The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

Chapter Fifteen

After about half an hour, Joe stood up. ‘OK, so we’ve been walking in circles but we can’t give up the search just like that. We are looking for Lisa after all — we are doing it for her.’ He wrung the water out of the bottom of his shirt and dragged Fraser by the arm. Fraser moaned and shouted but eventually allowed himself to be dragged to his feet. ‘Come on. Come, this time we’ll all listen out for the river. All we need to do is concentrate and we’ll find our way, I’m sure of it. All we need to do is keep a constant course.’ The three men, tired and downcast, made their way again into the jungle, pushing aside large ferns and foliage as they went. The professor was finding it hard going. He let his mind wander to his classroom, to the bright faces of the students and the easy life of the university lecturer. He tripped over a tree root and cursed his luck. Joe kept up a good pace for an hour and then let a reluctant Fraser take the lead. The speed slowed somewhat but with all three men craning their ears every second they kept a good course. They always heard the river. No matter what other noises polluted the air, they always heard the river. Joe saw the clearing up ahead that he had visited the day before. He pointed it out to Fraser and the three men headed for it, bursting through the dense trees to rest in its spacious, empty environment. The professor sighed with relief as he flopped down upon a log which, unbeknownst to him, had held his niece only a few hours before. ‘Do you think we’ll ever find her?’ he asked, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiping his forehead with it.

Joe looked at him, not wanting to say no, but unable to say yes. He made to speak but was gripped by a sudden, all-powerful feeling of being watched again. He looked around. Damn this jungle, he thought, there are more eyes here than any street in Hong Kong. The aswang were watching him, their eyes peering out of every leaf, their hot breath steaming in the close air of the jungle. Wherever he went the aswang were there beside him, goading him onwards, taunting him, making him go where he did not want to go. He spoke to no one in particular. ‘I think this jungle is playing with my mind. Every step I take, every time I turn around I think I’m being watched.’ Fraser peered nervously into the undergrowth. ‘Well, if you are paranoid,’ he said, ‘Then I must be too because for the last half an hour I’ve been having the same feeling, as if there are eyes peering at me from behind every tree.’ The professor shuddered. He too had been feeling the same but had failed, or had not dared to mention it. He stroked the three-day-old stubble on his chin and looked up to the tall canopy of the trees. Everything was strange here, he thought to himself, nothing was what it seemed.

Then from out of the trees there came a great blackness, something unexplainable that flew through the air and hit all three like an explosion. They reeled from the force and fell to the ground, moaning and screaming more from surprise and shock than pain. The world for Joe went black. One moment he was standing, staring through the trees, the next he was on his back fighting some invisible enemy. He shouted to the air, ‘The aswang! It’s the aswang!’

The professor and Fraser, though, realised this was a far more mortal foe. They scrabbled at the net that covered them and tried to free themselves but it was no use. The more they struggled the tighter the net seemed to entwine itself around their limbs and catch itself around their necks and torsos. For ten minutes the three struggled but to no avail — the net had completely covered them. Joe finally opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was the legs of a young woman. They were slender legs, legs that he might have gazed upon with lust once; legs that he might have encountered in a bar in Hong Kong, in one of the back streets where love was cheap and lasted a night if you could pay. Joe followed the line of the legs upwards until he caught sight of a beautiful young girl, about fifteen or sixteen. Her skin was brown and soft and her hair flowed in long waves around her shoulders but she had the hard face of a warrior, the look of someone who had known pain and suffering. Joe implored her to let them go but it was no good. The girl just stared and said nothing. She was joined in time by four or five others, all with the same slender brown legs and hard, almost aggressive look. Joe started to wonder whether this was his idea of paradise or his idea of hell. Each new woman that arrived carried a different and increasingly deadly-looking weapon — a knife at first, then a dagger, then a club, then a spear. Joe gulped. If there was a time to be surrounded by beautiful half-naked women, he thought to himself, this wasn’t it. Beside him, in the net, the professor and Fraser were having similar thoughts. Fraser called out to one of the women, in his best pathetic tone. ‘Hello, hello! Could you free us? We are caught in your net. I’m sure you meant to trap an animal or two but you seemed to have caught us.’ He laughed a little but the women were not laughing. They just looked at him and occasionally jabbed him with a stick. The professor was a little more sedate. He had assumed that this entrapment was no accident. Suddenly it all became clear to him: he remembered the feeling of being watched and the noises in the jungle that seemed a little too human to be anything other than a voyeur.

