Hawaii Page 8

  The invocation of Oro’s name among men who had only recently staked their lives on this god, effectively halted comment, and the High Priest had continued: “That is why Tatai has urged his daughter Tehani to become the wife of Teroro. He will move to Havaiki and take with him most of his vigorous supporters, and they will soon become swallowed up among the men of Havaiki. Tatai, when he becomes king of Bora Bora, has agreed to leave his wives behind and to marry our women. In this way, Oro will be supreme.” He had not added that when this was accomplished, he hoped to move his own headquarters to the great temple at Havaiki, and that at such time he would take along with him those Bora Bora subordinates who most heartily supported his master plan. But none of his listeners required to be told this, and with these exciting thoughts coursing through their minds the holy men returned to Bora Bora.

  The twenty-seven surviving crewmen had few coherent thoughts. They had watched, helpless, while their original number was decimated by the power of Oro, and they had shared their leaders’ confusion. Contrary to what the High Priest believed, they were gratified rather than disturbed by the fact that Teroro had spent his time with Tehani, for Mato had spread the news that Teroro must be got back to Bora Bora alive. They suspected that King Tamatoa had some solid plan of revenge, and they hoped to be a part of it. But beyond animal revenge they could not see.

  There was one emotion which all in the boat shared, for at the end of the day, just before entering the home lagoon, the travelers saw the sun sink toward the west, throwing rich golden lights upon their magic island, and each man, no matter what his plots, instinctively felt: “This is the beautiful island. This is the land upon which the gods have spent particular care.”

  For to see Bora Bora at the end of a journey, with sunset upon the peaks, with dark night drifting in upon the valleys, and with sea birds winging homeward; to see the red line of sunset climbing the mountain faces until the top was reached, and darkness, and to cry, “Hold! Hold! Let it remain day until I touch the shore!” and to catch within the lagoon the sounds of children at play and the echoes of home, while outside the reef the ocean roared—to have known Bora Bora at such a moment was to have known beauty.

  It was with enhanced regret, therefore, that King Tamatoa led his brother to the palace and bade him recline on the pandanus mats, whereupon the king carefully lowered the matting walls, and when he was thus protected from spies, lay down facing Teroro. Secretly and in a low voice he delivered the striking words: “I have decided that we must leave Bora Bora.”

  Teroro was stunned. He had never even contemplated such a retreat, for he still did not appreciate the untenable position into which he and his brother had been maneuvered. “Why should we leave?” he gasped.

  “There is no place for us here any longer.”

  “We can fight! We can kill …”

  “Whom shall we fight? The people? The other islands?”

  “We could …”

  “We can do nothing, Teroro.”

  “But where can we go?”

  “To the north.”

  This simple phrase carried implications that were difficult for Teroro to digest, and as the idea climbed from one level of his consciousness to another he could only repeat his brother’s startling words. “To the north?” He recalled that other canoes had left for the north centuries before, legendary canoes which had never returned. There existed, however, a mysterious old chant which purported to give sailing directions to a distant land that lay under the Seven Little Eyes, the holy constellation whose rising launched the new year, and some said that this chant implied that at least one of the legendary canoes must have returned, and words from the chant came to his mind:

  Sail to the Seven Little Eyes,

  To the land guarded by Little Eyes.

  But as soon as he spoke the words he grew angry, for they conjured up a picture of him fleeing Bora Bora.

  “Why should we go?” he blustered.

  “Don’t take refuge in empty words, Teroro,” the king snapped impatiently. “When you sailed to Nuku Hiva, did you find any certain knowledge of any of the canoes that have sailed to the north?”

  “No.”

  “I understand there’s an old sailing chant.”

  “No one knows for sure where it came from.”

  “What does it say?”

  “If I remember, it says to sail until you come to land that lies under the Seven Little Eyes.”

  “How many days?”

  “Some men say thirty, some say fifty.”

  “Teroro, if we decided to sail with the next big storm that brings us a west wind, how many people could we carry on our canoe?”

  “Would they let us take Wait-for-the-West-Wind?”

