Tiếng chim hót trong bụi mận gai (1.2) - Colleen McCullough

2024-11-02

Tiếng chim hót trong bụi mận gai (1.2)

Colleen McCullough

 

Dịch giả: Trung Dũng

từ bản chuyển ngữ tiếng Pháp “Les oiseaux se cachent pour mourir” (Những con chim ẩn mình chờ chết)

Bản tiếng Anh:

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

~

 

1915 - 1917

MEGGIE

1.2

Fiona suýt nữa ngã vào con gái khi bước qua ngưỡng cửa sau nhà, tay xách một giỏ quần áo sắp sửa đem phơi. Meggie đang ngồi trên bậc cao nhất ở ngoài hàng hiên, đầu gục xuống, tóc rũ rượi, dơ bẩn. Fiona đặt chiếc giỏ nặng xuống, thở ra, đưa tay vẹt qua một bên phần tóc che khuất mặt Meggie.

- Nói cho mẹ nghe chuyện gì đã xảy ra. Bà hỏi bằng giọng mệt mỏi.

- Con nôn ra đầy áo của xơ Agatha.

- Chúa ơi! Fiona kêu lên, hai tay chống vào hông.

- Bà cũng đã quất cho con nhiều roi - Meggie nói không ra tiếng, nước mắt giàn giụa.

- Thật sạch sẽ quá - Fiona đứng lên khó nhọc xách chiếc giỏ quần áo đầy nắp - Meggie, mẹ không biết phải làm gì đây, rồi ba về sẽ cho một trận.

Nói xong bà băng qua sân đi về phía hàng dây phơi quần áo.

Meggie lấy tay quệt nước mắt; nhìn theo mẹ một lúc rồi đứng lên và đi xuống con đường dẫn đến lò rèn.

Frank vừa đóng móng xong cho con ngựa cái của ông Roberson thì Meggie xuất hiện. Anh ta quay lại và thấy Meggie. Những kỷ niệm không lấy gì tốt đẹp mà cậu ta từng trải qua ở nhà trường lại ập đến. Meggie quá nhỏ bé, mũm mĩm thơ ngây biết bao, và những gì Frank nhìn thấy trước mắt khiến anh không thể không nghĩ đến việc giết ngay xơ Agatha. Giết bà ta, giết bà ta thật sự. Anh ta buông mấy thứ đang cầm trong tay, tháo cái tạp dề bằng da ra và đến nhanh bên Meggie.

- Chuyện gì đã xảy ra em gái cưng của anh? Frank vừa hỏi vừa quì xuống trước mặt em gái.

Mùi nôn mửa xông ra từ em gái làm cho Frank cũng khó chịu nhưng cậu ta cố chịu đựng.

- Anh Frank - Frank - Frank! Cô bé nói như rên siết, gương mặt nhăn nhó đau đớn, và bây giờ nước mắt mới tuôn trào. Meggie nhào tới ôm ghì lấy Frank, và khóc không ra tiếng, nhưng lại rất đau khổ.

Khi Meggie dịu bớt cơn xúc động, Frank bế em gái đặt trên đống cỏ khô mùi dễ chịu, bên cạnh con ngựa cái của ông Roberson. Cả hai ngồi yên lặng nhìn con vật nhấm ổ rơm. Đầu của Meggie ngả vào phần ngực trần êm ái của Frank.

- Tại sao bà ta phạt tất cả anh em mình hở anh Frank? - Meggie hỏi. Em đã nói là lỗi riêng của em mà.

Bây giờ thì Frank đã quen cái mùi toát ra từ chiếc áo của em và anh ta không còn chú ý nữa. Bất chợt, Frank đưa tay ra, lơ đãng vuốt mũi của con ngựa cái, đẩy nó ra khi nó có vẻ quá thân mật.

- Chúng ta nghèo, Meggie, đó là lý do chính. Các dì phước luôn luôn ghét học sinh nghèo. Nếu em còn đi học ở cái trường hắc ám đó của xơ Agatha vài ngày nữa, em sẽ thấy bà ta không chỉ nhắm vào anh em Cleary, mà cả anh em Marshall MacDonald. Tất cả đều nghèo. Ngược lại, nếu chúng ta giàu, đi học bằng xe ngựa có mui sập sang trọng như dòng họ Ó Brien, các bà xơ sẽ nhảy tới ôm cổ chúng ta. Nhưng chúng ta không có điều kiện để tặng một cây đàn ócgơ cho nhà thờ, cũng không có những áo choàng lễ nạm vàng, hay một con ngựa, một chiếc xe cũ tặng cho các bà nữ tu dùng việc riêng, nên chúng ta chẳng là gì. Các bà muốn đối xử với chúng ta như thế nào tùy ý.

Cô bé ngái ngủ, hai mí mắt trì nặng xuống. Frank đặt em nằm trên đống cỏ khô và trở lại công việc của mình, trên môi điểm một nụ cười và cất tiếng hát nho nhỏ.

Meggie đang ngủ thì Paddy bước vào, tay lấm đầy phân vì ông ta vừa chùi rửa chuồng ngựa của ông Jarman.

- Mẹ con mới cho ba hay là Meggie bị phạt ở trường và bị đuổi về nhà. Con có biết lý do hay không?

Frank để cái trục xe qua một bên.

- Tội nghiệp nó đã nôn vào áo của xơ Agatha.

Paddy đổi sắc mặt, mắt nhìn thẳng về phía bức tường xa nhất như đang tìm một thái độ. Rồi ông lại hướng mắt về phía Meggie.

- Con bé bị xúc động quá mức ngay buổi học đầu tiên chứ gì?

- Con không rõ. Nó đã nôn ở nhà trước khi đi và do đó làm cho cả bốn đứa phải trễ giờ. Chúng đến trường sau khi kiểng đổ. Mỗi đứa đều bị ăn sáu roi, riêng Meggie bấn loạn vì cho rằng nó là người có lỗi duy nhất đáng bị phạt. Sau buổi ăn trưa, Meggie lại bị xơ Agatha đánh một lần nữa, thế là Meggie của chúng ta đã trút toàn bộ bánh mì và mứt lên trên chiếc áo dài màu đen của xơ Agatha.

- Rồi chuyện gì xảy ra tiếp đó?

- Xơ Agatha đã tặng thêm một trận đòn cho Meggie và đuổi nó về nhà.

- Như vậy, Meggie đã bị phạt là đúng. Ba rất kính trọng các dì phước và ba cũng ý thức rằng chúng ta không có quyền chỉ trích hành động của các dì. Nhưng ba mong rằng các dì sẽ sử dụng roi thước bớt đi. Ba biết các dì phải khổ tâm lắm mới nhét được vào những cái đầu khó bảo của người Ái Nhĩ Lan chúng ta một chút văn hóa. Dù sao đó là ngày đi học đầu tiên của Meggie.

Frank nhìn cha sửng sốt. Lâu nay chưa bao giờ Paddy nói chuyện với con trai lớn trong tư thế giữa hai người đàn ông. Lần đầu tiên được lôi ra khỏi những oán giận thường xuyên đầy ắp, Frank hiểu ra rằng dù với bề ngoài cứng rắn, cha mình vẫn tỏ ra âu yếm Meggie hơn cả bọn con trai. Frank cảm thấy gần với cha hơn. Anh mỉm cười không có chút ẩn ý.

- Meggie là một đứa trẻ tuyệt vời phải không ba? Paddy tán đồng một cách lơ đãng câu hỏi của Frank vì ông đang nhìn Meggie. Con ngựa cái nhe răng, hỉnh mũi thở phì phì; Meggie trở mình, lăn qua một bên rồi mở mắt. Khi nhìn thấy cha đứng kế bên Frank, cô bé bật ngồi dậy, mặt tái nhợt vì sợ sệt.

- Sao cô gái bé nhỏ, con đã trải qua một ngày rất mệt nhọc phải không?

Paddy bước tới, bế Meggie lên và không khỏi giựt mình vì mùi tanh xông lên mũi. Nhưng ông nhún vai và ôm con gái vào lòng.

- Con bị đánh đòn bằng gậy... Meggie nói với cha.

- Này nhé, xơ Agatha cho ba biết đây chưa phải là lần cuối cùng đâu (ông đặt Meggie lên vai) - Bây giờ tốt hơn hết con xem mẹ có sẵn nước nóng để tắm không. Con gái ba mà hôi hám hơn cả chuồng ngựa của Jarman.

Những lần nôn mửa của Meggie đã mang lại một kết quả khá tốt. Xơ Agatha vẫn dùng roi đánh cô bé nhưng bây giờ bà luôn luôn giữ một khoảng cách đủ để tránh những hậu quả bất ngờ. Do đó mà sức mạnh của làn roi và sự chính xác đã không còn như trước.

Khi Meggie chưa đến trường thì Stuart là mục tiêu chính của ngọn roi trong tay xơ Agatha. Nhưng thật ra, Meggie lại là đối tượng hành hạ thích thú hơn, vì tánh hay mơ mộng và kín đáo của Stuart ít có chỗ sơ hở cho xơ Agatha khai thác.

