The Shark God (29 page)

We took a couple of the boys and pushed Selastine's canoe into the lagoon. The boat consisted of three mighty planks pegged together a long time ago. There was room for twenty people in among the fishnets and sloshing fish-gut water.

The lagoon was still except for the dip and slice of our paddles. The half-moon illuminated the thin veil of clouds that had spread itself across the entire dome of the sky. The hills of Malaita were the color of licorice. The lagoon flashed with amoeba-shaped patches of reflected light, a glimmer here, an urgent flutter there. Hot white sparks erupted from each paddle stroke.

We glided to a halt. The water became like the sky. The stillness of the night was broken only by distant percussion. It began as a crude thumping, like the sound that grouse make in the Canadian bush. But the thumping grew and was joined by more thuds and thunks. It became a kind of melody, rising and twisting, flowing across the water from some distant hamlet. I recognized it as the sound of a pipe drum band, of boys striking bamboo tubes with the soles of their rubber flip-flops, as they had after the bishop of Malaita's cathedral service.

Selastine stripped to his underwear and pulled on a pair of goggles, the kind you could buy for a couple of dollars in the Chinese stores back in Honiara. His white hair shone like a halo.

“Wait,” I said. “Why did Bolai have to go and eat all those people on Guadalcanal?”

The boys giggled.

“Because his mother told him to,” said Selastine.

“Why the hell would she do that?”

“To make better the death of his brother.”

“I don't understand. How could that help?”

“This is Malaitan
kastom
,” he said. “If you want to avenge a death, you don't go and kill another person in your village. You have to go to another place to do it.”

“But the shark-boy was the one who killed in the first place!”

“It doesn't matter who killed. What
kastom
requires is a life to avenge a life. If you killed my brother, for example, I would not need to come back and kill you. Anyone's life would do. And I wouldn't have to do the killing myself. I would pay someone to do it.”

“Like a
ramo
?”

“Yes, that's it. Bolai was our first
ramo
. This is
kastom.
”

It didn't seem much different from the cycle of payback that had exploded during the tension and that was still crippling the plains around Honiara. Payback was tradition. It was
kastom
.

Selastine picked up his speargun and pointed his flashlight into the water. There was nothing to see. He looked at me.

“You come now!” he shouted, then leapt into the water, disappearing in a cloud of bubbles and phosphorescent sparks.

“
Yu garem glass-blong-diver. Yu swim. Hem fun!
” said one of the boys.

I pulled on my mask and crawled over the gunwale. The water was warm. I poked my head beneath the surface and gazed down into the abyss, where there was nothing. I pulled myself close to the canoe and imagined bad things.

The calm was broken suddenly by the leap and crash of something big.

“Long-fish. Hunting,” said a boy. “You go! You go!”

I imagined myself as seen from below: a soft bundle of exposed flesh. I flattened myself against the canoe, wrapped my legs around the hull. All this talk of indiscriminate revenge killing had filled me with a nauseating sense of vulnerability.

Another explosion of water, this time near the bow of the canoe. It was Selastine. He was like a breaching whale. He gasped and sucked at the air. “
Gudfala
moon!
Gudfala
night! Come now. Follow my light,” he said. And then he took a long heave and slipped away again, leaving an expanding circle of silver ripples in his place. I saw the flashlight beam across the hull of the canoe, turn toward the deep, and then descend until it was engulfed by a silty mist.

One of the boys pushed down on my head with his paddle blade. He hammered on my knuckles, making it somewhat less comfortable to cling onto the boat. The boys thought I was afraid. Of course I was afraid! I was swimming with the bloody lord of the sharks. But the humiliation made me let go.

I took a breath, pushed off from the canoe, and reached into the void with both hands. The effect was mesmerizing. Every movement, each handstroke, was followed by a momentary burst of blue-green light, as though I had released a handful of fireflies. I circled beneath the canoe, which, with its paddles pointing out, resembled a great black dragonfly hanging in the sky. I waved and curled my hands, kicked above me until my body was surrounded by a whorl of stardust, like the sorcerer's apprentice in
Fantasia
. I was laughing when I surfaced, and so were the boys, who knew what I had seen.

