Solomons Seal

by Hammond Innes

  They were two men of uncertain age, but both of them elders and certainly not young; this was politics, not mortal combat. At first, there was no reaction from the other side, the white concrete walls of the government offices standing blank and silent in the hot glimmer of misty humidity that lay like a blanket over the scene, Tagup standing there, shouting taunts that were echoed by the black, glistening lines of bodies behind him. Perenna, translating for me, suddenly said in a quite different voice, ‘He’s changed it. He’s challenging Sapuru, not as a fighter – as … he’s challenged his power—’

  ‘What power?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re not just political leaders, they both have—’ But a door had opened, and a small, very dark man in a light blue suit came out. He stood there for a moment, his head held high, the black halo of his hair framed in the arch of the entrance. The ranks of the Chimbu swept forward, a tide of glistening bodies uttering a low menacing roar. Tagup raised his hand. The ranks of his men halted, the roar fell to a murmur, then a sudden silence, and Tagup walked forward, moving very slowly, very deliberately. Sapuru, too, was moving forward. A shot was fired. It came from one of the ground-floor windows, sounding very loud in the stillness. A howl of fury swept the Highlanders’ ranks. Sapuru half turned, his face clouded with anger, his hand raised.

  Silence again, and the two men walking towards each other. Sapuru was unarmed. The Chimbu leader discarded his axe. They met halfway between the black ranks of the Chimbu and the white blank face of the government offices. They talked, and while they talked, the glimmer of sun heat in the mist increased. Tagup turned, shouted something to his followers, and they answered with a roar, fanning out on either flank and moving forward, stopping suddenly when he raised his hand. This movement was repeated three times, each time the black mass of men spreading out to encircle the offices, moving steadily nearer. And then, suddenly, it was over, Sapuru turning and walking back into the building, Tagup calling to the PNG captain, who came marching forward at the head of his men to take up a position facing the government HQ.

  There was a moment’s hiatus then when time seemed to stand still, no sound, no movement, everybody waiting, tense and expectant. And the glimmer turned to sunlight, the mist burning away to reveal the high green interior of the island still wrapped in cloud, pinnacles of grey rock appearing and disappearing. Then Sapuru reappeared. A great a-ah of released tension went up from the crowd as the hostages came out behind him. They hurried to the safety of the jungle-green uniforms, and then the Buka insurgents were coming out of the building, some of them men I recognised, who had been part of the crew of the LCT coming across from Australia, all of them carrying their weapons and laying them down in front of the captain.

  There had been no fight, no last-ditch stand. The insurrection was over, and the defeat of the insurgents had been achieved by bluff, by a show of strength. And something else, too – some inner power. He’s more than a politician, Perenna had said, and I could only guess at the secret trial of strength that had gone on between those two men. And now suddenly it was over, no bloodshed, not a single hostage harmed. By evening more troops had arrived, and the LCT was under charter to the PNG government to take the insurgents back to Buka, all except Daniel Sapuru and a dozen or so leaders of the Buka Trading Co-operative.

  That night I lay between fresh-laundered sheets in a bed that was rock steady and did not move with the motion of the ship. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep, thinking of Perenna just a few doors down the cement walkway of the motel where we had found accommodation, wondering what she would do now, whether she would accept Hans Holland’s advice or whether she would ignore it and try to run her brother’s life and the Holland Line, the two in harness. The torn pieces of that last letter of his were drifting soggily somewhere in the dark depths of the Pacific, and though it was that first line of his to which she had reacted so violently – My father and yours were brothers, each destroying what the other built – I could remember every line. It had gone on: Take my advice. Let the Holland Line founder. It has cost too many lives. Or else burn the stamps so that nobody else can ever know. And he had added, Goodbye, Perenna. I was cursed before ever I was born.

