Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  After the women in the grass hut had wakened, the female slaves would move inside, throw out the slops and do the other necessary chores. Particularly, they kept clean that corner of the hut which had been cut off by lengths of tapa and reserved for those women who were experiencing their monthly sickness, for it was a tabu entailing death for there to be any communication between men and women at such time.

  In general, however, the tabus which were rigidly enforced on land had to be suspended aboard a crowded canoe. For example, had any of the rowers while ashore come as near the king as all now were, or had they stepped upon his shadow, or even the shadow of his cape, they would have been killed instantly, but in the canoe the tabu was suspended, and sometimes when the king moved, men actually touched him. They recoiled as if doomed, but he ignored the insult.

  The tabus which centered upon eating were also held in abeyance, for there was no one aboard of sufficient status to prepare the king’s food as custom required; nor had the keeper of the king’s toilet pot come on the journey, so that a slave, terrified at the task, had to throw into the sea the kingly bowel movements, rather than follow the required custom of burying them secretly in a sacred grove, lest enemies find them and with evil spells conjure the king to death.

  Women upon such a trip did not fare well. Obviously, the food had to be reserved for men who did the hard work of paddling. The pigs and dogs also had to be kept alive to stock the new land, which left little for the women. That was why, at every opportunity, they set fishing lines and tended them carefully. The first fish they caught went to the king and Teroro, the next to Tupuna and his old wife, the next four to the paddlers, the seventh and eighth to the pigs, the ninth to the dogs, the tenth to the chickens and the rats. If there were more, the women could eat.

  With great niggardliness, the prepared foods were doled out, a piece at a time, but when they were distributed, how good they tasted. A man would get his stick of hard and sour breadfruit, and as he chewed on it he would recall the wasteful feasts he had once held, when abundant breadfruit, fresh and sweet, had been thrown to animals. But the food that gave most pleasure, the master food of the islands, came when the king directed that one of the bamboo lengths of dried poi be opened, and then the rich purplish starch would be handed out, and as it grew sticky in the mouth, men would smile with pleasure.

  But soon the poi was finished and the bundles of dried breadfruit diminished. Even the abundant rain ceased and King Tamatoa had to reduce his rations still further, until the crew were getting only two mouthfuls of solid food, two small portions of water. Women and slaves got half as much, so that unless the fishermen could land bonito, or trap water in the sails, all existed at the starvation level.

  Early in the dry period the king and Teroro made one discovery, a tormenting and frustrating one made by all similar voyagers: when the tongue was parched and the body scorched with heat, when one’s whole being craved only water, an unexpected squall often passed a mile to the left or right, dumping untold quantities of water upon the sea, just out of reach, but it was no use paddling furiously to overtake the squall, for by the time the canoe reached the spot where the rain had been falling, the squall had moved on, leaving all hands hotter and thirstier than before. Not even an expert navigator like Teroro could anticipate the vagaries of a rain squall and intercept it; all one could do was to plod patiently on, his lips burning with desire and his eyes aflame, trying to ignore the cascades of water that were being dumped out of reach; but one could also pray that if one did continue purposefully, in a seamanlike manner, sooner or later some squall would have to strike the canoe.

  On a voyage such as this, sexual contact was expressly tabu, but this did not keep the king from gazing often at his stately wife Natabu; and old Tupuna saw to it that Teura got some of his food; and in the heat of day Tehani would dip a length of tapa into the sea, cool it, and press it over her husband’s sleeping form. At night, when the stars were known and the course set, the navigator would often sit quietly beside the vivacious girl he had brought with him and talk with her of Havaiki, or of his youth on Bora Bora, and although she rarely had anything sensible to say in reply, the two did grow to respect and treasure each other.

  But the most curious thoughts between men and women involved the twelve unassigned women and the thirty-four unattached men. Perhaps the word unassigned is not completely accurate to describe the women, because some of them in Bora Bora had been specific wives of individual men, but on such an expedition it was understood that upon landing, any such woman would accept as her additional husbands two or three of the men who had no wives, and no one considered this strange. So on the long voyage men with no women began cautiously to do two things: to form close friendships with men who had women, establishing a congenial group of three or four who would later share one woman as their common wife; or to study the unmarried women in an effort to decide which one could most satisfactorily be shared with one’s group; so that before the voyage had consumed even fifteen days, groups had begun to crystallize, and without anything definite having been said, it was remarkably well understood that this woman and these three men would build a house for themselves and raise common children, or that that husband and wife would accept those two friends of the man into complete and intimate harmony, thus populating the new land. It was further understood that each woman, until she reached the age when children no longer came, would be kept continuously pregnant. The same, of course, was true of the sows and the bitches, for the major task of all was to populate an empty, new land.

  On the eleventh night occurred an event which, in its emotional impact upon a people who lived by the stars, had no equal on this voyage. Even the abandonment of Oro had failed to generate the excitement caused by this phenomenon.

