Read Online Wanting by Richard Flanagan - Free Book Online

abandoned the child in order that he and his wife, Wongerneep, could escape.
    Robinson recorded Black Ajax’s improbable story in his diary. But he didn’t believe it. He was confident Black Ajax had abducted the child to bait the trap. He admired his cunning and respected his diplomacy in concocting the story of abandonment.
    The following day the weather had cleared not long after dawn: dirty clouds scurrying away to leave the sky an intense, if chill, blue. Changed, too, were Towterer’s people, who had grown surly and restless. Fearing they would escape, Robinson ordered his men to form lines either side of them, the tame blacks with readied spears and the whites with loaded guns. Under this armed guard, Towterer’s miserable people were marched to a standing camp at Hell’s Gates.
    It pained Robinson to have to intimidate them. His head had ached from the necessity of it; his stomach had swirled at the sight of it.
    ‘ They are to me always ,’ he had written in his diary that evening, ‘ objects of the greatest commiseration .’
    He felt the need to pray, but as he put down his quill, he felt a warm, squeamish sensation in the seat of his trousers and realised he had shat himself. He felt weak, but his mind was clear and calm. He determined to eat nothing until his stomach was once more firm; then he would head south to capture the last natives himself. He knew it would not be difficult. After all, he had their child.
    At dawn two days later he set off with his son and four tame blacks, following the ground burnt by the Aborigines to construct their passageways through the forests and moors. They had only walked a day and a half when Towterer and Wongerneep were spied on a tableland. After ordering the rest of his party to lie down, Robinson approached them with just a black woman to act as a translator.
    Towterer’s manner with Robinson was much changed from their first meeting. He seemed overjoyed to see the white man, and he told Robinson he regarded him as an old and dear friend. Finally Towterer asked about his daughter. Her name, he said, was Mathinna.
    ‘She is already learning prayer,’ Robinson told him. ‘Her future is bright indeed.’
    Towterer said he esteemed Robinson in every respect equal to his own family. Towterer was inventing a new idea of equals with which to endure and, perhaps, to battle his subjugation. If it were an illusion, it was also an attempt to deny the terrible cost of reuniting with his stolen daughter.
    ‘I view you and yours no less,’ said Robinson. ‘So much so, I wish you to come with me and join with yourdaughter, and together we can embark on the miracle of a new life.’
    If there had been something forced about Towterer’s effusive behaviour, Robinson could see that there was also something entirely genuine: an understanding that this was a new way in which they would henceforth behave towards one another. For Towterer wanted his daughter, and he was no fool, and Robinson wanted Towterer, and Robinson was Towterer’s only path back to his child. Robinson felt his stomach settling.
    On a blustery morning four days later, the brig Gulliver —chartered to transport such natives as Robinson had captured to the growing Aboriginal settlement on distant Flinders Island—finally came into view, sails full with the warm northwesterly.
    ‘ They are to me always ,’ he began writing in his diary that night, glancing out of his tent at the pitiful remnants of a race waiting to be exiled from their native land. But he halted and crossed out this beginning. ‘ Capt Bateman arr. 5pm. Wind nnw ,’ he began again.
    Bateman told him that thirteen blacks had died in as many days at the Flinders Island settlement. Robinson entered this in his diary, but not Bateman’s final comment.
    ‘They’re dying like flies.’
    Bateman declared himself astonished with Robinson’s ongoing success. Robinson found his stomach, his head, his mood, improving markedly. He forgot about