New Guinea Moon

by Kate Constable

  Suddenly she knows she is lost.

  More slowly now, she pushes her way along the track. ‘Robyn? Dr Gregory? Hello?’

  Her voice is thin and wavering; she clamps her mouth shut. Doggedly she walks on. This track must lead somewhere, she tells herself, to the river, or to another village.

  The gold and emerald day is hushed; the beauty of it pierces her. Her heart calms, her feet slow. Sunlight dapples the path. High above the trees, a light plane drones across the sky. It might be Tony, or Andy, or Gibbo, oblivious to her, far below, hidden under the veil of leaves.

  She can see the trees thinning out ahead, and she hurries on until the track emerges onto an unsealed road, wide enough to take trucks, and rutted from traffic. She halts, biting her lip, not knowing which way to walk. She looks left and right, but no one is in sight. After a moment, she turns left, which she thinks is the direction of the village, and starts to walk.

  She’s been walking for about ten minutes when she hears an engine behind her. Her heart starts to thud. Do raskol gangs drive round in the daytime? How can she ask for help, when she can’t even remember the name of the village she was in? She’ll have to ask for a lift back to Hagen . . .

  A battered, mud-stained Jeep draws up beside her. The window is wound down and Simon Murphy leans across. Julie’s heart somersaults.

  ‘Julie? What are you doing here?’

  Incoherent with relief, she starts to stammer out an explanation, but Simon cuts her short. He flings open the passenger-side door. ‘Hop in.’

  She climbs up, bangs the door shut, and Simon releases the handbrake so the Jeep jerks forward.

  ‘You don’t know the name of the village?’

  ‘No.’ She is shamefaced.

  ‘But there’s a clinic there? I think I’ve got a fair idea where you were, but it’s a long way round in the Jeep.’ Simon thinks for a moment. ‘We’re not far from Keriga. What if I take you there, we get a message to the clinic to say where you are, we can have a bite to eat, and then I’ll drive you home?’ He shoots her a look. ‘How does that sound?’

  She can’t understand why he’s so tentative. ‘That sounds perfect. Thanks a billion.’ She slumps back on her seat, weak with gratitude.

  ‘No worries. Got to help a damsel in distress.’

  ‘My knight in shining Jeep.’

  ‘Hasn’t been shining for a while; it could do with a wash.’

  They bump along the track for a few minutes until they reach the top of a ridge, where Simon halts the Jeep, the engine still running. ‘There it is.’

  Julie can tell he’s trying to sound matter-of-fact, but he can’t suppress the pride in his voice. Keriga lies in a valley, fringed by hazy purple mountains. Simon rolls the Jeep slowly forward. ‘There are the coffee bushes, can you see?’

  He drives them down into the valley, among the dense deep green of the coffee bushes, and stops the Jeep. The clusters of red and green berries gleam like miniature Christmas baubles. He tells her about the Brazilian slump, about frost, and the roller-coaster of international prices. She nods and tries to look intelligent. He hails a pair of men strolling between the rows of bushes, and introduces them to Julie as Moses, the foreman, and one of the workers, Ezra. He speaks to them in Pidgin, and they grin and shuffle as they reply. Ezra nods and saunters off; Simon calls sharply to him, and Ezra breaks into a trot. Julie realises with a shock that Simon is effectively their boss, though he’s at least ten years younger than they are.

  ‘I’ve sent Ezra to the clinic, to tell them where you are. Did you still want to have a look round?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  In one of the drying sheds, he shows her an open sack of raw beans. She runs her fingers through the loose grey kernels, each bean rustling and light as parchment. She plunges her arm deep into the sack, and the dense mass of the beans drags at her like quicksand until she tugs free. The beans don’t smell like coffee; the magical oil is trapped, hidden until roasting, called out by the power of fire. She asks Simon if she can keep a few beans, as a souvenir, and he pours a handful into a paper bag.

  ‘Come up to the house,’ he says. ‘You must be starving. It’s way after lunchtime.’

  The house is shabby, dark and rambling, surrounded by lush flowering gardens. Simon steps up onto the verandah and calls out for his mother. ‘I’ve brought someone for lunch!’

