‘Yes?’ said the god. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? You don’t look like a boy who lies.’

  The boy shook his head. But he did lie, often, even to Mam. He lied to Mam about cleaning his teeth, about playing with his wee-wee, and about whether or not he had ‘had a movement’ that day. If there had been no movement, she would feed him Epsom salts before bed or make him sit on a steaming potty. So he would tell her, ‘Yes, I did one,’ and then he would have to pray out loud with his sisters listening, and all the time he knew that he had lied.

  ‘All right, so your home is in Fairly,’ said the god. ‘By the way, since you’re so trustworthy, I must ask you a question. May I?’

  The boy nodded, though he was shy at the thought of not knowing the answer.

  The god looked up at the sky and asked, ‘What colour is the moon?’

  ‘White,’ said the boy.

  ‘Now,’ said the god, ‘you must look properly at the moon before answering my question. Do you see it? Pay close attention. Is it white?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the boy, but cautiously.

  The god gave him a friendly and disappointed smile.

  The boy added, ‘But it’s in a green bag.’

  The god seemed to like this answer. ‘Very well, and what kind of green is the bag?’

  The boy had seen this green, sometimes, in the glossy bodies of flies—it appeared when he looked at the flies from certain directions—but he didn’t know how to explain this. The word ‘housebound’ dropped into his head and out again. He thought hard about it, then said, ‘It’s a hiding green.’

  The god nodded thoughtfully, looking at the moon. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is.’ They sat in silence for another minute. Then the god asked, ‘Have you ever painted a picture?’

  ‘No,’ said the boy.

  ‘Would you like to?’

  The boy sank into his blankets. ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘I’ll teach you. Nothing could be easier. We’ll have a lesson now. I’ll bring my paintbox.’

  The god sprang up and hurried over to his things. The boy, feeling warm and comfortable, liked the idea of learning how to paint a picture. He had liked talking with the god so much that he had for a moment forgotten his mother and father. Remembering them now, he was ashamed of himself. He saw that the gods were clever, that they played tricks, and that unless he was careful, he could end up going to the red hill willingly, climbing it, and stepping off the hill onto the sun. The god was coming back now, carrying a battered box beneath one arm. He was shining at the thought of this painting lesson. The boy watched the god and rubbed his blistered feet together beneath the blankets so that they stung.

  DREAM OF THE PASHTUN CAMELEER

  If you need to know what I was doing, if you’re asking as the German girl asked, I’ll tell you: the camel is constipated. Of course I won’t shoot it for such a reason. The thing to do when a camel is constipated is to take a double-barrelled shotgun, open the action, place the barrels in the rear end of the camel, and flush with warm water. This may sound both simple and comical; believe me, it’s neither. At home, we would burn the branches of a certain kind of tree so the camel would inhale the smoke. Here, we’ve tried other plant remedies, but none are so effective. Also, the shotgun is faster.

  I couldn’t discuss this subject with the German girl. I had already talked with her for too long. For her, I gave the camel a name, but we don’t name each camel. We name herds. It also isn’t true that the German woman won’t do business with foreign men. Women like her say that because they know the Englishmen prefer it.

  I’m explaining these things, but for what reason? Who listens, and why? That’s unclear to me. I think I may be sleeping. I may be speaking to these willow trees. I don’t think this is a true dream, revealing hidden things: in those I fly over vast encampments, I witness a furious wind full of dust, I see tent pegs struck in the sea. This dream is probably caused by indigestion—I have a habit of eating too fast. But what if I’m wrong, and the dream is true? I’ll ask next time a mullah travels through our settlement, which is north of here, outside a town called Hergott Springs. We built our masjid there out of earth, with an iron roof, a channel of running water and a tree hanging with kettles, one for each man. We keep goats, we grow date palms. I live there with my wife, whom I haven’t seen since Eid. My wife is a Dieri woman, and she knew, when we came to our arrangement, that I’d often spend weeks or even months away from her. She knows that’s what men do.

