I tried to calculate how long ago that would have been. He was exceptionally old for the region, his face shrunken, his features collapsing to the center, and his left earlobe nearly horizontal on a large growth coming out of the top of his jawbone. Hairless, toothless, a thumb and one finger on each hand, he had to be over ninety. He understood immediately that although Nell was speaking, the questions were mine, and he looked at me directly when answering, his eyes clear, free of the glaucoma which blued the eyes of so many natives, even children.
‘It was a ceremony?’
‘Yes.’
How often was it practiced?’ I asked.
‘I saw very little,’ Nell translated. She hadn’t asked him my question. She had asked him what he’d seen. I smiled at this and she shrugged. She asked again.
He didn’t know. Nell reminded him that he couldn’t say that. She had put a taboo on that response.
‘I remember little.’
‘What were these little things you saw?’
‘I saw my mother’s skirt.’
‘Who was wearing your mother’s skirt?’
At this Chanta looked ashamed. ‘Tell him it is common,’ I said. ‘Tell him it is very common for the Kiona.’
She did, and Chanta looked back and forth between us with his clear eyes, unsure if we were making a joke. ‘Tell him this is true. Tell him I have lived with Kiona for two years.’
Chanta’s incredulity only seemed to grow. He seemed to be retreating.
Nell chose her words carefully. She spoke for many sentences, pointing to me as she might a blackboard in a lecture hall. Using a careful grave tone, nearly worshipful.
‘I saw my uncle and my father in courting clothes,’ he said.
‘Can you describe them?’
‘Cowrie necklaces, mother-of-pearl collar, waistbands, leaf skirts. The things girls used to wear. In those days.’
‘And what were they doing in these clothes, your uncle and father?’
‘They were walking around in a circle.’
‘And then?’
‘They kept walking.’
‘And what did the people watching do?’
‘They laughed.’
‘They thought it was funny?’
‘Very funny.’
‘And then?’
He started to say something and stopped. We urged him on.
‘And then my mother came out of the bushes. And my aunt and my girl cousins.’
‘And what were they wearing?’
‘Bones through their noses, paint, mud.’
‘Where were they painted?’
‘Their face and chests and backs.’
‘They were dressed as men?’
‘Yes.’
‘As warriors?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were they wearing anything else?’
‘No.’
‘What else did they do?’
‘I didn’t see the rest.’
‘Why not?’
‘I left.’
‘Why?’
Silence. The water in his eyes trembled. This was clearly an upsetting memory. I thought we should stop.
‘What were the women wearing?’ Nell asked again.
He didn’t answer.
‘What were the women wearing?’
‘I have already said.’
‘Have you?’
Silence.
‘Did something upset you then?’
‘Penis gourds,’ he whispered. ‘They were wearing penis gourds. I ran away. I was a silly boy. I did not understand. I ran away.’
‘This is what the Kiona women wear, too,’ I told him. ‘It can be unsettling.’
‘The Kiona?’ Chanta looked at me with relief. And then he laughed, a great bark of a laugh.
‘What is funny?’
‘I was a silly boy.’ And then he was overcome with laughter. ‘My mother wore a penis gourd,’ he squeaked, and his face crumpled even further until he was just a pair of wet eyes and a smooth wedge of black upper gums. He seemed to be emptying his body of a great deal of tension.
Nell was laughing with him and I wasn’t sure what had just happened: who had asked the questions, whose questions were asked, how we got that story out of him when he did not want to tell it, when he had kept it as a secret all his life. Bolunta. They want to tell their stories, she had said once, they just don’t always know how. I’d had years of school, and years in the field, but my real education, this method of persistence I would draw on for the rest of my career, happened right then with Nell.
After lunch she gathered a few things in a bag.
‘You’re off on your rounds now?’
‘I’ll keep it short today. I won’t go to the other hamlets, just the women’s houses here.’
‘Don’t change your plans for me. I’ll go and find Kanup. Follow him around a bit.’
‘I’m sorry Fen has done this. Made off with your canoe. Kept you stuck here.’
‘I’m not stuck. I could pay someone to get me back if I wanted to go.’ I flushed at my honesty.
She smiled. She was beautiful standing there in a ripped shirt over wide cotton trousers, a bilum bag slung over her shoulder. ‘Take cigarettes with you,’ she said, and left.
Kanup was eager to hear what I knew of Fen and Xambun’s hunt. That is what they all thought — that Fen and Xambun had gone on a boar hunt. He led me to a back room of his men’s house where, he told me, the men were discussing this expedition. I sat on a thick cane mat and passed out the cigarettes, which quickly made me many pals. Chanta was there and broke into laughter every time our eyes met. Kanup did his best to translate, though it was clearly not a skill of his and I got only fragments of the long conversation. Now that Xambun was gone, they felt free to speak of him. Some of the men felt slighted not to have been included on the trip, but the general feeling was that it was a good thing he had gone. His spirit has gone wandering, they said. He had not returned with it. He was once a man on fire and he came back a man of ash. He is not the same man, they said, and he has gone to find his spirit and bring it back into his body. They appealed to his ancestors, reciting their long names, and to the land and water spirits. I watched how fervently they prayed to all their gods for the return of Xambun’s soul to his body. Tears sprung from their clenched eyes and sweat beaded on their arms. I doubted anyone had ever prayed for me like that, or any other way for that matter.
I didn’t hear her come up. I was typing up the day’s notes.
‘I love that sound,’ she said just outside the netting, and I jumped.
‘I hope you’re not bothered. My notes turn to mush quickly if I don’t get them down.’
‘Mine too.’ She was bright and lovely, grinning at me.
‘I’m nearly through.’
‘Take as long as you like. That’s Fen’s machine anyway.’
She went to her bedroom and came back with another typewriter. She set it on the adjacent desk. I tried to concentrate, though I was aware of her legs to the left of mine beneath the table and her fingers feeding a page into the platen and her lips fluttering slightly as she read over her notes. Once she began typing, at a furious rate that was not at all surprising, the sound concentrated my thoughts and our keys thundered together. I noticed that she was manually advancing the paper at the end of each line. It was a lovely instrument, dove grey with ivory keys, but it was dented in one corner and the silver arm had broken off at its base.
She ripped out a page and snapped in another.
‘I don’t believe you’re writing actual words,’ I said.
She handed me her first page. There were no paragraphs, barely any punctuation, the thinnest sliver of a margin. Tavi sits still her eyes drooping nearly asleep body swaying and Mudama carefully pinching the lice flicking the bugs in the fire the zinging of her fingernails through the strands of hair, concentration tenderness love peace pieta.
I looked down at my own words: In light of this conversation with Chanta, and the proximity of his native Pinlau to the Kiona, one concludes that there were other tribes in the vicinity who also once practiced some sort of transvestite ritual.