One Blood Read online

  ‘Then how the hell am I going to get them back to work?’ demanded Michie. ‘So far this year we’ve been delayed by rain, mechanical breakdown, shortages of materials and a bunch of so-called skilled workers who don’t know their arses from their elbows.’ He glared at the unkempt white men behind him. ‘I’ve got a schedule to keep!’

  Kella took his opportunity. ‘I might be able to help,’ he told the Australian. ‘Of course, I would expect your cooperation with my investigation afterwards.’

  A gleam of reluctant respect appeared in the big man’s eyes. ‘You would, would you, Sergeant?’ he gritted. ‘All right, go ahead. Sort them out, and at least I’ll give you the time of day afterwards.’

  ‘First I must persuade them to take me to their temple in the trees, the faata abu.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that, for a start. They don’t have a temple,’ growled the Australian triumphantly. ‘I’ve been here eighteen months and I’ve never seen one.’ He looked at the men behind him. ‘Have any of you jokers?’

  The others shook their heads.

  ‘That’s because they’ve never let you see it,’ said Kella, walking away. ‘Stay here. And leave those rifles alone.’

  He reached the Malaitans. ‘Do you want to go back to work?’ he asked Zoloveke, the leader.

  ‘Only if the signs are right,’ replied the older man. ‘We will not ignore the faata maea.’

  He was referring to the unfavourable omen known in pidgin as show death. Kella nodded understandingly. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to. Suppose I can lift the curse?’ he asked. ‘Will you go back to work then?’

  Zoloveke conferred briefly with the men nearest him. ‘If the ceremony is performed properly,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘We know that you have been given the power to do that.’

  ‘Then take me to your beu aabu,’ said Kella. ‘Not all of you; what I am about to do is not for everyone to see. Choose half a dozen men to come with us.’

  The custom temple was half an hour’s walk away through the outer ring of trees. There was no path through the densely matted undergrowth, but Kella could see that unobtrusive strands of red drachmae plants had been secured to the boles of some of the trees to indicate a route already prepared through the bush. Such signs would have meant nothing to any expatriates who strayed into the undergrowth. They struggled through knee-high grass, disturbing clouds of small yellow butterflies, which scudded ahead of them.

  The temple, when they encountered it, was simple, consisting of little more than a one-roomed hut of sago palm thatch lashed together with creepers, under a sloping roof supported by posts. The opening in the front of it was only a few feet high, meaning that a man could only enter on his hands and knees, thus showing due deference to the holiness of the building. In front of the beu was a round flat flintstone to represent the outdoor altar. Detritus of ashes and charred sticks on its surface showed that sacrifices had been made there quite recently. On the ground around the altar were scattered minor offerings of yams, taro and twists of tobacco. Kella knew that inside the place of worship would be a collection of clubs and spears, all plaited with red and yellow vines to show that they had been dedicated to the gods. Being itinerants, the labourers would have no priest among them, and would be forbidden from practising all but the most basic ceremonies before the spirit people, otherwise he would never have been shown this sacred spot. Even now, he knew that he would not be granted much time in which to lift the curse. The spirits did not like temples that did not have permanent custodians. They would not go out of their way to assist him.

  Before he made his approach to the altar, Kella stopped and opened his rucksack. He took out a well-worn sacred bag containing his own holy relics and attached it by a swathe of cloth to his head. Next he brought out a handful of areca nuts from the bottom of the rucksack, moving deliberately so that the Malaitans, watching his every move intently, could see what he was doing. He was aware of their impressed gasps as he prepared to start his ritual. Only a custom priest of the highest rank and in great favour with the ghosts would be allowed to hold in his hand so many areca nuts, the favourite food of the gods, without being struck down for sacrilege.

  Impatiently Zoloveke gestured to the Malaitans to stand back while Kella approached the altar and abased himself before it. He ought to make a fire and burn some of the areca nuts, so that the scented smoke would attract the spirits, but he did not have time. Reaching up, he scattered the yellow husks of the nuts on top of the flintstone. The shell of a ripe areca nut was so hard as to be almost impenetrable, reflecting the inviolate manner of their faith and the supremacy of the gods. As he did so, he chanted the names of the first aofias of Lau: Maruka, Vuvura, Fili’ei, Solubosi and Lauvanua.