  My mother used to say: Gul Mohammed, if you don’t marry a gentle woman, she won’t bear you a gentle son. My wife isn’t gentle. She has the scars of stockwhips on her skin. She brought one son with her—I take him to the masjid for prayer—and two shy daughters. Three children is a lot to feed, but we must be merciful to the orphans. Though my wife rarely disputes with me, I’m told she’s fierce with the other women. I don’t want a gentle son—not in this place. A gentle son might become lost, like the little one out in the desert.

  When we came into the town tonight and heard that a boy was lost, we had a conference. We should leave now, one said, they’ll be nervous; another said, We should offer to help, we might find him, Inshallah. No, said one, leave what doesn’t concern you. And another: Aren’t good deeds a better ornament than wealth? And another: How are they losing their children like this, all over the country? They aren’t used to the desert. Neither are we—this isn’t our desert. Godforsaken shithole. Do we lose our children? You don’t have children. Not here I don’t, I have daughters as beautiful as song at home, Allah be pleased with them. This is a boy we’re talking about, a little one. They’ll blame us. Well, what would we have done with the boy? Fed him to the camels? Where is your kindness, your mercy? And where is theirs? Enough, enough, his destiny is fixed by Heaven.

  I listened, and then I said that I would go and help with the search. They laughed at me. On what, they said, your constipated camel? They said, We’ll keep to our own business and we’ll stay together, it’s better that way. That’s true: look what happened when I walked away from the fire, alone with my sick camel—there are dangers everywhere. The others said, These people won’t thank you for helping them. Do you want to die in the wilderness, or return to Kandahar at the end of your contract? One said, He has a family now, he’s sure to stay, contract or no contract. They all laughed. I’m the youngest. It’s better to stay quiet.

  The jemadar made the decision for all of us: we stayed at the creek. I’m asleep now beneath the willow trees, warm in the stink of the camels. And when I wake up, I’ll walk with the others down to the creek to wash. We’ll pray, I’ll gather my things and tidy the camp and load my camels, I’ll get them all up on the string. We’ll pass out of here, going north, and this town, which exists because of men like us and camels like these, will fall back into a dream in which we play no part.

  FIFTH DAY

  Minna wakes in her old room, in her old bed—the brass one in which the wasps once built their nest. She hears her mother calling out sharply to Annie Bell; she hears Annie scurrying about, and the wheels of Mama’s chair passing in front of the bedroom door. Annie appears with breakfast to be served in bed—a married woman’s privilege—but she makes it clear that Wilhelmina wants Minna up and dressed as soon as possible. When Annie opens the curtains, Minna is reminded of a saying of her mother’s she’s always considered lovely, though it’s Mama’s way of hurrying her out of bed: ‘Morning has gold in its mouth.’ She drinks her coffee slowly, picks at her breakfast, washes her face, dresses, and looks at herself in the mirror for some time before going to the parlour.

  Mama raises her eyebrows at Minna and says, ‘Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund!’ As expected, she looks cross and tired. She always is during shearing season, for reasons Minna has never quite understood. Apparently shearing used to be a great effort for Wilhelmina, back in the days when her husband managed Thalassa, and she seems to suffer, annually, from a vestigial strain. Minna knows that her mother will insist on sitting out on her verandah to watch the shearers pass, and that this will both delight and depress Mama for reasons—unfathomable to Minna—of pride and nostalgia. For now, Wilhelmina Baumann sits in the parlour with a blanket over her knees and wields a tight, forbidding smile as Annie frets and fusses. Oh, Mama, thinks Minna, why do you persist in being so unhappy in this full, free world?

  ‘I feel a draught,’ says Wilhelmina, her head cocked above the gleaming black slant of her arms as if she can detect breezes with her ears. ‘Across my ankles, a draught.’

  When Annie has adjusted the blanket and hurried away, Minna pulls out a dark, studded chair that has always made her think of a coffin, and sits.

  ‘Try, Hermina, please, to be less noisy,’ Wilhelmina says.

  ‘Do you have a headache, Mama?’

  ‘You know you are a married woman now,’ Wilhelmina says, ‘and “Mama” sounds like a word for little girls. I hope your husband won’t call me Mama.’

  ‘What would you prefer? “Mother”?’

  ‘Is it important what I prefer?’

  ‘Yes, Mama. Mother. You know it is.’

