Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  In order to make the mess palatable, the native pops in a couple of inches of daca, the string-bean-like product of a creeping vine. Daca tastes like pepper and yields a red juice, which stains the mouth and teeth. In time, the red on the teeth turns black and becomes a sure cure for tooth decay.

  Most natives spit out this witches’ juice, but others swallow it and become mildly drunk. For this reason the triad beteldaca-lime is called “grog belong native.” Tough characters swallow big doses and pass out cold.

  Betel juice makes even placid natives look ferocious, with red slashes for lips. But there is one tribe near Rabaul which needs no such paint. The Mokolkols—called the Irish of the Pacific—were originally a seacoast tribe, but they liked to fight so much that neighboring villages decided to exterminate them. But a handful of the Mokolkols escaped and fled to the hills. They inbred, nursed their grievances and vowed terrible revenge.

  They acquired heavy axes with six-foot handles. At unknown intervals they still swoop down on lonely outposts and kill everyone they meet. They don’t rob. They don’t collect heads. They simply kill.

  Three weeks before I reached Rabaul the Mokolkols fell upon a coastal village. Screaming mad, they swarmed upon the unprotected natives. The axe-men did not stop to murder individuals. They slashed out at anything they saw. The raid lasted only ten minutes, but when the wild men had left, twenty-eight villagers were dead. Some had only one fatal slash. Others had more than fifty.

  What makes the story absurd is that there are only sixty Mokolkols altogether, men, women, children. Dozens of expeditions have been sent against them, but no Mokolkol man has ever been taken alive. A long time ago a woman and two babies were captured. The woman killed herself and the children were reared in coastal ways in hopes they would return to their tribe and explain the necessity of law. When they grew up they were afraid to go back.

  The Mokolkols have no home, no known leader, no specific area of operation. Their last three attacks were at locations more than a hundred miles from one another. There is new talk of “an expedition against the Mokolkols.” Old-timers laugh and say, “Why waste the money?” It’s provocative to think that Germans, Australians and Japanese with airplanes, guns, radios and medicine have been unable to find one small band of murderers in an area about the size of Rhode Island. Says the old hand, “Gives you city dreamers some idea of the fact that this is a savage place. Won’t be civilized in another hundred years!”

  During the war I had seen Rabaul from a Navy bomber, and I had from that moment wanted to visit the violent town that had known so many disasters. I wanted to know what it felt like to live under a volcano. I lived under six of them and in the bosom of a seventh. I climbed the lava sides of Matupi and stood at the rim watching that magnificent crater spit smoke along bright, lime-yellow cliffs two hundred feet high. The smell of sulphur was oppressive, and from the muddy lake in the heart of the crater twisting steam rose like a forming cloud.

  Six days before I reached Rabaul there was a violent guria, another on the day I landed. It was interesting to feel the ground wobble, and even Mrs. Macdonald, who hates volcanoes, said, “Too bad you missed the big one. You’d have enjoyed it.”

  Life under the volcanoes was like life anywhere else. Men with money were making more. The Government was fumbling with a half dozen ideas, some of which might one day save the territory. And women cried at weddings. Nobody bothered much about potential disasters, either volcanic or historic. Mr. Macdonald kept saying hopefully, “In Rabaul anything can happen!” Fred Archer said, “I’d hate to live in New York now that Russia has the atomic bomb.”

  One day in hot Rabaul I asked my wife, “All sentiment aside, would you be willing to live on the islands we’ve seen?” We considered the worst aspect of everything and came to these conclusions.

  We would be willing to live on almost any Polynesian island. We’d think ourselves lucky to be able to live on Tahiti or Rarotonga. We could enjoy a year or two on even the loneliest atolls. The inconveniences would be offset by the joyous life-patterns of the people who would share them with us.

  As for Australia and New Zealand, if we could grow to ignore certain colonial pettiness—formal dress for men; nineteenth-century customs for women—life in either of those countries would be very good. My wife would choose New Zealand of the beautiful vistas; I’d take rugged Australia, especially if I could learn to drink beer like water.

