Visitants

by Randolph Stow

  ‘True, Dipapa,’ said Misa Kodo. ‘I am a young man of no importance. But I should be sorry to see an old man like you, an important man like you, die in the calaboose.’

  ‘What is your mind?’ asked my uncle.

  ‘That I think,’ said Misa Kodo, ‘that Metusela is dead. That I think you killed him.’

  My uncle said: ‘I am an old man, you have already said it. Do you believe I kill people?’

  ‘With your own hands,’ Misa Kodo said, ‘no. But I ask you another time. Where is Metusela?’

  ‘I have heard,’ my uncle said, ‘that he went to the stones. The machine had been there before. Perhaps it came again.’

  ‘Dipapa,’ Misa Kodo said, ‘do not forget the calaboose.’

  My uncle sat up once more, and only looked. And I was afraid for Misa Kodo. I came to stand near him, so that when my uncle looked at Misa Kodo he would have to see me beside him, with the bushknife in my hand.

  While we three were like that, Osana had been gossiping, in whispers, with Boitoku and a few other men. Suddenly some of them hissed, and some others laughed in an uneasy way, as if Osana had said something of which he should have been ashamed.

  I did not hear what Osana said, and nothing he said would interest me. But Misa Kodo, who was nearer, had understood, or thought that he had.

  Misa Kodo seized the bushknife from my hand, and rushed at Osana. And Osana was terrified. Misa Kodo meant to cut off his head, as Tudava did to Dokonikan.

  ‘Say it another time,’ Misa Kodo said to Osana.

  ‘Say what?’ Osana cried out. He was trembling, but not more than Misa Kodo.

  ‘What you have said already,’ said Misa Kodo.

  ‘Taubada, you did not understand,’ Osana was gabbling. ‘You do not understand everything. There are words you do not know.’

  That was so true that we felt a little sorry for Osana. Nevertheless, Misa Kodo was going to cut off his head.

  But Misa Dolu’udi came behind Misa Kodo and closed his hand around Misa Kodo’s wrist. They did not struggle, or even speak, but my bushknife fell to the ground, and Misa Kodo turned and went away towards the resthouse.

  Some of the men would have followed him, but Misa Dolu’udi called in a deep voice, in the language: ‘You stay here.’ And he was so stern, and so different, that they did not move.

  Misa Dolu’udi said a few words in English to Osana, and later Osana translated a speech of Misa Dolu’udi’s. Misa Dolu’udi said: ‘The older taubada is ill. This time we cannot stay long in Kailuana. In the meantime, I shall manage matters and hear your talk. And I shall come again before long.’

  The people were so interested in Misa Dolu’udi, who was suddenly so changed, that they almost forgot Misa Kodo. I saw my uncle watching, sucking his lips and the inside of his cheeks in the way that he had. I saw his thoughts in his face. He was thinking: This is a taubada of the sort I understand. He was pleased with Misa Dolu’udi. That was one more reason for him to want Misa Kodo dead.

  DALWOOD

  After leaving Dipapa I took Osana and the policemen with me, and we went round the villages again, to the church and to the stones, while I put together as much information as I could collect. Osana was pretty cast down, which was good to see; but in any case, I soon found I hadn’t much need of Osana. Because Benoni started trying his Pidgin on me, and though I don’t speak it, I had learned enough from a book, while I was still expecting a posting on the New Guinea side, to be able to follow and answer. That way I was able to get a very good picture of what had happened, and what Benoni had done about it afterwards, and it gave me quite a respect for him, as well as just a skerrick of sympathy for Dipapa, because it was certainly checkmate there.

  It was twilight when I came back to the resthouse, and there wasn’t a light, so I shouted out for Biyu to attend to that. While he was dealing with the Tilley lamp on the veranda, I went into the room where we slept. Alistair was lying, wrapped in the red blanket with the tiger on it, on one of the hard bunks lashed with vines that Benoni had had built for us the first time we came. But he had been busy, apparently, because his day-book was lying open on the other bunk, mine, covered with writing which I would see at a glance was about the Metusela business.

  He wasn’t asleep, though, and when I only sat on my bunk without saying anything he felt he had to say: ‘Well?’

