Lily King: Euphoria

She smiled, remembering this. ‘I’ll take good care of them.’

They were big for her small marsupial face, but suited her somehow. You get hounded daily in the field for your possessions, and it felt good to give something away that hadn’t been asked for.

‘Bankson, help me out here!’

I went down to Fen, who was face-to-face with one of my informants, Ragwa, who was meant to take me to a naming ceremony in his sister’s hamlet this afternoon. Ragwa had taken up the Kiona intimidation position, arms bowed and chin stretched out over his feet, and Fen had done nothing but encourage it by taking up his own, either in mockery or for real, I couldn’t tell which.

‘Ask him about the sacred object,’ Fen whispered.

But Ragwa cut me off and said his wife had gone into labor and he couldn’t accompany me today. After that he rushed off.

“They all like that?’

‘He’s worried about his wife. The baby’s early.’ A few weeks ago Ragwa had grabbed my hand and pressed it to his wife’s belly. I felt the baby roll beneath her taut skin. I had never felt that before, never known, honestly, that such a thing happened. It echoed against my palm for a long time after. It was like putting my hand to the surface of the ocean and being able to feel a fish beneath. Ragwa had laughed and laughed at the expression on my face.

‘Can I help with the birth?’ Nell was standing in the doorway.

‘I thought we were leaving,’ Fen said, not noticing her spectacles.

‘But if the baby’s premature.’

‘They’ve been having babies for a long time without you, Nell.’

‘I have some experience,’ she said to me.

‘It’s very kind. But there’s a taboo on childless women witnessing a birth.’

She nodded. ‘The Anapa were the same,’ she said, but her voice had lost some strength, and I felt I’d said the wrong thing.

‘And we do need to see if we can find something, Nellie,’ Fen said more gently than I’d ever heard him speak.

I gave them a tour of the village, and an hour later we set off to the Ngoni. I had made a case for this tribe: They were skilled warriors, which would appeal to Fen, and renowned healers, which I thought might interest — and help — Nell. But the real reason I’d chosen the Ngoni was that they were less than an hour’s boat ride from my village.

We were hungry as soon as we got on the water. I had packed enough food for several days if need be. We ate with our hands, scooping our fingers into still warm baked yams and the cool flesh of a jackfruit. I made sure the food made equal rounds up to Nell in the bow, and that she was taking it. After she ate she seemed to revive a bit, looking ahead and turning back toward me, her hair rising behind her, with questions about adzes, kina shells, and creation stories.

The Ngoni were just beyond the sandbar I always had to watch out for in the dark. The hamlet’s houses were arranged in groups of three, set back fifteen feet from the steep riverbank and, like all houses in the region, raised on piles to keep out vermin and the river when it rose.

‘No beach?’ Nell said.

I hadn’t thought about that. It was true. The land dropped into the water abruptly.

‘It’s a bit gloomy, isn’t it?’ Fen said. ‘Not much sunlight.’

At the sound of the approaching engine, a few men had gathered at the edge of their land.

‘Let’s keep going, Bankson,’ Nell said. ‘Let’s not stop here.’

Next were the Yarapat, but Fen thought the houses hung too low to the ground. I tried to point out the rise in the land — the Yarapat were set on a high hill — but he’d been flooded once in the Admiralty Islands, so we passed them by as well.

They didn’t like the looks of the next village, either.

‘Weak art,’ Nell said.

‘What?’

‘That face,’ she said, meaning the enormous mask that hung over the entryway of the ceremonial house we could see from the water. ‘It’s crude. Not like what I’ve seen elsewhere.’

‘We need art, Bankson,’ Fen bellowed poshly from his seat in front of me. ‘We need art and theatre and the ballet , if it’s not too much bother.’

‘Do you want to stop here?’ Nell asked him.

‘No.’

We were now four hours away from Nengai, and the sun was dropping fast, the way it does near the equator. We hadn’t even got out of the boat yet. I knew of one more tribe, the Wokup, before my familiarity with the river in this direction ran out. The Wokup had a beach, tall houses, and good art.

When we reached them, I gunned the boat directly at the center of the beach, determined that I would not stop for any reservation they could cook up. Though I was concentrating on the shore beyond her, I felt Nell imitating the stubborn clench in my face. But I thought she’d been a fusspot about the other tribes and could find no humor in it.

No one came down to greet us at the sound of the boat. Then I heard a call, not a drum, and there were flickers of quick movement, a child’s shriek, then nothing.

I had met a few Wokup. They were not ignorant of whites — no one on this part of the river was by now. Most tribes had a story of someone being put in jail or lured away by recruiters — blackbirders, they were called then — to the mines. I pulled the canoe up onto the shore and we sat in it, waiting, not wanting to cause more distress. A second call went up and a minute later three men came down to greet us. I could not see their backs, but the raised scars on their arms were longer, more like strands of hair or rays of the sun, than the crocodile hide designs of the Kiona. Save a few armbands, they were naked and took their positions in the sand. They knew, even if they had never seen it themselves, that whites had powers — steel blades, rifles, pistols, dynamite — that they did not possess. They knew this power could come on suddenly, with no warning. But we are not afraid, they said with their spread legs, arched backs, and hard gazes.

The one in the middle recognized me from trading at Timbunke and spoke to me in Kiona fragments. From what I could piece together, their village was expecting a raid from a swamp tribe. Swamp tribes were low in the pecking order of the Sepik, weak and impoverished, but they were unpredictable. I explained that my friends were interested in living with them and understanding their ways, that they had many gifts — but he waved me off before I could finish. It was a bad time, he said many times. There was the raid, and there was something else I couldn’t understand. A bad time. We were welcome to spend the night — he could not guarantee us a safe trip home in the dark if their enemies were en route — but we would have to leave in the morning.

‘I don’t know how much of this is true,’ I said to Nell and Fen after I translated everything the chief had said. ‘He could be waiting for some incentives.’

‘Tell him we can supply him with ten years’ worth of salt and matches for the whole tribe,’ Fen said.

‘We can’t lie.’

‘We still have loads of the stuff in Port Moresby.’

To verify this with Nell would insult him, yet it seemed impossible that after a year and a half they would still have that much to offer.

‘We are not light travelers,’ she said.

I began to communicate this to the chief but he raised his hand before I could finish, insulted. He explained that they lacked nothing and needed nothing from us, but for our safety and the safety of his people, he would let us stay the night.

We followed the three Wokup up to the village center. A boy was sent up the ladder of a house and within minutes a mother and five children climbed down. Without looking at us they made their way to a house three doors away. The children let out small yelps once they were inside. The adults hushed them angrily.