KELLA COULD HEAR the singing while he was still some way from the village. Women’s voices were joined in a tuneless, monotonous chant that cut through the dusk like a blunt knife. He tried to increase his pace, beating his way through the steaming undergrowth with a stick he had cut from a nanum tree. The path before him was slippery and undulating in the last precious hour of daylight. The earth beneath his feet squirmed with the caress of water seeping from one of the adjacent rivers. The trees rising from the mud were linked up to knee height with bushes and undergrowth, making progress on foot difficult. He wondered if he would reach the village by nightfall, or whether he would have to construct a temporary shelter among the trees and then continue his journey the next morning. Fortunately he had brought a little food with him, a few grey balls from the hearts of germinating coconuts, consisting of the solidified milk of the nuts. These should keep him going.
He was approaching the end of his first day on the large volcanic island of Kolombangara. He had paddled over from Marakosi and started his trek inland early that morning. Kolombangara was a thickly forested island some twenty miles in diameter. In the centre, the still active volcano of Mount Veve rose to a height of over five thousand feet, tendrils of its smoke drifting much higher so that they could be seen all over the Western District. There were only a few bush and saltwater villages dotted about the island, which was known to its inhabitants as Water Lord, because it was divided by over eighty rivers and streams flowing in different directions. Once its lower regions had contained the bases for ten thousand Japanese soldiers, while at the top of the volcanic peak, Reg Evans, a lone Australian coast-watcher, had radioed details of their movements to the Allied headquarters at Tulagi from his precarious eyrie.
Kella thought about Sister Conchita’s problem with the lack of official activity over the death of the tourist Blamire. Before leaving Marakosi, he had used the mission’s generator-operated two-way radio to contact Police Headquarters in Honiara about the matter. The reply had been short to the point of brusqueness. Blamire’s death had been an accident. That particular matter was well in hand. Sergeant Kella was not, repeat not, to take any part in the ongoing enquiries. Instead he was to concentrate on the important matter of the sabotage attempts at Alvaro logging camp and to report back, preferably with a solution, as soon as possible.
Well, in a roundabout way he was doing that, he decided hopefully, toiling up another mud-covered slope, listening to the squeaks and blundering wings of flying foxes moving above him. The trees were joined together by lianas, sprawling hanging gardens of mosses and ferns. He walked warily. The bush village for which he was heading had once been the centre of headhunting forays in the Roviana Lagoon. There had been no examples of these for several decades, but during the war, the Allies had turned a blind eye to ambushes on Japanese outposts that had culminated in the triumphant party returning to their homes with a number of Japanese helmets with their owners’ heads still inside them.
Kella remembered with little pleasure from his wartime service in the lagoon that on this island, local traditions were still observed. The corpses of the dead were buried upright, with their legs drawn back and secured behind their bodies with vines. Their heads were left protruding above the ground until they had rotted into bare skulls, at which time they would be detached and transferred to the aabu, the holy temple. At the death of a chief, a funeral pyre would be built, and the dead man and all his possessions consigned to the flames. The mourning period would last until the ashes were cold, at which time the female relatives of the dead man would strip naked, daub their bodies with red clay and then prepare a great feast of pork and yams for the whole village. At the end of the feast, the naked women would offer their bodies to the new chief.
Lately the bushmen had started making tentative advances towards the other cultures in their region. They no longer depended entirely on barter for their subsistence. They had even begun to use Australian currency, rather than strings of teeth from the flying fox, in some of their internal trading ventures. A virgin could now be purchased for ten dollars cash, while a widow could fetch almost half that sum.
The chanting ahead of him grew louder, and a drum started to beat. Kella knew that he had been seen. This would be the great talking drum of the bush people, made from a tree trunk. It was seven feet long, almost three feet wide and the same in height. The only opening was a narrow slit at the top, through which all the hollowing-out had been accomplished with a stone chisel. It was beaten with a bundle of eight rods, each about half an inch in diameter. It was used to announce the arrival of strangers within the village bounds, and could be heard three or four miles away.
Suddenly the thud of the drum was dwarfed by the sound of a woman’s screams. The policeman hurried forward as quickly as the thorns and bushes would allow him to push his way through the undergrowth. Scratches and weals appeared on his arms and legs. Be cautious, he warned himself, you have no mana here. On Kolombangara, the water gods had precedence. He did not know what their punishment for intrusion would be, but he could guess that it would most likely include a prolonged end in some river, perhaps between the jaws of one of the gigantic crocodiles of his nightmares. The gods of all the islands could be ingenious in the forms they devised for their death sentences.
