SHORT STORY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 147, 12 September 1927, Page 12

SHORT STORY

By

L. P. B. ARMIT

Kila was a cheerful Papuan girl, a mop-haired, sloe-eyed, plump, brown maid, whose greatest treasure was the string of dogs’ teeth she wore around , her slender neck. She had other strange jewels, but the necklace of dogs’ teeth pleased her most, because it made her less fortunate sisters scowl with envy. Even her mairi (crescent of polished pearl-shell), which she wore on her breast, and her wide armlets of salt-white cone-shell, took second place in her affections when the dogs’ teeth became her property. For the giver of the precious necklace was young Pala, who, in Kila’s estimation, was the handsomest youth in the village. Ivila liked Pala. Pala’s mother disliked Kila. “Wasting your wealth on a good-for-nothing loafer like her,” Vavini told her son; “I think you’re mad to even look at such a lazy girl. A useless, loud-mouthed creature like her I” And so on, ad lib. For Vavini could scold when the mood took her. Tau, her husband (Vavini’s seventh essay in matrimony), being diplomatic, was always silent when his wife’s tongue wagged; so when Pala came to him and said he wished to marry the girl, he listened while the youth raved about his divinity. “She’s a fine girl, my father,” Pala declared, “and her face is good to look at. Did you notice how her eyes ” Tau rattled his ebony spoon loudly against the rim of his lime-gourd. “Umph!” he grunted. Pala scowled. “Did you ever see eyes like hers when you were a young vian?” he reiterated. “They have the brightness of the moonlight on the ocean, and ” “What use are bright eyes if the body that owns them is lazy?” interrupted his father. “Your mother says ” “M!y ears are sore with hearing the things my mother says!” Pala put in. “Kila is young, and —and —she likes me! What more is there to say?” he completed, angrily. “But your mother ” Tau commenced. “Is a live-mouthed scold!” Pala interjected rudely. Tau glanced fearfully around the yerandah. “I know it!” he agreed sorrowfully. “Many years have I known it!” he added, in lower tones. He moved close to his son. “Open your ears to my words,” he whispered. Pala’s face creased with smiles as he heard what the old man told him. “Verily, you talk wisdom, father!” he exclaimed, when the old fellow finished. A thought obtruded itself on his mind. “Such wisdom as yours -should have prevented you wedding my mother,” he said, Slowly; “but perhaps she was not always so full of words!” he hastily amended. The old man chuckled. “Women are strange beings, my son. When you have married as many as I have, you will speak as I do; my first three wives ran away from me; but I —l am still with Vavini . . .” He took another spoonful of lime and filled his mouth with a lump of betel-nut. Va\ ini finished grating the oily kernel of a coconut into a wooden bowl. She tipped a little water into the bowl, scooped up a double-handful of the shredded kernel, and squeezed its rich, white juice into the earthenware pot of yams and fish before her. The thick, creamy coconut milk filled the clay pot to the brim. She lifted a thick pad of banana leaves from the floor, and laid it on fhe rim to act as a lid, and keep the smoke out of the food. Then, after wiping her oily fingers on her shrivelled chest, she put the pot on the fire, and sa t back to have a smoke while the dinner boiled. “Such good food to be wasted on a pair of useless fools like Tau and Pala!” she growled to herself. A wrinkled, skin-diseased old woman on the verandah of the next house heard the remark, and called to her. “Always it is the task of we weak women to feed our men,” she observed, shrilly. “If we are sick and unable to cook for them, they’d go without food. Men are stupid creatures. Why you waste your days slaving for two such useless apologies for men like Tau and ” Vavini snarled at her. “Who are you, woman without shame, to insult my husband and my son?” she screamed. “Whose man stole and ate a widow’s only pig? Whose daughter is devoid of virtue? Another word from you, and I’ll come over and scratch your ulcerous face, you ” She sought for a suitable epithet, but the garrulous old gossip had vanished, diving into her house with marvellous agility for such an ancient crone. “You descendant of countless unmarried women!” Vavini spat at her vanquished neighbour. Tau came on to the verandah. “Such lovely food!” he remarked pleasantly, and sniffed audibly. “Wife, did you see Pala just now?” he asked, anxiously. “I’ve been waiting for him to help me tie the outrigger on our j canoe, so we can go out with the nets s to the reef to-night,” he explained, hurriedly. “Renagi, the father of that ; lazy Kila, is coming with us, so I want ; to get the canoe fixed up before the sun gets too hot ” .