Meggie thuận tay trái. Đó là cái tội đáng trị nhất. Ngày tập viết đầu, khi cô bé cầm cục phấn lên, xơ Agatha đã lao vào cô bé như César lao vào lính Gaulois:

- Meghann Cleary, bỏ cục phấn xuống ngay! Bà ta hét lên.

Thế là một trận chiến dằng lại diễn ra. Meggie quen tay trái, bất trị, không khoan nhượng. Khi xơ Agatha bẻ cụp bàn tay mặt của Meggie trên tấm bảng, Meggie thấy đầu óc đảo lộn, không biết cách nào điều khiển bàn tay bất lực của mình làm theo đòi hỏi của xơ Agatha. Bà ta có làm gì đi nữa, bàn tay mặt của Meggie vẫn không thể kẻ được chữ A. Thừa lúc xơ Agatha vừa quay sang chỗ khác, Meggie nhanh hơn dùng tay trái viết một chữ A thật đẹp.

Nhưng cuối cùng xơ Agatha đã thắng. Một buổi sáng trong lúc các học sinh đang xếp hàng, xơ Agatha đến lắm lấy tay của Meggie kéo ra sau lưng rồi dùng một sợi dây thừng cột chặt lại. Xơ Agatha chỉ tháo dây khi chuông báo tan học vào lúc ba giờ chiều. Ngay giờ nghỉ buổi trưa, Meggie cũng phải ăn, đi dạo và chơi với một bên tay trái hoàn toàn bất động. Ba tháng sau, Meggie tập được viết bằng tay mặt khá ngay ngắn, theo những qui định do xơ Agatha đề ra. Để đảm bảo chắc chắn cô bé không sử dụng trở lại tay trái, bà ta tiếp tục cột như thế thêm hai tháng. Sau đó xơ Agatha tập hợp tất cả học sinh để đọc một tràng kinh, cảm ơn Đức Chúa Trời với lòng nhân từ của Ngài, đã chứng minh sai lầm của Meggie - Những đứa con của Đức Chúa Trời nhân từ đều sử dụng tay mặt; những người sử dụng tay trái là do quỷ sứ sinh ra, nhất là khi chúng có tóc màu hung. Năm học sắp hết, tháng 12 đến và ngày sinh nhật của Meggie cũng gần rồi. Như một thông lệ của gia đình khi sinh nhật của các con rơi vào một ngày đi học thì buổi lễ được dời qua ngày thứ bảy.

Quà sinh nhật của Meggie năm nay là một bộ tách đĩa với những hình vẽ đề tài Trung Quốc mà cô bé mong muốn từ lâu. Bộ tách đĩa ấy được đặt trên một chiếc bàn nhỏ xinh xắn màu xanh dương chung quanh có những chiếc ghế nhỏ. Tất cả do Frank làm cho em trong những lúc rảnh rỗi. Thế là Agnès mặc chiếc váy màu xanh mới, do chính mẹ Meggie cắt và may, được đặt trên một trong những chiếc ghế ấy.

Hai ngày trước Noel năm 1917, Paddy trở về nhà đặt lên bàn tờ tuần báo và một chồng sách mượn của thư viện lưu động. Lần thứ nhất, việc đọc báo được chọn trước việc đọc sách. Tổng biên tập vừa áp dụng một công thức mới cho tờ tuần báo phỏng theo các tạp chí Mỹ. Ở phần giữa tờ báo được dành trọn để phản ánh tình hình chiến cuộc đang diễn ra.

Frank chụp lấy tờ báo và đọc ngấu nghiến các bài tường thuật.

- Thưa ba, con muốn ghi tên vào quân đội - Frank vừa nói vừa đặt tờ báo xuống bàn một cách lễ phép.

Fiona quay phắt đầu lại, làm đổ món ragu xuống bếp; Paddy giật nẩy mình trong ghế bành Windsor, ngưng đọc sách.

- Con còn quá trẻ, Frank, ông đáp lại.

- Thưa ba, con đã 17 tuổi. Con là một người lớn! Tại sao bọn Đức và bọn Thổ có quyền tàn sát quân lính của chúng ta như những con heo, trong khi đó con lại ở nhà ngồi bình yên? Đã đến lúc một thanh niên của dòng họ Cleary phải phục vụ Tổ quốc.

- Nhưng con chưa tới tuổi, Frank - người ta không nhận con đâu.

- Nhận. Nếu ba không ngăn trở - Frank nói ngược lại một cách quyết liệt, mắt vẫn nhìn cha.

- Nhưng ba không đồng ý. Con là lao động duy nhất trong gia đình hiện nay. Gia đình cần tiền do con làm ra. Con biết điều đó.

- Nhưng trong quân đội con cũng được trả lương.

- Lương lính hả? Paddy vừa hỏi vừa cười. Một thợ rèn ở Wahine có thu nhập nhiều hơn một người đi lính ở châu Âu.

- Nhưng khi con ở đó, con có hy vọng đổi thay số phận thợ rèn của con! Đây là lối thoát duy nhất của con.

- Tất cả điều đó đều là chuyện tầm phào! Trời ơi, con không hiểu chút nào về những điều con đang nói. Ba sinh ra từ một đất nước trải qua một ngàn năm chiến tranh, do đó ba biết ba đang nói gì. Con có bao giờ nghe, các cựu chiến binh kể lại cuộc chiến của những người nông dân gốc Hà Lan ở Nam Phi chống lại quân Anh? Con thường ra thị trấn Wahine; vậy lần tới con hãy tìm hiểu. Ba nghĩ điều đó sẽ rất bổ ích cho con. Ngoài ra ba có cảm tưởng bọn Anh không thích dùng người Tây Tây Lan; bọng chúng luôn bố trí lính Tây Tây Lan ở những nơi dễ chết nhất để tránh nguy hiểm cho mạng sống quí giá của họ. Cứ xem cái cách mà viên tướng Chwichell đã đưa quân lính của chúng ta đến một khu vực hoàn toàn không cần thiết như ở Gallipili thì cũng biết. Mười ngàn người bị thiệt mạng trong số năm mươi ngàn. Tại sao lại phải đi chiến đấu cho cuộc chiến của Anh? Nước Anh đã giúp ích gì cho con, cái xứ gọi là Mẹ Tổ Quốc ấy, ngoại trừ việc hút các thuộc địa đến giọt máu cuối cùng. Nếu con đến nước Anh, con sẽ gặp ngay sự khinh bỉ vì con đến từ một xứ thuộc địa. Tây Tây Lan không hề bị đe dọa, kể cả Úc.

- Nhưng con vẫn muốn vào quân đội.

- Con có thể muốn bất cứ điều gì nhưng con sẽ không rời khỏi nơi đây. Hay nhất là con quên đi tất cả những chuyện ấy. Hơn nữa con còn quá nhỏ để trở thành người lính.

Gương mặt của Frank đỏ gay, hai môi mím chặt lại, cậu ta cảm thấy đau khổ về chiều cao dưới trung bình của mình. Mới đây, một nỗi nghi ngờ đáng sợ lại xâm chiếm Frank. Mười bảy tuổi rồi mà Frank vẫn cao đúng một thước năm mươi chín, đó là chiều cao khi Frank được 14 tuổi; phải chăng mình không còn cao lên nữa.

Thế nhưng, công việc ở lò rèn đã mang lại cho anh một thể lực hơn hẳn vóc dáng của anh. Tuy nhỏ con nhưng Frank có một sức mạnh vô địch. Ở tuổi 17 anh chưa bao giờ bị đánh bại trong bất cứ một cuộc thi đấu quyền Anh nào. Frank được nhiều người khắp bán đảo Taranaki biết đến.

Paddy nhìn chăm chú Frank, cố tìm hiểu đứa con trai lớn của mình nhưng ông cảm thấy bất lực, Frank là đứa con “xa con tim” của ông nhất dù cho ông đã cố gắng không thiên vị bất cứ đứa con nào.

Cuộc tranh luận trên bàn ăn bỗng tắt ngang khi Paddy nhận xét về chiều cao của Frank; cả gia đình cúi đầu và im lặng khác thường, họ ăn món ragu thỏ. Meggie không ăn, mắt cứ nhìn Frank như lo sợ lúc nào đó anh mình có thể biến đi mất. Còn Frank, sau khi ăn sạch, ngồi nán lại một lúc cho đủ lễ, rồi đứng lên đi ra ngoài. Một phút sau tiếng rìu bửa củi vang vào tận trong nhà. Frank tấn công những khúc gỗ cứng nhất mà Paddy đã dự trữ để chuẩn bị đốt vào mùa đông, củi loại này cháy chậm.

Trong khi mọi người nghĩ rằng Meggie đã ngủ, cô bé lẻn ra khỏi phòng bằng ngã cửa sổ và đi đến vựa củi, nơi đây được coi là đáng kể nhất trong đời sống của cả nhà. Vựa củi chiếm khoảng đất rộng một trăm mét vuông, Frank đang đứng giữa bãi, chiếc rìu sáng loáng giơ cao hạ xuống nghe rít trong gió, những mảnh gỗ nhỏ văng tứ tung, lưng trần của Frank như thoa mỡ, mồ hôi chảy xuống từng giọt.

