Headhunters on My Doorstep

by J. Maarten Troost

  My head did a cartoon wobble, like it was trying to shake off the effects of a recent impact with a sledgehammer, just to make sure that my eyes were not lying. Not only was there a dorsal fin but it was immediately evident that it was attached to a not-insubstantial shark. There were no markings on the fin. This was not a white- or black-tipped reef shark. Maybe a grey. Or God forbid, a tiger. Or a bull. It kept swimming closer, languorously, methodically, until I saw its full shape. Six footer.

  Eyes darted from shark to children. The adrenaline kicked in, and now I galloped like Roy Scheider on a Nantucket beach, trotting back and forth along the jetty. Shark. What should I do? The kids were oblivious. They needed to be warned. Think. I whirled toward the three Marquesan ladies. “Excusez-moi,” I said. “Mais il y a un . . .” What the hell was the French word for shark? Re . . . “Mais il y a un requin là.” My mask had dislodged and was now burrowing into my left eye. I pointed a flipper toward the water.

  The ladies glanced up. “Oui,” said one. “C’est un requin.”

  Yes, well, shouldn’t we be doing something. Like blow a whistle. I turned to look at the shark. The water was so clear I could see every gill, the wet sheen of its dorsal fin reflecting sunlight, the death-stare of its eyes. It was just ten yards from the nearest kids, coldly stalking them.

  “Il y a beaucoup de requins ici,” said the same woman with a mirthful glint to her eyes. Might not be my place to say, but is it good parenting to let your kids play where there are beaucoup de requins? “C’est pas dangereux,” she said, reading my mind. Only in the South Pacific is a man-size torpedo-shaped fish with three rows of prehistoric teeth and a cantankerous disposition not regarded as dangerous.

  I turned back toward the water. The shark was now gone, as stealthy in its disappearance as in its arrival. If this were the United States, there’d be mass pandemonium. Beaches would be shut down. Signs would be posted. A dozen lifeguards would spend their days toting binoculars, searching for shadows and ominous dorsal fins. But we were not in the United States. This was the Marquesas. I stood there for a moment pondering the situation and concluded that I needed to man up. Surely, the ladies were right. Reef sharks are not dangerous. Yes? And somewhere out there was a curious manta ray. I watched a couple of boys swoosh down the ramp like it was made out of frozen ice. That, I thought, is dangerous. Let’s maintain perspective.

  So I approached the ramp, sat on my bottom, and scooted toward the water. Apparently, the sight of a foreign man with a mask and snorkel resting askew on his head, sliding down a boat ramp like a toddler on a slide, is regarded as funny in the Marquesan culture. The kids hooted and laughed and pointed and basically collapsed in a pile of mirth. Yes, well, I thought, you know what would be really funny? My falling on my ass. But I denied them that joy and inched my way down.

  The commotion interested the three ladies and they peered over the jetty to see what all the hubbub was about. I reached the water and was busy putting on my flippers when they asked where, exactly, was I planning on going snorkeling. I pointed toward the deep water beyond the seawall and said that I was heading yonder. “Je cherche pour une manta ray,” I said. The women nodded. “Ce n’est pas dangereux? N’est-ce pas?” If the kids are in the water, then the water is safe. This has always been my guiding principle when swimming in this part of the world. Sure, there might be a few reef sharks but as long as you hadn’t nicked yourself shaving then it was fine, right?

  The women wrinkled their noses. “Non, c’est pas très dangereux.” Was that a qualifier, that très there? Not very dangerous. What did she mean with not very dangerous? “Mais faites attention aux requins-marteaux.” Pay attention to a what now?

  “C’est quoi ça?” I asked with great hesitation.

  The women all tried to explain just what, precisely, a requin-marteau was. It sounded like a really high-end cognac, and like cognac, I gathered that this was something I should seek to avoid. But still, I had not an inkling of which particular species of shark we were discussing until a boy used his finger to sketch its distinctive shape on the mossy surface of the boat ramp. It looked like a menacing whale that had swallowed an anvil.

  “Hammerhead?”

  Oui they all said in unison. “Ammer-ead.”

