Simon announced he was flying to Papeete to talk to Lars and the Australian consul. All seats on the whimsical air service were still booked solid, and the airstrip was several hours away across the mountains. But he was going to camp there for a stand-by seat “and be such a bastard they’ll bounce someone just to get rid of me.” This seemed a workable plan. The gendarmes raised no objection, and he left in Taiohae’s only taxi, a battered jeep.
Meanwhile I covered church, state, and free enterprise with my posters and enquiries. The schoolteacher, a young Demi from Tahiti named Monique, listened well but knew nothing. The priest, a Father Yves, had been on Nuku Hiva only a year; his heart was still in France. He poured out coffee and memories of Avignon. He showed me his church and took me to the cemetery, where I spent hours pulling weeds from weathered stones and lacy cast-iron crosses, in a welter of emotion, hardly knowing whether I wanted to find Jon or not to find him there.
Was there anywhere else the dead might be buried; in house platforms, for example, as I’d read?
“No! Not in the nineteen-fifties.” Father Yves laughed awkwardly, as if the persistence of heathen customs might be a professional embarrassment. “I doubt anyone has been buried in a paepae this century. Of course, two villages also have churchyards. Hatiheu. Taipivai.” Taipi-vai, the Taipi Valley: Melville’s Typee. Since landing on Nuku Hiva I’d hardly thought about him, his book, my film.
“The only other place I can suggest,” the priest added, “is an old Protestant cemetery, beyond the fort. No one’s been buried there in years. Marquesans are Catholics. But occasionally, when a Tahitian or a foreigner dies here.…”
I left fuming. I should have gone there first. Surely a French priest would know that an Englishman was likely to be a Protestant? Either Father Yves was a bit dim-witted (Nuku Hiva was hardly the plummest parish in the French empire) or he’d stalled from some ridiculous sectarian rivalry.
The small burial ground lay up a track beyond the government wharf at the far end of the village. I had to ask directions several times to find it. When I got there I saw I’d judged the priest harshly; the place might easily have slipped his mind. Cliffs rose sharply behind, their wild vegetation tiptoeing back among the graves. Elderly frangipani, leafless but in bloom, tottered like branching coral over the headstones. I found a stick and began slashing at the undergrowth.
My discovery took less than an hour, but raised many more questions than it answered. I peeled a poultice of moss and roots from a simple concrete slab edged with pebbles. I swept away loose earth, and read:
J. HENDERSON
†1953
Age inconnu
Inhumé 25.8.1959
R.I.P
It began to rain but I hardly noticed. I knelt down on the brush I’d felled, ran my finger over the crude letters, confirming they’d been scratched into the cement when it was soft. Could this be the man Jon was looking for—some descendant of Franks? Or was it Jon himself, under a false name? But why the precise date of burial and vague time of death? No one else had a pair of dates like these.
Of course it was just possible that this Henderson had no connection to Jon whatsoever, like the Mormon in Tahiti. The name is common enough. But surely not in a place the size of Nuku Hiva. There can’t have been eight hundred people on the whole island in 1953. If this was coincidence, it was cruel enough to make one believe the Greeks were right about the gods: that they’re a bunch of overgrown wastrels roistering away in the clouds, and every now and again one of them gets bored—gets tired of brawling and screwing with the rest—and decides to toss down a lump of shit or gold in the path of us mortals, just to see what we’ll do.
Sergeant Benoit gripped my elbow warmly and handed me into a chair. We’d fallen into a pattern of communication: I understood his French if he spoke slowly, he understood my English if I did the same. He came round from his desk and sat opposite me, his fingers in a cat’s cradle.
“My secretary has checked the earliest papers.” He looked over at Heikua, who nodded glumly. “She has found nothing yet. No Englishman of the right age. Not even an American or Australian.…”
I burst in with my discovery, explaining that Henderson was a family name. He thought for a moment, then snatched up a bunch of keys. “Come!” We jounced back to the graveyard in his Land Rover. Soon we were standing by the slab, in light rain and the moist fetor of slashed weeds.
