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“ACHILLES …” Sonderfeld smiled tolerantly and pointed his cigar in the direction of the Kiap house. “Achilles is sulking in his tent. Unfortunately he is too young to make such gestures with any grace. He succeeds only in making himself ridiculous.”
It was late in the afternoon—the afternoon of Oliver’s departure from Goroka, the afternoon of his coupling with N’Daria. He was sitting on the stoop with Gerda and Nelson, relaxed, expansive, at ease with himself and his small world. Wee Georgie hovered in the background, shambling and solicitous.
The absence of Curtis was the only flaw in his pattern of contentment. It was a small loss, to be sure. The boy was callow, uninformed, gauche. It was not his absence but his refusal to attend that fretted Sonderfeld. It was an affront to his hospitality, a small reverse in the lengthening tally of victories.
Gerda and Nelson said nothing but watched him covertly over their drinks. Something had happened to the big man, but they could not put a name to it. His stringent control had slackened. His laugh was louder, his irritation more patent. His movements and his gestures were suddenly out of rhythm. The smooth-running machine was ever so little unbalanced, its beat was out of kilter, its bearings whined in protest.
Sonderfeld tossed off his drink and gestured to Wee Georgie to refill his glass. He turned to Nelson.
“Do you think, Nelson, it is because I have offended him?”
Nelson shrugged.
“Don’t know. He hasn’t said anything to me. He’s very busy, of course.”
“Busy! Busy!” His voice was harsh with anger and contempt. “A mission clerk could do in half a day what these fellows do with a dozen policemen and all the trappings of military authority. No, I will tell you what it is. It is one of the defects of the present system that sends these fellows—schoolboys most of them, half-trained, half-educated—into isolated areas and expects them to do a man’s work. They are not prepared for it, mentally or physically. They are at an age when it is dangerous to live alone. They are armed with an authority beyond their strength. Small wonder that they become eccentric, cross-grained, a burden to themselves, a trial to those who are forced to have dealings with them.”
Wee Georgie set a fresh drink at his elbow. Sonderfeld seized it and half emptied it at a gulp. Gerda watched him anxiously. She had never seen him like this before. She could deal with him sober, but drunk and out of conrol, there was no knowing how dangerous he might be. She shivered and looked inquiringly at Theodore Nelson. The small fluttering movement of his hand told her that he was helpless.
Then Wee Georgie caught her eye. He was standing behind Sonderfeld’s chair and he jerked his thumb back and forth in the direction of the Kiap house. His meaning was plain. Gerda herself should go down and fetch Curtis.
Sonderfeld was frowning as he slipped the band off a new cigar and pierced the end with ritual care. His hands were trembling again and he fumbled uneasily with the small sharp instrument. Gerda stood up. She masked her uneasiness with a cool smile and addressed herself to Theodore Nelson.
“If Kurt is right—and I think he may be—we should be gentle with the young man. We are the older ones. It is our business to make the first approaches. I’ll go down and talk to Mr. Curtis myself.”
Sonderfeld looked up sharply. Then his tight mouth relaxed into a smile of tolerant approval.
“Good! Good! If he will come, I am prepared to forget his bad manners and welcome him back into the circle. My wife has many defects, Nelson, but she has all the talents of a diplomat. Go, my dear, and charm Achilles into the sunlight. Georgie—drinks for Mr. Nelson and myself.”
Gerda smoothed her skirts and patted her hair into place and walked swiftly down the path to the Kiap house. A small icy finger of fear was probing at her heart.
Lee Curtis greeted her with surprise and pleasure and drew her into the cool half-light of the hut.
“Gerda! This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me. What brings you here? Here, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”
The boyish warmth of his greeting touched her and she was filled with tenderness towards him, young, lost and afraid, but stiffening his courage to a man’s work in a harsh and alien country. She seated herself in the canvas chair while he perched himself on an upturned box, eager and grateful for this small mark of her favour.
“I’ve been wanting to see you, Gerda. But I’ve had to keep away. I’m—I’m not very good at hiding my feelings and—well—it seemed safer”
“I know that. But now I want you to come.”
“Why?”
“Because my husband is irritable, unsettled. Your absence annoys him. He’s drinking more than he usually does.”
“Oh!” His hurt was so obvious that it touched her to pity and she leant forward to lay a cool hand on his wrist.
“That isn’t the only reason, believe me. I want you there, too. I’ll be glad of your company. I won’t be so afraid if you’re there.”
