Visitants

by Randolph Stow

  SALIBA

  The Wayouyo girls scattered from the path to the bushes and the grass, as the Olumata women had done on the other side of the track to Rotten Wood. The Wayouyo girls and the Olumata women were screaming at each other, like white cockatoos in two close trees.

  The noise of the fighting men was deeper. Some were calling out challenges, and others were grunting and groaning. The boys who had torches had given them to girls, and the girls were running up and down among the bushes, trying to see the fighting on the path but making everything dark by not being together.

  Some Wayouyo men had hung back from the fighting as if they were afraid. Benoni was one of them. But with him it was not fear. Benoni was shouting and shouting through his hands but I could not hear what he said, and nobody else could have understood a word in his sounds because of the shrieking of the women.

  A boy came staggering through the bushes where I was standing. Blood was running down his face, and shone in the light of my torch. He fell in the grass and lay there and was groaning. So I went to him, holding the torch above his head, and looked and saw that he was an Olumata boy, the same age as I.

  ‘It hurts?’ I said. ‘It is a bad hurt?’

  ‘E,’ he said, ‘it hurts.’

  ‘You lie there,’ I said. ‘Lie quiet. It is madness, this.’

  ‘You say,’ he said, spitting and swallowing. ‘Ssss. Women.’

  Then he heard something, on the path, towards Wayouyo. ‘Avak’?’ he said, sitting up, and looking at me, not trusting me.

  ‘I do not know what it is,’ I said. ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘A conch,’ he said. ‘Tell me—more men will come?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I said. And then we heard the conches very clearly, more than one, and coming quickly from Wayouyo.

  ‘I will go back,’ the boy muttered to himself. ‘What do they want? They will harm the village?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘no,’ pushing him back in the grass. Blood was over all of his face and over most of his chest by then, and his voice sounded feeble. ‘Lie there,’ I said, ‘it is not war like that.’

  ‘Then,’ he said, ‘you go and look. There, by the path. You look out and tell me.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now you see. I was not one of those girls.’

  When I told him that he smiled at me, weakly. ‘My thanks,’ he said. ‘O, Salib’, did you think I did not know you? That night in the cookhouse at Rotten Wood, when the lamp went out, that was me.’

  ‘E, truly?’ I cried out. ‘Then, what is your name?’

  ‘Later I will say,’ he said. ‘Go now, Salib’. Keep watch.’

  But when I stood up, taking the light away from him, his eyes followed the light and me, and looked lonely and even a little afraid. So I hesitated, but he said: ‘Quickly,’ and lifted his arm to point where I should go. So I did what he said, though looking back at first, watching the light slide down him, and his body and the grass turning into darkness.

  BENONI

  It was the Olumata women who heard and saw first. Before I could hear anything, the women were running out of the bushes with their torches and clustering on the path towards Olumata, until their men were between them and what they were pointing at and calling out about, which was behind me somewhere, a long way.

  As I was turning to see, the conches whooped. Not one but six or more of them together, and after them the high ululating of a crowd of men. Then the conches broke out again, booming and droning. On the palm-trunks leaning over the path I began to see the glow of moving torches, and later the flash of torches through gaps in the bushes. I saw the torches coming towards the last bend. The light spilled out ahead of them on the straight path. When the flames burst into the open, we saw who had come.

  I thought: I do not know these men, what men are these? Their faces were painted white with black eyes and mouths. They had made their bushknives shine, like tin. They ran side by side, in line, four men after four men. As they ran, they howled.

  Behind me everybody was quiet, the fighting had paused, there was only a little whimpering from the Olumata women.

  I did not know one of them. They were coming towards me with their black eyes staring and the light on their white faces; coming from Wayouyo, yet there was not one I had seen before. They were all the same. Every man in a white yavi, every man with a silver bushknife, every man with a torch or a white conch in his other hand. They were all black and white, wearing tusks and arm-shells and garlands of white flowers, with white dancing-feathers shaking in their hair. As they ran they lifted their knees and stamped, and the conches blew. While they stamped, they howled.

  I ran too, going towards them, shouting: ‘Who? Who?’ and spreading my arms in front of them, to stop them, to keep them from the fight. But the first men threw me out of the way, and others pushed me while I was stumbling, so that I fell and was lying in the deep grass at the side of the path. When I sat up, the last of them were going by me. I saw that the last ones were not young, and for the first time I understood what they were chanting. They were calling: ‘They will come.’ And then: ‘They will come here.’ And then: ‘They will come, the star-people.’

  SALIBA

  The painted men smashed through the young men on the path. Wayouyo boys and Olumata boys, they all went sprawling. Not that the painted men hit them, they just came at a run, with a howl, and drove through. All the time the torches of the women dodged among the bushes and the voices of the women came out of the leaves in little wails of excitement and fear.

  I could hear then what the painted men were calling. ‘Bi meise! Bi meise besa! Bi meise Mina-utuyam!’

  Benoni had stood up and was staring down the path at the moving bodies and torches. I came beside him with my light, and he started.

  ‘It is I,’ I said.

  ‘Who are they?’ he said. ‘Did you see?’

