The Clay Dreaming (26 page)
Authors: Ed Hillyer
Brippoki clings to the undersides of eaves. He shelters in the darkest doorways, and deepest pools of shadow. Pale and ghostly shapes, endlessly parading, shimmer through the streets in sunshine.
In the cold light of day, parts of the city are so different as to be unrecognisable. He better understands the city by starlight, or moonlight. At the height of noon, features familiar from his Dreaming, double-exposed, rapidly fade – leaving only discrepancies: strange, monumental eruptions, insistent crowds.
Blinking, Brippoki stumbles, less sure in his movements for being unsure of his whereabouts. His Truth is mixed with falsehood, to the point where they are hard to tell apart.
Over the course of the recent week Sarah had been working ahead on her transcript, only in increments, but far enough to sow seeds of doubt.
The convenience of some of the names made them read almost like those in a novel. There was Luker, for instance, as in ‘filthy lucre’ – but also, perhaps, Lucifer.
Fiction was never so strange as the truth, supposedly, but it crossed her mind that the entire story might be just a fabrication, a fabulous invention. From the heaven-sent flock of birds to crossing paths with a shepherd boy, Bruce presented pious imagery neat as a pin. Running in remote and silent woods, through the dark night, in the wintertime, he was Blake’s Bard, ‘That walk’d among the ancient trees’. Martyred, naked, on thorns – ‘
Our legs and feet was tore
’ – Sarah wondered at the power of his visions in the wilderness, the immaculate imagery they conjured: exceeding Popish raptures, all of the self-torturing punishments so beloved of Catholicism. Bruce was obviously a capable-enough storyteller, even something of a dramatist, to judge from recent notes. Yet, if his own identity were suddenly open to question, the
Life
, perhaps even the man himself, could be an elaborate fake; like Ossian, like Chatterton’s works of Thomas Rowley.
For her own satisfaction Sarah felt she needed verification of some sort, one piece of hard evidence that could establish as fact the narrative lately overtaking their lives.
An alarm sounded. It was almost six o’clock. The entire readership within the library grumbled and prepared to end their studies for another day.
Sarah took up the blotter. Prior to closing up the notebook, she gently massaged her most recent lines. The text of the manuscript had become complicated, the most recent section having morphed into something of a playlet, fraught with unpunctuated dialogue that needed to be picked apart and carefully attributed.
Sarah went gliding amongst the shelves, seeking another hidey-hold for her precious cargo. She found what she adjudged a suitable haven, nestled up against another, eminently obscure title,
Public Performances of the Dead
by George Jacob Holyoake.
~
Saturday is payday for the workers of London. As evening advances, the streets throng ever deeper with itinerant market stalls and the eager shoppers who attend them. The barrows offer up ‘’ot taters’ and sheep’s trotters, fresh bread, milk and other sundries; every delight, in fact, on which it is possible to spend a week’s wages. Spirits are high. Many of the men are paid from tables arranged at the public houses, and wives will be lucky if they do not drink their earnings away.
As natural light wanes, the gas taps and candles are lit. The streets flare up, self-generating gas-lamps giving off a fierce and intense white light. Vendors make sure to situate their stalls underneath them, the better to set off their wares. Strung out either side of long streets busy with amusement, the markets take on a fairground air.
Brippoki stands snake-charmed by tendrils of smoke that rise and curl in the cooling air. They come from the red flame of an old-fashioned grease lamp, set smack in the middle of a pickled whelk stand. He looks across a spread of silver herring, glittering by candlelight. The saliva is so thick in his mouth that he has to turn away.
Weaving, in a daze, he has once again wandered the whole day through.
Coloured lights bounce and strobe, pink, and red, and yellow. Brippoki closes his eyes and jerks his head, side to side, until their after-images judder to a halt. Spectres promenade twilight’s unearthly beauty. They grin, their trails glowing green and blue, fading to purple as they pass. He thinks of the Great Serpent’s gullet, and the forlorn creatures there. These are different, more like the coral-dressed mer-people that walked the river’s depths, only closer now, and brighter still. They are fireflies, and dancing lightning bugs. Their laughter and squeals of drunken delight echo, as if from afar.
This weak yellow sun is incapable of baking his brain; Brippoki reckons himself to have slipped sidelong, into the Dreaming – when he is only faint from hunger.
Brippoki arrived a little earlier than usual, just as Sarah was finishing her supper. She had begun to leave a window open on the first floor, their tacit agreement being that this was all round the best way for him to perform his subtle entrances and exits – such an arrangement as one might have for a tame bird, or half-domesticated cat.
