I curled into a ball, a foetus on the sand. And then the miracle was nothing more than going to the toilet for the first time in two days. I knelt and cupped my hands, filled my palms and lifted hot, glorious piss to my mouth.
You must forget taste and smell, trivial senses to hydration. Right there and then, my tongue swollen and blistered, lips cracked and bleeding, it was a glass of vintage champagne.
I’ve crawled all night since this drink, and I’m almost at the ruin. It’s just a pile of rubble, a broken building. But to see worked stone, a brick, a straight line chiselled by a human hand and not millennia of crushing oceans and broken stars, is to know I’m not the only one.
I write this by the burn of the coming dawn. A morning so quiet and windless, I swear I can hear flames roaring on the surface of the sun.
The vultures snapped at my heels for the final kilometre. They didn’t need to fly to keep pace with my crawl, wobbling behind like drunken tramps. When I threw handfuls of sand, twigs, the dried-out carcass of a dead lizard, the vultures mockingly dodged and hissed, chuckled and raised their ragged wings.
Once at the ruin I slung lumps of stone and boulder, chunks of rotten wood from a decayed beam protruding from the sand. Only after the vultures skulked into the stand of gum trees did I have a chance to pause and absorb this crumbled structure.
I’ve dragged my body into a broken church to die. I know it’s a church because I dug beneath the sand and found a scorch-marked pew. I don’t know what I expected, searching in the rubble. Maybe just a reason to have crawled here? But deep beneath the drifted sand, splinters of charred wood and broken benches, I discovered a blackened candlestick, two steel ball bearings, and a leather-bound journal. Though the covering has bubbled with whatever fire tumbled this house of God, the pages remain intact – all unreadable except the first, as the entire manuscript has decayed and melded into a single block of paper.
The opening paragraphs, dated 14 September 1834, introduce a Nelson Babbage of Whitechapel, a Fijian returning to his island after ten years of living and studying English in London. I wish there were more to read, an adventure to share. The company of another so far from home.
Show Me the Sky
10 May 1835
A week in the bosom of my brothers and sisters, and I seek my journal for solace, not the ears of my family. I am a stranger in my own home, the boy who sailed away half-naked, now a man unknown in clothes. England is in my voice, on my skin, the way I stand in a pair of shoes.
When the boat ran aground, my people did not flee in fear of the white men, a ship of cannons anchored in the bay. No, they fled from astonishment at their brother in a suit, buttoned up in a shirt and pair of slacks.
Then, from the retreat came the pointed spears and loaded barrels, bowstrings taut with sharpened arrows. I stood on the prow of the boat and announced my name, that Kasanita was my mother, and Dreketi my father. Beyond the ends of pointed sticks came a cry of my name, an echo of my own voice. It was Lau, my younger brother! He pushed through the pack to the front, stood a yard away to look me up and down and confirm it was I, then hugged my body so hard I could not take a breath.
A great chatter rattled the guarded ranks. Spears were lowered and muskets downed. ‘But what of the ship and its great guns?’ someone called out. ‘He’s led the white man here to plunder our homes!’ warned another. I jumped back upon the prow, below me the reverends and crew huddled, pawed by my people, the plucky ones pulling at their hats and buttons. I hastily spoke loud and clear of our peaceful intentions, informing my heathen brothers that these white men were not warriors but messengers, that they had braved the foaming depths to bring us God, the creator of creators, the one true Saviour. I implored my brothers to welcome them into their homes, their hearts and minds, as the white man had me when a guest upon their distant island.
‘I have seen their kingdom,’ I said. ‘I have stepped among their great villages, huts so tall they touch the sky, machines of metal powered by flames, the man-made mountains called cathedrals, erected to house the spirit of their creator, our creator.’
‘We know the white man is no god,’ shouted an elder. ‘His blood runs as red as mine.’
