Things Bright and Beautiful Page 3

  Night-time trips to the bathroom were, however, intolerable. It was barely worth lighting a candle for such a short trip, but unthinkable without proper navigation. After dark, the grass was squelchy underfoot with dew, and concealed an innumerable plenitude of teeming insects. After sunset, the outhouse became a zoological garden of creeping terrors. The floor and the walls became coated in lively, twisting spiders, furred centipedes, and all manner of antlered monstrosities for which Bea did not even have a name. It was only possible to use the lavatory by trustfully baring your behind to this spectacle of crawling nightmares, while simultaneously performing a sort of hopping dance. Allow one’s legs to stay on the ground for more than five seconds, and its inhabitants crawled up them and into one’s nightclothes. The first few twilight trips were so traumatizing for Bea that she stopped drinking water after supper, and without mentioning it to Max, in cases of dire emergency, she began to use a chamber pot.

  Max and Bea had arrived on the island the morning after Chief Bule had presided over a generous feast, the centrepiece of which had been a freshly slaughtered bullock. Rainson Tabi and his eldest son, Edly, had inexpertly split the beast in half with their bushknives, and hung it from a rope attached to the beams of the Chief’s bushkitchen. Sepater, Rainson’s second son, had grabbed the freshly severed tail of the animal, and wrapped it around his waist in high-spirited mockery of the ceremonial red mat his father was wearing.

  All this meant that on the day of Max and Bea’s arrival, the earth around Mission House was trailed with dark cow’s blood and frothing with ants. Bule met them on the coast as they waded in from the launch, but he was sluggish and grumpy from drinking too much kava. In a moment of last-minute observance of the proper etiquette, Othniel Tari ran back to the village to procure for Max and Bea two wilted salu-salus of browning hibiscus flowers that had been made for Bule the day before, and trampled underfoot during the celebrations.

  Max was delighted when he first saw the church. Passion flowers had been tucked into the slats of the windows, and palm fronds cut into fans were tied in arches over the doorway. As Max circled the room, a pink lizard paused motionless on the ceiling, before scuttling noisily through a hole in the wood. On the wall behind the altar there was a crude and rather faded painting of a white man with a beard, and a helpful label of ‘Jesus’ added in broad brushstrokes underneath. In front of the altar were arranged two sets of wooden benches so the women could sit on the left of the church, and the men on the right. There were a handful of battered paperback Bibles with ‘M. Hardwood’ ink-stamped into the flyleaf.

  Max sat on one of the benches, unknowingly picking the women’s side, and looked up at the pulpit, daydreaming about nothing in particular, but enjoying the warm breeze inflating the back of his shirt. He looked around to see a handful of children ducking below the window sill, and heard a murmur of hushed giggling as they ran away. There was a tentative knock on the door frame, and Max stood up to greet a man with short hair, and a round face with deep-set eyes. This was Mr Filip Aru, who spoke decent English as a result of the Protestant boarding school on Santo.

  ‘I have been running the religious programmes until now,’ Aru said shyly, nodding his head, rolling a paperback Bible in his hands so the white seams of the book strained. ‘It’s very good to have a Pastor here to help us in the ways of the new religion.’

  Max smiled. ‘That’s splendid. Have you received any training?’

  Aru smiled, a dimple appearing at the left corner of his mouth. ‘No, no training. I only have the grace of the Holy Spirit.’

  ‘That’s splendid,’ said Max again. ‘Tell me, has it been long since your last missionary left?’

  ‘The last missionary?’ Aru echoed in English.

  ‘Yes, a woman, I believe. I’m afraid I can’t remember, perhaps from New Zealand?’

  Aru raised his eyebrows in affirmation, but didn’t reply.

  Max nodded silently for a moment before changing the subject. ‘Maybe you can help me, then. We should talk about the religious programme you have run so far.’

  Aru smiled broadly, showing two rows of small, white teeth.

  Max began work in his small kingdom the week after they had arrived on the island. After consultation with Aru, he agreed to run services in the church every Wednesday and Sunday morning, during which he could expect not only villagers but converts from the surrounding area, who would rise early to walk to Bambayot.

