The Marsele
I want to tell you a little about the superstitions
of the kanakas that led to two, very nearly three deaths on Palmalmal.
The boys were chopping down bush to clear new
land for planting. One evening after work one of the boss-boys came and said
that the boys were afraid to fell a certain section of the bush, the strip of
high trees down by the water, since there was a ‘marsele’ in them and if they
had to work there one of the boys would have to die. Williamson, who was at the
time in charge of the plantation, laughed at the boys and said the bush had to
come down and that he could not take consideration on such a crazy
superstition. At the line-up in the morning, the boss-boy then asked for a
rifle as he would try to shoot dead the ‘marsele’. We were unable to discover
what the kanakas imagined the ‘marsele’, which in the kanaka language means
devil or evil spirit, to be like. Anyway, they went off and the boss boy shot
at the marsele five times. But he obviously didn’t get him. For ‘bello
That would have been the end of the matter if
the boss-boy had not imagined that he would have to die too since he was to
blame for the death of the boy. Sure enough, not six days had passed when some
boys came with a lantern one night and woke Williamson and me with the words: “Masta,
boss-boy he like die.” Since Williamson was still unfit for service I had to go,
quickly pulled on trousers and a shirt and was about to make my way down when
several others came to meet me: “Masta, boss-boy he die finish.” When I arrived
in the ‘house boy’ I could see blood spattered all over the floor and the
table; the boss-boy lay motionless and covered in blood on a bed. I checked
that he was actually dead and after a closer examination and an exacting
interrogation of the boys it became clear that he had died of a hemorrhage. I
had the suspicion that they might have murdered him since he wasn’t very
popular and was also blamed for the death of the first boy. For that reason I
undertook an investigation and questioned about six boys separately; they all
said the same thing and the examination of the dead man also showed that there
could be no question of murder. Without a doubt he had died of a normal hemorrhage.
Now the entire dwelling and the dead man were washed with disinfectant and in
the morning he too was buried on the island.
The result was that the boys now insisted
that the marsele had taken up residence in the boys’ house and nobody wanted to
stay in the house. All the boys from this house camped out in the other houses,
an impossible state of affairs. In addition to that, distraught boys came every
day claiming that they had seen the marsele, the evil spirit. Something had to
be done. But it is impossible to convince the kanakas that they are only
imagining things. A few days later, somebody came along and said that he knew
how to drive out the devil and all the preparations were made for that
night. – The house where the devil was
supposed to live, the house where the boss-boy had died, was cleared. Doors and
windows were barricaded with branches and poles and a tree approximately six
meters in length was fetched from the bush, its branches were cut off and it
was sharpened to a point at one end. The point of the beam was now placed in
the house and about forty boys standing opposite each other held it on their
outstretched hands. The marsele was then implored to enter the beam and, to
show that he had done so, pull the beam into the house. These incantations
continued on for several hours with the boys manifesting extraordinary
patience. It was dark already when the marsele actually drew the beam into the
house or rather the kanakas pushed the beam into the house in their
auto-suggestion. Thereupon he was asked who the guilty person was and in the
process everyone’s name was mentioned, including those of the mastas. Finally
the beam decided on a man named Rullapun, the best and strongest man from the
Drina that is my place. And now the beam dragged the forty boys with apparently
uncontrollable force to Kaitun on the Drina .
With terrible howling they marched through the plantation, straight through the
bush and those forty boys, still holding on to the beam, swam through the
Palmalmal River. But fortunately the kanakas are very scared in the bush when
it is dark and halfway they killed the marsele by splitting the beam in two.
Satisfied with themselves they returned home and all the boys moved into the
de-spirited house again. Poor Rullapun is supposed to have made a ‘poison’ for
the boss boy and that is supposed to have been in connection with an old matter
when Rullapun is supposed to have sold the boss-boy a boy who later died on the
goldfields. What that had to do with the death of the boss-boy I don’t know,
but you can’t expect logic here.
It was, however, still not over. At midnight three days later, we again
had two boys come and wake us. Masta, one feller boy he like die. – God
almighty, is there a hex on this place? Quickly don trousers and shirt and down
I go. This time it was an elderly man who lived in a house of his own with his
Mary. When I arrived I could see him lying on his back breathing heavily and
groaning, his Mary squatting next to him lamenting, a bundle of misery. His
pulse was calm and regular but as soon as the kanakas touched his head he
screamed in terrible pain. I was then informed that someone had made a poison
against him and there was now a marsele in his head that intended to rupture
his skull. At this point I lost patience and decided to play along with their
superstition, to drive the devil out with Beelzebub. I went and got some whisky
and aspirin, poured some down his throat which made him slowly regain
consciousness and then declared in a loud voice that I knew this devil but that
he was unable to kill. My funny speech was more or less the following: “Me
savvy this feller marsele. He something nothing. He savvy make him pain, thats
all, he no savvy make him die finish. Now me give him you some feller medicine.
