15. Truth or Dare

I thanked Bahla for telling me his story. It gave a fascinating insight into a rather murky period and, particularly, into the early career of Lomu. It also left me with a difficult question as to how I might be able to use the information. Indeed, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to use it at all, given Lomu’s eminence today. Even if I were to publish this, I realised that it would seem so ludicrously out of alignment with his public character that I would probably be a laughing stock.

Somehow, the histories written by American authors seemed so authoritative by comparison with my own pieced together account, with general agreement at least on the facts of what occurred. I wondered if I could ever complete my self-imposed task or whether what I was writing would have to remain secret until long after I (or at least Lomu) was dead.

Feeling quite disheartened by this thought, I decided that the best thing to do would be to change tack. I had not succeeded in gaining very much information about the shortage of fuel from Bahla and I thought back to my conversation with Langanipa, at the time, about what he had predicted. It was one lunch time that I had walked over to the Tractor shed to look for him.

I entered the Guardians' office and found one of the Sergeants at his desk. I asked him where Langanipa was. He sent me down to the river side and I soon found Langanipa at work, up to his waist in the water. He was being helped by a couple of younger Guardians and a few men from the Village, to erect an enormous water wheel.

When he saw me on the bank, he left his work and came over, a grizzled man of about fifty but sunburned, slim and fit.
“Hey, Tommu!” he greeted me. “You’re just in time to see the new wheel. We’ve set her up with a higher dam that doubles the fall of water. She’s not connected yet but we were about to check the bearings. Drive the wedge home,” he shouted down to his assistants, “and check there’s no play on the axle, then come up here.”
Once they were all out of the water, he walked up river to where a sluice gate diverted the water from the head race and raised a lever to let the flow rush and tumble down the channel. As the great wheel began to turn, a ragged cheer went up from the little group of men.

“Fantastic!” one of the men standing next to me said. “Only Langanipa could get something like that up and running.”
“Yes.” Another chimed in. “He is the greatest engineer we have ever had. We come down to learn everything we can from him.”

When it was clear that the wheel coped smoothly with the power of the stream, Langanipa closed the sluice and returned to stand beside us. “Come on,” he said enthusiastically. “While the boys get some lunch I’ll show you around. Over here we have the power off-take, with a belt drive to the master pulley.”

In a shed next to the wheel itself, he pointed to a steel drive-shaft passing through bearings fastened to balks of wood. A number of different pulleys were mounted on it. “This pulley will drive a belt to the bellows of a charcoal furnace for melting iron. This one drives a five hundred pound hammer that we will use for working iron bars and the last one will be connected to an electric generator when we get hold of one.” His explanation was long and complex so that I do not think it worth trying to recreate it here but as he described each development his eyes were alive with enthusiasm and energy.

“Good grief, Langanipa.” I stopped him in mid flow. “I had no idea that the Guardians were working on this. How did you persuade them to do something so adventurous?”
“It’s not entirely official.” He replied, glancing down. “But the Sergeant lets me get on with it and the boys are sort of helping me in their spare time. Of course they’re happy when we can cast spares for the tractor, so they will occasionally lend me some labour for the really heavy stuff. But come along and I’ll show you the foundry.”

He led the way to a stone structure with an open fireplace at the base. Joined to it were two large bellows.
“We build a charcoal fire in here, he said and blow air though it to raise the temperature until the iron melts. The bellows are still powered by the old waterwheel and it takes several days to heat up. This channel is where we draw off the molten iron and these,” He pointed to beds of fine sand in which the impressions of wooden models in the shapes of wheels and plates were visible, “These are the sand beds where we cast the finished ironwork.”

When we had seen the rest of the installation, we returned to the river and sat down. I asked him to tell me more about the fuel shortage he had discovered and the official reaction to what he had found.
“Ah yes, Tommu.” He replied. “I’d heard that you were writing things down. Well I’m afraid that fuel levels are one thing that I can’t really discuss. As you can see, they pretty much allow me to do as I please down here and I would definitely not want to put that at risk. You’ll have to find someone else to talk to if you want to talk about the fuel situation.”

“So you’ve changed your mind about there being limits on the amount of fuel?” I teased him gently.
“I didn’t say that. In fact I said that I couldn’t talk about it. You know very well that they don’t want Guardians speaking out of turn and I am still a Guardian after all. They can’t do anything about what people think or believe. But the official view is that there is enough fuel.”
“A lot of people think that you were right about the fuel, you know.” I told him.
“I can’t help that.” Langanipa smiled. “There was a time, before they sealed the tanks, when anyone who wanted to could go there and lower a rope into them. That doesn’t alter the facts. The official view is that there is enough fuel.”

“But, Langanipa,” I protested, “Do you not feel that you have a duty to make sure that the truth is known?”
“Not really. Everyone is at liberty to believe what they want to. I don’t choose what I believe. I just believe it. What other people believe is their own problem. What I believe does not matter. It is how I behave that counts. The facts are what they are and it would be very arrogant if I were to think that I could not be mistaken. I have the choice of behaving as if Our Granny’s view (as represented by our Gardeners) is correct and leading a comfortable life or of arguing and leading an extremely uncomfortable one. No matter what I might think, I behave as if Our Granny’s view is right.”

“So you’re not sure that the fuel will run out? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He smiled again. “Let’s not be naïve.” He said. “Two years ago the pump stopped working. They went to draw up the fuel one morning and there was nothing. Just air. Of course they called me. They never told anyone but it was me that they called.

I took a look at the pump and it was clear that the pipe didn’t reached down to the level of the gasoline any more. I extended it and they could pump again. It makes sense. It doesn’t matter how much gasoline is in the tank. If you pump out two cans of fuel every day then there is less gas in the tank now then there was a year ago or fifty years ago. You need to go down further to get it. That says nothing about how much there is left. The Gardeners say that there’s enough and there’s nothing I can do except accept that.

And, of course, concentrate on energy that doesn’t draw on resources that might or might not be finite. I need to go now, and see about connecting the new water wheel up to the drive shaft.”

I thanked Langanipa and turned to leave.
“You’re most welcome, Tommu. Come back any time you like. We’ll always have something new to show you.”

That evening, I cautiously broached the subject with my father.
“What else can Langanipa do?” he asked. “He has been punished twice already. Once for questioning Our Granny’s wisdom. Once for showing people how to measure how much fuel was in the tank. You had better be careful with whatever you are writing not to get him into trouble. They would not let him off so lightly again.”
“But if it is a real problem, then why doesn’t someone say so?” I wondered.

“Look, our leaders, the ones who talk directly to Our Granny, tell us that there is no fuel problem. Who are we to question the people whose job it is to manage these things. It’s nothing to do with ordinary people like you and me so you’d have a hard time finding anyone to come out and say openly that there is a problem.
And you need to be careful with all this writing. You have a good position up at the library. I’d be a lot happier if you weren’t raking up arguments that were settled and forgotten long ago. If you go around undermining the Gardeners, you know they won’t like it.”

Thinking overnight about this conversation, I concluded that my father who, like nearly all of his generation, knew very little of reading and writing had given me very sound advice. I needed to ensure that my records did not incriminate my friends and informants – or even myself.

I reread everything I had written in this light. On rereading the present section I found that Langanipa’s comments had been carefully calibrated to avoid dissent and I would reiterate here that he absolutely and consistently supported the official view on the subject of fuel shortages.