  As the West Wind crept constantly northward it became obvious to the astronomers on board that they must lose, and forever, many old familiar stars which lay below what astronomers would later call the Southern Cross. It was with sorrow, and even occasionally with tears, that Tupuna would follow some particular star which as a boy he had loved, and watch it vanish into the perpetual pit of the sky from which stars no more rise. Whole constellations were washed into the sea, never to be seen again.

  Although this was cause for regret, it did not occasion alarm, for the men of Bora Bora were exceptional astronomers. They had developed, from careful observation, a year of 365 days, and they had found that from time to time an extra day was required to keep the seasons aligned. Their ritual life was organized around a moon-month of twenty-nine and a half days, which is the easy way to build a calendar; but their year of twelve months was founded on the sun, which is the right way. They could predict with accuracy the new appearance and subsequent motion of the wandering stars, while the merest glimpse of the moon told them in what phase it stood, for each night of the moon-month bore its own special name, derived from the progress of the moon through its cycle. Men like Tupuna and Teroro even knew, by counting ahead six months, in what constellation the sun stood; so they were prepared, as they sailed north, to lose some of their familiar stars; conversely, they knew that they would come upon new stars, and it was with the joy of discovery that they identified the hitherto unseen stars of the north. But in all their wisdom, they were not prepared for what they discovered on the eleventh night.

  Having set their course, they were surveying the northern heavens when the old man saw, bobbing above the waves, a new star, not of maximum brightness like the vast beacons of the south—for the voyagers found the northern stars rather disappointing in brilliance in comparison with theirs—but nevertheless an interesting newcomer.

  “See how it lies in a direct line from the two stars in Bird-with-a-Long-Neck,” Tupuna pointed out, referring to stars which others called the Big Dipper.

  At first Teroro could not catch the bright star, for it danced up and down on the horizon, now visible above the waves, now lost. Then he saw it, a bright, clean, cold star, well marked in an e
mpty space of the sky. Speaking as a navigator he said, “That would be a strong star to steer by … when it rises a little higher.”

  Tupuna observed, “We must watch carefully, the next few nights, to see which pit of heaven it goes into.”

  So on the twelfth night the two men studied the new guidepost, but as dawn appeared each was afraid to tell the other what he had seen, for each realized that he had stumbled upon an omen of such magnitude that it did not bear speaking of. Each keeping his own counsel, the two astronomers spent the last minutes of darkness watching the new star with an apprehension that bordered upon panic, and when daylight ended their vigil, they licked their dry lips and went to their beds knowing they would not sleep.

  It was no more than midafternoon on the following day when the two men took their positions to study the heavens. “Stars won’t be out for many hours,” Tupuna said warily.

  “I’m watching the sun,” Teroro lied, and when Tehani brought him his water and stood smiling by the mast of Tane, her preoccupied husband did not bother to smile back, so she went aft with the women.

  Swiftly, at six in the evening, and not lingeringly as at Bora Bora, the sun left the sky and the stars began to appear. There were the Seven Little Eyes, blessing the canoe, and later Three-in-a-Row, now well to the south, and the very bright stars of Tahiti; but what the men watched was only the strange new star. There it was, and for nine hours the two astronomers studied it, unwilling to come to the conclusion that was inescapable. But when they had triangulated the sky in every known way, when they had proved their frightening thesis beyond doubt, they were forced, each working by himself, to the terrifying conclusion.

  It was Tupuna who put it into words: “The new star does not move.”

  “It is fixed,” Teroro agreed.

  The two men used these words in a new meaning; they had always spoken of the bright wandering stars that moved in and out of the constellations like beautiful girls at a dance; and they had contrasted these with the stars of fixed position; but they realized that in a grand sense the latter also moved, rising out of pits in the east and falling into the pits of the west. Some, who hurried around the Southern Cross, rose from one pit and quickly dropped into another, and there were even a few that never disappeared below the waves; but all moved through the heavens. The new star did not.

  “We had better consult with the king,” Tupuna advised, but when they went aft they found Tamatoa sleeping, and no man would dare waken another suddenly, lest the sleeper’s spirit be out wandering and have no time to slip back in through the corner of the eye. A man without a spirit would go mad, but Tamatoa slept soundly and his uncle grew nervous, holding as he did the news of the ominous fixed star.

  “Could you cough?” he asked Teroro. The navigator did, but with no results.

  “What would let him know we are waiting?” Tupuna asked petulantly. He went outside the grass house, took a paddle and tapped the side of the canoe, whereupon the king, like any captain who hears a strange noise aboard his ship, rolled uneasily, cleared his throat and gave his wandering spirit ample time to climb back into his eye.

  “What’s happening?”

  “An omen of terrible significance,” Tupuna whispered. They showed Tamatoa the new star and said, “It does not move.”

  Anxiously, the three watched for an hour and then summoned old Teura, advising her: “Tane has set a star in the heavens which does not move. What can it signify?”

