BEN PEEK
Ben Peek is a Sydney-based author. His fiction can currently be found in the anthologies Forever Shores, edited by Peter McNamara and Margaret Winch, Agog! Smashing Stories, edited by Cat Sparks, and the ezines Ticonderoga Online and Shadowed Realms. In 2006, a dystopian novel. Black Sheep, will be published by Prime. He can be found at his blog:
http://benpeek.livejournal.com
‘The Dreaming City’ is the opening chapter of a novel. A Walking Tour of the Dreaming City. It is a mosaic novel organized into fifteen short stories and four novelettes that, when read as a whole, depicts a view of Sydney. It will be completed shortly.
* * * *
1895
In his dreams, he had always been Mark Twain; awake, he had always been Samuel Clemens.
It had been so since the day he had first used the pseudonym. At first, he thought of it as a warning, but the first dreams had been sweet like the Missouri summers of his childhood, before his father’s death. There was a rare quality to them, and he awoke refreshed and invigorated and filled with the kind of joy that not even the most vivid memory of his childhood years could supply; of course, as time continued, not all the dreams of Mark Twain had been so pleasant, but even the nightmares provided him with a substance that nothing in the waking world could provide him.
And now, at sixty, asleep in the White Horse Motel in Sydney, the small, grey-haired man no longer felt the slightest sense of warning as he dreamed.
It was natural, normal, as familiar as the shape of his hands. It simply was.
Mark Twain dreamed:
He stood on the wooden, creaking docks of Sydney Harbour. It was early evening, and the sky had been splattered with leaking orange paint, while in front of him was an ocean of closely packed, swaying hulks: rotting old troop transports and men-o-war, their masts and rigging stripped away, the remaining wooden shells turned into floating prisons that had, one hundred years ago, marred the Thames in a cultural plague.
* * * *
1788
The Eora watched the arrival of the First Fleet from the shores of the Harbour, and were told by the Elders that they had nothing to fear from the great ships: they held the spirits of their ancestors, reborn in fragile white skin. In response, the Eora questioned and argued, but the truth, the Elders said, was inescapable.
Look closely, they whispered, and you will recognize the members of your family.
But how? the Eora demanded with one voice. How can this be true?
The Elders never hesitated with their response: They have sailed out of the Spirit World itself. [Noted Aboriginal historian Henry Reynolds documented this vision of the First Fleet’s arrival in The Other Side of the Frontier.]
* * * *
Introduction to: A Walking Tour through the Dreaming City.
The Harbour has never been a welcoming berth for immigrants. Since the day the English landed and changed its name from Cadi to Sydney Harbour, this has been the case. The cultural wars that have been fought along its banks and throughout Sydney’s streets for over two hundred years have left their mark on the heart of our great beast, and the signpost for this is the Harbour. Yet strangely, the literary acknowledgement of the Harbour’s significance does not begin in the journals of the naval captains who arrived with convicts, or in the diaries of the Irish or Chinese, but in this book you are holding now, Mark Twain’s A Walking Tour Through The Dreaming City:
Sydney Harbor is shut behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in the early days before the place was lighted. Any stranger approaching Sydney is advised to take heed as the entrance is the only warning the city will offer on its nature: that it is filled with false hope and false promise, and that it and its citizens will break anyone dreaming who is not natural to it.
Twain understood Sydney in some ways more clearly than those who have lived in it, while at the same time being incredibly naive about certain aspects of it. However, he understood the importance of the Harbour, and it is from here that he launched his dissection of the city altering it forever. It might appear strange to an Australian that such an important change in Sydney’s history would begin in an American’s book (and published one hundred years after the first Englishman stepped foot on the soil), but in the years following the work’s publication, historians and academics have been forced to recognize Mark Twain’s legacy in shaping the city and its political and social climate. The reader only has to walk down George Street and into the floating mass of American culture that is presented in signs tattooing ‘McDonalds’, ‘Nike’, ‘Subway’, ‘Taco Bell’, ‘HMV Music’, and ‘Borders’ onto his or her subconscious to understand the very basics of the argument.
The seeds of this gift (or curse, depending on your stance) have now been passed onto you, dear reader, with this new edition. In these pages, you will find the finest chronicle of English occupied Sydney, which began when the first of our chained ancestors stepped onto our shores, and the start of the new Sydney that was born when the most American of Americans stepped onto the shores, and began his tour.
And yet, still, the meaning of the Harbour and Sydney has not changed in all that time. It is as if it is immune, or purposefully resistant to anything that arrives. The result of this, is that time has only crystallized the fact that Sydney has never welcomed immigrants, never welcomed the poor, the hungry, or anyone who is in need, and that this mentality spreads throughout the country from here. It is a sad fact in this new millennium that examples are easy to find: Detention Camps that spring up as barbwire islands in the dusty sea of outback New South Wales, fattened with immigrants who have fled less fortunate countries than ours, are just one example. But then perhaps Twain, for all the change he brought, knew that this part of Sydney’s nature would not change. After all, it was he who wrote. ‘God made the harbour and that’s all right; but Satan made Sydney.’ It is a sentiment that anyone who has lived in the city will find familiar.
* * * *
1788
Pemulwy, the scarred, black skinned Eora warrior, climbed into the thick arms of a eucalyptus tree. There, he watched his dead brothers row into the ocean on ugly, unsuitable boats, and fish.
The warrior had never doubted the Elders before, but he did now. He could do nothing but. On the ground, beside the grey eucalyptus, lay his spear, tipped with the spines of the stingray; while out in the ocean the dead dragged one of the great fishes from the water.
The creature was huge and grey and sacred. It had been—and would ever be—since the Eora and other tribes had begun telling the story of the ancient fisherman Jigalulu. In the story, one of the sacred stingrays gave its life to the fisherman so that he could fashion a spear to kill the great shark Burbangi, who had murdered his father and brothers. [In the story, Jigalulu’s spear does not kill the shark. Instead, the shark flees, breaking the spear but leaving the stingray spines embedded, thus forming the fin that warns men of a shark’s approach. While this is most certainly an Aboriginal story, the notion that the Eora of Sydney believed the stingray to be a sacred creature is not. The idea can be found in Tim Flannery’s The Birth of Sydney, where he also informs the reader that the largest of the stingrays taken from the Harbour weighed, when gutted, 200 kilograms.]
Yet, from his perch, Pemulwy watched the dead kill the stingray with a knife, and later, in the evening, watched them cook and eat it.
The Elders told Pemulwy that the dead, being dead, could do as they wished with the fish, but he disagreed. It was not just an insult to the Spirits, but an act of supreme arrogance that told the warrior that the dead did not care at all for their kin.
But it was not a solitary act.
Worse happened during the day, when the dead would take the young Eora, take their food, and take their land, giving them nothing but coloured ribbons and blankets that left them ill in ways that none had ever seen before.
Finally, on the branch of the eucalyptus tree, watching the dead eat the sacred flesh of the stingray, he was forced to answer why they acted this way.
The answer was simple:
They are not my kin.
They are invaders.
* * * *
1895
He followed the long, twisting gangplank that looped around the hulk, showing him the rotting and discoloured frame of the ship. Below him, the water was still and pitch black, and emanated a menace that caused Twain’s old legs to tremble whenever the planks he stepped on groaned beneath his weight. Half way around the hulk, Twain knew that he did not want to continue, but his feet would not stop, and he found himself muttering in disgust to them as he made his way onto the deck.
The deck was ragged, empty, and filled with invisible spirits. The till turned left and right, spun by the hands of an unseen and pointless sailor. Above, the remains of the rigging flapped, trailing through the air as decayed streamers and confetti: the cabin door to the captain’s quarters was twisted off its frame and hanging on one hinge; the glass window had long ago shattered and the jagged remains pointed into the middle. Twain walked on rotting planks and passed broken railings that were circled with rusted chains.
It was a parade of death, cheering him towards the hulk’s rotting belly with relentless determination.
The smell of unwashed bodies, urine and faeces overwhelmed him when he stepped onto the rotten, creaking stairs that lead into the ship’s belly. Had he been anywhere else, he was sure he would have fallen, or even vomited, so tangible was the odour; but instead he continued down the stairs, one step at a time.