“If you waste any more of the day loafing with your tired friends,” Vavini yelled, “you’ll find it a lot hotter in this house than it is on the beach in the mid-day sun!” She shook her fist under his nose, and literally leaped with rage. “Worthless one! Am I, a poor weak woman, to do everything? I clean the house. I weed the garden where I grow the yams and bananas you eat. I gather the firewood and carry it on my back to cook your food. I cook every mouthful you and your equally useless son eat, and I even mend the nets, while you lie about almost too tired to carry your skin!” She reached out and pulled her digging-stick from the thatched wall. “Begone, loud-mouthed loafer!” she railed. Tau had slowly backed to the edge of the verandah while the torrent of words poured around him. He was like a dumb man, though his eyes flashed with a reddish light. As the digging-stick appeared he disappeared —over the verandah edge.

Kila sat cross-legged before the fire on the floor of her one-roomed home, her usually happy face clouded with a sulky frown. Renagi, her father, lay on the floor, his woolly head propped up on a “pillow” of carved wood. The Renagi family were concluding a wordy battle in which Kila had played a lone hand against her parents. Her mother sat facing her across the fire, on which a clay cooking-pot was bubbling merrily. The room was full of smoke, and the reek of roasting fish and the acrid odour of cheap “trade tobacco crowded the atmosphere. “He is a good man, and he has made a proper payment for you,” Renagi told his dauhgter, wearily. . “But he is old and he already has a wife!” Kila answered. ‘T won’t marry an old man whose first wife will surely beat me when I go into her house,” she cried angrily. “Truly he is, perhaps, just a little older than you,” put in her mother, “but he is rich, and he will treat you well. He lias many pigs and armshells, and his garden.is a large one.” “His eld wife made most of the garden!” Kila interjected. “His garden is very large,” her mother went on, “so you will always have plenty of jfood food. Any girl in tlje village would be delighted to get such a ” “Then they can have him, because

WOOING OF KILA RENAGI

I’m not going to marry him, even if he had all the gardens on the coast!" declared Kila. “Pala is my choice, and I won’t marry anybody else!” she exclaimed. firmly. Renagi split a betel-nut with a slip of pearlshell. “But Pala doesn’t want you!” he told her. "His mother, Vavini, said to me this morning that her son was only fooling you. Be quiet, girl with the voice of a parrot, and do as I tell you.” He licked a helping of lime from his spoon, and chewed a chunk of pepper-bark from the stick he held in his hands. “Bo you hear that, Kila?” her mother asked. “Pala never did want you; he is like his father—my cousin ran away from him because he was too tired to work for her—a lazy loafer.” “The mother of Pala spoke a lie,” Kila declared tearfully. “Pala is made to marry me,” he continued. “Only yesterday, when I was returning from our garden, he happened to meet me on the road, and—and he—he said he liked me better than ” Renagi opened his betel-reddened mouth to speak, but his spitfire wife got going before him. “So Pala follows you to the garden, and fills your stupid head with his lies! The idle, useless thing! He’ll be sorry if I catch him hanging about the track; my yam-stick ’ll make him move faster than he ever did before!” she screamed. Renagi chewed on without a word. “These women,” he mused, “they talk and talk and talk! Like parrakeets that have been startled by a snake—chatter, chatter, chatter without end! What does it matter what Kila says? When I get all the payment I have asked for her, I will give her to her husband. He is wise, and will beat her a little until she learns to obey him.” He reached for another betel-nut. The argument between Kila and her mother raged on. “Don’t you imagine I’m going to marry any other man than Pala!” Kila stormed. “I’ll throw myself off the edge of the reef to the sharks sooner than marry anybody else!” she raved. “The shark* that ate you would die of poisoning!” sneered her mother, as she poked another stick under the boiling pot. A cloud of steam suddenly rose up from the fire; the pot had cracked open and spilt its contents on the hot coals. Kila and her mother reached forward and tried to salvage their wrecked dinner. “You put that cracked pot down for me to fill, Kila,” shrieked her mother. “How many times have I told you not to leave it about? i thought I was filling a sound pot; I couldn’t see the

thing was broken. You know my eyes are not as strong as your young ones, yet you go and leave that broken pot for me to spoil a good meal with. Was there ever such a lazy, useless ” Words, failed her. She snatched the “pillow” from under her husband’s head and hurled it her daughter. Renagi’s head rapped the floor. He rolled to his feet and faded through the door after Kila.