In the section before, the story of the return home after the attack required some slight adjustments. I thought of simply changing the text to accord with the prevailing view that it was Lomu rather than Haziki who had been instrumental in motivating the group and ensuring their safe return. In the end, however, I felt that would not be good enough and so decided to rewrite it stating explicitly that it was the general view that both Lomu and Haziki had brought the band home. I would finish with a pithy comment that some of the people involved felt that the public view substantially understated the role that Haziki had played.

I also decided that I needed to take a more detached position as I continued writing, emulating the American authors whose sober accounts gave an air of authority which, I thought, my work so far badly lacked.

14. Homeward Bound

“When we awoke the next morning, I think that every one of us was nursing a sore head.” Bahla continued. “It was only later, I think, that we realised how lucky we had been that we were not attacked in the night. Even if the men who had been on sentry duty remained sober and alert (and that is something we will never know) the rest of us would not have been able to defend ourselves. Fortunately, however, we awoke to find that the night had passed safely and, as the camp gradually awakened, life resumed its normal course.

Somewhere, in the course of the evening’s festivities, an agreement had been reached that Ezeka and his people would help us to contact other bands in the forest. The result was a series of more or less clandestine encounters with small family groups who traded with us on condition of absolute confidentiality and discretion so that a week or ten days later we had almost exhausted our supplies of trade goods and were ready to set out for home.

In the forest we had seen a number of model tractors, some in the course of construction, some already destroyed and, although we were sure that their cult was completely irrational, we had not been able to have any more sensible discussion on the topic. Even Ezeka’s group, with which we spent a good deal of time either refused to discuss the issue or, if they did, simply stated a blind belief in the necessity of destroying the model tractors as a means of purifying the land and returning it to a natural state.

At last, as the new moon approached, we said our farewells and set off to retrace our path to the Village. I suppose that our success in contacting and trading with the tribes had given us a false sense of confidence and, although we still travelled in a defensive formation through the forest, the edge had gone from our alertness. We were tired after nearly three weeks on the road and all our minds were fixed more on our arrival home than on the difficulties of the journey. The first two days were uneventful although, as we were running short on some provisions, the evening meals were somewhat frugal and the Gardeners, in particular, were feeling the pinch.

The third day was humid and, shortly after we had broken camp, it began to rain; a heavy tropical downpour that left us soaked and steaming as the day warmed up. The sound of water dripping from the trees was also a distraction. I think that we were all more concerned with avoiding the showers of water that had pooled in the leaves and flooded over the unwary person who disturbed them than with keeping a lookout so that the ambush, when it came seemed even more of a surprise than it actually was.

The first sign of something wrong was when one of the Guardians half way along the column fell suddenly and silently to the ground. The man behind him assumed that he had tripped and it was only when he stooped to help him up that he saw that he had been felled by an arrow through the neck and was lying jerking on the ground, bleeding copiously and mortally wounded. By the time he had raised the alarm another three men had been skewered and two more lightly cut by poisoned arrows.

‘Get down and defend yourselves!’ the Sergeant shouted as the column spread out from the path and took up positions to resist further attack. The two riflemen moved to the left and right but, at least at first, there were no targets to be seen. For a few seconds, nothing moved and then, as if from nowhere, the forest was filled with warriors, screaming bloodcurdling battle cries and charging in, attacking ferociously with machetes and axes.

The Guardians stood their ground and returned cut for thrust and blow for blow. We were outnumbered, I think, but not by many and the Sergeant led the resistance heroically, moving about and supporting first one, then another of our fighters.

At first it seemed that we would be overwhelmed but, as the advantage of surprise dissipated it became clear that we were holding our own. Both sides were suffering casualties and our men fought more desperately because they had no alternative. In addition, the rifles were beginning to show their value and, whenever there was an opportunity for a clear shot, one of the attackers would be picked off.

The turning point came when the Sergeant, fighting with a machete in one hand and an axe in the other, engaged three of the attackers. Hacking one in the side of the neck so that the blood spurted in a fountain, he turned his attention to the second and, feinting with the machete, killed him with a blow from his axe. For the third man, this was too much, and he turned and ran as fast as he could.

The Sergeant made to follow but, in his moment of victory, an arrow flew out of the forest, striking him in the temple and felling him instantly. Had this happened five minutes earlier, I think that all would have been lost but, as it was, the heart had gone from the attack and, once the tide had turned, it was only a matter of time before the rest were driven off and we were left to count the cost.

Aside from the sergeant, seven of our men and the gardener’s wife had been killed and many of the others had been wounded. Starling had lost two fingers on his left had and others had been gashed by axes and machetes so that we were occupied for some time in dressing their injuries. Lieutenant Haziki stood silently over the sergeant’s body then turned round to face the rest of us.

‘I need volunteers to dig a trench,’ he said. ‘We can’t leave the bodies of our friends to be eaten. And I promise that I will come back and teach these animals a lesson they will never forget.’
‘What shall we do with these two?’ One of the Guardians gestured to two of the attackers who had been taken prisoner in the attack.
‘Bring them over here.’ Lomu, the Gardener spoke. ‘I need to talk to them before they die.’

The two men were led over to him and, by his orders, laid down on their backs on the ground.
‘You men!’ he addressed them. ‘You have attacked a party moving in the name of Our Granny. For this disrespect, you will pay with your lives. Have you any last words to say? What could you possibly hope to gain by attacking us?’

Neither of the captives answered and he began kicking one of them in the groin. There was still no reply and he turned to one of the Guardians.
‘Build a fire. Then we will see how long these two can remain silent.’

At this point, one of the men lying on the ground began to speak. ‘We ourselves gain nothing by attacking you. But The Shadows will not allow you to succeed. We defend the forest and the people of the forest, the island of Morakeewa and the Fundamental Truth of Granny Frum against the lies of the Great Shai Hathan.

Kill us, if you want to. Burn us and tear us to pieces. For every one of us that you kill, two will rise in his place. We will protect the people of the island and defend them to our deaths and beyond.’
‘What do you mean, you protect the people of the forest?’ Lomu demanded. ‘You have killed Thumbs and his family. How did you protect them and from what?’
‘We protected them from you and from themselves. They were half way to having their souls eaten by the Shai Hathan. They had already decided to run to it. They had decided that they wanted the cargo of the Shai Hathan and the evils of the Village. They had given in to the temptation and the only way to save their souls was to send them away. Their bodies have died. Their souls were not eaten.’

‘So, by exterminating them, killing innocent men, women and children you think that you saved them from something? You do not understand the benefits of the Village. Our people are happy. We have food and clothing, all the necessities of life. They are protected by Our Granny. Is that what you want to save them from? If you had seen how people can live in the Village you would understand how wrong you are. We have spent a week in the forest and we have seen how the people want what the village has to offer.’

‘Many of our people have lived in the Village. We have seen how souls are eaten there. We have seen the bodies that are fat and the souls that are eaten. Yes. The people of the forest are tempted by the trinkets of the Shai Hathan. They are hungry and they think that they will be happy if they can eat. They feel pain and they think that they can still that pain with rum and corn liquor. Hama Batu has taught us the danger of that. He teaches us the Fundamental Truth of Granny Frum, who comes to speak to him.
Yes, you can kill us. Yes, you can burn us. But we are right and right will always prevail.’

