Savages

  Annie said, “Let’s see what everyone has in their purses. Maybe there are things we can use here.”

  “Sure,” said Jonathan. “I’ve always wondered what women cart around in them.”

  In the firelight, their purses yielded a jumble of melting lipsticks, powder compacts, mirrors, money, keys, sun cream, tissues and ballpoint pens. Annie had a packet of tampons. Carey had cigarettes, a lighter and a notebook. Patty triumphantly produced a tiny hotel free gift sewing kit, which contained another pair of scissors. Suzy had two thousand dollars in American Express checks.

  Jonathan said, “Who’s got a watch that isn’t waterproof? Hand ’em over now, and we’ll keep ’em in the lemon-drop tin, in case we need to use ’em for barter.”

  Suzy handed over her platinum watch, the face surrounded by diamonds. Annie removed the black silk strap of the old-fashioned, round gold watch that had been her grandmother’s. Silvana didn’t wear a watch, and neither did Carey when she was on vacation. The only waterproof watches were Jonathan’s chrome Seiko and Patty’s black plastic Swatchwatch.

  Jonathan said, “Anyone who leaves camp wears the Swatchwatch.”

  “What about our rings?” Silvana asked wistfully.

  “Can’t we still wear the rings our husbands gave us?”

  It was an emotional moment. Jonathan nodded. “Sure. Like I said, I don’t want to barter anything, because it’ll get traced back in no time.”

  Patty asked how far the taboo area extended.

  “Not farther than that Burma bridge, because that’s obviously a track that’s in use.” Jonathan said, “Stay as near to the camp as possible and there’s less risk of going out of the taboo area—and on no account go near the next village.”

  Suzy persisted. “But why not?”

  Jonathan said, “It’s not safe.”

  “But why not?”

  He said slowly, “I suppose you’ve got to know sometime. They’re practicing cannibals. All the fishing villagers are.”

  There was a shocked silence, followed by a babble of horror.

  “How revolting!”

  “Disgusting!”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “I think I’m going to throw up!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  Suzy gasped, “But when I wouldn’t swim into the cave, you told me to go to the next village!”

  “You’d have died anyway,” Jonathan said. “I had the safety of the party to consider. The natives don’t talk English and you don’t talk Pidgin, so you couldn’t have told them that we’d hidden in the pool.”

  There was another shocked silence.

  Jonathan said, “A lot of this island is still primitive—particularly the wild, barren bits in the south, where the fisher-folk live. Around here, you can buy a hard-working bride for a couple of axes and a pig.”

  Patty said, “What’s that got to do with cannibalism?”

  “Animals are rare and fresh meat is scarce. The natives keep pigs, but they don’t kill ’em, because they’re a sign of wealth. They use the pigs for barter or for paying debts. They only kill one for a special feast, and then they’re only eaten by the men, not wasted on women and children. To natives, cannibalism is human ecology; they think it’s a waste to bury people or burn ’em. When their own people die, they get eaten.”

  Patty said, “But we’re not their goddamned relatives.”

  “Any stranger risks being considered a free pig.”

  Patty spoke very fast. “You must teach us all to use that gun. Now!”

  “Not much to worry about now. Head-hunting is seasonal, in June, and they raid the other islands—there are nearly eight hundred islands in this area. A fast canoe-man can paddle nonstop for forty-eight hours to carry off a victim. But they ain’t used just as grub, human sacrifices are needed for religious and ceremonial purposes.”

  Carey burst out, “But why did you bring us to this place in your boat? Why did you let us picnic on a cannibals’ beach? Why did they build a luxury hotel in the middle of cannibal villages?”

  “The National Assembly wants to encourage tourism, because it provides easy money,” Jonathan said, “and this island needs cash to haul itself into the twentieth century. The only sandy beaches are on this side of the island.”

  Silvana said, “I can’t imagine why Arthur allowed it.”

  “Probably Arthur didn’t know about it. Officially, all cannibalism stopped years ago. It’s something that isn’t discussed, but everyone knows it still goes on here, just as it does in Papua New Guinea—although PNG is teeming with tourists. Remember that millionaire’s son who disappeared in the sixties? They reckon he ended up in the pot.”

