by Anbara Salam
I. A. M. Jonson had made a brief flirtation with the army himself, only to have spent two years in 1939 sweating in a miserable hole in Egypt. There, he felt suffocated by flies and hot sand, uninspired by his humourless neighbours and their inevitable diet of onions. He’d been given an honourable dismissal after losing his nerve and shooting a man through the kneecaps, after he was overcharged for a black-market bottle of whisky. His commanding officer, not unsympathetic himself to the locals’ booze-swindling, had decided the sand-fever had gone to Jonson’s head, and perhaps he’d be better off on government service in a steadier climate. Somewhere with lots of rain where a chap could eat fish. And so, Jonson was transferred to the Colonial Administrative Service, and was sent off to the New Hebrides.
When the last of the items had been piled on the beach, Max and Jonson stretched their backs and waved to the passengers on the ship as the boat slowly pulled away from the shore. At that moment, Jonson was rushed from behind by New Dog. Snorting and twisting, it leapt up at Jonson’s back, sniffing him wildly, its tail flapping, pressing mucky paws behind his kneecaps so he momentarily lost his balance.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Max offered Jonson his left arm to brace him, while delivering a swift kick at New Dog’s snout with his right leg. ‘Go! Shoo – get away from here! Kranki dog!’ He gave it another shove on the side of its face with his leg, and the beast slunk off towards Mission House, its ears flattened to its head.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Max brushed the back of Jonson’s shoulders, though they weren’t at all dirty. ‘It’s totally harmless but quite wild about visitors.’
‘It’s quite all right.’ Jonson adjusted his cuffs. ‘Well,’ he coughed, ‘let’s have a look at your digs then, shall we? Make sure the natives are treating you right.’ He placed one small, square white hand behind Max’s shoulder blades and gestured him back towards the village.
‘My wife will be delighted to meet you,’ Max said. ‘She’ll be so grateful for your help with our items, we’ve been waiting for months.’
Jonson had heard the new missionary had brought his wife with him, and had been expecting a chubby, dour-faced woman wearing a high-necked white shirt, clutching a Bible. This vaguely Victorian image, plus the caustic smell of carbolic soap from the inside of the few Christian houses in Cairo, formed Jonson’s entire lexicon of reference for missionaries’ wives.
He was startled, therefore, to spot outside the thatched house a young, brown-skinned woman with a thick plait over one shoulder. She was sitting astride a green stool, her skirt carelessly tucked between her legs as she shelled peas into a basket under her knees. In the dim light, her bent head, long hair and slim shins sent an odd wrench through him. But when she raised her head, he realized she was not beautiful after all. Her nose was too large for her face, and bumped in the middle, as if it had been broken at some point. Her eyes were spaced far apart from each other, and were a bit goggled-looking. Her mouth was wide, and her teeth were white, with a clear gap through the centre. As she stood and smiled, she wiped her face on her shirtsleeve in a singularly unladylike gesture.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she said, in a hoarse, not-quite-American accent.
‘Beatriz, this is the famous Mr Jonson, who has been so kind as to come all the way to welcome us,’ Max said. He placed one proprietary hand on her waist, and motioned for her to shake Jonson’s hand.
Bea took his hand in her own damp one, and smiled disinterestedly. Jonson found himself stuck for words, being unused to socializing with women.
‘Ah, good evening. It’s I. A. M.’
‘Sorry?’ Bea looked at Max, her eyes widening in panic, as if it were a greeting in the local tongue she did not yet know.
‘I. A. M. Jonson,’ he said, clearing his throat.
‘Oh.’ Bea looked as if she were fighting a small smile. ‘Oh. You’re Jonson. I see.’ She glanced down into her basket of shelled peas, barely concealing a smirk.
‘Poor Mr Jonson has already met your canine,’ said Max, an edge of reproach in his voice.
Bea grimaced. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She looked at Max. ‘I did try and tie her – soon as I saw a whiteman – um, Mr Jonson, but –’ She gestured vaguely.
‘Just keep it away from here, will you, huh?’
Bea nodded.