At the word ‘fat’, you could see the Gardener bristle and now he turned to Haziki. ‘Lieutenant,’ these men have spoken against Our Granny. Now they must die.’
Haziki thought a moment. ‘They cannot travel with us. We must deal with them now and bury them with the others.’
‘But Lieutenant,’ it was Starling. ‘If we kill them, will we not be exactly like them? I do not think that the Sergeant would have wanted to kill them. He would have treated them as men and not as animals.’
‘Perhaps that is true, Starling.’ The Lieutenant answered firmly. ‘Perhaps that is true. And if the Sergeant were alive we would know. These men might have benefited if they and their friends had not killed him. But as he is no longer here to tell us, then I have decided that their deaths will go towards paying for his. Take them away.’

As I said,” Bahla continued, “We had lost eight of our party. Those of us who remained were more or less in shock, but somehow Haziki managed to pull it all together. When we checked our perimeter we found ten bodies. That helped, as we would appear to have triumphed over the attackers.”

For the purposes of my history of the island, I was taking most of this down word for word, and I was interested in precise numbers, so I asked Bahla about the two men they had captured.
“Including the two that were executed,” he replied, “they had lost twelve. Another of our wounded died on the journey back, so you can assume that they might also have lost men who died later of their injuries. In any case, they did not attack us again so you can think of the encounter as an initial skirmish in what, everyone now knows, was to be a long and bitter war.”

When I commented that Lomu, whose reputation was, to a large extent, built on his achievements in bringing the expedition safely home, did not seem to emerge with the sort of credit I had expected, Bahla just laughed.

“I’m telling you this in confidence.” He said. “I would never say anything against the Reverend Lomu. His sensitivity to criticism is well known and it would be as risky for you to publish any of this today as for me to have told you. You would be wise to accept that, with regard to the great Lomu, discretion is the mark of wisdom.

As I remember it, however, Lomu said hardly a word from the ending of the attack until we reached home, when he declared himself the hero of the hour. Our safe return was almost entirely due to Lieutenant Haziki and his ability to motivate the troops and get them back on the move. As you know, of course, he received very little credit for the achievement and the fact that he had lost a quarter of his platoon counted more than bringing three quarters back. But, again, you didn’t hear that from me.”

He rubbed his chin reflectively then continued. “When we returned, I reported back to the Chief Reader. It was clear to both of us that we needed to resolve the problem of trade with the forest. In particular, we needed charcoal for smelting iron so we could not simply give up on the people we had traded with. We needed an active presence there. As a result, I began to scour the Books to see what wisdom the Americans had left us regarding situations of this type.

To my surprise, I found many accounts of similar situations in the recent past of America as they encountered savages in the parts of their country they called the ‘Wild West’. They had resolved the issue by building forts where they stationed soldiers mounted on horses – a large animal that they used for swift transportation in those days – to protect their people living in the wilderness.

Lomu, when he returned, was very keen to send an attack in force to wipe out Hama Batu and his Shadows but, thankfully, good sense prevailed. On the recommendation of the Chief Reader the system of fortification and protection that served so well was set up instead.
We could not, of course, be everywhere, but we were able to control enough of the forest to serve our purposes at the time. There were casualties and Ezeka, the chief who had helped us was one. He was killed by the Shadows but fortunately, most of his band were spared and they remained friends of the Village almost to the present day.”

13. Meeting of Minds

‘How did you get here? They should have warned us!’ The oldest of the hunters looked around himself wildly. ‘No moving! No moving! Lie down on the ground!’ He gestured with his bow.
‘We demand respect for Our G…’ Lomu began to protest.
‘On the ground! On you faces! Quick! Or eat arrows.’ The tribesman’s voice was shrill and shaking with anger.
The bulky Gardener, already on his knees, lay as if trying to bury himself into the earth.
‘Are you the leader of these people?’ the hunter demanded.
‘Indeed, yes. I am their commander.’ Lomu replied, speaking with the side of his face pressed to the ground.
‘Well then tell them to put down their weapons and surrender to us or we will kill you.’
‘You heard him, men.’ Lomu said. ‘Do as he says.’ No one moved. The Guardians remained surrounding the clearing, axes and clubs raised.

‘If you do not lay down your arms, we will kill your leader.’ The savage shouted. Dressed as he was in a loin cloth, his body tattooed and his hair in a wild mop, decorated with bones and feathers, there was no doubting the seriousness of his intentions. There was silence then a laugh from the Sergeant.
‘You’ll be doing us all a favour. The man’s a fool.’
‘You should have respect for Our Granny.’ Lomu shouted. ‘I am her representative on this expedition and I say that you should lay down your arms and surrender.’
‘What?’ The Sergeant laughed dryly. ‘So they can kill us all? Better they kill you and then we can deal with them. Starling, make sure that if anything happens you blow the head off that one first.’

There was a moment’s silence as the two groups contemplated one another.
‘Sergeant!’ It was Lieutenant Haziki, speaking from the ground. ‘Untie the prisoner. Let him go to his friends.’
‘Yes Sir.’ The prisoner was pushed into the clearing.
‘Do you know this boy?’ the Lieutenant asked.
‘Yes. It is Watu.’ To the boy: ‘Where is your uncle?’
‘Dead. He is dead.’ The boy ran sobbing to one of the women.

‘We are very sorry that one of your family was killed.’ The Lieutenant continued. ‘But as you see, we do not mean you any harm, and so we return the boy, Watu, to you. We have brought you axes and arrow heads to trade, and corn liquor and cane spirit – white rum – to show our friendship. Sergeant, send one of the men in with a pack. Offer to our friends the gifts we bring from Our Granny and the Village.’

‘We cannot accept these gifts. The shadows will surely kill us as they killed Thumbs and his family.’ The chieftain protested, but it was already too late as the contents of the pack – glass beads, arrow heads, axe heads, metal mirrors, salt and sugar – were eagerly examined by the members of his group.
‘You must leave now.’ He continued. ‘Before the shadows know that we have spoken to you.’
‘We will indeed leave in good time,’ said the Lieutenant, rising to his feet. ‘But first, we shall drink together and you will tell us what has happened here in the forest that makes you so fearful that you will not talk to us. What is it that has prevented you from coming down to the Village to trade with your friends? Sergeant, bring a flask of rum and let us sit down with our friends of the forest. Oh, and Lomu, I think it is now safe to stand up.’

Lured by the trade items, the rest of the forest group returned to the clearing, where, after a while, they were joined by members of the Village party. The Lieutenant had to make sure that guards were posted out in the forest so that we would not be interrupted. A meal was prepared, with wild pigeons, forest mushrooms and taro and maize flour that we had brought from the fields. Before long, it was as if we were long lost friends so that even the details of the death of the man who had been following us spread too slowly to destroy the general sense of celebration.

‘But why would you want to run away from the gifts sent by Our Granny to her friends in the forest?’ Lomu asked. ‘You have traded with the Village for many years and we have always been friends.’
The forest elder who had so recently had an arrow pointed at Lomu’s head was called Ezeka. He burped loudly and laughed as if nothing so ridiculous as running away could ever have occurred to him.
‘That was before.’ He said, and rolled his eyes.
‘Before what?’ the Lieutenant asked.
‘Before they said we must not deal with you.’ He turned his head and tried to focus on the visitors.
‘Why should you not trade with us?’
‘Because of Etna Barak.’
‘Etna Barak?’ The Sergeant raised his eyebrows. ‘Etna Barak, who lives in the Village?’
‘That’s right. Of course, Etna Barak.’ Ezeka looked around as if he had just scored an incontrovertible point in a debate.