“As you describe,” he muttered. “It is curious, two dates. This person—and let us keep in mind that we don’t know if this is a man or a woman—this individual must have been moved or reburied. Or found six years after death. This is possible.” He got down and scraped at the letters. “The grave is very plain, even for a Protestant. No headstone. No Christian name. Only an initial. Facts, nothing more. This looks to me like an official inscription.”
“Except R.I.P.”
“R.I.P. is something one might put when one knows nothing. On the grave of a sailor or a soldier, for example. It is possible this belongs to a body washed up from the sea, from a wreck.”
“Who might know? There must be people around who’d remember. It was only thirty years ago.”
“I’m afraid thirty years is a long time on Nuku Hiva, Mademoiselle. If this grave were in the Catholic cemetery there might be some connection with a local family. But here, and the age unknown.… It must have been an outsider. If I were you I’d ask anyone over fifty. But you’ve already been doing so.” He turned and gazed down through the trees to the sheen of the bay. “There may be records in Papeete of a shipwreck at that time.”
He fell silent, thinking, eager to help, oblivious of the rain soaking into his starched shirt. Suddenly he stamped his foot, a winning, childish gesture. “Je suis vachement stupide! Tari Kautai is the one for you! Many years ago he was constable here. Long before my time.”
This man, very old now, lived in Taipivai but wasn’t on the island at the moment. He’d been flown to Tahiti some weeks ago for an operation, but was expected back soon. “A hip replacement. They say he has a new woman! Some wood on the old tree must still be green.” The sergeant allowed himself a smirk. “Though you wouldn’t think so. Tari is half blind and deaf as a stone. But his brain is not bad. Well conserved in alcohol, like that of Einstein. Or is it Comte? Is it Comte whose preserved brain is no bigger than a chimpanzee’s?”
“Where will he go when he comes back? Will he come to Taiohae?”
“He’ll go straight home. We’ll send our helicopter to the airstrip. He’ll be home in twenty minutes. Old Tari’s too frail to go by road. The Taipivai road’s washed out anyway. You should visit him at his house. If this rain ever stops.”
I begged him to let me go immediately. I wanted to be on the spot when the old man returned. Benoit was cagy, saying I might still be needed as a witness. I was terrified of being summoned to Papeete before having a chance to talk to this ex-constable. I wanted to be hard to find.
“How would you get there? I regret I can’t let you go by boat. My orders. And more important for me, how would you get back?”
“I’ll walk. I’m a keen hiker. How bad is the road?”
He pointed at the sugarloaf above the bay, thrusting darkly into cloud. “There’s a landslide about three kilometres beyond Muake.”
“Let me try. I’ve got a good map. If I reach Taipivai, and you need me in a hurry, you can always fetch me by boat or helicopter.”
“If you knew our helicopter, Mademoiselle, you would not say such a thing! Only the very ill are not afraid of it.” He laughed. Then he went silent, looking at the grave, and his eyes said he’d decided to let me go.
“You may go. But please, no boats.” He wagged a finger. “Not even little ones.” Then he shook his head, as if clearing water from his ears. His expression was strained, his voice low. “You yourself were only a passenger with the others, is that not true?”
I said it was. He hissed in exasperation.
“This is what I have been telling Papeete
!”
At sundown I went to Lily McIver’s for dinner, to find the others and say goodbye. I got there before them and sat by the window. A stout man was unpacking woodcarvings he made to sell to yachtsmen, setting out a row of incised bowls and weirdly foetal tikis—gods and ancestors with pursed lips and bulging eyes. Like the tattooist, he copied ancient examples. Two or three generations ago, Marquesan society had shrunk to where there were not enough hands to pass the culture on. This happens in families, too, I thought. The road from the past is washed out, and all one can do is rescue a few artifacts and echoes and bits of paper.
I showed him Jon’s photograph. He shook his head.
The sun had fallen behind the western rim but its light, coppery in the thick air, still lit a shoulder of Muake and the ridge above the little graveyard. The bay filled gently with dusk.
The others came in. Natalie sat down and puckered at the wine list. “Only one Aussie and it’s a shit. Dunno about the Chilean. Won’t touch French on principle. Doubt it’s fit to drink by the time it gets here anyway. Even though we’re in France right now!” she cawed sardonically.
Lily appeared, bright as ever.
“When are y’all going Melville hunting?”