At the bottom of the stairs the smell grew stronger, and the air had a heavy quality to it, but the belly of the hulk itself was empty. He had expected to see hundreds of men and women, sick, dying, and generally pitiful, huddled together, but instead he found only a thin pool of black sea water and the disintegrating ribs of the ship.
And, in the far corner of the hulk, the shadow of a man.
Twain’s feet splashed noiselessly through the black water, and the silence around him grew while the oppressive odour slipped away. He was not sure what was worse, as the silence filled his head like wet cotton and weighed down his senses, until the shadow revealed itself to be a black-skinned man.
He was darker than any black man Twain had seen before; black like the water he stood in. He was naked and across his skin had been painted white bones. Yet, as Twain gazed at the bones, the paint became tangible, turning them solid. In response to his awareness, they began to move, shifting and twitching and cracking slightly while the man’s black flesh remained still.
Twain’s gaze was pulled away from the bones when a buttery yellow light filled the hull, illuminating a painting on the back wall. It had four rectangle panels, each panel located beneath the proceeding one.
In the first panel were two men and two women, one black and one white in each gender. The two women held babies, and wore white gowns with hoods, while the men wore trousers and shirts and had a dog beside them. The second showed an English naval officer (Twain did not know who) shaking hands with an Aboriginal Elder. The third panel showed an Aboriginal man being hanged for killing a white man, while the fourth panel, identical to the third, showed a white man being hanged for killing an Aboriginal. It was, Twain knew, a message of equality, but it felt cold, and hollow for reasons he was unable to voice.
Finally, turning to the black man—an Aboriginal—he said, “Is this your painting?”
“No,” the black man replied, the skull painted across his face moving in response, while his thick lips remained still and pressed tightly together. “It was painted by an Englishman for Englishmen, as you can clearly see.”
More confidently than he felt, Twain said, “It doesn’t have ‘English’ in big lights now, does it?”
“Look at their clothes, Mark Twain.”
Unnerved by the use of his name, Twain returned his gaze to the painting: in the first panel, as he had noted, all the men and women were dressed identically, while in the third and fourth panel, the dead Aboriginals wore nothing but a loincloth and the painted symbols of their tribes.
“Equality and law rise from the English viewpoint,” the bones of the Aboriginal said quietly, the tone laced with anger and resentment.
“That’s hardly a unique experience,” Twain replied, the confidence he had feigned earlier finding a foothold in his consciousness.
“I am aware of this,” he said. “The Oceans of the Earth speak to me, and tell me of the English, and their Empire. And they tell me how it crumbles with revolutions, but that does not happen here, in Sydney. Other things happen here.”
Behind the Aboriginal, the painting twisted, and became alive: the white man stepped from his noose, and shook hands with the officers, and they passed him a flask of rum. (Twain did not know how he knew that it was rum, but it was a dream and he knew not to question the logic of a dream.) In the top panel, the black man was beaten by the white man, and attacked by the dogs, while the black baby in the Aboriginal woman’s arms disappeared, and was replaced by a baby of mixed colour and heritage that faded until the baby was as white as the baby next to it.
“That’s a nice trick.” Twain’s foothold slipped into a vocal tremor as the scenes played themselves out in an endless loop. He cleared his throat loudly, and asked, “What’s your name, then?”
“Once,” the Aboriginal’s bones replied quietly, “I was called Cadi.”
* * * *
1788
Perched once again on a eucalyptus branch, Pemulwy, three weeks later, watched the skyline turn red and grey with flames and smoke. The cries of the dead pierced the night as they rushed from their tents to the wooden dwelling that held their food.
Pemulwy’s decision to fight the dead was not popular among the Eora. Elders from other tribes sent messages and warned him that the Spirits would be furious, and many warned that his own spirit, strong now, would not survive.
Last night, an Elder had sat in front of him, and told him that he would die nine years from now if he followed this path, and that he would be struck down by divisions that he, Pemulwy, created in his kin. The words had rung disconcertingly true, as splits throughout the Eora were already beginning to show.
But he had no other choice. He was a warrior, and as such, he would fight the dead like any invader into his land. He would strike their weakest targets: the houses where they kept food, and crops they were trying to grow. He would burn them, and then he would burn the men and women, and, finally, the land itself if required. Whatever the white beeàna [The word means ‘father’ and, in this case, applies to Governor Arthur Phillip. Phillip’s title was given because he was missing a front incisor. In one of tribes native to that part Sydney, this tooth would be knocked out of the mouth of boys during the ritual of manhood. Therefore it was assumed that Phillip, who led the returning spirits, was part of the Eora.] decided in response, he would also deal with.
He drew strength from the fact that, stretched throughout the bony trees and in the bush around him, a dozen other warriors also watched the fires. He knew, gazing out at their shadowed outlines, that more would come after the night. Perhaps from the dead themselves.
He did not believe that any of the dead were kin, but around the Harbour there were black-skinned men that he felt a faint kinship for. It was not unreasonable, he believed, to think that they might join him—and it would certainly assuage some of the worries from the Elders if he could bring one back as a friend.
He would have such a chance now:
In front of him a black figure emerged from the fire-lit horizon, the harsh crack of leaves, twigs, and scrubs alerting the warrior to his presence long before he came into sight. With a cautioning wave to his warriors, Pemulwy dropped from his perch, leaving his spear balanced along the branches.
The dead was a huge figure, twice the size of Pemulwy. His face, craggy and scarred, was a pitted black stone, with wet pebbles lodged deep within, that in the dark suggested that the dead had no eyes; but he did, and they blinked rapidly, scanning the trees and path around him, before settling upon the Eora. His clothing, covered in soot, smelt of smoke, and around his wrists was a long chain, attached to the manacle on his right arm.
His teeth, when the dead smiled, were yellow and misshaped. “Deve ser o bastard que põe o fogo,” he said slowly. “Agradece.”
Pemulwy had learnt a small amount of the dead’s language, but it was difficult to learn without a guide for context and meaning. Yet, knowing as little as he did, he knew that this was not their language.
Come with me, he said, pointing into the dark scrub. I will offer you shelter.
Around him, his warriors tightened in a ring above the dead, watching, waiting, protective. Unaware of them, the dead shook his head, and said, “Eu nao entendo o que você dizem, mas eu nao von em qualquer lugar com você.” Slowly, as if trying to conceal the action, he began wrapping the length of chain around his right fist.
Pemulwy, giving him one more chance before he killed him, tapped his chest silently, and then pointed into the bush again.
“Tive suficiente com ser cativo. Você e o Inglês,” the dead’s gaze swept the surrounding area. “Săo soniente os mesmo a mim nesta prisăo.”
“Ingles?” Pemulwy repeated, tasting the familiar word. “English?”
The dead nodded, his yellow teeth splashed against his skin. “English,” he agreed, glancing behind him. The message was clear to the Eora: the English were the white men at the fires.
Still glancing behind him, the dead suddenly swung his chain-covered fist at Pemulwy.
The warrior ducked and, darting forward, jammed his foot in the back of the dead’s knee, causing him to cry out in pain and slump to the ground. The cry sent a hot flush through Pemulwy, and he bared his teeth in joy. Around the fallen man, the dozen Eora warriors emerged, one of them tossing Pemulwy his spear.
The black man—and he was a man, Pemulwy knew, just a man—began to speak, but the spear of the Eora warrior never hesitated.
Leaving his spear in the body, Pemulwy turned to the warriors. None of them had struck the dead, but they knew, by watching him, by hearing the exchange, that it would only be a matter of time until they too killed the invaders.
Running his fiery gaze along the semicircle of men before him, Pemulwy said, The name of our enemy is the English.
* * * *
1895
The bones across Cadi’s skin snapped together in faint clicks as the Aboriginal walked through the black water of the hulk’s belly to stand before Twain.
Twain, despite his wariness, was fascinated by the features behind the white skull. It was the impression of a man sleeping, with the full, closed lips showing no strain, the skin smooth, and his eyes, undeniably, closed. But there was nothing childlike or innocent about the Aboriginal. Scars covered him in slender lines, as if a series of blades had been run again and again against his skin, and then stitched back together with a care that ultimately could not hide the damage.
