Devil-Devil (23 page)

With his left hand Kella grabbed the startled man by the front of his tattered singlet. He brought his other hand across the man’s face in a stinging slap.

The Santa Cruz man bellowed with rage, tore lose from Kella’s grip, took a couple of paces backwards and then charged head down at the police sergeant. Kella sidestepped adroitly. As the man blundered headlong past him, the sergeant brought the edge of his hand down on the back of the islander’s neck.

The Santa Cruz man fell heavily on to his hands and knees and remained there, shaking his head dazedly. Kella chose his spot and drove his foot into the man’s side, sending him sprawling over on his back.

Kella glanced at the second man, who had not moved from his perch on the counter and was looking on in open-mouthed amazement.

‘You were about to tell me where Mendana Gau is,’ suggested Kella.

The second man looked at his companion, who was still on the floor, holding his ribs and moaning softly. ‘The boss has taken some crates of tobacco to sell at the villages upriver,’ said the second man quickly. ‘He left about an hour ago in the canoe with the outboard engine.’

‘I do hope you’re not lying to me,’ said Kella, leaving the hut.

Kella was on his way to the mouth of the river to borrow a canoe from a
wantok
, when he heard his name being called. Impatiently he turned, tensing, half-expecting with relish to see the two Santa Cruz men coming after him. Instead he found himself looking at a very large and very wet Brother John.

‘Did you get lost?’ asked Kella.

The evangelist shook his head. ‘They didn’t want me in the village,’ he said. ‘The old man’s dying all right. His daughter’s a Christian and she sent for me, hoping that I could convert her father on his deathbed. He insists on dying the custom way. That’s why he wants you.’

‘Why me?’ asked Kella in surprise.

‘The old man wants the
tala oto
, the entry to the straight path, intoned over him before he goes. Apparently these days only you and two old custom priests still know how to pray in that way. The other two are a couple of days’ walk away, so that leaves you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kella, brusquely, turning to continue on his way. ‘I don’t have time. I have to find Gau before he gets too far upriver.’

Brother John walked round until he was standing in front of Kella. ‘I don’t think you understand,’ he said steadily. ‘You have been requested to give a dying man the blessing which will enable his spirit to leave the village and make its journey to the ghost island. He won’t go my way, so he’ll have to go yours. As the
aofia
you have a duty to help the old man on his way.’

‘But you don’t believe any of that,’ said Kella, trying to move round the obdurate form of the evangelist. ‘You’re a Christian missionary.’

‘I am also a Melanesian, like you,’ said Brother John, no longer so affable. ‘I believe that any man has a right to maintain his faith, and that all others have a responsibility to help him, no matter what their views.’

Kella hesitated. If he made a detour to see the dying man, Mendana Gau might get so far up the river that he would not find him for days, just when he felt that his investigation was approaching some sort of conclusion.

On the other hand, he had been called upon to perform the straight path ceremony, which would light the passage of an old man’s soul from this life to the next. It was just another choice that he would have to make between being a policeman and the
aofia
. There had been so many of those over the past few years. He knew which path he would have to tread.

‘I’m on my way,’ said the
aofia
, changing direction.

‘And don’t worry about Gau,’ called Brother John after him. ‘I know where you’ll probably find him. He’s got a supply of trading goods he keeps in a treehouse in a clearing just outside the village by the killing ground. If he’s up in the bush, that’s where he’ll be. It’s getting as crowded as Honiara up there these days.’

‘What do you mean?’

The big missionary shrugged. ‘The bushmen tell me that someone from Ruvabi mission was hanging around the
treehouse
a week or so ago.’

‘Peter Oro?’

‘They didn’t know his name. Just fella bilong school.’

‘So Oro discovered the treehouse,’ said Kella. ‘But why would the bush people kill him for that?’

‘It’s none of my business,’ said Brother John firmly. ‘I just want the straight path ceremony carried out. Don’t forget, it’s the first saltwater village along the track. The dying man says he knows you. His name’s Andu. He’s the ghost-caller!’

