Judith Wright
The Weeping Fig
Mr.John Condon drew up his chair now,and made an effort at conversation.Though it
was really too hot to try to keep up this tea-party foolishness.
“ Have you lived there always,Mrs.Hastings?”
“ Oh goodness,no.Harold came here as manager three years ago;that was before we
married.But we hope for a city job,as soon as we can find a house – so difficult,you know.Of
course,the pay here is quite good,I have to admit that.But to be seventy miles from the nearest town … .And frankly,Mr.Condon.I don’t feel myself cut out for country life.I have
a phrase for this kind of country – the abomination of desolation.Don’t you think that’s
appropriate?”
He found the right formula in answer,and went on,” Who really owns this place,then?”
“ Oh,it’s run by a company.I don’t know how long they’ve owned it.They make something out of the place.But they only come in the cool season.”
“ You don’t know, then,whether any of the original buildings are still standing?”
“ Well,I don’t.But Bertha might.She’s the cook-house-keeper here,you know.Bertha
has never left the station.” Bertha,”she called to the dim back regions beyond the side veranda.” Come here a minute.”
There was a pause;then the door leading off the veranda behind him was opened.
Bertha advanced,any age over forty,deeply coffee-coloured,bare-footed and hideously dressed;she half-hopped,half-limped on a withered leg.
That was it,he realized suddenly.A Condon had failed here,as he himself had failed.
And that old failure of Stephen Condon’s had somehow linked itself in his mind with his
own.So this obstinately foolish expedition of his led to no renewal of pride in him.The land-
scape defeated him,as it had defeated old Stephen.
And Bertha,too,ignored him.” Yes,missus?” “ This gentleman,Mr.Condon,would like to ask you about the old buildings here.” Bertha waited.
“ I was just asking Mrs.Hastings whether any of the original buildings – the first that were put up on the place – are still standing.”
Bertha raised a sinewy arm.” Out there,by the big green tree,you see?’
“ Yes.”
“ That was the old homestead,my father tell me years ago.Made of split slabs.Roof
used to be bark,now they got tin on it.We use that one for store – old timber,paint,that kind
of thng.Should have pulled it down;nearly falling now.”
“ Did your father know – did he ever mention the name of the man who built it?The
name of Condon?”
Bertha looked vague,uninhabited.” No,never said.”
Condon humbly thanked Bertha.But he would like to look at that hut,just the same,
before he went.
“ Tell me,” Mrs.Hastings turned to him with a pallid show of interest,” how long ago
were your people here?”
“ My great-grandfather left here in eighteen-sixty-five.”
“ Good heavens,” Mrs.Hastings murmured,” would you like to go and look at the shed,perhaps?”
Condon rose with relief.” Yes,I should like to look at it,thank you.I shall have to be
going shortly,though.My appointment in Hambleton is for this evening.”
“ Please make the place your own,” Mrs.Hastings invited.Her eyes said plainly that
this chat had been a sore disappointment.
Condon made his way down the side steps and turned towards the old building.As he left the shade of the roof,heat took him by the shoulders and dry air burnt his lungs.Novem-
ber was no month to travel in north-western Queensland.It was the name of the town that
had arrested his attention – Hambleton.So it still existed,he had thought,that name that had come into the old diary,written in a rusty pale ink like dried blood.Then the places were real.
He would go and see.
Ellen and the two children moved into the house yesterday.A great change from the wagon and we are rejoicing accordingly.All now looks fair for our new venture,and the cattle so far doing well.
Inside,the hut was shelved and stacked with all the cast-off and useless material accumulated over the years.He looked at the window-space,nailed up with timber.There Ellen (he did not think of her as his own great-grandmother) had sat and worked;had endured her private lonelinesses,enjoyed her brief pleasures.Ellen,the Devonshire girl,seventeen when
she married,twenty when she came here,twenty-two when she died – who had loved birds and fed them with scanty crumbs,who had hated snakes and lost her daughter by one.
But the heat in the little room drove him back to the door.It was inhuman,that heat,the climate of another world.
Pioneers,oh pioneers!A lot of rot was talked about them.Had they ,indeed,been different?Was there something in old Stephen – some faith,some vitality – that Mrs.Hastings
And he,John Condon,had never known?Nonsense to ask.One could know no more than the diary said.