Meggie rón rén đến im bên chiếc áo sơ mi và áo lót của Frank vứt ở một góc, nhìn anh mình với chiếc rìu, Meggie không khỏi ngạc nhiên. Có đến ba cái rìu như thế sẵn sàng để thay vì vỏ cây bạch đàn có thể làm lụt đi nhanh chóng những cái bén nhất.

Frank tiếp tục làm việc gần như theo bản năng dưới ánh sáng hoàng hôn đang tắt lịm. Meggie né tránh nhanh nhẹn những mảnh gỗ nhỏ và chờ cho Frank khám phá sự hiện diện của mình.

Khi Frank quay lại để lấy một cái rìu khác thì anh ta bắt gặp cô em gái, ngồi đó im lặng trong chiếc áo sơ mi của Frank cài nút thật kỹ từ trên xuống dưới. Frank bước đến gần Meggie ngồi xổm xuống, chiếc rìu vẫn để giữa hai đầu gối.

- Em ra đây bằng cách nào hỡi cô bé lém lỉnh?

- Ngã cửa sổ. Em chờ cho Stuart ngủ mê.

- Coi chừng đấy, em sẽ trở thành một thằng con trai hư hỏng mất.

- Mặc kệ. Em vẫn thích chơi với bọn con trai hơn là buồn hiu một mình.

- Dĩ nhiên là thế.

- Có chuyện gì không Meggie?

- Frank, anh không đi thật chớ?

Meggie đặt hai bàn tay lên đùi anh mình và ngước nhìn bằng mắt âu lo, miệng mở lớn, còn nước mắt dã chảy xuống đầy lỗ mũi làm cho cô bé cảm thấy khó thở.

- Vâng có lẽ anh sẽ đi Meggie ạ - Frank trả lời dịu dàng.

- Anh Frank ơi, không nên! Mẹ và em rất cần anh! Nhà này không thể thiếu vắng anh được.

Frank mỉm cười dù biết khi nghe Meggie hồn nhiên lặp lại những lời nói giống hệt mẹ.

- Meggie, có những việc xảy ra không như mong muốn của chúng ta. Em phải biết điều đó. Trong nhà này các thành viên của gia đình Cleary đã được dạy phải làm việc chung nhau vì lợi ích của mọi người mà không bao giờ nghĩ đến bản thân mình. Anh muốn ra đi vì anh đã 17 tuổi, đã đến lúc phải tự lập. Nhưng cha không đồng ý. Người ta cần anh ở nhà vì lợi ích chung. Vì anh chưa đủ 21 tuổi nên anh phải nghe lời cha.

Meggie gật đầu thật nhanh, cố gắng hiểu cho được những điều mà Frank giải thích.

- Thế đấy Meggie. Anh đã suy nghĩ rất kỹ và anh sẽ ra đi, anh không thay đổi quyết định. Anh biết mẹ và em không muốn thiếu anh, nhưng Bob lớn rất nhanh rồi ba và các em sẽ không nhận ra sự vắng mặt của anh đâu. Chỉ có đồng tiền của anh kiếm được là đáng kể đối với ba thôi.

- Thế là anh không thương ba mẹ và tụi em nữa sao hở anh Frank?

Frank quay lại ôm Meggie trong vòng tay, siết mạnh vào lòng, vuốt ve cô em gái với nỗi sung sướng. Hình như có gì quyện chặt vào như là sự tra tấn, pha lẫn đau buồn, cùng xót xa và cả đói.

- Không đâu Meggie! Anh thương em vô cùng, thương mẹ và em hơn tất cả mọi người cộng lại. Chúa ơi, phải chi em lớn hơn thì anh có thể giải thích cho em nghe. Nhưng có lẽ cũng may khi em còn bé bỏng như thế này... Đúng thế, như thế này vẫn tốt hơn...

- Em van anh, anh đừng đi Frank ạ.

- Meggie của anh, em không hiểu những gì anh đã nói à? Nhưng thôi, điều đó không quan trọng. Cái chính là em đừng nói cho ai biết em đã gặp anh. Em có nghe không? Anh không muốn người khác biết em đã rõ chuyện này.

Meggie đứng lên, ráng nở nụ cười:

- Anh thấy cần phải đi thì cứ đi, anh Frank.

- Meggie, em nên trở về phòng và lên giường trước khi mẹ biết được em không có ở đó. Đi đi, chạy nhanh lên... !

Sáng hôm sau, Frank đã đi khỏi nhà. Khi Fiona vào đánh thức Meggie, nét mặt của bà căng thẳng, nghiêm nghị hơn lúc nào hết. Meggie nhảy ra khỏi giường như con mèo bị phỏng nước sôi và tự mặc quần áo vào không cần nhờ mẹ cài những chiếc nút nhỏ.

Ở bếp, mấy cậu con trai đã ngồi chung quanh bàn, buồn bã. Ghế của Paddy trống. Ghế của Frank cũng trống. Meggie im lặng rón rén ngồi vào chỗ của mình, răng cắn chặt vào nhau lo sợ. Sau buổi ăn sáng, Fiona ra lệnh cho các con dọn dẹp nhà. Ra phía sau nhà kho, Bob báo tin với Meggie.

- Frank đã đi rồi - Bob nói thật nhỏ.

- Có lẽ anh ấy chỉ đi Wahine - Meggie đặt giả thiết.

- Không đâu. Đồ ngu như bò. Anh ấy bỏ nhà ra đi để đăng vào lính. Anh cũng muốn lớn nhanh lên để có thể làm như Frank! Anh ấy may mắn lắm.

- Còn em thì thích anh ấy ở lại nhà hơn.

- Đúng quá, em chỉ là một đứa con gái.

Khi Meggie trở vào nhà, cô bé hỏi mẹ.

- Ba đâu rồi?

- Ba đi Wahine.

- Có phải ba đi để đem Frank về?

- Thật không có cách nào giấu chuyện bí mật trong gia đình này - Fiona cằn nhằn. - Không, ba không đi tìm Frank ở Wahine. Ba biết Frank đi đâu. Ba đi đánh điện tín cho cảnh sát và cho quân đội ở Wanganui. Lính quân cảnh sẽ mang anh con về đây.

- Mẹ ơi, con hy vọng rằng họ sẽ tìm ra Frank. Con không muốn Frank đi luôn.

- Không một ai trong chúng ta muốn Frank ra đi. Chính vì thế mà ba sẽ lo liệu những điều cần thiết... để người ta đưa Frank trở về đây. Tội nghiệp thằng Frank con tôi! Tội nghiệp Frank! Bà không nói với Meggie mà than vãn một mình. Tôi không hiểu tại sao trẻ con phải gánh chịu mọi tội lỗi của người lớn. Thằng Frank tội nghiệp của tôi, nó khác tất cả...

Ba hôm sau, cảnh sát mang Frank trở về! Cậu ta chống lại dữ dội như một con sư tử - theo lời của viên trung sĩ ở Wanganui kể lại cho Paddy.

- Hắn ta đúng là một tên võ sĩ. Khi anh chàng biết được rằng Văn phòng tuyển binh đã được thông báo về trường hợp của hắn, hắn vọt chạy nhanh như một ngọn lao. Nếu hắn không xui rủi đụng đầu một toán lính tuần thì có lẽ đã thoát thân. Hắn chống lại dữ dội như một kẻ bị ma ám. Phải cần tới năm người mới còng hắn được. Anh ta quậy như làm xiếc.

Vừa kể lể một cách hấp dẫn, viên cảnh sát vừa tháo những dây xích nặng nề trả lại tự do cho Frank rồi đẩy Frank qua ngưỡng cửa. Frank bị loạng choạng và khi lấy lại thăng bằng anh đã đứng ngay trước mặt Paddy. Cậu ta co rúm người lại như thể sợ bị phỏng nếu chạm phải thân thể của cha.

Các em của Frank đứng chung quanh nhà nhìn lại. Meggie âu lo không biết người ta có làm gì hại Frank không.

Frank quay sang nhìn mẹ trước hết, hai mắt màu đen và màu nâu pha trộn nhau trong một sự kết hợp chưa bao giờ được nói ra và cũng không bao giờ nên nói ra. Ánh mắt khắt khe màu xanh của Paddy nhìn thẳng Frank vừa khinh miệt, vừa chua cay, như ngầm nói không thể chờ đợi gì khác hơn ở một đứa con như thế. Mắt Frank nhìn xuống đất, chấp nhận cái quyền nổi giận của cha mình. Từ hôm đó, Paddy không nói chuyện với con trai ngoại trừ những câu cần nói.

Gặp lại các em mình, đó là điều hết sức khổ tâm với Frank vừa hổ thẹn, vừa khó chịu, như con chim lộng lẫy bay lên cao từ phương trời xa thẳm nào đó, rồi bỗng bị bắt phải quay về bị gẫy cánh, tiếng hót trở nên lặng lẽ.

Buổi tối như thường lệ, Meggie chờ mẹ kiểm soát xong các con đi ngủ, cô bé mới chuồn ra cửa sổ và băng qua sân sau; Meggie biết rõ Frank ở đâu giờ này. Ở một góc nhà khi, tránh mọi cái nhìn soi mói, nhất là của cha.

