Hawaii Page 4

  "I suppose he was preparing for the convocation."

  "No. That must have been decided many days earlier. To permit canoes from Tahiti and Moorea to return to Havaiki by tomorrow. Last year a woman from Havaiki confided to me that the priests there consider our High Priest the ablest of all, and they plan to promote him to some position of prominence."

  "I wish they would," Teroro grumbled. "Get him off this island."

  "But they wouldn't dare make him paramount priest so long as his own island is not completely won over."

  As Marama talked, her husband began to pick up a thread of importance, which often occurred when the wise moon-faced woman spoke, and he leaned forward on the log to listen. She continued: "It seems to me that the High Priest will have to do everything possible in this convocation to prove to the priests of Havaiki that he is more devoted to Oro than they."

  "In order to make himself eligible for promotion?" Teroro asked.

  "He must."

  "What do you think he will do?" Teroro asked.

  Marama hesitated to utter the words, and at that moment an unexpected wind blew across the lagoon and threw small waves at her feet. She drew her toes from the lagoon and dried them with her hands, still not speaking, so Teroro continued her thought: "You think that to impress others, the High Priest will sacrifice the king?"

  "No," Marama corrected. "It is your feet he will place upon the rainbow."

  Teroro reached up and tugged at the tip of a breadfruit leaf and asked thoughtfully, "Will the killing then stop?"

  "No," his wife replied gravely, "it will go on until all your friends have left the lagoon. Only then will Bora Bora be safe for Oro."

  "Men like Mato and Pa?"

  "They are doomed," Marama said.

  "But you think not the king?"

  "No, the queenly young woman reasoned. "Your brother is well loved by the kings of Tahiti and Moorea, and such a bold step might turn not only those kings but people in general against the new god."

  "But offering me to Oro would be permitted?" Teroro pursued.

  "Yes. Kings are always willing to believe the worst of younger brothers."

  Teroro turned on the log to study his beautiful wife and thought to himself: "I don't appreciate her good sense. She's a lot like her father." Aloud he said, "I hadn't reasoned it out the way you have, Marama. All I knew was that this time there was special danger."

  "It is because you, the brother of the king, still worship Tane,"

  "Only in my heart do I do that."

  "But if I can read your heart," Marama said, "so can the priests."

  Teroro's comment on this was forestalled by an agitated messenger, his arm banded by a circle of yellow feathers to indicate that he belonged to the king. "We have been looking for you," he told Teroro. "I've been studying the canoe," the young chief growled. "The king wants you."

  Teroro rose from the log, banged his feet on the grass to knock away the water, and nodded an impersonal farewell to his wife. Following the messenger, he reported to the palace, a large, low building held up by coconut-tree pillars, each carved with figures of gods and highly polished so that white flecks in the wood gleamed. The roof consisted of plaited palm fronds, and there were no floors or windows or side walls, just rolled-up lengths of matting which could be dropped for either secrecy or protection from rain. The principal room contained many signs of royalty: feather gods, carved shark's teeth, and huge Tridacna shells from the south. The building had two beautiful features: it overlooked the lagoon, on whose outer reef high clouds of spray broke constantly; and all parts of the structure were held together by thin, strong strands of golden brown sennit, the marvelous island rope woven from fibers that filled the husks of coconuts. Nearly two miles of it had been used in construction; wherever one piece of timber touched another, pliant golden sennit held the parts together. A man could sit in a room tied with sennit and revel in its intricate patterns the way a navigator studies stars at night or a child tirelessly watches waves on sand.

  Beneath the sennit-tied roof sat King Tamatoa, his big broad face deeply perturbed. "Why has a convocation been called?" he asked peremptorily. Then, as if fearing the answer, he quickly dismissed all who might be spies. Drawing closer on the tightly woven mat that formed the floor, he placed his two hands on his knees and asked, "What does it mean?"

  Teroro, who did not see things quickly himself, was not above reciting his wife's analyses as his own, and now explained, "It looks to me as if our High Priest must be seeking promotion to the temple in Havaiki, but in order to be eligible he has to do something dramatic." He paused ominously.

  "Like what?" the king asked.

