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terrible is bound to happen. Of course the reason it’s called Sickness Country is because of the natural radioactivity found there. Sacred ground is one thing, uranium mines are another. Since 1950 mining companies have been extracting gold, uranium, palladium, and God knows what else. Australia’s national debt versus poisoned mine water, vanishing animal species, sacred land rights, ancestral myths – it’s already an explosive enough mix. Not to mention all those beautiful rock paintings. Lascaux is nothing in comparison.‘
    Just then Almut came sailing in from the patio, waving a newspaper. She flopped down in a chair without acknowledging Cyril. Nothing ever surprised Almut, not even the fact that you were talking to a centenarian.
    ‘Here, take a look at this! It makes you realise you’re somewhere else! “Clan Elders Sing Aborigine to Death”. I’ve been trying to imagine how they did it. I know that sounds can be used to torture people. I’ve been told that the steady dripping of water in a bucket can drive a person insane. But singing? If it’s anything like what we heard this morning in the museum – that slow drone – it might just do the trick. After all, it drove me nuts too. How you could go on listening to it is beyond me. I could feel the vibrations of those low tones down around my knees. A kind of buzzing.’ She imitated the sound of a drill.
    ‘What’s your friend saying?’ Cyril asked. ‘I love your language, it’s beautiful, but I don’t understand a word.’
    I told him, and he began to laugh.
    Suddenly Almut seemed to see him for the first time. She shot me an enquiring glance and said, ‘Where’d you dig him up? I didn’t know people like that still existed! He looks like something straight out of a movie. Why did he laugh?’
    ‘Sing a person to death,’ Cyril said. ‘It would be nice if one could actually do that. It has an entirely different meaning here, however, though in the end I suppose it boils down to the same thing. It’s what happens when someone is placed outside the community, for whatever reason – for stealing a totem from someone else or breaking another important taboo. He or she is then cast out. The ban itself is sung. Once you’ve been banished, no one in the group is allowed to help you in any way. You might as well be dead. Those are the people you see hanging around the big cities. They’re no longer part of a community.’
    Almut said nothing. She seemed to be disappointed by the story. She stood up. ‘Another illusion down the drain,’ she said. ‘What were you two talking about before I got here?’
    ‘Sleisbeck. Cyril says it isn’t straightforward.’
    She immediately picked up on his name, as if she had heard it a hundred times before.
    ‘Then Cyril ought to tell us how to get there.’
    ‘He says it’s impossible. We should go somewhere else. Ubirr. Kakadu. Nourlangie.’
    The three of us pore over the map. His hand, as he points out the places, looks as if it is made of transparent marble.
    ‘But what do we do about your Sickness Dreaming Place?’
    ‘I’ve been cured already.’

12
    AS WE ARE DRIVING OFF THE NEXT DAY, WE SEE HIM standing on the patio. Our Japanese clunker makes a God-awful noise, but we are in high spirits. Almut sings half the repertoire of Maria Bethania. From time to time a road train sweeps us to the side while the drivers laugh and shout and make obscene gestures. It is October, so the rainy season, known here as ‘the Wet’, has begun, though the big rainstorms are not due until later. After twenty-five miles, we turn left in the direction of Arnhem Land. Almut chants the names: Humpty Doo, Annaburro, Wildman Lagoon. Somewhere we are supposed to choose between Jabiru and Ja Ja, but I can’t find the turning on the map, and then the road fizzles out into a red track and the track becomes an endless repetition of itself, with the dread and silent forest all around us.
    We get out of the vehicle beside a