“Revolutions.” When Cadi’s faint, skeleton whisper of a voice reached Twain’s ears it was a mixture of raw emotions: sad and violent where it had before sounded like a teacher. “I have tried to organize revolutions.”
“That’s a mighty large thing to do,” Twain replied. “And not always together successful, from my understanding of history.”
As he spoke, the ribs of the hulk melted away, and the black water drained from his shoes; but rather than experience a dryness, the fluid was immediately replaced with new water that signaled, before he saw it, a continual silver slant of steady rain that ran over him.
Before him was an inn made from wood, with a wide, tin roofed verandah around it, and hitching posts for horses out the front. It had glass windows and lanterns provided light behind them.
“I have tried to make symbols,” Cadi’s grating voice whispered to his left. “A revolution must have a symbol.”
Twain began to reply, but stopped.
On the verandah, dark shapes slithered into view between the rain. Allowing the Aboriginal to lead him through the mud and grass, Twain approached the figures, and found them to be man-like and, moments later, to be men. They wore armour that covered their torso and head, and which was made from ugly black metal: it was dented, and poorly shaped, and the helmet looked like an up-ended tin, with a slit cut across for the eyes.
The armour was crude and laughable, but Twain could not bring himself to acknowledge the fact. Instead, he watched the figures load their pistols and rifles and step from the porch in heavy, awkward footfalls, the silver rain washing over their dark bodies.
“Symbols,” Cadi repeated, and stepped before the figures. They paused, and he ran his bony fingers across the black armour. “A symbol to defy the English, that is what this is.”
“There’s certainly something in it,” Twain replied quietly, shivering, but not from the cold.
“It would have been pure in Sydney.” Cadi turned and raised his right arm, pointing behind Twain.
He gazed through the rain, at the graveyard of fallen branches and trees that littered the ground around the inn. At first, Twain could not see anything. But then, like ghosts emerging in the darkness, outlined by the rain, he saw them: police officers. The representation of English authority, scattered throughout the branches and trees, easily fifty in number, each with rifles and pistols aimed at the four men.
“Here, it is an act of stupidity,” Cadi said.
“Stop them!” Twain cried, spinning on him. “This doesn’t need to happen!”
“It already has. All my Irishman had to do was ride into Sydney and walk down the streets, his guns drawn, dressed in this armour, demanding the release of his mother, and the heart of the nation would have gone to him. But he did not understand that, and instead, he took my revolution and wasted it here, where no one would understand.”
Twain curled his hands into fists, and fought back the urge to scream out a warning to the black-armoured men. Instead, trying to hide his distaste in the situation, he said, “And what exactly happened to these youngsters who didn’t go to Sydney?”
The Aboriginal’s voice was faint, and touched with sadness, “Like all Australian folk legends, they died at the hands of authority.”
There was a loud crack from behind him and, with a violent shiver, Twain felt a bullet pass through him. He clutched his chest, horrified, terrified, ready to scream out; but there was no injury, only the disconcerting echo of pain. It’s a fantasy! Nothing more than a cheap trick! The thought, rather than calming Twain, made him angry. Around him, more guns fired, the bullets fat silver streaks in the air, and the four black-armoured men raised their arms and returned fire before falling back into the hotel. As they did, the windows shattered and screaming from men and women inside the inn tore out and ignited the night.
“What is the meaning of this?” Twain demanded angrily. “Why show me this tragedy? Let me go—I’ve no interest in this!”
“You must understand the need for revolution,” Cadi replied, the sockets of his skull gazing intently at him. “You must understand why the heart of Sydney needs to be replaced.”
“I don’t care!” Twain hollered. “This isn’t my country, this isn’t government! This isn’t my goddamned concern!”
“No, not now. But it will be.”
Cadi thrust his bony hand into the mud. There was a faint crack, and he straightened, lifting a smooth hatch from the ground. Inside was a tightly wound spiral staircase made from wood and iron railings.
“Come, Mark Twain, and I will show you more.”
“Where’re you taking me?” Twain asked, his feet moving without consent. He struggled against them, but quickly realized the futility.
“Into the Spirit World,” Cadi replied without emotion. “Where one step can he a day or a year or a lifetime. At the end of the stairs, you will understand the importance of this event, and why the death of an Irishman will always be remembered, if not understood.”
Twain gazed at the inn, and watched as one of the black armoured men stepped out of the front door, pistols held in his hands. Alone, a dark, iron-covered beast torn by emotions and a lifetime of injustice, he strode down the stairs, firing into the police.
Unable to watch him fall, Mark Twain accepted his descent.
* * * *
1797
Toongagal [Governor Philip officially named it Toongabbie in 1792, taking the name—and the land—from the Tugal clan living there.] had been turned into a simple sprawl of ugly, poorly built English buildings parted by a muddy stretch of road and surrounded by dirty bushland.
Pemulwy emerged from the muddy scrub, followed by the lean shadows of twenty warriors. Each man was armed only with a knife, but also carried sticks and cloth across their backs; they held nothing that would hinder their speed or their use of the land and the cloudy night sky as cover, for their goal tonight was one that relied upon stealth.
Silently, Pemulwy lead the warriors along the edge of the muddy road, leading them around the town, aiming for the isolated outpost at the opposite end.
In the years of his war, the Eora warrior had become a fearsome figure in the minds of the English and his fellow tribesman, but he was not pleased with the progress he had made. Burning crops, stealing food, killing farmers on the edge of the townships: these were not stopping the arrival of English men and women and their convicts. If anything, it only dug the farmers on the outskirts deeper into the land. And, as each year progressed, Pemulwy became increasingly aware that he was not winning the war.
To complicate matters, he was also coming to the realization that it was not the English and their weapons that he was losing to, but rather their clothing, food, and luxuries such as tobacco pipes.
And rum.
Rum was the enemy that Pemulwy could not fight.
It was the currency of the land, spreading not only through the Eora and tribes inland, but the free farmers and convicts who worked for the English. It was indiscriminate, and endless: a dark, intoxicating river that wove around everyone and flowed out from the hands of the English authorities.
He had learnt of that only recently, when fellow tribesmen moved into the towns, lured by rum and tobacco that they received for erecting buildings, plowing the land, and hunting. Tasks that tribesmen had done for their tribes, but now did for the English Redcoats.
Having followed the wayward Eora to threaten and force them back to the tribes with little success, Pemulwy had suddenly decided that a frontal attack on the English was what was required. The idea had come to him, a gift from the Spirits that was accompanied by the Elder’s warning nine years ago, about his foretold death. Being a warrior, he pushed aside the doubt, and focused on acquiring English weapons. He would need them.
The outpost was a long, squat building that resembled a giant wooden goanna baking in the sun or, in this case, the night. There were no lanterns inside it, but on the verandah, on a wooden chair, slept the white body of an Englishman.
Pemulwy motioned for the warriors behind him to wait, then slipped up to the verandah. The mud around the barracks pushed coolly through his toes and clung to his feet, leaving dirty prints along the railing that he climbed, and the porch he stalked along before his strong fingers clamped over the Englishman’s nose and mouth, and his hunting knife sliced into the man’s neck.
The muddy prints multiplied as the Eora warriors joined him, and they pushed through the door, into the dark, half empty barracks and circled the beds that held men. There, nothing more than a concentration of mud marked the struggle, and the death, that took place in the beds.
At the back of the outpost, behind a poorly made wooden door, the fading prints ended at the weapons of the English: thirty gunmetal black rifles and fifteen pistols, each with wooden stocks; a dozen sabres; one cat-o-nine-tails; chains and manacles; a dozen daggers; a small cannon on wooden wheels; and bags of powder and bullets and balls for the cannon.
The cloth and sticks were laid out, and rifles and pistols and sabres and knives taken. The cannon and its ammunition proved difficult, but Pemulwy ordered two Eora to carry it, and their feet, free of mud, made an invisible, slow exit from the building.
