Visitants by Randolph Stow Read Free Book Online Page B

waited for him to say: ‘Do you think I could—?’
    ‘Do you think I could take a photo of the house?’ he said. ‘And, oh—maybe you wouldn’t mind—?’
    ‘Please yourself, old man,’ I said, ‘but not me, not now, it’s my time for a shower. No, you sit yourselves down at the table there, Naibusi will bring some rum. Cawdor, look after him, give Naibusi a shout.’ Then I went off to get out of my clothes, because it was six o’clock.
    I heard Dalwood behind me spluttering and then choking with stupid laughter that he couldn’t swallow, and Cawdor saying, half-laughing himself: ‘Where are your manners, you ape?’ And the funny thing was that I felt rather pleased with him, the boy, for laughing at me that way, because I used to be like him at his age, and even later, when I first came to the island. But of course he couldn’t have conceived of that, no one can conceive it, except sometimes Naibusi when she stops and looks.
DALWOOD
    We sat at a table with a scarred plastic cloth on it, looking down on the sea, which was changing colour, and the dimming
Igau
by the islet. The palms kept up a slow sweeping on the roof, and the white bird somewhere out of sight was swearing to itself in one of those instant rages that cockatoos can turn on. A pawpaw tree beside me leaned in and drooped its fruit on the veranda rail. I thought of tight green breasts.
    Corny. But that was the sort of thing I thought then a lot of the time, and thought it must be the same for him, not understanding that it was not that, never simple like that.
    But then he was laughing and looked at home, at ease, the way he sometimes was when we were among new faces and not at home, and I thought perhaps, perhaps when we get back to Osiwa, this time, it will be over and he’ll be like he was before, however that may have been.
    He saw me looking at him, and scowled. ‘You still doing a project on me?’ he said. Then he caught sight of something behind me, and his face went sort of gentle, and he stretched out an arm.
    ‘O!’ he called. ‘Naibus’.’
    An old woman in a blue dress, with her hair cropped to the scalp, came towards us over the veranda carrying a tray. A rather beautiful old woman, I remember thinking: very straight and young in her walk, her face worn and fine. She put down the tray on the table, and then did what I never saw any other woman do in these islands, held out her hand, and he took it and kept it for a moment, smiling into her eyes.
    ‘How are you, old woman?’ he said in the language. And she murmured: ‘
A bwoina wa’
, taubad’. I’m just fine.’
    ‘That is Misa Dolu’udi,’ he said, nodding my way, and she turned and bowed, taking me in for a second with deep eyes. ‘This is Naibusi, Tim, the woman of the house.’
    I said: ‘Hullo, Naibusi,’ and she murmured: ‘Taubada,’ bending to the tray and beginning to put out the things on the table. I saw that there was a bottle of O.P. rum there, with glasses and sugar and water, and a withered lemon on a plate that said
South Australian Government Railways.
    ‘But where is Saliba?’ Alistair asked her. And as soon as the name was out, something violent happened in the passage leading to the cookhouse, an explosion of shrieks and giggles, screams of: ‘
Ku la,
Salib’!’ Then there were sounds of fisticuffs on yielding surfaces, and one girl kept yelling out at the others. ‘
Inam
!’ she shouted, and ‘
Wim
!’ Then the force behind her had its way, and she came shooting across the veranda, still swearing, like a giggle-powered rocket.
    ‘Saliba!’ Misa Kodo sang out.
    She was wearing all the flowers for miles around and smelt like a rich funeral, and had on arm-bands and leg-bands and red coral beads and a new skirt that seemed to be giving her a lot of trouble to control. She must have got dressed up for somebody, but it wasn’t for Misa Kodo apparently, because when she saw him opening his arms for her all she had to say was: