‘And?’ Rika asked.

‘There was no child. He died soon after.’

‘And the curse?’ the kiap asked.

‘It’s still here, on this land that was taken from Jiwu,’ Aaron said. ‘If you believe these things.’

Which, of course, Rika did.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT

LEONARD ARRIVED WITH HIS FILM JUST AS THE RAIN began. It sent everyone running from building to building; dogs cowered under houses and trees bowed from the weight of the water that poured and slashed. Leaks sprang from the roof of Laedi’s platform; his visit was accompanied by the drip of rain into buckets.

He had been at a conference in Melbourne – ethnographic film, very specialised – where The Mountain had been screened. Five years in the making, and for three of them it had looked as if there’d be no film. Yet now, here it was, and him, in their hemisphere. He flew up to Moresby; he couldn’t not, though it was a hard return to make, and he kept it short.

The public showing of The Mountain was on his second evening in town. The university theatre was packed. There were people on the steps, standing at the back, crushed in the doorways. Over the years Leonard had grown into a figure of legend, the white man who’d lived on the mountain with a camera, who believed in the purity of observation, and had lost his wife to Aaron. That in itself would have been enough to fill the theatre, even if word hadn’t flashed around that the film, which had been shown at a seminar that morning, was a knockout. The anticipation was high, even before Leonard arrived, and the higher it got, the worse Rika felt. In the week before he came she was sick to the gut at the prospect of watching it, and watching it in the eye of attention; so sick, in fact, that for a day or two she thought that this time she must be pregnant.

But it was fear that had her curled in her bed, where there was no Aaron to comfort her. He was off in the regions, a scout for Somare, soothing prides and calming aggressions. Since the visit to the fjords and the story of Jiwu’s curse – just a story, Aaron said, but Rika knew that in this place nothing was just a story – the gap between them had widened, and they talked so little, Rika began to feel a stranger, to herself as much as to him. It was as if some essential part of her was draining away. Simbaikan boiled up roots of ginger and pieces of bark, leaves from the market, and coaxed her to drink. A child was close by, she said, and for a day or two Rika thought maybe the bitter brew had done its work. But, no. There was no salvation, and there was no avoiding Leonard’s visit. In a resigned voice she said she supposed it was better that Aaron was away. ‘I should do this alone,’ she said, as if it were an ordeal.