  "Like eliminating the last signs of Tane worship in Bora Bora. Like sacrificing you ... at the height of the convocation."

  "I'm fearful of just such a plot," Tamatoa confessed. "If he waits till we're in convocation, he could suddenly point at me the way they pointed at our father, and . . ." The troubled king made a slashing swipe at his brother's head, adding dolefully, And my murder would be sanctified because Oro had ordained it."

  "More likely the High Priest," Teroro corrected.

  Tamatoa hesitated, as if probing his younger brother's mind, and then added petulantly, "And my death would go unavenged."

  Self-pity was so alien to Tamatoa, whose warlike capacities and prudent leadership had kept little Bora Bora free from invasion by its larger neighbors, that Teroro suspected his brother of laying some kind of trap, so the younger man fought down his inclination to confess his own plans for the convocation and observed idly, "The canoe will be launched at noon."

  "Will it be ready by sunset?" the king asked.

  "It will, but I hope you won't be on it."

  "I am determined to go to this convocation," Tamatoa replied.

  "Only evil can befall you," Teroro insisted.

  The king rose from his mats and walked disconsolately to the palace entrance, from which he could see the majestic cliffs of Bora Bora and the sun-swept lagoon. "On this island," he said with deep emotion, "I grew in joy. I have always walked in the shadow of those cliffs, and with those waves clutching at my ankles. I've seen the other islands, and the bays of Moorea are lovely. The crown at Tahiti is good to see, and the long beaches of Havaiki. But our island is man's heaven on earth. If I must be sacrificed to bring this island into harmony with new gods, then I will be sacrificed."

  The images evoked by Tamatoa's memories of the Bora Bora of their youth accomplished what his guile had been unable to do, and Teroro cried, "Brother, do not go to Havaiki!"

  "Why not?" Tamatoa asked, flashing around and moving back to the mats.

  "Because your departure to the gods will not save Bora Bora." "Why not?" Tamatoa demanded, thrusting his face close to Teroro's.

  "Because when the club falls, I shall kill the High Priest. I will rage through all Havaiki and destroy it. Then the other islands will destroy us.

  "As I thought!” the king cried sharply. "You have a plan to riot. Oh, Teroro, it will accomplish nothing. You cannot go to the convocation."

  "I will be there," Teroro muttered stubbornly. The king stood grave in the morning shadows and pointed his right forefinger at Teroro. "I forbid you to leave Bora Bora."

  At this moment the warrior-king Tamatoa, burly and serious-faced, was a symbol of overpowering authority to his younger brother, and the projecting finger almost made Teroro tremble; for although he wanted to grasp his brother by that finger, and then by his hand, and finally by his strong arm and thus pull him down onto the mats for an honest conversation, the young chief could never have brought himself to touch the king, because he knew that the king was the instrumentality whereby the gods delivered mana--the spiritual sanctification of the heavens--to Bora Bora, and even to touch a king or pass upon his shadow was to drain away some of that mana and thus imperil not only the king but the entire society.

  Yet Teroro's desire for words with his brother was so great that he prostrated himself on
the matting, crept on his belly to him, and pressed his face close to the king's feet, whispering, "Sit with me, brother, and let us talk." And while the flies droned in morning heat, the two men talked.

  They were a handsome pair, separated in age by six years, for a sister had been born between, and each was aware of the special bond that linked him to the other, for as boys their wrists had been opened one solemn day, and each had drunk the blood of the other. Their father, dead as a sacrifice to Oro, had named his first son Tamatoa, the Warrior; and then when a younger brother was born the family had reasoned: "How fortunate! When Tamatoa becomes king he will have his brother to serve him as high priest." And the younger child had been named Teroro, the Brain--the intelligent one, the man who can divine complex things quickly. But so far he had not proved his name to be appropriate.

