Under the Wide and Starry Sky

by Nancy Horan

  “Permission to come aboard?” the white man called.

  “Permission granted,” Otis replied.

  A ladder was thrown over the side, and the men climbed into the Casco. “Regler,” the white man introduced himself with a German accent. “And this is Chief Taipi-Kikino.” The chief, a good six feet tall, had two parallel blue bands tattooed across his nose and cheeks; he was a smiling man with beautiful white teeth and bronze skin that gleamed with fragrant coconut oil. He shook their hands, then shook them again. In the distance, Fanny spotted two more canoes emerging from the low-hanging white cloud.

  “Valentine, go below quick and prepare tea. More visitors,” she said, nodding in the direction of the canoes.

  In the time it took Regler to explain that he was a trader living on Nuka Hiva, a dozen native men had climbed up the ladder—giant men in loincloths with tattooed thighs and arms, knives at their waists, and handsome, glowering faces. They brought with them an assortment of items—plaited straw hats, oranges, coconuts, bananas—and held them out for sale.

  The turn toward commerce took Fanny by surprise. Apart from the Stevenson party’s greetings, no cordialities had passed among them. An odd period of staring ensued.

  “All right. Tell them I will buy the bananas,” Fanny said.

  “The man wants a dollar,” Regler said rather apologetically.

  “For a bunch of bananas? Tell him twenty-five cents. And that’s too much.”

  The native men snorted their disgust when Regler translated. One of them swept

  his arm about to take in the schooner and its fine trappings. “You no rich?” he said ironically. A round of taunting laughter went up.

  Before Fanny knew what was happening, the men were swarming the boat, with Louis in anxious pursuit.

  “Dear heavens,” Maggie whispered. “We’re at their mercy.”

  Fanny went below so Valentine wouldn’t be frightened. She found the girl quaking in the galley; the cook was nowhere in sight. Fanny stood at the entrance of the kitchen and waved away the men when they poked their heads through the door.

  When the natives had departed, everyone on board stared at one another in wonder.

  “How extraordinary,” Louis said.

  “It’s not really how they are,” Regler said. The trader had a clean-shaven chin and preposterously long and curly hair growing from his cheeks, like sheepskin saddlebags. “What you saw just now was a bit of posturing. When you befriend them, you will find they won’t accept money for food. With these folks, food isn’t something you own. They give it as a gift, and they know eventually they’ll be reimbursed, so to speak. There is a lot of back and forth with the gift-giving. Sometimes it wears a man out.” He laughed. “Why don’t you come with me to the island, Captain Otis? I will find you chickens and coconut milk and coffee—whatever supplies you need. And the chief has offered to take your letters over to the next bay.”

  Maggie jumped in glee at the news of a mail steamer. They all promptly retrieved their letters. Regler turned to Lloyd, who had stood dumbfounded on deck during the visit. “Young fellow, you come, too. We will need extra hands.”

  While the men were gone, yet another canoe arrived, this time with fourteen men and boys led by the chief of chiefs, Ko’oamua. The chief might have been wearing a suit of clothes, so thoroughly was his body tattooed with blue arabesques. Maggie didn’t flinch at the sight of his nakedness. He came bearing gifts of welcome and showed every sign that he was a fine gentleman. He and his men followed Louis in single file on a tour through the fore and after cabins and up the forecastle companion. They all settled on the floor of the cockpit and stared at Lloyd’s typewriter, which was set up on the table. By way of entertainment, Louis asked their names and typed each phonetically, handing out the individual strips of paper. Ko’oamua took over the typewriter at that point and punched out the names of each of his family members.

  “The man knows some English but not enough. And God knows, we haven’t a syllable of theirs. It’s bloody frustrating not to be able to talk to them,” Louis said to Fanny. “We might as well be from different planets.” He was thumbing madly through a book about Polynesian languages.

  Fanny shrugged. She went to the supply of gifts she had brought from San Francisco and handed around some cheap cigars. The men burst into smiles and left peacefully.

