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'We can tell you right here all you need to know about the Abos,' Eva said.
'It was just this last five months, this last tribe.' She could not think how to describe them. She and Fen had not agreed on one thing about the Mumbanyo. He had stripped her of her opinions. She marveled now at the blankness. Tillie was looking at her with a drunk's depthless concern.
'Sometimes you just find a culture that breaks your heart,' she said finally.
'Nellie,' Fen called at her. 'Minton says Bankson is still here.' He waved his hand upriver.
Of course he is, she thought, but said, 'The one who stole your butterfly net?' She was trying to be playful.
'He didn't steal anything.'
What had he said exactly? It had been on the ship coming home from the Solomons, in one of their first conversations. They'd been gossiping about their old professors. Haddon liked me, Fen had said, but he gave Bankson his butterfly net. Bankson had ruined their plans. They'd come in '31 to study two New Guinea tribes. But because Bankson was on the Sepik River, they'd gone north, up the mountains to the Anapa, with the hope that when they came back down in a year he'd be gone and they'd have their pick of the river tribes, whose less isolated cultures were rich with artistic, economic, and spiritual traditions. But he was still there, so they'd gone in the opposite direction from him and the Kiona he studied, south down a tributary of the Sepik called the Yuat, where they'd found the Mumbanyo. She had known that tribe was a mistake after the first week, but it took her five months to convince Fen to leave.
Fen stood beside her. 'We should go and see him.' 'Really?' He'd never suggested this before. Why now, when they'd already made arrangements for Australia? He had been with Haddon, Bankson, and the butterfly net in Sydney four years ago, and she didn't think they had liked each other much.
Bankson's Kiona were warriors, the rulers of the Sepik before the Australian government had cracked down, separating villages, allotting them parcels of land they did not want, throwing resisters in jail. The Mumbanyo, fierce warriors themselves, told tales of the Kiona's prowess. This was why he wanted to visit Bankson. The tribe is always greener on the other side of the river, she often tried to tell him. But it was impossible not to be envious of other people's people. Until you laid it all out neatly on the page, your own tribe looked a mess.
'Do you think we'll see him in Angoram?' she asked. They could not go traipsing after Bankson. They'd made the decision to go to Australia. Their money wouldn't last much more than half a year, and it would take several weeks to get settled among the Aborigines.
'Doubt it. I'm sure he steers clear of the government station.'
The speed of the boat was disorienting. 'We need to get that pinnace to Port Moresby tomorrow, Fen. The Gunai are a good choice for us.'
'You thought the Mumbanyo were a good choice for us, too, when we headed there.' He rattled the ice of his empty glass. He looked like he had more to say, but he walked back to Minton and the other men.
'Been married long?" asked Tillie.
'Two years in May,' Nell said. 'We had the ceremony the day before we came out here.'
'Swish honeymoon.'
They laughed. The bottle of gin came round again.
For the next four and a half hours Nell watched the dressed-up couples drink, tease, flirt, wound, laugh, apologize, separate, reintegrate. She watched their young uneasy faces, saw how thin the layer of self-confidence was, how easily it slipped off when they thought no one was looking. Occasionally Tillie's husband would raise his arm to point out something on land: two boys with a net, a sloth hanging like a melting sack from a tree, an osprey coasting to its nest, a red parrot mocking their engine. She tried not to think about the villages they were passing, the raised houses and the fire pits and the children hunting for snakes in the thatch with spears. All the people she was missing, the tribes she would never know and words she would never hear, the worry that they might right now be passing the one people she was meant to study, a people whose genius she would unlock, and who would unlock hers, a people who had a way of life that made sense to her. Instead she watched these Westerners and she watched Fen, speaking his hard talk to the men, aggressively pressing them about their work, defensively responding when they asked about his, coming to seek her out then punishing her with a few cutting words and an abrupt retreat. He did this four or five times, dumping his frustration on her, unaware of his own pattern. He was not through punishing her for wanting to leave the Mumbanyo.
Excerpted from Euphoria by Lily King. Copyright © 2014 by Lily King. Excerpted by permission of Atlantic Monthly Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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