The Living God

A Mysterious Island and the Strange Double Life of Don Juan Olozagá

PAUL MORAND

EDITOR'S NOTE:—The story on this page, The Living God, is the third of the series of tales of the Orient which Paul Morand is writing for Vanity Fair. M. Morand is regarded as the most cosmopolitan of the new French writers. He is the author of Ouvert la Nuit, its companion volume, Ferme la Nuit, Lewis et Irene and (most recently) L'Europe Galante. The next Paul Morand story in this series will appear in the June issue of Vanity Fair.

AFTER several days of heavy weather, engine trouble developed and we were forced to lie off some coral reefs in the Indian Ocean, near the spot known as the Barrier Islands. The land here was torrid and boggy, and at a distance of two miles, scarcely distinguishable from the sea; it could hardly be called solid ground. One would have said that the Flood had only just subsided—so covered with clay were the cocoanut and banana trees which stood deep in mud. The roots seemed twisted, motionless reptiles. A temperature like that in a hot-house permitted one to think that prehistoric animals—no matter how difficult to please—would find the surroundings agreeable, were they to return to earth.

After three days of waiting in vain for a tow, requested by radio and promised by a Japanese steamer which was proceeding along the western coast of Sumatra, I had myself rowed over to the island in a small boat. There, earth and water were strangely commingled. The wood seemed like a marine forest surmounted by an open sky; shells and corals were encrusted on the tree trunks. Sea birds, who usually flee dry land, approached the island as of it were an amphibious domain. There was no beach. Neither sand, nor pebbles: without seeming transition, the forest sprang from the water.

SEEEKING a landing place, I followed the wavering coast line, splashing along on foot, amid floating moss and spreading water lilies, on which perched great birds. Ants, in their hills, were the only inhabitants of this uncertain ground, which was really a series of mud holes, covered over with a treacherous carpet of water plants. And yet, from my ship's cabin, the evening before, it had seemed to me that I saw a red glow, which indicated a lighted fire. After an hour's hunt and walking on slippery soil, during which I was unable to penetrate inland, I at last came upon a wooden pavilion, mounted on stilts, covered with dry palm leaves and surrounded by the kind of huge piles that are driven into water for the building of a bridge. The entrance was decorated with shells, many red feathers, and such trophies as mounted deer heads. Determined as I was not to become bogged in the shifting mud, and intent on my own footsteps, I had had no leisure to look about me. It is always thus in a forest!

When I lifted my eyes, I saw that a naked old man—a white man—had been observing me for some time. He was on a high platform, which he had reached through the narrow aperture of his hut, a building made of alternate strips of hard wood and yielding bamboos and closed at the top by a lid which was its door. He was bent over, as by rheumatism, and his stiff attitude made him look very old although the expression on his ravaged and tanned face was still young. He was, indeed, naked save for some strings of shell and a mother of pearl breastplate. FI is bony knees and his feet seemed deformed by the effort of adhering to the roots and tree trunks, slippery with slime. I took him for an Arab—for some holy recruiter of pilgrims to Mecca (the population of these islands is Mussulman) for he had the fine and cruel profile of the near East.

"Dutchman: " he called from his observation post, without making the native gesture of salutation which signifies: "I place myself beneath the soles of your feet."

"No," I answered. "Ship-wrecked—temporarily. That is my nationality."

"You need not fear for your safety. Europeans, 'white eyes', are not taboo here."

THE man spoke sometimes in French, sometimes in Spanish.

"And your" I queried. "Where are you from? "

"I? Basque."

"You are on a holiday here? In exile?"

"No, I live with the natives. My functions are replete with honour. I am a judge, a general, a senator and above all—"

"Are you perhaps a leper?" I interrupted, seeing him thus isolated.

"No. Fear nothing. I am a god. My name is The Navel of the World; and also Dispenser of the Elements. I am alone here because my subjects arc away fishing."

"But your real name? Your European name? "

'Flic man was crouched in the native attitude, knees to the chin; a cigarette hung from his lips. His eyes gleamed beneath his straw shade hat with, its strap beneath the chin.

