‘BIGFELLA LONG SKY tokk-im long me. Himi say work-im long boat all-same Noah,’ said the old islander with red betelnut-stained teeth, glaring defiantly at the men who had been threatening to kill him.
‘God has spoken to you and told you to build an ark like Noah’s,’ translated Sergeant Ben Kella of the Solomon Islands Police Force, wearily playing for time. He was standing among the gardens on a sloping hillside outside a small salt-water village on the coast of his home island of Malaita. The small plots of earth carved out of a clearing among the trees were given over to the cultivation of sweet potatoes, yams, taro and tapioca. The taro had been watered conscientiously, but the yams grew better in dry conditions and had been left to struggle as best they could through the cracked earth. The fertile ground in which the subsistence crops had been planted had been cut and burnt out of the forest and would be cultivated intensively for several more years before the villagers moved on to begin another patch. Usually the food would be tended by the women of the area, struggling with bush knives every day to keep the alang-alang grass and brambles at bay, but word had gone out that this afternoon there was to be a lethal payback. This was men’s work, especially if a ritual killing should turn out to be involved.
On the other side of the garden area, twenty or thirty young men from the village glowered at the old islander. They were clad only in shorts or loincloths under the blazing sun. Their faces were tattooed with the diamond lozenge marks of the fual alite, the nut of the alite tree. Without such tattoos a Lau man would not be admitted to a place of honour on Momolu, the island of the dead, when the time came for him to begin his long journey into the dark. Kella noticed that ominously some of the young men were carrying heavy sticks, while one elder was carefully assembling a pile of stones to throw at the ark-builder when the fighting began.
Kella sighed. So far this had been just another routine, uneventful one-man police patrol of the coastal villages, no different from dozens of others he had conducted lately. Then the government-appointed headman of this hamlet had sent for him with the disturbing news that Timothy Anilafa, an islander of unblemished reputation, acting completely out of character had spurned tradition and was defying village customs and the white man’s law by trespassing on cultivated land. Normally this would be a matter for the headman, and would not involve a government policeman, but several decades before, while he was still a child, Kella had also been appointed by the Lau Lagoon pagan priests as the aofia, the traditional justice-bringer of Malaita, charged to maintain the traditions of the ancient gods in this part of the remote Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. It was his responsibility to settle any religious disputes on the island while attempting, if possible, to keep news of his involvement from his police superiors in the capital, Honiara.
‘Is there no way that you can move your ark?’ he begged humbly in the Lau dialect. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the thundering of the adjacent waterfall, hidden by the trees and bushes of the undergrowth surrounding the garden area.
Timothy Anilafa shook his head stubbornly. ‘God told me to build it here,’ he said. ‘When the floods come, they will rise to just below the level of the gardens. This is the best place to build it to save the animals when they assemble.’
All eyes swivelled to regard the object of the controversy. The skeleton of Timothy’s vessel lay sprawled across a substantial corner of the village gardens. It was a ramshackle construction consisting of roughly sawn planks bound crudely together asymmetrically with vines and creepers, to form the rough-hewn outline of a boat about sixty feet long. So far only part of the hull had been laid down and the old man had made no effort to establish decks or even to caulk with pitch the lower half of the ark. It was most definitely a work in progress. However, for the toil of one elderly islander it was an impressive enough effort. The drawback was that because of its sprawling growth over the last few months, the vessel now covered much of the fertile land that provided the village with its basic supply of food.
‘The headman and elders say that in the interests of the village you must move your most interesting and well-intentioned ark,’ Kella pointed out.
‘But the Lord told me in a vision that I must build it here,’ Timothy said triumphantly, like a card player laying down a trump. Like most islanders, he practised Christianity in tandem with the old ways of magic, switching with ease from one to the other as the mood and needs of the moment took him. Kella could empathize with the old man. All the same, at the moment, all his tribal instincts told him that Timothy Anilafa had chosen the wrong spot for his shipbuilding project. It was out of balance with the feeling of the area.