They were ghosts, unable to be tracked in the bush, the only sign of their passing the dark stains the returning English soldiers experienced with mounting terror two hours later. They knew who it was, in their bones, more spiritual in knowledge than they had ever experienced, as if something in the land was taunting them itself, and they knew what it meant:
Pemulwy was armed for war.
Introduction to: A Walking Tour through the Dreaming City.
There is no doubt that the protests and art and stories of the Aboriginal culture influenced Mark Twain during his stay. The reader will note that the retelling of their stories and anecdotes throughout the book are always sympathetic, and that the tales he was told could have filled a dozen books equal to this one’s size. Yet as the book continues, the reader will find that he is particularly interested in the story of Pemulwy. (Curiously, the reader will note that Twain spells the name “Pemulwy mirroring his pronunciation of it. The reason for this has never been clearly stated. Academics have argued that it is the author’s subtle acknowledgement of his fictional creation, and others a form of respect tor Aboriginal culture, which does not reference the departed’s name for a period of time alter death.) Indeed, his fascination with the warrior was so intense that he took a band of Aboriginal storytellers under his wing, and made sure that the story of the Eora warrior was heard every evening before he performed.
The great Australian poet and author, Henry Lawson. in his private memoirs (collected, finally, in Lauren Barrow’s biography. Lawson, One Life), wrote:
Twain’s adoption of an Aboriginal storytelling band was nothing short of shocking. Newspapers were flooded with angry letters from readers and blossomed with poisoned columns from writers. All of these complaints could be summarized into the catch phrase of ‘How dare people pay their hard earned money to see the history of a savage!’ It was quite the scandal at the time. Even I, who had never had a problem with an Aboriginal that was based on the colour of his skin, wondered about the quality of the show now that Twain’s ambitions had turned to a local cause.
Unsurprisingly. Twain’s first shows with the band were failures, weighed down, no doubt, by an unappreciative audience: but by the third show, the great man himself joined the band on stage, and lent his own considerable skills in telling the tale of Pemulwy. During this first performance, he promised that if the audience was not properly respectful, then they would not be treated to Twain’s solo performance later that evening.
The shows were, after that, given a grudging praise, but they earned criticism due to the fact that they were not totally accurate, on a historical level. In response. Twain replied that ‘history [has] never been respectful to the needs of narrative’. At the end of his tour, the debate about Pemulwy and his importance to Sydney was such a topical item that many forgot that he did not, as Twain said, ‘attack a King’.
The question that has interested historians and academics, however, is why Twain went to such lengths for the Aboriginal people and their culture. The press releases, and Twain’s own statements before his arrival in Sydney, gave no hint to this desire. That is not to say that Twain was not sympathetic to native cultures: one can witness in Following the Equator his many generous and wonderful insights to the natives of Fiji and New Zealand, among others; but he never gave them as much attention as he did the Aboriginals of Sydney. In response to the question, most researchers have focused upon a particular dream that Twain describes, where ‘the visible universe [was] the physical person of God’. Many writers have drawn connecting lines between this and the peculiar belief of a Spirit World that was favoured by Aboriginals.
For my own part, I cannot say. Certainly Twain experienced something, but what it was, and if it was linked to a spirituality, we will never know. It is possible that this ‘spirituality’ was linked to the grief that be still felt for his recently departed daughter, Susy. Some historians believe that it was this that motivated Twain, but it is too nebulous for me, a reason that is too easily accepted and dismissed under the same reasoning.
For my own part, however, I will agree with noted historian Jason Vella that whatever Twain experienced, it was linked to the Cross.
* * * *
1797
Before dawn, on the same night of the attack on the Toongagal outpost, Pemulwy and his warriors—joined by an additional twenty—swept into Burramatta. [In 1791, Burramatta was renamed Parramatta by Governor Phillip, the name rising from Phillip’s spelling and pronunciation of the Aboriginal word.]
The wooden outpost of the English town appeared in the misty morning, looking like an atrophied beast, and Pemulwy slipped up to it silently. With a vaulted leap over the verandah railing, the Eora warrior plunged his spear (brought to him by the additional warriors) into the belly of the lone Englishman on guard. Standing there, he turned to the dark figures of his warriors, white war paint curving like bladed bones across their skin, and motioned for them to sweep into the outpost, where they butchered the ten Englishmen inside.
After the outpost, they continued into the town, breaking open the pens, scattering livestock, and killing the men and women who investigated the chorus of agitated animal noises that swept through the morning sky. It was there, watching the animals, and his men, and the dirty orange sun rising, illuminating the muddy streets and crude houses of the town, that Pemulwy realized how poorly he had planned the attack.
He would die here, on these streets, as the Elder had said.
Shaking his head, pushing the thoughts aside, Pemulwy gripped his spear and walked down the cold, muddy street. Around him, his warriors were firing into the houses, the battle having already broken down into individual conflict, rather than a combined attack. Pemulwy had feared that this would happen—he had stressed that they had to fight as one, that they needed to remain together to take and hold the town, but his words had fled them, lost in the rush of emotions they were experiencing.
To his left, the cannon fired and the sound of splintering wood and a spike of screaming followed.
You will die here.
Shaking away the unsummoned thoughts, Pemulwy advanced on a white man who emerged from his house. Thick set, bearded, barely dressed, the man raised his rifle, but before he could fire, Pemulwy hurled his spear, skewering the man. The Eora stalked up to the body, retrieved his spear and the man’s rifle, and turned back to the chaos of the town.
The cannon fired again, and the smell of smoke worked its way to the warrior. Before him, bodies littered the ground. They were white men and women and children and between them, dark slices of the country given form, were his own warriors.
You will die here.
The thought was a cold chill, working up his spine, through his body. But he was a warrior, and he would not leave. Instead, he rushed through the churned mud and into the chaos of the battle, where he plowed his spear into the back of an English woman.
* * * *
When the shape of the battle changed, Pemulwy asked himself if he had seen the English soldiers arrive before the first bullet tore through his shoulder to announce their presence, or if he had not. In the split second the question passed through his mind, he realized that he had been so caught up in the bloodlust, in the killing, that he hadn’t.
When the bullet tore through his left shoulder, he fell to his knees, his spear falling into the mud; in his right hand, he still gripped the English rifle. Around him, fire leapt from crude building to building, acting as his warriors had done when they swept into the town, but with a more final devastation.
They had failed.
Pemulwy rose to his feet, clutching the rifle.
Before loosing control of his warriors, he had planned to organize a defensive structure, to take prisoners, to prepare for the wave of red-coated soldiers that swept into the town.
The men that will kill you.
The bullets that sounded around him were organized, and worked in series, punching through the air and into the bodies of his warriors. Across the street, he watched a tall Eora warrior hit by a volley of bullets, his body lifted from the ground. It was the sign, the moment that Pemulwy’s attack was truly broken, the moment he should have fled; but instead, he began running across the street to help the fallen, a bullet sinking into the calf of his right leg before he was half way across, and spinning him to the ground, into the mud.
Don’t die face down.
Pemulwy pushed himself up, using the rifle for the leverage. The wave of Redcoats had become a flow of individuals, and he was aware, dimly, that some of his warriors had fled. Around him, six others were caught on the same street, firing into the red tide that worked itself to them like the lines of a whirlpool working into the centre. His warriors dropped slowly, as if an invisible finger, a spirit’s finger, was reaching out and knocking them down, taking their life away as children did with toys in a game.
A third bullet punched into Pemulwy’s chest.
Die fighting!
Roaring, Pemulwy raised the English rifle, leveling it at a red coated figure in front of him. He took no recognition of the figure’s details, of who he was, or what made him; he was English and it did not matter; he squeezed the trigger, and the soldier pitched backwards –
Four bullets smashed into Pemulwy in response.
* * * *
The Spirit World
To Mark Twain, the spiraling staircase was endless. The rickety, wooden panels sliced through the inky black world around him, dropping until his perspective refused to believe that he was still seeing a staircase, and his body trembled from fright.
There was no way to measure time. His body did not grow weak or strong and, more than once, Twain believed that he was repeatedly stepping on the same two steps. When he mentioned this to Cadi, the Aboriginal laughed, a warm, smooth, calming sound.