"After all, there is no reason now, for hiding it. Sit down a minute and listen. I am called Don Juan Olozaga. My mother brought me into the world on Spanish territory, not far from Pampeluna. Twenty years ago, I landed here—after a storm, as you did,—and also in the month of February. At that season there is a change in the prevailing wind which establishes an eastern current in the ocean, difficult to cope with, when a ship is the worse for wear and when the island is here."

"What do you mean?"

"Please follow my story, sir, without interrupting. When I tell you that I landed here, after a shipwreck, I am inexact. As I swam toward the shore, I fell into a net and was hauled in by the inhabitants of this island who exclaimed, on seeing me 'Yinko!' Now Yinko, in my Basque tongue, means 'God.' Could this word have the same meaning here, a thirty five days' journey away from my home? I took a chance. I asked 'Eman dezada y aver a?' which is to say 'Can you give me something to cat?' I was understood! Some women appeared, then a man wearing a quantity of little mirrors such as arc used on certain bird traps; he was the High Priest. He announced to me, in a language which I understood without knowing, that, since I had been found in a fishing net, I was 'the god who is to be brought up from the sea', awaited, according to local legends, for twenty centuries.

"I then remembered the mysterious origin of my mother tongue, that Basque speech which does not resemble any Indo-European language and which one hears only in northern Japan, where the ancient race has been isolated in the interior—I pondered on this dialect which is certainly the oldest on the face of' the globe. Had I, perhaps, ancestors in common with this Oceanic tribe, descended as it was from a Caucasian race? At any rate, I was allowed to sit in the Karapatan—which is the assembly of notables—and whilst I was hourly expecting to be crucified it was explained to me that I was 'The Navel of the World'. There it was I learned that this island is submerged every seven years, for eight months. It then reappears, covered with a tepid slime. While it is under water, the inhabitants live on rafts— keeping the cats and sacred lizards and themselves alive, subsisting on fish.

"The prognosticated holy flood did, in effect, take place the following year, as the natives had announced. I informed my people that I would spend the eight months of the island's immersion in travel. When the catastrophe fell due, according to a volcanic rhythm which nature has established, I sailed for the Dutch Indies, taking with me a young priestess named Ncscatcha and a provision of pearls. I returned to Europe, delighted to have so successfully emerged from such an adventure.

IN the Basque country, my mother was bciLgiiming to grow old. She wanted to marry me off. Ncscatcha, who had honoured polvgamy among the priests of her tribe, was present at my wedding. But my wife, who did not share her broad-mindedness, became angry and reduced her noble rival to the rank of a servant. Fhis bourgeois life speedily became odious to me. I left my village and my wife, after a week of conjugal existence, sold my pearls and settled in Biarritz, where I lived in regal style. I occupied the royal suite at the Palace Hotel.

I had the first automobiles of that time, a yacht, and was never sober; I played baccarat like a madman; in short, after two months, I was ruined. One morning, I returned from the Casino, having lost everything. Ncscatcha wept; she loved only the simple life and my sophisticated excesses made her suffer. But, anyway, I was gradually being seized by a nostalgia for the tropics. I left for my island.

"I saw it again with emotion. On a sheet of silver, like a coral basket full of fruits and flowers, already risen from the sea, like Venus it had*reappeared and was awaiting me, fresher and more beautiful for its bath. The off shore breeze wafted over the ocean, several miles out to sea, strong odours of camphor and turpentine. Feasts, accompanied by human sacrifices, greeted my return. I was officially wedded to Nescatcha, who was raised to the rank of Goddess, d'his new life lasted seven years.

