Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the End of the World. Mudrooroo

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      While the ghosts shouted at each other, Wooreddy wandered off. He looked inside the hut where the women stayed, or were put, when they visited the whaling station. They were not there. He looked down onto the ground to find the newest set of tracks, but the dust was too smudged for him to read the time. He returned to the two ghosts and waited for a silent moment to break into their wrangle. At last he made himself understood that the women were not there. Meeter Ro-bin-un stamped off, streaming words to the effect that he would send letters officially to each European ordering them not to interfere with the native women, or men for that matter, Wooreddy caught the words ‘this letter’ and remembered that they referred to the strange lines of abstract shapes which the num drew on thin sheets of bark called ‘paper’. When ‘Fader’ had cooled down enough he tactlessly asked about ‘this letter’ and set him off again. He shouted out to the trees: ‘I’ll haddress ha circular letter to heach and hevery un o’ t’ese reprobates. I will not hallow t’em to co’abit wit t’a native females. I’ll put a stop to i, t’at I twill.’ Then he pulled himself together and in a clearer voice patiently explained to the good doctor that ‘this letter’ was magic and so was the bark called ‘paper’. ‘Put pen to paper,’ he declared, ‘and the waggon begins to roll and the house to be built.’ This mystified Wooreddy still further. Finally gesture and repeated num words got the meaning across. How childlike they were, Robinson thought while the good doctor politely acknowledged the magic of the symbols scratched onto a thin sheet of bark with a stick dipped in charcoal. They might well be magic, he thought, declaring: ‘Neire this paper, neire this letter; good this paper, good this letter.’

      ‘Extremely good, Wooreddy,’ ‘Fader’ agreed holding the man’s hand in his own pale paw. ‘We will put a stop to this immorality,’ he said squeezing the hand.

      Wooreddy smiled in the warmth, nodded vigorously and urged: ‘send this letter, send this paper.’

      Robinson returned to the hut and wrote and wrote. Nothing happened; the women did not return. Finally Mangana got up one morning and ambled off in the direction of the whaling station. His daughter had been gone too long and he missed seafood and num-food. Wooreddy wandered off after him. Both returned after a week, but the women refused to come with them. Wooreddy began to doubt the efficacy of ‘this letter’ and ‘this paper’. He began to pester ‘Fader’ with a continuing wail of ‘Send this letter; send this paper, Fader and they will come’.

      The ghost had spent long hours in acquiring his style of writing; and though it had been some time since the Governor had acknowledged his report or sent instructions, he still believed in the power of the written word just as he believed that faith would move mountains. Still he decided that he would personally deliver his next report and stir things up. Already he felt bored at being stuck on the island for over three months. He was a man of action and longed to be up and about. ‘Things are about to happen,’ he assured Wooreddy, as he bent his head to continue scrawling the long words of a long and tedious report.

      In their own good time the women finally limped back to the camp. After a day or so they planned to go fishing. Wooreddy had found to his dismay that the attractions of not having a woman were countered by the attractions of having a woman. In short, he needed a new wife. Women could brave the ocean and endure its cold pressure while they prised off abalone or grabbed the crayfish crawling along the very sea bottom. Trugernanna, young and agile, squat and strong, was a powerful swimmer who enjoyed her mastery of the watery element. She could fill this hole in his life. After thinking overlong in his usual fashion, at last he approached her father to see if his offer still stood.

      Mangana seemed to have become all grey – his hair, his beard and even his skin was grey. He sat at his fire watching a few roots called ‘potatoes’, which Meeter Ro-bin-un gave out, darkening in the ashes of the fire. Wooreddy once had liked sitting with the old man, but since the ghost had arrived he had spent much less time with him. Mangana seemed senile and it was difficult to speak to him. In reply to sentences he usually grunted or muttered a single word or strung words together in meaningless sentences. Still he had to ask the old man’s permission – he did so and waited and waited. At last the old man shifted his eyes from the fat possum Wooreddy had placed next to him and began to speak without the ceremonial opening which tradition had once demanded.

      ‘Ahaha, Ria Warrawah, the darkness fleeing. My wives, my children – all but one gone! How dark the day is – and Trugernanna friends with those from Ria Warrawah. The Islands of the Dead! Does she wish to jump up over there where even the water is white and cold? Great Ancestor sits at his campfire in a sunny land and waits. Things are as they were, ever changing. They sicken and die on this island once our homeland. The dead roam whining in the night and it is best to leave them with the ghosts. That is right!’

      Mangana fell into an ocean of sorrows and the younger man shared his pain. Then he began to speak again.

      ‘Trugernanna, an ocean girl, a sea girl, a lover of ghosts. A ghost girl, a pale girl, she will live on longer than all of us. Go and eat her food, go and love her loveless body, go and share whatever she will offer. You and she are both foolish enough to want life. It is for both of you and some of it will be enjoyable. Tomorrow is but a day away from Great Ancestor, he lives in me

      The old man rambled on for an hour allowing the younger man to share the past of his life laid out in words and silences, gestures and feelings and things beyond Wooreddy’s ken. When he left he felt himself floating in the old man’s memories, but he had promised to bring him a fat doe kangaroo as payment for permission to court Trugernanna.

      VI

      ‘MOTTO NYRAE PAKLERDI MOTTI NOVILEI RAEGEWRAPPA. PARLERDI MAGGERA WARRANGELLI, RAEGEWRAPPA MAGGERA TOOGENNA UENEE. NYRAE PARLEWAR LOGERNA TAGGERA TEENI LAWWAI WARRANGELLE PARLERDI NYRAE, NYRAE RAEGE LOGERNA TAGGERA TEENNI LAWWAI WARRANGELLI; NOVILLI PARLERWAR LOGERNA TAGGERA TEENI TOOGUNNA RAEGEWROPPA UENEE MAGGERA UENEE...’

      ‘Fader’ stopped his somewhat premature attempt at a sermon in Bruny and rose in eloquence and competence as he continued on in Ghost. His flow of moral rhetoric was directed at his convict servants carefully segregated from those he called his ‘sable friends’.

      One of his ‘sable friends’ had been stealing glances at another ‘sable friend’ throughout the attempt at Bruny. With the abrupt change in language, Wooreddy switched his mind off Trugernanna and onto the words he had heard. Within them must reside some sort of meaning. They seemed to mean that if you were good, that is, kept the laws of the Bruny Islanders, on death or after death you travelled along the sky-trail to where Great Ancestor had his camp; but if you were bad, that is, did not follow the customs, you stayed below in the sea or dark hollows with Ria Warrawah, All in all, if he had interpreted the mishmash of words correctly Meeter Ro-bin-un had just given a very simple account of the Bruny Island religion. ‘Fader’ also had seemed to imply that ghosts too could travel along the skyway, but this was wrong. Ghosts came from the Islands of the Dead {a halfway stop on the way to Great Ancestor) and when they left Bruny Island they would return there. But the good doctor, not content with the apparent meaning, sought a deeper and more esoteric meaning.

      ‘Fader’ could be relating a part of his own past as a human being. Then he had been ‘bad’ and thus after death failed in his attempt to reach Great Ancestor. Now his present life was a warning to all humans not to go astray. Using his excellent memory he recalled Robinson’s words to check if they fitted with his interpretation.

      ‘One good Great Ancestor; one bad demon. Great Ancestor, good! Great Ancestor stop sky; demon stop below fire (this must mean that he stayed in the dark places of the earth and ocean). Good men dead go road up sky. Good RAEGE (perhaps num or ghosts) dead go road up sky (perhaps this was a rhetorical question?). Bad men dead go road below (across СКАЧАТЬ