by Graeme Kent
‘But for Shem to have to kill himself because he couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations . . .’
‘Custom,’ said Kella, as if that explained everything.
Far below them, four men were lifting Shem’s body into the long canoe.
Six more Tikopians climbed into the outrigger and picked up their paddles. In a few minutes they were propelling the canoe towards the coral reef, while a great wailing emanated from the mass on the beach. The canoe headed for a narrow channel leading out to the open sea. The men navigated the aperture and steadied the rocking vessel with their paddles just outside the reef, while two of them erected a mast and a tapa-cloth sail on a joist in the centre of the canoe. Then all six islanders dived over the side, splashed their way back through the channel and began swimming easily across the lagoon to the crowd on the sand.
A paroxysm of wind filled the sail and started taking the canoe and its solitary occupant out to sea. The dugout was the only object above the level of the water as far as the hazy, wavering horizon. Sister Conchita watched the vessel’s progress with all the concentration she could muster. She thought she knew why Shem had spent so much time in the Church of the Blessed Ark, but this was not the moment to voice her suspicions.
Brother John emerged from the bushes behind Kella and Sister Conchita. He shook his head as he joined them.
‘No one claims to know what happened to Abalolo,’ he said. ‘Not even the islanders in the Christian sections of Tikopia. One minute he was here; the next he seems to have disappeared.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Kella.
‘I think he’s probably dead,’ said Brother John briefly. ‘If Atanga intended reviving the old pagan faith, the first thing he would do would be to get rid of the leading Christian minister on the island.’ He looked out to sea. ‘No one will move from the beach until the canoe is taken over the horizon by the wind,’ he said. ‘After that, there’s no telling what Atanga might get up to. We really ought to be getting back to our ship and putting as much distance between us and Tikopia as possible.’
‘You take Sister Conchita back,’ said Kella. ‘I’ve still got to find Dr Maddy.’
‘I’d better stay with you,’ Sister Conchita said. She returned the forbidding looks of the other two with something approaching defiance. Then she cleared her throat nervously. ‘Actually, I think I know where she might be,’ she said.
The nun led her two sceptical but mercifully for the moment silent companions into the trees. Doing her best to steer by the golden darts of sunlight piercing the foliage, she was relieved to stumble across the track she had followed the day before and then the line of sago palms leading to the sluggish stream.
‘Where now?’ asked Kella.
‘There’s a broken-down hut round the next corner,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘I think it’s the remains of a Christian church.’
‘What makes you believe that?’ asked Brother John
Sister Conchita fumbled in the pockets of her robe and produced the scallop shell she had picked up from the floor of the hut the previous afternoon.
‘I found this inside,’ she said. ‘Obviously no one thought it was worth stealing.’
‘They had a point,’ Brother John said. ‘What’s the purpose of an empty scallop shell?’
‘It was the symbol of St James, the son of Zebedee,’ the nun told him. ‘In medieval Spain, any Christian pilgrim who could produce such an object would be given shelter and provided with as much food as would cover the surface of the shell. I imagine that the first Spanish Catholic priests who came ashore and preached in the Solomons in 1568 might have mentioned the importance of local symbols like shells to their religion. As the centuries passed, other Christian denominations among the islands might have taken up the same common emblem, including the minister at that church over there.’
As she led the group, she told them about her meeting with the old woman. By now they had turned a corner on the bank of the stream and were standing in front of the remains of the hut. Brother John approached what was left of the front door.
‘That old woman was a Christian,’ he said. ‘She recognized Sister Conchita’s habit and told her that she was going to hand Dr Maddy over to her today in what remains of the Christian church building in Chief Atanga’s territory.’
The sergeant pulled hard on the door. It sagged to one side, allowing sunlight into the hut. Sitting on the floor, her hands sheltering her eyes from the glare, was Florence Maddy. She was wearing the same shorts and T-shirt that she had had on when Kella had last seen her on Malaita. As usual, her tape recorder was cradled protectively in her arms. She struggled to her feet when she saw the others, her eyes widening.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Kella, entering the hut.
