Horror in Paradise Page 13

  Without waiting further, we set off for the village of Mondo by lantern light: it was no more than five minutes’ walk from the mission station. There, we at once visited the communal hut where travelers are received, and then ruthlessly went into each smaller hut, questioning its inhabitants. We knew our Papuans and they knew us. They knew—and openly admitted—that we were not “whites just like the others,” to whom one could tell any tall story. I do not need, therefore, to go into details. We were quickly convinced of one thing: not only was Isidoro not at Mondo, but he had not been seen in the village for a long time, nor for that matter in the surrounding district.

  We decided therefore to set off at dawn the next day for Ilide. We arrived there toward noon, panting, perspiring, and exhausted. The first person to greet us, wearing a broad smile, was Isidoro.

  We were careful not to show the least trace of astonishment. The villagers themselves were certainly surprised by our unexpected visit, but we found some plausible excuse, and in the most casual way possible, pursued our detailed and rather anxious investigation. Even then, we were forced back to the conclusion: Isidoro had remained in the communal hut of the village on the preceding evening, smoking and gossiping, until “two pipes after the hour of the ghelele“—that is to say, until after seven, for it is at about six-thirty that the mountain cicada salutes with his strident cries the coming of twilight. He had said that he was going back to his own hut to sleep. Others had seen him enter it, but not come out again. Early next morning, he had appeared on the veranda of his hut in the usual way, yawning and stretching. There had, in short, been nothing unusual in his whole behavior.

  The bare facts, however, gave rise to much more troubling conclusions. Isidoro had been in his village the previous evening until after seven o’clock. By about nine-thirty that same evening, he had been in our hut at Mondo. Let us recall at this point that it was physically impossible to cover the distance between these two points in less than five hours, above all at night. For the return journey, it is true, the time factor presented less difficulty. Even then, there are limits to human endurance, above all among the Papuans who, for lack of rich and sustaining foods, have little stamina. Even supposing he could have made the journey by night, which in itself was highly improbable, and counting the time he had spent with us, Isidoro would have had to accomplish in about nine hours a return trip which, by day, would normally take at least ten, and by night at least sixteen hours.

  It was a complete mystery. However, the next day, while I was alone, Isidoro came to see me. I had grown weary of turning the problem over and over in my mind. Looking him straight in the eyes, I asked him bluntly:

  “Where were you, the other evening?”

  “With you, at Mondo. You know that. You gave me some tobacco. We talked. We talked about different things. We shook hands.”

  “Yes, but you deceived me. You said you were going to sleep at Mondo. No one saw you in the village.”

  “Oh! . . .” That was just an av’ur’elafe [a manner of speaking].”

  “Yet the people here say that you were with them, in this village, until quite late that same evening, and early the next day again.”

  “Yes—there they speak the word of truth—av’akai.”

  “In that case, perhaps you flew like the birds to come and see us?”

  His face darkened and his eyes grew fierce. His mouth twisted into a grimace of smiling hatred that I had never seen before, as he said jeeringly:

  “You, a priest, have powers to do extraordinary things. I wanted to show you that I, too, have such powers.”

  And abruptly, he departed.

  Robert Dean Frisbie

  Over the Reef

  Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Robert Dean Frisbie (1896-1948) left for the South Seas after World War I. After “going native” for several years near Papeete, he began twelve years of drifting about the islands. “Ropati,” as he was called, in 1924 became a resident trader on Puka-Puka or Danger Island in the northern Cook group. He stayed for four years, married twice, and by his first wife Nga had five children. Encouraged by his friend James Norman Hall, he began writing. The Book of Puka-Puka (1929) is his best known work.

  In “Over the Reef,” Frisbie narrates a horrifying personal adventure among the coral-crusted, iron-toothed shoals of a surf-beaten atoll.

  A FEW months ago, while surfboarding across the shallows near Windward Village, I was swept into a depression in the reet where a rapid current washed me through the breakers into the open sea. It was as much as my life was worth and I knew it.

