Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  “Well, seeing that Johnny is leaving behind a baby that I’ll have to feed …”

  Weakly Mrs. Winchester cried, “Griswold! Griswold!” When her husband appeared she whispered, “Get this creature out of here.”

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Winchester blustered.

  “It’s unspeakable! This wretched man’s daughter has had three lovers. Now she’s going to have a baby and her father”—she shuddered—“wants to be paid off.”

  Mr. Winchester took out his wallet and said, “My dear, I warned you that Tahiti …”

  “Don’t give it to him! Give it to the girl, if she’s not some cheap.…”

  “I’ve seen the girl,” Mr. Winchester said. “She’s very decent.”

  He took his wife ashore and led her to the vanilla shed, where she gasped when she saw how lovely Teuru was.

  “You’re very pretty,” Mrs. Winchester said.

  “Johnny told me you were an old friend.”

  “Yes, we’ve known his family for years.”

  “What will Johnny do … when he gets home, I mean?”

  Mrs. Winchester perceived that she had stumbled upon the classic island tragedy: the deserted native girl and the handsome white man. So she said gently, “Hell probably go back to college.”

  “And get married?” Teuru asked, smiling warmly as she whipped cords about her bundle of beans.

  Mrs. Winchester knew that the brave smile masked the heartbreak of betrayal, so she said consolingly, “And you? What will you do?”

  Teuru started a new bundle in her left hand and said thoughtfully, “I guess I’ll get married, too. After I get rid of the baby.”

  Mrs. Winchester swallowed. “What do you mean? Get rid of the baby?”

  “Kim Sing won it. After a few weeks I’ll give it to Kim Sing.”

  “He … won … it?” the American woman asked weakly.

  “Yes. He threw eleven sixes.”

  Mrs. Winchester retreated in a flood of nausea. At the door she bumped into Povenaaa and said to her husband between clenched teeth, “Give this despicable creature some money.” Then she stared at Povenaaa and said bitterly, “You had to take care of the baby!”

  Yet it was Mr. Winchester’s money that finally settled many problems for Teuru. After the yacht left, with redheaded Johnny Roehampton staring at the dock until the headland had been breasted, Povenaaa slipped over to Bora Bora and came home with the last jeep. It was badly battered and carried a garish sign across the front: SHORE PATROL. But it ran and it had a horn. Povenaaa’s first use of it was to drive up to Kim Sing’s establishment and blow the horn like mad. When the Chinaman appeared Povenaaa stood up and announced to his former employer, “You, M’sieur Kim Sing can go to hell.” Then he drove off down the middle of the road.

  Teuru immediately came to apologize. She told Kim he had always been kind to her family and that she appreciated this. “And now what will you do?” Kim asked.

  Teuru looked at the bundles she had tied and said, “After the child is born, Maggi wants me to go back to Papeete.”

  “Papeete is very fine,” Kim said.

  “But the rooms are so small and dark. I don’t want to leave Raiatea any more.”

  Kim Sing thought a long time and said, “You should tell your father.”

  So Teuru sought out Povenaaa at the new pier where he was hauling rock. “I’m not going back to Tahiti,” she announced.

  To her surprise Povenaaa said, “Good! We’re people of importance now. We still have lots of money left from the yacht.” Then, seeing Kim Sing approaching, he shouted, “And no daughter of mine is going to work for a damned Chinaman, either!”

  Kim Sing came to the pile of rocks and said haltingly, “I did not come to ask Teuru to work for me again.”

  “Then get out of the way. Can’t you see I’m a busy man?”

  “I came to ask … since Teuru does not wish to leave … since I’m to have the baby anyway …”

  When the meaning dawned on Povenaaa he slammed the jeep into low gear and tried to murder the Chinaman with it. “My daughter!” he bellowed. “Living with a Chinaman!”

  From behind the rocks the merchant said quietly, “I am not asking her to live with me. I am asking her to marry me.”

  Then Teuru stepped boldly beside Kim Sing and said, “Yes, Povenaaa, we are going to get married.” Povenaaa let his hands fall from the steering wheel and started to gulp, but Teuru said softly, “I went to Papeete three times for you. Now I shall stop in Raiatea.”