“Afraid of what?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. Kurt is changed. Always before he was so controlled, so much master of himself that nothing seemed to touch him. Now he is uneasy, restless. His whole manner is different. His voice is louder. He does not trouble to conceal his thoughts. I—”
“He’s scared.”
“Perhaps. But I am afraid, too. I know him so well, you see. I have seen the cruelty of which he is capable.”
“Has he—been cruel to you?”
The young mouth tightened, the eyes were suddenly grim.
“No. But don’t you see? It isn’t that only. I am so isolated. When the pig festival comes, you will leave us and I shall be alone, completely alone. If Kurt succeeds in this crazy plan of his, what then?”
“I’ll look after you, Gerda, I promise you.”
Then he was at her side, his arms about her shoulders in a protective gesture, his eyes tender, his lips brushing her cheeks. There was so much simple love in him that she had not the heart to reject him. He drew her to her feet and held her to him and kissed her lips and cradled her head awkwardly on his shoulder. She was warm to him, but there was no passion in her response and she drew away as quickly as she could.
He pleaded with her.
“I love you, Gerda. You know that now, don’t you? You understand that I won’t let anything happen to you. We’ve got more than half a case against your husband now, and when George Oliver comes up—”
The words were out before he remembered that this was to be a secret between himself and Nelson and Père Louis. Gerda’s face went grey; her mouth dropped open; her eyes stared blankly. Her voice was a frightened whisper.
“George Oliver?”
“That’s right. He’s the A.D.O. at Goroka. He’s my boss. It was to be a secret, but I don’t see that it matters if you know. Père Louis and I sent reports to him. He’s probably on his way now. … I say, are you sick? You look awful.”
“No, no! I’m all right. Just let me sit down and give me a drink of water.”
He settled her solicitously in the chair and turned away to fill a mug from the canvas water bag hanging in the doorway. Gerda closed her eyes and tried vainly to marshal her scattered thoughts.
George Oliver! One love remembered from the many now forgotten. One warmth remembered out of all the cold and barren years. The one regret from all the loveless laughter. Now he was coming back—not for her, but for her husband. She remembered his brooding eyes and his hurt mouth and the droop of his tired shoulders when he turned away for the last time.
“Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”
Lee Curtis was squatting beside the chair offering the pannikin of water like a lover’s token. She sipped it slowly, veiling her eyes from him lest he should read his own rejection before she had time to prepare him for it.
“Thank you, my dear. I am better now.”
He took the tin cup from her and moved away a pace or two to set it on the table. When he came back, she was standing up, smoothing her frock, patting her hair with the old familiar, intimate gesture. He watched her, puzzled and half afraid. Then she took his hands in hers and spoke softly and with compassion.
“Lee, you have paid me a very great compliment. I shall remember it all my life. But I am not for you. I am too old, for one thing. For another, I know that I could never make you happy. No, listen to me, please—” He opened his mouth to speak, but she closed it with the palm of her cool hand. “You are too young to bind your life to that of a woman who has lived as I have. I have loved many men. I am married to a man I hate. The burden of a past like that would crush you and you would come to hate me. I could not bear that. Besides …” Now she knew she must say it, as much for herself as for him. She might deny it later, she probably would, but here in the shadows of the Kiap house she must make affirmation of the last shred of faith left to her. “Besides, I am in love with George Oliver.”
For a long time he stood there, head drooping, his body slack, his hands plucking helplessly at the seams of his trousers. When at last he straightened up, his mouth was twisted into a tremulous, youthful grin.
“Well, that’s it. I daresay I can take it, given time. Now wait till I spruce up, and I’ll drink myself silly on your husband’s grog.”
He washed his face and straightened his hair, changed his shirt and buckled on his belt, and then walked with her back to the bungalow. His heart was empty and his brain was tired; he felt like a man who had wakened suddenly from a nightmare and groped frantically for a handhold on reality. But his back was straight and his head was high, and he greeted Kurt Sonderfeld with a smile.
Cadet Patrol Officer Lee Curtis had entered into man’s estate.
Once again they were dining together in the candlelit room with its vista of stars and dark mountains, while the kundus thundered up from the valley and the chant rose and fell into crests and hollows of melody. Once again there was the warmth of wine and the savour of fine food and the smell of flowers and the shifting play of flames on silver and crystal.