- Frank, Frank, anh ở đâu? Cô bé hạ thấp giọng hỏi. Meggie bước vào nhà kho tối mịt, chân dò dẫm mặt đất với nỗi lo sợ chạm phải một con vật nào đó.

- Lại đây, Meggie.

Cô bé rất khó khăn mới nhận ra được giọng nói của Frank. Giọng nói ấy trước đây rất quen thuộc với Meggie bây giờ lại nghe đều đều, không còn sự nồng ấm trong đó.

Theo hướng gọi, Meggie đi lần đến chỗ Frank nằm rồi ngã vào lòng anh, hai tay ôm Frank, tay dài được bao nhiêu cô bé ôm hết bấy nhiêu.

- Frank ơi, em sung sướng quá vì anh đã trở về đây.

Frank tìm cách nằm sát hơn nữa dưới đống cỏ khô để có thể nhìn ngang mặt Meggie. Tay cô bé luồn vào tóc của Frank miệng kêu lên gừ gừ như con mèo con. Bóng đen dày đặc không cho Frank nhìn rõ mặt em, thế nhưng tình cảm của Meggie bỗng chốc phá tung những khúc mắc trong lòng anh. Frank bắt đầu khóc, run rẩy toàn thân một cách đau đớn, nước mắt làm ướt áo cô bé. Meggie thì không khóc. Cái gì đó trong tâm hồn nhỏ bé của Meggie đã sớm chín muồi và cô bé trở thành một người khác có thể cảm nhận được niềm vui tràn ngập, dữ dội, ý thức rõ về sự cần thiết của mình. Meggie ngồi tay lay nhẹ đầu tóc nâu thân yêu, cứ thế cho đến khi nỗi đau ở Frank dịu bớt và tan vào khoảng trống.

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[¹]      La Foi de nos Pères. (Tiếng Pháp: Đức Tin của Tổ Phụ chúng ta)

➖➖➖

 

Phần tiếng Anh

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

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ONE

1915-1917 MEGGIE

1.2

Fee nearly fell over her as she staggered out of the back door with a full basket of wet washing. Meggie was sitting on the top step of the back veranda, her head down, the ends of her bright curls sticky and the front of her dress stained. Putting down the crushing weight of the basket, Fee sighed, pushed a strand of wayward hair out of her eyes. “Well, what happened?” she demanded tiredly.

“I was sick all over Sister Agatha.”

“Oh, Lord!” Fee said, her hands on her hips.

“I got caned, too,” Meggie whispered, the tears standing unshed in her eyes.

“A nice kettle of fish, I must say.” Fee heaved her basket up, swaying until she got it balanced. “Well, Meggie, I don't know what to do with you. We'll have to wait and see what Daddy says.” And she walked off across the backyard toward the flapping half-full clotheslines. Rubbing her hands wearily around her face, Meggie stared after her mother for a moment, then got up and started down the path to the forge. Frank had just finished shoeing Mr. Robertson's bay mare, and was backing it into a stall when Meggie appeared in the doorway. He turned and saw her, and memories of his own terrible misery at school came flooding back to him. She was so little, so baby-plump and innocent and sweet, but the light in the eyes had been brutally quenched and an expression lurked there which made him want to murder Sister Agatha. Murder her, really murder her, take the double chins and squeeze .... Down went his tools, off came his apron; he walked to her quickly.

“What's the matter, dear?” he asked, bending over until her face was level with his own. The smell of vomit rose from her like a miasma, but he crushed his impulse to turn away.

“Oh, Fruh-Fruh-Frank!” she wailed, her face twisting up and her tears undammed at last. She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him passionately, weeping in the curiously silent, painful way all the Cleary children did once they were out of infancy. It was horrible to watch, and not something soft words or kisses could heal.

When she was calm again he picked her up and carried her to a pile of sweet-smelling hay near Mr. Robertson's mare; they sat there together and let the horse lip at the edges of their straw bed, lost to the world. Meggie's head was cradled on Frank's smooth bare chest, tendrils of her hair flying around as the horse blew gusty breaths into the hay, snorting with pleasure. “Why did she cane all of us, Frank?” Meggie asked. “I told her it was my fault.”

Frank had got used to her smell and didn't mind it any more; he reached out a hand and absently stroked the mare's nose, pushing it away when it got too inquisitive.

“We're poor, Meggie, that's the main reason. The nuns always hate poor pupils. After you've been in Sister Ag's moldy old school a few days you'll see it's not only the Clearys she takes it out on, but the Marshalls and the MacDonalds as well. We're all poor.

Now, if we were rich and rode to school in a big carriage like the O'Briens, they'd be all over us like a rash. But we can't donate organs to the church, or gold vestments to the sacristy, or a new horse and buggy to the nuns. So we don't matter. They can do what they like to us. “I remember one day Sister Ag was so mad at me that she kept screaming at me, “Cry, for the love of heaven! Make a noise, Francis Cleary! If you'd give me the satisfaction of hearing you bellow, I wouldn't hit you so hard or so often!”

“That's another reason why she hates us; it's where we're better than the Marshalls and the MacDonalds. She can't make the Clearys cry. We're supposed to lick her boots. Well, I told the boys what I'd do to any Cleary who even whimpered when he was caned, and that goes for you, too, Meggie. No matter how hard she beats you, not a whimper. Did you cry today?” “No, Frank,” she yawned, her eyelids drooping and her thumb poking blindly across her face in search of her mouth. Frank put her down in the hay and went back to his work, humming and smiling.

Meggie was still asleep when Paddy walked in. His arms were filthy from mucking out Mr. Jarman's dairy, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. He took in Frank shaping an axle on the anvil, sparks swirling round his head, then his eyes passed to where his daughter was curled up in the hay, with Mr. Robertson's bay mare hanging her head down over the sleeping face.

“I thought this is where she'd be,” Paddy said, dropping his riding crop and leading his old roan into the stable end of the barn. Frank nodded briefly, looking up at his father with that darkling glance of doubt and uncertainty Paddy always found so irritating, then he returned to the white-hot axle, sweat making his bare sides glisten. Unsaddling his roan, Paddy turned it into a stall, filled the water compartment and then mixed bran and oats with a little water for its food. The animal rumbled affectionately at him when he emptied the fodder into its manger, and its eyes followed him as he walked to the big trough outside the forge, took off his shirt. He washed arms and face and torso, drenching his riding breeches and his hair. Toweling himself dry on an old sack, he looked at his son quizzically.

“Mum told me Meggie was sent home in disgrace. Do you know what exactly happened?”

Frank abandoned his axle as the heat in it died. “The poor little coot was sick all over Sister Agatha.”

Wiping the grin off his face hastily, Paddy stared at the far wall for a moment to compose himself, then turned toward Meggie. “All excited about going to school, eh?”

“I don't know. She was sick before they left this morning, and it held them up long enough t[*thorn] be late for the bell. They all got sixers, but Meggie was terribly upset because she thought she ought to have been the only one punished. After lunch Sister Ag pounced on her again, and our Meggie spewed bread and jam all over Sister Ag's clean black habit.”

“What happened then?”

“Sister Ag caned her good and proper, and sent her home in disgrace.” “Well, I'd say she's had punishment enough. I have a lot of respect for the nuns and I” know it isn't our place to question what they do, but I wish they were a bit less eager with the cane. I know they have to beat the three R's into our thick Irish heads, but after all, it was wee Meggie's first day at school.”

Frank was staring at his father, amazed. Not until this moment had Paddy ever communicated man-to-man with his oldest son. Shocked out of perpetual resentment, Frank realized that for all his proud boasting, Paddy loved Meggie more than he did his sons. He found himself almost liking his father, so he smiled without the mistrust. “She's a bonzer little thing, isn't she?” he asked. Paddy nodded absently, engrossed in watching her. The horse blew its lips in and out, flapping; Meggie stirred, rolled over and opened her eyes. When she saw her father standing beside Frank she sat bolt upright, fright paling her skin.

“Well, Meggie girl, you've had quite a day, haven't you?” Paddy went over and lifted her out of the hay, gasping as he caught a whiff of her. Then he shrugged his shoulders and held her against him hard. “I got caned, Daddy,” she confessed.

“Well, knowing Sister Agatha, it won't be the last time,” he laughed, perching her on his shoulder. “We'd better see if Mum's got any hot water in the copper to give you a bath. You smell worse than Jarman's dairy.” Frank went to the doorway and watched the two fiery heads bobbing up the path, then turned to find the bay mare's gentle eyes fixed on him. “Come on, you big old bitch. I'll ride you home,” he told it, scooping up a halter.

Meggie's vomiting turned out to be a blessing is disguise. Sister Agatha still caned her regularly, but always from far enough away to escape the consequences, which lessened the strength of her arm and quite spoiled her aim.