Palo loafed along the beach near his sweetheart’s home. He was in a miserable mood, for he had just heard that Renagi had accepted from his elderly rival the bride-price for his beloved Kila.

“One fat girl-pig, six shell armlets, a fathom of red shell ‘money,’ a woman dog and two small men dogs, two tomahawke, two big knives, six canoe puddles, a fish spear, one snake-skin drum.” He recited the whole list, sorrowfully. “What hope have lof finding even half those things?” he moaned dismally.

He leant against the cocoa-nut butt and wondered if Kila’s mother was at home. If she was, it would be hopeless trying to have a word with her daughter. That woman, he reflected, was a cruel, hard-hearted mother for such a nice girl. The way she talked — A group of girls went jauntily past him, swinging their red-and-yellow fibre petticoats. They nudged each other and giggled as they saw him. “Gaze on the brave young man who let an old grandfather—a married grandfather with grown children—steal his girl!” a buxom lass jeered. “Te will surely get a wife when some silly girl steals him from his parents!” said another maid. “Look at the brave warrior! He looks as happy as a fish on the mud!” sneered a third girl, and poked her tongue at him. Pala squirmed inwardly, but kept a still tongue. The girls tossed their heads and went off along the beach laughing loudly. He walked a few paces, and stood looking hopelessly at the sand, mentally listing what he could possibly induce his mates to shell out toward a suitable bride-price that would be bigger than his rival’s offer for Kila. Suddenly he leaped forward, and stooped close to the sand, spelling out the words that were traced there.

Both he and Kila had learnt to read and write in the days they had been

forced to attend the missionary’s school; so, writing-paper being an unknown luxury in their several homes, the beach was handy when they wished to smuggle a message past her arguseyed mother.

Kila wrote an atrocious fist, but Pala managed to understand her message. He rubbed his feet over the love letter, picked up a chip of shell for a pencil, and laboriously scribbled an answer. “My stomach laughed when I saw your words,” he wrote. “I "*as full of sorrow because I heard you were to marry that ancient man, but now my skin is is glad. It is very wise what you tell me to try and do. It is a road with many rough places that 1 must go, but I am strong, and will get what is best for us two. Remember, girl with bright eyes, your face hovers before me like a butterfly over a flower. Be strong, and wait for me to return. Look here for my w ords to-morrow, and you will know what to do.” Pie stood and admired the letter. A hand waved from the side window of Kila’s house. Pala waved back, then he turned off the beach and went along a narrow, croton-lined track through the cocoa-nut grove.

The long hot day was nearly oyer. The sun was nearing the sea line: the shadows of the cocoanuts reached down the beach, and the white smoke of the cooking fires oiifted up above the thatched roofs of the ' illage. Strings of women plodded along tie sands, their backs bent under the heavy loads of food and firewood they were bringing home from the gardens. Bevond the straggling line of houses in the shallows beside the beach, the sails of the canoes returning from the day’s fishing on the outer reef showed black against the flaming gold of the sinking sun. The sky glittered with the painted splendour of the sunset. Far back behind the quivering green plumes of the palms the purple, mistwreathed peaks of the Interior etched themselves against the northern sky. Pala came through the bustling crowd of people on the beach. had been working hard —a new thing for him —making copra a mile down the bay, and now with the help of a mate he was carrying a heavy sack of the sun-dried cocoa nut kernel to sell it to the local trader. The sack was suspended from a long pole between the two boys.

