“This is our oldest island, very spiritual. You can feel the mana everywhere. The coral layers tell the history of millions of years. At eighty-five feet down, you’re in the time of Christ. At one hundred and eighty feet, the age of the Pyramids.”
She showed him a bay filled with magical swarms of thimble jellies, and millions of lobster larvae like spun glass.
Max looked down in wonder. “Our predecessors. Which proves we’re just little bags of atoms at the mercy of chance.”
“Darwin. And you don’t believe that.”
He laughed. “Right now I do. Tomorrow I might quote Jesus, the Upanishads. My die is cast, my deck is shuffled and dealt. I’m game to believe in anything.”
Beneath his humor she heard the subtext of a man who knew he was beginning to die. Some days she drove for hours, and while she talked, Max felt his senses rush out to the landscape of his new, his last, life. He began to let go of other things, even his personal history. Sometimes they drove in silences that lasted so long, when Ana spoke she hardly recognized her voice. She sounded almost formal, using the landscape to camouflage her sorrow.
“Folks say this is our most beautiful island. Here is one of the world’s great annual rainfalls high up on Mt. Wai‘ale‘ale.”
“Which means?”
“A Rippling on the Water. Because of the pond up there on the plateau of that peak. Also Wai‘ale‘ale was the wife of the god Kaua‘i.”
She pointed to a peak five thousand feet above them, where clouds hovered over the mountain. “The wettest spot on earth. Five hundred inches of rain a year.”
It was the constant source of moisture plus rich soil that produced the lush vegetation of Kaua‘i and gave it the name Flower Isle. In all directions, miles of vegetation and wildflowers imparted a lovely grace and physical softness to the land.
“How could you ever leave these islands?” he asked.
“That’s something outsiders never understand. Life is very hard here. It takes more courage to stay.”
They drove to the rim of Waimea Canyon, a natural spectacle, where miles of deep gorges cut in red earth were washed by cascading waterfalls. Eroded by the runoff of rainfall from Mt. Wai‘ale‘ale, the canyon plunged three thousand feet in sections, its valleys dramatically serrated as if sliced out with giant blades. Covered in green scrub, the series of gorges turned gold and pink as sunlight slowly shifted.
Max shook his head, astonished. “I thought I knew this island. In fact, I was blind to it. Perhaps I didn’t feel such beauty should exist after what we did in Bikini, and the Marshalls.”
“You saw too much, Max. You cared too much. In a way, you stopped living.”
As the days passed, Ana began to relax, braiding her hair like a schoolgirl. She went barefoot and wore sarongs. One day while they sat on cliffs overlooking the sea, she smelled morphine, the scent of ether on his breath. She laid her head against his shoulder, terrified, and vastly inexperienced.
“I don’t know what to say, Max. I don’t know how to deal with this.”
“Shhh. It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s when we’re quiet that it all makes sense.”
Even as he languished, he watched Ana metamorphose into something new. Sometimes at meals he had no appetite and pushed his plate aside, while she recounted ancient legends. Unbraiding her hair, combing her fingers through it in a timeless way, shoulders aglow like running water, she flicked her fingers like fireflies, conjuring and embellishing with such dreamy cogency, Max was drawn into her fables.
He forgot his pain, his body seemed to melt and yield, as she described a race of little people, the Menehune, who had flourished here, perhaps as the first settlers.
“They were small, muscular people, masters of stonework and engineering feats. They only worked at night, and built ingenious irrigation systems for wetland farming that still exist today … There is a place, called Pu‘ukapele, high up in Waimea Canyon. It was the home of the Menehune. They gathered there to talk and to debate, rather like the Athenian agora. It’s said that on half-moon nights, if you climb three thousand feet to this hill, you can still hear them debating …”
She lit a candle. Her voice was soft and soothing.