  “There aren’t that many of them left, not compared to their old numbers,” Regler said that evening over dinner on the boat. “They’ve had sickness of all kinds—cholera, smallpox, syphilis. Taipi-Kikino is a chief, but the big chief is Ko’oamua, whom you also met today. He’s been converted by the missionaries. It wasn’t that long ago, though, you could see him striding proudly along the beach right there.” Regler pointed to the stretch of sand opposite the Casco. “He was wearing a tapa cloth around him. And out from its folds, what did he pull? A human arm that he chewed bites out of I suppose it belonged to one of his enemies—former, that is. They call human flesh ‘long pig.’ The man appeared to enjoy it, all right.”

  “Long pig. How picturesque,” Fanny said.

  Between courses, Regler raked his fingers thoughtfully through his whiskers. “The days of long pig are over with now. So will be the tattooing, if the French have their way. They’re against it. Too much a reminder of the old savage days. The fact is, the natives won’t stop with their tattoos. Some things you can’t take away from people,” he mused. “Get a look at Queen Vaekehu’s tattoos if you go visit her, which you should. She’s gone missionary, but at one time her legs were the main attraction for visitors to the island.”

  In the morning, they all went ashore. As their canoe approached the beach, the people of Anaho stopped to get a good look at them. There were women among the men, most of them half-clad and damp. It appeared they were returning home from a morning bath. When Fanny, in a holoku, and Maggie, in a proper dress and veil, stepped onshore, the women came forward and startled them by calling out, “Hello! Hello!” Another in the crowd—a man who had come aboard the Casco yesterday—gestured toward Louis with his eyes and said to the gathered, “Ona.” A round of nodding followed.

  “What does that mean?” Louis asked Frère Michel, a jolly young French priest who had joined the greeting party.

  “‘Owner,’” he responded. “It is a word of respect. It means you are trés riche, monsieur.”

  Fanny watched Louis—so pale and slender a specimen compared to these strapping men—fairly beam with pleasure at his new notoriety.

  “Some of them speak pidgin English,” the priest said, “but do not assume they comprehend everything you say. Would you like a tour?”

  Fanny, Louis, Maggie, and Lloyd followed Frère Michel, who was joined by Taipi-Kikino and Regler. Fanny guessed which of the locals had “gone missionary” by what they were wearing. A few men wore European-style pants; some women wore holokus.

  They visited a large oblong building with an open gallery set on a platform of stones. Several people—a family, it appeared—promptly emerged from the thatched-roof house to stare back at the “Cascos,” as they now called themselves. In a matter of moments, Fanny and her family were welcome guests sitting on the floor in the house’s central open room on woven mats.

  “Look closely at the mat upon which you are sitting,” Frère Michel said. “It is made of tree bark and has probably taken the woman of the house a year to make. It is the islander’s greatest wealth, these tapas. Some of them have been in families for decades.” The priest nodded toward a man preparing a drink. “And that is kava. You will drink it often here.”

  Fanny watched the man prepare the drink. He chewed on a plant root until it was in shreds, then added water and mixed it in a wooden bowl, which was passed around to them. Maggie shot a horrified glance at Fanny as she sipped the liquid, but took the bowl in her turn and made a show, at least, of sipping. Next they were served roasted pig on banana leaves and mashed breadfruit covered in coconut cream.

  “Would you ask th
e hostess if she will share her recipe?” Fanny requested. Soon the priest was translating the simple instructions.

  “I want to give them something,” Fanny said to her family as they prepared to depart. “Have you anything at all?” Louis and Lloyd searched their pockets while Maggie held the tip of her widow’s veil, as if she feared Fanny might snatch it off her head. In her pocket, Fanny felt her tobacco pouch and papers.