‘What do you want?’ he asked, but still the women said nothing. They just stared at the bundle of netting and the men struggling on the floor for breath and space. Suddenly the trees parted and Winthrope appeared, looking odd against the green of the jungle. ‘Greetings!’ he intoned. ‘Please relax. You will come to no harm.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ Joe asked.

‘I will introduce myself presently. For the moment all you need to know is that I am a friend and a friend that intends to make your stay as comfortable as possible.’

‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are,’ Fraser shouted.

Winthrope laughed. ‘I think you will not be going anywhere until I say so… Fraser, isn’t it?’

Fraser was stopped in his tracks by the mention of his name. He stammered out an incomprehensible sentence before falling into silence amid the netting. The professor, however, was not so easily placated. ‘I wonder if you know you are dealing with Hong Kong citizens,’ he said. ‘We have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, especially by someone who is from Her Majesty’s realm.’

Winthrope laughed again. He threw his head back and revealed a set of blackened and filled teeth and his belly wobbled. ‘Professor, I know all about your brilliant mind. I have heard everything about you — why you are here, where you are going, what you are looking for and, let me tell you this, if you play right by me (which by the way you have very little choice but to do) you will be rewarded with what you came here for. Remember, you are strangers here, my friends, but this is my home.’

Winthrope nodded to the young women and they set about unfastening the net. They then removed each of the three men from its clutches and tied them to wooden stakes that they heaved over their shoulders. Joe, the professor and Fraser were carried, upside down, through the jungle along the exact route that Lisa had the day before. They felt every bump in the trail, every stumble that the women made as they carried them, each scratch from the branches that brushed their faces and the bare skin of their arms and legs.

Winthrope followed along behind, whistling merrily and beating the trees as he passed with a stick. Every now and then he would gently pat the behind of one of the girls that walked along with him, smiling lasciviously. After about half an hour Joe lifted his head up and saw, upside down in the distance, the village. It looked bright and sparkling in the freshness of the morning. There were children running about and women here and there seeing to everyday tasks and duties. Winthrope behind them called out, ‘There she is, men, home, for a while anyway. There can be paradise or there can be hell.’

He swiped at a tree with the stick and sent leaves and branches flying up into the air. Joe wondered what the hell was going to happen to him. The rope that the women had used to tie him to the stake was beginning to bite into his flesh and he felt as if he might pass out at any moment due to the blood rushing to his head; his eyes felt fit to burst and his face was hotter than a frying pan.

Joe took a deep breath and willed himself to carry on. He thought to himself that, still, this was all for Lisa. Once they had released him he would continue his search. He did not care anymore if he found her alive, he would search and search until he found her body if need be. He wanted to do his best for her, to do right by her, he wanted her to know that, wherever she was, he was thinking about her.

Behind him the professor was conversing to his carriers. ‘So, tell me,’ he was saying, ‘Do you speak English? Japanese? Filipino? None of these it would seem. Well, it has been nice to be carried for a while, I must say, especially by such lovely ladies.’

‘Save it for later,’ Winthrope offered. ‘You may need it with these.’

The party made their way through the edge of the clearing and out into the village. Everyone, it seemed, came out to look at the strange procession, to gawp and to stare at the line of weird humanity that passed before their eyes. Some of the women laughed and pointed, at the professor especially; some of them remained silent, but most chatted idly to each other, weighing up the situation with a removed indifference.

Eventually the three men were taken to the biggest hut in the village and dumped, unceremoniously, by the door. Winthrope strolled up to them. ‘Now, gentlemen, let me introduce myself. I am W.G. Winthrope, MD (retired) and I welcome you to my village.’

He spread out his arms and turned around on the spot to highlight the circumference of his land. ‘Here you will be well looked after and you may even come to like it. Of course… you cannot stay here forever… but your time here will be a pleasant one, I would imagine, that is if…’ He paused for a while. ‘You are of use to us.’ He looked the professor over and sniffed at the air dismissively. The professor did not know what that signified but somehow he knew it was not a compliment.

