even see his eyes, they are so dark. But he sits and bides his time and smiles, in the spaces between the stars. And he doesn’t know himself what he thinks. But there’s deep, powerful feelings inside him, and he’s only waiting his time to upset this pigsty full of white fat pigs. I like my Lord. I like his dark face, that I can’t see, and his dark eyes, that are so dark you can’t see them, and his dark hair that is blacker than the night on his forehead, and the dark feelings he has, which nobody will ever be able to explain. I like my Lord, my own Lord, who is not Lord of pigs.”
He slept fitfully, feverishly, with dreams, and rose at daylight to drink water, and dip his head in water. His horse came, he tended it and with great difficulty got the saddle on. Then he left it standing, and when he came again, it wasn’t where he had left it.
He called, and it whinnied, so he went into the scrub for it. But it wasn’t where the sound of whinnying came from. He went a few more steps forward, and called. The scrub wasn’t so very thick either, yet you couldn’t see that horse. He was sure it was only a couple of yards away. So he went forward, coaxing, calling. But nothing . . . Queer!
He looked round. The track wasn’t there. The well wasn’t there. Only the silent, vindictive, scattered bush.
He couldn’t be lost. That was impossible. The homestead wasn’t more than twenty miles away — and the settlement.
Yet, as he tramped on, through the brown, heath-like undergrowth, past the ghost-like trunks of the scattered gum-trees, over the fallen, burnt-out trunks of charred trees, past the bushes of young gum-trees, he gradually realised he was lost. And yet it was impossible. He would come upon a cabin, or pick up the track of a woodcutter, or a ‘roo hunter. He was so near to everywhere.
There is something mysterious about the Australian bush. It is so absolutely still. And yet, in the near distance, it seems alive. It seems alive, and as if it hovered round you to maze you and circumvent you. There is a strange feeling, as if invisible, hostile things were hovering round you and heading you off.
Jack stood still and coo-eed! long and loud. He fancied he heard an answer, and he hurried forward. He felt lightheaded. He wished he had eaten something. He remembered he had no water. And he was walking very fast, the sweat pouring down him. Silly this. He made himself go slower. Then he stood still and looked around. Then he coo-eed! again, and was afraid of the ringing sound of his own cry.
The changeless bush, with scattered, slender tree-trunks everywhere. You could see between them into the distance, to more open bush: a few brown rocks: two great dead trees as white as bone: burnt trees with their core charred out: and living trees hanging their motionless clusters of brown, dagger-like leave. And the permanent soft blue of the sky overhead.
Nothing was hidden. It was all open and fair. And yet it was haunted with a malevolent mystery. You felt yourself so small, so tiny, so absolutely insignificant, in the still, eternal glade. And this again is the malevolence of the bush, that it reduces you to your own absolute insignificance, go where you will.
Jack collected his wits and began to make a plan.
“First look at the sky, and get your bearing.” Then he would go somewhere straight west from the Reds. The sun had been in his eyes as he rode last evening.
Or had he better go east, and get back? There were scores of empty miles, uninhabited, west. It was settled, he would go east. Perhaps someone would find his horse, and come to look for him.
He walked with the sun straight bang in his eyes. It was very hot, and he was tired. He was thirsty, his arm hurt and throbbed. Why did he imagine he was hungry? He was only thirsty. And so hot! He took off his coat and threw it away. After a while his waistcoat followed. He felt a little lighter. But he was an intolerable burden to himself.
He sat down under a bush and went fast asleep. How long he slept he did not know. But he woke with a jerk, to find himself lying on the ground in his shirt and trousers, the sun still hot in the heavens, and the mysterious bush all around. The sun had come round and was burning his legs. What was the matter? Fear, that was the first thing. The great, resounding fear. Then, a second, he was terribly thirsty. For a third, his arm was aching horribly. He took off his shirt and made a sling of it, to carry his arm in.
For a fourth thing, he realised he had killed Easu, and something was gnawing at his soul.
He heard himself sob, and this surprised him very much. It even brought him to his senses.
“Well!” he thought. “I have killed Easu.” It seemed years and years ago. “And the bush has got me, Australia has got me, and now it will take my life from me. Now I am going to die. Well, then, so be it. I will go out and haunt the bush, like all the other lost dead. I shall wander in the bush throughout eternity, with my bloody hand. Well, then, so be it. I shall be a lord of death hovering in the bush, and let the people who come beware.”
But suddenly he started to his feet in terror and horror. The face of death had really got him this time. It was as if a second wakening had come upon him, and his life, which had been sinking, suddenly flared up in a frenzy of struggle and fear. He coo-eeed! again and again, and once more plunged forward in mad pursuit of an echo.
He might certainly run into a ‘roo hunter’s camp, any minute. The place was alive with them, great big boomers! Their silly faces! Their silly complacency, almost asking to be shot. There were a lot of wallabies out here too. You might make a fortune hunting skins.