The dark child who sat next to her was the youngest daughter of the Italian man who owned and operated Wahine's bright blue cafe. Her name was Teresa Annunzio, and she was just dull enough to escape Sister Agatha's attention without being so dull that it turned her into Sister Agatha's butt. When her teeth grew in she was quite strikingly beautiful, and Meggie adored her. During lesson breaks in the playground they walked with arms looped around each other's waists, which was the sign that you were “best friends” and not available for courting by anyone else. And they talked, talked, talked. One lunchtime Teresa took her into the cafe to meet her mother and father and grown-up brothers and sisters. They were as charmed with her golden fire as Meggie was with their darkness, likening her to an angel when she turned her wide, beautifully flecked grey eyes upon them. From her mother she had inherited an indefinable air of breeding which everyone felt immediately; so did the Annunzio family. As eager as Teresa to woo her, they gave her big fat potato chips fried in sizzling cauldrons of lamb dripping, and a piece of boned fish which tasted delicious, dipped as it was in floury batter and fried in the smoking well of liquid fat along with the chips, only in a separate wire basket. Meggie had never eaten food so delicious, and wished she could lunch at the cafe more often. But this had been a treat, requiring special permission from her mother and the nuns. Her conversation at home was all “Teresa says” and “Do you know what Teresa did?” until Paddy roared that he had heard more than enough about Teresa. “I don't know that it's such a good idea to be too thick with Dagos,” he muttered, sharing the British community's instinctive mistrust of any dark or Mediterranean people. “Dagos are dirty, Meggie girl, they don't wash too often,” he explained lamely, wilting under the look of hurt reproach Meggie gave him.

Fiercely jealous, Frank agreed with him. So Meggie spoke less often of her friend when she was at home. But home disapproval couldn't interfere with the relationship, confined as it was by distance to school days and hours; Bob and the boys were only too pleased to see her utterly engrossed in Teresa. It left them to career madly around the playground just as if their sister did not exist.

The unintelligible things Sister Agatha was always writing on the blackboard gradually began to make sense, and Meggie learned that a “plus was meant you counted all the numbers up to a total, where a “com” meant you took the numbers on the bottom away from the numbers on the top and wound up with less than you had in the first place. She was a bright child, and would have been an excellent if not brilliant student had she only been able to overcome her fear of Sister Agatha. But the minute those gimlet eyes turned her way and that dry old voice rapped a curt question at her, she stammered and stuttered and could not think. Arithmetic she found easy, but when called upon to demonstrate toper skill verbally she could not remember how many two and two made. Reading was the entrance into a world so fascinating she couldn't get enough of it; but when Sister Agatha made her stand to read a passage out loud, she could hardly pronounce “cat,” let alone “miaow.” It seemed to her that she was forever quivering under Sister Agatha's sarcastic comments or flushing bright red because the rest of the class was laughing at her. For it was always her slate Sister Agatha held up to sneer at, always her laboriously written sheets of paper Sister Agatha used to demonstrate the ugliness of untidy work. Some of the richer children were lucky enough to possess erasers, but Meggie's only eraser was the tip of her finger, which she licked and rubbed over her nervous mistakes until the writing smudged and the paper came away in miniature sausages. It made holes and was strictly forbidden, but she was desperate enough to do anything to avoid Sister Agatha's strictures.

Until her advent Stuart had been the chief target of Sister Agatha's cane and venom. However, Meggie was a much better target, for Stuart's wistful tranquility and almost saintlike aloofness were hard nuts to crack, even for Sister Agatha. On the other hand, Meggie trembled and went as red as a beet, for all she tried so manfully to adhere to the Cleary line of behavior as defined by Frank. Stuart pitied Meggie deeply and tried to make it easier for her by deliberately sidetracking the nun's anger onto his own head. She saw through his ploys immediately, angered afresh to see the Cleary clannishness as much in evidence with the girl as it had always been among the boys. Had anyone questioned her as to exactly why she had such a down on the Clearys, she would not have been able to answer. But for an old nun as embittered by the course her life had taken as Sister Agatha, a proud and touchy family like the Clearys was not easy to swallow. Meggie's worst sin was being left-handed. When she gingerly picked up her slate pencil to embark on her first writing lesson, Sister Agatha descended on her like Caesar on the Gauls.

“Meghan Cleary, put that pencil down!” she thundered. Thus began a battle royal. Meggie was incurably and hopelessly left-handed. When Sister Agatha forcibly bent the fingers of Meggie's right hand correctly around the pencil and poised it above the slate, Meggie sat there with her head reeling and no idea in the world how to make the afflicted limb do what Sister Agatha insisted it could. She became mentally deaf, dumb and blind; that useless appendage her right hand was no more linked to her thought processes than her toes. She dribbled a line clean off the edge of the slate because she could not make it bend; she dropped her pencil as if paralyzed; nothing Sister Agatha could do would make Meggie's right hand foam an A. Then surreptitiously Meggie would transfer her pencil to her left hand, and with her arm curled awkwardly around three sides of the slate she would make a row of beautiful copperplate A's.

Sister Agatha won the battle. On morning line-up she tied Meggie's left arm against her body with rope, and would not undo it until the dismissal bell rang at three in the afternoon. Even at lunchtime she had to eat, walk around and play games with her left side firmly immobilized. It took three months, but eventually she learned to write correctly according to the tenets of Sister Agatha, though the formation of her letters was never good. To make sure she would never revert back to using it, her left arm was kept tied to her body for a further two months; then Sister Agatha made the whole school assemble to say a rosary of thanks to Almighty God for His wisdom in making Meggie see the error of her ways. God's children were all right-handed; lefthanded children were the spawn of the Devil, especially when redheaded.

In that first year of school Meggie lost her baby plumpness and became very thin, though she grew little in height. She began to bite her nails down to the quick, and had to endure Sister Agatha's making her walk around every desk in the school holding her hands out so all the children could see how ugly bitten nails were. And this when nearly half the children between five and fifteen bit their nails as badly as Meggie did. Fee got out the bottle of bitter aloes and painted the tips of Meggie's fingers with the horrible stuff. Everyone in the family was enlisted to make sure she got no opportunity to wash the bitter aloes off, and when the other little girls at school noticed the telltale brown stains she was mortified. If she put her fingers in her mouth the taste was indescribable, foul and dark like sheep-dip; in desperation she spat on her handkerchief and rubbed herself raw until she got rid of the worst of it. Paddy took out his switch, a much gentler instrument than Sister Agatha's cane, and sent her skipping round the kitchen. He did not believe in beating his children on the hands, face or buttocks, only on the legs. Legs hurt as much as anywhere, he said, and could not be damaged. However, in spite of bitter aloes, ridicule, Sister Agatha and Paddy's switch, Meggie went on biting her nails.

Her friendship with Teresa Annunzio was the joy of her life, the only thing that made school endurable. She sat through lessons aching for playtime to come so she could sit with her arm around Teresa's waist and Teresa's arm around hers under the big fig tree, talking, talking. There were tales about Teresa's extraordinary alien family, about her numerous dolls, and about her genuine willow pattern tea set.

When Meggie saw the tea set, she was overcome. It had 108 pieces, tiny miniature cups and saucers and plates, a teapot and a sugar bowl and a milk jug and a cream jug, with wee knives and spoons and forks just the right size for dolls to use. Teresa had innumerable toys; besides being much younger than her nearest sister, she belonged to an Italian family, which meant she was passionately and openly loved, and indulged to the full extent of her father's monetary resources. Each child viewed the other with awe and envy, though Teresa never coveted Meggie's Calvinistic, stoic upbringing. Instead she pitied her. Not to be allowed to run to her mother with hugs and kisses? Poor Meggie!

As for Meggie, she was incapable of equating Teresa's beaming, portly little mother with her own slender unsmiling mother, so she never thought: I wish Mum hugged and kissed me. What she did think was: I wish Teresa's mum hugged and kissed me. Though images of hugs and kisses were far less in her mind than images of the willow pattern tea set. So delicate, so thin and wafery, so beautiful! Oh, if only she had a willow pattern tea set, and could give Agnes afternoon tea out of a deep blue-and-white cup in a deep blue-and-white saucer!

During Friday Benediction in the old church with its lovely, grotesque Maori carvings and Maori painted ceiling, Meggie knelt to pray for a willow pattern tea set of her very own. When Father Hayes held the monstrance aloft, the Host peered dimly through the glass window in the middle of its gem-encrusted rays and blessed the bowed heads of the congregation. All save Meggie, that is, for she didn't “even see the Host; she was too busy trying to remember how many plates there were in Teresa's willow pattern tea set. And when the Maoris in the organ gallery broke into glorious song, Meggie's head was spinning in a daze of ultramarine blue far removed from Catholicism or Polynesia.

The school year was drawing to a close, December and her birthday just beginning to threaten full summer, when Meggie learned how dearly one could buy the desire of one's heart. She was sitting on a high stool near the stove while Fee did her hair as usual for school; it was an intricate business. Meggie's hair had a natural tendency to curl, which her mother considered to be a great piece of good luck. Girls with straight hair had a hard time of it when they grew up and tried to produce glorious wavy masses out of limp, thin strands. At night Meggie slept with her almost kneelength locks twisted painfully around bits of old white sheet torn into long strips, and each morning she had to clamber up on the stool while Fee undid the rags and brushed her curls in.