“Would you believe,” he said, “that I am walking along the beach of my past? The sand is pure white, the water blue, and the horizon beautiful.”
Unhappily, Twain muttered, “So this is for us tourists, huh?”
“In the Spirit World, you see what you expect to see.”
Twain stopped, and turned to face the Aboriginal. The bones that had been so prominent on his skin were now sunken, having turned into a smooth white paste that covered his muscular body. His skin was no longer scarred, and his eyes, once closed, were open.
“What happened to you?” Twain asked, not surprised by the change.
“This is my world,” Cadi replied. “Why would I look dead here?”
Twain began to respond, then shrugged, and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a smoke?”
Cadi shook his head. “No. It’s not a habit I’ve ever seen anything good rise from.”
“Right then,” Twain said, and continued his repetitious walk down the spiraling stairs.
Eventually, a light blinked into life in the inky black. Twain wondered, upon seeing it, what Cadi saw, but refrained from asking. He had not liked the Aboriginal’s previous response—it had made him feel young and foolish, that latter an emotion he worked hard to avoid. He continued down the steps, drawing closer to the dot which, in response, grew brighter, turning from yellow to gold.
Finally, Twain reached a position on the case where he could make out the dot’s features. It was a small, brown bird, the kind that Twain had seen many times. As he drew closer, he discovered that it was caught in mid-flight, unable to move, to rise or fall.
“I’m not the only one seeing this, right?” he asked, unable to conceal his irritation. “Or is this a private showing?”
“I see it,” Cadi responded quietly.
“What is it?”
“A bird.”
“Thanks,” Twain muttered dryly. “What does it mean?”
Cadi smiled, but it was a small, sad smile. “This is the last Aboriginal myth, which took place before the turn of your century. In it, an Eora warrior, my first revolutionary against the English, is lying in an English hospital, shackled to the bed, dying.”
“So the bird is his fantasy?” Twain lifted raised his arm, reaching for the bird. “It’s not terribly original.”
“You misunderstand. This is the Eora warrior. On his seventh day in the hospital, he turns into a bird, and flies out of the window to return to his people.”
Twain’s fingers touched the bird, and its beak opened, and a small, angry chirp pierced the inky blackness, startling him. With a second chirp the bird bit Twain’s finger and, flapping its wings, flew around the spiral staircase and off into the darkness.
“The Aboriginal tribes began to die after this,” Cadi continued sadly. “They were always my favourite, but it was a mistake to take one of their men as a champion. I poured into his spirit everything that the Aboriginal culture had, everything that gave them form and purpose, ft was a mistake. There was nothing for the others, and he, alone, could not change the inevitable. He could not defeat the English.”
Twain sucked on his finger, and muttered around it, “It doesn’t sound like any of your so called revolutions worked.”
“No,” Cadi agreed. “Gone are the days when the disenfranchised could change a path. I must rely on a celebrated kind, now.”
“And that’s me, is it?” Twain asked, shaking his hand.
“You are a celebrity, are you not?” the Aboriginal asked.
Twain shrugged, then nodded. “Yeah, I am. But why bother with me? Just make your own kind and leave me in peace. People react better to their own kind.”
“The Eora are Sydney’s own,” Cadi said softly. “But no Englishman would embrace them, just as no Aboriginal or Irishman would embrace the English. So tell me, whose kind should I make a celebrity out of?”
Twain began to reply, then stopped. He could think of nothing to say in response, and instead said, “Well, if that’s the case, why even bother?”
Cadi was silent. Twain watched him look around, wondering what, on his beach, he was gazing at, for nothing was offered to him but the endless black and a spiralling staircase that stretched to the end of his sight and beyond.
“If you could save your daughter, Mark Twain, would you?” Cadi finally asked.
Stiffening, Twain replied hotly, “Of course —”
“What if she was no longer the daughter you remembered? If she did things you didn’t agree with, or understand. What if, except in name, and dim memory, the presence of your daughter was a totally alien thing? Would you still offer to save her?”
Swallowing his anger, Twain nodded in wordless response.
“Then we must continue onwards,” Cadi said, pointing to the stairs that he did not see.
* * * *
1802
Pemulwy could not stop the English. They continued to spread, a white herd of disease and invading culture that knew no boundaries.
Once, the Eora warrior had believed that the strength of the English would unite the tribes, would force them all to fight, but it was not the case. Each week, young men and women left the tribes, lured by the items in the towns, and stayed there. Their family and friends would then journey back and forth, visiting, partaking in what was offered. Weekly, the base of the tribes was eroded, worn away not by individuals, but by the inevitable march of time, which Pemulwy, for all his strength, could not stop attacking even himself.
Ten years ago, he could run all day, and rise in the morning, ready to run again. Tracks were sharp, and bright to his eyes. The night wind was soothing, and he would lie naked beneath it, gazing up into the sky until he fell asleep. But not now. Now he took breaks during his running and, after a whole day, he would awake with aches, and the awareness that he slept longer. He needed a blanket at night, and the tracks he had followed so easily were no longer clear, and the horizon, when he gazed out, was now a shifting, blurring thing.
Worse, age arrived with another barb that Pemulwy had not expected: the animosity of the young.
They argued against everything he did. They brought back the trinkets of the English, and when he ordered them put aside, they told him that he did not understand. That he was old, that he no longer understood, that he was trapped in a time no longer important. To make matters worse, he could not pick up his spear and issue a challenge to respond to them directly. To attack the youth was to attack the future of the Eora.
Other problems had also arisen (and which, with the weave of his thoughts flowing from the fire he stared into, joined the procession like smoke) and that was the bushrangers. The escaped convicts, or white men who had taken to the bush who, despite Pemulwy’s instructions, had been shown the land by the young. These men—and they were always men—did not fall into conflict with the Eora warrior and showed to him the flaw in his early logic. The mistakes his hate had created, for the free men and women in the towns favoured the white bushrangers. They looked to them for protection and, in some cases, a future. From the towns, he had seen mugs, plates, and pipes work their way through the tribes, designed in the faces of the favoured bushrangers. [Historian Robert Hughes, in The Fatal Shore, notes a line of clay pipes that were made the week after Bold Jack Donohoe’s death at the hands of the authorities. They were modeled after his head, and came complete with a bullet hole in the temple, where he had been shot. They were bought, Hughes noted, by emancipated convicts and free settlers, but not in recognition of the lawfulness of Jack’s death. Rather, they were bought as part of the celebrity cult that surrounded the favoured outlaw, and highlighted the local resentment towards the English officers.] No such thing existed for him, nor for any other Eora or tribesman warriors that fought the English. But was it possible, that if he had aligned himself with the free men and women, instead of attacking them, he might have fought a more successful war against the English?
So closely did his thoughts mirror the argument taking place around him, that Pemulwy did not notice it until his name was shouted through the night. That, and only that, drew his attention to the group before him.
They were Eora men and women, but they were not dressed like him. Instead, they wore the clothes of the English: buttoned shirts, pants, boots, dresses, with their beards and hair turned smooth and decorated with reds and blues. At their feet were bundles of their belongings, bulging in various shape and form, leading the aging Eora warrior to surmise that what was contained within would not be welcomed by him.
“He gives us his attention!” cried one of the Eora in English. He did not have a beard, but a mustache, and through his ears were silver rings. “The Great Pemulwy finally looks upon us, his subjects.”
The words were not the same, but he knew them. You’re old, you’re a relic, you don’t understand, spoken in the English language he despised. Unfolding his body from its position, the Eora, weaponless, lean, a map of scars from English bullets that refused to kill him, stalked over to the younger man, who, to his credit, did not sink into the company of his friends.
Quietly, he said, Miago, yes?
“I am called James now,” he spat in reply, angrily returning Pemulwy’s gaze.
Shaking his head, he said, It is a great shame –
“Spare me,” James retorted hotly. “Spare all of us your words. We have been perfectly content away from here.”
Then leave, Pemulwy replied, his voice cool, controlled, his gaze running over the eight Eora behind James—it was such a fitting, ugly name for him—where he found them unable to meet his gaze.
“We cannot!” James said harshly. “Thanks to you and your ways!”