Christ! how one could want water.
But no matter. On and on! His soul dropped to its own sullen level. If he was to die, die he would. But he would hold out through it all.
On and on in a persistent dogged stupor. Why give in?
Then suddenly he dropped on a log, in weariness. Suddenly he had thought of Monica. Why had she betrayed him? Why had they all betrayed him, betrayed him and the thing he wanted from life. He leaned his head down on his arms and wept hoarsely and dryly, and went silent again even as he sat, realising the futility of weeping. His heart, the heart he wept from, went utterly dark. He had no more heart of torn sympathy. That was gone. Only a black, deep male volition. And this was all there was left of him. He would carry the same into death. Young or old, death sooner or later, he would carry just this one thing into the further darkness, his deep, black, undying male volition.
He must have slept. He was in great misery, his mouth like an open sepulchre, his consciousness dull. He was hardly aware that it was late afternoon, hot and motionless. The outside things were all so far away. And the blackness of death and misery was thick, but transparent, over his eyes.
He went on, still obstinately insisting that ahead there was something, perhaps even water, though hope was dead in him. It was not hope, it was heavy volition that insisted on water.
The sling dragged on his neck, he threw it away, and walked with his hand against his breast. And his braces dragged on him. He didn’t want any burden at all, none at all. He stopped, took off his braces and threw them away, then his sweat-soaked undervest. He didn’t want these things. He didn’t want them. He walked on a bit.
He hesitated, then came for a moment to his senses. He was going to throw away his trousers too. But it came to him: “Don’t be a fool, and throw away your clothes, man. You know men do it who are lost in the bush, and then they are found naked, dead.”
He looked vaguely round for the vest and braces he had just thrown away. But it was half an hour since he had flung them down. His consciousness tricked him, obliterating the interval. He could not believe his eye. They had ghostlily disappeared.
So he rolled his trousers on his naked hips, and pressed his hurt hand on his naked breast, and set off again in a sort of fear. His hat had gone long ago. And all the time he had this strange desire to throw all his clothes away, even his boots, and be absolutely naked, as when he was born. And all the time something obstinate in him combated the desire. He wanted to throw everything away, and go absolutely naked over the border. And at the same time, something in him deeper than himself obstinately withstood the desire. He wanted to go over the border. And something deeper even than his consciousness, refused.
So he went on, scarcely conscious at all. He himself was in the middle of a vacuum, and pressing round were visions and agonies. The vacuum was perhaps the greatest agony, like a death-tension. But the other agonies were pressing on its border: his dry, cardboard mouth, his aching body. And the visions pressed on the border too. A great lake of ghostly white water, such as lies in the valleys where the dead are. But he walked to it, and it wasn’t there. The moon was shining whitely.
And on the edge of the aching void of him, a wheel was spinning in his brain like a prayer-wheel.
“Petition me no petitions, Sir, to-day;
Let other hours be set apart for business.
Today it is our pleasure to be drunk
And this our queen . . .”
Water! Water! Water! Was water only a visionary thing of memory, something only achingly, wearyingly, thought and thought and thought, and never substantiated?
“A Briton even in love should be
A subject not a slave . . .”
The wheel of words went round, the wheel of his brain, on the edge of the vacuum. What did that mean? What was a Briton?
“A Briton even in love should be
A subject not a slave.”
The words went round and round and were absolutely meaningless to him.
And then out of the dark another wheel was pressing and turning.
“How fast has brother followed brother
From sunshine to the sunless land.”
Away on the hard dark periphery of his consciousness, the wheel of these words was turning and grinding.
His mind was turning helplessly, but his feet walked on. He realised in a weird, mournful way that he was shut groping in a dark unfathomable cave, and that the walls of the cave were his own aching body. And he was going on and on in the cave, looking for the fountain, the water. But his body was the aching, ghastly, jutting walls of the cave. And it made this weary grind of words on the outside. And he had need to struggle on and on.
In little flickers he tried to associate his dark cave-consciousness with his grinding body. Was it night, was it day?
But before he had decided that it was night, the two things had gone apart again, and he was groping and listening to the grind.
“But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things.
Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things
Falling from us, vanishing.”
He was so weary of the outward grind of words. He was stumbling as he walked. And waiting for the walls of the cave to crash in and bury him altogether. And the spring of water did not exist.
“Blank misgivings of a creator moving about in a world not realised.”
This phrase almost united his two consciousnesses. He was going to crash into this creator who moved about unrealised. Other people had gone, and other things. Monica, Easu, Tom, Mary, Mother, Father, Lennie. They were all like papery, fallen leaves blowing about outside in some street. Inside here there were no people at all, none at all. Only the Creator moving around unrealised. His Lord.
He stumbled and fell, and in the white flash of falling knew he hurt himself again, and that he was falling forever.