Hawaii (19 page)

King Tamatoa felt a sick quaking near his heart and asked, "What goddess?" for he knew that if a goddess felt insulted, there was no restriction on the steps she might take in exacting revenge; her capacity was limitless.

"It is the voice of Pere, the ancient goddess of Bora Bora," the old woman replied. "Tell me, nephew, when your wandering stars were searching the heavens, were they not attended by specks of fire?"

The king tried to recall his haunting premonitory dream and was

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able, with extraordinary clarity, to conjure it, and he agreed: "There were specks of fire. Among the northern stars."

They summoned Tupuna and told him the burden of his wife's dream, and he acknowledged that it must have been the goddess Pere who had wanted to come on the voyage, whereupon his nephew asked, "But who is Pere?"

"In ancient days on Bora Bora," the old man explained as the thin-horned curve of the dying moon rose in the east, "our island had mountains that smoked, and Pere was the goddess of flame who directed our lives. But the flame died away and we supposed that Pere had left us, and we no longer worshiped the red-colored rock that stood in the temple."

"I had forgotten Pere," Teura confessed. "Otherwise I would have recognized her voice. But tonight, seeing the smoking mountain, I remembered."

"And she is angry with us?" the king asked.

"Yes," Teura replied. "But Tane and Ta'aroa are with us, and they will protect us."

The old seers went back to their places, and the king was left alone, in the shadow of his new land now barely visible in the misty moonlight. He was disturbed that a man could take so much care to satisfy the gods, and that he could nevertheless fail. He could study the omens, bend his will to them, and live only at the gods' commands; but always some small thing intruded; an old woman fails to recognize the voice of a goddess and disaster impinges upon an entire venture. He knew the rock of Pere; it had been retained in the temple for no known reason, both its name and its properties forgotten; it was no longer even dressed in feathers. It would have been so simple to have brought that rock, but the facts had eluded him and now he felt at the mercy of a revengeful goddess who had been deeply insulted, the more so because she had taken the trouble to warn him. He beat his hands against the poles of the grass hut and cried, *Why can we never do anything right?"

If the king was perplexed by his arrival at the new land, there were other passengers who were terrified. In the rear of the left hull, the slaves huddled in darkness, whispering. The four men were telling the two women that they had loved them and that they hoped the women were pregnant and that they would bear children, even though those children would be slaves. They recalled the few good days they had known on Bora Bora, the memorable days when they had chanced upon one of the king's stray pigs and had eaten it surreptitiously, for to have done so openly would have meant immediate death, or the days when the high nobles were absent from the island and they had been free to breathe. In the fading darkness of the night, for a day of great terror was about to dawn, they whispered of love, of human affection and of lost hopes; for the four men knew that when the canoe landed, a temple would be built, and when the four corner post holes had been dug, deep and sound, one of them would be buried alive in each, so that his spirit would forever hold

the temple securely aloft, and the doomed men could already feel the taste of earth in their nostrils; they could feel the pressure of the sacred post upon their vitals; and they knew death.

Their two women, soon to be abandoned, could taste worse punishment, for they had come to love these four men; they knew how gentle they were, how kind to children and how alert to the world's beauty. Soon, for no ascertainable reason, the men would be sacrificed, and then the women would live on the edge of their community, and if they were already pregnant, and if their children were sons, they would be thrown under the prows of canoes to bless the wood and to be torn in shreds by it. Then when they were not pregnant, on strange nights men of the crew, their faces masked, would rudely force their way into the slave compartments, lie with the women, and go away, for if it were known that a chief had had contact with a slave woman, he would be punished; but all had such contact. And when the children of these unions were born, they would be slaves; and if they grew to manhood, they would be ripped to pieces under canoes or hung about the altars of gods; and if they grew to comely womanhood, they would be ravished at night by men they never knew. And the cycle would go on through all eternity, for they were slaves.

In the early light of morning it became apparent that the smoking mountain and its supporting island lay much farther away than had at first been supposed, and a final day of hunger and work faced the paddlers; but the visible presence of their goal spurred the famished men so that by nightfall it was certain that next morning the long voyage would end. Through the last soft tropical night, with the luminous mountain ahead, the crew of the West Wind followed their rhythmic, steady beat.