  On the next day, Saturday, November 17, they built their house.

  Jonathan cut down twelve saplings of different lengths, which Patty trimmed with one of the fish knives. Suzy gathered rattan, for use as rope and string; it sprouted, vinelike, from the ground and twisted up like ivy—thickest at the root for rope, thinner toward the tip for string. Carey found it difficult to work, because of her damaged hands, but she was able to carry rattan back to camp in her arms.

  Jonathan staked out an area about fifteen feet square and sank an eight-foot Y-topped pole in each corner. He said, “We’ll lash four more poles to these corner supports to form a boxlike frame about six feet high.”

  He propped two poles to form an A-shape at each end of the box frame. “We’ll lash slimmer poles horizontally between the A-frames to form the skeleton of our hut; she’ll have eaves that almost reach the ground.”

  Annie and Silvana had been collecting elephant’s ears—huge, oval leaves up to four feet long with very thick spines. In the center of each spine they cut a slanted notch; with the leaf tip pointing up, Jonathan hooked each notch over the horizontal poles of the hut, starting at the bottom, so that each new row of elephant’s ears overlapped the previous ones, on the same principle as roof tiles.

  Suzy grumbled at the work. “I don’t see why we can’t just sleep under the canvas awning, like we did last night.”

  “Because it’s not big enough for us to stretch out, and you’re going to need proper sleep or you won’t be able to work,” Jonathan told her.

  “I don’t want to do this work.”

  He stared hard at Suzy. “When we’ve finished making the roof, you can dig the drainage ditch, just above and to one side of the hut. That’ll keep the floor dry.”

  They all realized that if you complained, you were apt to get a worse job.

  Their most serious problem was not snakes or sharks, it was the climate. The nights seemed even hotter than the days; except for one cool hour at dawn, there was no escape from the humidity, which was generally well above 90 percent. Their hair was always lank and soaked with sweat, their clothes were wet enough to wring out, and they felt hot, sticky and lethargic most of the time, as if they’d just had influenza and were at the stage when, no matter how thirsty you are, it is simply too much trouble to reach for a glass of water.

  So in the late afternoon, Jonathan introduced a little luxury. He cut a sapling into four twelve-inch lengths and hammered them into the beaten earth floor of the new hut, to form a three-foot by six-foot rectangle. He cut some thirty-foot-high bamboo poles, chopped each into four pieces and bound them with rattan into a rectangle that could be fitted on top of the four stakes.

  He grinned. “Scorpion-proof bed. Insulation against ground chill and damp at dawn.” Because it was cold just before dawn, they had already suffered from indigestion and diarrhea.

  Suzy immediately scrambled onto the bamboo bed, which yielded beneath her weight, then sprang back like bed springs.

  “Why, it’s really comfortable,” she said, sitting cross-legged. “I want one.”

  So each woman built her own bed, which would clearly make a great difference to the comfort of their nights and also to the comfort of their afternoons, when it was too hot to move. From the moment they had beds, the spirits of t
he women lifted.

  At last, something had improved.

  Toward dusk Jonathan, carrying two pails, two spear guns, two fishing rods and two knives, was followed down to the beach by all the women except Carey. She had been posted as lookout because she already knew how to fish in the ocean, whereas the other women were about to learn.

  Jonathan taught them to look along the shore for crabs, worms or insects to use for bait. He showed them how to conceal the hook in the bait, how to make hooks from large thorns or carved bits of bone and to make fishing lines from rattan or from unraveled threads of canvas, rewound counter-clockwise, to form a stronger line.

  “Why do we have to make our own hooks and lines and fishing spears when we’ve still got the spearguns and plenty of ready-made ones?” Suzy grumbled.

  “Takes time to learn to use a speargun. And you can’t help losing lines and hooks—they catch on rocks or get tangled on something underwater,” Jonathan told her. “And most of my tackle’s too heavy for this sort of fishing. We want to save it for when we go to sea.”