  Julie is pleased to be described as a lunch guest, rather than a lost child picked up by the side of the road. She tries to arrange her face to look mature and sophisticated, for meeting Simon’s parents.

  It’s a genuine surprise when Simon’s mother comes bustling out of the house to greet them, a small, comfortably plump local woman, a couple of inches shorter than Julie. Somehow Julie had forgotten that she was a New Guinean. She shakes Dulcie’s hand and stammers, ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Dulcie holds onto Julie’s hand and smiles into her eyes. Already Julie has grown used to the shy, giggling manner of the Highland women, ducking their heads and laughing behind their hands; but Dulcie has the same direct, almost challenging gaze as Simon himself. She is about forty years old, her skin smooth and unlined; her hair is mostly black, with only the odd thread of silver wire coiling at her temples.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Starving,’ says Julie gratefully.

  Dulcie smiles. ‘Mr Murphy and me, we had our lunch already.’ She picks up Simon’s wrist and shakes it in mock anger. ‘Your watch bagarap?’

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Ma,’ says Simon. ‘I got stuck in town.’

  Dulcie rolls her eyes. ‘You like sandwiches?’ she asks Julie. ‘Good.’

  While Dulcie disappears into the kitchen to find Simon and Julie some lunch, Simon leads Julie inside.

  ‘Julie, this is my dad. Dad, this is Julie McGinty, remember, the girl who got me a flight from Moresby?’

  Again, Julie’s absurdly pleased that Simon has discussed her with his father.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Murphy.’

  ‘Call me Patrick.’

  Simon’s father is a gaunt, craggy old man, with a shock of white hair, who hauls himself painfully from the depths of his chair to shake Julie’s hand in a massive, bony grip.

  ‘Julie got herself lost in the bush,’ says Simon. ‘I said I’d run her home after lunch. If you don’t mind putting off our walk for another hour or so —’

  Patrick shrugs. ‘I can wait an hour. The plantation’s not going anywhere.’ He turns his faded blue eyes on Julie. ‘Shouldn’t you ring someone, and tell them you’re alive? People are going to be worried about you. They’ve probably got the police out by now.’

  ‘I sent Ezra with a message,’ says Simon.

  ‘Maybe I should ring — my friend. Ryan Crabtree.’ She can’t look at Simon; she hopes she isn’t blushing. ‘In case anyone is looking for me, and they contact the Crabtrees, he can tell them not to panic.’

  Simon raises an eyebrow. ‘Sure.’

  Julie dials the Crabtrees’ number from Patrick’s old-fashioned study, full of dark, heavy wooden furniture. A clock ticks slowly from a bookcase. It’s like stepping back in time.

  ‘Hello?’

  Thank God, it’s Nadine.

  ‘Nads? It’s me, Julie. Listen, I got a bit lost today. If anyone wants to know where I am, can you tell them I’m fine and I’m coming home soon? Someone’s giving me a lift back.’

  ‘Okay.’ Nadine’s voice is puzzled. ‘So where are you now?’

  ‘At the Murphys’ plantation, at Keriga. Simon’s going to drive me home.’

  ‘Oh!’ says Nadine. ‘Oh, okay.’

  Julie hears a noise in the background; Nadine covers the receiver, and Julie hears her muffled voice. ‘Julie — with Simon Murphy —’ Nadine removes her hand. ‘Julie? Do you want to talk to Ryan?’

  ‘No, I’ve got to go now,’ says Julie hastily. ‘Tell him I’ll ring when I get back, okay?’

  She bangs down the phone and returns outside. Dulcie brings out a plate of sandwiches
, and Julie and Simon eat them at a table on the verandah.

  ‘Sit down, Ma,’ urges Simon, but Dulcie shakes her head.

  ‘I got too much to do.’ She smiles at Julie and retreats inside.

  ‘Oh, well,’ says Simon. ‘Next time, she’ll stay and talk to you.’

  Next time. Julie reaches for a sandwich, her heart suddenly light.

  The view is spectacular, the bright green of the garden shading softly into the darker green of the coffee fields, and the misty velvet of the mountains.

