The Great Taboo

THE SECRET OF KORONG.

“You have lived here long?” Felix asked, with tremulous interest, as he took a seat on the bench under the big tree, toward which his new host politely motioned him.  “You know the people well, and all their superstitions?”

“Hélas, yes, monsieur,” the Frenchman answered, with a sigh of regret.  “Eighteen years have I spent altogether in this beast of a Pacific; nine as a convict in New Caledonia, and nine more as a god here; and, believe me, I hardly know which is the harder post.  Yours is the first White face I have ever seen since my arrival in this cursed island.”

“And how did you come here?” Felix asked, half breathless, for the very magnitude of the stake at issue—­no less a stake than Muriel’s life—­made him hesitate to put point-blank the question he had most at heart for the moment.

“Monsieur,” the Frenchman answered, trying to cover his rags with his native cape, “that explains itself easily.  I was a medical student in Paris in the days of the Commune.  Ah! that beloved Paris—­how far away it seems now from Boupari!  Like all other students I was advanced—­Republican, Socialist—­what you will—­a political enthusiast.  When the events took place—­the events of ’70—­I espoused with all my heart the cause of the people.  You know the rest.  The bourgeoisie conquered.  I was taken red-handed, as the Versaillais said—­my pistol in my grasp—­an open revolutionist.  They tried me by court-martial—­br’r’r—­no delay—­guilty, M. le President—­hard labor to perpetuity.  They sent me with that brave Louise Michel and so many other good comrades of the cause to New Caledonia.  There, nine years of convict life was more than enough for me.  One day I found a canoe on the shore—­a little Kanaka canoe—­you know the type—­a mere shapeless dug-out.  Hastily I loaded it with food—­yam, taro, bread-fruit—­I pushed it off into the sea—­I embarked alone—­I intrusted myself and all my fortunes to the Bon Dieu and the wide Pacific.  The Bon Dieu did not wholly justify my confidence.  It is a way he has—­that inscrutable one.  Six weeks I floated hither and thither before varying winds.  At last one evening I reached this island.  I floated ashore.  And, enfin, me voilà!”

“Then you were a political prisoner only?” Felix said, politely.

M. Jules Peyron drew himself up with much dignity in his tattered costume.  “Do I look like a card-sharper, monsieur?” he asked simply, with offended honor.

Felix hastened to reassure him of his perfect confidence.  “On the contrary, monsieur,” he said, “the moment I heard you were a convict from New Caledonia, I felt certain in my heart you could be nothing less than one of those unfortunate and ill-treated Communards.”

“Monsieur,” the Frenchman said, seizing his hand a second time, “I perceive that I have to do with a man of honor and a man of feeling.  Well, I landed on this island, and they made me a god.  From that day to this I have been anxious only to shuffle off my unwelcome divinity, and return as a mere man to the shores of Europe.  Better be a valet in Paris, say I, than a deity of the best in Polynesia.  It is a monotonous existence here—­no society, no life—­and the cuisine—­bah, execrable!  But till the other day, when your steamer passed, I have scarcely even sighted a European ship.  A boat came here once, worse luck, to put off two girls (who didn’t belong to Boupari), returned indentured laborers from Queensland; but, unhappily, it was during my taboo—­the Month of Birds, as my jailers call it—­and though I tried to go down to it or to make signals of distress, the natives stood round my hut with their spears in line, and prevented me by main force from signalling to them or communicating with them.  Even the other day, I never heard of your arrival till a fortnight had elapsed, for I had been sick with fever, the fever of the country, and as soon as my Shadow told me of your advent it was my taboo again, and I was obliged to defer for myself the honor of calling upon my new acquaintances.  I am a god, of course, and can do what I like; but while my taboo is on, ma foi, monsieur, I can hardly call my life my own, I assure you.”

“But your taboo is up to-day,” Felix said, “so my Shadow tells me.”

“Your Shadow is a well-informed young man,” M. Peyron answered, with easy French sprightliness.  “As for my donkey of a valet, he never by any chance knows or tells me anything.  I had just sent him out—­the pig—­to learn, if possible, your nationality and name, and what hours you preferred, as I proposed later in the day to pay my respects to mademoiselle, your friend, if she would deign to receive me.”

“Miss Ellis would be charmed, I’m sure,” Felix replied, smiling in spite of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior.  “It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this barbarous island.  But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the exact nature of this peril in which we both stand—­the precise distinction between Korong and Tula?”

“Alas, monsieur,” the Frenchman replied, drawing circles in the dust with his stick with much discomposure, “I can only tell you I have been trying to make out the secret of this distinction myself ever since the first day I came to the island; but so reticent are all the natives about it, and so deep is the taboo by which the mystery is guarded, that even now I, who am myself Tula, can tell you but very little with certainty on the subject.  All I can say for sure is this—­that gods called Tula retain their godship in permanency for a very long time, although at the end some violent fate, which I do not clearly understand, is destined to befall them.  That is my condition as King of the Birds—­for no doubt they have told you that I, Jules Peyron—­Republican, Socialist, Communist—­have been elevated against my will to the honors of royalty.  That is my condition, and it matters but little to me, for I know not when the end may come; and we can but die once; how or where, what matters?  Meanwhile, I have my distractions, my little agréments—­my gardens, my music, my birds, my native friends, my coquetries, my aviary.  As King of the Birds, I keep a small collection of my subjects in the living form, not unworthy of a scientific eye.  Monsieur is no ornithologist?  Ah, no, I thought not.  Well, for me, it matters little; my time is long.  But for you and Mademoiselle, who are both Korong—­” He paused significantly.