  He showed them how to strand fish when the tide went out by piling up a wide crescent of rocks on the tidal flats from which they could scoop up any floundering fish with their nets. He taught them to use stones and loose rocks to block the natural opening of pools on the rocks, and so trapping any fish in them.

  He made a fishing spear by binding his fish knife to a bamboo pole about the thickness of a thumb, then showed them how to throw the spear, aiming just ahead of the fish, in the direction in which it is moving, to allow for the refraction of the water. He showed them how to thrust the spear straight down and out of the water in one smooth swoop, so that the fish couldn’t wriggle off the prong before it was netted.

  He also taught them not to be discouraged if the fish didn’t bite. “There are two secrets of fishing,” he explained. “One is using the correct bait in the correct way, and the other is patience.”

  “Then how come Patty fishes so well?” Suzy asked crossly.

  Wearing leather gloves, Patty and Annie searched the shore and tidepools formed by coral. The coral, exposed at low tide, wasn’t a pretty pink color but dull, earthy shades from tan to black. There were many different shapes: branch, fern and brain.

  “Look for clams, mussels, scallops, sea cucumbers—they look like large slugs—,” Jonathan had encouraged, “and you’ll also find shrimp, prickly sea urchins, crayfish and crabs.” He had shown them which poisonous shells to avoid—the ones with cone-shaped or spindle-shaped shells.

  Suzy and Silvana were collecting pigweed, a fleshy, reddish-green weed that grows in large patches on coral. “Tastes like watercress if you eat it fresh, and like spinach if you boil it in seawater,” Jonathan had said.

  Half an hour later, when they met on the sand, Patty had about a quart of shellfish.

  “That’s not much for six people,” Suzy commented.

  “We’ll boil this lot up with your pigweed and have clam chowder,” Jonathan promised. “Before we go to sleep, I’ll make a dip net. I’ll bend a little sapling into a circle and lash it to a mosquito-net bag. Tomorrow, you’ll be able to go shrimping in the rock pools like a couple of kids.”

  * * *

  All day, the women had worked hard under Jonathan’s direction, like a class of students working obediently for their professor. They were still not very friendly with each other, and each was, in her own way, vying for the attention of the only man.

  While they were assembling the skeleton frame of the hut, Suzy kept dropping the poles and looking hopefully toward Jonathan; Carey kept leaping forward to help Jonathan pick them up. Every time Annie prepared a pile of elephant’s ears she looked hesitantly at Jonathan and waited for his nod of approval before continuing. Every time an elephant’s ear fell off of the frame of the hut, Silvana shrugged her shoulders and threw Jonathan an amused look, like a parent watching a child with its first building blocks. Patty proudly showed her first catch of shellfish to Jonathan, with the expression of a child that expects a pat on the head. However, Jonathan didn’t seem to notice any of it.

  Their evening meal of shellfish chowder was served in individual coconut shells, which they ate greedily using scooped leaves for spoons. For the first time, all the women felt a sense of order, if not security. As they gazed into the dying embers of the fire that kept the mosquitoes away, they also felt a sense of achievement. They felt soothed, and no longer at the mercy of a cruelty that they did not understand.

  During the entire day—as they bathed in the pool, as they built their house, as they fished on the beach and played doll house in the jungle—hidden eyes were watching them from the leafy branches of a tree that grew on the far side of the waterfall. During the afternoon, at one point a soft gust of wind scattered the feathery palm leaves. In that moment, a native was revealed, motionless and unblinking. The next moment, the leaves had closed around him and nothing could be seen. The immobile, treetop spy continued to survey the women, with the cold, calculating look of a serpent.

  12

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1984

  As the soldiers approached, Harry and Kerry slowly raised their hands. They knew that when you’re looking into five rifle barrels, you don’t act like a TV hero. You move slowly, with maximum prudence and an expressionless face. In particular, you do not react with schoolboy aggression, especially if it is invited—you do nothing provocative, which might be used as an excuse for shooting you.

