The Swan Book Read online

  While the genies were drifting even further back into ancient times with their name calling, Warren Finch was making the equivalent leap into the future, and impatient to get a move on and back to his job of bloody well running the country, he told the genies to speed it up. They were getting out of here. Before the bloody country got fucked up good and proper by Horse. That cunt of a man. Can’t turn your back on him for a second. The genies looked concerned, but not overly bothered, having seen it all before, on other occasions when they had to get him out of a jam. Tops! They might make him last another few days out in the bush. Yep! The boss! Too right! Power crawled like a pack of cut snakes through his body. He was an addict to it. Addiction? They knew he wouldn’t last long. Couldn’t. They had seen the man explode if he was not in control. They knew that what was left for him was time. But, like the man said, he had work to do, and everyone knew how toey Warren could be if he didn’t get a fix from being in charge, and feel the power surging through his blood. He would chase it down anywhere. Do anything to assert power. Why couldn’t he just chase that girl around a bit more? Crazy thing had his measure already. Warren always thought it was a waste of time to hold up the entire country just for the sake of a few people getting in his way. Well! Bring it on. He knew it. They knew it. Impatience was a fact of life. Yep! Everything will be fine. I will be fine. The girl will be fine. He convinced himself of it. She would grow up. Why wouldn’t she? What else could she do? He was bored of marriage already.

  Doom, Mail and Hart understood the deal: they could only hold him up for as long as they could possibly get away with it. Already he had imbued every molecule of air with the stench of Horse Ryder. Rah! Rah! Rah! Can’t keep still for a minute. Can’t stop talking about Horse Ryder. But, even they thought he would maintain some interest in the girl he had taken. His keepsake. This little challenge he had set himself – a promise wife. They knew the threats on his life were real this time. Why can’t he take it seriously instead of worrying about what Horse is doing? The girl saw an endless journey ahead in an unchanging landscape that they would continue walking forever. Just like ghosts! Perhaps they had already crossed over into that world. Would she escape? Do ghosts escape?

  A day passed of counting the fluffy fledglings transforming into orange wash and white feathers that were hidden in the grasslands by the shores of saltpans while waiting to fly. The country was consuming the girl’s memory. She could not carry the past and had to let some of it go. A few of her old messages to her swans had returned from places that no longer existed – address unknown. The Harbour Master had come along and saw the burden she was carrying, and for a while, he walked beside her while trying to persuade her to give up some of her treasured nightmares. He sat around in the salt sorting out which thoughts should stay, which should go, telling her off for sending away anything he thought was really valuable. He was the kingmaker of policy too. You always need a few of those bad thoughts to chuck around. He kept telling her how he could not stand the sight of Warren Finch. Look at him. Stalking along. Planning and scheming some other stupid thing – probably how he is going to kill you off since he is sorry he bothered with someone like you in the first place? And the genies? Mate! I know a ghost from the Middle East when I see one.

  Maybe you are from the Middle East yourself, the girl growled and walked away from the Harbour Master who was piling up her thoughts into salt columns of what was to be kept, and what cut loose.

  This is not all we do, Doom said, feeling that he ought to prepare the girl for their departure – once the owls left the desert after the rats perished in these hottest months.

  There was a shop he owned, he said, in the city where she would live. She did not understand what he meant. Cities are where people die. That was what old Aunty always said about cities. Illness places. You will be arrested for being a terrorist. She wondered about what he said, and thought: But I like it here now. He looked at her sadly. You could ask Warren about the city. Could she ask him what would happen to her? Why would she do that? Speak! To terrorists from the city? The salt lands now became unreliable, temporary in her mind. I specialise in many things. Birds. People. Books. I am not always there. Travel with the boss a lot. Love to spend time at the shop though, Doom said.

  He explained that he, Edgar and Snip were all involved in specialist trade and had the most beautiful shop in the city. It was the place where you could feel the country: This place. I made a place in the city to hold my heart. Like this place. He said that they sold birds, old butterflies from all over the world, exhibited rare eggs and feathers, bird books, snake books, musical instruments, traditional maps of routes and footpaths, maps for following foxes and bees, old instruments for finding dreams, stars, or fossils. This was the place to seek professional advice on cultural law, societies, myths and almost anything anyone needed to know of the human condition from Edgar, Snip or him – the filler of ears, the purveyors of information.