He saw that she was still eating. Brippoki casually reached out of the window to retrieve something from an adjoining sill – something unspeakable.
‘I join you,’ he grinned.
It was a piece of meat, charred and blackened, and, from the gamy smell, more than a few days old. Declining to sit on a chair, he squatted on the floor and began gnawing at the gross object, lips smacking in contentment.
‘Dat
putjikata
proper good tucker, my word!’
Very much his word; Sarah hadn’t the faintest idea what it meant.
‘Where…’ she hated to ask ‘…did you get that?’
Brippoki wiped the back of his hand across his greased lip and pointed up, towards the roof. His eyebrows danced a jig.
The meat was definitely off. She remembered, two or three nights before, as he was leaving, the sound of a strangulated yowl…
Putjikata
.
Sarah pushed aside the plateful of leftovers, unable to finish her meal. She promptly cleared away the supper table, ready for them to reconvene with the text of George,
né
Joseph, Bruce – if Bruce he was.
He wandered the wilderness like a pilgrim. As the attributes of civilisation were stripped away, so he seemed to gain in spiritual awareness. The ‘wicked, wicked wretch’ was preparing to make his peace with God.
Brippoki chewed on a piece of stick tobacco, having stirred it first amongst the fine white ash in the fireplace. He refused his usual chair, preferring instead to stay on the floor. That made it seem all the more like story time in the nursery – only what a curious fable, and curiouser child.
Sarah stared at the pages ahead. She barely knew how to begin.
Saturday the 6th of June, 1868
‘Then ev’n my buried Ashes such a snare
Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air, As not a
True-believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.’
~
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Sarah took a deep breath.
In a short time after, I met a boy who was minding sheep. The child was much terrified, but I soon consoled him. He then gave me every information that I wanted, and directed me a nigh way for crossing the river that led through the village, which was my intent.
I went on in a most cheerful manner, and in a few hours came to the riverside, where I met a man who asked me my business. I told him I was going to banish myself from all society of mankind, and trust to the mercy of God in the wilderness.
He then insisted I should go into his house which stood close by. I consented, and as I walked by the side of him, I perceived that his heart was full of grief, pitying me, for the tears from his eyes rolled down his cheeks rapidly. This moved me. I replied:
– Friend, you are but a stranger to me. Therefore think not of my troubles. You see I don’t fret for myself.
A good reason why, my heart was so full of grief, it would hold no more, and my soul was so light with faith in God that I dared every insect on the Earth to touch a hair of my head.
I entered his house. No brother could ever have treated me better, and he insisted that he would so do everything that lay in his power to save my life. I remained with him three weeks, during which time I related to him all my pedigree. And he, in return, every Saturday would bring me news what report was flying through the country about me.
The first Saturday when he came home from the green hills, he told me that there was a proclamation, for all persons that had absconded from the law
to surrender themselves up, or in three days they would be outlawed. And he also told me that he had met with Hobbes, who informed him that Farr had written a private letter to a Colonel Fairfax concerning it, and by the answer of the said letter he was sure that if I would go to Colonel Fairfax with him I should not die. And, if I consented, that night I was to go with him to Hobbes’ house. I immediately despatched him with the answer, to tell Farr that if he chose to trust his life to a rotten staff, I would not.
The next Saturday he again went to the green hills to draw his ration from His Majesty’s stores, and at his return he gave me a full account of the death of all my companions. For they had given themselves up to the law and were hanged.
The third Saturday, he told me that there was a most desperate outcry about me. But he had good news to tell me. That was, he met a man that day who knowed me in England, and that he also would do all that lay in his power to save my life. I asked him the man’s name. He told me Thomas Dargane.
I then thanked him for all his faithful kindness to me, for that night I should leave him and go to Dargane, for I well recollected him. And that night I with my friend went to the house of Dargane. Here I took leave of Charles Bell, who was my friend. I then remained with Dargane for some considerable time, during which time there was diverse of robberies, all of which I was accused. Nay at last there was a murder committed on the road that was also linked to me, although it was 40 miles from the River Oxbury that the murder was committed.
However this report, being rose on me, was the separation of Dargane and me, for as soon as he heard it he came to me in a violent hurry, and burst into such a fit of laughter at the lies that was told about me that I could not get one word out of him for some time.
