Free Tracks by Robyn Davidson

feeling as we walked together over the hills. It wasn’t until we got to Kate that I realized how hard I had been holding Jenny’s hand. I sat Kate down in a washaway, pointed the rifle at her head, wondering if divine retribution would have the bullet ricochet back at my own, and pulled the trigger. I remember the noise of her hitting the dust with a thud but I must have shut my eyes. I was not expecting the momentary wave of hysteria that swept over me then. Jen practically shouldered me home, made me tea, and then had to leave for work. I was badly shaken. I had never done anything like that before. Never destroyed something that had a personality. I felt like a murderer. The idea of stripping Kate’s hide was unthinkable. It was all I could do not to go back to the carcass and stare, wondering at what I had done. So that was that. No Katie, no trip. Fate again. And all that time and all that money and all that energy, devotion and care, for nothing. Eighteen months had passed down the plug-hole, for nothing.

4
    M Y DEPRESSION OVER THE shooting of Kate was compounded by my escalating terror of Kurt. He seemed so out of control, so close to the edge, that I believed he had the capacity to kill, if not me and Gladdy, then at least my animals. So I had to play his game. Had to let him believe I was no threat — not worth bothering about. He thought Gladdy and I were plotting something, but he didn’t ever say as much; his mind turning over like a mill, machinating ways and means of thwarting whatever plans we were concocting.
    This debilitating fear, this recognition of the full potential of Kurt’s hatred of me, and the knowledge that Kurt could and would hurt me very badly if I displeased him enough, was the catalyst which transformed my vague misery and sense of defeat into an overwhelming reality. The Kurts of this world would always win — there was no standing up to them — no protection from them. With this realization came a collapse. Everything I had been doing or thinking was meaningless, trivial, in the face of the existence of Kurt.
    The fear was like a fungus that slowly grew over me and defeated me in the weeks that followed. I went down down down to that state that I had long since forgotten existed. I would stare for hours out of my kitchen window, unable to act. I would pick up objects, stare at them, turn them over in my hand, then put them down and wander back to the window. I slept too much, I ate too much. Tiredness overwhelmed me. I waited for the sound of a car, a voice — anything. And I tried to shake myself, slap myself, but the energy and strength that I had so taken for granted had leaked out through my fear.
    Yet the strange thing was I snapped out of this melancholy the moment a friend arrived. I tried to tell them about it, but the language to describe such a thing belonged to that feeling, so I joked about it instead. Yet I desperately wanted them to understand. They were evidence that reason and sanity still existed and I clung to them as if I were drowning.
    Kurt went away on holiday and Gladdy decided to leave while the going was good. I was happy for her; she looked better already. But I knew how much I was going to miss her, and I was frightened of being left on my own with her husband. One night I was up staying with her, as often happened these days when Kurt was away, and Katie’s ghost was still inhabiting my room at Basso’s. We had both gone to bed hours before but I could not sleep. I was again overcome by a sense of failure. Not just of the trip but a kind of personal failure — the absolute impossibility of ever winning against brute force and domination. I was worrying it over and over, trying to seek a solution, impossible in that state of mind because of its very nature. And then I thought: of course, the perfect way out — suicide. Now, this was not the ordinary chest-beating, why-are-we-born-to-suffer-and-die syndrome, this was something new. It was rational,