And I could stop here. I could let this be enough. But there should be more to this story, shouldn't there?

I do remember there was more.

I realized Selastine was still underwater. How long had it been? One minute? Five?

“Selastine,” I said, and the boys just laughed. “
Hem go walkabaot. Hem fising
.” I peered down and saw nothing. I took a great breath and dove, kicking at the sky, pulling at the deep, peering through the blackness.

There is a panic that comes when you hold your breath for too long. It's about oxygen, of course, and the thought of all that water
pouring into your lungs. I saw the faintest glow, a foggy circle of light beneath me, and I struggled against my buoyancy, but the panic turned me around. I kicked for the surface and emerged far off the bow. The boys paddled toward me. I grabbed the gunwale and took ten deep breaths, then dove again. I exhaled slowly this time. I ignored the phosphorescent sparks that peeled from my fingers. I saw the light and kicked hard toward it. It grew into a jaundiced whorl of seaweed and sand. Perhaps there were coral rocks. I couldn't tell. A great, obscuring dust storm of silt was sweeping through the lagoon. I kicked farther and saw that the light was coming from a man, from Selastine. He was sitting cross-legged on the ocean floor, not moving, just sitting there. Occasionally, a bubble escaped from his mouth and floated like a nervous jellyfish up toward the steel glare of the night sky. The panic returned, obscuring my vision, screaming for me to surface, even as I struggled to make sense of the scene, which was somehow right and not right at the same time, and confusing, because I knew I should have been scared, yet I was not.

Selastine was not alone. Between the halo of his flashlight and the impenetrable void, in the gray murk between certainty and imagination, I saw something like a great drifting shadow. It was sleek, as long as a car and as black as cooking charcoal. And it was circling the shark boss, slowly, slowly, and if I could have pulled myself down just a little deeper I would have been able to give it a shape, but even as I gaped I was beginning to rise slowly back up toward the surface and the shark boss was becoming a blur, and his pool of light was shrinking and the great shadow was melting into the murk.

I wasn't certain at the time what I saw. I never spoke to Selastine about it. When he bobbed to the surface a moment after me, he just smiled and said, “
Gudfala
moon!
Gudfala
night!” again, and I agreed. We paddled to the shallows and splashed around a bit, while the pipe drum band thumped away beyond the distant
mangroves. We returned to the fire and drank hot water mixed with milk powder.

Selastine asked me to stay a week, so we could fish and dive on the reef. I told him I couldn't. I told him I was bound for the Santa Cruz Group, to look for Bishop Patteson's ghost on Nukapu. He understood. Then he asked for my diving mask, and I gave it to him.

When I returned to Honiara, I didn't think about the circling shadow, not even when my friend Morris asked me about Langa Langa. Did I see the shark spirit? Did we have a tourist attraction? he asked. No, I told him. No, I told all my friends, though each time I told my story, I felt it could have been more complete. And then, late one evening after the lights had failed and the rascals had fled the city, after the conversation of a dozen men had trailed away around me and there was no sound but the rustling of palms and the whirring of cicadas, as the perspiration seeped down my back and the circle of listeners drew close, I let myself say yes. Yes, I saw a shadow in the deep. Yes, it was big and it was as black as cooking charcoal, and every sweep of its tail fin raised a storm of silt from the lagoon floor. Yes, that shadow had circled ever so slowly around my friend the shark boss, who was sitting cross-legged on a bed of crushed coral. And the story became whole, and I grew more certain every time I repeated it. Now there is no doubt. Yes, it was a shark. Yes, it was Bolai. Yes, an ancestor could still be summoned from the darkness. I would believe, and it would be true because I believed.

Myth, like love, is a decision. What it answers is longing. What it demands is faith. What it opens is possibility.