As if to confirm this thought, the crowd of men on the other side of the garden started growling. Kella took care to remain where he was, as a token shield between Timothy and the wrath of his putative attackers. It was plain that the villagers were on the verge of destroying the vessel and sweeping the old man away with his project in the process. The problem was that Timothy genuinely believed that he had experienced a vision and would not step aside when his younger kinfolk surged forward. Desperately Kella cast about in his mind for a way of resolving the problem to the satisfaction of both sides, before the elderly villager got hurt. Somehow he had to facilitate the movement of the ark without offending its architect’s jumbled religious beliefs. The persistent drumming of the adjacent waterfall seemed to grow even louder in his ears as he racked his brain for a solution.
Vague memories of his Bible lessons at Ruvabi mission school twenty years earlier, before he had abandoned the white man’s religion, began to stir in Kella’s mind. He remembered Father Pierre prowling up and down the rows of desks in the overcrowded bamboo classroom in his bare feet and ragged cassock. The old man had hoped that Kella would one day enter the priesthood. He must have been severely disappointed when the youth had been summoned away by the custom chiefs, the hata aabu, those whose name must not be spoken, to undergo the calling and cleansing ceremony among the artificial islands of the lagoon. After that, as the aofi, he had been lost to the white man’s church forever.
However, unbidden, one phrase from his dusty mission lessons leapt into Kella’s mind.
‘The springs of the great deep!’ he said loudly. ‘That’s what the Book of Genesis says about the ark.’
Timothy looked at him suspiciously. ‘When the Lord spoke to me—’ he began.
‘I am telling you what the Bible tells us,’ Kella interrupted, gently but firmly. ‘All the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.’
‘That will assuredly happen again,’ nodded Timothy, regarding the policeman intently.
‘But where?’ asked Kella. The villagers were edging forward, all except the one in charge of the cache of stones, who was now engaged thoughtfully in selecting the sharpest ones. The policeman spoke quickly. ‘The waters of the earth rose first, before the rains came.’
‘And they will once more,’ said Timothy, as if speaking to a child. ‘That is why I must finish my ark soon, to be ready for the overflowing of those waters.’
Actually it looked as if it would take a fair number of years for the old man to complete that particular quixotic project, thought Kella, looking at the ramshackle collection of detritus that made up the vessel’s insecure and uncompleted base. ‘Where will the water rise around here?’ he asked rhetorically, indicating the gardens. ‘There are no springs. The women have to carry water all the way from the pool at the base of the waterfall to feed these plants.’ He paused for effect. ‘You must locate your ark close to the waterfall. Then you will be ready to float away in glory down to the river, and from there to the sea with ease when the rains come.’
Timothy frowned. The villagers stopped advancing. Kella drove home his point. ‘It was an understandable mistake,’ he said. ‘You have chosen the wrong place.’ He pointed in the direction of the unseen thundering waterfall. ‘That is where you should have built your ark, next to the cascade. Assuredly that is where the springs will erupt when the Lord decides to send his first flood before the rains come.’
Timothy Anilafa looked thoughtful. For all his zeal, he knew how much present danger he was in at the hands of his disgruntled wantoks. In the interests of self-preservation, he was not averse to a face-saving compromise. The village men, suddenly aware of Kella’s intention, chorused their agreement, their mood lightening. Melanesians delighted in long, hairsplitting arguments to while away the empty hours. Only the solitary man in command of the stones could not conceal his disappointment as he continued to crouch over his carefully selected missiles, like a protective bird on a nest.
‘The waterfall is only a hundred yards away along the track, on common land,’ said Kella. ‘Take the ark there and carry on with your building in peace. No one will bother you again. You will become a big man in the eyes of everyone. The waterfall is a sacred place for the gods. Perhaps they will unite with the Christian Bigfella and join with him to bless your efforts for years to come.’
It was a telling point. Nothing bore more weight in the Lau culture than an activity that obviously had secured the approval of the entire spirit world, pagan and Christian alike. Judiciously Timothy Anifala nodded.
