A Century of Great Suspense Stories

Lady Hillary Janwillem van de Wetering

The Amsterdam mysteries of Janwillem van de Wetering have fascinated international audiences ever since the appearance of 1975’s Outsider in Amsterdam. Van de Wetering is still publishing today, his following as devoted as ever for novels about a small group of Amsterdam cops who change and sometimes grow because of their collision with the world of crime. The author has talked about his attachment to Zen Buddhism and makes it clear that his vision of it is frequently the subtext of his books and stories. Van de Wetering now lives in Maine, a fact well presented in many of his recent books.

Good day, Ma’am Tourist Group Leader from America.

Welcome to the Tariand Isles of Niugini.

Your tourist group likes my little Pacific isle? I’m glad. I’m the chief here, just a little chief. My great-grandfather Waku was a great chief who became ruler, after much carefully planned and brilliantly executed interisland warfare, of all the Tariand Islands here in Pangea Bay on the east coast of Niugini. Niugini is our name for Papua New Guinea. PNG (we call it that too) is, next to the immensity of Greenland, this planet’s biggest island. Even so, few people know our country, except experienced travelers, like yourself, ma’am, and your group.

I don’t know America, but I did travel to Europe. After Independence, in 1975, we thought we should introduce ourselves to our former masters, the British, the Germans, the Dutch, the Portuguese. I was part of the retinue of our prime minister; we wore three-piece suits and headgear made out of casuari feathers. Everywhere we went we were mistaken for representatives of some newborn African nation. We kept saying, “Papua New Guinea, North of Australia,” and a departmental secretary would say, “...Ah...” and buy us lunch maybe. Hamburgers. French fries. In Bonn we were fed sushi; that was nice, actually. We do care for fresh fish.

During the Second World War we were important, though, and even American warriors admitted that my grandfather, Witu of the Tariand Crocodile Clan of Niugini, was a great Papuan island chief. Lieutenant James Cosby of the U.S. Marines came back to present my grandfather with a Legion of Merit medal. We keep it in our Long House, it has its own shelf.

The medal came with this beautiful ribbon that I wear on my belt between these parrot feathers. Just one moment, I have to undo its clasp. Here you are, ma’am, you can pass the ribbon along to your fellow tourists. Chief Witu earned the great honor because he kept you Allieds informed about Japanese naval movements. My grandfather once tricked a Japanese destroyer (by observing and copying Japanese light signals) into breaking up on a reef. Chief Witu was also known for his cunning counsel.

My grandfather’s wisdom once saved face for your Marine Corps. Shall I tell you what happened or would you rather take your group skin diving?

Your group’s itinerary allows for an extra hour to spend on trivial matters? Good. We can all sit in the shade of the banyan tree there. See where the tree’s air roots have formed a little cabin? That’s where my throne is, I can look down on the people and direct their formal dancing. But there’s no need for formality now. Some other time perhaps, maybe some of you would like to learn about our sacred dances, but for now... let me tell you...

The Marine Corps face-saving matter was tricky, both personal and political. Lieutenant James Cosby, “Jim Bwana,” as he liked us to call him, was accused of raping Leia, my beautiful sister, and cutting her throat afterward. Our murder suspect Jim Bwana was a splendid man, of course, not just a Marine warrior but a graduate of the, ahhh, — I can never say it right, Havvard(?) School as well. Do I pronounce that right? Havvard, yes? The American school of wizards? Good. Even so, in spite of his qualifications, Jim Bwana, liked and admired by all of us, nearly lost name and fame here but was saved by my father’s father, chief Witu.

Isn’t war fun?

I was only a boy then but never will I forget the glorious days when your war birds dueled with their Japanese counterparts in our sky, when our giant crocodiles slid into the lagoons looking for parachuted corpses, when dried chicken eggs and other exotic foods were served out of little green cans, when we tore gold braid off Japanese officer tunics and used it in our hairdos together with polished pieces we cut from spent cannon shells. Later the fun improved. There were Japanese landings, brief fights among the sharp eight-feet-high alun-alun grasses — we used our weapons.