  The sun was just setting behind a heavy screen of storm clouds; half a gale chopped the sea to whitecaps; and between me and the shore was a line of gigantic breakers raising their backs twenty feet above the jagged coral, to crash with terrific violence the whole length of the reef. Even a Puka-Pukan would have considered it impossible to regain the shore.

  I had clung to my surfboard, a piece of one-by-four planking, four feet long. It buoyed me up somewhat; otherwise I could not have survived three minutes in that frothy sea.

  The news was yelled across the island and soon the beach was black with people; some of the stronger men were on the reef vainly trying to throw me pieces of wood. They watched me with morbid excitement, for they expected momentarily to witness my last agonies.

  Three desperate chances were open to me. One was to swim round to the lee side of the island, a distance of about five miles. This was impossible; night was setting in and the gale increasing. Furthermore, my strength was rapidly ebbing in the fight for breath against the waves that constantly bashed against my face. Or I might wait for a canoe to cross the lagoon to the lee reef and come round to me. Only the largest of the canoes could have weathered that sea, and at least two hours would be needed to make the passage. I should be dead long before they could reach me.

  The third chance was to swim straight for the reef, and this I did, without hope of getting across but with a strangely exhilarating determination not to give up my life without a struggle. I have sometimes had moments of absurd panic while swimming in deep water far out from shore, as when turtle-fishing with Benny; but now I was nerved by a sort of reckless courage and looked forward without fear to the coming fight, as though the combers were human enemies whom I should somehow injure before they crushed and buried me. When one believes that death is inevitable, one is indifferent to everything except a final splendid demonstration of one’s ego—at least, so it was with me that murky evening, a chip flung, buried, raised, derided by the relentless sea.

  Coming within the grasp of the combers, I looked back again to see an immense wave about to hurl itself upon me. All my courage ebbed in an instant. The struggle was too hopeless; the contrast between that mighty wall of water and my puny self was too clearly apparent.

  Then, strangely, my courage returned. I refused to lose this last opportunity for self-assertion. As the comber curled to fall, I dove straight into it as the only means of protecting myself from its impact.

  I could feel the concussion as it hurled itself on the reef; the water became milky with foam, and I knew that I was being tossed about perilously close to the jagged coral.

  Fighting my way to the surface, my head was buried in two feet of foam. I beat the water frantically, trying to raise myself above that layer of soft choking froth. My lungs were bursting when it had subsided sufficiently for me to gasp the fresh air.

  I scarcely had time to empty and refill my lungs before another comber reared above me with the malice of a cat playing with a mouse.

  Subconsciously I was fighting the greatest battle of all, suppressing an almost overpowering fear which prompted me to dive, fill my lungs with water, and put an end to the struggle. But consciously I was still exhilarated: I was ending my life with gusto, with almost sensual gratification.

  The comber fell just as I was diving. Half-stunned, I was whirled around like a chip. I had a vague impression that my head had grazed the coral; in fact, as I a
fterward learned, a deep gash had been laid open half-way across my scalp. It now seemed that the end was at hand, for again there was the deep layer of light foam above my head. I held my breath, expecting to hear the peculiar hissing sound of the next toppling sea.

  As the foam subsided, coughing and gasping for breath I exerted my last strength, making a few feeble strokes toward the reef, now but a few yards distant. Dimly I could see naked figures along the reef gesticulating frantically. I knew that they were warning me of the approach of the next breaker, but I didn’t turn my head. There was nothing more that I could do. In my own mind I was already dead, for I had been through the terror of dying, and the final annihilating stroke had only been delayed for a few seconds, that was all. On the beach I saw a hazy line that seemed to waver and melt into blackness as I watched it. I knew it was the villagers standing as close as they could to get to me, watching the end.