“Just me. These two aren’t crazy enough. I’m going up that ridge tomorrow, rain or shine.”
“Last year I had some professor from … I don’t rightly recall. Maybe Noo Yawk? He said the boys went that way.” She pointed to a hollow far below the ridge. “There’s a big ruin down in there, a place where they used to dance in the old days. What Melville called a hula-hula ground, on account of his time in Hawaii.” A French oath issued from the kitchen. Lily glided away gracefully, a dancer herself, rolling a clear blue eye.
“I can’t agree with that professor,” I said sotto voce. “They stuck to the ridge all the way. You can read Typee like a guidebook. …”
“Listen, Liv.” said Natalie, glancing at Vatu. “We have to say our final goodbyes tonight. Simon got out on a plane this morning. He’s being questioned in Papeete. Sent a telex. They still have those here. We’ve got to go back to Tahiti.”
“Flying?”
“Sailing. They may want to look over the boat.”
I wondered what the authorities would make of Simons samples. But I kept this to myself; I didn’t want to take care of them.
“Can you sail her, just the pair of you?”
“We’ll manage. It’s true about Vatu—he’s worth two.” Natalie patted the Fijians burly forearm. “The trades’ll be with us. We’ll motor if it gets rough.”
They didn’t seem too put out by this change of plan. Indeed, they were relieved to be off. They even planned to do some more “snooping,” as they put it—something they’d have done on our way here if we hadn’t had the death to report. They’d heard rumours the French were preparing a new test site on Eiao, an uninhabited rock island only sixty miles from Nuku Hiva.
I’d seen it on the charts but given it no thought, till now.
“Could someone live there?”
“You mean your father?”
“I’d leave Eiao till the very end,” Vatu said. “Too barren. Good for goats and bombs, and not much else. Long time ago, four Navy blokes deserted there. Three died of thirst.” He topped up my glass and grinned. “The last one survived by using the others’ skulls as water bottles.”
It seemed very foolish of Natalie and Vatu to do more spying. But their plans weren’t my business. I told them about the Henderson grave, the old constable in Taipivai. Hours later, after brandy with Lily and a conversation that seemed haunted by the dead—by Melville, Henderson, the girl, and perhaps by Jon—we walked along the beach to their dinghy, beneath a field of stars.
“Maybe we’ll see you when you’re back on Tahiti,” Natalie said. “Ring Lars. He’ll know where we are.” She hugged me, a little desperately.
This was the last I saw of them until I spotted Natalie here in the prison yard.
The Tui Marama was gone from her mooring by sunrise. There were no other boats. I walked down to the beach for a swim. In its stillness and emptiness the bay might have belonged to a time before man, to any of the twenty thousand centuries since Nuku Hiva rose and cooled.
“When I was a boy,” my hotelier said unexpectedly at breakfast, after watching me study my map, “people used to walk that way to Taipivai across Hapaa. Before there were cars.”
The menace of his silence, his bulk, and his tattoos vanished with these words. I asked him what he meant by Hapaa, which wasn’t on the map. Soon we were chatting easily. His name was Pierre. Marquesans weren’t surly, just shy and reserved—as I should have known, being English.
Taipivai and Hapaa: Melville’s Typee and Happar. The first hundred pages of Typee resound with the question of these names. The Happar were said to be peaceful folk, already half tamed by missionaries, who might shelter Melville and his friend until their ship sailed off. But at all costs the runaways had to steer clear of the heathen Typee, “inveterate gormandizers of human flesh.”
Pierre’s large finger settled on a green blank running east from the crater rim. Across the contours was a dotted line, marked Sentier. “That’s Hapaa. No one goes up there now except to hunt pig.”
He thought this path joined the Taipivai road, probably beyond the landslide. From there it was only a few kilometres down to the village of Taipivai, where Tari Kautai lived.
I left most of my luggage with Pierre, taking only camping things and a change of clothes. His wife (a fuchsia bra that day) packed me a lunch. I made my way to the edge of town, found the path, and began climbing the crater rim.
Melville had been on board the Acushnet a year and half when she anchored at Taiohae in 1842. He’d seen no land in six months. Provisions were low. “The bark that once clung to the wood we use for fuel has been gnawed off and devoured by the captains pig; and … the pig himself has in turn been devoured.” He decided to risk his luck “among the savages of the island.”