I’m sorry, I’ll try to be brief. I forget the other items in your program, skin diving, was it? I hope you won’t be naked. We hear nakedness is rude in America and we can’t abide rudeness. You won’t be rude? That’s nice. I am glad.

As I said, my mind wanders back sometimes, to throwing spears, or swinging them, like clubs.

We play golf now. Have you seen our course? Japanese tycoons fly their business jets out to Port Moresby on the mainland, then ferry across Pangea Bay in their hydrofoil. When they come ashore here I charge big money for entry and dues. Would any of you like to be a member? The memory of Jim Bwana will warrant a discount. Here is my card, for you, sir. We don’t allow ladies on our course. You and your colleagues, when you plan to come out again, can fax me at my office so that I can confirm reservations. Winter months are quite busy.

We, male members of the Crocodile Clan, follow the warrior path. I’m glad to see white hair on your party’s gentlemen’s heads, it means the gents will remember the great war of the forties. Once in a while the sightseeing schooner out of Port Moresby brings us your anthropology students who need to fill up their lap-top computers. I get paid by the tourist agency to answer their questions. I tell them our war stories. It’s all news to them. Sometimes those bright young folks stare at me as if they don’t know nothing.

Oh dear...

Wearing a pig’s tusk through my nose doesn’t excuse use of the double negative. If Sister Cissy could hear me she’d rap my knuckles with that bad wooden ruler. Sister Cissy was an Australian nun who taught school here, before Independence, of course. The young Papuan sister who met you at the dock is now in charge of the Mission.

Pardon?

Yes, ma’am, when our nation was considered old enough to make its own decisions we, on this island, retained the Roman Catholic faith. We didn’t make religious changes, but appearances changed somewhat. We’re in the tropics here. You will have noticed the heat. So our sisters go topless, as far as we are concerned we consider that quite polite.

I’m sure Sister Cissy forgives that change, but I’m equally sure my use of the double negative will infuriate her spirit. I apologize to her spirit. You see, ma’am, now that we’re seeing modern movies we tend to pick up bad language, but as for me, I do make an effort to practice your Queen’s English.

Does America have a queen? I get confused sometimes. I only traveled to Europe, you see. You do have one now, right? The Lady Hillary? No? I thought I read that somewhere. Time magazine? No? She was on the cover. A lovely lady.

America, to me, is kind of a dream. Like movies.

What was that, ma’am? You were saying that violence on TV has an unfortunate influence on us native people?

That may be so, but here in Niugini we don’t have TV yet. So far the prime minister says we don’t need more advertising. He sees TV in Australia in hotel rooms and he says it’s repulsive. All dead babies and fast food. We do see movies, though. In the Long House over there, the very tall building with the sloping roofs, I keep a VCR and a large-size monitor that a Japanese group gave us. The old Caterpillar generator Sister Cissy left makes it go. My cousin the schooner captain brings out videotapes that he copies in Port Moresby. Kick-ass movies are great fun, ma’am. The language may be bad, but the action is simply splendid. We particularly like Chief Schwarzenegger, he who married Lady Hillary of the Kennedy tribe.

Oh, I see. Pardon our ignorance, ma’am. We don’t get too many newspapers here. Clint? Clint Eastwood? Wrong again? Clint Ton? I see, Clinton. Just a president, you say? I’m glad you explained. I’ll try to remember.

Shall I tell your group about the time your Marine Corps nearly lost face, about splendid Jim Bwana and my poor sister Leia?

Jim Bwana and his men were dropped off a U.S. Navy motor patrol boat when the Battle of the Coral Sea was going on. As you remember, a flotilla of Japanese invasion vessels, aimed at Australia, was defeated between Guadalcanal and these islands. It is impossible to forget the views we enjoyed then. The first great happening was Japanese warships sailing by in formation. I had never seen anything like it — those big light-gray-colored vessels with their smoothly swiveling guns, the bright flags used for communication, their sea planes being catapulted off their rear decks, scouting everywhere. Whenever the warships came by, theirs or yours, it didn’t matter, I ran along our beaches, with the other boys behind me, screaming and waving. We had no idea what we were looking at, but we were so happy it drove us crazy. Like the Speechless One here, but she is always that way...