‘I think, perhaps, before we go on we should extricate you from your stakes. Girls, would you?’

Five young women from the crowd that had gathered round ran forward and began to cut Joe, the professor and Fraser away from the stakes upon which they had been carried for the last half an hour.

‘You’ll understand that until we get better acquainted, I cannot permit you to be totally free of your bonds; however that will come later, do not worry.’

Joe rubbed his shins with hands that were still tied together. He noticed the rope had bitten into them so much that blood had pooled on the tops of his boots and begun to run down their sides.

‘I think perhaps we should offer you some refreshments,’ Winthrope said, and snapped his fingers, whereupon a number of women appeared carrying jugs of water and milk, fruit and honeyed chicken. Joe, the professor and Fraser fell upon the food hungrily and started cramming it in their mouths. The women standing around began to laugh as if they had never seen hungry men before. Joe smiled at one and felt a line of grease running down his chin. Fraser nodded to Winthrope to pour some of the milk into a waiting bowl and Winthrope obliged. Fraser lapped greedily, like a dog drinking from a bowl. Every now and then one of the men would let out a belch that sent the crowd into a paroxysm of laughter. They rocked their shoulders and shook their breasts, throwing their mouths open in a display of unadulterated joy that made the professor himself begin to giggle and smile.

Joe knocked over the bowl of water with his forehead as he tried to drink out of it, another action that seemed to gain favour with the crowd who, again, laughed long and loud. Joe smiled and when the bowl was righted deliberately knocked it over again to achieve the same results. Each of the women was clamouring for a better place to see the spectacle that had dropped into their village and Joe played up to being the clown. He wriggled his way over to one of the older women and started biting at her toes as if it were the food that now lay strewn over the floor. The woman skipped and danced, trying to get her feet out of the way of Joe’s snapping mouth but the more she moved them the more Joe tried to catch them. If she moved to the left, Joe wriggled that way; if she moved backwards he would shunt forwards, licking at her toes and biting at her ankles.

After a while, the entire crowd, including Winthrope, was laughing and shaking in a raucous way. Joe wriggled on his belly like a snake to entertain them and made noises like a pig that made the women hop and skip in delight. Every now and then one of the women would summon up the courage to move forward and would offer a naked foot to Joe who would try to butt it or to gnaw at it with his flashing teeth. The woman screamed with laughter, clearly enjoying the joking attention of this man who seemed so young and fresh compared to the others.

Fraser and the professor sat together smiling but trying their best not to join in the frivolity. They were too busy trying to work out why they had been brought there and why Winthrope had insisted that they were tied. Fraser whispered in the professor’s ear. ‘What is this all about?’

But the professor just shrugged and rolled his eyes. There was nothing in his textbooks about any of this and he was content to let Joe take the lead where women were concerned. Joe larked and played a little more, pulling himself up on all fours and moving around the circle with difficulty. He would nose the legs of the women who stood at the front, pushing his head up against their shins until they lifted each leg with a hoot of laughter. He liked to be the centre of attention, especially the attention of young, pretty girls. He moved from girl to girl, butting their knees, pretending to bite their shins until, eventually, he came to a pair of legs that were different. Where the others had been a deep brown, these were lighter; where the others had been hard and rough, these were soft and smooth, and where the others had been excited and jumpy these were still.

Joe followed the line of the legs up until eventually he came to a face that he recognised. ‘Lisa!’ he exclaimed. ‘What… the…?’

He could barely form the words that came out of his mouth. He wasn’t sure whether this was due to the surprise of seeing her, the happiness of finding her or the guilt that the look on her face made him feel. He smiled the best smile he could manage.

‘It’s nice to see you’re missing me,’ she said, and crossed her arms. Joe felt lower than he had ever felt. Lisa looked across at the professor and Fraser and gave a huge smile. She skipped over Joe and crossed over the circle to where they sat.

‘We thought you were lost,’ the professor said. ‘We were looking for you. Joe was out all day yesterday trying to find you. We were captured by these — who are these people, Lisa?’

‘I‘ll tell you everything, later, uncle. You have to know, though, you will be all right…’ She looked at him. ‘Well, I think you will be.’