  She was to learn that Snip loved nothing more than selling his customers gadgets to find stars, and that Edgar Mail specialised in selling old sheet music he had collected from elderly men and women in the inner laneways of ancient cities. He also recorded and spent tireless hours publishing the music from these works. His own music was printed on the old printing press in this shop. They believed in their enterprise. Our customers are people seeking knowledge about the world. Mostly from the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Australians? Not too many. We are specialists you know. You will probably want to visit us from time to time.

  Oblivia tried to anchor these new pictures of the genies in her mind, but she had no idea of how to hold the details of what she had never seen. Their words died as soon as they were spoken and buried in her mind. She squinted in the sun, had to blink to see what lay ahead in the endless story of yellow lofty crags in salt lakes, owls, rats, snakes, when she saw a speck in the horizon of blue skies. Yellow! White! Blue! Black!

  A Lake of White Water

  A lake of white water, not a mirage, lay far ahead. This was where she saw the swans. Black wings swirled down from the clear blue skies to skid across the water. The girl thought it was her dreams catching up with her, coming back in the daytime. She needed to run to see if these were her swans but knew not to, to watch from a distance the swans gliding on the white water, while I glide swanlike…I glide and glide. From the sides of her eyes she saw the hurdles. Warren Finch would see she had not forgotten the swamp. She never knew how the genies would react.

  Questions surfacing in her mind about leaving ran from the girl, and disappeared into the vista of the white sea. She felt homesick, a terrible yearning to go home. She ran towards the swamp that wasn’t there. The swans saw her coming over the salt, and before she had a chance to come anywhere in reach, they snapped loose her spirit from theirs, and took to the air. She watched until they were out of sight, flying further ahead, in a south-easterly direction.

  Warren watched her run. Sure! Sure! I’ll be there. He spoke loudly into his mobile phone. I am ready. Let’s do it. His words caught her, ran along the surface of her arms as she ran, and as though a net he threw had unfurled over her, she realised in this moment, that she was attached to him. She would never escape, even if she ran forever from a world that had fallen apart.

  Doom tried to console the girl about the swans flying away. They were not your swans. They are free birds. They belong somewhere else. She felt residues of bad luck lurking inside of his voice. It was his bad luck that the swans had sensed, why they had flown. Around their feet, a little breeze picked up grains of salt with dead grass and carried these along, signalling the owls to start their retreat, back towards the east coast for the summer. Most would not reach their destination, Doom said sadly. So much work done for nothing. Why breed? He knew that they would all be gone that night.

  Hare stew.

  Meal fit for kings. And a queen. Eat before the lizards steal it.

  The Milky Way lit the landscape, and Snip took the girl away from the c
ampfire to give her a lesson about the night sky. I think you will like it. There is something pretty special up there tonight. She had learned a lot about the alignment of the planets from him. The genies often pointed to the path in the west where Venus would fall earlier each night, until in the winter nights it was Mars that was the first to fall. Remember! Winter rains will fall on this land, and in the middle of the night, a cloud of mist will descend to touch the earth.

  Remember to come back here, Snip said, as they stood on a hill, staring at the sky.

  The thought of returning seemed unlikely. She could not imagine how it would be possible.

  These are the methods of positioning yourself for finding South, he said, explaining that they were in the galaxy of the Milky Way that rose like smoke from the horizon until its river of stars ran directly above them. Their light rebounded off the salt and it was this phenomenon that seemed to make the stars shine more brightly. He showed her how to position where she was by drawing a line through the Southern Cross and joining it to a line drawn to the halfway point from The Pointers. This will form a V for you, and from there, if you draw a line down to the horizon, you will know where to find South. Or another way, he explained, was by forming the same triangle by drawing an imaginary line down from the brightest star in the sky, Canopus, and across from the star Achernar which sits low in the southern sky.