  “If not, we would have to fight for it.”

  “Good!” Teroro grunted, for now he could begin to see specific action.

  “How many men?” Tamatoa pressed.

  “About sixty.”

  “And all supplies?”

  “Everything.”

  “And a house for our gods?”

  “Yes.”

  The brothers lay on the matting with their faces at arm’s length apart, whispering, and finally Tamatoa asked, “Who should join us?”

  Teroro quickly rattled off the names of many warriors: “Hiro, Mato, Pa …”

  “We aren’t going to battle,” Tamatoa corrected. “We are going to the north … forever.”

  In the hushed room the word overcame Teroro. “Leave Bora Bora forever?” He leaped to his feet and cried, “We’ll kill the High Priest tonight!”

  Tamatoa grabbed him by one leg and hauled him down to the matting. “We are concerned with a great voyage, not revenge.”

  But Teroro cried, “At the convocation I and my men were ready to fight all the islands if anyone touched you, Tamatoa. We would have strewn the temple with bodies. We feel the same way now.”

  Tamatoa smiled and said, “But the High Priest outsmarted you, didn’t he?”

  Teroro pressed his fingers into a tight knot and mumbled, “How did it happen? Our plan was so good.”

  “Oro has triumphed,” the king said sadly. “We had better take our gods and go.”

  Teroro growled, “I should like to be set free on Havaiki one night before we go. They’d never put out the fires.”

  “Is there anyone on Bora Bora who knows the directions north?”

  “Our uncle. It was Tupuna who taught them to me.”

  “Is he loyal to Oro?” Tamatoa asked.

  “Yes, but I think he is also loyal to you.”

  “Impossible,” Tamatoa objected.

  “For wise old men like Tupuna, many things are possible,” Teroro laughed. “Do you want me to call him?”

  “Wait. Won’t he be in session with the others?”

  “They don’t pay much attention to him,” Teroro explained. “They suspect he’s loyal to you.”

  “We wouldn’t dare take so long a voyage without a priest,” Tamatoa said gravely. “To be alone on the ocean for fifty days …”

  “I would want a priest along,” Teroro agreed. “Who would read the omens?” And he sent a messenger to fetch old Tupuna.

  In the interim the brothers resumed their positions and their planning. “Can we gather all we need?” the king asked.

  “We can get spears and helmets …”

  “Brother!” Tamatoa cried impatiently. “For the last time, we are not going forth on some adventure. What I mean is can you get breadfruit shoots that will survive? Seed coconuts? Bred sows? And some good eating dogs? We would need a thousand fishhooks and two thousand lengths of sennit. Can you get those things?”

  “I’ll get them,” Teroro said.

  “Keep thinking about whom we shall take with us.”

  Again Teroro rattled off the easy names and again the king interrupted: “Find a man who can make knives, one who can strip pandanus, a good fishhook man.”

  “Well, if we take sixty men it ought to be easy …” />
  “I’ve been counting the spaces in my mind,” Tamatoa reflected. “We can take only thirty-seven men, six slaves, and fifteen women.”

  “Women,” Teroro gasped.

  “Suppose the land to the north is empty,” Tamatoa mused. “Suppose there are no women. We would watch our friends set their feet upon the rainbow, one by one, and each man as he left would be forever irreplaceable. There would be no children.”

  “Will you take a wife?” Teroro asked.

  “I will take none of my present wives,” the king replied. “I’ll take Natabu, so that we can have royal children.”

  “I’ll take Marama.”

  The king hesitated, then took his brother by the hands. “Marama may not go,” he said gravely. “We will take only women who can bear children.”

  “I would not want to go without Marama,” the younger man said. “She is my wisdom.”

  “I am sorry, brother,” the king said with complete finality. “Only women who can bear children.”

  “Then I won’t go,” Teroro said flatly.

  “I need you,” the king replied. “Don’t you know any young girl to take?” Before Teroro could reply, the flaps parted and his uncle, old Tupuna of the white topknot and the flowing beard, came into the palace. He was nearly seventy, a remarkable age in the islands, where a man of thirty-three like the king was already an elder, so he spoke with exceptional authority.