  ‘He is eating the ghost,’ murmured Zoloveke to the others, proud of his knowledge of ancestor worship. ‘The aofia is sacrificing to the spirits on our behalf. He is putting himself at risk for us.’

  Sweat started pouring down Kella’s face from the mental and physical exertion of his incantations. The kwisi bird had warned the Malaitans not to go into the deep bush. That meant that the war gods who protected these Lau people far from home were angry and must be appeased by the wholehearted intervention of a high priest.

  ‘Ma ni kobu’ana hato,’ he cried, begging the gods to accept the areca nuts.

  He depicted himself as being unworthy to enter the temple despite his high standing on earth: ‘Toto taa’I nau.’ He praised the war gods: ‘Ramo oliolita.’ He thanked them for guarding the Malaitans on the island by sending the kwisi bird to warn the working party that morning: ‘Ramo vei ngwane na.’ He begged them to send a sign that it was now safe for the labourers to resume work: ‘File bare ngwane I Afeafea.’ Finally he prayed for the future of the temple, that it might stand as a monument to the war spirits for many years: ‘Agalo I mae.’

  When he had finished, Kella stood up. Briefly he clutched at a tree for support, and then, when the dizziness had worn off, he walked back to the waiting Malaitans.

  ‘What happens now?’ asked one of the younger ones.

  ‘We wait for a sign,’ said Zoloveke curtly. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  The small group stood in the silent, gloomy clearing for a quarter of an hour. Kella was aware of the suspicious glances being directed at him by the labourers.

  ‘We should walk back to the beach,’ he said finally. ‘This may not be the appointed place.’

  Dubiously the men struggled in single file back through the trees. Kella wondered if something would happen. The spirits had never denied him before, but this might be his time to be rejected cruelly and shown that he was always in the hands of the higher powers.

  They had been walking for about five minutes when the bird appeared. It swooped through the trees in silence, grey and plump, its wings flapping joyfully. Not until it was only a few yards in front of them did it utter a sound. Then, soaring just over their heads, it started chattering vigorously in an ecstatic concatenation of sound. It held its unwavering, fearless course until it had passed every man in the line, and then veered abruptly to one side and was lost to view among the trees.

  Zoloveke turned to face the other labourers, his face lit up. ‘The war gods are happy again!’ he declared loudly. He signalled to two of the younger Malaitans. ‘Run back to the camp,’ he said. ‘Tell everyone that the aofia’s prayers have pleased the spirits. They can enter the bush without fear again.’ He turned to Kella. ‘It is true what they say,’ he said. ‘You are the only Lau man carrying the secrets of the spirits who has come out into the real world.’

  The young men sprinted away, carrying their news. With a fresh respect in his attitude, Zoloveke gestured to Kella to come to the head of the line and lead the party back in triumph to the beach.

  By the time they reached the shore, the camp had already sprung back to life. Labourers were hurrying up the track through the mangroves carrying cross-cut saws on their shoulders through the initial swamp forest and then on to the
higher land where the trees more suitable for logging were to be found. Bulldozers, jeeps and the mobile winches known as log-haulers driven by the Australians were following in the wake of the Malaitans, to blast away any intervening rocks and ridges and gain access to the logs higher up, which they would bring down to the piles already in the pen by the beach awaiting shipment. The drivers were noisily tearing the clutches out of their machines in their efforts to get up the ridge. Other logs were being floated down the muddy river from the interior mountains on a filthy red torrent of pollution. Some of the labourers on the shore were busily joining logs together and lashing them to empty fuel drums with cables to form makeshift rafts, which would be towed out to sea by launches when the Swedish logging vessels arrived to winch up their cargoes from the water.

  Michie, the big Australian logging boss, was at the heart of the action, vigorously directing groups to their work. Already he was barking at the labourers as if nothing had ever happened. One of the Australian drivers scurried towards him with a query on his lips. Michie skewered the white man with a glare.

