Territory of Papua: August 1926
Occasionally, the only unpalatable difference between adventure and misadventure is eating exotic foods as opposed to being exotic food. The sweltering rainforest teemed with blaring pitfalls shrouded in silence. It was an unforgiving wilderness, untrodden land, but to Alexandra Illyria Bathenbrook it served as a refuge from everyday life. From a crouched position, she studied the indigenous tribesmen through her field glasses as they tramped over a dried riverbed half a football pitch away. They had emerged from the greenery parroting the stealth of bashful apparitions: stocky men wearing feathered headgear and nothing more. Colorful dyes graffitied their dark skin, which rendered them evermore ferocious to her fascinated gaze. Sharpened bones pierced their nostrils and jutted from the tips of crude weapons, touting a most unappetizing demise.
“They look like bloody cannibals! Why did I ever agree to this?”
“Not cannibals, Bannister,” she said to reassure him. “According to the map, they’re the next valley over.”
Owing to prior forays as an aspiring photographer, novice ornithologist, and fledgling explorer, Alexandra was well-rehearsed in stirring misadventure. At age seven, she had learned to swim in the Amazon jungle, and ever since, she’d fancied dipping her toes into unfamiliar waters. It was not a footpath for everyone.
Patrol Officer Bannister, her hoodwinked guide, felt differently.
Alexandra sighed fretfully. “They’ll shrink our silly heads, though, if we dare introduce ourselves.”
Bannister gulped. “How do you know they’re headhunters?”
Her field glasses locked onto the shriveled skulls dangling from their spears. “Just a hunch.”
Bannister wilted in posture, becoming one with the rainforest. He presented a strapping figure in his khaki uniform and Akubra hat. His starched mustache accentuated a resolute jaw and daring blue eyes, but perilous fieldwork did not fill his resumé. The valley dimmed under the cloak of storm clouds. He feared the headhunters might spot a reflection off of the tripod-mounted camera once the sun broke free. The fingers of the young lady in his charge remained on the flashlamp bulb, and she seemed the sort who’d risk snapping the photo.
He’d piss himself if he had anything in the tank.
“Quite a peck of pickled peppers I’ve picked,” Alexandra jested.
The five tribesmen were heading for the Ficus trees at which her Victorian Hasselblad field camera was aimed. She retrieved her pistol. It was a Colt 1908 vest pocket; her preference when traveling. It took up little space in her luggage, and while a meager sidearm, it was more dissuading than either teeth or fingernails. Her fevered mind calculated all the motion before her: the pace of the headhunters’ steps, the churn of the turbulent clouds, the half-light cast upon the riverbed. She made a final gambit that the synchronicity of all these elements would sway her way and reclaimed the bulb, intoxicated by the moment. A wave of re-emerging sunlight rolled forward. The tribesmen kept a steady gait.
It was going to be razor close.
She whispered, “Fortune favors the brave,” and squeezed.
Despite beads of sweat tickling her nose and something slithering over a boot, Alexandra’s focus remained squarely on the headhunters. Everything had fallen into place for a pitch-perfect shot, and she believed it had been pulled off undetected. The lead tribesman turned away just as sunlight exposed her camera. The second followed, and then the third. You fourth bugger, don’t you dare look back she silently pleaded.
The last of them evaporated into the dense foliage.
She lowered the field glasses. “You can set down the camera.”
Bannister did not hesitate. “Long way to come for a silly bird.”
Her cattish grin was unwavering. “Not for me.”
Two months had passed since Alexandra took sea passage for Singapore to rendezvous with her father as he toured Southeast Asia. Her junior year at college had concluded, and it was healthy for her to get away from her mother over the idle summer months. It was an era of irreverent behavior and momentous social change. Young women were lighting up cigarettes just to be rebellious, allowed to perspire while dancing, and no longer too timid to talk a bit saucy. Alexandra would vote for the first time this coming November, and as a dual citizen of England, she’d likely exercise the franchise there too, as women’s suffrage was on the brink of dropping to age twenty-one. She found the times invigorating, as long as one didn’t lose their head over it.
While Archibald Bathenbrook had spent much of his adult life scouring the globe as a geologist for the British Colonial Office, Alexandra knew her father’s genuine passion lay beyond discovering riches to be plundered by the empire.
The man found his greatest joys in birdwatching.
Upon arrival in Papua, he had arranged with officials a trip up the Fly River to meet with prospectors and assess what natural resources might fill the vaguely charted interior of the island. These briefings were conducted over liberal amounts of gin and tonics, consumed for what was impishly deemed “medicinal reasons.” The quinine in tonic water was a remedy for malaria, which had afflicted Archibald since Ceylon. His eagerness to subject himself to such a taxing quest, however, held its appeal in spotting a Paradisaea raggiana—among the most colorful of the bird-of-paradise genus. Prior to departure, he was informed that further upriver were nesting grounds for a grander prize: the Paradisaea apoda. Rumor held these birds lived in only two remote regions of the world: the islands of Aru and the higher reaches of the Fly River. There, too, roamed the most feared of tribes—the cannibalistic Marind-Anim.