‘How does Etna Barak come into this?’ The Sergeant asked.
‘Etna Barak,’ Ezeka lowered his voice confidentially. ‘Etna Barak was a great hunter.’
‘Etna Barak? He does nothing but drink.’ The Sergeant laughed.
‘He sleeps.’ The chieftain almost whispered. ‘His soul has been eaten. They told us that we must not go to the Village. The Shai Hathan is there. It ate the soul of Etna Barak. When he lived here in the forest, he was a famous hunter. He could track animals and birds anywhere in the jungle and then he went to the Village and his soul was eaten.’
‘Who told you that?’ Lomu asked. ‘Our Granny protects the Village. There are no Shai Hathan in the Village.’

Ezeka took a swig of his drink and looked slyly at the Gardener. ‘Someone who has lived his life in the Village told me.’ He answered carefully. ‘But I cannot tell you who he is.’
‘That is ridiculous.’ The Gardener responded. ‘Everyone who lives in the Village is protected by Our Granny. They would not say such stupid things.’
‘I cannot tell you who said it, but I can say that he knows more about the Granny, the True Granny, Granny Frum, than anyone.’
‘Granny Frum? Are you talking about Our Granny?’ Lomu looked at him.
‘Oh yes. Granny Frum is our granny. She will bring back the good hunting when she returns to us.’
‘Returns to us? What is this nonsense? Our Granny is in her house. She is with us always.’ Lomu was incensed. ‘Who has been talking nonsense to you?’

But no amount of questioning could obtain more details on this point. All that Ezeka would say was that he could not tell us because of the shadows. Of course, we had never, at that point, heard of the Shadows with a capital ‘S’, so none of this made much sense at the time. All we could understand was that the shadows had some connection with the fate of Thumbs and his group.

‘If it is found that we are talking to you, then we will fall to the shadows.’ Ezeka proclaimed wisely at a certain point. ‘Thumbs said, when he heard that you were on your way, that he would trade with you. And you see what has happened to him. Not one of his band escaped. Not one! No one must know that we have spoken to you or nothing can protect us.’
‘Our Guardians and Our Granny will protect you.’ Lomu leaned over and clinked his drinking bowl with Ezeka. ‘This is Lieutenant Haziki.’
He gestured towards him as he spoke. ‘He looks like a child but he is going to be a great warrior. Hell! He already is a great warrior. He will certainly protect you.’
‘How will he protect us when the Tractor is burned and the Shai Hathan is gone?’ Ezeka asked suspiciously. When the tractor is gone and the land returns to the forest, nothing from the Village will be left to protect us.’

‘What do you mean, “when the Tractor is burned”?’ the Lieutenant asked. ‘Is this to do with the wooden tractors in the forest?’
‘You must forget that I said that.’ Ezeka looked confused. ‘I said nothing about the tractor being burned.’
‘Has someone told you,’ the Lieutenant asked, ‘that the Tractor will be burned and the forest will come again?’
‘The animals will return when the Shai Hathan is destroyed. That is clear. No-one has told me that. That is sure. No one has told us that.’
‘Did you build the wooden tractors?’ the Lieutenant persisted. Ezeka looked shiftily about him.
‘No.’ he said at last. ‘We did not build the wooden tractors. At least, we did not build them on our own.’
‘Well why did you help to build them, in that case?’
‘We were told that if we burned the tractor…’ he stopped in confusion. ‘No-one told us to build them,’ he continued at last. ‘Or to burn them. But when all the tractors are burned, then the forest will return and the Shai Hathan will return the souls he has eaten. Indeed, Etna Barak’s soul will be returned to him and he will be a great hunter, as before. And…’

‘And what?’ Lomu asked. ‘What will happen then?’
‘Why, then the forest will be filled with fruit of all types. There will be mangoes and guavas and sugar cane and Granny Frum will give us animals to hunt, monkeys, wild pigs, parrots, birds of paradise. They will have feathers of every colour of the rainbow. And Etna Barak will help us to hunt them because his soul will be restored. And the souls of all the hunters will be restored and the women will cook taro and maize porridge in the forest with sugar and there will be no more Shai Hathan.’

‘This is indeed wonderful news.’ The Gardener smiled cunningly. ‘And I shall have to share it with all that I meet. Everyone must know this thing that you have told us.’
‘Oh No.’ The chieftain looked troubled. ‘This news is private. I have told it you in confidence. My life would be worth nothing, less than nothing, if they knew that I had told you.’
‘In that case, of course.’ Lomu smiled, a look in his eyes that perhaps Ezeka was too drunk to recognise,’ Of course we would not tell anyone. As long as you tell us the source of your information.’ ‘I could never. I could never tell you that.’

‘My friend,’ Lomu looked at him in a way that seemed to penetrate even the copious amount of alcohol he had consumed. ‘You expect us to honour your confidences and yet you hold back information as if you do not trust us? That is not how friendship works. I had thought we were friends but now…’ He let the sentence trail off.
The chieftain shook his head and cleared his throat. At last he said. ‘Well yes. Well yes. Of course. We are friends. Of course I can tell you that. We were told by Hama Batu.’

12. Contact

‘Anyone can see that it is a tractor,’ the Gardener, Lomu, snorted derisively. ‘Why on earth didn’t the scouts just say so?’

‘They couldn’t believe their eyes and they didn’t want to make fools of themselves.’ The Lieutenant replied. ‘And Sergeant, get those men back out on guard.’ The whole party was thronging into the clearing to look at the strange green object.

‘Why would anyone want to waste their time making something like that?’ The Sergeant wondered, voicing the perplexity of the whole party.

‘Perhaps they don’t understand that there’s more to a tractor than what it looks like.’ One of the Guardians speculated.

‘Or perhaps they made it for good luck?’ another suggested uncertainly.

The clearing buzzed with discussion as the group tried, without success, to find an explanation. A quick search of the area revealed nothing so, in the end, the column moved on and, as it turned out, our ration of events for the day was not exhausted. A few hundred metres from the clearing we came upon a group of shelters. They had been abandoned in a hurry and a few wisps of smoke revealed that the inhabitants had not even had time, properly to douse their fire. Some food had been left behind and, had we not been delayed in the clearing, we might even have made contact with them.

‘It doesn’t look as if they want to meet up with us.’ The Lieutenant said. ‘No chance we’ll find them in the dark.’ He gave the order to move back into the forest and find a camp site for the night.

In the event, a slight rise in the ground that offered both shelter and a good defensive position was very nearby. A foraging party was sent to fetch water and the evening camp fires were lit. The discovery of the tractor and the deserted shelters had briefly distracted everyone from the threat of attack but once the camp had been set up, there was no need to underline to the watch the importance of staying awake and alert. Lieutenant Haziki had conferred with the Sergeant so that, when the fires died down and the camp settled down for the night, two shadowy figures slipped quietly out into the darkness and, two hours later, returned.

‘Only two of them, sir.’ The sergeant reported. ‘They’re very jumpy so we couldn’t risk anything, but they definitely didn’t see us. Let me and a couple of the men stay behind when we move out in the morning and we’ll do what we can.’