  It was that last line, in conjunction with his opening – My father and yours were brothers – that my mind fastened on, and Perenna’s reaction, her statement that it had been blurted out by Tim. She had leapt to the instant conclusion that he was saying her grandfather, Colonel Lawrence Holland, had been her natural father. His own daughter-in-law … It’s unthinkable. But unthinkable or not, if it was Colonel Holland, then the only brother he had ever had was Carlos of the Holland Trader and the wooden masks and stamps. Carlos Holland! If it was Carlos Holland who was Hans’s father, then he must have survived the loss of the Holland Trader, must have known what had happened to it, and had then spent the last thirty years of his life masquerading as a distant cousin. It would explain Colonel Lawrence Holland’s reaction on finding that letter from Lewis in the safe at Madehas. No wonder he had been filled suddenly with such demoniac anger that fratricide became the only answer. A man who could leave his partner waterless … I was thinking of the Holland Trader then. Christ! Lewis, that letter, the stamps … The thought that had leapt into my mind was enough to bring curses upon any family.

  There was a gentle tap on the door, and Perenna came in. ‘Roy.’ She was a dim shape in the darkness, feeling her way towards me. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I think I’m too tired to sleep. I keep thinking …’

  ‘About what?’

  I pulled back the sheet, and she reached down to me. ‘About Hans – that letter chiefly and what happened to him.’ I could smell the warmth of her as our bodies met and I held her close. ‘Do you think he’s really dead?’ she breathed. ‘Or was the letter, the shot, the fire … was it all a stupid game?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said, but with more conviction than I felt. ‘He won’t trouble you again.’

  ‘No?’ She lay very still. ‘Then that’s the end of Carlos Holland. Hans was the last of his blood.’ She was trembling slightly as she said that. ‘Where’s Mac? Is he all right?’

  ‘He’s sober again, if that’s what you mean. He’s gone north with your brother.’

  ‘I’m glad. But I ought to have gone with them. As long as I’m with Mac … He’s getting old now.’

  ‘You think you can keep him off the drink?’

  ‘I could try. But not now.’ She pressed her body close against me.

  ‘What about the stamps?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to take Hans’s advice – burn them, forget all about the past and—’

  ‘No. I want to know the truth now. If I know the truth, then I can face it and that’s the end of the curse, isn’t it? If only Tim—’ She stopped there, burying her head in my shoulder. She stayed like that, very still for a moment; then she whispered, ‘But that’s for tomorrow. Let’s forget now.’

  So we forgot, leaving the truth for the morrow.

  Part Five

  Solomons Seal

  The next few days became increasingly difficult for us as the PNG government moved quickly to restore its grip on the island. Two airlifts of troops were followed by police reinforcements, and the Civil Administration was strengthened with the arrival of a senior government official and extra staff, together with a judge and two political officers to enquire into the cause of the insurrection. Screening of personnel began immediately, and all whites, other than mining company employees, had their passports confiscated. In our case, we not only became for the time being prisoners-at-large in Bougainville, but were subjected to endless questioning as a result of a statement made by Shelvankar.

  It was from this statement, passages from which were read out at various times when I appeared before the Court of Enquiry, that I learned the full seriousness of Jona’s position. In no sense was he Hans’s partner; he had simply borrowed money from him. As managing director of the Holland Line, a private limited company of which he and Perenna were the sole
shareholders, he was responsible for the fact that it had been operating so consistently at a loss over recent years that its sole asset, the LCT, had become totally committed as security for loans the company could not repay. As a result, he had been forced to agree to the cargoes Hans had arranged through Shelvankar, and in the case of the voyage from Sydney to Anewa and the lifting off the Queensland beach of the two truckloads of automatic weapons that had made the establishment of the Bougainville-Buka Republic possible, he had known very well that he was becoming involved in something highly illegal.

  All this came out in the first two days of the Enquiry, so that on his return from transporting troops and police reinforcements to Buka, Jona was arrested, and the LCT impounded. Later he was released on his undertaking not to leave Bougainville. I thought at the time stronger action might have been taken against him if it had not been for his sister’s part in persuading the Chimbu workers to parade their strength and so save the lives of the hostages. Also, something quite unexpected occurred the day after his return. This was the death of Sapuru.

