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The Adventures of Vela

Page 3

by Albert Wendt


  Bone-man twirl like a top’

  Into the sanctuary of the pigpens I fled

  as if I too had been pillaged of bone

  to fashion a mockery of bone

  (2)

  ‘Leave me here to dissolve to earth!’ he begged

  as I lifted him out of his bed of blood

  that evening in the savage emptiness of malae

  Wrapped him in tapa

  and to the dreaming mountains carried

  him like a bride

  Trapped wild pigs and of their bones

  and one skull built a new frame

  for his flesh

  And as he healed in my embrace

  we slept in the murmuring of Pofanau

  when Tagaloa reshapes maggot into person

  (The world is afloat in our unstill eyes

  All is an amniotic tide changing

  Dreaming is the continuing of our waking)

  I woke to the startled emptiness

  in my arms: he was gone into

  a morning forest webbed with mist

  and glittering dew as hard as tears

  into that dimension where unfulfilled spirits

  refuse the way to Pulotu

  In the unravelable maze of mountains

  I stalked his long sad silence as he searched

  for new verse for vengeance he was never to exact

  Today he still wanders the Atu’olo —

  his sorrow is the mournful noon cooing

  of the pigeon and the tava’e’s eternal circling

  (3)

  ‘To win you must catch a rhythm

  a way a beat no one can imitate

  Learn from everything’ the Lulu advised

  For the passing of ten breadfruit seasons

  I watched learned caught first the sea’s

  creatures moods and swings

  Then sky stone river creeper bird

  tree dew lizard ant beetle

  All their languages I trapped

  But each time I returned to Lulu

  and sang him my new songs

  he echoed them exactly back

  (A song is not invented It simply is

  It is caught fished up out of the sea

  of all that is and will be)

  In the river that was dream I was flyingfox

  hovering in the white stillness

  and the stench of acid fire

  above a strange reef of cloudhigh dwellings

  with millions of eyes and fissured

  with deep chasms like dry riverbeds

  I flew lower and in one of the chasms

  black youths in exotic hides gyrated

  to a black singing box

  to a beat I’d never heard

  like the rapid shatter of rain

  or branches breaking in strong wind

  to a voice chanting an imagery

  both savage and hypnotically direct

  muscled like jabbing spear arms

  And in that gifted flow of dream

  I netted their imagery and beat

  in my upsidedown flyingfox head

  ‘I’ve come to meet the one they say steals

  the bones of songmakers!’ I challenged

  from the eye of their dawn malae

  (Around me they were waking)

  I called again and they emerged

  to circle me with ridiculing laughter

  Suddenly through them like a wave strode

  the Tuimanu’a and Alopese propped up

  by his talking staff (such arrogant beauty)

  ‘Don’t be foolish — you’re too young

  to die!’ said the Tuimanu’a (They laughed

  and jeered — a clatter of fat hens!)

  ‘Watch’ Alopese said and then played his flute

  and out of his dark fale hopped

  the grinning one-legged Bone-man

  At Alopese’s command the Bone-man rushed

  at me as if to attack (they laughed)

  but I refused to retreat

  ‘I can’t be refused — it’s the Law’

  I reminded the Tuimanu’a ‘So be it

  if you want to die’ He answered

  The Bone-man sat beside his haughty master

  ‘You set whatever rhyme you please’ Alopese said

  so sure of easy victory

  ‘Are you sure sir?’ I asked

  ‘On any topic set to any patter beat —

  I know them all’ he laughed

  My cunning flyingfox heart leapt

  I had him in the net closing in

  My tongue could taste his blood

  In the To’elau were Mulialofa’s love songs

  and the scent of pua scent of

  mosooi scent of pig scent of woman’s sap

  scent of my life’s total stretch

  as the La grasped my shoulders

  and raised me to my uncourageous feet

  ‘Gather round kings and aristocrats of our land

  and listen to my brand new beat’ I began

  my attack ‘I’m a holy rock ’n’ roller

  looking for a seat in Lord Tagaloa’s

  ferocious band I’m a holy rock ’n’ roller

  eager for revenge

  ‘So c’mon Alopese and your toothlessly

  scared Bone-man there’s a new beat rolling

  through this nobody land

  ‘C’mon Alopese put up your voice

  put up your heart put up your everything

  I’m going to win them all

  in this one-sided contest’

  Stopped abruptly like a club blow

  Caught a blink of panic in Alopese’s eyes

  We waited for him to repeat to leap

  He chuckled pretended there was nothing wrong

  Bone-man jumped up to his one leg

  and tried to scare me again

  ‘You want to dance Bone-man

  so dance to my rocking beat from

  the land of the acid dead

  I’m a holy rock ’n’ roller eager for revenge …’