Dr Maddy nodded confusedly. She seemed to be experiencing difficulty in speaking. Sister Conchita guided her by the elbow towards the door.
‘We don’t have too much time left,’ she said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘Do you think you can get as far as the reef with us? We’ll be all right then.’
The musicologist inclined her head again and stumbled out of the old church with them. While Sister Conchita supported the other woman, Brother John took over the leadership of the party, heading through the trees parallel to the coast.
‘We’ll be in one of the Christian territories in a minute,’ he told them, panting. ‘We’ll head down to the beach there and try to get back on board The Spirit of the Islands. I’m not saying that Chief Atanga will necessarily come looking for us with bad intentions once Shem’s canoe has taken him over the horizon, but he’s an old-fashioned leader. He could decide to exact retribution for the death of his son. As soon as he can no longer see Shem’s canoe out at sea, he will be carried to Mount Reani to be instructed by his gods. That gives us a little time.’
A quarter of an hour later, Brother John led them out of the trees and on to the beach. There was no sign of any village. To their right, a headland topped by cliffs and holed with the dark mouths of caves cut off their view of Chief Atanga’s beach and its mourners. On the solitary expanse of beach immediately ahead of them, one old Tikopian was sitting next to his outrigger at the water’s edge, mending a fishing net. Out beyond the reef, The Spirit of the Islands lay sedately at anchor.
‘How are we going to contact Mr Mayotishi?’ asked Sister Conchita.
Wordlessly Kella produced a small hand mirror from the pack he carried on his back. Cupping it in his hand, he trapped the rays of the sun and started to flash a message out to the waiting vessel. Either the lookout on board the ship was alert, or Mayotishi was standing over him. Almost immediately the rusted anchor of The Spirit of the Islands groaned up on to the deck of the vessel and the ship began to move cautiously forward to the very edge of the exterior of the reef. It was a difficult and dangerous manoeuvre. The vessel could easily have been holed beneath the waterline on the jagged lumps of coral against which it was now bumping. It was completely out of character for the bosun to risk The Spirit of the Islands in this manner. The vessel altered course a little, and Kella was able to see, as he had expected, that Mayotishi was at the wheel, handling the ship with considerable confidence. It almost looked as if the sombre Japanese was enjoying himself for once. The ship glided with surprising dexterity into place alongside the wall of rock before the anchor was lowered again.
‘We need to get out to that reef,’ said Brother John, running down to the old man mending his nets and engaging him in a lively and apparently fruitless dialogue accompanied by hand gestures on both sides and ending with the Tikopian shrugging and then shaking his head firmly.
There was something that Kella had to know. He turned to Florence. ‘What made you come to Tikopia?’ he asked.
‘Shem saw that I was disappointed not to have recorded more pidgin war songs at the feast,’ said the musicologist. ‘He told me that he could arrange for me to go to Tikopia, where there was a famous song about an American bomber crashing dur
ing the war. He arranged for me to get a passage on the government boat.’
‘But no one speaks pidgin on Tikopia,’ Kella said.
‘Nobody told me that,’ said Florence, tight-lipped.
‘Then what happened?’ asked Sister Conchita.
‘It was crazy,’ said the other woman with a shudder. ‘When the Commissioner put in at Tikopia, a group of islanders met me and hustled me ashore. Ever since I got here, I’ve been moved from one village to another.’
‘It seems to me’, said Kella, ‘that somebody wanted to get Dr Maddy away from Malaita for some reason. It might have been Shem, or the person concerned might have paid Shem to tell her the story about the American bomber song.’
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’ asked Florence. ‘What harm could I be to anyone on Malaita?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Kella said. ‘Anyway, I reckon that on the voyage to Tikopia, some of the Christian passengers on board the ship realized that Dr Maddy was being lured to their island by pagan Tikopian members of the Church of the Blessed Ark. This alarmed them, because they didn’t know what Shem and the others wanted with Dr Maddy, so when the ship anchored they arranged for her to be smuggled ashore. Ever since Dr Maddy arrived, she’s been moved from place to place on the Christian areas of the island, so that the pagans couldn’t find her.’