  Tamatoa, of course, had developed into a classical island warrior, rugged, big-boned and grave. Like his dedicated ancestors he had defended Bora Bora against all cabals and concentrations. Six times in his reign of nine years he had been called to beat back invaders from powerful Havaiki, so that the sudden supremacy of that island's new god, Oro, was especially galling; the ancient enemy seemed about to conquer by guile what it had never been able to take by force. Teroro, on the other hand, had not lived up to his name, and showed no signs of becoming a priest. Tall and wiry, with a handsome thin face, he loved brawling, had an impetuous temper and was slow to grasp abstract ideas. But his greatest failing was that he could not memorize genealogies or sacred chants. His love was navigation and the challenge of unknown seas. Already he had driven his canoe to distant Nuku Hiva, while a run down to Tahiti was familiar play.

  "I am afraid it is for you the gods will send the rainbow," Tamatoa whispered.

  "We have stood against them in the past, we can do so again."

  "In the past they had canoes and spears. Now they have plans and plots. I don't feel hopeful."

  "Are you afraid?" Teroro asked bluntly.

  "Yes," the king confessed. "New ideas are afoot, and I can't seem to grasp them. How has the High Priest succeeded in manipulating our people so successfully?"

  "New gods are popular, I suppose," Teroro hazarded. "When our people see many sacrifices they know the gods listen. It makes the island seem safer."

  The king studied his brother for a moment, then asked cautiously, "Would it not be possible for you to accept their new god?"

  "Impossible," Teroro said flatly. "I was born with the blessing of Tane. My father died defending Tane, and his father before him. I will never consider another god."

  The king breathed deeply and said, "Those are my thoughts, too. But I am afraid the High Priest will destroy us, Teroro."

  "How can he?" the impetuous young warrior demanded.

  "By tricks, by plans, by clever ideas."

  "I'll trick him!” Teroro cried in frustration. Slashing his hand across his knee he muttered, "I'll trick his head into a mass of coconut jelly."

  "That's why you mustn't attend this convocation," Tamatoa said. Teroro stood humbly before the king, yet spoke stubbornly: "Beloved brother, that is why I must go." Then, rising, he moved about the palace mats and said prophetically, "The High Priest will not destroy us. If we go down, he goes down with us. The whole island goes down. Brother, I swore to our father that I would protect you. I'm going to the convocation, to protect you. But I will give you my promise not to riot unless they strike you."

  "They won't strike me, Teroro. They'll strike you."

  "They had better strike with the speed of a hungry shark," Teroro laughed, and with this he walked out into the glorious high noon of Bora Bora, when the sun blazed overhead and filtered through palm fronds and breadfruit leaves, making soft patterns in the dust. Naked children called back and forth in their games, and fishermen hauled their canoes onto the beach. The soporific haze of noon, compounded of sunlight and dust was upon the island, and all things were beautiful. How restful this moment was, when the sun hung for a moment in midheaven, casting no shadows; flies droned and old women slept. Through the beautiful and dusty heat Teroro moved slowly to where the great ceremonial canoe of Bora Bora rested, and as he went he called, "Into the water! Into the water!"

  From various grass houses along the lagoon, men appeared, drowsily wrapping themselves in tapa and swallowing the last bits of coconut. "Send for the priests to bless our canoe," Teroro called, and soon four holy men arrived, pleasure on their faces, for among all the functions of this island, there was nothing that exceeded in common joy the returning of the ceremonial canoe to its natural element. Palm fronds that had enclosed the seaward end of the long shed were taken down, and the twin hulls of the immense canoe were edged carefully toward the water. Then a rare old priest named Tupuna, his long white hair piled on his head and stuck with skewers, separated his beard, and with his eyes on the lagoon and on the open sea beyond, cried:

  "Ta'aroa, god of the dark and sweeping sea,

  Ta'aroa, master of tempest and gentle calm,

  Ta'aroa, protector of men with vision of the reef,

  Ta'aroa, take Wair-for-the-West-Wind to thy bosom,

  Take it to Havaiki and to Moorea and to Nuku Hiva,

  To the Black Shining Road of Ta'aroa,

  To the Black Shining Road of Tane,

  To the Road of the Spider,

  To the Much-traveled Road of Ta'aroa.

  God of the dark and sweeping sea,

  Accept as thy gift, this canoe."

  In silence and in spiritual exaltation, Teroro pulled away the last prop that bound his glorious canoe to land, and slowly it began to taste the lagoon, to dip its high-tiered stern into the gentle waves, and finally to ride upon the bosom of Ta'aroa, which was its home.