  ‘I don’t put my own wishes forward,’ Wilhelmina says, and Minna’s heart both breaks at and is bored by her mother’s pious, sacrificial face. Minna has always assumed that marriage will liberate her from her mama’s moods—and she does feel somewhat removed from them. But here she is, back in the same old house, the same old parlour with its paintings of muscular stags brought down by German hounds; the same fire screen with its pattern of embroidered cornflowers; and the same silver bowl with its palm trees and monkeys, which Minna knows is a source of special bitterness to her mother, without understanding why. In fact, there’s something different about the bowl today—it’s been half wrapped in brown tissue paper, as if it were to be put away. There were six candles in it on Minna’s wedding day, but they’re missing now.

  ‘Why have you wrapped the Indian bowl?’

  Wilhelmina grimaces. ‘It is a thing of immense ugliness.’

  ‘It isn’t ugly,’ Minna says. ‘Mr Rapp admired it.’

  Wilhelmina swats the Swedish painter’s opinion away with one hand. ‘I can no longer look at it. Now,’ she says, ‘we must speak as women do.’

  Minna smiles mockingly at this, which her mother ignores.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Wilhelmina says, ‘that this marriage was too hastily undertaken, if here you are already back in your mother’s house. But no.’ She lowers her voice and glances over her shoulder as if Annie Bell might be lurking there. ‘It could not be too soon.’

  Weeks ago, when Minna first hinted at a pregnancy, Wilhelmina appealed to Heaven, represented by the ceiling; she spoke aloud as if the Lord, also a parent, would sympathise: ‘One minute out of sight und siehe da! Eine Mussehe.’ Minna likes the straightforwardness of the German ‘Mussehe’: must-marriage.

  This morning, Wilhelmina looks meaningfully at Minna’s midsection and says, ‘Not one moment too soon.’

  Minna doesn’t respond. Her trick with the baby is irrelevant now—what does it matter? She’s thinking of the Afghan and the way he stroked the white, woolly camel; she’s thinking of Robert’s big red hands; of Karl Rapp, who kissed her in the garden; and also of Bear Axam, whom she made nervous. Minna leans forwards in the funereal chair and peels the paper away from the Indian bowl. She looks at her reflection in its curved silver and waits for her mother to chide her for her vanity by saying something like, ‘The more one pets the cat, the higher it holds its tail.’ Minna turns her head to inspect her profile in the bowl. She likes her tail.

  ‘Look at me,’ Wilhelmina says, so severely that Minna looks. Mama’s fingers are laced together in such a way that her fire opal emerges as a fevered eye. ‘I allowed you to stay here last night, but I should have turned you out. Next time, I will. Your husband may not come home—very well. That will happen. There is no end to the things that happen. Possibly he will drink, have a temper; who can predict such things? He may hit you. There may be other women. He may be angry at you because of other men. Whatever happens, you sleep in your husband’s house. No one else’s, not even your mother’s. You sleep in his house so that he always knows where to find you. Do you listen, Hermina?’

  Minna is surprised to feel herself near tears, which is inexplicable, and must be kept from Mama. ‘Yes, Mother, I listen.’

  ‘Good.’ Wilhelmina leans back in her chair as if exhausted. This is an unusual posture for her; Mama has always been strict about a lady’s need to sit upright. ‘Now you will go to your husband’s house. You will wash and tidy yourself. You will attend to the business of being a wife. Annie tells me you have already allowed things to become untidy. We must find you a maid at once.’

  Minna presses one finger against the Indian bowl, leaving a print on the silver. ‘I think it’s rather pretty,’ she says. ‘The bowl, I mean.’

  Wilhelmina sighs. ‘Lieber Gott, hilf mir. What does the bowl matter? Go home, Hermina.’

  Minna stands up—slowly. ‘I’ll go,’ she says. ‘Look at me, I’m going.’

  Wilhelmina makes a disgusted noise. ‘You are a child,’ she says. ‘God help your little one.’

  ‘There is no little one,’ says Minna. ‘Why do you talk like this? There never was going to be a baby.’ Without daring to look at her mother’s face, she leaves the room, and then the house.

