One Blood (16 page)

‘Just tell me about Kakaihe and we will go and not come back to your village, I promise you.’

The headman stood thinking. He nodded. ‘Ask quickly, then,’ he muttered.

‘What sort of a man was Kakaihe?’ asked Conchita.

‘He was a rubbish man,’ said the headman, as if speaking from the heart for the first time. ‘He was very young at the time. He was about eighteen or nineteen, no more. Kakaihe was very proud and headstrong, always boasting about his bloodline. He would quarrel with people and become offended easily. He was not an experienced coast-watcher, so he was not given an important part to play in searching for Kennedy. That was why Sister Brigid found him still here and was able to use him as a guide.’

‘So he wasn’t a full-time coast-watcher for the Americans?’

‘No, sometimes he did that,’ said Matthew warily. ‘At other times he did other things. He spent much time wandering about the island. There was a lot happening in the lagoon all that time ago. It is hard to remember everything.’

‘But when the search was on for Lieutenant Kennedy, Kakaihe guided Sister Brigid to some of the islands to look for the American seamen?’

‘We did not want Sister Brigid here,’ said Matthew. ‘It was very dangerous. The Japanese were just along the coast. But Kakaihe was most eager to go. Even though he was not Sister Brigid’s usual guide.’

Probably because the reward for retrieving a lost American serviceman was a sack of rice, thought Conchita.

‘Do you know where the pair of them went?’ she asked.

Matthew shook his head. ‘All I know is that a few days later Sister Brigid returned at night with the dead body of Kakaihe in her canoe. He had been stabbed to death. Sister Brigid was weeping and crazy in the head, and would say nothing that we understood.’

‘Stabbed? But if they had encountered the Japanese, wouldn’t they have shot at Sister Brigid and Kakaihe with guns, and not used knives?’

‘Me no savvy,’ said Matthew. ‘All I know is that Kakaihe
had six stab wounds in his body and had lost much blood. Sister Brigid would not say what had happened. We knew and trusted her, so we made sure that she was taken back safely to the mission at Marakosi. We told her not to come back to Kolombangara. They say that to this day she has never left the mission again.’

‘Can you guess what happened to Kakaihe after he left this island with Sister Brigid?’

‘No,’ said Matthew. After a pause he added: ‘There is only one man who might know that, and nobody would dare go to him and ask about it.’

‘Who is that?’ Conchita asked.

‘Teiosi, the magic man, who lives in the bush,’ said Matthew reluctantly. ‘He does not come down to the saltwater villages often, but when Kakaihe was brought back to the village, he visited us and sat alone with the body on the sand for two days, listening and talking to him.’

‘How could he listen to a dead man?’

‘Custom,’ said Matthew simply. ‘We keep the body of a dead man above the ground for as long as possible, so that members of his bloodline can get here in time to say goodbye. Until the body is buried, it is not regarded as being dead. That means that it can still talk to the special people, the magic men, if it has something important to say, or some last confession to make. When the body is being buried, the soul will come out through the dead man’s throat. Then it will go down to the coast and wait for the next boat to the other world. That was the time when Teiosi listened to Kakaihe.’

‘And you think that Teiosi the magic man left this village with information that Kakaihe had given him?’

‘It is known to be so,’ said Matthew. ‘He told us that before he left. The spirit of Kakaihe spoke to Teiosi and the magic man went back to the bush with the knowledge that the spirit had given him. He has guarded that knowledge ever since.’

‘Is there someone who could guide us to this magic man?’ asked Conchita.

Matthew shook his head firmly. ‘My people do not go to see Teiosi. It would be
tambu
for us to do so. His mother was an islander and his father was a wild boar. It would be death for any of us even to look upon him. The women leave food for him on the track outside the village and then run away. That is all I want to say. Now you must go!’

The headman turned and walked away. Other men were coming out of their huts and gathering in small groups, looking malevolently at the nuns.

‘Come, Sister Johanna, my dear; I think we may have outstayed our welcome already,’ said Sister Conchita.

They retraced their steps along the path leading up into the bush. After half an hour, Sister Johanna stopped and sat on an uprooted tree. While the main track continued along the clifftop, a smaller, barely discernible path branched off up a steep slope towards the interior of the island.

