And, like a yam, she took root in the garden of Laedi’s university house. Rifle found a kerosene drum from somewhere, which he lined with river rocks, and at the swift transition from day to night Simbaikan lit a fire and sat beside it prodding the dark, roasting vegetables in the embers. Rifle took her presence as a tactical advantage and brought his wantoks, with their betel nut and lime gourds, to the side of the house. Milton came with students from the drama group, drawn by the smell of the fire after the soft food of the canteen. Wana was often there, and when she was, Sam came from his house with a frying pan and a bag of sausages, and a kind of absurd theatre took place as he and Simbaikan negotiated the cooking and the fire. Martha went most nights, after Pete returned to the extra marking that had landed on him in Don’s absence. Rika drove straight there on her library days, going into the house, where Simbaikan was brewing up leaves from the market for the new baby to grow strong. Rika stayed there, talking to Laedi as if they hadn’t seen each other for weeks, and when night fell and Simbaikan lit her fire, she’d take up a seat beside Simbaikan, leaving the veranda to Laedi, who liked to sit within sound of the house, a midway zone she made her own.

There were no guests in Laedi’s garden, and no hosts. There were no invitations, no program. Time slipped its accustomed mooring; people came, or didn’t come. Sometimes six turned up, sometimes twenty. Things happened, or didn’t, direction came without direction. There was Simbaikan, hawk-faced by the fire, and fruit bats in the pawpaw trees, the whine of mosquitoes. There was the friendship growing between Rika and Laedi and Martha. And above, a night sky charged with forces, which set Rika thinking about what it might mean to have an ‘unlocked heart’. It was a phrase she’d learned from the surrealists, and André Breton’s amour fou with the place where she was. ‘Oceania. It has always had the supreme ability to unlock our hearts.’

She’d been in the library, working at her table, when Gina opened an archive box that had arrived from Melbourne. It was from the widow of a prominent dealer in ‘primitive and tribal arts’ who’d worked in Paris in the 1920s, and then in New York, before returning to Australia. ‘We didn’t lead a life that would accommodate children,’ his widow wrote in her accompanying letter. ‘You’d be doing me a kindness if you could make good use of these papers.’

Inside was the record of the Oceanic section of her dealer husband’s business. There were neat ledgers of every item traded over forty years or more, folders of letters and exhibition notices, catalogues and articles. The folders that caught Gina and Rika’s attention that day were of photographs, professionally taken, black and white, and large, not the wretched stamp-like prints Rika was sorting, and all of them labelled and dated.