And what did it say,of the life lived in the crazy hut that sagged beside him? Death,death,and again death;hope revived and lost again;loneliness,hard work,semi-starvation;and at last the handwriting that was unrecognizable and conformed to no ruled lines.My wife is dead.No name,no details,and nothing more said;the diary ended.
It was by chance he had found out the rest,down in the hot northern port;in the crumbling earliest file of an old newspaper.So Stephen Condon had left his venture,nothing
but graves behind him.One son,the eldest child,remained;he had ridden with the boy in a pack-saddle,those three hundred miles,to the northern port,and died there.
Of what had happened after that,John Condon had no idea.Only the diary remained,
washed up on the shore of his father’s death,unexplained among old papers.
He leant giddly against the door-post,and looked round for shade.He looked up and
saw the dark-green depth of swaying leaves,the cool cave of branches.A weeping fig-tree.
* * *
Today Ellen planted the Port Jackson Fig.She has kept it alive in a crock all the way in the wagon,I must say almost miraculously.We plan for our old age a bench and table under it,though it is now just one foot in height.It will make a splendid shade in the garden.
* * *
A black and bitter day for us.Today we buried little Jane under the fig-tree.Ellen says
she cannot bear to have her any farther from the house.
* * *
Ellen last night bore a son,which died at birth.She is grief-stricken and very weak.The child is buried near little Jane.One son remained to us … .
A sentimental journey.A crazy journey.Yet he could not help feeling a strange triumph.” Well,” he said to himself,hardly knowing why,” That was worth coming for.”
Yes,that tree.It was an achievement of some kind.It was huge,alive,green,in that country of stunted greys.And in it,he told himself,those dead Condons must have some part;their red blood had fed its green.It was taller than anything he could see.The Condons
and the landscape reconciled in it,failure and hopelessness forgotten.Something sprang up in
himself;here was a root,here was something he had needed.He had got what he had come for.
Pre-reading.
1.Read the title of the story.What do you think,will the story be a happy or a sad one?
Why?
2.What do you know about fig-trees?
3.Have you ever eaten figs?Are they tasty?
Lexis:
to weep –плакать,рыдать venture –рискованное предприятие
to be cut out –подходить cast-off -выброшенные
the abomination of desolation – to endure –терпеть,выносить
мерзость запустения scanty -скудные
appropriate –подходящий crumbs -крошки
hideously –отвратительно rot=nonsense
to limp –хромать faith =belief
withered –высохшая vitality=ability to live
to link=to connect to sag -оседать
renewal –возобновление to revive=to come to life
obstinately –упрямо pack-saddle –собачья упряжка
sinewy –мускулистая to lean -опираться
homestead –усадьба door-post –косяк двери
slab –плита(строительная) depth – n;deep – adj.
bark –кора to sway -качаться
vague =indefinitely cave -пещера
pallid –бледный crock –фаянсовый горшок
relief –облегчение to bear=to stand
heat –жара,зной grief-stricken –убитая горем
lungs –лёгкие to reconcile –находить примирение
diary –дневник root –корень
rusty –ржавый
to rejoice –радоваться
Cultural notes: the weeping fig – плакучая смоковница,красивое дерево с густой
кроной,устойчивое к заморозкам и засухе .
While-reading.
1.Write out the sentences for the description of the weeping fig.
2.Finish the following statements:
1) The main character of the story is … .
2) Mrs.Hastings’s husband was a … .
3) The Hastings family’s homestead was … from the nearest town.
4) Mrs.Hastings called that place … .
5) Bertha told John Condon about … .
6) Mr.John Condon wanted to see … .
7) Ellen Condon’s life there was … .
8) Stephen Condon,John’s great-grandfather, wrote a … about his family’s life there.
9) Ellen Condon,John’s great-grandmother planted … .
10) Two of the Condons children … .
11) Ellen’s weeping fig did not make a splendid shade only, it also gave John … .
Post-reading.
1.Answer the questions:
1) Why did Mr.Condon come to the Hastings’ place?
2) Did he see his great-grandfather’s hut?
3) What was life of Australian pioneers like in eighteen-sixties?
4) Who planted the weeping fig near the hut?
5) What did the tree look like?
6) What did the weeping fig mean to John Condon?Why?
7) Had Mr.Condon got what he had come for?What was it?
2.Describe the weeping fig growing at the homestead.