Henderson's Spear

by Ronald Wright

  The girl withdrew to the platform and began to chew some of the roots we had brought, decorously spitting the proceeds into a wooden bowl. This was the local method for making kava, and very effective it proved to be. We drank round after round, breaking off only for some fruit, and by mid-afternoon were in a state not far removed from that of opium smokers. Indeed, I remember little of those hours but a drowsy reverie among old stones and trees, the wind keening in the upper branches. The sun slid down; shadows lengthened and filled the clearing, restoring to perfection the jagged walls and mossy pavements, until I seemed back in the heyday of this ancient temple, a languid worshipper of Oro.

  We revived ourselves with pipes, cigars, and large cigarettes rolled in leaves, the Tahitians being much addicted to their home-grown tobacco. At about five o’clock some women brought food for us, a fine repast of fish, clams, and cold roast pig. Our hosts would not eat, saying it was “taboo” for them. This taboo did not extend to Skinners keg of calibogus, which went down very well with everyone.

  The light in the clearing was poor but not too faint to see that Eddy was hitting it off with a member of the opposite sex. She was handsome rather than pretty, a little fleshy but full-framed, taller than Britannia, beautifully turned out in a silk pareu and floral wreath, her long black lashes and red cheeks enhanced, respectively, with kohl and rouge.

  Dalton, now in conversation with the deacon, who spoke English, looked on approvingly, as did the lovely kava girl, seated between me and Skinner on the grass, laughing and rolling her eyes. She had enough English to tell me her name: Tiurai, Tahitian for July, the month in which she had been born sixteen summers past. I told her mine, but the bunched consonants were beyond her lips’ command. Skinner rendered me as Faraniki Henesoni, taking pains to explain the distinction between Faraniki (Frank) and Farani (France), an important one under the circumstances. With my “beach” Polynesian I asked her who Eddy’s vahine (woman) might be. This produced a cascade of laughter from her pretty mouth and the information that the individual was not a vahine but a mahu. Thinking she might mean that Eddy’s friend was married or betrothed, I pressed for details. Skinner came to my aid with a number of opaque definitions.

  “How good are ye, sir, with a fousty secret?”

  “Good enough, I hope.”

  “Then let me tell ye that a mahu is a Polynesian poodlefaker.” He paused, searching my face for comprehension. “A kanaka John-Jane, sir. A maricón what’s janneyed-up. A midnight surprise. What them belowdecks calls … savin’ your grace.…”

  “Out with it, Captain, I’m still no wiser.”

  “The lads, sir, they calls ‘em fuckaladies, sir. For, er … hobvious reasons.”

  “You mean a prostitute?”

  “Well, some is and some hisn’t. But I don’t tink ye’re getting me.”

  At this moment I was appalled to see Reverend Dalton in the offing.

  “Actually, Henderson,” he said, lowering himself didactically to the grass, “the word is not the English profanity you might suppose. The term is Polynesian: faka leiti. It means ‘in the manner of a woman.’ The custom is indeed curious. If a family has only sons and wants a daughter, they may raise a boy as a girl. He assumes a girl’s name, wears flowers and feminine attire, becomes proficient in cooking, mat-making—all the distaff arts. He is treated in every way as a normal woman. He may even marry.”

  “Marry aye, Reverend,” said Skinner. “But I’ve never known one drop a kid.”

  “But I fail to see the point,” I broke in. “The Chinese or Hindoo wants a son so badly he’ll leave a baby girl to die. Why should the South Sea islander, in his state of Nature, want counterfeit daughters?”

  “Perhaps it has to do with the voluptuous character of the Polynesian and, more practically, with Malthusian pressure. An island can support only so many mouths. When its full up, as many of these seem to have been when first discovered, there’s no premium on fertility. A barren wife is no disgrace. On the contrary, a counterfeit woman, proficient in … er … female arts.…” He coughed into a hand and lowered his voice. “Captain Cook and others observed such practices.”

