Nell warbled out every long name of each child waving to her, complete with clan and maternal and paternal ancestor names, until her words gave out and her wailing became incoherent. The children waded deeper into the water as we pulled away and splashed madly at our boat, screaming out things I couldn’t understand.
Go. Go to your beautiful dances, your beautiful ceremonies. And we will bury our dead.
The sky seemed so low, so bleak. For a moment I lost my bearings entirely, and I wasn’t even sure where to point the boat, how to get back to the river. Then I remembered the canal between the hills and I pushed up the throttle and the motor drowned out all their voices. The canoe lifted, lurched, then skimmed fast across the black lake.
We flagged down a pinnace almost as soon as we reached the Sepik proper. It was a boat full of missionaries from Glasgow who planned to sprinkle themselves and their faith all over the region. I could see their hearty confidence falter as soon as they saw us.
‘Been through the wars, have ye?’ one of them managed, but they shrunk from us as soon as we climbed on board. Nor did we give them much opportunity for conversation, though one of them bought my canoe and engine for far more than they were worth. Nell tried to persuade me not to sell, to go directly back to the Kiona. But I was determined to go with them to Sydney, and I needed the money. While Fen was up talking to the driver about getting the rest of their stuff picked up, I told her I’d go as far as New York with her if she’d let me. She shut her eyes and Fen came back to his seat beside her before she had answered.
26
We took rooms in Sydney at the Black Opal in George Street. Nell insisted on having her own. The clerk wrote down in his ledger Nell Stone, Andrew Bankson, Schuyler Fenwick, and it pleased me to see their names separated and to see Nell receive her own key, 319, a flight above the rooms Fen and I were given.
Without bathing, we walked to the Commonwealth Bank then down to the White Star booking office where Nell and Fen secured two passages to New York. I’d hoped they’d have to wait weeks for space on a ship, but because of the crook economy, the man in the office said, most liners were half empty. The SS Calgaric would sail in four days. The paper money they slid across the counter looked fake. An electric fan spun bland air at us, though the day was cool and Nell wore a sweater over her blouse that made her look like a girl at university. Everything felt wrong: the fan, the hard floor, the man’s combed hair and bow tie, the smells of cured leather and mint candy. I wanted my own ticket on that liner. I wanted to tear up hers and take her back to the Kiona with me.
Unable to return to the heavy walls of the Black Opal, unable to sit at a restaurant, we walked. I tried to inure myself to the noise, the foot and road traffic, the hundreds of bloated pink faces barking in Australian English, which had become a loathsome sound. Even the shop signs and billboards overwhelmed me. YOUR GAS REFRIGERATOR, MADAM, IS HERE. THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE COME IN CELLOPHANE. Nevertheless, I was compelled to read every one.
This sensation of the familiar feeling new and jarring was something I had relished when I’d returned from my first field trip. This time it felt wretched. I had never seen more clearly how streets like these were made for and by amoral cowards, men who made money in rubber or sugar or copper or steel in remote places then returned here where no one questioned their practices, their treatment of others, their greed. Like them, the three of us would face no recriminations. No one would ever ask us here how we had got a man killed.
Before Fen had seen the numbers, I had chosen Room 219, the one directly below Nell’s. Next morning, when I heard her door open and shut, I dressed quickly and went down to the breakfast room. They hadn’t started serving yet and the room was empty save Nell in the corner holding a teacup with two hands as if it were a coconut gourd. I took the seat across from her. Neither of us had slept.
‘The only thing worse than being out of that room is being in that room,’ she said.
I wanted to say so much. I wanted to acknowledge with her what had happened, how we had let it happen, why we had let it happen. I wanted to tell her Fen had made it clear to me from the start that this flute was what he was after and that I had done nothing to stop him, only taken full advantage of his absence. But I wanted to say it all lying down again with her, holding her in my arms. ‘I should have gone after him straightaway, as soon as I saw the note.’
‘You couldn’t have caught up with him.’ She ran her finger along the edge of the teacup. ‘And you certainly wouldn’t have persuaded him otherwise.’ She was wearing the sweater again. She hadn’t looked up at me yet.
‘I wanted that time with you,’ I said. ‘I wanted it more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.’ These last words surprised me. The truth of them made me start to shake. When she didn’t respond, I said, ‘I can’t regret that. It was perfect.’
‘Worth a man’s life?’
‘Was what worth a man’s life?’ Fen said. He’d come in a side door behind me.