Devil-Devil (29 page)

Sister Conchita shook the old man’s hand vigorously, shocked at the change in him. The sprightly air that usually distinguished the old priest was gone. If she did not know him better Sister Conchita would have believed that he was defeated. She dismissed the thought; her mentor was merely tired, she assured herself.

Forcing herself to chatter inconsequentially, the nun
conducted
Father Pierre to the makeshift car park. The old man’s eyes widened in mock wonder as he saw the waiting vehicle. ‘The mission jeep!’ he exclaimed reverently. ‘I was expecting something much less grand; a bicycle, perhaps. Don’t tell me Father Ignatius said you could use it?’

‘He didn’t say I couldn’t,’ said Sister Conchita.

A chuckle escaped the priest’s lips. For a moment he looked like his former mischievous self. ‘Oh, sister,’ he said solemnly, ‘unless we are both very lucky we shall spend so much time in purgatory together!’

They sat in the jeep. Sister Conchita made as if to start the vehicle. Father Pierre lifted a restraining hand.

‘First, tell me everything,’ he invited.

It was as if a dam within her had been breached. Sister Conchita found herself telling her expressionless listener all that had happened since she had arrived in Honiara, of her run-ins with the headquarters administrator, her encounters with Kella and her increasing unease at the danger the police sergeant seemed to be heading into.

‘Ben Kella’s all right,’ said Father Pierre after Sister Conchita had finished, half-ashamed at revealing so much about her feelings. ‘I saw him recently at the mission station. He’s probably heading for trouble in the high bush, but if anyone can look after himself it’s Ben.’ He paused. ‘You like our sergeant, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know what I feel about him!’ said the nun.

‘How so?’

‘Well …’ Sister Conchita struggled to express her feelings and to put into words what had been bothering her ever since she had first met the police sergeant. ‘Yes, I like him fine,’ she conceded. ‘He’s a great guy, he’s brave and he knows so much about Malaita. But …’

‘Yes?’ prompted the priest. ‘You find it difficult to come to terms with his background, is that it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Sister Conchita miserably. ‘Father, Ben’s a pagan. He worships his own gods. His beliefs go against everything I’ve been taught. Yet he’s putting his faith and his ideology to use to help the mission.’

‘He’s not doing it for the mission,’ Father Pierre corrected her. ‘He’s doing it for his people, because he’s the
aofia
.’

‘It still worries me.’

Father Pierre was silent for a few seconds. When he spoke it was almost with reluctance. ‘I knew that we would have this conversation one day,’ he said. ‘I just hoped that you would have learned a little more about the islands before you had to make a decision.’

‘What decision?’ asked the nun.

‘You’ve agreed to dedicate your life to God in the Solomon Islands, and I’m glad that you’ve done so, because you have so much to offer, Sister Conchita. But to be effective you’ve got to immerse yourself in the customs and traditions of the islands.’

‘I’m trying to do that!’

‘I know, I know. But you won’t get it all from books. Over the years to come you’ve got to mix with plenty of islanders like Ben Kella – highly intelligent and just as dedicated to their gods as we our to Our Lord. And you’ve got to understand their beliefs and appreciate that sometimes they can bring about miracles too, if people believe in them strongly enough.’

‘Are you asking me to—’

‘I’m putting a choice before you. You can follow in the way of Father Ignatius and go by the book. Many do and lead useful and productive lives within the Church. Or you can do what a number of priests and nuns who have spent much of their time in the bush do, and appreciate that there are two worlds of the spirit in the Solomons, and that sometimes they intermingle. It’s a big decision for someone as young as yourself to make, and perhaps I’m being unfair in urging you to take it so early in your career. But I think you’re ready to make up your mind. To do that you’ve got to experience both sides.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘I’ll show you,’ said Father Pierre.

Sister Conchita toiled up the narrow track leading to the top of Mount Austen, a few miles outside Honiara. Leaving the airport, she had driven inland up the unmade road as far as she could persuade the jeep to jolt along. Then Father Pierre had told her that she would have to go the rest of the way on foot by herself. He would wait for her for as long as it took.

‘But I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m looking for,’ she had objected.

The priest had shrugged. ‘Maybe nothing,’ he had said. ‘But if you want to begin to understand Kella and what he stands for, you will have to put yourself in a position to learn about his faith.’ He had seen the look of incomprehension on the nun’s face and reluctantly had explained a little further.