  There was now less than a fathom of water beneath me, and even though I had had the strength, I could not have dived. I heard the roaring of the oncoming comber; lights flashed in the darkness, and in that second I saw, with uncanny vividness, the form of my mother sitting in her armchair, quietly knitting and gazing up at me with her thoughtful, compassionate eyes.

  I lived, of course, but it was a near thing. The last comber had buried me, hurled me across the reef, and rolled me like a log to a spot where the natives rushed out to grasp me.

  I remember little of what followed, although I have a faint recollection of people carrying me inland, and of the great little Ura waving his arms and crying: “He is a superman (toa)! A Puka-Pukan would have been killed by the first wave!” My pride is so strong that I remember his words more vividly than any other circumstance. He was right: a Puka-Pukan would have philosophically allowed the first wave to kill him, not being sufficiently egotistical to make a final grandiose gesture in the face of death.

  That night old William and Mama, Little Sea and Desire sat by my mat. Little Sea had my feet in her lap, massaging them. Desire sat huddled in a comer, whimpering. Mama stroked my forehead, while the whole night through William repeated the story of the incident, adding details with each narration, so that, long before dawn, he had placed me in the same class with Great Stomach, who flew over the sea. It was annoying, to say the least, to have the one thing I wished to forget dinned everlastingly into my ears.

  I was aware of a cutting pain in my side and that my breath was coming laboriously, but this was nothing to the mental pain; for when I shut my eyes great combers would rise above me to hang there on the verge of breaking for moments at a time; then they would subside, giving place to others. They seemed to have human faculties and to be leering at me in a cruel, implacable manner. They were screaming that they had pounded the reefs of Puka-Puka for thousands of years and that no mere human should interrupt their endless toil even for a moment.

  Toward morning I sent for my medicine chest and took five grains of opium. In a few minutes I was asleep.

  I awoke in the evening, coughing up quantities of blood. The pain in my side had grown to a steady burning pang, aggravated by the least movement, and, when I coughed, forcing me to use all my strength to keep from screaming. I could still see the combers rising with horrible deliberation over my head, and I realized vaguely that all during my sleep I had been harassed by a dream-fugue of curling, crashing breakers.

  About midnight, after a fit of coughing, I sank back on my mat to feel the pain gradually lessening. Dimness veiled my eyes, and it was with a feeling of immense relief that I awaited the approach of death. To this day I am more than half-convinced that I did die. At any rate, the watchers thought me dead, and all but one of them resigned me to the shades of the ancients.

  Half an hour later I awoke, or was revivified. I was dimly conscious, and yet my whole body was as lifeless as though the blood had congealed in my veins. Only my mind functioned, refusing to give up life even though the body was stiff and cold. As though coming from an infinite distance, I could hear the death songs being chanted over me, the patter of footsteps as people ran back and forth on the road below, and the barely audible cry: “Ropati is dead! Ropati is dead!”

  I believed that I was dead, and I remember the dim thought came to me that, after all, there is a life after death, a belief I had always scoffed at.

  Little Sea and Desire were wailing, with their bodies thrown across my legs, and who but evil—or, rather, good old Bones, the village libertine, the most degenerate soul on the island, was leaning over me, absolutely refusing to give me up as he vigorously massaged my body with those powerful, gorillalike hands of his. Without lecherous old Bones I am convinced that I would have died that night; but by some mysterious Polynesian method of massage (tarome), a method which I have often seen used to as much as bring a man out of the grave, Bones saved me. God—if there is one—bless his sinful old soul—if he has any.

  Still the death chant went on much as it had over the body of Wail-of-Woe, and at last another half-hour passed before I was sufficiently restored to show signs of life. Consciousness had returned by imperceptible degrees. At first I was only dimly aware of something touching my body lightly. Then I associated this with Bones, whom I could vaguely see leaning over me. A tingling sensation suffused my muscles, much like that one feels when one’s foot is asleep. It was at about this time that I blinked my eyes, bringing the death wail to an abrupt end and sending Bosun-Woman home, doubtless greatly disappointed at being balked in her expectation of revels over a fine white corpse. I can still see the ghastly smile on her witchlike face as she turned to leave; and now, when I meet her in the village, she looks at me as much as to say: “Wait, Ropati—just wait! You fooled me once, but I’m in no hurry. I’ll be laying you out one of these fine days.”