  Evidently few things are more entertaining for Marquesans than the spectacle of some foreigner attempting to crawl up a moss-sodden cement boat ramp upon learning of the presence of requins-marteaux. Really, I don’t think we need to draw this out, but as I wandered back to the ship, listening to the guffaws and twittering of the locals, I saw the winged shadow of a manta ray languorously swimming in the middle of the bay, serenely gliding above swarms of hammerhead sharks. That’s how they roll, you know—in packs of dozens, with a few twenty-foot alpha sharks leading the hunt. Swimming with manta rays was on my list of things to do; swimming with hammerheads not so much; and here, apparently, you have to choose. For me, the only choice was to walk away. Were I to create a list of 100 Things Not to Do Before I Croak, swimming with sharks, particularly known man-eaters like the hammerhead (currently holding the number eight spot on the International Shark Attack File) would definitely crack the top ten, and since I could already cross off at least seven items on that checklist (falling off a waterfall, getting shot at, ending up in rehab, etc.), I was happy to stay dry. This was a list where I needed to keep a few openings.

  Chapter Seven

  Qu’est-ce que tu fais?”

  This would be Yvonne, standing next to me in our narrow galley bathroom as I stood in front of the mirror, shirtless, performing my morning ablutions. I was pleased to hear the familiar tu. I guess it’s inevitable when you share a bedroom. Eventually, all formality disappears, even among the French. But I had no answer for her. I searched hard in my francophone brain, but I could not find the word for nipple.

  How to explain, I wondered, the phenomenon of chaffing? I’d been preparing for a run that day and knew the tropical sun well enough to realize that going shirtless would be madness. It would be hot and sunny, and no matter how much SPF 500 sunscreen I slathered on, it would soon dissipate with my sweat, and I’d finish the day looking like an overcooked lobster, spending my remaining time in the Marquesas moving about like a shedding robot, grimacing in pain, as I’d leave a serpentine trail of peeling skin in my wake. Obviously, I should wear a shirt, which would get sodden with sweat, and then it would scrub against my nips, over and over again, mile after mile, and that would hurt, and while I’m okay with a certain amount of agony and misery, I draw the line at bleeding nipples. My solution was Vaseline. Few things are more discomforting than a post-run shower with nipples that feel like they’d been voraciously consumed by twins with emerging vampire fangs. I’ll say this about the long-distance male runner: To breastfeeding moms, we understand now.

  And so, as I slathered on the Vaseline, I tried to explain that I was going to run from Vaipaee to Hane, the two villages on the island of Ua Huka. I guestimated that it was about a ten-mile run, which normally wouldn’t be a problem, but I had no idea what kind of hills I’d face. Like all the islands in the Marquesas, Ua Huku had emerged from a cataclysmic volcanic eruption, rising to a lofty 2,800 feet. A flat island this was not. There were a mere 480 people living on this dry, crescent-shaped island, outnumbered by wild horses that’d been brought over from Chile more than a century ago. And so I prepared for the worst—Vaseline, of course, sunscreen, a baseball cap, and a large bottle of water, wishing now that I had brought a camelback, because I hated running with the rhythm-impinging feel of a water bottle in my hands.

  Yvonne was an engineer by trade, and she understood the problem immediately. Also, she was a woman. “Tu es fou,” she declared. You have no idea, I wanted to add. But this, I thought, as I put on my shirt and laced my running shoes, was what kept me sane.

  I’d been reading Haruki Murakami, the Japanese author, on my Kindle. He’d written a treatise called What I Talk Abo
ut When I Talk About Running. I admired him for his discipline. He’d declared his intent to become a serious runner, which for him consisted of a baseline of 36 miles a week, or 6 miles a day for six days a week, for a total of 156 miles a month. After some time at that distance, he increased it to 186 miles a month, and soon he was habitually running marathons in under three and a half hours. I envied his systematic approach. I, on the other hand, ran according to whim. Once I had attained a certain ability for distance running, I ran however far my soul dictated. Some days, when it didn’t feel right, particularly while I was destroying my Achilles tendons, I pulled up after four miles. On others, when all I intended to do was a six-mile jog, I would feel so good or I’d be so deep in thought that eighteen miles would pass before I called it a satisfying workout.

