Hawaii

by James Michener

  "For us there is only one name," the old man insisted in a burst of rhetoric. "Havaiki of the manifold riches, Havaiki of the brave canoes, Havaiki of strong gods, and courageous men and beautiful women, Havaiki of the dreams that led us across the endless oceans, Havaiki that has lived in our hearts for forty and fifty and sixty generations. This is the island of Havaiki!”

  When he was finished, King Tamatoa, who had forgotten his own history, spoke solemnly: "This will be the island of Havaiki, and if you have evil memories of old Havaiki let it be remembered as Havaiki-of-Red-Oro, but our land is Havaiki-of-the-North." So the island was named Havaiki, the last successor in a mighty chain.

  It was only when Teroro, accompanied by Mato, Pa and three others, had sailed completely around Havaiki, requiring four days for the exploration, that the settlers appreciated what a magnificent island they had found. "There are two mountains, not one," Teroro explained, "and many cliffs, and birds of endless number. Rivers come down into the sea, and some of the bays are as inviting as Bora Bora's lagoon."

  But it was blunt Pa who summed up what they had learned: "It looked to us as if we had picked our cave on the worst land in Havaiki." Gloomily, Mato agreed; but King Tamatoa and his aunt and uncle looked at the newly planted crops and at the temple and said stubbornly, "This is where we have established our home"; but Mato and Pa thought: "If anything should happen, we know where the good land is."

  And then the forgotten one appeared. It was on a hot, dusty afternoon when Teroro had gone into the forest seeking birds, that he turned to avoid a tree and found a strange woman confronting him. She was handsome in figure, dressed in a fabric he had not seen before, and her hair, of a strange material that glistened in the sun, stood out like wild grass. She was of his race, yet she was not. With most mournful and condemning eyes she stared at Teroro until he felt his head swimming, but she did not speak. When, in unaccustomed fright, he started to run, she ran with him, and when he stopped, she stopped; but always when he paused, she stared at him in reproach. Finally, she departed in silence, whereupon Teroro regained some of his bravery and ran after her, but she had disappeared.

  When he returned to the settlement, he was shivering, but for some reason which he could not explain he did not confide his experience to anyone; but sleep did not come to him that night, for he could see the deep-set, fanatic eyes of the woman staring at him in the darkness, so that on the next morning he took Mato aside and said, "I have found some birds. Let's go into the woods," and the two young chiefs moved through the trees, and Mato asked, "Where are the birds?" And suddenly the gaunt, distracted woman stood before them.

  "Who is this?" Mato asked, astonished.

  "She came to me yesterday. I think she wants to speak."

  But the woman said nothing, content merely with admonishing the young men by her wild stare, so that Teroro said to his companion, "When we move, she will move with us." And certainly, when the warriors started walking under the trees, she walked with them, her garments disheveled and her strange hair glistening in the sun. Then, as they watched, she vanished.

  "Where did she go?" Mato cried.

  "Woman! Woman!" Teroro called, vainly.

  The two young men consulted as to whether they should advise the others, and it was finally decided that they should, so they went first to old, red-eyed Teura and said, "In the trees we met a strange woman with different hair . . ."

  Before they could finish, the old woman burst into a long wail, "Auwe, auwe! It is Pere! She has come to destroy us."

  The old woman's husband hurried in and she announced: "They have seen Pere, of the burning fire!" And when the king arrived at the commotion she warned him: "The forgotten one has come to punish us."

  "Auwe!" the king mourned, for he perhaps best of all understood the unforgivable error they had committed in abandoning a goddess who had warned them beforehand that she wished to accompany them, and he decided that the entire community must assemble at the temple to pray for respite from the goddess. But the prayer was not uttered, for at this moment the earth began to shake violently.

  In a manner unknown to the strangers, the red earth of Havaiki rose and fell, twisted and heaved, and cracks appeared through the heart of the settlement, and pigs squealed. "Oh, Pere!" the king cried in terror. "Spare us!" And his prayer must have had power, for the trembling stopped, and the horrified voyagers huddled together to decipher this mighty omen.

  They did not succeed, for a much greater was about to envelop them. From the mountain that reached high above their heads volumes of fire began to erupt, and rocks were thrown far into the air, Scattered ash fell back onto the earth and settled on the king's head and on the newly planted banana shoots. All day the fires continued, and into the night, so that the undersides of the clouds that hung over the islands shone red, as if even they were ablaze.

  It was a night of terror, fearful in its strangeness and paralyzing in its power. The settlers gathered at the shore and hovered near West Wind, thinking that if the land caught fire, they might escape in it, and when the eruptions grew worse, Tupuna insisted that the king and Natabu, at least, be sent out to the safety of the sea, and it was because of this foresight that the colony was saved, for Teroro dispatched Hiro and Pa with the canoe, and when it was a mile out to sea, lighted by the blazing mountain, a great ocean wave sped toward shore, and if the canoe had not already reached the sea, its appropriate element, the onrushing wave would have destroyed it.