  “I come to my brother’s sons,” he said gravely, taking a seat on the matting near them. “I come to my own children.”

  The king studied the old man carefully, and then said in a low voice, “Uncle, we place our safety in your hands.”

  In a striking voice mellowed by years and wisdom Tupuna said, “You’re planning to leave Bora Bora and want me to join you.”

  The brothers gasped and looked about lest any spies should have lingered, but the old man reassured them. “All the priests know you’re planning to leave,” he said benevolently. “We’ve just been discussing it.”

  “But we didn’t know ourselves until we entered this room an hour ago,” Teroro protested.

  “It’s the only sensible thing to do,” Tupuna pointed out.

  “Will you join us?” Tamatoa asked directly.

  “Yes. I told the priests I was loyal to Oro, but I could not let my family depart without an intercessor with the gods.”

  “We couldn’t go without you,” Teroro said.

  “Will they let us take Wait-for-the-West-Wind?” the king asked.

  “Yes,” the old man replied. “I pleaded for that in particular, because when I was younger I helped consecrate the trees that built this canoe. I shall be happy to have it my grave.”

  “Your grave?” Teroro asked. “I expect to reach land! Somewhere!”

  “All men who set forth in canoes expect to reach land,” the old man laughed indulgently. “But of all who leave, none ever return.”

  “Teroro just told me that you knew sailing directions,” the king protested. “Somebody must have returned.”

  “There are sailing directions,” the old priest admitted. “But where did they come from? Are they a dream? They tell us only to sail to land guarded by the Seven Little Eyes. Perhaps the chant refers only to the dream of all men that there must be a better land somewhere.”

  “Then we know nothing about this journey?” Tamatoa interrupted.

  “Nothing,” Tupuna replied. Then he corrected himself. “We do know one thing. It’s better than staying here.”

  There was silence, and then Teroro surprised the king by asking, “Have they agreed to let us take our gods, Tane and Ta’aroa?”

  “Yes,” the old man said.

  “I am glad,” Teroro said. “When a man gets right down to the ocean’s edge … when he is really starting on a voyage like this …”

  He did not finish, but Tupuna spoke for him. He said, in a deep prophetic voice, “Are there people where we go? No one knows. Are there fair women? No one knows. Will we find coconuts and taro and breadfruit and fat pigs? Will we even find land? All that we know, sons of my brother, sons of my heart, is that if we are in the hands of the gods, even if we perish on the great ocean, we will not die unnoticed.”

  “And we know one thing more,” the king added. “If we stay here we shall slowly, one by one, be sacrificed, and all our family and all our friends. Oro has ordained it. He has triumphed.”

  “May I tell the High Priest that? It will make our departure easier.”

  In complete humbleness of spirit, King Tamatoa replied, “You may tell him.”

  At this moment there came from the beach a sound which thrilled the three plotters, converting them at once from mature men into the children that they essentially were; and as each heard the exciting message, his eyes widened with joy and he threw off whatever badges of position he might have been wearing and ran toward the palace door, looking out into the starry darkness with the same pulsating thrill he had known as a boy.

  For there along the waterfront, in the midnight hour, the citizens of Bora Bora, without king or priest, had assembled with drums and nose flutes for a night of wild merriment. The apprehensions of the convocation were ended and childish revelry was again in command. Therefore, with only the rank of commoners, Tamatoa, Tupuna and Teroro hurried eagerly to the beach. A raucous old woman was yelling, as they came, “Let me show you how our great helmsman Hiro steers a canoe!” And in superb mimicry she became not an old woman with few teeth, but a malicious lampoon of young Hiro steering his canoe; in a dozen ways she caught his mannerisms: the way he looked out to sea, and his swagger; but what she steered was not the canoe’s tiller but the make-believe male genitals of another old woman who was playing the part of the canoe. When the steering was done, the first woman screamed, “He’s very smart, Hiro!”

