19

It is Bonny’s greatest challenge yet. He whispers to Beeral not to worry, that he is pretending to be back in the bora ring and that this is just another test of his strength and bravery. But it seems to me a strange one. And cruel.

Throughout the process he is asked to stand still, like the statues he has seen in the churches and out on the streets. His legs and arms tremble with fatigue and the weight of the thick white plaster that is setting as hard as rock. With his chest now encased, his breathing is shallow and slight. I wonder if he thinks of a wong in its shell?

For as long as his face remains uncovered, Bonny talks to Beeral, recounting the times he stood on K’gari’s beaches facing the sea breeze, letting his chest expand to its full potential until he felt he had a whole sky of air within him, a sky that contained all the exhalations of all the animals on earth, all the people, even the white strangers, and the whispers of the spirits, good and bad, that were carried on the wind.

The wind outside stills. I imagine the great spirit Beeral listening.

Bonny’s breathing quickens and, finally, he confesses that the weight and heat of the plaster make it impossible to be anywhere but here in his enclosed body, in this enclosed room where the walls too are thick and white. They have captured him, finally.

‘It was not like this last time,’ Bonny whispers so quietly that the people in the room do not hear. ‘Beeral, perhaps this is all a trick and I will be forever locked inside this shell,’ he says. ‘Perhaps even Hilda doesn’t know what is planned for me. The white strangers want to own me. To consume me. They call me a menschenfresser, but they are the cannibals.’

‘What are you saying?’ Hilda asks. She is just a few feet away. Bonny looks at her and raises his voice.

‘The statues out on the streets …’

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Are there men inside?’

‘No! No, Bonny.’

Bonny is sweating heavily now under the hot mud-like plaster that he says burns worse than K’gari’s white sand burns a person’s feet at midday in summer. When the mud reaches his chin, he turns to Hilda, but she is looking at the floor.

‘Beeral,’ he whispers. ‘The mud is burning unbearably. Is it soon to be on fire? Can you send me a message? Am I to be turned to ash? Is that how these statues are hollow? Like a tree after a fire? Will possums make homes within the space I leave when I am gone, will snakes, or birds? I do not know what to believe anymore.’

Two metal tubes are inserted into his nostrils. Mud is layered across his face. He closes his eyes. Hilda whispers, ‘It will be over soon.’ But her voice shakes and is high-pitched. Then the plaster covers his ears, and I doubt that Bonny can hear anything at all. Muffled sounds only.

Bonny takes a shallow breath through the straws. I hope that he is thinking of the smell of the sea, or of eucalypt leaves. The drying mud hardens all around him. Perhaps Bonny imagines now being in the jaws of a crocodile, a weighty creature that squeezes him tight then drags him under until he drowns. He takes another breath, but there is dust in the air and it makes him cough, a stifled, small expulsion that partly dislodges one of the breathing tubes. Unable to move his lips, he mutters to Beeral using just his tongue and his voice.

‘Am I to suffocate? To die in this way? Is this the end?’ This is what I think he is saying.

The German doctor repositions the metal tube and it tears the lining of Bonny’s right nostril. Bonny cannot point or call out so instead waves his foot to indicate a problem, and I wonder if the voice of the doctor, shouting not to move, makes its way through the plaster. The doctor slaps Bonny’s foot, and Hilda protests in her friend’s defence.

‘Beeral,’ Bonny murmurs, his garbled voice inaudible to all but him and me. And Beeral? Can he hear? ‘The mud is very hot now, like the coals of a fire.’ Bonny takes more small breaths. ‘It is painful. For what purpose am I undergoing such a test? What is so important?’ He says, ‘Wä burangaman.’ I do not understand.

It is a few moments before Bonny speaks again. ‘How much more heat will this mud release?’ he asks. ‘I do not have my Jun Jaree to send a message to Little Bonny.’ The cowrie shell containing Bonny’s personal spirit is still in the hotel.

He rests for a moment.

‘Beeral, if there is any way for you to pass a message to Little Bonny, please say to him, Sorry, Little Bonny, if this story is becoming difficult for you to hear. It is becoming difficult, too, to tell. But sometimes we must endure more than we ever thought possible. What I want you to learn is that you must never give up. Fight, Little Bonny. Be brave.’

The dust above Bonny’s nostril tubes swirls and settles, swirls and settles, and Hilda reaches closer to Bonny’s head so that she can feel his breath on her wet cheek.