  Having instructed the men at the table to roll cigarettes, she rose with the others and went outside, where dancers had gathered to entertain the visitors. A fellow pounded a barrel as five men leaped about, escalating their jig into gymnastics as they climbed upon each other’s shoulders and jumped off. Some of the native people milling about were nearly naked, wearing only a rolled-up piece of fabric around their waists. Others had on lavalavas, large handkerchiefs tied at the waist that covered the private parts. The men sported extraordinary tattoos on their flanks and thighs that so completely covered their skin, they appeared to be wearing tight pants down to their knees. Yet others mixed European-style clothing with native garb. A few of the men had white lime caked in their hair. It seemed that everyone wore a sprig of nature: a flower behind the ear, a wreath around the neck, tendrils of vines wrapping the midsection. The fragrance of the flowers mixed with the smells of ginger, coconut oil, and the dung of fat black pigs moving among the audience with the kind of freedom she’d heard cows enjoyed in India.

  Fanny began to laugh. What a strange turn life has taken!

  When the dancing finished, an elderly man burst into song. “What is he saying?” Fanny asked Regler when the song had gone on for some time.

  “It is a story about your visit. A rich man and his wife have arrived in a silver ship to this island. He is composing it as he goes. That is what the people do here.”

  Next came a tour of a girls’ school run by nuns, and then the church, where Frère Michel took them into his little office to make a pot of coffee. Fanny could see the caution on Louis’s face. He was entering the camp of the enemy: a missionary, and a Catholic one, at that. She watched him walk over to the bookcase to scan the titles and take the man’s measure.

  “It is not the coffee you are accustomed to,” the priest warned. He shrugged. “One adapts.”

  “I am trying to adjust to their manners.” Louis laughed. “Yesterday we were ridiculed for not buying their coconuts, and today they opened their homes and served us coconuts.”

  The priest folded his hands in his lap. “Yesterday’s display reflects how these people are treated by traders. They expect to be cheated, and they were perhaps trying to establish their power in the bargaining. It was a performance, in a way. Today is far more sincere. They have a rather complex sense of etiquette.”

  “Yes?”

  “It has evolved over time, I think. They haven’t anything like a court system. No legal structure to speak of,” the priest said. “No mechanism for appealing wrongs. In the absence of laws, it’s rather useful to have strict rules of etiquette, don’t you think? They tell everyone how to behave. There are rules for all sorts of things. One doesn’t just wake up a chief in the morning, for example. You must tickle his feet. Their tapus are their laws. There are tapus for fish, for women …”

  “Yes?”

  “If they find there are fewer fish in an area, they will declare a tapu for that place until the fish come back.”

  “And the ones for women?” Fanny asked.

  “Ah, women can do very little. They marry young and have many restrictions. On some islands, the women are not permitted to eat meat. So the men form clubs and cook and eat together. On this island, the chief recently removed the tapu against women using roads that men have built, which is all the roads. Up to now, they had to walk through fields. If they wanted to cross the road, they had to wade through a stream. They cannot use a man’s saddle for their horses—that’s another tapu, though I don’t know the origin of it. Some chief became annoyed with his wife borrowing his equipment too often, I suppose. But the women are clever. They have figured a way around it. It seems they are permitted to use the saddle of someone who is not a native. My saddle is borrowed quite a lot, as is Mr. Regler’s. And so it goes.”

  “I want to invite the women to come to the boat tomorrow,” Fanny said. “I don’t know if you can arrange it.”

  The priest smiled. “I shall see what I can do.”

  When the group arrived the next morning, Fanny had jam and hard ship biscuits waiting. Dressed in holokus and fragrant with fresh flowers in their hair, the women hardly noticed the tray of food on the table, for they were caught up in their multiple reflections set off by the mirrors lining the walls of the saloon. They were not strangers to mirrors, but many at one time were an oddity, and wildly entertaining. The women lifted their hems to examine the backs of their legs, tilted their heads to admire their faces. In time, their attention turned to the lush velvet on the cushions around the table. One woman hoisted her dress and, exposing legs and buttocks tattooed in spiral patterns, rubbed her bottom on the crimson cushion. Valentine, who was serving tea, pressed her lips tight in quiet horror. But Fanny’s mind filled with a picture of herself some ten years ago in Fanny Sitwell’s elegant drawing room, lying on a chaise with her foot in a cast while her hosts stared at her as if she had just leaped out of a gulch in the wild and woolly American West. Fanny remembered vividly the one odd longing in her mind that day: to bury her face in the luxury of Mrs. Sitwell’s velvet curtains and thereby confirm everyone’s worst instincts about her class and character.