  That leaves the forbidding islands of Melanesia. We considered Fletcher’s lament written in 1912: “I don’t think the South Seas is a good place to earn a living in—especially for a fool who is cursed with the smallest grain of sensitiveness. The dolce far niente may or may not be good. Personally, I am inclined to think it would pall quickly except in congenial company. You see, sweltering heat, mosquitoes, flies, fleas and other pests are all against quiet enjoyment.… I should not stop in the New Hebrides another day if I could get away.”

  We would add: “It’s difficult to live without plumbing, fresh milk and meat. The noonday heat is enervating, and we don’t like living so near to beautiful water without ever getting a chance for a swim. The libraries aren’t much good. Tropical diseases are unpleasant, particularly prickly heat. And we hate sleeping under mosquito nets.”

  But in spite of all that, we wouldn’t hesitate to live on any of the Melanesian islands we’ve seen. If we could earn some income, have screening, some kind of lighting system and some native boys willing to work for a decent wage, we’d live anywhere. We like hot weather. We have liked most of the people we’ve met in Melanesia. We especially appreciate the release from tension that tropic life encourages.

  Only two things might keep us from the islands. We would want to be assured of good medical services. And we would never willingly adopt the attitude toward natives that is prevalent among many white people in Melanesia. Only with great restraint have we been able to keep from brawling with people like the New Guinea planter who roared, “It’s a disgrace! The bloody Government says I’ve got to stop knocking down my niggers. They’re nothing but animals. It’s the only way you can train the swine.” Sooner or later we’d get into a fight over that.

  The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn’t either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific.

  What I Learned

  It would be folly for a man to spend almost a year knocking about islands if he proposed to learn nothing from the experience. The tropics taught me something almost every day.

  First, I learned that white women enjoy the islands as much as their husbands do. On every island I met some woman who had found a home which was lovelier than she had ever known before. An inexpensive house of native materials, airy verandahs, local women to help with the chores, and endless flower gardens made many white women happy. On Tahiti there were many such women, tolerantly amused at the havoc caused by native girls among male tourists. My own wife was approached by a dazzling beauty who asked bluntly, “Your husban’, he is very rich, yes?” My wife recalled her allowance and corrected the impression. The Tahitienne shrugged her shoulders and asked, “But he is very strong, yes?” My wife replied in that tone of voice recognized by women the world over, “Yes, chérie, but I am very strong, too. You understand?” Apparently the girl didn’t, for she asked, “Would you be angry with me if I asked your husban’ to dance with me on Saturday night?” Unmistakably now my wife replied that she would be mad, whereupon the dark beauty sniffed and said, “Madame does not trust her husban’, yes?” In spite of such disarming propositions my wife liked the South Pacific even more than I did. Once in deathly humid Bougainville she wavered, but for the rest of the
time she loved the quiet restfulness of the tropics.

  Second, I learned what I believe is the secret of the South Pacific. Here nature is so awesome that it compels attention. Other things being roughly equal, that man lives most keenly who lives in closest harmony with nature. To be wholly alive a man must know storms, he must feel the ocean as his home or the air as his habitation. He must smell the things of earth, hear the sounds of living things and taste the rich abundance of the soil and sea.

  The South Pacific is memorable because when you are in the islands you simply cannot ignore nature. You cannot avoid looking up at the stars, large as apples on a new tree. You cannot deafen your ear to the thunder of the surf. The bright sands, the screaming birds, and the wild winds are always with you. The great writers, Conrad, Maugham and Melville, spent only a few years in the South Seas, but their memory of those waters was indestructible; for the nature of life in the islands commands attention to the vivid world and its even more vivid inhabitants.

  I have often been mildly amused when I think that the great American novel was not written about New England or Chicago. It was written about a white whale in the South Pacific. This part of the world sharpens the perceptions of a man and brings him closer to an elemental nature. It may seem contradictory, but in the languid tropics one spends more time contemplating those great good things of sound and sight and smell.