As they approached the end of a trek nearly five thousand miles long, it is appropriate to compare what they had accomplished with what voyagers in other parts of the world were doing. In the Mediterranean, descendants of once-proud Phoenicians, who even in their moments of glory had rarely ventured out of sight of land, now coasted along established shores and occasionally, with what was counted bravery, actually cut across the trivial sea in voyages covering perhaps two hundred miles. In Portugal men were beginning to accumulate substantial bodies of information about the ocean, but to probe it they were not yet ready, and it would be six hundred more years before even near-at-hand islands like Madeira and the Azores would be found. Ships had coasted the shores of Africa, but it was known that crossing the equator and thus losing sight of the North Star meant boiling death, or falling off the edge of the world, or both.

On the other side of the earth, Chinese junks had coasted Asia and in the southern oceans had moved from one visible island to the next, terming the act heroism. From Arabia and India, merchants had undertaken considerable voyages, but never very far from estab—

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lished coasts, while in the undiscovered continents to the west of Europe, no men left the land.

Only in the north of Europe did the Vikings display enterprise even remotely comparable to that of the men of Bora Bora; but even they had not yet begun their long voyages, though they had at their disposal metals, large ships, woven sails, books and maps.

It was left to the men of the Pacific, men like cautious Tamatoa and energetic Teroro, to meet an ocean on its own terms and to conquer it. Lacking both metals and maps, sailing with only the stars and a few lengths of sennit, some dried taro and positive faith in their gods, these men accomplished miracles. It would be another seven centuries before an Italian navigator, sailing under the flag of Spain and fortified by all the appurtenances of an advanced community, would dare, in three large and commodious ships well nailed together, to set forth upon a voyage not quite so far and only half as dangerous.

At dawn Teroro brought his canoe close to land at the southeastern shore of the vast volcanic island that rose from the southeast end of the rupture in the ocean floor. When the shoreline became visible, the voyagers had many thoughts. Teroro reflected in some disappointment: "It's all rocks. Where are the coconuts? Where's the water?" Mate, who paddled in the hull nearest the land, thought: "No breadfruit." But King Tamatoa mused: "It is the land Tane brought us to. It must be good."

Only Tupuna appreciated the profound problems which the next few hours would bring. In trembling apprehension he thought: "The children of my brothers are about to step upon new land. Everything depends on the next minutes, for this island is obviously filled with strange gods, and we must do nothing to offend them. But will I be able to placate them all?"

So he moved with agitation about the canoe, endeavoring to arrange things so that the unknown gods would be offended as little as possible. "Don't pick up a single stone," he warned. "Don't break a branch or eat a shellfish." Then he went to the gods' house and called Pa to his side, handing him a square of flat stone. "You will follow me," he said, "because you are extremely brave." He adjusted the king's feather cape, handed Teroro a spear, and lifted into his own shaking hands the two gods, Tane and Ta'aroa.

"Now!" he cried, and the canoe touched knd.

First to disembark was Tamatoa, and as soon as he had made one footprint in the sand, he stopped, kneeled down, and took that earth into his hands, bringing it to his lips, where he kissed it many times. "This is the land," he chanted gravely. "This is a man's home. This is good land to settle upon, a good land on which to have children. Here we shall bring our ancestors. Here we bring our gods."

Behind him, in the prow of the canoe, stood Tupuna, his face upraised. "Tane, we thank you for the safe voyage," he whispered. Then, in penetrating voice, he called, "You unknown gods! You

brave and gentle pods who hold this island! You fine and generous gods of the smoking mountain! You forty gods, you forty thousand gods, you forty million godsl Allow us to land. Allow us to share your treasures, and we will honor you." He was about to step ashore with his own gods, but the idea of invading a new land was too overpowering, so he shouted once more, "Terrible, all-seeing gods, may I please land?"

