Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [47]
“You bother them?”
“Yes. We bang on the walls, and we howl. The boys are very frightened. They think there are ghosts. And sometimes we go in and kick sand on their wounds. It is very painful.”
“Well, that’s not very nice.”
“No,” George said, recollecting his own circumcision. “It is not nice. But it is the custom. Afterward, the boys are men and they live with the other men.”
What a curious way to live, I thought. One thing seemed clear, though. One certainly didn’t want to be a penis on Malekula.
IN THE AFTERNOON, George took me to Wala Island. We paddled an outrigger canoe across Wala Bay—or, rather, I paddled an outrigger canoe. George steered. Paddling two grown men into the teeth of an incoming tide and up and over the ocean swell under the blistering midday sun left me sweating and panting from the exertion. There was a fine white sand beach on Wala Island, and when we arrived, I gave in and dived into the warm turquoise water.
“Maybe not such a good idea to swim there,” George said from the beach.
Easy for you to say, I thought. Next time I’m steering. “Why, George? This is wonderful.”
I was in clear, shallow water above a sandy bottom, facing Malekula, not the open ocean.
“Maybe you should swim there,” George suggested, pointing to the water alongside a dock that jutted out several yards.
“Whatever you say.” I was as pleased as I could be to be swimming. The South Pacific, after all, is the South Pacific, and sun, palm trees, a splendid beach, and clear, warm, gorgeous water, I find, are irresistible. I did an easy backstroke toward the pier.
“What are you looking for?” I asked George. He was standing on the pier, scanning the water.
“Nothing.”
“Seriously, George,” I said. “What are you looking for?”
“The water is very deep over there.”
“So? I can swim.”
“There are many sharks living there.”
If there were six words that could ruin a swim in the South Pacific, George had found them. I was out in a heartbeat. I did not know it then, but shortly before I arrived on Malekula, a seven-year-old girl had been killed by a tiger shark. This had occurred not one hundred yards from where I swam, off Atchin, an islet a short swim from Wala Island. The shark had severed the child’s leg.
We walked around Wala, a circumnavigation that took twenty minutes. The villagers were slumbering in the shade and hardly gave me a glance, which I found a little peculiar. Malekula and the islets that circled it were not often visited by Westerners.
“George,” I said. “What are all these stands for?” The entire periphery of the island had the appearance of an empty market.
“For the cruise ship.”
Say what? “Did you say cruise ship?”
“Yes. During the season, a cruise ship comes every six weeks. Not now. Now is cyclone season.”
I cannot express how disheartened I was to learn this. Here I was, enduring perilous flights in rickety third-world airplanes, canned corned beef, and mosquito nets, all so that I could experience life on one of the most isolated, unchanging islands in the world, and now there were cruise ships.
“They come for two hours,” George said. “And they buy souvenirs. So we make souvenirs now.”
“And make lots of money?”
“Yes.” George laughed. “Dollars, not vatu.”
At that moment, a boat powered off carrying five exuberant youths, who steered it in the nautical equivalent of a drunk man’s stagger.
“Ha-ha,” George laughed. “They are going to buy the beer.”
The only place on Malekula where beer was available was in Norsup. I had checked. It would take the boys the rest of the afternoon to acquire it. What a waste, I thought. Kava offered so much more bang for the buck, which got me thinking.
“George,” I said. “Do you think I can drink some kava this evening?”
“You like kava?”
“George, me likem kava tumas.”
That evening, in a family compound near the shoreline back on Malekula, I found myself sitting among people who seemed oddly familiar to me. “Hey,” I said to one young man. And then in French, “I recognize