Seclusion: Predatory women abound

SHORT STORY

By DANIEL KUMBON
ROSEMARY and the Old Man had come across the girl a couple of years ago when she had sent a random text message to his mobile phone pleading for financial assistance. She claimed she was 13 years of age and wanted to complete her primary education. Her father, she said, had died when she was only seven years of age. She had stayed home the last couple of years doing nothing on an oil palm plantation near Lae city in Wopa Country.
Her mother didn’t work and nobody wanted to help pay her school fees. They had been entirely dependent on her father’s pay packet. Her mother, she said, was the lazy type who had stayed home like a young chick in the nest with its mouth wide open expecting her husband to drop something into it. She was the type of woman who spent food money on buai, bingo games and cigarettes.
Now, they managed to survive on company royalty payments and informal market sales. But her mother had continued on with her reckless lifestyle saving nothing for her daughter’s education. She even went off with strange men to drink and play pokies at the local tavern. The young girl was showing her own initiative to ask for small contributions. Could anybody help a poor orphan?
The Old Man had received many such random texts from con artists on a regular basis. He ignored them but this one seemed genuine. So, he showed it to Rosemary to ring her and find out if it was a small girl on the other end.
After making sure she was genuine they added her name on a list of other successful applicants from other under privileged families who requested assistance from Akali Wakane Life Centre (AWLC). They established the not-for-profit charity organisation after all their three children had started working.
‘Do to others what you would like done to you,’ is a piece of advice he received in the hausman or house for man only. This message was also in the bible.
But he also remembered this other piece of advice: ‘When you feed the pigs in a pen, leave the food at a safe distance. Don’t go close. If you hand feed them the animals will bite your hand off. Be cautious too when you deal with people. Always keep your distance.’
Every year the couple sent enough money to the girl and the handful of other successful applicants to pay for their needs – clothing and other necessities. They were delighted when this girl was accepted at the Lae School of Nursing after successfully completing Grade 12 at Bumayong Secondary School. She was now doing her final year. Now after Rosemary died, whether appropriately or foolishly she was trying to claim her mentor and sponsor to be her husband.
A mistake
The Old Man realised he’d made a mistake to express how lonely he felt after Rosemary died. He told her and the other Akali Wakane scholarship recipients in an email about the funeral feast and how he had fulfilled tribal obligations by paying some form of compensation to her people back home in Enga province.
But the young girl had taken his message wrong. To her, articulating his loneliness meant that he was now available to accept any woman who came into his life. She already had this father-child relationship and knew him well. She had always loved him for his generosity, care and advice. They hadn’t yet met in person but exchanged only their photographs. Now, she felt as if The Old Man belonged to her alone to claim.
The girl had forwarded that initial text message to any random number that crossed her mind. She had been happy when the couple responded to her request immediately, total strangers who just appeared in her life. Would this type of man not make a good husband irrespective of age difference? She convinced herself there was nothing wrong in marrying him now that Rosemary was dead.
What type of women would possibly blame her for writing to The Old Man and express her intentions in the manner she did?
She was a child of mixed Sepik and Morobe parentage living with her aunt’s family in a shack on an oil palm plantation compound near Lae city.
She basically grew up on her own with neighborhood childhood peers. Her mother did not object, but encouraged her to keep writing to The Old Man until he submitted. The mother provided key words and ideas in some of the text messages the girl sent.
He had rescued them during their time of need. Her daughter was now in the final year of training to be a nursing sister. The fortnight pays the girl would earn would rightly be his. He had paid her school fees and other necessities. She would live with him and work at one of the hospitals and clinics in Port Moresby. The idea was perfect in her mother’s head. And in Delisa’s young innocent self.
After all, it was common to see many young girls getting married as the second or third wives of much older men. All that needed to be done was to pay bride to seal the union. It was a traditional practice that had continued to modern times.
The Old Man almost gave in to the girl’s persistent requests to allow her to take Rosemary’s place in the house. Her clear-headed approach to discuss openly an important issue revealed maturity and her ability to understand sensitive matters with a tinge of genuine innocence.
His spirits were beginning to lift. Strangely enough, he looked forward to her next text message. And he began to eat. An unexpected urge to again feel the closeness and the soft touch of a female companion tugged at him. The thought stimulated him like breathing fresh air after coming out of a smoke-filled kunai house.
He realised how easy it was to just ask the girl to fly over from Lae to live with him. He had the resources to do as he pleased. But yet The Old Man struggled hard to remove this sort of thoughts from taking root in his distressed mind.
He was a well-known lawyer, diplomat and entrepreneur. He had also established a well-known charity organization. He had used his position to full advantage and accumulated enough wealth through his real estate business, private law firm and other long-term investments. Just as he and his wife, Rosemary were beginning to enjoy the benefits, she had been killed before his very eyes.
Wife’s best friend
Many women made passes at him soon after Rosemary was buried. The story was carried in the daily newspapers, radio and TV stations. They knew whose wife it was that had been killed in the city.
