‘We can’t have that, old man,’ I said. ‘Got to think of the future.’
‘I do think of it,’ he said. ‘But lately—I’m beginning to wonder if Osana’s winning.’
‘There’s a very simple solution,’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t there be an accident? With a revolver, for instance.’
He turned away with a sort of laugh that he had at times, very uninfectious. ‘Ah, you old fossil,’ he said. ‘The days of the desperadoes are over. I think, Mak, it’s time we left. Thanks for having us. We’ll be back.’
His manner didn’t fit with his words. His voice had gone suddenly nervy and high, and as he shook hands with me his face was as it had been on the night before, strained with the attempt to find some humour in himself.
‘Cawdor,’ I said, ‘what’s the matter?’
‘Let me tell you something funny,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t shoot Osana. Do you know why? Because they took my revolver away from me and locked it up in the office safe. You see, I’ve got friends.’
‘You need friends,’ I said, looking at his eyes.
‘Not all that much,’ he said. But he seemed to press my hand before dropping it, and that was rather touching and not like the man. I remember him very clearly at that moment, against the glow of the frangipani thicket. I remember thinking, as he walked away, that when a man has been humiliated too often, which of course is a matter of his own tolerance, then the place where it shows itself is in the shoulders.
First of all in the line there was Saliba.
On her head she had the typewriter, a huge old office model, a jalopy of a machine. It moved through the air in a straight line, without a wobble. On the five miles to Wayouyo she never raised a hand.
Once upon a time the MacDonnell’s vehicles used to travel that path: a horse and cart in the early days, then a string of horseless carriages, all dead after the first breakdown. It is a highway of grass. Once a month the villagers still turn out to mow it, and if anyone asked them why, they would say: ‘It is the custom of Kailuana.’
After the palms had been left behind, we moved into the smell of the grass and the hot leaves of the scrub in the fallow gardens. The scrub was flowering then with vincas and painted-lady and little convolvulus, purple and pink. Everywhere, cropping out of the grass on the thin brown soil, boulders of coral glared in the white light. The sky was hazing over, and no wind blew that day. It was sultry. Alistair’s shirt was glued to his back with sweat and his skin shone through it.
And my shirt and my skin too. In the long line behind they were talking about me, and I could have understood, if I’d concentrated, from the few words I knew. But I wouldn’t, I shut my mind, I thought about anything, the weather, plants, birds, rather than hear them. But about her, most of all, because of her long brown back ahead of me, tapering to the pandanus-leaf waistband of her flaring red skirt.
But it’s hard, hard to be deaf when you want to be, and he knew the language. I thought of all the weeks I had walked behind him, just like that, with that whisper all around us, that meant nothing to me:
La kwava i paek’.
Wayouyo is a pretty place, and I would live there if I did not live with Naibusi. It is old and shady and cool, and when you are there you know that people have been in that village many many years, but in Misa Makadoneli’s village you know that it is new, although it is falling down. When you come to Wayouyo the path is smoother with people’s feet, and the old palms come together over the path, and between the palms are hibiscus bushes planted in a line. At the end of the path is the grove that surrounds Wayouyo, very thick and very dark, and always blue in its darkest places with smoke from the cooking fires. The areca-palms wave and look spiky against the sky, higher than any other trees in the grove, and from a long way away you can hear the women and the children calling, and sometimes a man going
Ulululu
! from the gardens.
But before we came into the shade of the grove Alistea called out: ‘Salib’,’ and I turned and saw him pointing, and Timi behind him, looking at me, with his eyes bright blue in his red face.
‘What?’ I said.
‘To the resthouse, Salib’,’ Alistea said. ‘We will leave these things.’
So I took the little path that he pointed to, between hibiscus and palms.
‘Saliba,’ Alistea said after me, ‘you call.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you call. Because you are a man.’
‘E, truly, you are a too shrinking woman,’ said Alistea. And he put his hands around his mouth and called, just like a black man: ‘
Ulululu
!
Gu’umenti bi ma
!’
All the men behind us were laughing at that, and other men that we could not see began to shout back, very excited. And suddenly I was at the end of the path and in the clearing, which was full of people, before the resthouse.
