wantok bilong mi
T. A. G. HUNGERFORD
PROLOGUE
On June 26th, 1959, at Boianai in Papua, visitants appeared to the Reverend William Booth Gill, himself a visitant of thirteen years standing, and to thirty-seven witnesses of another colour. At 6.45 p.m. Mr Gill, an Anglican missionary, glanced at the sky to locate the planet Venus. He saw instead a sparkling object, ‘very, very bright,’ which descended to an altitude of around four hundred feet. The craft was shaped like a disc, perhaps thirty to forty feet across, with smaller round superstructures, and had on the underside four legs pointing diagonally downwards. Uppermost on the disc was a circular bridge, like the bridge of a ship, perhaps twenty feet in diameter.
Behind this bridge, and visible from the waist up, human figures emerged and proceeded to busy themselves with some operation on deck. They bent and straightened from time to time, occasionally turning in the direction of the onlookers, but showed on the whole no interest in anything but their machine. The focus of activity appeared to be a thin blue spotlight directed at the sky. This was switched on at irregular intervals, each time for the space of a few seconds. The figures, seemingly four in all, continued preoccupied with this work for the rest of the night.
On impulse, as one of the figures leaned forward over the bridge, the clergyman saluted him by waving a hand over his head. The figure replied in kind, like a skipper on a boat (said Mr Gill) waving to someone on the wharf. Then a Papuan teacher called Ananias waved with both arms, and two other figures returned the greeting. Encouraged, Mr Gill and Ananias began to wave a good deal, and were acknowledged by all four visitants. The watching Papuans were ‘surprised and delighted’. Small boys called out, everyone beckoned the ‘beings’ to come down. But there was no audible response, and the faces and expressions of the figures remained obscure: ‘rather like,’ as Mr Gill said, ‘players on a football field at night.’
The tenuous contact ended with a display of technology by the groundlings, and wistfully on their part. They signalled to the disc with a flashlight. ‘The object swung like a pendulum, presumably in recognition. When we flashed the torchlight towards it, it hovered, and came quite close towards the ground…and we actually thought it was going to land, but it did not. We were all,’ said Mr Gill, speaking for the thirty-seven witnesses to his testimony, ‘very disappointed about that.’
The craft, after floating above Boianai for two nights, ascended to a great altitude and vanished.
WITNESSES AT THE INQUIRY
held 28–30 November, 1959
before Mr J. G. Browne,
Assistant District Officer, Osiwa Sub-district,
Territory of Papua
MR K. M. MACDONNELL
Planter, of Kailuana Island
SALIBA
A domestic in Mr MacDonnell’s household
MR T. A. DALWOOD
Cadet Patrol Officer,
Osiwa Sub-district
OSANA
Government Interpreter,
Osiwa Sub-district
BENONI
Heir to Dipapa,
Chief of Kailuana
I
SINABADA
SALIBA
And he screamed: The house is bleeding. There is nobody inside, he said. But I said: No, des’, it could not be like that. A house is strong, I said, and has its own time. You will see, I said; you will see how a house endures.
Thinking of this house, and the far rooms, that voices go into and then you hear nothing, but still they are there.
When first I came from Wayouyo I said to Naibusi: This house is too hollow, too loud. Because a house among palms is like a house at sea, and the leaves are in it all around you, night and day. A house should be like a cave, I said, closed and dark. But Naibusi said: No, that is not the Dimdim custom. They like the wind in their houses, she said, and to look out on the sea, and I think he listens to the palms, because he planted them in the time when he was strong and young.
My house is a conch, he said. By and by it will ring in the wind.
When he spoke to me he was sad. The rain is eating my house, he said. We were outside, in front of the house, and we looked to see what the rain had done, and Misa Makadoneli was shaking his head, a sad man. The wooden walls were the black of rain and the red of rust and green of slime. In the rainy wind the palms were being blown all one way, and were soft like feathers, coloured by the sky.
