The Shark God (4 page)

We entered the forest again and followed a rutted track to a clearing and a collection of thatch huts on stilts. This was Kelsen's
grand hotel. It was crude and beautiful. There were flowering trees and dozens of potted plants. Chickens clucked. Children dashed back and forth. Somewhere in the forest, a pan flute played “Amazing Grace.” It reminded me of the postapocalyptic idyll depicted in the pamphlets that Jehovah's Witnesses hand out on street corners. Nothing bad ever happens here, I thought. But then a terrific sucking noise ripped through the valley—like a tsunami rolling across a pebble beach—then another appalling roar, and then a momentary vibration, not of the earth but of the air, which caused the huts to tremble and pressed my shirt against my skin. More smoke boiled above the treetops. I noticed there was no grass in Kelsen's village, only a thick layer of ash on the ground. The garden, the huts, the trees, they could all be burned and buried in an afternoon.

Kelsen's wife was too shy to look at me, but she brought me a plate of
laplap,
a root vegetable pudding baked and served in coconut leaves. The pudding was cold and rubbery. It had been cooked on Friday. Today was Saturday, the true Sabbath, and work was forbidden.

Kelsen failed to tell me his volcano story that day or the next. He took me for walks instead. We tramped through the jungle, following scant trails from village to village. The forest floor was punctuated by crude holes and littered with coconut husks: the work of wild pigs. At one village I heard the banging of coconut shells and singing, coming from a tiny lean-to. There was an old woman inside, surrounded by children.

“What are they singing about?” I asked.

“The grandmother has her own religion. She teaches it to all the little kids,” said Kelsen.

“Can we talk to her?”

“No, no, of course not. She's a woman.”

“Yes, I can see that. Let's talk with her.”

“No!” Kelsen said. “
Kastom
.”

“
Kastom?
Wha—”

But Kelsen was already stomping back into the forest. He moved with an inexplicable urgency.

At the edge of the next village, Kelsen led me into a clearing where a lone man stood beneath a banyan tree. He wore a
lavalava
, a light scarf, wrapped around his waist. He dropped the
lavalava
the moment he saw me. I was embarrassed for us all, until I realized he had done it on purpose. Kelsen called to him, encouragingly. The man approached, and I saw that he wasn't quite naked. His penis was wrapped in what looked like hundreds of strands of grass or bark, the ends of which dangled artfully about his bare testicles. The bulk of the contraption, the penis part, was held erect by a grass belt wrapped around his waist. This, I realized, was a
nambas
, which was the only thing most men in the region had worn for centuries. (The first Europeans to see
nambas
were scandalized by them. E. Vigors, an early visitor, cloaked his horror in Latin, proclaiming that the men were “destitute of all clothing
si excepias penem quem decorant modo dissimilis indigenes Tannae ube membrum virile semper erectum tenent, sub singulo ligatum.
”)

The
nambas
man beamed at me. Kelsen barked at him in a language I did not understand, and the man performed something like a slow pirouette, as if to prove to me that yes, indeed, his behind was bare. They spoke some more, then the man charged off into the forest.

We marched through two more villages. At each of them, Kelsen issued more orders and pointed at me, now with a growing tone of urgency and irritation. I was beginning to dislike Kelsen when we entered a clearing, grander than all the rest and flanked by two banyan so huge they made the space feel like an auditorium. Kelsen sat me down on a little bench.

“You want to see the heathens dance?” asked Kelsen.

“Maybe,” I said, baffled.

“You will pay them, of course.”

After a few minutes I heard chatter in the shadows, and then chanting. One by one, a troop of familiar faces emerged from a gap in the roots of the biggest banyan: an old man with a patchy beard, then a sculpted young version of himself, another fellow with tidy dreadlocks, three giggling teenage boys, and finally our friend from the first village. They had all shed their town clothes and were naked except for their
nambas.
They formed a circle and began to dance. They clapped their hands and stamped the earth, peering over their shoulders to see if I was taking pictures. I was, of course, but mostly out of politeness, since it was no more inspiring than the dinner-hour dances staged for package tourists back at Le Meridien Resort in Port Vila. Kelsen, heathenism's greatest detractor, had managed to transform the old ways into a meal ticket. The
nambas
gang was bored. I squirmed on my bench, trapped, despising Kelsen more every minute. But I thought if I was polite I might at least be able to talk to the old man when they finished.

