The Swan Book (19 page)

Mr Weisenheimer looked around the room at
his people
– the worst basket case he ever had to work with in a long, distinguished career in Aboriginal affairs. All he could see were the innocent faces of the Aboriginal Government representatives who were his charges, still arriving late and sitting down at the table whenever they were ready. They were doing what he had already assumed they would do – just sitting there and staring at the table and not saying a word. He knew this because he was an experienced career man of Aboriginal Affairs. He had seen this happen heaps of times.

Weisenheimer knew Aboriginal people better than they knew themselves, but that was okay. That was how he earned his bread and butter. He was a learned man about Aboriginal people. An academic. He had a national reputation that set the benchmark for Aboriginals to achieve results in Indigenous policy, which
he had influenced in its development for numerous years with the Government in Canberra.

These people though? He believed that the people he looked at around the room were
had it
. Did not have what the policy required of them. Did not share the dream of Australianness. This was the reason why they had to be in servitude. It was the only hope if he was to shape the next generation on his human farm. And quite frankly, he thought it was hard work, almost impossible to save the children. He expected that they would continue to have nothing to say, and it would take several generations – more than his lifetime of assimilating them – even if it all started tomorrow, to eventually one day see a good, decent Australian citizen from any of these people.

While the entire meeting remained silent, Weisenheimer was expert enough to instantly fetch to the surface something from somewhere deep within himself – the whim-wham thing called the goodness in his heart. He prattled on about his programs – about how well everything was progressing (now that he was in charge). In doing so, he chose to adore Warren for being Aboriginal, by instantly ignoring the statement of marital intention that was no business of his, but all the same it confirmed in his mind that all Indigenous people were the same, since even the great Warren Finch could just come straight out and voice his personal business to all and sundry – to anyone at all.

Good old financial controller! He raised his grey eyebrows and remembered he had visitors in the room, which prompted him to get back into the saddle of managing the social, political, economic and cultural life of these people. You could trust him on this. He averted the staring at hands and the silence in the room with the appearance of busy work, pulling out of his white plastic shopping bag the remote control for the overhead fans,
which instantly from a flick of his finger, spun a cool breeze on sweat-dampened skins.

Looking for my wife!
The assembling representatives of Swan Lake's Aboriginal Nation Government were very surprised by what Warren Finch had just said. But they waited until everyone had sat down at the table dedicated to the ancestors, after they had greeted each other in their own languages, and an ancestral anthem song had been sung to the mighty ones, plus an obligatory
Advance Australia Fair
to show some interest in closing the gap. A few words were said about what Warren wanted, then the oldest one they called
No One At All
– who would rather be speaking in his own language, but spoke in old time blackfella English to Warren Finch to affirm the controller's beliefs – simply said in a few reluctant grunts that no one had seen a woman arrive in that piece of rubbish car they saw Warren Finch cruising around in without even thinking of coming into his place to say
hello
.
Her spirit must be living inside his head, that's what I think. His wife's spirit was either controlling him, or he had lost her himself – must have, inside all of that rubbish overseas knowledge stuff he got cutting loose in his brains.

The Aboriginal Government seemed to agree since they were being cordial, they were practised people in governing too, just like the government in Canberra he was more used to dealing with. They commonly sat around this table being nice and eternally grateful, patting the table, or looking at it. It was the table of expectation, like an empty plate. They did what was expected with the expectation that, after he had delivered the berating that they usually received from politicians about their mismanagement, and the lack of transparency that was always how Australians regarded Indigenous people in remote places whom they could not see anyhow, Warren would announce some good news. It was to be expected, since no one important enough had ever travelled to
the swamp, without giving them news of extra funding – a relief to save the little housing program once again, or a few biscuits to carry them over a few more weeks with essential services like fuel for the generator, or sewerage disposal.

What else could politicians do with the enormous, gigantic mess that they had created?
No One At All
explained, by concluding what he always needed to say,
We are all living in the age of anxiety here, Mr Sir whatever-your-name, what's your sustainability for us?

Welcome to the dystopia of dysfunction.
The controller Weisenheimer again reclaimed the meeting by dismissing, or not hearing this local speech by the most important and most senior man still alive at Swan Lake. He was keen to have the first word about the business that needed to be completed in this impromptu meeting. He needed to bring proceedings back to a professional standing, and he made his stand, by saying that he was not interested in
loose change from Canberra
. He deliberately spoke in terms that he thought Warren Finch would know exactly what he was talking about, while at the same time knowing that his words would be full of mystery to these uneducated, local people. It was his place to speak to Warren on behalf of the meeting, and he gave this address:

We have been waiting for a long time, Warren, for a bit of action. Isn't that right that we have been waiting for somebody to turn up here and tell us how we are going to fix this crisis? We need someone to tell us how to run the community store, the health centre, get the bums on seats at the school, fix up all the violence, alcohol, petrol-sniffing, criminality, over-housing, maintenance, tell mothers how to have babies, healthy babies, pretty babies, clean babies, immunised babies, and to implement Canberra's policy to teach these people how to love their children, and while I am mentioning health, to rid the place of diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, mental health, eye, ear, nose disease and dogs; not to mention training people for work, to go out and be useful to society, to drive a bulldozer, build houses, be electricians
and plumbers, grow and cook their own food, feed it to the children, and then to lift a box and bury themselves in a box. To have a choice! We really need we-can-do people, that other old black man Barack Obama-type people who become Presidents and leaders of some sort or other – of their people. Warren! We will need money to do that.

How do you do?
When the controller stopped speaking, each of the councillors got up from his or her seat like sovereign kings and queens of the place, and went and shook Warren's hand, and his minders' hands, and returned to their seats.