With this popular fact the crowd roared. I stood taller on the prow, the beach below obscured by a swathe of painted bodies, clothed only by jewellery of feathers or shells, a loincloth of calico, and the wild wigs of fuzzed hair, decorated with the bones of fish, birds, hogs, and men.
I told them these passengers were no more divine than they or I, but that my brothers on-board were messengers, that they had dedicated their souls to the Universal Lord, a god, who, even though every man and woman had offended, was merciful and benevolent, granting those who believed His word great blessings on earth, and after death, eternal bliss.
Still, despite my speech, I was a visitor in my own home. The reverends and the crew, stranded in the surf, grimacing smiles upon a trial of fear, knew very well they had run aground on an island of cannibals. Again I went to speak, but the mob was flooding over the gunwales, and as I pushed them back I was pulled out, hauled away by my brother. He prised me from the melee, wanted me gone from the craft before living men were torn to meat. I fought with him to save the reverends, but others pinned my arms.
Then I heard the report of a musket, and believed not that this was a rescue, but the bell for dinner.
Men leapt back from the flare, and when the puff of smoke cleared from he who had pulled the trigger, I saw that it was my father. His black hair was now grey, and though his body had slumped and shrunk with time, his stature among his peers had grown. All stopped and listened when he spoke.
‘My son does not lie.’ He looked me so straight and hard in the eye that once again I was a boy, his son, running naked in the surf. ‘He may look different, and wear the skins of a white man, but his soul remains the same.’
With these saving words we were welcomed to Fiji. Now the warriors helped the reverends and crew ashore. But when I went to hug my father he winced, as though my clothes were the thorns of a spiky bush. I asked how he was and he did not reply, only ordering us to follow him to the king.
I trod close in the steps of my father, yet fearful of his reticence. Behind me my brother, the reverends – as nervous as clucking chicks behind a mother hen – the crew, and what seemed like the whole of Lakemba, women and children, young and old, touching, caressing, and fondling the foreigners. As I recognised my friends, family, and neighbours, and as they too accepted that this Fijian in shirt and trousers was in fact one of them, they sang out their welcomes.
But not my father. Even when I asked him about my mother he said nothing, only gesturing towards the fort of King Nayau, his house the largest on the island, surrounded by a dry-stone wall, a fence of reeds, and wide moat that could not be crossed without swimming.
King Nayau, donning the gauze turban only worn by chiefs, did not rise when we entered, instead solemnly nodding to grant us a seat upon his floor of pandanu mats. Reverends Thomas and Collins, with some composure returned in the comfort of formality, offered the king their gift of an illuminated bible, pushing it across the ground to his majesty in the manner I had previously instructed. Though of course the king could not read, he was pleased to hear that the book contained the message of a god.
Addressing him with stately etiquette, both reverends explained the nature of their visit in generally excellent Fijian – only the pronunciation of Rev. Collins a little unclear at times – impressing the king and the principal men also gathered for this most serious of business.
The chief priest was outwardly sour to our presence, but his counsel held no sway before the king, who sat in silent and motionless reverie while considering the request of a mission to be established upon his shores. But it was not the fact that I was one of his subjects that gained favour, or that the love of God had already swelled within his chest. After an age of thought, the only sound the waves on the reef and the waft of a fan worked by one o
f his wives, he suddenly announced: ‘Everything is true from the land of the white man. Muskets and gunpowder are true, therefore your religion must be true.’
With that he clapped his huge hands together, the smack of his heavy palms as loud as an exploding cap, and dispatched a body of men to clear land for a house, which yesterday, after five days of feverish construction, was completed.
I should be happy that I sleep under such a magnificent roof, that I have been granted a room in the second largest house on the island, but I only sleep here because my father cannot bear to hear what he does not know. My mother, who has been bedridden with sleeping sickness, spoke to me only as though I had wandered into her dream, and seems to think that I have never even left the shores of Lakemba.
