The Roving Party - Hardcover

Wilson, Rohan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 161695311X ISBN 13: 9781616953119

Verlag: Soho Pr Inc, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

"[An] exceedingly powerful debut. Wilson's compelling story carries us through forest and over plains, leaving a trail of dead men."
—Alan Cheuse, The Chicago Tribune

1829, Tasmania. A group of men—convicts, a farmer, two free black traders, and Black Bill, an aboriginal man brought up from childhood as a white man—are led by Jon Batman, a notorious historical figure, on a “roving party.” Their purpose is massacre. With promises of freedom, land grants and money, each is willing to risk his life for the prize. Passing over many miles of tortured country, the roving party searches for Aborigines, taking few prisoners and killing freely, Batman never abandoning the visceral intensity of his hunt. And all the while, Black Bill pursues his personal quarry, the much-feared warrior, Manalargena. A surprisingly beautiful evocation of horror and brutality,The Roving Party is a meditation on the intricacies of human nature at its most raw.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rohan Wilson lived a long, mostly lonely, life until a lucky turn of events led him to take up a teaching position in Japan, where he met his wife. They have a son who loves books, as all children should. They live in Launceston, Tasmania, but don't know why. Rohan holds degrees and diplomas from the universities of Tasmania, Southern Queensland and Melbourne. This is his first book.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

   They whistled for Black Bill through the foredawn and called his old clan name behind it, a name he had no good use for. He sat upright on the bed and looked about. The fire in the hearth was dead and the hut utterly without light. He doubled the blan- ket over his woman, covering the small mound of her belly. He pulled on his hat, his boots, all the while listening to those distant souls whistling and calling as if he was some game dog meant for the hunt. Then he swung the bark doorflap outwards and stood in its hollow watching the huge columned gums slowly gain distinction as the sun flared. In the thin hews of light the air was damp and misted and he was staring a good few moments before he noticed them. First the wormy dogs half hidden in the fog bands. Then ranged out in the steaming scrub reefs some- thing arrived as if from an ether dream.  Black Bill clenched  his teeth. It was a hunting party of Plindermairhemener men.
   They watched him across the mists, gripping clusters of spears  like  long slender  needles. Kangaroo mantles  hung loosely off their frames to hide the costume  pieces beneath, trousers old and torn and black with the blood of game they had taken and looted cotton shirts gone to rags. One of their number was got up in  an infantryman’s  crosswebbing and another was fitted out in a fine worsted coat as if dressed  for dinner. Their breath bled in the cold. Not a cast of relics come out of the grasslands where their forebears had walked but men remade in ways peculiar to this new world. As he watched those figures from the doorway the Vandemonian felt for the knife he kept rigged between his shoulder blades.
   Foremost among that singular horde was Manalargena who carried across his shoulder  a waddy shaped from blackwood and stained with the filth of war. He twisted the tool as he led his party from the scrub flanked by a dog pack, the bark shat- tering beneath his feet. Manalargena was vain, had always been, and his wife had ochred his hair into long ringlets as precise as woven rope. Indeed all the men wore their hair in this fash- ion sculpted by the womenfolk but only the headman walked across that ground like a fellow enamoured of the sound of his own tread. mina bungercarner. nina bungercarner. mina tunapri nina. nina tunapri mina. He gazed into Bill’s face as he spoke.
   narapa. Black Bill lowered his knife.
   The clansmen arranged themselves on the bare earth beside Bill’s humpy and they gestured with open palms for him to sit also. They were freshly painted for war and when Manalargena offered him a muttonfish shell filled with grease and ochre the Vandemonian accepted it, removed his hat and dabbed the paint over his head. Bill wore his hair cut tightly short like the white men of the district but the clansmen watched him with solemn regard and if their opinion of it was scornful they gave no sign. The headman again addressed Bill and this time he did so partly in English by way of showing him his place. For the Vandemonian was as good as white.
Tummer-ti, he said. You come we need you. tunapri mina kani?
   Black Bill studied his deeply creased face. You come fight, the headman said.
   Eh?
   Fight with us.
   Where? carnermema lettenener?
   tromemanner.
   Bill looked around at those grimly visaged men of war; each and every one met his eyes and he saw among their faces the bold expectations held for him.
   You strong man you fight, the headman said. Come with us. Black Bill was silent. He scratched at the old ritual scars on his chest. He called to his woman to leave her bed and when no reply came he called again, his words oddly deadened by the mist between the trees. Soon she showed in the doorway bundled in a blanket and Bill asked for the meat to be brought out.
   tawattya, she said to the clansmen, but they looked away from her and shook their heads. Her hair, long for a black woman, seemed to upset them.
   Her name what?
   Bill faced the headman. Katherine.
   Katarin, the headman said to her. You good woman. You bring food, Katarin. Bring tea. Good woman. We talk.
   She stared at him. Then she vanished into the hut. Manalargena smiled and waited until  she returned with a cold joint of kangaroo. The clansmen ate freely and passed the billycan of tea around every mouth. Over the smack of lips the headman praised Bill for the fine wife he had taken, her obedience, her silence, and on a whim he stood and strutted in mockery of his own proud wife and raised their laughter with his portrayal  of her arrogant bearing. The beard on his chin was matted, and the lank twists as red as a rooster’s wattle jig- gled while he walked about. Dark hands flapped at his sides and his nose turned high. The men of his party laughed but Bill watched and kept his tongue still.
   Once more the headman sat among the men of his clan and reached for the billycan. He drank, wiped his mouth and looked towards Bill. In the doorway Katherine held her rounded belly. The headman waved a crooked finger at her.
   She carry what?
   I dont know, said Bill.
   The headman studied her a moment and rubbed his plagued left arm. It was a mass of scars where he’d tried to bleed the demon out in his youth.
   Boy, he said. Strong boy. I know this.
   The cold sun in the trees as it loomed over the hills picked out Manalargena’s features, the folds of his face, the crosshatching rent in the flesh of his evil arm. Here was a man who might part the very weft of the world by his own words. A man sung up and down the island. The whites wanted him for hanging and several locals had stood their own private funds against the receipt of his head for campaigns conducted upon them by his clan. But Black Bill looked away from him.
   The headman  said, A boy. My demon tell me.
   There was another elder among the party, an old man of skin and sinew, who summoned their eyes to himself by beat- ing his waddy on his palm. He was called Taralta and his face was scarred and churlish. He alone in that clan knew the law and its application and he talked quietly into the hush his tap- ping had created. He spoke long against the whites and decried their  contempt for peace with  ancient  turns  of phrase  Bill could not comprehend, metaphors that had lost sense for all but a few wizened lawkeepers. He called the whites the caw- ing of the crow for morning. An inundation driving his kind into the heights of the mountains, the peaks of the trees. He adduced a great litany of evils befouling his clan and on each point he drew attention to the culpability of the whites and the flagrant disregard they displayed for any notion of justice. He said that if you forgave the devil for eating your food, he would soon eat your children. Black Bill listened to the case put forth and when Taralta was finished he raised his eyes to the law- man’s face.
   I am obliged to Batman, he said, and no other.
   Taralta frowned upon mention of that name. One or two of the seated clansmen, those who had something of the English language, saw through Bill’s  meaning  and they rendered it for the lawman. They stared at the Vandemonian and waited for Manalargena to speak. But the headman was rubbing his bedevilled arm as new spasms appeared upon his shoulder, rippling and flexing beneath the skin. He closed his eyes and seemed intent on hearing whatever counsel it might whisper in whatever sordid tongue it used.
   bungana Batman, the headman  said...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Soho Pr Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 161695311X
• ISBN 13: 9781616953119
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 281
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar