The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish

by Dido Butterworth

  ‘Sounds like a job for you, Trembly. Shake a leg then!’

  Miss Stritchley accompanied Trembley to the cartographic section of the library. ‘I hope we’re never at war with them,’ said the librarian as she hesitantly handed over a large naval map of the harbour, prominently stamped ‘secret’.

  ‘Oh no. Never,’ Stritchley replied. ‘They’re far too civilised!’

  Later that day Archie, too, visited the library, and was accosted, in excellent English, by a young Japanese lieutenant. He’d heard that the anthropologist had recently returned from the islands to Australia’s north and was keen to learn all he could about the region. After explaining the local religion, forms of wealth and governance of the Venusians, Archie went on to describe the islands themselves and their fringing reefs. The sailor presented him with a beautifully wrapped package in thanks, and a half bow.

  Inside was a bottle covered in Japanese writing. Mystified, Archie took it to Dithers, whom he found standing in the museum courtyard, contemplating the carcass of a pygmy sperm whale which had been found washed up on Cronulla Beach. It was not entirely fresh.

  ‘Sake, old fellow. Japanese wine,’ proclaimed Dithers, after sniffing the contents.

  ‘Phew, tastes like preserving liquid!’ said Archie, reliving the bad memory of finding Sopwith, as he spat out the mouthful.

  At that moment Henry Bumstocks appeared, dressed in a leather apron. In his hand was a large flensing knife. He was unsteady on his feet. Archie saw that he was drunk and flinched as Bumstocks wielded his blade.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Dithers. ‘Henry’s teetotal, mostly. But when he’s called upon to deflesh a whale I have to supply a bottle of Scotch. Says he simply can’t face the job without a stiffener. And I don’t blame him. Whale oil carries the taint of rotting flesh into every pore. The chap stinks for weeks afterwards.’

  Bumstocks slashed into the abdominal cavity of the whale and a great gush of gas and greenish liquid burst forth, causing the two curators to reel. Bumstocks soldiered on, hauling out yards of intestines. Giles Mordant came around the corner trundling a deep wheelbarrow. Archie stood by stonily while he shovelled up the stinking mass and took a load away. The pair worked with such efficiency that it struck Archie that they must have dismembered countless bodies together, both great and small.

  While the disembowelling of the cetacean was proceeding, Vere Griffon sat at his desk, his head in his hands. The faint whiff of decay did not brighten his mood. That morning he’d been summoned to the Department of the Arts—by Cedric Scrutton. Griffon had a feeling in his waters that the meeting was going to be particularly nasty.

  Griffon was kept waiting a long time in the antechamber. When he was finally let in, Scrutton fixed him with a gimlet eye. ‘Sit down, Director. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Treasury has revisited the budget for the current financial year, and finds that urgent cuts to expenditure are required. As a result, your museum budget will be cut by twenty per cent.’

  ‘What!’ gasped Griffon. ‘That’s completely impossible. It’s June already. The financial year is almost gone, and we’ve spent the money.’

  ‘I’d love an excuse to sack you, Griffon,’ said Scrutton, smiling. ‘In my opinion, you and your institution are bloody parasites on the body of this state. If you run one penny over budget, I’ll make sure you leave New South Wales in disgrace.’

  ‘It is utterly impossible,’ continued Griffon, ‘to make such a large cut in a few weeks—without sacking staff or selling collections. And that I will not do.’

  ‘Cut, Griffon. Deeply and quickly. And don’t wave your bloodied stumps at me! Get rid of some of those useless curators of yours. They do nothing except spend, as far as I can see. Now get out of my office and on with your job. I’ll expect a full budget acquittal in six weeks.’

  Vere Griffon had never felt so diminished. Threatened and shouted at by a third-rate colonial bureaucrat like that. What utterly absurd demands. What a dreadful place this was! Yet he could not give up or back down now. He was getting his curators into order, and soon the institution would re-establish its reputation on the world stage. He would find a way to outwit Scrutton.

  Chapter 18

  Archie was still in love with Beatrice, and he longed for her company. But when he was with her his pain only increased. The mere sight of her was enough to rouse his jealousy to fever pitch. So he was often aloof in her presence. Peace of mind would only come, he realised, when he could accept things on Beatrice’s terms. But what should he do about Mordant? He was sure the vile man was in cahoots with Griffon. He wondered whether he should confront him, but could only see an encounter ending in a punch-up, and that would give Griffon the excuse he needed to act against him. For the moment, avoidance was the only option. And to make matters worse, Archie just could not bring himself to select the skulls that Griffon had requested. That, he felt, would be soul-destroying. Instead he would wait for a second summons.

  Beatrice had now got over the shock caused by Archie’s love token. Her affections were as warm as ever. But something between them had changed. She wondered whether she was the cause of Archie’s strange behaviour. Or had his experiences in the islands affected him? She wondered what might help her to understand him better.

  ‘Would you like me to read your fieldwork report?’ she asked as they sat in the winter sunshine in Hyde Park eating sandwiches.

  ‘Well, Beatrice, it is an anthropological study, and it contains some matters that are not discussed in polite company.’

  ‘Oh, Archie, you can trust me. I know it’s scientific. I’d only read it for grammatical errors. I presume you’ll want to publish it one day? Really, I wouldn’t be shocked by anything in a report.’

  When they returned to the department, Archie handed Beatrice a bulky manila envelope full of handwritten pages. Perhaps, he reflected, if she read them she might understand why he had sent the foreskin. He was disappointed that she had not even made the token effort of deregistering it.

  That night Beatrice went to bed early. Archie’s handwriting was not the neatest, but as she turned the pages she became more used to it. Leafing through the chapter headings, she came to one called ‘Love and Courtship’. She put aside the rest of the manuscript, and started reading.

  Among the Venus Islanders, foreplay and sexual intercourse are seen as entirely natural and expected activities. Following puberty, both males and females indulge in sex frequently, without embarrassment and with the utmost pleasure.

  Beatrice gulped. What had Archie seen among the islands?

  Virginity is usually lost at the first annual yam festival following the onset of puberty. This occasion, which coincides with the yam harvest, is marked with much feasting, dancing and social licence. On the first night of festivities, boys and girls clean and oil their bodies with the greatest care, arranging their hair and dress, which for girls consists only of a short grass skirt, and for boys a woven belt. The boys rub charcoal into the coconut oil they use to anoint their skin, which blackens their already dark complexion. The girls use ochre to give their bodies a rich reddish sheen. They dance late into the night to the throb of the kundu drum.

  The feast is held at the full moon. As its orb dips into the ocean the dance breaks up. The young pe
ople form couples and make their way to the beachfront. There, among the low bushes and beneath the coconut palms, they make love until dawn, at which time they return to their families. Custom dictates that by day they ignore their sexual partners; nonetheless many a furtive glance and shy smile are seen in the village at this time. By night they are free to dally in each other’s arms for as long as the festival continues—a period of three weeks in all. It is a remarkable sight to see the dreamy youths returning from the beach at dawn, the girls with black smudges on breasts and groin, the boys ochred wherever they’ve been caressed.

  Marriage is not connected in any way with the festivities, but follows the initiation of the men, which is reported upon in detail in chapter seven. Suffice to say here that a couple who have enjoyed each other’s company through several successive yam festivals are likely to become man and wife. Marriage proposals are conducted through delivery of the initiate’s tattooed foreskin to his sweetheart. Her acceptance of the proposal is signified by her rolling it into a ring, which she wears on her fourth finger.

  Beatrice was breathing shallowly when, in the early hours of the morning, she put the manuscript down. So that was it. Archie’s foreskin was not some obscene act of tomfoolery, but a sincere offer of marriage. If only she’d been born in the islands; she sighed.

  Beatrice could see the near-full moon through her window. As she dropped to sleep she could feel a salty, tropical breeze on her skin. She was surprised to find that she was naked. Then she saw Archie. Tall, muscular and draped in a loin cloth, he walked across the beach towards her, took her in his arms, and under a graceful coconut palm kissed her passionately.

  Archie pulled his trousers on next morning and absent-mindedly thrust his hand into his fob pocket. He felt a small object—the incisor that he’d found on the floor below the Venus Island Fetish on the day of his return, nearly six months earlier. Somehow, in the excitement, he had misplaced it. Had it really been hidden in that small pocket all this time? His suit had been dry-cleaned a couple of times, but somehow the tooth had survived intact.

  As Archie rotated the incisor in his fingers, a thought came to him. Griffon had said that Henry Bumstocks inspected the fetish regularly. Perhaps Archie could use the incisor to strike up a conversation with him. The only reliable way to meet the famously antisocial taxidermist was to venture to his office, but there Archie was likely to run into Giles Mordant. Then it struck him. Perhaps Mordant kept the foreskin hidden in his locker in the taxidermy department. He changed out of his street clothes and into his work outfit every day. He was often busy running errands in the afternoon, and if Archie took the incisor to Henry while Mordant was out, he could search for his foreskin while Bumstocks reattached the tooth.

  That afternoon Archie adjourned to the Maori’s Head. He needed to kill some time and thought it worth asking Nellie if Giles had shown her anything unusual—such as his love token. He propped himself against the bar and downed a beer.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ called the publican, ‘who wants a ticket in the duck raffle? A shilling each. Just a shilling for a duck.’

  ‘What’s this about a duck?’ Archie asked Nellie, as the publican announced that the raffle would be drawn at five o’clock.

  ‘Oh, Archie! I didn’t want to, but I can’t make ends meet,’ she replied, red-faced. Then she added brightly, ‘Would you buy a ticket? Please? For me?’

  ‘Nellie, I’m no gourmand. I wouldn’t know where to begin cooking a duck. If I was still in the Venus Islands, of course, I could mu-mu it in a stone oven. But I’m staying with Dithers and we’ve got no facilities at all.’

  The publican drew a ticket out of his hat. ‘Number 14, gentlemen. Who has the lucky number?’ A lanky young fellow missing his front teeth let out a whoop and made a dash for the door. Once outside, he ducked into the back of a removalist’s van.