  ‘They were moving,’ I said, ‘and they were painted. But I think I knew some. I think the old man Boitoku is there.’

  ‘Boitoku?’ he said. ‘Ku sasop’. He is the VC, he talks for the Government.’

  ‘Yes, but,’ I said, ‘he talks first of all for Dipapa.’

  By then the painted men were all together once more in their lines. Their torches were like a path in the middle of the path. Their conches sounded again, and their howls. They began to run.

  ‘To Olumata,’ I said. ‘Why will they go to Olumata?’

  But Benoni did not answer, and when I looked at him he was gazing after the lights going away from us, and the Wayouyo people and Olumata people falling in behind. He was gazing at the crowd that was trotting and running after the painted men, and biting his lip until I felt the pain.

  ‘Benoni,’ I said to him, ‘what is it?’

  ‘He will destroy it,’ Benoni said.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Tell me, what will happen?’

  ‘So that I may not have it,’ he said, shaking his head, as if he had grown very tired. ‘He will destroy everything.’

  BENONI

  When we came into Olumata, Saliba and I, long after all the others had arrived there, the fires were just beginning.

  But before the flames showed, we heard the noise. Pigs were screaming. They were being hacked to death with bushknives. Chickens were screaming. Boys were wringing their necks. Women and children were screaming, standing outside their houses, watching the fires spread slowly along the damp thatch.

  Men with knives were running everywhere. Not only the painted men, but the Wayouyo boys, and many of the Olumata men too. Olumata men were setting fires, cutting down their own fruit-trees, laughing and shouting. Like the painted men, they were shouting: ‘They will come!’ Only the mothers with their children, and the old women who had been dragged from their houses, were crying out and weeping and twisting their hands in front of their eyes.

  And Boitoku, the old VC, painted like a skull, the white of his face growing redder as the fires spread, moved among them, telling a story.


  CAWDOR

  There is every reason to believe that the myth-basis of the movement has existed on the island for a very long time. Since my first visit, a year ago, I have been aware of the circulation of stories and traditions apparently influenced by or connected with some millennial cult which may have flourished here during the war years, when Mr MacDonnell was evacuated to Australia, or which may have been introduced (as myths pure and simple) from some area such as Kaga, where there has been an actual outbreak of ‘Vailala madness’ or cargo-cult. I now think that the connection with Kaga has been proved, though I no longer feel certain of the physical reality of the vanished Kaga ‘King’, TAUDOGA.

  According to KALETA, an Olumata woman, BOITOKU went among the people who had refused to join in the destruction of their village, telling a ‘story’ intended in part as an explanation of the events they were witnessing. As she told it to me, the story went like this:

  ‘I will narrate. I will speak of TAUDOGA.

  ‘A long time ago, TAUDOGA said this. He said: “I am a native, you are natives, the Dimdims are the same as natives. In the olden days our ancestors and their ancestors came here together in two flying-machines. They crashed at Odakuna. So the survivors went into a cave. Oh, their hunger, having nothing to eat. Some died, others ate them. Then they saw that they could never leave the island. So they came up out of the ground and made their villages. They came up, they looked for village-land, they settled, one man after another. They settled the land all the way, as far as the coasts of Dimdim.”

  ‘TAUDOGA also said this: “So you see, the Dimdims went to Dimdim. But later they became envious. They said: It is our wish to return to Kailuana, to take away the land from the natives.”

  ‘And TAUDOGA said this: “This year war will break out. After three years, war will be ended, and I will go away.” And that year war with the people of Yapan broke out, and after three years TAUDOGA went away. Nobody can say if he died truly, he went away, that is all.

  ‘But I am here to tell you this. He will come again. And today, in Wayouyo, we can hear his voice.’

  BENONI

  I shouted over the women’s heads: ‘This is gammon, Boitoku. Who is this Taudoga? Where did you hear his voice? Through Misa Makadoneli’s wireless, ki?’

  But Boitoku just looked at me with his painted face. That old man who used to be like my father to me when I was small, he just looked at me, and I knew from his eyes in their charcoal hollows what my uncle had it in his mind to do.

  ‘You will come to Wayouyo,’ he called to all the people. ‘You will hear the voice of Taudoga. Dipapa has said.’

  And then he went away, towards the entrance to the village, where all the other men were gathering; and one by one the women wandered after, many still crying, talking of something precious that was gone, a pot that the men had broken, or a young pig that they had chopped up and thrown away, or the yam-harvest sizzling under the burning thatch.

  So in the end Saliba and I were left alone, at the centre of the circle of fire, with blood and fallen fruit-trees on the ground around us.

  ‘Salib’,’ I said.

  ‘I am afraid,’ she said. ‘Beni, I am afraid for you.’

  All the village was deep in smoke. The smoke drifted between us, red, and the fires showed in the tears on her skin.

  ‘Do not be afraid,’ I said. I reached out my arm to touch her shoulders, and then was holding her against my chest. She was crying, and I felt her mouth moving on my skin. My desire was very great, because my fear was great. ‘I will be strong, Salib’,’ I said. ‘O, all will be well.’