But there were ghosts at the banquet—the ghost of Max Lansing, querulous, demanding, disappointed, inescapable; the crackling echo of Père Louis’ voice, interpreting the signs and the portents; the monstrous tossing shadow of Kumo the Sorcerer, symbol of all the dark evil of the valleys. There were ghosts at the banquet and their presence could not be ignored, their voices could not be stifled.
The talk eddied uneasily round the quartet at the table, lapsed and stirred again as Sonderfeld, flushed and emphatic, commanded their attention to a new subject or an old argument. He had been drinking deeply and steadily since the end of the afternoon and he was by turn truculent and goading, or given to fantastic condescensions and wild laughter. Gerda was shocked and helpless, afraid to provoke him, ashamed for herself and her guests. Theodore Nelson kept his eyes on his plate and tried vainly to escape the attention of his host. But Sonderfeld nagged at him with perverse amusement and soon reduced him to mumbling confusion.
Then he turned his attention to Lee Curtis. His big voice boomed in drunken mockery.
“Now, Curtis, you are among friends. You can afford to be frank. Tell me, have you never found yourself tempted to try the village women?”
“Kurt, please—”
“No, my dear, you must not be prudish. It does not become you. Mr. Curtis is a man of the world—even if a very young one. He lives much alone. He would be the first to admit his need of the satisfactions of the flesh. Well, my friend?”
Curtis flushed with anger, but he kept a tight hold on himself.
He said, coldly, “So far I haven’t been interested.”
“Yet some of them are beautiful, are they not? Scrape off the pig fat, take the lice out of their hair, wash them well with soap and water, don’t you think they would grace your bed as well as—say, Gerda here?”
“I—I—I say, old man …” Nelson began to stammer a half-hearted protest.
Curtis cut him short with a gesture.
“If you’ll leave your wife’s name out of it, Sonderfeld, I’ll answer your question.”
“Forgive me!” Sonderfeld waved a regal hand. “I offend you. I mentioned Gerda simply for comparison. She is beautiful, is she not? I believe other men find her desirable. I did myself once. However, we will omit her from the proposition. You will admit that in certain circumstances dark flesh might be very desirable?”
“Possibly.”
“To you?”
“I doubt it.”
“And yet there are cases on record of—shall we call them lapses?—even among your own colleagues.”
“Not within my experience.”
“But then”—Sonderfeld’s voice dropped to a low purring pitch of calculated insult—“you are so very young, Curtis. Your experience is so very limited. How can you say what the years may do to you? How can you promise that you will not sicken of hothouse fruit and turn to the wild vine and the apples of Sodom? What would you say if I told you that I, myself, have tasted them and found them sweet?”
“I would remind you,” said Curtis bluntly, “that it’s an offense against Territory law to cohabit with native women. I’d also remind you that you’ve had too much to drink. I suggest it’s time you started to sleep it off.”
“Gott im Himmel!” Sonderfeld crashed his fist on the tabletop, so that the glass shattered and the cutlery danced and rattled under the flickering candle flames. “In my own house, at my own table, I am reprimanded by a puppy!”
“I didn’t ask to come,” said Curtis quietly. “I didn’t expect to be insulted.”
“No, that’s true.”
As suddenly as it had come, his anger seemed to leave him. His features composed themselves into a mask of smiling approbation. Ignoring the wreckage on the table, he leant forward in the attitude of a great gentleman delivering a careful compliment.
“You know, Curtis, I like you. You have more brains than I gave you credit for. You have courage, too. Do you never feel that you are wasted in this pitiful routine—poking through the valleys, sitting in judgment on childish disputes, listening to childish lies, making little lists of folk who will be dead in two years, writing reports that no one ever reads?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you are, you know. Look!” He slewed round, unsteadily, in his chair and flung his arm out in a forensic attitude towards the picture window that framed the stars and the black barrier of the mountains. “Out there is the last unknown country on the map of the world. Behind those mountains there is wealth undreamed of, gold and oil and manpower, to turn this wilderness into a paradise. There are a million men in the valleys waiting for a leader, ten thousand drums waiting to burst into the march of the conqueror. And you have—what? Ten thousand Europeans and a shabby charter from the United Nations. Look at it, man! Look and look again and tell me whose way is right—yours or mine?”
“What is your way, Sonderfeld?”
The question was soft and innocent, but it had the impact of a bullet. Sonderfeld’s hieratic attitude was gone in an instant. His face twisted into a grin; his eyes were cunning and wary as an animal.