When I returned from Langa Langa and found neither the
Temotu
nor the
Eastern Trader
in port, I was not surprised or particularly upset. I went straight to Chester Rest House, a hostelry run by the Melanesian Brotherhood. There were no guards at the rest house, nor was it wrapped in barbed wire like the Quality Motel. But it was the safest place to bunk in Honiara. A rascal wouldn't dare risk God's anger by crossing the
tasiu
. I did not go to Chester for protection, but to get closer to the brothers and to their magic. I was ready for both.

The rest house stood in a grove of flowering trees on the hillside above the port. There were papayas in the garden and frangi
pani blossoms scattered in the dirt. There was a cement porch on which the brothers lounged, smoked, chewed their betel, and guffawed at the world. These brothers were not at all like
Tasiu
Ken, the stoic dispenser of curses I had met on Vanua Lava. They nestled in each other's arms like children at naptime. They shrieked like birds when amused. They liked to tease the Sisters of Melanesia, who lived in a house just down the hill. Chester became my home and the brothers my friends.

A dozen
tasiu
lived in a communal household next door to Chester. Seven times a day, a bell would ring and the brothers would disappear to the chapel inside their house to pray. That's what made the brothers powerful, people said. All that prayer. My first friend, little Brother Albert Wasimae, showed me the chapel. It was the size of a bedroom. There was a small wooden cross on the altar, and a picture of a pale, white Jesus wearing his crown of thorns. Also on the altar:

Two chicken's feet, bound together and caked in dried blood. The feet were a killing charm, surrendered by a man on Malaita.

A plastic vial of ground coral. You could kill a man, or at least give him insomnia, if you blew that powder at him.

A tongue of shriveled gingerroot, wrapped in a brittle leaf. You could use that root to spoil someone's brain.

A bullet, whose power was obvious.

Brother Albert told me that all of these bad things had been rendered impotent by prayer and a sprinkling of holy water, which was kept in glass jugs on the floor. The bad things had been gathered in the course of the brothers' Clearance Mission.

I had heard about this Clearance Mission. It was not the same as evangelical work; it was a campaign of direct action against black magic. The
tasiu
would tour the countryside, making surprise visits to villages where people had complained of curses and sorcery. When they arrived, the brothers ordered the entire community to come to church. All the residents were then obligated to
wrap their hands around one of the
tasiu
's walking sticks and tell the truth about their own use of magic. People knew that
kastom
spells were no match for those walking sticks, just as the Egyptian pharaoh's magicians had not stood a chance against the staff of Moses. They handed over whatever charms they had. A liar would simply be unable to let go of the walking stick until he told the truth. The test left the worst ne'er-do-wells in convulsive fits. Sometimes, said Brother Albert, if the confrontation was with a
kastom
devil, the clash could be so explosive it would break a walking stick in two. So the
tasiu
carried spares.

There was a corkboard by the door of the chapel. Tacked to it were dozens of notes written by people who wanted the brothers' help—or rather, God's help, which they hoped the
tasiu
would direct their way. People asked the brothers to pray for their careers, their marriages, their children's success in school exams. Some had attached money. A politician's wife complained that her husband spent too much time campaigning: could the
tasiu
pray for the politician to come home, or at least send money? One writer lamented that his daughter was having trouble becoming pregnant and explained that this was likely the result of a curse cast by angry in-laws. Another pleaded for the brothers to save him from the “green leaf with satanic power.”

People in the Solomon Islands had looked to the
tasiu
for hope and for miracles for almost eighty years. Their journey, like that of Abraham, began with a vision and a message from God.

It was 1924. Ini Kopuria, a beefy young corporal in the Native Armed Constabulary, suffered an injury while trying to arrest a bad man. His leg was torn open, or perhaps it was broken. Nobody remembered the details. It was the message that mattered. As he rested in hospital, Kopuria had a visitation from Jesus. “Ini,” said Jesus, “you are not doing the work I want you to do.” It took Kopuria several months to realize that what Jesus really wanted was for him to organize a fraternity of native missionaries to carry
the gospel to all the places where people still clung to their heathen ways.

