Fear Drive My Feet (18 page)

When we reached Bawan two days later the tultul was waiting for us at the outskirts
of the village. With an apprehensive glance up the track that led to my house he
drew me nervously aside.

‘Master, this-fella police-boy, name belong 'im Buka, 'em 'e long-long finish. Me-fella
fright too much long 'en.'

He was telling me that Buka had gone mad, and went on to explain that he was rampaging
round the countryside, stark naked, brandishing rifle and bayonet, threatening to
rape all the women and shoot all the men. The tultul said that Buka had not actually
molested anyone yet, but the people were all too scared to leave their houses, and
no gardening had been done for days.

Watute stepped forward as the tultul finished speaking.

‘It's the full moon, master,' he said. ‘It's happened before, but he's never harmed
anyone yet.'

The tultul was watching me anxiously, and I was vaguely conscious of other scared
faces peering round the corners of the houses, so I said in a firm and confident
voice that Buka would be kept under control, and we moved on to the house. I had
not the faintest idea of how we would deal with the situation, and when I caught
sight of Buka I was really frightened. He was squatting naked by the fire at the
end of the house-police, crooning a senseless, monotonous tune. His usually fat and
jovial face seemed wasted and sullen, and his eyes were dull and empty. He took no
notice whatever when we spoke, so Watute climbed up beside him and quietly grabbed
his rifle and bayonet and handed them down to me. Then we went into my house to consider
what to do.

Watute reckoned that Buka would soon be himself
again, for in the past the attacks
had seldom lasted longer than a couple of days. Disarmed, Buka was now much less
dangerous, so I accepted Watute's suggestion that he and Dinkila should take it in
turns to watch him, and I told them to call me instantly if he attempted to leave
the house or wander down to the village. We hid the rifle in the thatching of the
roof, and Watute returned to the house-police while Dinkila prepared my tea.

I was filling an after-dinner pipe by the fire when soft footsteps padded across
the veranda. A quiet voice at the doorway said, ‘Master!' The tultul had pushed aside
the canvas cover of the door and stepped inside.

‘What is it, tultul?' I asked.

‘Master, one-fella piccaninny, 'em 'e sick too much. Papa belong 'en like you come
lookim.'

This was the first time they had asked me to see a sick person outside the usual
morning ‘visiting-hours'. I picked up the medical kit and followed the tultul out
into the cold night and down the track to the village. He led me to a small house
near the edge of the cliff, and helped me through the tiny doorway. The hut, its
timbers and grass roof smoke-blackened and glazed, was so hot that I could hardly
breathe. The smouldering fire in the middle of the floor gave off a little light
and a lot of smoke, and I could see the sick child's mother and father squatting
in the shadows by the back wall. When the fire blazed up a little I saw the hopeless
look on their faces.

The child, a boy about eight years old, lay stretched out naked on the rough floor
near the fire. His head was resting on the lap of a hideous old woman – probably
the grandmother, I thought, shuddering at the sight of her. She too was almost naked,
and her whole body was covered with a grey, scaly skin disease. One breast had shrivelled
almost to nothing, while the other hung, skinny and straplike, to her navel. Her
head was shaved. From
time to time, through shrunken toothless lips, she mumbled,
dribbling and idiotic. As I stooped to look at the child I glanced up and saw her
glinting old eyes flash hatred. Then she stared straight ahead and ignored me.

The child's pathetic, skinny body was rigid, the stick-like limbs immovable. The
eyes were turned up so that only the whites showed – and they were not really white,
but a muddy bluish colour. When I touched the eyeballs there was no more reaction
than if I had pressed my finger on a marble. His pulse was so feeble that for a while
I could not detect it, and thought he was dead already. The tultul leant forward
and picked up a piece of wood from the fire. He blew gently on it till it flamed,
and then held it close to the child's head so that I could see better. Death was
already in the little black face, I thought, and put the glowing stick back on the
fire.