A group of chattering urchins playing cat’s-cradle saw the sack of copra. The intricate patterns they were weaving with string were neglected while they discussed the value of the copra. “My father sold a bag like that,” boasted a chubby lad, “and he bought a beautiful saucepan—a white man’s iron saucepan with three legs—with the money he got for it." The other infants shouted him down. “If I sold a bag of copra.” said end child, “I would buy things I could eat —flour and rice, and tinned salmon. 1 like the good food of the white men, because it makes my belly glad!” “I would buy a. big iron pot.” declared a little girl, “for they last a long time, and don’t break like oui clay pots do.” The little boys laughted at her. “You are a girl, and you think only of cooking pots!” they jeered. “We are men. Cooking food is women’s work; when we are big we will make much copra, and buy what we like! The strong food of the white people is men’s food!” The lad in front of Pala looked over his shoulder, and spoke. “What did Tau tell you? If you are wise you will get a saucepan with three legs like the child talked of. Iron pots are what the women like above all other things. I know, because my sisters told me!” he advised.

Pala lifted the pole from his shoulder, and rested it on a stump while he rolled a banana leaf around a few shreds of tobacco. His mate stood patiently until he had built the cigarette.

“It is a wise suggestion,” the boy went on, “and if you are not a fool you will listen to it.”

Pala took a few puffs of the smoke, and passed the butt to his mate. “Let us hurry along and get it,” he replied; “don’t waste any more time standing there.”

Ten minutes later, with the precious saucepan hung on the pole between them, the two friends swaggered down the beach until they reached a spot immediately in front of Kila’s house. Their progress through the village was a triumphal one; for the people they passed all noticed the wonderful prize and spoke in flattering praise of it and its lucky possessor.

Kila’s mother met them, and had to look at the precious pot. “Such a fine pot deserves a careful owner!” she told them. “Now, if I owned such a fine thing, it would only be used by my own hands,” she remarked, significantly. “It is for the girl I want to marry,” Pala said, airily. “Clay pots make much sorrow for good women; but my wife will rot be filled with grief for spoilt meals through cracked and broken pots.” He puffed out his chest, and continued his walk. An old dame on a verandah saw him pass, and turned to her daughter. “That is a fine young man,” she said. “His wife will not be worried with her cooking. Such a nice lad would suit you, Walo. Look! He is smiling at you!”

Walo tossed her head, and glad-eyed the saucepan owner.

Vavini’s sharp eyes caught the coy glance of her neighbour’s daughter. “Such shameless conduct!” she snorted. “Pala would never think twice about such a vain creature! Of course he has bought the pot for m^! Truly he is a kind son.” Old man Renagi sat on his verandah repairing a fishing-net. The saucepan went jauntily by. Renagi dropped his netting-needle and called to his daughter. “Come and see the lovely iron pot that useless son of Tau’s is carrying. Who is he to have such a fine thing?” he growled. “If he was going to be married—” He looked

blandly at his daughter, and left the j sentence unfinished. Kila yawned and glanced tJong the beach. "The sun is nearly gone,’ she remarked. “I’ll go and get a pot of water before, it gets dark.” She balanced the heavy water-jar on he left shoulder, and walked up the beach —in the opposite direction to where the water was dr r.wn. Renagi and his wife watched her go. “She’s not thinking of water!” the old man thought, and grinned. The clay pot on the fire boiled over. "If that was only a proper white naa’s saucepan w: tli three legs.” Kila** mother whispered to herself. $ * Loud voices wrangled In Rerajjfs house. “Give me tack all the things I paid you for that worthless daughter of yours!” roared a crinkly-skir.ned, greyhaired man. "What sort of parents are you to accept my presents for your daughter—and let her run away with that lazy, offal-eating son of Tan’s? My skin is sore, and sorrow: fills my belly that su?h shame should he put upon me by your child! Give me back everything I gave you—at once;! ’ be stormed. Renagi helped himself to a mouthful of lime and bit a chunk of bark off a pepper-stick. “Why give anger to me?** he asked, calmly. Am I—•** Kila’s mother silenced him with a gla re. “It is not us who did this tiling,'* she told the angry, disappointed rnitur. "Blame the white man who brought the iron saucepan with three legs to this village!” She thought for a moment "You are a. wise man. Why didn't yor buy a big iror pot and give i. to EUa, like Pala did?” she asked, and p isbed the fire together under a shining new iron pot with three legs, which bubbled on the coals before her. “How could I buy one?” answered the old man. "There was only one pot for sale —and Pala bought it.” —“The AustrzJasian.’