A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2) Page 4

  Ned thought in the circumstances that he needed all of the authority he could get.

  He paid visits to all of his new neighbours on the plantations, encouraging the young men to visit the Administration offices and sign on as reservists. All had been in the military during the War, most of them Army, a pair sailors and one lone airman, distinguished by the twitch in his face. They could all handle a rifle.

  Almost all of the constables in Kokopo knew Ned from the first years of the new force and he could still talk to them, greeting most by name. They were, generally speaking, as unhappy as the villagers, most finding their pay inadequate for their responsibilities in the new Territory. They had a money income, and dozens of relatives expecting to share it with them.

  Property in the villages had always been more or less communal. People had their own huts and gardens and expected to keep them to themselves, except that if they did well they would share the surplus with any villager who needed it, and if, for example, the pigs got into their gardens after a storm blew the fences down, then all of their relatives would feed them for a few weeks without question. A man who went fishing would give most of his catch to his neighbours, for it would rot inside a day, he could not keep it; he would not expect to be paid. There was no question of keeping a tally, of ensuring that a dozen fish this week would be balanced by a feed of kaukau next. Over time things evened themselves out naturally, and if they did not, then those who gave most gained the name of 'big men' and became respected leaders of the community.

  It was expected that wages were to be treated in the same way - a man who had money on payday must give much of it away to his relatives and clansmen.

  The constables wore their uniform and did their duty day after day, week after week, and saw no gain from it - they were no better off than other men who stayed at home in the village. At first it seemed a natural enough sort of thing, but over the years they discovered they had more and more relatives but the wages stayed the same. Some gave up and left the force, and they discovered that the clan was indignant - they had deprived the whole village of their money. They could not win and they were not pleased with their new existence.

  Ned listened and said nothing, but he noted that it was still an armed force, far outnumbering the few soldiers remaining in the Territory. If the policemen grew politically active then there would be problems.

  He spoke to the kiap, who could see no problems in his own little world, was concerned only with the problems on the borders with the Bainings folk, many of whom were effectively still outside the remit of the Administration.

  "Out beyond Toma, Ned, and that's not twenty miles from here, they ain't under any sort of control at all. The missions are pushing out and it's only a matter of time before they chop some of them for poking their noses in where they ain't wanted. Those fools over on the North Coast were moaning at me only last week, complaining of 'devil worship' and how it must be stopped and why wasn't I doing something about it."

  The North Coast of the Gazelle Peninsula was under the influence of Protestant missionaries; they had worked out a border with the Catholics from Vunapope and neither poached among the others' converts, but the untouched lands to the West were open to both. Because it was more important to outdo each other than to apply common sense, both Protestants and Catholics were pushing their outposts out as far as they could, irrespective of safety. Both sects had small stations with no more than half a dozen of lay preachers isolated miles out of contact, sometimes three or four days of hard walking away, yet expecting protection from the Administration.

  The lay preachers were sometimes Samoans or Papuan coastals - obviously hostile clansmen to the Bainings people or the West New Britain clans beyond them. A number of them were Americans, a strange new form of whiteskin often viewed with utter incomprehension because they belonged neither to the old Master Kaiser or the new Master King Georgy. When they preached against the old ways, however, they were very like the interfering demons they shouted so loudly about.

  The Bainings people particularly practiced fire dancing - marching into great beds of red hot cinders and coming out again unharmed - which the missionaries objected to bitterly. They could not comprehend either why or how the dancers did it and therefore knew that it must be wicked. The dances were banned to all of the mission converts, much to their disquiet. The problem had only recently arisen, the Bainings having been untouched before the War, and it seemed likely to the kiap that there would be problems very soon.

  "I don't know Ned, not for sure, because they won't talk to me about it, but I think that the boys have got to go through the fires a few times before they can be men. And I've got a suspicion, no more than a guess really, that the grown men need to dance every so often to keep their status and to celebrate important parts of their lives. I think that when they have children they need to join in the next dance to make them part of the clan, or something..."

  Ned knew nothing of the Mountains, had never walked that far, but he suspected that the kiap was right. In the nature of things, he was more likely to know what was going on than the missionaries would. The kiap was an old man in his early twenties who had been through the Western Front and had lost his youth the hard way; he believed in nothing now. Religion meant little to a man who had survived the trenches, who had spent four years changing from a boy private to a hardened captain at twenty, a loner because every one of his mates had died in the mud. He had medals, Ned believed, knew in fact from his records, but they were never displayed. He cared about the people he worked with; he drank too much once a month when he went into Rabaul; other than that, he worked.

  Ned was on first name terms with the kiap - he was an Australian - but he knew nothing of him; he suspected there was no longer anything to know; it had all been burned out of him by the War.

  "What do you have in mind to do, Gerry?"

  "Not much, Ned. I spoke to the Administration people last time I was in Rabaul and they didn't want to know. They just said that if a problem arose I should deal with it."

