Le leurre magique, 2021
Stéphane Foucaud

This day didn’t begin like any other: Grandma had returned with croissants (I couldn’t even remember the last time I had eaten one). Goodbye to the bread cooked in a pot, which could even choke our hunting dogs, who were used to gnawing on bones! On top of that, as we headed to enjoy our surprises by the sea, we spotted a two-masted ship—or almost—stuck about a hundred meters off the reef. It seemed to have weathered a storm. The roughly twenty-meter-long vessel looked like a junk. It was my little cousin Leopold who reached uncle first when we rushed to tell him the news. We hurried our uncle, also the chief of the tribe, to the spot of our discovery. Our walk led us straight to the backsides of two strangers, quenching their thirst from the half-barrel meant for the pigs.

After serving them coffee, they explained their mishaps with gestures and an English as approximate as ours. Leopold mostly remembered the part where they had to drink their pee, a detail that froze his grimace for the rest of the conversation. That evening, uncle gathered the whole community, imposing complete discretion on our guests, while my other cousins and I hid the “Padewakang” inside the bay. “The Brain” (our nickname for grandpa due to his inexhaustible knowledge, even though, as grandma would say, “he couldn’t even find his underwear”) informed us that this type of sailboat came from Sulawesi, an island in Indonesia. When the two sailors thanked uncle for not alerting the authorities, grandpa intercepted our complicit glances toward the ship: “Don’t even think about it!” he thundered. It was true, everyone was wondering about the cargo.

The next day, we heard Leopold screaming in the forest. He stood before the great kauri tree, long and straight, which was cut and mounted two days later on the Indonesian junk to serve as a replacement mast. To thank little cousin for his tree-finding skills, our potential smugglers gave him something by the fire the night we celebrated their departure. This offering could have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t immediately hidden it behind the elastic of his shorts.

Two weeks passed without anyone mentioning our two lost sailors. The main attraction of the moment focused on my little cousin Leopold, congratulated on each of his returns from trolling. His “made in Indonesia” lure left all other lines empty, while his kept pulling in massive trevallies, tuna, and other salmon. Many envious fishermen tried to replicate his hybrid “dragon-shrimp” lure, dangling with four hooks, but without success. The gift from our Sulawesian friends seemed to enchant its new owner, who became more and more insufferable as his arrogance grew. The brat didn’t even hesitate to call us “sardine fishermen”!

One morning, I decided to inspect his talisman more closely, hidden under his pillow. Shaking the lure near my ear, I heard faint clicks that made me want to open it, divided into two parts. I scraped off some of its paint with my knife, but luckily the damage blended with bite marks. A whole miniature world was revealed to me—an interior universe made of colorful pebbles, almost sand, seeds, and small animal bones. Convinced that the key to its power lay in the sound produced by this fish rattle, I decided to close it back up, only removing a single seed. My intuition was confirmed during the next fishing outing. Little cousin had just one bite, while the rest of the crew caught enough to feed double the number of guests planned for the tribal wedding the next day. The fallen fisherman grumbled angrily while nervously rubbing the altered little sarcophagus. And for good reason: it wouldn’t be his name remembered that season, but that of “Big Yann” with his magnificent swordfish catch. The Council of Elders closed our fishing zone to preserve it until the following year. Only line fishing from the beach would be allowed.

This practice of sustainable fishing, followed by all, prompted me to return the missing seed to the earth: the carnage caused by the magical bait went against our traditions. However, the wisdom of our elders likely vanished during this time, as neighboring tribes said that people from our area began hunting with Kalashnikovs. That said a lot about the infamous cargo from the Padewakang of Sulawesi.