  As it was, the water swept far inland, and tore down the temple and uprooted many of the crops. In its swirling return to the sea, it dragged with it one of the pigs, most of the bananas and old, red-eyed Teura. The goddess had warned her, but she had failed to interpret the dream correctly, so that when the turbulent sea reached far inland to grab her, twisting her this way and that, she was not afraid. Committing herself entirely to the gods, she whispered into the engulfing waves, "Great Ta'aroa, keeper of the sea, you have come for me and I am ready." As she was dragged across the reef, the green water rushing over her, she smiled and was relaxed, for she was certain that somewhere out beyond the coral she would encounter her personal god, Mano, the wild blue shark. "Mano!" she cried at last. "I am coming to talk with you!" And she was carried far from land.

  When dawn rose, accompanied by new explosions of ash and flame, King Tamatoa studied his stricken community, and he could explain the ravages, especially the fallen temple, only by the fact that no slaves had been planted alive at three of the corners, but Teroro would not tolerate such reasoning.

  "We are punished because we forgot our most ancient goddess, and because we built in the wrong place," he insisted.

  How wrong the place was would now be proved, for Mato came running with the news that up on the side of the mountain a creeping wall of fire was slowly descending toward the settlement. A dozen men went back into the trees and climbed toward where Mato had pointed, and they saw a fearful thing: above them, and marching over all obstacles on its way to the sea, came a relentless wall of fiery rock and molten lava, turning over and over upon itself, devouring trees and rocks and valleys. Its ugly snout, thirty feet high, was not ablaze and seemed dead, until it struck a dried tree, whereupon flames leaped mysteriously into the air. At intervals long tongues of molten rock spurted through the ominously creeping front and spread out like water. It was obvious that crawling monster must soon devour the entire community.

  "It will be upon us by tomorrow," the men calculated.

  When he was satisfied with the news, King Tamatoa reacted without fear, for his brother's bold words had strengthened him. He commanded: "We will first pray for the old woman Teura," and he blessed her to the gods. When this was finished he said calmly, "All planted things will be dug up immediately and wrapped carefully, even if you must use your own clothes." Then he showed the slaves bow to load the canoe, and when, at a distance of less than three miles, the molten lava began pouring over a low cliff, like a flaming waterfall, he, studied it for a long ti
me. Then he said, "We will stay ashore tonight and get all things ready. In the morning we will leave this place. Pa says he has found a promising land to the west."

  Through the night the settlers worked, seeing one another in the dim flares of the volcano, and when dawn came they were ready to go. They had recovered much of their seed, and had saved their gods, their pigs and their canoe. With these they escaped, but when they were safe at sea, they saw the vast, fiery front of the lava break through onto their plateau, where it ate its way impersonally across all things. The temple site was burned away in a flash; the fields where crops had rested were gone; the taro patch was filled with fire; and the cave disappeared behind a wall of flame. From the plateau, the cascade of fire found a valley leading down into the sea, and after building its strength aloft, it plunged down this avenue and poured into the ocean. When it struck the water it hissed and groaned: it threw columns of steam into the air and exploded the waves; it sent noisy reports of its triumph and filled the sky with ash; and then, conquered by the patient and accommodating ocean, it fell silently into dark caverns, as it had been doing here for the past thirty million years.

  The men of Havaiki, seeing for the first time the incredible fury of which their new land was capable, sat awestruck in their canoe and watched for a long time the cataclysm that had destroyed their home; but a gust of wind, stronger than the rest, carried down from the crest of the volcano a wisp of hair, spun by the breezes from the molten lava, and Teroro caught the hair and held it aloft, where the sun played on it, and he saw that it was the hair which the strange woman in the forest had worn, and he announced: "It was the goddess Pere. She came not to frighten us but to warn us. We did not understand."

  His words gave the people in the canoe great hope, for if the goddess had thought enough of her erring people to warn them, she must retain some love for them; and all was not lost. This hair of Pere was given to the king as an omen, and he placed it upon the neck of the only remaining bred sow, because if this animal did not live and deliver her litter it would be as bad an omen as the volcano.

  In this manner, but bearing only half the cargo with which they had arrived, and a bred sow clothed in Pere's hair, the voyagers started for a new home; and Pa and Mato had chosen wisely, for they led their companions around the southern tip of the island and up the western coast until they found fine land, with soil that could be tilled, and water, and it was here that the settlement of Havaiki began in earnest, with new fields and a new temple built without sacrifices. When the sow threw her litter, the king himself watched over the young pigs, and when the largest and strongest reached a size at which he could have been eaten--and mouths had begun to water for the taste of roast pig--the king and old Tupuna carried the pig reverently to the new temple and sacrificed it to Tane. From then on the community prospered.

  WHEN THE SETTLEMENT was established, Tupuna took the steps which were to give it the characteristics which marked it permanently. He said one day to the king, "Soon I shall follow Teura, but before I go upon the rainbow, we ought to protect the life of our people. It is not good that men roam freely everywhere, and live without restraint."

  “For a few months, pernaps,” tne priest argued. "Just as the years pass, unless a community has fixed laws, and patterns which bind people into their appointed place, life is no good."

  "But this is a new land," Teroro reasoned.