“The Menehune also built the first lighthouse in Hawai‘i. They called it Maka-ihu-wa‘a. Eyes for the canoe prow. You see, on dark nights they could not find their way back to land when fishing in deep waters. Their chief loved his ocean men, so he devised a plan … His land workers dug for weeks and months constructing a platform halfway up a ridge rising behind Wai‘oli River. The ridge could easily be seen at night. Then his workers placed torches all along the ridge, so that its reflection in the river would give the seamen double torchlight …
“Some folks say the Menehune were a real people of an ancient time, who had migrated from the Marquesas. Others say they were mythical, children of the Pō, the night, which is also the Realm of the Gods. That is why they only worked at night. You see, in the ancient time, Hawaiian ‘day’ began at nightfall.”
SOMETIMES WHEN SHE LOOKED UP, MAX WAS SOFTLY SNORING. HE often slept for two days straight, then woke refreshed, and sat poring over picture books and maps. In that way he began to understand the layout of the island, a world of breathtaking and treacherous beauty.
When they drove to the Na Pali Coast, the road seemed familiar to him. “This is the way we drove to the Barking Sands Missile Range Facility, which is engaged in intercepting guided missiles from mainland military bases.”
“That’s right.” Ana pointed west toward a place called Mana. “I once told you about this place, sacred grounds where spirits of the newly dead wandered. And where they wander still, in spite of the bombs that land nearby.”
It was a region of salt marsh and dunes, of coral beaches that barked like dogs when waves rushed in. Here lay the remains of a great temple that was the gateway to the land of Pō, the dim twilight land beneath the sea where gods watched over the souls of the dead. Now guided missiles exploded in these seas.
She continued on the island’s treacherous west coast until they reached the last beach, Polihale. Now they left the paved road behind and jolted through tall, rustling cane fields until gradually a dark ridge of jagged peaks appeared on the right. When she could drive no farther, the beach at Polihale emerged from the base of the cliffs—a stretch of brilliant white powder more immense, it seemed, than the cliffs towering above it. Max fell silent, words seemed so silly here.
“Polihale,” Ana whispered. “Home of the spirits. Here the coast road ends and our gods begin. Our ākua.”
There was much more to explain, but she suddenly felt afraid, fearing the gods would look down and see a woman who had abandoned her culture, and her blood.
She turned to Max. “We mustn’t stay. The sun is fierce.”
Yet in that moment an icy wind enveloped them. It cut right through her, knocking her down. For a moment, she lay stupefied. Max knelt beside her, shouting, and they heard a rumbling from the cliffs. Ana tried to stand but something knocked her down again.
“What is it?” Max cried.
Her lips hardly moved. “We have to leave this place.”
She lifted her head, cautiously rose to her hands and knees, and crawled across hot sands away from the cliffs. When she finally stood up, she looked haunted. The gods had leaned down and acknowledged her, a change-face.
SHE WATCHED AS HIS STRENGTH SLOWLY EBBED. EVEN WHEN HE rallied, the bounce back was slight. They began to stay at home where, from their lānai, they spent hours looking down on half-moon-shaped Hanalei Bay, its sunshot parquetry of waves, its Titian clouds dazzling as neon. Behind them, rain forests of an astonishing green leading to cliffs called Hele Mai. Come Away.
“I can’t think what more I could want,” he said. “Except more time.”
Intense pain came. Nights when he tossed and moaned, when pain threatened to outrun his medications, he swallowed morphine, conservative doses that did not dull his mind. His lung grew more conges
ted. Yet he rallied.
“Tell me more stories of your islands.”
Ana was amazed at the wealth of history she remembered from elders who had taught her as a child. “Talking-story” hour after hour, she spoke so slowly and thoughtfully each sentence seemed three generations long.
“Now I will tell you that some folks say much of the ancient life and history of the Polynesians who discovered this island and lived here for two thousand years has been forgotten … But, a‘ole loa! Absolutely not. Our history is never forgotten. Only hidden … Place-names remain, and with them the names of chiefs and chiefesses, gods and demigods. And all their feats and defeats … In sacred places, they are still worshipped. Their stories remembered and retold …”
Max listened, intrigued, and finally asked, “Why don’t your people teach this fabulous history and its legends? Why keep them hidden?”
Ana’s lips moved, but her voice was that of someone old and wise.