  My song snared him and spun him

  round up and down like the black

  youths in the vibrating chasm

  backslides headspins turtling

  until his sinnet joints snapped

  and he was a heap of bones at Alopese’s feet

  ‘Defeat him!’ the Tuimanu’a ordered

  His Lord of War His Taulaaitu His Second-

  Self His prize Shadow and Echo

  Alopese couldn’t He tried and tried

  but my beat wasn’t in his knowing in

  his air or in his future

  Each time he tried and failed

  his talking staff withered and the Tuimanu’a

  and His people withdrew the protecting circle

  leaving him naked without mana

  shelter for his pride a stranded fish

  kicking for breath on lacerating coral

  to be speared even by inexpert children

  taken home and roasted on coconut embers

  and eaten by toothless grandmothers

  (Revenge is sweet and out of the To’elau

  I sucked Mulialofa’s love and victory

  as I watched Alopese die that day)

  ‘Your demands?’ the Tuimanu’a asked

  (Some chiefs always pretend extra aristocracy!)

  ‘His voice is all I want’ I replied

  I’ll not follow the usual twist of

  the revenge tale and say Alopese

  then melted into a grovelling coward

  No flaw of fear even when they trussed

  him up like a pig and exposed

  his gifted throat to the Tuimanu’a’s knife

  No sound of fear as the knife dug in

  and slit across and blood bubbled

  up to the blade and skilled hand

  that lunged in and down through

  gullet into the sacred depths

  of chest hear
t and moa

  Grasped the kicking voice on fire

  and wrenched it up and out

  into the circling gasping air

  I knelt and the Tuimanu’a’s red-

  flowing hand unclasped and covered

  my in-sucking mouth releasing

  Alopese’s voice his mana to surge

  like Tagaloa’s breath that gave us life

  down down

  into all that I was am

  and will be in the Unity that weaves

  winner and loser

  conjurer and conjured

  artifice and reality illusion and fact

  in the fatal game in the endless dreaming of the dream

  (4)

  Tonight I catch again the homeless wailing

  of the Pig-man in the sad mountains

  of my soul

  Tonight Alopese’s arrogant fluting

  and the Bone-man’s clicking dance measure

  the faulty pulse of my heart

  (We exist in the sacred water

  gathered from the Fafā I’m a long

  remembering but have deciphered

  little from that water cupped

  in the desperate hands of my skull

  and dribbling away unreturned)

  Tonight Mulialofa Alopese Bone-man

  Pig-man and the holy rock ’n’ roller

  That I inelegantly was

  dance again around the healing

  togo fire burning as slowly

  as the last rising dawn

  That is enough

  enough warmth for an old man

  about to bathe in the waters of the Fafā

  5

  War Correspondent

  (1) The Offer

  Vela’s fame was instant on Alopese’s defeat

  Every Tama’aiga wanted him as personal historian

  (We hunger after chroniclers who mirror our vanity

  and grow fatly opulent on the rewards

  our vanities provide them)

  Thin yaw-footed neglected all his youth

  Vela knew a fat offer when the most paramount

  of Tama’aiga the Tuimanu’a made it

  As was customary Vela refused it at first

  but not too adamantly

  Tama’aiga don’t beg in public so Tuimanu’a

  invited Vela into his fale and on His knees

  offered him His favourite wife (out of twenty)

  Alopese’s harem and title — after all he was

  now Manu’an with Alopese’s mana

  Yet unwise in the world’s bartering

  Vela refused his patron’s favourite and Alopese’s

  identity but accepted the envied post of chronicler

  in a solo he composed on the spot

  to inflate his patron’s already bloated ego

  (I’ve not been able to find that solo

  and couldn’t persuade Vela to recite it

  to me ‘I’m now so ashamed of

  such lying flattery’ he keeps

  insisting ‘I sold my integrity for material comfort’)

  (2) A Celibate Sacredness

  In a fale in the shadow of Foafoalagi

  the Sacred PalmGrove heart of his patron’s compound

  Vela awaited a sexual abundance but no one dared

  intrude after the Tuimanu’a declared him tapu

  too sacred even for women’s fondling

  His servants haggard old matai

  and spies followed him everywhere scraping up

  his sacred shit so no one could use it for sorcery

  A celibate caged in his sacredness

  Not a fuckable creature in sight

  Only the Tuimanu’a and His taulaaitu

  (shrivelled like ancient fau) visited

  Boring old men brewing war and Atuahood

  preparing Vela to record their

  glorious vanity

  So out of his trapped nights he fished

  the Lulu to talk with: ‘The quest for power drives

  men mad so escape now’ Lulu warned ‘Don’t forget

  you’re anchored in flesh’ ‘But what use is the anchor

  if I can’t relieve it of lust? I’m sick of dry hand-jobs’