Then you folks, in Mustangs, suddenly dove out of the sky and bombed us. You thought the Japanese had taken over our village and lands but what you saw were women tilling our fields (they still did that then; now they insist we take turns) and little girls manning bamboo lookout towers, keeping seed-eating birds away. The Mustang pilots must have been nervous, they kept strafing and bombing. Us males happened to have an important ceremony going on, me and some other boys were being prepared for coming of age. Dressed in my creamy white parrot-feather skirt and bright red-clay ghost mask, I was stomping about the village square, and suddenly air devils dove down and the village was burning. Wasn’t that an intimidating initiation? I thought I had done something wrong at first. Fortunately you missed our two community temples. Both the Long House and the Boys House are considered as kind of holy. There are treasures inside. Used to elevate our spirits. You didn’t miss my father and brother. They both got hit. My brother Masset died instantly, my father took his time, having many helpful hallucinations before he floated off on the turtle shell.

Yes, ma’am, quite a few women and girls were hit too.

Then the Japanese sent a boat ashore, to see why you bombed us.

No, ma’am, Sister Cissy had left us already. She died before the war and the other Australian nuns had fled to their convent in Brisbane. They had been teaching us knitting and Jesus and how to wash hands and relieve ourselves before dinner and be respectful to our masters. I forget how to knit, but we still love Jesus. The Japanese had Buddha. He lives in a little mahogany box, with hinged doors that open; you get to burn incense and clap your hands and sing. I like Buddha too. We keep him in the Long House, in the box that we captured from the Japanese captain. Our holy sisters keep a little Jesus in their church, but we have our own big Jesus in the Long House. My brother Masset carved him long ago, from specially selected pieces of driftwood that he dovetailed together. The big statue is still in service, in spite of the squirrel living in Jesus’ stomach. The squirrel has long whiskers, he takes part in some of the ceremonies, running about and squeaking. We also have Elvis Presley, he is a painting done by the Speechless One here. We started with a poster that a sea captain gave us, but the paper wore out. The Speechless One loves him.

Yes, ma’am? How did Sister Cissy die? Unnecessarily, I’m afraid. There is a hill behind the village that we can climb after we have purified ourselves. It’s just for sitting, gazing, quietness, that sort of thing. Sister Cissy wanted to grow tomatoes on that hill’s slope. We warned her, but she was somewhat strong-minded and started pulling up weeds, tearing the soil, and one of the hill’s devil-lizards bit her bottom. Those devil-lizards are quick. They’re big too, ten feet long, including the tail of course. They like to eat our goats, but they eat us too if we make ourselves defenseless by not paying attention. Sister Cissy got bitten badly. Afterward she hit the lizard with her rake and he backed off and hid in the bushes. This happened over fifty years ago, before we had penicillin here.

Let me sing you the story while the Speechless One plays her bones. All set?

Go!

Devil-lizard doesn’t mind being chased off, he can think. He waits behind bushes for Sister Cissy to weaken. My grandfather, Chief Witu, can think too. Devil-lizard concentrates on Sister Cissy and grandfather concentrates on Devil-lizard, and gets him. We roast Devil-lizard, have a death feast for the sister. Devil-lizard enters by the mouth, Sister Cissy enters by the ear. (Bone music. Bone music.)

Don’t let the sacred Speechless One frighten you. She carries the craziness of this island, but we keep her in check. We always have one, you see. Craziness is so useful.

No, the Speechless One is not always female. In fact, I think there is a mistake here, but somehow this generation’s Speechless One entered a woman. Could it be the greenhouse effect? Or nuclear carelessness somewhere? Worrying, somehow. Very.

