Chapter 9

The orange in the west was nearly gone when we admitted defeat. Perhaps the holes were unoccupied. Perhaps it was a lizard or snake, busily digesting its prey of yesterday. Most likely, it wasn’t a marsupial. The huntsman had been quite busy, catching ants and wrapping them. We trudged back to camp. It was quite purple when we got there, but for the last 20 minutes we had focused on the bright orange of the small fire.

“We were about to send out the dogs,” Al said.

“What dogs?”

“We were going to send for some. Lois thought we could get a pack from Adelaide or the Alice in ten days.”

“Good thinking, the ants would have picked us dry by then.”

“We assume you two would be OK,” Aggie said. “Reg is the best-travelled and Gordy seems to be the tracker and camper of our motley band.”

I decided that was too much. “But none of us is clad in motley.”

“That’s right, none of us wears apparel consisting of many different sorts that don’t seem to go together.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Motley is the particolored costume of a jester,” I said.

“Actually,” Reg noted, “Historically, I think it was cloth of contrasting mixed color. But we’re all dressed fairly drably.”

“True,” noted Lois, “But would you want to challenge the birds or the beetles for color?”

“No,” I said. “And by the way, I picked these up for you.” And I handed her the envelope of feathers.

“Ooh! Aren’t you the cavalier, bringing a bouquet to a lady!”

“More likely fruits of the hunt.”

“You should have brought a brace of mallee fowl or a parentie.”

“Haven’t seen either. Though I saw the tracks of one a week ago.”

“Let’s eat some of those delicious rations we brought,” said Reg. But when we were settled down around the small orange flame, he asked “Do you know the story?”

“I know the story of Ngiṉṯaka, of the Perentie Man -- he was living far away, in a distant place without a good grindstone; he had only a very poor quality grindstone and he was trying to grind the seed from wild pigweed, and so he was having to eat coarse seed cakes.

“And he thought: ‘Ah, someone is grinding, there is the sound of grinding coming from a long way away.’ And having heard he quickly travelled to that other place. And he travelled and travelled and until he saw that other grindstone. And he took it, yes, he stole it and carried it back to his camp. But as the Ngiṉṯaka travelled he created many landforms in the Musgrave and Mann Ranges and he vomited up many different kinds of unmilled or partly ground grass seeds and vegetable food as he went. This is the true story.”

“Thank you,” said Al.

“I heard this when I was a child.”

“Those are good stories. I read a lot of them to my boys. But after they went to school they lost interest.”

“It’s a problem in our system,” Reg said. “I’ve known aborigines. These stories are the way they teach history and behavior. When I was in Sumatra and in Ceylon I heard similar stories. They’re not just tales of distant gods.”

“No,” I said. “They’re more like Kipling’s. They tell how to behave and where things come from. The Iliad and the Aeneid tell history. The opening lines of each say so.”

“Opening lines?” asked Lois.

“‘I sing of the wrath of Peleus’ son, Achilles’ and ‘I sing of arms and the man’ are the openings.”

“Beowulf is like that, too,” Al added. “‘Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes... ‘“

“Am I the sole illiterate here?” Lois asked.

“Far from it,” Reg said. “It’s just that Gordy and I are really taken with the function of story. And Aggie just mentioned the Just-so Stories because she’s read them to her sons. And I bet you’re far from illiterate, it’s just that you’ve read other stuff.”

“You ought to be a psychologist!”

“No thanks. I do reptiles because they’ve nearly no brains at all.”

“But I admit I don’t read much that folks call literature. I hated that stuff in school: Macbeth and Middlemarch and Banjo Paterson. And really sad stuff by White and Stead. Don’t they ever write happy stuff?”

“I’d turn to Steele Rudd for that. I thought ‘Dad and Dave’ was the best when I was young,” Reg remarked.

“That must be over 30 years ago!”

“Well, what about Carey? Illywhacker’s funny. So’s Bliss.”

“I liked Astley’s Acolyte,” Aggie put in. “And she’s female.”

“Does that make a difference?” I asked. “Certainly Dorothy Parker was funny. And Pym’s Excellent Women. And so’s Cold Comfort Farm.”

“Where’d you acquire those?” Lois asked.

“Aha! I dated someone in Women’s Studies when I was in Sydney.”

“Gordy’s secret life!”

“Not quite. Nor much of a secret.”

“‘but that was in another country, /And besides, the wench is dead,’” said Reg.

“Jew of Malta,” I said. “But I certainly hope she’s not dead.”

“It’s also the colophon of Eliot’s ‘Portrait of a Lady’,” Al added.

“That’s the one Eliot ends with a ‘dying fall’ – from Marlowe to Shakespeare. Interesting: Malta to Illyria.”

“And the Jew was written a decade before Twelfth Night.”

“I’m going to bed!” said Lois. “I can’t bear this literary sewing circle!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m off to those acacias.” The campfire party broke up.