Killman (2 page)

‘Papa Noah has a point,’ said the nun smilingly. ‘We’re here this afternoon to celebrate the success of his church, not to pursue individual agendas, however important they may seem to us.’ She extended a hand. ‘By the way, I’m Sister Conchita, from Ruvabi Mission on the coast.’

She did not ask the other woman her name. It would have been a breach of Lau etiquette to do so. A third person would have to introduce two strangers.

‘Sister Conchita, this is Professor Florence Maddy,’ beamed Papa Noah. ‘She is here to study the music of the Solomon Islands. Sister Conchita works at the Catholic mission station a few miles away. There are those who say that she runs it, now that Father Pierre is no longer a young man. But then neither am I, and the gods have seen fit to keep me in good health, despite the threats issued daily against me. Don’t worry, Professor Maddy. Later there will be another visitor you might be interested in meeting, someone who may be able to help you with your doubtless fascinating research. I shall have something of a surprise for you all afterwards. But let us go and eat first, before I make my announcement.’

‘Which university are you from?’ asked Sister Conchita, in an effort at small talk as they walked towards the feast.

‘Juneau,’ muttered the other woman, not looking at her. ‘You won’t have heard of it.’

The reassuring form of Brother John appeared, as it did so often at awkward moments. Smilingly the Melanesian put a protective tree trunk of an arm around the small woman’s shoulders and guided her shrinking, reluctant form towards the waiting food, talking reassuringly in undertones as they went.

‘Come, Praying Mary,’ said Father Noah to Sister Conchita, giggling and performing a sprightly but incongruous little jig in a grotesque parody of the
tue tue
. He seemed to appreciate the fact that the nun had not been fazed by the blatant nudity of the village girls. ‘Let us break bread together.’

A discreet cough of thunder reverberated over the central mountain range. As if on cue, a man clad in a loincloth loped out of the trees of the tangled bush area skirting the plateau. He differed greatly in appearance from the squat, dark Melanesian islanders on the plateau. He was about thirty, six feet tall, and broad-shouldered. He was not heavily muscled, but his smooth arms and legs were thick with power. His skin was a light tan in colour. He had high cheekbones and a straight nose. He moved clumsily, like an affable puppy capable of causing considerable upheaval without really meaning to. This was a cheerful man, thought Sister Conchita, and probably a good and caring one as well. He would be a Polynesian from one of the outlying islands, probably from Tikopia like the others in the separate group.

He was carrying a large wooden cage. Father Noah raised an eyebrow in an exaggerated blend of surprise and censure at the sight of its contents.

‘Shem, my dear son!’ he said in a carefully guarded neutral tone. ‘What have you brought this time?’

‘A pair of bird-wings,’ said the other islander happily, speaking English in deference to the expatriate sister’s presence. ‘Assuredly they were on the way to the ark by themselves, but the noise of the singing bothered them and made them stop on a nearby bush, so I put them in the cage for the last part of their journey and brought them here for you.’

Papa Noah frowned. ‘But you had to carry them,’ he pointed out disapprovingly. ‘You know that I only take animals that make their own way to my ark. They must come of their own free will.’

‘These two had almost finished their journey,’ argued the islander called Shem. ‘I just helped the poor tired creatures at the end of their flight. Look, aren’t they beautiful?’ He turned appealingly to Sister Conchita, lifting the cage so that she could see its contents. The nun could not help smiling in response to the man’s ingenuous enthusiasm. Inside, behind the slatted rails, were two enormous butterflies. The bigger of the pair had a cream-coloured body and brown wings with white markings. As Sister Conchita watched, the glorious insect spread its wings. They must have been twelve inches in diameter. The other butterfly, cowering on the same perch, presumably its mate, was smaller, with blue and green markings.

Papa Noah shook his head stubbornly. ‘The Bible has told us,’ he said.
‘And there went in unto Noah, into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life
. It does not say that they were carried into the ark in boxes. No, Shem, I am sorry, but I cannot take your bird-wings.’

‘We’re never going to fill the ark,’ said Shem, sadly, but still smiling hopefully. ‘Every time I bring you a fresh pair of animals, you tell me that they must come of their own free will! At this rate we won’t be ready to sail away when the flood comes.’

‘Oh yes we will,’ said the old Malaitan confidently. ‘I have had another of my visions. Someone is coming from far away to help us. I shall tell everyone about it after we have eaten.’

