скачать книгу бесплатно
In his diary he wrote descriptions of the Samarai landscape that possess the intensity and heightened feelings of German Expressionist painting:
The evening before: the poisonous verdigris of Sariba lies in the sea, the colours of blazing or phosphorescent magenta with here and there pools of cold blue reflecting pink clouds and the electric green or Saxe-blue sky … the hills shimmering with deep purples and intense cobalt of copper ore … clouds blazing with intense oranges, ochres and pinks.
He wrestled with language and culture like his compatriot and friend Joseph Conrad, a similarly-displaced Pole. Some commentators spoke of him, rather inaccurately, as the Conrad of anthropology. This he never was, possessing more of the Nabokovian ‘precision of poetry and intuition of science’, qualities the great enchanter impressed on his literature students at Cornell. But the prose of the diary, written partly in the Trobriand Islands, does share similar unsettling qualities to those we find in Conrad’s tale Heart of Darkness set in the Congo. Both writers pressure language to its limits. Malinowski was seeking a cultural truth, the resolution of an identity crisis.
‘Bronio’ felt that islands symbolised the imprisonment of existence, yet, ‘At Samarai I felt at home, en pays de connaissance [in the world of knowledge],’ he writes. His fastidious nature was repelled by what he considered the inhospitable, drunken and wretched representatives of European humanity he found on Samarai, how they contrasted so depressingly with the natural beauty surrounding him. The ‘part-civilised’ local villagers he found there offended him equally. He would compulsively circle the island on this path like a caged panther. He sometimes felt he was merely exchanging the prison of self for the prison of cultural research. Yet Malinowski redefined the role of the ethnologist, his work expressing a romantic love for non-European cultures. Here was a man driven to seek his own philosophical nirvana. He subjected his own psyche to as close an objective scrutiny as the Trobriand villagers he studied. One of the great journeys of the modern European mind began on this tiny island of Samarai in 1914.
Campbell’s Walk continued along the tropic shore, past rocks defaced by graffiti at the most easterly point but giving way to views of enigmatic Logea island shaped like an oriental hat, and chains of islets married to the sea by golden rings of sand. Clumps of hibiscus with miniature flowers suspended like drops of blood grew abundantly. Arching over the water, a strangely-shaped frangipani tree emerged from a wall, branches loaded with yellow and cream blossom, a canoe silently passing beneath. Almost hidden among the palms were the police station and the modest hospital, a moloch for patients in the early colonial days.
The heat was monstrous. I envied the village boys swimming among the tropical fish in the crystal water. I leant on a broken rail at the end of the wharf.
‘Those two are my sons,’ a voice behind me said.
I turned to see a tall, elderly ‘whiteskin’ in a baseball cap. The ubiquitous shorts and plasters decorated his legs, flip-flops on leathery feet, but it was the fathomless melancholy in his eyes that struck me. They were the bloodshot eyes of a hounded man given over to alcohol and grief. The lower lids drooped to catch his many tears.
‘Oh! They seem pretty happy. Wish I was a bit younger.’ I smiled pleasantly.
‘Well, I buried my wife a few days ago in the Trobriands. On Kitava. Died of cancer.’
‘I’m terribly sorry.’
‘We took her by boat. That’s mine over there. The Ladua. She was built on Rossel Island in the Louisiades.’ I glanced over at an attractive, wooden trade boat painted ochre and grey.
‘Why didn’t you bury her here on Samarai?’
‘I can see you haven’t been here long! Her soul must go to Tuma, the erotic paradise in the Trobriands where departed spirits dwell. It’s a pláce where you stay beautiful and there’s no old age. You might call it Heaven. You can hear the spirits crying there at night. It’s the mirror of the world.’ People so rarely speak in this way I lapsed into silence for a time, turning over these poetic images.
‘Is sorcery still strong?’
‘It absolutely rules the lives of everyone living on Samarai, particularly the women! Everything is explained by sorcery, particularly losses at sea – people taken by sharks or crocodiles. Dinghies often sink in the savage currents. We lost six drowned over there a few weeks ago, and four over here the other day. They try to take the boats as far as Port Moresby!’
I reflected grimly that all my travels through these infested waters would be without a life jacket or radio.
‘There’s a launch pad for yoyova just along the path. Did you see it?’
‘No. What are yoyova? Strange word.’
‘They’re the flying witches. They spread destruction and flame from their … well, you know! They can change shape into birds or flying-foxes, even appear like a falling star or fire-fly.’
‘But they aren’t real, surely. What’s this launch pad look like?’
‘A frangipani tree sticks out from the wall over the sea. It’s an odd shape. You can’t miss it.’
‘Yes! I did see it.’
‘They represent the malevolent magic of women, my boy. You must’ve experienced that. They’re real women all right. Some have sex with tauva’u, those malicious beings who bring epidemics.’
