Locust Girl: A Lovesong Read online

  Photo credit: Danielle Binks

  Award-winning writer Merlinda Bobis writes in three languages across multiple genres. Her works have received literary recognition in Australia, Philippines, USA, and Italy. She has performed her dramatic works at various international venues. About her creative process, she writes: ‘Writing visits like grace. In an inspired moment we almost believe that anguish can be made bearable and injustice can be overturned, because they can be named. And if we’re lucky, joy can even be multiplied, so we may have reserves in the cupboard for the lean times.’

  www.merlindabobis.com.au

  Other books by Merlinda Bobis

  Fish-Hair Woman

  (2012)

  The Solemn Lantern Maker

  (2008, 2009)

  Banana Heart Summer

  (2005, 2008)

  Pag-uli, Pag-uwi, Homecoming

  (2004)

  White Turtle

  (1999, 2013)

  Summer was a Fast Train without Terminals

  (1998)

  Cantata of the Warrior Woman Daragang Magayon/Kantada ng Babaing Mandirigma Daragang Magayon

  (1993, 1997)

  Ang Lipad ay Awit sa Apat na Hangin/Flight is Song on Four Winds

  (1990)

  Rituals

  (1990)

  LOCUST GIRL

  a lovesong

  MERLINDA BOBIS

  First published by Spinifex Press, 2015

  Spinifex Press Pty Ltd

  504 Queensberry Street

  North Melbourne, Victoria, 3051

  Australia

  [email protected]

  www.spinifexpress.com.au

  © Merlinda Bobis, 2015

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  Copying for educational purposes

  Information in this book may be reproduced in whole or part for study or training purposes, subject to acknowledgement of the source and providing no commercial usage or sale of material occurs. Where copies of part or whole of the book are made under part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires that prescribed procedures be followed. For information contact the Copyright Agency Limited.

  Cover design: Deb Snibson

  Typesetting: Helen Christie

  Typeset in Albertina Std

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Bobis, Merlinda C. (Merlinda Carullo), author.

  Locust girl : a lovesong / Merlinda Bobis

  9781742199627 (paperback)

  9781742199597 (ebook : epub)

  9781742199573 (ebook : pdf)

  9781742199580 (ebook : Kindle)

  Climatic changes—Fiction.

  Environmental refugees—Fiction.

  Food security—Fiction.

  Human ecology—Fiction.

  Social ecology—Fiction.

  Fantasy fiction.

  A823.3

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DEDICATION

  LOCUST GIRL

  SINGING

  LOVE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank Spinifex Press for all their years of conviction, passion, and kindness. Thanks to Susan Hawthorne, Renate Klein, and Pauline Hopkins for their keen eyes and heart in the editing of this book, and for hearing the songs of Locust Girl; to Deb Snibson for visualising them in the cover design; to Helen Christie for setting them on the page; to all the places and people in Wollongong, Canberra, and Legazpi that nurtured the dreaming up of this book in all its strangeness; to my family for always believing; and to Reinis Kalnins for the enduring love that makes me sing.

  For those walking to the border for dear life

  And those guarding the border for dear life

  Even if your worst enemy is thirsty and he asks for water,

  you have to give him a cup of water,

  because they believed, and we still believe

  that water is life and water gives peace.

  Rudolf Dâusab of The Namib Desert

  (Extremes: Survival in the Great Deserts of the Southern Hemisphere

  National Museum of Australia, 2005–2006)

  LOCUST GIRL

  Once upon a time

  I was nine when the stars went out. When the sky was taught a lesson: no one should shine or outshine anyone. All must know darkness and light must be rationed equally. We were warned on the box, a tiny blue square that kept us hoping, kept us on the line. Our tents were also blue like water and rationed. We lived in the desert of many tents. Our halfway homes between heaven and earth, the blue box said, so we should be grateful. The sun and wind rippled the blue cloth and we thought, water! And drank up the thought.

  I’d just had dinner when the stars went out. Sand porridge and locust. Good for protein, the blue box said. The locust crackled between my teeth. I was in my blue dress, also rationed like the number and letter inscribed just beneath my right ear: 425a in blue ink. I was the daughter of number 425 living in tent 425, where there was no 425b or c or d. I was his only daughter and I did not have a mother. She would have been (425), a creature forever hidden like all the other mothers whom I hardly saw. But I knew they were around, their arms a warm pillow for their sons and daughters on cold nights. Or a shade for their eyes when the desert sun soared too high as if to abandon the horizon forever.

  No pillow or shade for me but I did not complain. I promised myself one day I’ll soar with the sun or I’ll walk to the horizon and sink to the other side. Such was my thought before the stars went out. Before my father Abarama went to walk under their distant lights. He said walking under the stars was good for digestion. He took two mouthfuls of his sand porridge but did not touch the locust, then he walked off so the meal could settle nicely in his belly. He limped out of the tent, saying, ‘Finish my dinner, Amedea. I’ve had too much and I must have my digestive promenade.’ My father had a way with words.

