Show Me The Sky

by Nicholas Hogg

  Telling each fairy tale with a straight face I am an actor of the highest order. Though while I have some use I shall not complain. If I am busied Naraqino has less reason to make me the object of his idle violence.

  15 August 1835

  Before the skeleton joists of the unfinished chapel, the rev. preached officially for the first time since the baptism. Using Naraqino as the shining example of conversion, not one of the congregation failed to volunteer their soul to Jesus.

  16 August 1835

  Today the rev. and I formally moved into the mission compound, an enclosure consisting of the rapidly rising chapel, a large hut and stores, all surrounded by a bamboo fence, with the post tips cut to a sharpened point – in defence of attacks from those loyal to King Tanoa.

  On moving in I wrongly presumed that I would be sharing the central hut with the rev., but what I mistook for the stores was in fact my accommodation.

  17 August 1835

  Attendances of the services burgeon. Each day the population of a nearby village is visited by a troop of Naraqino’s men and ‘encouraged’ to attend the morning worship.

  It is unlikely that stone-throwers will spoil the rev.’ s oration, as warriors are posted at the edge of the crowd during each sermon, ensuring against attack, as well as dissent from within the congregation.

  19 August 1835

  This morning, hanging by their heels from trees outside the grand house of Naraqino, were two men accused of spying for King Tanoa. Naraqino plans to roast and feast on the bodies this evening, eating them entire but for the heads, which he will send back in a canoe to the shores of Rewa, ‘so that the subjects of my heathen brother can see what power the mighty Christians possess!’

  The rev., despite regretting the bloodshed with his words, seems more and more unconcerned with Naraqino’s bastardising of the Gospel.

  21 August 1835

  Again another schoolhouse has been constructed. Again, at the command of the rev., I shall instruct the men and he the women.

  I look forward to returning to the classroom, so that once more I may be invigorated by the joy of reading, of tuning a soul to the music of words.

  24 August 1835

  Today the chapel was completed. A crooked spire of trunks twists towards the stars, and a fine pulpit of polished teak stands at the end of a stately hall, the floor inlaid with large flat stones hauled up from the beach. On top of the stones are mats braided from pandanu leaves, seats for the congregation. The only chair in the chapel is for Naraqino, with a space either side reserved for his concubines to keep him fanned with fresh air.

  During the opening sermon, the rev. preaching love and humility as Naraqino perched on his chair above his subjects, grinning like a manic gargoyle, the thought crossed my mind that God had departed, leaving Fiji in the hands of the sinners and the wicked.

  27 August 1835

  The daily service and instruction of letters has assumed a routine calmness after the tumult of the preceding weeks. Once more I am thrilled to see my students read their first words. After only a morning of phonetics they were able to sound out the name of their own country.

  Strange I did not write our country? Yes, I am Fijian, my skin, hair, eyes, arms, mouth and nose is Fijian. But my soul, that what cannot be seen or labelled, is beginning to feel like an impostor in its own body.

  28 August 1835

  As nervous as my pupils to have Naraqino present, I spent the entire morning instructing an apprehensive class how to write his name. Before students were permitted to leave the schoolhouse, Naraqino inspected each patch of dirt – smoothed earth for want of a slate – using the barrel of his musket to dally above the letters, while the quaking men below sounded out the name of their chief.

  Naraqino did not write his own moniker, and neither did I ask, in fear of shaming him before his subjects. Maybe he realised his own deficiencies there and then, because he decreed from this day on that no chief should dirty his own hand by writing his name.

  2 September 1835

  More sermons and lessons. My translation duties diminish as the rev. advances his Fijian. Rather than wandering the village inviting trouble, I stay within the compound.

  4 September 1835

  About to put pen to page an hour ago, Naraqino and his cohorts paid me a visit. Ever fearful of something he does not understand, he flung my journal into the trees after failing to decipher what I had written. I explained that it contained no more than what I had experienced on any particular day, and by no means was it something to be used against his chiefdom of Bau. Lying through my teeth, I then told him that if anything it was a document to praise his character and intelligence. Still suspicious, he then asked who was my ruler.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘It is you, Chief Naraqino of Bau.’

  He smiled at my answer, but not a gleam of joy, more the razored glint of a shark about to bite. ‘Fool!’ he roared. ‘My brother is your King!’ He kicked my ink pot across the pandanu mats, splashing the walls of the hut blue, like royal blood. ‘Next time you write, you write about me!’

  These very words I write are forbidden. I have been ordered to commit Naraqino’s tales of heroism and bravery to paper, so that when one day all of Fiji may hear the ‘speaking book’ they will know who should have been the ‘real ruler of this kingdom, even before the shores of Rewa washed red with blood’.

  5 September 1835

  So now I write this journal farther up the hill, in a thicket of brushwood beyond the schoolhouse where none but the insects may see me.

  I have said more prayers to Jesus since arriving in Bau than on the entire voyage from England to New Holland. I pray once more that the Lord hears my call and brings His love to where there is none.

  10 September 1835

  Again I have had to retire to the cover of the bush to write my journal. Naraqino has been firing muskets at parrots, and I do not wish to be a target for his practice.