‘Surely we don’t need any more help,’ said Shem, looking alarmed. ‘You and I are together in this, Papa Noah. You told me that the gods had given the two of us the task of filling the ark and sailing away when it is full. That’s why I joined you and became your son.’

Papa Noah did not speak. The younger man hesitated, and then shrugged and opened the front of the cage with a gentle twist of his powerful wrists. The two magnificent butterflies vibrated their wings expectantly and then flapped regally back towards the trees, climbing steadily. Shem watched them go, and then moved on towards the waterfall, muttering disconsolately to himself like a good-tempered but disappointed child.

The centrepiece of the Lau Church of the Blessed Ark lay ahead of him on the edge of the cliff. This was the vessel still being assembled lovingly, section by section, by Papa Noah. To an outsider it might appear to be a crudely constructed assemblage of brushwood, tree trunks and aggressively bristling thatch hammered and slotted together into a listing caricature of an ark, but to the hundreds of adherents of the cult it represented nirvana. It was thirty feet long and half as wide, constructed roughly in the shape of a cutter boat and rising to twice the height of the average islander. A deck constructed of weather-beaten planks of various shapes salvaged from the lagoon and the ocean beyond covered a hull extending the length and breadth of the landlocked craft. A spindly tree trunk formed a rough approximation of a mast rising from the centre of the deck. Piles of creepers had been thrust into gaps in the sides. Two doors, one at each end of the static vessel, had been roughly hewn and fitted into the hull. About fifty yards away from the ark was a scattered deposit of mildewed planks, spars, salvaged rusted nails and indefinable hunks of metal, all ready to be pressed into service for the next stage of the building process.

‘Please take your places,’ cried Papa Noah to the crowd back at the feast, gesturing expansively towards the food.

The islanders surged forward eagerly. Within minutes, most of the men, women and children were eating without inhibition. Papa Noah sat on the mat at the head of the feast, beaming in an avuncular fashion on his guests. At his invitation Sister Conchita sat on his right. Brother John occupied the mat next to the patriarch on his other side. Florence Maddy sat farther down, next to the large Melanesian missionary, still simmering mutinously and only picking sulkily at her food.

As she ate, her eyes cast down modestly, Sister Conchita observed the situation around her without seeming to do so. She had consulted Father Pierre, the elderly priest in charge of her mission at Ruvabi, at some length before deciding to accept the invitation from the Church of the Blessed Ark.

‘It’s a breakaway cult, there’s no doubt about that,’ the old man had said. ‘However, it claims to be at least semi-Christian. We don’t want to close the doors on it too quickly. Go along and see what you can find out.’ Then Father Pierre had smiled, an increasingly uncommon event these days. ‘With your genius for investigation and getting to the heart of matters, that should be an easy task for you.’

Almost certainly the priest had overestimated her capabilities on this occasion, and probably on many others, thought the nun. So far she had discovered relatively little. She would have been better employed back at the mission. It needed a thorough spring-clean. She had heard several rumours over the past few weeks that Ruvabi was due for a visit from the bishop’s inspector, an ominous augury.

There seemed to be nothing here worthy of report to Father Pierre. Papa Noah appeared to be an innocuous, almost saintly man, concerned only with the stocking of his embryonic ark in an appropriate fashion. His followers were all ordinary Melanesians and Polynesians, with no obvious extremists among them. The Tikopian called Shem had seemed mildly resentful when Noah had ordered him to free the butterflies, but he had done as he had been told.

The only real problem lay in the looming presence of Brother John. Why had he bothered to attend the ceremony? Sister Conchita was there because her mission was situated in the area and her superiors needed to study and analyse the newly founded Church of the Blessed Ark in case it might impinge upon the work and numbers of the established church. But Brother John was an itinerant preacher, covering the whole northern section of Malaita, from coast to coast. What interest could such a shrewd, busy and knowledgeable man have in an insignificant splinter group like Papa Noah’s?

Conchita developed the line of thought in her mind. Not only had Brother John attended the feast; the normally taciturn missionary was actually at this moment attempting to initiate a conversation, a rare occurrence in her experience. He leant forward, almost anxiously, and addressed the still beaming Papa Noah.

‘You said that someone was coming from a distance to help you with your duties,’ said the big man. ‘I wonder who that might be.’