You would have thought, from the work of those men, that the people of Wayouyo loved the Government like a new wife, they had done such things to make the Government’s house beautiful. No Dimdim ever stayed at the resthouse before Alistea’s time, it was better for Dimdims in Misa Makadoneli’s house, and besides, Misa Makadoneli liked them to be where he could see them. So when Alistea came the first time to Wayouyo the resthouse was falling down, and the Wayouyo people were ashamed. That is what Dipapa said, he said: ‘I am ashamed.’ And he was more ashamed because Alistea said: ‘O, Dipapa, it is nothing, next time I will sleep in a tree.’
When the Wayouyo people heard that the
Igau
had come again they went to the clearing, every one of them, and began to work. They mowed that whole clearing with their bushknives till the grass was like a mat, and thatched the roof again, and in the sleepingroom built two beds, very beautifully, with vines and cane. All round the veranda they hung branches of bananas as a present for the Dimdims, and made a yam-house for them with yams in it, and a new small-house which was strewed with bwita flowers and sulumwoya so that it would smell sweet. They put mats on the floor, but not too many, because everyone wanted to watch the Dimdims through the cracks between the planks. On the wall they hung a picture of the Kuwini that was given to Dipapa when he went to Port Moresby to speak with the Kuwini’s husband, and in front of the house they put a very tall pole buried deep in the ground.
As I came into the clearing people were running in all directions, and you could not tell what was happening or what would happen next. Three or four men were blowing conches, and a lot more men were shouting, and women and children were laughing and exclaiming everywhere. Then I saw that in their running about they were making themselves into two lines. Suddenly it was finished, and they stood with their faces turned towards us, waiting, like a road for the Dimdims to walk along.
At the end of the two lines, in front of the pole, two men were standing as straight as they could stand, and each of them had one hand up to his forehead and the other hand at his side. One man was Boitoku, the old VC, and the second man was Benoni. They stood stiff like stones, staring under their hands at the Dimdims.
Behind me I heard Osana laughing, and then Alistea said: ‘Osana, shut up.’
‘Taubada,’ I said, ‘I do not understand this. What do you want me to do?’
‘Wait a little,’ Alistea said. ‘Follow Misa Dolu’udi.’ Then he and Timi walked past me, and into the road of the people.
When they saw them coming, two men on each side of Boitoku and Benoni lifted their conches to their mouths and blew long notes, and at the same time a little boy began to climb the pole behind them. He climbed very fast, and when he was near the top he took a piece of cloth out of his belt and fastened it to the pole. It was somebody’s rami, bright red and new, and it flapped and floated in the sky, very fine.
Osana was laughing near my back. ‘You look,’ he said to the policemen, ‘the flag of Dipapa. O, Biyu, tomorrow we will be saluting your shirt.’
I felt angry with Osana for speaking like that and mocking Benoni, and said: ‘Fuck your mother, Osana.’
‘Okay, sinabada,’ Osana said, and the three policemen laughed.
‘You know nothing,’ I said. ‘You have not been to Manus. You do not understand the customs of the Navy, not like Benoni.’
Osana said to the policemen: ‘Benoni,’ and I heard him spit.
Suddenly Biyu cried out, very loud. ‘O!’ he cried. ‘Benoni-O! He will fall! The child will fall!’ And all the people who had been standing so still and neat, like a hedge, watching Alistea and Timi walk between them, looked up and began to call, until after a second there were no more lines, there was only like an ants’-nest of people, rushing about and holding their arms to the sky, while the pole with the boy sliding down it leaned and fell over on top of them.
But Timi pushed through them and reached up. He reached over all the people and picked the boy off the pole like a beetle. When the pole fell among the other men, the boy was still high in the sky, at the end of Timi’s arms.
‘Salib’,’ said Osana, laughing, ‘you are right, I do not understand the customs of the Navy. Why do they lower the flag at midday? I think it must be a mad place, Manus.’
‘O, enough, Osana,’ I said, feeling sad for Benoni, who had worked hard to make a great welcome for the Dimdims, like they would have in their own home.
Timi was still holding the little boy up in the air. When the pole was falling the boy had been brave, but as soon as he looked down and saw the face of a Dimdim, with big teeth, he began to moan a little and call for his father. But his father was laughing, and so he laughed too, and was calling to people from out of the sky. ‘E, you talk gammon,’ he was saying. ‘I do not think he is a cannibal. I think he is my friend. Besides, he will not eat me raw.’
Misa Kodo turned round among the people and looked at me over their heads. He was hot, but he was smiling, and he said to me: ‘O, Benoni, how are you?’