Okay, Speechless One, that’s enough now. Sit down. Yes, you have lovely legs. Fold them. That’s better. Thank you. Please relax, dear.

Where was I? Sister Cissy’s bottom? We used herbs on Sister Cissy’s wound but couldn’t stop the lizard bite’s infection. A high fever set in that resulted in death. We buried the body for a while, within view of the Long House, within earshot too. We did a lot of drumming and chanting and so forth, to prepare Sister Cissy’s bones.

Yes, sir. It does get a tad chilly here in the evenings, could be the sea breeze. Makes you shiver, doesn’t it? I have the same trouble.

Any other questions?

What the Japanese were like?

A little fishy, ma’am, reminded me of that seagull I ate when my canoe broke on a reef during a storm, and I had to wait for my father to find me. We are what we eat. That makes seagulls flying fish. Japanese are walking fish. Australian soldiers, we met quite a few of those too, with those hats that curl up on one side; Australians are sort of muttony and Americans kind of beefy.

Ha ha.

Sorry, ma’am. Just kidding — I beg your pardon. We’re not cannibals on the Tariand Isles. We do have some customs, of course — what tribe hasn’t? — but for really consuming human flesh I’d have to refer you to the mainland. Foreign rule stopped flesh eating for some time, as you know. We were colonized for, oh, over a hundred years, I should think. There were the Dutch out west side, the Germans up north side, the British/Australians down here, south and east, and roving Portuguese in the past. Your white tribes’ customs differ a little but all you folks agreed that we shouldn’t catch and eat each other. “Headhunting,” as you called our pastime, took up too much time. Instead you had us pick coconuts to make margarine or kill off birds of paradise to stick feathers in your girlfriends’ hats. All work, no fun for us, all fun, no work for you. Tribal warfare is our fun, though, and now that we’re on our own again it’s drifting back on the mainland.

Ancient customs, something to keep us busy.

How about us island people? Well, everything changes so fast — I’m not too sure. I have no way of knowing for certain, but maybe some of our young men still practice a little customs. The young men are very much on their own, you see. We allow our boys some privacy, to grow up in. Adults live rather dull lives, they’ll have enough of that later. Eventually they’ll be like I am now, like to play a little golf. Some fishing in the afternoon. A nap. Watch Chief Arnold in the Long House. Chief Schwarzenegger, on the big monitor, with the VCR the Japanese gave us — that’s right, ma’am.

What kind of customs do our young ones practice?

Our young fellows, from fourteen through seventeen, not an easy age as you may recall, live in the Boys House over there. With the skulls on the veranda. They’re plastic, you know. I bought them in London, they came in flat cartons, all broken up in parts, we had to glue the parts together. I had sticky fingers for a week. They do look real, don’t they now?

Well, yes, we do train our boys a little, but apart from weekly instruction we pay no attention to what our successors are doing. For instruction the boys join us in our Long House. There’s ritual, there’s storytelling by the chief — our sorcerer, Mr. Waya, is in charge of ritual. We beat wooden drums and shake lizard-skin tambourines (baby rat skulls are the jingles), and the Speechless One rattles Sister Cissy’s thighbones. The Long House is dark but the shadows are dancing. Hollow-eyed images of the ancestors look down from the rafters. There is always a draft in the Long House, even if there is no wind outside. It rustles the ancestors’ grass skirts and Leia’s coral necklace. Mr. Waya’s herbal student burns twigs, roots, and leaves. The wooden Jesus statue, pale white, lifts its arms while Buddha smiles quietly in his box. The foreign chiefs smile too, especially Chief Elvis when we do his “You’re Nothing but a Hound Dog.” You know the hymn? Big Bart’s Marine fighting knife squeaks in its sheath. We don’t have Sergeant Big Bart’s bones here but the Speechless One made a mask that catches his likeness. Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen that mask lately. I hope she didn’t take it out of its niche.

Well, never mind.

