As the days passed, the possibility of settling in another village receded. My leg was now better, and nothing prevented me from roaming the village, but I was paralysed by the scale of the task ahead. I needed a new excuse.

“How can I meet people if the village is empty all day?” I complained to Ama Darius after returning mud-stained from the upper village one afternoon. “I can't follow everyone to the fields.”

“They are countrymen. There's not much in their heads except pigs and sweet potatoes.”

“Then what shall I do?”

“Call on the nurse or the priest. They've got nothing to do. Or play chess with the teachers. Ordinary folk are jealous of their time. If you want to talk to them we can assemble them in a field and you can do them all at once, like a vaccination.”

I had something less formal, more participatory, in mind, but for the moment, I was hampered by language. I had learned Indonesian, and here, somewhere in Indonesia, nobody could understand me.

Ama Darius drew up a chair and observed me with cold, discomforting interest. His small, widely spaced eyes glittered. Then he put the mask back on.

“Talk to me,” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “I'll sit here from morning till night. Go ahead. What do you want to know?”

I hesitated. Where to begin? First the fundamentals – birth, marriage, death. Then history – your own, your neighbours', your ancestors'. How do you conceive of the past? The Great Repentance, the Dutch, the German missionaries. How to stage a feast of merit; how to hunt, clear forest for cultivation, make medicine from plants; how to build a house, measure a pig, trim a coconut without losing a hand; how to make a speech, how to speak?

“Well, nothing in particular.”

He was grinning as he gazed at me, amused and slightly contemptuous, as if he could read my thoughts.