The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish (2 page)

How long since a steamer last anchored in the lagoon? Long enough that Archie had
begun to feel that steamers were things you saw only in dreams.

He had been living outside time, at least as it is measured by clocks and calendars,
for almost five years. But that smudge of smoke announced that a ship was coming
to restore him to a land where time is doled out in precise units.

The canoe ground into the sand and Archie leapt ashore. He ran to the beach-side
hut that he called home. Crates filled with pickled fish, birds and lizards occupied
one wall, while from the thatched roof hung all sorts of artefacts, from grass skirts
to spears and knobkerries. He sat on his ribbed, wooden sea-trunk, its rusty lock
long untouched, and remembered the day he'd arrived.

Then, as today, Archie sat on the trunk. It was midday, and the sun beat down on
the deserted beach like a hammer. The sailors remained silent as they offloaded his
cargo of preserving jars, reference books and butterfly nets. He had told them what
he had half-convinced himself was true: that museum anthropologists had studied and
collected on most of the islands of the Pacific, and that very few had come to harm.
But the sailors' eyes said it all: they were sure they were leaving the young scientist
to be killed, and most likely eaten, by savages.

As he watched the crew row back to the schooner he erected an umbrella, and waited.
Soon, the sounds of the wind in the palms and the chirruping of insects filled his
consciousness. As the sun was sinking into the lagoon a man strode out of the shadows,
took his hand, and led him to the hut he sat in. Months later Archie learned how
lucky he'd been. By sitting and waiting on the beach until being welcomed by the
village chief, a man called Sangoma, he'd unwittingly followed protocol, and had
been accepted into the clan.

But God, how difficult those first months had been! Archie was as useless as an infant.
No, worse. He had the mind of an infant, but the body of a man. He could not light
a fire or prepare food. In fact he could hardly tell what was edible and what was
not. He unwittingly stole fruit from people's trees because he did not know that
the forest was owned. He transgressed into the women's menstrual huts and stomped
through sacred sites, simply because he did not recognise the many warning signs
placed around them. He killed tabooed creatures, defecated in taro gardens (which
he took to be the bush), and generally made a nuisance of himself. All the while,
Sangoma had made excuses for him, paid compensation to those wronged, and explained
that Archie knew as little about life as a child, or a savage.

At first his only use was as a beast of burden—to carry firewood and suchlike. But
he was soon participating in communal activities. One morning the men of the village
set out to clear the bush for a new garden. Archie swung his axe until he was in
a lather of sweat. When the tree he was hacking at finally fell, a great rat slithered
out of a knothole in its trunk, and Cletus
expertly flung a stick after it, striking
it on the head. Archie scrambled to collect the animal, thinking that it might interest
his friend and curator of mammals at the museum, Courtenay Dithers. Cletus' younger
brother Polycarp had mimed that the creature was unclean, but Archie persisted in
carrying it back to his hut and pickling it. For weeks afterwards, whenever they
met, Polycarp would repeat the mime and walk off laughing.

Ever so slowly, Archie had grown proficient at things. He loved fishing best of all
because the hooks and line he had brought, along with the experience of a childhood
spent fishing around Sydney Harbour, made him moderately competent. But he could
not manage a canoe, so needed someone to come with him. It was during his hours fishing,
most often with Cletus, that he made most progress with the language.

As Archie realised how ignorant he'd been, he suffered agonies of embarrassment.
When he felt competent enough to speak, he decided to broach a subject that he felt
might gain him some kudos: the Great Venus Island Fetish, as the mask was known among
anthropologists, was the work of a stone-age genius and quite the most famous Pacific
Islands artefact in the world. The size of a dinner table, it took the form of a
monstrous and stylised heart-shaped face, around the margin of which were attached
thirty-two human skulls. It had been taken from the Venus Islands in 1893 by the
crew of HMAS
Adelaide,
during a punitive raid in reprisal for the massacre of the
passengers and crew of the
Venus
. Its loss had been more devastating to the islanders
than the shelling of their village, or the destruction of their gardens. Archie was
familiar with the fetish because it was a prized exhibit at the museum where he was
employed.

Before its removal to Sydney, the fetish had resided on a deserted sandy islet—one
of the five islands that made up the Venus Group. Only under the most exceptional
of circumstances would the most senior men dare to visit it. To them, the mask was
the embodiment of pure evil. Remove just one skull from the cordon of thirty-two
sacrificial heads that surrounded the ghastly face, it was said, and the door to
an age of depravity, madness and murder would open.

‘Do you remember the great mask?' Archie asked Sangoma one day as the chief worked
carving out a canoe.

Sangoma put down his adze, fixed Archie with a fierce gaze, and said, ‘Such things
must never be spoken of while we work. Wait for the story time.'

That night, as the coals died down and the young men drifted off to sleep, Sangoma
and a few of the village elders refilled the yangona bowl, and began to whisper about
the great mask. They told of its creation by a mad genius who was eaten by an enormous
shark on the very day he completed his work. Only the spirits of warriors, which
resided in their skulls, would be strong enough to contain its malignant power. But
how difficult it was to get those skulls! The Venusians were few, and their enemies
too fierce and numerous to make easy victims. So the islanders had lived for years
in terror while the protective skull fence was in the making. Then, one day, a godsend
came to them. A floating island, full of white-skinned warriors, had run aground
during a storm and the survivors had straggled ashore. Exhausted, they seemed to
give themselves willingly to the bamboo knife and man-catcher. In a single day the
skull fence was completed, and the villagers slept soundly
for the first time in
years.