  He wasn’t executed. Nobody had arranged his assassination. His body was quite unmarked. And I can vouch for that as I saw it in the hospital when I visited Perry, who had been roughly handled trying to escape back to Paguna. And it wasn’t a heart attack, or cancer, or any identifiable disease; it was sorcery. Witness after witness swore to the fact that he had just lain down and died. And the doctors found nothing wrong with any of the organs. Rumour had it that it was a case of pay-back, that Tagup was a great sorcerer and could call upon spirits more powerful than Sapuru’s island ancestors. Logic, on the other hand, suggested that it was probably a case of extreme dejection following the failure of his coup, a complete moral and physical disintegration resulting in total lack of the will to live.

  But if that is the explanation, something occurred immediately afterwards that is totally beyond rational explanation. However, I didn’t know about it at the time. All I knew was that Sapuru had died suddenly and mysteriously, and that Eddie Wurep, the senior government official, had ordered a post-mortem to be carried out in the presence of Joseph Nasogo and one or two other Buka islanders who had worked at the government HQ. This was to forestall any rumours that he had been eliminated for political reasons. The pathologists were from the hospital in Arawa, a black doctor and a white surgeon assisted by two black nurses. A government medical officer was also present.

  By then I was told it was generally accepted, even on Buka, that responsibility for his death did not lie with the police or with any government agency, that nobody had physically assaulted him. But what he had died of, neither of the medical experts was prepared to say. I made a point of talking to them afterwards, and both of them admitted they had experienced cases like this before, cases where a man – it was men, rather than women – had just lain down and died for no apparent reason. Sorcery? They agreed it was a distinct possibility, though the word ‘sorcery’ was mentioned with reluctance as something that by their training and profession they should have outlawed completely from their minds.

  The white surgeon was a New Zealander, and he took me to his home in Arawa, where he gave me a drink and to make his point clear produced an encyclopaedia. This bracketed sorcery with witchcraft, and under Witchcraft in Australia and Melanesia it said that, as in Africa, death or illness was seldom thought to be due to natural causes, adding that the chief function of sorcery was to discover the person who had caused the illness or the death. Vengeance must then be taken on the enemy. This it referred to as payback and said it could be done by pointing a stick or bone. When, saturated with the sorcerer’s curses, it was pointed at the victim, belief in its potency does the rest. And of Melanesia, in particular, it said, Belief in the possession of supernatural powers by certain men is universal and these powers are feared and sought by all.

  That evening Tagup came to the motel to say goodbye to Perenna. He was flying to Port Moresby and on to Goroka in the morning. Dressed again in his white shirt and shorts, the silver Councillor shield glinting over the breast pocket, he looked very different from the near-naked fight leader who had pranced and taunted and brandished his axe at the head of the black howling ranks of his Highland people. In twenty-four hours he would be over 5,000 feet up in his grass-thatched house, with his wives and his many grandchildren, wearing nothing but a few broad blades of grass. No, he said, smiling in self-derogation, he was not really responsible for Sapuru’s death. But he had warned him that a death wish had been put upon him by a man he had tried to harm, a man who was injured and was a kiap. ‘He knew at once,’ he said, looking directly at Perenna. And he added that an old curse, one that had not been powerful enough to destroy a man like Sapuru, who was himself a sorcerer, until after he had been defeated, could well have brought about his death when his vitality was at a low ebb and the will to live so reduced that he had become vulnerable.