Pemulwy’s eyes flashed with a touch of anger, and the younger Eora faltered for a moment, almost stepping back as Pemulwy spoke: I have not done anything to you. I have not seen yon since after I escaped the hospital, and your father helped me with my injuries.
“You should have died!” James cried, and the Eora who understood his words gasped. “That’s what the Elders said!”
Rather than being angered, Pemulwy felt a thread of defeat work through him. Ten years ago, he would have struck James, killed him for the words, no matter his age. But now? Had he seen too much death? Was it possible that he was not only losing the war, but the will to wage it? You would do well to watch your words, Pemulwy said quietly. Show respect, for you are the one who came here, not I.
“King [About the Aboriginals, Governor King wrote, ‘I have ever considered them the real Proprietors of the Soil.’ Australian history, however, would not remember him, or these words. King would be remembered, instead, as a politically weak man who married his cousin.] has driven us out,” James spat venomously in reply. “Because of you! You and only you are to blame for this!”
King? Pemulwy repeated, annoyed, a spark of anger finally igniting in him. King doesn’t run those towns, boy! The soldiers with rum do! He cannot do anything without their approval.
“Not true!” James turned to the Eora behind him. “Tell him.”
“It,” said one, a young woman, “it is true. King has driven us out.”
“He has done it because of you!” James shouted angrily. “Because of your attacks, your raids, because of everything you have done. King has driven us out!”
And what would you have me do about it? Pemulwy returned hotly. I’ll not bow to the English willfully!
“We cannot go back until you are dead!”
Then so be it.
Angrily, Pemulwy spun away from the young Eora and stalked over to the fire, grabbing his spear. The sudden movement caused a snap of pain to run along his chest, but it only angered him further. This was his land! Eora land! It was their past and their future and no one, much less King, would dictate how an Eora walked across it.
Gripping the spear tightly, Pemulwy stalked up to James, who, shrinking back, knew that he had pushed the warrior to far. The warrior who, for all his age, for all his failures, had still been struck down in Burramatta by seven bullets, and when he refused to die, chained to a bed in a hospital, had escaped with the Spirits’ aid. The warrior who had fought the English from the day they landed, the warrior whose very name caused fear-in the settlements.
That warrior, Pemulwy, said to James harshly, Do you wish to fight me?
The young Eora shook his head.
We cannot fight among ourselves, Pemulwy spat angrily. That is how the English will defeat us. If we separate, if we betray our heritage, then they have already won.
Thrusting the young Eora to the side, his companions parting before him, Pemulwy stalked into the darkness of the bush. It welcomed him and his intent with the comfort and support of a mother.
* * * *
The Spirit World
In the middle of the spiral staircase a door appeared. It was a faded red, and had a long, brass handle.
Wooden stairs were behind it, but Twain could not make out a way to reach it, without climbing onto the edge of the stairwell, and risking the grasp of the inky darkness. He considered it, arguing with his fear as he gazed downwards, but the disorientation and nausea were powerful responses, and Twain was left gripping the railing tightly, unable to climb it and step out.
“Mark Twain,” Cadi said after a moment, “we wish to go through the door.”
Biting his lip, he said, “Why wait to tell me that?”
“Sometimes, when a man is different, he will go around it.”
“But not me?” Twain muttered with annoyance, releasing the railing. “I’m just an ordinary man, huh?”
Cadi shrugged. “Does that bother you?”
“I guess not, since I’ve got no desire to go ‘round.” Twain grabbed the door handle, and paused. “Still, there must be something about me. Being a celebrity and all, right?”
“No,” Cadi replied, shaking his head. “A celebrity is just an ordinary man, or woman, given an extraordinary place. I do not understand why, or how, or what even makes other ordinary men and women so fascinated by them. It is beyond me.”
“I think you just lost me,” Twain replied, leaning his back against the door. “I was almost starting to come around, too.”
“The knowledge is here,” the Aboriginal said, touching Twain’s chest, at the place where his heart beat. “It’s locked away from me.”
Twain shivered, and pushed aside the finger. He was aware, more than ever before, of the stretching emptiness on either side of him, of the frail stairwell he stood upon, and of the fact that there was only one other man in the world with him at that moment. “I think I ought to open this door, don’t you?” he said.
Cadi smiled, but not with amusement.
The door handle turned smoothly under Twain’s grasp and, when he pushed it open, he found that it lead to a set of stairs. But unlike the stairs he left, these were made from dirty grey cement, and lead downwards for five steps, before running into a narrow alley where buildings made from brick and smooth cement loomed over him, and the noises of the world reached into the ally with thin, sticky fingers.
They were familiar noises: the sound of cars, of people, of music, and the things that mixed between, like dogs, birds, and cooking. But there were other sounds, familiar in the cacophony, but yet, at the same time, alien: beeps, strange, tinny musical tunes, sirens that were not quite right, and more, that he could not distinguish fully.
Twain stepped from the alley and stopped. In front of him was a street, similar to the ones he was familiar with, but at the same time totally different. Moving along it like a school of salmon moving through a stream, were automobiles, their bodies smooth and so rounded that they resembled giant bullets. They were an array of colours, from blue, red, green, to grey and white, and even, in one small automobile that looked like a dented bubble, aqua. Inside the vehicles sat men and women, singularly or in groups, just as they walked along the streets, talking into small boxes in their hands, or with wires leading down from their ears and into their strange straight cut jackets or purses or bags. Other men and women did not dress the same, with some wearing simple, dark versions of suits that he was familiar with, and others appearing more casual, in blue and green and orange, among other colours. Sitting on the sidewalk, however, holding bags to them, were the dirty and poorly dressed homeless men and women that Twain knew anywhere, huddled within doorframes or the edges of alleys, and being stepped around by the walking crowd, who talked and beeped in a susurration of sound.
“You bought me all this way to show me another fantasy?” Twain asked, unimpressed. There were smells in the air, a mix of food and fumes and perfumes that irritated his nose, and he reached into the pocket of his jacket. “You’ve really outdone yourself on the smells.”
Next to him, Cadi had resumed his bony shape, with the man’s eyes closed, his mouth compressed, and scars mapping his body. Clicking as it moved, the skull said, “This is not a fantasy of mine. None of them have been.”
Twain wiped his nose, and gazed outwards: buildings stretched out like a steel valley, running as far as he could see.
It was as he gazed at the building that experienced a flash of recognition.
“This is Sydney?” he asked.
“In the Twenty First Century,” Cadi acknowledged. “We are standing in Kings Cross.”
“I’ve never heard of such a street,” Twain replied, walking down the path, and gazing through a glass window. Inside, rows and rows of brightly coloured plastic items sat, but he could not, for the life of him, understand what they were for.
“It is not a street,” Cadi said from behind him. “It is the heart of Sydney. In your time, it is known as Queens Cross, but it will be changed.”
Twain looked into the reflection of the glass, but neither he nor Cadi was there. Accepting it as he did everything, he said, “They don’t say good things about the Cross in Sydney, which I’m sure you’re aware of.”
“And with good reason.” The Aboriginal began walking down the path, weaving between the people, leaving him to follow. “The Cross, as it is so known, pumps life into Sydney straight from the English authority that founded it. The name tells anyone walking into Sydney this, yet most of its citizens instead choose to accept it, to treat the Cross as a dark novelty that they can enjoy on a weekend basis. But they shouldn’t. It is not an amusement ride for the masses.”
Twain’s gaze ran from man to woman that he passed, each of them unaware of his presence. Listening with half an ear, he said, “We’ve places like this back home, and they never hurt no one.”
Cadi stopped, and gazed intently at him.
Twain shrugged. “It’s true.”
“So naive, Mark Twain.” Cadi swept his hand along the storefronts beside them, and pointed down the street, where buildings ran in an endless line. “Why is it that nobody asks what fuels the city? Where is its heart, and what marked it? In Sydney, Kings Cross feeds off an act of violence that took place in 1788, shortly after the First Fleet arrived. Six convicts raped five Eora women in the swamp that was once here. [This account can be found in In the Gutter… Looking at the Stars, edited by Mandy Saver and Louis Nowra.] It was here that what the English delivered in its fleet sank into the ground, into the fabric of the land, and connected with the rotten umbilical cord that wormed out from their mother country. It killed the land. I saw this, and I could do nothing in response to it, until I learnt to…”
He held up his bony hands, and his skull opened in an attempt at an expression; smile or frown, he did not know.