Now marsele he smell him, now he rous quick time too much. This feller boy he
no can die. Marsele he fraid too much long me feller.” Then I put my hand on
his head and mumbled something incomprehensible and gave the Mary the aspirin,
telling her that she was to give it to him when he fully came to. --- Next day
the boy was well and I now have the reputation of being able to drive out
devils, something that could be quite useful one day. The boy claimed that when
I put my hand on his head the marsele left amidst terrible pains and
immediately afterwards the pain stopped. There can be no doubt that the fellow
would have died from autosuggestion and countless cases of this kind are known.
One day a boy who was completely healthy came to Kar-Kar and said: “Masta,
tomorrow me die.” He actually died the next day and Kar-Kar was unable to
establish the cause. In Buka it once happened that a boy who had the reputation
of being able to make ‘poison’ terrorized an entire district and people
actually died in every village and no one knew what they had died of. Eventually
the magician was caught, taken to court and confessed that he had made a poison
for all the people who had recently died. He was hanged by the government. And
that was done although they don’t actually give their victims poison, only
create a hocus-pocus and the imagination of the others does the rest. – I then
confronted Rullapun, the supposed poison maker, and forbade him with terrible
threats ever to make poisons again, although that won’t be much use if he
should ever have an enemy again that he wants to dispose of.
This is a matter that can’t be comprehended,
for it has no inner logic, certainly none that a European can understand. All
those who have been here for a while confirm that the longer you have to do
with kanakas, the more you become convinced that you can never understand them
and never will either. It is simply that there is an impenetrable wall of race
between us. And the only thing by means of which we can control these people is
fear of the white man, physical and also mental fear. (15.10.28)
The Tamburan
The house on Palmalmal stands high on a hill,
overlooks the greater part of the plantation and has a view out across the
large Jacquinot Bay with its high mountains in the background. Kar-Kar and I
sleep on the front balcony. We had both gone to bed when Kar-Kar woke me and
said that a schooner was coming. I too could see two lights that were moving at
sea and I cried out a loud hurrah. We then watched the lights through the
binoculars and saw how they kept on approaching and then separating again,
moving up and down the big bay with quite considerable speed for a schooner.
Since the entrance through the reef to the harbor was somewhere quite different
I quickly got dressed and rowed out in the canoe with four kanakas to show the
boat the way in. As soon as I came out from behind the island, or rather in
front of the island which lies abreast of the harbor, the lights were no longer
visible. That seemed very strange to me and we paddled out to sea for quite a
way as I thought that the lights might be beyond the horizon. Even though I stood
up in the canoe to be higher nothing was to be seen. The kanakas thought it
must be a tamburan, meaning a specter, and that this specter always comes in
the night before a real ship arrives. It was definitely the tamburan-ship. The
master who used to live on Palmalmal experienced it twice. I laughed at them.
When we came back to shore Kar-Kar was on the jetty with the lantern and was
quite surprised that there was supposed to be no ship because while I was gone
the ‘ship’ had come closer. With a funny feeling we went back up and, lo and
behold, the lights could be seen more clearly than ever only that they were now
relatively immobile. Through the binoculars they looked exactly like the navigation
lights of a ship though they were first reddish and later became bluish.
Gradually they became weaker and eventually they disappeared altogether. The
whole thing lasted for a good two hours from the moment we first saw them.
That afternoon there had been a small
earthquake but today we had the real thing. At nine o’clock we happened to be
in the house when the whole building began to rock backwards and forwards so
violently that we ran outside so as not to have the roof fall on our heads; we
could hardly stay on our legs and the water squirted high out of the water
tanks. It lasted for a bare minute. We then went into the plantation again just
as a many-voiced call rang out from the heights where the boys were working:
Sailoh! [...] Kar-Kar and I quickly ran to the next hill from where the sea
could be overlooked and there, far out on the horizon, a schooner was visible
heading towards us. [...]
The kanakas now swore black and blue that it was
the tamburan-ship and they were of course right about their schooner. I think
that it must have something to do with today’s earthquake, that maybe gases
rose from the floor of the ocean and ignited in the air.[...] [We also
considered the possibility] that it might have been Japanese submarines building
an underwater station here in case of a war in the Pacific, something that is,
by the way, not impossible and may already exist in places. (15.5.28)
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