David Foard - Published Author

THE HARLEQUIN STONE.
by David Foard

It had been sixty-three days now since the old man had found any opal. During the first forty days a young aboriginal boy had worked with him. But after forty days without opal, the elders of the tribe told him that the old man was most Ngarlputjarra, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone to another mine, which had two good finds the first week.

It made the boy sad to see the old man come home at the end of each day with his bag empty, and he went down to help him carry the pick and scoop, and move the mullock heap from the top of the shaft.

As the old man wound the bucket down into the deep hole, his back would curve and his bones would crack, and to the boy, it sounded like the snap of imminent disaster.

The old man was thin and angular with deep creases around his eyes and forehead. He had a dark complexion from too many days in the Australian sun, but the boy loved him, because he had taught him the beauty of the opal, and showed him the fire and power and life that each stone contained.

"I come back to help you." the boy said, but the old man shook his head and wagged his thick fingers at him.

"I can manage. I don't need much. Besides," he added, "you must not go against the elders. They rely on you. There are many old men and women in your tribe, and you must help them first."

The boy gathered the empty sugar sack and tucked it between his belt and shorts, gathering the pick and iron bar the old man used to prise open fissures in the rock, and fell into step as they walked in the long shadow at the end of the day, back to the old man's dugout, between Diggers Gully and the Old Four Mile.

"Gunder," the boy queried, "did you find nothing, today?"

The old man shook his head as they crossed the bland furrows of the bulldozer tracks, where even the last of the spotters, following behind the lumbering yellow machines, had turned back towards the pub.

"Not even Potch or Painted Lady," the old man answered, "but perhaps it will come tomorrow."

As they crossed the light mauve claystone, bleached white by the steadfast sun, they passed between mullock heap and blowers, and great gouges in the earth where dozers and the hand of man had transformed the landscape into a scarred and pock-marked profile.

But the old man loved this ground, and couldn't remember anything before and couldn't conceive of anything after. For him, life was the opal. There could be nothing else and he wanted nothing more.

He smiled to himself as he remembered a time in '56 when he saw the 'Olympic Australis' and for a moment held it in his hands before it split in half and was sold to Sherman.

And he subconsciously tapped his left breast to feel the small tobacco tin, nestled safely within his shirt, containing three of the finest stones he had ever mined, and he was happy.

To Gunder these stones were not opal. These were old friends whom he loved and cherished, and when he was tired and feeling dejected, he would open the lid of the tin, unfold the wad of cotton wool and stare at the three stones.

He liked to look at them in the light from his candle, and would marvel at the red and orange that glowed from within the white silica.

When they arrived outside the dugout, the boy asked, "Have you eaten?" but the old man smiled and retrieved a brown paper bag from his trouser pocket.

"I have fresh apple, and I have the cheese your mother made for me." he smiled and shook the bag in the air, "I took of some cheese earlier today, and I have water, in the bottle I keep in the darkness of the tunnel. I am all right."

Inside the hollowed cool of the dugout, nestled in a small corner away from the door, the boy unlocked a padlock securing the metal lid of a 44 gallon drum. As he slid the rusted top to one side and tossed the empty sugar sack inside, he reached in.

It contained the mine run from better days, but was now depleting as Gunder sold off just enough to pay his way and cover expenses.

It was true, he didn't need much, the boy thought, but the quality of opal had become less and less over the past season or two, and the old man couldn't live on the good finds forever. It was half empty.

The old man's voice echoed down the tunnel as he made his way into the heart of his home, "It's still half full. It will last a while longer, yet." and the boy fastened the lid, replacing the key in its niche, where it was always hidden.

When the boy entered the large, hollowed room, Gunder was sitting at a pine-topped table, lighting the kero lamp. The flicker of the flame increased, then steadied, as the dancing shadows became resolute against the curved walls and ceiling.

The boy sat opposite the old man, his skin burnished black, his teeth overly white in his smiling face.
"I could come back and help you," the boy said. "We had a good find, you hear about it? Gem quality, reds and orange."

And the old man nodded, taking a knife from beside him and cutting the apple in half and passing it to the boy who took it happily; for it reminded him of the many times they would stop in the tunnel or near the face, and share their food and talk of the old days when good opal was thrown away; for it was plentiful then, and they only wanted the very best for the buyers.