  SALIBA

  I did not want to go back to Wayouyo, I was so happy. I said: ‘Let us go to Rotten Wood, we will tell Misa Makadoneli, he will talk through the wireless to the Dimdims.’ But Benoni said: ‘The Dimdims cannot settle this. This is work for me. Because soon, very soon, Salib’, I shall command the villages.’

  Again we were on the path to Wayouyo, and on the high point of the path I saw for the second time the lights by the stones, and a long way off a glow in the sky.

  ‘It is madness,’ I said. ‘The people have gone mad. There will be famine.’

  Now Obomatu is burning,’ Benoni said. ‘They have destroyed two villages. There is only Wayouyo left, and Rotten Wood.’

  Then I felt afraid for Misa Makadoneli, and for Naibusi, who had kept his house safe with magic when Dipapa wanted to destroy it, in the Dimdim war. But Benoni was not in a mood to speak, and so I said nothing.

  As we came into the boundaries of Wayouyo the mad people were returning from Obomatu. They were running wild through all the parts of the village, whooping and leaping, shouting of the star-machine. Some of them were Obomatu men, still bleeding from the fighting when they had tried to defend their village. But now they too were calling out about the star-people, like the Olumata men, who had helped destroy their own groves and houses, and then had gone to Obomatu and burned that too.

  The women who followed them were weeping, and could not understand. They trailed behind the excited men with their children and their old people, crying out and sobbing because of all the things that were gone.

  Boitoku ran among them, urging them on. He wanted them to go to where the church was, to hear some talk, some news. Dipapa was there, he said, and would speak to them. And they would hear something else, he said, yes, a thing never heard before. They would hear the talk of Taudoga, a man from the stars, who would come soon, when the world turned over, with cargo.

  CAWDOR

  The church at Wayouyo plays a rather mysterious role in the life of the community. The Methodist Mission on Osiwa Island was established in 1870, and at some time during that decade missionaries visited Kailuana and supervised the building of a church on the site of the present structure. It has been enlarged and rebuilt several times. For about twenty years a Polynesian or Osiwan catechist was in residence. Mr MacDonnell, when he arrived in 1908, immediately established hostile relations with the white missionaries on Osiwa, and his views seem to have spread to the Kailuana villages. The life of the native catechists became increasingly difficult, and after the 1914–18 War no more were sent to the island.

  In the years since, however, singing and some form of worship has taken place in the building, often under the direction of someone who could be called, in a general way, a religious leader. BOITOKU, who is the garden magician of a section of Wayouyo, has recently played this part. So, at some time or other, has DIPAPA. What they do during these ceremonies, apart from singing an eerie local version of ‘Daisy, Daisy’, I have not been able to discover. It probably contains an element of Christianity, but certainly they acknowledge no debt to the Bible. There may be a clue in the fact that they claim ‘Daisy, Daisy’ as an invention of their ancestors.

  But the church was not the focus of this outbreak. As was known to the main actors in the cult, the ‘painted men’, the centre of activities was the group of stones called Ukula’osi. It is only through the stones that one can explain the suddenness of the hysteria which took hold of the ‘painted men’.

  On October 29th a rumour went through the villages that a space-ship had taken away three men living on the island of Budibudi, where they guarded DIPAPA’s betelnut plantation. This seems to have been interpreted (by DIPAPA first, I should say, and later by METUSELA and BOITOKU) as a hopeful sign, a sign that the visitants needed more information about Wayouyo and had taken the men aboard as guides.

  When asked why they should connect the stones with the space-ship, all the men implicated said that they had heard of the connection from BENONI, who had heard it from me. I shall have to return to this, obviously.

  On October 30th BOITOKU (acting for DIPAPA, I suspect) spread the ‘talk’ through the group which became the hard core of the ‘painted men’. There were perhaps twenty, perhaps, forty of these, all men over 35, and all unfriendly to BENONI. Every one of them would have been familiar with the tradition attached to the stones: that if they were mov
ed, a great wind would destroy the villages, that there would be famine, and that all the people would go mad.

  Under the direction of METUSELA (I believe), these men went to the stones at Ukula’osi and moved them.

  I consider this sufficient to explain the hysteria. They had expected to be destroyed instantly by a wind, and were not. They had expected to go mad, and in a sense did. They had accepted the possibility of a famine and were easily persuaded to set about creating one.

  The stones, which formed a roughly oval pattern, were rearranged in a circle. The ground inside the circle was picked clean of weeds and pebbles, and swept ritually by a magician (presumably BOITOKU), in preparation for the space-craft which was to use it as a landmark.

  Later they set about constructing a shed or warehouse for the cargo from the craft. Work continued on this throughout the next three days and nights.

  When the violence began on the night of October 31st, it was the ‘painted men’, in their almost intoxicated state, who spearheaded it. But they were very quickly joined by the majority of males in all three villages of Kailuana. I do not believe that this reaction had, at that stage, anything in particular to do with the ‘star-machine’. I believe that myths and traditions of the ‘cargo’ type are part of their experience, of their memory. But I may be wrong. I admit that I have good reason to doubt my own judgement on a number of matters.