The Next Resort

Short story

By Russell Soaba

A CESSNA circles, whines and almost flaps like a loose calico in the wind before touching down to perch at Tarakwaruru. Out of that foreign man-made bird steps a girl of about 18, short, light brown and wearing a pair of swollen cosmetic eye-lids that reminds one of the story of a restless ‘daughter of the soil’ brought up in towns. We watch her unconcernedly, the way we are watch ing the other passengers alight from the small plane. She does not matter much. She is just one of the many that come and go, anonymous.

Yet quite against our childish stares of interest the girl walks straight to us, clutching a Qantas travelling bag and a brown parcel. She eyes each one of us for a moment then without offering us a smile of greeting she says, “Are you small ones Anuki?”

“We are,” we return in unison after discovering that she speaks Anuki.

“Then I am glad to speak my own language again after a long time,” she says, this time smiling. Her cheeks are swollen, if not fat, and almost flush with the European powder she might have puffed them with this morning before her journey. “What are your names?” she then asks.

We read out our names in turns.

When I mention my first name the big girl just stares at me for some time as if I have said something wrong. She then bites her lips which are painted red.

“What is your father’s name, Septi mus?” she asks me, without looking at me.

“Father Gabriel, my elder,” I answer her. In Anuki we always address those older than us our elders.

But with this girl I am forced by some unknown demand to do so.

“Ah?” she looks straight at my eyes.

“My father’s name is Father Gabriel, my elder,” I tell her again with care. “He is the priest of the station.”

The girl’s eyebrows are uplifted slightly, as if she is surprised by what 1 have just said. As she turns away I see an expression of woe, suffering, but mainly of pain, on her face. It is as if the mention of my father’s name hurts her feelings. We watch her walk off to collect the remainder of her belongings with the other pas sengers.

“Septimus!” the girl calls and beckons me after she has collected all her luggage. “Come and carry some of my things,” she orders in English.

There is a high-pitched croak in her voice as if a fire is burning her throat.

The other little boys and girls come and help us with the luggage and we walk to the station with the big girl leading. The Cessna behind us roars, moans and its wings carry it high into the air. It is going back to Port Moresby from where the girl has come. We walk on, seeing nothing but the isolation of Tarakwaruru.

THE station itself is dry almost throughout the year. Trees are stunted and thinned by the dry seasons, the banana and coconut leaves are stale, olive and remain torn by the dry winds while the surround ing hills, barely big enough to be

hills, look rocky and uninviting.

The only grass patches that survivd between the rocks put on the colour of near-savannah and lifelessness and the black soil on which you stand just lightly hides a thick layer of coral and rocks. A hard drive of a digging stick into the earth will result in a stubborn ricochet and a raw peel of the skin of the palms.

Not many people who have gone to towns and cities ever come back to Tarakwaruru. Yet the station itself has produced many who had “struck the jackpot” ranging from mere car penters to senior public servants and intellectuals. But in its isolation alone, Tarakwaruru becomes the next resort for the troubled-minded like this big girl who might have been running from one net of confusion to another perhaps during all her

outh. She has spent most of her fe in the city, perhaps. Or perhaps he went to a high school in Aus *alia thus making herself alien and ninteresting in our eyes.

My father sometimes tells me of is own fears about the youths rought up in a foreign soil. He fears ley have lost their beginnings, but ic never explains fully what he leans by that because he thinks I m still too young to understand.

Some day, Septimus,” he tells me, you will know of the torments of the ities.”

“Septimus?” a little girl who is bout my size and who helps me airy the big girl’s travelling bag calls ly name.

“Yes?”

“Who is the big girl?”

“I don’t know, Charlotte.”

“I think she must be your big ister,” suggests Charlotte.

“I don’t know. I have many rela tes who have gone to Port Moresby, ut I don’t know if they are my rothers or sisters. None of them irites to my father, Charlotte. They on’t even send pictures of them slves.”

“But I still think she looks like our big sister,” insists Charlotte, as : she has known any of my relatives have gone to towns even before tie was born! I look unbelievingly t Charlotte who grins, revealing two illk teeth that are missing. We call er window-teeth. Some day when 'e are big enough I shall marry her.

CHE big girl leads us into the station, and in front of one class □om she turns and stares at me the 'ay she did at the airstrip. She picks ff a leaf that has just been warped y the sun and holds it to her nose, he then lets it go, shaking her head 'ith a melancholy look and letting er eyes follow the leaf until she is /atching the black soil.

“Septimus, where is the house of our father?” she asks the leaf that > lying indifferently between her feet.

We lead her to the Mission House.

Father Gabriel comes out of the Mission House and eyes the girl for very long time. Within moments lis face, that was once known to wear /rinkled passions of animation, now urns bitter, remote and becomes an xpression worn by dedicated re igious figures in moments of tor aenting contemplation. He opens his aouth to speak to the girl but his ower lip just hangs and trembles /ith the profoundest of human motions that words cannot express.

“Ma-Mary?” Father Gabriel aanages to stammer. “Ar-are you _9”

“Yes, Dadi,” replies the girl, her back turned on us and her head bowed. “I have come back to you.”

“My daughter!” cries my old father, as he folds his little, half tubercular body round the big girl.

Continuous, successive jerks of sob bing come out from both my father and the big girl, until my father’s wailing is louder with his whistly gaspings which indicate that he is already suffering from phlegmatics.

We all stand still, stunned.

When the big girl turns away to stare at me, still sobbing uncontroll ably, she becomes a little girl who is angered by some unknown enemy which she cannot conquer. She charges at me in a passionate fury out of a kind of love now forgotten, yet being gradually revived, and I find myself in her womanly busom.

“Septimus!” she shrieks in a weird tone. “Remember me? It’s me— Mary! Why—why don’t you recog nise me!?”

During the girl’s and my father’s meanings as well as Charlotte and the other little ones’ quiet crying, I feel in my soul a certain inflow of consolation. There is tranquility and peace in the air that surrounds us, as I remain numb in the arms of my sister, my blood. Her belly is soft and warm, a bit swollen, and I know Mary is seated with a child, with a guilt. And that guilt forces her not to be sure if I love her or not.