‘Yes, but what do they do exactly? How do they catch you?’
‘They pounce from a high place and rip out your entrails, eyes and tongue. They snap your bones then they devour the rest of your corpse.’
Those inflamed, leaden eyes might well have witnessed such ghoulish instincts in action.
‘When does this happen?’
‘Usually when there’s a storm. If you smell shit when you’re fishing out at sea, watch out! Then the flying witches will attack by the squadron! They stink!’ he laughed out loud, but without conviction.
‘They’re objects of real terror to these people. It’s no joke because their powers are inherited, carried in their belly. Sometimes the spirit leaves them when they’re asleep and goes marauding.’
I tried to imagine a world where such beings were an everyday part of consciousness. The books of J. R. R. Tolkien approached such a phantasmagoria, but his cruelty was of a different order.
‘Sorcerers don’t have the power they did in the old days!’ and he looked dreamily out to sea.
The boys had begun diving for pebbles and shells.
‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Only about sixty years. I came here when I was five.’
‘Sixty years on tiny Samarai! I think I would have gone mad.’
‘Well, I did. I live over there now. On Ebuma.’
He pointed to a perfect tropical islet surrounded by glittering sand lying a couple of miles offshore.
‘It belongs to the Prime Minister. I’m just the caretaker. My name’s Ernie, by the way.’
I introduced myself … ‘Ebuma looks like everybody’s dream island.’
‘Why don’t you come over for a few weeks? We could talk. I could show you the fishing rats. They come down to the shore at night and dangle their tails in the water as bait. Small crabs catch hold and they whip it quickly round to their mouth and fasten onto the crab. Munch, munch!’
‘You’re having me on, Ernie!’
‘There are strange things around here all right. If you see a swordfish leaping out of the water and going crazy, they have a borer in the brain.’
‘What the hell is that?’
‘A sort of parasite drills into the sword and works its way up the shaft into the brain. The fish goes mad.’
‘What a place! Look, Ernie, I’m going to Kwato tomorrow, so I might call in on the way back.’
‘It’s up to you.’
I could not quite leave this mine of information without a last question.
‘A lot of interesting people came through Samarai, didn’t they? Malinowski, for instance.’
‘Oh, him. You know he used to take opium while he was on the Trobriands? Probably did here too. Hancock, was it Hancock? Can’t remember. Anyway, old Hancock told me about it. He was a little boy when the great man came here. Malinowski criticised him as being a spoilt brat in the famous diary. Payback.’ He chuckled.
‘Come over and see me for a couple of months. We can just eat and drink there … on the beach. I’m working on another boat at the slipway just over there. You could help. Want to earn a few kina?’
(#ulink_7e321ab0-30d0-584d-abde-61e72dc0dbea)
A boy of about ten was running about behaving strangely, banging the walls of the warehouse with his head, laughing manically and fighting off a group of teenage tormentors. He seemed to have no control over his muscles and flopped about like a rag doll.
‘He’s a bit simple,’ Ernie answered my enquiring glance. Boys were leaping into the water in an endless circle.
‘May see you tomorrow then. Come over for a month.’ He wandered away towards the Ladua.
I was sitting on the edge of the wharf when suddenly I was struck from behind by the flailing fists of the disabled boy. He seemed to have gone completely mad and was making the constricted sounds many damaged people make. It became quite painful and I began to slip towards the water. Some of the local boys rescued me and used the incident to give him another beating. He disappeared round the corner of a shed squealing like an animal.
I crumpled in the shade against the gnarled bole of an ancient rosewood growing near a tiny beach. Fragile canoes with delicately lashed outriggers were drawn up amidst scattered coconuts stranded by the tide, the fibre of the husks trembling in the breeze. Women were leaving the market with bundles and launching their canoes to paddle to nearby hamlets. I drifted off to sleep under a blazing copper sky only to be woken by a lizard crawling down my neck. A mangy dog began timidly to sniff my boot as dusk softly enfolded the island in the wings of a giant moth.
The grass-paved street that led back to the guesthouse was dusted with pink and white frangipani rouged by the last light, the pink trunks of coconut palms leaning over a darkening sea. The lonely bell from the Anglican church marked the hour. Wallace was seated on his usual perch by the table playing patience.
‘So, you’re back. I thought you’d been eaten!’ and he laughed wickedly.
‘No, but I almost ended up under the wharf. That disabled boy tried to push me in.’
‘Oh, he’s harmless, a sweet child really. Tomorrow you go to Kwato. The pastor is coming in the morning to take you over.’
‘Great. Look, I’ve bought a few beers, Wallace. Let’s have one and you can tell me about that Englishman.’
‘Oh, him! Not much to tell.’ He grimaced as if I had prodded a painful injury.
‘He came to Samarai like they all do for a few days, but stayed on. He decided we could restore the guesthouse and went back to England to get the money. Work began and the scaffolding was put up. I built a dancing area in the traditional style.’
‘Yes, I saw it. Beautiful local carving on the posts and boards under the roof.’
‘Beautiful, yes. But I only used it once. He was an alcoholic and ran up debts everywhere.’
‘I had an Irish business partner like that. He drank all the profits.’
‘Well, then he left, disappeared into thin air taking what was left of the money with him. I had huge bills to pay. Electricity, workmen. It broke me.’ I began to understand why the whole building was surrounded by old, bleached scaffolding. Time had stopped for Wallace as it had for Mrs Havisham.
‘Did you tell the police?’ The moment I asked the question I realised it was ridiculous out here.
‘The police? They aren’t interested in things like that.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘He’s being sought in London. He’s thought to be in Thailand.’ The story had the faded, melancholic glamour of a sepia print.
‘He sounds a typical predator. Islands attract them.’
Dinah was preparing dinner and the table had been set with more bright green cordial and chicken, taro and pineapple. I poured a glass of pure, chilled rainwater.
‘Is there any local music?’ Mercifully, I had not heard any recorded music in the villages of East Cape, just distant garamut
(#ulink_350f1d42-e45a-51fb-a382-c4c6a080bc9e) drumming. The silence was inspiring.
‘Oh, yes! Music! That’s what I should be playing during the dinner.’
Depression had caused him to forget the past pleasures of hosting guests. Standards had slipped following the Englishman’s betrayal years ago.
‘My daughter is a singer. She’s made lots of tapes. I’ll get the recorder.’
He returned with an old recorder that had suffered the ravages of high humidity. The volume was either deafening or scarcely a whisper. Only one speaker was working. The songs were commercial and South Pacific in flavour, but professionally produced. The voice was very musical.
‘She calls herself “Salima”, which in Suau language means “canoe float”.’
‘Does she live on Samarai?’
‘No. She’s in Port Moresby now. All the young people leave the island to find work. My wife left too.’
Again he appeared to be wrestling with terrible dejection and unseen demons. The light went out of his eyes. He returned to playing patience. I battled with the volume control, not wishing to destroy the silence of the island night.
I had almost finished dinner when the two government officials returned from their seminar. They nodded towards me and padded upstairs. I had noticed with surprise their tiny travelling cases on the chairs of their open rooms. They rapidly caught up to my stage of dinner and introduced themselves as Napoleon and Noah. One was from the Sepik, the other from Morobe Province.
‘What’s the subject of your seminar to the councillors?’
‘Standing Orders. We need to explain the basis of the Westminster parliamentary procedure.’
‘My goodness, that must be quite a task.’
They glanced at each other suspiciously, sensing criticism.
‘They’re intelligent men. Serious men. The problem is just one of language. You know there are over eight hundred languages in our country. Explaining the concepts behind the English procedure is most difficult. Old English is a strange language for us. Standing Orders are supposed to make parliamentary business easier but in our culture … more difficult … some concepts mean nothing to these people even in Tok Pisin. Independence came before we understood how the system worked.’
They both looked dark and fierce with an almost excessive masculinity, as if it was my fault, then they smiled. Such extremes.
‘We’re having a party to celebrate the end of our mission tomorrow night at the Women’s House on the hill. You’re invited. And you, too, of course, Wallace!’
He was gathering in the flaccid cards as he thanked them, pleasure struggling up to the surface. The officials rose quite suddenly from the table and headed off to the evening session at the hall. Another hand of cards fluttered down. Wallace turned to me.
‘They always stay here, the ministers. Soon I will redecorate the entire hotel.’
He looked around the flyblown walls, the stump of his arm more than symbolic over the cards.
‘I plan a stylish refurbishment here. God will bring the cruise ships. Thousands of tourists will visit Samarai. You’re just the first of a great wave.’
I switched off his daughter’s music. Mass tourism on the scale of Fiji or Vanuatu is an impossible, even undesirable dream on Samarai. The situation seemed ineffably melancholic.
‘I’m sure you’re right. Well, I think I might go to bed, Wallace. Could you switch on the water pump?’
‘The pastor will be here in the morning. Everything will be fine.’ His voice trailed away as I climbed the bare stairs.
The air in the bedroom was hot and thick. Garish streetlamps lit the window covered by a thin curtain printed with a tropical landscape hung upside down. I switched on the fan and went for a shower. Huge cockroaches crawled up from the drain but fled as the water fell. I pulled the string that promised hot water but with no result. A blessed coolness bathed me, the effect remaining for a full two minutes. I was slightly worried about being unable to lock the door and decided to sleep with my passport and wallet under my pillow.