“You are Christians like Kelsen,” I said to the chief when the dust settled.

He shook his head. “Ha ha! No, we don't believe in church,” he said in Bislama. “We believe in kava and pigs.”

“But didn't the missionaries ever come and talk to you, to change you?”

“Yes, they have heard the good news,” interjected Kelsen in English. “But they don't want to listen. They are going to hell.”

“The missionaries came,” said the chief. “They told us not to make our
kastom
”—that word again—“but we were born with
kastom
and we won't forget it. My grandfather and my great-grandfather, they followed
kastom.
So I will, too. My life is easy. We eat, sleep, and drink kava for free. Christians have to work so hard. They have to pay for everything,” he said, eyeing Kelsen slyly.

Kastom.
I would learn that the word means many things to Melanesians. To translate
kastom
as “culture” is to chart only a part
of its power.
Kastom
is Melanesian history, religion, ritual, and magic, but it also refers to traditional systems of economics, social organization, politics, and medicine. If you say something is
kastom
, you are attaching it to the traditions of the ancestors. You are sanctifying it. But sometimes the word is simply used to excuse a practice from scrutiny. (Why aren't women allowed to drink kava?
Kastom
. Why can't women be pastors?
Kastom
. Why don't kava bowls get washed between servings? “
Hem i kastom blong mifala nomo.
”)

“We solve every problem we have using
pik-pik
and kava,” the chief said. “For example, when we make a fight with another village, we can kill a
pik-pik
to make it better. If we have other kinds of problems, we drink kava, then ask the spirits for help. A spirit could be in the hollow of the banyan tree. It could be somewhere else, too, but it comes when we ask.”

Kelsen nodded approvingly, but mumbled in English, “Idolatry.”

“Friend, let me ask you a question,” said the chief. “Suppose Kelsen goes to church and asks his Jesus for rain. Will it rain? No. Ha! But if I want rain I go to the banyan, drink my kava, and make a prayer to my papa or my mama. They are dead, but if I need rain they will bring it. If I have lost a
pik-pik
in the forest, they will bring that back to me, too.”

“Foolish heathens,” said Kelsen. “Jesus can make it rain harder.”

It was impossible to talk to the chief about religion without running the gauntlet of Kelsen's commentary. I changed the subject.

“Your
nambas
. Does it hurt?”

“No, not at all,” said the chief. “We have been circumcised. Our penises are very strong.”

Kelsen jumped in again to explain that all Tannese boys were ritually circumcised before adulthood. Even his own boys would be circumcised amid much feasting and celebration.

“But why would you do it, Kelsen?” I asked.

“Because it's
kastom.
”

“But Kelsen, you are Christian!”

It seemed a baffling contradiction. It appeared as though even Tanna's staunchest Seventh-day Adventist could not wrest himself completely from the ways of the ancestors.

“
Kastom
doesn't mean not Christian,” Kelsen said gruffly, but before he could continue, the chief touched my hand to get my attention, then made a fist and punched the air.

“We have strong, strong penises! Even very old men on Tanna can make children. Friend, suppose you ever have a problem making babies on your own island, you just come back here and our
kastom
doctor can give you medicine for your penis.”

I thanked him and asked about John Frum.

“Don't worry about John Frum,” Kelsen said. “John Frum is for crazy people. John Frum has no power—”

“You must go to Sulphur Bay,” interrupted the chief. “On Friday night they will dance for John Frum.”

This agitated Kelsen no end. “Time for go now,” he said, then asked me for five hundred vatu so he could pay the chief.

We retreated through the forest, me feeling like a tourist, knowing the chief and his boys would be climbing back into their regular clothes as soon as we disappeared.