‘I want to talk to them, Sergeant. Don’t damage them if you can help it.’

As we set off the next morning, not even the members of the column would have noticed that we were three short. As the day warmed up, the scouts led us out on a trail that moved on from the clearing with the green tractor. We walked as before, in single file, with the scouts moving ahead nervously. After perhaps an hour, the scouts halted, alerted by a movement ahead.

As they waited, a single tribesman came down the path towards them. He was armed with an axe and a bow and arrows and, when they called out to him, he started in fright and ran away as fast as he could.

‘He looked completely terrified.’ The scouts reported back to the lieutenant. Our hopes of contacting the tribes looked quite slim if they saw us first. Some time later, we halted again and news filtered back along the column. The scouts had found a second clearing and, inside it, another of the dummy tractors.

As we approached it, however, we could see that the tractor itself had been burned. Although the shape was still distinguishable only the thickest and greenest parts remained in position. The front ‘axle’ had burnt through on the left side and the cage forming the engine had collapsed into a heap of charcoal and ash. Of the leafy circles that had formed the wheels, blackened patches on the ground were the only trace. Surrounding the remains of the tractor, a circle of burned grass was already beginning to shoot up green again. The fire must have been set within the previous week or ten days.

Again a thorough search of the clearing revealed nothing of the motivation for the construction of the model tractor or what might have led to its destruction. Based on what we had seen of the fire in Thumbs’ camp, we were inclined to interpret the burning of the tractor as a hostile act but beyond that, there seemed to be no sense in any of this.

As we completed our examination of the clearing and were about to return to the path, suddenly we heard a single shot fired in the jungle behind us and slightly to the north. The Lieutenant ordered a halt and the men were deployed in a defensive position, watchful in all directions. We waited half an hour until we heard movement in the forest in the direction from which the shot had come and, after a short while, the sergeant, Starling and one of the forest born Guardians emerged. In front of them, a tribesman walked with his hands bound in front of him with vines. He looked a little dilapidated and one presumed that he was not a volunteer.

‘Only one, Sergeant?’ The Lieutenant raised an eyebrow.

‘Sorry Sir, the other one tried to run away. Starling stopped him but he wasn’t worth bringing back with us. We dumped the body into a crack in the rocks.’

‘And no trace of any more?’

‘Not as far as we could see, sir. This chap is a gibbering wreck. Seems so frightened of us that he won’t even speak. Tell the Lieutenant your name and why you were following us.’ He addressed the tribesman who, on closer inspection, we could see was very young – scarcely more than a child – and he gave him a clip on the side of the head.

The tribesman said nothing and simply crouched down on the ground, curling his head down between his knees. Trying to cover his head with his bound hands, he whimpered incoherently.

‘See what I mean, sir. For some reason he’s terrified of us’

‘I’ll show him what he should be terrified of.’ Lomu, the Gardener, strode forward with a machete in his hand.

‘You see this, you scoundrel!’ he brandished the machete. ‘How dare you sneak around and follow an expedition sent out by Our Granny. Now tell us where you come from and who you are, before we roast you on a bed of hot coals.’

He gave the boy a shove that sent him spinning so that he fell full length against a tree, where he lay moaning softly.

‘I don’t think that you will get any more out of him that way, your Reverence.’ The sergeant walked over to the tribesman and half lifted, half helped him into a sitting position.

‘Here boy,’ he said, passing him a water bottle. ‘We aren’t going to eat you.’

‘He’d better come with us for the moment, at least until he calms down.’ The Lieutenant concluded as the Gardener glared at him. ‘Let’s move along now.’

The rest of the morning and the early afternoon passed without incident, but it was clear that we were now in an area of the forest where the tribes-people were active. We encountered several plantations of taro and two sets of shelters erected off the paths. They were not currently occupied but it was clear that they were used regularly and we had not progressed very far beyond the second when the scouts reported voices ahead of us in the jungle.

‘Gag him.’ The Lieutenant gestured towards our young captive. ‘We don’t want him letting them know we’re here.’

We halted and concealed ourselves off the path while the scouts investigated. They returned to report that a mixed group – men, women and children – were working and resting in a clearing ahead of us. They had posted lookouts but they were not particularly alert, presumably because they were relying on the two observers we had apprehended to warn them if we approached.

‘We must make contact with them.’ Gardener Lomu said. ‘Immediately. Our task is to trade with them and to gather information and we are already in danger of appearing to have failed when we get back.’

‘Perhaps.’ Lieutenant Haziki considered. ‘The danger is that they will all run away.’

‘Well let us capture them, then. There are few enough that you can place them all under arrest. Then I can tell them what Our Granny requires and we can trade and gain information.’

Haziki looked thoughtful. ‘They may not be as prepared to oblige Our Granny out here in the forest as people are in the village.’

‘In that case, they must be taught respect.’ Lomu responded.

‘Excuse me, er, Brother.’ Everyone looked round at the voice of the younger Gardener. To the best of our memory, these were the first words we had heard him speak. ‘er, Brother, I think that perhaps Our Granny would wish us to win friends among the tribes, not enemies. Our duty is to tend and nurture her young plants.’

‘Our duty is also to prune the plants that do not grow as she wishes. Brother.’ Lomu snorted scornfully.

‘Let us not argue about this.’ The Lieutenant said mildly, ‘I think that we should place our men in a circle round them, then you and I, unarmed, can walk into their camp and speak to them.’

‘Unarmed?’ The hefty Gardener looked down at Haziki, a head shorter with his shorts and shirt showing the marks of a week of travel. ‘Would that be safe?’

‘Don’t worry.’ The lieutenant replied. ‘I’ll look after you. And in any case the men will be close by in case of problems.’

With the men in position to prevent escape, the effect of the sudden appearance of Lomu and Haziki on the inhabitants of the bivouac was electric. Some tried to hide in the shelters and behind trees. Some tried to escape and were prevented by the ring of Guardians. Four or five men, armed with axes and bows stood to face them, arrows nocked and aimed at the two intruders. If, for any reason, the strings were released, at point blank range it would be impossible to miss.

Lomu gulped and, in a strange, high pitched voice began to speak. ‘We bring greetings,’ he said, ‘from Our Grandmother, the Saviour and Founder of the village of the Island of Morakeewa.’

11. In the Forest

The Sergeant took the arm and examined it closely. The fingers were missing and it was clear that this was an old injury. “Thumbs, right enough.” He turned to look round at the Gardener who was retching. “You’d better sit down, your Reverence,” he said. “Have a drink of water. Now where’s Lieutenant Haziki?”

The Lieutenant, too, was looking a bit green and the Sergeant walked over to him.

“You OK, Sir?” he asked.

“I’m fine. It’s just the smell that got to me for a moment there.”

“Right, then. I guess that you should let me get the men to search the area to see if we can find out what happened here.”

“Good idea, Sergeant.” The Lieutenant smiled wanly. “And post a couple of lookouts with the rifles. Whoever did this is probably far away by now but it would be a bit unpleasant if they were to come back.”