He stepped upon the land, expecting some awful omen, but none came and he told Pa, "You may bring the rock of Bora Bora onto its new home," and the shark-faced warrior leaped ashore with the only lasting memorial of home: a square of rock. When he stood beside the King, Tupuna cried, "Now you, Teroro, with your spear."

But when it came time for Teroro to leave the canoe, he did not worry about new gods. He placed his two hands on the prow of Wait-for-the-West-Wind and whispered, as gently as if he were speaking to Marama, "Beautiful, lovely ship. Forgive me for cutting away your glory. You are the queen of the ocean." And he leaped ashore to guard his brother in the next fateful moments.

Tupuna left three warriors at the canoe to guard it, while the others strung out in line and formed the solemn procession that would invade the island. At the head of his nervous column marched Tupuna, and whenever he came to a large rock, he begged the god of that rock to let him pass. When he came to a grove of trees he cried, "God of these trees, we-come in friendship."

They had gone only a short distance inland when a passing cloud dropped misty rain upon them, and Tupuna shouted, "We are received! The gods bless us. Quick! See where the rainbow ends!"

It was Pa, holding the stone of Bora Bora, who saw the arc come to earth, and Tupuna cried, "There will be our temple!" And he hurried to the spot, crying, "Any evil that is here, Tane, push it aside, for this is to be your temple!"

The foot of the rainbow had fallen on an inviting plateau overlooking the ocean, and Tamatoa said, "This is a good omen indeed." Then he and his white-bearded uncle began their search for a high male rock, for both knew that the earth itself was female, and therefore polluted, but that solid rocks of impermeable stone were male, and therefore uncontaminated, and after a long search he found a large protrusion of male rock coming erect out of fine reddish soil, and when Tupuna saw it he said, "A perfect site for an altar."

So Pa placed upon this male rock his slab of Bora Bora stone, and with this symbolic action the new island was occupied, for upon the flat stone Tupuna reverently placed the fine old gods Tane and Ta'aroa. Then he climbed back to the sea with a coconut cup which he filled with water, and this he sprinkled over the temple area, over the gods, and over every human being who had come in the canoe, flicking it into their faces with the long finger of his right hand. "Now let us purify ourselves," he said, leading every living thing into the ocean: king, warrior, pig, chicken and breadfruit bundle. In the cool sea the voyagers replenished themselves and a canny

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woman cried, as soon as the job was done, "Do you know what I stood on? Hundreds of shellfish!" And all who were purified fell back into waves and began routing out succulent shellfish. Prying the sweet snails loose, they popped them into their mouths and grinned.

When they were satiated, Tupuna announced, "Now we must design the temple," and the slaves began to tremble. The old man led everyone back to the plateau, and while they watched, he and Tamatoa laid out the four sacred comers of the temple, and large piles of rock were collected about deep holes which the farmers dug.

The king signaled his warriors to bury the four quaking skves, but Teroro prevented the sacrifice. Placing himself before the skves, he pleaded: "Brother, let us not launch our new island by more killing."

Tamatoa, astonished, explained: "But the temple must be upheld!"

"Tane doesn't require that!" Teroro argued.

"But we have always done so."

"Isn't that why we left Havaiki and red Oro?"

"But that was Oro," the king rationalized. "This is Tane."

"Brother! I beg you! Don't start this killing!" Then, remembering how his best men had been sacrificed, he pleaded: "Ask the men!"

But this was not a question on which Tamatoa could take a vote. It concerned his relationship to the gods; perhaps the entire fortune of the voyage depended on these next few minutes. "Your words are ill timed," he said stubbornly.

Tupuna supported him, grumbling petulantly, "From the beginning of time, temples have been held up by men."

'%ury the slaves!" Tamatoa ordered.

But again Teroro spread his arms before them and cried, "Brother, don't do this thing!" Then an idea came to him and he pleaded, "If we must sacrifice to Tane, let us sacrifice the male pig."

For a moment the idea was appealing; all knew that Tane loved pig sacrifices more than any other. But Tupuna killed the suggestion. We must keep the boar to breed more pigs," he said flatly, and all agreed.