The Adventures of Vela

by Albert Wendt

  either in their daily routines during any one

  of their five seasons: Planting

  Building Harvesting Mating Music

  One morning Two gashed his left hand on

  a coconut husker The crew closed upon him

  and laid hands on the bleeding (I too

  joined in) and before my amazed eyes

  the wound knitted to skin unblemished

  A Nei-week later the crews suddenly stopped

  working and gazing up at the Cliff hummed

  in unison and for the first time I detected

  grief in their voices But what had caused it?

  I awaited the answer impatiently

  After our evening cleansing we assembled on

  the malae around a female crew circling

  the broken body of a companion

  So they did know death I concluded

  eager to witness their burial ceremonies

  The Nei song of mourning is frightening

  on eardrums unused to its pitching

  I blocked my ears with tapa fibre

  as the song crescendoed to one piercing needle

  and the whole cosmos threatened to shatter

  Then SNAP it ended and in the trembling silence

  the crew carried their companion

  up the paths on the cliff face to the third row

  of a hundred circles and into the fifth entrance

  then outside again without her body to their dirging

  that later when everyone else was asleep guided

  me up the cliff through the pulsating luminosity

  that warned I was breaking a tapu

  entering the Sacred Cliff of Circles Nest

  of their atua and the Miracles

  From behind boulders I watched the nine mourners

  who seemed bait teasing the crouching entrance

  Icy dew fell during their vigil but they

  ignored it I kneaded warmth into

  my body and wished the revelations to hurry

  It was dawn I recall then the wind began

  breathing into the row of Circles and as it blew

  the Sacred Cliff sang like a gigantic

  arrangement of bone flutes And in that

  marvellous celebration I sensed

  their atua was speaking but though

  I tried theirs was not my vocabulary

  The circled nine mourners interpreted

  and as if on command reentered the Cave

  My heart held still waited for the revelation

  Couldn’t believe it and looked again Yes

  the dead woman was wholly back in the Ten

  resurrected in the fifth Cave of Miracles

  in the singing of her atua through

  the Sacred Cliff of the 1000 Circles

  Now I knew why music was their most

  vital connection – it was the essence of

  their breathing and mana the golden thread

  that wove them to the atua

  and Vanimonimo sinewed with Intelligence

  No aging or death or decrease because

  the number and age of all the species

  were perfect for that environment So why

  have a Mating Season? (I wouldn’t

  see any sexual activity outside that Season)

  (6) The Seasons

  As I’ve said already they had five seasons

  (in a year of ten months ten weeks in a month

  ten days to a week) that didn’t coincide

  with climatic changes and earth’s natural

  cycle as in our civilisations

  But though their seasonal pattern was dictated

  by their curious mathematics there was always

  an abundance of food in any tropical variety

  from the land sea and heavens Enough

  of every thing for everyone and no wasting

  The Planting Season was the months of One and Two

  (The arithmetical Tagata-Nei weren’t always

  imaginative) Each crew attended to its totem

  crop animal bird fish fruit and so forth

  Planted nurtured spawned trapped fattened

  My belly’s a hungry frenzy teethed like Dracula

  as I recall that lush abundance:

  yams as round as a woman’s pregnancy (I’m not

  exaggerating) taro heavier than the Niuean

  variety papaya that juiced your taste buds to

  a melodious coming coconuts creamier than

  a boy’s buttocks nonu as big as coconuts

  and would you believe it parrot fish larger

  than grouper that when charcoal roasted

  was a song in your gullet? Their clams

  were my special addiction sucked down raw

  by the tens as was the Nei custom

  Could keep sucking them down until eternity

  (They were also magic for my central muscle

  and now sorely missed in my flaccid aging)

  During months Three and Four the Building

  Season each crew built storehouses repaired

  their quarters with timber and thatch cut from

  the smothering mountain forests without permission of

  the atua of that region sacrilegious behaviour!