"Then shall I return?" he urged, but the old man shook his head, broke the cheese in half, and ate the ripe mixture, releasing the pungent odour, mixing its bitterness with the sweetness of apple.

"How full is your drum?" Gunder asked, and the boy lowered his head. "When your drum has enough for two bad seasons, then we shall see."

"But the Chinese buyers take everything," the boy answered. "We never have enough to store. Soon as it reaches the top of the shaft, the buyers take it and ask for more."

As they chewed the apple and cheese, the boy could see the old man's eyes flutter, and then close. So the boy helped him to his bed and covered him with an old grey blanket.

He wrapped the remaining cheese back into the paper bag and placed it in the food safe, then he trimmed the lamp and left, knowing the old man would sleep soundly and dream of the colours of the sun.

As the boy crossed the dust covered earth; even in the darkness his eyes scanned the ground in memory of childhood days, when he would walk with his mother and the women of the tribe behind the white man's machines, looking for 'tailings' of opal.

He stopped and looked at the stars and called on the spirits to smile on the old man and change his luck.

In the morning the old man woke and lay in the warmth of the blanket. For many years he used to rise from his bed, wash, eat, and begin a new day with vitality and urgency. Now he liked to lie for a moment in the warmth of the blanket and savour the night's dreams and enjoy the modest comfort he derived from a night's rest.

For he understood now, the opal would still be there, and he knew it would not rush and hide, if he didn't look for it early enough, so he lay and thought of the candle flame, curling its yellow finger towards the spectral colours hidden just beyond the next pick-axe of stone, the next drive along the shaft, and he remembered too, his mother's eyes and his father's voice, and it made him happy to lie in the darkness, and share their presence again.

Just before the sun scourged the flat landscape, the old man had climbed the thirty meters down the shaft, and moved toward to the central chamber.

It was here, from this circular hollow, the separate tunnels would radiate like fingers from a hand and he paused here to tie rags to his knees, to protect his flesh on the long crawl to the face.

He pushed the blade of his screwdriver between belt and hip, gathered his short handled pick and tied the long rope to the canvas bag he used to haul opal from the face. Then with it looped over his shoulder, he moved towards the newest tunnel, dragging the iron bar in his left hand, and the curved blade shovel in the right.

But for some inexplicable reason, he did not enter the newest drive, perhaps drawn by memories from the past or the curl of the candle flame, but instead, entered the oldest tunnel, following a slide in the strata where once he dug the verticals and found the finest opal from Coober Pedy.

He smiled to himself as he passed familiar outcrops of sedimentary rock and rubbed his hands over the walls to feel for the holes where once, many years before, he hammered the spiraled, iron candle holders into the rock. And remembered the constant noise and continual falls the tunnel used to make, almost as if it were giving up more than just its opal, as if it were being laid back and raped of its very soul.

Finally; he crouched near the end of a worn out drive, placed candles in the wall, and looked at the face.

"What will you give me today, rock?" he whispered almost reverently to himself, and then added, "perhaps I should have blasted you before. Taught you who owns this mine. Then we should see what hides behind your skirt, eh?" and proceeded to pick a line some three inches deep and twelve inches long, prising it from the face.

The old man worked continually for five hours, stopping only for a mouthful of water from the plastic bottle he kept in the canvas bag, and occasionally licking the edge of a vitreous piece of loose potch in order to see the colour.

Then he stopped and rested against a side wall and ate some of the cheese and a raw potato he had kept for his lunch.

The air became stale and the flame of the candles only moved when he moved, and as he rested, he lay on one elbow and stretched out as best he could along the narrow shaft.

The gnarled, cracked roof of the tunnel seemed nearer than the usual four feet, as small, crumbling rubble fell away in tiny flakes, pattering against the canvas bag and across his chest.

The old man looked up, as a black shadow of a crack opened from a large slither of stone, lodged between both side walls.

A shower of coloured fragments rained onto the floor as the candle flickered and spectral colours gushed from the seam. He reached forward and began to claw at the rock, pulling at it with powerful, thick fingers, until the slab crumbled at the edges and crashed to the ground.

Through the dust and thick air, he first saw the stone. It was dark and intensely red, the size of a man's fist. The pattern was large and blocky, brilliant greens with the iridescent blue of butterfly wings, and he marveled at the beauty and began to weep.