  That I think is the nearest anybody will ever come to a solution of the mysterious death of Daniel Sapuru, the two-day President of Bougainville-Buka. Shortly after that, Perenna and I had our passports handed back to us, and we were told we were free to leave whenever we wished. By then we were into the second week of August. The LCT was still in Kieta Bay, empty except for a police guard. The three RPLs were anchored nearby and up for sale. The government had confiscated all Hans’s property, together with that of the Buka Trading Co-operative. Everything, land, trucks, ships, was being sold to provide compensation for the cost incurred by the government in reestablishing their authority in the island. Jona and Perenna had been informed that the LCT was being held as the property of Hans Holland and would be sold under the terms of the compensation decree already issued, unless they could repay all loans made to the Holland Line by Hans Holland before the end of the month. And it was made very clear that this concession, and the leniency shown to her brother, were in recognition of the part she had played in saving the lives of the hostages and bringing the insurrection to a speedy and bloodless end. Unfortunately, the concession as it applied to the LCT was of little help to us. The amount outstanding now totalled 38,000 kina, which was the equivalent of just on A$47,000. This was almost exactly what enquiries through the kind offices of the mine management indicated the ship might fetch for scrap in the open market.

  It was the end of any hope I might have had of taking over the running of the ship and trying to make the Holland Line profitable. And it had been profitable until Hans had started undercutting the two coasters Jona had originally operated with his more economical, more practical ramp-propelled lighters.

  It was the end of the Holland Line, and for Perenna a bitter blow. She felt it much more than Jona, for whom the Line meant very little. It was only the ship that mattered to him, and even that wasn’t very important since he didn’t anticipate any great difficulty in getting command of a vessel belonging to one of the major shipping companies, which would have the advantage that he would no longer have to worry about the business side.

  The day I left for Australia we drove down to Kieta early in the morning, just before sunrise when the world was still fresh, and walked along the beach hand-in-hand under the palm trees. All the eastern horizon was a blaze of red, and against this flaming dawn sky the slab-sided, boxlike shape of the LCT rose black in shadow, a cut-out silhouette of a ship, the sea so still and red it might have been molten lava.

  She was an ugly vessel. At least I suppose she was, being totally functional, with no concessions to anything other than the purpose for which she had been designed. But to me she had the beauty of an unattainable dream. I don’t know whether it was the dream or the ship I had come down to say goodbye to, but there it all was – a ship of my own and a line to run … and I was taking the flight to Port Moresby later that day.

  For Perenna it was much more than the end of a dream, and she was in tears as we stood looking at the familiar shape of the little vessel standing so clear-cut against that translucent sunrise sky. And then the red elliptica
l curve of the sun’s rim inched up over the horizon right behind her, so that the shape of her became framed in the thrusting orb and Perenna gasped in astonishment, for it appeared as though she were being consumed in fire. I could feel her fingers digging into my hand, sensed her feelings that the ship represented something that had been a part of her all her life. That was all that remained of the trading schooners, the old post-war coasters and MFVs, the long line of vessels stretching back three-quarters of a century to the Holland Trader, and in a few weeks’ time it would go for scrap … ‘Carlos, my grandfather, Jona, us’ – her grip on my hand had tightened, her voice more husky than usual – ‘Red Holland, too, I suppose – Carlos in a new guise – and Hans.’ She paused, thinking back to her childhood. ‘Mac, all those skippers – I can’t remember their names now, there must have been half a dozen of them – and the crews. So many people, all involved in keeping the islands supplied and taking their crops to market. And now it’s finished – up for sale. Scrap.’ There was a catch in her voice as she said that final word and she let go of my hand, turning abruptly away.

  Halfway to the car, in command of herself again, she said in a small, tight voice, ‘When I came on board, that first day, in the evening, standing in the wheelhouse – I watched you at the chart table, working out our position – I thought then, knowing something of your background, conscious of the way you had dealt with those stamps and got money out to me when I needed it, I thought, This is the man to get the Holland Line on its feet again.’

  ‘Is that why you fell into my bunk?’ I said it lightly, an attempt to lift her out of her mood, though deep down I was hurt, knowing there was a calculating streak in most women.

  She stopped, turning on me quickly. ‘Don’t be silly, Roy. It’s just that I never thought to fall in love with a man who could match my own background – my own needs, if you like. Not physical, I don’t mean that … ’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I’m not putting it very well.’