Twain said, “It’s not a good thing, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone, but it doesn’t have to be like this.”
“But it is.”
“Are you —”
Without warning, Twain was thrown to the ground, and a boot cracked into his temple, sending him reeling.
Struggling, Twain felt his feet grabbed, and he was dragged to the side of the street. Legs passed him, people walking, uncaring, while the dark, bony legs of Cadi were just at the edge of his consciousness. He struggled, crying out, and in response, he was slung around, his head smacking loudly into the brick wall.
A rough, white, young face shot into his view, and snarled, “Money!”
Twain shook his head. How to explain that this wasn’t real, that he wasn’t here, that he was Mark Twain!
“Fucker!”
Twain’s head exploded in pain, and he felt a second punch plunge wetly into his face. He sagged, and once again the boot caught him in the temple. He should have lost consciousness, should have faded into nothing, or perhaps another scene, but he didn’t; instead he saw the young man furiously search his pockets, ripping the wallet and money out, and then, glancing down at his boots, tore them off too.
Without a backward glance, the boy turned, and ran down the street, the flow of people continuing past the fallen Twain.
“This is real,” Cadi said from above him. “It is happening right now. It happens every day in Sydney. The dark amusement ride that is the beat of the city spreads itself out in acts like daylight robbery, sold drugs that kill, underage prostitution, and worse. You could not imagine what is worse. And it is kept alive not by the people, but by the scarred heart that beats here, in Kings Cross.”
Cadi’s bony arms reached down, and helped Twain to his feet. Glancing behind him, he saw a young, dark haired Asian man lying on the ground, blood pouring from his face, his skull split open.
“He will die,” Cadi said flatly.
Twain did not respond. He felt sick, and wanted to vomit, but knew that he would not, knew that there was more to be shown to him. In response to his silent acceptance of continuing, Cadi led him to a green door in the side of a building.
* * * *
1802
Pemulwy had begun, after the battle of Burramatta, to think of the land around the Harbour as Sydney Cove.
It pained him to think of the Eora land in such as manner, but as he made his way through the darkness, he realized that it was not incorrect of him to think that way. The land no longer resembled anything from his youth: the stingrays were dwindling, the bush had been cut away, trees were replaced with crude buildings of wood and other, more sturdy buildings made from yellow sandstone. Nothing about the land he made his way through resembled the Eora land, with the exception of the Harbour itself, somehow retaining its purity, its strength that cut a dark mark through the English land.
Pausing at the top of a hill, the Eora warrior dropped into a crouch and gazed at the ragged ugliness of Sydney Cove.
According to the English, it had been named after a man who had never seen it, and who would never do so. One young Eora had told him that Sydney was a genteel man—though he had been unable to explain to him just what made such a man—a friend of the white beeàna, but that he was a man who held the land, and everything upon it, in contempt. It was not an uncommon opinion, and after so many years of fighting the English, Pemulwy had grudgingly accepted that the only native-born Englishmen who did not hold the land in contempt were the Rum Corps [In 1808, the Rum Corps would depose King’s successor, Governor Bligh, and rule the colony for two years while treating it as their own bank to become rich, landed gentry. When removed from power, none of the Corps would be executed or severely punished; their leader, John Macarthur, a common-born Englishman, would instead be remembered as the man who laid Australia’s financial backbone with the wool industry he founded. History, however, would be much less kind to the genteel-born Bligh who tried to end the Corps’s stranglehold on the colony. In his history of Sydney, Leviathan, John Birmingham sums up the general consensus about Bligh, describing him as ‘a stunted foul-mouthed ogre with axes in his eyes, stalking the quarterdeck of the Bounty and being unconscionably rude to Fletcher Christian’.], who he hated with a passion. He had learned, too late, it appeared, that there were divisions as wide as the Harbour between the English here and those in England, and despite his animosity towards them, he believed that if he had known this years before, he would have exploited this.
But of course, he had not.
I have lost my taste for the war, Pemulwy whispered, rising from his crouch, his muscles complaining. I don’t want it anymore. I have watched my tribe die and walk into the towns, yet the English living here no longer appears the crime I once thought it was.
Time had, he realized, defeated him. And yet, as he gazed down at the town, he knew that he would not be able to turn away from his current actions: he would still kill King. But it was not for hatred that he would do it, he realized, or for the Eora way of life, or even the land. In truth, he did not know why he would do it.
He felt no anger or fear as he made his way quietly down the hill. His hard feet left only the barest hint of a track in their wake, and when he skirted around a pair of Redcoats in the street, he did not attack them. They were young men, and ugly like all the English were to him, but that was not why he stayed his hand. Part of him wanted to believe that he did so because he did not want to alert others to his presence, and in a small way, that was true; but mainly, his refusal to step into the street with his spear was the physical manifestation of his unwillingness to continue the war.
He wondered, briefly, if a new Spirit had settled upon him. When the land had belonged to the Eora, the Elders had told Pemulwy that the Spirit of the land demanded protection, that it was angry if he allowed any tribe to take the land, and it had been this that had fueled him in the first years of his war. But he did not feel it anymore, and indeed, admitted that there was a different feel to the land now. Was it possible that it rose out of the quiet houses of the English that he passed, dark with sleep, and with dogs chained to the back doors for protection? Pemulwy did not know, but it was entirely possible.
King lived in a two-story sandstone building in the middle of Sydney Cove. It was where all the Governors had lived, and was surrounded by large lawns and vegetable gardens that were beginning to show produce. Pemulwy had seen similar gardens around the houses throughout the settlement, but their vegetables had shown sagging green tops, while at King’s dwelling, there was more life, the promise of things to come.
Pemulwy slipped over the surrounding fence, and made his way quietly and silently to the back of the sandstone building. Coldness was seeping into his fingers, and he flexed them as he scanned the garden slowly. Once, he had been able to scan the surrounding ground quickly, but now, even with the aid of moonlight, he needed more time. Time to distinguish the shapes, such as the fence palings to the left, and the firewood next to it.
When he was sure that the yard was empty, Pemulwy continued to the back of the house. There were no lights coming from the house, but on the second floor, the Eora could make out the hint of something, either movement or a candle. The windows that the English had placed in the building were too thick for him to see through properly.
His hard feet lead him quietly to the back door, which, when he pushed upon, swung open with a faint creak.
Warmth still had its fading grip on the house, and emanated from the sandstone bricks of the narrow hallway that Pemulwy made his way along. Doors were to his left and right and, when he gazed into them, he found a small kitchen, followed by even smaller rooms that were packed like an overflowing parcel with couches and tables and, in the case of one, a piano.
Pemulwy had seen a piano once, pushed into a ravine and almost on its side, the wood cracked and broken. The dirty keys had still produced a sound when he tapped them, however, and, despite himself, he had straightened the broken instrument, and tapped sounds out of it in the midday sun.
Afterwards, he had been angry with himself for indulging in such an English thing. The Eora had instruments of their own, traditional ones that he enjoyed, and ones that he should use. But seeing the piano brought back the memory, and as he made his way quietly up the steps, he felt a faint twinge that he could not go and tap on it to produce sounds again.
On the second floor he was presented with two doors. In the first, he found a large, spacious room with two occupants: a white English baby, lying in its crib, and a large, meaty woman, asleep on the couch that lay next to the crib. Around them were thick curtains, and drawers, and plush toys. Pemulwy, easing the door shut quietly, knew the two to be King’s wife and child.
He truly had lost the taste for the war. Years ago, he would have thought nothing of killing the woman and child, just as the English thought nothing of killing Eora women and children. It would not have been difficult to turn around and kill them still, Pemulwy knew, even as he made his way to the second door that emitted a hint of light, but even thinking of the women he had known and who had died at English hands, he could not find the anger or will to do it.
He would kill King, and that was all. After King, he would find a different way to battle the English.
But why not now?
