Hawaii (11 page)

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

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and taro and breadfruit and fat pigs? Will we even find land? AH 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 canoel" 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.

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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 Tehanil" 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 ha 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 a mock frenzy, the crazy dancer Pa gyrated directly up to King Tamatoa and pointed his stick at him, whereupon Marama rushed alongside, swung her feather bag, and brought it within an inch of the king's face. The victim fell as if his skull had been crushed, 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 pos-: sessed 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 spe cial 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 kgoon once more established over the night's loud revelry, Teroro confided, "Tamatoa has decided to leave the islands."

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"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."

He started to explain that she would not be going on the voyage, but he could find no words to do so gracefully; in cowardice he fell asleep, but after a while he half-woke and mumbled, "You were very funny tonight, Marama. You were really wonderful."

WHEN THE DECISION to depart from Bora Bora was whispered from one village to the next, the island became a curious place, because no one admitted officially that the king was leaving. The High Priest continued to pay public deference to Tamatoa, and old Tupuna officiated at daily prayers to Oro. Young chiefs who had determined to join the expedition embraced wives who were obviously going to be left behind; but under this surface of indifference, all were preoccupied with one job: loading a canoe for an unknown voyage.

Particular care was given to food supplies. It was relatively easy to prepare food that was going to be consumed on the voyage; it was dried in the sun and compacted into small bundles tied with ti leaves. What required special thought was the selection of roots and saplings for a new land. Experts sought taro roots that would produce the gray-blue tuber which made the best poi, and coconuts that came from the strongest trees, and breadfruit that did not grow too high but which did produce big heads rich in starch and glutinous sap. White-haired Tupuna spent three days selecting chickens that would yield meat and dogs that would bake well, for he constantly reminded his charges that they were heading for land that might be very spare, indeed.

Then came the day when departure could no longer be politely masked, for with a saw made from a large sea shell, Teroro boldly cut eleven feet from each of the canoe's high sterns. "We cannot risk such high adornment on a long trip," he explained.

"Auwel" cried men and women along the shore. "The great canoe of Bora Bora is being desecrated." Gently Teroro handed down the god-carved sterns, and priests bore them to the temple. The crowd watched while he used dried shark's skin to smooth the ends of the truncated stern, and he kept his back to the watchers as he worked, for he was praying, "Wait-for-the-West-Wind, forgive me for this mutilation," and out of his humiliation at having to cut down his

own canoe, an obsessive rage was generated which was to make departure from Bora Bora an event ever to be remembered in the islands.

His rage increased when he left his deformed canoe and went to his own hut, where he threw himself on the floor and hammered the pandanus mats. Marama came to sit with him and assured him: "When we have found a new home we will find big trees and we can make new pillars for our canoe."

"No! They'll remain as they are! A signal of our shame."

"You talk like a boy," the placid-faced woman chided.

"When I was a boy," he corrected, "if anyone insulted me, I beat him on the head. But now I'm a man, and Havaiki insults me without risks."

"Teroro," his wife pleaded. "Look at it sensibly. What has Havaiki really done? They've invented a new god, and the world seems to prefer him. They haven't . . ."

Teroro grasped his wife by the arm. "Haven't you heard the whispers?" he asked bitterly. "When Tamatoa goes, who is to be the new king? Fat Tatai of Havaiki."

Marama gasped. "Have they gone so far?" she asked.

"Yes!" Teroro snapped. "And do you know what they had the insolence to do? They proposed that I desert my brother and leave Bora Bora. I was to marry Tatai's daughter . . . trade pkces with him!"

"Why didn't you tell me this?"

"It was only now that I figured it out," he replied sheepishly. And as always, when he felt humiliated, he decided upon a plan of swift action. "Marama," he said hurriedly, "go across the mountain and assemble all who have agreed to paddle the canoe."

"What are you planning?" she asked suspiciously.

"To take West Wind for a trial, on the ocean. To see if the new stern works. Tell anyone who asks, that's what we're doing. But whisper to each man that he must also bring his best war club."

"No, Teroro!"

"Do you want us to creep away, unavenged?"

"Yes. There's no dishonor in that."

"Not for a woman, perhaps," Teroro said.

Marama considered what was involved, the possibility of death and the chance that Havaiki might send canoes in retaliation, thus ending escape to the north, but after she had considered for a long time she said, "Since men are what they are, Teroro, you ought not to go unavenged. May the gods protect you."

So, toward midafternoon two days before the intended departure for Nuku Hiva, and while a good wind blew from the west, promising a later storm of some dimensions, thirty determined paddlers, plus the steersman Hiro and the navigator Teroro, set forth from Bora Bora to test their canoe. It moved sedately across the light green waters of the kgoon and stoutly into the dark waters of the outer

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ocean, already whipped by the wind into sturdy waves. The canoe moved back and forth in speed tests, then hoisted sail and darted into a long leg down wind. When it had left the lee of the island Teroro asked, "Are we agreed?"