Walanguh moved himself into one of the tiny old huts down behind the mission. The Sisters tried to dissuade him, but they failed. The huts were each not much larger than an outside lavatory, and were scattered among large mango trees. Loose sheets of iron flapped in the wind. In flood time the river rose up the slope to lap at the lowest huts.
Walanguh slept outside, under a tree, on some blankets slung over an old wire-framed bed. His dogs kept unwanted people away. If a child ventured too close they would have brought it down, possibly torn it apart. The dogs barked at anyone who approached, and Walanguh would either silence them and welcome the visitor, or let them bark and snarl and keep the intruder at bay. And Walanguh would not even look up, not until that person had gone away.
He called Billy over to him one afternoon as the teacher was returning from a swimming session at High Diving with his students.
‘You bin tellim them kids story?’
Walanguh was smiling hugely, with his face half averted. He punctuated his sentences with laughter, and kept winking as if he and Billy shared some joke. His dark face was etched with wrinkles, and white whiskers stabbed from his leathery skin. He held a fleshy bone in one hand, and gnawed at it between words.
Billy kept a watchful eye on the dogs. He hadn’t thought Walanguh knew about the taping sessions. He attempted to explain that he hadn’t found time to transcribe many of them, but he had done so with one or two, and the students seemed to appreciate it, liked hearing familiar words and stories in the classroom. But no, he really hadn’t done it much.
‘Your pudda—grandmother—my sister, she die, eh?’
Billy could not understand what Walanguh was saying. He thought it was something about the river, about Walanguh’s sister or grandmother, about crossing the river. Walanguh was grinning and chuckling the whole time, pleased with himself. But Billy could not understand.
Walanguh grunted and threw the bone to the dogs. Billy, a little relieved, left.
‘Any smoke?’ Walanguh called after him, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, and casting his smile.
Within twenty-four hours Billy saw Walanguh again. He saw the old man’s face, very close to his own, and he saw the sleep in the corner of the eyes as the old man winked at him. The face began drifting away, and skilfully spat a wad of tobacco from one side of its mouth, without ceasing its cackle.
Billy saw the old man, fat like a balloon, drifting along in the sunlight, way up above the mango trees and coconut palms. He was silent now. There was no sound but the rustle of leaves in one breath of wind. A thin trail of smoke went straight up into the sky from a campfire below, and Walanguh drifted through it, drifted through it, and the smoke was barely disturbed.
Billy stood among all the people of Karnama, all of them silent and in awe, but many of them not looking up at Walanguh drifting through the blue. Many were transfixed by the shadow, Walanguh’s shadow, which, solid black, skimmed and rippled along the ground while the old man, naked and shameless, his penis shrivelled below his swollen belly, grinned and waved at those few who turned their eyes up to him. He drifted away and up, going up and up and away.
And the noise returned to the people, who, with a cough and a sniff, turned to their other tasks. Except Fatima, who began wailing grief and beating her skull with her fists. And the dogs howled.
Billy and Liz woke to the wailing early in the morning. They could hear it even from their bedroom.
So Walanguh died. But still, he had been sick for a long time. He was very old. The Sisters at the mission used to bring food to him every day, even when he moved back to one of the little huts with all his wild dogs. Not many people visited him, only some of the other old ones, and Fatima of course, who trusted and loved him the more now that he was growing old, weak, away. He spent his day in feeble dreaming. The night he died some people did dream of him, so they said. He was in their dreams the way each of them remembered and knew him best.
People were upset, but it was no surprise.
But one thing began from his death. Beatrice’s young parents did not make sure that Beatrice, a growing girl, was smoked properly at the funeral. She did come to wail with them, and she looked sorry. She, smart little girl so clever at school and who the gardiya really liked, did not take trouble to walk through smoke as the Law says. Her parents didn’t trouble to make her.
Some noticed it, but so what? It was not a tragic death. We living in the twentieth century now you know. Only a little girl.
Look at it. A clever little girl doesn’t even bother. Alphonse and Araselli not bothering with things. People not believing, people not trusting, people not caring. All falling down, all asking to fall down. That’s all we need to say for now.
Beatrice, she knew nothing. Raphael, her silly bugger father, was one of those whose eyes saw the shadow but didn’t know. That man is empty and has nothing inside him, except when he drinks from a bottle or spurts into a woman or has money in his hand. So. A modern man maybe. That’s all we say for now.