  The crowd bellowed, particularly when they saw Teroro applauding the vicious mimicry of his helmsman. “I’ll bet she really could steer a canoe!” he shouted.

  “You’d be surprised at what I could do!” the lascivious old woman replied. But the crowd left her antics and started to applaud as blunt Malo, from the other side of the island, suddenly wrapped a bit of yellow tapa about his shoulders and made believe he was fat Tatai of Havaiki, executing ridiculous steps to the music and lampooning that chief’s pompous ways. To the great joy of the assembly, King Tamatoa nimbly leaped into the smoky arena and took his place beside Malo, and both imitated Tatai, each more foolishly than his competitor, until at last it was difficult to say which was Malo and which the king. The foolish little dance ended with Tamatoa sitting exhausted in the dust, laughing madly as if he had no cares.

  Again the crowd looked toward a new clown, for shark-faced Pa had grabbed a leaf-skirt and was crying in a shrill high voice, “Call me Tehani!” And he pirouetted grotesquely but with uncanny skill, evoking the Havaiki girl, until Teroro asked himself, “How could he have seen her dance?” But his preoccupation with Pa was broken when he saw his own wife, Marama, leap into the dance in hilarious burlesque of her husband. “It’s Teroro!” the crowd applauded as the skilled woman ridiculed her man, gently and with love, but also with keenest perception. As she danced Teroro wondered: “Who told her about Tehani?”

  Marama and the shark-faced man were the night’s success. Pa was so ugly and his features so preposterous that he could make them seem like those of any man; and he could be both gentle, as in his mimicry of Tehani, and savage, as in his next burlesque of the High Priest. With a bit of black tapa for a wig and a breadfruit branch for a staff, Pa gyrated furiously in demented manner, whirling about and pointing his stick at first one islander and then another. As he did so, Marama, dancing behind with a feather bag, played the burly executioner, clubbing down one victim after another. Finally, in mock frenzy, the crazy dancer Pa gyrated directly up to King Tamatoa and pointed his stick at him, whereupon Marama rushed along, swung her feather bag, and brought it within an inch of the king’s face. The victim fell as if his skull had been c
rushed, and lay in the sand, laughing, laughing.

  As the long wild night progressed, every item of island life was brought under ridicule, with chinless Pa as the ringleader. He possessed what islanders loved: a child’s sense of fairy tale, and to watch his amazing pointed face move from one characterization to the next was endless joy. Toward dawn, when the fears and repressions of the past weeks were dissipated, a group of old women approached King Tamatoa and began pleading with him, obviously seeking some special boon for the people, until at last he gave assent, whereupon the delegation’s leader leaped withered-legged into the center of the crowd, screaming the good news: “Our great king says tonight we play the gourd game!” With hushed excitement the men and women separated into facing groups as King Tamatoa ceremoniously tossed toward the men a feathered gourd which glistened in the firelight. A chief reached out and caught it, danced a few ritual steps, then pitched it in a high, shimmering arc toward the eager women. A young girl who had long lusted after this man leaped into the air, snatched the gourd and dashed with it to the man who had thrown it. Clutching him by the waist, she rushed him passionately into the shadows, while the feathered gourd flew back and forth, determining the sleeping partners for that wild night.

  Teroro, although he had the island to choose from, elected his own wife, Marama, the penetrating clown, and as they lay quietly in the gray-and-silver dawn, with the timeless waves of the lagoon once more established over the night’s loud revelry, Teroro confided, “Tamatoa has decided to leave the islands.”

  “I suspected he had reached some grave decision,” Marama said. “He was so eager to laugh.”

  “What I don’t understand is, the High Priest has agreed to let Tupuna join us. And also to let us take Wait-for-the-West-Wind.”

  Marama explained: “He’s wise. He knows that islanders like to avoid direct conflicts that humiliate others. It’s good procedure.”

  Her words were so in conflict with his plans for revenge that he asked, “What about the humiliation we suffered at Havaiki? Would you forget that, too?”

  “I would,” she said firmly. “When we’re safe on some other island we can afford to forget Havaiki.”