The Songmaster (2 page)

For my wonderful son, Nick, in the hope that
he too will make this journey.

For my mother and family.

Jim Revitt for his guidance.

Carolyn Beaumont for her sensitive and skilful
editing.

Thanks to all at my publishers, Pan
Macmillan.

To all those kind friends and specialists in their
field who answered a myriad questions.

And especially to my soul mate whose words
of wisdom and love stay in my heart.

For further reading on Aboriginal culture, I
recommend two books that inspired me –

Yorro Yorro
by David Mowaljarlai and Jutta
Malnic, Magabala Books, Broome, WA,
Australia.

Voices of the First Day
by Robert Lawlor,
Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, USA.

T
he man was not old, nor young, but of an age that knew wisdom, knew pain, yet still moved forward with bright eyes and a hopeful heart.

He was lithe and taut, like strong stretched twine, the muscles and sinews of his body delineated like an anatomical sketch. Putty-coloured ochre painted on the shining black skin had dried, caked and cracked. He sat in the blood-rust dust, dark eyes ringed in the ceremonial paint, staring into the middle distance . . . and through it into the spirit land of his ancestors.

This was a land formed by Wandjina spirits. In their human form they wore a halo of lightning and clouds, huge watchful eyes, and faces devoid of any mouth. They travelled this country,
leaving in their wake the physical attributes of the landscape – the ridges and mountains, the gorges and sacred wunggud waters – until they entered the caves, painting themselves onto the walls, and sinking back into the earth.

These beings, whose ages transcended time, were familiar to the Songmaster. Their knowledge was in the stories, passed through countless generations, in the Dreaming songs of his people and their country.

Stretching his legs before him, he lifted the long didgeridoo, putting the mouthpiece covered in beeswax to his lips, the end of the long wooden pipe resting on the ground. Nature had participated in the creation of this instrument. It came from the soil, the land of his ancestors. The shape, thickness, type of wood, hollowed by termites, gave it life and its own voice.

Cheeks swollen with air, he forced breath down the length of bloodwood. It emerged near his toes, in a resonant note that vibrated into the ground, returning to nature, sinking to the inner heart of the earth, to the origin of the sacred Dreaming.

He sang to the Wandjina, the powerful spirits who watched over this land, who could punish those who disobeyed the laws, who controlled the child spirits who waited in the wunggud waters, who could bring rain and who guided the wisdom of the elders.

And so he sang . . . of the rocks and trees and plants and animals. Of these beings that
created all things and of his people, then, and those of now.

‘. . . and there will be a child who will unite the people and make them one.’

T
he traffic on Beverly Boulevard was thickening as a rosy twilight settled over Los Angeles. Doctor Hal Silverstein stood at the window of his twelfth floor office and stared above the Beverly Hills buildings to a sky streaked with bands of gold and red. It amused him how this city produced such spectacular sunsets, thanks to the layer of smog that contributed to LA’s poor air quality. He glanced down at the line of metallic beetles snaking their way to suburban burrows, taillights glowing, the last light of day reflected in their glossy paintwork.

‘Do you have any idea what it is?’ The woman’s voice was edgy, querulous.

The psychiatrist turned from the window to face his patient. ‘No. To be candid, I don’t.’

‘Surely there’s another test they can take, another blood sample, something . . ?’

‘Rowena, we’ve done every test known to medical science . . . all the doctors can tell us is that it is probably some type of virus, possibly something you’ve picked up in Australia . . .’

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. ‘But it’s killing me! God, surely they can do something . . .’

The doctor fiddled with his Gucci tie then sat down and faced her. While he was concerned about her mental stability, he was shocked at the sudden decline in her physical health. In a town that idolised thinness, she was stick-like, though the doctors who had examined her had ruled out anorexia. The unexplained loss of weight had made her bones jut sharply against her skin so that it appeared translucent, as if it would rip as easily as tissue paper. Her pallor was an unhealthy pasty shade that washed out her normal skin tones. Crepey skin sagged in folds around her neck – a look that normally sent LA women running to the nearest plastic surgeon.

Stretching out a hand, he laid it on hers. ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight. I know you’re always tired and feel unsettled, but physically we can’t find anything wrong.’

‘What about the headaches, the pains, and the dreams . . . they’re nightmares, not dreams . . . horrible nightmares . . .’ she was almost screaming in desperation.

The doctor adjusted his features into a sympathetic expression as he searched for the appropriate words, when in reality he felt like shaking this patient he knew was just another neurotic spoiled bitch. And a bully in the demanding manner of rich females who’ve never had a grasp on the real world. He studied the tall middle-aged woman with the flame hair and yellowish cast to her brown eyes. It crossed his mind she had something of a wild dog look to her.

‘Tell me about it again,’ he said in placating tones to distract her. She seemed to calm after talking to him about her nightmares. The psychiatrist looked across at the clock on his desk. She was paying by the hour, he reminded himself. He had all the time in the world. He leaned back as she closed her eyes and began . . .

