Mister Dalwood sighed too when Mister Cawdor said that, but ate the mango, making noises of joy. All the time Sagova stared at his throat, and looked proud whenever he saw Mister Dalwood swallow.
‘Sagova,’ said Mister Cawdor, ‘speak to me. Do you remember Taudoga?’
‘Oh, yes, taubada,’ Sagova said. ‘But I was a child then. I was not in those doings.’
‘What were they like,’ Mister Cawdor said, ‘those doings? Were they like Christians, like Church?’
‘Truly, I do not know,’ Sagova said. ‘I did not see. But I know the reason. The older men did not want the young men to have the girls. So they called themselves sergeants and names like that, and said that the girls were only for them. They had dancing, taubada, but the young men were not allowed to see it. The older men and the girls danced in two circles, and when they stopped the man seized the girl facing him and took her away into the bush.’
‘That is like a game,’ I said, ‘that they play at the Mission. It is called Musical Chairs.’
‘True, Osana,’ Mister Cawdor said. ‘Sagova, you say: did Taudoga truly vanish? You did not hide him?’
‘No, taubada. He did truly vanish. And when he was gone, that madness was over.’
‘You did not kill him, you Kaga people?’
‘No, taubada!’ Sagova cried out. ‘He just vanished, and afterwards nobody saw him. Taubada, I am not lying.’
‘I believe,’ Mister Cawdor said. ‘I believe your word. Well, enough of Taudoga. My talk is finished.’
By that time Mister Dalwood had finished his mango, and threw the mango-stone at a gull. Then he walked in the sand, pulling the strings of the fruit out of his big teeth. ‘Very good,’ Mister Dalwood exclaimed, nodding to Sagova. But in English he said: ‘It wasn’t too bad, but let’s push off quick. I was watched. Any minute now we’ll have the ladies from Meals on Wheels.’
‘Right,’ Mister Cawdor said, beginning to get up from the sand. ‘Sagova, our gratitude, and goodbye.’
‘Taubada,’ Sagova said, putting his hand on Mister Cawdor’s arm, ‘wait a little. I want to ask a question. The people are talking about the star. Taubada, what is the star?’
‘Star?’ Mister Cawdor said. ‘Which star?’
‘It flies,’ Sagova said. ‘It flew last night from the south-east wind to the north-east wind.’
‘Perhaps it is a mulukwausi,’ Mister Cawdor said, ‘a flying witch.’ And he laughed, as all the Dimdims do at the mulukwausi that ignorant people believe in, because they think it is funny that fire should stream from their women’s parts.
‘No, taubada,’ Sagova said, sounding annoyed. ‘Not mulukwausi, taubada. A star, that flies.’
‘E,’ said Mister Cawdor, ‘I will tell you my mind. I think it is a machine, a Dimdim machine, and its name is Sputnik. It does nobody any harm. It flies in the sky and shines, that is all, like one of those glass floats of the Japanese fishermen.’
‘True?’ said Sagova. ‘Well, I will tell the people.’
‘Yes, tell them,’ said Mister Cawdor; ‘and tell them also that I am sorry that I spoke of what they did not want to remember. Well, the dinghy has come back. Goodbye, my friend. I will see you perhaps at Wayouyo when you come on the kula.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Sagova said, and he shook hands with Mister Cawdor and Mister Dalwood and me. Then we waded to the dinghy and rowed away, with chickens packed all around us like Dimdim cushions.
DALWOOD
In those first days the weather was like early mornings when I was a kid, the south-easterly blew quiet and cool, hardly marking the sea, and the clouds were fairweather wisps along the horizons. That evening, between Kaga and Kailuana, the sea died to a smooth curve of bottomless blue, and the blue of the sky faded and changed to green: an apple-green peacock-green sky pouring down a pink and golden light. The Igau turned rosy in the glow, which coloured the sea, too, so that it passed through lavender to deep violet, while the faces and shapes of the people became ghostly and strange.