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"Naturally, T had given no one a sign of life, nor my address. But my mother's health was worrying me; a presentiment caused me to fear some mishap. I seized the leave of absence granted me by Nature and—this time alone—I returned to Europe, after having passed the happiest days of my life on the island. When I reached home, I learned that my mother was dead, and that my wife, weary of waiting for me and believing me lost at sea, had married again. I had brought back more pearls than the first time. They did not last much longer, when I had converted them into money, for life had become more expensive and my ambitions were greater. I became an influential chieftain, a political leader in my district. Madrid, the capital, smiled upon me. I was offered a senator's seat. Out of vanity, I accepted. I had a palace on the Castellana; I kept open house and a racing stable. I played polo with the King and supported a cloud of parasites, of unnecessary servants and of mistresses who deceived me. But once more, at the end of a few months, lack of funds obliged me to disappear. I regained my island. This double life lasted twenty years. In one hemisphere, I was a dreadful parvenu, a profiteer with diamonds on my fingers, a grey Fedora, a red tie—dissipated and brutal, my habitual associates toreros out of a job, seedy generals, professional gamblers and go-betweens. My nights were spent in the gaming hells of Ciudad Lineal, or at suppers in the cabarets of La Pernices.

"When I was informed that I was being considered for the post of Ambassador to a South American country, I made no objection. I bribed ministers. I had a palace built for myself on the sea at Santander. My character changed and was affected by my life; I became avaricious, unkind, vain and predatory. But, as if Heaven wished to prove that it had not forsaken me, I was always obliged to depart again, naturally without giving the faintest hint of unobjective, nor sending back anv news of myself. Then, another life, the real one, began for me in the other hemisphere. He who had dazzled the farmers and the street girls of laFeria, in Seville, a few months earlier, here became an austere being, an ascetic, his only wealth a straw sleeping-mat, a stone mortar for crushing herbs and a board studded with nails to shred cocoanuts with. He who, in Spain, had had reproduced in his house the Arab baths of the Alhambra, at a cost of five million pesetas, lived in Melanesia, without washing, merely scratching himself with a split bamboo. I distributed alms. I dispensed justice. I worked miracles. (Not the least of these was the transformation I accomplished in myself.) I have heard of people, suffering from a psychic malady, who, without knowing it themselves, lead a double life and are criminals by night and honest men by day. Well, I went through that experience, not in a somnambulistic fashion, but wide awake. Not for one day only. I went through with it, as I have told you, for twenty years. In Europe, fleshy, drunk, but at bottom, a much despised wastrel; here, lean, naked, but a god!

"When the last period of seven vears had passed (three years ago) and the island was beginning to settle into the sea like a foundering ship, I boarded a craft, imitating the island's inhabitants, but I did not return to Europe. Nescatcha, the wife of my heart, had died young, as do all women of the tropics; I, myself, was beginning to feel my age and although my riches, drawn from the hunting and fishing of my native subjects, had become unlimited, my taste for the paltry and depressing pleasures of civilization was exhausted. So I remained among those who believed in me. They needed me. I loved them, now, like children. This population, thanks to its language which bears no relation to the Indonesian idioms, to its insularity, most of all to that super-insularitv brought about by the periodic disappearance of its island and its life on floating dwellings, has been protected from contact with the other islands and has escaped Islam, the vices of the Malavs, alcohol and commerce. The simplicity of their customs is such that the natives arc ignorant of the use of iron and innocent of even the slightest vestige of clothing. In the interior they live in huts like these, shaped like bee hives enlarged to human size and surmounted by wooden birds with outstretched wings. Nothing in them reminds one of inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula. Their skeletons are finely built; their tramps through the woods and thenhabit of crawling has given them the stooped attitude which you notice in me. Their eyes are luminous and limpid, timidly pleading like those of a captured deer. As you have observed, they flee into the interior as soon as they catch sight of a sail or a cloud of smoke on the horizon. Generally, I accompany them. If I did not do so today, it was because I wanted to see and speak to a white man. When the time comes for the island to disappear, a feast day is chosen, and some of the natives set sail in unsinkable canoes, others establish themselves in floating houses which have the shape of ancient Portuguese ships, while I continue to inhabit a temple, set on a raft, in company with white buffaloes and sacred lizards. I am waited on by sorcerers, those medicine men, dressed in straw, whom you have already seen elsewhere and who continue to practice their incantations and prophetic arts during their sojourn in the water."

"So, since your stay in Europe, I am the first white man you have seen?" I asked.

