Headhunters on My Doorstep

by J. Maarten Troost

  Whenever I read contemporary travel accounts of the Marquesas, I find that the locals are often described as aloof, guarded, and unfriendly. I’m not sure why this is so. Just how warm and accommodating are New Yorkers to their visitors from Japan? Or can you imagine what it might be like for a Mexican tourist traveling through the great state of Alabama? Do Parisians get all warm and fuzzy with the hordes of Americans trampling about the Eiffel Tower in August? Is Moscow a nice place for visiting Nigerians? And if your name is Abdul or Emir or Muhammad, is there a border agent anywhere outside of the Middle East that greets you with a smile? For the most part, visitors to our own countries are invisible. For some, they’re a nuisance. Rare are the locals who go out of their way to ingratiate themselves with the befuddled visitor from overseas.

  Which is why I was so pleased to meet Moke. He was a big dude, six four at least and perhaps a wobbling 260 pounds, who informed me, right off the bat, that he was a wild-pig hunter. I’d seen pig hunters in action on Malekula, an outer island in Vanuatu, and knew enough about boars to know that they are surprisingly vicious creatures when cornered and do not like to be trifled with. They will gore you in an instant. Say that you are a pig hunter in the United States and you will mostly be regarded as one of those gun nuts on game farms just looking for something to satiate your blood lust. Say it on an island in the South Seas, where you clamber over perilous ridges in a dense rain forest, armed only with a spear as you hunt for your family dinner, and you are a manly man to whom I tip my hat.

  And Moke was full of helpful information. We stood on the shoreline, in the village of Taiohae, in front of a glass-smooth bay that was a flooded volcanic crater that opened to the sea. Two small islands guarded the entrance. There was a ceremonial platform, the Temehau Tohua, that contained a few modern tikis, and nearby a monument to Herman Melville, who also jumped ship, in 1842, an experience he’d used in his celebrated story Typee. Everyone somehow ends up on Nuku Hiva—Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Jeff Probst and the cast of Survivor. I didn’t know why that was so. I mean have you seen where Nuku Hiva is on a map? Jamaica this is not. But I was willing, more than eager, to explore the allure of the island and its hold on writers and travelers.

  Moke saw me looking out to sea, and without me even prompting informed me that I shouldn’t even think about swimming here. A tiger shark had mauled a local woman just two weeks prior, lacerating her leg and arm. Her hand, he told me, was now limp and useless. The predators follow the fishing boats in and seize what they can from the catch, whether hooked or discarded. Unsatiated, they cruise the bay and hunt, looking for errant swimmers. If that wasn’t enough, Moke informed me that not a week earlier another woman was killed by a falling coconut, so fais attention with the trees. Also, recently, a local Marquesan took a visiting German yachtie, Stefan Ramin, into the hills to hunt for goats and murdered him, whereupon he burned the corpse and ate what remained of the charred remains. The attacker hid in the mountains for fifty-two days until he was apprehended. Now this caught my attention. Nowhere in my guidebook did it say, from time to time, a local might regard you as Jeffrey Dahmer once did the contents of his refrigerator.

  So you see? Who says that the Marquesans aren’t helpful? This was exactly the sort of information that as a visitor I found useful. Don’t swim with the tiger sharks. Beware of coconut trees. Decline all offers for goat hunting. And know that some might regard me as a meal. Thank you, my friend, now would you happen to know where I could rent a room for a while? Clearly, Moke was a fount of useful information, and he pointed me to a small, two-story building on the hillside and bade me a good day.

  Excellent, I thought, as I slung my backpack onto my shoulders and walked on. Sharks and coconut trees I knew to be wary of. I once owned a pickup truck in Kiribati that after a few short months looked like the cratered remains of the moon. But cannibals? Today? Really? But I’d been reading so much early literature on the South Seas that the presence of active man-eaters lent an air of unexpected authenticity to the Nuku Hiva experience. I thought it would be hard to replicate Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventures on the island—he has a nice description of meeting “an incurable cannibal grandee” whose “favorite morsel was the human hand, of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favored lustfulness”—but now I felt a sudden burst of confidence.