Brother John trudged back up the beach, shaking his head. ‘It’s no use; he won’t take us out to the reef,’ he said.
Kella sighed impatiently and brushed Brother John aside. With something of a flourish he walked over and offered the old man the mirror with which he had been signalling. The sergeant pointed first at the dugout and then at the distant reef. The canoe owner accepted the looking glass judiciously, admired his reflection in it and placed it carefully at the bottom of his dugout before, with maddening precision, putting aside his net and pushing the canoe out into the lagoon.
Sister Conchita, Florence Maddy, Kella and Brother John clambered into the now crowded dugout as its owner started paddling his passengers effortlessly towards the coral wall. As they drew closer to The Spirit of the Islands, Sister Conchita looked out beyond the cargo ship. In the distance she could see the great canoe with its sail distended still carrying Shem steadily towards the horizon. A school of dolphins had surrounded it and seemed to be swimming on either side. One or two of them even appeared to be nudging the canoe forward with their heads. From their truncated round snouts, she guessed that the placid mammals were bottlenoses, reputed to be the cleverest and most adaptable of the whole species. Although some of the fully grown ones were up to eight feet long, it was difficult to make them out with their dark grey backs merging into the blue of the ocean. They seemed to be providing a strangely dignified escort for the canoe. It was quite a coincidence that they should have turned up at this particular moment.
Or was it such an unforeseen event? Sister Conchita wondered. A number of frayed fibres in her mind seemed to weave into place in one strong single strand. She leaned forward and tapped Sergeant Kella on the shoulder.
‘I know why the Tikopians have linked up with the Church of the Blessed Ark,’ she said.
23
EYES OF THE WIND
The dinghy from The Spirit of the Islands put the four of them ashore on the main island of Malaita at a spot roughly halfway between the site of the burnt-out ark and Sulufou shortly after dawn. Kella, Sister Conchita, Brother John and Florence Maddy stood uncertainly on the beach, as if reluctant to leave after the long but uneventful voyage back from Tikopia.
‘The parting of the ways,’ Kella said, wishing that he could have thought of something more original. ‘Are you sure you want to go up to the ark, Sister Conchita?’
‘I’d like to see what is left of it,’ said the nun. News of the destruction of the edifice had come to them over the local pidgin news on the radio.
Kella knew that Sister Conchita had more definite plans than that but that she would only reveal them in her own good time. He looked at Brother John, who was standing with Florence Maddy. He had deputed the Guadalcanal man to escort the musicologist along the coastal path back to her island. Brother John had appeared reluctant to accept the commission but had known better than to dispute the matter with Kella.
‘The sect of the ark will probably dwindle now that Papa Noah and Shem are dead,’ the young nun went on. ‘After all, as I told Sergeant Kella, there was only one main connection between the cult and Tikopia. It came to me as I watched Shem’s canoe taking him out to sea. Papa Noah based his cult on the story of Noah. He even built his own ark. The pagan Tikopians noticed that. Their own faith was based on the vaka tapu, the great canoe. When most of them became Christians, they gave this canoe to an overseas museum, as a relic of the past. But when Atanga and his followers started their revival of the pagan faith, they secretly built another vaka tapu.’
‘The one Shem was buried in,’ said Brother John.
‘Exactly,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘The Tikopian pagans decided to take over the Church of the Blessed Ark because it was based on the same icon as their own faith – a ship. The cult would give them a foothold on other islands, especially if Shem took over the church after Papa Noah’s death.’
‘That would give Shem a reason for killing Papa Noah,’ said Brother John.
‘Are you saying it was Shem who murdered Papa Noah?’ asked Sister Conchita. ‘It seems so out of character.’
‘Who else could it have been?’ Brother John asked.
