It’s hard to believe, as I write this account, that the next World War was only six years away from that night, or that in nine years the Japanese would take control of the Sepik and the whole of the New Guinea Territory from the Australians, or that I would let the United States government shake me down for every bit of knowledge I had about the area. Would Fen or Nell have done the same? Anthropological contribution, they called it in the OSS. A generous epithet for scientific prostitution.
I led a rescue operation up the Sepik to this village at the end of ‘42, and afterward every man, woman, and child of Kamindimimbut was killed by the Japanese when they learned a few Olimbi men had helped us find the three captured American agents being held nearby. Over three hundred people slaughtered solely because I knew which cluster of raised houses, which strip of sand, was theirs.
‘What do you do about women then, Bankson?’ Fen said quite out of the blue, after we’d passed Kamindimimbut.
I laughed. ‘That’s a bit personal for our first canoe trip, isn’t it?’
‘Just wondering if you’ve gone Malinowski’s route. Sayers visited the Trobriands last year and said there were quite a number of suspiciously tan-colored adolescents walking about.’
‘Do you believe it?’
‘Have you seen the man in action? Nell and I picked him up at the station in New York and the only thing he said to me was “I need a martini in my hand and a girl in my bed.” Seriously, mate, it’s rough alone. I don’t think I could do it again.’
‘I’ll take a partner of some sort or other next time. More efficient, too, by half.’
‘Not sure I’d go that far.’ His spent cigarette made a brief orange arc into the river. I slowed for him to light another, then sped up again.
Sometimes at night it seemed to me that my boat was not being pushed by the engine but that boat and engine both were being pulled by the river itself, the ripples of wake just a design, like a stage set moving along with us.
‘Sometimes I wish I’d gone to sea,’ I said, perhaps simply for the luxury of being able to speak a passing thought aloud to someone who would understand what I meant.
‘Do you? Why’s that?’
‘I think I’m better on water than land. Better in my skin, as the French say.’
‘The ship captains I’ve met are tossers.’
‘It would be nice to do a job that wasn’t a big invisible knot to untangle, wouldn’t it?’
He didn’t answer, but I wasn’t bothered. I was flattered that we’d gotten to this stage already, that our minds could wander without apology. We passed through a long swath of fireflies, thousands of them flashing all around us, and it felt like soaring through stars.
The dark shapes on land became increasingly familiar: the tall narrow blackboard tree I called Big Ben, the jut of blueschist rock, the high mud bank of the most western Kiona hamlet. I must have slowed for Fen said, ‘Are we nearly there?’
‘Mile or two more.’
‘Nell,’ he said in a regular voice, not so much a question as a test. Satisfied she was still asleep he leaned over and said to me quietly, ‘Do the Kiona have a sacred object, removed from the village, something that they feed and protect?’
He’d already asked me many questions along these lines in Angoram. ‘They have sacred objects, certainly—instruments and masks and skulls of old warriors.’
‘That are kept in ceremonial houses?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean something bigger. Kept apart. Something they might not have told you about, but you sense exists.’
He was suggesting that after nearly two years they were withholding some vital aspect of their society from me. I assured him that I had been shown every totemic object in their possession.
‘They told me theirs was a descendant of a Kiona one.’
‘The Mumbanyo told you this? About what?’
‘Do me a favor and ask them again. About a flute. One that’s sometimes kept in isolation and has to be fed.’
‘Fed?’
‘Could you ask while I’m there? Your informant might not tell you the truth, but at least I’ll have a look at his reaction.’
‘Did you see it?’ I asked.
‘I only found out about it a few days before we left.’
‘And you saw it?’
‘They sort of presented it to me.’
‘As a gift?’
‘Yes, I think so. As a gift. But then this other clan—there were two rivalrous clans in our village—took it back before I got a full look at the thing. I wanted to convince Nell to stay longer, but there is no rerouting her once she puts her mind to something.’
‘Why did she want to leave?’
‘Who knows. They didn’t fit her thesis statement. And she calls the shots. We’re on her grant money. Will you ask your man for me? About a sacred flute?’
‘I’ve already shook them down hundreds of times about such things, but all right.’
‘Thanks, mate. Just to see his face, really. See what it reveals.’
My beach appeared around the bend.
‘Do you still have the butterfly net?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Haddon gave it to you in Sydney. Remember? Made me jealous.’
But I had no recollection of it.
I cut the engine and paddled in so as not to wake the village.
This time Fen shook her. ‘Nell. We’re here. We’ve reached the famous Kiona.’
‘Hush. Let’s not wake them,’ she whispered. ‘Lest we get shot by the arrows of the Great Warriors of the Sepik.’