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could dance carefree to this rhythm. The didgeridoos replied to his sadness and urged him along.
He knew that his time was limited. The atmosphere pressed on him with a sense of disease that threatened him with sickness. But his need and the need of his people cancelled out the sense of foreboding. He wanted health. They wanted health. All were far too depressed to endure the island prison much longer. They were becoming tired of life. Then his need for health met an answering need. Strange scenes threatened to take over his brain. They were of such ghostly intensity that only the strong magic of his shaman nature kept him from going insane with a longing for something that was beyond all his understanding. Unsure of his power, he took on the shape of a spider and darted along a safe strand towards his goal. A slab of wood attempted to bar his way, but he passed through and found himself caught fascinated by the bloated horror that hung in the centre of the web. It had not been his web, but her web. She reeled him in. The slavering jaws fascinated. He was paralysed, unable to escape ... Then the urgency of the didgeridoos danced him free. He changed from a spider back to the shaman, then into his Goanna familiar, then back again as he found himself out of danger.
A ghost female lay on a platform covered with the softest of skins. She was fair to behold. Stark white and luminescent was her skin beneath which, pulsing blue with health, Jangamuttuk could see the richness of her blood. Her lips were of the reddest ochre and her cheeks were rosy and glowing with good health. Her firm breasts rose and fell. She slept the sleep of a being seemingly content in body and spirit, but Jangamuttuk with his insight knew that this was an illusion. A wave of illfeeling from her nightmare shivered her form and before his eyes the fair illusion of her face twisted with a hunger which might never be satisfied. Her longing extruded from her to fix his attention on a small table within reach of her groping hand. On it stood a golden flask. The source of her good health. Before the hand could clasp it, Jangamuttuk snatched it up.
The eyes of the ghost female sprang open. Blue and utterly cold, they held him. Wrenched from a dream in which she was on the verge of finally and utterly achieving complete satisfaction, her hunger erupted in a scream of rage at the human. The female sprang at him. Before the claws could fasten on his throat, he regained his power and sprang aside. Thwarted, she glared at him, readying her body for another attack. This gave him the edge he desperately needed. Thrusting the neck of the flask through his hair belt, he lifted his clapsticks and began a pacifying rhythm. She hung, her body quivering in the urge to spring upon him. Softly, he began to chant:
‘Now the darkness holds my soul ,
His voice keeps me from the source,
Thunder, thunder, lightning strikes
Holds me still in my wretched plight.
And I groan, moan, no pain can quell,
Or hope can quench, the sorrow of my hell,
Down under, living hell down under.’
The truth of the spell safely held her. The didgeridoos swept into a petrifying rhythm while he searched for an escape.
A perfect cube held both of them prisoner. But he was threatened by more than imprisonment. The angry female struggled to free herself from the bonds of rhythm. Jangamuttuk pressed at a slap of wood marking one of the vertical sides. His ghost knowledge failed him. It was only design without function. A small square in the opposite side. Suddenly, he knew that it was the way to escape. He rushed to it. The female glared and lunged at him. The rhythm held her. He thanked his master for the gift of the chant, as he poked his head through the opening and saw, alongside, his Dreaming companion. He grabbed two handfuls of rough skin and swung himself across the broad leathery back. With a rush, he was away with the medicine safely tucked in his belt. From behind came a loud shout of rage, followed by a scream of despair ...
Fada watched entranced as the natives acted out their travesty of the central ritual of a Popish mass. Each couple approached that rascal of a Jangamuttuk and received from what he could have sworn was one of his wife’s old medicine bottles, a drop or two of seemingly precious fluid. This, indeed, would make for another amusing anecdote; but Fada was more than startled when the villain mimicked an awful travesty of his better half’s voice. This was too much of an imposition, especially if she was still awake and listening. Visions of the endless barrage of words he would have to put up with for the rest of the night forced him to act. Stepping into the light of the clearing, he commanded: ‘Stop!’
Petrified by the apparition in the long white garment and nightcap, they instantly obeyed him. It was indeed a ghost summoned hither by the ceremony of their shaman; but he, they knew, had the power to send the apparition back whence it had come.
Jangamuttuk, feeling himself coming out of his trance, hastily said farewell to his Dreaming companion. Satisfied that he had fulfilled his task, he looked up and into the angry eyes of a ghost. He tensed, then relaxed. It was Fada, his tame spirit.
‘Jangamuttuk, you old villain, you will put an end to this immediately.’
‘About to boss,’ Jangamuttuk smiled, humouring him.
‘And did I see you with a bottle of my wife’s medicine?’
Fada, without waiting for an answer, came towards the shaman. Jangamuttuk hastily stood up in case the ghost turned violent. He knew that sometimes Fada took exception to nakedness, and here he was naked except for his shell pubic ornament and his hair belt in which he had thrust his clapsticks. ‘No, boss,’ he replied as he hurriedly made off and out of the clearing.
The rest of the people followed him and Fada, feeling somewhat foolish, was left alone. With a mental note to himself to fix the rascal in the morning, he poked around the spot where Jangamuttuk had been, looking for evidence with which to confront the old man with thievery. Not a thing. Strange, he could have sworn ... and not a stitch on the beggar. With a shrug he dismissed the whole incident and let his good humour return. He stared around the deserted clearing and found himself alone, romantically alone in the wilderness. How he wished for a charcoal stick and a sheet of paper. ‘Deserted ceremonial ground’, would make a fitting title for the sketch. Perhaps (at least he fervently wished) his wife had lapsed into a sleep, leaving him the rest of the night free to make notes on the fascinating ceremony he had witnessed. The body paintings were of such a degree of intricacy that he might not be able to reproduce them in their entirety, but then over the years he had seen enough of native ceremony and body painting to improvise on the design. But these ceremonies, they must stop, and it was his Christian duty to end them. He sighed. The missionary and the anthropologist uneasily shared his soul. The stern Christian knew that these pagan ceremonies had to go, whilst the anthropologist (and the romantic) found a natural joy in them. Was there a middle way which accepted both Christian duty and scientific enquiry? He sighed again, as he left the clearing with a last sad look.
On the way back to his house, his mood lightened as he began to plan out an interesting paper for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society. His last effort had elicited a number of most favourable comments from the learned gentlemen of the Society. Now he was sure that with his next publication, he would be well on the way to achieving his ambition to become a member of that august body. He smiled with satisfaction and quickened his pace ... and to think that he had started life off as a bricklayer.
II
‘It’s often when in slumber I have a pleasant dream
A’lying in old Ireland beside a purling stream,
With my true love upon my side and a jug of ale in hand,
But I wake a broken-hearted man far in this dismal land.
‘That true ghost song. Contain whole meaning of ghosts. Learnt it from ’em way way back, when a lit’le, lit’le fella. Just like you two ’uns. Maybe smaller, ’cause you getting ready to be men. That time, I was one two year off that. Just lit’le fella, just off me mummy’s tits.’ A burst of coughing interrupted Jangamuttuk’s voice, and he hawked, then spat before continuing: ‘Saw ’em when they first come from that “Ireland”. One of their homelands, ’nother one called London, then England – maybe more ’cause there’s lots and