Papua

by Peter Watt

  ‘What are you going to do about your sister?’ Sir Hubert asked as Jack picked up his big floppy bush hat from the floor beside his chair.

  ‘I will be arranging to catch a steamer south to Sydney,’ he replied. ‘Mary is looking after my son.’

  Sir Hubert glanced in surprise at Jack. ‘I was not aware that you were married,’ he said.

  ‘Married and widowed – but with a son.’

  ‘I am sorry for your circumstances,’ Sir Hubert said gently. ‘It must be hard leaving a son behind.’ Jack did not reply.

  When Jack thought it could not get worse – it did.

  Sen explained that Iris’s horse had been found dead with an arrow in its chest about a month after the time that he and George had departed on their expedition. Iris was missing without any trace and the police had been investigating the circumstances of her disappearance. Their conclusion was that some renegade natives from around Moresby had taken advantage of the isolated area and a lone girl and had ambushed her.

  ‘Jesus,’ Jack swore softly and bowed his head as he sat on the verandah steps of Sen’s residence. ‘A single arrow killed her horse you say.’

  ‘It may have been a poisoned arrow,’ Sen said. ‘No other explanation.’

  ‘At least I have been spared the task of telling her that George is dead,’ Jack said bitterly. ‘And it is a kind of mercy that George did not live to learn of Iris’s fate. I think it would have killed George if he had known.’

  ‘What are your plans now?’ Sen asked.

  Jack looked up from the fernery to stare at the blue sky above. ‘Use some of the money I know you will give me for the gold I found and head back to Sydney for a spell. My sister is pretty crook and I need to be away from here for a while. Just one of those things . . .’ He trailed off, at a loss for words to describe the crushing feeling of despair and guilt. Despair for George’s death – and guilt for leading him to that cruel fate.

  ‘You are always welcome in my house,’ Sen said, placing his hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘We have both lost people close to us.’

  ‘Thanks, old cobber,’ Jack said as he rose from the steps. ‘But I will catch the first steamer south I can. In the meantime I need to go back to Moresby and have another drink at the pub. With any luck I might bump into O’Leary while I’m still sober and finish what George started for me before we went north.’

  ‘O’Leary is not around these ways,’ Sen said with a touch of relief. He knew Jack was in a mood to take out his pent-up emotions in a display of violence. He was aware of the Australian’s pre-war reputation for being prepared to take on any man who dared challenge him to a fight. It was the Irish in him, some said. ‘O’Leary and his partner went west to the Fly River region on a recruiting drive about the time you went north.’

  ‘Pity,’ Jack growled. ‘It’s not going to be over between us until I make him know that I will not take any rubbish from him. Anyway, I will accept your kind offer and head back to put my head down here tonight. I should be able to get the boat leaving the day after tomorrow. You will find the gold in my duffel bag,’ he added as he rose from his cane chair. ‘I don’t have to say that I can trust you to arrange its sale with your Chinese contacts and take your commission.’

  Sen glanced at his friend with just a touch of surprise. But why should he be surprised? Jack Kelly was indeed a trusting man when it came to friends. He knew that he could trust Sen and he also knew that Sen would not let him down. He watched him stride away but noticed his friend seemed to carry a sad load on his shoulders. His gaze lingered on Jack and Sen felt the surge of guilt turn to a wave of despair for those things about his own past years in the territories of Papua and New Guinea he knew he could never tell his good friend, who had fought so courageously for his country. It had been so simple to fool the Australians. They were a trusting people who saw him as just another Oriental who had worked hard to make his fortune. If only they had known how he had been given his stake to build his fortune he might now be a dead man. Such was the punishment for the offences he had committed during the war years. And as for O’Leary and Jack’s suspicions – Sen knew a lot more than he could tell.

  Jack strode towards the stables. He would take the sulky into town and get roaring drunk and bury his old friend again in the manner they both knew so well. The horse would make its own way back to Sen’s with him as a passenger once the alcohol had helped numb his grief. Or was the alcohol a means of numbing guilt, Jack wondered bitterly.

