by Albert Wendt
that heathen balancing of the species
to their environment’s wishes and logic
but to me an unforgivable terror:
the Emptiness was an evil Intelligence that
demanded the mass aborting of each Mating Season’s
human harvest Such insane atua don’t
deserve our worship Long live Tagaloaalagi!
Into my sleep the Tagata-Nei hooked their admiration
and pulled me to morning at the Cave’s entrance
The malae below exploded with their applauding
so I strutted raising arms skywards in
the victorious warriors’ salutation: I’d survived
the Black Night of the Circles and as I descended
into their linked intelligence I introduced
the civilised concept of chiefs and commoners
divinely appointed or earned through heroic action
I am conqueror of the Circles! I injected
into their worship and they chanted it back
I let a few days run on as usual but nightly slept
in the Caves with their expectation
of my destruction emerging unscathed to mornings
that pranced to their awed admiration
To my Crew I was now special so
one night I told them they too
were individual identities with separate
agaga masalo finagalo and loto
They were puzzled so I quoted my example:
I am I am separate I am Vela
You you are separate You are individuals
so to Number Nine I gave the name Faitau
Counter of our Pigs daily Number Eight
I named Faipese our Pigs’ Songmaker/flutist
Seven became Taulasea Healer Six became
Faupapua’a Builder of Pig Fences Five
Sasavao Grass Cutter and so on until
my Crew were proudly separate persons
who dreamt that night of self-fulfilment
Next evening the other pigherding Crews demanded
my naming them individual persons
I remembered their brainlinking allowed
no secrets or privacy (and power is knowledge
kept secret from others)
On my instructions my Crew members took
one crew each and named them individually
Disputes were referred to my judgement
and I ensured no name duplication and
nightly that week Crew after Crew in Nei
demanded my naming which my Crew implemented
Consequently the Tagata-Nei added another title
to my mana: Supreme Namer and Arbitrator
and my class of pigherders and Slaughterers
became the fulltime enforcers of my rulings
I persuaded with extra titles the pigeon-hunters
to take over our work as pigherders
(but insisted on my Slaughterers continuing
their profession in case we needed to quell
any rebellions against our leadership)
Within one Nei month I’d established individual
selfing a class of chiefs (my House of
Slaughterers) and eager followers
To protect that civilised structure I declared
the primacy of individual private thinking
Mass brainlinking was an evil invasion
of that sacred principle so my class formulated
laws to control the linking: No one
below Slaughterer was to brainlink with others
without permission or spy on
the thinking of Slaughterers who were permitted
to link with commoners and one another
but absolutely no one was to invade
the Supreme Namer’s mind without His permission
for that would undermine His impartial justice
The planting crews insisted fertility
was dependent on instant linking of
all mind earth sky and Vanimonimo
My Slaughterers exampled a few of them
publicly and they obeyed the Law of Linking
With my privileged access into their thoughts
I believed their conversion to Tagaloa’s
Enlightenment would be as simple as dreaming
but their atua through the plans they’d set
into Nei’s every fibre frustrated my efforts
For instance I ordered into their collective unconscious
my Samoan pattern of rising and sleeping
but one hour after our evening eating
even my enforcers the Slaughterers
were snoring despite threats of flogging
When asleep I ordered them not to adhere
to the precribed Nei seasons
but when the seasons changed they responded
automatically and when I jailed them
they howled as though possessed by aitu
I legislated a 12-month year seven-day week
four-week month and enforced it with imprison-
ment and torture but the Nei mathematics
in their blood countered and even my Slaughterers
ticked to the Five Nei Seasons
In anger I imprisoned the men in strong pens
the night before the Mating Season
but at the Cliff’s programmed singing next morning
the women tore the pens apart
and the Nei immorality raged for another season
I worked to get them fornicating like us
civilised humans in private in moderation
during any season and started with my Slaughterers
by demonstrating out of season with youths
I fancied but they accused me of unnatural practices
Every night in the Cave of Pigherders now
my headquarters I tried unriddling how their atua
controlled what They’d programmed into Nei’s sinews
The answer lay in the Cliff They spoke through
in language created by wind whispering
through the empty 100 Circles whose shape
size and design determined the mathematical
nature and limits of that speaking But
how do you explain the Cave’s gift
for healing resurrection and aborting?
