Euphoria

Written from the perspective of Nell’s notebook, Chapter 12 documents her care for Andrew during his fever. He is delirious and refuses to drink water until she pretends to be his “British battle-axe” (127) mother. Fen grumbles about Andrew turning up sick, but Nell knows that it is because sickness frightens him, owing to his own mother’s death from flu.

While Andrew convalesces, Fen hatches a plan to go back to the Mumbanyo and retrieve a sacred object, whose whereabouts he has discovered. He argues that he and Andrew “could sell it to the museum for a right heap of cash,” stating that the books written about it would eclipse Nell’s: “It would fix us up for life […]. We’d be like Carter and Carnarvon discovering Tut” (133). Andrew gives a vague reply about not knowing the Mumbanyo.

In another visit to Andrew’s bedside, Fen reveals that he grew up on an isolated farm in Queensland, his mother died of flu, and he and his brothers sexually abused his sister. These experiences are why nothing in the primitive world of the tribes surprises him. He also kisses Andrew on the mouth and backs away as though Andrew initiated it.

Told from the perspective of Nell’s notebook, the chapter reflects on the two days of health Andrew enjoyed. Nell, Fen, and Andrew went for a hike and a swim. She reflects that the three of them are in “a bit of a dance” romantically and that Fen and she are “both a little in love with Andrew Bankson” (144).

When Andrew returns to Nengai, he has a note from his mistress, Bett. He canoes over to her, but without his usual lust. Sex offers a release for Andrew, but he is still thinking of Nell. Bett can tell something is wrong.

Andrew consciously stays away from Lake Tam, inviting Teket’s family over for dinner. He speculates that the time could have passed uneventfully, with him steeped in his own work, but Teket comes back to him with a note from Nell.

This chapter is written in the third person, from Nell’s perspective. A sudden parade almost crushes Nell. When she spots Malun and a man in green trousers, she knows that Xambun has returned. Nell’s note to Andrew informs him of this fact.

Fen comes home stoned, having taken hallucinogens in the parade celebrating Xambun’s return. He is violent and finding Nell working at her typewriter an irritation, crashes the thing off her desk. Nell remembers how “once in their first month together in the field an Anapa elder had come and told her it was not safe for her to be alone with just her husband” and that she needed a “brother” (156) there too, for her protection. Nell reflects that “she might still have her baby if she’d had a brother there” (156).

Nell wants to write Xambun’s story of working in the mines and returning, but before she can even approach him, he tells her “to go away” (159) in English.

In her notebooks, Nell writes that she is fatigued by the ongoing celebration of Xambun’s return and finds it a time of needless and excessive festivity. She cannot even muster anthropological interest in the sexually explicit beach dances that imitate “public fornication” (116). Fen continues to be stoned, and she wishes she could talk to Andrew.

Nell and Andrew are pleased to see each other, and he brings her a mountain of correspondence. Andrew is surprised that neither Nell nor Fen have approached Xambun for an account of his time away and thinks that they are keeping something from him.

Fen, who is dismissive of his wife’s popularity in the anthropological field, takes Andrew to the men’s ceremonial house, whose opening is an “enormous scarlet vulva” (168). Women are allowed in this house, and it is not a place where non-members can feel at home. Fen disappears “somewhere in the dim back of the vast room” (169). When Andrew asks him what is going on, Fen says that he was merely waiting for Andrew. However, Andrew senses Fen is lying.