At nine the truck reaches the gate on Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat. Yulius Wenda draws the bolt of the side door. The glass of the lobby throws his face forward, then lets it through.

The crates are of pale wood, with metal corners. Twelve. A man in a blue jacket counts them aloud. Yulius puts his hands on the trolley. The wheels make noise on the marble.

In the great hall they have taken away the chairs. There is a long table, covered with red cloth. There is a flag. There are the camera cables, taped to the floor with yellow tape. Yulius passes the rag over the table one last time. The rag takes the dust and the table stays red.

Yulius has been in Jakarta for six years. He cleans the museum halls from seven to three. He lives in Tanah Abang, in a room with two other men from Papua. In the morning he takes bus number twelve. The bus passes under the skyscrapers and Yulius looks at the glass of the skyscrapers and in the glass is the sky of Jakarta, which is white with heat.

They open the first crate at ten. Inside there is wood-wool. A man in white gloves sinks his hands in and lifts out a stone axe. The stone is green, polished, bound to the haft with a fibre cord. The man sets it on a cushion. The camera clicks.

Out of the second crate comes a piece of carved wood, dark, in the shape of a man seated on top of another man: it is a piece of an Asmat pole, the people of the mud coast, who are not Yulius's people but whom Yulius recognises, because the face of the carved man is the face of one who looks straight ahead and does not close his eyes. Out of the third comes a painted bark from Lake Sentani, rolled up, with red circles. They line them all up on the cloth.

Yulius stands against the wall, the rag in his hand. He looks at the axe on the cushion.

The axe is a ye. The green is the green of the river stone, the one found only upstream of Wamena, where the water is cold even at noon. The cord is knotted in four and a half turns. The knot of the fourth turn is tighter than the others. His grandfather knotted it like that. His grandfather knotted it like that because he had learned it from his father, and the father from his father, and the ye of that knot were the ye of the valley of Yalengga, and the valley of Yalengga is where Yulius was born.

A man with a sash at his neck comes in through the door. Everyone turns. The cameras come on. The American man shakes the minister's hand. The minister says a few words in Indonesian. Then he says them in English. On the table, behind them, the stone axes are lined up on eleven cushions. The twelfth crate is still closed.

"We are coming home," says the minister. "These objects are coming home."

Yulius looks at the ye on the first cushion. Home is three thousand kilometres away. Home is three flights and a road of mud. In the valley of Yalengga there is no glass. In the valley of Yalengga the ye hangs from the pole of the hut, and when a man gives a daughter in marriage he takes it down from the pole, he holds it in his hands before the boy's father, and the hand that holds it trembles, and that trembling is part of the price.

The hands in white gloves lift the ye and carry it towards the case. The case is of glass, lit from within. Inside there is a support of clear Plexiglas, cut to measure. They set the ye on the support. The green stone touches nothing: it hangs in the light, held by two little clips that cannot be seen.

They close the door. The lock makes a small sound.

A photographer comes up to Yulius. "Excuse me," he says, "can you move? You're taking the light."

Yulius moves one step.

The minister makes the round of the cases with the American man. They stop in front of the green ye. The minister points to the knot, the cord, the stone. He says something about provenance. He says the name of a district. It is not the right district. Yulius hears the wrong name and stays against the wall, the rag in his hand.

He could have raised his hand. He could have said: this comes from Yalengga, my grandfather made the knot, my grandmother carried it the day they gave her in marriage, I know the fourth turn. He could have. The hall is full of cameras and his voice would be heard.

He does not raise his hand. He passes the rag over the glass of the case beside it, where the glass has no fingerprints yet, and cleans it all the same.

At noon they take down the cables. They carry away the red cloth. The chairs go back to their place. Yulius stays for the last round. He passes with the rag in front of the cases. In front of the green ye he stops.

From outside the glass has a reflection. Yulius brings his face close, his hands cupped around his eyes to take away the reflection, the way you do to look inside a house in the evening. The green stone is in there, hanging in the cold light, without dust, without hand, without pole, without the trembling that was part of the price. The cord hangs from the haft and does not touch the bottom. The fourth knot is turned to the wall.