He did not slacken his pace. As a result, before long he was standing on the edge of a village established in a clearing. A dozen stunted leaf houses were huddled closely together, as if for company against the dark, threatening trees. Acrid smoke from cooking fires drifted across the area. Twenty or so women were gathered around a slight figure seated hunched on a tree stump outside one of the leaf houses. The seated person was a girl in her twenties, and she was shivering and screaming in agony as some of the women held her down. Even from a distance Kella could see that she was beautiful, with a light brown skin, curly black hair and fine features. She was wearing a long cloth lap-lap falling from her waist to her ankles, her upper body naked, revealing high, firm breasts. Incongruously, blood was pouring down her back in rivulets as she sat hunched forward, writhing in agony on her seat. One woman standing behind her, frowning in concentration, was tracing a maze of patterns on the girl’s soft skin with a pointed bone of a bat, while another was rubbing coloured herbs into the bleeding wounds. Both women were retaining a firm grip on the girl’s shoulders with their free hands.
Kella realized that he was watching a tattooing ceremony. The women would have been singing for hours in an attempt to keep the girl awake, hoping, usually in vain, that she might fall asleep before the gruesome ritual could get under way, thus relieving her of some of the pain. After the traditional process was over, her wounds would be allowed to ooze and congeal for three days while more and more indelible pigment was infused into her cuts.
One of the women in the group saw Kella on the other side of the clearing and shouted a harsh warning. They all glared across the intervening space at the intruder. There were no men attending the ceremony; perhaps they had been excluded because watching the tattooing was tambu. At least it seemed to be almost over now, so perhaps the villagers would accept him as an outsider who knew no better than to interfere. Putting a good face on it, Kella walked across the clearing towards the group, hoping that the sight of his police uniform would reinforce his immunity if inadvertently he had broken any local customs.
‘Hello, oketta,’ he said. ‘Mefella Sergeant Kella, mefella polis. Me lookim long this fella Mary Gui.’
‘I’m Mary Gui,’ said the beautiful girl who had been tattooed, looking up with an effort. She spoke in perfectly modulated English, although she was biting her lips against the pain that must have been racking her lovely body. She gazed at him coolly and without shyness, making no effort to conceal her seminudity. She was fighting for breath now that her ordeal was over. ‘I must say, you choose your moments for your professional calls, Sergeant. It could almost be construed as voyeurism.’
Kella could not conceal his surprise. He had assumed that the girl at the centre of the ritual came from the village, and was being initiated into the ranks of young village women ready for marriage. A suitably tattooed woman was considered a considerable prize in the bush villages of the West, and would fetch a high bride price. However, he had been told that the Mary Gui he was looking for was a mission-educated young woman who had won a scholarship to an Australian university and had recently returned to the Solomons with a degree. Why was she undergoing a centuries-old ceremony in such a remote area?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This is hardly the moment to question you; I can appreciate that. I’ll find somewhere to sleep overnight, and come and see you when you’re feeling better.’
Mary shifted her position on the log stump and winced. The women behind her moved away, their task accomplished for the moment.
‘At the moment I don’t think I’m ever going to get better,’ she said, wincing and standing up with an effort. ‘They tell me that I’m going to feel like shit for the rest of the week anyway. You might as well go ahead now. It might take my mind off things. Walk with me round the village.’
‘But why?’ asked Kella, falling into step with the hobbling girl. ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’
‘It’s custom, of course. You should know all about that, Sergeant Kella. I’ve heard all about you, aofia. This is my home village. Like you, I left it to go to a mission boarding school when I was ten, and I haven’t been back much since. But now that I am back, I don’t want people to think that I’m just a rice convert. I’m one of them. I’m proud of my traditions and I wanted to go through the ceremony. Now everyone will know that I come from Kolombangara.’ She paused. ‘I only wish it didn’t hurt so bloody much.’
‘People will only know you’ve gone back to your roots if you walk around half-naked,’ said Kella.
‘I wouldn’t be ashamed of that either,’ said the girl with a flash of spirit. ‘Although I’m sorry if my tits embarrass you. Talking of custom, you’d better take this.’ She hobbled over to one of the other women and returned carrying a betelnut the size of a plum, which she handed to the sergeant. ‘We’d better observe procedure as long as you’re here,’ she said.