Fee used an old Mason Pearson hairbrush, taking one long, scraggly curl in her left hand and expertly brushing the hair around her index finger until the entire length of it was rolled into a shining thick sausage; then she carefully withdrew her finger from the center of the roll and shook it out into a long, enviably thick curl. This maneuver was repeated some twelve times, the front curls were then drawn together on Meggie's crown with a freshly ironed white taffeta bow, and she was ready for the day. All the other little girls wore braids to school, saving curls for special occasions, but on this one point Fee was adamant; Meggie should have curls all the time, no matter how hard it was to spare the minutes each morning. Had Fee realized it, her charity was misguided, for her daughter's hair was far and away the most beautiful in the entire school. To rub the fact in with daily curls earned Meggie much envy and loathing. The process hurt, but Meggie was too used to it to notice, never remembering a time when it had not been done. Fee's muscular arm yanked the brush ruthlessly through knots and tangles until Meggie's eyes watered and she had to hang on to the stool with both hands to keep from falling off. It was the Monday of the last week at school, and her birthday was only two days away; she clung to the stool and dreamed about the willow pattern tea set, knowing it for a dream. There was one in the Wahine general store, and she knew enough of prices to realize that its cost put it far beyond her father's slender means.

Suddenly Fee made a sound, so peculiar it jerked Meggie out of her musing and made the menfolk still seated at the breakfast table turn their heads curiously.

“Holy Jesus Christ!” said Fee.

Paddy jumped to his feet, his face stupefied; he had never heard Fee take the name of the Lord in vain before. She was standing with one of Meggie's curls in her hand, the brush poised, her features twisted into an expression of horror and revulsion. Paddy and the boys crowded round; Meggie tried to see what was going on and earned a backhanded slap with the bristle side of the brush which made her eyes water.

“Look!” Fee whispered, holding the curl in a ray of sunlight so Paddy could see.

The hair was a mass of brilliant, glittering gold in the sun, and Paddy saw nothing at first. Then he became aware that a creature was marching down the back of Fee's hand. He took a curl for himself, and in among the leaping lights of it he discerned more creatures, going about their business busily. Little white things were stuck in clumps all along the separate strands, and the creatures were energetically producing more clumps of little white things. Meggie's hair was a hive of industry.

“She's got lice!” Paddy said.

Bob, Jack, Hughie and Stu had a look, and like their father removed themselves to a safe distance; only Frank and Fee remained gazing at Meggie's hair, mesmerized, while Meggie sat miserably hunched over, wondering what she had done. Paddy sat down in his Windsor chair heavily, staring into the fire and blinking hard.

“It's that bloody Dago girl!” he said at last, and turned to glare at Fee. “Bloody bastards, filthy lot of flaming pigs!”

“Paddy!” Fee gasped, scandalized.

“I'm sorry for swearing, Mum, but when I think of that blasted Dago giving her lice to Meggie, I could go into Wahine this minute and tear the whole filthy greasy cafe down!” he exploded, pounding his fist on his knee fiercely.

“Mum, what is it?” Meggie finally managed to say. “Look, you dirty little grub!” her mother answered, thrusting her hand down in front of Meggie's eyes. “You have these things everywhere in your hair, from that Eyetie girl you're so thick with! Now what am I going to do with you?”

Meggie gaped at the tiny thing roaming blindly round Fee's bare skin in search of more hirsute territory, then she began to weep. Without needing to be told, Frank got the copper going while Paddy paced up and down the kitchen roaring, his rage increasing every time he looked at Meggie. Finally he went to the row of hooks on the wall inside the back door, jammed his hat on his head and took the long horsewhip from its nail. “I'm going into Wahine, Fee, and I'm going to tell that blasted Dago what he can do with his slimy fish and chips! Then I'm going to see Sister Agatha and tell her what I think of her, allowing lousy children in her school!” “Paddy, be careful!” Fee pleaded. “What if it isn't the Eyetie girl? Even if she has lice, it's possible she might have got them from someone else along with Meggie.”

“Rot!” said Paddy scornfully. He pounded down-the back steps, and a few minutes later they heard his roan's hoofs beating down the road. Fee sighed, looking at Frank hopelessly.

“Well, I suppose we'll be lucky if he doesn't land in jail. Frank, you'd better bring the boys inside. No school today.”

One by one Fee went through her sons' hair minutely, then checked Frank's head and made him do the same for her. There was no evidence that anyone else had acquired poor Meggie's malady, but Fee did not intend to take chances. When the water in the huge laundry copper was boiling, Frank got the dish tub down from its hanging and filled it half with hot water and half with cold. Then he went out to the Bleed and fetched in an unopened five-gallon can of kerosene, took a bar of lye soap from the laundry and started work on Bob. Each head was briefly damped in the tub, several cups of raw kerosene poured over it, and the whole draggled, greasy mess lathered with soap. The kerosene and lye burned; the boys howled and rubbed their eyes raw, scratching at their reddened, tingling scalps and threatening ghastly vengeance on all Dagos.

Fee went to her sewing basket and took out her big shears. She came back to Meggie, who had not dared to move from the stool though an hour and more had elapsed, and stood with the shears in her hand, staring at the beautiful fall of hair. Then she began to cut it snip! snip!-until all the long curls were huddled in glistening heaps on the floor and Meggie's white skin was beginning to show in irregular patches all over her head. Doubt in her eyes, she turned then to Frank.

“Ought I to shave it?” she asked, tight-upped. Frank put out his hand, revolted. “Oh, Mum, no!

Surely not! If she gets a good douse of kerosene it ought to be enough. Please don't shave it!”

So Meggie was marched to the worktable and held over the tub while they poured cup after cup of kerosene over her head and scrubbed the corrosive soap through what was left of her hair. When they were finally satisfied, she was almost blind from screwing up her eyes against the bite of the caustic, and little rows of blisters had risen all over her face and scalp. Frank swept the fallen curls into a sheet of paper and thrust it into the copper fire, then took the broom and stood it in a panful of kerosene. He and Fee both washed their hair, gasping as the lye seared their skins, then Frank got out a bucket and scrubbed the kitchen floor with sheep-dip. When the kitchen was as sterile as a hospital they went through to the bedrooms, stripped every sheet and blanket from every bed, and spent the rest of the day boiling, wringing and pegging out the family linen. The mattresses and pillows were draped over the back fence and sprayed with kerosene, the parlor rugs were beaten within an inch of their lives. All the boys were put to helping, only Meggie exempted because she was in absolute disgrace. She crawled away behind the barn and cried. Her head throbbed with pain from the scrubbing, the burns and the blisters; and she was so bitterly ashamed that she would not even look at Frank when he came to find her, nor could he persuade her to come inside.

In the end he had to drag her into the house by brute force, kicking and fighting, and she had pushed herself into a corner when Paddy came back from Wahine in the late afternoon. He took one look at Meggie's shorn head and burst into tears, sitting rocking himself in the Windsor chair with his hands over his face, while the family stood shuffling their feet and wishing they were anywhere but where they were. Fee made a pot of tea and poured Paddy a cup as he began to recover. “What happened in Wahine?” she asked. “You were gone an awful long time.” “I took the horsewhip to that blasted Dago and threw him into the horse trough, for one thing. Then I noticed MacLeod standing outside his shop watching, so I told him what had happened. MacLeod mustered some of the chaps at the pub and we threw the whole lot of those Dagos into the horse trough, women too, and tipped a few gallons of sheep-dip into it. Then I went down to the school and saw Sister Agatha, and I tell you, she was fit to be tied that she hadn't noticed anything. She hauled the Dago girl out of her desk to look in her hair, and sure enough, lice all over the place. So she sent the girl home and told her not to come back until her head was clean. I left her and Sister Declan and Sister Catherine looking through every head in the school, and there turned out to be a lot of lousy ones. Those three nuns were scratching themselves like mad when they thought no one was watching.” He grinned at the memory, then he saw Meggie's head again and sobered. He stared at her grimly. “As for you, young lady, no more Dagos or anyone except your brothers. If they aren't good enough for you, too bad. Bob, I'm telling you that Meggie's to have nothing to do with anyone except you and the boys while she's at school, do you hear?”

Bob nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”

The next morning Meggie was horrified to discover that she was expected to go to school as usual.

“No, no, I can't go!” she moaned, her hands clutching at her head.

“Mum, Mum, I can't go to school like this, not with Sister Agatha!” “Oh, yes, you can,” her mother replied, ignoring Frank's imploring looks. “It'll teach you a lesson.”

So off to school went Meggie, her feet dragging and her head done up in a brown bandanna. Sister Agatha ignored her entirely, but at playtime the other girls caught her and tore her scarf away to see what she looked like. Her face was only mildly disfigured, but her head when uncovered was a horrible sight, oozing and angry. The moment he saw what was going on Bob came over, and took his sister away into a secluded corner of the cricket pitch. “Don't you take any notice of them, Meggie,” he said roughly, tying the scarf around her head awkwardly and patting her stiff shoulders. “Spiteful little cats! I wish I'd thought to catch some of those things out of your head; I'm sure they'd keep. The minute everyone forgot, I'd sprinkle a few heads with a new lot.”

The other Cleary boys gathered around, and they sat guarding Meggie until the bell rang.

