The months slid past; the pile of field notes grew. Whether it was August or April hardly mattered. The village moved to its own rhythm and, unresisting, we fell into step. Even the landscape – now dry, now flooded – changed too frequently to mark the passage of time. In Nias, life had no seasons. There was, of course, the finite span of fieldwork, the journey of two years that had a beginning and an end, but our arrival now seemed a distant memory, our departure barely thinkable. We were, to paraphrase the poet, out far and in deep.

Our time with the chief's family was a difficult one. They had more or less taken over both houses (their houses of course). Ina Edi and the boys next door now slept down at Edi's stall; Ina Mulisa, the aging mother of Ama Festi, became a servant, fetching firewood and feeding their pigs; two or three small girls belonging to the poorest families worked in the kitchen. We were absorbed into this jumbled, census-proof household. As well as cash for feasts and other expenses, we provided a large share of the food but saw less and less of it. Sometimes we could smell the meat we had bought in the market being roasted over a fire, but at dinner time none was left. We were short of sugar though I was buying half a kilo a day. As Ama Darius had prophesied, we were paying out far more than if we had settled on a generous rent. But our main fear was that with this comfortable arrangement they would never go back.

I could no longer talk to people without an audience and my flow of visitors dried up. The days when Ama Huku could sit for hours drinking tea with us were gone. And anyone who wandered in was obliged to pay their respects to the chief – a deterrent in itself. It was hard for Mercedes too. Her callers were intimidated by the presence of the family.