  The young chiefs who would paddle the canoe that night now leaped into the two hulls and adjusted the movable seats that slid back and forth along the dugout sections. Teroro, grabbing his personal god-carved paddle, gave the canoe a mighty shove that sent it far into the lagoon, with him trailing his feet aft in the green waters. "Hoist sail!” he cried. "We'll test the wind." And when a noonday breeze dropped down from the cliff, it caught the sail and began to move the great double-hulled canoe, and men paddled briskly, and soon with lightning speed Wait-for-the-West-Wind hurtled across its home lagoon.

  It flew like a special albatross, just dipping into the waves. It went like the wind-caught leaf of a breadfruit tree, skimming the waters. It went like a young woman hurrying to meet her lover, like the essence of the god Ta'aroa majestically inspecting the ramparts of his ocean. It sped like the spirit of a warrior killed in battle, on its swift journey to the everlasting halls of Tane. And it flashed across the lagoon like what it was: a miraculous, slim, double-hulled craft of Bora Bora, the swiftest ship the world at that time had ever known, capable of doing thirty knots in bursts, ten knots for days at a time, hour after hour; a huge, massive craft seventy-nine feet long, with a tiered stern twenty-two feet high and a solid platform slung across the hulls on which forty men or the statues of forty gods could ride, with pigs and pandanus and water stowed safely in the hidden innards.

  "Wait for the west wind," the men who built the canoe had advised, "for it blows strong and sure from the heart of the hurricane." The north wind cannot be depended upon, and the east wind is no treasure, for it blows constantly, and the south wind brings nothing but irritating minor storms, never those that shake the earth, not storms that last for weeks at a time and which can be counted upon to drive a canoe to the farthest points of earth. Wait for the west wind! It blows from the heart of the hurricane. It is a wind to match this great canoe.

  On this day, it was an ordinary eastern wind. Some of the world's sailors might even have counted it a considerable breeze, but to Bora Borans who longed for the westerly gale that could carry them even to distant Nuku Hiva, the day's wind was really nothing. But it did bear a hint of invitation, and so on the spur of the moment Teroro cried, "Through the reef!"

  Wait-for-the
-West-Wind was already doing better than fifteen knots, and a prudent navigator usually took his craft through this perilous reef at slowest speed, but on this sun-swept day Teroro shot his precious craft directly at the small opening that marked the dividing line between the placid green waters of the lagoon and the thundering blue ocean which pounded outside.

  The canoe seemed to anticipate the impending crash of giant waves, for it tensed in the wind, cut a little deeper into the lagoon, and leaped toward the passageway through the reef. For an instant the crew could glimpse cruel fingers of gray coral clutching at the defiant craft, but this danger was quickly forgotten, for ahead loomed the towering waves.

  With a song crying from its sail, with vigor to match that of the young chiefs who manned it, the swift canoe shot into the combers, lost its nose in a great gray-blue wave, then rose triumphantly onto the crest and sped away into the very center of the wind and the rousing waves and vast blue sea of Ta'aroa.

  "What a canoe" Teroro exulted, the spray whipping his black hair about his face.

  It was with special exhilaration that the thirty paddlers tasted the last moments of freedom with which Teroro had provided them, for each man knew that at nightfall he would embark upon a different journey: solemn, joyless, with the constant threat of death impending. In their imagination they could see the altar where the blood would be. They could visualize the dreadful sacrificial clubs. But worse, each man knew positively that when Wait-for-the-West-Wind touched Havaiki's shore at dawn tomorrow one of today's crew would be struck down forever.

  So in the day's bright sunlight, with spume about them and the sound of sea birds, they experienced momentary joy as they drove their swift canoe, champion of the islands, with the assurance that only competent men ever know. To their wishes, the canoe responded; to their efforts it leaped forward; and now as they turned it in the free and joyous ocean, it responded as they willed, exactly to the inch as they intended, and found once more the opening through the reef, and came at last to shore. How competently these island men had built and mastered their canoe; how securely it obeyed their will.