  On his third morning on the island, Max had woken to the sound of hymns. He was used to the New Hebridean form of singing, a chorus of childlike, high voices whose discord ultimately produced something queer and beautiful. He lay in his cot, dreamily transported back to his days of service during the war. And then, all in one tumultuous lurch of childhood terror, such as when one recalls they are already late for school, Max realized the music was coming from the church. He sat bolt upright in his cot in a flurry of panic, realizing he must be, in fact, absent from one of his own services. He dressed as quickly as he could, and dashed down to the church two strides at a time. This was not how he had planned his introduction to his new congregation.

  When he arrived at the church, he was relieved to see there was only Aru and a group of seven young women inside. Three he vaguely recognized, but the others were strangers to him.

  Aru shuffled over. ‘These are the church singers.’ He gestured to the women.

  Max nodded hastily, looking around for the arrival of the rest of the churchgoers who were no doubt already on their way. Aru walked backwards, still facing Max. He picked up his ukulele from one of the benches, and continued to accompany them. Max stood behind the lectern, flipping through his Bible and praying for inspiration for an introductory sermon.

  A girl of about thirteen in a blue island dress watched him and tittered, nudging the girl next to her. He realized he must look quite unkempt, and smoothed his hair down, wondering if the creases on his face from his pillow were still obvious. Aru continued to sing along with his small crowd of girls. Max stood at the lectern, flicking through the Bible and feverishly composing a speech in his head. The singing continued for another twenty minutes. As the sun rose higher in the sky, and the day began to warm, it became increasingly obvious to Max that no one was coming for a service. Instead, Max had interrupted a practice session.

  Aru’s church singers gathered at the break of day and the close of night to practise. After awkwardly hanging about at the first several sessions, Max realized he wasn’t needed, nor even particularly welcomed to the singing practices. Aru was clearly in charge of the musical arrangement for the services. He was a talented musician, who not only coordinated the chorus of girls, but accompanied them on a ukulele. Their singing was beautiful and unpredictable. It was a combination of old church favourites set to a sort of island rhythm, and substitutions made in Bislama or in what was simply known as ‘Language’ – the umbrella term for any of the hundreds of local dialects.

  When he wasn’t preparing his services, Max was occupied with the everyday small tasks of missionary work. He administered yaws injections and distributed mosquito nets. He doled out spoonfuls of Milk of Magnesia, dispensed Bufferin pills, rubbed antiseptic cream on cuts, and occasionally handed out Atabrine tablets to malarial children. He attempted to acquaint himself with each member of the village, and offered his services to Othniel Tari for the religious education of the small band of children he intermittently and reluctantly tutored. Max held a Bible reading group on Monday evenings, inviting all the villagers to participate. These were sporadically attended by Othniel and his wife, Jinnes, and their five-year-old daughter, Lorianne. Aru dutifully came to every meeting, as did Abel and Gracie Poulet and their daughter, Judy. Occasionally, Patro Tarileo and his daughter, Leiwas, joined in. But never his wife, Mabo-Mabon, who was decidedly unconverted.

  Max often worked alongside Chief Bule, who had been converted to Christianity some ten years previously. Standing at around five foot, he reminded Max of a garden gno
me. Bule appeared to own only one shirt, a strawberry-coloured affair with a pussy-bow collar that had clearly once been a lady’s. It was spotlessly clean, but tattered about the hem and the sleeves, so that all edges of the blouse hung in shreds. Max supposed Bule found the colour to be cheerful, and never thought to mention it was clearly an item of women’s clothing. Bule was of an indeterminate age. He might have been fifty-five or seventy-five. His beard and hair were peppered with grey hairs, and he wore a constant toothless smile of mischievous good cheer. Bule was lean, his muscles taut and powerful. He had the aura of a man with a potential reserve of explosive energy, like a cat about to pounce. Bule sometimes took Max on walkabouts to other villages in the area, and Max could barely keep up with the man, despite matching his stride by almost double.

