Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  It was midnight when we reached our agreement and the jungle was riotous with crickets when we went to bed. The next morning we said good-bye to The Queen Emma while castled clouds began to form upon the mighty mountains.

  We were sixty miles off the mouth of the Sepik when Dame Sheila found the monkey. She dragged him from a hole so small you’d have sworn no human could have wedged himself into it. The little fellow bowed his red cockade and produced a remarkable document drawn up by some bush lawyer: “To all men, presents. Know that being of sound mind and body I do depose that my son may go on boat along Capt. Shannin. My mark.”

  “Well,” Dame Sheila sniffed. “A fine thing.”

  “What do you mean?” Shark Eye demanded.

  “We’ve got to put him ashore. That’s obvious.”

  “We’ve not!” Shannon roared.

  I was surprised when the Englishwoman backed down. “Very well,” she said. “You’re captain.” Further, she took the legal document and endorsed it: “There was no way to put him ashore among his own people. We kept him with us.”

  The monkey was a tremendous help. I often talked with him and found that he considered Shannon the greatest man who ever lived. It was beyond me. Sheila and I treated the boy with respect, while Shannon bullied him, made him work like a slave. Yet the monkey had run away to be near the man who abused him. “Mastuh good man. Me like go ship.”

  I mentioned this to Sheila and she said, “I’d be stupid not to admit it. Many natives prefer brutal white men.”

  “Why?”

  “Because such men conform to the stereotype of what a white man should be. The way Hitler, whether we like it or not, is most people’s ideal of what a political leader should be.”

  “Then you can’t educate people?” I asked snidely, meaning: “You admit Shark Eye is right about women scientists?”

  She laughed. She knew what I was driving at. “No,” she protested. “Look over there at tragic van Hoog. People who were once stupid caught up with him.”

  As we neared the Sepik—even the name haunts me, the great savage river, my Congo—I watched van Hoog with increasing pity. I could not even approximate the feelings of a man whose world had been washed away. For instance, I get terribly fed up with Chicago. It’s one hell of a place. But no matter where I go, Chicago’s always waiting, between Gary and Joliet. I would hate to think it wasn’t there. Or that the enemy held it. Or that I couldn’t go home.

  I tried talking with the steel-brained Dutchman but there was nothing I could say. He never even laughed at the monkey. He was a man impossible to like.

  Then we hit the Sepik. I remember the scene. I could never forget it. It was about dusk and we heard a shout far to starboard. The water was muddy and we couldn’t see a thing. Then the glasses picked out a native riding a raft of logs. He was being swept out to sea. We tried to reach him, but it was no use. Drifting logs cut us off, and finally a wave washed him into the turgid waters. We heard him yelling. Something got him. Crocs. Sharks. Something snapped him in two.

  “That’s that,” Shannon said, swinging our craft into the great river.

  We went upstream about three hundred miles, moored the boat, and hired some canoes. Above us, around us, even growing from the bottom of the river, the jungle muffled all we did. Immense lianas twisted down like snakes, and pythons writhed away like drooping lianas. Parrots, birds of paradise and monster pigeons swept in and out of shadows. We caught strange fish and van Hoog predicted they’d all be poisonous, but no one died. The monkey sat in my canoe and chattered across the water to Shannon, who told him to shut up.

  Natives skulked along the banks to watch us pass. White kiaps, who governed the disciplined tribes, stopped us and took legal notice of the monkey’s presence. Soon we were beyond the places where white men dared to live.

  This was the upper Sepik, one of the most fatal areas in the world. Headhunters still lurked here. Murders still went unpunished, and natives lived in deathly fear of voodoo, night mists and strange diseases that swept through villages like mountain floods.

  I was ready to call it quits. I wondered if Amundsen and Scott had ever thought: “What a mess! Why did I come here?” Then I’d see Dame Sheila taking notes. She observed things I never even guessed at. And I came to the conclusion that the great explorers were like her. They pursued facts until they uncovered ideas.

