‘Tomorrow,’ Boja said. ‘Now chiefs come.’

As Josephine approached the house, Leonard went abruptly inside. Had he not seen her? The girl hesitated as if uncertain, and handed the kettle to a boy who was sitting in the doorway.

‘Why doesn’t Josephine go in?’ Rika asked.

‘She no good girl,’ Boja said. ‘She go to cookhouse.’

Instead of asking how a girl so young could be no good, Rika asked Boja if Janape could come and drink tea?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Boja said. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

As light drained from the sky, the old chief climbed the steps to the platform. He stood to attention, heels together like an ancient soldier. Round his neck a pig-tusk necklace hung like a mayor’s chain. Behind him was another clan chief, his teeth worn down to their stumps, and the woman chief in her soft feather headdress. She came to Rika, took her arm, put her nose to it, breathed her in. The woman from the river, with the eyes like jewels.

‘Nogi,’ Leonard said. ‘The paramount chief of women.’

A soft murmur of words. Those dark eyes.

‘She welcome you,’ Boja said.

The three chiefs, the duvahe, sat on woven mats facing Leonard and Rika. Their backs were straight, their legs crossed. Boja spooned milk powder, sugar and coffee into round tin mugs, then poured water from the kettle, and carefully passed them to the chiefs. They warmed their hands, looking into the steam. Leonard had the Nagra tape recorder running, but no camera.

The platform was filling up with people, crowding in. More were gathering in the fading light outside. Boja was standing by to translate.

‘Listen,’ the first of the chiefs said. The old man. ‘Hear me! I am Nanaji, chief of all chiefs of the mountain people. My house is beyond the dance ground, in the village where the path to the far river starts. I have six sons.’ He named them all, beginning with Boja, who accepted the mention as his due. The chief pointed to his other sons among the men who’d squeezed onto the platform. ‘My gardens grow many yams, and my pigs are plenty.’ He listed the virtues of the gardens and hunting grounds of the clan. ‘Hear me and listen.’

‘This is the formal welcome,’ Leonard whispered. ‘If it hadn’t rained, it’d have been outside, after they’d danced you in.’ He gestured to the edge of the dance ground, to a tall, narrow pulpit of saplings, a dark outline in the misty light. ‘Everyone would have been there to hear.’

‘Leonard, man of yours,’ Nanaji went on, addressing himself to Rika, with Boja and Leonard both supplying the meaning, ‘he holds the knowledge we give him well. We are pleased to see this man, this man with white skin, come into our land. He takes news of our art to the place that belongs to him. This is good. This is good for Huvaemo.’

Leonard made a small bow, and spoke a few words in the mountain language. Huëmae, thank you.