  Dalton had taken our discussion as purely ethnological. That Eddy’s companion was not what “she” seemed had escaped him. And so, mercifully, did Eddy’s reaction, when the understanding that eluded Dalton dawned upon the Prince. This I saw: it was the look of a tarantula that has just spied prey. But can a tarantula be said to have a look at all? Of course not. No, it was merely a predatory stillness; but one knew where it would lead.

  I regarded the mahu with fresh eyes. Indeed, I could hardly take my eyes off the amphibious creature. He was lovely—not a word I normally employ for my own sex, but even without the silk, the make-up, the hibiscus bloom behind his ear, he would still have been lovely. This godling vouchsafed to those of normal appetites a glimpse of the magnetic force of the abnormal. And (leaving aside the question of what may be normal and abnormal in such a place) he vouchsafed to other men—to me, at least—an intimation of what women see in us, of how they see us.

  “One feels it in the air, among these pagan stones, don’t you agree, Henderson?” the tutor naively observed. “A certain indefinable voluptuousness, what? Ellis reports that Oro was an Eros as well as a Mars. Carnal love was a god amongst these children of Nature. Such capital women! So free! Though they may be sinners in our eyes, let us remember they are not sinners in their own hearts. Unlike ourselves.”

  A messenger came from the woods with ponies, announcing that Teraupoo had sent these to convey us to his fastness in the hills.

  We ascended a dank ravine. Streamers of mist formed at chest height and wove between the trees. We rode in silence; doubtless the French and their puppet King had many spies on the island. As the path rose into the highlands it grew muddy where wild animals had passed. Our mounts began to stumble on clay and roots. We were obliged to continue on foot, Eddy soon slipping in a puddle. I saw the tall figure of the mahu beside him, whispering reassurance, steering him with a gentle touch on the elbow, the shoulder, in the small of his back.

  The slim hand of Tiurai slipped into mine like a child’s.

  The sun left without any farewell glow. Soon it was dark. I began to doubt the wisdom of this march. Were we perhaps being lured into ambush, as Skinner was muttering under his breath? He admitted he’d never met their leader face to face. He did not know these people or these hills. The weather was gathering itself for some mighty outburst, and he was miles from where he should be—with his ship. He did not share our interest in the secrets of the land. Sailors go round and round the world, but they never get far into it.

  Our mysterious destination came to us as a hot blast and a strange glow filtering between the trunks of giant trees. Ahead was a clearing of light—light cast upward on the boughs. In the ground was a shimmering pool of white and red, figures moving darkly at its perimeter, stirring the source of light and heat with long poles, like devils torturing the damned.

  “Aue!” Tiurai exclaimed in delight, squeezing my hand.

  The pit was about ten paces long and half as wide. A great fire, which had raged there for a day or more, was in the last stages of combustion, having transferred its energy to several tons of glowing volcanic stones. The demons were levelling and turning these to make an even bed of coals. At close quarters the scene resembled some industrial process, and I couldn’t fix my eyes for long against the incandescence. Any leaf or twig that fell burst into flames.

  “The learned Ellis must have been mistaken,” I remarked to Dalton. “What can this be but an oven for roasting ‘long pigs’—in this case four white ones?”

  “I have the deacons assurance that we are about to witness something remarkable—even inexplicable—but will live to tell the tale.”

  The deacon joined us, saying that though his people had lacked precise knowledge of Te Atua, the Lord God, until white men brought His Book across the sea, yet they had known in their innocence some element
s of His Truth which the white man had not been given, or had forgotten. Chief of these was the miracle of the fiery furnace—the very same by which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had struck the fear of the Lord into the King of Babylon.

  Dalton assured the deacon that we worshipped the same God he did in every way, and trusted that it would therefore be unnecessary to cast us into the furnace as a test of our faith.

  “Well, I don’t say as I agree with that,” Skinner struck in. “Me dear old Ma baptized me a Roman in the church of Santa Rosa de Lima! I worships a different Lord from the likes of Swaddlers and heathens.”

  The deacon smiled ironically. “The white people,” said he, “brought us this Book but they do not believe in its miracles!” No foreigner, to his knowledge, had ever walked the fire. We were to watch, nothing more. Indeed, he begged us not to follow the example of the firewalkers, no matter how strongly we might feel “called” to do so, because we had not observed certain indispensable taboos. To tread the oven in an unclean state was sure to end in death or terrible injury.