Grey, he said. See, Salib’, my trees are grey.
And your hair is grey, I said, and he moved his head.
All those palms are good for nothing now, he said to himself.
The light falls through the shutters green with leaves. His paths on the matting shine. If you knew nothing of the house, you would know of him from the shine. You would say: There is someone here who walks and walks between the shutters. Someone who leans with his arms on the window-sills to watch the sea.
A house is a conch, he said; and I thought of the sound.
And of other shells, that roar inside like the sea or like palms, but lie in your hand so small and closed and still.
MACDONNELL
Well, I said, let’s take a stab with a pin, and let that be where it started. You guess Osiwa three months ago, he guesses Guadalcanal twenty-seven years ago. Plenty of room in between.
Futility. Am I the only one who sees, the only bystander?
If anyone wants to know what I think, I think some people could spend their time more profitably than in humbugging around the islands in a boat paid for by the tax-payer. The Eagle they’re calling it today. That shows the seriousness of the occasion. I said to the ADO: ‘Is that your tub from Osiwa, old man, that you’re talking about, because we don’t know her here by that name. She’s the Igau,’ I said, ‘the By-and-by, and very appropriate, too. The only thing that’s keeping that crate afloat,’ I said, ‘is the magic of an old fellow in Vaimuna, but you wouldn’t know about that. Take my advice,’ I said, ‘stay at home with your sinabada on dry land as long as you can, and if you can’t, then wear your Jesus boots, that’s what I think.’
The futility. The thing is ended. That was the point.
Why bother at my age with appearances? I know what I feel. Very little, to tell the truth: no shock, no loss, like the young ones. But still something, and what I feel is not curiosity. I’d tell some of them that, if they wanted to know, I’d tell them straight.
The futility.
But they must know, they say, where it began, for the sake of their files. Just a formality, to have it in black and white. And then it will be there forever, lying on a shelf, turning grey.
It is ended. That was the point.
Never did care for the sight of strangers in this room. The starched white clothes, the pink shining kneecaps. Now I notice the dust on everything, smell the rot. The books are dog-eared, I’d forgotten, and things are living in the horsehair that spills from the sofa. It was they who pointed out the cockroaches in the wireless. Naibusi doesn’t think of these things, they’re not part of her life; but I must keep in touch. Shall I really have to get a new wireless, because of cockroaches?
It’s late, late to be thinking of that sort of thing. Yet I must keep in touch.
I’ll give you a word of wisdom, I said. If you twist my arm, I’ll tell you a lie. That’s translated from the Latin, I said. Oh well, then, if you want to know, it all began with the wireless.
Yes. The daily heavenly voices rattling the room.
Yes, those, and the silence. The palms taking over in the sudden vacuum.
And I, at that table above the sea, calling out through the house full of leaves.
A bit nervous, I said, a little excited, not that I expected anything but an evening or two of company, but we lead a quiet life here, and there is the business of food.
So that’s how it started, I said. From here, I said. With me shouting towards that doorway, like this: ‘Naibusi–O!’
BROWNE
The house endures.
The palms above the house submerge the rooms in their surf of sound. Creakings and susurrations drop from the air. The palms wander in the bare wooden passages, in the gaunt living room wide open to the sea. Sudden gusts send them streaming, grey-green plumes against a grey-blue sky.
Time has not smoothed or mellowed the fabric of the house. Grey splinters fur the walls of the central room, where maps and ships’ pennants fade to a neutral dun. A smell of mildew circulates, from chests and cupboards where clothes, bedding, papers moulder in the hot damp.
The grass mats shine a little in the greenish light from the shutters. They show the path of someone who walks day after day between the windows, who leans day after day on the splintery sills to watch the sea.
A house is a castle; it defends. A house is a conch.
Under the palms, the house lies turbulent and still.
SALIBA
When Misa Makadoneli called to Naibusi she had her hands in water, and I said: ‘I will go, Naibus’.’
‘No,’ said Naibusi, ‘he will abuse us both.’
