There. That couldn’t put her in much of a state, could it? Yes, it would. It absolutely would. I clutched the top of the page and pulled hard, ripping it in two. Blast her. I dragged out the other portion then wadded them together and tossed the ball out to the boys who, when they saw it, sent up another cheer. Direct violation of objectives #2 and #4. After a certain number of sentences, my letters to my mother now became letters to Nell. My mind was stuck in conversation with her and the feeling of talking to her rang through me, disturbed me, woke me up as one wakes from sudden illness in the middle of the night.
Before I left them, I’d slipped a copy of her book in my bag. I read it as soon as I got back, without stopping. And then again the next day. It was the least academic enthnography I’d ever read, long on description and sweeping conclusions, short on methodical analysis. Haddon, in a recent letter, had mocked the success of The Children of Kirakira in America, and joked that we should all bring a lady novelist along on our field trips. And yet she wrote with an urgency most of us felt but did not have the courage to reveal, because we were too beholden to the traditions of the old sciences. For so long I’d felt that what I’d been trained to do in academic writing was to press my nose to the ground, and here was Nell Stone with her head raised and swiveling in all directions. It was exhilarating and infuriating and I needed to see her again.
Several times I’d set out toward Lake Tam but turned back within an hour, having convinced myself it was too soon, they wouldn’t be expecting me, they couldn’t afford the disruption of a visitor yet. I would be a lurking nuisance lumbering along after them as they tried to do the work of twelve months in seven. If they were closer, I could stop by, have a pretext. Fen had spoken of wanting me to go on a hunting expedition with him within a fortnight, but he would have sent word already if he’d been serious about it.
I suspected Fen didn’t have Nell’s discipline, but he had a sharp mind, a gift for languages, and a curious, almost artistic way of seeing things. On the beach he’d noticed the way the Kiona turned their canoes sideways, with the fishing gear together in front. They look like pews before an altar in a country church, he’d said, and now I could not see the arrangement any other way.
I felt I loved them, loved them both, in the manner of a child. I yearned for them, far more than they could ever yearn for me. They had each other. They could not know what twenty-five months alone in this hut was like. Nell had been in the Solomons for a year and a half, but she’d lived with the governor and his wife, and had all their friends and visitors for company. Fen had been alone with the Dobu, but hadn’t he mentioned going to Cairns for his brother’s wedding in the middle of it? Home for him had been within a thousand-mile reach.
Outside the boys had switched to bows and arrows, practicing their shooting on a fast-rolling paw paw. One of the boys’ strings snapped and he ran into the bush, pulled up a bamboo stem, and, using only his hands and teeth, stripped out a thin fibre, tied it to his bow, and ran back to the game.
Nell and Fen had chased away my thoughts of suicide. But what had they left me with? Fierce desires, a great tide of feeling of which I could make little sense, an ache that seemed to have no name but want. I want. Intransitive. No object. It was the opposite of wanting to die. But it was scarcely more bearable.
9
1/20 Watching the women out fishing, barely any light in the sky yet. Their boats gliding on the flat black water, silver blue columns of smoke from fires in pots at the stern rise thick and taper to nothing. Some of the women are still wading around up to their chests in the cool water, checking their traps. Others are back in their canoes warming themselves at their small fires.
We got our slit gong beats yesterday. They surprised us with a little ceremony. Fen’s is 3 long wallops followed by 2 quick ones. Mine is 6 beats very fast like footsteps, they said, imitating my swift walk. Men from Malun & Sali’s clan performed the dances, an old woman beside me complaining that the younger generation hadn’t learned the steps properly.