by Peter Watt
‘There is a stream up ahead in a ravine that I spotted when we climbed the last ridge.’ Jack slid the bolt of his rifle back to check for rust. Daily cleaning of the firearms was just as much a habit as good sense. ‘While you supervise the boys with the camp I am going to go and have a look at it.’
George noticed that Jack scooped up his old gold pan as he sauntered away. At least his friend had something to look for, although the matter of gold mining licences had not been settled on the formerly German side of the border. But that did not exclude gold prospecting. George had never made a comment about Jack’s disappearance from the camp whenever they stopped near a river or stream but he well knew what he was up to. But always he would return with a disappointed expression on his sun tanned face and plonk himself down to drink the mug of steaming tea George had waiting for him.
George stretched his legs and set about his tasks around the camp. He was becoming more proficient in Motu and was even able to share a joke with the two police boys.
At first Jack just stared at the dull glimmer in the mountain stream as he stood up to his knees in the icy flow. It lay amongst the river pebbles in a deep hollow. ‘God almighty!’ he heard himself mutter as he plunged his arm into the water to seize the flattened lump the size of a large knife. It was a joy to feel its wonderful weight in his hand. The sun was rapidly setting in the mountains and Jack was afraid to even move in case any similar nuggets escaped him. He glanced around the water and noticed another smaller piece of gold flattened by eons of wear from the fast flowing waters. Before the night came he had found another five large pieces trapped in rock pools. A rough estimate of its worth told him he already had a working man’s wages for a year in his possession. And he had not even had to use his pan!
His heart was pounding as he waded from the stream with the small fortune in the pockets of his shorts. In all his life he had not even dreamed of being so lucky. He was so excited by his find that when he retrieved his rifle from the bank he did not notice the sudden silence of the jungle as he pushed his way back through the undergrowth to the campsite. Nor was he aware of the many dark eyes that watched him with a mix of curiosity, fear and calculation. All he could think of was reaching the campfire he could see a short distance away and carefully plotting their current position on a map. To find such large pieces of gold so easily could mean only one thing. He had found the mother lode of the gold that so many old prospectors in Papua had speculated must exist somewhere in these unexplored mountains.
‘Jack!’ George called to him as he stood with his Lee Enfield grasped in both hands across his body. ‘You see anything out there?’ The Australian instinctively glanced over his shoulder into the depths of the forest.
‘No. Why?’ he answered and quickened his stride.
‘The boys feel that something is up.’
By the time Jack reached the campfire the porters were staring fearfully out into the jungle whilst the two police boys nervously fingered the triggers on their rifles.
‘You see anything?’ Jack asked the older of the two police boys.
‘No, mister,’ he replied wide eyed. ‘But I think the Kukukuku are close by. I just know.’
Jack did not disregard the police constable’s intuition. Centuries of living in a permanent state of war with neighbouring tribes had honed the instinct for sensing danger. He placed his hand on the man’s shoulder reassuringly. ‘I think the Kukukuku will end up in our cooking fire if he comes too close,’ Jack said with a grin.
His humour helped settle the nervous police constable. ‘Me think so too,’ he replied with a sheepish smile.
‘We will post guards all night,’ Jack said, and the other man vigorously nodded his agreement. There was nothing else they could do except be vigilant. Maybe they were being watched. But maybe the tribesmen – if they were out there – would be interested in trading with them for some of the goods they had brought for such an occasion – a plentiful supply of toia shells which were highly prized by the inland tribes.
George poured a mug of steaming tea from the kettle perched over the red coals of their campfire and handed the mug to Jack who took it gratefully. The chill of the night was upon the mountains and he felt the tension of unseen danger. Years on the battlefield had also honed his instincts. ‘You think we are in any danger?’ George asked casually as he sipped from his mug but held his rifle in his free hand.
‘You never know around here,’ Jack said, scanning the darkness outside the glow of the fire. ‘Just pays to be bloody careful.’
‘You think that it could be these Kukus I hear everyone talk about?’
‘Any tribesman outside of Moresby gets called a Kuku,’ Jack said. ‘For all we know it might be your Orangwoks, and if it is, they are probably more scared of us than we are of them. In the meantime we get on with our routine and see what happens. Might be nothing.’
George agreed with the experienced bushman. Better not to let whoever may be watching them see any fear. If all went well his dream to photograph a tribesman never before seen by a European in this strangely beautiful but primitive garden of paradise might just come true the following day. And with any luck they would be prepared to trade food for the shells they carried as barter.
They went about their evening routine. Meals were prepared and when they were finished, cigars brought out whilst they drank hot tea, laced with a good quantity of sugar. The porters chewed betel nut and were relatively quiet as they huddled together by their fire.
When Jack extinguished the kerosene lamp in the tent he took the precaution of advising George to join him with his blankets outside. They would sleep a distance away, beside a great log from a fallen forest giant. The police boys would be diligent in their duty of standing guard. Fear would make them so. He and George would relieve them just after midnight. One sleeping, one awake when the time came.