  I grabbed his bowl and ate his meal, having licked my own bowl clean. I crunched his share of locust, trying to convince myself I’d be full. My father believed little bellies must be treated well, so they can grow into big, strong, and good bellies. ‘Mine has no more room to grow, so I’m all right.’ Nightly he gave up his dinner for me.

  I knew it was a beautiful night from the wedge of deep blue outside where I last saw my father. It was a clear sky. I knew he would have plenty of stars to ease his belly. From where I sat finishing his meal, I caught a glimpse of his bad leg dragging behind. It was flattened and pushed inwards from the knee to the ankle. ‘Because of too much dancing with beautiful ladies. You see, my dear Amedea, this leg remembers, like trees bent this way or that forever because of the wind. Even if there’s no more wind.’ He winked at me and I winked back. My father and I understood each other.

  ‘Beautiful ladies with the scent of wind behind their ears and that of sand on the hollows of their throat. And trees, a multitude of trees.’

  ‘But what’s trees, Father?’

  ‘Tall things with leaves.’

  ‘What’s leaves?’

  ‘Green things.’

  ‘What’s green?’

  My father frowned deeply to squeeze from his brow the apparition of trees for me. ‘Green was tall and proud. Ah, dear daughter, once upon a time there were trees standing proudly like beautiful ladies.’

  Was my mother as proud as a tree? And
how beautiful? Tell me about trees, father. Tell me about mother.

  ‘Alkesta … as beautiful as a tree,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘Tell me more,’ I begged but he had already stood up, ready to walk under the stars as he’d always done each night. So I never knew my mother beyond a whispered name. Alkesta. My queries for stories about her, about trees, about his dance with them, about when the dancing stopped, and about his mangled leg had grown fat only at the tip of my tongue. Even before I learned how to walk, he and I had understood each other. There were ‘no-go-no-story zones’ between us. There were silences.

  But that night when the stars went out, when I last saw my father, it was not silent. Through five hundred blue tents turned black in the dark, there was the rustle of hundreds of scraping spoons and tongues licking bowls. It was a simmering down sound, settling down like bellies for the night. For the dream of bigger and better rations the next day or maybe the next. No, for the rations to arrive. They had stopped coming for a month. Our hungry mouths were gnawing at top sand, worrying the earth, and the grey, underground locusts were burrowing too deep beyond our reach.

  Soon the tapping of spoons on bowls began, calling for the fathers to walk together under the stars after dinner. I licked my father’s bowl and licked mine again, and heard a song that played like a rumour in my head.

  Abarama, tell me the story

  Again please but with no silences

  Amedea, tell Abarama’s story

  Again please but sing the silences

  The grey locusts had bulging blue eyes and blue whiskers. Like strange prawns, my father said. He knew prawns from long ago, but not me. I had never seen prawns or the water where they were found. Water which he called riverrrr, with a delicate roar in his mouth, or ocean, with a ssshh that hushed me to sleep. My father had seen all those ‘big, big waters, sometimes as big as this desert and coloured blue.’ I could not imagine them, especially when he said you couldn’t drink them, well the salty ones. I only knew water from the blue barrels rationed from far away, way past the horizon.

  Long ago he had eaten pink prawns that looked like locusts. ‘Well sort of, only normal,’ he said, while sucking his tongue. He ate prawns as a young man dancing with beautiful ladies.

  Finally I cracked the locust head, saved under my tongue as my last mouthful, and imagined the blue eyes bursting and turning pink. A shade lighter than what comes out of you if you prick yourself, my father said. Then I wiped the two bowls with the hem of my dress, lay them upside down beside the two spoons at the foot of my mat and turned off the blue flame. It was also rationed in tiny glass vials that looked pretty and useless. The light was too small, too dim. We were on our last light. Tomorrow night we would have to eat in the dark. If we could find enough top sand, the finer kind, and if we could trick the locusts out of hiding.

  The tapping of spoons on bowls continued. In the dark I imagined my father walking. He won’t be back till early morning, till the last star closed its eye. I was not to wait for him. ‘Just sleep tight so you can grow up big and strong and good.’ Thus my father sighed whenever he looked at me.

  I sighed too before I lay on the mat that night. Under my lids I walked with my father. I imagined we walked far, close to the horizon, but never touching it. Then we came back as he always did, for where else could he go?

  I could not sleep. I turned towards the wedge of sky outside, now black, not daring to open the tent a little bit more. I did not wish to see the dragging leg and doubt his dance with beautiful ladies. They must remain tall and proud in the arms of a young man turning on two good legs.

  Up in the sky I saw three stars forming an upside down V. Like the peak of a tower, he used to say. Father had seen towers. ‘These you will see for yourself when you grow up, when the right time comes. But it’s not yet the right time, so promise me to sleep tight and to grow up big and strong and good.’ I forced myself to keep my promise, though I cheated for a while. I etched the three shining points under my lids and saw towers lulled by the rustle of the night. In the other tents meals were just drawing to a close.

  Finally the scraping of spoons faded.

