Short Story

The Villager's Request

By Russell Soaba

AHA! ha! ha! Well! At first I thought it was only a walk. A little walk. I didn’t know why I was walking. Nor did I know where my walk was taking me. No one told me to take a walk in the first place, anyway. Still, there was music in the air. Which was why 1 decided to take a walk. I think.

But wait! Yes, I was walking in a trouble mind. Weariness too (out of old age perhaps) faltered my con science. And loneliness balked my pride, my innate pride, my integral native being, besmalling me all the more, until I couldn’t remember my self the way I did last year and the years before. Some nostalgia about an anonymous home began to stalk my soul.

Well, I don't know how you say it in English but I hope the young lad who is now translating and trans cribing my narration into your langu age uses the right words so that you’ll know what I’m trying to say.

Anyway, I was suddenly gripped by those nostalgic feelings I have never felt before. The funny thing is that I have forgotten where my vil lage is. I have a vague idea though, especially when people tell me that I am in the heart of the city: I am in Port Moresby: therefore, home must be in the northerly direction.

But which way is it to the north?

You must forgive me but I am a villager; I am uneducated, I can’t read signs on the road, and I have no sense of direction. Of course, of course, people told me numerous times that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and that if you are facing the east, north is on your left . . . But how do you expect me to know that if I spend all my time in the dark confinement of the docks at my job as an interior warehouse cleaner then anxiously rush out after work to just see the twilight without knowing if it is sunrise or sunset? Of course I could wait and watch which way the sun moves but I have no time to do that because my boss calls me back for a roll call before knock off time.

And by the time I am free I can’t tell the difference between night and daylight because the lights in the city are always on, day and night. I could

go away from the city altogether, go north to my village, and find this out: but then again, which way is it to the north?

Another funny thing about me is that I am left-handed. So if by any chance I caught the sun napping above the eastern horizon how could I tell which side of me was my left, where north is? I always mistake my right to be my left because I don’t use my right hand at all!

I must have been lost, deep in the sea of familiar faces because I recall, at one stage, asking a passerby which way it was to the north. He stopped and stared past me at something I couldn’t see and laughed. He just laughed and laughed—so much so that he had forgotten to answer me and strolled on. Along Wards Road one time I interrupted yet another passerby with the same question.

There was a stench of alcohol about this one as he looked me straight in the eye, staggering a bit.

“Know what I think, Pop?” he said after a long, contemptuous stare. “Ya dead drunk, old boy!” he shouted at me, almost throwing his massive, podgy body all over the smallness of my 60 year-old stature.

“Ya drunk, ya hear! Dead drunk!”

And the young Papuan staggered along the gutter, vomiting and cursing in tok peles. A sad case, I took the educated lad to be.

The signs along the road became alien all of a sudden. I couldn’t re cognise the meanings of some of them even though a friend (who is now transcribing my adventures for you) had been reading and explaining them to me for the last six years. Once I stood under a sign I knew too well to be safe enough for any living crea ture. Yet to my annoyance a police van pulled up and transported me to Kalabus. When 1 demanded an ex planation for my arrest from the chief inspector, he just lit his pipe with deliberate care and stared hard at me, letting the smoke fill my line of vision and dull the cold sense of humour in his eyes.

“What d’you mean ‘I demand an explanation for all this’?” he laughed suddenly.

“Did you think that bus stop sign was a nudist camp or something?

Standing there with just that scrap of cloth around your groins and no other place else! Hah! Another sam ple of the living ends! Sergeant! Get some clothes for this antique village hippy and send him off”.

A hoarse “yessir” echoed eerily along the corridor of the prison cells, followed by a percussion of heels and soon the repetitive boot sounds died away into the enclosures within.

Such discipline for youth nowadays, I sighed: I wish they’d felt;the pains we’ve endured during our initiation ceremonies.

The chief rose from his chair, his stare transfixed on me with that ob vious laughter still clouding his dark blue eyes. I felt something wet, but warm, trickle down my shaking legs.

I discovered I was afraid.

“You poor old village idiot!” he laughed aloud. Such a civilised laugh, I thought: especially with that wide red mouth, like a crocodile’s.

“Aha! ha! ha!” laughed the in spector. “What a mess! Go on!

Vamoose!”

And he walked out on me! Me!

Me! Me, a 60 year-old village elder, respected by many, being walked out on? O shame! O guilt! O terrible shame!

Rather, still laughing, the chief in spector walked into my cell and locked himself in.

I would like to tell you about what happened after the police bit but my friend here is anxious to catch the bus to the other end of the city to see his girlfriend. And since my friend happens to be one of those quiet but

polite gentlemen produced by Western

education (through schools, colleges, universities, etc) he probably finds it impossible to tell me straight out whether I am mad or not.

In any case, it won’t hurt if I my self go for a walk now (alas, I have run out of bus fares since the be ginning of the year) and start asking everybody in the streets of Port Moresby which way it is to the north.

Will it? I mean, it had been a long time since I left the village and like anybody, and with that strange music so soul-searchingly piercing as well as soft in the air of city life, I am somehow homesick.