Fraser piped up. ‘I don’t suppose you will be able to get us out of these ropes, would you, Lisa? They hurt. I think I’m losing the feeling in my hands.’

Lisa shook her head. ‘They’ve only just let me out of mine. They don’t allow strangers to wander the village alone. You’ll understand why later on when they explain why you’re here.’

The professor looked imploringly at her. ‘Why are we here Lisa? Has it got something to do with the gold?’

Lisa hushed him and looked around suspiciously. ‘You’d do well to forget the gold for a while, uncle, and concentrate on getting out of here.’

‘That’s if we can,’ said Fraser.

Lisa laughed. ‘Oh, I think the problem will be wanting to.’

She felt a tapping on her back and turned to see Joe smiling at her, his face covered in the dirt from the floor. Lisa stood, pushed her way through the crowd and disappeared into Winthrope’s hut. Joe looked longingly at her, then back at the professor, who could only offer a shrug in explanation. Winthrope beside him clapped his hands together and the circle of women closed in around the three men. They were taken roughly by the hands and led to a hut that was being built in the middle of the village.

It was then that Fraser started noticing that none of the villagers were men. At first he had not thought about it but as time went on he slowly began to realise that, other than Winthrope and the few small boys he saw running about, the only three men were himself, Joe and the professor. He tried to get the latter alone to mention this but it was proving difficult. The women had prepared small beds for the men in the sunshine, so they could sit and watch the building of their hut. Some of the girls mopped the professor’s brow or rubbed Joe hands until they could feel themselves being lulled into a deep sleep. Beside them, however, Fraser was vigilant. He began to take a keen interest in what was happening around him.

He noticed that Winthrope seemed to control the operation. Everything he wanted, the girls would run and get for him. Whether it was food, water or just company they seemed eager to get him everything he desired. He wondered what relationship he was to them. He was obviously English, from some part of the south, he guessed, so what was he doing here? What hold did he have over these women?

One of the older women sidled up to his bed and sat beside him. Fraser did not want to engage her at all so he remained motionless, looking straight ahead, not meeting her gaze. The woman reached across and took his hand but Fraser snatched it back; from the corner of his eye, he could see that she looked hurt but he did nothing.

After a few seconds she reached out a hand and tried to stroke his head but Fraser lifted her arm and placed it back on her lap. He swiped at the air as a fly buzzed around his face. There was silence in the village. Next to him Fraser heard the woman gently crying. He turned and looked at her. She bowed her head, either in deference or embarrassment, and let her tears fall onto her knees. Fraser felt his heart softening but he knew he must not let himself be taken in by all of this until he knew what was going on. He waved the woman away and reluctantly, after a few minutes, she went.

Fraser sat back on his bed and watched the clouds scudding across the sky. The sky looked so blue after the rains and the clouds were a brilliant white. He closed his eyes but would not let himself drift off to sleep. He knew he must keep alert whatever happened. However much they tried to relax him, he knew he must keep his mind aware at all times. Beside him, the professor snored as a young girl played with his hair. For the first time Fraser thought how ridiculous the professor was, how odd he seemed here, miles away from his classroom and his schoolbooks. The snores seemed to get louder and louder until the girl had to hold his nose causing him to start and to cough back phlegm.

Fraser was aware of a shadow crossing him. Suddenly things got darker and colder — something was blocking out the sun. He opened his eyes and saw Winthrope standing over him, and beside him, cowering, was the woman who had left moments ago. ‘You do not like our hospitality?’ Winthrope asked.

Fraser was taken aback for a moment. There was something in the tone of voice that he did not like, something that made him wary. ‘It’s fine…’ he managed after a while. ‘I just need some time on my own.’

‘Perhaps,’ Winthrope continued sarcastically, ‘You don’t like the women?’

‘No, they’re fine, fine… I just need to be on my. ’

Winthrope interrupted him. ‘No, you misunderstand me, perhaps you don’t like THE women?’

Fraser thought he realised what he was insinuating. ‘Well, I’ve never had any problems before.’

