Of father figures and political assassinations
“When I was in my early twenties Hal Franklin was more to me than a father.”
That remark comes from David Apps, the narrator of Trevor Shearston’s fourth novel on Papua New Guinea, “A Straight Young Back.”
Though nostalgic in tone, the remark is immediately betrayed by the title of the novel, which points to David as the protagonist who must embark on a narrative that will meticulously deal with the problems of power and governance as much as the need there is for one to research into and be frank with certain discoveries on certain historical events such as the politics of the Mataugan Association of the late sixties and early seventies.
But before taking us to Gazelle, the narrator draws our attention to Eraro, a fictitious spot somewhere between the Southern Highlands and the Gulf Province, as a way of familiarizing us with this charismatic father figure known as Hal Franklin. Now Hal Franklin is a legend in Eraro, and it is to this region of the Highlands that he posts David as the latter’s gift of promotion in the thriving business of shall we say kiap industry.
There, in Eraro, David first experiences the taste of power. His rank, Acting District Commissioner; his designation, Senior Patrol Officer; age, 23.
Thus, stepping out onto the airstrip at Eraro, on February 11, 1967, young David cannot believe the air of quiet submission and servitude that rises up to greet him. He feels drunk, he says, but feels more like floating and viewing the world through a magnifying glass. “And I was”, he continues, “the lens of power. There was no one on earth I’d have traded places with. I was ruler of every square inch I could see... I enjoyed the way the chatter fell silent when I arrived. I even enjoyed the smell of them, deliberately breathed it in as I crunched along the limestone path, the mix of sweet potatoes and sweat emanating from their armpits, the smoke in their hair, in the bark of their cloaks, on their skin.”
That sudden elevation to ADC leads David to viewing power as something precious, something virtuous, but only in so far as it serves to maintain a good record of what we might call book-keeping. By book-keeping, we mean precisely the necessity of keeping one’s working table in order: neat piles of diary and other entries of the day, census figures gathered from village registers, and detailed records of the cost of running an entire district.
Or so it would seem for Mr. David Apps. But not so as we later find out.
In fact, when David arrives at Eraro, he is viewed differently, not only by the villagers there, but by the mentor who sent him there, namely masta Franklin. Franklin has purposely sent David to Eraro to mind the fort, as it were, developed by Franklin himself as a kind of empire. David walks through that empire tasting the fruit of power that Franklin sowed: the food gardens and cash crop plantations; the roads to maintain contact with the governed; the thousands that come to see him rule over them; and the land area itself which might offer some unforeseen wealth in the future.
In his diaries and official records, which he later transcribes from Glebe (a suburb in Sydney), David offers numerous illustrations of Hal Franklin as a father figure. Even the missionaries at a station close by do not have the privilege of being looked up to in the manner that Franklin relishes the respect bestowed upon him by the villagers and the kiaps of David’s generation.
The first time David meets Franklin, the latter is solving an industrial crisis between the teachers and prefects of a local school and the PWD from a town close by. Franklin has this habit of throwing his left arm around the waist of a disgruntled group leader or complainant, walking with him, talking with him, advising him, until like a father-son combination in walking to and fro, those standing by see the one being held finally humbled and subdued. He does the same with the leader of the other group until some agreement is reached and both parties go home, satisfied.
The most dramatic of these father-son tangos or waltzes in solving problems occurred when a deranged police constable held two child hostages in a house and threatened to behead them with an axe if his demands were not met. The ordeal lasted several hours before Franklin arrived with a chair, sat outside the house and began talking to the constable. No one watching knew or clearly heard what Franklin said, but within minutes the constable walked out and, as the narration goes, “Franklin stood and put his arms out and the constable walked into them like a little boy and sobbed his heart out. He didn’t even feel the axe leave his fingers. Franklin under armed it away into a flowerbed.”
David later, asked how all that happened, what was the magic word or trick, since the constable could have swung that axe within easy reach, and the answer received from Franklin was one of embarrassed hesitation: “For a time you stop being yourself - you become who he needs. He needed a father.”
Some weeks later, David learns that he must be transferred to Madang for reasons as vague as being replaced by a James Renault who has this terrible reputation of conning villagers into selling artifacts cheaply to him to be later sold overseas for large sums. The job in Madang leads David to again being offered a posting to the Gazelle Peninsula.
At this time, the Mataugan uprising is at its peak - much of it being heard in the media overseas. Somare is promising Papua and New Guinea self-government. The land-owner factions of the Gazelle Peninsula are given the audience of Gough Whitlam who thereafter promises the whole colony early independence as soon as he is in power. And David Apps finally resigns - which is a fitting thing to do, since the kiap has nothing else to do but go home.
In Sydney, trying his hand out at real estate with his “going finish” money, David learns of the murder of Hal Franklin in Rabaul. As it is natural with anyone David breaks down and weeps for Hal Franklin. He was a good man, David reasons, merely doing his duty out in the fields, but rather unfortunate that “a good man could be killed enforcing bad law.”
But since the media in some areas of reporting describes Hal Franklin as a martyr, David begins thinking twice about the man. He regrets not having obeyed Franklin in being transferred to Rabaul with his mentor. That way perhaps he could talk the old man out of pressing things too far, tell him PNG was ready for Independence, and there was no point in any expatriate hanging around in the new country. But David felt Franklin deserved something better: a decoration for good service perhaps, or a decent burial with a 21 gun salute.
So, 19 years later, he returns to Rabaul, to Kabaira, with a producer from ABC and interviews a few people responsible for the death of Hal Franklin, one or two of whom having served 14 years in jail. There he discovers the reason why Franklin was anxious to get all the tough kiaps based in the Highlands region transferred to Rabaul: it was to exterminate Mataugan and be rid of rebel rousers the likes of Kaputin, Tamur and Kereku. Beneath all that was the colonial necessity of safeguarding the peninsula’s wealth dating back to the times of Queen Emma.
Hal Franklin is suddenly seen in a new light. He is no longer the father figure walking a confused young rebel with his left arm wrapped around the latter’s waist, talking with him, advising him on what is good and bad. The reader suddenly becomes aware of the amount of seduction involved in that father-and-son tango. Certain informants pointed out to David that in those wrap-around walks, Hal Franklin was actually nursing a gun in his right shirt or trouser pocket. Ironically, the person stabbing Hal Franklin with an old and rusted Japanese bayonet was left-handed.
Several questions now need to be answered about Hal Franklin. Was he a martyr? Would he have, and still have today, been given a decent burial at least, with some fitting epitaph above his head? Or is he, rather, today, a worthy subject of what might eventually become accepted by scholars, historians and political scientists alike, as the first case of a political assassination in the history of both Papua New Guinea and Australia?
Whatever the answers to these questions, Trevor Shearston has struck again as certainly the finest of writers writing on Papua New Guinea today.
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