“I mea a ho ‘oko aku I na makemake o na kūpuna. So that we might live as our ancestors would expect us to. This is what they wanted. Silence is how we preserve that which is most sacred.”
One night she circled the floor in front of him. “Now I will show you the ancient, authentic dance we call Hula Kahiko.”
“… This sacred hula was called ha‘a. In the back-and-back days, it was performed only by men, and had deep religious significance for Hawaiians … Then certain kapu were lifted and women began to dance outside the temples, using the movements of the hula to express the life force itself … This dance and its accompanying chants tied us to the universe, made us one with the powers and currents of nature and the gods. And always, what was so important was the posture in the dance …”
She bent forward slightly, right foot extended and pointed, right hand pointed up with fingers closed, her eyes following her hand.
“There were hundreds of hulas, each performed to celebrate fertility, a marriage, a birth. Hulas to celebrate our gods, our fields, the sea. And Laka, patron of Hula. Watch now …”
Ana began a haunting, penetrating chant, her voice eerily low, almost sepulchral, part prayer, part proclamation. Then her voice grew louder as she glided, swayed, and pirouetted in a trance. Moving her hands in all the classic ways of hula kahiko she metamorphosed as a bird, a fish, a wave, as Pele—fire and volcano goddess. And as calm trade winds after a storm.
Even as she moved, she felt a deep disturbance. Something calling to her. Something in her responding. She did not know how long she danced. It could have been for days, or only hours. Finally, she sank down to a mat, exhausted.
“You must understand. The hula was our oral history, how we remembered our genealogies. But, for over a hundred years, it was forbidden, along with our traditional art, Mother Tongue, our chants and prayers. In this way the missionaries cut out our tongues, cut off our arms. They wanted laborers, stoop workers for their sugar plantations, not intelligent natives. Our ways were ‘pagan’ so they outlawed them—on pain of imprisonment, even death—while their children grew land-rich and sugar-rich. Without culture, Hawaiians began to die out. This was how they colonialized our islands.”
Max shook his head in silence.
“An old Hawaiian scholar, Samuel Kamakau, said Hawai‘i had been ‘cut up, salted down, hung out to dry.’ White man’s diseases did the rest.”
“I never knew you gave such thought to your history,” he said. “How do you remember all this, the words, the dance … ?”
She explained how it was not “remembered,” it was just there like breathing, how this knowledge had been passed down for centuries. Each mother “gave” her child this gift of voice, of dance, of life.
“I learned the hula in my mother’s womb. While she was dancing, I was formed in the rhythm of her fluids. And, in turn, I danced, until a child quickened in my womb. Then my feet stopped moving, my heart turned hard. But, as you taught me … genes remember. This knowledge never leaves Hawaiians. No matter where we go, how far we run. And, you know, Max, we did not die out. We survived! In the past ten years there has been a rebirth of our culture. They’re chanting the old chants again, reviving the old dances.”
He sat back and smiled. “Ana. My ‘talking-story’ woman. Don’t you ever want to come home, to your islands?”
She sat up, looking very young. “I do. When we’re here, my body changes. I feel my blood thicken. There’s this sense of merging with the land, the sea, I don’t feel separate anymore. But, at some point I start to feel strangled. I can’t breathe. I’m afraid I’ll always be going makai and makai and makai, as they say. In the direction of the sea. I don’t even blame it on my childhood anymore.”
“Ontological security,” Max said. “You find it in running, in motion. No one can touch you then.”
“You touched me, Max. I no longer need to run with you.”
“And what about your daughter? I know you think of her.”
She shook her head. “She’s a woman now. We’re virtual strangers.”
Max studied her before he spoke. “Perhaps one day you should try to know her. What good are life’s experiences if we don’t pass them on to our children?”
That night Ana sat up in the dark, imagining her daughter as a child. I never “gave” her the gift. I never saw her dance the hula …
MELE KANIKAU
Chant of Mourning
SOME NIGHTS HIS SLEEP WAS SOUND, AND SOME NIGHTS HE WOKE in a kind of delirium. One morning he came awake to find what looked like a huge man-woman standing over him. Eyes like green leaves, a wide ‘upepe nose, silver hair billowing to his waist. Under long, yellow robes, he had a massive chest and big copper-colored arms, but the rest of him—his cheeks and lips and chin—were delicate and shaped like a woman’s. Max found him beautiful, in a scary way.