  When I watched Shark Eye shoot crocodiles and smack his lips after each good shot, it occurred to me that this man, too, had escaped fear. He hadn’t scrammed out of Rabual because he was afraid of Japs. He wanted a more even fight. He said, “You draw stumps and wait for a better pitch.”

  On the thirty-eighth day we approached the Danduras, and Dame Sheila’s nose dilated as if she were a race horse. I commented on this, and to my surprise she grew quite sober. “Everyone recalls that portion of earth where he grew up. When he finally discovered there was no cause to be afraid. It was in these mountains that I grew up.” She pointed to where Shannon now led us. We climbed two days on that trail and each of us must have lost five pounds. I sweated until my fingers were a pale white. Then we hit the kunai plateau, and before us on the broad plain was the village of Lagui, close to the Dutch border. I fancied that van Hoog, staring across at the distant hills, was biting his lip.

  Certainly Dame Sheila wasn’t. A runner from the village had recognized her and now jumped up and down in giggling delight. He shouted some words which Shark Eye translated with mocking scorn: “Lady doctor come back!”

  “Are you a doctor?” I asked.

  “No. I used horse sense and cured some of them.”

  The villagers crowded out to meet us, and presently the Paramount Luluwai—a handsome brute—came toward us in stately measure. Behind him walked a girl of about sixteen. She was naked except for a small apron and was curiously appealing. Her nose was not broad. Her hair was curly instead of kinky. And I remember that she kept her feet one before the other.

  She watched us carefully and it amused me that even a girl who had never seen white people before took only a quick survey of the woman and the old man. She divided her attention between van Hoog and me.

  In the days that followed, while Dame Sheila assembled a crew for me and Shannon collected his, this girl Alwi spent more and more time watching van Hoog. The Dutchman was aware of this, and so was Shark Eye. He finally took us aside and laid down the law. “There’s one rule up here. Learn by the gash on my face. Never fool with women if you’ve got to come back through their village.”

  Van Hoog showed great interest. “What happened?”

  “I came back through the village,” old Shark Eye laughed, “and the villagers came through me.”

  But van Hoog would not be warned. He shared a frond hut with me and one night I heard the monkey creep in and shake him. “Mastuh! Mastuh!” the little boy whispered. “Alwi say, ‘You come ‘long now.’ ” And the little conspirator led the Dutchman away.

  I said nothing to Shannon, but after three nights van Hoog no longer pretended that he was living in my hut. What really surprised me was that the Paramount Luluwai made no complaint.

  But I still had to come back through this village, and I had a bit of wind up. I spoke to Dame Sheila. “Will this mean trouble later on?”

  The Englishwoman never batted an eye. She perched on a box of gear and said slowly, “You’re young.”

  “I know. That’s what Shannon said when he had dirty business to explain.”

  “You might call this dirty business,” she said quietly. I recall that sweat stood at the roots of her bobbed hair. “But it’s also essential business. The Luluwai knows that. Herr van Hoog is a sick man. His life has been cut away. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “But I do!” And I told her about my sick feeling when I thought about Chicago lost.

  “You do comprehend,” she said with some surprise. “The moment often comes in a life when the world is lost. God doesn’t exist. There’s no good, no bad, no hope, no past
. You’re the basic animal, bewildered. You’re dead.” She now spoke with terrible intensity. “That’s the moment I hope you will never know.”

  After a moment she unclenched her hands and said, “When such a time hits you, if it ever does, let the basic animal take control. There’s a great cure in nature. The girl Alwi is that cure, and she’s going with us. Van Hoog won’t find his gold, and if he does Shannon will probably steal it. But he’ll be cured.”

  And Alwi did go with them. This strange party set off one morning for the distant hills. Shannon led the way, with a rifle on his arm. Then came the bearers and Dame Sheila. The monkey ran up and down the line, swinging a machete. And behind them all trailed van Hoog and the naked girl.