  For example, this time I saw some things I had missed before. The mountains of New Caledonia, great glowing red hills rising from green valleys, were brilliantly beautiful. On the Australian Outback, across absolutely barren wilderness, I saw from aloft a herd of wild horses galloping with their heads stretched forward and their plumes flying. Or the lagoon at Bora Bora, nestling beneath the volcano, sleeping within the protecting rim of coral. Or that curious and half-revolting sight in Tonga where entire trees were covered with sacred bats, squirming, furry, flying creatures whose chatter was never silenced. And the gay color of the provincial square in Noumea where the flamboyant trees were aflame and where Canaques danced beneath them, shuffling for hours at a time while frenzied natives beat upon gasoline tins until the night throbbed.

  There were strange things to feel, too. There was the brain coral that grows along the edge of the reef, a huge ball of rock covered with softly convoluted folds, living and delicate to the touch. I used to lie upon them and they would clutch my belly and keep me from slipping down the face of the reef. Less pleasant was the feel of that stubborn hypodermic needle in the French hospital, striving to force its blunt way into my arm, then leaping in triumph right into the bone—oh, horrible memory! Or the giant Rabaul snails, bigger than my fist, crawling over my fingers, no part of them moving, yet with everything in motion. Or the indescribable shock of those cold tropical shower baths where you would expect to relish anything cool—but not that cold! Or what my wife liked best, the cold fresh-water pool in Tahiti with the water plummeting down in a cascade. I know they’ve done it a hundred times in the movies. I know it’s a cliché. But I also know it’s a superb experience. And what I liked best, the feel of the kava bowl in Fiji, a coconut shell worn grayish-brown by many hands over many years, cool to the touch yet containing a bite as the kava hit my gums.

  Of the tropic sounds none can compare with the thunder of surf upon the distant reef, where the coral halts the vast waves in full flight so that they writhe into the air like monstrous horses along the rim of a Greek bowl, neighing and thrashing their forefeet. The most unbelievable sound, of course, was the laughter of the kooka-burra birds in Australia. I heard them at least a hundred times but never without wanting to laugh along with them, for their shattering cry is totally boisterous. There was a subtler sound that came in time to represent the jungle. A crowd of Sepik natives had been flown down to our plantation in New Guinea, and in their homesick huts they played endlessly upon their reed pipes of Pan. Sometimes they played for twenty hours at a stretch, four plaintive notes weaving a haunted spell. If I were to hear that monotonous tune tonight I would be back in New Guinea—and I would like that.

  There were good things to taste, too. You can get pretty fond of Australian filet mignon, at 29¢ a pound. Or the juicy mangoes in Tahiti that drip bright yellow stains upon your chin. Or those fantastically good meals served by the Tonkinese cook on the edge of the Santo jungles. The classic taste was the sun-sweet pineapple of New Guinea, which was more acid and memorable than any I’ve ever known before or since. It clung to my fingers for a day as if reluctant to let me forget how good the feast had been. The most longed-for taste was that good, cold Hong Kong beer. The Chinese ship it across the Pacific, and a good refrigerator stocked with bottles can be a wonderful end to a journey, or a torturing memory when you are inland upon some trait.