  That meant to wait until a mission station was burned out and then to punish the village involved; it was not a policy that either man approved.

  "What about the Tolais, Gerry?"

  "They keep talking to me, Ned, moaning that the Administration won't do anything. When they stop talking it will be time to panic. Until then, there's bugger all I can do."

  "No chance of a school?"

  "Not a hope in hell, cobber!"

  "Bastard politicians!"

  "Agreed!"

  Things pottered on slowly; the cocoa trees began to throw out their pods and Ned dived panicking into his books before he discovered that it was normal for them to grow pods randomly from the trunks, branches and smallest twigs. He had expected them to behave like an apple tree – flower then pod to follow tidily on the branches. He pulled out his notes made for him in the War, checked that his fermentery was set up properly and then began to process his crop as it ripened. There was no harvest time – some of the pods ripened every week, more in the period of the flush after the Wet Season, but never a week with none.

  The sacks of cocoa went south to Australia and were bought in by the chocolate manufacturers at a price higher than he had ever expected. It was still cheaper than beans from Africa and was at least as good. To his surprise, he had money, an income greater than he had achieved in the War, and he began to rebuild his savings. Then came the first set of troubles.

  A messenger ran up to his door early one morning, handed him a letter from the kiap.

  “Wait, please. I will want you to take back an answer.”

  The boy sat down on the porch, was amazed when Jutta came out with a mug of tea for him.

  Ned read the brief note then called for the stables boy to make the riding horse ready.

  “Jutta, I am to take a patrol up the hills to Toma and reinforce the station there. Then go out into the Bainings with a dozen men and see what is happening. Be a week, at least.�
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  “What is it, Ned?”

  “They don’t know, but a couple of the Mission boys have come in saying that there has been fighting and that some of the Bainings folk have been eaten. Because they’re Mission people they reckon that cannibalism’s a bad habit.”

  “Is dangerous, Ned. Half the Tolai have eaten long pig and not so many years ago. My old nursery girl, when my mutti was still alive, she said man was better than pig, for not being so fatty. Pig made you belch, so she said.”

  “Sod it, love! They ain’t eating Bainings people just to cure their indigestion!”

  “Ach! You know what I mean!”

  He came out in his uniform, sucking his belly in to do up the belt – maybe he had been eating too richly of late. He swung two leather gun-buckets on either side of the saddle, shotgun in one, rifle in the other.

  “I’m leaving the other shotgun and the spare rifle with you, Jutta. I’ve loaded both.”

  He tied an ammunition box on behind and set off to Kokopo. The constables had no more than five rounds for their rifles; he would issue them with sixty when he called them out.

  The constables were not at all enthusiastic; they knew all about the fighting in the Bainings – they were Tolais, after all - and they knew which side they were on.

  “No choice, men. You are policemen. You must enforce the law – every man must obey the law.”

  Ned ignored a little voice behind him saying, ‘it is your law, master’. He had no wish to take disciplinary action at this stage.

  They had no transport, had no alternative to the uphill walk out to Toma, two days through the bush. Ned put his horse into the stables – he was not about to ride while the men must march. He could perhaps have conscripted a wagon and horses from the Mission at Vunapope, but he could not have guaranteed stabling and fodder up at Toma; it was not worth the potential trouble. They needed a truck; there was no possible chance that the Administration would pay for one.

  They passed through the Tolai village at Vunadidir in absolute silence; not a person to be seen. They knew what was happening and wanted to be no part of it.

  The track grew narrower, unused by plantation traffic, and they walked in single file, Ned at the front, back twitching just in case the policemen decided that the easiest solution to their problems was a bullet between his shoulder-blades. The bush grew taller and thicker on both sides, the trees bigger away from the coast; mangoes grew here much more than down in the lower land and there were a few of unnamed nut trees, their nuts never seen down in the market at Kokopo.

  Ned pointed to them, received a very decided head shake.

  “Not good, boss. Eat one of them, you reckon you head flying. Eat two and you get the belly-ache something cruel and then you fall down and go to sleep and don’t wake up. Old Master Parkinson, he say they maybe got ting-ting he call ‘stric-nine’.”

  “Right! I’ve heard of that stuff, sergeant. I don’t want that, thank you.”

  Ned kept his eyes open, just in case one of the constables might take it in mind to pick a few nuts and crush them up in his evening stew – but he was sure that none of them went near the trees. He began to wonder if he was worrying about nothing. He hoped he was.

  It was the Dry Season – traditionally warriors stayed at home in the Wet, which was no time for fighting – and they were able to sleep at the side of the track wrapped in a pair of blankets. Ned debated on sentries, decided against – that would show nervous; they were policemen going about their business, not soldiers in a war zone.

  None of the constables deserted during the night; he had more than half expected to wake up alone, but all were there.

  “We get to Toma late morning. Keep an eye out for trouble.”