  ‘War is a feast a feeding of kings the sport

  of atua and aristocracy’ said the Tuimanu’a

  and a war Vela’s first interrupted

  his dry monotony of hand

  A war which he called:

  (3) Taua o le Taeao Fua (War of the Naked Morning)

  This war was Vela’s first assignment

  as chronicler but let’s pause here —

  we’re getting ahead of our tale — and return

  to that war’s source: Tuimanu’a Fa’aola

  Spiritual Overlord Son of Tagaloaalagi - with - the - Intestine

  now an old body refusing to shrink

  hurling His young warriors into Saveasi’uleo’s

  insatiable gob and gobbling up

  teenage wives to keep death at bay

  (Power is our sweetest aphrodisiac)

  The Tuimanu’a’s sixtieth war planned and executed

  Each war chronicled to be re-enjoyed

  in the telling and the retelling

  and in that giddy spiral He’d be

  remembered He hoped forever

  Being atua He never fought in the wars

  Being indispensible He had to be protected

  (Let the dispensible be Saveasi’uleo’s fodder)

  Tuimanu’a Fa’aola Grand Director

  of the Drama and the Feeding

  And here’s how Vela recorded

  that war for his patron’s vanity:

  The hour was right Our Lord and taulaaitu

  have consulted our atua through Foafoalagi

  the Sacred Conch and the omens in the air

  earth wind and sky were on our side

  To war! To war!

  For seven anae seasons our troops

  had trained under our Lord’s expert command

  their bodies incredible in muscle and speed

  Such ferocious beauty is ready to test Saveasi’uleo

  To war! To war!

  In the bay still as the waters of Vaiola our Fleet

  of war alia were giant tanifa loaded with

  warriors weaponry and our atua’s blessings

  eager for war ready for the sacrifice

  To war! To war!

  Our Lord was ready ‘Lift Him up Bear Him

  to His seat of victory! His shadow will melt

  our enemy away like dew! His magic

  club the Uluta’eto will feast on their skulls’

  To war! To war!

  Into Safele Bay we broke like black tanifa

  swarming onto the beach and the sleeping

  enemy the Aiga Safele while our Lord

  watched from his alia

  To war! To war!

  The Safele army was foolishly defiant

  They stood their ground

  Their women and children also willing to die

  but our courageous warriors couldn’t

  be denied as they advanced

  ‘Stab Parry Cut Weave Turn!’

  ‘Stab Parry Cut Weave Turn!’

  We broke their solid wall

  Cut their troops into scatters

  we surrounded clubbed and speared

  Our warriors so beautiful in their erect nakedness

  in their oiled tatau glistening

  ‘Stab Parry Cut Weave Turn!’

  Our Lord’s strategy deadly correct

  ‘Pursue Pursue Club Cut!’

  ‘No one must escape they must pay!’ our Lord

  had commanded And now from His alia

  He smiled to witness his plan succeeding

  Saw the enemy scattering falling

  Heard the piercing cries of their dying

  He wept in victory shouted to the La:

  ‘See again the mana of your most hum
ble servant

  To you I dedicate this glorious victory!’

  To our supreme Tagaloaalagi He offered

  the head of Safele’s leading ali’i

  When He strode ashore the enemy grovelled

  for mercy in their dirt

  Being a true aristocrat He cut the women’s

  and children’s bonds

  For the men He ordered the ultimate price

  In Safele’s malae a pit was dug

  filled with logs and set ablaze

  The conquered warriors were clubbed and thrown in

  to become sizzling smoke the ravenous La

  and our atua swallowed for breath

  Our merciful Lord Tuimanu’a Fa’aola

  wept to see such a beautiful sight

  How He wept to witness such courageous death!

  The War of the Naked Morning will always

  be remembered as our Lord’s most glorious victory

  Our Lord is the mightiest of Lords

  War is His game War is His sport

  May the atua bless Him forever

  May They feed His mana with blood

  Long live Lord Tuimanu’a Fa’aola!

  Immediately after Vela recited to me that chronicle

  he wanted me to record how he really felt:

  (4) Walking

  The War Dead walk they walk like weightless

  mountains across the night bay

  The stars are white pua discarded over

  the black curving waters

  The War Dead my Dead walk

  They walk and the unquiet waters wince

  under their footsteps that cut

  wounds that spark briefly

  like fireflies and drown

  My War Dead walk the bay

  Seven weeks since the war ended

  Seven weeks of their pacing my dreams

  Seven weeks of their refusing to

  turn west to Falealupo and the Fafā

  I’m bursting with their evil load

  My days have been incessant crapping

  to evacuate them and I’m melting away

  in foulness my servants scrape up and hide

  (Poor stinging arsehole oozing blood)

 

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