  It’s what I liked about traveling. You never know what to expect. It keeps you on your toes. I found the building Moke had pointed to, surrounded by a large, overgrown garden, and was immediately shown to a small room on the second story, which contained a balcony that I shared with the neighboring room. These were the only two rooms that appeared to be occupied, but in Pacific culture they go to great lengths to avoid any semblance of loneliness, which is regarded as either tragic or suspect. I stepped out onto the balcony and immediately encountered a couple speaking Hebrew. The man, a young, voluble, balding fellow with a nervous disposition, turned to me and, assuming I was French, spoke at a rapid clip en français, while his female companion, an olive-skinned beauty with a mane of curly black hair, painted her toes. He told me, as best as I could follow, that he was a medical scientist on a quest to find a rare medicinal plant that he felt confident could be used to repair broken spines. And then he told me that he was an American and that . . .

  “Hang on,” I said. “You’re an American. Whazzup? It’s been weeks since I’ve spoken to an American. Where are you from? Where do you live?”

  . . . and he didn’t speak English. Nor did his companion, who, did I mention, was smoking hot? Not that I notice these things. I’m just including it here for descriptive purposes. And with that the conversation was over and they returned to their room, closed the sliding glass door with a click of the lock, and shut the shades, whereupon I heard soft, urgent whisperings in guttural Hebrew.

  Really, could things get any more intriguing? In a mere one hour on the island there was already so much to be weirded out by. Rogue tiger sharks, malevolent coconut trees, murderous cannibals, and mysterious Israeli botanists. No wonder writers flocked to Nuku Hiva. Within five hundred yards of my balcony was a world of mayhem and wonder. I looked toward the bay, where a dozen yachts were anchored, riding out the cyclone season. There was the usual mix one sees in ports like Savusavu in Fiji or Port Vila in Vanuatu—a beautiful Hallberg-Rassy; a few French production boats, Beneteaus mostly, a sleek Jeanneau; a Hans Christian, one of my favorite sailboats, with its upturned rolling bow and its celebration of teak; and an assortment of really weathered sailboats that looked like they’d survived a typhoon or two, hit a reef or twelve, and lay heavy in the water, their bottoms weighed down by rust and barnacles; and each of these cruisers were top-heavy with gear and solar panels. I gnawed at my fingers in envy.

  It was late in the afternoon and I headed out for a run. It was my sundown relief, my libation. I calculated that from one end of town to the other, following the curve of the bay, was about a mile, a straight run hemmed in by mighty headlands and a three-thousand-foot ridge of mountains. I set out to do six laps. It’s a great way to introduce your presence to the islanders. It was again stiflingly hot, and the locals stopped and stared and laughed as I ran past, sweating freely, but I was pleased to find a flat run, one that didn’t undulate or offer steep, thigh-crushing inclines. I could run like this forever, provided I lay off the smokes. I saw a few children scampering on the roadside. In the Pacific, kids are usually healthy, slim, and distinct looking. They play—I saw a group of girls in school uniforms busily engaged in a game of handball at the local school, and the boys, well, they do what preadolescent boys do everywhere. Aflame with energy, they run and tackle and chase each other, climb trees, hike hills, scamper up rocks, and burn off all that energy that schools the world over feel the need to bottle and subsume. By the end of the of the day, the typical schoolboy is an exploding supernova. So they’re all fit. You hardly see a fat kid on the islands.

  But then something happ
ens around the age of seventeen. It’s strange, like some wizard goes SHAZZAM and they inflate like parade floats, and by middle age they waddle through the air like sexless cartoons, indistinguishable from each other as they graze out of cans of corned beef and Pringles. Normally this would be sad, but I had cannibalism on my mind, and figured that being skinny and lean was a good defense for any psychotic man-eater afoot. I’m about six foot, and Drunk Me weighed 195. Sober Me hits the scale at 165. I always told my wife that should I hit the scales at 170–175, it probably means I’m lifting weights with a little more vigor than usual. At 180 and I’m drinking again. At 190 plus, it’s time for another stint in rehab, or the park bench, depending. But now, one look at me, and like an underweight pig or cow, I’d be fit for nothing more than the grinder—like Fargo—which, I believed, would be more trouble than it’s worth. So I was good. When you look at a piece of meat, it’s the marbled fat that screams here comes something tasty. Now should a bloated William Shatner ever reach these shores, well, all I can say is don’t boldly go goat hunting.