As if on cue, one of his wife’s best friends, an attractive young divorcee made passes immediately after Rosemary was buried. The typist at another law firm, the shop assistant, the single mother and work acquaintances who knew him, all made passes too. But he ignored them all.
He was perplexed how cruel people could be to take advantage of one’s loss – especially at a time when he was in mourning. Did they know how much he had loved Rosemary? He decided to disappear from the public domain to live in isolation. He wanted very much to avoid such predatory women.
He was content living alone in his cozy home on Paga Hill, an affluent hillside suburb in downtown Port Moresby. Sometimes his children came with their families to spend their holidays and kept him company. But most times he lived alone for over a year. But it was taking its toll on his health.
The Old Man doubted if this young girl or any other woman would fill perfectly the empty spaces in his heart and in the house left empty by Rosemary. It seemed to him a lifetime of dedicated love shared between two people could not be easily replaced by somebody else’s love. It was just not possible, it seemed.
It had been his wife’s idea to acquire the land and build their own family home. She had selected the site where the house should stand, where their bedroom should be and how the windows should be designed to take in an unimpeded view of the open sea and surrounding hills.
They had gone on a pilgrimage to Israel via Jordan with a local church congregation and had seen the similarities of the Holy Land hills and their own brown hills of Port Moresby during the dry season. They had made up their mind to build their home on Paga Hill applying middle-eastern style architectural designs.
When it was completed, the condo made of brick and painted white with the sloping shallow roof was a distinctive landmark perched on the hill. It looked very much like those rich mansions they had seen along the Mediterranean coast. Or like those properties they had seen on the hills at the Whitsundays on a trip to Australia.
The roof made a wide overhang and provided shade on hot days. The courtyards, open arches and big, open windows allowed cool winds from the wide-open sea to flow freely throughout the house and verandas.
There was also a barbecue area and swimming pool glistening among the lush bougainvillea, hibiscus, palm trees, cactus, roses and other flowers and shrubs planted at strategic locations around the house adding color to the landscape. In the dry season, it looked like an oasis in the desert after hooligans burned the grass from the low hills which surrounded the property.
As on a giant television screen, live scenes of natural forces occasionally played out as he and Rosemary lay on their bed and watched everything unfold: the sun rising on the horizon over the Pacific Ocean; the seabirds feeding on krill floating on the waves; ocean liners from distant lands crawling in through the narrow Basilisk Passage to berth in the Fairfax Harbor, fishing boats and a couple of lakatois from the last Hiri Moale festival lazily tossing about in the afternoon breeze.
At other times they watched tropical thunder storms roll past their window stirring up the ocean causing giant waves to rise 10 feet into the sky only to come crashing against the rocks, the foam slowly dissipating into the sand before the next wave hit. This was a sight to behold from within the confines of their abode.
Also, from the bedroom window they could see multitudes of migratory seabirds flocking in from the south to build their colonies and raise young ones on the white cliffs on Fisherman’s Island a few miles out to sea.
One species in particular stood out – the Wandering Albatross, with their wide wingspans gracing the cliff face like gliders seeking a suitable spot to settle down to build their nests. These migratory birds mated with a single partner for life and raised their chicks almost like human beings – one every two years.
And in their own home, The Old Man and his wife Rosemary had also raised three of their own children over the years conceived in the heat of the night. These thoughts came flooding back as The Old Man sat holding the framed letter in his hands. He was oblivious to time as he reminisced about his life’s fruitful journey with Rosemary by his side.
This was the rhythm of life, how nature puts everything in its place. What is bound to happen, happens, no doubt about that.
Suddenly, the reverie was broken with the persistent cooing of an owl or kolakau reminding him to retire for the night. The dark starless night outside belonged to ghouls, spirits of dead relatives and sangumas or sorcerers who possessed dark powers able to transform into spirit beings seeking out unsuspecting victims to eat their hearts while they slept. People found dead in their beds next morning with no prior complaints of illness was believed to be the work of sorcerers.
The Old Man shivered for a while at the thought. Who would sound the alarm if something unexpected happened to him?
He was too old to cry but the temptation to remarry and the realization that his body suddenly seemed to have responded to inner thoughts of having female company and again hold a woman against his body overwhelmed him.
Yet, the Old Man found it difficult to imagine a strange woman lying down beside him on the same old oak bed on which he used to make love to Rosemary.
As the Old Man carefully placed the framed letter back in its place on the living room wall, he could not avoid noticing the smiling face of the young girl. He couldn’t resist admiring every detail of her lustrous young face. For a moment, he thought she was really beautiful.
Then with a guilty grin which seemed to light up his sunken face, he quickly changed into his night clothes and cried himself to sleep.
Outside in the darkness, the owl continued to coo as if to remind him of the words written on the framed love letter, he himself had penned promising Rosemary that he would love her forever. This thought moved him to more choking tears.
His sobs were heard as whispers coming from the bedroom in the empty mansion.
Next week: Human after all