But if that is the explanation, something occurred immediately afterwards that is totally beyond rational explanation. However, I didn’t know about it at the time. All I knew was that Sapuru had died suddenly and mysteriously, and that Eddie Wurep, the senior government official, had ordered a post-mortem to be carried out in the presence of Joseph Nasogo and one or two other Buka islanders who had worked at the government HQ. This was to forestall any rumours that he had been eliminated for political reasons. The pathologists were from the hospital in Arawa, a black doctor and a white surgeon assisted by two black nurses. A government medical officer was also present.
By then I was told it was generally accepted, even on Buka, that responsibility for his death did not lie with the police or with any government agency, that nobody had physically assaulted him. But what he had died of, neither of the medical experts was prepared to say. I made a point of talking to them afterwards, and both of them admitted they had experienced cases like this before, cases where a man — it was men, rather than women — had just lain down and died for no apparent reason. Sorcery? They agreed it was a distinct possibility, though the word ‘sorcery’ was mentioned with reluctance as something that by their training and profession they should have outlawed completely from their minds.
The white surgeon was a New Zealander, and he took me to his home in Arawa, where he gave me a drink and to make his point clear produced an encyclopaedia. This bracketed sorcery with witchcraft, and under Witchcraft in Australia and Melanesia it said that, as in Africa, death or illness was seldom thought to be due to natural causes, adding that the chief function of sorcery was to discover the person who had caused the illness or the death. Vengeance must then be taken on the enemy. This it referred to as payback and said it could be done by pointing a stick or bone. When, saturated with the sorcerer’s curses, it was pointed at the victim, belief in its potency does the rest. And of Melanesia, in particular, it said, Belief in the possession of supernatural powers by certain men is universal and these powers are feared and sought by all.
That evening Tagup came to the motel to say goodbye to Perenna. He was flying to Port Moresby and on to Goroka in the morning. Dressed again in his white shirt and shorts, the silver Councillor shield glinting over the breast pocket, he looked very different from the near-naked fight leader who had pranced and taunted and brandished his axe at the head of the black howling ranks of his Highland people. In twenty-four hours he would be over 5,000 feet up in his grass-thatched house, with his wives and his many grandchildren, wearing nothing but a few broad blades of grass. No, he said, smiling in self-derogation, he was not really responsible for Sapuru’s death. But he had warned him that a death wish had been put upon him by a man he had tried to harm, a man who was injured and was a kiap. ‘He knew at once,’ he said, looking directly at Perenna. And he added that an old curse, one that had not been powerful enough to destroy a man like Sapuru, who was himself a sorcerer, until after he had been defeated, could well have brought about his death when his vitality was at a low ebb and the will to live so reduced that he had become vulnerable.
That I think is the nearest anybody will ever come to a solution of the mysterious death of Daniel Sapuru, the two-day President of Bougainville-Buka. Shortly after that, Perenna and I had our passports handed back to us, and we were told we were free to leave whenever we wished. By then we were into the second week of August. The LCT was still in Kieta Bay, empty except for a police guard. The three RPLs were anchored nearby and up for sale. The government had confiscated all Hans’s property, together with that of the Buka Trading Co-operative. Everything, land, trucks, ships, was being sold to provide compensation for the cost incurred by the government in reestablishing their authority in the island. Jona and Perenna had been informed that the LCT was being held as the property of Hans Holland and would be sold under the terms of the compensation decree already issued, unless they could repay all loans made to the Holland Line by Hans Holland before the end of the month. And it was made very clear that this concession, and the leniency shown to her brother, were in recognition of the part she had played in saving the lives of the hostages and bringing the insurrection to a speedy and bloodless end. Unfortunately, the concession as it applied to the LCT was of little help to us. The amount outstanding now totalled 38,000 kina, which was the equivalent of just on A$47,000. This was almost exactly what enquiries through the kind offices of the mine management indicated the ship might fetch for scrap in the open market.
It was the end of any hope I might have had of taking over the running of the ship and trying to make the Holland Line profitable. And it had been profitable until Hans had started undercutting the two coasters Jona had originally operated with his more economical, more practical ramp-propelled lighters.
It was the end of the Holland Line, and for Perenna a bitter blow. She felt it much more than Jona, for whom the Line meant very little. It was only the ship that mattered to him, and even that wasn’t very important since he didn’t anticipate any great difficulty in getting command of a vessel belonging to one of the major shipping companies, which would have the advantage that he would no longer have to worry about the business side.
The day I left for Australia we drove down to Kieta early in the morning, just before sunrise when the world was still fresh, and walked along the beach hand-in-hand under the palm trees. All the eastern horizon was a blaze of red, and against this flaming dawn sky the slab-sided, boxlike shape of the LCT rose black in shadow, a cut-out silhouette of a ship, the sea so still and red it might have been molten lava.
She was an ugly vessel. At least I suppose she was, being totally functional, with no concessions to anything other than the purpose for which she had been designed. But to me she had the beauty of an unattainable dream. I don’t know whether it was the dream or the ship I had come down to say goodbye to, but there it all was — a ship of my own and a line to run … and I was taking the flight to Port Moresby later that day.
For Perenna it was much more than the end of a dream, and she was in tears as we stood looking at the familiar shape of the little vessel standing so clear-cut against that translucent sunrise sky. And then the red elliptical curve of the sun’s rim inched up over the horizon right behind her, so that the shape of her became framed in the thrusting orb and Perenna gasped in astonishment, for it appeared as though she were being consumed in fire. I could feel her fingers digging into my hand, sensed her feelings that the ship represented something that had been a part of her all her life. That was all that remained of the trading schooners, the old post-war coasters and MFVs, the long line of vessels stretching back three-quarters of a century to the Holland Trader, and in a few weeks’ time it would go for scrap … ‘Carlos, my grandfather, Jona, us’ — her grip on my hand had tightened, her voice more husky than usual — ‘Red Holland, too, I suppose — Carlos in a new guise — and Hans.’ She paused, thinking back to her childhood. ‘Mac, all those skippers — I can’t remember their names now, there must have been half a dozen of them — and the crews. So many people, all involved in keeping the islands supplied and taking their crops to market. And now it’s finished — up for sale. Scrap.’ There was a catch in her voice as she said that final word and she let go of my hand, turning abruptly away.