  Dademo was standing beside the sulky stroking the big chestnut’s forehead as it stood patiently waiting between the harness rails.

  ‘Hey, Mr Jack, me got something you want to buy,’ he said and held out his hand. In the palm of his hand nestled an empty rifle cartridge. ‘You buy this fella stuff.’ Jack knew that empty brass rifle cartridges could be reloaded and so too did the natives who worked with Europeans. Bullets cost money and a reloaded bullet cut back on cost of ammunition.

  Jack took the brass cartridge and frowned. It was not the standard .303 case used in the Lee Enfield rifles common throughout the British Empire. He recognised it immediately as a German 7.92 case as used in Mauser rifles.

  ‘Where did you find it, Dademo?’ he asked. The houseboy suddenly appeared sheepish, moving from foot to foot in a manner that Jack knew meant he was reluctant to speak. ‘You tell me quick smart where you found this bullet.’

  Under Jack’s withering stare, Dademo relented. What harm could come from telling Mr Jack, who was a good man? ‘Found it in the hills near where missus Iris horse got killed,’ he mumbled. ‘When we went out to look for her with Master Sen.’

  ‘You didn’t tell Master Sen about your find because you figured a white man would buy it from you.’ Jack spoke without rancour. It was the way of the local people to remain aloof from European matters not of their concern and he did not expect a reply from Dademo. ‘You think that one arrow could kill a horse?’ he asked and Dademo now frowned.

  ‘No, Mr Jack.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ Jack replied pocketing the empty case. From the expression on the white man’s face Dademo knew better than to ask for payment.

  Jack hauled himself into the sulky and took the reins from Dademo. The ruse of placing an arrow in a bullet wound was as old as the Palmer River days, almost half a century before. Jack remembered how the old timers who had worked the dangerous gold fields of northern Queensland told stories of unscrupulous men who killed Chinese miners for their gold, then placed souvenired spears in the resulting wounds to make it appear that the Aboriginal warriors had killed the Chinese. This memory was fresh when Sen had told him that a single arrow had killed the horse. He had considered poison but that would still be slow acting – and from what Sen had told him, when they found Iris’s horse it was clear it had crashed into the ground very heavily.

  The find of the rifle case was purely circumstantial. It could have been ejected at any time, but the fact that it was a Mauser case made Jack think of O’Leary. He was the only man he knew in Moresby who preferred the German rifle to the British Lee Enfield most commonly used by prospectors and police. But even a suspicion required proof. The rogue Irishman was the lowest of men, Jack knew, but surely not stupid enough to kill a woman related to a man with considerable influence in Papua. Jack remembered how Sen had told him that O’Leary left the Moresby district about the same time as Iris went missing. Sen thought that O’Leary had left a month earlier. But whilst Jack had been at the pub earlier after his audience with Sir Hubert he had been informed by one of his old gummy, prospector mates that O’Leary had stolen a good set of false teeth from him. When Jack had ceased laughing he had asked idly when the theft had occurred and the old prospector grumbled the date, which he had obvious reason to remember: three days before Iris went missing.

  Before he flicked the reins Jack turned to Dademo. ‘That arrow that killed Miss Iris’s horse, I will pay two bob for it if you know where it is.’ Dademo looked startled at Jack’s offer of a
reward. He did know where it was. It was in the possession of an old and feared masalai meri – a witch the Europeans would have called her. She lived in Dademo’s village and paid well for items that had been used to kill. Such items held strong magic and in a land where all misfortunes were attributed to acts of magic the arrow was a potent item. Her powers must be strong, as she was still alive in a land where a bloody vengeance was often sought against those identified as practitioners of the dark arts.

  ‘I know where the arrow is, Mr Jack,’ he replied. ‘But it belongs to masalai meri who is the witch of my village.’

  ‘Tell her that I will buy the arrow off her for five bob,’ Jack said, ‘and I will throw in a couple of bob more for you if you get it to me tonight.’

