Turning Back the Sun(15)

The old man encircled the paintings with a wide flourish of his stick. “This life our people always. This is life after the tree come down.”

“Tree?”

The man pointed at what appeared to be a white river wavering between the paintings. “The tree come down. Who brings it down? Maybe some devil bring it down, maybe the people from the other place, the salt marsh people, I don”t know. But it got cut and there”s no more climbing up and down, only the sky like you see. This is the story now.”

Rayner wondered if the savage was confusing him on purpose. Perhaps he had enquired too closely. And now the man was pointing to the far side of the imaginary tree, tracing a surface whose paintings looked fainter and older. “Is the time before Time.”

In this bleached space, animals were the same size as men. They seemed to inhabit a region without gravity, and a few were upside down. Hare, lizard, human, antelope—they floated together in stressless equality. Some of their heads were turned, as though they held conversation. But compared with the other figures they looked full-blown, static, as if they had reached completion or perhaps not begun. Hunters froze by their spears. Animals just sat.

The savage said, “This is happiness.”

Even the dancers described only hieroglyphs of dance, with their hands raised hieratically above their heads—although the loosened pose of one woman reminded Rayner bizarrely of Zo?, who had slept last night in his arms.

The man said, “The animals painted in their own blood. Gazelle is in gazelle blood, hare is in hare blood. That”s how they painted, eh.” The native was now breathing audibly, and Rayner noticed that he was starting to sweat. “Maybe these things painted by God.”

Rayner stepped back in frustration, to view the whole rock face from a distance. He felt he was gazing, illiterate, at a crucial text. It seemed to portray a felicity from which the white man had been excluded at some primordial time: a kind of lost knowledge. And the savage could only explain it in riddles. But if this was the inner world which these people inhabited, Rayner thought, why did they axe people”s heads in?

He asked, “What is this tree?”

“This tree, I not seen it since I was young.” The man flung out one arm toward the south. “Those people not my clan.”

Rayner looked foolishly to where he pointed. “What people? Where?”

“Out there, I don”t remember how far. Maybe five days away, maybe ten. I don”t know. They”re not my people, like I say. But most blackfellers been there one time or other. Tree place is like the world”s middle, eh.” He touched his stomach-button. “The navel of the world.”

Strange how many people imagined they lived at the center of the world, Rayner thought, while for him it was always somewhere else.

The savage turned and started back heavily towards the hut. Rayner said quickly, “May I use a camera?”

“Camera?”

“Yes.” He took it from its case.

The old man frowned at it. “What does this do?”

“It makes pictures of things.” Cameras were commonplace in the town now.

The savage took the black box delicately in his hands, and peered into the lens. His forehead had depressed into inky corrugations. He handed it back. “You show me.”

Rayner pointed the box along the cliff face. He had left its hood and tripod in the car. The old man listened to its clicking and waited for something to happen. After Rayner had finished he asked, “Where is the painting?”

“The painting is in the camera. They take it out in the town.”

He was not sure if the man believed him. They walked back slowly to the hut. It looked makeshift: just myrtle boughs and straw. Behind it, sprinkled with chips of painted bark, was a fresh grave. The girl was cooking outside, but jumped up as they approached, and pulled some grass-seed cakes from the ashes. The man said, “My daughter has made you welcome-cakes.” They sat down opposite one another, and he broke one. The girl disappeared into the hut, and after a while Rayner heard the clacking of a loom.

The old man started cramming the bread into his mouth. He said, “I heard some blokes been making trouble round town area.”

“There”ve been murders in the outlying farms. You heard that?”

“Yes, I heard that. These bad fellers make like they get rid of white man. One bad bloke makes it wrong for all of us. They grow angry because no rain. They go a little out of their heads. That”s how it takes them, the drought. Is hard if rains don”t come and cattle all dying, one there, one here, dying.”

“The people in town are getting angry too,” Rayner said. “They think they live at the earth”s center!”

The man did not understand. “That”s another place, the earth”s center, long way south.” He extended his arm again. Rayner saw that he was shaking slightly, his whole body shaking. He kept ramming his stick in and out of the embers, as if to raise heat. His breathing had become a sad, nasal sighing. He said, “But that tree cut now. Nobody climbs up and down no more. It”s just sky now.” He pulled his stick from the cinders and inscribed something in the dust. “That”s the tree now.”

As his stick withdrew, Rayner saw that he had outlined a tall stump, like a phallus: some early object of worship, perhaps. But even in the crude medium of dust, his shaking hand had invested it with nervous, quivering lines.