There were other guests on the plantation, and I was wondering whose boy had gotten by Ahuia’s watchfulness when a sleepy glance through the sunlit window awoke me to a real annoyance. There sat the Goaribari with the bandaged hand, serenely chewing betel-nut. “For the love of God, Ahuia, what does he want now?”
Ahuia’s funny English informed me, “Taubada, he still wishes to be paid. He has slept all night on the porch.”
I jumped out of bed, dragging the mosquito netting with me. Like a fishwife in a bridal veil I exhausted all the arts of profanity. With an amiable smile on his betel-red mouth the cannibal listened—and held out his good hand. Then I checked myself in mid-oath and laughed as I have never laughed before. This was socialized medicine with a reverse English.
“Ahuia,” I shouted, “give this cheeky bastard two sticks of trade tobacco.”
Quite unemotionally the savage accepted his fee and departed.
I was still laughing when the planter came in, and he grinned. “It’s the fashion—that’s all a bush fellow will say. They’re pretty much confused about money values. To them a white man’s a sort of cross between Simon Legree and Santa Claus; when he comes around it’s either to send ’em to jail or pay ’em off.”
I grumbled: “Next thing they’ll expect me to pass around free tobacco before every hookworm lecture.”
“Certainly they will,” he said. Then he rang the changes the planters had rung all along the line. “Anything can happen in Papua.”
CHAPTER V
JUST THIS SIDE OF THE MOON