  Povenaaa washed his hands of the whole affair. He announced, at Le Croix du Sud, that if a daughter of his insisted upon such a thing he wished to hear no more about it. Maggi arranged the wedding and exacted from Kim a written pledge that he would not beat Teuru as some of his countrymen did their wives and that he would allow her spending money so long as she continued to wrap bundles of vanilla. But on one point he was adamant. Povenaaa came sniveling around and said that since his only daughter was leaving home he might as well sell the house, but Earl Weebles’ big sculptures still cluttered up the place. “Why not move them into the vanilla shed?”

  But Kim Sing—even though he had sworn not to beat his wife—was not a complete fool. So years later when hungry collectors from London and Paris reached Raiatea they uncovered the precious masterpieces in the most unlikely places. The classic bust of Maggi, for example—the one now in the Louvre—it was found propping open the door to the barn where Povenaaa kept his jeep.

  Fiji

  Imagine a group of islands blessed by heaven, rich in all things needed to build a good life, plus gold mines and a good climate. Picture a native population carefree, delightful and happy. Add a white government that works overtime to give honest service. Top it all off with a democracy that enables dozens of different levels of society—from Oxford graduates to bush dwellers—to have a fine time. That makes a pretty wonderful colony, doesn’t it?

  There’s only one thing wrong with that picture of Fiji. The Indians. Nobody can stand the Indians. When threepenny bits were recently issued in an unconventional form, bankers experienced a phenomenal run. They discovered that Indian sharpsters were buying in quantity and scurrying to remote regions where the new coins were sold to gullible natives as sovereigns. The Indians made a profit of 7700% on each sale.

  Of 7000 criminal cases tried in one year, 5000 had Indian defendants, although they represented only 50% of the population. In the same year they accounted for 80% of the income-tax penalties. Christian church schools are overrun with Indians who, when they are graduated, ignore the religion. Hospitals are jammed with Indians but boycotted by Indian nurses who say such work is fit only for natives.

  When the Japanese threatened the islands—they were less than 900 miles away—no Indians volunteered for military service, and those finally forced into uniform were, with few exceptions, useless. Some Indian leaders indulged in near treason and many hoped for a Japanese triumph.

  It is almost impossible to like the Indians of Fiji. They are suspicious, vengeful, whining, unassimilated, provocative aliens in a land where they have lived for more than seventy years. They hate everyone: black natives, white Englishmen, brown Polynesians and friendly Americans. They will not marry with Fijians, whom they despise. They avoid English ways, which they abhor. They cannot be depended upon to support necessary government policies. Above all, they are surly and unpleasant. It is possible for a traveler to spend a week in Fiji without ever seeing an Indian smile.

  People from many lands have come to Fiji with sentimental sympathy for Gandhi’s brave fight against British imperialism. They have been predisposed to like the Indians and to distrust the British. But one week in Fiji and they say, as one woman did, “I would like to eat every word I ever uttered in favor of Indians. If America had to put up with Fiji for a year, we’d all go crazy.”

  The question of what to do with these clever Indians of Fiji is the most acute problem in the Pacific today. Within ten years it will become a
world concern. They were brought to the islands by grasping capitalists who needed a docile labor supply for the sugar-cane fields, just as American landowners needed Negro slave and Mexican labor for our cotton industries. But the Indians have stayed and raised large families until now they outnumber the native Fijians. Soon they will outnumber all the other races combined, and it seems inevitable that Fiji must one day become a colony owned, populated and governed by Indians.

  Ramat Singh, from a sugar plantation, illustrates why the Indians are the way they are. He is twenty-nine years old, stands five-feet-nine and weighs only 138 pounds. He is very black and was married at twenty when his wife was sixteen. They have seven children.

  Ramat Singh has a lease on some good land, but it belongs to Fijian natives, and after eleven more years he must turn it back to them. What he will do then he doesn’t know. There is little land that can be bought by Indians. For the present he has a contract to sell his cane to the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, the second largest corporation in Australia.