So our big boys are humming, the younger ones, with the clear high voices, chant “Heartbreak Hotel.” We also have our own hymns. After an hour of good chanting and burning there’s that strong acrid smell that shows things are beginning to jump a little.

Ha!

Excuse me. I get too enthusiastic.

No, ma’am, girls are not allowed either in the Long House or in the Boys House.

After instruction in the Long House our young men go back to their Boys House.

What do they do there? Play cards, I think. Smoke Benson & Hedges, I imagine, that’s a brand of cigarettes that is advertised on billboards here: The pictures show handsome warriors in ceremonial dress impressing attentive, beautiful girls that look like my dead sister Leia. Everybody smokes. Or the boys drink Budweiser maybe. The schooner brings beer once a week, taking wood sculptures in return. We like to chisel palm-wood on this island. Our specialty. Here’s an example of our art. See? Big penis on one side, gun butt on the other. The butt side of the art object curves. The Portuguese raiders, a hundred years ago, were armed with that kind of handgun. Portuguese “blackbirders” didn’t do too well here, though. We caught some, but most of them died by natural causes. Or so I heard.

Yes. That’s true, ma’am. I did live in the Boys House myself and do recall that in my time... of course... I don’t know if such a pastime would still be popular now. Each of our Tariand islands had a custom then, when I was a boy — but, as I said, that’s a long time ago now — of “hunting Her.”

“Hunting Her,” involved sending scouts to the neighboring islands to look for Her, for that island’s female principle. My sister Leia, on this island, was a candidate to be the female principle, we knew that, but the custom said that we could only use a Her from another island. It meant that we had to protect Leia, for boys from another island would be likely to be attracted.

So, when I was a boy living in our Boys House...

What the new building is on the other side of the village? Ah, you noticed, did you? Oh, some newfangled idea we haven’t quite dealt with. We may have to pull that building down soon, but please don’t interrupt, ma’am. I’m trying to tell this story.

So once our scouts determined what girl Her inhabited in one of the other islands, we would carefully note that girl’s habits, her timetable, and so forth, when and where she might be alone. Then... you really want to hear the story, ma’am? You’re sure? Not too rough for your group? I notice it’s mostly female. Okay, I continue.

There might be some sick boys who would stay behind in our home island’s Boys House to light and tend fires, burn twigs, make the acrid smoke I mentioned. Us others would sneak out in a war canoe shaped like a two-headed crocodile. You saw the canoe boats in our harbor? Tourist display now, but they were all in use once. We kept our paddles razor sharp so that they can also serve as weapons. Us boys, naked, rubbed with oils, honed by all sorts of war games that we used to play all the time, were weapons ourselves. We would have waited for a moonless, windless night. Once on the chosen island (we have six islands here) we would hide in the jungle that surrounds the village, wait for daybreak, for Her to show herself, catch the girl, sling her body from a pole, race back to the canoe, wait for nightfall, paddle home.

And then?

Hmmm. I don’t know whether your anthropologists ever got that part of our customs right. Eating human flesh is not for sustenance, you know. We keep pigs for that. The “hunting Her” custom intends to join spirits, there is no room for the stomach. If boys partake of Her it’s to harmonize their manhood.

Oh yes, I’m afraid, in those long-bygone days, we did eat Her. There were other sacred customs too, that came first.

Pardon? You say “rape”?

How could we? Poor girl? Perhaps. But think of the honor, though, how the chosen one knew that she did represent the highest, the most elevated part of half of what goes on. How she was the essence of what all men are looking for? Forever?

Think of the custom’s aftermath too. To us participating boys, the adventure was fraught with danger. If we were caught, we died. There was always revenge when the boys from the other island would notice that their divine one was missing and send their scouts to even things out. If they found us they’d have to kill us. Of course they’d also come to find Her on this island. Keep us on our toes, so to speak.

Disgusting, you say?

Remember First Lieutenant James Cosby, “Jim Bwana”?

What was he suspected of doing? How come Leia got raped; then murdered?

Guilty?