"That I should see such a gem," he said, and reached up to touch it, yet held back for a moment, afraid the vision would disappear. It was as if he, of all people, were unworthy to caress it, and until the pattern and play-of-colour had seduced his heart, would never be allowed to possess such a stone.

Finally; and with trembling hands, he brushed away the side matrix and loosened the rock with the pointed shaft of his screwdriver, until the harlequin stone lay in his lap.

I shall share this with the boy, he thought. He would have been with me if he could. It was not his fault he was not here.

So he wrapped the stone in a rag, then placed it in the paper bag, finally packing it carefully in the canvas sack ready to haul to the central chamber and into the light.

The steady incline of the tunnel seemed longer and more disturbing than he remembered. Several mounds of loose material had fallen in the passageway, and more than once he had to dig away with his hands to clear a path.

The roof too, punished him as he transversed the tunnel, dropping stones and boulders onto his back and shoulders.

The constant rumble of twisting, shifting rock resonated through the chambers as if some giant beast had given up its heart and was screaming in its death throes.

The old man too, was sad, as the surrounding rock crumbled and fell around him.

Kupa piti, he mumbled to himself, Kupa piti, Kupa piti, the aboriginal for White man's burrow, and hurried towards the central chamber, remembering a woman he once lived with in Adelaide, who told him Coober Pedy would be the death of him.

He had laughed at her, but now wondered if she were right.

Then the silence came. A stillness which snuffed the candle and forged fear in his heart. The only sound; the scurrying of an old man grovelling in the dirt of his lair.

I have dug my own grave, the old man thought, and it has taken me forty years to finish this task.

Then he reached the central chamber and the welcoming glow from the kero-lamp and the silver-blue light emanating from the sky above.

He sat motionless, regained his breath and cursed himself for his fear, and thought of the boy. I am glad the boy was not here to see this, he chided. It would have worried him to see me frightened, and I would not have been happy for that.

Then he gathered the end of the rope and pulled it taut, speculating on the opal that lay snuggled in the canvas bag at the end of the tunnel, and began to pull, and pull and pull.

As he dragged the bag through the earth and towards the light, there were many rock falls in the tunnel, but after each thunderous rumble the old man managed to haul the bag free from whatever snared it, and continued to drag it towards him.

He regretted not having tucked the opal safely in his clothes and carried it with him, but it was too late for that now, and he had only the line and the bag to think about.

Finally, the sack came into view, the stout rope still attached to the canvas straps the old man had sewn into place many years before.

He gathered his lamp and the few remaining tools, placed them in the bag with the opal still wrapped in the corner of the sack and moved towards the shaft.

He stopped at the base, placed everything in the drum for winding to the top, then climbed the ladder to the surface.

The sun had gone down by the time the old man reached his dugout, for he was exhausted from the digging, and forcing the mine to give up her greatest treasure.

He placed the canvas bag on the pine topped table and lay on the bed to rest.

Soon the boy arrived and, as was his custom, unlocked the lid of the drum and looked inside. When he found no sugar sack he entered the room and saw the old man lying on the bed and said, "You were not there when I went to the top of the shaft. There was no mullock heap and I called your name but you did not answer. Did you not feel well? Did you not work today?"

But the old man smiled and pointed toward the canvas bag on the table and the boy opened it, removing the discarded cheese and the half eaten potato and the plastic water bottle the old man usually kept in the shade of the tunnel.

"And what is in here, old man?" the boy asked, his face beaming as he withdrew the rag from inside the paper bag. "Have you found your luck at last?"

As he unwrapped the cloth, the crushed fragments of the once brilliant stone spilled between the boy's fingers and cascaded across the floor.

The old man stared in disbelief and then began to laugh.

"No matter," he said, "The earth did not defeat me, yet. Tomorrow I shall go back, and the day after if need be. Then you shall see what this old man can do, to the ground he walks upon, and who masters, who."

They bathed the old man's hands, tended to the cuts on his arms and legs, and ate the thick broth the old man boiled on the stove.

Then the boy covered him, and said goodnight, but the old man didn't hear him leave as he slept in the warmth of his blanket, dreaming of his mother's eyes and his father's voice, and shared in their presence once more.

And during the night he turned onto his side and dreamed the colours of the sun and smiled, knowing the opal couldn't run from him, and would still be there, somewhere, in the morning.

And that he loved the boy as a son, and was happy.

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