The hotel proprietor had shared what little was known of their culture, for of the handful of whites who’d encountered them only a thumbnail had returned. This perilous tease had taken the last wind from Archibald’s sails. He had retired to bed, asking Alexandra to offer apologies to their guide come morning. To idle in Port Moresby for another week seemed an intolerable sentence. She had not sailed nine thousand miles to forego such an escapade and prepped to conduct it in her father’s absence. When Bannister arrived at the Moresby Hotel to collect them, she’d stood in the lobby kitted out in a chic dotted net shirt, khaki waistcoat, skirt, and shoestring leather boots. Her rebellious hair was temporarily subdued under a floppy straw hat that boasted a large brim ribbon. She had put on lipstick hoping that a youngish man might show and knew upon their greeting she’d have her way.
And here she stood.
Rain began pattering, eliciting riotous calls from the wildlife filling the leafy canopy. Alexandra lifted a pad from her canvas satchel and ruffled through the drawings of birds she had likewise photographed with her handheld Eastman-Kodak Brownie 2 along the journey upriver.
“Such risks and nary a hint of the bloody bird,” Bannister said, growing impressed as a duplication of the lead headhunter materialized onto a fresh page of her sketchpad.
Alexandra offered an unapologetic confession without breaking the rhythm of her hand. “I photographed the ‘bloody bird’ from the raft while you were dozing.”
Bannister decried, “Then why are we risking shrunk noggins?”
“I felt further exploration was in order.” She looked up and issued a contrite smile. “Anyhoo, whenever will I have another opportunity to see naked headhunters? It’s unlikely back in Montana. I cannot fathom the discomfort of having their schlanges tied up to their waistlines so.”
“Schlanges?” Bannister repeated, dumbfounded. “Why would you refer to them like that?”
She held up her palms and shrugged. “Is that not what you call them around these parts?”
Bannister fumbled for a respectable response but could find none. His mouth fell agape, having never witnessed a young woman sketch a man’s schlange tied up to his waistline.
Alexandra completed her drawing, bagged her utensils, and darted to her feet. “In the harbor, another ship passed. Several sailors pointed down, howling, ‘Nimm a meinen schlange!’”
“We might have driven the Germans off this bloody island, but some of their coarse nature remains.” He slung his rifle and tossed the camera across a shoulder, but then paused. “Which way the river?”
Having always been directionless, Alexandra never felt lost. She pointed east. A fetid mist rose from the soundless floor bed once the rain subsided. She bit into an orange and began peeling its skin. “Have you seen much of the world, Bannister?”
“I served on the HMAS Sydney. We transported poor buggers to Gallipoli and returned to Australia whatever remained of them.”
Alexandra’s spirit soured on hearing that the Great War had wrapped its ugly tentacles even as far as Down Under. It had certainly sullied her life. “Bully for you in making it home.”
He hastened his pace to walk beside her. “You beguile me, Miss Alexandra. I need to know more about you. What of your family? Your other talents? I beseech you!”
“My family background is too absurd to be believed,” she conceded, forever uncomfortable when being beseeched. “As for other talents, I fare well at getting men to carry my belongings, unsolicited.”
The massive Fly River stretched for a thousand kilometers, evolving in attraction and mystery the closer one delved toward its headwaters near the Dutch West Indies. Days prior, Alexandra and Bannister had journeyed up its lower course on the riverboat Vanapa, which conducted routine trips from Kiwai Island to a remote outpost called Everill Junction. Once docked at the wharf, supplies for those daring to live on the cusp of the known world were off-loaded, and the booty of prospectors secured for delivery to the coast. Presbyterian missionaries had established a settlement, and Alexandra had milled about its stilted thatch huts meeting the amicable villagers. While capturing a shot of a Paradisaea raggiana, she had spotted a sturdy raft, and a foolish impulse to go for the grand prize had usurped better judgment.
Alexandra had not noticed the wooden handle on the back of the raft along their trek beyond the junction. She had enticed the captain of the Vanapa to tow them, rendering the trip swift and the handle’s purpose unforeseen. Yet now, in the return riding a slight current, sixty kilometers was proving a significant distance. Nature was calling.
It always seemed the biggest killjoy in her unorthodox travels. She tried to lose herself in a copy of Picturesque Travel. Not even the magazine’s fetching tourist ads or stylish vignettes touting the beauty of the South China Sea could distract from her bladder’s rebellion.
Seni and Inisi—the two young men manning their quant poles—knew the river and might have an answer to the fundamental question on her mind. They were good-natured lads and Papuan members of the Presbyterian congregation, caught somewhere in that difficult no-man’s-land between the way things always were, and the ways things forever would soon be. Though dressed in torn khaki shorts, sandals, and loose-fitting pith helmets, they did not speak English.
Alexandra often studied up on language when venturing abroad, but no literature existed on the finer pronunciation of Motu or the other hundred trans-Papuan dialects she’d have cause to use.