But as soon as he recovered himself from laughing, he uttered these words:
– Bruce, I give you all that I possess, farm and wife, children and all my money, if you tell me how you do it.
– Do what, Dargane?
– How you fly, Bruce.
– Me? Fly? Dargane, I wish I could. But tell me, what do you mean, Dargane?
– Why, I can’t help laughing, Bruce, when I hear what horrid lies they tell of you. There was a man murdered yesterday on Dick River Bridge, and there is one of the most dreadfullest liars in my house you ever heard tell of. He’s just come from the green hills and positively swears that he saw you yesterday on the bridge, alongside of the murdered man. And that he would have caught you, if his foot had not caught a stump and he fell down! But he vows, by all the virtue of an old cabbage stalk that he has with him which he calls a gun, that he will have you Dead or Alive before this day week. So, come in and talk to him, for I am sure that he don’t know your person at all. For he is not been in the country three months, so how can he know you? But mind, Bruce. Before him, call me ‘Faithful’, and I will call you ‘Swift’. Because if we call one
another by name he will discover you, and then you will be obliged to put him in the river.
We both entered the house.
– Come, my dear, is dinner ready? For I am sure poor Swift must be hungered, for he has been hard at work. Ain’t you hungry, Swift?
– Yerse, Master Faithful, I am.
– Well, come, my man, sit down and fill your belly. Thank God for it, here is plenty. Come. I don’t know your name, Master, but come and have a bite with us.
Here we all sat down to meat, and after we had all eaten our fill, I thus addressed my accuser:
– I presume you know Bruce, that you are in pursuit of him?
– Know him? Ah, that I do. And if ever I see him again, I be bound he don’t get away.
– Ho, then you have seen him?
– I see him yesterday murder a man on Dick River Bridge, but he didn’t know that I knowed him. But I did, though.
– Well, my friend, but if you see Bruce murder a man, you are as bad as him if you didn’t strive to stop him.
– I did, sir, but he run away from me.
I turned to Dargane.
– Well, Master Faithful, what do you think of it?
– Why, Mister Swift, I think what a dreadful thing it is, if this poor man is mistaken in the person of Bruce.
– Yes, Master Faithful, that is what I was thinking of myself. But this man says that he is sure he knows Bruce. And Bruce don’t know him. Those words, Master Faithful, puts me in mind of a few words that I heard a doctor of the blessed elect say once, when I went with my old mother to hear a sermon preached. The old man took his text about St John the Evangelist, and these was the words: ‘Behold, my dear brethren, St John was in the world, and the world knew him not, but he knew the world.’ Do you understand those words, my man?
I was speaking to the stranger once more. He replied:
– No, sir, I don’t. It is like a riddle to me.
– Well, my man, I will tell you. Understand that St John the Holy Evangelist is as God, and God is as the Holy Evangelist St John. For whatever one said, the other agreed to, together with the Holy Ghost when they made your seed and mine. And then made they a garden to sow that seed in, which is this world, that you and all people are in. If you mind and look out sharp, you will become a freemason by my discourse to you.
– St John was one that was with God when he lay the foundation of this world. Therefore the Holy Evangelist knowed the Heavenly works as well as the Earthly ones. But the world, and the people that were in the world at that time, knew nothing about how Heaven or Earth was made. So, how could they know anything of St John the Holy Evangelist that was at the making of all?
So it is with you, my man. How can you know anything of Bruce, when you told Master Faithful that you have not been in this country four months? And to my knowledge Bruce has been in the country above eight years, for I came in the ship with him.
– And there is another thing. I am sure Bruce has been in the woods this five months. So how can you say that you know a man you never saw? And when you do see him, you don’t know him! Why, I might be him for all you know.
– No, I am sure you aren’t him, sir.
– Why, what makes you think I ain’t him?
– Because you would run away, sir, for fear I should shoot you.
– Ho, Master Faithful! Do you hear this?
– What is it, Mister Swift?
– This poor man says that if I was Bruce, I should run away for fear of this old candlestick that he has with him… Putting all jokes aside, I tell you what you had best do, my man. That is to go home, and pray to God to give you Grace, that you may know better than running about seeking a man’s blood for the sake of emancipation. That is what you are to have, my man, ain’t it? If you take Bruce dead or alive.
– Yes, sir. And I aim to have a farm, as that is a settlement in this life, for a short time.
– But look here, my man. What a shocking thing it will be for you, if by seeking the life of Bruce for the sake of your emancipation you lose your free pardon from Christ for your immortal soul, and drop into Hell, where you will have a settlement forever.
