By Julia Leigh
The Hunter
Author: Julia Leigh
Extract
Extract
“ If it had not occurred to him before, he realises it now as once again the plateau opens out before him: the boy's drawing has brought him comfort. Yes, comfort. Today he is the spy who, after months of inactivity in a steamy port town full of manic gamblers and corrupt sweating officials, is beginning to think he has been abandoned (ah, too well he knows this kind of town), and who, on reading the morning newspapers, unexpectedly catches sight of a coded message and knows he is not alone. He is, M concedes, exaggerating – but why not? It's only himself he is fooling, buoying. Who else is there? The sky-flecked plateau, for one, is impervious. If this is what's called clutching at straws, then today the straws are firmly anchored to that higher, better part of him that so rarely sees the light of day. Perhaps, he thinks as he weaves through the yellowbush, this is what it is like to be truly happy ... But he does not dare dwell too long on these matters, and instead enjoys his light step and the easy swing of his arms.
And to his pleasant surprise this feeling of comfort survives the day: survives a slip in the creek which leaves him with a mulberry-blue bruise on one shin; survives a light lunch of cheese and scroggin; survives endless muddy patches devoid of tiger prints; survives the discovery of a missing trap. The missing trap puzzles him and, while he cannot be sure, he decides it is most likely that a ferocious devil, summoning the powers of good and evil, has managed to rip the retaining spike out of the ground. They were furious snorting grunting things, those devils, and never gave up without a fight. Not like the tiger. When the tiger was trapped it let itself go. Some trappers said they died of shock, but other sensitive souls preferred the ancient and redeeming thought that the tiger chose its time to die, the trapper being a mere conduit. Others again, the noble men, thought the tiger was a noble beast who refused to suffer the indignity of capture. So in 1936, when the Johnson boy led a tiger down the escarpment and chained it up at his father's dairy firm, such men were not the least surprised to learn that overnight the tiger had jumped the fence, thereby hanging itself. Of these spectral theories M has no favourite: he is happiest to wait and see.
By dusk this strange but welcome feeling has not evaporated. He drops his pack at the top of a steep ridge, and settles with his rifle on a promontory of rock overlooking a stretch of button-grass. in the half-light the clouds blush violently, sober up; a sharp-beaked currawong calls to a friend. M sits. He hears the thud-thud of a wallaby passing not far behind him, but does not turn to look. He lets an inch-man trail over his mountainous boot. The scent of lemon boronia is ushered by on a light breeze. M continues to sit. Darkness falls; the stars take their infinite curtain- call. He sits and feels his body grow light, disappear, so now there is no skin between himself and the plateau. He expands. The huge deep ground he is sitting on is holding him up, but soon there is no such thing as up: he is nowhere, everywhere. When he breathes he can sense the air cool as it flows over the moisture in his nostrils, his belly swells, then the same air, now a little warmer, flows out again. This is what he focuses on: the air in and the air out, and in time he is nothing but something through which air passes, just as it passes through the shivering treetops below him, over stones, slips through blades of grass. The black night grows cold, and still he sits.
In the morning he hes in his sleeping bag and listens to the rain patter against his tent. The comfort has changed, yes, but has not left him. He dresses and eats, breaks camp. Throughout the day he checks his runs and sets new snares. The rain thins, stops, the clouds dissipate and drift. He cuts carcasses from his traps and drags them up and down the pad, marking their scent. Again, the sky colours pink and mauve, and again he prepares to sit.
On the morning of the twelfth day, just as he is headed back toward the escarpment, he finds a wallaby corpse with its throat ripped red-raw. On closer inspection he sees the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver have been consumed, along with some meat from the inside of the ham. Nothing else has been touched. There are none of the usual telltale signs of a struggle. And when the Naturalist gently lays his wet hand on the animal he feels the faintest warmth. A fresh kill, displaying all the characteristics of a tiger kill. He refuses to be excited, thinking only: This rain win have washed away any prints. The first thing he does is mark his position clearly on his photograph. Then he searches his surrounds. He follows a nearby pad, stopping when it fractures into a creek. Nothing. He returns to the site of the kill and picks another path to follow; this one climbs a small snow gum studded rise, immediately dropping down the other side to linger along the edge of a marshy stretch of cord rush. M has been following this route for an hour, checking for possible rest spots along the way, when he finds a dry patch of flattened tussock grass below two interlocking slabs of dolerite. He presses his hand onto the grass to feel for heat and thinks he feels some. Any animal could have stopped here for some respite from the beating rain, it's true, but M takes out his photograph and marks it with a tiny circle.