Kella nodded and put the nut in his mouth. It would stain his teeth red, but would have the kick of a mild narcotic. There were many such forms of greeting in the islands. The saltwater people would give a visitor a cooked gnarli fish, which had the power to bring on hallucinations. By rights the girl should also have given him lime and wild pepper wrapped in a leaf as flavouring for the nut, but she could not be expected to remember everything after such a long absence from her home islands.
In fact, she was trying just a little too hard, thought the sergeant. He could appreciate the young woman’s dichotomy; he had been through it himself. The girl could not make up her mind whether she was a Solomon Islander or a brown whitefella. In truth, of course, she was neither—or both. She would discover that fact as she grew older. In the meantime, much like himself, she was trying to keep a foot in both camps. A back covered in custom tattoos would make a useful rallying point if she ever wanted to further her career in local politics and canvas votes in the bush villages.
‘I tried to find you at the Munda rest-house,’ he said, ‘but they told me you’d gone home for a week’s leave, so I followed you here. I want to talk to you about the Solomon Islands Independence Party. I understand that you are its president.’
‘What about it?’
‘There have been accusations that some of your members attacked the logging camp in the lagoon on several occasions and destroyed a quantity of valuable timber.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘But you don’t approve of the actions of the loggers?’
‘Does anyone? Not only are they destroying the island, but they’re enticing the local girls into prostitution. The Australian workers on Alvaro lure them on to the island to cinema shows and dances and then pay them for sex. After that, they’re damaged goods—spoiled marys—as far as their kinfolk are concerned.’
‘Do you and your organisation feel badly enough about that to do damage to the logging camp?’ Kella asked.
‘I’m not going to talk about it,’ the girl said.
‘Several attempts have been made to damage stocks of wood on Alvaro. Were you or anyone you know responsible for this damage?’
‘Certainly not!’ said the girl indignantly. ‘I’m not at all bothered if the loggers are having trouble, but I’m not responsible for it, nor is anyone else I know. I’ve only been back in the Solomons for a month. That’s hardly time to develop a terrorist organisation. When I attempt to get rid of logging in the Roviana Lagoon, it will be by legitimate means.’
‘And your colleagues in the SIIP feel the same?’
‘Certainly,’ Mary said. ‘We’re a democratically elected and organized group. Nothing is done without an open vote.’
‘You mean you just talk and issue leaflets, that sort of thing,’ Kella said.
‘We’re planning for the future of the islands, especially the Western Solomons,’ Mary said. She was walking with considerable difficulty now. Kella stopped.
‘You’d better go and rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll still be here tomorrow.’
The girl shook her head. ‘No, walk me round another couple of times. If I lie down, the way I feel at the moment I’ll never get up again. No one will harm you. Anyway, all the men have gone crab-hunting. At this time of the year the crabs migrate from the bush to the bay in hundreds. I remember that much about my upbringing.’
They resumed their walk. Most of the other women had disappeared into their huts. It was almost dark. A fitful moon illuminated the village between scudding clouds. Mary Gui gave a little cry and stopped again.
‘I think I overestimated my stamina,’ she admitted, putting a hand on Kella’s shoulder. ‘Perhaps I should rest after all.’
‘Show me your hut,’ said Kella. ‘I’ll help you over to it.’
‘No, that’s all right, I can manage.’ The girl cried out again and clung to the sergeant for support. Reluctantly she indicated a hut on the far side of the square. Kella helped her across and took her in through the open door. He lowered her on to a bed of straw on the ground, making sure that she was lying on her stomach. Mary groaned once and was quiet. Kella was not sure whether she was sleeping or had fainted from the pain. In either case, there was nothing that he could do. A sudden shaft of moonlight illuminated his surroundings. He saw a small wooden table and a smouldering fire in the centre of the room, kept alight for warmth, light and to keep venomous centipedes at bay. A cotton dress and undergarments were scattered on the floor. Mary’s attempt to live in two worlds was evidenced by the sight of several paperback textbooks abandoned on the floor by the fire, an empty Coca-Cola tin, and an open wooden box containing a variety of small shell custom trinkets, including a necklace and several rings and pendants. Kella looked more closely at the box. The jewellery was on a tray at the top of it. He lifted the tray. Beneath it were several wads of Australian ten-dollar notes. It looked as if there was at least a thousand dollars there. He replaced the box on the floor. Then quietly he turned and left the hut.
Outside in the village square, Kella thought at first that he was alone. Then he heard someone sidling up behind him. He turned, too late. Something very hard hit him with crushing force on the side of the head. Suddenly he was falling helplessly into a whirling black pit.