  Fanny took the woman’s hand and placed it on the velvet curtains of the ship windows. Then she put her own face against the fabric to demonstrate, and encouraged the woman to do the same. When the native woman had given her cheeks a satisfying rub, her great brown eyes looked at Fanny seriously. She ran a finger along the tanned skin of Fanny’s forearm, then touched her own arm. “All same you,” she said.

  CHAPTER 61

  “To think we were wearing buffalo coats a few weeks ago,” Maggie Stevenson remarked. She had put on her widow’s veil for the priest’s visit and wore shoes over her bare feet, unlike her daughter-in-law, who had stopped making such concessions some time ago.

  The family, along with the priest, were all sitting on the deck of the Casco, feeling the soft bulge of each wave as it lifted and lowered the boat before breaking into tinsel-bright strands on the shore.

  “It doesn’t seem real,” Fanny said. “The beauty of this place—of these people—is beyond anything I ever conceived. “

  “Yet there is a sadness, a kind of defeat I have sensed here and there among them,” Louis said. “Or am I imagining that?”

  “No, you are not imagining. They have lost much,” the priest said. “To diseases, to alcohol and opium—the gifts of civilization. There are many suicides. If you chip away at their culture, people forget who they are.” He looked at Louis. “I know what you are wondering. How dare I speak of such loss if I am part of the cause?”

  Louis conceded the point with a nod.

  “I believe we have done some good by helping to end cannibalism. As for the rest, I don’t know,” the priest said. “When I came here, the bishop said to me, ‘You are coming into a culture that is more civilized than our own.’ I have pondered that remark a great deal.”

  Polite eaters of human flesh? Suicides in paradise? None of it added up, and Louis had no real sense whether the reported facts were correct. Yet for him, there were strands of familiarity in the stories.

  “When the English defeated the Scottish, they deposed clan chiefs and stripped the people of their kilts and bagpipes,” he told Fanny that night before retiring. “They weighted down their lilting Gaelic tongues with the thumping ballast of official English.”

  “How odd to feel sympathy for cannibals that their old ways have been taken away,” Fanny said. “But there it is.”

  Louis shook his head. “I wonder how it is on other islands, where there has been le
ss contact with foreigners. Are their populations declining? Are the people of other islands as deeply depressed as the Marquesans appear to be?”

  “If they have been stripped of their identities, I should think so,” Fanny mused.

  Louis shook his head. “I cannot help but think of the Highlanders.”

  “Oh, Louis, you can’t compare all the world to Scotland at every turn.”

  “No, I suppose not. On our island, we much preferred drawing and quartering. Though the old Scots shared one decorating pleasure with these island peoples: displaying heads on pikes around the old homestead. Otherwise, I admit our savagery is entirely different.”

  CHAPTER 62

  In the near darkness, Fanny threw a holoku over her head, pulled the blanket from her berth, then felt her way along the passage leading to the companionway. Her bare feet found the steps, counted them. Up on deck, she made out the figure of her husband in his striped trader’s pajamas, sitting cross-legged near the railing. She sank down next to him, wrapped them both in her blanket, and rested her head on his shoulder. The only sounds were the lapping of waves against the hull and the cry of a single bird flying overhead. As first light came up on the little island of Hiva Oa, they sat there together like theatergoers, silent and watching.

  “It’s yet another restaging of the Creation,” he whispered. “Are you weary of the same old thing?”

  She laughed. “I never grow tired of it.”

  The island’s mountains, darkly furred with foliage, formed a silhouette behind two strips of clouds. A veil of mist covering the peak loomed gray as lead. But on the water’s surface, cloud wisps lit white by the hidden sun danced across the glittering waves. All parts of the picture—clouds, waves, light and dark air, even the mountains—appeared to be undulating together.