Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, a tap turned off, and in an instant bare black feet had churned the area round the market into a quagmire. The sun’s heat was filtering through, burning up the thin veil of cloud that was now so low that the futher shore of the Passage was hidden from my sight. The dirt road, running straight as a sword through endless plantations, was a brown slash of steaming mud, out of which strange shapes emerged as villagers bringing woven mat baskets of produce in to market. I bought some bananas and ate them, wandering round the concrete display counters — so much colour, so much ripe fruit, so many bare breasts — and then the nun came and spoke to me. They had heard on the radio that a Ruling Council had been formed in Kieta and Daniel Sapuru had been elected first President of the Republic of Bougainville-Buka. Was I off the tug? Did I know Mr Holland? Could I give her any more detailed information?

I shook my head, wondering what Hans Holland’s role really was, just how much he was in control. The nun knew him, of course, but only to greet, she said. She was Italian from the big Catholic Mission halfway up the island, and when I questioned her about Hans and his relations with the Co-operative, she said very coolly, ‘I have nothing to do with him. He is bisnis. Always bisnis.’ She changed the subject then, very firmly, asking me about myself and telling me about the produce on the counters as she made her purchases. There were paw-paw, of course, and yams and mangoes, real bananas, small and perfectly ripe, as well as big coarse plantains for cooking, green oranges and a large pink grapefruit she called pomolo. There were also things I had never seen before: betelnut, pit-pit, lou-lou like a big crunchy apple, snake bean, Chinese cabbage, taro and cassava and the sweet potato they call kau-kau.

It was when she was leaving, having by then in her quiet way discovered how I had come to Buka, that she told me something about the Hollands that surprised me, and not in answer to any question from me, but of her own volition. There was talk, she said, among the expatriate inmates of the Mission that long ago, before World War II, Mr Hans Holland’s father had been a convert to the Catholic faith and that he had done it to make his peace with God because of some terrible transgression. ‘A man with red hair like that’ — she smiled up at me, a gleam of amusement in her eyes as she shook my hand — ‘they always have evil tempers, no? We have them in Sicily. They are descendants of the Vikings and do terrible things.’ She hesitated. ‘This Hans Holland, he also has red hair. Has he done something bad? I’m told he has some island blood, but he still comes to us regularly to confess.’

‘He’s a Catholic, then?’

She nodded. ‘Since last year.’ And she added, very quietly, ‘There is good in all people, don’t you know, my friend, so God be with you.’ And she smiled as she got into the Toyota and was driven off, her head bowed, her hands on the beads of her rosary, and only the satisfaction of a quick sidelong glance to assure me of her femininity.

I ate another banana, watching the Buka Cooperative and chatting about the weather to a big-breasted sultry-looking woman selling fruit. She spoke Pidgin mixed with Mission English and assured me the sun would shine. ‘Bik fella rain tru finis’im. No rain. Sun nau.’ She chuckled, her mountainous bosom heaving under the coloured cotton that did little to conceal it. ‘Bik fella rain tru, yu savvy? It mean rain all time. Not rain all time nau.’ She gave me a huge betelnut smile, and almost instantly the daylight faded and the rain poured down again.

The door of the Co-operative opened, and Hans Holland peered out. He called to one of the truck drivers; then he saw me and shouted, ‘You. Slingsby.’ He hesitated, glancing up the road, then made a dash for it through raindrops bouncing knee-high. ‘Where’s Perenna? Still on board?’ He licked the rainwater from his lips, staring at me, his red hair plastered to his skull. ‘I saw you talking to her. Did she say anything about Highland workers up at the mine? Well, did she?’

I shook my head, wondering what it was all about. He seemed to have been thrown off balance. ‘Something wrong?’ I asked, but he had turned, signalling to the truck driver, who now had his engine going. The truck drew up close to where we stood, the door swinging open. ‘I’m going up to the ADC’s office. They’ve got a direct line to the radio station over on Sohano. You’d better come, too, unless you want to get soaked.’ He climbed in, and I followed him. ‘Kiap’s office,’ he told the driver. Then, as we drove off into the thundering grey wall of the teeming rain, he turned to me. ‘It’s Arawa,’ he said. ‘They’re down into Arawa, a great crowd of redskins, I’m told, all raising hell.’

‘You mean Chimbu Highlanders?’

‘Yeah. Highlanders from Papua New Guinea.’

‘What are they raising hell about?’

‘That’s what I want to know. They’ve no weapons. Not firearms anyway, so they can’t do anything. They’re just making a bloody nuisance of themselves, and they won’t talk to anybody but Perenna. That’s what they say. I don’t know what the hell they want.’ He had been yelling in my ear to make himself heard above the tom-tom beat of the rain on the cabin’s tin roof. Now he relapsed into silence, not saying anything till we drew up at the Sub-District HQ. A truck and two Toyota short-wheelbase land-cruisers were parked outside, and sheltering in the corrugated iron garage was a bunch of Buka men armed with old, rust-worn rifles. ‘You wait here.’ There was a guard on the door, an elderly man with close-cropped hair holding what looked like a Japanese rifle, and he had two very old grenades fastened to the waistband of his shorts. It was a wet, soggy world, the rain a steady downpour now and the light so dim it was a steaming sepia colour. Hans Holland was only gone five minutes. He came back in a hurry. ‘Tugboat.’ He jumped in and slammed the door, his tanned leathery face tight-shut and frowning.

‘What’s happened? What’s the news?’

The empty truck bumped and skidded its way down the track, and for a moment he didn’t answer me. Then suddenly he said, ‘If I’m not there, they make a balls of it. If I am there, they say I’m trying to run things myself. I told them to put a guard on that tote road when I found you’d come out that way. They didn’t, of course, so now they’ve got these redskins in Arawa, and they don’t know what to do about them.’

‘How many of them?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Sapuru said several hundred, but he’s probably exaggerating. Why do you think they insist on talking to Perenna? All their leader keeps saying is: “Yu send Miss Perenna, we speak with her.” That’s what Sapuru says.’

I was remembering Perenna in conversation with that thickset Chimbu Councillor outside the Immigration Office. ‘Did he say what the man looked like?’

He shook his head. ‘Just one of those PNG people they employ for the hard manual work up at Paguna. If it were only a few of them, it wouldn’t matter. But the riot squad was always having trouble with those people. They get on the beer — they’re not used to beer — and now if they go on the rampage, like they did a few years back …’ He turned and looked at me, a hard stare. ‘You asked me what their leader looked like. Why? Do you think you’ve met him?’

I hesitated, but there was no point in not telling him what Perenna had said, and when I had finished, he nodded. ‘Chimbu,’ he said. ‘They’re most of them Chimbu. But a fight leader. I never heard of a fight leader coming over to work at Paguna.’ I was still trying to explain what she had told me about that when we drew up at the ferryboat jetty.