‘There is wisdom in what you say, aofia,’ he conceded. ‘But how will I move my ark? It is large and heavy.’
‘We will all help you,’ said Kella, setting an example by walking forward rapidly to the mangled heap. The rest of the islanders, understanding his purpose, followed him willingly and encircled the ark. They bent and with a series of groans lifted the sagging timbers from the ground, and staggered along the path previously cut and trampled down through the undergrowth. Away from the gardens, the branches of the towering trees in the tropical coastal rainforest intertwined overhead, suddenly almost blocking out the light of the sun. It was like a journey into a fast-falling night. The calophyllum trees with their white bark and shiny leaves grew next to coconut palms and mangroves. Between the trees, the vines of the morning glory and the purple flowers of the bay bean curled above the tussocks of porcupine grass, making their progress difficult.
The group of perspiring men staggered beneath the weight of the rudimentary ark as they neared the noise of the waterfall. Pieces of the vessel broke off and dropped to the ground unheeded, their descent muffled by the moss carpeting the track. Kella and the straining islanders left a trail of this debris behind them as they neared the cascade. Kella was big for a Solomon Islander at six feet in height, and had been strong enough to play professional rugby league in Australia for two seasons, but even he was feeling the weight of the shared burden by the time the party emerged again into the sunlight.
They were on a treeless plateau by the side of the waterfall, halfway down its mighty descent. Water crashed to the river a hundred feet below, while spray hurtled spitefully across the level surface, soaking everyone. At Kella’s command, the villagers lowered what was left of the shattered and contorted structure of the ark to the ground and stood back. Some of them were grinning slyly. It was obvious that the new site was vastly inferior to the one that Timothy had originally selected on the village gardens. The sun beat down steadily on the flying spray, producing an eerie mist that drifted across the ground and swirled to the height of a man’s waist.
Kella could see that the old man was coming to the same conclusion as the other villagers. Angrily he was beginning to react to being duped. With a sinking heart, the police sergeant realized that his problems were not yet over. In a spurt of rage, Timothy Anifala kicked out at the ark with his calloused bare foot. Now the villagers were laughing openly at him. Kella moved forward to stop the old man from launching himself at his tormentors.
Then the islanders stopped laughing. They were looking at the edge of the forest. A small, undistinguished rodent was crouching among the undergrowth, its whiskers twitching suspiciously. A beatific smile appeared on Timothy Anilafa’s face.
‘Emperor!’ he said caressingly, almost as a greeting.
No one else on the plateau spoke. Kella moved to one side to get a better view of the rat. He could not recognize its species, but surely the old man was not right? The Emperor Rat, once indigenous to Malaita, had not been seen for the best part of a hundred years. In the 1880s, a British colonial administrator, driven half mad by loneliness and the effects of the sun, and with too much aimless time on his hands, had noted the animal’s existence in excruciating detail in his notebooks. Then it had vanished on to the international registers of extinct species. Over the decades, some islanders claimed to have seen examples of the creature deep in the bush, but there were no recorded official sightings. Yet here was the villager greeting the shy, twitching creature almost as an old friend.
The Emperor Rat lurched forward and then walked steadily towards what was left of the ark. It stopped beneath an overhanging spar and looked back towards the trees. A second, smaller rat, as undistinguished as the first, emerged and scurried over to its mate. The two animals hesitated for a moment, and then were lost inside the dark recesses of the structure. Kella could hardly believe what he had just witnessed, but he did his best to take advantage of the moment.
‘You have your first pair,’ he told Timothy Anifala. ‘Now you must continue with your building here and wait for others to follow. It might take a long time, but the creatures of the island have taken their first steps to assist you in your venture. You have your first animals, the rarest in the whole of the Solomons.’
The old villager nodded, for once lost for words. Kella looked at the other islanders. No one was laughing any more. All were regarding the ark and its builder with sudden awe. Of such incidents were legends established. Kella clapped Timothy on his scrawny shoulder.