  Murakami wrote of running as a kind of meditative event. I’d tried the meditative run, but since I’d learned how to meditate by focusing on my breathing, stilling the monkey mind by concentrating on the simple inhalation and expulsion of air, I found it completely counterproductive when running. During a good meditative session, when stillness was crucial, the breathing would eventually lead to a kind of emptiness, and I could feel—kooky as it sounds—some kind of dreamy, floating sensation, as if I were hovering not so much above the universe, but within it, like I’d been atomized and disassembled and now just existed, connected to the same life force that created the Crab Nebula or a single-cell organism. This rarely happened, however. I’ve got tribes of monkeys living in my head.

  But concentrating on my breathing while running just left me feeling winded. Breathe in, breathe out, would soon turn to gasp in, gasp out, and all I’d focus on was my air intake, and how it seemed insufficient, and wouldn’t it be preferable to stop right here and now, and sit down, maybe have a sandwich, and think of something else, like how good a bar of Toblerone would taste. For me, running alternated between the plodding, let’s go forward, one step at a time, and just move on kind of running; or alternatively, I’d find myself so deep in thought that every step, every mile, seemed to pass accidently, thoughtlessly, without effort, and soon I’d find myself in another state.

  Unless pain was involved.

  “Pain is inevitable,” Murakami had written. “Suffering is optional.”

  This struck me as a very Buddhist sentiment. I had chosen the Catholic team, of course. We’re all about suffering.

  We had tied up the ship . . . No, let me rephrase that. At the crack of dawn, four psychotic members of the crew—divided into two teams—grabbed the heavy, water-sodden ropes and set forth in small boats to secure the lines to shore. And I am using the word shore very loosely here. This was a narrow anchorage, a channel wedged between steep cliffs that in the morning sunlight looked like a mesa found in the American Southwest. The ocean waves rose and fell as they funneled through a daunting hourglass of dizzying precipices into a shallow cove, forcing the rope guys to time their leaps perfectly as they jumped—while carrying ropes as thick as your thigh—onto a narrow sliver of wet, crumbling rock, which they did with considerable aplomb as Edgar led the early-bird passengers through a rousing cheer.

  Once again, we boarded our landing craft and approached the island with all the subtlety of the 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines and proceeded to lay siege. I believe the itinerary for the day included handicrafts, horseback riding, a visit to an arboretum, followed by artillery practice, marching drills, latrine digging, and a nice Polynesian buffet. I, however, had decided to desert and it wasn’t long before ditchdigging seemed like a dreamy alternative to the foolishness I had committed myself to.

  Did I mention that there are hills in the Marquesas? Well, there are. Big ones. Where I come from hills are finite and manageable. They tend to roll. If they ever get steep, it’s usually just for a couple of blocks and then they even out and you resume your nice, leisurely run. Not so on these islands. While the other passengers were busy perusing the handicraft skills of Vaipaee’s artisans, I set out to see what it’s like to have a cardiac event nine hundred miles from the nearest emergency room. It began right from the get-go, as I followed a narrow road that rose precipitously just outside the village, switchback after switchback on a dry, sun-drenched hillside. No breeze reached these canyons, and it wasn’t long before I felt the grinding, unrelenting heat. Typically, I didn’t mind running in sultry weather. Sure, you may collapse of heat stroke but at least your muscles are nice and limber. Nothing had quite prepared me though for mile after mile of torturous uphill running under an unrelenting sun. It seemed to go on forever and soon my thighs were burning, my pulse was thumping, and every breath was painful. Only a couple of miles in, and already this had turned into one of those really snotty runs, where the inhalation and expulsion of air becomes violent and explosive. Just as I was beginning to flag, a jeep passed me carrying a French television crew, who were here filming a documentary about the Aranui and the Marquesas. Allez, allez, allez, they yelled as I choked on their dust. Okay, I thought, I shall allez a little farther before I collapse and die, and when this seemed imminent, an entire caravan of passengers rolled past me, all loaded into jeeps, like they were heading toward the Battle of Inchon. Again with the allez, allez, allez. No wonder all those guys on the Tour de France are doped up. If that was the only word I heard for three weeks, I’d resort to drugs too.

