‘Come,’ Milton says. ‘I’ll show you where my village was.’

Having known his own share of shame, and given to gloom, Milton doesn’t attempt to cheer, or advise, or offer wise words. About Bili, or about the mountain. All he says is that they, the two of them, are on a pivot, and there are people who’ll never understand what it’s like exactly, or even a bit. ‘We’re not just hapkas, that’s one thing,’ he says, and anyway he isn’t. ‘We’re existential hapkas.’ He’s made his own language for it. As they walk on, the trees become sparser. It’s like being inside a Max Ernst painting, Jericho thinks. Looming figures greet Milton, and cut on through to their village, or their plots of oil palm.

After a while, they come into gardens again. On the opposite hill, on the other side of a small river, the oil palm begins. As they follow the rise and fall of a path that borders the gardens, Jericho reminds Milton of the story he was going to tell.

‘What story?’

‘Rika and Aaron. At the river.’

‘Ah,’ Milton says, and walks on, head down, frowning that frown. Jericho’s come to understand that it means he’s thinking, or, more likely, remembering. ‘Yes,’ he says at last. ‘I was living out there, in a shack, back before independence.’

‘I’ve seen photos,’ Jericho says.

‘Rika’s?’

‘Of course. A whole gang of you. Long hair. Flares. A bong.’

Milton makes a noise that might have been a laugh. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘At weekends they all came out. From the arts centre, everywhere. Cooked fish on the fire. Got drunk.’ They walk on, and Jericho waits. He’s learned not to push. Several minutes go by, and then Milton starts again.

‘If Aaron and Rika came, it’d be late in the day. Aaron worked hard. Saturdays, Sundays, no difference. On this day they arrived late as usual, not long before dark, and Aaron went down to the river for a swim. Rika had a whole lot of food and stuff, she was busy with that. Then she went to the river. We were sitting around outside, and watched her go down the path, out of sight. A moment later she was screaming, loud enough for someone to be dead.’

Milton goes quiet again. ‘She saw a snake,’ he says eventually. ‘It slid into the water from the other bank. She was standing on the rocks and called across to Aaron to get out, but he stayed in the water. He turned and watched the snake with its head held up, then moved to let it pass behind him.’ Milton makes a graceful gesture with his head as if watching the snake. ‘It slid up onto the bank upstream from Rika and disappeared. We rushed to the river. It was almost dark by then. Sam thought he’d been bitten, Rika was making so much noise. Aaron was sitting on a rock with his arms and head hanging down. Didn’t matter how much we said land snakes don’t bite when they’re in water, Rika kept saying he’d let fate come up close, left himself open to danger. She was angry. First she was angry, then she was silent. That closed-off silence that once fascinated us had turned against him.’ On Milton’s face is Aaron’s bewilderment. Jericho recognises it. The hurt when you’re on the wrong side of Rika’s silence.