  When I was finished, I took a quick shower and wandered back to the waterfront, near the small port, where a few fishing boats were tied and a slew of dinghies were roped to a pier. This was the yachtie ghetto, where sailors could access their e-mail, buy a few supplies, and gather around long tables, choosing from a few rustic mom-and-pop cafés or partaking of one of the food trucks that parked nearby. Long-term cruisers the world over are notorious cheapskates, and nowhere more so than in French Polynesia. You had to be, of course. A basic bag of groceries will set you back a hundred bucks. A simple jar of peanuts costs eight dollars. Want to stay on a resort on Tahiti or one of the other more-visited islands? Four hundred dollars. The only thing that appeared to be subsidized was French wine, the fuckers. I don’t claim to be any kind of travel-guide writer, but I can’t for the life of me figure why a typical tourist on a budget would head for French Polynesia. Why, when you have the beauty of Hawaii, the beaches of the Caribbean, the culture of Vanuatu, and the deals in Fiji? This was a place for hedge fund managers and the sort of people that travel by private jet, like the one I saw when I arrived in Papeete, which carried the logo of the Miami Dolphins. No, you had to be as diligent as a backpacker and find the cheap pensiones, shop for basic provisions at the corner store, and when you see a food truck, park yourself in front of one of its folding tables and eat as the locals or the yachties do. Restaurants were for spendthrift chumps and European pensioners.

  Crepes? Why not crepes for dinner? I approached the small van, ordered a banana crepe, found another shop that sold fresh young coconuts and mangoes, and felt pleased to have regained a semblance of sanity to my budget, which had been bludgeoned on the Aranui. I settled at a table and was soon joined by groups of affable cruisers. The families were the sanest of the lot, couples with adolescent children who had set forth to give their clan the experience of a lifetime, sailing the seven seas from one exotic port to another, every day a new adventure. Then there were the older couples, crusty and familiar as only those living in a confined space get after a number of years at sea, rarely sailing now as they inhabited agreeable ports for a season or three at a time. And then there were the solo sailors, always men, in my experience, who were without exception lacking any discernible sanity and clearly off their meds.

  I met one such lunatic, a short, stout Frenchman with a US Navy cap. He’d crossed two oceans alone—the Atlantic and the Pacific. He was supposed to have sailed with his son, but inconveniently, the son lay dying in a hospital of cancer, so he set off on his own, wrecking one boat in the Mediterranean and another in the Caribbean—pesky reefs. He’d bought his next boat in Seattle. Just $37,000, he said, a very good price for a boat rigged for extended blue water sailing, though it needed a few repairs and new sails. He spoke of the men who tried to rob him in Panama at knifepoint. And then he asked me to stand up and he demonstrated how he punched them in the throat comme ça, swinging his knobby arm. And then he kicked them and beat them, and after that no more problems in Panama as he blew out his chest like one of those dead puffer fishes one sometimes sees on the beach. But now, alas, monsieur, he is in hiding from the French authorities. He had bought his boat in America. Duties needed to be paid. So he was laying low for now, tu comprends.

  These tough little men were always a wonder to me. But I liked his spirit. He asked me if I’d come by bateau. Yes, I’d said, the Aranui, but I’d left and now found myself here, in that small building up the hill.

  “Avec les Juifs?” he said. “Ils sont ici pour l’or,” he informed me with a confidential whisper. And then he explained how they went from village to village, from household to household, offering to buy up anyone’s gold.

  Psshaw, I said. The French and their anti-Semitism. It’s baffling, really. Perhaps the Jews weren’t here for gold at all. Maybe they’d come to collect a few Christians to bake into matzo balls. I explained that my good neighbor was some kind of medical scientist, a botanist searching for a plant to help the unfortunate souls with broken backs. The Frenchman laughed so hard tears streamed from his eyes.

  “Aah, les Juifs,” he said. “Du vin, monsieur? Nous avons besoin de vin.”