  But in human beings it is the sense of smell—least regarded of the senses—which is most powerful in evoking memories; so that now if I smell burnt chicory I am in Fiji. If I smell clean ocean fish, I’m in the Tahiti market. Or a whiff of burnt sulphur can pitch me back into the sugar factories of Queensland. But there are three Pacific fragrances I can never forget. I have tried to imprison the smell of ripe vanilla oils as they drift across Raiatea on some dewy morning, but I have probably failed. At Tonga there is another odor of which a traveler said, “Well, at least it’s strong!” The Tonga reef stretches far out to sea and low tide exposes vast expanses of flat coral, where pools of stagnant water collect. Each pool contains its delicacies, as the pot of a famous chef contains oddments for the stew: a fragment of dead fish, a fractured clam, a leg torn off a wounded lobster, an old shoe, some jetsam, and some rotting sea weed. All day the blazing sun cooks this delectable brew so that when the tide returns at evening a rich ambrosia awaits its probing fingers. When an off-sea breeze is blowing, you can stand along the shore and watch the smell come in. In the distance a kettle of stew is stirred up and swept along to another kettle closer inshore. Finally the whole powerful broth is thrown at the shore as a furious cook throws out a stinking mess. You have to brace yourself when the aroma hits, but strangely enough it does not smell offensive. It smells mightly like the ocean, and that is always good. But the queenly fragrance of the tropics is the tender perfume of frangipani blossoms when dew is on them. The frangipani is a miraculous tree which bears a multitude of creamy white flowers whose petals shade into a golden amber where they join the stem. And there they hide as lovely a fragrance as we know.

  But rejuvenating as it is to feel one’s self close to nature, that alone is never enough. Along with the timelessness of natural things must go a concern with temporal events if a man expects to live with any decency in his world. If the South Pacific were merely an escape from reality it would be nothing but a pleasant grave; but that is not the case, for when I am in the South Pacific I am each day more keenly an American. And from that restful vantage of islands and coral I sometimes discover things I did not know before.

  For example, this time I discovered what I think about America. I was not on a single island but what someone with good sense and responsible years approached me with this direct question: “Did the American Government send you out here to report on whether or not we want America to take over this island? Let me tell you, my friend, we dream of nothing else. When will America adopt us?” Even in Australia—north of Brisbane in the country that was to be abandoned to the Japs in 1942—this question was asked.

  These questions did not make me arrogantly proud of America. Often I explained to my questioners that if they studied the history of Puerto Rico they might not find the prospect so alluring. I also cooled them off by pointing out that my nation doesn’t have too good a record in dealing with colored races. Finally I explained that during the war they had seen us at a rare advantage: our finest young men, with money to burn, and machines to waste, and hearts for any lovely girl. I told them we Americans were not all like that.

  Of course, they didn’t believe me. They knew I was painting a rather dark picture because I felt it improper to visit
a foreign country and then encourage sedition among its citizens. Yet I can honestly say that never was this vital question asked—“When will America take over?”—without its awakening in me a tremendous appreciation of my native land. We can laugh at our weaknesses, and surely we’ve got to learn to accept it with good grace when others ridicule our faults, but a residue remains. Across the world that residue is known. I discovered it in the South Pacific.

  I also discovered what I think about certain aspects of life. When I first explored the Pacific I was bowled over by the volcanoes. I climbed a full dozen of them, watched them explode at night, listened to their majestic growls as they spit forth ash. There was something awful and final about these Pacific volcanoes—more numerous than anywhere else on the globe—for they represented the fundamental earth asserting itself in violence.

  But since that first exploration I have known enough of violence, and on this trip I was surprised to find that volcanoes bored me. True, it was interesting to see how old friends were getting along—Bagana in Bougainville and Ruapehu in New Zealand—but I had lost my taste for violence. Now what delighted me were the waterfalls, those poetic threads of light leaping through the quiet air and finding rest below. I was weary of gigantic horrors and relished the prospect of peaceful movement to some green haven. I have never seen a waterfall that did not bring spiritual restfulness; and once when I had turned my back upon a volcano to study a waterfall I thought that in his heyday Hitler would have screamed that I was degenerate. I found that I was all in favor of such degeneracy.

  But not even the loveliest cascade could put me to sleep, for I kept seeing one vision across the Pacific that kept me fitfully awake. On Hawaii it was the Japanese storekeeper, alert and wise. In Rabaul it was the Chinese shipping magnate, quick and industrious. In Espiritu Santo it was the Tonkinese I used to know as a laundryman’s helper’s helper. Now he owns a store. In Tahiti it was the wonderful Chinese-Tahitian basketball team, lithe and tricky on the pivot shots. Wherever I went I saw the face of Asia, and it was unforgettable.