‘I know the fetish. I look after it now.' Archie had boasted in the silence that
followed. Eyes flashed in the darkness. Then all the elders started whispering at
once.

‘It survives!' Archie heard. ‘But where? Where is it?'

‘In my village. Sydney.'

From that day on Archie was treated with new respect. Old men took him under their
tutelage. Things were shown to him that were revealed only to youths of great promise.
One morning, an elder asked what his tattoo should be. Archie was not sure he wanted
a tattoo, but sensed that his choice would be significant. Just then a platoon of
frigate birds cruised past. Black and red, bent of wing and forked of tail, the enormous
creatures flew in a strict V-formation, like some piratical, futuristic flying machines.
‘
Alaba
. The frigate bird.' Archie replied. Only later did he consider the possibility
that the old man had waited until he saw the birds approaching before asking his
question. The tattooing had been painful, but afterwards Archie looked with pride
at the image of the bird decorating his forearm, knowing that it was Sangoma's clan
symbol.

At some moment he found hard to identify, Archie stopped collecting things, and practically
stopped making field notes. He had slipped from being the observing outsider to one
of the clan. It was only as the final stage of his initiation approached that he
took up his journal again. He had both personal and professional reasons to record
the event. Circumcision had seemed a high price to pay to hear the sacred stories
that were essential to his full comprehension of the culture. But after a few swigs
of yangona the cut of the bamboo knife hadn't been
as painful as he'd anticipated.
As Archie watched his blood drip onto the sand, Uncle Sangoma told him that he was
now a man, and a true Venus Islander.

After the ceremony, Archie, Cletus and the other lads had stretched their foreskins
into discs, which dried to a parchment. As was the custom, they then tattooed them
with their totems. Archie's frigate bird was beautifully executed. No proposal of
marriage would be taken seriously in the Venus Islands unless a man presented his
girl with a tattooed, parchment-like disc made from his foreskin. The youths whispered
that the objects were infallible love charms. If a girl received one, she would be
powerless to refuse the giver anything. She would signal her acceptance of the marriage
by softening the parchment in coconut oil, rolling it into a ring, and wearing it
on her finger.

The Venus Islands had made Archie a man in more ways than one. He had learned how
to carve a canoe and make a bow and arrow. He could catch a tuna or a wallaby as
adeptly as anyone. And he had seen five yam festivals, with their moonlit nights
of lovemaking and fertility rituals. He was now a man of consequence among the islands.
A man in his prime.

Archie's meditations were broken by a bugling sound. Sangoma was blowing his shell
trumpet, his muscular chest rising and falling with the effort. He was magnificent,
with his prominent nose, dark eyes and full, greying beard exuding authority.

‘Launch the great war canoe! Launch the war canoe,' he
shouted between notes. ‘Load
it as well. Load it with Aciballie's cargo. All the cargo!'

Cletus, Polycarp and the other lads were already at the door, ready to carry Archie's
crates to the beach. Outside, Archie could see that preparations were being made
to launch the canoe he had purchased. As the boys puffed past with boxes and chests,
Cletus mimed that he was carrying an extraordinarily heavy crate, and quipped, ‘I
don't know why you bothered collecting all those poisonous and useless creatures,
Aciballe. They'll break my back!'

Archie grinned and covered his nakedness with a bark lap-lap. Then he dashed out
the door. He was headed towards the yam gardens, his bare feet beating a frantic
tattoo on the burning sand. Round one last corner and he saw her. She was bent almost
double, and with each thrust of the yam-stick her withered breasts flapped against
her chest.

‘Auntie Balum,' he cried as he saw the woman who had cared for him as tenderly as
any mother could. Balum stretched upright, one hand in the small of her back while
she steadied herself with the stick. She'd been a beauty in her youth. Even now her
almond eyes, delicate nose and shapely mouth were arresting. For a few moments her
tattooed face remained blank, as if she couldn't understand why he was there. But
then her sweet visage collapsed with grief.

‘My son. My son is gone,' she wailed. ‘My son is gone, gone from my sight!'

It was the traditional dirge for a young man slain in battle.

‘Auntie. I must go home. I told you that when I first arrived. But I will be back.'
Archie's eyes filled with tears as he cradled
her slight body in his arms. He knew
he was lying.

An hour later the steamer was inside the lagoon. It was time for Archie to go. He
was desperately sad to be leaving his island family. It felt like a sort of death.
But if he didn't leave now he would never see his fiancée Beatrice again. He had
written to her at every opportunity. Letters had piled up waiting for a passing vessel.
And she had written back. He imagined her beautiful face concentrating as she crafted
each sentence, her glorious blonde locks flowing over her shoulders, her exquisite
hands delicately holding her pen. And with every loving letter he'd received from
her, his confidence had grown. In his last missive, sent by canoe and then native
runner to the nearby mission, he had proposed marriage. He felt certain of a positive
response. But just to be doubly sure he had enclosed his foreskin love-token with
the letter. And now, in just a few weeks, he would fall into her arms, and a new
life would begin.