  What a lovable, incompetent nurse garrulous old Mama was! Little Sea and Desire could have taken much better care of me, but Mama would not hear of it. What! Allow two mere “drinking-nuts” and one of them no more than an undeveloped korn, to nurse me? Never! So dear old Mama settled herself comfortably in my house to attend to my wants.

  In the height of my fever she fed me roast pork, lobster, taro pudding, and tinned beans; and when convalescent, arrowroot starch, eggs, and milk; but thanks to a reasonably good constitution and Bones’s daily massaging, I managed to pull through, and in a month’s time I could sit up and take notice of the world of Puka-Puka.

  Once Jeffrey, the village witch doctor, came to visit me with his bottles of noxious medicines and a leering, conceited smile on his lips. Possibly Bosun-Woman had sent him, aware of his skill at hastening the departure of the ailing. I sent him away with an outburst of curses that only old William could appreciate. The old heathen had increased respect for me from that time on, and I think I have never, either before or since, shown such profane versatility.

  Merlin Moore Taylor

  Two Sorcerers

  of Black Papua

  An American journalist, Merlin Moore Taylor, penetrated the mountain regions of New Guinea with an expedition consisting of three white men, a guard of native police, and a hundred and twenty carriers. In villages in the heart of Papua, never before visited by outsiders, Taylor—who was strongly opposed to “faking stuff from the four corners of the earth”—met a number of characters portrayed in this selection from his 1926 volume, The Heart of Black Papua.

  THE sorcerer still is a power in New Guinea. Mostly he follows the same path that Tata Koa trod, with variations of his own. One sorcerer, after a period of incarceration at Samarai, somehow discovered the big radio station there and grasped the idea that it enabled the white man to talk to other white men far away, out of sight and hearing. In his village today you will find a miniature wireless tower, a fearsome and intricate thing of sticks and vines and what not, and hanging from its top two long vines with huge sea shells at their ends. With these shells clapped to his ears, the sorcerer maintains he is able to hear what is being said by anyone whose fear and respect he wishes to g
ain.

  Another has a glass bottle, salvaged from the sea, to which he ascribes potent powers. In his district the natives hold what they call a bottle—a length of hollowed bamboo fashioned in that shape—in great reverence. A “bottle” may be handed down for generations, gaining “strength” with the years, and he whose bottle is the “strongest” will have the best hunting, the best gardens, the most successful fishing, and other good fortune. Needless to say, the glass bottle of the sorcerer leads them all.

  So the superstition and ignorance of the savage makes sorcery a lucrative business. He buys charms for this and that, he believes implicitly the words of the maker of puri-puri, he sees his enemy die as the sorcerer he has hired promises, he steps softly lest he incur the magician’s wrath, and he pays tremendous prices, according to his ideas, to protect himself against the machinations of the hired sorcerer of his enemies. But he does not take matters into his own hands—that is, not often.

  A native constable, ordered to arrest the sorcerer of his village, declined. The sorcerer threatened him with a lingering death if he obeyed. Faced at last, however, with the alternative of being stripped of his uniform and the prestige attached, he bore the maker of magic to the ground and handcuffed him.

  As they crossed the Sound to the government post, the sorcerer took from a tiny bag a long string with many small sticks attached. With his manacled hands he began to finger each stick and to each he gave the name of some villager who had died. “These,” he explained to the curious constable, “represent the people I have killed by puri-puri. This stick is your grandfather, this stick your father, this your uncle,” and so on, until he had named seventeen blood relatives of his captor.