  Now, I thought, might be a good time to go before I was inflicted with a boozy recitation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Man, these French. You can’t even be a nice Israeli medical botanist without having your motives impugned. It was nearly dark as I wandered back. The sun sets with a swift brilliance in the tropics, and this, of course, being France, there wasn’t a shop open where I could buy a flashlight. I walked up the potholed road, found my hillside, and proceeded to whack my face with every low-lying branch, trip over every errant rock, lose myself in a tangle of thorny bushes, slip in mud pile after mud pile, so that by the time I returned to my room I looked like I’d belonged on the losing side of some epic battle against a violent uprising of murderous forest dwellers. But eventually I found my room, tripping over every stair until I found a light switch, and emerged onto the balcony, filthy and scarred and bleeding from a gash on my knee.

  The Israeli took one look at me and without further adieu asked me how much I wanted for my watch. “C’est un Tissot, n’est-ce pas?”

  Well, yes. I got it for my thirtieth birthday. It’s not for sale. At least not yet. Talk to me as I leave French Polynesia.

  And my ring? It’s white gold, yes.

  I think so. But it’s my wedding ring and as of last check I was still legally entitled to wear it, though I’d had to get it resized when I quit drinking. Who knew how fat your fingers get when you drink a couple of bottles of wine a day? Also not for sale, though it’s yours should I relapse again.

  Did I have anything else?

  No. What did I look like? P. Diddy? But I seem to be encrusted with all sorts of plant material? Perhaps that might interest you.

  My Israeli friend excused himself and said that he wasn’t really a botanist. He was traveling the islands, going from village to village, and trying to get the locals to depart with their gold. You can buy it here for about two or three hundred dollars an ounce. In Tel Aviv, you can sell it for twelve hundred or more an ounce. It’s incredible. It’s like picking fruit. He was becoming rich, he said. These poor villagers, they knew the value of nothing. Do you know what the spot price for gold was? You have to be a fool not to take advantage of these stupid villagers. This was the chance of a lifetime. Meanwhile, his partner was painting the toes on her other foot. Really, I thought. Why don’t we discuss the Torah instead? But he wouldn’t let it go, his eyes aflame with gold, no different from a conquistador of yore, but without even the illusion of something beyond the purely mercantile.

  This conversation was becoming both boring and disturbing, and so I bade them good night and settled down with my Kindle, browsing though the Sober Lit I’d downloaded. Infinite Jest was my go-to book for when I was craving hard. I’d just need to read a few pages about D
on Gately, during the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, as he attended to his commitments at Boston-area AA meetings. No one writes about the gawping maw, the horror, of addiction and the pain-in-the-ass, life-or-death struggle of early sobriety like David Foster Wallace. Or sometimes I’d read Mary Karr’s Lit, but would soon have to close the book whenever I read too many pages because I’d find myself with a deep and abiding crush on the author, which, apparently is not unusual. David Foster Wallace had her name tattooed on his arm, which was subsequently crossed out with, of course, an inked footnote when he’d moved on to other loves. Or I’d read Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story, but then my mind would wander as I’d try to recollect where exactly did I meet her. Though she was older than I, we were both in Boston at the same time and her face seemed strikingly familiar, yet I could never quite place her and this bothered me. Or I’d try, again, to trudge through Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life: A Memoir, but it must be a generational thing. I have a hard time reading through the Big Swaggering Dicks of the fifties and sixties—the Mailers, the Updikes, and the like, who write of their virility like a fourteen-year-old braggart holding forth in the boy’s locker room, describing the feel of Mary Jane’s yielding bosom. And Hamill’s book is 90 percent about drinking and traveling and newspapering, and then one day he quits with the boozing and everything’s peachy. Not my experience at all. So I scrolled down to my rock star bios. Duff McKagan’s It’s So Easy: And Other Lies is a good, tight read, but what I really enjoyed were the pictures; the pale, sickly, bloated, miserable-looking rock star onstage with Guns N’ Roses, followed by pics taken ten years later, him aglow and fit and surrounded by an adoring family. Finally, I settled on The Heroin Diaries. There’s nothing redemptive about Nikki Sixx’s memoir of the worst year of his life. It is merely a recounting of the horrible trap of addiction; the loathing of the partaking, followed by the inability to stop. I put it down after reading about the author snorting a beach ball’s worth of coke while fucking a stripper, turned off the light, and said a small prayer.