  ‘I’d better get you back to town.’ Simon brushes the crumbs from his fingers. ‘Everything was okay when you rang? No search parties out for you?’

  ‘It was fine,’ she says. ‘I don’t think anyone even noticed I was gone.’

  10

  ‘How old was your mother when the Australian explorers came? Can she remember it?’ Julie asks Simon on the way back.

  ‘She was only a baby then. But my grandmother could remember it. She used to talk to me about that time, when I was a kid. She’s dead now.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Julie is silent a moment, then says cautiously, ‘So — what was it like?’

  Simon pauses as the Jeep bounces over a pothole. He and Julie are flung into the air, suspended for a second, then crash back into their seats. He says, ‘My grandmother was pretty young, too, about our age, I guess, a new young wife. She remembered when the white men came. And the red-skinned men, too, that’s what she called them, man bilong nambis, men from the coast. They were big and tall, they carried the kago for the white men, all the equipment, the supplies, tents and food and all the rest of it, a long line of men all laden down with boxes. They laughed at that, because carrying stuff was women’s work . . .’

  He glances across at her. ‘It was a big shock, for everyone. The Europeans didn’t know there was anyone living in the valleys. From the north coast, they could see mountains, and from the south coast, they could see mountains, and everyone had just always assumed it was the same mountain range. They had no idea there were huge wide valleys in between. So when they marched in and discovered there were a million people living here — it was quite a surprise.

  ‘And of course, the Highlanders had no idea there was anyone living outside the valleys. Suddenly all these strangers arrive, aliens from another world. They didn’t know what these men wanted, what they were doing here, on their tribe’s land, in their territory. My grandmother said the women and children hid, the meris and pikininis, they were frightened.’

  ‘It must have been like Martians landing,’ says Julie.

  Simon nods. ‘Yeah, it must have seemed just like that . . . They didn’t know if these strangers were ghosts, or devils, or spirits from the lands of the sky. The strangers asked for food. But the men couldn’t bring it to them, because that was women’s work.’ He catches Julie’s eye, gives a wry grimace. ‘But they soon realised the white men weren’t spirits. They were men all right. The women found that out soon enough.’

  Julie stares straight ahead, at the road. She can guess what the men must have wanted.

  ‘The village men picked up whatever the strangers dropped, a tin lid, a matchbox, a cartridge case, any old rubbish that the white men threw away, and they’d wear it in their hair or in their beards, as if they were kina shells, precious shells — the shells were our money,’ he adds. ‘When Independence comes, the new currency is going to be called kina and toea, after those shells, did you know that?’

  Julie shakes her head.

  ‘Anyway, the whites had plenty of shells, they’d brought them up from the coast, and they gave them away in handfuls, scattered them around like they were worth nothing! And, of course, to the Europeans, they were worth nothing . . . But everything was upside down, the rubbish the strangers threw away became really valuable, the shells were worth less because the white men had so many of them . . .’

  He glances sideways at Julie.

  ‘My grandmother told me, in the beginning, they used to follow the men into the bush when they — relieved themselves. And afterwards, they used to pick up what they’ve left behind, wrap it in leaves, and take good care of it —’

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ says Julie. ‘Why?’

  ‘In case it had magic powers. Because they thought the white men might be devils or sorcerers. They didn’t do that for long. Once they realised they were just ordinary men. Nothing to get excited about. That’s what my grandmother said.’ Simon veers to the edge of the road to avoid a truck coming the other way. ‘Mind you, she was pleased when Mum moved in with my father. Share some of the wealth around. Help the wontoks.’ He sees that she doesn’t understand. ‘Wontok. One talk — people who speak the same language, the same plestok. Relatives, basically. You’ve got to help them out. If a wontok asks for help, you have to do it.’ He falls silent. ‘That’s hard for Mum.’

  ‘So does that mean they’re your wontoks, too?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘So you have to help them out?’

  ‘Yep.’ A pause. ‘But there are ways of doing it. Dad and Mum, they kind of figure it out together. They’re a good team.’