  Fortunately, I’m not a drug addict, just an alcoholic, and now all the skills and habits I had learned as a lush served me well. The single-minded fealty to a goal irrespective of costs. The grim acceptance of misery, and the Jedi mind trick that tells you that it’s not so bad. The conviction, false or otherwise, that says, any minute now, this is going to feel good. The enthusiastic acceptance of your abnormality: Normal people do not run up hills with a 10 percent grade in ninety-five degree weather; but you are not normal, and therefore it’s okay. The determination to keep going even if it means an early death.

  This was a mind-set that felt familiar to me. Embrace the suffering. If you can drink a liter of vodka, you have what it takes to become an Ironman. It’s true. It takes years of steadfast devotion, untold months of anguish, an unwavering commitment to solitude, a fondness for taking things to the edge, and a constitution that embraces pain for you to succeed at either endeavor. You never start out believing that you can down a bottle of vodka but with enough practice and diligence you find that it becomes second nature. The important thing is persistence. And so it is with running. A year earlier, if you had told me that one day I’d be running mile after mile up a steep-sided slope in withering heat on a faraway island—for the fun of it, no less—I would have looked at my wobbling gut and snorted with laughter. Not bloody likely. Which goes to show you how unpredictable life can be. You can do it, I told myself, even as my legs and lungs were telling me otherwise. Keep going. Don’t stop. And I didn’t, and as I crested the summit, there before me lay a sweeping vista, a cascade of mountain ridges and grassy valleys, and the shimmering blue ocean.

  I could see a lonesome runway, but otherwise the entire panorama betrayed not even a hint of human activity, except, of course, the road, which I was pleased to see now followed the contours of the island, a long downhill glide and then a few trifling bumps until it curved into the next bay, where I presumed I’d find the tiny hamlet of Hane. I drank what remained of my water and ran onward. There’s an air of striking desolation on Ua Huka, an austerity that suggests little rain ever falls here. Every island in the Marquesas appeared to have its own microclimate, from lavishly green Fatu Hiva to the dry severity of Ua Huka. Despite the lack of trees and shade, heat exhaustion was staved off by a constant breeze that flowed uninterrupted from the ocean, and as I made my way to Hane it occurred to me that running is different from drinking in at least one fundamental way—you never regret it when you’re done.

  And so I ran happily onward, until I reached a little village of tin-roofed bungalows at the mouth of a sterling bay. Here too all activity seemed to have
been suspended as the inhabitants gathered near the shore in front of a small museum, where they nodded and dozed in a listless heat, awaiting the arrival of the cavalcade of jeeps that would deposit the Aranui passengers. One look at me and it was apparent that I was unlikely to do anything uplifting for the local economy. Clearly, anyone foolish enough to run across the island would also be the kind of thoughtless moron to spend all his cash on the first handicraft he saw on the first island he visited, which is too bad because the good citizens of Ua Huka are veritable master carvers and sculptors. I spent a few minutes perusing tikis and bowls made out of rosewood and coconut wood, and soon joined the French television crew, who were sitting on a stoop, seeking a shady respite from the heat. We got to chatting and it wasn’t long before I nixed the neuroscientist option for the next life. What I really wanted to be now, should we get to do this again, is a TV sound guy.

  Seriously. There were three of them, all roughly in their thirties, and they spent their time traveling the world, putting together documentaries about the earth’s wonders. The on-screen talent, I learned, did indeed write his own scripts, and came off as the Boss Man for the trio. He was the one with all the responsibilities—deciding on shots, dealing with the Home Office, periodically having to shave, etc. The camera guy did all the heavy lifting and was always one hernia or one dropped camera away from ruin. And the sound guy? He just stands there holding a lightweight microphone and a headset. Then ka-ching, paycheck, and he trots off to the Andes. It sounded ideal to me, a lazy traveler’s ideal profession. No thinking. No lifting of heavy objects. Just keep the mike out of the camera’s view and know what a woofer is. Easy-peasy. Then they asked me what I did.