He felt a sharp pain around his jaw. Winthrope had struck him and Fraser fell to the ground. He clutched his mouth and tasted the sharp, iron tang of blood on his tongue. ‘You will like our women, or you will regret it!’ Winthrope said menacingly. Fraser looked up and saw that he had a small club in his hands. Suddenly the pain in his jaw seemed a hell of a lot more understandable. He got up off his knees and swung his fist but Winthrope was too quick and Fraser was never much of a fighter. Again he landed in the mud, the force of his missed punch sending him off balance.

Joe and the professor awoke sleepily at the noise and stared in amazement as Fraser, for the second time in as many minutes, tried to pick himself up off the floor. He spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt and shook the grogginess out of his head.

‘You will enjoy yourself, while you’re here, or you will feel that again, do you understand?’

Fraser nodded. He was not about to try and hit out again. He figured you had to admit if you weren’t a fighter. Winthrope raised his hat to the professor and Joe and left, leaving the woman to pick Fraser up and wipe the blood from his chin.

‘What the hell was that about?’ Joe asked.

‘Do yourself a favour,’ Fraser told him. ‘If they ask you if you want anything, say yes.’ For the first time in his life Fraser felt that he was being pushed against his will to pair up with a woman, any woman. It wasn’t his style. He still hoped that there might be a chance with him and Lisa. He felt uncomfortable taking advantage of the host’s gracious hospitality, but hey, when in Rome…

The women of the village busied themselves making the hut. Some carried wood from the jungle on their backs, some wove leaves and ferns around the struts that made the side of the building and still others daubed its walls in mud made in small pits around the hut’s perimeter. Within a few hours it was made and the whole village, it seemed, gathered at its opening. Winthrope was there and beside him Lisa. Winthrope cleared his throat and began to speak.

‘It gives me great pleasure to declare this new building open. It’s not often that we are lucky enough to welcome four visitors into our village, three of them strong and virile men…’ He gave a quick glance at the professor and corrected himself. ‘Two of them strong and virile men. We have seen, over the years a sharp decline in our fortunes. These people have known tragedy and they have known pain but, hopefully, this is behind us now. Now we can start again, a new beginning for mankind — out of the ashes of the past a new dawn will arise. With the help of our friends we can make a better life for these people and, who knows, we might even be able to forge a new life for the whole world. If we show the way, perhaps they will follow. When the rest of the world has gone to rack and ruin we will be here with our bright faces and our strong hearts, right here on this island, a glorious paradise, a little piece of heaven right here on earth.’

He bowed his head and there was silence. Fraser did not know whether to laugh or to cry. The speech, although beautiful, had made a curious impression on him. He felt, suddenly, as if he knew what Winthrope had been talking about. He looked around himself at the bright smiling faces of the villagers and thought of the streets of Hong Kong, or the streets of London or the streets of New York; he remembered the scowls and the growls and the pushing and shoving; he remembered how he had hated every moment of shopping at Christmas or trying to get home in the rush hour. He could feel his heart melting.

Winthrope raised his head and made his way inside. He motioned to the older women to join him and for the younger ones to lift Joe, the professor and Fraser inside. Lisa followed on behind, feeling forgotten and ignored. She had realised that now they had found the men she was largely redundant. As she made her way through the doorway she met Joe’s eyes. He smiled at her and she smiled back, feeling as if a bridge had been crossed somewhere and there was no going back to the relationship they had once had.

Inside it was dark but Winthrope lit the fire and it roared into life. The girls put the men down so that they formed a circle around the fire. One of them offered a pipe to each of the men, who refused, but accepted the milk that another offered; Winthrope took a pipe and smoked it with his legs crossed looking for all the world like a village chief.

Joe looked at him and laughed. ‘You’re no more a villager here than me, Winthrope,’ he said.

‘What is a villager and what not?’ Winthrope asked. ‘I live here, that makes me a villager, whatever colour my skin is, whatever my facial features are. I am here so here is me.’

Joe thought for a moment. ‘But why are we here?’

Winthrope laughed a little. ‘All in good time. Are you comfortable, gentlemen? I can bring some more cushions if you want. I had to show the girls how to fashion them from leaves and interlaced vines myself; however, they’re only comfortable up to a point.’ He shifted his buttocks to get comfortable. ‘Can I offer you more milk? Water? I would offer you wine, a nice Merlot perhaps, but as you can appreciate it is a little difficult to get out here. I have heard of a drink the men used to drink here but I have yet to try it. Perhaps I will this year.’