In the smoke-filled hut Kella checked that he had all the equipment necessary to prepare Andu the ghost-caller for the straight path. He had assembled a pile of the scarce areca nuts. He had roasted a yam ready to be eaten by Andu’s youngest great-grandchild when the old man died. He had borrowed a bush knife and had assembled the dying ghost-caller’s fishing nets on the floor of the hut. Outside, a whole pig was being roasted on stones, to be offered as a sacrifice to the spirits and to entice them to the ceremony.

Kella had already purified his mouth with salt water, brought from the beach in a bamboo tube by one of the women. He had rubbed his hands in the sacred red clay found along the bank of the river. He had sung the incantation celebrating the first finding on Malaita of taro in the time before. Now he was ready.

Andu was lying on his bunk, comfort stones steaming beneath him to give comfort and ease to his frail form over the last hours of his life. His eyes were closed and his scrawny, hairless chest hardly moved as the shallow breaths being taken by the ghost-caller struggled to maintain some form of life in his wasted body.

About a dozen of Andu’s relatives had crowded into his hut. They were squatting, occupying every spare scrap of available space, except for the sacred rectangle next to the bunk where Kella was standing. They were all watching the
aofia
intently.

More members of the old man’s line were waiting outside the hut. In the distance, Kella could hear the shouts of children. Once the ghost-caller had died, no one in the village would be allowed to raise a voice above a whisper for five full days.

Kella took a deep breath and began the straight path chant.

‘
Ramo dingana, toli ana aena
,’ he intoned. ‘
Tafui fena igi
…’

The assembled men and women looked on in silence as Kella prepared the dying man for the life to come on Momulo. There he would spend long, storm-free days fishing with friends who had gone before him, and he would live effortlessly on wild yams and taro.

To reassure Andu, Kella recited the names of some of the great warrior chiefs who had died in the time before and whose spirits would soon be waiting to greet and protect the ghost-caller in the afterlife. These were Baala, Tabusu, Salaimanu and Angasi. He sang a song honouring the
agalimae
, those war-ghosts who would befriend the spirit of Andu.

In front of the old man’s relatives he shredded the ghost-caller’s fishing nets with the bush knife, so that no one on earth would take Andu’s place in the affections of those he left behind. Gently he placed several areca nuts on the dying man’s scrawny chest, to assure him of the protection of the
aofias
from the time before, who were already maintaining peace on the spirit island he was about to visit.

The atmosphere in the packed hut grew steadily more oppressive as Kella made his chants and incantations and offered up prayers for the
ano
, the soul of the man. He begged Andu’s
ano
to roam no more fitfully at night, so that it might return and tell the old man in the form of dreams what it had seen on its travels. Now the
ano
must prepare itself for its final journey.

As he drew near the end of the ceremony Kella could sense the sombre presence of death, waiting to bear the old man’s soul away. At last there was only one more function for him to perform before the old man could be released from the shackles of life.

Kneeling at the old man’s side, Kella whispered in the Lau dialect, ‘Andu, you must start your last great journey shriven of your sins. Is there anything you wish to leave behind on earth, to make your voyage to Momulo easier for you?’

At first Kella thought that the dying man had not heard him. Then Andu’s claw of a hand reached out and held Kella in a clammy grip.

‘Yes,’ he gasped with an effort.

‘What is it?’ asked Kella. He placed his ear close to the ghost-caller’s mouth, so that no one else would hear the old man’s final confession.

Andu struggled dreadfully to speak. Then the words came out, in little more than an expunged waft of air. ‘The tall white man,’ he breathed.

‘Lofty Herman?’ asked Kella. ‘What about him?’

Andu fought to get the words out. With a supreme bubbling effort he opened his mouth again.

‘I killed him,’ he said.

Kella felt numb. As a policeman there were a dozen questions he wanted to ask. However, in the straight path ceremony there was only one more thing he was allowed to put to the dying man, in order to let the spirits decide how peaceful his imminent journey to Momolo would be.

‘Is there anyone to share your blame?’ he asked urgently. ‘Did anyone help you in this act?’

Andu nodded, almost imperceptibly. ‘Senda Iabuli,’ he croaked, and died.