  Religion of all kinds was evidently the family business, for the deacons own brother was the tahua, or holy man, who knew the rites for walking the furnace, namely certain prayers in an ancient tongue which, the deacon assured us, was identical with that spoken by the Israelites in Babylon. This tahua would soon emerge from a little kiosk of leaves on the far side of the pit, quavering in the oily light of candlenut torches.

  In the dancing air there appeared a ghostly figure dressed in the ancient style of the Tahitian islands, white tapa about his waist. He wore a headdress of long leaves, whose tips jutted out like the crowning spikes of an aloe and bobbed as he walked, and in his hand was a leafy wand. His face and limbs were nearly invisible against the darkness, so he seemed a hollow man, a thing of nightmare.

  The spectre halted by the far edge of the pit and began a long chant to some spirit or deity, which (pace the deacon) I was sure had scant relation to the God of Israel. Some fifty people were around the pit: men, women, children, and we four unclean popaa. The oration done, nothing could be heard but the cracking and spitting of the furnace, and the wind soughing in the trees. All present seemed to hold their breath as, with upright carriage and wizened face fixed on heaven, the tahua stepped down onto the white-hot stones and calmly walked the ovens length towards us.

  I could see the hem of his pareu, which hung to his knees, agitated by the rising heat but not scorched, and there was no sizzle or smell of burning flesh from his bare feet. Neither was there any flinch in his movements or expression, no sign whatever of pain. He seemed entranced, far removed from daily consciousness. When he reached the end of the pit where we four sat transfixed, he stopped, turned, lifted his wand majestically, and walked slowly back to where he had begun.

  He raised his wand again. Now others got to their feet and began to file behind him. One by one they stepped down into the furnace as if entering a paddling pool, except that all kept their eyes upturned to the night sky. It seemed the tahua had the power to confer his mastery on them. Some forty people were soon moving through the incandescence, all under the same enchantment. Each time the priest reached an end of the pit he called out, and in this way the walkers followed him back and forth six times.

  I was astounded to see the deacon there, and the other chiefs who had received us, but my amazement knew no bounds when I descried the slender form of Tiurai rippling in the midst of the heat.

  The last to enter the pit, and to leave it, was the seven-foot Triton who had borne Eddy on his shoulders from the sea. Here, among several others well beyond six foot, his stature did not seem so exceptional, yet his tall form moving in the haze and glow was an unforgettable sight, and as I watched him pass calmly back for the last time, back to safety and the normal world where fire and flesh are foes, I heard Dalton softly quoting to himself in wonder: Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.

  The holy man withdrew to his hut, the walkers fell back to the rim of the light, a hush fell on the outlandish scene.

  “Jaysus!” Skinner exploded. “Lord liftin Jaysus!” There followed a litany of “Can ye believe your eyes?” and “Never in all me years,” and less repeatable expressions of incredulity. He’d heard talk of this “pishogue” all over the South Seas. He’d always thought there had to be some circus trick behind it. But now.… His hand trembled as he passed the jug of calibogus, and so did mine as I took it.

  Years afterwards I had occcasion to speak with a medical officer who witnessed a firewalk in Fiji. He was utterly at a loss to account for the phenomenon. The only observation he could add was that he saw one man lapse from trance and look down, whereupon the poor fellow was dreadfully burnt, his feet taking months to heal.

  • • •

  Young men threw bundles of leaves on the stones, sending up billows of steamy smoke. Out of this cloud a tall, regal figure appeared before Eddy and Dalton. It was the seven-footer who was last to tread the oven. He could hardly have contrived a more dramatic entrance.

  “I am Teraupoo, Your ‘ighness,” said he incongruously, for like all who had English on the island, he spoke with the Cockney savour of the missionaries. He was about thirty, having a broad, dark face with a small goatee, and long hair braided in a knot at the nape of his neck. His eyes were bloodshot from the smoke. He was lean and fit, his musculature showing to advantage through the greenery he wore like a sprite. He apologized for remaining incognito at the bay. On the coast the French had many eyes and ears. Indeed we had passed the ruins of his home, the work of a gunboat and a squad of marines.