  ‘Alistair,’ I said, ‘I’ve taken over, you realize that.’

  ‘Have you?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know what the rules are,’ I said. ‘Perhaps, if it came to it, I have the right to arrest you for what happened today. Anyway, I’m stronger than you are, and we don’t want public trouble.’

  He showed hardly any reaction. All he asked was: ‘What will you tell them here?’

  ‘I have told them,’ I said. ‘That you’re sick. That I have to get you back to Osiwa tomorrow, to the doctor. Thank God we’ve got one at last. We’ll take Boitoku and some of the witnesses, say Tobeba’i and Saliba. But we’ll have to leave this half-finished for the time being. Benoni can handle it, I’m sure of that.’

  In the dim light I had been able to make out his face, more or less, but just then Biyu got the lamp going properly, and the glare coming over the half-wall made a shadow in which I lost him.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. Then he gave a sort of laugh, like a sob. ‘Am I to consider myself under arrest now?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘On sick leave.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, and rolled over and pulled the flimsy blanket around his head.

  BENONI

  When I wanted to see Misa Kodo, first Kailusa tried to stop me, than Misa Dolu’udi did. But I kept saying, in Pidgin, that I knew that Masta Alistair was sick, and knew why, and would do something to help him. And at last he let me go into the room where they slept.

  Misa Kodo must have been listening to us, because when I came in he turned on the bed and said, very quietly: ‘O, Benoni.’

  ‘Taubada,’ I said, ‘I want to talk.’

  ‘Talk, then,’ he said.

  ‘Taubada, I want you to come and sleep in my house. It is not safe here.’

  ‘Why is it not safe?’ he asked.

  ‘It is built off the ground, taubada. Look at the cracks between the floorboards. And the walls do not meet the roof, and there is no door.’

  ‘E,’ he murmured. ‘So you fear sorcery for me?’

  ‘Yes, taubada. Very much. In my house you would be safe. I will not sleep with you if you do not want, though it would be better. But I will be watching.’

  ‘You are kind,’ he said. ‘But I think I shall live as long as Dipapa. I am a Dimdim, Beni. I laugh at sorcery.’

  ‘My friend,’ I said, ‘do you laugh at my fear?’

  ‘No, my friend,’ he said. ‘But I want to be alone now. You know I have a fever. In the morning perhaps I shall be better.’

  I knew how it would be. But I only said: ‘Well, then, I am going.’ And he said: ‘Sleep peacefully.’

  DALWOOD

  At first, waking and finding him gone, I made nothing of it, thinking that he had wandered out to the small-house, or perhaps was on the veranda having a solitary session with the rum-bottle, as he used to do before he changed so much. But I couldn’t sleep again, thinking of that blanket lying there uninhabited, opposite, and at last got up and went out, just as I was, in bare feet and underpants, to look for him.

  As I was taking the path towards the small-house, Benoni suddenly appeared beside me, and asked in Pidgin: ‘Masta Tim, you like to find Masta Alistair?’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we know. We are watching, many of us. He is all right.’

  ‘Take me to him,’ I said; and he walked on, telling me with a jerk of his head to follow.

  He spoke the truth about there being many of them. As we went along the beach-path, people kept popping out of the bushes. Most of the younger men on the island must
have been out of bed that night. Nobody said much, there were just a few mutters meaning that there was no news.

  In the moonlight the place where the stones were looked more desolate even than when I saw it first. In burning the cargo storehouse, as they called it, Benoni’s men had started other fires in the scrub, and whatever wasn’t barren rock was charred. Behind the biggest of the stones, one that Metusela’s crowd could never have moved, Kailusa was keeping guard over his boss.

  With all that shadowy activity around him, Alistair thought he was alone. He was sitting on one of the rectangular stones, staring at the ground.

  The coral-rock tore at my feet as I went towards him, and at one point I stopped with a bit of a yelp, and he looked up, startled.

  ‘You,’ he said, as if he’d forgotten that there was such a person.

  ‘Alistair,’ I said, ‘this isn’t doing you any good. Come back to the resthouse. You’re keeping a lot of people awake.’