Sarah turned the page.
At those words, all in the house, instead of laughing as they had done, they all burst into a flood of tears. Because Dargane and his wife well knew my spirit, and expected every moment to see the poor midget wallowing in his blood. But Dargane see the fire of my soul darting through my eyes, and exclaimed with a loud voice:
– O Bruce!
That was a little too loud.
Sarah leant in closer, to render the shout instead as a sort of stage whisper. Brippoki sat further forward, on tenterhooks himself.
– O Bruce, consider my dear children, and don’t take his life in my house!
Brippoki jerked backwards, as if losing his balance.
‘Are you all right?’ Sarah asked. She continued.
At those words the poor miserable wretch turned quite pale, and got up and left the house. Whatever betide him, I don’t know, for neither Dargane nor me ever heard of him after. But for the safety of Dargane and his family, I
that night went down the river to Samuel Woodhum, a freeholder to whom Dargane had recommended me.
I stopped with him till the cries became furious through all that country about me. All through I was hard at work for my living. But when I heard those horrid lies that daily rest on me, I said in my heart: ‘Behold, old merciful Redeemer. It is not men that tell lies on me, but devils. Therefore I will again return to thy desert places, where thou hast ordained for a wicked wretch like me to wander.’ I told Woodhum my intent. He pressed me to stop a few days, and then he accompanied me back to my first friend by that riverside, who received me with great joy. It was at night, but, it being too dangerous to stop in his house, he then took me to an old house half full of straw. It had no doors, nor window-shutters. Within the immense body of straw there were hundreds of snakes, adders, vipers, rats and mice. I was inexpressibly tired. Now, the responding eases fell from the loud cries of my soul, filled all the chambers of my heart, and hushed all my worries to sleep. I fell down amongst the straw, where I remained till the next night, when I went down to the riverside with that intent to cross it, and go up among the mountains of that country.
‘Go…up among mountains dat country?’ Brippoki queried.
Sarah nodded, ‘Go up among the mountains.’
Having entered fully into the drama, Sarah enjoyed the taking on of different character parts. She had varied the tones of her voice to suit the supposed manner of each. Just as her father had lived much of his life by nature outward-bound, her mother had best enjoyed the diversions of theatre, and it was perhaps these instincts that ran thickest in her blood – another innate talent lain dormant.
With his wide grin, or frown, or expressions of shock as appropriate, and the occasional steady nod, throughout her performance Brippoki had egged her on.
‘Thomas Dargane,’ said Sarah. ‘Does that name mean anything to you? No? What about Hobbes?’
Brippoki merely extracted the stick he had been sucking at and tucked it away behind his ear.
Of course not – wasn’t it Hobbes, in the
Leviathan
, who wrote that man was a naturally selfish unit? Sarah consulted another of the lists she had made on various slips of paper.
‘Mark Dammers,’ she said, ‘Charles Bell, Samuel Woodhum?’
What was in a name? Brippoki shook his head to each one. He sported a daft expression, as if they played at a game.
‘How about the River Oxbury, or the River Dick?’ she pressed. ‘I was wondering if either of those places were familiar to you.’
No. She supposed the Aborigines would have their own names for such places.
‘No matter,’ she said. ‘Carrying on… Something happened in the middle of this sequence that I don’t fully understand, an interruption of sorts to the ongoing narrative. It reads as follows…’
Just as I was about to relate to the world this part of my life, where Dargane laughed so hearty at the lies that was told behind my back in New South Wales, then three of Beelzebub’s gang jumped up in the house of Greenwich, where I was in the year 1817, June the 16th, about this work. It was eleven o’clock in the day when the three devils came about me, and all of them being in authority over the rest of devils, they demanded I should go with them to their master, to answer for a quarrel that I had with the she-devil that was one of the three. As I went with them to their master, every now and then I would look them in the countenance, and they all three looked like an old tame baboon that I saw once playing with a child. When the child gave him a smack of the head he would twinkle his eyes and screw up his mouth as if he was sucking plums. So were the faces of those vipers. They twinkled their eyes and screwed their mouths, being crammed with infernal lies by the Serpent, which they vomited before their master.
‘And there,’ said Sarah, ‘the digression as suddenly ends. It reminds us, I suppose, that he is in the Hospital while dictating all of this. We then return to the main story, and the account of Bruce’s dialogue with Dargane.’
According to her calculations, performed earlier that day, the reported events took place just after the turn of the century, around the year 1803.