Fraser took the opportunity to ask Winthrope about the village. ‘Where are the men? Did they all drink their drink and die? Were they poisoned?’

Winthrope shot a glance at Lisa. ‘The men are dead,’ he said. ‘They all contracted flu, common or garden flu. The virus was too much for their systems and they all died while on a trip looking for Yamashita’s gold.’

Suddenly the professor’s ears pricked up, his eyes opened wide and his face was a picture of intensity. ‘You know of Yamashita’s gold?’

Winthrope laughed. ‘My dear professor, that’s why I’m here, that’s why you’re here, that’s why anyone is here. Except these lovely creatures; they had the misfortune to be born here.’

The professor’s eyes narrowed as his brain clicked into gear. ‘Do you know where it is?’ he asked

‘The gold? If I did, do you think I’d be sitting here, professor? No, I’d be lying in a mansion built with the proceeds. The general was a clever old stick, he knew how to hide things from the rest of the world — the Americans especially. I have been over most of the island and have never even had a sniff of the treasure. I have heard tales of it, though.’

‘Tales?’ Joe asked.

‘Yes, of the kinds of artefacts there, and the kinds of fate that await those that find it. I came here, you see, with a party such as yours. We were ready and willing to hunt for the treasure wherever we thought it might lie. However, we did not count on the belief in the spirits of the jungle.’

Joe felt his heart grow cold suddenly. He too believed in the spirits of the jungle; he had seen them and felt their presence.

‘You don’t believe in them?’ he asked, whereupon Winthrope looked guiltily around him.

‘I believe as much as I allow myself to, which is to say to the extent that it benefits me. I am a man of science, I was a doctor in another life, a medical man, how could I let myself believe in ghosts and spirits? The aswang, the dwendi, they are all names to me, not entities.’

‘The dwendi?’ Joe enquired, not wanting to hear the answer to his question.

‘Little people, can be good or mischievous, the locals leave food out for them, just to keep on their good side.’

Joe swallowed hard. He would have said the same himself until a few days ago.

‘However, it’s the aswang that come to me at night,’ Winthrope added.

Joe and the professor looked at each other with fear in their eyes.

‘They come to me in dreams. Oh, I dare say it’s because I spend so much time thinking about them, you know what Freud said about dreams — they are the royal road to the unconscious and all that. I suppose they might have some deeper significance but they come to me at night.’

‘What do they say?’ Joe queried.

‘Say? Oh, nothing much. They show me a tunnel, a dark tunnel that reeks of death, people, bodies. They make me feel its claustrophobia — no doubt the effect of the jungle on a man’s mind. Then they show me…’ He hesitated for a second. ‘The golden Buddha.’

The professor almost fell backwards from his bed. He gathered himself quickly and sat intently looking at Winthrope. ‘You must tell us about the golden Buddha,’ the professor exclaimed. ‘You simply must.’

Winthrope rocked back on his haunches. His face grew cold and uninviting. His eyes closed momentarily and then opened, to reveal their full, shocking colour. ‘You seemed interested in the golden Buddha professor. I wonder if that is why you are here.’

The professor was taken aback and stammered out an answer. ‘I, well, we are here to find the golden Buddha, yes, and the rest of the contents of Yamashita’s gold. For the past and for the future, for the sake of history and knowledge.’

Winthrope laughed and the women that surrounded him followed suit. ‘History and knowledge won’t get you very far out here, professor. There is no history in the jungle. To have history is to progress and there is no progress here, only life, day after day, year after year, life. That’s the beauty of it.’

The professor shot a hard look at the man opposite him. ‘I’m not from here, Winthrope. I’m from Hong Kong, where history is more important than anything else, perhaps even the day to day.’

‘The golden Buddha, as you probably know, professor, is only the outer casing for what lies inside. Hundreds upon hundreds of years of wealth, collected by the monks of temples throughout Asia, stolen from them and brought here. It was so revered by the men who carried it that they were not allowed to look at it as their bent backs ached and broke under the weight. It is said to be so beautiful that to look upon it is to render the rest of your life useless. These people, these simple people, are not Buddhists. They know nothing of Buddhism’s teaching or its creed but even they speak in hushed tones about the golden Buddha, the giver of riches and the taker of lives.’