Sister Conchita waited at the wheel of her van for the trading boat from Malaita to finish tying up at the wharf. A makeshift gangplank was lowered over the side and a thin,
bewildered-looking
expatriate in his fifties walked down, carrying two suitcases.

He was wearing an old-fashioned, shapeless white linen suit and a straw hat. He put his suitcases down on the wharf and looked about him, as if wondering what he was doing in the capital.

Sister Conchita left the shade of the van and hurried over to the newcomer. ‘Mr Wilmot?’ she asked. ‘Let me take your bags.’

She carried the man’s luggage over to the truck and put the suitcases in the back. Wilmot did not move. Sister Conchita returned to him and took him by the arm, propelling him towards the Ford and opening the passenger door for him.

‘I’m from the mission,’ she told him, taking her place behind the wheel. ‘Father Ignatius thought you might prefer to stay there, instead of a hotel, while you’re waiting.’

‘He’s a DBS,’ the administrator had told her the previous evening. ‘That’s short for Distressed British Subject. He’s the first one we’ve had for a few years. Wilmot’s run a trading store on the west coast of Malaita for years. Now it’s gone bust, and he’s bankrupt. The Brits are shipping him home at the government’s expense, as they always do in these cases. He’s a Catholic, so we’ll look after him until a ship comes in to take him away. You may find him a little shell-shocked. These things sometimes hit them hard.’

The administrator had been right, thought Sister Conchita. Wilmot was almost in a catatonic state. She tried to rouse him from his trance.

‘How long is it since you were last in Honiara?’ she asked, heading from the wharf towards Mendana Avenue.

At first she thought that he was not going to answer her question, but with an effort the trader acknowledged her presence for the first time. ‘It must be fifteen years,’ he said. ‘Just after the war, when I was trying to restart my business.’

His well-modulated voice reminded Sister Conchita of the leading actors in British films of the 1930s. She could have been listening to Leslie Banks or Rex Harrison smoothing their way effortlessly through a drawing-room comedy.

‘Fifteen years,’ repeated Wilmot savagely. ‘I’ve given my life to this place, and what do I get out of it? Ungrateful, cheating natives and a government that can’t get rid of me quickly enough. I won’t be sorry to go.’

‘It must be very hard,’ said Sister Conchita carefully. She was beginning to dislike the bitter, self-absorbed man sitting next to her. Be fair, she told herself. He’s been through a lot, and now he’s lost his livelihood.

‘Very well,’ went on Wilmot with a self-satisfied sneer, half to himself. ‘I knew that this would happen one day. I’ve made provision for it. It’s time I cashed in on my pension fund. Take me to Johnny Cho’s.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Johnny Cho’s,’ said Wilmot impatiently. ‘Don’t you know anything? Chinatown – the Happy Gardens store. I’ve got to see him at once.’

Sister Conchita drove the Ford towards the bridge and turned left into Chinatown. The stores were beginning to open, she doubted if some of them ever closed, but this early in the morning there were few people around. She had no difficulty in parking outside the Happy Gardens. Wilmot got out of the cab.

‘Wait here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve got business to transact.’

Sister Conchita watched him disappear into the store. She wondered what could be so important to make the trader this eager to see Johnny Cho. She had only heard vaguely of the Chinaman, but he and his father were reputed to have their fingers in a lot of pies in Honiara.

Ten minutes passed. A group of curious children gathered around the van. Sister Conchita winked at them. They giggled and ran off down the unmade-up road. Suddenly there was a sound of shouting from within the store. Wilmot emerged, his arms raised to protect his head. He was pursued by four angry Chinese men wielding sticks, which they were bringing down with stinging force on the trader’s body. The men were being urged on by a younger Chinese man in well-cut slacks and a silk shirt.

Wilmot staggered out into the road and turned to face his tormentors, who remained threateningly on the verandah outside the store.

‘What’s the matter with you people?’ he demanded
despairingly
. ‘We had an agreement! I’ve kept my end of the bargain. I’ve been supplying you for years. Now I need the money. I insist on being paid my money!’