  Below, beyond the drooping palms leaves, I can hear women giggling in the schoolhouse. The rev. still prefers a curriculum devised solely by him, and I am curious to hear what and how he teaches. I have also noticed that either the men learn English quicker than women, or, Lord forgive my pride, that I am a better instructor.

  I will creep to the schoolhouse and observe.

  What I have just seen answers all my questions – why the schoolhouse has always been so far removed from the village, and why the rev. does not divulge the contents of his instruction.

  When I peeked over the window frame the women were engaged in copying the alphabet from the blackboard, all in utter silence before their patches of smoothed dirt on the floor.

  Until two of the women began chatting, and the Rev. barked, ‘Silence!’ from the small study at the rear, I knew not where he was. Still below the line of the window I crawled on, stopping only when I heard the rev. mumbling through the Lord’s Prayer: ‘ … hallowed be thy name.’ I dared not lift my head for being discovered, so adjusted my gaze until I could find a gap between the timbers to spy.

  And there he was, yes, reciting the Lord’s prayer, reciting the Lord’s prayer with his trousers heaped around his ankles, a young woman on her knees before him, on her knees as though in worship, so close she could only listen and not speak for her mouth was full of the rev. and his Christian teachings.

  11 September 1835

  I have not slept. Again I have read Matthew 19:10–12 and tried once more to understand something about desire and faith, that the rev. was not disguising himself as some demigod to fulfil his depravities. I have avoided him the entire day and would prefer the sun to set without my eyes resting upon his person.

  12 September 1835

  If the Lord God is here I pray that He show Himself, for the sins of Rev. Thomas now pale against the orgy of violence that just took place.

  The river is the border between the quarrelling brothers, and villagers that pass from one parish to the other are doomed. Of course, all know this, and
unless on-board a war canoe with a legion of warriors, would not attempt to cross. But this morning, high tide lifted several Rewans from the reef. The current flowed too fierce to swim against, and all the unfortunates could do was to beat the sea to keep from drowning. Meanwhile the Bau shore thronged with a cruel audience, laughing and shrieking, knowing that the Rewans would either drown or wash upon their sands. Even when sharks threatened to cut the ghastly entertainment short, Naraqino launched a canoe of men with spears, driving them off so that his dinner could not be poached.

  Naraqino immediately snatched the women for wives, while warriors trussed and bound the men. Teenage sons of the principal elders prepared their bows and spears, for one of the prisoners was to be live sport, running prey, so that the boys could hone their skills of murder. The petrified man was thus untied and released into the bush, chased by a mob of boys hungry for death. They brought back his body in parts, limbs dangled from their hands and teeth like faithful hunting dogs.

  Naraqino started a fire beneath the feet of the remaining men. They kicked at the flames licking their toes. When Naraqino stepped forward and chopped off the arm of a man I had seen swear his soul to Jesus Christ in the chapel at Rewa, God fled.

  And then I ran. I ran before the arm was cooked enough for the guests of Naraqino to take a bite. For sitting at the grand table with the rest of the diners, merrily toasting the charred flesh with a bowl of kava, was the beaming Rev. Thomas.

  14 September 1835

  For two nights I have slept away from the Bau, curled beneath the trees and the stars, seeking answers to why God must allow such murder and cruelty.

  After the slaughter of the Rewans, they who had done nothing but fish the reef for their families, I grabbed my satchel and stormed away from the village, from the chapel, Naraqino and the Rev. Thomas. I took flight into the bush, deeper and deeper, beyond the farms of kava and plantations of taro, to the paths where none walk, until I was utterly alone.

  For one day and night I did not stop to rest, eat or sleep. My legs walked as if driven by their own volition. I was neither thirsty nor hungry. Then, and I do not know why, I shed my clothes, left them shrivelled upon the earth, like skin, like a snake had sloughed its scales. I was naked, liberated to feel the breeze upon my flesh, unadorned with the trees and the birds. Again I was a newborn, no space between the glory of creation and myself. I had left behind the trivia of civilisation, both Fijian and English, to inhabit once more the womb of nature. I followed the path to a small stream, wading through the shallows until I came across a bend that had slowed the current to a standstill. In this limpid pool I floated beneath an array of sun-shot leaves, no less beautiful than a stained-glass window or cathedral roof. Above parrots squawked and flashed their wings. Coconuts thudded to the earth, a rhythm worked from the sun and the rain, not the hands of man.

  In that pool, my thoughts came as clear as the water flowed. I knew there and then the ways of one kingdom are no truer than the other. If Fiji had chanced upon guns, books, and God, it would be the white man fetching my shoes and sweeping the floor, bound and chained in a ship of slaves. With pen, page, and gunpowder, God and the white man have sailed the seven seas as righteous pirates, armed with disease and doctrine, a cannonball and bible.

  Before I rose from the water, I dug my hand into the stream bed and scooped a lump of clay on to my palm. I realised it is I alone who is responsible for its fashioning.

  God is not dead, because God never lived.