Teresa Annunzio came to school briefly at lunchtime, her head shaven. She tried to attack Meggie, but the boys held her off easily. As she backed away she flung her right arm up in the air, its fist clenched, and slapped her left hand on its biceps in a fascinating, mysterious gesture no one understood, but which the boys avidly filed away for future use. “I hate you!” Teresa screamed. “Me dad's got to move out of the district because of what your dad did to him!” She turned and ran from the playground, howling.

Meggie held her head up and kept her eyes dry. She was learning. It didn't matter what anyone else thought, it didn't, it didn't! The other girls avoided her, half because they were frightened of Bob and Jack, half because the word had got around their parents and they had been instructed to keep away; being thick with the Clearys usually meant trouble of some kind. So Meggie passed the last few days of school “fin Coventry,” as they called it, which meant she was totally ostracized. Even Sister Agatha respected the new policy, and took her rages out on Stuart instead. As were all birthdays among the little ones if they fell on a school day, Meggie's birthday celebration was delayed until Saturday, when she received the longed for willow pattern tea set. It was arranged on a beautifully crafted ultramarine table and chairs made in Frank's nonexistent spare time, and Agnes was seated on one of the two tiny chairs wearing a new blue dress made in Fee's nonexistent spare time. Meggie stared dismally at the blue-and-white designs gamboling all around each small piece; at the fantastic trees with their funny puffy blossoms, at the ornate little pagoda, at the strangely stilled pair of birds and the minute figures eternally fleeing across the kinky bridge. It had lost every bit of its enchantment. But dimly she understood why the family had beggared itself to get her the thing they thought dearest to her heart. So she dutifully made tea for Agnes in the tiny square teapot and went through the ritual as if in ecstasy. And she continued doggedly to use it for years, never breaking or so much as chipping a single piece. No one ever dreamed that she loathed the willow pattern tea set, the blue table and chairs, and Agnes's blue dress.

Two days before that Christmas of 1917 Paddy brought home his weekly newspaper and a new stack of books from the library.

However, the paper for once took precedence over the books. Its editors had conceived a novel idea based on the fancy American magazines which very occasionally found their way to New Zealand; the entire middle section was a feature on the war. There were blurred photographs of the Anzacs storming the pitiless cliffs at Gallipoli, long articles extolling the bravery of the Antipodean soldier, features on all the Australian and New Zealand winners of the Victoria Cross since its inception, and a magnificent full-page etching of an Australian light horse cavalryman mounted on his charger, saber at the ready and long silky feathers pluming from under the turned-up side of his slouch hat.

At first opportunity Frank seized the paper and read the feature hungrily, drinking in its jingoistic prose, his eyes glowing eerily. “Daddy, I want to go!” he said as he laid the paper down reverently on the table.

Fee's head jerked around as she slopped stew all over the top of the stove, and Paddy stiffened in his Windsor chair, his book forgotten. “You're too young, Frank,” he said.

“No, I'm not! I'm seventeen, Daddy, I'm a man! Why should the Huns and Turks slaughter our men like pigs while I'm sitting here safe and sound? It's more than time a Cleary did his bit.”

“You're under age, Frank, they won't take you.”

“They wilt if you don't object,” Frank countered quickly, his dark eyes fixed on Paddy's face.

“But I do object. You're the only one working at the moment and we need the money you bring in, you know that.”

“But I'll be paid in the army!”

Paddy laughed. “The “soldier's shilling' eh? Being a blacksmith in Wahine pays a lot better than being a soldier in Europe.”

“But I'll be over there, maybe I'll get the chance to be something better than a blacksmith! It's my only way out, Daddy.”

“Nonsense! Good God, boy, you don't know what you're saying. War is terrible. I come from a country that's been at war for a thousand years, so I know what I'm saying. Haven't you heard the Boer War chaps talking? You go into Wahine often enough, so next time listen. And anyway, it strikes me that the blasted English use Anzacs as fodder for the enemy guns, putting them into places where they don't want to waste their own precious troops. Look at the way that saber-rattling Churchill sent our men into something as useless as Gallipoli! Ten thousand killed out of fifty thousand! Twice as bad as decimation.

“Why should you go fighting old Mother England's wars for her? What has she ever done for you, except bleed her colonies white? If you went to England they'd look down their noses at you for being a colonial. En Zed isn't in any danger, nor is Australia. It might do old Mother England the world of good to be defeated; it's more than time someone paid her for what she's done to Ireland. I certainly wouldn't weep any tears if the Kaiser ended up marching down the Strand.”

“But Daddy, I want to enlist!”

“You can want all you like, Frank, but you aren't going, so you may as well forget the whole idea. You're not big enough to be a soldier.” Frank's face flushed, his lips came together; his lack of stature was a very sore point with him. At school he had always been the smallest boy in his class, and fought twice as many battles as anyone else because of it. Of late a terrible doubt had begun to invade his being, for at seventeen he was exactly the same five feet three he had been at fourteen; perhaps he had stopped growing.

Only he knew the agonies to which he subjected his body and his spirit, the stretching, the exercises, the fruitless hoping. Smithying had given him a strength out of all proportion to his height, however; had Paddy consciously chosen a profession for someone of Frank's temperament, he could not have chosen better. A small structure of pure power, at seventeen he had never been defeated in a fight and was already famous throughout the Taranaki peninsula. All his anger, frustration and inferiority came into a fight with him, and they were more than the biggest, strongest local could contend with, allied as they were to a body in superb physical condition, an excellent brain, viciousness and indomitable will. The bigger and tougher they were, the more Frank wanted to see them humbled in the dust. His peers trod a wide detour around him, for his aggressiveness was well known. Of late he had branched out of the ranks of youths in his search for challenges, and the local men still talked about the day he had beaten Jim Collins to a pulp, though Jim Collins was twenty-two years old, stood six feet four in his socks and could lift horses. With his left arm broken and his ribs cracked, Frank had fought on until Jim Collins was a slobbering mass of bloodied flesh at his feet, and he had to be forcibly restrained from kicking the senseless face in. As soon as the arm healed and the ribs came out of strapping, Frank went into town and lifted a horse, just to show that Jim wasn't the only one who could, and that it didn't depend on a man's size. As the sire of this phenomenon, Paddy knew Frank's reputation very well and understood Frank's battle to gain respect, though it did not prevent his becoming angry when fighting interfered “with the work in the forge. Being a small man himself, Paddy had had his share of fights to prove his courage, but in his part of Ireland he was not diminutive and by the time he arrived in New Zealand, where men were taller, he was a man grown. Thus his size was never the obsession with him it was with Frank. Now he watched the boy carefully, trying to understand him and failing; this one had always been the farthest from his heart, no matter how he struggled against discriminating among his children. He knew it grieved Fee, that she worried over the unspoken antagonism between them, but even his love for Fee could not overcome his exasperation with Frank. Frank's short, finely made hands were spread-across the open paper defensively, his eyes riveted on Paddy's face in a curious mixture of pleading and a pride that was too stiff-necked to plead. How alien the face was! No Cleary or Armstrong in it, except perhaps a little look of Fee around the eyes, if Fee's eyes had been dark and could have snapped and flashed the way Frank's did on slightest provocation. One thing the lad did not lack, and that was courage.

The subject ended abruptly with Paddy's remark about Frank's size; the family ate stewed rabbit in unusual silence, even Hughie and Jack treading carefully through a sticky, self-conscious conversation punctuated by much shrill giggling. Meggie refused to eat, fixing her gaze on Frank as if he were going to disappear from sight any moment. Frank picked at his food for a decent interval, and as soon as he could excused himself from the table. A minute later they heard the axe clunking dully from the woodheap; Frank was attacking the hardwood logs Paddy had brought home to store for the slow-burning fires of winter.

When everyone thought she was in bed, Meggie squeezed out of her bedroom window and sneaked down to the woodheap. It was a tremendously important area in the continuing life of the house; about a thousand square feet of ground padded and deadened by a thick layer of chips and bark, great high stacks of logs on one side waiting to be reduced in size, and on the other side mosaic-like walls of neatly prepared wood just the right size for the stove firebox. In the middle of the open space three tree stumps still rooted in the ground were used as blocks to chop different heights of wood. Frank was not on a block; he was working on a massive eucalyptus log and undercutting it to get it small enough to place on the lowest, widest stump. Its two foot-diameter bulk lay on the earth, each end immobilized by an iron spike, and Frank was standing on top of it, cutting it in two between his spread feet. The axe was moving so fast it whistled, and the handle made its own separate swishing sound as it slid up and down within his slippery palms. Up it flashed above his head, down it came in a dull silver blur, carving a wedge-shaped chunk out of the iron-hard wood as easily as if it had been a pine or a deciduous tree. Sundered pieces of wood were flying in all directions, the sweat was running in streams down Frank's bare chest and back, and he had wound his handkerchief about his brow to keep the sweat from blinding him. It was dangerous work, undercutting; one mistimed or badly directed hack, and he would be minus a foot. He had his leather wristbands on to soak up the sweat from his arms, but the delicate hands were ungloved, gripping the axe handle lightly and with exquisitely directed skill.

