Hawaii

by James A. Michener

  The sexual life of the king was much too important to be conducted in darkness and hidden glades, so on the next day, after the fishermen had brought in their first substantial catch and women had boiled their unpromising pandanus drupes, Tupuna announced that his wife Teura had ascertained that the time of the month was propitious and that their king, Tamatoa, would that afternoon lie with his wife Natabu. That grave and stately woman was then brought forth from beneath a tree, where she had been secluded, and a temporary shelter, made of cut saplings stuck into the ground and covered with the most consecrated tapas, was erected according to ancient custom.

  When the tent was completed, sedate Natabu, who rarely spoke and who was, by a peculiar combination of omens and good circumstances, the most holy of all the voyagers, was blessed by Tupuna and led into the nuptial area and placed according to ancient custom upon the woven mats. The king was then blessed, and the entire company, including even the five slaves, surrounded the tapa house and chanted. Then, with the prayers and blessings of all the community, the king was taken to the sanctified house, placed inside by the priest, and hidden by the lowered tapa. At this point the prayers mounted in frenzy.

  The woman with whom the king lay was his sister Natabu. It had been discovered anciently in the islands that for a king to breed a proper heir to the throne, one who would combine the finest lineage and the utmost sanctity, he must mate only with his full-blood sister, and although both Tamatoa and his sister Natabu might later take other spouses, their principal obligation was the production—under circumstances of the most intricate propriety, and under the surveillance of the entire community—of royal descendants.

  “May the union be fruitful,” old Teura chanted as her niece and nephew lay inside the tapa tent. “May it produce strong kings and princesses blessed with godlike blood.” The crowd prayed: “May this union produce for us a king,” and although they had prayed thus on occasion in the past, when the nuptial tent had been raised over Tamatoa in hopes of breeding an heir, they had never prayed with equal fervor, for it was apparent that in a strange land an heir of the most impeccable lineage was essential, for who else could represent them before the gods if Tamatoa died.

  In the late afternoon, when the king and his sister left the rude tent, the eyes of the people followed them, and the chants continued, and all prayed that a good thing had been accomplished on that auspicious day.

  When the nuptial tent was taken down and all omens pertaining to it examined, King Tamatoa faced another major obligation, for he was led by Tupuna to a field into which the farmers had diverted a small stream. This would become the taro bed upon which the community would depend for its basic food, and already the mud walls surrounding it imprisoned a foot of water, making the bottom of the field a deep, soft mass of mud. Standing at the edge, where the stream entered, Tamatoa cried, “May the mana of my body pass through my feet and bless this field!” Whereupon he stepped knee-deep into the muddy water and began trampling the bed. He was joined by Tupuna, Teroro, Mato and Pa, the men with most mana, and for hours they passed back and forth over every inch of the taro patch, hammering the mud into a watertight basin, sealing it with their mana. When they were done Tamatoa shouted, “May this bed be forever sealed. Now plant the taro!”

  And according to customs more than two thousand years old, the people planted not only the taro, but the breadfruit and the bananas and the pandanus; but for no crop were they as fearful of failure as when they planted coconuts, for to a large extent their entire manner of life was intertwined with this extraordinary tree. When the nuts were young they gave delicious water; when old, a precious oil or a sweet milk. Palms from the coconut thatched many of the houses; hard shells formed cups and utensils, fibers from the husks yielded sennit. Timber from the trunk was used for building and for carving gods; the wiry fiber that grew in the crown was woven into fabric; ribs of the fronds when dried were suitable for starting fires, and sharper ribs, from the leaves, were used in making darts. But most of all, the coconut gave food, and the vocabulary of these people contained twenty-eight different names for the maturing stages of this marvelous nut; from the time when it contained a just-formed, jelly-like substance eaten with scoops by the old or ill to the day when it was a firm, sweet nut.

  Therefore, when a coconut was planted, the people placed about the nut a baby octopus to hold the resulting tree erect and prayed: “May the king have done a good job this day.”