  ‘It’s hard times, Archie. I’m sorry,’ Nellie whispered as she followed the youth into the van’s darkened interior.

  Archie sat in stunned silence. Nellie returned amid the chaos of the six o’clock swill. She poured Archie a gratis beer on the sly, then another. He couldn’t raise the issue of the foreskin now. The poor girl evidently had her own worries.

  It was a decidedly unsteady Archie who made his way to the taxidermy workshop. The place was already steeped in preternatural gloom. He groped his way in. The stench was distinctive and subliminally revolting—a cloying, decomposing organic stew that lodged in the nostrils and pores.

  Bones, dried organs, and bits of skin covered every surface and packed every nook. Even the ceiling was used—a half-stuffed gibbon swung from an overhead pipe and a human skeleton hung in a corner. In the middle of the room stood a frightening figure. Naked apart from a loincloth made of animal skins, it held a fearsome, knobbed club. It must be the model of Piltdown man, Archie realised, the prize exhibit of the new evolution gallery. It was ugly: a cross between human and gorilla, its face twisted in a terrifying scowl.

  Archie edged around it towards the taxidermists’ offices. The nearest one belonged to Bumstocks. It was a small space running off the back of the workshop with a dim light in the far corner. The narrow passage forced Archie’s face uncomfortably close to the terrible visage of the Piltdown man. Unnerved, he backed away, and knocked a huge bone off the shelf behind him. It fell to the floor with an explosive crash.

  For a second Archie was startled into stillness. Then a terrible roar erupted from the nearest office. It was Henry Bumstocks, wearing a long, bloodied butcher’s apron and waving an enormous knife. Even in daylight Bumstocks was a frightening figure, but as he lurched forward in the gloom he resembled an animated version of his own monstrous recreation of Piltdown man. And now he was crashing towards Archie, intent, it seemed, on murder.

  Sheer terror gave Archie an agility he usually lacked. He leapt from the taxidermy lab in a single bound. Once out of the line of Bumstocks’ sight he slowed to what he hoped looked like a leisurely walk, and made his way to his office.

  He was recuperating at his desk when Jeevons appeared at the door. Archie snatched up a book—Professor Hooton’s classic Apes, Men and Morons—which he pretended to be absorbed in as he granted Jeevons entry.

  ‘All in order this evening, Mr Meek? You’re working late, I see. But I suppose you’ve a lot to catch up on?’

  ‘Much to do, Jeevons. This new exhibition will take my every waking moment for the next little while, I expect.’ Archie waved his hand in an awkward twirl meant to dismiss the guard.

  Jeevons doffed his pillbox hat, gave a broad smile, and was gone.

  Archie was flabbergasted. Surely the guard must have heard Bumstocks’ rampage? And surely Bumstocks had reported the intruder in his office? If not, why not? If he had reported an intruder, then a search of the institution would surely be conducted. But, judging from Jeevons’ reaction, nothing unusual had occurred.

  Chapter 19

  Dithers was out at yet another meeting. Archie lay in his bed, his eyes fixed on the yellowing ceiling, trying to make sense of the events of the evening. Why had Bumstocks tried to knife him? Could he be involved in the murders of the missing curators? Jeevons’ reaction made no sense. Could he be involved too? It was as if the whole world was mad, and only he, Archie, saw the truth. As he drifted into an exhausted slumber, the Great
Venus Island Fetish danced around the edge of his consciousness. He saw it advancing at him out of the gloom, and found himself awake, screaming. He knew that he needed a new perspective on things. After the episode with the centipede, Dithers clearly thought he was paranoid. He would not do as a confidant. But what about Beatrice? She said she would be his friend. Perhaps together they might make sense of things.

  Archie found Beatrice hunched over an Aboriginal shield, inscribing a registration number on it. It was work she enjoyed immensely: first finding the spot where the number could be clearly read but not visible to the public if the object were ever put on display, and then forming those minuscule figures with the sharpest of nibs. Archie waited until she pulled the pen away and straightened herself.

  ‘Beatrice, it’s such a glorious day. Would you care for lunch in the botanic gardens? We could take a picnic.’

  ‘Oh, Archie that would be wonderful,’ Beatrice gushed, before checking herself. She did not wish to seem too forward. She sat impatiently for the rest of the morning before the great register, filling in line after line, until the clock struck midday.

  Archie and Beatrice walked down Macquarie Street, past the lawn bowls club and the cathedral, and on to the gate of the gardens. Then they strolled through the ornamental plantings towards the harbour foreshore, and sat by the duck pond.

  ‘Beatrice, there is something I have to tell you.’

  ‘You can tell me anything, Archie,’ Beatrice replied.

  ‘On the day I returned to the museum, I was shocked to see that the Great Venus Island Fetish had been installed in the boardroom. Vere Griffon has no right to expose one of the institution’s most precious relics to such a hostile environment. And it has started to deteriorate. Bits are dropping off, and some of the skulls have lost their patina.’