‘Kind of reminds you of the old days,’ Jack said, laying back and pulling the blankets up to his chin. ‘When we were at the front.’
‘Too much so, old chap,’ George answered, as he made himself comfortable on the rainforest floor. ‘Thought that was all behind us. I was hoping for a little less excitement in my old age.’
‘You mean you are thinking about getting back to Iris and her bed,’ Jack teased. ‘Thinking like that takes the edge off the old warrior that I once knew in France.’
George smiled and stared up at a patch of stars rapidly disappearing behind a scudding cloud. Jack was right. There was not a moment since he left Iris that he was not counting the days, hours and minutes of returning to her. So this terrible ache of wanting to be with someone must be love. ‘Did you love your wife, Jack?’ he asked softly.
Jack turned his head towards him. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied after a short silence. ‘I suppose I did. We had a kid together.’
‘Do you miss her – now that she is gone?’
‘The conversation is getting a bit deep and philosophical for this time of night,’ Jack said lightly.
‘Sorry, old chap,’ George apologised. ‘I was not meaning to pry into your personal affairs.’
‘I didn’t take it that way,’ Jack countered, and fell into a guilty silence. No, I don’t think I loved her, he thought. It was just one of those things that happens between two people too young to know better. Instinctively he touched the waterproof wallet in his pocket where Erika’s photograph was carefully protected from the tropics. But how could he be so attracted to a woman he had never met? A woman he knew nothing about except the passion she revealed in her words to a long dead soldier lover. He felt the spatter of rain on his face as the stars disappeared and groaned at his decision to sleep away from the tent. But he and George had shared worse in the falls of snow on the battlefields of France.
The skies broke and the downpour felt like a torrential weeping of heaven, as if for the loss of so many young men whom they had known in their past and who now slept for eternity.
And the dark eyes continued to watch
from the depths of the forest.
NINE
Cloying sweat soaked the sheets. Paul Mann lay on his back, wearing only a pair of long johns whilst his wife lay beside him in the sensible, light cotton shift she had purchased in Sydney. Her back was to him and he could vaguely see the shapely, curved outline of her hip where it folded into her waist.
The heat in the small hotel room was almost suffocating and Paul felt guilty that he did not have the money to rent larger more airy accommodation for him and his wife, while Erika and young Karl were forced to share a room and bed.
Although it was dark the sound of men drinking downstairs in the public bar dampened their prospects of getting any sleep. But soon they would drift home and possibly the heat would even dissipate in the hours before sunrise.
They had reached Townsville, the tropical northern port in Queensland, en route to New Guinea when the bad news had been delivered by telegram to the ship. The Australian who had originally agreed to sell the family’s plantation at Finschhafen back to Paul had reneged on the deal. Paul made the decision that he would leave his family in Townsville until he was assured of employment in New Guinea. When he was settled he would have them join him. To those ends they had taken the time to find a suitable house and were fortunate when an Australian of German descent rented them a little place on a small lot of land just outside town. They were due to move in within the week, after Paul had sailed for Port Moresby.
Erika scowled when she saw the house. It was too far from the bright lights of the tropical town where there was sure to be at least some distraction. But Karin had loved the house at first sight. Although small, it was surrounded by a well-kept garden of exotic, tropical flowers and stood high on a frame to catch the occasional breezes. It even had a verandah on which to sit at the end of the day.
‘Paul?’
‘Yes?’ Paul had sensed that his wife was awake, as she had known he was.
‘What will we do? Does it make sense to continue to New Guinea?’
Paul did not answer immediately, as he did not have an answer. They had sold everything and burned their bridges back to Europe. The money had been transferred into a British bank account for transfer to Australia. It was a reasonable amount to live on for at least a year. But after that . . .
‘I could possibly get employment as a manager on a plantation around Finschhafen,’ he answered, staring at the black space above his head. ‘I have the experience and know the natives.’
‘I have read that the Australian administration hates Germans. That when they invaded New Guinea at the beginning of the war they had our men whipped for no reason.’
‘That was war,’ Paul said softly. ‘A lot of bad things were committed by good men. But the war is over and I know that all nations will need to rebuild with the few of us left with experience.’
Karin rolled on her side to face her husband. ‘The people in Sydney did not appear very friendly when they learned that we were German.’
‘They lost a lot of their men in the war for the British. You must realise that it will take time for the wounds to heal and leave only the scars.’
‘Do you think that all Australians will hate us for being German?’ she asked, as a child would a parent.
Paul felt a surge of love for this woman who had followed his decisions without question. He reached out and touched her gently on the cheek and felt her hand close over his. ‘Not all Australians,’ he said softly. ‘I once met an Australian officer at the front who was from Papua before the war. He spoke fluent German and told me his mother was German. He was a good, kind man who I hope survived. And I hope that he returned to his wife and son, as I have been fortunate to with you and Karl. I often wonder where he is today, now that we can be friends and not enemies sworn to kill each other.’