When I told my father of London and its spires higher than the tallest palms, that more people live in one city than all the islands of the great Pacific, and that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins, he put his hands over his ears and shouted, ‘Enough! Before the white man we believed that the sun rose in Tonga and set in Fiji. We were happy with our own gods. They put fish in the sea and fruit on the trees and never did we go hungry. Before the ships came men sat content with only their canoe and house. Now they sell their wives for a handful of nails. Now you tell me I will go to a land of fire when I die, that unless I place my soul in the palms of the white man I am damned for ever.’ Then he said, ‘Go. You are my son no more.’ The words stabbed my heart like a knife.
I pray that with the help of the Lord above, and the dedication of Reverends Thomas and Collins, who have already drawn large crowds to their open-air services, that I can guide my mother – if the Lord grant her health – and father along the one true path.
12 May 1835
Today the Caroline set sail. The missionaries are now well and truly left in the care of the Lord.
The three children of Rev. Collins have already made themselves quite at home, running free and gay with the children of the village, laughing louder than I ever heard them in the confines of the ship or their house in Port Jackson.
Whilst the reverends could hardly be described as joyous, I believe they are more than satisfied with the welcome so far. Each day the congregation swells, and the word of our arrival echoes through every village on the island.
13 May 1835
The morning service was attended by the king – his first since our welcoming audience – and though attentive to the account of creation, did not yet wish to offer his soul to Jehovah.
Though my younger brother listens with wonder at my adventures, my father sullenly ignores my very presence, only speaking to mock the shirt on my back. Yesterday he asked, ‘Are you ashamed of your skin?’
The reverends are attended by willing villagers keen to please their newly arrived guests – guests who also happen to dole out fish hooks, nails, and the promise of redemption – with baskets of yams or the carriage of fresh water from the stream.
Shame on me! I am already a sceptic of my people and their embrace of the one true God. Of course I am happy that several scores of my brothers and sisters have pledged themselves to the good Lord, but doubt the sincerity of some. One man declared himself a Christian when understanding that he must forgo all other beliefs, thus enabling him to pick bananas from a taboo orchard.
15 May 1835
Rev. Thomas and Collins go about their business of the Lord in a most spirited manner, as the numbers of the daily service gradually increase, so does their confidence of success in bringing light to where there is dark. Even though King Nayau is still reluctant to convert – fearing the ruling chiefdoms of Bau and Rewa will see it as a rejection of their power – he is keen to question the reverends about their religion. Like many of the converted, he is drawn to a Christian afterlife, and also wishes that he might be a dweller of the sky, ‘that good land among the stars named Heaven’. But only once chiefs more powerful than he permit this so.
True that Bau and Rewa would view King Nayau’s conversion a weakening of their kingdom, and send war canoes to Lakemba. But I also believe this a convenient excuse for a man who has a different wife for each day of the week, and drinks kava not from the husk of a coconut shell, but a hollowed-out skull.
16 May 1835
Work has begun on a chapel. Part of the king’s decision to grant land by the river previously decreed taboo is, I believe, a direct result of the service delivered this morning by Rev. Thomas.
Though his Fijian is fast improving – due to the necessity of communication if I, his translator, am not present – the service was delivered in English, with myself as orator to the congregation. He has already realised the power of dramatic gesture, and while recounting the story of Noah and his ark, acted each scene with bodily vigour, as though a dancing marionette worked by God Himself.
The tale of the ark running aground on the peak of Ararat also compares closely with the great flood of Fiji. Ndengei, the Fijian lord of creation, was greatly angered by the killing of his pet bird, Turkawa, murdered by his mischievous grandsons who then escaped to a fortified town. They resisted the attacks of Ndengei until he gathered the clouds and burst upon them an ocean of rain. The flood rose, and the grandsons begged not to be drowned. In an act of benevolence Ndengei taught them how to build a great canoe. Thus they floated upon the calamity, and when the waters subsided came ashore on the slopes of Mbengga, with the people of this island now considered their descendants and first in the rank of Fijians.