“Five hundred vatu: a very good deal,” Kelsen explained. “That's how much they charge tourists over in Yakel village. And those heathens wear grass skirts, not
nambas
. Sometimes you can even see they have shorts on under their skirts. More naked should mean more money, yes?”

Kelsen was skipping now.

“You see,” he said, “I know the heathens. I am your best guide. You are very lucky to have found me.”

Kelsen was a tragic case. He ridiculed pagan
kastom
, but he clearly suffered without it. For one thing, he was fighting with his
brother over the money that guests paid to stay in their village. They couldn't hold a
kastom
pig-killing ceremony to settle the dispute, since pork was
tabu
for Adventists. The brothers could not rely on their ancestors or island myths to guide them. They would be parted like Cain and Abel, Kelsen had told me—though he would be the one to keep the money. He quivered with an obsessive, greedy longing. It was my first taste of the spiritual confusion that had metastasized into an all-out civil war up in the Solomon Islands.

Kelsen begged me not to go to Sulphur Bay. There was nowhere to stay, he said. John Frum's followers had left the stronghold of their faith and run off into the hills where I would never find them. He assured me that if I stayed with him just one more night, he would tell me his volcano story. But he had been promising that for three days.

I followed the cart track back toward Yasur, this time on foot. At midday, I reached the ash plain, where I spotted a trio of Mormon missionaries. Their white shirts blazed in the sunlight. Their ties flapped in the wind. We shook hands. I told them I thought they deserved great credit for keeping their shirts clean no matter how rough the mission field might be. They told me I shouldn't be so cheery, especially if I was going to hike down to Sulphur Bay.

“There is a false prophet on this end of the island,” one said gravely. “He has led hundreds of people astray.”

“John Frum,” I said.

“No. The false prophet's name is Fred. He is very dangerous. He has been throwing babies into the volcano.”

They gave me directions to Sulphur Bay anyway. I crossed the ash plain, mesmerized by the black mushroom clouds that periodically issued from the summit of Yasur. There was a single set of footprints in the ash, zigzagging up a spur to the summit ridge.

Babies in the volcano. Honestly.

But Fred…that name was familiar. Then I remembered.
Back in Port Vila I had met a Canadian man who had just served a six-month stint as Tanna's only doctor. Fockler was his name. He told me that the island had intrigued and baffled him. Like the time the national police had summoned him to Sulphur Bay to check on a man who had established a new village on a shoulder of the volcano.

“Rumor had it that this guy had gone off the deep end,” the doctor said. “He was having all kinds of visions and he had been accused of all sorts of crimes—you know, ritual child abuse, or something like that. Oh, they also said that he had leprosy.”

Fockler had dutifully trucked across the island with his rubber gloves and a bag full of antipsychotic drugs. He had barely begun to hike up the mountain when he came face-to-face with the infamous Fred, who was a big man with messy hair. It was clear that Fred had indeed suffered from leprosy. His eyebrows and hands were slightly misshapen. But it was also clear to the doctor that the condition was inactive and not contagious. Fockler pretended to examine the prophet's skin while actually conducting a quick mental status assessment.

“I asked him if he saw visions, you know, or heard any messages, and he said, ‘I can't tell you that, it's the source of my power.' Well, that pretty much shut down my psychological assessment. But he didn't seem overtly psychotic.”

Fockler figured that the police were looking for an excuse to lock Fred up, but he decided it was not his job to do their dirty work. He announced to Fred's followers—there were hundreds—that he would let them keep their prophet. They cheered. The doctor returned to the hospital in Lenakel, and Fred remained on the mountain with his visions.

I followed a track into the forest and down along a ravine. The slopes on either side of the ravine had been scoured right down to bare rock. That puzzled me: the creek that trickled through the gorge could never have done such damage. The devastation
widened to several hundred yards as I neared the sea. Then the track veered away from the creek and ended in a wide field surrounded by huts. This was Sulphur Bay, but the village was empty and the field had been thoroughly excavated by pigs, two of which watched me silently from their craters. There was an old cement cistern. Its tap yielded only dust.