Sayam stood at the wheel wearing the face of a Mexican god, and listened to the plop of eggs behind him. Seventy-three eggs must have been dropped that evening in the belly of the fresh-painted Igau. So Sayam scowled and snapped at his admirers, steering that enormous omelette through the purple sea.
I thought Alistair would be asleep, I was so nearly asleep myself, and everything was so quiet, and I felt so alone. When the singing began I didn’t even wonder about it, it just seemed right, and meant for me. I lay by Alistair on the decking over Sayam’s head and let the song come to me.
‘I attempt from Love’s sickness
To fly in vain,
Since I am myself my own fever,
Since I am myself my own fever and pain.’
Hard to believe that he understood perhaps four words of that, he sang with such passionate sadness. When it struck me, I scrambled to my knees and stared at him: coal-black in that light, his mauve rami burning. Cross-legged near Alistair’s head, singing to Alistair.
I thought of the music books in the cupboard where he had thrown all her things, and knew that the song would be there, inside one of the books with her maiden-name on the cover.
‘Kailusa,’ I said.
Alistair’s hand came away from his eyes. ‘Very good, Kailusa,’ he said. ‘Another time.’ And the boy (that boy of round about forty) lifted his head and began again, out of that broad deep chest that had something to do with his deformity. Over the ghostly Igau on the empty sea the words hung like frigate-birds.
‘Since I am myself my own fever,
Since I am myself my own fever and pain.’
SALIBA
The sea was pale when we came to Kailuana again, but the island was black. We could tell where the house was among the palms because one shutter was full of light, and we knew that Misa Makadoneli would be standing there, looking for us, seeing us black like the island on the pale sea.
When the people came back he and Naibusi were waiting on the veranda, and he said to Alistea: ‘You’re late, old man, you’ve been holding us up.’ He was dressed in his pyjamas that he puts on at six o’clock, and he had his rum and his pipe that Naibusi brings at half past six, and he sat at the table by the lamp wearing his hat, because the cockatoo likes to sit on his head at that time, and looked cross.
Because he was in a bad humour Alistea was gentle with him, and said we had been delayed by a vineilida, one of those rocks that are alive and live at the bottom of the sea. Then Popu flew down on to the table and began to drink Timi’s rum, and Timi let him drink it, and soon Popu was drunk.
Popu staggered around the table flapping his wings and screaming, with all his feathers standing up, until he could not walk any more. Then he lay on his back and cried his name very pitifully, like a baby. Timi was laughing and laughing, and soon he was drunk too, and kept looking at me. So I said to Misa Makadoneli that I felt sick, and I went down the back steps to the village and stayed in Naibusi’s house, to stop Timi from looking at me, because nothing can happen in the big house that Misa Makadoneli does not see.
Afterwards, when it was nine o’clock and Misa Makadoneli was in his bed, I went to help Naibusi in the cookhouse. Naibusi was making bread and her hands were covered with flour. ‘O,’ she said, ‘Misa Kodo wants his tobacco that I cut tonight. You take it to him, I have too much work. He is in his room.’
I went to Alistea’s door and knocked and he called to me to come in. He was lying on his bed and reading a book, and he looked very hot.
‘O, Saliba,’ he said. ‘Shall we sleep?’
‘Ssss,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I do not think you want to sleep with me.’
‘You are very pleasing,’ he said, ‘O face-like-the-moon.’ But he was smiling, and I did not think he truly thought I was pleasing, though he liked to be my friend.
‘It is hot,’ he said. ‘The window will not open?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Here is your tobacco that Naibusi sent.’
‘Put i
t there,’ he said, pointing at the box beside his bed, ‘and say to Naibusi my thanks. E, I do not like this room. It smells. It smells of rot.’
‘The name of the house is Rotten Wood,’ I said.
‘That is the truth,’ he said. ‘But your garland smells very good.’
I was stooping to set down his tin of tobacco on the box, and he put his arms around my body and his face against my garland of bwita flowers.