  "It is in a new land that customs are most necessary," the priest warned, and the king supported him, and out of their discussions the tabus were established.

  "Each man lives between an upper, which gives mana, and a lower, which drains mana from him," Tupuna explained in words that would never be forgotten. "Therefore a man must plead with the upper to send him mana and must protect himself from the lower, which steals mana from him. That is why no man should permit a slave to touch him, or to pass upon his shadow, or to see his food, for a slave can drain away a man's entire mana in an instant, for a slave has no mana.

  "The way for a man to obtain mana is to obey his king, for it is the king alone who can bring us mana directly from the gods. Therefore no man may touch tie king, or the garment of the king, or the shadow of the king, or in any way steal his mana. To break this tabu is death." Tupuna then enumerated more than five dozen additional tabus which protected the king in his suspension between the upper gods and the lower men: his spittle may not be touched; his excrement must be buried at night in a secret place; his food must be prepared only by chiefs; his reservoir of mana must be protected; he is tabu, he is tabu.

  Men with mana required protection from defilement by women, who usually had none. Since men were of the light, and women of darkness; since men were outgoing and strong, and women intaking and weak; since men were clean and women impure; since it was nightly proved that even the strongest man could be slyly drained of his power by a clever woman, dreadful tabus were set about the latter. They must never eat with men, nor see men eating, nor touch food intended for men, on pain of death. Each month they must spend the moon-days locked up in a tiny room, on pain of death. They must eat none of the good foods required to keep men strong: no pig, no sweet fish, no coconuts, on pain of death. "And since the banana has obviously been created by the gods to represent man's fertility," Tupuna wailed, "no woman may even touch a banana, on pain of instant strangulation."

  The days of the moon, the turning of the season and the planting of crops were all placed under tabu. So were laughing at improper moments, certain sex habits, the eating of certain fish and the ridicule of either gods or nobles. Tabu was the temple, tabu were the rock-gods, tabu was the hair of Pere, tabu was the growing coconut tree. At some seasons, even the ocean itself was tabu, on pain of death.

  In this manner, and with the approval of the people, who wanted to be organized within established levels, the tabus were promulgated and patterns were developed whereby each man would know his level and none would transgress. What had been a free volcanic island, explosive with force, now became a rigidly determined island, and all men liked it better, for the unknown was made known.

  It is not quite true to say that all men were content. One was not. Teroro, as the king's younger brother, was the logical man to become priest when old Tupuna died. He had inherited great sanctity and was growing into an able if not a clever man; there was no greater astronomer than he, and it was tacitly understood that he would in time become guardian of the tabus.

  But he was far from the dedication required for this exacting job. Instead of the equanimity that marked the king, Teroro was torn with uncertainties, and they centered upon women. Day after day, when he wandered in the woods, he would come upon Pere, her shining hair disheveled and her eyes deep-sunk. She said nothing, but walked with him as a woman walks with a man she loves. Often, after her appearance, the volcano would erupt, but what lava flows there were, went down the other side of the mountain and did not endanger the growing settlement, where many pigs roamed, and chickens, and sweet, succulent dogs; for Tamatoa and Natabu had done their work well and had produced a son.

  Only Teroro did not prosper; often he would turn the corner of a well-known footpath, and there would be silent Pere, hurt, condemnatory and yet speaking her love for her troubled young chief. Always, in the background of his mind, there was Pere.

  Yet his real agony concerned not a shadowy goddess, but a substantial woman, and this was Marama, his wife whom he had abandoned in Bora Bora. He thought: "How wise of her to speak as she did on that last day!" For he could hear her voice as clear as it had been a year ago: "I am the canoe!" It seemed to him almost godlike wisdom on Marama's part to have used that idiom; for she was the canoe. Her placid face and sweet wisdom had been the continuing thread of his life; over all the waves and through the storms she had indeed been the canoe. And for the first time, here on remote Havaiki, Teroro began to understand how desperately a man can remember a strong, placid, wise woman whom he had known before. She was the symbol of earth, the movement of waves, the so
ng at night. Hers was the weight that rested in memory; her words were recalled. He could see the movement of her skirts, and the way she wore her hair; once on Bora Bora when he had been sick she had washed his fever and he could recall her cool hands.

  In consternation he remembered that on the canoe young Tehani had done the same; but it was different. He had never known with older Marama one fifth of the sexual excitement he had experienced with Tehani; and yet his mind was tormented by his wife. He would see her at night when he returned from his silent walks with Pere. In his dreams he would hear Marama speak. And whenever he saw Wait-for-the-West-Wind, that perfect canoe, he would see Marama, for she had said, "I am the canoe!" And she was.

  It was in this mood that one morning he dashed from his thatched hut where Tehani slept and ran to Mato, at the fishing grounds. Grabbing the surprised chief by the hand he dragged him to the hut, and jerked Tehani to her feet. "She is your woman, Mato," he shouted with unnecessary force.

  "Teroro!" the young girl cried.

  "You are no longer my woman!" Teroro shouted. "I watched you on the canoe. Mato never took his eyes from you. All right, Mato, now she is yours." And he stalked from the scene.