The Undying. Mudrooroo
waiting for a reply, he deftly cut around the throat and legs, slashed down the front and· pulled at the skin. The others watched. I bent and held the carcase for him. The skin slipped off easily, as did the other. He was about to go further and gut the wallabies when Jangamuttuk stopped him. ‘We like the insides just as much as the red meat,’ he said. ‘Stomach contents are our vegetables. We can digest the grass after they have done the first bit. Old man’s tucker, you know.’
The carcases were laid in the pit and hot coals placed over them, then more firewood heaped on to keep the heat going. After an hour or so, when the fire had died down, the coals were scraped aside and the carcases pulled out. They were placed on a piece of canvas and Jangamuttuk, because of his seniority, took charge. He propped the carcases on their backs, hacked open the chests and spread them so that the insides were showing. The men scooped up the curdled blood and ate it, then Jangamuttuk drank the gravy of the stomach contents. After this, he hacked up the meat and gave each person a piece or two. I received the end of a tail and then, best of all, the heart. The animal had been young and the muscle was tender enough for my teeth to rip into. It was barely cooked and succulent with blood. I chewed away. The sweet juices dripped from the corners of my mouth. Indeed, as I ate I could feel my fever leaving me.
‘We’ll get possum tomorrow, easier for old ones like me to digest. This wallaby is a bit tough for worn-down teeth to chew,’ Jangamuttuk declared from around the rib bone he was gnawing on.
Wadawaka used a knife to pare meat off a thigh bone and, while chewing it, stared at the other carcases. He swallowed, then said, ‘We can get more of these and salt them for the voyage ahead. We need to use these ghost methods if we are to have meat to eat along our way. Simple job. I’ve salt enough and a few spare casks. Maybe I could start with one of these while there is still light.’ He glanced at the sun where it glowered through the clouds, then suddenly stared hard along the beach. I followed the direction of his gaze. A mob of strange blackfellows were coming towards us. I looked the other way and there was another lot coming along there too. Their spears were raised in their right hands and they held short flat wooden boards in front of them with their left. Between them, we were trapped.
Trapped! Was this to be the end of our voyage? What could we do? The stone points of their spears moved to cover each of us, including the women. I felt for my pistol which I had tucked in the band of my ragged trousers. I raised it and sighted on the leader of the nearest mob, but Jangamuttuk made a gesture for me to put down my weapon. Slowly he got to his feet and walked over to the nearest mob. It was led by a gnarled old fellow with a long grey beard and long hair tied up in a topknot like the tufts of grass which had scratched our legs. The group stopped, but kept their weapons ready. My father stopped a few feet away from them. We looked up at him, not daring to get to our feet. We were vastly outnumbered and now surrounded, for the other mob had drifted around to hem us in. Would they, I wondered, take us for blackfellows? We still were clad in our ghost clothing, somewhat worse for wear, but they were naked and covered in white ash without a trace of red ochre anywhere. So unlike our old traditions of smearing our bodies with a mixture of fat and red ochre. At the mission Fada had forbidden us to do this, and had even tried to get us to keep our hair short, but now that he was gone our locks had grown and we still used the red ointment to colour and shape them.
‘Maybe we should not worry overmuch,’ Ludjee muttered in a whisper. ‘Since women are here, they will know that we are not a raiding party. Then, there is another sign. In the old days when our men fought, in the excitement their penises rose along with their spears. It was such a sight that no wonder they didn’t want the womenfolk along. Now look at theirs – not much of a weapon, are they? Limp as our men’s are, but not from fear. Probably from curiosity. Anyway, my husband will smooth the way. He has a way about him. Remember him and Fada? That was a sight to see. He was the only one that could get through to that ghost.’
