Free Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan Page A

and abandoned their normal solemnity and started to point and chatter to one another. As the storm above grew in ferocity, as thunder roared and rain crashed upon the roof in sheets, the bleeding became more pronounced, until the walls appeared to be haemorrhaging. Wherever the congregation of mourners chose to look there was blood. Occasional droplets fell onto the burning candles in the brass stand that sat up against the wall to the right of the altar. Blood began to run onto the Stations of the Cross. It dripped over the figure of Our Blessed Lady, giving to the Virgin Mother a ghoulish aspect as a rill of blood ran round her cheek to her mouth, from where it dribbled down onto her open palm.
    But the most miraculous sight was that of the large crucifix behind the altar. At first a small amount of blood had merely - and, it had seemed, solemnly and respectfully - run onto Our Saviour’s nailed right hand, whence it gently fell to the floor, the effect melancholic and in keeping with the sublime and transformed suffering portrayed in the sculpture. But then, as the storm grew wilder, the blood spilled over His head and flooded over His body, until the crucifix seemed awash with blood. As it ran all over the body of Our Lord upon the cross, the blood gave to the previously inert figure a most immediate and horrifying sense of physical agony. Sobs of shock and fear ran through the mourners and a few scurried along the aisles and left, too frightened to stay. But most remained, transfixed by the spectacle, their fear out-weighed by their wonder. And when at last the rain stopped and the bleeding subsided to occasional drops and the priest held out his arms and said, ‘Let us pray,’ most believed they had witnessed a miracle in keeping with Rose’s Old Testament religion. Those who later heard that the blood was actually the result of incomplete restoration work on the roof were not inclined to believe it. The story of roof repairmen, immediately prior to an unexpected storm, abandoning wet red paint to run in the rain through unplugged gaps in the roof had little chance against a miracle. While one story was repeated and grew in the telling from a small seed to a large tree of tales, until half the town swore that they had been at the funeral and had seen the Lord bleed, the other story went astray, languished and soon was heard no more, for none wanted to know it.
    There were two unforeseen consequences of Eileen’s spectacular funeral. One was that the cathedral became something of a local pilgrimage point, and some miracles were ascribed to its special powers. The church authorities were uneasy about its new status, but were unable to publicly say a great deal against it. The other was that Eileen, in her death, was elevated to the position of something of a local saint, which was an exaggeration of her virtues, for she was on occasion bad tempered and vicious, and invariably hard and mean. But whereas in life she had by nature been contrary and always contradicted anyone and everyone, in death she was silent upon the virtues attributed to her, and so the stories of her goodness and charity grew. These amused Boy, who remembered how parsimonious she had been with food and how silly she could be when frightened.
    When the bushfires had ringed Richmond in that year of fires, 1934, she had gathered as many local children as she could find inside her home and solemnly told them that the end of the world was nigh. Outside, the day was ferociously hot and gale-force winds whipped small sparks into raging infernos in the tinder-dry bush and pasture. As the fires burnt over an ever greater area of land, the sky filled with ash and the town fell under a pall of smoke so dense that, were it not for shafts of late-afternoon light shining underneath the heavy dark voids of ash, it would have seemed as if it were night. Inside the house Eileen shut all the doors and windows, and in the stifling stillness made the