  15 September 1835

  This morning a troop of Naraqino’s men passed within yards of where I lay sleeping in the brushwood. Two were armed with muskets, and three others with bows, clubs and an axe. I watched them track my steps into the stream, following my prints in the soft clay until the solid rock.

  Before they picked up the trail again, I fled. But if they are good they will have already found my prints, and with each word I put down in this journal they will be a footstep closer to their prey.

  16 September 1835

  Dawn. I can still see the thread of smoke rising from the embers of their smouldering fire. They have gained on me. I should have ambushed them last night, streaked into their camp wild and raging, just my bare fists flurrying.

  If Naraqino has threatened them with his oven, they will not give up the chase until I am dead.

  17 September 1835

  Because they cannot read, I live. I led them higher into the hills, across streams and rivers, and then down into another valley, following a trail into a steep gorge until it narrowed into a path no wider than the shoulders of a stout man. Where the walls of rock were shaped well enough to be gripped, I climbed, hand over foot to the plateau above.

  At the top I set about gathering the largest, heaviest rocks I could move, arranging them at intervals along the ledge so that they may be toppled over with the slightest nudge.

  Then I waited, listening. Only when I heard footsteps splashing in the rainwater pools did I glance over the ledge, long enough to know which rock to drop first and when. Then I shoved over the boulder. No clack of rock on rock, only a scream and thud of breaking bone. It had staved in the skull of the lead man. In quick succession I heaved over two more boulders, and from the clatter below knew that both had missed their targets. The moment I put my head over the ledge a musket flashed, and the ball flew past my head so close that it singed a line through my hair. I ducked again when two arrows sailed up from the gorge bottom, loosed off so that they might fall down from a height and stick in my back. I watched them rise, turn, and descend, bouncing off the stone yards from where I lay. Two more shot into the sky, but this time the wind caught the flights and scattered them into a stand of palms. I crawled to the other boulders and again leaned over the ledge. The man with the musket had spilled his gunpowder, and grasped at the sprinkled charge.

  The nearest archer, despite seeing me release the rock, had time only to raise his hand in defence. The weight of the boulder shattered his arm open at the elbow. He screamed. I swayed back from two more singing arrows and roared, ‘Surrender and I’ll spare you.’

  I threw down two more rocks. None hit, but the man with the shattered arm screamed for me to stop. The warrior holding the empty musket struck the injured man. ‘We either die here or on Naraqino’s fire,’ he warned. ‘You heard him! Bring home his book or I’ll cut out your hearts!’

  The book. They wanted the journal. They wanted the journal because the Rev. Thomas knew his sins had been recorded. Without the journal, history would be left in his hands, the fiction of how Fiji had surrendered to the good Lord.

  ‘No more blood,’ I shouted. ‘No more blood of Fiji for England.’

  I moved in sight of the archers. ‘If you want the book, take it.’ They had their bows raised and taut with arrows. I reached into my satchel and felt around the back of the journal. I pulled out the bible and waved it so that they might see. Their leader, the man with the musket, hissed into the ears of the others, then called for me to throw it down.

  I let the bible go. It fell through the air like a dying bird, the pages splayed and fluttering. When it hit the rocks below, the spine split. The archer quickly picked it up, as though it might suddenly take wing and flap away. None of these men had attended a reading class. None of them knew the difference between a printed and handwritten word. They fussed through the pages. The man with the gashed and broken arm shrieked, ‘This is it!’ He looked up and demanded I let them go. But again the man with the musket cursed. ‘And why would Naraqino think him killed without a head?’ Once more the archers raised their bows.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘You have a head.’

  I needed explain no more. The man with the musket switched it for a club. He stood on the neck of the man I had killed with the rock and set about disfiguring his face. Then he stopped, stood back from his bloody work and swapped the club for an axe. The blade rose and fell without ceremony. In one blow he had cleaved off the head, executed a man already dead. He put down the a
xe and looked up. ‘Your shirt, take it off.’

  I unbuttoned the cotton skin and dropped it over the ledge. He snatched the shirt from the air before it hit the bottom and opened it out as though checking the size. I thought he would either tear it in two or try it on, but he draped it over the head and wrapped and bundled it like a breadfruit to carry home to his wife. Next he looked up to where I stood, a look beyond my body as merely prey, and commanded in a low and steady growl, ‘And never come back.’

  Then he swung the head over his shoulder and turned. The man with the broken elbow tucked the bible beneath his good arm and together they walked away. All of them trod in the blood that seeped through the shirt and dripped on to the rocks.

  18 September 1835

  Three days now I have trekked deeper into the interior. Here the grand Rewa River is no more than a brook hopping over stones. Clouds slide down from the mountains, tangle in the leaves and stream across the rocks like liquid ether. While walking these whispering trickles I often stop and run my palm over the velveteen moss, peeling away handfuls to wipe the sweat and dirt from my brow. I have eaten only the fruit that has freshly fallen, for my appetite, despite this hike further and further into the hills, has disappeared.

  Perhaps I am not hungry because my body has left me. By now the men will have returned to Rewa and presented my death to Naraqino and the Rev. Thomas. Will the men plead ignorance when they hand over the bible as my journal?

  19 September 1835