  Julie finds herself imagining what it must have been like for Dulcie’s mother, or for Koki, when they were little girls like the ones she’d seen in the village this morning, but little girls who’d never seen a white person or dreamed that any world could exist outside the safe, enclosing wall of the mountains. Young girls, digging in the kaukau gardens, caring for babies, listening to the men boast about fighting, giggling with the other girls about their husbands or prospective husbands.

  And then the lid was blown off the box.

  Aeroplanes swooping overhead, dropping cargo like bombs. Airstrips and schools and churches springing up like fungus, the outside world flooding in; guns and money and food in tins; metal tools, metal weapons, instead of stone axes, spears and digging sticks; skirts and shirts and soap and books; cars and pills and razor blades, cameras and radios and movies and World War II.

  Julie thinks of Koki, and of Dulcie, and their serene, peaceful faces. She thinks of all they’ve seen in their lifetimes, their universes turned not just upside down, as Simon says, but inside out.

  ‘And what about your father, when he first arrived?’ Julie says. ‘What did he think of it all?’

  Simon doesn’t answer; for a moment, Julie thinks he hasn’t heard. At last he says, ‘Dad doesn’t like talking about those pioneer days. He’s talked about the war, a bit. But not the thirties, not first contact.’

  ‘Why? It must have been so exciting — amazing to discover all those people —’

  ‘He came to find gold,’ says Simon. ‘To make money. Not to expand the sum of human knowledge.’

  ‘But still —’

  ‘It wasn’t pretty, you know,’ says Simon. ‘It was bloody dangerous. The locals thought they were being invaded. Well, they were being invaded. So they attacked. But there’s not much a spear can do, or bows and arrows, against a rifle.’

  Julie holds her breath. ‘You mean — do you think Patrick might have —? He wouldn’t have shot anyone, would he?’

  Simon changes gear, his eyes fixed on the road. ‘I found a box of stuff once. A journal, photographs, even some old films . . . They were under attack all the time, they had to defend themselves.’

  ‘Who’s they?’ says Julie. ‘Are you talking about the locals, or the explorers?’

  Simon laughs, perplexed. ‘Both, I guess — but I meant the Europeans. Sometimes they had to shoot first and ask questions later. Once the warriors knew what guns could do, they’d back off. It actually meant less bloodshed. If they shot just one man early on, and that scared the others into not fighting, they were actually saving lives, in the long run.’ He glances at Julie. ‘That makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. You think your father did that? Killed people?’

  ‘I know he did. It’s in his diaries.’

  Julie stares out through the windscre
en. A rainbow glows above the mountains; rain has polished the leaves and left behind glittering pools on the surface of the road. She tries to picture stiffly-moving old Patrick as a young man, raising a rifle to his shoulder, staring down a naked warrior who charges toward him, spear in hand, teeth bared. Does he shout a warning? The warrior doesn’t, cannot, understand his peril. The rifle kicks; the warrior falls. There is blood on the ground; the women’s mouths open in soundless screams. The picture is jerky, black and white, a scene from a silent film; it doesn’t seem real.

  They drive on in silence. Soon the buildings of the town appear on either side. They drive down the main street, past the post office with its forest of radio towers, and the two big trading stores — Carpenters and Burns Philp — the barefoot nationals wandering along the pavement. Julie can’t help remembering Nadine’s story about the woman who wore the sheet off the clothesline.

  A couple of minutes later Simon pulls up the Jeep outside Tony’s unit.

  ‘Thanks for everything,’ says Julie. ‘For rescuing me, and lunch, and showing me Keriga, and everything. Thanks for taking me to meet your parents . . . Not that it was like a date,’ she adds hastily. ‘I mean, I know it’s not as if you were asking me to marry you or anything — not that that would be a bad thing — I mean —’ Her face is burning. She wonders if it’s possible to actually die from mortification. She tugs at the door-handle and almost falls out of the Jeep.

  ‘Just glad we got you home safely,’ says Simon.

  ‘Well, thanks!’ calls Julie brightly, waving like an idiot.

  The Jeep drives away, and she covers her face. Her cheeks are so hot with embarrassment she almost scorches her hands.

  11

  ‘On the nose with Barb, are we?’ says Tony, after two nights of Julie’s cooking.

  Julie busies herself at the stove with the sausages. ‘I think I upset her.’