Horror in Paradise (18 page)

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

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 gain.

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.

“And those?” asked the constable, pointing to six loose sticks in the palm of the sorcerer.

“Those,” was the reply, “are you, your wife, and four children. Some day, and soon, they will be tied to the string.”

Whereupon the constable, in a frenzy of desperation and fear, upset the canoe and held the old sorcerer under water until life was extinct. Then he gave himself up to the magistrate and went joyfully to jail. Perhaps in the months he spent there he reasoned out things pretty accurately, for when he returned home, no longer a constable, he declared that the sorcerer, being an old man, had compelled the constable to kill him and in return had imparted to him the secret of his
puri-puri.

So the ex-constable became the new sorcerer, and where before he had been the white man’s aid, today he is his handicap  . . .

“Taubada
[master],” said Dengo, the policeman who was to be my orderly and bodyguard, pointing to the sorcerer, “I sawee this black cow. He try
puri-puri
(magic) on you, I break his bloody head.”

It was a promise that Dengo could easily make. He was a native of Mambare, in the mountains hundreds of miles away, and he had no respect for the black arts of this sorcerer of a coast village. Yet when the time came for him to make good, Mira-Oa used the one thing calculated to make my policeman-orderly show the white feather—a snake. For in the Mambare district flourishes that strange cult, the Baigona, with its overlord a huge snake which is believed to dwell on the top of a mountain, and whose slightest wish, as expressed through the mouths of those who pose as his representatives, is to be obeyed under penalty of death. A native of Mambare gives every snake the right of way and turns his eyes in the other direction, lest by chance he seem to be curious as to the destination or movements of his master.

For five days our trail lay through dismal sago swamps, knee-deep in mud and water, or fighting our way through thick saw-edge grass higher than a man’s head. The sun beat down fiercely on our heads and, because we were all trail-tender, we suffered intensely. As soon as we should leave the lowlands and get into the foothills we would be out of civilized territory and rapidly getting into country that never had been explored and where the people live in the same primitive style that their ancestors did hundreds of years ago.

Meanwhile we were in no danger. Fear of the white man’s police and jails keeps the Mekeo district which we were traversing under control.

Old Mira-Oa seemed to be resigned to his fate, so far as outward appearance went. It no longer was necessary to throw him down and fasten a load to him, and he ate as heartily as any of his fellows. But he didn’t mingle with them much, but sat apart, wrapped in the blanket we had furnished each of the carriers. When he chose to walk around the camp at night, the other natives respectfully stepped aside and he stalked through their midst with tightly compressed lips. But his eyes gave him away. When he looked at us there was a venom and hate in them that was unmistakable.

Humiliated before those he dominated through the fear he was able to inspire in them, forced to carry a load and shown no special favors, he was cut to the quick and he brooded over the manner of his revenge.

When we halted for a rest the old man did not sink upon the ground and relax while he smoked and chewed betel nut, as did the others. Instead he poked about in the bushes at the side of the trail or in the long grass where the sun was hottest. He was looking for something, as we noticed rather casually, but he smothered the rebellion within him when we were looking.

We thought he had decided he was licked, and Humphries was about ready to relieve him of his load, lecture him on the folly and uselessness of pitting his will against that of the white man, and sending him back to his home. Then something happened that revealed the deep cunning of the sorcerer.

Api and Kauri, our cooks, were pottering around over the evening meal, just beyond the canvas fly we occupied at night, when old Mira-Oa came stalking by. He stopped for a moment, flashed a keen glance at us where we were changing our sweat-sodden garments for pajamas, then came forward and, speaking in the Motuan tongue, which is the dialect used between white men and those coastal natives with whom they deal, offered to spread the clothes out to dry.

It was astonishing, almost unbelievable, but we tossed them to him and he laid them out on top of the sloping roof of the fly. Then he departed without saying a word. The next morning, when our orderlies brought the garments to us, each of us three white men made a discovery. The big khaki handkerchiefs we wore about our necks and used to mop the sweat from our faces were gone. During the night someone had taken them.

We did not at that time associate Mira-Oa with the theft, nor did we dream that the offer to hang up our clothing and the stealing of the handkerchiefs was an essential part of his plot to gain his revenge. Neither did we have the faintest suspicion that the old sorcerer intended that vengeance should take the shape of the most horrible death his wicked old brain could conceive. That he failed was due entirely to the fact that loyalty and devotion overcame superstition and tradition in the brain of a black man who five years before had been as wild and untamed a cannibal as ever stalked another.

The first attempt was made the night we camped in the village of Oriro Petana. As soon as he had dumped his load the old man hurried to the far end of the village and entered a hut which stood by itself, surrounded by a tiny fence. It is thus that the home of the village sorcerer may be picked out. We saw him go and Humphries chuckled and made some remark about the old man hunting for sympathy. Then we forgot Mira-Oa in the many camp duties.

In some of the villages the government picks out one of the leaders and makes him a vUlage constable. He is given a uniform, a big brass badge which he hangs about his neck, and a pair of handcuffs. Mostly his duties consist of keeping the village clean and the trails between villages open, and, in case of serious offenses, to arrest offenders and take them to the magistrate of the district.