Small girls in soft, feathery headdresses came through the gate from the village and took her hand. They were wearing cloth painted in the same colours, wrapped around them as skirts.

‘Leonard?’ she asked and a young woman from the river pointed beyond the gate. ‘We wait yet,’ she said. The last gap in the clouds had closed, a grey veil descending.

In clothes wet from the river, shivering at the prospect of what lay ahead, Rika let her mind drift back to Aaron and the few days she’d tended him, the nights she’d slept beside him, their first moves towards each other made in small, careful moments; a soft hand, a lip, the sweet taste, salt and blood, skin on skin, the insignificance of all difference. And here she was, cold from the river, with the clouds rolling over, and Leonard waiting.

The drumming stopped. A voice called out, an invocation perhaps, and then the singing began again, the women’s voices rising above the beat of the kundu drums. The gateway was opened, the bark-cloth pulled back, the saplings removed. Rika was to enter. In the large grass circle of the dance ground, dancers moved in welcoming pairs, advancing and retreating in a rhythm she couldn’t quite take into her body, the pause and repetition rhythmic, yet at odds with her own experience of rhythm. The headdresses of the men bounced like the tails of the birds whose plumes they wore, and all around the painted cloth worn by the dancers moved as if it was itself made up of movement. Through the double lines of dancers she saw Leonard with the Arriflex on his shoulder shooting straight towards her, breaking his long-held practice of filming only that which was ethnographically authentic, and never contaminating the view through the lens.

The dancers ignored the first spots of rain as they led the slow advance back and forth across the grass. Boja ran towards Leonard with an umbrella for the camera. Rika’s clothes hung clammy against her. She was cold, her feet numb in wet boots. And still the dancers danced and chanted their high rhythm, until a crash of thunder and slashing rain sent them running for cover. The chiefs hung their feathers under the eaves of a large covered platform. The camera was closed and Boja hurried towards a house with it. Leonard came fast towards Rika across the boggy grass, his hair flattened on his head.

‘You’ve come at last,’ he said, taking off his glasses. His voice was rich with pleasure.

FOR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON, RAIN POUNDED AND POURED. RIKA changed her sodden clothes for a dry shirt and trousers rolled down against the mosquitoes. She rubbed her hair in the small towel Leonard had brought, and wrapped herself in a blanket. Mist was blowing in under the eaves; bark-cloth hung limp from the wall of the covered platform, which stretched between the enclosed sleeping rooms. Along one open side was a half wall of plaited pandanus; the side facing towards the dance ground and the village was open to air and cloud. Leonard was sitting in the centre on a woven mat. He was thinner, hollowed out, wearing an anorak and sucking at his pipe.