With a faint sigh, Pemulwy realized that he could not return to the tribe and face James, and the other young Eora, without having accomplished what he said he would. Besides, didn’t King deserve it? Wouldn’t his death be a fine warning for the future governors that they sent in his place?
His fingers tightening against his spear, Pemulwy pushed open the door.
In the room, holding a long muzzled rifle, was King. The aging, tall, grey-haired man regarded Pemulwy with his bright blue eyes, and then said, quietly, “You’re a disease upon this land.”
Before Pemulwy could react, King fired.
The lead tore into his chest, punching him out of the door, throwing him to the floor. His hands searched for his spear, but he could not find it, and his breath came in harsh gasps. His mind spun and, in the darkness above him, a figure emerged. But it was not King. Instead, it was the young, smooth featured black face of James.
“If only you had learnt to ride a horse,” the young Eora said coldly and leveled a pistol at him. “But no, not the great Pemulwy. It was beneath you.”
Hatred flared in Pemulwy, and he roared. In response, James’s pistol bucked, and the world exploded in blood and pain from which he would not walk away.
* * * *
Introduction to: A Walking Tour through the Dreaming City
The Cross (once known as Queens Cross and briefly as Kings Cross before common vernacular was made permanent) in Twain’s day was no different to the Cross of today. As Vella said in his history, it was, is, and always will be: ‘a centre-point for low gunmen, violent pimps, prostitution of all kinds, drugs, artists, musicians, crusaders, bent cops, and the best-dressed transvestites the world has ever known.’
Twain’s theory was that the Cross was undeniably linked to the English authority that landed in Sydney. ‘It does not matter who you are,’ he said in one lecture, ‘but no one in the streets of [the] Cross is an Australian. Instead, you are nothing more than the pawns of a decaying Empire.’ It was a harsh statement, and as Vella explains, untrue, especially in the light of the fact that the Cross has not changed one iota since Twain made that proclamation.
But there is no denying the influence Twain’s words had. It can be linked directly to the rise of the Democratic Party and Arthur Butler, and, from them, the Republic that we live in now. Through Twain’s words. Butler took control of the voting power of the blue collar working man and organized rallies, demonstrations, and, in the historical protest of 1901, a strike that shut down Sydney entirely.
Of course, Twain couldn’t have known that Butler would make the same mistakes America did in search of the national identity to go along with the new Republic. (At any rate, Twain was busy with other political concerns. Having returned to America, he was accused of lacking patriotism as he publicly questioned the American policy regarding the Philippines.) In his search, Butler and the Republic of Australia were responsible for evil acts, many of which ignored what Twain spoke out oil. It is therefore nothing short of a tragedy that we witnessed the Australian Government steal an entire generation of Aboriginal children from their parents, and give them to white ‘Australian’ families to raise; we witnessed Asian immigration made illegal, and a mob mentality encouraged that saw established Asian families beaten and driven out of Sydney: and, perhaps most pedantically xenophobic, we saw schools begin teaching the ‘Australian’ language.
The result led to decades of confused culture, where men and women who did not fit into Butlers description of an Australian (‘standing by your mates, working a hard day, enjoying a cold beer, and a swim in the ocean’) were culturally shunned and often targeted by hard-line ‘patriots’. All of this began to change around the sixties, with the influence of American drug culture that was brought into prominence by American cinema, but it left its scars deeply within the nation, and especially, Sydney.
To walk down Sydney today is to walk in the shadows of the political past (it is in the buildings, the street signs, and the statues that link our cultural understanding together) and to watch a Government whose history is responsible for the near genocide of the Aboriginal race and culture, refuse to make amends. It cannot but force one to question what Mark Twain brought to Sydney. A few have labelled him the man who broke Sydney, but I think that is an ignorant suggestion. Twain is not responsible for the actions of our politicians, just as the transported English before him were not. Rather, he was responsible for bringing to our attention the idea that we were in control of what we made of our city, and indeed, our country.
‘Sydney is the heart of Australia, and it is from here that everything flows,’ Mark Twain said in his final performance, and he was correct. It is a heart we control, that we, with our presence, force the beat of, and which, like a mirror, reveals the best and worse that we, as Australians, bring.
Darrell Barton
Kings Cross,
Sydney
* * * *
1803
Beyond the green door was a cool, dark room. As Twain’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he was able to make out the shapes of shelves filled with books, and a large oak desk, with a high-hacked chair behind it. In the middle of the table, in a large glass jar, was the head of an Aboriginal, his mouth and eyes stitched shut, his head floating gently in light brown alcohol.
“The poor devil,” Twain said quietly, approaching the desk. “What’d he do to deserve this?”
“This is my first revolutionary,” Cadi whispered from the darkness around him. “The Eora warrior you saw earlier.”
“Where are you?” Twain said, scanning the room.
“I am here.” Cadi stood behind the desk, the darkness making his bones more prominent, as if there was no skin at all behind them. With his bony hands, the Aboriginal stroked the glass jar of the head, as if it were a child that he could pick up and hold close to his chest. “After he had been killed, King had his head removed, to make sure that he would not rise again. He did it that very night, in his backyard.”
Twain shuddered. “Where are we?”
“We are in London, in Joseph Banks’ study. King had the head sent here afterwards, to study, to learn what it was that made him hate them so much. In doing so, he took everything I had given the warrior, and isolated it from the Aboriginal people, destroying the last remains of his power.”
“Surely something could have been done?” Twain asked, approaching the desk.
“No,” Cadi replied coldly. “The warrior himself was the symbol. I realized the mistake afterwards, and rectified it with my Irishman, but in this case, the Eora’s skin, his entire body, was the symbol that could unite them.”
Twain stared at the floating head. After everything he had seen, everything he had been forced through, he wanted the head to leave an impression on him; to suggest to him the quality of the Aboriginal people who lived in Sydney and the white men and women who lived in the city too. But mostly, he wanted it to explain the figure that had taken him along this journey with intensity that bordered on fanaticism. But the longer he stared, the more it resembled that of a simple head.
“Do you understand why Sydney needs a new heart?” Cadi asked, passing through the table to stand before him. The head of the Eora warrior appeared to float in his stomach, part of the spirit.
“Yeah,” Twain said uncomfortably, wanting to step back, but unable to. “I understand why you want one, but maybe you’ve looked at it wrong. Maybe things aren’t as bad as you say. At any rate, there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“That’s untrue,” the other replied quietly, an underlying menace in his voice. “You bring with you a culture that can be embraced. A symbol for a revolution that can wash away the old hatred, and bring a new beat to the city.”
“But—”
Cadi’s bony hand plunged into Twain’s chest before he could finish. The pain was immense: it spread through every fibre of his body, terrible, and inescapable. It was death. He knew that. He would never see his wife or daughters again, never write another word; it was all over… and then, through the pain, he felt the beat of his heart fill his body like the sound of a drum, beating the tempo of his life…
It stopped.
Cadi pulled his bony arm out of Twain’s chest, the flesh and bone parting until it released the still beating heart of Mark Twain.
Seeing it, Twain’s consciousness failed, his legs went weak, and he began to fall.
“I will not let the English win,” said Cadi without remorse, his voice reaching through the pain and shock.
The ground rushed at Twain. Black and solid, he could not avoid it, he could not escape it, and he did not want to escape. Let it be over, let it finish, let him go. He could still feel his heart beating, but it was no longer his own: it was stolen, ripped from him to be placed into a city he barely knew. It would do no good. The spirit was wrong: revolutions were not done with symbols and stolen cultures, they were seeded from within, grown from what was the land and people created anew. Change would only rise in Sydney when the city was its own creature, when the people in it embraced it, when they understood all that had happened. Change could not be forced; to do so would result only in a cosmetic, shallow, tainted beast, the exact kind Cadi fought against. Realizing this, Twain wanted to cry it out, to tell Cadi that it was futile, that he was wrong, that he had to acknowledge the past, that he had to accept it and resolve the issues that arose from it; that only by doing this could he destroy the rotten hands that held Sydney in its stranglehold; but he could not cry out.
The black slab of the ground raced up.
Mark Twain dreamt no more.