Meggie crouched down beside his discarded shirt and undervest to watch, awed. Three spare axes were lying nearby, for eucalyptus wood blunted the sharpest axe in no time at all. She grasped one by its handle and dragged it onto her knees, wishing she could chop wood like Frank. The axe was so heavy she could hardly lift it. Colonial axes had only one blade, honed to hair-splitting sharpness, for double-bladed axes were too light for eucalyptus. The back of the axe head was an inch thick and weighted, the handle passing through it, firmly anchored with small bits of extra wood. A loose axe head could come off in midswing, snap through the air as hard and fast as a cannonball and kill someone.

Frank was cutting almost instinctively in the fast fading light; Meggie dodged the chips with the ease of long practice and waited patiently for him to spy her. The log was half severed, and he turned himself the opposite way, gasping; then he swung the axe up again, and began to cut the second side. It was a deep, narrow gap, to conserve wood and hasten the process; as he worked toward the center of the log the axe head disappeared entirely inside the cut, and the big wedges of wood flew out closer and closer to his body. He ignored them, chopping even faster. The log parted with stunning suddenness, and at the same moment he leaped lithely into the air, sensing that it was going almost before the axe took its last bite. As the wood collapsed inward, he landed off to one side, smiling; but it was not a happy smile.

He turned to pick up a new axe and saw his sister sitting patiently in her prim nightgown, all buttoned up and buttoned down. It was still strange to see her hair clustering in a mass of short ringlets instead of done up in its customary rags, but he decided the boyish style suited her, and wished it could remain so. Coming over to her, he squatted down with his axe held across his knees.

“How did you get out, you little twerp?”

“I climbed through the window after Stu was asleep.”

“If you don't watch out, you'll turn into a tomboy.”

“I don't mind. Playing with the boys is better than playing all by myself.” “I suppose it is.” He sat down with his back against a log and wearily turned his head toward her. “What's the matter, Meggie?” “Frank, you're not really going away, are you?” She put her hands with their mangled nails down on his thigh and stared up at him anxiously, her mouth open because her nose was stuffed full from fighting tears and she couldn't breathe through it very well.

“I might be, Meggie.” He said it gently.

“Oh, Frank, you can't! Mum and I need you! Honestly, I don't know what we'd do without you!”

He grinned in spite of his pain, at her unconscious echoing of Fee's way of speaking.

“Meggie, sometimes things just don't happen the way you want them to. You ought to know that. We Clearys have been taught to work together for the good of all, never to think of ourselves first.

But I don't agree with that; I think we ought to be able to think of ourselves first. I want to go away because I'm seventeen and it's time I made a life for myself. But Daddy says no, I'm needed at home for the good of the family as a whole. And because I'm not twenty-one, I've got to do as Daddy says.”

Meggie nodded earnestly, trying to untangle the threads of Frank's explanation.

“Well, Meggie, I've thought long and hard about it. I'm going away, and that's that. I know you and Mum will miss me, but Bob's growing up fast, and Daddy and the boys won't miss me at all. It's only the money I bring in interests Daddy.”

“Don't you like us anymore, Frank?”

He turned to snatch her into his arms, hugging and caressing her in tortured pleasure, most of it grief and pain and hunger. “Oh, Meggie! I love you and Mum more than all the others put together! God, why weren't you older, so I could talk to you? Or maybe it's better that you're so little, maybe it's better . . . .”

He let her go abruptly, struggling to master himself, rolling his head back and forth against the log, his throat and mouth working. Then he looked at her. “Meggie, when you're older you'll understand better.”

“Please don't go away, Frank,” she repeated.

He laughed, almost a sob. “Oh, Meggie! Didn't you hear any of it? Well, it doesn't really matter. The main thing is you're not to tell anyone you saw me tonight, hear? I don't want them thinking you're in on it.”

“I did hear, Frank, I heard all of it,” Meggie said. “I won't say a word to anybody, though, I promise. But oh, I do wish you didn't have to go away!” She was too young to be able to tell him what was no more than an unreasoning something within her heart; who else was there, if Frank went? He was the only one who gave her overt affection, the only one who held her and hugged her. When she was smaller Daddy used to pick her up a lot, but ever since she started at school he had stopped letting her sit on his knee, wouldn't let her throw her arms around his neck, saying, “You're a big girl now, Meggie.” And Mum was always so busy, so tired, so wrapped in the boys and the house. It was Frank who lay closest to her heart, Frank who loomed as the star in her limited heaven. He was the only one who seemed to enjoy sitting talking to her, and he explained things in a way she could understand.

Ever since the day Agnes had lost her hair there had been Frank, and in spite of her sore troubles nothing since had speared her quite to the core. Not canes or Sister Agatha or lice, because Frank was there to comfort and console.

But she got up and managed a smile. “If you have to go, Frank, then it's all right.”

“Meggie, you ought to be in bed, at least you'd better be back there before Mum checks. Scoot, quickly!”

The reminder drove all else from her head; she thrust her face down and fished for the trailing back of her gown, pulled it through between her legs and held it like a tail in reverse in front of her as she ran, bare feet spurning the splinters and sharp chips.

In the morning Frank was gone. When Fee came to pull Meggie from her bed she was grim and terse; Meggie hopped out like a scalded cat and dressed herself without even asking for help with all the little buttons. In the kitchen the boys were sitting glumly around the table, and Paddy's chair was empty. So was Frank's. Meggie slid into her place and sat there, teeth chattering in fear. After breakfast Fee shooed them outside dourly, and behind the barn Bob broke the news to Meggie.

“Frank's run away,” he breathed.

“Maybe he's just gone into Wahine,” Meggie suggested. “No, silly! He's gone to join the army. Oh, I wish I was big enough to go with him! The lucky coot!”

“Well, I wish he was still at home.”

Bob shrugged. “You're only a girl, and that's what I'd expect a girl to say.”

The normally incendiary remark was permitted to pass unchallenged; Meggie took herself inside to her mother to see what she could do. “Where's Daddy?” she asked Fee after her mother had set her to ironing handkerchiefs.

“Gone in to Wahine.”

“Will he bring Frank back with him?”

Fee snorted. “Trying to keep a secret in this family is impossible. No, he won't catch Frank in Wahine, he knows that. He's gone to send a telegram to the police and the army in Wanganui. They'll bring him back.”

“Oh, Mum, I hope they find him, I don't want Frank to go away!” Fee slapped the contents of the butter churn onto the table and attacked the watery yellow mound with two wooden pats. “None of us want Frank to go away. That's why Daddy's going to see he's brought back.” Her mouth quivered for a moment; she whacked the butter harder. “Poor Frank! Poor, poor Frank!” she sighed, not to Meggie but to herself. “I don't know why the children must pay for our sins. My poor Frank, so out of things ...” Then she noticed that Meggie had stopped ironing, and shut her lips, and said no more. Three days later the police brought Frank back. He had put up a terrific struggle, the Wanganui sergeant on escort duty told Paddy. “What a fighter you've got! When he saw the army lads were a wakeup he was off like a shot, down the steps and into the street with two soldiers after him. If he hadn't had the bad luck to run into a constable on patrol, I reckon he'd a got away, too. He put up a real wacko fight; took five of them to get the manacles on.”

So saying, he removed Frank's heavy chains and pushed him roughly through the front gate; he stumbled against Paddy, and shrank away as if the contact stung.

The children were skulking by the side of the house twenty feet beyond the adults, watching and waiting. Bob, Jack and Hughie stood stiffly, hoping Frank would put up another fight; Stuart just looked on quietly, from out of his peaceful, sympathetic little soul; Meggie held her hands to her cheeks, pushing and kneading at them in an agony of fear that someone meant to hurt Frank.

He turned to look at his mother first, black eyes into grey in a dark and bitter communion which had never been spoken, nor ever was. Paddy's fierce blue gaze beat him down, contemptuous and scathing, as if this was what he had expected, and Frank's downcast lids acknowledged his right to be angry. From that day forward Paddy never spoke to his son beyond common civility. But it was the children Frank found hardest to face, ashamed and embarrassed, the bright bird brought home with the sky unplumbed, wings clipped, song drowned into silence.

Meggie waited until after Fee had done her nightly rounds, then she wriggled through the open window and made off across the backyard. She knew where Frank would be, up in the hay in the barn, safe from prying eyes and his father.

“Frank, Frank, where are you?” she said in a stage whisper as she shuffled into the stilly blackness of the barn, her toes exploring the unknown ground in front of her as sensitively as an animal.

“Over here, Meggie,” came his tired voice, hardly Frank's voice at all, no life or passion to it.

She followed the sound to where he was stretched out in the hay, and snuggled down beside him with her arms as far around his chest as they would reach. “Oh, Frank, I'm so glad you're back,” she said. He groaned, slid down in the straw until he was lower than she, and put his head on her body. Meggie clutched at his thick straight hair, crooning. It was too dark to see her, and the invisible substance of her sympathy undid him. He began to weep, knotting his body into slow twisting rails of pain, his tears soaking her nightgown. Meggie did not weep. Something in her little soul was old enough and woman enough to feel the irresistible, stinging joy of being needed; she sat rocking his head back and forth, back and forth, until his grief expended itself in emptiness.

 

 

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