  When the crops were planted, a question arose as to what the island should be named, and the warriors, who knew little of omens, agreed that it ought properly to be called Bora Bora; but a great surprise was in store for them, for when Tupuna of the ancient mane heard the report he was outraged. “There is only one name for our island,” he announced stubbornly.

  “What?” the warriors asked.

  “Havaiki,” he replied.

  The settlers were aghast at this suggestion and began to swear that the hated name Havaiki would never exist in their new-found refuge; and both King Tamatoa and Teroro agreed, but the old priest, his white beard long and blowing in the breeze, began the most ancient chant of his people, and no interruption of the king could stay him until he had explained, in words more precious than coconuts, for they summarized the race-experience of his people, and were its soul, who the settlers were: “In ancient times, when great Tane lay with a goddess, the people of the swift canoes were born. They lived then in Havaiki, but it was not the Havaiki we know. It was Havaiki-on-the-Great-Land, and from there King Tamatoa’s father’s father’s father, back to forty generations, led his people in a canoe, and they went to Havaiki-Where-the-Animal-Is-Like-a-Man, and there they lived for many generations, until King Tamatoa’s father’s father’s father, back to thirty generations, led his people in canoes to Havaiki-of-the-Green-Lagoon …” And in a wild soaring voice he recalled the search of his people, wandering from one land to another, always seeking an island where they would find peace and coconuts and fish. Always, wherever they landed with their burning hopes, they called their new home Havaiki, and if the new Havaiki treated them badly, it was appropriate that they set forth in search of a better, as their parents had done from time immemorial. Thus, in parables, he spoke of the migration of his ancestors from the interior of Asia, to the north coast of New Guinea, through the Samoan islands and out to distant Tahiti; later men, reconstructing the voyages, would discover more than a dozen Havaikis, but none closer to the ancient dream than the island about to be dedicated.

  “For us there is only one name,” the old man insisted in a burst of rhetoric. “Havaiki of the manifold riches, Havaiki of the brave canoes, Havaiki of strong gods, and courageous men and beautiful women, Havaiki of the dreams that led us across the endless oceans, Havaiki that has lived in our hearts for forty and fifty and sixty generations. This is the island of Havaiki!”

  When he was finished, King Tamatoa, who had forgotten his own history, spoke solemnly: “This will be the island of Havaiki, and if you have evil memories of old Havaiki let it be remembered as Havaiki-of-Red-Oro, but our land is Havaiki-of-the-North.” So the island was named Havaiki, the last successor in a mighty chain.

  It was only when Teroro, accompanied by Mato, Pa and three others, had sailed completely around Havaiki, requiring four days for the exploration, that the settlers appreciated what a magnificent island they had found. “There are two mountains, not one,” Teroro explained, “and many cliffs, and birds of endless number. Rivers come down into the sea, and some of the bays are as inviting as Bora Bora’s lagoon.”

  But it was blunt Pa who summed up what they had learned: “It looked to us as if we had picked our cave on the worst land in Havaiki.” Gloomily, Mato agreed; but King Tamatoa and his aunt and uncle looked at the newly planted crops and at the temple and said stubbornly, “This is where we have established our home”; but Mato and Pa thought: “If anything should happen, we know where the good land is.”

  And then the forgotten one appeared. It was on
a hot, dusty afternoon when Teroro had gone into the forest seeking birds, that he turned to avoid a tree and found a strange woman confronting him. She was handsome in figure, dressed in a fabric he had not seen before, and her hair, of a strange material that glistened in the sun, stood out like wild grass. She was of his race, yet she was not. With most mournful and condemning eyes she stared at Teroro until he felt his head swimming, but she did not speak. When, in unaccustomed fright, he started to run, she ran with him, and when he stopped, she stopped; but always when he paused, she stared at him in reproach. Finally, she departed in silence, whereupon Teroro regained some of his bravery and ran after her, but she had disappeared.