“Oh, no, Curtis! I am not so big a fool! Why should I peddle my visions to the blind and shout my message to the deaf? Go back to your hut! Suck your pencil stub and scribble your little notes and wait for the thunder and the lightning that will strike you dead!”
He heaved himself from his chair and lurched unsteadily to the door. Then he turned and looked at them. His face was distorted, his lips slobbered, his eyes were sullen and bloodshot. His voice was hoarse with liquor and excitement.
“The cassowary men are abroad in the valleys. They run from village to village with the news of the great coming. There is a name spoken that is louder than the drums. There is a chief promised who will raise the tribute of the valleys, who will sweep from the Sepik to the Huon Gulf, and the name of the chief is—is—”
He broke off. He seemed suddenly to understand where he was and what he was saying. They saw him struggling for control, shaking his head to clear it of the liquor fumes, composing his flushed features into a travesty of smiling charm. He steadied himself against the doorjamb and surveyed them with something of the old mockery. Then he made them a little bow and left them. They heard him stumbling out onto the veranda, down the steps and onto the path that led to the laboratory.
Then they looked at each other with relief and with horror, and in the eyes of each was the same unspoken verdict.
Gerda buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Lee Curtis patted her shoulder awkwardly and made a sign to Nelson to wait for him on the veranda. He hesitated a moment, as if unwilling to be left alone, then he went out, polishing his glasses, peering anxiously into the shadows as if afraid that Sonderfeld might be waiting to leap upon him out of the darkness.
Slowly, painfully, Gerda recovered herself. She dried her eyes on Curtis’s handkerchief and took the cigarette that he offered her. She smoked a few moments in silence until her hands stopped trembling and her tight nerves began to relax. Then she turned to him with a simple, pathetic question.
“What am I going to do, Lee? Tell me, please.”
“Wait. That’s all you can do. Wait till George Oliver gets here.”
“But Kurt … ? You saw him. What … ?”
“He was drunk. He’ll sober up before morning.”
“He was mad. You know that as well as I do.”
“There’s no one here to certify him, Gerda.”
“But what am I to do?” It was a cry of terror wrung from her by the sudden press of memories she had thought buried forever—memories of Rehmsdorf and the gas chambers and the protracted torment of the damned and the dispossessed.
“Nothing. Nelson and I will stay here tonight, in the guest room. You’ve only to raise your voice and we’ll come running. Besides, he may not even come back. He may decide to sleep it off in the laboratory.”
She saw him then with new eyes. She saw him tempered, as steel is tempered, violently and abruptly in fire and water, to a new strength and hardness. The soft lines of youth had disappeared. His mouth and his eyes were hard and the skin of his cheeks was tight as vellum on a drum. This was what must have happened to George Oliver—this and things like it—until youth was dead and there were no illusions left and the heart was empty of all but strength.
She came to him then and took his face in her hands and kissed him gently on the lips, and though he knew that she was kissing another man, he did not resent it. He took her arm and led her out onto the veranda where Theodore Nelson was waiting for them.
For all his huckster’s shrewdness, for all the bright burnish that travel had given him, the round-faced, myopic fellow was of indifferent courage. He drove hard bargains for the men who stood behind him in business. He made profit for scant payment in the casual commerce of the bed. His mind was a card index of facts and figures and dossiers of people who might be useful to him. He was amusing when he cared to be, brusque and inconsiderate when his comfort or convenience were involved. He had travelled the world in pursuit of one star, apparently unaware that it was a gaudy pasteboard pinned to his own navel. Inside, he was as hollow as a coconut.
He had made his alliance with Lee Curtis because, despite his youth, the patrol officer represented the big battalions. Now, when the treaty seemed to demand service in return for protection, he wanted to dissolve it as soon as possible. Sitting alone in the darkness, listening to the beat of the drums, he had framed his proposition with some care. Now he laid it before Lee Curtis.
“Have you told Mrs. Sonderfeld about the—er—arrangements?”
“About Oliver coming up? Yes. There was no good reason why she shouldn’t hear about it.”
“Good. When do you expect Oliver to get here ?”
“Late tomorrow, possibly. More than likely the following morning.”
“Will he be bringing more police with him?”
“I should think so. Depends on what’s available in the pool at Goroka. Why?”
“Well—er—I have a very tight schedule, as you know. Lots of places still to see in the Territory. Then I have to get back to Sydney to catch a ship for Colombo—”
“Yes?”
The monosyllable wasn’t encouraging, but Theodore Nelson stuck to his script.