Despite the heat of the tiny room Karin nestled closer to her husband and Paul was vaguely aware that it was not just the stifling room generating all the heat. He slid his hand down Karen’s shoulder and continued his journey of exploration to her hip. He held his breath. They still had not made love since his return from the prisoner of war camp and that had been many long months past. But here in the tropics of Australia with Karl in another room, they were alone. His wife had not resisted his exploration and he was almost stunned by her move to lift the cotton shift above her waist. She took his hand and placed it between her legs where he felt her wetness.
‘I want you, my darling husband,’ she said as she drew her legs apart for him to explore her more intimately. ‘It has been too long for us both to be apart this way.’
The strength of Paul’s arousal made him feel as if he were a young school boy again. He recalled the time that he had accidentally seen a naked lady for the first time. She was bathing in the Rhine one summer’s day, long before the trumpets of war had called him to military service.
Paul gripped Karin’s wonderfully full buttocks and pulled her to him. It took only a moment to slip his undergarments off and hurriedly enter his wife. Karin gasped, whether from pleasure or pain it did not matter, as for the next hour they coupled like two animals in heat. It was as if the world would end and they must love as they would have lived.
When it was over Karin collapsed back against the sheets and cared little that the moistness was now a wetness. Nor did she feel the heat of the room as she slipped into a deep and untroubled sleep. What the future held was uncertain. What was certain was the present reality of her husband’s strong body and arms that held her in a tender embrace.
Paul however did not slip easily into sleep. He held her until he was sure she was oblivious to their uncomfortable surroundings then eased his arm from under her. He was still overcome by the euphoria that Karin’s body had brought to him and hardly noticed that tears splashed down his face. He wiped them away with the back of his hand and was glad that Karin was not awake to see his unmanly display. Throughout the war he had not cried once. It took the love of his wife to touch his soul which he had guarded so carefully in the horror of the trenches. Whatever the future held for them, their strongest roots had been rediscovered here in a stuffy hotel room in an obscure town, somewhere on the tropical coast of eastern Australia.
Down the corridor in her own room, Erika lay on her back in a swelter of sweat. Her six-year-old nephew Karl tossed restlessly beside her in the big double bed. The heat was unbearable – an experience new to her, although their brief stopover on the island of Ceylon had provided a taste of what was to come, as they lay in their cabins perspiring. But at least then she had been able to go on deck and feel the kiss of a gentle tropical sea breeze. Here the heat was everywhere and it was a walk to the Townsville harbour.
Like her brother Erika was pondering the future. Once again he had blundered into a situation that had caused his family distress, she thought bitterly. They were twelve thousand miles from home in a land as alien as if they had been on the moon. Ahead of them was the uncertainty that was New Guinea whilst behind her the memories of gentle falls of white snow. Then it had been more of a nuisance but now she would have given anything to feel its cooling embrace.
What was happening in her absence? Was Adolf recruiting more and more true believers to their cause? The memory of the handsome young former soldier with the mesmerising voice and eyes caused her to temporarily forget the stifling heat. For a moment she was in his arms and he was tearing at her clothes.
The thought caused her to squeeze her legs together as the unbearable ache crept through her body. She was aware that she was swelling and that a moistness was oozing from her. She groaned in her frustration, causing Karl beside her to ask in a startled voice, ‘Are you unwell, Aunt Erika?’
‘No, Karl,’ she replied with a touch of guilt. ‘I just had a small tummy ache.’ She wished he would go to sleep. Then she could relieve the agony of desire. She would think of Adolf, the fantasies of being with her fiancé long forgotten. They had been romantic memories of their stolen moments in summer fields where she had first exp
erienced the meaning of a man and woman being one. Wolfgang had been a wonderful lover, but she now admitted that his memory could not truly give her what she wanted.
But what did she want? She puzzled. Something brutal and exciting that crouched in the dark and hidden places of her mind. As a young girl she had experienced her first taste of sexual desire watching animals mating, the brutality of the stallion taking the mare. Sex devoid of love, free to indulge the most forbidden desires. Somehow she sensed that Adolf was that terrible and unspoken god of her most forbidden desires. The agony grew and she knew she desperately needed relief. Nothing else mattered in the world except to feel the explosion that would follow.
‘Karl?’ she asked in a husky whisper. ‘Are you awake?’
The boy remained silent and Erika moaned softly as she sought her pleasure in the only way she could. But Karl was not asleep. He lay very still in his fear and confusion as the sounds of his aunt’s self-induced pleasure filled the room.
During the family breakfast together in the hotel dining room, Paul frowned at his son’s strange silence. He was normally a talkative boy but this morning he poked at his fried eggs in a distracted manner. Karin glowed, oblivious to what her husband had noticed. Her appetite was good and she ate the fried steak that had been served with the eggs along with two slices of toasted bread and butter. The abundance of good food was something that even Erika had grudgingly admitted was much better than back in Germany.
Paul glanced at his sister who had said little during breakfast. She normally complained about anything and everything. But this morning she was also quiet, eating her breakfast with a good appetite.