I could not treat a disease I was unable to diagnose, and anyhow I felt certain that
the child was beyond help. No one spoke. As I squeezed out the doorway the mother
and father looked bewildered, and the old woman followed me with her eyes, detesting
my interference. I felt angry at my own helplessness.

The cool air outside was like a cleansing bath after the murky stink of the little
hut where death was waiting just a few minutes longer. In his quiet, calm voice the
tultul thanked me for coming. The child's father would be grateful too, he said,
though unwilling to say so in front of that terrible old woman.

I walked slowly back to my house and raked the fire together. Life is bloody tough
for these people, I thought, as I stared into the coals. They were naked both bodily
and morally, victims of every cruel and senseless whim of fate and nature. But not
quite naked, perhaps, when one recalled their gentle, stoic patience. The cloak of
their
philosophy was probably no more threadbare than the scientific cloak in which
civilized people have tried to shroud themselves for the last half-century.

A piercing, terrible wail shivered through the air from the village. It was like
a dog howling, but infinitely tragic. The child was dead. I went to the door and
looked out. Little points of light moved in the blackness where the village was,
as people came out of their houses holding torches. The wailing became general, taken
up, swelling and fading, by every voice in the community. Sometimes low and moaning,
sometimes shrill and harsh, it went on all night.

Tossing wakeful on my bed-sail, I remembered Jock's idea of trying to visit the Chinese
prisoners in the compound behind Lae. These people would have on-the-spot news of
the Japs' recent landing of reinforcements, and perhaps some knowledge of how they
intended to employ them.

The more I thought about it, the more exciting the idea became. I decided not to
wait for Jock's return, but to go alone next morning. To the sound of the weird wailing
down the hill, and with one ear cocked for any sound of trouble from Buka, I sat
all night over my maps and notes of the country between Bawan and Lae, trying to
work out the safest approach and to devise escape-routes in case we were discovered.

I was still making notes and sketches when dawn showed the grey outline of the doorway.
As I went outside to call Dinkila, a loud, hollow banging echoed from the village. The
men were knocking together a coffin from rough hand-hewn planks, to bury the little
boy.

Buka seemed sane again – but exhausted, like a man who has just been on a hectic
drinking-jag. He had no recollection of what he had done or said, and seemed mildly
surprised to see us all. I decided to leave him in camp and to take only Watute and
Dinkila down to the Chinese camp.

The three of us set out about eight o'clock, carrying blankets, a little food, trade
goods, and a tiny hurricane-lamp. We had our usual arms, and our pockets were stuffed
with hand-grenades. I told the tultul of Bawan that we were merely doing a routine
tour of the villages and would be away two or three days. To make sure that gossip
could not precede us, I did not tell even Watute and Dinkila our real destination
until we were well clear of Bawan. Dinkila's eyes lit up at the prospect of excitement,
but Watute merely gave his queer tight little half-grin and said nothing.

‘Did you know where we were going?' I asked.

‘I guessed,' he said. ‘After all, we've got all these hand-grenades, and you've got
those maps and papers. I realized it wasn't going to be just routine stuff.'

We walked fast all day, over ridges and valleys, drenched alternately by sweat and
icy river water. We did not stop to eat, for safety depended on speed – to get in
and out again before unfriendly natives could warn the Japs. Evening found us in
a little village called Lambaip, near the edge of the foothills behind Lae. The few
people in the village greeted us quietly, showing neither hostility nor enthusiasm.
They gave us some vegetables to eat, and pointed out an empty house where we could
sleep.

We were to be on the track by four o'clock next day, so I divided the night into
three-hour watches – mine from seven o'clock to ten, Watute's till one o'clock, and
Dinkila's till four.

Among the Lambaip kanakas Dinkila found an old friend with whom he had worked in
Lae. The two of them talked and laughed so loudly at bawdy peacetime recollections
that in the end I yelled at them to shut up, so that I could go to sleep. Dinkila
came sheepishly to the door, leading his friend.

‘Master, this friend of mine will come with us tomorrow, if you like,' he said. ‘He
knows the language of all the villages on our way.'