“Well, I’m not much use to you here. This sort of fandango isn’t my choice of entertainment. So I thought—er—with Oliver on the way, you’d be able to give me a couple of police boys for escort back to Goroka. I could leave first thing in the morning.”
“You could leave tonight.”
“Well, there’s not that much hurry. But, of course, if you thought …”
“You want to know what I think, Nelson?”
“What?”
Curtis’s voice was a savage lash of anger and contempt.
“I think you ‘re a yellow-livered bastard. So far as I’m concerned, you can get out any time you like—alone!”
“You have a duty to protect me. That’s the understanding on which the company …”
“You’re being protected. You’re sitting on this veranda with your belly full of food and whisky. What more do you want?”
“There’s trouble blowing up. If you can’t guarantee my safety, then I demand to be sent back under escort.”
“I can’t spare an escort. Besides, the southern tracks are as safe as King’s Cross—a damn sight safer, come to that. The trouble’s up there, fifteen, twenty miles north. You’ll be going the other way. I’ll give you two days’ rations and you can sleep in the Kiap houses. That’s the best I can do. Make up your own mind.”
Before Nelson had time to frame his reply, the drums stopped abruptly. The sudden silence was as commanding as a trumpet blast. Tense, expectant, they peered out across the valley. They saw no movement. Even the trees and the feathery bamboos hung still in the windless air. Then, distant but distinct, they heard the crescendo beat of the running cassowary.
“What’s that?” Gerda whispered the question close to Curtis’s ear.
“Cassowary,” said Curtis flatly.
“Kumo?”
“Probably.”
“What do you mean—Kumo?” Nelson’s voice was a husky croak. “A man doesn’t run like that. He couldn’t.”
“I know,” said Curtis quietly.
“Then what the devil … ?”
Curtis was silent a moment, as if debating whether to answer. When he spoke, it was with a sort of calculated calm.
“I can’t tell you very much because I don’t know. It’s common belief among the tribes that certain sorcerers have the power to change themselves into cassowaries and travel between the villages faster than a man could possibly run. I’ve heard accounts from reliable men, old hands, missionaries, that point to such things actually happening. I’ve never heard one who was prepared to deny it flatly. Two things I do know.” He paused a moment, listening to the drumming crescendo. “The first is that that’s a cassowary out there. And yet … the cassowary never travels at night.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve half a mind to go down and find out.”
“No, please!” Gerda clung to him desperately.
“You can’t leave us here. It’s your duty to protect us.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Nelson!”
For a few moments he sat, undecided whether to go or stay, then he decided with some relief that there would be little profit and possibly a great loss in an abortive effort to confront the sorcerer. Even if he succeeded, what could he say or do? Sonderfeld was the man he wanted, and already Sonderfeld had played halfway into his hands. He relaxed in his chair, lit two cigarettes, handed one to Gerda and listened to the steady chuff-chuff-chuff of the great earthbound bird that never travelled at night.
When they reached the village, the footbeats stopped, and for twenty minutes or more there was silence, broken only by the small crepitant noises of the night and the low murmur of their own desultory talk. Then, from down in the village, came a wild shout of triumph whose echoes rang startlingly across the sleeping valley. Then the drums broke out again, and the singing-a new rhythm and a new chant, savage, exultant, rolling like thunder round the ridges and the peaks.
“To hell with it!” said Lee Curtis. “Let’s go to bed. We share the guest room, Nelson. Four-hour watches. If Gerda calls, wake me immediately.”
“You can’t give me orders like that!” Nelson’s voice was high and petulant.
“I give ’em, you take ’em. If not, you spend the night in the Kiap house—alone. Come on, Gerda, you’ve had enough for tonight. It won’t look half so bad in the morning.”
Together they walked into the house with Theodore Nelson at their heels like a frightened puppy. At the door of her room she kissed him lightly and left him.
He went straight to the guest room and flung himself, fully dressed, in the armchair, leaving Theodore Nelson to sleep the first four hours of the night watch.
At two in the morning Sonderfeld had still not returned, so he woke Nelson and sat him, grumbling and ill-tempered, in the chair, while he himself stretched out on the bed for a few hours of uneasy slumber.
But Nelson was a man who needed his rest. He nodded and dozed fitfully and finally slept, forgetting even to awake Curtis to relieve him.
When morning came, they found that Sonderfeld was gone, taking N’Daria with him, and that the whole village was moving out to the pig festival.