  Then like a flash of light, I saw it all! Dame Sheila had let the monkey come along to tie down Shannon’s suspiring emotions. This way the old devil wouldn’t bother the girl. And Alwi was going along so that if trouble came, van Hoog wouldn’t have to face it alone. But where did Dame Sheila herself come in?

  Then I understood. As the train disappeared toward the mountains—beyond the swamp—this naked girl Alwi walked in a strange way that I had seen before. I rushed like crazy into the Paramount Luluwai’s hut and cried, “This girl Alwi! Whose daughter is she?”

  “Mine,” the big man said proudly.

  This stopped me for a moment and I started to leave. But suddenly I began to laugh very loud. The Luluwai joined in, so I said, “Sure. She’s your daughter. And who else’s?”

  He would not reply, so I took a long chance: “The lady doctor’s?”

  The Paramount Luluwai never stopped laughing, but he did say, “You savvy too much.”

  Rabaul

  Before the catastrophes, Rabaul was the loveliest town in the Pacific. Lying near the equator, it demonstrated how idyllic tropical life could be.

  It was a picture town. Wide avenues were lined with flowering trees. Handsome homes were surrounded with gardens of profuse beauty. A botanical park contained specimens from across the world, and the town was kept extraordinarily clean. There were no mosquitoes, no malaria and the nights were cool.

  The Germans had built Rabaul in 1910 on a scimitar-like arm of mountains that cut off a bay of great beauty. The town was completed in 1914 and immediately lost to the Australians, under whose supervision it became even more charming, with a social life patterned upon archaic eighteenth-century customs.

  There were two clubs, the Rabaul and the swanky New Guinea. Manners were impeccable. At formal dinners women wore gowns from Paris. Men were obliged to wear patent-leather pumps, black trousers, stiff shirts, hard collars, bow ties, white mess jackets. Perspiration was measured by the bucket and par was three fresh shirts for an evening dance. But “the conventions were protected.”

  Men visiting Rabaul who refused to wear tropical whites were asked to leave. Women who wore shorts were visited by the police and informed of the next ship south. The police also dealt ruthlessly with any white man who had visions of beachcombing with some dark beauty. He was tossed out of the territory, fare paid if necessary. It was all right, however, to welch on debts owed to Chinamen, many of whom went into bankruptcy because of unpaid chits.

  Each family had five or six servants—ninety cents each a month—and no white man was permitted to lift or carry. White women often did no work at all. There was a good library, movies, a gay party life and a plane from Australia twice a week.

  Everybody made money. One lawyer cleaned up $130,000 net in nine years. Citizens traveled widely, a favorite trip including London, New York, across America by Buick, and back to Rabaul with the car, which was sold at 100% profit to the taxi company.

  Life had two focal points: copra and alcohol. Plantations on nearby islands were among the richest producers in the world, and when the price of copra was good—like cotton, the price is never good—Rabaul was a town of swaggering millionaires.

  The consumption of drink baffles the imagination. It was common for a man to drink three or four gallons of beer a day topped off with a bottle of whiskey. Serious drinkers did better. Men who did not participate to the point of delirium tremens ran the risk of ostracism.

  Yet the whole system was reassuring because it was founded on the principle that the white man—specifically the Anglo-Saxon—was God’s choice to rule the world.

  Natives addressed white men with a reverent “Mastuh.” The numerous Chinese were ridiculed as being even lower than the natives. There was no social intercourse across barriers, no intermarriage, no admittance to movies, no stopping at hotels. If a Chinese could prove that he had been married for ten years, he might import his wife into Rabaul for three, after which she must return to China till she had built up another ten-year credit.

  Rabaul was a tropical paradise—for white men. For white women it was even more so. If one was willing to behave in the stylized Rabaul pattern—a man trying to play tennis without a shirt was told by the police, “That costume is approved for natives only”—this town was one of the most gracious and charming ever built.

  But near it hovered the volcanoes. Rabaul was surrounded by five cones. Six, actually, for the beautiful bay itself had once been a great volcano. It had exploded with terrific violence in some remote time, perhaps while still on the ocean floor. Eons later the eastern rim had broken down and the sea had rushed in to form a bay.

