‘Come with me,’ Jericho says. ‘See for yourself.’

‘Nice try,’ he replies. And then, ‘You’ll learn.’

On the day of the independence celebrations, Jericho relinquishes the seat that’s been reserved for him with Laedi and Bili, instead squeezing into the stadium through a hole in the fence with the boys from the mountain. They’re wearing the shorts he bought them at a trade store, and he’s wearing the same. He’s on the upswing, no longer an imposter – authentic, he thinks – as the sun beats down through the long wait, and a slow, resentful clap starts up until Somare arrives, very late.

Jericho is part of the wild applause as the pageant begins. Hundreds of schoolchildren tumble into the stadium in an acrobatic display of mountains forming. He cheers the first ancestors as they draw fire from the earth, and he roars for the coming of the sea people in their canoes and lakatois. There’s a louder roar yet for the coming of the white men with their flag. Jericho spins back to his other self, astonished by the cheers that ring out for the big war with the Japanese, and the native bearers who carry wounded soldiers, their faces painted white on the rollicking stretchers that circle the ground. Something queasy happens in his stomach as an Australian woman from Laedi’s department stands in a cart and reads a poem about the fuzzy wuzzy angels who, ‘Though their skins are surely black,/Have proved the whiteness of their hearts/On that Kokoda Track.’ But cheers are in the crowd, and in the air, and he rejoins the applause until his throat is hoarse, as squadrons of dancers, plumed and painted and rivalrous, spin into the arena, each group out-dancing the last. Of all the applause, of all the cheers, the greatest is for the Christian missions, the priests who cross the stadium with their crucifixes and their bibles. Bigger even than independence and the bird of paradise flag, though it gets a roar, sufficient to lift Somare’s heart when he walks into the stadium as ‘the chief, the father of the nation’. The appearance of God in paradise, Bili says afterwards. She says she’s the only person in this whole damn place who isn’t a Christian. Even Simeon says he is, sort of, though he never goes to church.

‘Jesus,’ Presley says, ‘good man true,’ and he leaps in applause. ‘He die on a tree. Very good. He die for PNG.’

When the celebration finishes, Jericho walks in the singing crowd back to the settlement, where the pageant goes on, every scene re-enacted and embellished. Jericho takes the part of Captain Moresby sailing into the harbour – though he hasn’t read the account Laedi left for him – and that evening he feels at one with the boys who tumble as mountains, drop dead on the ground as wounded soldiers and rise to become missionaries. It feels good, sitting there on the ground chewing that foul-tasting betel, aiming his own globules of red spit, his lips and tongue numb. Napo takes a turn as the first ancestor raising fire from the earth, and Young Albert lights a cigarette, transforming himself into a politician, his pockets full of cash.