‘On the hilltop there’s a Malaitan community,’ he said. ‘They’re men and women who have come over from the Lau Lagoon to Guadalcanal. They don’t own land on this island, so they’re squatting in an area the local people don’t want. Make no mistake, it’s a long hike up to the summit and it’s pretty rugged when you get there too.’

‘But what am I looking for?’

‘You’ll know when you arrive – if you’re lucky. The Lau people have transferred their culture to this area, remember that, and they’ll be reluctant to disclose it to strangers. But this is the only place on Guadalcanal where you can get in touch with Kella, and maybe begin to understand him. On the other hand, you may just have a long and unpleasant walk for nothing. It’s up to you!’

‘I’ll do my best, father.’

‘I know you will. Just one word of advice – if you do get lost, don’t follow any water-course up there. An apparently harmless stream could lead you straight into a swamp or a gorge. Don’t worry; you ought to be safe enough. If I’m right you should be looked after all the way.’

The old priest would be drawn no further and, despite the voices screaming inside her not to go, the bewildered young sister had set off up the steep incline. Before she had gone more than a few paces Father Pierre had called her back. The old man’s face was lined and strained.

‘There’s one more thing,’ he had said. ‘It’s only something I’ve heard, and I may be wrong. But I believe that what you are looking for is in a cave. And that cave will be distinguished by the sign of the local dream-maker carved outside.’

‘What sign?’ asked Sister Conchita.

‘A snake,’ said the priest. ‘
Baekwa I Tolo
. Be careful in your dealings with it. It has very powerful
mana
.’

Now, three hours later, she was still plodding up the narrow track. Farther down, the hillside had been forested but now there was nothing but brown, spiralling vegetation on either side of the track. The mountainside bush was nothing like the lush damp greenery to which she was accustomed on Malaita. Here it was just as thick and impenetrable, but brown and wire-like in appearance, with great threatening thorns stirred into sudden sallies by the breeze. Sister Conchita could understand why the local Guadalcanal people did not want to live in such a remote and infertile place.

She turned a corner and saw the plateau of the summit ahead of her. It was covered with ramshackle buildings made of planks and boxes. Presumably there was no suitable wood for building houses in the area, resulting in the sprawling shanty-town lying before her. The inhabitants must have carried every scrap of material five miles up the mountain track from the main road. She could see no stream, just a series of man-made rock pools designed to catch rainwater.

There were the usual teeming groups of half-naked women and children outside the makeshift homes. As soon as they saw the nun they disappeared rapidly inside the dwellings, although Sister Conchita was aware of dozens of pairs of eyes peering out at her through the open doorways. She stopped, at a loss. This was so unlike the effusive welcome she would have received as a matter of course on Malaita.

Eventually a man appeared from the far end of the settlement. He was of medium height but tightly muscled. He wore a pair of tattered shorts.

‘I am Sam Beni,’ he said abruptly in English.

‘Sister Conchita,’ faltered the nun, extending a hand.

The man did not take it. ‘What can I do for you, sister?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ said the sister, trying to conceal her
embarrassment
at her total sense of misplacement. ‘Father Pierre from Ruvabi sent me up here – to look for something, I think.’

If her words made any sense to the islander he showed no sign of it. He shrugged scornfully ‘We cannot help you up here. Like you, we are exiles.’

‘Tell me, is there a path leading anywhere?’ begged Sister Conchita. She was tired and thirsty, but determined not to turn back.

Beni shrugged briefly. ‘One track,’ he said, indicating the direction from which he had appeared. ‘It soon disappears into the bush and cliffs. There is nothing for a white sister there.’

Sister Conchita thanked the man but nevertheless took the direction he had indicated. She soon left the settlement behind her and was aware that the ground was sloping gradually beneath her feet. The sun-browned vegetation grew thickly all around her and there were great outcrops of rock, some towering into the sky and many yards long. Presumably the cave Father Pierre had mentioned would be a fissure in one of the grey, looming outcrops.