Max gave her an anticipatory smile, ‘So, Mr Jonson has helped to bring our boxes ashore,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Bless you, Mr Jonson!’ She dropped her chin on to her chest and made a soft gurgling sound in her throat that Jonson feared would be crying, or praying, or both.
‘Yes, very welcome, madam,’ he said, stepping back away from the porch, lest she try and embrace him. ‘Shall we – uh?’ Jonson tipped his head towards the bottom of the hill.
‘Yes, please!’ cried Beatriz.
Max chuckled. ‘OK, after you.’
As they walked back down to the bottom of the hill, Abel Poulet chased his son away from the boxes, and with a brief nod, seized a trunk and carelessly hoisted it on to his shoulder and began walking it up to Mission House. Max and Jonson exchanged a glance. They each took one handle of a chipped oak chest that had been Max’s grandfather’s, and slowly inched it up the slope.
‘Have you been married long?’ said Jonson, between breaths.
‘Almost two years,’ said Max.
‘And –’ Jonson nearly restrained his curiosity, but his chest still bristled with pique from the close encounter with Bernard’s accomplishments. He cleared his throat. ‘And how did you meet your wife, if I may ask?’
‘In Venezuela,’ Max said.
‘And was Mrs Hanlon also working on mission?’
‘Not at that time –’ Max licked his lips ‘– but I’ve been blessed to guide her as she learns from our opportunity here on Advent Island.’
It had taken Max two weeks to travel from Boston to Venezuela, but almost instantly, he felt the tepid misery of the last few years lifting off him like sheets of vapour from a gasoline bucket. It was hot, it was humid, and the food was awful. It was like being back in the Pacific. Max first stayed with a small chapter in a wooden house a couple of hours away from Caracas. It was overseen by Gustav Horetz, a large German in his late forties, with short blond hair that stood up on his head like the bristles on a toothbrush.
There were eleven people who lived permanently in the house, and they slept four to a room in bunk beds. Although Gustav and his wife, Penelope, were extremely welcoming, they were also bonkers. Gustav was prone to long lectures in the middle of mealtimes, during which he would stand up, tipping over his bowl of rice and beans to orate at length about how the prophecies of Ezekiel were coming true right before their eyes. He declared South America to be the New Jerusalem, and his small, strange band of companions to be akin to the Puritan founders of America, come to civilize the natives. Max decided it might be wise to spend rather less time in that house, and more time visiting the other minuscule chapters of Protestants near the capital.
It wasn’t easy making his way around on his own, but it was certainly preferable to the cramped quarters of the wooden cabin. Max had tried to learn some Spanish on the long trip south, but languages had never been his forte. He had to make do with a set of phrases dutifully copied into a notebook that expressed his intentions in a woefully old-fashioned and formal Spanish that made people on the street break out into gleeful hilarity whenever he opened his mouth.
While visiting a small Mission Hospital outside of Caracas, Max met a young woman. Her nose had been broken, and her face was still swollen and split in places like an overripe plum. She had been deposited outside the hospital three weeks previously, and had spent most of her time inside her narrow cell, refusing to talk, and staring blankly at the walls. Nurse Abilo, a middle-aged woman with a cauliflower-shaped birthmark on her neck, told him the girl had been in an accident with an automobile, and was now developmentally damaged. She would probably be sent to the asylum when she recovered. But
while buying oranges from José Martido, the caretaker, Max was told the girl had been beaten by ‘some bastard’ somewhere in the city, and left on the doorway of the hospital.
José crossed himself apologetically. ‘Sorry, Father, for using such language.’
Her name was Beatriz. Max sat with her sometimes on his visits to the clinic. She barely turned her head to look at him when he first came to sit with her. He couldn’t do much more than read out Bible passages to her in English from a wicker chair in the corner of the room, while she pointedly ignored him. He tried to engage her in conversation, making inane small talk in his shaky Spanish. But after four visits, she had astonished him by addressing him in English. Her face was still healing, and had joined back together asymmetrically. Looking at it straight on was a bit peculiar, it seemed to wander in a squiggly line.
‘Your Spanish,’ she had said, in a low voice. ‘It’s too formal. You sound like a ridiculous old man.’