  (After I saw them treat other regions irreverently

  I guessed their atua were confined to

  the Sacred Cliff and Circles)

  Together the crews then repaved the malae

  with black pebbles canoed from distant rivers

  Weeded and swept their terraces and paths

  up to the Cliff but no one dared enter

  the wombs of the Circles (I too ate

  my liver after I peered into the blue-

  black gullet that swallowed forever)

  As in our country they offered their first fruits

  to their atua For our crew it was our ten

  firstborn pigs gutted prepared for cooking

  and left with prayers at our Circle entrance –

  number 99 in the ninth row of Miracles

  Like them I believed the atua would consume

  our offering but I couldn’t ignore the stench

  of decaying food that soon poured down from

  the Circles especially when the wind played

  the Cliff to a furiously ecstatic singing

  My smelling that foulness was welcomed proof

  they’d not converted me to their savage religion

  When I mimed my disgust my companions

  indicated the air was as fresh as a piglet

  (reconfirming my belief that we smell what we believe)

  During the harvest I also wondered why they were

  storing their surpluses so meticulously

  The answer erupted the morning I woke

  and pursued them humming to the malae

  Took my space on the terrace puzzled

  but like them hushed still in anticipation

  round eyes locked to the Sacred Cliff where

  a playful breeze was tonguing the Circles

  giving voice to the atua in the fluting

  that grew louder and hypnotically demanded

  them to respond to its universal rhythm of

  the twobacked creature madly combining

  and in a moment I was choking in their

  thick-musk mist of women’s sap

  and cocks straining to fornicate beyond civilised morality

  No! I cried but the scheduled madness

  was upon them in an abandoned orgy of

  frantic bodies coupling in every imaginable

  combination irrespective of gender preference

  and (surprisingly) crew membership

  The civilised twobacked beast in that free

  torrent became the multibacked monster

  dreaded by civilised societies pausing

  only to devour raw stored surpluses

  No sleep even from the unquencha
ble Madness

  that raged and raged across the country

  in the Nei Season of Fornication the only

  time they gave in to their senses utterly

  And I too raged in many orifices

  but being human couldn’t wield the permanent

  erection demanded by the two months multibacking

  everywhere anytime almost constantly

  No time out even for worship but I figured

  their atua through their adherents were frenziedly

  coupling for how else could you explain such rapacity?

  Such stonehard endurance? Such suicidal

  determination to fornicate orgasm out of the Madness?

  To a coming to end all comings? (Although

  I fled to the mountains I couldn’t escape

  the love screeching and stink of sex juices)

  For me that Season became a deadly boredom

  that reinforced my determination to civilise

  my hosts in the Samoan image saving them

  for my Atua Tagaloaalagi Who’d created

  Every thing out of His boredom

  One night still drowning in the miasma of

  compulsive fornicating the next morning the Season

  of Music — a sedate healing of bodies

  depleted by the mad loving Again we gathered

  and listened to the atua singing through the Circles

  Their fluting spoke of a cosmos content with

  its richness of earth breathing to a faultless

  timing each creature object and relationship

  satisfied with its placing in the Circle

  of Intelligence in the Unity’s Dreaming

  Their music was that of healing genius

  their adherents reechoed in the songs

  they composed and performed during the Season

  (And the Tagata-Nei in music were by far

  our superiors: it was their special mana)

  Each day one member of each crew invented

  a song in their unique notation

  and as he invented brainlinked to

  the others they learned it too so that on completion

  all 10,000 Tagata-Nei were singing it fluently

  each taking a separate part in harmonics

  and orchestration beyond my understanding

  using voices and rhythms of every known

  instrument (and more) every cry and sound

  of earth most of which my ear couldn’t capture

  100 compositions a day 1000 a week

  which we sang each Tenth Day on the malae

  to the atua who swallowed and echoed

  them back in magnificent complexities

  that delighted healed and soothed our spirits

  Being pigherders I deemed it proper to teach my crew

  the Pig song I’d composed in my young loneliness

  Hummed it slowly first till they got it

  then sang the words: Pig is best Pig is

  delicious Pig is aristocracy Pig Pig Pig! …

  The brainlink shattered – they didn’t understand

  my word vocabulary but were hungrily curious

  so I repeated Number Nine snared it first

  then Eight Seven and I danced in their

  exploding joy of learning a new language

  That Tenth Day they sang my song to their atua

  in their uniquely complex orchestration in my

  language as if it’d always been theirs

  and I quivered with power as I listened

  for I now had a way of converting them

  (7) The Conversion

  Recalling their conversion with hindsight’s

  wisdom is to judge it an unforgivable crime

  of my sightless arrogance (We each are

  histories of guilt beyond redemption but

  perhaps the future will learn from my confession)

  On the tenth evening of the Tenth Week after

  the Music Season the female crews climbed

  the Cliff and nested (my premonition) in their Circles

  To bonedeep depths I shiver refeeling that night’s

  cold stab of rain as I unplaited the women’s

  flightpath anticipating barbarous rituals

  (Is reality a construct of the imagination’s

  fancy? Was that night and those that followed

  pure constructs of my prejudiced seeing?