  Still he didn’t seem to realize how many eyes were watching. All he had to say was: ‘Aren’t you cold?’ He was fully dressed himself, but shivering.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said. ‘Come on, there’s that nice blanket waiting for you, and if you like you can have my mosquito-net on top of it. D’you hear me, Batman? This is your boy-apprentice reasoning with you.’

  He put back his head as if to take one last look at the stars, and seemed to fix in that position, and keep gazing.

  ‘Come on,’ I said again. ‘You know I’m quite capable of carrying you, if I have to.’

  I heard him take a sudden deep breath, then he muttered to himself: ‘It won’t come to that.’

  CAWDOR

  The space-craft was seen over Boianai for two nights in late June. From here, Boianai is about 125 miles S.W. Coming from there to here it would have passed over Vaimuna: specifically, over Kaulagu village.

  The first sighting at Boianai was on 26th June. It may be possible, with the co-operation of the Kailuana people and Mr MacDonnell, to establish the dates of the sightings at Wayouyo.

  Check the date of the disappearance at sea of the Munuwata. It was near the end of June, beginning of July. No trace was found. At that time I was at Vaimuna and heard of it. On Vaimuna there is no wireless, no radio, and no one speaks English anyway. The abandoned church in Kaulagu village has been restored and strangely decorated. Most of the objects hanging from the rafters are based on a rather vague notion of aircraft.

  It will pretty certainly never be possible to date the disappearance of the three men from Budibudi island, but the fact was known on Kailuana in late October.

  There is also the disappearance of Metusela. Is the idea of murder too simple?

  SALIBA

  At midday we all came back to Rotten Wood, the Government people and Boitoku and my aunt’s husband and I. I went straight into the cookhouse and began helping Naibusi, as if I had never been away. I wanted to be alone with her, but the other girls were coming and going, and calling out that Saliba was being taken to Osiwa, that she was being sent to the calaboose. And at that Naibusi grew angry, and told them they lied, that I and my aunt’s husband were only going to help the Government, to tell about the painted men.

  On the veranda there was much talk and movement, and Naibusi came back from there to say that Sayam would not sail until nearly dark, because there was bad weather coming, and if the Igau left then, it would not be able to anchor at the Government’s village. She said that Misa Kodo was shut up in the room where he slept, and that Misa Makadoneli was in a bad temper with the other Dimdims and was reading a book, and that Misa Dolu’udi was angry.

  He is angry today. No, not angry, but sad and hard. He never notices me. Benoni calls him: ‘Masta Tim,’ but when I was talking to the ADO and called him: ‘Timi,’ he looked surprised and then ashamed.

  Is Benoni ashamed? O, my mind is very heavy. He is so beautiful, he is so noble now. Does he want to forget everything he said to me on the night of the painted men?

  DALWOOD

  It is because of that radio that we are here.

  Old Mak was fed up about having us hanging around all afternoon, and left me to entertain myself. So most of the time I sat at the table on the veranda, watching the canoes go out to the Igau with all our stupid gear: the patrol-table, the chairs, the typewriter, the patrol-boxes, all the Government’s signs of rank.

  Later, Mak came out to be sociable, carrying the radio. He said: ‘Something for you to do, old man. It’s kaput again.’

  I took the back off, saw what a simple thing it was, and fixed it. I gave him a blast to prove that, then killed it.

  Presently Naibusi came out of the cookhouse with the tray and the rum and the lemon, and we were ready, a bit early, for the sundowner ritual.

  She asked Mak some question about ‘Alistea’, as she had taken to calling him, and after he had muttered something she went into the main part of the house and I heard her knock on the door in the passage.

  When Alistair came out to join us his clothes were crumpled and damp with sweat. He stood leaning on the rotten veranda-rail, looking down on the Igau, and said after a while: ‘I thought we’d have been off by now.’

  ‘Any minute,’ I said. ‘Sayam will send a boat-boy to tell us.’

  ‘Here’s your rum,’ Mak said, ‘young Alistair.’ It was probably the first time in half a century that he’d called a grown man by his Christian name.

  But Alistair just shook his head and said: ‘No, thanks, Mak,’ still with his eyes on the boat.