‘Are you tired? Would you like a rest?’ asked Conchita, concerned.

Johanna shook her head. ‘No, I just want to think,’ she said. ‘Do you really believe that Mr Blamire was murdered with the war club at our mission?’ she asked. ‘And then his body was thrown on the bonfire, as if it was a funeral pyre?’

‘I’m convinced of it. Why?’

‘It is another sign,’ sighed the old nun. ‘You coming to the mission to change us, Mr Blamire being murdered; they’re both omens that it is time for Sister Brigid’s long silence to be ended.’

‘But how can we do that?’

‘We must follow the indications that we have been given, of course. The American has pointed us towards Kakaihe. Mr Imison may not be a good man, in fact I think that he is probably a very bad one, but the Lord could still be using him as an instrument to help us.’

‘How?’

‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I think I know where the magic man might be,’ said the old nun, standing up. ‘Many years ago, Father Karl and I came here to inject the babies on the island against yaws. Father Karl had heard about the magic man and went up to his lair to try to find him in case he needed help or supplies. I stayed here on the main track. Father Karl did not see the magic man on that occasion, but when he returned, he told me of the path he had taken on his search. I think I can remember his instructions well enough, even after all these years, if you would like me to take you up to it.’

‘I certainly would,’ said Conchita, ‘but you’re in no state to make a detour like that.’

‘It will have been a wasted journey if we don’t try it,’ Johanna said. ‘Sins of omission are as bad as those of commission. I’m not as feeble as I may look, Sister. Follow me; I’ll go at my own pace.’

The two sisters toiled at a snail’s rate up the slippery incline. The trees grew so thickly here that their tops almost blotted out the sky, leaving the track in perpetual gloom. Eventually Sister Johanna stopped, exhausted. ‘It should be somewhere here,’ she said.

Conchita looked around hopelessly. The jungle looked no different here than it had at any other stage on their struggle up the mountainside. The undergrowth reached almost up to their waists, while the branches of the closely packed trees intermingled to provide a profusion of false roofs above their heads.

‘Do you think there really is a magic man up here?’ she asked dubiously.

‘There’s someone here, certainly,’ Johanna said. ‘He won’t be the offspring of a woman and a boar, of course, as the headman believes. Most likely many years ago some poor unmarried pregnant girl was ejected from her village and cast
out into the bush up here. She gave birth to a baby boy in isolation and died while he was young. That boy grew up alone to be the magic man.’

‘What a life!’ said Sister Conchita.

Johanna was studying her surroundings. ‘Father Karl told me that the hermit had a home up here in the side of a large banyan tree. He had a bed of sorts on the ground. It was where two large rivers met and flowed into one another. We can hear those rivers, I think.’ She pointed to the north. ‘They’re over there somewhere.’

Twenty minutes later, the bedraggled, sweat-stained nuns came out of a ring of trees into a large clearing on a plateau. Here the two rivers converged and swept down to the sea with a roar. The huge banyan tree stood alone on the nearest bank of the newly formed river. A hole about six feet in diameter had been cut in the side of the tree. Creepers hanging from one of the lower branches had been trained to serve as a makeshift curtain over the entrance.

‘Do you think he’s inside?’ asked Sister Johanna in hushed tones.

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Conchita said.

With a confidence that she was not really feeling, the nun walked across and entered the lair. Inside, it was stiflingly hot and oppressive. A bed of leaves occupied one corner. No one was lying on it. Sister Conchita took a look round and left the room, shaking her head.

‘It’s empty,’ she said.

It was then that she saw the rope ladder. It was long and frayed, hanging from the branches halfway up the banyan tree. She tugged the lower rungs tentatively. To her surprise, they did not come away in her hand.

‘Perhaps he’s up there,’ she said to Sister Johanna, looking up at the higher reaches of the tree.

‘You mustn’t!’ gasped the German nun. ‘That ladder has
probably been there since the war. It would be dangerous even to try to climb it.’

‘I don’t weigh very much,’ said Sister Conchita. ‘I’ll be careful.’

‘This is taking parish visiting to extremes,’ moaned the other nun in an agony of apprehension, watching Sister Conchita begin her difficult ascent.