I was not angry, I did not move away, but I said: ‘Taubada, I do not want that.’ Still I thought: He is my friend. But I did not like his body, which had black hair on it like so many Dimdims, though not like Timi, and his face was rough with hair and hurt my skin. ‘Taubada,’ I said, ‘I will go.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘stay a little.’ He turned his face upwards to look at my face, and his face was very young, he seemed like a boy. ‘Nowadays,’ he said, ‘I have no woman.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I heard the people talking. My grief for you.’
‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘my mind is heavy. Yet truly, I was not happy before, when the sinabada was with me.’
‘Why?’ I said.
‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘We were not happy. Perhaps I am not a good lover.’
‘Truly?’ I said. ‘In what way are you not a good lover?’ Then I saw in his face that he had wanted me to think that he was joking, and because I thought he was not joking his eyes went dark and small.
‘It is bad,’ he said. ‘I talk too much.’ And he stopped holding me and lay back on the bed, in his white Dimdim yavi, with hairs on his chest and belly.
‘You are my friend?’ he said, with his eyes on my eyes.
‘Yes, truly,’ I said, and with one finger I stroked his arm, till he closed his hand around my finger and held it. ‘Alistea,’ I said.
‘Salib’,’ he said, smiling because I had called him by his other name that I had never said before. And we stayed like that, very quiet and friendly, for a little while, until the door that was half open creaked all the way into the room, and Misa Makadoneli cried out: ‘O! Pardon me, old man.’
MACDONNELL
Saliba sprang into the air like a wallaby, tearing away her hand from Cawdor. ‘Peeping man!’ she screamed in my ear as she thudded past me at the door.
‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ I said to Cawdor. ‘I had no idea, old man, no idea at all.’
‘Nothing was happening, Mak,’ Cawdor said. ‘Relax. You haven’t missed a thing.’
‘You might be civil,’ I said. ‘She is my servant.’
‘Yeah, and she’s in the house after sundown,’ he said. ‘I could Court you for that.’
‘She’s in the house because she was born and bred in the house,’ I said. ‘God knows who makes these ordinances. Some withered old nancy at Konedobu. The whole country’s going to pot. If I could still do it I’d be doing it, and not think of your Court, old man.’
‘It would make a lovely trial,’ he said.
In the hot room the scent of the girl’s flowers still hung on the air. I let him see me sniffing at it. ‘Like a whorehouse in here,’ I said.
‘Mak,’ he said, picking up a book from the bed, ‘isn’t it after lights out for you? I’m not really tuned in for this kind of chat.’
‘Well, of course, old man,’ I said, ‘I know nothing was going on, really, it was just my joke. The girl’s a good-natured girl, but she’s plain, they’re all plain nowadays, and you’ve got other things to think about. I don’t know why you don’t bring her with you, she’d certainly be most welcome in the house.’
He put down the book and faced me from the pillow, very hard and level. ‘Bring who?’ he said, sounding sharp and tired at the same time.
‘Why, your sinabada, old man. Quite a doll, that’s what young Johnston from Muyuwa said.’
He went on looking at me for so long that I began to know that something was up. Then he said: ‘Have you really not heard?’
‘Heard what, old man?’
‘No,’ he said to himself, studying my face. ‘No, you haven’t. Well, Mak, my doll of a sinabada shot through two months ago with the Osiwa doctor.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘They went out on the same plane. He was going on leave, she was going to the dentist in Moresby. So she told me. They wrote from Tokyo. They were having a honeymoon.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, all I can say is it’s a pretty poor show.’
‘Sometimes I think so,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I feel a bit restless. A bit taken for granted—you know the feeling? When I write to my wife, for instance, Mrs Alistair Cawdor, and have to address it to Mrs John Philipson. She gets worried about her reputation. Well, you wouldn’t know, but neighbours can be beastly.’
I went and sat on the bed, so as to see him better. His face, filmed with sweat, looked stiff, and very dark.
‘You’ll divorce her?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll get round to that, in time.’
‘You wouldn’t take her back? Just supposing.’
‘She wouldn’t come. It’s not her kind of place, the Territory. Especially not Osiwa. She never went much on tennis or Scrabble.’