  Ramat hates the C.S.R., as do many of his silent friends. In 1888 his grandmother was brought over from India as an indentured worker, but she died in the fields after having been beaten by a white overseer. Ramat’s mother was seven at the time, and against the law she was forced to work in the fields until her dead mother’s period of indenture was ended. From his birth Ramat has hated Europeans and waits only until India, which is now free, expels them from Fiji.

  He has studied sugar production until his fields are the finest in the region. His wife and children work the cane and he makes a fair living. He has saved £81 and has hoarded $300 he made off the Americans by selling rotgut whiskey and the address of a girl in Lautoka. He dreams of owning a small store some day.

  His home is a two-room corrugated shack that is incredibly dirty. He hates this, especially when the children are sick, and if his store makes money, he is determined to build himself a real house, say twenty years from now. His wife is pregnant again, a fact which pleases him, for he has discovered that big families hold together. Already his oldest son, nine years old and born at the time of his marriage, has saved £2 and $11. His daughter, almost nine, is attractive and may one day marry a store-keeping Indian.

  He stays away from natives and white men. He keeps three goats, owns some chickens. He pays what taxes he must, rides buses with a mania, discusses politics with friends and is polite to the C.S.R. field men. He is sure that the Indian leaders in Fiji will force the British to build more schools—neither he nor any of his children has been to school—and he is equally certain that when the schools are built, Indian will be the language used for instruction. Meanwhile he saves every penny he can get and thinks of that store.

  Ramat Singh does not think of himself as a revolutionist, but he is. He has only to wait, and one day he will own Fiji. He is one of the millions in many parts of the world who are proving that the cradle is more powerful than legislatures. If he has enough children, they will be able to buy Fijian land. In fact, they will own Fiji.

  The land which he is determined to inherit has a vivid history. Less than a hundred years ago these islands of Fiji were the most cruel and barbarous on earth. Cannibalism had become a mania, with rules governing the murder and baking of enemies. Religion required that shipwrecked sailors be cooked and eaten the day caught. “If the mighty sea had not intended these men for you, it would not have sent them.” In the worst areas compounds were built where prisoners were fattened, tied into compact living bundles, and roasted. In many parts of the islands choice bodies were salted away and dragged out for princely feasts.

  The islands were in perpetual warfare. Villages were plundered. Huts were burned. Everyone captured was eaten. From one small island less than a mile square a band of ruthless predators subdued surrounding lands and exacted intolerable penalties.

  And when the native fury seemed about to spend itself, beachcombers from many nations fought their way ashore, defied the priests who ordered them killed, and set up reigns of horror which included massacres, cannibal feasts and total degeneracy. The white savages excelled the black.

  One of the worst was a Swede who called himself Charlie Savage. He was found by a British ship on a remote island, and no one ever knew how he got there. He was taken to Fiji, where he jumped ship and became military adviser to murdering chiefs. He used firearms and shot hundreds of natives for the sport. He instigated cannibal feasts, debauched as many women as he could catch, had 150 known children, and gradually gathered about him a gang of European and Chinese killers equally depraved.

  By 1813 he had so outraged the natives that he had to seek protection from a passing British ship, whose crew he inveigled into disgraceful wars of retaliation, in which corpses were carefully harvested for evening feasts.

  But this time the natives outguessed their tormentors and massacred the lot, except six who fortified themselves on a hilltop. Charlie Savage and a Chinaman felt certain they could fancy-talk the natives into a truce and set off to do so. An eye-witness reports: “At that moment Charlie Savage was seized by the legs, and held in that state by six men, with his head placed in a well of fresh water until he was suffocated; whilst at the same instant a powerful savage got behind the Chinaman, and with his huge club knocked the upper part of the skull to pieces. These wretched men were scarcely lifeless when they were cut up and put into ovens ready prepared for the purpose.”

  Not all white murderers came to such an appropriate end. Others lived on to inflame the islands until Fiji became celebrated as hell on earth. It is doubtful if there has ever been a worse in the Pacific.

  And then, within a comparatively brief time, the islanders foreswore their brutal practices, accepted Christianity, begged three different white countries to govern them and developed into what judicious travelers consider the most completely lovable people on earth.

