【荆棘鸟】第六章 08

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He leaned back, smiling. "I don't doubt you'll try. But I don't think you know me as well as you think you do."

"Do I not? Time will tell, Ralph, and only time. I'm old; I have nothing but time left to me."

"And what do you think I have?" he asked. "Time, Mary, nothing but time. Time, and dust, and flies."

The clouds heaped themselves in the sky, and Paddy began to hope for rain. "Dry storms," said Mary Carson. "We won't get rain out of this. We won't get any rain for a long time."

If the Clearys thought they had seen the worst that Australia could offer in the way of climatic harshness, it was because they hadn't yet experienced the dry storms of drought-dogged plains. Bereft¹ of soothing² dampness, the dryness of the earth and the air rubbed each other raw and crackling, an irritating friction³ which built up and up and up until it could end only in a gargantuan⁴ dissipation of accumulated energy. The sky dropped and darkened so much Fee had to light the lamps indoors; out in the stockyards the horses shivered and jumped at the slightest noise; the hens sought their perches⁵ and sank their heads into apprehensive⁶ breasts; the dogs fought and snarled⁷; the tame pigs which rooted among the rubbish of, the station dump burrowed⁸ their snouts into the dust and peered out of it with bright, skittish⁹ eyes. Brooding forces pent in the heavens struck fear into the bones of all living things, as the vast deep clouds swallowed the sun whole and prepared to spew solar fire over the earth.Thunder came marching from far away with increasing tread, tiny flickers¹⁰ on the horizon cast soaring billows into sharp relief, crests¹¹ of startling whiteness foamed¹² and curled over midnight-blue depths. Then, with a roaring wind that sucked up the dust and flung it stinging in eyes and ears and mouths, came the cataclysm¹³. No longer did they try to imagine the biblical wrath¹⁴ of God; they lived through it. No man could have kept himself from jumping when the thunder cracked-it exploded with the noise and fury of a disintegrating¹⁵ world-but after a while the assembled household grew so inured¹⁶ to it they crept out onto the veranda¹⁷ and stared across the creek¹⁸ at the far paddocks. Great forks of lightning stood ribbed in veins¹⁹ of fire all around the sky, dozens of bolts each and every moment; 

 

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