On the far bank Rika waved as she watched Boja and Leonard disappear into the trees.

She climbed the next ridge behind Kimame and Nogi, the sound of farewell yodels bouncing over their heads from the village. Kundus called out to her, each with its own voice.

At the top she said goodbye to the women chiefs, who stood tall and straight. Nogi took off a necklace of shell and seed, put it over Rika’s head to join the one she was given on arrival. This place, this place was all she could think. This place of extremes, this paradise that blinds its pigs.

She shook the hands of the women who’d climbed with her and were now leaving her to go on with Obi and the guides. Kimame would take them to the edge of clan-land. She took Lilla’s arm, brought it to her face and breathed in.

Albert stood quietly with her old basket and did not mimic her large shiny tears as she went back along the line, shaking every hand, bowing to Nogi and the chiefs, until at last there was only Janape.

‘Look after him,’ Rika said.

‘Remember us,’ Janape replied.

HOHOLA

WHEN THE UNIVERSITY HOUSING OFFICER TOLD AARON that he was not eligible for married quarters, Rika said, ‘Then let’s move to Hohola.’

Leonard had come down from the mountain two months after Rika, head bowed, to work on a transcript of the film, with Obi’s help. She had endured sideways glances and pursed lips. The eager questions were the worst, and then, after he’d gone, the feigned concern. A white woman living in Hohola? She liked the idea. And she liked Hohola, which had the advantage of being on a hill and closer to town. It was a well-established suburb, with gardens growing between the houses; the ‘native clerks’ it was built for had been joined by new players in the new order. On one side of them was a store manager from the big supermarket and his family; on the other, a journalist from Rabaul.

The house Aaron and Rika moved to was boxy, like all Hohola houses, and the rooms were small, without internal doors. The water that ran from the taps was cold, and there was a copper out the back for laundry. But when they walked into the empty house with its stained walls and concrete floors, they saw only that it was theirs. Laedi and Martha tied up their hair, stood on ladders and in the space of a weekend the walls were painted white – a bit rough, but clean and bright. Wana went to the markets for woven panandus mats to cover the floor, and Rika hung her bark-cloths from the mountain over the empty doorways. At the side of the house was a large, bare slab of concrete. Aaron and Pete built a frame over it, Sam knocked up a trellis, and Rika planted vines, which grew to make a shaded veranda where people gathered, crowding around the table, or sleeping on the old bed against the wall. Aaron’s kin came in from the fjords – no one was turned away. Rika sang as she cooked coconut rice and banana bread, food for many.