‘I am not afraid because of Misa Makadoneli,’ I said. And then he called again, very loud: ‘Naibusi–O!’
‘E, go then Salib’,’ Naibusi said. ‘If he calls you a fat pig, I will call him something.’
So I went running from the cookhouse, across the veranda and down the passage, though he tells me not to run in the house because I will break it.
Misa Makadoneli was walking up and down in the room, by the shutter there, and muttering. He took off his glasses and wiped them on the handkerchief that he wears around his neck. Then he put them on again and looked at me.
‘What, taubada?’ I said.
‘O,’ he said, ‘you. Do not shout, I hear you. I do not want you. Where is Naibus’?
‘She is coming,’ I said. ‘Already she has come.’
He never hears Naibusi, she walks so softly. When she was in the room he moved his glasses again to see her better. Sometimes they stare at one another, Naibusi and Misa Makadoneli.
I think I do not understand the minds of people who are old. But everyone knows what there was between Misa Makadoneli and Naibusi, long ago. So I think when they stare like that they are looking for the people who were young.
‘Taubada?’ said Naibusi.
‘Ki, Naibus’!’ said Misa Makadoneli. ‘You have shaved your head.’
‘E, taubada,’ said Naibusi. ‘It is mourning.’
‘Truly?’ said Misa Makadoneli. ‘Then who has died?’
‘Bakalu’osi, taubada.’
‘Ah, my grief for him,’ said Misa Makadoneli, shaking his head. ‘He was my friend, that old man.’
All the time Misa Makadoneli looked at the eyes of Naibusi, while Naibusi tugged at the blue dress Misa Makadoneli gave her, that is too tight. Under that dress Naibusi’s chest is flat like a boy.
‘Taubada,’ Naibusi said, ‘you called.’
‘E,’ said Misa Makadoneli, like a man whose spirit had been away. ‘Naibusi, the wireless has spoken. Soon some taubadas will come. Make ready the beds in that room and this room.’
I called out: ‘How many taubadas?’ and Naibusi hissed at me and said: ‘Enough, Salib’.’
‘Two,’ said Misa Makadoneli. ‘One is that young Misa Kodo from Osiwa. The other I do not know.’
‘O,’ I said, ‘Misa Kodo. He has a benevolent face.’
Misa Makadoneli said to me: ‘Much you care about his face.’ But he and the old woman were thinking about other things.
‘These taubadas,’ Naibusi said, ‘when will they come?’
‘Soon. Before night.’
‘They will bring food perhaps? Dimdim food?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘They might eat chicken,’ Naibusi said, wondering. ‘I do not know. The Dimdim yams are finished.’
‘E,’ said Misa Makadoneli, ‘green bananas then. They are the same as potatoes. And lokwai.’
‘They will eat lokwai?’ said Naibusi. ‘Perhaps it is not their custom.’
‘My grief for them,’ Misa Makadoneli said, showing his teeth that he keeps very often in a glass of water, and that smile at me when I am making the bed. ‘Go now,’ said Misa Makadoneli, ‘see what there is in the cookhouse.’
Then Naibusi went away, very quiet, saying: ‘E, taubad’,’ very quiet, and I could not hear her feet because of the sound of the palms. But I stayed to ask a question of Misa Makadoneli, who had gone to his table and sat in his chair, though he still looked after Naibusi down the long grey passage.
MACDONNELL
Not really what I expected, in a life devoted to escaping everything, to be left at the end of it the guardian and ward of an old woman with the head of a monk, and a back like a spear hardened in the fire.
Ah, Naibus’. You will bury me.
Well, that is something to be thought about, and something I was thinking then, sitting there among the bills and unanswered letters that the Igau had given a point to suddenly, and that were speaking to me in a language that cut me off from her. Yes, I thought, something will have to be done. Because how will she live, afterwards?
But the big girl slouched in the doorway was impatient with the silence, and bursting with a question. She screamed across the room: ‘Taubada.’