  Dademo whistled. Such an amount of wealth must mean that the arrow was truly powerful and he now regretted selling it to her for the price of a blessing against the curses of his enemies.

  ‘I will, Mr Jack. But I will need some money to buy another blessing against the evil spirits.’

  The reward he had offered was generous and Jack knew he would get the arrow when he returned from the hotel that evening. Dademo would be leaving only a trail of dust back to his village a short distance away to retrieve the item. ‘Tell her she only gets the money when I get the arrow.’

  Dademo nodded and Jack flicked the reins.

  In the town Jack submitted his written report to an official at Sir Hubert’s office then went to purchase his fare for the voyage back to Sydney. The exchange of gold for cash had left him with a considerable amount of spending money, which he took from Sen in Australian currency. Rolled in a wad it felt good in his pocket. But he was also aware that it was not enough to properly outfit another expedition back to the river where he had found his gold, nor enough to bring in the equipment and supplies to set up a large scale mining operation. To do that he would require a vast amount of capital, and Sydney was the place to try and raise it. For the venture he envisaged, this would not be just a case of grubbing a staked out lot. It would give him a chance at his long held dream of owning a mining company and becoming a very rich man.

  Jack was deep in thought as he crossed the street to walk to the hotel where he had left his horse and sulky. Now it was time to have a drink in George’s memory. To raise a glass to him in the bar where George had so efficiently dispatched O’Leary and earned a place in local folklore for his efforts.

  ‘Captain Kelly! Is that you?’

  Jack froze. Not because someone had recognised him – there were many former soldiers of the war who had travelled to find a new life on this wild frontier – but because the person who had questioned his identity had spoken to him in German. Jack turned to see a face that brought back memories of a terrible day of hand to hand fighting in the trenches of the Hindenburg Line three years earlier.

  ‘Major Mann!’

  ‘It is you, Captain Kelly,’ Paul said as he stumbled forward, almost in a daze of disbelief. ‘I always hoped that you had survived.’

  Jack’s expression of shock thawed to a slow, warm smile of welcome. ‘I am pleased to see that you made it,’ he said as he thrust out his hand. ‘But I never thought I would ever see you again. Especially back here.’

  Paul took Jack’s offered hand and pumped it enthusiastically. ‘It is good to see you again, my friend.’

  ‘So what the hell are you doing in these parts?’ Jack asked. ‘I thought that our government took all your lands from you up in New Guinea.’

  ‘They did,’ Paul replied with a frown. ‘But I was to buy back my plantation from one of your countrymen. However he pulled out of the deal at the last moment. So here I am in Port Moresby on my way up to Finschhafen to see if I can get work as a plantation manager.’

  Jack suddenly realised that in their conversation they had been switching from German to English. He was surprised how fluent he still was in his mother’s language. ‘Why don’t you join me at the pub for a drink?’ he beamed. ‘Tell me how things have been since I last saw you.’

  ‘I would, my friend, except that I have noticed that I am not welcomed by many of your countrymen in the hotel. I was there yesterday and they asked me to leave.’

  ‘Like bloody hell they will when they know you are with me,’ Jack swore. ‘C’mon, old cobber, I’ll buy the first round.’

  ‘What is a cobber?’ Paul asked in English.

  ‘Cobber is a mate – a friend, an amigo,’ Jack laughed.

  Paul smiled. He had not smiled very much since leaving his wife and son on the wharf at Townsville with his petulant sister. But the Australian had an infectious friendliness about him and the air of a man confident that he was bullet proof to the world.

  As Jack stormed into the bar heads turned curiously to greet him. Without any further fanfare Jack roared above the low babble of men steeped in drink. ‘This is Major Paul Mann, formerly of the German army, and formerly a man who did his best to kill me on the Hindenburg Line. But now he is here with me and prepared to buy the first round. Any man who objects to him being in here can tell me personally of his grievance. But, for the sake of propriety, that will be done outside the pub where civilised men settle their differences. Are there any objections?’

  ‘No, Jack,’ old Harry the prospector said. ‘If he is a cobber of yours and you don’t object to the fact that he tried to kill ya, then he is okay with us.’