Most of the rest of the day was spent in a search of the area. It was clear that anything up to a dozen people had been killed in the camp before it had been set on fire. Pieces of skeletons had been dragged some distance into the jungle by scavenging animals. Insects had already picked many of the bones quite clean. The attack had been sudden and deadly, with people killed as they lay sleeping by a stroke of a machete or axe. Thumbs, however, must have put up a fierce resistance. His skeleton was marked with cuts from machetes and the back of his skull had been broken open by a blow from an axe.

The camp was burned out but every metal item had been taken and the amount of man-made material in the debris was small enough to indicate that the place must have been quite thoroughly looted before being torched.

As evening closed in, we moved away to find a camp site for the night that was out of range of the stink of the fire and the massacre. I think that none of us could shake off the smell of destruction – I don’t know whether it had penetrated our skins and clung to us like swamp mud or perhaps it had just penetrated our brains and our imagination. Even the Gardeners, who had not been involved in sifting through the camp seemed to have little appetite that evening, contenting themselves with a pot of soup and some roasted vegetables.

The next morning, as we were about to set off, we heard the Gardeners shouting. They had found Starling opening one of his packs and he was handing out axes – brought along to trade – to the rest of the troops. “Put those back into the pack!” Lomu, the senior Gardener was shouting. “Those items are the property of Our Granny, to be traded with the savages. You are not entitled to use them. Lieutenant! Lieutenant! This man is disobeying our orders.”

The Lieutenant and the Sergeant walked over. “What is the problem, precisely, Sir?” The Sergeant asked.

“This man has broken into the packs of trade goods and is stealing the contents.”

“Starling is obeying my orders, sir.” The Sergeant replied. “I told him to give the axes to the men.”

“Well if you do not instruct him to replace them, then I will ensure that you are all severely punished when we get back to the village.”

'Maybe it would be wise, Sir, to retract that statement. Arming the men with axes materially increases our chances of reaching the village.'

The Gardener glared at him. 'Under no circumstances. I have spoken on behalf of Our Granny and I demand that you do as you are ordered!'

'Perhaps you should think more carefully, Sir,' the Sergeant looked back grimly, 'and Our Granny will change her mind. I said that arming our men increases all our chances of returning safely to the village but, with respect, Sir, retracting that instruction materially increases your own personal chances of a safe return.'

'I see.' The Gardener stood a moment as if he meant to reply but in the end he just said. 'Very well. If that is the way that you want it. You had better arm the men.” And he turned on his heel and walked angrily out of the camp.' ”

Bahla paused in his account and looked at me. “As you can see,” he said, “the relationship between the Guardians and the Gardeners was already tense, even at this early stage.”

“This all sounds horrific, Bahla,” I commented. “I don’t think that the official report by the Gardeners mentioned any of this.”

“Well, knowing the skill of the Gardeners at turning things in their own direction, would you expect anything else?

It was decided that we should continue as planned to locate another group of tribes-people who lived a few miles to the west, quite near to the edge of the escarpment. They had also been regular visitors to the village, bringing their forage of spices and fibrous leaves to barter and they had not been down to the trading site in nearly a year. They were particularly missed because their territory included the site at which a particularly large airplane had fallen during the war and they were in the habit of bringing down pieces of scrap metal that were very valuable resources for the Guardians in their continual struggle to maintain The Tractor.

We moved forward cautiously through the forest. Lieutenant Haziki, even though he was young, seemed to have a good grasp of tactics and he used two of the forest-bred guardians as scouts ahead, followed by the remaining Guardians in single file. The two rifles (one now carried by Starling) were two thirds of the way down the column ready to defend in any direction.

As we walked forward through the empty forest, each scuffle in the undergrowth as birds and animals moved out of our path seemed like an imminent threat. We had the sensation again, before long, of being watched and, when we halted mid-morning, the scouts returned to report that they thought that our march was being observed. They reported birds and animals being disturbed alongside our line of movement and they were sure that we were not alone as we progressed forward.

Stopping for lunch, the scouts confirmed their view that we were being followed. Lomu, the Gardener, called a meeting of the officers.

“I demand that you send out men to attack these ‘followers’.” He stormed. “You are here to protect this mission and you place us all at risk by allowing us to be tracked by invisible watchers.”

Lieutenant Haziki, inches shorter than the burly Gardener, drew himself up to his full height, “A first rule of military engagement,” he said, “Is not to split your forces if there is a danger of attack. We don’t know how many of them there are, or even that they are hostile. We will continue our march with caution until it is clear what we are dealing with.”

The march progressed through the afternoon heat and humidity. No-one spoke. Sweat trickled down our backs in the humid gloom. The only sounds, apart from those we made ourselves, came from birds and animals disturbed by our passage. From the centre of the column we could not see any sign that we were not alone but gradually it began to feel as if the jungle were full of eyes watching us. Occasionally we would hear the sound of an animal or bird escaping at a distance and that provided food for our fears, so that soon we were imagining vast armies moving along and waiting to attack us when the moment was ripe.

In the late afternoon, we began to see signs of human activity. We came across a path that led us to some abandoned shelters under the trees. We could see that some of the clearings created by fallen trees had been burned out to allow a few crops to be planted and in some the taro looked healthy and ready for digging. There were paths and trails so that progress was faster.

All the time we were on the alert. Fortunately, the leafy canopy overhead did not allow much undergrowth on the forest floor, making a surprise attack more difficult. We avoided walking out into the open spaces of the clearing where we would not have been able to see back into the surrounding jungle through the vegetation along their edges.

Late in the afternoon, when we were almost ready to look for a camp site for the night, the scouts halted us and came back to report to the Lieutenant. They had seen a structure in one of the clearings that they could not recognise. It was definitely man-made but it was like no shelter they had ever seen. They were reluctant to offer an opinion on what it might be and the Lieutenant went forward to see what they had found.

After a while, he sent word back to the Sergeant and guards were posted in the jungle around the clearing while the rest of us entered. In the centre of the clearing, a construction of sticks, bound together with creepers and vines had been build. The central part was a platform on the front part of which a rectangular cage had been carefully built. Behind it was a seat. Front and back, it was supported by saplings, cut down and held off the ground on posts, short at the front and taller at the rear.

At the end of each support, circular bundles of vines were lashed into the shape of tires. Saplings projected upwards from the front cage to form an air intake and an exhaust. We were looking at a quite realistic copy, made entirely from saplings, branches and vines, of a tractor.

10. Up The River

I asked Bahla recently, as I was collecting material for this account, about his memory of the rejection of their work on fuel shortage and whether he resented being punished. He replied that it had all been a long time ago.

“You have to put things in perspective.” He said. “After all it wasn’t a very severe punishment. That was the sort of thing they gave out to people who stole a chicken. You could have got a lot worse for going counter to Our Granny if they had wanted to be difficult. And, in any case, it was just before we were sent up country on the trade expedition, so I didn’t really have time to worry about it.”

As it happened, I was very interested in the trade expedition he mentioned. The village has always had an uneasy relationship with the tribes in the Northern forest and Bahla was one of the few people I could ask about what had happened.

“The trade expedition had been planned before the fuel episode.” He continued. “And if that had resulted in my not being able to go north ...
Well it would have been a different story but, as it happened, things were already so far along that the Chief Reader decided I should go as planned. He realised that we hadn’t intended any disrespect and sending me away gave things a chance to settle down.

