The Swan Book Page 13

  As he looked at the hull, he thought about how ideas of flightlessness occupying his recent dreams were mostly about his childhood, and for a moment he once again felt the gravitating seductiveness of the swan woman’s shadow. He was flying with her towards the realisation of the journey his dreams had always evaded. Then he looked straight past the vision, and all he saw was the sun reflecting the shadow of the flotilla’s rust and wreckage on the watery expanse, before a whisper of wind dissolved into a nothingness the muted hues of rippling gold.

  The girl thought old Aunty and the Harbour Master had returned and were outside, their spirits walking over the swamp. Whispering on the water. It made her blood run cold. She wanted it to be old Aunty and the Harbour Master talking about raising the evening mist together, and already mist was blanketing the water, covering it like a shield. The voices continued a whispering conversation, where old Aunty was saying that lingering reservations kept occurring in people’s lives, and were always holding them back from what they should be doing. Harbour Master was more specific. More grounded. He said someone was tapping the concrete boomerangs up in the park and arguing with the old people. The Harbour Master said that person thought that he was living in a big ship populated by castaways – a bunch of scavengers, he claimed. A big captain shouting orders from the decks of the destroyer that gave people berth – if they liked the way he was single-handedly shipping and trading the world. The Harbour Master said he just watched and was keeping his own particular mouth shut.

  Up in the middle of the memorial park of Swan Lake, several swans had scattered from puddle to puddle under a sprinkler watering what remained of a lawn. A plague of grasshoppers, jibaja, bloated from eating everything green, chirruped, jumped up and down, and rose away in a wave when the swans scattered. But dozens of the town’s thousands of pet brolgas with the quickest eyes around the place suddenly remembered something from the past. This was their old friend Warren from their former colony near his own community. These ageing brolgas also regularly sat under the park’s creaking set of sprinklers, while enjoying the spurting jets of water, falling into deep sleep as water rolled off their grey feathered bodies. The brolgas went haywire and immediately leapt up from the mud to run over and greet their old friend from days gone by.

  The old brolgas had led the flocks from the abandoned rookeries after the brolga boy had deserted his country. These brolgas had become half urbans from living at Swan Lake. They were flourishing in the rookeries that they had built all around the swamp. Nests stacked on the rooftops of houses. Look out in bits of backyard and you would see a grey throng sitting there in a day-dream of devising methods to steal food from the township that they too thought was wondrous.

  Earlier in the day when Warren Finch was driving around, the old brolgas had been taking a majestic stroll up and down the streets to knock over the rubbish bins, and to squabble in D minor about all the useless rubbish they saw lying on the ground. Everything was going along fine until the flash car beeped the horn at them wherever they were spotted. They had retreated back to the lawn in the park, to continue examining the exposed roots of the lawn struggling to replace each green shaft of leaf repeatedly plucked clean and eaten by insects, until finally, they sank into their deep peaceful sleep.

  Disturbed again. The bright red and featherless heads crowned with buzzing flies watched Warren stepping out of his car, and looked very puzzled. It took them some time to gather up a distant memory of a boy dancing their dance. But once they recognised him, their excited trumpeting called in more brolgas, dogs and people. The bugling went on and on, and the ballet of brolgas prancing lightly off the ground followed each other up, up, up and down while trampling the excuse of a lawn into a feculent pool of mud.

  Warren smiled slightly, but he did not dance with the brolgas. These days he was far more excited about how the world danced for him from way up high, or in the couch-grass backyards of every Australian city, its towns, and right down to any far-flung, buffel-grass infested corner of the country where people watched a battery-operated television in their rusty water-tank home, cardboard box, or packing crate, and looked out for fire, flood, or tempest coming up the track. All people liked to dance for a gift from God. The Warren Finch dance. He was the lost key. He was post-racial. Possibly even post-Indigenous. His sophistication had been far-flung and heaven-sent. Internationally Warren. Post-tyranny politics kind of man. True thing! He was long gone from cardboard box and packing crate humpies in the remote forgotten worlds like this swamp.

  Warren Finch’s name was saturated in the hot and humid air of climate change. He had a solid, strong face to stare at the world, like a modern Moses – same colour, but in an Italian suit, and with the same intent of saving the world from the destructive paths carved from its own history. His whole body bent from carrying the world on his shoulders, and from lurching forward on the staff of responsibility to reach too much of heaven.

  But look! To be frank, Swan Lake did not have arms wide enough to catch the troubles of the world, so what was he now doing in a place like this? What would he find out about himself from coming back to his so-called roots? Why would he call on his lost people now that he was the Deputy President of the Government of Australia, and basking in the parliamentary system of a powerful political dynasty that was long skilled in the mechanisms for overturning any of the commonly understood rules of democracy? It was true that who spoke the loudest received the most justice, consensus, transparency – all that kind of talk about being decent. If you wanted to take a swipe, you could say that he only got as far as he had, not because he had clawed his way to the top, but because the colour of his skin was like Moses’, and everybody wanted skin like that these days.