In that I intuited was the key
to the nature of Nei behaviour and existence
Every enlightened leader’s quest is to alter
human behaviour to suit his vision of the ideal future
The Nei atua had designed a system
they considered perfect and immortal
because it was self-healing self-renewing
a marvel of total environmental and biological engineering
though it denied freewill and wisdom acquired
through aging and suffering
Revolutionary insights like songs are intuited
whole out of the river of dreaming so I ditched
logical thinking and floated in the Cave’s silence
letting It invent my vision in
Its image and patient shaping
but all I saw was my self my every nook
and cranny mirrored in perfect Emptiness
that took Its dimensions from the light It sucked
out of my body and without which It would
be unintelligible Darkness
Without me It wouldn’t have seed to nourish
into whatever promise that seed intended
Sharkshit! I cried on catching that revelation:
the Emptiness fulfilled each seed occupier’s
wishes for instance the women had brought their
dead and in the Cave had dreamt her back
into breathing So I occupied the Cave’s centre
and tried dreaming the Nei Seasons to alter
to my models but failed blaming my not
being Tagata-Nei and got Faitau
> my most loyal Slaughterer to try it
Though he failed I knew I was coming
hugely into awesome power (helped by my Atua
Tagaloaalagi Supreme Creator and Unriddler)
Faitau faked a fatal accident and I observed
another woman resurrected from the Dead
That night I assembled my Crew in our Cave
and hands linked in our Magic Ten as I’d seen
the women doing we dreamt for light rain
at dawn and in the clear Cave walls around
that miracle tumbled to our dreaming
At dawn when I heard the rain run the Cliff face
I rushed out and danced in its predicted truth
of the mana I now possessed to conquer even
the determinist Atua Who designed the Nei universe
Vanity through self-love is a killing talent
I had to live out to witness its tragic consequences
(at irretrievable cost to Nei’s inhabitants
If only I can unwind history and save them
from my missionary vanity)
I decided to reprogramme the basics of Nei
existence in my aristocratic image
Firstly using the Cave’s dreaming I altered
my Crew’s pigherding role to fulltime rulers
nestling in our Circle that
we conceived to be the centre of the sacred network
of Circles (we reprogrammed a fishing crew
of commoners to be the pigherders)
Once installed in our impregnable fortress
we programmed our Law of Linking into
Nei’s fabric so that no one could link
into my secret of using the Cave’s
dreaming to rule totally
and recreate the civilisation
of my rich Samoan upbringing
Every one has a price in politics: my Slaughterers’
price for their loyalty was to be my aristocracy
and because I alone held the secret
of the Cave’s creativity I didn’t
fear the possibility of their treason:
Linked into their thinking I could anticipate
any conspiracies and dream the culprits out
of their ungrateful breathing Into my
other 9900 subjects I programmed belief
in a divinely willed class system:
the Supreme Namer and His Slaughterers were
the supreme Ali’i and taulaaitu the warriors
and hunters were their orators and protectors
the rest were Tautua serving the aristocracy
with absolute obedience
I paused in my social engineering and pondered
the radical implications of introducing natural
aging death procreation and marriage:
too many old people would be a burden
uncontrolled breeding meant hunger and
squabbling over resources new generations
could prove unpredictable and attack
the social order marriage encouraged protection
of wives and offspring as precious property
the placing of family ahead of the Supreme Namer and Society
So though I deemed their seasonal pattern artificial
their aging unnatural and abhorred
their annual orgy and aborting I decided
to introduce only one modification: all fornicating
was to be private with consenting partners modestly
After my renovations I thought Nei perfect
and I had total power to protect my creation
to see even future enemies and destroy them –
no need for a surveillance network So I rested
like Tagaloaalagi and enjoyed my handiwork
(forgetting Lulu’s maxim that power is
the elixir that turns even atua into crazies)
My 99 Ali’i toured to see no citizen deviated
and reported daily for my flattery but I didn’t
notice they were competing for higher status
until my Nine crew members named themselves
‘The Namer’s Sacred Guardians’ and the others objected
