Death of a River Guide Read Online Free Page A

nosed. Strange. And unsettling. Vulnerability and doomed pride and very large nostrils.
    I watch in fascination as this Aljaz Cosini squats down, puts his hands in the creek, lays his body near parallel with the ground, then slowly lowers himself, taking the weight upon his arms as though he is beginning a pushup. His head disappears into the river. Beneath the water’s surface Aljaz opens his eyes and looks at the shiny brown and gold river pebbles beneath him. The light falls through the water as it does through the air, in shafts created by openings in the all-encompassing rainforest, falling upon the rocks beneath to give the entire river its red-gold glow. As he looks he opens his mouth and takes a draught of river water into his mouth and lets it feel its cool way down his throat. I watch him think that no water tastes as good as water drunk like this. I watch him wonder what it would feel like to be part of the river. As his thin red hair floats back and forth like kelp in the slow current of the shallows, I watch him think that perhaps it would feel like this. Then think, or perhaps it wouldn’t feel like anything at all. Then think perhaps this is what he likes best about being down the Franklin, the ditch, as the guides call it. The way the mountains and the rivers and the rainforest care nothing for him. They feel him to be neither part of them nor separate from them, neither want him to be there nor want him to go, neither love nor hate him, neither envy nor disparage his efforts, see him neither as good nor bad. They have no more opinion of him than of a fallen stick or an entire river. He feels naked, without need, without desire. He feels enclosed by the walls of the mountains and the rainforest. He feels, for the first time in such a long time, good. Perhaps this is what death is, he thinks. A peace at the heart of an emptiness.
    Shush, shush, shush . The large shiny red pontoons of the raft they will use to navigate the river begin to inflate as the doctor from Adelaide with the expensive purple polar-fleece jacket and the white legs like an emu pushes the foot pump up and down.
    Shush, shush, shush . I watch myself encouraging him in his labours and revelling in my insincerity. ‘Great job, Rickie, great job. That’s the way.’ It’s not the way, but Aljaz knows it is better that someone else does some of the work than he do it all, even if they do it badly. ‘Stick with it, Rickie.’ I watch Rickie give a purposeful smile, watch him feel wanted and needed and appreciated.
    â€˜To finally be here at the Franklin River,’ shush, shush, shush , ‘you don’t know how much it means,’ says Rickie. Shush, shush, shush .
    â€˜A stiff back, bad food, and weak bowels, that’s what it means,’ says Aljaz, and I see that this Aljaz is something of a comedian, that he sees his role as much one of entertaining as of guiding. I see that his customary shyness finds a cover in theatrical exaggeration.
    I watch as this Aljaz slowly looks up from the river at the bush that forms around its banks and I watch him smile. I know what he is thinking at this precise moment: he is happy to be back at last upon the river, back upon the lousy leech-ridden ditch. Around him, the myrtles and sassafras and native laurels and leatherwoods mass in walls of seemingly impenetrable rainforest, and in front of him flows the tea-coloured water of the river, daily bronzing and gilding the river rock a little further.
    I know he is smiling at the punters, who, despite their protestations to the contrary, despite their assertions that this is the most beautiful country, are already feeling a growing unease with this weird alien environment that seems so alike yet so dissimilar to the wilderness calendars that adorn their lounge-rooms and offices. It smells strongly of an acrid, fecund earth, and its temperate humidity weighs upon them like a straitjacket of the senses. Wherever they turn