  ‘Hang around, why don’t you, and I’ll sing you a chorus of “My Hero” from The Chocolate Soldier,’ he snarled menacingly.

  The driver flinched, thought better of his self-imposed mission, and without breaking stride turned and hurried back to his vehicle and started it up. Michie stared at Kella. ‘Come for a reward?’ he demanded.

  ‘A cup of coffee will do. And ten minutes of your time.’

  With a theatrical sigh, the logging boss led Kella towards his office, a bungalow built on wooden poles, with a corrugated-iron roof. Beneath the poles were sliding log skids. When the office had to be moved farther up the trail, it could be towed by a truck. Next door was the company general store, selling 4X beer, tinned food, rice, biscuits and work clothes to the loggers and any islanders with enough money to pay its exorbitant prices. The store would have a deep freeze, powered by generators night and day. Behind the store and office, on the edge of the coastal mangroves, an effort had been made to make the area look a little more attractive by planting a few coconut palms and colourful hibiscus and oleander bushes on a patch of coral-based loam. A raised wooden structure housed half a dozen water tanks in two tiers, glistening with aluminium paint. Rainwater would be stored in the tanks and then distributed to taps in some of the houses.

  ‘Would you still rather have an expatriate police officer here?’ asked Kella politely as he entered the office.

  ‘Don’t push your luck,’ warned the Australian impassively, but the edge previously in his tone was now missing. ‘You may have given me a hand back then, but what else have you done for me lately?’

  The office was large but sparsely furnished. A desk was covered with maps and papers. A door led to what presumably passed for the Australian’s living quarters. Underneath a window overlooking the camp was a bookcase filled with tattered paperbacks that looked as if they had been read. Kella could make out some of the titles; they included The Catcher in the Rye, Moby Dick and This Side of Paradise.

  He took the chair offered in front of the desk. Michie started to pour two cups of coffee from a percolator on a side table.

  ‘Have you got any ideas who might be responsible for the attacks on your station?’ Kella asked. ‘How about the local islanders you dispossessed.’

  ‘They were paid fair and square for the logging rights before they left the island,’ said Michie quickly. ‘They’ve got no beefs.’

  ‘They might have if custom land was involved,’ said Kella. ‘Or if they didn’t fully understand what they were giving up.’

  Michie brought the cups over and gave one to Kella before sitting behind his desk. He shifted his stomach to one side to make room. ‘Everything was explained to them,’ he said. ‘The company even used a local boss to represent the kanakas on the island. A bloke called Dontate.’

  So Joe Dontate was involved, thought Kella. That would make matters difficult. The Westerner was a hard man with a lot of clout in the Roviana Lagoon as a hereditary chieftain. Presumably he was making a nice profit out of any brokering deal in which he was engaged on Alvaro, and would not give up his role easily.

  ‘These negotiations were all right with your head office, were they?’ he asked.

  ‘My head office would do a deal with Old Nick himself as long as the logs kept coming out and the shareholders got their dividends,’ said Michie bitterly. ‘All they want is a smooth-running operation here, even if they have to send somebody in to kick my arse every now and then.’

  ‘I’m told there’s a local independence group that doesn’t think much of your presence on this island,’ Kella said. ‘Could they have been involved?’

  ‘They’re just a bunch of cowboys,’ said Michie dismissively. ‘They’re even led by a sheila, for God’s sake. A local kanaka called Mary Gui. Do you know her?’ Kella shook his head. ‘She runs the rest-house at Munda for Joe Dontate.’ Michie scowled. ‘Thinks she’s God’s gift,’ he went on. ‘She’s formed this movement called the SIIP, the Solomon Islands Independence Party. It’s about as effective as a chocolate teapot. Believe me, all they’re good for is holding meetings and distributing pamphlets. They wouldn’t attack my blokes.’ The logging boss slurped his coffee gloomily. ‘Gui’s just come back from Aussie university and knows it all. Can you imagine that? A kanaka bitch with a degree!’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Kella mildly, ‘I have two degrees, from Australian and British universities.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Michie. ‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me? What have I got? Nada. I don’t even have a certificate of good attendance from a Hong Kong brothel. Pig-ignorant jokers like me are going to have scarcity value soon. Just who the hell are you anyway?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I’m—’

  ‘I don’t mean the copper shit. How did you get my men back to work so fast?’