He told me that the expedition was important. Relations between the village and the tribes have always been a bit strained. Whenever they come in to trade their spices, colours and sisal fibre, the Guardians need to keep them within reach of a club’s end or they would just take what they wanted and leave. And if we go out to get supplies of charcoal or scrap machines they have found crashed or abandoned in the forest we have always had to be on our guard against having the food and tools and ornaments we take to trade ‘lifted’ if we sleep too soundly.

Even the tribesmen who have moved into the encampments surrounding the village are problematical, reluctant to work on the land, with problems of alcohol abuse. They frequently require the attention of the Guardians to maintain order and every week seems to bring a case where someone has been stabbed in a drunken brawl so that the lock-up in the hangar always has one or two sullen savages awaiting the Gardener’s decision on how they will be punished.

The trade expedition was being organised, according to the Reader, because the tribes had been coming down less to the village. We were short of dyes and spices. Instead of just sending a few men out to barter for charcoal, a group was to go out to replenish all our stocks and to attempt to understand why we had not heard from the tribes as we were used to.

Thirty eight of us set out into the jungle that morning. I was to collate any information we should gather and to keep a record of progress. There was a platoon of Guardians, well armed with clubs and even two M1 rifles, who would carry trade goods and, on the outward journey, provisions. They were led by a Lieutenant and a Sergeant Guardian. The Lieutenant looked to be about fifteen years old, with shirt and shorts carefully laundered by his mother. The Sergeant seemed to be a veteran and as we waited to form up in line of march, there was a good deal of banter between the officers and Starling, one of the Guardians. Tall and broad, Starling towered head and shoulders over the others and they were asking him if he was one of the Gardeners who was to go with us or, if he was a starling, how he hoped to fly, being so big.

Of the two Gardeners in the party, one had his wife with him, which shows how little he knew what to expect. Before we left, he made a speech about how important the task was and how Our Granny had given it her personal blessing and that we had nothing to fear because he was there to take care of us and how he would make sure the savages listened to what he told them and so on. He was as broad as he was long and he looked as if he would struggle to walk to the end of the village but we didn’t have any choice but to take him at his word.

We set out early, walking in line through the early mist along the edges of the fields. By late afternoon, we had reached the edge of the forest so we camped beneath the first trees. We still did not need to be properly vigilant, so we were took the opportunity to relax, even though we could hear the sounds of the jungle through the humidity of the evening. We knew that the next day would bring a tough climb into the interior. Over the sound of insects, bats and the strange noises of foraging animals, we could hear drumsticks on wood as the signals went ahead to warn the tribes of our approach.

The Guardians were set to work to build a fire and cook the evening meal. The Gardeners ate separately and we could see at first hand the quality and quantity of their meal, prepared separately by the wife of the Senior Gardener.

The next morning it rained as we packed and moved out so that we entered the dripping green world of the jungle soaking wet. We travelled slowly as the path led us first along the river, upstream to the waterfall where it drops down from the escarpment. We saw nothing in the gloom beneath the forest canopy although we could hear the cries of birds among the leaves overhead and the sound of movement alongside. Seeing nothing ourselves, we had the sense of being watched even though the undergrowth was relatively sparse. In the occasional clearings where one of the giant trees had fallen, allowing the sun to reach down and create a dense growth of grasses and creepers we had to hack our way through with machetes.

Progress was much slower here. The track led steeply up hill and we were plagued by insects and leeches so that it took nearly the whole of the day to reach the foot of the waterfall where we camped for the evening. All of us were born on Morakeewa but, apart from a few of the Guardians who had been recruited as adults from the tribes, I think that everyone felt as if they had travelled into another world.

The gardener who had brought his wife must already have begun to regret it because she was clearly unhappy and we could hear them from inside their bivouac as she explained in great detail that this was not what she had been led to expect and that he had better find a way to send her back (something quite impossible as he was at pains to point out). I don’t think anyone slept well that night and there were several alarms, which turned out to be pigs and monkeys investigating the perimeter of the camp.

The next day the sun shone, a relief at first, although the humidity did not permit our soaking wet clothing and equipment to dry very much and, of course, the task of scaling the path alongside the waterfall was made less pleasant as the day warmed up. As we moved upwards, we were able to look out over the treetops of the jungle below but of course we could see nothing of what was happening on the ground, just the brightly coloured parakeets and macaws as they flitted in and out of the upper branches. The Guardians, with their heavy packs, struggled upwards one step after the other and the Sergeant kept them moving ahead without pause, by dint of continual shouting and cursing.

The Gardeners were not carrying any of the luggage but they were soon feeling the effects of the unaccustomed exercise. There was no way to overtake them on the narrow path so the whole party moved at their pace. As the day grew warmer, all of us began to suffer from thirst and to drink from our water bottles.

As we climbed higher, there was a disturbance ahead. Starling, carrying a double pack, was leading the column and bearing the brunt of breaking the trail, hacking away the creepers that had grown over the path, with his machete. It emerged that he had filled his bottle with corn liquor and now he was prepared to trade the whole bottle (or what was left of it) for a mouthful of water. The Guardian officers were refusing to let anyone take him up on this offer so, at last, he sat down in the middle of the path. Then he refused to move or allow anyone to pass him unless he was given a drink of water. 

When the senior Gardener finally caught up he was indignant. 'Lieutenant. Move this man or have him flogged.'  he ordered. The Lieutenant looked uncertain but the Sergeant passed his water bottle to Starling who took a long swig and resumed his place at the front of the column.

That night, we camped at the top of the waterfall. We were now nearing our first objective, the area where a tribesman called ‘Thumbs’ lived in the forest with his extended family. His name came from the fact that, when he was a child, he had lost the fingers of his left hand in an accident. He was well known as a skilled hunter, gripping his bow and arrow with his thumb against the palm of his hand. As one of the tribesmen who had bartered regularly with the village, he and his people were able to use the metal tools they had traded to cut logs, which they sent over the falls to float down the river to the be collected there by Guardian work parties. Our first task was to contact him, trade for spices, dyes, cloth or scrap metal and to try to find out what was stopping all the tribes from trading with us.

The next morning we visited a number of the sites that Thumbs and his family used. None of them appeared to have been occupied for some time. As we pressed on into the jungle, there was no sign of human activity. Finally we came to a clearing in the forest with the burnt out vestiges of some family shelters. Looking among the ashes it was clear that a number of bodies had been destroyed in the fire. Some had been dismembered by animals but many still showed the violent signs of attack, with skulls split open and the bones of the skeletons broken.

The Gardener, our noble leader, was looking rather pale and pasty and our attention was distracted as one of the Guardians walked up waving the bones of an arm with the hand still attached.
“Look!” he said, “Thumbs!”

09. Less Than Expected

Thinking back to the construction of the football park, it would be fair to say that I was quite shocked by the extravagance it represented. I know that I was naive but, at the time, I couldn’t justify in my own mind anything so lacking in obvious function. It produced nothing tangible and I don’t think that I understood what my father was telling me about having everything we needed.

After all, there were still people in the village without enough food. Even assuming that we took the extra food consumed by the Gardeners (and it was abundantly clear that they had more than they needed) there wouldn’t have been enough to feed everyone properly. You could argue – I did argue – that we should have been dedicating our energy to the basic necessities rather than to the luxury of replacing something that we already had.

I think I have mentioned that I was not much of a sportsman. As a youngster I took life very seriously; looking back, far too seriously. I was not the only one who felt that way. I think most of the village women would have agreed with me. Their view was that as long as there was a hungry child in the village, feeding it should be our first priority.