  Bule introduced him at all the nakamals in the surrounding villages on the south coast. He pointed out the garden allotments on top and showed him the paths to the North. Max quickly learnt that ‘path’ was more of a euphemism for hours of trudging upstream through ice-cold rivers. He dreaded those short cuts. Deep, hungry ravines appeared out of nowhere, requiring a steady heart to clutch on to mucusy vines and leap between slippery boulders. Vast, gummy spider’s webs hung across the whole width of the river. Sinewy things crept over his feet. Every now and again, Bule would point to something in the bush – a completely indistinguishable branch, or a tiny white flower – and draw his bushknife across his heart, miming death. It was thoroughly unnerving.

  Once, Bule took Max along a ‘path’ to the East that he would be able to use when the rainy season was over. After the usual vertiginous spiral up the hills, the track broke on to wide meadows dotted with the odd brown cow. Max caught his breath. The grass was thigh-high, with soft green weeds that closed in upon themselves when touched. He could look behind them, and see the coiled-up buds tracing their wake. Bule pointed out a nakamal in the distance, which, he claimed, served the best turtle on the island.

  It wasn’t long before the ‘path’ plunged back over the edge of the land. Max stepped into the crunchy shell of a hornets’ nest and froze in terror as a stream of stripes poured out, trailing barbs as long as pencils. Bule rolled his eyes at Max, and began winding down and up and down again, round the hill, underneath the old colonial house. Max had to scramble on his hands and knees, heavy rocks turning in the mud underneath his wrists and ankles. He slipped several times, and almost slid back down the slope, grabbing desperately on to liana to steady himself, while Bule nimbly sprang up ahead of him, pausing to watch him in amusement.

  As they passed the ridge under the shadow of the old house, Max allowed his neck the odd rest to look up at it. It was two storeys high, with one window on the top floor, looking out towards the ocean. The ground floor was covered in vines that had busted through the window frames. Two ionic columns flanked a heavy doorway, coated in moss. It was quite uncanny. Max asked if they could go up to take a look, but Bule merely shook his head, made the bushknife ‘death’ sign, and offered ‘tabu’ by means of an explanation.

  Knox Turu later claimed the old colonial house was built by a French prince, who had intended to create for himself the first two-storey construction on the island so he could be closer to the gods. Unknowingly, he had chosen a tabu hilltop, and had died horribly from leaf magic. If anyone ever went in there now they would also die horribly from the tabu. When Max shared this story with Willie at the nakamal, he laughed and slapped his thigh.

  ‘No, no. It was a copra farmer. He lost his money before it was finished. It’s not a good place for a house. Too wet for the wood. So he gave up and went to some other island.’ Willie waved his cigarette vaguely in the direction of the shoreline. He hunched over to take a draw of smoke, and turned back to Max, suddenly serious. ‘It is tabu, though. You must not go there.’

  While Max spent time on walkabouts with Bule, or in church with Aru, Bea found it tricky to get to know the other people in the village. Each day, she strolled through Bambayot, hoping to strike up a conversation with one of the other women. But the women weren’t in the village in the middle of the day; they were farming in the gardens ‘on top’. There were often men congregating by a fallen tree near the nakamal at the south of the village, chewing tobacco or sharpening their bushknives. But Bea was far too nervous to approach them. She was not used to talking to tall, half-naked black men wielding machetes. She wasn’t even sure if it was ‘allowed’, since there were so many tabus around what women were and weren’t supposed to do.

  She wasn’t supposed to go walking around by herself. She wasn’t to show any skin above her elbows or knees. Even while bathing, she had to swim fully clothed, in her island dress, or in a pair of Max’s long shorts. She wasn’t allowed to go out in a dugout canoe. It was tabu for women to fish. She shouldn’t make too much eye contact with men, in case she seemed indecent. She wasn’t to wear her hair loose. She mustn’t dry her clothes outside, especially any underclothes. She wasn’t to point directly at anything, because it was unlucky. It was also unlucky for women to walk on the path to the nakamal. She wasn’t supposed to run anywhere. And on Sundays, it was considered ill-mannered to do anything that might constitute work – no mending clothes on the front porch. It was like being a pilgrim. It made Bea feel a little wild. All she wished to do was leap from her house on a Sunday morning, wearing only her underclothes with her hair shockingly loose, and run straight down the coast into a dugout and start fishing.