  It is doubtful if anyone but an Indian can dislike Fijians. They are immense Negroes modified by Polynesian blood. They wear their hair frizzled straight out from the head, so that the effect is one of a huge head set upon a rugged torso. They are one of the happiest peoples on earth and laugh constantly. Their joy in things is infectious; they love practical jokes, and in warfare they are without fear.

  If encouraged, they will sing all night and sleep all day. Late visitors to their churches, where they sing a capella, are convinced there is an organ inside, so resonant are their voices. A hundred years of prodding by the British have failed to make the Fijians see why they should work for money. They love children and make wonderful nurses. A completely spoiled English boy of seven was turned over to a huge Fijian woman. She stood him as long as she could, then dropped to her knees so that she was his height, sparred off with him and knocked him silly. When he cried, she yelled, “Get up and fight like a man.” In three days he was cured and loved his huge tormentor.

  They are so gentle that white women could cross the islands on foot without molestation. They are so tough that on Guadalcanal Japs looked for American Marines to surrender to because of what Fijians might do to them. They are so uproarious in their games—at which they are most skilled—that certain teams won’t play them in football; they massacre the opposition just for the hell of it.

  How was it possible for the descendants of ruthless savages to change so vividly in a few generations?

  First, it is doubtful if their cannibalism was a permanent addiction. It seems to have been on the way out when whites like Charlie Savage introduced firearms and made it easy even for cowards to collect a meal. There were numerous instances in which a chief setting out to extirpate a neighboring community sent messengers ahead to warn them. Then, having arrived at the vacated community, he merely burned down the houses, stole some food and went home pleased with himself. Many of the most brutal massacres developed accidentally when horse play backfired into a hundred murders. Priests kept cannibalism alive, but the Fijians were never very successful warriors. When the really tough Tongans from the sou
th invaded Fiji they met little opposition. The savagery into which the Fijians degenerated was a cultural accident—like the savagery into which Germans descended—and their recovery from it uncovered the real behavior pattern of this singular people.

  Second, Fiji was saved by missionaries. These brave souls, who wrecked other islands, resurrected Fiji. It is true that by insisting upon clothes and European habits they also encouraged a fatal incidence of tuberculosis; but the spiritual salvation of Fiji is one of religion’s most notable accomplishments.

  Many of the missionaries were eaten, leading an irreverent planter to suggest that they triumphed by infiltration. But an endless supply of devout spirits took their places and argued the de-facto king into becoming a Christian. They warned him of the perquisites he must surrender—his many wives, his passion for human flesh, his predilection for treachery—and they argued so well that the old savage saw the merit of their reasoning and Christianized Fiji by fiat. His soldiers murdered those who objected.

  Third, although the conversion from cannibalism was dramatic, it was slow. In the 1870’s, a planter’s wife, going into her kitchen, saw a pair of human hands protruding from the pot in which the Fijian cook was preparing dinner. “Very good!” the cook said. “The best part!” Says the chronicler, “Her mistress got the pot down and sent the surprised woman packing with it, telling her never to come near the place again.”

  The early settlers gave Fiji one of the oddest alphabets in English. Since Fijians insert a vowel between any two consonants, it was difficult to devise a system of spelling that avoided juxtaposed consonants. For example, Christ, in Fijian becomes the inexpressibly lovely Karisito. Britain is Beretani. So in the Fijian alphabet d is pronounced nd. (The airport of Nandi is spelled Nadi.) Q is ng. (The great native drink is yaqona, pronounced yangona.) B is mb, and C is th. Thus the king who Christianized Fiji is Cakobau, pronounced Thakombau.

  This Cakobau was a remarkable fellow. His family, especially his father, relished brutalities that make modern stomachs retch. His brother tried five times to murder Cakobau, after which unfraternal behavior their father ordered the brother’s brains beaten out. Yet as a mature man, Cakobau had the intellectual power to weigh alternatives, to see what was best for his islands, and to decide that only by cession of his power to some white government could he hope to lead his Fijians into any kind of order.