Perhaps you’d like to drink some coconut juice first? We serve Heineken too. A Perrier for the ladies?

You are refreshed?

Good.

Leia and I had different mothers. Leia’s mother was a Her who never got caught. We knew Leia was Her too and made an effort to guard her.

You saw our girls when you walked up the ramp from the schooner this morning? Arranged into two rows, facing each other, leaving just enough space so that our visitors can shuffle through? Wearing grass-minis? Perfumed with squirrel secretion? Chanting and bopping while the Speechless One taps her bones to carry the chant? The girls brushing the gentlemen in your party with their breasts? Our new local nuns clapping and smiling?

Leia was many times as attractive.

The American Marines liked to look at Leia but she had eyes for Jim Bwana only. The lieutenant and his men came to set up radio equipment and to train us as spotters, but when the Japanese landed patrols too the Marines stayed on. In order not to attract attention, the Marines killed with their knives.

Later, when the Japanese had left the area and the Marines had little to do, Jim Bwana had a long jetty built into the ocean. The Marines constructed a little thatch-covered hut at the end of the jetty. Jim Bwana liked to sit there quietly for hours on end. I think he was thinking of Leia. He probably knew she was Her. Leia kept showing herself to the lieutenant, finding things to do in the yard when he came back from his jetty, smiling, reaching up to pick flowers or fruits.

Even good men are bad sometimes. You have noticed? There was a good/bad man in Lieutenant Jim’s war group. His name was Sergeant Big Bart. The sergeant was driven crazy by Leia’s smiles and movements, directed at Jim Bwana, who seemed not to notice. Not expecting a raid from a neighboring island — the Great War was still on — us boys weren’t paying attention. Big Bart broke into my sister’s cabin one night and raped her. That same night Jim Bwana, made bold by my sister’s seductive invitations, finally gathered courage and knocked on Leia’s door. Inside Leia was about to scream for help. Big Bart, hearing the lieutenant’s voice, cut Leia’s throat. Big Bart escaped through the window. The lieutenant, perturbed by Leia’s throaty death-gurgle, entered the cabin. He tried to help Leia, had her leaning against his chest. There was blood all over his tunic. Big Bart had left his knife. The lieutenant wasn’t armed. Seeing Leia was dead, the lieutenant panicked. He left, leaving footprints.

We found Leia’s corpse in the morning, the blood, the knife, the footprints that enabled us to track the lieutenant, who was waiting for us in his thatched hut at the end of the jetty.

We liked Jim Bwana fine, and we understood what he had been doing, but custom demanded the intruder’s death.

We were all very sorry, but our brothers, the huge lagoon crocodiles, were hungry now. We would have to feed them.

The lieutenant told my grandfather, Chief Witu, that he was innocent, but the evidence (although we didn’t understand why he hadn’t tried to eat her) was overwhelming. Even the Marines didn’t believe their own chief. Chief Witu kept quiet. He just nodded, had the lieutenant locked up in the bamboo cage behind the Long House, and appointed me as a guard. That night I heard my grandfather ask Jim Bwana if his Havvard (I wish I could say it right) training suggested a solution. Jim Bwana said it did not. He had no idea who was the real killer. When he entered Leia’s house there was just blood, and the corpse.

Sergeant Big Bart had gone off to check radio equipment on a hill on the other side of our island.

While all this happened word came from the mainland that the Great War was coming to an end, and we knew our friends, the Marines, were waiting to be picked up by a warship.

There were some twenty victorious white Marines and some five thousand of us black, friendly, armed, and war-trained Fuzzyheads, that’s what we were called then. It was a term of endearment. We had been of use. There were a few million of us in the islands and on the mainland. It was rude to repay us for our wartime help with what a Marine lieutenant had done to Leia, daughter of a chief.

As I said before, the matter was tricky.