She broke her lean against a water barrel and maneuvered around supplies piled under an angled canopy. Female etiquette could, to some extent, be set aside in the jungle, yet some gender inequities would last eternal, sometimes for practical reasons. Nothing Alexandra considered would be so convenient as her companions’ ability to unbutton, unfurl, and unleash in a proud stance. She inspected the raft for any cracks to squat over, but the bamboo shoots were tied securely.
It would be easy enough, as she’d already cut off her undergarments to use as toilet paper. She moseyed over to Bannister.
“Pardon me, but how does a lady tinkle aboard this vessel?”
He lifted his hat off his eyes and called out in Gogodala. Seni spoke, pointing near and far. Bannister forwarded, “They can stop on Snake Island. This handle is safer unless crocs break from shore.”
“Snakes or crocodiles… hmm! I’ve tolerated worse company in powder rooms.” Alexandra tossed off her hat, which freed her sun-kissed blonde hair to cascade down to the middle of her back; the cloying humidity having yet vanquished the everyday wave to its length.
The full force of the equatorial sun was taking its toll. Her throat felt parched and her linen outfit was stained with the many mucks of the wilderness. She was drenched in perspiration, and, worst of all, smelled bad. Such muss could not stand, and there was but one remedy.
She unstrapped her belt, wiggled out of her waist vest, and feistily battled the laces of her boots until they shared a pile. “Tally-ho!”
The men all cheered as Alexandra cannon-balled with a splash and vanished beneath the surface. It took several determined strokes until the handle was in her grip. She rolled herself over to float on her back. Her eyes soaked in the colorations spawned by the sun as it sculpted faint rainbows in the river’s rising mist. Hanging fruit bats set off to skim their bellies upon the water to cool off. She marveled at where she was and blithely debated whether it was innate courage or mental instability at the root of why she felt so carefree. What made interior Papua so foreboding was not what was known, rather all that remained unrevealed. Native folklore spoke of monstrous antediluvian reptiles roving its rainforests and spiders that feasted on human prey.
Something high in the trees caught her eye. It resembled a hazy outline of a flying fox. Beyond its ungodly size, what rendered it compelling was it did not hang from a branch but sat perched, encased in its wings. In Port Moresby, she had heard of a winged creature the locals called a Seklo-bali, foretold to be a demon guardian of the river.
It filled her mind with more wonderment than worry. “Something just nipped my foot.”
Bannister spotted a turtle poking its head above the surface. He reached out a hand. “Come along. I’ll pull you aboard.”
Alexandra’s saturated shirt was not thick enough to shield her bosom. She noted his interest, flashed a coy smile, and then maneuvered to drift on her belly. “I recall a story about a man-eater shark in New Jersey swimming way up a river and devouring some boys unaware. Are you familiar with the tale?”
Bannister shook his head and exhaled in exasperation, unsure if her provocations were intentional or just her insouciant manner of being. It’s what had gotten him into this mess to start. “I heard this Jersey place has a lot of sharks… Italian mobsters, mainly.”
“Well done, Bannister. Not a place for an upright man like you.”
He pleaded, “I’ll be up a creek if I bring back only half of you.”
Alexandra grasped her lifeline, and he pulled her aboard. She tussle-dried her hair with a towel and attempted to squeeze moisture from her dripping clothes, but her soggy condition was unsalvageable in such interminable mugginess. She took a squishy seat on a crate to take in the final offerings of sunshine before the full moon emerged to be their guidelight downriver. Bannister sat across from her, looking tight-lipped.
She knew why. “Chin up, good fellow. In a few hours, we’ll be back at Everill Junction, no worse for the wear.”
“I’ll reside a penal colony once Government House learns of this.”
His anxiety was grating on her, as she was on holiday from her own.
Alexandra asked, “Why did you ever agree?”
“You were a young American woman toying with my emotions,” he protested. “When I kissed your hand… the look in your eyes and smell of your perfume captivated me.”
“Mostly sweat with a touch of jasmine. You wouldn’t have been so enchanted if you met me in Java last month, legless with dysentery.”
It was unfair. Losing herself in foreign lands always unearthed the best in her. In such a fleeting acquaintance, he could not know what an everyday wreck she truly was.
“I should have placed you in handcuffs and taken you back.”
She abandoned efforts to comfort him.
The raft drifted toward the reputed kingdom of poisonous black snakes. The long islet cut the river into a narrow course to the left and a wider channel to its right. Bannister adjusted the mounted rudder to ride the faster waters of the narrows.
Alexandra noticed she was tapping a foot out of cadence with the pulsing choral contributions of frogs, birds, and katydids.
Bannister scurried up and gripped his rifle. “Do you hear it?”
She focused on the ruckus. It held a rhythmic quality. She was not imagining it. Seni and Inisi stopped guiding the raft. They all remained in frozen silence: sensing, listening, waiting.
It was now unmistakable; someone was beating a drum.
Inisi shouted, “Marind-Anim ti sasasa!”
A dozen tribesmen emerged along the riverbank. They took a stance in the shallows, chanting in unison; their bodies rocking from side to side in a traditional war dance or show of force.
Alexandra could live with the thought of being killed, but to be eaten thereafter was beyond her palate. She looked at Bannister, completely vexed. “Do you think they prefer to barbecue or boil?”