At first the rope ladder swayed and swirled, swinging the sister from side to side. Encumbered by her flowing cotton habit, finally Conchita got the hang of adjusting her balance as she went up, step by laborious step. Branches scratched at her hands and face, and heavy vines draped themselves over her shoulders, trying to force her back down. Often she stopped for a rest, struggling for breath. She forced herself to continue the climb, setting one foot doggedly above the other as she went up the huge tree. Slowly her limbs grew almost accustomed to the strain she was placing on them. Finally her head cleared a ring of branches and she found herself inching up an expanse of cleared bark where the branches had been lopped away and kept trimmed close to the trunk of the banyan. Just above her head, about a hundred feet above the ground, was a huge fork in the tree. Across this fork had been laid a platform of wooden planks nailed together, wide enough to allow three or four people to stand in comfort. The rope ladder ended here, fixed to the side of the platform.

Transferring her weight carefully, Conchita scrambled from the ladder to the platform. She stood, balancing her weight, and stared out over the island. There was a marvellous view of much of one side of Kolombangara and the placid green waters of the Roviana Lagoon beyond. Coast-watchers must have stood here to study and report on the movements of the Japanese in the war, she thought.

There was a bed of leaves close to the trunk of the tree. Conchita walked over to the bed and knelt down. The
emaciated form of an elderly islander was lying on it. The man was scarred and naked. Flies were crawling over his face. He had been dead for some time. The magic man must have made the long climb from the ground to die up here where he could see the island that had treated him so cruelly in his lifetime.

Sister Conchita stood up. She looked round the platform. The magic man had few possessions. There was a rusty old bush knife and a few coconut shells that had been carved into the shape of bowls. In one corner was something wrapped in a banana leaf. Conchita picked it up and opened it. Inside was a circle of turtle shell affixed to a larger white seashell. The outline of a frigate bird was carved crudely on the central circle.

Clasping the shell, the sister hesitated. The old magic man had died alone and untended. By tradition he needed the farewell incantation of a custom priest to send him on his final journey. But no custom priest would come near the corpse of this outcast. Sister Conchita would have to take his place. She bowed her head.

‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee
,’ she intoned. ‘
The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
’

• • •

CONCHITA MADE THE
long descent to the ground and showed the carving to the waiting Sister Johanna.

‘What is it?’ she asked, brushing aside the elderly nun’s expressions of concern and solicitude.

‘It’s a
knap knap
, a Roviana carving,’ said Sister Johanna, examining the piece of shell. ‘It has different meanings depending on the subject of the carving.’

‘What does a frigate bird represent?’ Conchita asked.

‘That’s a strange thing,’ replied Johanna, frowning. ‘It’s a sign of peace from the old days. Sometimes when two tribes called a truce in their fighting, men designated to negotiate
the peace would travel through enemy lines with the sign of the frigate bird strung around their necks or affixed to their foreheads. That allowed them safe passage. What would a magic man be doing with one of those?’

‘I don’t think it was his,’ Sister Conchita said. ‘My guess is that he took it from the body of the dead guide Kakaihe. When he told the villagers that Kakaihe had spoken to him after death, he meant that Kakaihe had given him a sign—that of a frigate bird on the
knap knap
. And Teiosi knew what that sign represented. It meant that in 1943, someone in the Roviana Lagoon wanted peace, perhaps even to stop fighting altogether.’

‘Why on earth would Kakaihe want to discuss peace terms with anyone?’ asked Johanna.

‘I don’t know,’ said Conchita, ‘but I’ve got a bad feeling about this place. I think we had better get back to our canoe.’

The two nuns began retracing their steps down the slippery track. Rain clouds darkened the sky. Soon it began to rain steadily. There was a rumbling noise further up the track. At first Conchita thought it was thunder. She looked round. A large boulder was hurtling with enormous velocity down the path.

‘Jump!’ shouted Conchita.

The nuns threw themselves off the path into the undergrowth. The boulder crashed past them, increasing speed and crushing everything in its path. Soon it was lost from sight, but they could hear it continuing its descent. The sisters picked themselves up, mud-splattered and shaken, but unhurt.