‘You want us to leave ourselves without protection?’ Wana weighed in. ‘Without an alliance? Outside the United Nations? Who’s going to stop the plunderers then? Who’s going to stand with us against anyone with the power and the money to land here and take what they want? Have you thought of that?’

It was a bad night. The atmosphere was thick and heavy. The argument ground on and on. Eremiah was out of his seat, walking back and forth like a mad preacher, the sweat gleaming on his face. Insects were flying into the lamp and dropping onto the table. Aaron was lighting one cigarette after another. Rika said something to him, a short, whispered exchange, and pushed back her chair.

‘We’re leaving,’ she said, and they walked down to the yard, out of range of the lamp.

‘Hey, brother,’ Eremiah called after Aaron’s retreating back. ‘You Melanesian man or what? Don’t follow your woman. Stay and fight. Where’s your pride?’

Pride. There was a lot of it around. Prides that could splinter in unexpected and inconvenient ways. Black Pride. Papuan Pride. Pride of ego. Pride of tribe.

The role given to Aaron was to be the voice that could soothe these clashing prides. Wana called it the task of the turtle dove. Forget the bird of paradise, she said. It might be okay for a flag, but it was too showy and temperamental for the realities Somare had to work with. Useless when it came to the task of quelling the disruptive prides. ‘Look at him!’ Eremiah said, opening another beer. ‘He’s cowed!’

‘Shut up, Eremiah,’ Laedi said. ‘Have you forgotten what it is to be a friend?’

That night, in their bed in Hohola, Aaron lay on his back, silenced by the weight of all that was asked of him, of them, of this new country. Rika, beside him, wept for the distance that was opening between them.

JIWU’S CURSE

RIKA WAS TWENTY-SEVEN THAT YEAR, SEVEN YEARS older than her mother had been when she was born. The starvation of war hadn’t stopped her mother becoming pregnant, yet here was she, well fed on coconut and fish, and still no sign of a child. Worse, the absence she referred to only in the most private of conversations had become present in the talk that moved between the women up and down the street. Laedi had been asked at the trade stores, was it true that white women could stop the sperm of men? Rika wept when she heard of it. Wasn’t every great narrative of love consummated by the conception of a child? A child such as she, who redeemed her parents’ wartime suffering. A child who would claim a role in Aaron’s village, an exchange between her and the women, his clan-sisters, who regarded her as essentially different, the bearer of new powers, maybe, but a focus for disaffection when the new ways ground against the old. As the years passed, their suspicion grew. Making a baby was not a simple matter if a woman didn’t know how to open her womb, how to draw the spirit of the child into her.