"Wait. One day, three years ago, while I was offering up a sacrifice, I perceived smoke on the horizon. A steamer anchored, not far from where yours is now. It was a little Danish coaster. The entire population of the island disappeared and I myself hid in the branches of a cocoanut tree. A gig made for the land and I was astounded to see that the two men who stepped ashore were two cousins of mine! From my tree top, I saw the two members of my family consult each other. One of them unfolded a map:

"'Three degrees of latitude south by six degrees—one day's journey from Kroemg Atjeh. It's certainly here that he should be. Johnston's Atlas, London 18+8, mentions the island of Summendi. Is it this oner The Encyclopedia Britannica also mentions it and even refers back to Marco Polo, who, after being dubbed a liar, has now been completely justified as you know.'

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(Continued front page 106)

'Hut Jacobs' Dutch Atlas of the year 18 75, which comprises all the islands in this region, does not mention the island we are on now. As for the Admiralty maps, they are singularly defective as far as the Barrier Islands are concerned.'

'But look, yourself, at the note book which Don Juan Olozaga forgot at home, and which we found among his late mother's effects. The indications are quite clear. The island must be this one—It is all incomprehensible.'

'Still, it's not possible to imagine that this island exists at some moments and not at others?'

'Evidently.'

'My advice, Eustachio, is that we are only wasting time and money here. Don Juan Olozaga is dead; that is why he has never returned home. At any rate, even if we had found him here, nothing indicates that he would have loaded us with presents—this elusive Sea Serpent!'

'For years now he has been rumoured to be now in India, then in Tibet, again in Patagonia!'

'The cenotaph which his widow, my wife, has had built for him is empty . . . Pretty soon, if things go on like this, I myself shall be obliged to replace him!'

'Don Juan was a canny one.'

'He was. I can't say the same about us! There is nothing for us to do but to return to Batavia and get the Dutch authorities to institute researches to be made by local government agents.'

"My cousins remained seated a long time in the blue shade of the blue cocoanut tree; eight metres above them, I, their invisible relative, was hidden. They spoke no more, impressed by the silence of the island, and the hostile explosive sound of the ocean's back wash as it receded from the onslaught in the coral reefs. They finally rowed away from the accursed spot, apparently relinquishing thereafter any attempt to discover their rich cousifi, for I have heard nothing more of them.

"I climbed down from my tree. I felt light and happy. All bonds with Europe and with civilization were sundered. I won't deny that in order to decide this, a good deal of will power was needed, for you know' how strong family ties are among us Basques. But I was obeying an even more powerful impulse—and yielding to that serene sense of detachment, that soft luring indifference of the tropics, which lulls you to sleep and makes you await your last hour with resignation. Today, my dear sir, I have attained that peaceful state and that is why I have confided in you and consented to tell you my secret. I am a doomed man. When I press my liver with my fingers, I can feel that it is hard as a stone; even if I wished to reach Aden, I would no longer have the time to do so, I have already had three abcesses; the fourth is always the last, the effective one. At all events, with that infallible instinct which animals and primitive men possess, the medicine men, two days ago, announced my approaching death. Listen. About us, you hear only the bull-frogs giving their evening concert. There is already a solitude around me; I am even now in another life . . . The natives have retired to the north. They will not return here until the last quarter of the declining moon has disappeared. Then, my corpse will be tightly bound and near it will be placed objects for the final voyage; it will be left to be dried by the sun, in an open hut, facing the southern winds . . . Which, by my faith, is just as good as rotting in the red earth of Guipuzcoa, isn't it? No, I thank you, I no longer need anything. In less than a week, I shall have left this world. I do not know if, as I am informed, I shall be obliged to reincarnate in the shape of a white animal. For my part, even though I am a god, I have no precise opinion on the point. Adieu. You are free to tell my story, when you reach home. But respect my western reputation, my shady one. Say, if you like, that you met Don Juan Olozaga, the nouveau riche, the filibuster, the man without a heart. Do not say that you met the other one, the most advanced man in the world—the god."