  They knew what he meant, had to spend the morning’s hike deciding whose side they were on. Fortunately, most had been indoctrinated as askaris under the Germans and had learned habits of loyalty.

  The track grew steeper, its surface increasingly broken; probably it had seen no maintenance since the Germans had set up their camp in Toma in 1914.

  They came to the base at Toma just before noon. Three European style buildings and perhaps thirty of Tolai huts. The Tolai places were well made and properly maintained; the European offices and bungalow had seen no paint or care since the German surrender. There was a sign on the larger office, ‘Toma Police Station’.

  A sergeant and six constables came out of the station as Ned led his dozen in. The Toma men were wearing uniform and carried rifles – they looked like police at least.

  “Sergeant Lapule, sir!”

  A reasonable salute – he was honest enough.

  “Report, please, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir. It is not easy, sir… there has been fighting this year. Men have come up from the villages, sir, to find land. The plantations, sir, have taken up the land the young men would have cleared for their gardens, sir; they cannot build their own huts and marry if they have no land, sir. It would have happened soon, even if the plantations had not come. The old men and women of the villages talked to each other about that and they know that the only way is to take more land in the hills, sir. They have known that for years, sir. There are more people every year, sir. So they must take land.”

  “Right, sergeant. There is a land shortage, so the young men have come up here to find land. There seems to be a lot of it about, and I can see no other villages.”

  There was a view from the hilltop, blocked to an extent by the bush, but some valleys could be seen and showed no sign of smoke from the cooking fires of villages.

  “No, sir. But this land is not the best. The men would have to cut down many trees, which would be very hard work for many years. A few miles down towards the big river valley there is better land, which could be used with much less work.”

  “And that is the land used by the Bainings villages?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So the Tolai men have killed the Bainings people and taken their land?”

  “Not all, sir. They killed the fighting men, sir, and the old ones who were no use, sir. The women and the girls they kept, sir.”

  “And what of the young children and the boys, Sergeant Lapule?”

  “They weren’t any use, sir.”

  “They killed them?”

  “Most of them, sir. But the missionaries took some of them away instead.”

  “What of eating the bodies, Sergeant?”

  “Some of them, sir. I told them they must not, but there were too many for us to arrest, so I sent the message to the kiap, sir.”

  “Then you did the right thing. I have bullets for your rifles and your men will keep the station safe. We will go down to the villages and make our first arrests. Did any of the Bainings men run away? If we send all of the Tolai back to the coast, or put them all in the prison, will there be people to come back to the villages?”

  “No, sir. A few of them ran, but they came to the wild villages where they do not know the white masters and the law. They were all killed there, sir – apart from the women and girls, of course.”

  “Of course!”

  Ned did not know what to do.

  The cannibalism had to end; that was given, it was intolerable.

  That said, if he arrested every Tolai man then he would leave the villages empty except for the taken women and girls. They would last a week, if they were lucky, before the uncontacted clans came raiding. If he did not drive the Tolai back to their own villages then he would be condoning their land grab and the killings that had gone with it.

  Nothing that he did could protect the Bainings women and their daughters, unless he dragged them from their land and marched them down to the coast where the Administration would have nothing for them.

  “Sergeant Lapule, do you know the faces of any of the leaders among the Tolai men?”

  “There are seven of them, sir, and a puri-puri man who tells them all what they must do. He is a very wicked man, sir; he can turn himself into a
bat, though he cannot fly, but must ride on the back of a pig at night. Any man who talks against him will soon die from his curses, sir. It has been known many times that an elder shouted rude words at him and was cursed. One week until his hair began to fall out in great clumps, and then his legs twisted against themselves so that he fell when he tried to walk. Then his teeth fell out and he began to dribble and to talk like a silly, long-long man. Then he died. Sometimes his whole family with him.”

  Ned knew of that one, he had long since been told by mission doctors of the roots of certain plants, small and insignificant to look at, that took up the heavy metals from the ground and concentrated them. When released, in a stew pot for example, they poisoned the brain. The volcanic soil of the Gazelle contained much in the way of traces of the dangerous metals. That particular curse relied only upon a woman of the household who could be ordered or cajoled into adding a little extra to the old man’s food bowl. Many elders, being rich, took young wives when they became grey-haired, the arrangements being made with the girls’ fathers and often to their great distaste; a goodly number of the girls had no objection to widowhood.

  “Where is this puri-puri man?”

  “In the nearest village, Master Ned, in a hut there, where he lives now. It can be told by the way it is made.”

  The hut would be painted and decorated with wicker-work and wooden carvings, symbolic of the man’s power.

  “I will take him up myself. It is known that his magic does not work against Diggers.”

  That was perfectly true. The puri-puri man’s curses did not affect the whiteskins and, quite equally, the missionaries’ excommunications did nothing to the magician. It had frequently been observed during the German days that Mauser bullets were quite lethal however. They suspected that the three-oh-three Lee Enfields they now carried would be just as good.