  When he returned to the settlement, he was shivering, but for some reason which he could not explain he did not confide his experience to anyone; but sleep did not come to him that night, for he could see the deep-set, fanatic eyes of the woman staring at him in the darkness, so that on the next morning he took Mato aside and said, “I have found some birds. Let’s go into the woods,” and the two young chiefs moved through the trees, and Mato asked, “Where are the birds?” And suddenly the gaunt, distracted woman stood before them.

  “Who is this?” Mato asked, astonished.

  “She came to me yesterday. I think she wants to speak.”

  But the woman said nothing, content merely with admonishing the young men by her wild stare, so that Teroro said to his companion, “When we move, she will move with us.” And certainly, when the warriors started walking under the trees, she walked with them, her garments disheveled and her strange hair glistening in the sun. Then, as they watched, she vanished.

  “Where did she go?” Mato cried.

  “Woman! Woman!” Teroro called, vainly.

  The two young men consulted as to whether they should advise the others, and it was finally decided that they should, so they went first to old, red-eyed Teura and said, “In the trees we met a strange woman with different hair …”

  Before they could finish, the old woman burst into a long wail, “Auwe, auwe! It is Pere! She has come to destroy us.”

  The old woman’s husband hurried in and she announced: “They have seen Pere, of the burning fire!” And when the king arrived at the commotion she warned him: “The forgotten one has come to punish us.”

  “Auwe!” the king mourned, for he perhaps best of all understood the unforgivable error they had committed in abandoning a goddess who had warned them beforehand that she wished to accompany them, and he decided that the entire community must assemble at the temple to pray for respite from the goddess. But the prayer was not uttered, for at this moment the earth began to shake violently.

  In a manner unknown to the strangers, the red earth of Havaiki rose and fell, twisted and heaved, and cracks appeared through the heart of the settlement, and pigs squealed. “Oh, Pere!” the king cried in terror. “Spare us!” And his prayer must have had power, for the trembling stopped, and the horrified voyagers huddled together to decipher this mighty omen.

  They did not succeed, for a much greater was about to envelop them. From the mountain that reached high above their heads volumes of fire began to erupt, and rocks were thrown far into the air. Scattered ash fell back onto the earth and settled on the king’s head and on the newly planted banana shoots. All day the fires continued, and into the night, so that the undersides of the clouds that hung over the islands shone red, as if even they were ablaze.

  It was a night of terror, fearful in its strangeness and paralyzing in its power. The settlers gathered at the shore and hovered near West Wind, thinking that if the land caught fire, they might escape in it, and when the eruptions grew worse, Tupuna insisted that the king and Natabu, at least, be sent out to the safety of the sea, and it was because of this foresight that the colony was saved, for Teroro dispatched Hiro and Pa with the canoe, and when it was a mile out to sea, lighted by the blazing mountain, a great ocean wave sped toward shore, and if the canoe had not already reached the sea, its appropriate element, the onrushing wave would have destroyed it.

  As it was, the water swept far inland, and tore down the temple and uprooted many of the crops. In its swirling return to the sea, it dragged with it one of the pigs, most of the bananas and old, red-eyed Teura. The goddess had warned her, but she had failed to interpret the dream correctly, so that when the turbulent sea reached far inland to grab her, twisting her this way and that, she was not afraid. Committing herself entirely to the gods, she whispered into the engulfing waves, “Great Ta’aroa, keeper of the sea, you have come for me and I am ready.” As she was dragged across the reef, the green water rushing over her, she smiled and was relaxed, for she was certain that somewhere out beyond the coral she would encounter her personal god, Mano, the wild blue shark. “Mano!” she cried at last. “I am coming to talk with you!” And she was carried far from land.

  When dawn rose, accompanied by new explosions of ash and flame, King Tamatoa studied his stricken community, and he could explain the ravages, especially the fallen temple, only by the fact that no slaves had been planted alive at three of the corners, but Teroro would not tolerate such reasoning.

  “We are punished because we forgot our most ancient goddess, and because we built in the wrong place,” he insisted.

