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Koch completes his image of these enrapturing, terrifying worlds, where his protagonist must
recognise the antagonistic demonic and sacred aspects of the world, of the human soul, and,
therefore, of himself.
From his boyhood home, the farm called Clare, in Tasmania, Mike Langford keeps
memories of the cool valley he loved and of the farm and the old house which he did not. Like
the farm, which has the green hop glades juxtaposed with the dank gully, the farmhouse Clare
has two spirits, one of life with ‘the kitchen, the house’s centre of power and warmth,
controlled by Mike’s mother’ (HW, 25); the other of the ‘dark, old century’, the dim, formal
sitting room, ‘like an empty stage set, waiting for some momentous action to begin. No action
ever did; and Mike and I were not encouraged to go in there’ (HW, 24). The central element of
his memories, however, reach beyond Langford’s immediate experience and into the events
defining the second spirit of Clare. He has dreams of ‘bits of some life a hundred years ago
that he didn’t want to know about’ (HW, 18), about the convicts and the heat, and also about
Black Ghosts, but which all predate the plot of the present novel. What remains are such
details as the forbidden zones on the farm—the hop kiln and the pickers’ huts—and in the
house—the room at the end of the front hall—, which are but scattered pieces of a puzzle.
These zones are much like the closed doors in the dream of Guy Hamilton, delineating
psychological barriers, except that the doors at Clare are just barely, but progressively, opened.
It remains for Ray Barton to return to Clare after news of Langford’s disappearance in
Cambodia, and then to travel to Southeast Asia to collect the pieces of the puzzle and try to put
them together.
12.3.2. The Looking-Glass Barrier Between Two Worlds
The Asian landscape then comes into play, though the elements are similar. The heat
and dust, along with the torrential rains, the mountains and colours are of importance,
especially in defining the two dominant spirits in Asia. These represent the two sides of the
looking-glass—on one side exists the realm of the apparent, real world, and the other is a
reality of dreams and illusion. As in the Alice books, the barrier between these two, normally
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