My associates
, Warren said briskly.
This is Dr Snip Hart. Dr Edgar Mail. And Dr Bones Doom
. Then Warren paused, to check whether his audience was still listening, and continued slowly.
Dr Hart here has a doctorate in hagiology, mythology and oneirology. Dr Edgar Mail holds a PhD of palaeontology, palaeoecology and ontology. Dr Doom has many doctorates too, of ornithology and oology. Mystagogy. Musicology. In other words, you might say between them, they are pulsatory omniscientific, very scientific! Scientists in the laws of two ways, in all of the things a black man needs to know about today's world in the bush up here, down in Heaven, or Paris whatnot, to make music.

All hands gripped the tear-stained table, though not the sceptic Weisenheimer. Only his eyes had not glazed over from Warren's music about Black science, but it did not seem to matter for the whole room was experiencing bedazzlement. How it felt to feel grand. These people agreed that they felt close to God!
Real close actually.
They smiled to be amidst so much omnipresence – the omelette of
ology
words floating gaily in the breeze of the noisy fans, and then dissipating featherlike, over and over in the ear en route to the brain cells.

Play something nice Edgar,
Warren said quietly, when no one could break from the word net that had been thrown over their heads; and now even furthering the sense of amazement and pure
wonderment, the one called Edgar it turned out, was a musician as well. The Swan Lake Government men and women looked like statues under the appraisal of those soft, pale brown eagle eyes of Warren Finch studying everyone in the room.

Sure, Boss,
Edgar said
. I'd love to play.

Edgar was a tall and beautifully proportioned, strong-boned, golden-brown-skinned man with a face so flat and smooth, it made him look like the brother of an owl. He cradled an old wattlewood violin in his arms as though it was a spirit creature and then, the silence in the room was broken by a long melody. The music softened his smoothly shaven face, and the sounds floated away like moths flying off softly to clear away any residue of hardness in the room, and with their little hair-coated legs, to coax gentleness back on the faces of those gazing on the musician angel. The music flowed outside, past the boomerang monument clapping thunder and lightning, and over the swamp and into the hull where the girl and the circling swans outside were listening to the sounds from faraway, like the murmurings of owls spreading across the distant range country of ancient cypress trees and coming up through the stillness of a freezing night.

This music of far-away places poured through the building and the call of owls seemed to come from every angle over the swamp. The swans swarmed into a giant serpent formation on the water. The brolgas rose in skittish, frenzied flights up into higher altitudes to escape the owl-like sounds floating below them. The music drowned the sounds of barking dogs, and inside homes there were small children imagining it was flowing from the pumpkin flowers on the rampant vines which interlaced the buildings and covered them with large green leaves. In the Swan Lake Government chambers, the men and women of the government saw themselves swimming in medicines with the thought of the three doctors. They
had never had a real doctor visit before. Never had a real doctor stationed there.

The sweet violin music kept blurring the here and now, and more of the fantastical escaped from minds usually locked in despair, even bringing back memories of the Harbour Master whose responsibility he now chanted to all the black consciousnesses sitting around the table, telling them to continue keeping a watchful eye on the sewers of thought.

The heads of the old spirits popped up from the manholes in their minds to see the travelling music passing by the cornerstones of memory. Lights were switched on. The despaired room spun with too many thoughts! But only thoughts, after all, of oodles of money from Shangri-La! Fancy that! Fancy sending three doctors to the swamp on fish and chip night. Oh! Man! Hear the gratefulness rising. Thank you! Thank you! Now black consciousness could see fat cattle everywhere in the room. Who mentioned cattle? The feast of music stopped suddenly. Warren Finch's voice had a way of slamming the door on any more thoughts about poor health, and people needing to eat a bit of fat steak, and having doctors galore arriving way out here in the sticks to do some good.
Forget the cattle!

I am looking for my wife,
Warren said it once more in plain English, and since no one spoke, he sat back with a slight smile on his face and continued to sift the room with his eyes.

Warren knew he had shocked these simple people to the core, by talking about a wife when no one thought he had one. The noise from the fans now paralysed anyone's ability to think in the room, but quite honestly, there was nobody in Swan Lake who would even resemble the wife of someone as important as Warren Finch. Swan Lake Government now thought outside of their own beloved homeland, something they rarely did, and tried to imagine
Warren Finch's big life elsewhere – overseas, looking for his lost wife in a European café – at another Swan Lake in a Mozart setting in Austria, or a beautiful model wife in Paris swanning around as she should, because these were places they thought any wife of his would belong.

He kept checking his watch to quicken the thinking in the room about how to respond to his demand to find his wife.
Now think fast
, and forget the cattle. There will be no cattle for you.

The financial controller Weisenheimer was not easily intimidated. He did not care for Warren's attitude and asked several pointed questions.

Why would your wife be here? Where did she come from? You can see for yourself that this Swan Lake Government is highly managed, and we know all the people living here. After all, and as you know yourself, this is an isolated community controlled by the Army. Everyone knows who comes here. Don't you?
Weisenheimer only expected nods from his people. He intended to keep the meeting from entering into the known nightmares of bad terrain and talk about cattle. He had had a gutful of Aboriginal whingeing and complaining.

But a discussion erupted. It turned into genuine interest about the lost wife. Everyone tried in vain to remember anyone who might be his wife – names of famous women, movie actresses she might look like, as well as trying to recall whoever had recently turned up. No! Not Really! There had been no ladies leaving or arriving for many, many months.
Only dead people leave. Only babies arriving. That's all, if we are lucky!

Still! It is really hard to remember everyone who turned up on our doorstops, who was looking for someone else by running away from who they should be living with, and taking care of, like they are supposed to do. Or something. You know, my Sir,
said Mr No One At All, as the delegated speaker of the Swan Lake House.