From the Acushnet’s deck it had looked easy: a dash down a village lane and up the nearest spur, a scramble along the crab-claw ridge until they reached the high mountains. Opportunity came when the starboard watch were given a few hours’ shore leave. A storm drove the Marquesans into their houses and the sailors into a boat shed. When their shipmates grew drowsy and began to doze among the war canoes, the two runaways sprinted through breadfruit groves and gardens, unseen in the misty downpour.
Even though I had a path to follow, the first stage of Melville’s route was tough going—steep, overgrown, the humidity enervating. My pack seemed heavier than it should be; I blamed the bottle of whisky it held for Tari Kautai, bought on Sergeant Benoit’s advice. It took more than an hour to gain the ridge and a phaeton’s view of the Taiohae amphitheatre, its heights fogged, a tarnish on the bay. Due south, across a windy sea, I could just make out the spires of Ua Pou.
The trail wound through a grove of Tahitian chestnut into an empty wooded valley, the sun winking through heavy leaves. Here and there the land sloped away, giving views of folded greenery ringed by mountains. There was no sight of the sea, no sound whatever of man. Only parakeets and bees, and wild cockerels flashing gaudily in the woods. I was enthralled. It was wonderful to be alone. If Jon had wanted to hide from the world he could hardly have picked a more delightful spot. But the thought faded as soon as it took full shape in my mind. No one could live here without supplies—matches, for a start. Sooner or later the most elusive hermit would become known to travellers and hunters.
There was a snort, the crunch of a large animal bullying through undergrowth, leaving a piggy scent on the air. This Eden had its dangers. Then I began to worry more about the hunters than the prey. What might they do to a foreign woman alone? I walked on nervously, considered turning back before dark, but the trail showed no recent footprints; I had Hapaa to myself.
Nearly all the trees—mango, guava, pandanus, banana, breadfruit—were food trees, descendants of old Marqu
esan orchards. This jungle was the work of woman and man, the overgrown garden of a ruined estate. And soon I saw ruins in the shadows, walls of paepae, the high rafts of stone on which wooden houses once stood. A neolithic civilization had thrived on these islands, glimpsed by Melville in its last good days. Now it was lost as Stonehenge, in only a hundred years.
The last two Hapaa, a man and a woman, had crossed the ridge to Taiohae a century ago, leaving their tribal home behind, a memory still fresh when Stevenson came, himself tubercular and doomed. Now nothing remained of them, and even their name was no longer written on maps. These were islands of oblivion, where people tattooed themselves with glyphs they couldn’t read.
E hari te fau,
E toro te faaro
E mo te taata. The palm tree will grow,
The coral will spread,
Butman will die.
By mid-afternoon the path had branched several times, bearing no relation to the confident line on paper. The way I chose became clogged with recent growth; soon I was breaking trail with a stick. I wasn’t exactly lost—map and compass told me I’d hit the road beyond Muake eventually—but I was running on dead reckoning.
The sky whitened to a lifeless haze. The air became oppressive. I stopped to drink at every stream that looked undisturbed by pigs, beginning to see the wisdom in Vichy water. The more I drank, the more I sweated.
Then rain came, thick cool rain, welcome until I stopped for the night and began to feel downright chilled. I had trouble finding a level spot to pitch the tent. Eventually I flattened some bush on an ancient paepae, and slept under nylon where a Marquesan family had lived under thatch.
I woke often from frightening dreams to more tangible fears of drunken hunters and wild boars. Once, I had to force myself outside to pee. Squatting in the bushes (always the worst part of camping) I remembered the giant centipede: a bite characterized by immediate severe pain, followed by tissue necrosis. It took a long time to fall asleep after that. There were things in the night beyond the nylon membrane—snapping branches, footfalls, breaths, grunts, stifled cries. It wasn’t hard to understand the old Polynesian dread of tupapau, the restless ghosts who lurk in lonely places. No doubt there were plenty of them in Hapaa. And as I floated between sleep and wakefulness, I was visited by a ghost of my own—scenes of my father lost and starving, stumbling about up here like Melville, sick in body or mind. He was buried in this very paepae, and I was lying on his bones.
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