  There was nobody around, Warren noticed. Nobody there to greet him! The whole place looked abandoned, except for some homeless loners watching the brolgas dance. He was not used to being ignored when he arrived somewhere. Shouldn’t there be an official welcome? He was not just anybody. Even the lowest of the lowest politician should expect to be greeted in an Aboriginal community out of respect, and here he was with supposedly his own people ignoring his first (kind-of official) visit to his own traditional country. One of his minders mused, You must have been jilted bro.

  Most of the swamp people (those approved by the Army to watch television) were in front of a television, and watching a good documentary about Warren Finch. They always kept up with the news about Warren. This documentary explained why Australia needed an original inhabitant on top of the political ladder and they liked that. They liked the idea that Australia needed a blackfella to hide behind. Warren was no lame-duck party man of the old guard political parties that had dominated Australian politics forever.

  Only remnant racism stopped him from taking his final place on the top of Paradise Hill. Even so, Warren Finch, the documentary on television explained, held more power than the Right Honourable Mr Horse Ryder. Was that so? That piss-dog Ryder, as he was locally known, was just that old nationalistic politician who (even though the country had changed its constitutional governing powers) continued calling himself a Prime Minister, and who was from the big bush electorate that included half of Warren’s traditional country. The man was clinging to power by the slenderest of straws, and said that he loved Warren Finch like a son.

  Well! It turned out that politics was just the same old caliginous turnout it had always been, but everyone knew Warren Finch was waiting it out. He knew he would lead the country in the end because in fact, he already did. The swamp people finished watching the documentary and gave it their usual thumbs up, before getting on with dinner with plenty of Canberra politics to talk about. And there was: you had to give it to Warren Finch for being a survivor of deadly times, sitting it out with a string of rat-faced men and women back-stabbers ruling Australia who had knifed him in the back.

  But Swan Lake? Why break the progress of the claw on its way to the top by being seen in a small place that had no power at all? The unexpe
cted news of Warren Finch turning up in their Army-run Aboriginal Government territory was not only as incomprehensible as divine intervention, it was just plain inconvenient. He was right in the middle of Friday night’s fish dinner. It was kamu. Suppertime. There was a lot of swearing amidst the sizzling and splattering fat flying out of frying pans cooking fish too quickly, about a slapped-down dinner having to be gulped half-raw like a pelican eating fish. And just because nobody had bothered telling somebody that there was a visitor who looked like Warren Finch – the bloody Deputy President of Australia – waiting up at the boomerangs like a complete Nigel for someone to get their arse up to the office to greet him.

  So then! Now the local hierarchy of the Aboriginal House Government for Swan Lake were smudging over the recent brolgas’ tracks with their own footprints, hurrying on the way up to the office to meet this Warren Finch if it was really Warren Finch, and wanting to get to the bottom of this mystery of why no one had shown common courtesy by forewarning them about his visit, because for one thing, someone could have cooked him a supper. They blamed the Army men, and the white controller for being the racists that they were.

  This journey of racism was long, and all the way, the conversations they shouted to each other across the dog tracks went like this: Why do we have to be continually gutted by these people making their punitive raids on this community?

  The schoolchildren sitting at home with stomachs full of fish and chips were quickly told by departing parents who had just glimpsed him again on the 5 O’Clock News, to watch something educational for closing the gap between black and white, like the serialised exploits of Warren Finch while they were gone. Adults were out of homes with departing words: What is wrong with you children? Their children had no shame. They had bailed up and decided that they would not go up to the office to welcome their hero and, good go! present him with some flowers or something. They announced, we are staying home, and seriously gloated that the reason why they were not going to the monument to see if it was him or not, was number one, because it was too cold outside.

  The temperature had already plummeted from 44 to 33.5 degrees Celsius, and number two, they announced that they were sick of hearing about Warren Finch, the role model for how Aboriginal children could become good Australians. Why was the whole country telling us to become another Warren Finch? His life story was centre stage of compulsory Indigenous education policies from Canberra where the saga of the brolga boy becoming number one Australian hero was constantly drummed into their ears. They were sick of hearing how he rose out of Aboriginal disadvantage, and how the whole country wanted other brolga boys to be just like him. Only that day, this new generation had learnt that Warren Finch was a cultural man of high degree. His first doctorate, although he had numerous doctorates, was the first to be achieved through a University of Aboriginal Government. They mocked him on the television series, saying, Yep! That’s right. We know those old brolgas outside taught you how to knock em down rubbish bins.

  The race was on, with more officials of the Swan Lake Aboriginal Government leaving their homes as the news spread, and running towards their office with hearts banging flat chat against rib bones in the heat of furthermores and whatnot speculations of what had sent Finch like some maniac to their office on a Friday night of all days. And how could he have travelled so fast to get there?

  They had just seen him on the television news and he was supposed to be somewhere else, with people who looked like polar bears – where it was snowing, on the other side of the world. How could he also be at Swan Lake when they had just seen him talking to more old tribals in a European village with one of those unpronounceable names, and Warren Finch actually speaking the same language as those people. They were all standing around in the snow and it looked cold. Maybe it was minus 20 or 40 degrees Celsius. Who knows? Nobody would know at Swan Lake. They had never been in snow like that. Not any snow.