‘Do not shout,’ I shouted, ‘madwoman.’
‘That other taubada, what is his name?’
‘I do not know.’
‘What is he like?’
I put down the pen and settled my spectacles, so that she could see that I was giving her all my attention, noting in passing that her breasts had come a long way since I last observed. ‘He is young,’ I said. ‘Yes, he is young. And very big. And insatiable. His organ is like the long yam—’
‘O, taubada!’ she shrieked. ‘O, your shame!’
Modesty struck the house like an earthquake and the floorboards juddered under her feet. She ran away from me, with a boiling skirt, down the passage towards Naibusi, to tell her of the organ that was to come.
‘Sea-cow,’ I called after her. Even a household like mine has its rituals.
When she was gone, the palms returned to the room. I heard a ripe nut plump to the ground, muffled by grass, outside the shutter. At the table I was washed in the surge of palm-sound. But the sea below was still: a pond of turquoise deepening to indigo beyond the islet.
I said aloud, just to hear myself speak English: ‘Well before dark.’ And thinking of that, went back to my bills and cheque book, signing MacDonnell of Kailuana, as is my privilege.
DALWOOD
When we were in the lagoon it was green, a sort of milky opal-green, but after we rounded the horn of Vaimuna we were on the open sea, and the Igau wallowed. So of course I thought of him, wondering if he was sick. The lagoon shores of Vaimuna were lush, all palms, but there on the south coast it is terrible country. Waves from clear across the Solomon Sea pound at the cliffs. The rock is grey, it has teeth like a nutmeg-grater. The pandanus that clings to it is twisted every which way by the wind, and you wonder how it grew there, how it keeps hold. The sea and the wind will not leave the atoll alone. We passed so close that I noticed the silence in the forest. Every few feet there are shafts into the caves below.
The Igau had just been painted, she looked fine then, especially out there, on the darker sea. She was white as salt. White is the best colour. The Eagle—Igau—Sooner or Later, she is called.
I was always standing there, up ahead. He used to say who did I think I was, the figurehead or George Washington crossing the creek? It was because I wanted to be the first to see everything, and get the wind and spray on me. I used to feel sorry for him, wondering was he sick yet.
O
SANA
Mister Dalwood’s houseboy works hard. Mister Dalwood’s clothes are always white. He is clean like a hospital. He looks as if they painted him, like the boat. I would not like to have blue eyes. They are not natural. I would not like to have big white teeth. They are like shells.
I asked the ADO how old was Mister Dalwood. The ADO said nineteen years. I said: ‘He is very big,’ and the ADO said: ‘You can say that again.’ I would not like to be big and clumsy like Mister Dalwood. He has the mind of a child.
I said to my wife: ‘Mister Dalwood is like a young dog,’ and she laughed. It is true. He was like a young dog with Mister Cawdor. Like a young dog with an old dog, but Mister Cawdor was not old. Twenty-seven, that is younger than I.
Once, on patrol, my feet hurt on the coral, and I said to Mister Cawdor: ‘I cannot walk any further.’ He said: ‘My grief for you,’ smiling, and told me to go on. So afterwards I used to look at him and say that with my eyes. My eyes said: ‘My grief for you,’ smiling, and he looked away.
DALWOOD
I always know when Osana is watching me. Today, in this room, he is watching. And that day, on the Igau, I felt his eyes on my back. I knew if I turned he would be sitting there, and so I wouldn’t turn, not to give him the pleasure.
A while before I had said, not looking round: ‘How much longer?’
And he said: ‘Two hours, taubada.’
Just the three words. But I couldn’t help myself, suddenly I was face to face with him, looking into those eyes that don’t seem to have any depth to them, but are flat and always insolent, in a way I can’t put my finger on.
I never knew how to deal with it. I said: ‘Watch it, Osana.’
And he did his usual stuff. ‘Taubada,’ very tolerant, drawing the word out, as if I was three years old.
Visitants Page 2