Wet dawn. The wind moaned. White lightning hooked itself violently into the land. Overnight, the sky had cracked open entirely, rain spilling like grey ink onto parched earth, filling holes that gaped with thirst. Balding, shabby eucalypts swayed their arms violently in both greeting and fear. Lizards hid in the crevices of floorboards on the hotel veranda.
His eyelids heavy, Alter felt fearful of what daylight might bring. What had started as a dance led to a kiss, and this morning he found himself sitting on the edge of the bed in the aftermath of making love to Anna. Would it be delight or shame that hung over them both? He heard her softly calling his name and, turning to face her, found himself once more in her arms. He had known her less than a week but in that time felt a longing for her he never thought possible. He cursed himself, wishing he believed in a God who might hear his anguish too. A German woman with no history. For all he knew she could be a Nazi spy. He prayed to himself, to the long-dead, to anything or anyone who might assuage his fears, to soothe this ridiculous angst. He wept to think the only true peace he would ever know would be when he was a mere handful of dust inside the grave. He was overreacting. She could never wish him any harm; Anna was the embodiment of compassion.
A blowfly circled the ceiling in its noisy attempt at escape. They lay together in Anna’s narrow bed as dawn light melted through the curtains. Her girlish shyness crept back after a night in which their craving for each other’s bodies had hardly let them sleep. He kissed her again, the stubble on his chin scraping against her cheek.
‘Tell me about before.’
Such an awkward question to throw into the stillness after such a storm. He was tugging at shadows, trying to fill in the vague outline she had given him. A bird called urgently outside, raising an alarm.
‘Why conjure up the past? I’m happy here.’ She listened to the words sneak out from her.
He tickled her belly. ‘You’re a bad liar, you know.’ He was prising open a door she was determined to keep shut.
She slapped him playfully. ‘And you are a thief who would mine a person’s life just to craft a poem.’
Leaning across, Anna stroked Alter’s cheek. They kissed. His mouth, which a moment ago had looked small and vulnerable, turned into the jaws of a hungry animal, demanding and devouring. It was a welcome distraction. Anna was not one for intimate revelations; she excelled in evasion. Instead, she spoke to him with the language of her body.
It was almost 7 a.m. when they woke again. She got up to dress, leaving him sprawled out under the covers, the heat of his body still imprinted on her skin. Anna was a mystery to Alter – he sensed some abysmal loss at her very core. She had given him a thumbnail sketch – her mother had died when she was seven, leaving her alone with her father. And then there was the boat trip to Australia. He caught her reflection in the mirror. He suspected that all she had known back in Europe was lost forever. How could he possibly see what she carried in her depths? Working behind the counter in the hotel she showed a lacquered friendliness to everyone, struggling hard to conceal the sadness he knew was there.
He stared out at the surrounding scrub that was starting to disappear under a watery landscape stretching as far as the eye could see. Humidity rose from the ground, enfolding everything in its oppressive damp arms. Insects thrummed as flashes of lightning announced deafening rolls of thunder. Dark-grey clouds reflected in Alter’s eyes, consuming the blue.
Leaping Lena was due to lurch into the station the following evening. Early Saturday morning he would have been on his way to Darwin, where he planned to stay for a couple of days before heading back to Melbourne. But word came via telegraph the night before that the early start to the wet season, heralded by a sudden heavy downpour, had flooded the town of Mataranka, 100 miles to the north. The train was stuck there after being derailed, and no-one knew how long it would take to get it up and running again. For now, there would be no train until the floods receded.
The rains forced him to change his plans again, or at least that’s what he told himself. He was secretly relieved to have the chance to spend more time with Anna. She was a mystery he needed to solve. He was determined to figure out the enigmatic laws that governed this woman he had seemed destined to stumble upon in the middle of the outback. It was a biblical story, this wandering through the desert, the sudden downpour and flooding, swarms of locusts. It seemed possible, in that purgatory of time and space imposed upon them, that he may be able to reach closer to her centre. Another week’s delay wouldn’t make much difference to his travels.
For the white folk, Birdum was the conquest of a hostile landscape. Built on the banks of a shrunken riverbed, it was born from the dream of a train that would bisect the heart of the country from top to bottom. Alter saw it as a possible safe haven, but Anna thought of Birdum more as a dull mote on an intricate carpet. She had woken in the depths of the shuddering night, long after the lamp had stopped hissing. Restless in her half-dreams, she left Alter lying there fast asleep and padded outside to the veranda. In the storm, she sat shivering as she listened to distant moaning echoing across the bush. She remembered the howling of wolves from the depths of the forest back home. She had thought she could hide away inside this scuffed, silent country and slowly creak back to life. Out here, though, despite the vastness that surrounded her – with its yelps, yawps and muffled whispers – she still felt as though Professor Jäger and his cronies were watching her. She lit the lamp and set it down beside her. A mouse who had been scuttling along the wooden boards suddenly froze, looking straight at her, its eyes strangely opaque, the wide round pupil and muddy iris marooned on an island of white. It glared mockingly, as if to say: Anna, you are a mouse, not a phoenix. Alter was chiselling away at her heart, even though she thought it had turned to stone long ago. She had been determined to stand on her own two feet, promising herself she would never take up with a man. Flesh had betrayed her.