  He had been speaking like this on the television news for weeks in daily reports as he moved from one country to the next, each time with ancient law holders by his side in his role (one of many) as the special old-law rapporteur to the world’s highest authority of elders for ancient laws, ancient scriptures, and modern Indigenous law-making. He was wearing yet another hat from his home hat, or his national hat, who knew these days. He had too many hats. They say he was leading the development of new laws for the world on the protection of the Earth and its peoples, after centuries of destruction on the planet.

  The little world of Swan Lake though, and many others like it, were speechless, glued to the television, to watch Warren’s fingers running down the pages of centuries-old documents containing ancient laws, and they were convinced that one day he would actually find secret information in these documents about how to save the planet, just like he was saving just about everything else. They knew he lived on an Indigenous high plateau. But somehow, perhaps another miracle was needed to understand how it happened, but he had left his important work with these polar bear snow people, and travelled halfway around the world since doing the news, and driven hundreds of kilometres from an airport, to be at Swan Lake on a Friday night.

  Warren Finch would find it hard to communicate with people such as those who were running to meet him, working their way up the winding tracks towards the Government building. Why didn’t he know that they only wanted normal things on Friday evening, why wasn’t Warren Finch at home in Canberra relaxing, or at the Casino in one of the cities of Heaven, and having the time of his life?

  What was he going to open his mouth to say? But! On the other hand, this man they were running to meet was one of the most important men in the world who knew the world’s cultures backwards. He was Warren Finch. He had come from their country. What could they say when they were introduced to all this embodied in one man who was really their own? The only news they had to tell him was how good their country’s fish was, that they had just eaten for dinner.

  What would you offer a world leader for dinner when something lavish like a lobster or a frozen chicken should have been carefully prepared, or even flown in especially with a chef from the city? If only they had known. So, while Australian political hero easily rolled over the tongue, and put brains on fire, Swan Lake-ian people could only run proudly and empty-handed to meet Warren Finch. They had no food to give him. Many cheered his government’s election song – We are not war makers and poor makers. Now they – the little people trying to climb the life of snakes and ladders – were finally going to meet him at last, their true gift from God. They had voted for him in every election. They were the master race of politics in a thousand-kilometre homeland that had pushed and shoved him, like a rocket, all the way to the top.

  The Swan Lake Government officers were exhausted from shifting about their thinking, and moving through their humid tracks, and yet they still had some way to walk their carbon-neutral pace through the short cuts. Could you believe that this was Friday night? No one believed in using their own vehicles just to drive over to the office, and especially not when the world’s foremost environmentalist was visiting – and if anyone needed to know, they had some of the world’s true environmentalists living at Swan Lake. They could bet a million dollars that they were not using much of the world’s resources. It was exciting to think that they would soon be on television surrounding Warren Finch. No one was to know that down at the war monument Warren did not have his media throng, even though he was still wearing his familiar grey suit seen on television that night, the style of suit that made him look 1950s quintessentially Australian.

  Warren took deep breaths because he had to, had to find within himself a memory of home, but nothing sprung to mind. He only caught the faint aroma of eucalyptus oil, an old memory past its use-by date sprinkled for luck on his suit. The fetid smell of swamp and fried fish was truly awesome and off-putting, and all he could think about were better memories of his life, and having closer familiarity with other places buzzing non-stop in his head.

/>   Very seriously though, he looked like a composed bouncer standing outside a Docklands nightclub, while the breathless local leaders clambered to introduce themselves. With a blank face, he lightly shook hands. An awkward silence followed. What had he to say to these people?

  This first sighting of Warren was surprising for some. He was not really as handsome in the refined way they had expected from someone who lived in the city. He looked different on television. But all the same, they saw themselves in him, even though he wore a designer-labelled suit of the Menzies era, and they did not. Much was said: Welcome! Welcome! Complete grovel! Voice of the nation! Face of Australia. Three cheers for Warren. Go Warren. Go Finchy. Go us. They cheered him wholesomely, like they generally did for football heroes.

  Quiet! Listen! He was signalling with his little left-hand finger, indicating: Watch the brolgas dancing. His gesture made the local crowd feel as though he was no different than anyone else. They were just ordinary people together.

  The brolgas danced chapters of the story they had produced out of their life at Swan Lake. It was an unusually frenzied repertoire, perhaps connected to the frustration they felt at losing their leisurely evening walk from house to house to snatch the bits of fish they had to gobble instead in the excitement of meeting Warren.

  He gave a little speech, although it was pointless trying to listen to him, when all eyes were on the transfixing sight of excited brolgas leaping madly, as though hallucinating to the smell of fried fish hanging in the air. Warren had to speak louder, until finally, he was speaking loudly enough that his voice was carried across the swamp and into the hull, where, Oh! Dear, Ethyl(ene) (Oblivia) Oblivion or whatever her name was, was still cooking fish in a frying pan hot with crackling oil. She was not listening to anyone, but she was the only person who heard every word he said.