Free Visitants by Randolph Stow

‘Taubada,’ she said, ‘do not abuse him. He is a good young man, and later he will command all the villages.’
    ‘That man?’ said Misa Makadoneli, pointing at Benoni like a turd on the path. ‘He will command nothing. His uncle has said it, Dipapa has said it. He is unclean. He has slept with his uncle’s wife.’
    I shouted at Misa Makadoneli: ‘Taubada, you talk gammon. Dipapa is too old to sleep with a woman, and Senubeta is an age like me. That old man has never slept with her. He did not marry her for that. He has thirteen wives so as to have fifty brothers-in-law to fill his yam-house. I do not understand your mind. Do you want Senubeta never to have a man? I think truly she did love Benoni.’
    ‘Saliba, enough,’ said Benoni, sounding ashamed because I spoke of such things, and I think also because he did not any longer love his uncle’s wife.
    ‘Yes, truly, enough,’ said Misa Makadoneli. ‘Go to the cookhouse, Saliba, to your work. You are insulting. And you, Benoni, go to your house, if you have a house. I know that Dipapa forbids you to live at Wayouyo.’
    ‘You are wrong, taubada,’ Benoni said, and he smiled at Misa Makadoneli. ‘My house is again at Wayouyo. My uncle has forgotten—those doings.’
    ‘I think you are lying,’ said Misa Makadoneli. ‘Dipapa told me you will never command the villages. He told me that when he dies there will be no chief. Dipapa is the last chief of Kailuana. Like me. I am the last King.’
    ‘That is my uncle’s word, taubada,’ Benoni said; ‘but it is not my uncle’s affair.’
    ‘Ssss,’ said Misa Makadoneli. ‘So it is your affair,
ki
?’
    ‘Taubada,’ Benoni said, ‘while my uncle is alive, he talks. While you are alive, you talk. When the time comes that you do not exist, that my uncle does not exist, you will not be talking, you two. If the people want a chief, there will be a chief. If they want a Dimdim King, there will be a King. The villages do not hear dead men.’
    ‘Do not quarrel with him, taubada,’ Naibusi said. ‘That is not gammon. Everything will be different when we are not here, you and I.’
    But the old man was passionate because a black man had spoken to him so proudly, and because he does love the people and wishes that the villages should always be like today and like yesterday. It is craziness, the craziness of old men. Better for him and Dipapa that they said in their mind: ‘We shall not command in the time when we are at Budibudi.’ But they hated Benoni’s thoughts, that he brought from Manus with his Pidgin, and their desire was that when they were dead the villages should turn to stone.
    ‘Benoni,’ the old man said, ‘go. You shall not speak with anyone in my house. You shall not walk on the ground of my village. You are not of a chief’s family, not now. You are a commoner and a shamed man. Go to your house.’
    But Benoni still smiled, and talked to the old man in a gentle voice. ‘Taubada,’ he said, ‘do not be afraid because of me. I am a benevolent man and like your nephew. Now you understand my mind.’
    Then Benoni turned and went down the steps. I saw his thighs, and then his shoulders, and at last his beautiful head, shining against the sea.
DALWOOD
    I went down the passage and knocked on Alistair’s door. A grey door, like all the rest in the house, furry as a copper-stick, set a little askew in a grey wall.
    I was still hot with the MacDonnell, for he seemed to be one more who thought that life was all way above my head, and by then I would have liked the chance to say some of the things I was muttering in my mind. Such as that it was tough on the young, this generation-gap, because by the time I was his age and fit to be talked to, he would be a hundred and twenty-nine, and all that much more experienced.
    I heard Alistair behind the door shout something in the language, thinking probably that it was Naibusi or Saliba, and lifted the rust-eaten latch and went in. The window of the