‘Cawdor,’ I said, ‘I’m very sorry, old man. Never been married myself, but it must make a man feel—’
‘Don’t worry your head about it,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. I shall have mistresses. Like you, you historic old ram.’
‘That’s what you should have done in the first place,’ I said. And out of politeness he smiled, still with the stiffness in his face. ‘You’re young, you’ve plenty of time. How old are you, by the way?’
‘Twenty-seven,’ he said.
‘And she?’
‘Thirty-two. Which was the point, maybe.’
‘I don’t quite read you, old man.’
‘Of marrying me,’ he said. ‘At least, I sometimes wondered.’
He rolled over, so that his cheek was on the pillow, and began to talk past me, into the corner of the room. ‘In my second stint up here,’ he said, ‘I was twelve months alone on a patrol post. I never saw anyone to talk to, it was just me and the locals. Everyone said how can you stand it? I thought I stood it pretty well, I thought I was happy, I guess I was. But when I went South on leave, first of all I couldn’t stop talking, it was like a disease, but there was no one to talk to. So I shut up, and then I couldn’t talk at all. I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t know anybody. I went South to have a good time, spend my money, but I couldn’t know anybody. So I went to ground in my father’s house in Sydney, because of that—because I knew him, more or less. Then this girl, this woman, started coming. He asked her to come, I think. And I could talk to her, and she talked to me. So I asked her to marry me. You won’t understand this, but it was that that I wanted, to be married. So we did marry and came to Osiwa and it didn’t work and she went and it’s finished. Now you know. It’s going to be my leave again soon, but this time I won’t take it. I’m not going to take any leave again. I’m going to stay here, in these islands, and if they transfer me I’ll resign and be a trader or something, but I’m not leaving. I can’t know anybody. I only ever knew her, and she never had any idea what she wanted, and she wouldn’t try. Christ, Mak, I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear this.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘But don’t let’s have any more of it. You get too excited.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a kind of laugh at the corner of the room. ‘I do. I get excited.’
‘And you’ve drunk a fair bit tonight.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do that too.’
‘I’d change my mind about that leave, if I were you.’
‘Ah,’ he said, into the pillow. Then I saw that his eyes were closed, and he looked to have fallen, really fallen, asleep, still with his mouth open from making that sound. It seemed to bear out how young he was. And I thought he will get over this, perhaps, and Dalwood is a Samaritan happy in his work, and at this end of my life
it is only humility to say it has nothing to do with me. So I turned to go, but when I was at the door he said quietly after me: ‘Tomorrow, Mak, you never heard me, understand?’
SALIBA
I called to Naibusi: ‘Very well, I will go, I will sleep now.’ And I went down the steps from the veranda and was on the path to our house, Naibusi’s and mine, when a voice from the dark whispered my name.
I did not see him at first, I did not see him for a long time. He was underneath the house, where the boxes and the kerosene drums are, sitting on a drum. I would not have seen him at all, but two thin lines of light were on him, the light of Alistea’s lamp, shining through cracks in the floorboards in Alistea’s room above his head.
‘You come, Salib’,’ he said.
He had waited very long, since he had been under the shower, and still had a white towel wrapped around him like a rami, stained with rust from the drum.
‘Salib’,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, taubada. I am afraid.’
But he did not understand that word, and stood up, very tall, with the lines of light on him, expecting.
‘I do not know,’ I said.
He said again: ‘You come,’ and one would not have thought that his voice could sound like that, so deep.
Then slowly I did go to him, not truly understanding my own mind, but because he said. And under the two lines of light he seized me and held me against his skin, which was hot and cool.
‘You are good, Salib’,’ he said, because those were all the words he knew. ‘Salib’, you are very good.’ He kissed me on the mouth, and I held his back, and felt him trembling.
And then I knew that he too was afraid, this Dimdim, he was afraid that I might hurt him. And when I knew that, there was no difference and no strangeness any more, there was only like one person there in the dark, whispering: ‘Timi,’ and ‘Saliba.’
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