The Speechless One of that time played Sister Cissy’s thighbones and Mr. Waya, after consulting a cracked tortoise shell in the Long House while my father made the acrid smell, set a date and time for pronouncing a verdict. My grandfather’s decision could be predicted. Weren’t the facts clear? My sister’s dead body on the straw mat? The Marine fighting knife on the floor? A man’s seed in her shell? Lieutenant Jim’s bloody trail leading out of the house toward the jetty, ending in the thatched hut at the end where we found him crying?

So what to do?

My father said that, as the tortoise shell indicated that his final decision had to be reached late that night, it might be nice to have a knife-throwing match first. All available Marines and quite a few of our warriors entered the contest. The target was a female figure cut from a lizard’s skin that was strapped between bamboo poles. Just as the first contestant was about to throw his knife, a heavy rain poured down, as it always did at that time during that part of the rainy season. My father ordered that all knives had to be put on a table while we waited for the downpour to stop. While Mr. Waya beat a drum and the Speechless One danced, I replaced one of the Marines’ knives with the one that had killed Leia.

The rain stopped, everybody went to the table to pick up his knife. One Marine said his weapon was missing. I pointed at the sharp flat dagger that was left on the table.

“Not mine.”

“Whose?” my grandfather asked.

All the Americans studied the knife. Although Marine knives are standard issue and apparently look alike, they don’t stay that way. After a while each Marine knows his own weapon, and those of his friends, by individual dents, stubborn rust spots, blemishes on the handle, or just the feel of the weapon.

Several Marines declared the murderous knife to belong to Sergeant Big Bart. As they were prepared to swear to the truth of their statements, Jim Bwana was released at once.

Beg pardon, ma’am?

Ah, you want to know what happened to Big Bart, the sergeant? He wasn’t there. Feeling guilty, Big Bart was wandering all over our island, on all sorts of errands — catching Japanese stragglers, looking for downed pilots, that sort of thing.

Well, we first had a feast. We were ready, of course. Prize pigs were slaughtered, big grouper fish were lanced with skewers to be rotated above coals, a multivegetable stew simmered, crackly tree bugs were being roasted, the girls were lining up for their dance. Us boys were shaking the rain sticks. Leia’s image moved in the breeze. We drank captured sake. Big Bart came back in the middle of the party, felt something was wrong, and took off again.

No, ma’am, a lizard got the sergeant. Us boys found Big Bart on the same hill slope as Sister Cissy. Wound fever had almost killed him then. Sergeant Big Bart died as we carried him in. The Marines had left, we sent the metal tag we took off Big Bart’s neck to the mainland, by schooner.

The body?

Crocodiles ate the body, ma’am. We are of the Crocodile Clan, as I said.

You have to go now?

Thank you, ma’am. We appreciate presents, but on this island we sometimes do things the other way round. Today we don’t accept presents. Here is a cassette for each of you. Mr. Waya composed the music. Here, I’ll play one for you on this boombox.

You liked the music?

You heard the thighbones?

Excuse me, ma’am?

The crying in between the Speechless One’s percussion? No, that isn’t Big Bart, that’s just the sound of large bats with flat faces that fly between the palm tops, looking for coconuts. I tried to chase them away when we were making the recording but the Speechless One was unhappy. Yes, the big bats do sound rather guilty. Like little male ghost voices, you say? Sorry for catching all those girls? Well, we only caught one girl once every three years or so. It’s a custom, you see, with a very deep meaning. Religious, you might say.

So... have a safe journey home and please give my regards to Lady Hillary, do tell her to be careful.

Yes, aren’t our girls noisy? The Girls House is having a ceremony again. Preparing for something or other? Yes, it does rather seem so. Why they keep chanting “Abau, Abau”? I don’t really know. “Abau” is our word for “male principle.” What those war canoes are doing in the cove near their building? Our nuns have been encouraging the girls to learn how to paddle.

Times are changing?

Who that handsome boy is? He is my son Kokoda, isn’t he an exceptional fellow? A perfect male. A little fearful maybe.

What is troubling you, Kokoda? The idea that the girls on the other islands, in their newfangled Girls Houses, are chanting “Abau” too?