  However, this is not what I really want to show you, he said, taking her hand, and pointing her fingers along with his into the northern world of the sky, he drew along the stars the outline of a swan in full flight.

  Do you see it?

  She nodded, seeing the swan’s long head arching down towards earth.

  That is the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. The star of its tail is a supergiant named Deneb. Look for it up along the Milky Way. If you can find it in the sky, you will be able to follow it North, until the weather becomes warm again.

  She continued looking at the swan’s changing position, wondering how she would remember to find it again.

  Don’t always look in the same place. He will move across the sky. Remember you will only see Cygnus at the onset of winter. Just like your swans I imagine.

  In the darkness with a dying fire, they waited for the final moment when the earth opened the spinifex grassland abodes and the hands of the spiritual ancestors released the owls like pollen into the skies. The swooping waves of owls flew over their heads, the young travelling eastwards with their parents in a colony of thousands.

  Men may do the same one day if they fear too much. Imagine it. Imagine a dust cloud travelling right through this country. Snip’s voice was almost a whisper, and in that moment, the clouds heralding the cool change appeared from the east, travelling in a westerly direction.

  While the girl and Warren slept, the genies were searching for a few stray owlets in the spinifex. Doom said there had to be one or two that had not fledged. He promised one for Oblivia to keep as a pet. In the morning I will have one for you, he said. She thought of this owl while sleeping in a low-lying valley filled with white flowering lilies that shone in the starlight breaking through the clouds.

  But the valley became a box when clouds settled on the hills, and very quickly it was filled with an overpowering perfume pouring into the air from thousands of flowers. Sometime during the night her lungs ached for fresh air, and this was when she heard Warren moving away. Very silently, he was slipping away into the night, but she thought it was already morning and they would be going back to join the others.

  Shh! he said, and left. Her tongue failed to form words to ask him where he was going, and she watched him walking further away into the night. He did not return, and she was unable to prevent herself from falling back to sleep as the heavy putrefied air swallowed her into a nightmarish dream. Those boys from long ago emerged from the ground. It had happened suddenly with the ground swelling and growing around her until she was covered in total darkness, but she knew them instantly, knew what they were doing – she had not killed them in her memory. She remembered their closeness to each other, in touch, smell, and breathing. Of being joined together with them as firmly as a ball of animals rolling over wet ground. She saw through them as they were falling in, over, above, coming through her in sepia-coloured waves of brown, grey and red. They rolled in desert wind over the surface of the land, and down the green and yellowing spinifex smothering the hillocks that rose and fell into valleys of lily-coloured skin, and over the distances of salt marshes.

  The landscape had closed over with mist, and the perfume of the lilies under the mist was suffocating even the flowers. Her arms and hands pushed at the fumes but she was unable to reach fresh air higher up, and succumbing to the intoxication, she crawled away towards her memory of the tree. She reaches the tree in this state, and falls back into the safe darkness to hide. From the shadows of her dream she sees the swans lifting off again from white water, pushed upwards by vaporised hands reaching out of the lake. They have been rejected, pushed away by the country from her outstretched arms.

  She was coiled inside the tree in a dream, and when she woke, she could see the valley surrounded by hillocks decked by clouds.

  Better get ready. We will be leaving soon. Warren spoke slowly but firmly, as if to a child, and the way he watched her, she thought he had been in her dream. She felt violated by the way he continued to stare at her with his eyes moving over her. Perhaps he had watched. It seemed that he knew what had happened. Perhaps it had not been a dream. You better eat something first, he said, handing her a piece of damper.

  She ate the brown bread that was made from seeds and bulbs. It had a sour bitter taste under the salt that had been added to the dough before it went into the ashes. Take your time, he said, after noticing how she was struggling to swallow each piece. She washed the lumps down quickly with cold tea. She watched him doing the same. They left empty-handed. Whatever had been brought in with them, the pannikins, swags, simple things like the tin billy, were left behind.