  Then the licking of tongues on bowls.

  And the wind rose, flapping the five hundred tents.

  And the blue box sang. About stars, about stars resting. About rest for one night. For our last night.

  Who could have heard that warning? Rest with a long, soft sssss. We thought it was our breathing, the hum of our dreams.

  ‘Amedeaaaaaaaaa — Amedeaaaaaaaaa!’

  Did I dream that too, his cry, before the stars burned brighter? Lights, lights! A shower of them dropped on our tents, our mats, our bowls, our spoons. They afflicted our eyes, our ears, our tongues, our noses, our skin with their song. Lights, roaring lights. Blinding lights. Not rationed for once. We had our fill.

  Did I dream such abundance? Such searing heat?

  They shot down the stars

  They shot down the stars

  They shot down the stars

  They shot down the stars

  Black. The sky. The desert. And tents 1 to 500. All the colour of cinder. But I was not to know until ten years later. A hundred feet beneath the ground, my eyes were shut. I was keeping my promise to my father. I was sleeping.

  They were small, snug and hidden. They ate grains as we did. Then the grains dried up so they ate sand. Then we ate them and sand. Then they ate their eaters. They gorged. We were five hundred families after all. So they burst like pods that could not hold their seams together.

  Did I dream this?

  The charred bodies above the ground saved me. I was buried too deep, too hidden. Like the locusts before they clambered out after the silence and nibbled at the dead, inquiringly at first. Did I dream this too? And the fire that plunged through the roof of tent 425? Then through the two bowls and a hundred feet below where it exploded and cleared a bed for me. Small and snug and hidden.

  In my bed or burial ground I dreamt again and again about my father walking but never reaching the horizon. Always I walked behind him, except when we reached the edge where I walked past him and fell to the other side, still wondering if he had digested his dinner. Dinner was glittering bowls of pink prawns. I was sure we had finished them with much relish. We were so full, we did not have to lick our bowls. It was our best meal ever, but I’m sure we had to eat in the dark. The rationed blue vials of light had exploded and the stars were all gone. The sky had been levelled black. Up there, no one outshining the other. Down here, all equally sheltered by the dark.

  In the dark, in my dream, something nibbled at my skin crusted black. A falling star had burnt me. I dreamt this too? The nibbling thing was the last of the grey underground creatures with once blue eyes and whiskers. It had turned black like me and could not clamber out. It could not feast above the ground and so was saved. It was dislodged from its nest by the explosion and had fallen into a deeper hole with me. Trapped, it had grown confused, forgetting how to feed. It nibbled at me, thinking I was a stone blocking its way. It nibbled parts of my burnt crust in patches. Then it grew tired. It nibbled its way under my forehead and there slept my ten-year sleep.

  We listen to the other’s dreams

  In the other’s skin — once a locust

  And a girl, then a locust girl

  Dreaming a single dream

  Beenabe told me she had never seen black and white earth before. She only knew brown. She only knew desert. It was her home and now she had strayed from it. She had been walking for five days. She was tired and thirsty, but hunger she managed well at first. She nibbled the grains of barley in her pocket.

  In her own home desert, from the highest peak that no one was allowed to climb lest they looked beyond the horizon, she had made out something dark and light from afar. Something not quite the colours she knew. She had looked once, only once, but she had looked hard and long. At least long enough before anyone noticed that she was up there, spying for something bey
ond the edge.

  No one should look

  No one should walk beyond the horizon

  From far away, in a place unknown even to our dreams, the Five Kingdoms issued these laws. The Minister of Mouths sang them every morning in the orange box, the brightest thing in Beenabe’s hut of clay. Then he ended his song with an attribution. The song was composed by the Minister of Legs who wrote all the songs of transport and passage: of walking and even running, of how and where you can walk or run, of all the to-ings and fro-ings in the world.

  The orange box was so orange, like the late sun or the deepest shade of the desert before the Five Kingdoms neutralised all colours with ochre rain: simplify, no bright tones. Bright tones make the eyes wish for more brightness and this is not healthy, so the Minister of Mouths sang.

  The ochre rain turned the sun and sky to ochre. It made hair fall out and stomachs shrink. It was rumoured to be cost-saving rain. The Kingdoms did not have to supply lice poison any more or the usual amount of barley and water.

  Beenabe was convinced she lived in dull monochrome: all hues of brown. Fancy ochre, hah! Thankfully there was the orange box, which everyone treasured because it was a big leap from drab brown. Orange was a concession, so Beenabe’s people would listen to The Songs. The Honourable Head thought with cleverness:

  What the eyes treasure, the ears treasure

  More clever was the gift of the word ochre. Shade of the desert. After brainstorming with his ministers, the Honourable Head wisely decided that all must blend with their habitat as animals would.

  For symmetry. For equality. For justice.

  He thought in grand leaps. Thus everything was rationed in ochre that’s just like the sand, the sky. The Minister of Mouths said it was a more colourful word than brown. So ochre it was, even the water barrels. And of course barley was ochre, he decided.