‘I am well, taubada,’ I said, and felt pleased because he had not forgotten me.
‘They are very fine, all these doings,’ he said. ‘The house is very fine. O, Boitoku, how are you? Where is Kailusa? Kailus’, tell the people what to do with our somethings. And give Osana some tobacco. Saliba, you help in the house. Now we will go with Benoni to speak with Dipapa. Boitoku, you lead the way.’
Old Boitoku, the VC, was smiling right round his head, and began to march across the clearing like a soldier, very important, sometimes stopping to make sure that we were following. And Misa Kodo and I walked side by side, with the young Dimdim and Osana behind.
‘Taubada,’ I said, ‘what is the name of your companion?’
‘Misa Dolu’udi,’ said Misa Kodo. ‘His years are nineteen. Now you are going to say: “
Wa
! He is very big”.’
‘It is true,’ I said. ‘That is what I thought when I saw him first, by the beach.’
‘You were at the beach?’ he said.
‘E,’ I said, ‘and you did not speak to me or see me.’
‘Idiot,’ he said, ‘you did not call. I cannot see everybody. There are so many, many people.’
Then he looked at my face, and saw that I did not like the way he spoke, and he laughed. ‘I talk gammon,’ he said. ‘You are my friend, Benoni, from before. Shall we go fishing by and by, we three? On the sea there are not so many people.’
‘Yes, good,’ I said. ‘Because, taubada, I want to talk, I want to ask for something.’
‘E,’ he said quietly, sighing, and when I looked at him he was sad.
‘What, taubada?’ I said.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Only that—everywhere it is: “I want, I ask”. Well, it is my work,’ he said. And so we walked on across the clearing and into the grove of my uncle’s part of the village, not speaking any more.
When we came through the grove of huge old shade-trees and areca-palms to the place where the whole circle suddenly spreads out ahead, what I saw first was the famous yam-house, like a tower at the heart of the hamlet. The great logs of it, grooved and locked at the corners, were thick as palm-trunks and silvery-grey with age. But the thatch was new, and the old designs of dolphins on the gable-boards had been retouched with black and white and red. And strings of cowries were hung from them, so many that some had to be dangled from frayed rods sticking out from the eaves, the marks of a man of tremendous rank. In that setting it looked enormous. But also very peaceful, and pretty, rising out of its own neat lawn, with the palms behind it and a clump of poinsettia nearby blazing against the old cool grey of the wood.
‘Hey,’ I said to Osana, ‘look at that for a house.’
‘It is not a house, taubada,’ he said, condescending. ‘It is a
bwaima
, for Dipapa’s yams. He is very rich.’
While he spoke he was listening to Alistair and Benoni and the old VC, who were pointing at the bwaima and talking about it.
‘What are they saying?’ I said.
‘When Mister Cawdor was here before,’ Osana said, ‘the bwaima was all bugger-up, and Dipapa said nobody was allowed to mend it. Now Mister Cawdor saying it look very good, and Boitoku telling him Benoni fix it. And Benoni, he says: “Now my uncle and me, we are very friends.”’
Alistair called to me: ‘Tim, this here is Darkness-of-Evening. So full of yams the light can’t get through the logs. That’s how rich Dipapa is.’
‘Why is he so rich?’ I said.
‘He married well,’ Alistair said, ‘thirteen times.’
He was pointing, and I looked beyond the yam-house to a neat semi-circle of thirteen grey-brown huts, and facing them a big house, built like the resthouse with pandanus leaf walls, but shut like a safe against light and air.
‘The palace,’ Alistair explained. ‘But the old man never entertains there. He eats a meal with each of the wives in turn, and locks himself up in the big house to sleep. It’s sorcery-proof, they say.’
As we walked on, Osana muttered in his democratic way: ‘Ignorance.’
Skirting the poinsettia, we came into the segment of the village that was Dipapa’s special ground. On one hand, the huts of the wives, each faced by its own yam-house; on the other, Dipapa’s mansion, painted with dolphins and hung with shells, like the great bwaima. But at the peak of the roof, instead of rods, it had the propeller of a plane, and the pilot’s seat stood like a throne on the small veranda by the axe-cut door. The door was closed, and there were no windows, and no stilts, either, for a breeze to wander through. The walls rose straight from a flower-bed of sulumwoya plants, with a tidy edging that glinted.