The bishop of Melanesia, John Steward, ferried Kopuria around the islands aboard the
Southern Cross
so that he could recruit volunteers. By the end of the year, Kopuria had enlisted six. The volunteers returned to Kopuria's farm at Tabalia, on the northern tip of Guadalcanal. They cleared the jungle and built a house for their headquarters. They called each other
tasiu
. They took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience to the church. They adopted a uniform, which consisted of a simple black loincloth and a black belt, underneath which was wrapped a white sash. This was the birth of the Melanesian Brotherhood.

The brothers traveled in pairs, trekking barefoot to the most remote pagan villages in the Solomon Islands. They did not behave like other missionaries. They were humble. They worked in people's gardens, slept in people's homes, and spread the word gently. They also carried walking sticks, which they used to exorcise evil forces from bodies and places. Even in the early days, islanders recognized that the
tasiu
carried a tremendous amount of
mana
. People said they could heal the sick and perform miracles. They were not afraid of devils or ancestral spirits. Their
mana
was similar to the power held by
kastom
priests, but it did not come from traditional spirits or ancestors. It came from God. What made the
tasiu
holy was their prayer, their devotion, their vow of poverty, their separation from material striving. People respected the clergy. But they revered the
tasiu
. Everyone knew that God worked through the
tasiu
, and that crossing them was akin to crossing God.

Everyone knew that when the darkness closed in on Honiara, when the city and its shanties were claimed by chaos, fear, and dumb violence, it was the Melanesian Brotherhood—not the police, the government, or foreigners—who brought back the light. In 2000, when bullets were whizzing back and forth between the
barricades that surrounded Honiara, the brothers camped for four months in the no-man's-land between the Malaitan and Guadalcanalese militants. The
tasiu
negotiated for the release of hostages, they calmed bands of vigilantes, they sheltered refugees. They carried the bodies of the dead back to their relatives. They exhumed corpses from shallow graves so that murder victims could be identified. They marched into militant camps to press for peace.

“In the name of Jesus Christ we appeal to you: stop the killing, stop the hatred, stop the payback,” went their official letter. “Those people you kill or you hate are your own Solomon Islands brothers. Blood will lead to more blood, hatred will lead to greater hatred and we will all become the prisoners of the evil we do.”

Their prediction was accurate. After hundreds of people were shot, chopped, or tortured to death, hundreds more were wounded, and tens of thousands of people displaced, it was generally agreed that the country had indeed become a prisoner of hatred. The killing did not ease up until the
tasiu
made their most famous stand, out past the airport on the Alligator Creek Bridge. Everyone knew the story: how the
tasiu
had walked right out onto the concrete stage of the bridge with their walking sticks; how, shielded from the bullets only by their holiness, they created a human barrier between the ignorant armies. The fighters saw that the
tasiu
were not hurt by their bullets. They saw that God disapproved of their violence. This was the beginning of the end of the war.

After the peace agreement was signed, members of the Melanesian Brotherhood led the ex-militants and their convoys of stolen trucks into Honiara and presided over the peace celebrations. For all their dashing back and forth amid the bullets, not a single
tasiu
was killed during the conflict. Most people agreed this was a sign of their special relationship with God.

Now, when people in Honiara wanted to forget their sad stories and push back the darkness a little, they talked about the Melanesian Brotherhood. The
tasiu
had pulled a demon from so-and-so's
soul. The
tasiu
had used a dash of holy oil and a tap of a walking stick to extract a sickness-inducing stone from a man's wrist. The
tasiu
had rescued a bloodied victim from Harold Keke's boys and taken him to their base at Tabalia, where God had made him strong again, then sent a single thunderbolt to illuminate the faces of the man's rescuers.