I have often wondered why men and women take such a different view of things like that but in the end, I concluded that it is really quite understandable. Think about it. For a woman, a child is a huge investment. Even if she began to have children when she was fourteen and had one every year until she was forty years old, the most children a woman could produce would be less than thirty children. Each one involves a year of discomfort and sacrifice, not to mention the unpleasantness of actually delivering the infant.

Compare that with a man’s contribution. All things being equal, there is no real limit to the number he can produce. Given willing female accomplices he can generate as many as he likes and the corresponding effort is relatively small. The theoretical lower limit is the effort required, one way or another, to persuade a woman to give him a couple of minutes of her time.

No wonder then that a man’s attitude to his offspring is somewhat more detached than a woman’s. When our grandparents lived in the forest it can be no surprise that the men were the ones who went out hunting, who were prepared to follow a wounded animal through the trackless jungle to finish it off. Women couldn’t take the risk that while they were away something nasty would happen to their offspring. Men could afford to take a more relaxed view.
Even today, one gets the impression that men are more comfortable with long distance adventures than women. They seem to be happier to take a risk. So perhaps it was predictable that they were more prepared to take on the quite speculative enterprise of building the ball-park. I don’t know.

What I do know is that their view prevailed, while the prudent idea of focussing first on the strict necessities that I thought right was predominantly a female point of view. Certainly, the arrival or The Tractor had changed things.

In the jungle, women had been responsible for gathering most of the food that was eaten every day. The hunters may have produced the odd luxury but women delivered the daily necessities so the hunters who taunted my father had a certain logic on their side. In focussing on staple needs, the Guardians were actually doing what was traditionally women’s work. The men who controlled The Tractor were breaking new ground in every sense of the word.

Each week as they pumped the gasoline from the ground, filled the jerry cans for the day and set off to plough the fields or harvest the crops, they established their control, not only of the natural world they forced to yield at their behest, but over the rest of the village.

The Americans had passed on, via Our Granny, the idea that a man should have only one wife. In practice, a Guardian who had an official wife was still seen as something of a catch, a source of some friction on the female side of the house. The Tractor had changed much more than just the way we produced food. The whole life of the village and the way people thought of relationships had changed as well.

People noticed the change, but they didn’t think about it very much. Our Granny had given us The Tractor, the Americans had left the underground tanks of fuel and drums of oil. We took things very much for granted, thanked Our Granny for her bounty and got on with our lives. Indeed, this way of thinking had become so much a part of people’s daily lives that the idea that there were limits to what was available was very difficult for them to face.

From the time that we had begun to use The Tractor, the routine had been the same. In the morning, the Guardians would pump the fuel for the day into cans and it would be taken with the Tractor down to wherever it was working. In the beginning, with only a small area under cultivation, one can was enough each day. Later two were needed and, as the work of The Tractor expands, so does the amount of fuel used.

The Guardians had noticed that, as time passed, not only did they have to pump more fuel, but they needed to pump harder to get it up. At first no one questioned this, but one day it occurred to Langanipa, the brilliant but undervalued member of the Guardians, to question why this was.
He opened the covers on the fuel store – something that no one had done for many years and quite difficult because, not only was he slightly built, but the covers had rusted closed. Looking in, he found that the level of the fuel was now some distance from the top. He thought about this carefully and then decided to measure the depth of the aviation spirit in the tank. What he found worried him. The tank was only one third full.

He discussed this with his superiors among the Guardians but they did not take his concerns seriously. Their view was that Our Granny had provided the fuel for The Tractor and that it was no one’s business but Hers how much she had thought to provide. Worrying about the fuel, they said, was no more use than worrying about the weather.

Langanipa was friendly with Bahla, the assistant to the Chief Reader, so he confided in him. Between them, they made some rough calculations. They assumed that the tank had been full when the Americans left the island and that the fuel had been used at a rate of six cans per week in the beginning and twelve cans per week more recently. By their calculations, at an average rate of four hundred cans per year, The Tractor had used twenty thousand cans of gasoline in the last fifty years. At the same rate, there was enough fuel for twenty five more years. Except that the rate at which fuel was consumed was increasing over time.

With this new analysis, and with the support of his friend, Langanipa returned to the issue and they obtained an interview with the Captain of the Guardians. As Bahla later told me, they found that they were wading in a deeper swamp than they knew. When they arrived for the interview they were taken to the Guardian’s formal reception office, where they found not only the Captain Paitor, but a group of his assistants and a delegation of Gardeners, led by the Dean of their college, a man called Tahmo Lukuni.

Not as tall as his superior, Lailavu, Tahmo Lukuni was no less broad. Yellow skinned with a sloping forehead and slightly bulging eyes, there was something that reminded one of a frog in his squat form. He wore the intricately dyed Sarong of a senior Gardener, with dark purplish patterns barely visible against a maroon background. Seated next to him, the dark, thickset figure of the Guardian Captain in his white shirt and shorts looked like his slimmer reflection in monochrome.

Langanipa and Bahla stood uneasily in front of the assembly. They had prepared themselves with facts and figures, but things took a different direction from the start as they found themselves standing before benches of important dignitaries.

“Langanipa, my son.” The Captain addressed them “It makes me very sad that you and our friend Bahla have decided to contest the Will of Our Granny.”
“With respect, Sir, that was not our intention.” Langanipa replied.
“And yet, having received an answer to your question, I see that you have returned to debate with us.”
“Not debate, Sir. We have additional information.”
“Information that you have produced yourselves?” the Captain frowned. “And that you would oppose to the wisdom of the College of Gardeners?”
“Sir, we simply wished to provide the results of our researches to the proper authorities.” Bahla interposed.
“It is more fitting that you should listen to the wisdom of Our Granny than attempt to instruct her as to how you think that she should eat her eggs in the morning.” Tahmo Lukuni studied them severely. “Our Granny has spoken. She has blessed us with Her Tractor and with the fuel for its operation. Ill it befits us to question Her bounty.”

“Your Reverence,” Langanipa tried to reason, “We do not offer an opinion, so surely we do not disagree with anyone. This is purely an issue of fact, where we have measured the amount of fuel...”
“Silence!” the Gardener’s shout cut him off in mid sentence. “I see that what I have been told is true. You are insubordinate. You place your own views ahead of the accumulated wisdom of those who have served Our Granny for fifty years. Who have heard her daily inform us of what is true and what is not true; of what is done and what is not to be done.
Captain.” He continued looking around for support to the benches of dignitaries. “I see that these men are in need of a lesson. I propose that they should be taken out and each given ten lashes. Unless there is anyone who would like to speak in their defence?”
The benches remained silent.

“Hearing no response; let it be so decided.” Tahmo Lukuni glared at the men in front of him.
“I hope your realise,” he continued, “that I have been extremely lenient with you this time. You will remember this lesson and I would like you to promise that never again will you have the insolence to act against the Our Granny’s Will.”

“But...” Langanipa began to speak but his friend Bahla interrupted him before he could articulate his thought.
“Of course we promise, oh Reverend One. It was never our intention to lack respect and we would never act against Our Granny.”
“I am glad to hear that. Now Captain, they should go to the place of punishment.” And rising to his feet, he gathered his sarong about his bulky figure and strode from the room.