  Soft light filled the lily plains with William Blake hues in the first light, which was like looking at the living museum of another time surviving in the arid landscape. Warren told her that some people saw these flowers as a fragment of life from another era, when there might have been a different language that once described the wetlands and rainforest in the heart of the country, before it disappeared. This living fossil was all that was left of those times, he explained. She knew it was a ghost place. Closer to the eye, groups of pale green, firm fluid-filled stemmed flowering plants luxuriating in their freshness opened their petals. Each stem had stormed through to the surface from a large swollen bulb that grew at least a metre deep in the red soil. This garden of lilies rose to the surface he explained, only if water lay long enough to soak through this dip in the landscape after heavy rain. The flowers open. She thinks the petals are like the wings of old Aunty’s white swans. He asks her if she is all right. She nods. She can look after herself.

  Warren Finch and the girl walked through hills, the ones that were called the great bodies of the spirit men moving through the land. What about the others? she tried but failed to ask Warren as she kept looking back to where the genies had been camping.

  They have other things to do. We will see them later, he replied simply and to the point, no differently than how he normally spoke to her. He looked as though he had aged, grown old on this trip. She kept thinking something was not right, that something had happened to them, and she kept looking back with growing concern as the distance grew greater. But only the old voices of Aunty talking to the Harbour Master could be heard coming from behind her, through the sound of the ground breathing, casually talking behind Warren Finch’s back. The Harbour Master said he was pretty sure the genies never existed. He had never recognised them as real people. They had come out of a brass lantern from the Middle East as far as he was concerned. The old woman crowed on about the men on the boats she had seen murdering each other out of rivalry and jealousy over wo
men. Oh! Yes! I saw it all. All the time you know. Did you cause this? The old woman was talking loudly, starting to accuse Warren of every travesty, until she got around to what she really wanted to say, you killed those nice boys, and the girl looked away from Warren who was telling her to keep moving, because she was thinking that he had murdered the genies too. The Harbour Master became silent because the old dead woman’s ghost was putting things in the girl’s mind about Warren Finch. Girls were always thrown overboard – I told you about that. Girls were left to die in the bush. You know the public payphone really only rang sometimes…Unwept girls, all killed by their husbands.

  The Harbour Master turned controversial, snubbing Bella Donna’s ghost, which was raving on like a mad woman about how the Aboriginal killer husband Warren Finch would end up killing Oblivia too, because he was already proving his true colours by killing the genies. The Harbour Master swung away from the old woman’s spirit every time she came close to him, calling her, Liar. What you think all Aboriginal men are violent or something? He poked his bony face in Oblivia’s while walking backwards in front of her as she walked ahead of Warren Finch. In the end, the Harbour Master spurted out everything in his head through hissy spit: You know something? Warren Finch only saw Doom, Mail and Hart, dead on the ground. He didn’t kill them. He makes a fist with his hand and with the index finger pointing from it like a pistol, he waves his arm around in the air, while calling over his shoulder to the old woman raving behind him to shut the fuck up about Warren Finch and warning her to stay away from them, and walking backwards quicker to stay in front of Oblivia’s face he releases more spit-hissed words, and on he goes: They were killed instantly – BANG! BANG! BANG! No mucking around. Just smack, smack, one shot each was enough. Knocked their lights straight out (clicks fingers) – knocks them flat in their sleep. Oblivia was really frightened now. She stared ahead and walked even faster as though she thought the only way to stop hearing the Harbour Master was to walk through his frightening face, and all the while she was looking around for old Aunty and old Aunty was calling from somewhere behind, wait for me, and all the while trying to convince herself to ignore the healing man’s powers, for that’s right, no man would take over her mind. But the old Harbour Master was relentless and was using his bony fingers to jab her in the chest, and on and on he went in his tirade about the deaths he witnessed – while telling the old woman to git out of their country, that nobody else saw what happened, not even that idiot-features Warren bloody Finch. You want to know who did it? Not that gutless wonder Warren – he didn’t do it – look at him? There’s no way in the world that a slack-assed cunt like him could kill face-to-face. He gets other people to do his dirty work. You want to know what I saw? A mob of assassins who killed them! All of them came running, hooded, and disguised in Army fatigues through the scrub but I saw them.