Her words cheered us up, but our eyes remained glued on Jangamuttuk as he stood there facing the old man who now began chewing his beard as if in anger. At the same time his head bobbed up and down so that he looked like some sort of scrawny bird engaged in a mating dance. My father, our shaman, now made his move, taking off his clothing to reveal the scarring across his chest and also the painted design of his totemic animal which he always wore for protection. The old man glared at him as he stripped. He stared at his markings, then clapped his shield against his spear like an exclamation. Still not a word had been spoken. We were the focus of their eyes. We huddled in a group and stared up at them. At least, as Ludjee had pointed out, their pricks were limp, but not their spears which were in full erection and directed at us.
It was then that Jangamuttuk began to use body language in an effort to communicate with the strangers. He dragged his foot through the sand, making a line which went to the schooner. He cupped his hands many times, then inclined his head into the palm of his hand while rocking his body from side to side. He clutched his beard, spread his fingers across his scarred chest, then pointed at Ludjee and fashioned heavy breasts on his chest. He pointed at me, then at the imaginary breasts. He mimed the action of a musket firing, then got into a spear stance and threw an imaginary spear many times. He dropped to the ground and lay still as if in death. He rose to his feet, went to the fire and picked up some ashes. His hand came up to his face as if miming a snout and then came away. His face was covered with ash and he mimed the firing of a musket again. He sank to his knees as if in terror, got up, ran a few steps, then rocked on his heels while gesturing at the others. His face assumed the lines of an ancient sorrow as his hands mimed movements which seemed to indicate men, women and children. He sank down upon the ground in an attitude of death, then arose and extended a hand flat out, turning it down to show that it was empty. Finally, he gave a shrug, then stood and waited for a response. He even risked glancing back at us, his eyes meeting mine as if to say, ‘That’s how you use body language, boy’.
Whether this strange mob had understood or not was a moot point. It did cause them to relax their aggressive stance. Many of the men smiled and the old man scowled as if to hide his amusement. His spear came down and the other men, observing this, also lowered their weapons. A few of them even exchanged glances, shrugged and grinned.
‘Munno ngo munguni maro pityuri ngo jungi eno uta,’ the old man growled, which in one of our dialects meant, ‘This old man is silly in the head’.
Jangamuttuk replied, ‘Tuari ena moolka ena yatea impa,’ which meant, ‘You are climbing up a tall gumtree’, that is, barking up the wrong tree.
It was a mild insult and the old fellow gestured with his spear, chewed his beard furiously and shouted for us to ‘begone’. This resulted in a furious clashing of spears against shields, but it was mere play-acting for even while they were doing this the men were narrowing their circle closer to us, their eyes on the remaining wallabies. Jangamuttuk’s reply in their language had broken the tension. In a matter of minutes, they had accepted us as weird blackfellows, a mob who might have come from a far distance, but were related to them at least by language. Soon they were sitting down with us around the fire while the remaining wallabies were prepared for cooking. Waai, for such was the old man’s name, took over the cooking, hopping about and bobbing his tuft as he cut open the wallabies and placed the stones within their body cavities. This he told us would hasten the cooking, but Waai meant Crow and we remembered our stories about the stupidity of crows and smiled as he did so. After all, we as members of the Eagle sections belonged to the Eaglehawk ancestor who had invented the shaftward-facing barb, while Crow had the point-facing barb. Eaglehawk had even given Crow his black colour and condemned him to eat carrion, so we did not take umbrage when they laughed long and loudly over my father’s body language, though Jangamuttuk did become sullen at this, then angry. He tugged at his locks and got to his feet, his heavy spear in hand. Waai quickly apologised for them, saying that it was only natural to be amused at our strange ways and dialect. This was true, for their language was similar but not quite identical to ours, and as for sign language, they lacked the rudiments of it. Their language in our ears was just as ill-sounding with a mixture of strange words and turns of phrases that sometimes kept us guessing at the meaning, especially as some of their words had meanings the opposite of ours. Still, all in all, we were accepted as guests who spoke a quaint dialect and had equally quaint ways, and as they accepted us we accepted them.