  Eddy was lost for words. Dalton made an obsequious reply, addressing his interlocutor as “King.”

  “I ain’t a king, sir, and never ‘ope to become one. We have a so-called king on this island, but he’s a blackguard and a traitor. The king we had before him was a bad man too. We knew nothing of kings before the white man. The first Pomare was made king by the thieves of the Bounty, with their muskets. The second by the men of God, with theirs. The third died young. The fourth lost her kingdom and fled here to the Leewards, the only place she could sleep without fear. Then she went back to Tahiti and became the knife and fork of the French. Now the last of these upstart kings has given away the kingdom that was never his to give, like a man who sells a house which belongs to his relations.”

  He added there would be occasion enough for politics tomorrow. The taboo had lifted; it was time to feast and dance.

  The people brought out instruments: drums, mouth organs, jew’s harps, nose-flutes, rustic banjos. The forest rang with music and laughter, and with the girls’ sweet voices singing himene, those promiscuous South Sea songs that may begin with a line of Blake or Cowper in stately Tahitian, and end with “Barnacle Bill” or “Fanny Be Good” bequeathed by a beachcomber.

  We dined gorgeously that night, and after much dancing of the upa-upa, were led a short way through the woods by torchlight to a settlement of a dozen huts, the headquarters of our elusive host. We slept native fashion, on palm mats, Dalton and Eddy in one hut, Skinner and myself in another. I fell asleep to the sound of distant flutes, rising wind, and loud crashes as branches snapped and fell in the woods. I believe Skinner lay awake all night, worried by the gale and perhaps by things of which he had a better grasp than we.

  The others were risen and gone when I awoke. A bloody sky filled the door, and the air was already heavy, gathering itself for the day’s blow. I arose and went outside, still groggy from kava and calibogus. It occurred to me I might get away quietly and do some sketching. Dalton had made it clear that I was to keep to the background here. The show must be Eddy’s. My day was free.

  I had just settled in a picturesque spot with a view across a succession of green ridges and mist-filled valleys—a vista worthy of the brush of Sesshu—when Tiurai appeared, none the worse for her ordeal by fire. Stretching out her hand she drew me up, having
touched a finger to my lips. I gathered my sketching kit and followed down a path descending a ravine. Without her guidance I doubt I should have seen a path at all after the first hundred yards.

  Thunderclaps were sounding on the mountain. After a long scramble, we came to a pool amid smooth rocks beneath a silver thread of water, the whole surrounded by lianas and giant ferns. She tried to ask me about myself and the others, especially our Arii, but we had too little language in common for me to oblige. For this I was grateful; I was falling under the spell of this strange girl, and might have told her anything she’d asked. Instead, I bade her pose on a boulder above the pool, and there, with a charcoal between the obedient toes of my right foot, dashed off a likeness that struck a pleasing echo of her beauty.

  My party trick delighted her. She accepted the sketch eagerly, comparing it with her reflection in the water. The pearly teeth I’d inspected the day before parted in a winning smile. She looked up, as if inviting a kiss. But when I bent to do so, she shook her head and instead placed her soft nose against mine, breathing deeply.

  Without any shyness, she unwound her garment and slipped into the pool. I did the same. And they were both naked… and were not ashamed.

  For a long time we frolicked there, whilst clouds flung volleys of rain across the hills, and our silver thread became a mighty hawser. Sheet lightning flickered in the overcast, bringing an unwelcome thought of Captain Scott and his electrical experiments. Bacchante! That world of iron and men seemed a distant purgatory; its contemplation lasted only seconds, until Tiurai pinned me under her brown limbs, tenting my face in her abundant mane. We played like otters in the waterfall, which pummelled us and shot us down the race. And when this game became too hazardous—Tiurai miming that stones and logs might soon tumble on our heads—we clambered from the pool and lay on a smooth boulder in the steaming rain.