  Mak looked at his watch, then clicked on the radio. ‘Might as well hear the news,’ he said.

  So we listened, Mak and I. I didn’t think that Alistair even heard it. It started with a local story, pretty grim, about sharks. Then it whipped quickly round the rest of the world. There was something happening in France, and something else in America. One of Harold Macmillan’s men was saying something important about independence somewhere, and the South Pacific Commission was saying or doing something not so important. Whatever it was, it sounded like progress, and so Mak switched off.

  ‘Sad, that,’ I said. ‘I mean, about the fellow at Vuna.’

  ‘Sad,’ Mak said, ‘but always, I can’t help thinking, a bit fishy. At least, people will say so, and think so. The clothes left on the beach—we’ve all heard that one before. Sad, anyway, for his wife. Of course he can’t be presumed dead for seven years.’

  I wondered whether Alistair had heard it, and whether it had given him any more crazy ideas about flying saucers. But he still had his back to us, at the rail.

  ‘When I said fishy,’ Mak said, ‘I meant, why should a chap go for a swim alone at night?’

  Alistair said, not looking round: ‘He’d probably had a row with Sheila, and stormed out of the house for a while.’

  ‘What was that, old man?’ Mak said. ‘I say. Did you know him?’

  Then I realized why the name Manson had rung a bell. It was the only friend he’d ever spoken of. That day in the resthouse at Vilakota he had said that he might go and stay with them, because Mrs Manson was a good cook.

  ‘It’s the watch I can’t get over,’ Alistair said. ‘The watch ticking away on the beach, when Jack was—all in bits.’

  He went away so fast that we couldn’t see his face. We heard the door slam, on that sweating, musty room that looks like a cage.

  ‘Don’t go after him,’ Mak said to me. ‘He won’t want to talk. If he does, he’ll talk to Naibusi.’

  I couldn’t have talked to him, anyway. Those words of his, ‘all in bits’, had hit me too hard. I was seeing what he saw: the real sea, flowering with a real man’s blood.

  MACDONNELL

  Well, we’re coming to the end of it. Browne promises to read us a draft of his report, to put us all in the picture. Just in case we should be blaming ourselves. Very civil of him, too.

  I shan’t be sorry to see the stern of the Igau this time. Then I can call my house my own. I don’t care if these are the last
white men I ever meet. White men are more trouble than they’re worth.

  Saliba looks peaky. Something is wrong there. I think it’s Benoni.

  Amazing, the change in that young fellow. That is my idea of a chief.

  I’m not so happy about the change in Dalwood. Our puppyish man-mountain is turning into something rather formidable. I preferred him before.

  Yes, I heard you. When the boat-boy came to fetch them I called for Naibusi to go and tell Cawdor. They came out of the passage together, and stood talking for a few minutes at the far end of the veranda. She was crying, and he put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked into her eyes, before coming to join us at the top of the steps.

  I held out my hand to him. ‘Safe journey,’ I said. ‘Get fit, and come back soon.’

  I knew I should never see him again. You had only to look at his face to know that he had died already.

  OSANA

  Long before we reached the strait between Vaimuna and the south of Osiwa the rain was falling hard and the sea growing rougher. And Sayam called to me, and asked me to tell Mister Cawdor that we could not anchor at the Government station that night. He said that we should go ashore at Vilakota, and he would take the Igau around the tip of Vaimuna into the lagoon.

  We both knew that Mister Cawdor was too sick to be in charge, but we did not wish to discuss important matters with a boy like Mister Dalwood.

  Mister Cawdor was lying, wrapped in his red blanket, on the bench. He was holding a book in front of him, but I do not think he was looking at it.

  When I told him what Sayam had said, he sat up and was thoughtful. After a moment, he said: ‘Very well, we shall sleep at Vilakota.’

  I went back to Sayam, but kept watching Mister Cawdor. Presently he took a blue pencil out of his pocket and wrote something in the front of the book. Then he stood up, and went to one of the patrol-boxes, and opened it. He put the book inside, and before he closed the lid I saw him take something from the box and drop it into the pocket of his shirt.