Max found himself speechless with equal parts of amusement and embarrassment. He was delighted to discover she understood English, even if she wasn’t prepared to speak more than a few terse words at a time, unless she were rebuking him. No one at the hospital knew anything of her background. But Max was surprised to learn she even knew some words of German, thanks to the mottled heritage of an émigré housemaid. And Max was even more surprised to feel relieved when he realized she must have been well educated. A wealthy man’s daughter. A girl who had probably owned ponies, and ridiculous little hats with feathers in them. God knows what blows life had dealt her to bring her to this place. Although he would never have admitted it, a part of his relief was also due to a new reassurance that no matter what had happened to her, she was too refined to have been a prostitute.
Three weeks into his trip, Max stepped into the small, dusty garden at the back of the hospital to light his pipe. He sat on the splintery bench and scratched at the back of his sunburnt neck. He turned his head to a soft brushing noise, to see Bea ineffectually sweeping eucalyptus leaves on the far side of the garden, near the corner wall. She was pushing the leaves in a circle, more than sweeping. After a couple of minutes, she stopped suddenly, as if listening to something, and looked intently into a glossy-leaved bush near the brick wall. She dropped the broom with a careless whack, and crouched into the pile of leaves. Shuffling clumsily into the bushes, she emerged a minute later holding a small, wriggling ginger kitten. Unaware of being watched, she smiled to herself, and rubbed her right hand over the top of its head and over the points of its ears. She put her fingertips in the soft fluff on its belly. The kitten leant backwards to grip at her wrist with the tip of its claws, and toppled over in an acrobatic backflip.
Despite himself, Max started laughing. Only now aware of his presence, Bea turned to the sound of the laughter, and smiled directly at him. She smiled completely, unapologetically, in a way that creased up the side of her scarred face. He forgot he shouldn’t have been watching her. He felt an unfamiliar queasiness pass right through the lining of his stomach.
Max began to find excuses to visit her. To walk her around the garden, and goad her into practising her English. She never said much, but he found her sober and lovely. The vacant-eyed catatonia that had led Nurse Abilo to believe she was a lunatic cracked into sparks of temper, jokes, and a stoic innocence that, despite everything she had suffered, Max admired. He felt quite able to forgive her for all her previous sins, even her Catholic upbringing.
As time went on, and Max realized his visit was drawing to an end, he became increasingly worried about what might happen to Beatriz after he left. Would she be sent to some wretched asylum somewhere? It seemed the most likely fate for a woman with no skills, no money and, as far as he could tell, no family. Perhaps she could stay on at the hospital, and become a nurse, too? There were several ex-patients who volunteered their time at the clinic, in return for board on the east wing, and the soupy, unappetizing meals dosed out to the invalids. But Beatriz certainly appeared to have no aptitude for nursing. When enlisted to help in the clinic, she would prod the patient in question, wearing a blank expression on her face. She had little sympathy for others. She would become distracted halfway through a task, and walk away during the middle of a bandaging to pick absently at a loose thread in the sheets.
With surprise, Max realized the solution was rather obvious. If she would have him, he would marry her. He could save her from all this. He could offer her a new life. After all, they both needed a healthy change of scene. A place where they could devote themselves to being useful in God’s work, and repair themselves from the misery of the past few years. Neither of them had any family to object to their union. And so they were married, with little fanfare, by Gustav Horetz from the Empires of Christ, in the drawing room of his wooden cabin.
Not long after, Max set out with his new wife for the old world.
When the last of the trunks were dragged up the hill to Mission House, Jonson and Abel excused themselves to join Willie in the nakamal. Max and Bea rested their fingers on each box in turn, smiling at each other. Max caught Bea up from behind and swung her round as she squealed with happiness. In the trunks were the musty relics of their life, and they were lifted out carefully one by one.