  ‘Oh, that. I said a prayer for them,’ said Kella simply.

  Michie looked at him suspiciously across the desk. ‘Are you jerking my chain?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Kella. ‘Among the Lau people, I happen to be a custom priest, as well as a police officer.’

  ‘You mean you’re a …’ Michie searched for the phrase and then came up with it triumphantly, ‘a magic man!’

  ‘That’s what they’re called in this district. Guadalcanal people call them vele men. On Malaita, and especially among my Lau people, I’m the aofia, the peacemaker.’

  ‘But you can’t be,’ said Michie. ‘For God’s sake, you’re an educated man! How do you reconcile that with this spirit mumbo-jumbo?’

  ‘Perhaps one man’s mumbo-jumbo is another man’s faith,’ said Kella, a sliver of steel entering his voice.

  Michie grunted. ‘Well, what do you want?’ he asked. ‘Normally I wouldn’t give you the time of day, but I owe you for that business at the temple that I didn’t even know was there. Don’t forget, though, I can have you thrown off this island any time I want.’

  Kella decided that it was time to crack the whip. ‘No, you can’t,’ he said. ‘You’ve got too much going against you on Alvaro. Your Japanese bosses expect you to keep an uninterrupted flow of high-grade timber moving out; you’ve upset the local islanders by uprooting them from their custom land; most of your technicians are a bunch of gutless white rubbish men on the run from one thing or another; you’ve upset a local freedom-fighting group, and you depend for your labour on a force of hairy-arsed Malaitans who could take over your whole logging camp whenever they wanted to.’

  Michie did not reply for a moment. His face still betrayed no emotion. The man was probably a pretty fair poker player, thought Kella.

  ‘You don’t do obsequious, do you, Sergeant?’ the big Australian said thoughtfully.

  ‘Maybe I’m practising for the post-colonial era.’

  ‘You and me both,’ sighed Michie, sipping his coffee. ‘You and me both.’

  Kella wondered how many dependent nations still remained to
give nomadic expatriates like the logging boss work, and for how long. Already most emerging countries were insisting on any new operations being placed in the hands of local overseers. Soon the rough-hewn but shrewd Michie would be as obsolete as the remaining British official administrators clinging desperately like alcoholic limpets to their tenuous positions in the South Pacific. The difference was that Michie seemed to be aware of his precarious position.

  ‘Do you want me to show you where the attacks took place?’ asked the logging boss, with little hope in his voice.

  Kella nodded. Under different circumstances, he decided, he might almost have liked the crude, bull-headed Australian. Michie was a brave man. It was not his fault that he as much in thrall to his own background and customs as Kella was to his.

  ‘That would help,’ said Kella, draining his coffee cup and standing up.

  Outside, Michie led the sergeant to the piles of logs waiting to be floated out to sea. Over the last year or so there had been so much traffic across the swampy area of peat bogs running down to the sand that Kella could see coral outcrops almost masked by dying mangrove roots visible below potholes worn in the surface. He recognized some of the different kinds of felled trees in the heaps, lopped and stripped of their branches. There were towers of kesi, airate, noora and nanum. Looming over all the others were the large collections of the grey-barked kauri pines, which would be exported to be stripped, planed and turned into profitable plywood. Michie stopped in front of two piles a little apart from the others. They were shrouded in black plastic sheeting. He shouted to a gang of labourers to strip back the coverings. The sheets fell to the ground to reveal a tangle of burnt and useless gnarled tanglewood.

  ‘There were two separate fires, a few nights apart, about a month ago,’ said the logging boss. ‘By the time anyone got here, they were well ablaze. We’ve put a permanent night guard on the timber piles now.’