  For the first couple of weeks, Bea’s main companion was an ugly little stray dog that had decided to follow her around. ‘New Dog’ was a scrawny piebald Jack Russell mutt with an overexcitable temperament. On the afternoon of their arrival, it had accosted her from the grass around Mission House, bursting out of the underbrush, yelping, whinnying and trying to leap up on to Bea’s clothes. Othniel had dropped the half of Max’s book trunk he was carrying up from the coast, and rushed over to her rescue. He kicked the animal in the snout, yelling, ‘Kranki dog!’

  The dog whined and slunk off behind the house, looking over its shoulder with its tail between its legs. Its flank was crawling with hopping fleas, its nipples were distended and swollen. Apparently, the beast craved attention, and any new arrival from another village would cause a mania of hysterical joy as the dog cavorted and frolicked, licking and sniffing. There had been so many attempts to catch the animal that it was considered basically demonic. Othniel explained he had tried to snare it in a net. Bea asked what he would do when he caught it, and he had smiled, miming eating.

  ‘Kakae,’ he said. Bea wasn’t sure if he was teasing her or not.

  Bea found that whenever she left her house, it was only a matter of minutes until the dog followed her, flattening its ginger ears against its head, trotting territorially around the porch while Bea scrubbed clothes in the bucket.

  It even, to Bea’s mortification, followed her into church. After trying to casually hustle the animal out of the building with her Bible, she had to relinquish herself to its company. It would shimmy underneath her pew, contenting itself with breathing heavily up into the folds of her skirt, attracting flies with its repellent stink. Occasionally it crawled out during the sermon to stretch itself, yawning casually before investigating the other members of the church, who were only too happy to release old-fashioned Christian vengeance on the beast by beating it with their hymn books and smacking it towards the doors, but with no luck. It let out strangled howls of annoyance and squirmed back under Bea’s pew. But as her only friend on the island, Bea didn’t feel she was in a position to be picky.

  2

  It was their third Saturday on Advent Island. The sun had begun to rise, and the sky was stippled with yellow clouds. With one hand on the door frame of Mission House, Max pushed himself towards the church, towards the sound of the screaming that had woken him. It was the screaming of a young woman. It echoed between the huts and the mountains beyond the end of the village. Over the wailing, he heard muffled voices, maybe prayers. It sounded li
ke someone was in pain, and a group had gathered to offer consolation.

  As he approached the church, a brilliant splash of crimson streaked up through the sky. He was now certain the noise was coming from the church itself. Through the slats in the windows, Max could see people had congregated inside. He paused by the door frame. A woman was lying prostrate on the floor. Maybe someone had had an accident? What could he do? He had so few medical supplies, and so little training.

  He realized, with a sinking feeling, that the woman lying there was Leiwas, Mabo-Mabon’s eldest daughter. He was fond of Leiwas. She was so young. She was a sober and sweet teenage girl who had brought Bea a gift of a beautiful hollowed-out, lavender-coloured lizard’s egg. She was supposed to be married next month to an older man from the North. She and Mabo-Mabon had spent the last two weeks collecting and drying pandan rushes on the roof of her house for her wedding mat.

  The murmuring had grown clearer as he descended the hill, and he could hear the five or so people gathered around the young girl were chanting prayers. He caught the odd exclamation of, ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Something was clearly terribly wrong. He paused by the door of the church, suddenly unsure. There were only young girls inside. And Aru. Together they had formed a circle around Leiwas, who was lying on the floor, her wails rising and subsiding.

  Aru and the girls were shifting from side to side and flapping their hands, as if shaking hot water from their fingers. Leiwas let out another agonized wail. The mutters of, ‘I cast you out in the name of Jesus,’ came more clearly now. Leiwas’ eyes had rolled back in her head, and she was sobbing uncontrollably.

  Aru approached the fallen girl with a Bible in his outstretched hands, and crouched beside her. He grabbed her firmly by the shoulder and placed the Bible on her forehead. Leiwas’ screams grew louder still. Max stood outside the church watching, unable to move.