Out came a box of black-beaded hatpins, and a grey wool housecoat which Bea held up to the candlelight only to find it punctured by moth holes. Bea sighed, deciding it would make a good bed for New Dog. She certainly didn’t have much use for wool in the rainforest. She uncovered a small cellophane bag of barley-sugar candies, and a full sewing set with reams of coloured thread and a crochet hook. A tiny kit for repairing eyeglasses was wrapped in brown paper, although neither she nor Max wore glasses. She picked up a handful of Paper Mate pens, a box of rustproof brass safety pins, and a carton of Derwent colouring pencils. Bea slid open the cardboard box, and rolled them under her fingers. They were so impossibly new and uncorrupted. A few incongruous items she placed carefully back into the box. This included a pack of stockings, and magnolia-scented hand lotion. She looked at her hands. They were calloused and freckled on the back. Her fingernails were rimmed with red dirt and thin slivers of cuticles hung in shreds from her thumbs. She felt a tremulous unhappiness, a sort of squeamish culture shock. How had she thought these objects would be of use to her? She had been so stupid and naive.
In one of the crates was Bea’s most treasured possession – a green Singer sewing machine. Bea hoisted it out on to the table and pressed at the pedal tentatively until it gave a little cough and a smart series of rotations. Bea’s face hurt from smiling. What things she would create with her new machine! She looked around the room for inspiration. Perhaps curtains for the windows? Cushion covers for the stools? A new dress! Bea felt feverish with the urge to start one of these projects straight away, when she became aware of Max’s voice from underneath the lid of a crate.
‘My commentaries seem to have made the journey well.’ He was fingering through a hardback book, and Bea knew he was making a deliberate attempt at understatement, as his face was pink with joy.
The next day, while Max was at church, Bea sat by the machine and stroked it like it was a beloved pet. She brought forth 101 Things, and luxuriously turned through each page, relishing how many new beautiful projects were now within her reach. She would transform Mission House into a modern home; Max would be astounded at her skill. That afternoon, Bea walked the miles up to Aru’s store, and bought a ream of plasticky pink fabric she recognized from the generous ruffles that bedecked many of the island dresses she had seen in church.
Over the next few weeks, Max noticed with initial amusement, then pride, and then some concern, as the pink fabric populated itself. At first, Bea produced a perceptibly asymmetrical tablecloth for Mission House, which, he had to admit, did rather cheer up the place. Then came a lampshade, which Max found perplexing, since there was only one hurricane lamp, and the last thing they needed was to ‘shade’ the paltry light that dribbled from it. A ruched bedskirt cam
e next, which mostly served as a climbing aid for the cockroaches. Max rolled it carefully up into the frame of his bunk as an anchor for the mosquito net. Then came the plague of handkerchiefs.
Before the week was out, scores of people from all over the island were knocking at Mission House, asking for their own small scarves. They became something of a fashion hit, and were stuffed in pockets, worn on the front of clothes, tied to bushknives, and used for redistributing sweat around the face. Santra and Bea began a workshop on the Mission House table as Santra painstakingly embroidered villagers’ names on to the handkerchiefs from Bea’s alliterations on an old envelope. Max suggested Bea and Santra should charge for production, but Bea shrugged. ‘It’s goodwill, Max, you should know – you can’t expect repayment for good Christian charity.’
9
The airstrip in the south of Advent Island was constructed during the last years of the war. Inspired by Ragrag Charley’s airfield on Malekula, fifteen members of a local cargo cult had cleared a rectangular strip of rainforest parallel to the ocean. The project took over two months, and cost the lives of three men when a rotten tree fell on them. To curry favour with the gods, an even-sided wooden cross was planted by the coast, and was coloured with red dye. A small pandan hut was built at the top left of the strip for staging ritual incantations.
The project had been abandoned only six months after its construction, when, impressed by their entrepreneurial spirit, Garolf Sugarcraven offered to relocate the worshippers and their families to work on his Dadavoki plantation. A year later, the mock airstrip was repurposed as an actual airstrip, and put into use to bring in DA agents from Santo. Without the benefit of a small community to obsessively tend to it, the strip deteriorated into a shabby, pockmarked ribbon of grass. At the bottom of the runway there were 200 metres of thick bog left uncovered when the bush was cleared. The stinking mud greedily sucked at anyone who attempted to cross it, and after a rainy spell, it often swallowed Max up to the waist. The airstrip was unusable during the rainy season, when the endless days and weeks of monsoon turned the whole area into a gummy orange marsh.