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By Root 864 0

Roy Mata was poisoned, presumably by his brother, who is believed to have been called Gary. While this intrigue was as compelling as any that occurred among the kings of medieval Europe, its ending was uniquely macabre. It was said that upon the death of Roy Mata, his eighteen loyal subservient chiefs joined him in the grave, where, fortified by a particularly strong brew of kava, Vanuatu’s favorite narcotic beverage, the men awaited their end. Joined by their twenty-two wives, who had been strangled to death, the chiefs were buried alive. The grave, on Eretoka Island, was declared taboo. Hearing of this legend, Garanger brought his shovel to Eretoka, where he soon found a grave with forty-one skeletons, including one bejeweled with pig tusks, an obviously high-ranking chief who could only have been Roy Mata.

I mention these disturbing details because if you ever happen to find yourself on north Efate—particularly at the small cove we found, where the water lapped gently against a glorious white sand beach, and in the near distance a small fringing reef captured the ocean swell, and a little farther on a couple of perfect green islets framed the vast, astonishingly blue South Pacific—you will be very hard-pressed to imagine that anything even remotely dark or cruel or gruesome could possibly occur in such an Edenic setting. Certainly, no such thoughts occurred to us.

“Let’s go for a swim,” I said to Sylvia a tad impulsively.

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit.”

“It’s Sunday. Who cares?”

Well, perhaps the Ni-Vanuatu Christians would have cared. But we knew where they were, and so we celebrated creation in our own way, in the buff, with a delightful swim in the mild waters of the South Seas. It was like a baptism of sorts, a chance to wash off the sins of office life and begin anew. I couldn’t think of a better way to resume our island existence than to spend a Sunday afternoon cavorting in the tranquil waters of a protected cove, somewhere off an island on the far side of the world. It didn’t occur to us then that this was a reckless and foolhardy thing to do. Vanuatu is notorious for shark attacks, and to tempt fate by swimming near a reef without first enquiring about the resident shark population is exceedingly rash and ill-advised. For all we knew, the local name for this beach might have been Place Where Many Large Sharks Come to Feed on Stupid Naked Tourists. Happily, though, our swim went uncontested by large sea critters, and we settled into the kind of mirth that occurs when, after a long spell elsewhere, you suddenly find yourself in a good, good place.

“I could live here,” Sylvia said.

“And now you do.” I smiled.

As we hopped back into the truck we were feeling immoderately satisfied with ourselves. We had done it, escaped the proverbial rat race and its ceaseless hustle and bustle and exchanged that world for one where, we hoped, we would once again live as contented exiles, modern Crusoes, finding gratification in the small pleasures life offers, like languid dips in the temperate waters of the South Pacific Ocean. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that a short while later we found ourselves back in the truck and gasping theatrically as we slipped down a perilously steep incline, the wheels locked in place by the foot brake, then by the hand brake—and yet still we could not halt the descent. Looming at the bottom was a glade of coconut trees, and those trees, I could see, were not going anywhere.

“Brake!” Sylvia yelled.

The mud-slicked road curved around the trees. Straining to control the truck as it slid toward its seemingly inevitable collision, I released the brakes, pressed the gas with as much confidence as I could muster, swung the wheel around the curve, and then immediately felt a sickening panic as the back wheels proceeded around in a graceless arc, up and over the road embankment, and with a shocking thud we found ourselves implanted upon a berm of mud.

“Well,” I said once my heart had slowed, “on the plus side, we’re alive.”

“On the down side, we’re stuck,” Sylvia noted.

“Not necessarily.” I