Upon my return to Nengai, Teket greeted me on the beach with a note. I knew by the shape of it, the three sideways folds, that it was from Bett. He handed it to me with great relief, as if he had been standing near the water for the entire week I’d been gone. Responsibility weighed heavily on Teket. It wasn’t hard to imagine him at Charterhouse, an earnest prefect, a stellar student. He asked me a great number of questions and, because the Kiona elders pass down their knowledge as secret family heirlooms, he treated the information I shared with great care. When an argument broke out between his clan and another about the nature of night, he’d asked my opinion. I told him what I believed about the earth’s diurnal rotation and its orbit around the sun. Afterward he coyly referred to it as ‘that matter we both know about,’ and whenever the sun or the moon came up in conversation among others, he always shot me a special look.
I took the note, but much to Teket’s disappointment I put it in my pocket without reading it. From its swollen edges I could tell the page had been folded and unfolded many times and it amused me to think of him studying Bett’s small Scottish scratches.
I asked for news, and he told me that Tagwa-Ndemi’s baby was a girl so little she fit in a coconut shell, and that a thief greased in palm oil so no one could get hold of him ran through Teket’s aunt’s house in the middle of the night, stealing three necklaces and a Turbo shell. Both Niani’s sons were ill, but Niani sat up all night negotiating with their ancestors and now they are better. I headed toward my house, but Teket was not finished. The night after I left, he said, Winjun-Mali tried to enter the mosquito bag of his brother’s wife, Koulavwan, but her mother heard him and shouted and Winjun-Mali tried to hide among the pots in the house but the mother caught him. He was brought to a ceremonial house where he argued his case. He claimed that he had seen Koulavwan give a betel leaf to her sister’s husband and that he was just making sure she was remaining faithful while his brother was away. He said that Koulavwan’s vulva was too wide for his taste. When he said this, all of the women who were listening under the house began shouting and Winjun-Mali picked up his spear and jammed it through the floorboards, nicking his own mother’s ear and disrupting the proceedings. Then Winjun-Mali’s father got in an argument with Koulavwan’s father about her extravagant bride price. Koulavwan’s father reminded him that when they were boys Winjun-Mali’s father had taken the glory for the killing of a man Koulavwan’s father had killed for him. He pointed to the tassels on Winjun-Mali’s father’s lime stick and asked if any of them were for real murders. Before it turned violent, Teket’s father cried out that their blood had made the baby in Koulavwan’s belly and they must not fight. So, Teket said, we all exchanged areca nuts and went back to bed.
A few months ago I would have been dismayed to miss all this and would have hurried to write it all down, but now I let it wash over and past me, without even trying to catch a drop. He took in a breath to say more but I pointed my fingers to the ground, a signal mothers gave their children to quiet down, and told him he’d have to save the rest for later, that I was too tired. Teket was unable to hide his disappointment, and lingered to show it to me, then finally turned away.
Teket would have liked to have someone like Nell. In her he would have found a kindred spirit, a tireless fellow prefect. They could have spent hours together, Nell cross-examining him about who came from whose vagina, relishing all the details that Teket had saved up for her return.
Alone in my house I lit the fire, placed a pot of water on top, steeped the tea, sat down, and opened the note from Bett.
Back on the boat. Rabaul insane. Missed you. Where are you? No one can tell me. Should I be worried? Come find me, sweet.