  At intervals upon the remaining rim the other five volcanoes had erupted later, like pimples along the edges of a nasty boil. There was the Mother, with two jagged craters, the North Daughter, possibly the oldest of the newcomers, and South Daughter with a secondary crater called Matupi, from which steam and sulphur still escaped.

  And if one forgot the volcanoes, gurias came to refresh the memory. They were violent earthquakes that rolled like waves. Sometimes they broke dishes. The worst ones knocked down houses.

  The people of Rabaul knew that sooner or later their nest of dragons would lash out again. They reasoned that the gurias foretold volcanic action and that when enough pressure had been built up, something would have to pop. They recalled that apparently no Rabaul volcano had ever erupted twice. It was easier to make new ruptures than to force open old channels. Furthermore, it was known that the two most pronounced faults in the earth’s rocky shell, one leading down from Japan and the other up from New Zealand, intersected at Rabaul. Vulcanologists—volcano experts—said, “In this region the crust is perilously thin. Catastrophe might strike at any time.”

  It struck in 1937. For twenty-eight hours there was a violent guria that shook houses. The people of Rabaul said, “Something’s got to pop.”

  In the bay there were two rocky needles called the Beehives. Near them was an insignificant island used as a quarantine station. On May 29, 1937—a Saturday—this trivial speck of land exploded.

  It started pumping ash and flame high into the air. The earth shook and within a few hours Vulcan Island became a major volcano. It wiped out three villages and killed more than 300 people. (Rabaul residents say: “Two people and 300 natives.”)

  Toward midnight the eruption became more violent. So much volcanic ash was ejected that the harbor was engulfed in a layer two feet above the surface of the water. Ships capsized. Vulcan became a mountain 700 feet high.

  Ash so disturbed the atmosphere that an unparalleled electrical storm ripped across the volcanoes. Immense towers of lightning shot into the air “like diagrams of the blood system in a medical book,” and thunder drowned out the eruptions of lava.

  By morning the citizens of Rabaul wiped the ashes out of their eyes and said, “That wasn’t so bad. Anybody who wants to evacuate can find boats up the bay. We’ll stop here.”

  But now Matupi, the forgotten crater on the side of South Daughter, rumbled into very powerful activity. Belching huge clouds of noxious gas, Matupi threw out a vast eruption of silky mud. It engulfed the town. The gurias became worse, and the electrical storm continued.

  That was enough. Rabaul was emptied. People were ferri
ed to safety in anything that would float, and a second stormy, frightening, muddy, volcanic night settled upon Rabaul.

  Within two days most of the residents were back. They found delicate mounds of mud on everything. One woman who had baked a cake for Sunday tea found it with a brown icing, baked hard. Flowers were frozen into shape with a coating of dried mud, and trees were frosted with volcanic ash.

  The debris proved to be remarkably fertile and soon Rabaul’s gardens were lovelier than before. Quickly life resumed its natural patterns, but with one change: from time to time Matupi belched a cloud of hydrogen sulphide that smelled simply awful. But even this curse was found to have a therapeutic value: it kept the air free of bugs. Within the week beer was flowing at the Rabaul Club. But now waiters did not plump the steins on coasters. They put the coasters on top of the glasses—to keep out Matupi’s vagrant explosions of volcanic ash.

  Now Rabaul was as placid as before. There was a relieved gayety. “It might not go off again for a hundred years!” But up from the Solomons came a strange white planter who used to sit at the bar and utter dire warnings. Ken Symes had always jabbered about odd things he was going to invent: new carburetors, a machine for husking coconuts, a trick for splitting the atom. Now he was on the booze and croaked: “Watch Java!” When fellow drunks asked why, he cried mournfully, “Java is the great enemy.” A friend who had known him in the Solomons snapped, “At Tulagi you said, ‘Watch Japan!’ ” Symes looked up condescendingly and said, “It’s too late now to bother about Japan. Watch Java.” Shortly he was executed—by the Japanese.