‘Nganwi ilana,’ he said respectfully, giving the old man the traditional title bestowed upon islanders who were not priests but who had displayed indisputable proof of being able to see into the future. For the sake of peace in the village, he hoped that the completion of the ark would occupy the remaining years of the venerable old man’s life, thus giving him local prestige in his evening years, together with a sense of purpose. At the same time, fortunately for his welfare, it was very unlikely that he would ever be called upon to test the plainly unseaworthy vessel before the eyes of his peers.
All in all, it was proving a most satisfactory state of affairs. The policeman decided that it was time to bring an end to proceedings and quit while he was still ahead. He gestured to the other islanders.
‘Fetch-im mary bilong you quick time,’ he suggested.
The men started to hurry back through the trees to bring their wives up to continue work on their now uncluttered gardens. Kella followed them down the slope at a more leisurely pace. Overhead, hornbills crashed their wings like cymbals through the air. A sense of well-being pervaded him. The sudden appearance of the Emperor Rats had been, almost literally, a godsend as far as preserving the peace in the area had been concerned. He did not intend, however, to make any mention of the event in his end-of-tour report. It was likely to be misunderstood by his superiors in the capital. There were some matters with which it just did not pay to bother his expatriate bosses. What they did not know could not hurt them. Especially, decided Kella, when he did not fully understand them himself.
The sergeant glanced at his watch. He decided that he would spend the remaining hours of daylight walking along the beach to the adjacent village of Haarumou. He had heard rumours that an elderly carver of traditional pan pipes there was refusing to practise his craft any longer because he had been threatened by a Gossile, one of the ghost-children who dwelt among the graves of women who had died in childbirth. The Gossile were reputed to spend their time making pan pipes for the gods. Sometimes they took umbrage if a human being developed the art too well, and would move in on the unfortunate man to harass him.
Kella’s sharp ears heard someone climbing the wooded hill towards him. The noise was too loud to be made by a local, but very few expatriates visited this part of Malaita. Circumspectly Kella stood behind a broad banyan tree until he could make out who the newcomer was. A few minutes later he glimpsed the portly form of Sergeant Ha’a toiling up the slope, gasping audibly for breath, giving a creditable impression of a tire with a slow puncture. Like Kella, he was wearing the khaki shorts and shirt and red beret of a member of the Solomon Islands Police Force. Kella stepped out from behind the tree and waited for Ha’a to see him. The other sergeant wiped the sweat from his eyes and squinted uncertainly through the trees.
‘I’ve been looking for you all damn day,’ he complained when he recognized his colleague. ‘You’re overdoing this jujuman bollocks. You don’t have to make yourself invisible just for my sake!’
Sergeant Ha’a was a rotund, amiable Western Islander with jet-black skin, a flashing white smile and a reedy tenor voice that had once secured for him a minor reputation as a singer of comedy country-and-western songs on the northern club circuit when he had attended a course in Yorkshire. His bowdlerized rendition of ‘Your Daddy Ain’t Your Daddy, But Your Daddy Don’t Know’ had once even secured him a brief spot on a BBC Radio Light Programme talent show, a taste of fame that Ha’a had relished almost to the point of obsession. As a result, he now spent much of his time applying to attend more courses, of any description, in Great Britain, so that he could return and live the dream once more. In the meantime, he was noted for his addiction to the relatively mild fleshpots of Honiara. It would have taken considerable efforts on the part of his superiors to shoehorn him out of his air-conditioned office in the capital.
‘I would have thought that it would have made a nice change for you to get back to your roots like this,’ commented Kella sarcastically.
Sergeant Ha’a shuddered. ‘I’m from the West,’ he said. ‘We don’t make such a big thing about fresh air as you primitive Malaitans. I’m here to take you over to Honiara sharpish. There’s a government ship waiting for us at Auki. Your attendance is urgently requested at Government House. Apparently there’s some sort of flap on.’
‘What about?’
Ha’a shrugged indifferently. ‘I operate on a need-to-know basis,’ he told the other policeman. ‘And believe me, the older I get, it’s surprising how little I really need to know.’