They were all my equal guardians I ruled mistakenly
for once you have privileged classes and ambitious
individuals the power struggle is for
chiefly titles and finally conquest of the Source
of those honorifics the Supreme Namer in this instance
Alone that night Faitau my trusted lieutenant
begged to be appointed Number One Guardian
(he was still rooted in Nei’s ridiculous mathematics)
Near midnight Faipese my secret preference slid
into my loving and wanted the title of Guardian
of Guardians – at least he was poetic At dawn
I awoke erectly to Taulasea’s expert mouth
shaping the title The Namer’s Shadow
Alarmed I decided to erase avaricious ambition
from my Crew’s personalities but failed at our
nightly linking because for our joint
dreaming to work all Nine had
to agree to my particular wishes
I tried other tactics: Got Faitau Faipese
and taulaaitu to report publicly that many lower
crews were plotting to overthrow us
and I declared the erasure of ambition from all
Warriors Hunters and Commoners
Next I talked (secretly and individually) with
each Guardian promised each the Number One
position if he supported ambition’s erasure
from the others: each agreed believing
only he would end up ruling with the Namer
Woke the next glorious morning to a Crew
without megalomaniac ambitions and Nei castes
content with their prescribed conditions and
thanked Tagaloa for immunizing me from
power’s self-destructive poisons
Better the enlightened rule of a single Ali’i Sili
than the bloody squabbling among power-hungry
warlords and aiga the innocent had suffered
in my own country Better for Nei to worship
the one true Atua the Merciful Tagaloaalagi
I expected no more threats to my creation
and realizing I was free of the yearning to
return to my homeland anticipated long years
of enjoying my just supremacy (I even
programmed aging out of my sinews)
Those years I recall seemed an unending happiness
even my reforming their Mating Season worked
and putting doors on the females’ Caves during
the aborting saved my eyes my nostrils and hearing
from their immodest loving and menstruation
I ruled a country free of greed and any other
ulcer-inducing problem In my leisure I taught them
my homeland’s music in return for theirs (which
I now admit was too complex for my mastery
but on my return home made me songmaker unbeatable)
I also composed hundreds of songs and solo
(which I prefer forgetting) and fed them to
my obedient subjects who I now realize
ate them sycophantically as ‘masterpieces’ because
I was their Atuahead with powers of erasing
You want examples of those awful compositions
born of luxury and deadly comfort smug self-love
and masturbating the ego’s megalomania?
Man I’m an artist ashamed of that sharkshit
so I’ll just sing one of my betrayals:
My homeland Samoa is where the palmtrees
sway to the loving caress of the sea breeze
The air is sweet with the scent of pua blossoms
and young lovers stroll in the mo
onlight
fondling etc etc to the utterly forgettable
Boredom edged into my marrow like an in-
audible whisper and before I knew it I was
obeying its peculiar fancies: as Supreme
Namer I commanded the best of everything
which bored me to fancying esoteric dishes
For food the feeding crews had to provide
rare pigeon’s feet cooked in charcoal and then
souped in dolphin’s bleeding tava’e eyes
marinated in ginger and so on down
my imagination’s crazy cravings
For sex tired with single partners I orchestrated
various sets and forced my Guardians to witness
the unnatural out-of-season multibacking
and while they were vomiting their abhorrence
I fiddled to a viciously novel bursting
Into the Mating Season’s sap I injected a streak
of S & M and in my lucid Cave walls enjoyed
its performance: Tagata-Nei who once wouldn’t hurt
an insect were now driven beasts inflicting
or receiving the lingering pleasures of flogging
Inspired I instituted the Tournament of Champions
not between individual gladiators – that might
again foster deviant individualism – but single crews
representing their professions (I exempted my aristocracy
because I wanted them fat spectators easy
to control and defeat if necessary) My Nine Guardians
were charged with organizing it but prohibited
from using their privileged linking to promote
their favoured champions: there was to be
fair and equal opportunity for winning
Each profession could select their rep by
any method: the hunters fought out
to a winner others voted democratically
but all were madly enthusiastic because