  A mumbled ripple of agreement went through the room and Jack guided Paul across the pub to a place at the bar beside Harry.

  That evening Sen was disturbed in the office of his house by the sound of drunken men. The voices were coming from a distance and he was puzzled by the foreign words. Although he did not speak German, he did recognise the language.

  He rose and went to the verandah to see the chestnut come to a halt and two men spill out of the sulky. Jack collapsed on the ground but rose to his feet with the help of a stranger.

  ‘I am sorry, my friend,’ Paul said, addressing Sen as he helped Jack by half dragging and half walking him towards the verandah, ‘but we have not met. You must be Mr Sen as Jack has told me much about you. I am Paul Mann from Munich but formerly of Finschhafen in New Guinea.’

  The stranger appeared less drunk than Jack and Sen stepped down from the verandah to assist. The German held out his hand. ‘I am Sen,’ he replied as he took Paul’s hand. ‘I must thank you for getting Jack back to my place in one piece. I am not surprised to see him this way. He has had a lot of bad things happen to him recently.’

  When Paul let him go Jack crumpled on the step. ‘Good man, this Kraut,’ Jack slurred as he tried to focus the world around him. ‘A bit like old George in many ways. Tried his best to kill me once though. But now he is a fair dinkum cobber. A Papuan like you and me, Sen.’

  ‘We will get him inside and onto his bed,’ Sen grunted. ‘I think he will be a very sick man in the morning.’

  They dropped Jack on his camp stretcher under a mosquito net and left. Sen invited Paul to join him in a drink but the German politely declined the offer with the explanation that he had to get back to his boarding house in Moresby.

  ‘It is very late and you would be better off staying here for the night, Mr Mann,’ Sen said. ‘I have room and my wife will arrange to make up a bed for you near Jack.’

  ‘That is very kind of you, Mr Sen,’ Paul replied.

  Sen did not correct Paul’s use of his name. He had long realised that Europeans tended to be embarrassed when they were told of their mistake in addressing him. It was similar to the Asian loss of face. So he would remain ‘Mr Sen’ to the German.

  ‘It is the least I can do for a man who once tried to kill Jack,’ Sen replied with just the hint of a wicked smile. ‘But that was when you Europeans were doing your best to destroy your own civilisation.’

  Paul nodded. Jack had told him about Sen and now he was able to see for himself just how remarkable the Chinese man was. His English was fluent with little trace of an accent and Paul sensed that Sen
was very much in tune with European thinking. This was strange to Paul, as the only Chinese he had known before the war were labourers or recruiters of native labour, so very different to Sen who could easily be at home in any European house – except that he was Chinese. Paul suddenly had a fleeting thought for the Jewish people of his own land. They were the Chinese of Germany, he thought. ‘I will accept your kind offer to stay overnight,’ Paul said, and once again shook Sen’s hand. ‘It is very late and I am not familiar with the country around Port Moresby.’

  ‘That is good,’ Sen said. ‘And knowing Jack I will presume that you have not eaten as yet.’

  ‘No, but I do not wish to impose any further on your hospitality,’ Paul said. ‘You have done enough.’

  ‘I know most of what happens around Moresby,’ Sen said. ‘But I have not heard of you before.’

  ‘I am only in Moresby on my way back to Finschhafen,’ Paul replied. ‘I am not from around here.’

  ‘So what is there in Finschhafen for you?’ Sen asked bluntly. He was warming to the German, there was something about him. Besides, Sen had known many Germans from his time in New Guinea before the war and respected the efficient way that they had governed the northern part of the island under the Kaiser’s jurisdiction.

  Paul told Sen his story; of how he had returned to New Guinea with the hope of starting a new life for his family away from the ruins of a war ravaged Germany. By the time Sen’s wife had served up a light meal of steamed vegetables and pork cooked in the Oriental style, Sen had offered Paul a job to help get him on his feet. Paul was stunned by the offer – especially since Sen’s accompanying offer of pay was more than generous.