But there was something cleansing in it too. What came out in these senseless flayings of one another was the contempt they had for themselves and the filth they lived in; the degradation they accepted at the hands of the guards: and what was especially shameful to men who had thought the spirit of generosity was inviolable in them, the peevish grudging they felt for every grain of rice that went into another man’s mouth. It was a relief at last to get rid of the poison in you.
‘It’s amazing,’ Digger thought after a time. ‘I never meant to be, but I’m closer to this cove than to anyone, ever. Even Slinger. Even Doug.’
Then another thought would hit him: even Mac. Mac wouldn’t be as practical as this bloke is.
He hated himself for letting that thought through. It would just be there, a thought like that, because he was at his lowest. His resentment of Vic would be strong then, fed by guilt. He would draw off in revulsion from him, which was really a revulsion from himself, and was surprised each time at the way Vic bore it and put up with him.
It went back to that animal-innocent, candidly guilty look he had seen on his face when he was finishing off the second dixie. It was a look that risked judgement, even invited it, then revealed, through its utter transparency, that there was none to be made.
6
IN HIS FEVER bouts, Digger found himself passing in and out of his lives.
There were, to begin with, the conversations with his mother. They took place outside time as clocks or calendars measure it, neither before nor after.
He would be floating. He had a mouth and ears. He had his sex. But they were far off; further anyway than his fists, if he unclenched them, could have reached. She was talking to him in their old way, without words.
Digger? she was saying, Digger? You come on now. I will not let you die on me. You hear me, boy? You get breathing now, get feeding. I’ve given you this, Digger, and I’m determined you’re goin’ t’ have it. You know how I am if I set my heart on a thing. There are stars, Digger, there are gerberas, I planted ’em. There’s a whole lot more as well that I haven’t got time to go into. So you just buck up now and come on.
You see this? This is earth, boy, dirt. You’ll eat a whole peck of that before you’re through, before you die, I mean, an’ you haven’ had more than a few grains of it yet, you’ve got a whole lot more eating to do. So you just start to get it down, you hear me, Digger?
This is your mother talking. Oh, you know me, boy, don’t pretend you don’t. Don’t pretend you’re not awake, I won’t let you off that easy, you don’t fool me. I’ve got a whole lot more to say, Digger, and I won’t let you go deaf on me. I can be a terror, you know that. You’re always running out on me, or trying to — you an’ your father both! But believe me, Digger, I’m coming after you, there’s no running away from fate. You know that. I’ve got enough ghosts on my hands already, without you trying to be another one. I won’t have it, hear? Now you get breathing, boy, you breathe! You come back into the real world and give up this dreaming. Here, take this.
She passed him something. It was a thread and he saw now that she was unravelling the sleeve of an old grey jumper he had worn holes in. Beginning at the shoulder, he watched the stitches hop back over invisible needles as the rows ran backwards from shoulder to cuff and the sleeve passed through an invisible wall into non-existence. He had to wind faster and faster to keep the wool running over his fist.
It was another version of her talk, this, and he couldn’t resist it. The thread ran between them, dark and fast, till the whole jumper, which he had worn through four winters and slept in, and which had his smell on it — sleeves, front, back — was gone, and there were nine balls of clean knitting-wool in her lap.
He began to fear almost more than the physical racking this having to face up to her each time the fever took him.
She never let up. He would thrash about, drowning in sweat, but she wouldn’t let him off the hook.
He made himself an eel, eels are slippery. He reduced himself to just a mouth and eyes — no ears, no sex, no fingers; but she got furious, hauled him out and thumped him into shape.
He tried going on all fours. Digger, she yelled, are you out there, you little grub? That’s Ralphie’s. Now you come in.
He stayed out. There were stars, there were gerberas. It was thundering and Ralphie was tonguing his neck, he could feel the thickness of Ralphie’s tongue rasping.
He knew he was out of his body. Well, good, he thought, that’s one way! It was the lightness of his head and his sex that told him that.
He got down in the dirt. He was swallowing it, getting down his peck. When he found Ralphie’s water-tin, the water he lapped up was the water of life — cool, sweet, slaking this thirst he had been tormented by, which was not the thirst of his body but of what his body had left when it shook him off.
He lapped and lapped — Ralphie didn’t mind, didn’t begrudge him the water he got from the dried-up bowl; or the bone either, which was alive with maggots. He got his teeth into it, defying the flies. It filled the hunger in him, fed some earlier body than the one he had abandoned, and did him good. Some animal part of him, which he loved as he had loved Ralphie, and which was Ralphie, wolfed it down, maggots and all, took the strength from it and was enlightened. He felt the strength gather in him; and lightly, on all fours, began to run light-footed over the earth. Under the moon, past bushes that lay low before him so that he could leap over them, across plains that burned but did not blister. He ran and ran and had breath for it, and came in the early morning down the track to Keen’s Crossing.
He woke feeling refreshed and fed. His dreaming body had fed his thin, racked frame, slaked its thirst, licked him into life again.
‘I’ll live,’ he thought, ‘this time. I’ll live.’
7
COMING IN FROM the line they would be so exhausted sometimes that a man might nod off with his bowl in his hand before he had taken a single mouthful.
‘That horse is done for,’ he would shout, right out of his sleep. ‘Better shoot the poor brute.’ Or: ‘Don’t you move, Marge. I’ll get it.’
The others would stare in wonder at his having got so quickly away, and would be reluctant to call him back.
That was one of the things the body could do.
Once they were sitting over their bit of a meal when Ernie Webber, one of the fellows who had been with them since the Great World, made one of his ‘remarks’.
He was a likeable fellow, Ern, but very poorly educated, a windbag, inclined, with great assurance and whether you asked for it or not, to give you the benefit of his thoughts. ‘I was perusing the papers once,’ he would say — it was one of his typical openings — and go on then with some rigmarole of a thing, half-heard and largely misunderstood, that was so plain foolish it was hard to keep a straight face sometimes. Newcomers took it for a subtle brand of humour and might offend Ern by laughing outright. What he said on this occasion was no more foolish than usual. ‘I knew there was gunna be trouble,’ he said. ‘I said we’re gunna have trouble with this feller Musso. Soon as I seen he was linkin’ up with them niggers, them Abbysiniums.’
‘Them who?’ This was Clem Carwardine, a fellow who generally said very little. His tone now was so scathing that they sat up shocked. Ernie was a joke and his ignorance under protection. He sat blinking now.