I held the little hurricane-lamp up. The boy was young and merry-faced like Dinkila,
and was nodding his head in energetic agreement with the proposal.

‘All right – it's a good idea,' I said. ‘Now, for God's sake let me get some sleep,
and go to sleep yourselves!'

Next morning before starting we gathered every scrap of wrapping paper from the army
biscuits and burnt it, and carefully buried the bully-beef tins. If any of the natives
told the Japs we had been here, we were determined that there would be no scrap
of evidence. I even packed my boots into the bed-roll and walked barefoot, for the
print of an Australian army boot, with its distinctive horseshoe heel-plate, would
have been certain proof that we had passed along the track.

The ground was rough, and my feet were soon covered in cuts. As I watched Watute's
leathery feet padding along in front of me I wondered how long it would take for
my soles to become as tough as his.

We walked rapidly, continually downhill, roughly following the course of the Busu
River towards Lae. It became very hot after the sun rose, for we had left the high
country behind and were approaching the coast. About midday we passed a huge bomb-crater
in the jungle on a nearby hillside. Probably the bomb had been jettisoned by a lost
or damaged aircraft.

A few moments later we reached the large village of Musom, about fourteen miles from
Lae. Natives who had been lounging about sprang to their feet in angry astonishment
as we strode into the centre of the village. An uproar broke out as men rushed from
the houses waving pig-spears and bows and arrows, and shouting. I slipped
the safety
catch off my rifle, and saw Watute do the same, and we backed up against a large
house so that nobody could sneak in behind us, while we waited for the row to subside.
Dinkila's friend from Lambaip stood close by, translating freely as the kanakas yelled
and gesticulated. We gathered that some of the people were for killing us off at
once, while others were trying to restrain them. The noise died down to a threatening
rumble, and an elderly man stepped sullenly forward.

‘Me luluai,' he announced in a defiant tone, making no attempt to salute.

‘Where's your cap, luluai? And the village book?' I demanded sharply.

‘Hat now book 'e something belong gov'ment belong Australia,' he said bluntly, and
went on to explain that cap and book had both been destroyed, and any Australian
who wanted to go on living had better keep clear of his village. His speech received
an ugly growl of approval from the crowd. They had the numbers to shoot us down quite
easily, even if it cost them a few casualties. Probably, however, we would be picked
off by bowmen hidden in the bush that fringed the village.

Bluff seemed our only hope.

‘You've seen that hole the bomb made on the hillside up there, haven't you, luluai?'
I asked.

He grunted a surly assent.

‘That was caused by just a single bomb,' I went on evenly, trying to infuse a note
of menace into my voice, to cover up very genuine fear. ‘Just one bomb cut down all
those trees and made that enormous hole.'

The crowd was quiet now, listening intently.

Jumping suddenly forward I stuck my face up close to the luluai's face, shouting
at the top of my voice, ‘You'd better look out, luluai! My friends with all those
aero
planes know where we are now! If anything happens to us they'll come over and
drop hundreds of bombs, all over the place!'

As the luluai fell back a step, I took a step forward, still shouting at him. ‘Bombs
everywhere! No gardens, no houses, no women, no children, no luluai either!' I went
on, piling horror on horror.

The luluai melted back into the crowd, but I called him out by himself again, and
painted in the full ghastly details of the imaginary air raid. As the crowd began
looking upwards apprehensively, as though fearing vengeance from the skies at any
moment, I thought of the parson who used sometimes to add a marginal note to the
draft of his sermon: Shout like hell here – argument very weak. That parson apparently
understood an audience.

Before long most of the kanakas had put their weapons down and moved to the other
end of the village, where they stood murmuring uneasily. The luluai was reduced to
a state of unwilling civility.

We asked him about the movements of the Japs.

‘I suppose an ignorant old man like you thinks the Japanese are the government now?'
I said.

‘Master, me no lookim Japan. Me-fella no savvy long Japan.'

‘ 'Em 'e gammon, master,' Watute said quickly at my elbow. ‘Look at these things
I found in the houses.'