Though the details of Noah and the flood of Ndengei differed somewhat, many of the congregation heard this story as proof of a single God, the Lord of Creation who is the father of Jesus Christ, the son who died so that we may live.
18 May 1835
Rev. Thomas spent the afternoon somewhat annoyed, as I had not been present to translate his morning service due to fishing with my brother on the northern side of the island. Guilty for allowing the words of God to go silent, I pray that my Lord understands how important it is that I reconcile my ‘old’ and ‘new’ self by bringing salvation to my family.
My brother has already sworn himself to Jesus, and it was probably the noisy and excited questioning of His teachings that fled the fish from our hooks this morning.
But still my father hangs his head and avoids my eye. I took some papaya to my mother yesterday evening, and as I walked into the house he walked out.
25 May 1835
Several pots and pans have gone astray from the kitchen of Mrs Collins, and this morning I accompanied the Rev. Collins to see the king and request that these most vital articles be returned.
King Nayau apologised that such honoured guests had been victims of crime, and swore that the perpetrators would be caught and justice swiftly done.
Returning from the fort, the Rev. Collins seemed most pleased with himself and the promise of the king, but I fear that the missionaries are somewhat naive to the true meaning of Fijian justice.
27 May 1835
This afternoon, after a lunchtime service on the beach, Rev. Collins received a message to visit the king. Again I accompanied him to the fort, apprehensive to what we would discover about the criminals.
The sentence was light – each of the four men involved in the pilfering having their little finger docked by the slice of an axe – though the Rev. Collins did not agree, horrified at being presented with the removed digits. Once his pink face returned from pale green, he insisted that this ‘barbaric retribution cease immediately’, making it clear to the king that it was not a godly justice he had administered.
The king expanded his considerable girth like a beached puffer fish, letting out a sigh that would have blown coconuts from their branches, and retorted, ‘This is not England! This is Fiji!’
With that he gestured for us to be gone, flapping his hand as though swatting away a fly.
The Rev. Collins, seeing this episode as the lowest point of our stay thus far, sought my counsel on why the king would not convert. I explained that t
hough he was ruler of this isle, Lakemba was but a jewel in the crown of the kingdom of Fiji, and that this crown was worn by the chiefs of Bau and Rewa.
3 June 1835
The Rev. Collins is adamant that the only way to evangelise my heathen shores ‘from north to south and east to west, not merely the toe of the devil but his entire body’ is to establish a mission on Viti Levu – without delay.
The Rev. Thomas, who sulked like a child at this news for several days, protested that a mission could not function on his sole administration, and that his reading class of young women would suffer in their progress if he were to leave now. Though I have ample time to teach both the men and women their letters, he had insisted that he take charge of tutoring the maidens.
The Rev. Collins then praised the Rev. Thomas on his fine teaching, and suggested that the population of Bau and Rewa would also require education beyond the Gospel.
Either this opportunity of instruction, or the news that I would accompany him to the new mission, excited him so that the removal to Viti Levu was thus agreed.
I have not told my brother yet, nor my mother or father. My brother will wail that I am leaving before I have even arrived. I will be happy if my father simply looks me in the eye, or if my mother raises her head from where she lays.
After so long apart from my family, it is only the call of God that could take me from them once again. If Abraham can offer his only son, surely I can sacrifice a further absence from my family?
6 June 1835
We wait for a wind to blow us east, to Bau and Rewa, where the Rev. Thomas and I will carry the torch of Jesus Christ.
Since the announcement of our moving on, I have not seen my father for two days.
7 June 1835
The canoe that will carry us across the waves to Viti Levu has now been prayed over by both the king’s priest and the Rev. Collins. The priest, while chanting his pagan incantations, ignored the protests of the reverends, insisting that their presence in Lakemba had angered the gods enough already, and that as one of his brothers would be crew for our voyage, he had authority to petition for blessings beyond the ‘lying book’ of the white man.
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