Now I have you.
Looking at his watch he sees he will have to hurry if he wants to be back before dark: the alarm must not be raised. So, turning from the dolerite, he takes a bearing and strides off into the new world, electrified and blood aflame.
And to his pleasant surprise this feeling of comfort survives the day: survives a slip in the creek which leaves him with a mulberry-blue bruise on one shin; survives a light lunch of cheese and scroggin; survives endless muddy patches devoid of tiger prints; survives the discovery of a missing trap. The missing trap puzzles him and, while he cannot be sure, he decides it is most likely that a ferocious devil, summoning the powers of good and evil, has managed to rip the retaining spike out of the ground. They were furious snorting grunting things, those devils, and never gave up without a fight. Not like the tiger. When the tiger was trapped it let itself go. Some trappers said they died of shock, but other sensitive souls preferred the ancient and redeeming thought that the tiger chose its time to die, the trapper being a mere conduit. Others again, the noble men, thought the tiger was a noble beast who refused to suffer the indignity of capture. So in 1936, when the Johnson boy led a tiger down the escarpment and chained it up at his father's dairy firm, such men were not the least surprised to learn that overnight the tiger had jumped the fence, thereby hanging itself. Of these spectral theories M has no favourite: he is happiest to wait and see.
By dusk this strange but welcome feeling has not evaporated. He drops his pack at the top of a steep ridge, and settles with his rifle on a promontory of rock overlooking a stretch of button-grass. in the half-light the clouds blush violently, sober up; a sharp-beaked currawong calls to a friend. M sits. He hears the thud-thud of a wallaby passing not far behind him, but does not turn to look. He lets an inch-man trail over his mountainous boot. The scent of lemon boronia is ushered by on a light breeze. M continues to sit. Darkness falls; the stars take their infinite curtain- call. He sits and feels his body grow light, disappear, so now there is no skin between himself and the plateau. He expands. The huge deep ground he is sitting on is holding him up, but soon there is no such thing as up: he is nowhere, everywhere. When he breathes he can sense the air cool as it flows over the moisture in his nostrils, his belly swells, then the same air, now a little warmer, flows out again. This is what he focuses on: the air in and the air out, and in time he is nothing but something through which air passes, just as it passes through the shivering treetops below him, over stones, slips through blades of grass. The black night grows cold, and still he sits.
In the morning he hes in his sleeping bag and listens to the rain patter against his tent. The comfort has changed, yes, but has not left him. He dresses and eats, breaks camp. Throughout the day he checks his runs and sets new snares. The rain thins, stops, the clouds dissipate and drift. He cuts carcasses from his traps and drags them up and down the pad, marking their scent. Again, the sky colours pink and mauve, and again he prepares to sit.
On the morning of the twelfth day, just as he is headed back toward the escarpment, he finds a wallaby corpse with its throat ripped red-raw. On closer inspection he sees the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver have been consumed, along with some meat from the inside of the ham. Nothing else has been touched. There are none of the usual telltale signs of a struggle. And when the Naturalist gently lays his wet hand on the animal he feels the faintest warmth. A fresh kill, displaying all the characteristics of a tiger kill. He refuses to be excited, thinking only: This rain win have washed away any prints. The first thing he does is mark his position clearly on his photograph. Then he searches his surrounds. He follows a nearby pad, stopping when it fractures into a creek. Nothing. He returns to the site of the kill and picks another path to follow; this one climbs a small snow gum studded rise, immediately dropping down the other side to linger along the edge of a marshy stretch of cord rush. M has been following this route for an hour, checking for possible rest spots along the way, when he finds a dry patch of flattened tussock grass below two interlocking slabs of dolerite. He presses his hand onto the grass to feel for heat and thinks he feels some. Any animal could have stopped here for some respite from the beating rain, it's true, but M takes out his photograph and marks it with a tiny circle.
Now I have you.
Looking at his watch he sees he will have to hurry if he wants to be back before dark: the alarm must not be raised. So, turning from the dolerite, he takes a bearing and strides off into the new world, electrified and blood aflame.
Published: 07/09/2011
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780143565215
RRP: $19.95
Published: 30/03/2009
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780143009573
RRP: $19.95
Published:03/05/1999
Format:Paperback, 180 pages
RRP:$19.95
ISBN-13:9780140283518
ISBN-10:014028351X
Origin:Australia
Imprint:Penguin
Publisher:Penguin Aus.
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