Everyone's favorite
tasiu
story was one about the snake gun: The Peace Monitoring Council had been attempting for more than a year to retrieve arms from all the ex-militants. But the boys liked their guns and did not want to give them up. The police weren't much help, largely because members of the Royal Solomon Islands Police had stolen their own guns and distributed them to
wantoks
in the first place. The situation seemed hopeless. So a few months before my arrival, the government had asked the Melanesian Brotherhood to take over the job of disarmament. The
tasiu
formed a special unit to go out and ask for the guns back, in God's name.

The disarmament unit had already collected several hundred guns when news came of a shootout on the outskirts of Honiara. The
tasiu
, not the police, went to investigate. They drove to the house of the man responsible. He denied everything. The lead
tasiu
told him, “We know you were shooting a gun at your neighbors, and if you don't give us that gun, we will just have to wait here until you change your mind.” They waited. The man sweated nervously in the sun. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Finally, a shadow appeared on the man's dirt floor. It slithered out into the sunlight. The man's son said: “Daddy! Daddy! Look at the snake!” The man tried to ignore the shadow, which continued to writhe threateningly in front of him. One
tasiu
said, “Don't touch it.” Then he reached down and grabbed the snake by its head. The serpent stopped writhing. It became as hard as metal. The
tasiu
lifted the snake in the air, and it was transformed back into the machine gun it had always been. This is the kind of story they tell now in the Solomon Islands.

I was fascinated by the way the brothers had grafted the traditional concept of
mana
onto Christianity. Like the old
kastom
priests, the
tasiu
were credited with directing supernatural forces, but their power came from the same God I had learned about in Sunday school. I had been taught to see biblical miracles as educational metaphors. But the brothers had taken the Anglican God and wrestled him back down to earth, where he was behaving much like a Melanesian ancestor spirit, much like the god of my own ancestors. Here he was, allowing his power to be directed by incantations and walking sticks. Here he was, getting involved and taking sides, just like in the Old Testament.

I was drawn to the
tasiu
, though for weeks I had felt unfit to befriend them; surely they would sense my skepticism and know my questions were insincere. But my time in the lagoons had changed me. Now I was ready. I wanted to witness the spectacle of the clearance and disarmament missions. I wanted to see the brothers make those sorcerers squirm in church. I wanted to see them turn guns into snakes, or at least to see them strike the fear of God into the hearts of men like Jimmy Rasta. But the brothers in Honiara had no idea which of their outstations were conducting clearance raids. We learned of clearance victories only after the fact (some ginger collected here, a sorcerer humbled there). The disarmament crew was more easily caught. They were based in the bishop of Melanesia's old house. I went there and found them watching videos of old American cop shows—“to improve our investigative skills,” they explained.

One member of the team promised to take me along on a mission. Brother Clement Leonard was a great bear of a man with enormous hands and ruby-stained lips. “You stick with me,” he said. The brother had so much betel crammed into his cheek, he could only slur. “I am your connection. I am your source. I will help you.”

“There is urgency,” I said. It was true. I was running out of money and time. But the urgency was about more than that. I was
worried that my memories of lagoon magic might fade. I was worried that I would lose my new way of seeing.

“I understand,” said Brother Clement. But he must not have understood, because I didn't see him for days.

I could not get close to things. The adventure was always yesterday. The action was always beyond the horizon. In fact, receiving news of any action in the Solomons was a bit like looking at the night sky; you knew a star had been real at some point because its light reached you, but you also knew that spark was thousands of years old and that the star's fire might by now have died entirely.

I was waiting out the midday glare at Amy's Snack Bar on Mendaña Avenue one afternoon when a tallish man with delicate pale skin strode by. I noticed white skin in Honiara because, like everyone else, I kept an eye out for my own
wantoks
. (After months alone, I was beginning to grasp the
wantok
concept. Nobody understands you like someone from your own island, or even better, like someone you can talk to without resorting to pidgin, which is nobody's mother tongue.)