‘Can’t you guess?’ asked Papa Noah playfully, obviously enjoying the moment. ‘I thought you might be able to work it out from the subject of the entertainment just provided.’

‘Which part?’ asked Sister Conchita caustically, unable to restrain herself. ‘The naked girls or the war chant?’

Papa Noah laughed. He was teasing whitey and getting away with it, an event that would have been unheard of among the islands of his youth fifty years ago. ‘A little of both, Praying Mary,’ he chuckled, ‘a little of both.’

‘This visitor,’ persisted Brother John. ‘Who is it to be?’

‘A surprise,’ said Noah archly. ‘You must be patient, Brother John, like Job in the Bible. Soon we will be rich.’

The long-threatened storm arrived like a flustered overdue guest. Warm drops of rain the size of leaves began to fall. In a moment clouds screened the sky, sucking all the light from it. It grew steadily darker on the plateau. In the background, thunder roared sonorously, calling the always alert evil spirits of the area out of their hiding places behind the rocks and at the bottoms of the streams. Lightning crackled and sparked spasmodically over the trees and waterfall. As if to make up for lost time, the rain began to fall seriously and steadily. It came down first in jerking spasms and then in solid, stinging rods, and finally as an inescapable seamless, soaking sheet. A snarling wind toyed with the trees at the edge of the clearing. The food on the ground was scattered, hurtling across the plateau. The guests screamed in alarm at the unexpected velocity of the attack. Only Papa Noah was not cowed. It was almost as if he had been expecting such a hurricane. The old man staggered joyously to his feet, his frail body tottering a few paces forward at an angle into the wind. He raised his stems of arms.

‘
Ala tagalangaini dafa fasui fasui fulas!
’ he cried to his adherents.

‘The old fool’s telling them that it’s all over,’ Brother John shouted to Conchita. ‘He’s saying that the great flood is coming and they are all doomed! He even seems happy about it! Look at him!’

Sister Conchita was already contemplating the old islander with concern. Papa Noah’s eyes were closed in concentration. He was dancing again, like a poorly carved marionette. His thin legs whirled maladroitly through the air as he performed a series of pirouettes. He looked like a man vindicated in a course of action he had followed for too long. He performed one particularly towering final leap and fell to the ground in a clumsy concatenation of flurrying limbs. He lay still for a moment and then scrambled to his feet and scampered off into the driving rain as if late for an appointment.

By now most of the guests at the feast were on their feet and running screaming in terror down the slope towards the shelter of the village below. The rain clouds had obscured the sun and it was difficult to see what was happening in the sudden incongruous mid-afternoon gloom. Sister Conchita, standing up, was aware of the emaciated shape of Papa Noah disappearing in the distance, cantering awkwardly in the direction of his ark. She started to hurry after the old islander. Brother John loomed out of the darkness, seized her by the shoulder and shook his head.

‘
Tabu!
’ he shouted. ‘Women aren’t allowed in the ark.’

Obstinately Sister Conchita squirmed out of the big missionary’s grip and ran towards the vague distant outline of the simulated vessel. Soon Brother John was lost to sight in the rain-thrashed quarter-light behind her. She would have been unable to tell anyone why she was searching so determinedly for the patriarch of the Church of the Blessed Ark. She only felt that she had to find the old man before something dreadful happened to him.

On her concentrated self-imposed odyssey across the assaulted clearing she was vaguely aware of the outlines of dozens of milling, panic-stricken figures, bent double against the force of the tempest. Sheer resolve allowed her to continue to grope her way against the general tide of terrified humanity in the direction of the ark. Through the driving rain it almost seemed as if the twisted, tortured planks of the vessel were causing the shrine to move, grunting sluggishly, across the plateau.

In the general confusion she lost sight of Papa Noah. Several times she veered in the wrong direction and had to retrace her steps, feeling her way back towards the ark, avoiding the water-filled potholes in the ground. More than once she stopped to assist terrified disorientated women and children to their feet and send them on their way to safety. By the time she reached the vessel, Conchita was exhausted. She leant against the wooden side of the shattered edifice and gulped for air. There seemed to be fewer people in the clearing now. Presumably they were huddling for shelter in the village and in the caves at the base of the waterfall, a few hundred yards inland from the beach below. The nun forced herself to stand upright. Tentatively she began to fumble her way along the side of the ark, feeling for one of the doors. It was as dark as ever, and still the storm showed no sign of abating.