  Or like Pilate wash my hands clean with metaphysics?)

  (Each tale discovers its own morality

  so you be the judge of my honesty)

  From mouth to womb every Cave was clogged

  with lava blackness: to Tagata-Nei

  a fertile beauty to me the amniotic tide of evil

  (Colourblind we’d invent other measures –

  the eye’s seed will sprout accordingly) No stir

  of sound or motion in the Caves and Vanimonimo

  washed clean of stars by the meticulous rain

  Bandaged my body with siapo and waited

  The next eight nights were as if the Caves

  had swallowed the women but I kept

  my vigil and in the day flowed

  with my crew to the season’s rituals but

  without the evening cleansing (Man

  we started stinking like malodorous flyingfoxes!)

  Head brittle with sleep I raced the tenth night’s

  centre when the Caves’ hymen darkness tore

  and poured out the unholy smell of menstruating

  and kicked awake the men below

  to a celebrating humming outside their fale

  Menstruation is sickness to civilised nostrils

  I struggled not to drown in that nausea

  the total Nei world like a cannibal

  flower was osmosing into its thriving

  (Save me from this uncleanliness I prayed

  to Tagaloaalagi) At flood’s end at dawn

  the women were reborn of the Caves to the Cliff’s

  triumphant singing (Such savage beauty

  but lead me not into temptation Tagaloaalagi

  Give me the courage to subdue their atua

  for your service) When the exhausted

  women lean to the bone from their fast-

  ing fell asleep on the malae to Ao’s

  observing silence I approached the nearest Circle

  Feet don’t be scared of the mouth of Darkness

  Heart don’t beat so wildly you’ll shatter to pieces

  Liver inflate to courage’s balloonfish round-

  ness and stop bowels and bladder from

  blubbering to cowardly piss and liquid farting

  One surprised heartbeat into the entrance

  I was suddenly a solid light: my arms legs

  every iota were yellow illumination bursting

  from my moa to light my forward way

  creating the perfectly circled tunnel with walls

  layered wetly black with lava roof

  a few feet above my head floor of sand

  finer than smoke and strangely as I

  walked refused my footprints so I stopped

  the Cave echoing my heartbeat and concluded

  Yes the tunnel was a construct not

  a geographic accident but who’d designed it?

  I counted 100 paces and was in

  the inner chamber: a dome that opened

  with my body’s upthrusting light

  A hundred feet high to its apex? Glistening

  hide of blackness that captured my reflection

  when I sat down on the circular floor’s

  still centre and knew the cauled air around

  was a living womb feeding its future

  A magnificent construct no equivalent in

  our engineering but it was an Emptiness

  I searched with sight and hands to

  find no cracks fissures gaps doors

  windows no indication of purp
ose

  Stamped my feet It stamped right back

  Hello! I called It echoed that perfectly

  Circled the wall but bumped only into

  my reflection and the surprised

  smell of my vegetarian body

  The technology was beyond my marvelling

  and didn’t belong to anything the Tagata-Nei

  had fashioned It spoke of divine

  ingenuity and dreaming but what atua

  would construct such perfect Emptiness

  a circled Void that reflected any occupant’s image

  And why? Surely such divinities were anchored

  in stone wood or live imagery

  idols totems? Yet that empty construction

  had divine powers – I’d seen a dead

  woman resurrected and knew their atua spoke

  through the Circles How can an Emptiness give

  life and language? Until dawn I sampled

  caves in each line of Circles:

  All were perfect repetitions

  of the first I’d entered and all on

  my entry caused my body to become solid fire

  that created form out of the Darkness as

  I explored them Had foreigners with

  abstract atua created this mathematical

  hive of Music and Emptiness? If so where

  had they come from and gone to? Fell asleep

  pondering the riddle which in my dreaming

  answered why the Tagata-Nei women

  had nested: Around me in the dome’s

  ebony skin ten women squatted hands linked

  eyes turned inwards then on a signal (from

  the Emptiness I sensed) their bodies rolled

  to birth rhythms and pushed out

  blood (the menstral odour we’d breathed earlier)

  that turned floor into scarlet pool

  the unshaped fetuses drowned in while

  the Emptiness and Nei men below celebrated