‘I’m walking through grass that brushes my thighs. I grasp a handful to part it and my palms are slashed as if by fine razor blades, blood trickles down my fingers to the ground. Huge dark rocks rise on all sides but they don’t look solid, they seem precariously balanced as if they might fall on me. The sky is bluer than any blue I’ve ever seen and seems to billow like a marquee and I fear it’s going to sink down and smother me.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘No. I want to go on. I see an opening between the rocks and a cave. I climb up and
crouch in the coolness of the overhang. There are these fantastic paintings on the wall, and ancient white handprints. I put my own hand over a white handprint and it leaves a smudge of blood. Then I see them . . . staring at me . . .’

‘What? What is staring at you?’

‘Skulls. Horrible faces, painted red . . . they glare at me. And then the sounds start . . .’

‘What kind of sounds?’ prompted the doctor.

‘Wailing . . . crying . . . weird noises. They seem to be from people but I can’t understand what they’re saying. I know they’re trying to tell me something.’

She dropped her face in her hands and started to shake.
‘The Kimberley is such a beautiful place . . . the people, just amazing. But since I’ve been back, those voices come in the night . . . it’s like they’re in my body, trying to get out.’
She opened her eyes, staring wildly at the man facing her.
‘It’s me or them. It’s a war in me. They’re trying to take me over. They’re trying to kill me.’

The LA doctor, his body sun-parlour tanned, trimmed at the LA Sports Club and dressed in designer labels, was a man whose professional and social radius rarely extended past La Brea to the east or Olympic to the south, and certainly never out of the 310 area code. Vacations for him meant Bermuda or Baja. So he couldn’t comprehend how Rowena Singer, who had lived with her movie mogul father in his Brentwood mansion
since her last divorce, would end up roughing it with natives in a desert in Western Australia.

‘Rowena, who told you about this Kimberley place? Why did you go there?’ His voice was gentle. For the first time he spoke with curiosity.

She stared at him then closed her eyes, wrapping her arms across her chest and rocking slightly. ‘Ardjani told me. He’s an Australian Aboriginal elder, a prophet, a wise man. I met him here in LA. He told me about the Songmaster, the man who plays the didgeridoo and sings the songs of the Barradja people. Ardjani says the Songmaster sings the stories of the past, of how the Barradja were the first humankind on this planet. He comes to Ardjani’s people and explains the present and predicts the future.’

‘How did you meet this Ardjani?’

‘At the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. It was a fundraiser. They had an exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art. And when I met Ardjani I knew I had to follow him . . . I had an idea about making a documentary about him and his people. But something went wrong. Something bad has happened to me. I never meant any harm.’

‘What did you do? What happened?’

She didn’t answer, but kept on rocking.

Doctor Silverstein stared out at the fading sky above the city of angels. Finally he spoke. ‘I can do no more for you. I believe you must go back
to Australia, back to that place and ask this Ardjani if he can help you.’

The security guard’s head dropped onto his chest as he slipped to sleep. With a jerk he lifted his chin, eyes still closed, but again his head fell forward and this time rested on his collar, the subconscious mind parting from the conscious as he slept deeply.

He didn’t see, and possibly wouldn’t have paid any attention to, the slight figure of the young woman who slipped quietly through the archway leading to the Victorian Art Gallery’s Aboriginal artefacts section.

She was just eighteen, wispy brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a shapeless flower-child dress worn over a long-sleeved cotton knit top. She walked past a display case of samples of weaving and bark and wooden coolamons and pots. Her soft sandals made no noise on the polished parquetry and as she moved, her arms embraced the infant cradled in a cloth sling tied around her neck. She glanced down at the sleeping baby, dark lashes curling on a cheek, a mouth so perfectly formed she couldn’t resist lowering her head to brush her own lips across the pink rosebud that had fitted so neatly and possessively around her nipples.

She walked past the contemporary canvases around the walls, a collection of work from Freddy Timms, Rover Thomas, Queenie McKenzie, Paddy Jaminji. She paused before an ochretoned acrylic sketch of two strange figures on ingres paper.
Wandjina Watching, Rosie Kaminyarli 1983
was pencilled in one corner. The primitive faces surrounded by halos, with huge eyes and absent mouths giving them an alien look, stared back at her.

The girl untied the sling from her neck. Although almost a child herself, there was no mistaking the maternal care with which she held the baby who stirred and whimpered. At the slight cry she felt her breasts ache with the letdown of milk. The baby wriggled in its confining wrap and she walked to where a dividing display wall screened part of this small gallery. She sank to the floor, spreading the wrap under and around the baby. For a moment she crouched there, letting the infant suck on one of her knuckles, while one small hand curled around a finger. She looked at the minute fingers tipped with just-formed pink nails, and ran her hand from the top of the baby’s downy head to the small perfect feet in the cotton wrap.