  The old woman insisted upon an hour in which to study the phenomenon for herself, at the end of which she decided that the men were correct. The star did not move, but how should such an omen be read? She said, haltingly, “Tane is the keeper of the stars. If he has placed this miracle before us, it is because he wishes to speak to us.”

  “What is his message?” the king asked apprehensively.

  “I have never seen such an omen,” Teura parried.

  “Could it mean that Tane has put a barrier, fixed and immovable, before us?” Tamatoa asked, for it was his responsibility to keep the voyage harmonious with the will of the gods. Others could afford to misinterpret omens, but not he.

  “It would seem so,” Teura said. “Else why would the star be set there, like a rock?”

  Apprehension gripped them, for if Tane was against this voyage, all must perish. They could not go back now. “And yet,” Tupuna recalled, “the chant says that when the west wind dies, we are to paddle across the sea of no wind toward the new star. Is this not the new star, fixed there for us to use?”

  For many minutes the group discussed this hopeful concept and concluded that it might have merit. They decided, therefore, that this should be done: continue for the coming day along the course set by the westerly wind and consult again at dusk, weighing all omens. The four went to their appointed places and discharged their various tasks, but in the remaining moments of the night Teroro stood alone in the prow studying the new star, and gradually a new idea germinated in his brain, tentatively at first, like a drum beating in the far distance, and then with compelling intensity.

  He began softly: “If this new star is fixed … Suppose it actually does hang there night after night and at all hours … Let’s say that every star in the new heavens can be associated with it in known patterns …” He lost the thread of some compelling thought and started over again.

  “If this star is immovable, it must hang at a known distance above the horizon … No, that’s not right. What I mean is, for every island, this fixed star must hang at a known distance … Start with Tahiti. We know exactly what stars hang directly over Tahiti at each hour of the night for each night of the year. Now if this fixed star …”

  Again he was unable to draw together the threads of his thought, but he sensed that some grand design of the gods was making itself manifest, so he wrapped one arm around the mast of Tane and concentrated his entire being upon the new star. “If it hangs there forever, then every island must stand in some relationship to it. Therefore, once you see how high that star is, you know exactly how far north or south you must sail in order to find your island. If you can see the star, you will know! You will know!”

  Suddenly, and with dazzling clarity, Teroro saw an entirely new system of navigation based on Tane’s gift, the fixed star, and he thought: “Life must be sweet indeed for sailors in these waters!” For he knew that northern sailors had what southerners did not: a star which could tell them, at a single glance, their latitude. “The heavens are fixed!” he cried to himself. “And I shall be free to move beneath them.” He looked happily to the west where the Little Eyes blinked at him prior to dawn, and he whispered to them, “The new land you lead us to must be sweet indeed if it exists in such an ordered ocean beneath such an ordered sky.”

  And for the rest of the voyage, through the terrible days that lay ahead, Teroro alone, of all the canoe, knew no fear. He was sure. He was secure in his conviction that Tane would not have hung that fixed star where it was except for some high purpose, and he, Teroro, had divined that purpose. Up to now he had given no one cause to think that he merited his name, the Brain; certainly he could never be a knowledgeable priest like his uncle Tupuna, and that was a pity, for priests were needed. Nor had he wisdom in political counsels like his brother; but on this night he proved that he could do something that none of his companions could: he could look at the evidence planted in the universe and from it derive a new concept, and a greater thing than this no mind can accomplish. On what Teroro foresaw that night the navigation of the islands ahead would be built and their location in the ocean determined. In his joy of discovery Teroro wanted to sing, but he was not a poet.

  Yet in his very moment of triumph, he experienced an emptiness that had been with him for many days and which apparently was not going to dissipate. When he finally grasped the significance of the fixed star, he wanted to discuss his concept with Marama, but she was absent and there was not much use talking about a thing like this with Tehani, for whereas Marama would have grasped
the idea at once, beautiful little Tehani would have looked at the heavens and asked, “What star?” It was curious the way in which Marama’s last cry persisted in Teroro’s ears: “I am the canoe!” In a most strange way, she was, for she was the on-going spirit of the canoe; it was her grave face that Teroro often saw ahead of him on the waves, and when Wait-for-the-West-Wind in its swift flight overtook the vision in the waters, Marama smiled as the canoe swept past, and Teroro felt that all was well.

  Into the arid heat of the doldrums they plunged. The sun beat upon them by day and the rainless stars mocked them at night. Now not even distant squalls passed with the tantalizing hope that rain might come. They knew it would not.

  Teroro planned so that Mato and Pa, the two sturdiest paddlers, would not work at the same time; also, after an hour’s stint in the right hull, which tore the muscles of the left shoulder, the paddlers would shift sides and wear out their right shoulders. At each shift six men would drop out and rest. But onward the canoe went, constantly.

  From time to time the stronger women would take paddles, whereupon the shift was shortened to half an hour; while in the bottom of each hull the artisans and the slaves worked constantly baling the water that seeped in through the calked cracks where the pieces of log which formed the hull had been tied together.