We only have to accuse Shem if we want to direct attention away from the real killer, thought Kella, wondering why Brother John was being so bellicose. Aloud he said: ‘I don’t buy Shem as the killer. He wasn’t a fighting man. That’s why he wouldn’t become the high priest.’
‘All those Tikopians are hard men,’ said Brother John with conviction. ‘Some of them must have murdered Abalolo, the Christian minister on Tikopia, and hidden his body.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Florence. She coloured when she saw everyone looking at her, but cleared her throat and continued gamely. ‘I mean, Abalolo isn’t dead,’ she said. ‘Some of the Christian women looking after me told me about him. They said that he had left Tikopia suddenly on a government boat six months ago, without giving any reason.’
No one in the group reacted visibly or said much after that. Soon afterwards they started taking their individual paths away from the beach. Kella watched them go. Apart from Florence Maddy, each of them was being secretive about his or her mission. He had no idea why Sister Conchita was heading for the site of the ark, and he was sure that Brother John had his own destinations as well. Mind, he himself was just as bad, thought the sergeant. The news that Brother Abalolo had probably been on Malaita for months meant that Kella was going to have to change his plans. He searched in his mind for an appropriate expression from the British crime movies he enjoyed watching so much at the Point Cruz cinema, claiming that they helped him with his understanding of colloquial English. Finally he settled on one.
‘I must see one of my snouts,’ he said, in what he hoped was an imitation of Leslie Dwyer, one of his favourite actors, and started walking towards the mountains.
24
THE TREE SHOUTER
The tree shouter had already started his work by the time Kella arrived at the clearing amid the forest of red-brown akwa trees on the side of the mountain, struggling to survive amid the choking cliffs of orchid-strewn vegetation in the Kwaio district of Malaita. The old man nodded almost imperceptibly in recognition as Kella entered the glade. The policeman examined the ground for signs of centipedes and scorpions before sitting on a tree trunk to enjoy the performance. He had noticed on his way up that most of the villages were still disappointingly desolate and empty, as their inhabitants continued to seek sanctuary from the killman in the bush.
This was high country, the home of the bushmen, the traditional enemies of the saltwater coastal dwellers. Kella examined Giosa, the tree shouter. For years the bushman had been
turning the onset of old age into an art form, as carefully cultivated as the way some people embraced and embellished the prospect of death. Prematurely wrinkled, he grew his straggly, matted hair long to his shoulders and constantly renewed the darkest of dyes to emphasize the tattoos slashed across his hunched torso in an attempt to make them resemble natural corrugations of the flesh. The two upper teeth remaining in his slack mouth drooped loosely like badly set green pendants. Legs as thin as filaments of brown vine straggled dispiritedly from his discoloured loincloth.
As Kella looked on, Giosa worked the crowd with all the concentrated skill and attention to detail of an Indian fakir the sergeant had once watched entertaining passengers at Benares airport. The tree shouter was circling the tree that the villagers had called upon him to weaken, muttering ferociously, like an athlete psyching himself up before an event.
The akwa was enormous, twelve feet in circumference and a hundred feet high, with huge leaf-encrusted branches burgeoning from its sides. The villagers had been clearing the area for new gardens, but this particular tree was throwing too much shade over the coveted fertile ground. Efforts to fell the giant with axes had so far been beyond them, and so the village headman had called in the tree shouter.
When he was ready, Giosa walked away from the trunk and stood on the charred stubble of the slashed and burnt garden land. Packs of terns swooped over the clearing into the spears of sunshine piercing the surrounding trees. The old man finished limbering up and faced the akwa before going to work flamboyantly, while the wondering villagers looked on. Kella had to admit that Giosa always gave value for money. For the next thirty minutes he howled threats and imprecations at the tree, trying to make it comprehend that it was no longer wanted in this part of the jungle. He interspersed these warnings with menacing wails and growls from the animal denizens of this particular part of the bush area. He hissed like a snake and a crocodile, squawked like a flying fox, squealed like a wild pig and screeched like a parrot. Sometimes he even sang hoarse, tuneless snatches from custom songs, involving the ancient gods in his struggle with nature.