  The day, outside, seems ordinary—no sign of camels or Afghans. It’s clear and warm. Minna has left her hat at her mother’s; fine, she’ll go hatless. The street is hers, anyway. Anyone can see that. The sun is hers: the hotter the better. Every man who looks Minna’s way belongs to her, and every woman. There’s a woman coming towards her—yes, it’s the German woman, walking her donkey away from the farrier’s, and Minna stops in the street to look at her. She’s plump, and wears a lumpy hat. Her donkey is being stubborn. It lets out a comical bray, which makes Minna laugh. Now the German woman looks back at Minna—they look at one another. There’s a shadow on the woman’s upper lip that may or may not be the beginning of a moustache. Aside from this her face is fair; she must take care to stay out of the sun. Minna waits for the woman to speak, but she doesn’t—she glances down at Minna’s dress and back up at her face. Then she turns away and yanks at the donkey’s lead rope as if she wants to both punish and protect it.

  Minna continues on her way to her husband’s house. When she arrives, it’s as empty as she expected it to be, but when she finds that the kitchen has been used, the bed slept in, and that Robert has left a dirty shirt on the bedroom floor, she thinks of her mother sitting in her chair, her opal flashing, saying, ‘There is no end to the things that happen.’

  Bess is dismantling the camp by the waterhole. She slept later than she meant to and is cross at Karl for not waking her; this crossness manifests as brisk efficiency and a refusal to let him help pack up. As Bess works, Karl entertains Denny with an art lesson. Yesterday, Karl asked her, ‘Why are you drawing him? Shouldn’t we take him home at once?’ Yes, of course they should have taken Denny home at once. A different sort of man would have insisted on it, but Bess knows that Karl trusts her judgement. She told him that the boy needed rest before the journey. To herself she said, Would it be so terrible to steal a day with him?

  So Karl, yesterday, let her draw. He prepared the food and watered the horses, he went to see the sunset and returned without talking about it, and he didn’t paint anything and barge into her head by being pleased or disgusted with the result. Karl might have been being thoughtful, or he might have been shirking the obligation of work. Perhaps both. Bess recalls his diffidence when Adi Carlin was in labour: never entering the room, hovering in the hallway, ready to fetch towels and water. As if attending, but in a minor role, some sacred rite.

  This morning, as Bess glances at Karl and Denny, she’s reminded of tidying the red house while Karl sat on the jetty with Adi, planning their future. The difference is that she wasn’t afraid of Adi Carlin at the time, but she’s unnerved by the boy. Two days ago, she sat by this waterhole and imagined a child, and then he appeared as if by expedient magic: this little pink Denny.

  So yes, she kept the boy with her for one day, in order to sketch him and plan her book: a book about a lonely, lost boy with light hair who befriends a stripe-tailed wallaby. She’s decided against the snake—no child would be convinced by it. The book will be poignant, sweet, and also it will touch on the wild, empty vastness of this place, its newness and its far-from-homeness—she’ll just prod at that a bit, the melancholy of it, the terror, and this will lend solidity to the sweet story about the boy and the wallaby. If the book sells, Bess will use the money to establish their Melbourne household: she imagines a maid, a cook, a grey cat, two studios with good light, paints sent from England, and a garden with roses in it. The possibility of all of this warrants keeping the boy for just one day.

  Besides, Bess tells herself as she shakes out blankets and fills waterbags, he needed rest; he really wasn’t well enough to travel yesterday. And they’ll soon have him home with his mother. Admittedly, his mother doesn’t know this yet—she’s been suffering the entire time Bess has been drawing the boy. Denny’s mother, in Bess’s mind, has Adi Carlin’s face—Adi’s face before the baby died: a tense, hopeful, frightened face. But the mother’s distress will definitely end, so the extra day can be forgiven. There will be a happy conclusion. Bess has nearly finished the preliminary sketches for her book—another day with the boy would do it—but she thinks of Adi Carlin and knows they need to take him home.

  Perhaps, though, not all the way home? Bess hopes to run into some trustworthy local people who know Denny and can get him to his mother. She does believe that it’s acceptable—in the larger scheme of things—to delay the boy’s return, but she’d rather not have to meet his mother and see the prolonged anguish on her face.

  The camp is packed, the horses are almost ready. Bess instructs Karl to finish the art lesson.