  How wrong the place was would now be proved, for Mato came running with the news that up on the side of the mountain a creeping wall of fire was slowly descending toward the settlement. A dozen men went back into the trees and climbed toward where Mato had pointed, and they saw a fearful thing: above them, and marching over all obstacles on its way to the sea, came a relentless wall of fiery rock and molten lava, turning over and over upon itself, devouring trees and rocks and valleys. Its ugly snout, thirty feet high, was not ablaze and seemed dead, until it struck a dried tree, whereupon flames leaped mysteriously into the air. At intervals long tongues of molten rock spurted through the ominously creeping front and spread out like water. It was obvious that crawling monster must soon devour the entire community.

  “It will be upon us by tomorrow,” the men calculated.

  When he was satisfied with the news, King Tamatoa reacted without fear, for his brother’s bold words had strengthened him. He commanded: “We will first pray for the old woman Teura,” and he blessed her to the gods. When this was finished he said calmly, “All planted things will be dug up immediately and wrapped carefully, even if you must use your own clothes.” Then he showed the slaves how to load the canoe, and when, at a distance of less than three miles, the molten lava began pouring over a low cliff, like a flaming waterfall, he studied it for a long time. Then he said, “We will stay ashore tonight and get all things ready. In the morning we will leave this place. Pa says he has found a promising land to the west.”

  Through the night the settlers worked, seeing one another in the dim flares of the volcano, and when dawn came they were ready to go. They had recovered much of their seed, and had saved their gods, their pigs and their canoe. With these they escaped, but when they were safe at sea, they saw the vast, fiery front of the lava break through onto their plateau, where it ate its way impersonally across all things. The temple site was burned away in a flash; the fields where crops had rested were gone; the taro patch was filled with fire; and the cave disappeared behind a wall of flame. From the plateau, the cascade of fire found a valley leading down into the sea, and after building its strength aloft, it plunged down this avenue and poured into the ocean. When it struck the water it hissed and groaned; it threw columns of steam into the air and exploded the waves; it sent noisy reports of its triumph and filled the sky with ash; and then, conquered by the patient and accommodating ocean, it fell silently into dark caverns, as it had been doing here for the past thirty million years.

  The men of Havaiki, seeing for the first time the incredible fury of which their new land was capable, sat awestruck in their canoe and watched for a long time the cataclysm that had destroyed their home; but a gust of wind, stronger than the rest, carried down
from the crest of the volcano a wisp of hair, spun by the breezes from the molten lava, and Teroro caught the hair and held it aloft, where the sun played on it, and he saw that it was the hair which the strange woman in the forest had worn, and he announced: “It was the goddess Pere. She came not to frighten us but to warn us. We did not understand.”

  His words gave the people in the canoe great hope, for if the goddess had thought enough of her erring people to warn them, she must retain some love for them; and all was not lost. The hair of Pere was given to the king as an omen, and he placed it upon the neck of the only remaining bred sow, because if this animal did not live and deliver her litter it would be as bad an omen as the volcano.

  In this manner, but bearing only half the cargo with which they had arrived, and a bred sow clothed in Pere’s hair, the voyagers started for a new home; and Pa and Mato had chosen wisely, for they led their companions around the southern tip of the island and up the western coast until they found fine land, with soil that could be tilled, and water, and it was here that the settlement of Havaiki began in earnest, with new fields and a new temple built without sacrifices. When the sow threw her litter, the king himself watched over the young pigs, and when the largest and strongest reached a size at which he could have been eaten—and mouths had begun to water for the taste of roast pig—the king and old Tupuna carried the pig reverently to the new temple and sacrificed it to Tane. From then on the community prospered.

  WHEN THE SETTLEMENT was established, Tupuna took the steps which were to give it the characteristics which marked it permanently. He said one day to the king, “Soon I shall follow Teura, but before I go upon the rainbow, we ought to protect the life of our people. It is not good that men roam freely everywhere, and live without restraint.”

  Teroro, listening, argued: “We had too many restraints in Havaiki-of-Red-Oro. Here we ought to be free. I like our life the way it is.”