“What happens, then, to those who are Korong?” Felix asked, with a lump in his throat—­not for himself, but for Muriel.

The Frenchman looked at him with a doubtful look.  “Monsieur,” he said, after a pause, “I hardly know how to break the truth to you properly.  You are new to the island, and do not yet understand these savages.  It is so terrible a fate.  So deadly.  So certain.  Compose your mind to hear the worst.  And remember that the worst is very terrible.”

Felix’s blood froze within him; but he answered bravely all the same, “I think I have guessed it myself already.  The Korong are offered as human sacrifices to Tu-Kila-Kila.”

“That is nearly so,” his new friend replied, with a solemn nod of his head.  “Every Korong is bound to die when his time comes.  Your time will depend on the particular date when you were admitted to Heaven.”

Felix reflected a moment.  “It was on the 26th of last month,” he answered, shortly.

“Very well,” M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation.  “You have just six months in all to live from that date.  They will offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila’s hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice.”

“But why did they make us gods then?” Felix interposed, with tremulous lips.  “Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they mean in the end to kill us?”

He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the Frenchman had expected.  “Monsieur,” the older arrival answered, with a reflective air, “there comes in the mystery.  If we could solve that, we could find out also the way of escape for you.  For there is a way of escape for every Korong:  I know it well; I gather it from all the natives say; it is a part of their mysteries; but what it may be, I have hitherto, in spite of all my efforts, failed to discover.  All I do know is this:  Tu-Kila-Kila hates and dreads in his heart every Korong that is elevated to Heaven, and would do anything, if he dared, to get rid of him quietly.  But he doesn’t dare, because he is bound hand and foot himself, too, by taboos innumerable.  Taboo is the real god and king of Boupari.  All the island alike bows down to it and worships it.”

“Have you ever known Korongs killed?” Felix asked once more, trembling.

“Yes, monsieur.  Many of them, alas!  And this is what happens.  When the Korong’s time is come, as these creatures say, either on the summer or winter solstice, he is bound with native ropes, and carried up so pinioned to Tu-Kila-Kila’s temple.  In the time before this man was Tu-Kila-Kila, I remember—­”

“Stop,” Felix cried.  “I don’t understand.  Has there then been more than one Tu-Kila-Kila?”

“Why, yes,” the Frenchman answered.  “Certainly, many.  And there the mystery comes in again.  We have always among us one Tu-Kila-Kila or another.  He is a sort of pope, or grand lama, voyez-vous? No sooner is the last god dead than another god succeeds him and takes his name, or rather his title.  This young man who now holds the place was known originally as Lavita, the son of Sami.  But what is more curious still, the islanders always treat the new god as if he were precisely the self-same person as the old one.  So far as I have been able to understand their theology, they believe in a sort of transmigration of souls.  The soul of the Tu-Kila-Kila who is just dead passes into and animates the body of the Tu-Kila-Kila who succeeds to the office.  Thus they speak as though Tu-Kila-Kila were a continuous existence; and the god of the moment, himself, will even often refer to events which occurred to him, as he says, a hundred years ago or more, but which he really knows, of course, only by the persistent tradition of the islanders.  They are a very curious people, these Bouparese.  But what would you have?  Among savages, one expects things to be as among savages.”

Felix drew a quiet sigh.  It was certain that on the island of Boupari that expectation, at least, was never doomed to disappointment.  “And when a Korong is taken to Tu-Kila-Kila’s temple,” he asked, continuing the subject of most immediate interest, “what happens next to him?”

“Monsieur,” the Frenchman answered, “I hardly know whether I do right or not to say the truth to you.  Each Korong is a god for one season only; when the year renews itself, as the savages believe, by a change of season, then a new Korong must be chosen by Heaven to fill the place of the old ones who are to be sacrificed.  This they do in order that the seasons may be ever fresh and vigorous.  Especially is that the case with the two meteorological gods, so to speak, the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds.  Those, I understand, are the posts in their pantheon which you and the lady who accompanies you occupy.”

“You are right,” Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest.  “And what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?”

“I will tell you,” M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower into a sympathetic key.  “But steel your mind for the worst beforehand.  It is sufficiently terrible.  On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from my Shadow, is just what happened.  That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass.  They keep then a festival, which answers to our own New-Year’s day in Europe.  Next morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make the crops grow better and the sky more clement.  In the midst of this horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived.  You were immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods.  You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the ground, and Heaven accepted you.  Then you were envisaged with the attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila’s home, and slain with tomahawks.  Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives, cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of all waters, as the natives call it.  And that is the fate, I fear the inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches’ hands about the commencement of a fresh season.”

Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence.  His worst fears were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so much uncertainty.

And now that he knew when “his time was up,” as the natives phrased it, he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.