  One of the soldiers stepped forward, tugged at the wrist-watch on Kerry’s outstretched arm and ripped it off. Harry lost his cheap watch in a similar manner. The soldiers argued over Kerry’s expensive gold watch, which they clearly preferred to Harry’s. Both white men then felt hands thrusting in their jacket and trouser pockets. The soldiers snatched their handguns, their wallets, their small change and Harry’s cigarettes. With rifles at their backs, they were marched up the steps of the hotel and roughly shoved to the right, into the manager’s small office.

  Against the rear wall of the office, a filing cabinet had been pulled open and its contents scattered over the floor. On top of the filing cabinet was a red plastic tray, upon which stood a coffeepot, an open carton of milk and a mug. A map of Paui was pinned to the wall above the cabinet.

  In the middle of the office stood an unprepossessing wooden desk; it was covered with opened cans and empty bottles. Behind the desk sat a soldier, whose sweat-stained tunic bore a corporal’s stripes.

  A small group of soldiers had been sitting in the shade on the concrete path outside the manager’s office. They scrambled to their feet and crowded into the small room, which stank of stale drink and sweat. They glared at the two white prisoners with ill-contained hostility. The air was heavy with menace.

  The corporal pointed to the raised wrists of the prisoners and spoke rapidly in a language that Harry didn’t understand; it was obvious that he was asking what had happened to their watches.

  Nobody spoke.

  The corporal raised his voice with increased vehemence. He jumped up, moved around the desk, thrust his hands into the empty pockets of the two whites, then snarled to the soldiers behind them. Nobody answered him.

  Enraged, the corporal went to the filing cabinet, snatched up the milk carton and flung the contents into Kerry’s face. Kerry’s expression did not alter as the stinking, sour milk dripped down his head and over his shirt.

  It was not a very threatening act—yet a real threat might have been less sinister, Harry thought, as the soldiers started to laugh at Kerry’s humiliation, looking at the two prisoners with gleeful anticipation. Harry suddenly thought, They’re hot and they’re bored. Perhaps they’re going to torture us for a bit of fun. Perhaps we’re going to die.

  The corporal pushed his face close to Kerry’s. He growled in English, “Why are you here?”

  Kerry kept his voice expressionless. “We’re looking for some important Americans. Guests in the hotel. Friends of General Raki.”

  The corp
oral stabbed his left forefinger over Kerry’s shoulder, toward the beach. “All Americans are dead.”

  Not taking his eyes from Kerry’s face, the corporal turned and swept the cans and bottles from the desk onto the floor. The smell of stale hops rose sickeningly. He sat on the space he had cleared and swung his legs. “Americans went fishing. Boat blew up. All dead.”

  The corporal leaned behind the desk and pulled a bit of flowered fabric from a drawer. He held it toward Harry; it was the bottom of a flowered bikini, smelling faintly of suntan oil. Kerry could see a small white satin label with the word Jantzen on it. Of course it could have been anyone’s bikini bottom, Harry thought. The corporal flung the garment back in the drawer.

  “What happened?” Harry asked quietly.

  The corporal turned to him and snarled, “No talking. You are both under arrest.” He jumped to his feet, went behind the desk and sat down.

  Behind Harry, more khaki-clad men crowded into the stuffy room. Harry and Kerry were shoved forward until their thighs were pressed against the desk. The air of anticipation in the room reminded Harry of a cockfight that he had once seen on the island. He remembered what had followed—the screaming violence, the smell of blood.

  The soldiers joked and laughed, making lewd suggestions, daring one another to action, urging one another on. Until that moment, events had happened very fast. Now, adrenaline flowed into Harry’s blood, with the result that everything appeared to be taking place in slow motion, as if on film.

  Suddenly, to Harry’s astonishment, the corporal stood up and saluted him respectfully.

  Behind Harry an authoritative voice rapped an order. Harry heard the men behind him shuffling from the office, after which they were no longer jammed against the desk. His arms ached painfully, but he dared not lower them.

  Another order was given. Harry and Kerry were roughly turned around to face the door.

  Just outside it stood a slim man wearing neatly pressed khaki trousers and shirt, with a captain’s insignia on the shoulder. With a faint American accent, not unusual in a Filipino, he asked, “Do you speak English?”