Again and again as she struggled onwards Sister Conchita wished that she had never embarked upon such a quixotic and apparently unnecessary journey. She found herself resenting Father Pierre and the cryptic manner in which he had dismissed her with a mere passing reference to someone called a dream-maker. All right, so presumably he had wanted her to embark upon a voyage of self-discovery, but at least he could have given her some sort of clue as to what she was supposed to be looking for.

Then she remembered that he had. The old man had told her to look for a snake carved on the exterior of a cave. Doggedly Sister Conchita forced herself off the path in the direction of the great stone outcrops growing out of the undergrowth.

Cruel looping hooks of thorns tore at her flesh and habit but the nun forced herself to keep pressing towards the rocks. The sweat stung her eyes into paroxysms of blinking. Almost blindly she skirted piles of dead brushwood and crumbled stones at her feet, her bleeding hands fending off the creepers and canes lurking before her. Eventually she reached the first of the outcrops. Here it was cooler, sheltered from the sun, but greyer, casting macabre shadows to form a harsh, separate, unforgiving world of its own. Sister Conchita slumped breathlessly against the stone wall, grateful for the temporary respite it bestowed upon her tortured limbs. Then, almost sobbing with agony, she forced herself onwards in desperate search of the cave marked with the snake carving.

Small creatures making their homes among the rocks and undergrowth scuttled beneath her feet; lizards and bush mice paused in their activities to survey her before disappearing urgently. Somewhere muffled by the undergrowth she could hear the snorting of an angry pig.

Sister Conchita moved as fast as she could between the cliff faces. There were apertures enough worked into the face of the rock, of differing shapes and sizes, but none with any visible marking signs outside. She dragged her protesting body
exhaustedly
from outcrop to outcrop, pulling herself along the uneven sides of the rocks by her frayed fingertips when the creepers threatened to scale the walls to a height above her head.

Finally she almost literally stumbled across it. The outcrop was relatively small, granite-grey in colour, separated from the main range by a sea of knee-high springy rough grass. Sister Conchita reached the wall of rock by the exercise of main force and headed with little hope for the entrance to a cave she had noticed about a third of the way along the length of the rock growth. She pulled herself to the hole and stopped, wiping the perspiration from her eyes with initial disbelief and then a flood of triumph.

The snake was etched into the wall to a depth of several inches, long, curling, with large, angry eyes and a head reared back ready to strike. Sister Conchita took a deep breath and entered the cave.

After her initial misgivings the interior of the cave proved almost to be an anticlimax. It was small, remarkably light and simply furnished with various flat stones strewn about the floor. What caused Sister Conchita to pause abruptly was the sight of the occupant. Standing just inside the doorway, smiling approvingly, was a young girl. She could not have been more than twelve years of age, clad in a grass skirt, with her cropped hair bleached blonde. She was holding out half a coconut shell filled with some liquid.

‘Why, hello there,’ smiled Sister Conchita, taking care to speak quietly, aware of the fearsome sight she must present after her recent battle with the undergrowth. Her habit was tattered and hanging in shreds, her face stained and sweating, her knees buckling with fatigue as she panted for breath, her hands bleeding profusely.

‘Is your mother here?’ she asked hopefully. The girl continued to smile serenely but made no answer. Awkwardly the nun tried to repeat the question in a rough approximation of pidgin. ‘Mama bilong you?’

The girl giggled. Probably at her visitor’s inexpert attempt at pidgin, thought Sister Conchita. Again the girl lifted her thin arms and proffered the coconut shell. The nun realized how thirsty she was. She nodded gratefully and drained the contents. The girl indicated one of the flat stones. Wearily Sister Conchita sat down on it.

Almost immediately she was drifting away. She was aware of her head slumping on her chest and then suddenly, through a haze that cleared slowly, she was in the company of her family in Boston once again. Her father was mowing the lawn while her mother was bringing a pitcher of lemonade out of the house. It was an idyllic scene and one that eased her heart to an amazing degree. But then as she watched it all started to go wrong. Her father deliberately steered the lawnmower off the grass and across a flowerbed, smashing it with force into the garden fence. Bewildered and horrified at such an act of random violence Sister Conchita turned to face her mother just as she turned the pitcher upside down and disgorged its contents on to the patio, laughing vindictively at her daughter. Sister Conchita goggled at the sight. She became aware of Ben Kella standing at her side in the suburban street. Both of her parents were staring
meaningfully
at the police sergeant.