Ana spoke softly. “This is ‘Iolani. Royal Hawk. I have brought him here for you. He says he cannot heal you because soon it is your time. But he can take your pain, and keep your spirit from wandering.”
The priest held a small wooden ki‘i, a sacred image that resembled a howling man. He slipped it inside his robes, then slowly bent and listened to Max’s breathing. When he straightened up he took Max’s hand in his own leathery hands, examining Max’s palm. Agitated by what he saw, he furiously rubbed the palm with his finger as if trying to erase it. All the while he whispered.
“What is he saying?”
Ana hesitated. “He says your lifeline is growing short even as he watches. He’s telling it slow down.”
The priest pulled him into a sitting position, so that Max was facing the sea. Then he turned to the open windows, raised his heavy arms, and chanted in a high, eerie voice.
“Aloha e ka lā, e ka lā! E ola mai e ka lā, I ka honua nei!” Greetings to the sun, to life, to the earth.
As he continued chanting, she explained. “To greet the sun as it rises, this was the tradition of the ancients. Like people the world over, we believe that the coming of the sun brings mana, life force, to the earth each day. With mana comes healing, growth, life itself.”
Now ‘Iolani turned, took Max by the shoulders, and silently studied him. He dug into a large lauhala bag and brought forth a gourd full of saltwater he had carried up from the sea, and a leaf cone full of sea salt. He flung the salt around to purify the room.
“He’s casting out ‘uhane ‘ino. Your demons of delirium.”
Then he sat and mixed olena, tumeric, in the saltwater. All the while he chanted.
“He’s praying to the healing gods. And to his ‘aumakua, the Hawaiian hawk.”
The priest seemed to be reading the salt water, staring at images therein. He opened Max’s pajama top and rubbed the mixture on his chest. He stopped and prayed, then rubbed again. He did that several times, then finally turned to Ana.
“Child, what I tell you now is so important. He has been a warrior. Now he is frail, an empty vessel. Whatever you put in this vessel must be pure. Of the ‘āina and the kai. Nothing else.
Pau la‘au haole! Please, tell him this.”
She leaned toward Max. “He says no more food that does not come directly from the land or the sea. And no more ‘white man’s medicine.’ That means your morphine.”
Max looked up. “Is this a test? To see how much I can bear?”
‘Iolani patted his shoulder. “Be patient, boy. I will come for two more dawns. Healing must be done in threes. And then … pau pain. Breath will come easy. You’ll see.”
By the second dawn when he returned, Max was in good spirits. “I feel great. I want to get up and run.”
‘Iolani pushed him down. “Not so frisky, boy. Be patient. How is your chest?”
Max shook his head in wonder. “No more congestion. I can breathe. I don’t have that awful rattle.”
He bent and rubbed Max’s chest again with the saltwater solution and prayed as he had before. Then he laid his head against Max’s chest and listened to his lung. The gesture, the warmth, and weight of the man’s massive gray head upon his chest brought tears.
Max wept like a child. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand why this is happening.”
‘Iolani sat up, gathered the tears on his fingertips, and examined them closely. “These come mai pu‘uwai … from the heart. They come when you let your body and your soul relax. When you allow them to believe. You have not believed in much. Did no one teach you? Believing is the final balm.”
Ana stood in a corner trembling. When he was finished, the priest took her outside.
“Tomorrow will be third-dawn healing. He will be a boy again, wanting to swim, and run. He will be well, but only for a while. After that I will not come again. I have done what I can do.”
She walked to the top of a footpath and took his hand. “How can I thank you, Tūtū man. I would give my life …”
He raised his hand. “You offer your life, for what purpose? To atone? I see the past hovering behind you. Things you did, and undid. Not all of it was wrong. Selfish, but not wrong. Only, just now don’t think on yourself. Your happiness, regrets. Give all your thoughts to this man who has loved you.”
House of Many Gods Page 12