‘The taker of lives?’ the professor asked.

‘Yes, professor. How many men died carrying it here? How many men died burying it underground in the tunnel designed by Yamashita? How many men are still down there somewhere, clutching it, praying to it maybe?’

The professor grew agitated. ‘It was not the Buddha that killed them. It was the general, the army.’

‘That is as may be, professor, but superstition is a powerful thing. And so they visit me at night to tell me these things, to make me aware of the situation. The aswang come to me and make sure I am thinking about them and the Buddha — or is it my thoughts telling me about the aswang? I don’t know, I don’t suppose it matters in the long run. The gold will never be found.’

There was silence in the hut. The women were hushed and the men had downcast eyes. Lisa looked at the professor and the professor at Lisa. Neither knew what to do. They knew that they would probably never find the gold without Winthrope’s knowledge but doing that meant opening themselves up to him. Could they trust him? Could they rely on him? Lisa thought not but could see, in the face of the professor that he thought otherwise. She tried to communicate a message of procrastination to her uncle, who merely nodded wisely — there was nothing said but everything had been understood.

Fraser suddenly found his voice. ‘So why are we here, Winthrope? And why won’t you free us?’

Winthrope smiled and rocked backwards. He placed his hands on his knees. ‘There is one thing that we need more than anything here, and that is men. As I explained, the men were all killed, the women think by the aswang, I know by the flu. Which puts us in the unfortunate position of, shall we say, having the birds without the bees.’

The professor was startled. ‘You don’t mean what I think you mean?’ he asked.

‘It’s simple biology, professor, think nothing of it. We have good stock here. Good breeding, intelligence, fine muscles, strong backs; everything we need to start again.’

‘But you’re mad! This is no way to repopulate a village. What will happen in a few years’ time? You need variation in stock, genes, you can’t populate a village with such a limited gene pool.’

‘But professor, I have no choice, and I’m afraid, you have no choice.’

The professor was suddenly aware of the door to the hut being closed. There was a click and he turned to see a gun being trained upon him. The young woman who held the gun looked no more than sixteen years old and she looked more scared than the professor, but held the rifle as if her life depended upon it. Across the other side of the hut, Winthrope smiled.

‘It is awful to be so heavy-handed, professor. I was hoping that you might agree to my little plan without me having to exert force. The gun is a leftover from my original party. I have never had recourse to use it but it’s in perfect working order and I’m sure could still do considerable damage should the need arise. You see, professor, this issue is bigger than both of us. It is bigger than our petty wants and desires. It concerns the regeneration of a beautiful people. After all, professor, when would you have the chance again to be with such young, beautiful women?’

The professor grew suddenly red and flustered. ‘I don’t know, it’s something I’ve never really thought about before, something that…’

‘Professor, do not be afraid, these women are housetrained.’

Winthrope laughed and the women laughed too. The professor grew redder and redder. All the while Lisa was staring at Joe. She had noticed how suddenly he seemed interested in everything Winthrope was saying. Suddenly he was listening with rapt attention. Not for the first time that day she felt the pang of jealousy. It had surprised her at first but it was definitely there, like an itch that refused to go away. For his part, Joe began looking around the hut and casting his eye over the women. He saw their beautiful round faces, their deep brown eyes, their burnt umber skin. Then his eyes fell upon Lisa and they were the only two people in the world. All the pain and the fear of the last few days disappeared when he looked at her, the loneliness he had known for his entire life seemed to fade and he felt touched by her beauty and her intelligence. When she looked at him there was no jungle, no Winthrope, no women of the village.

Fraser, for his part, had begun to resemble a thirsty dog on a hot day; his initial reticence had given way to an almost evangelical persuasion by Winthrope’s arguments. Once again he let his mind wander to cities he had known, their grey grubby surfaces, their stupid, mindless people; he knew suddenly what he had been looking for through all of his wandering. He knew why he had been brought here. The others may have been brought by the aswang or greed or for the love of a girl from Hong Kong but he had been brought here to help these women.

He lay on his back. ‘You have my vote.’ he said, and nuzzled up against the thigh of the woman sitting next to him.