Monsieur de Langle, La Pérouse’s companion, who made his way inland, observed shrubs of paper mulberry and mimosa, remarking that only one tenth of the island was cultivated, the rest covered with coarse grass. The only birds sighted by Monsieur de Langle were terns at the bottom of the crater. The statues seen through his telescopes had all fallen. None of this, thought Greer, differed from previous travelogues.
What struck her, however, was that Langle and La Pérouse both assumed the island had once hosted different vegetation. Langle estimated the island’s human population at two thousand and added:There is reason to think that the population was more considerable when the island was better wooded. La Pérouse even accused the Rapa Nui of deforestation. He complained of the lava rocks strewn across the land, explaining:
. . . these stones, which we found so troublesome in walking, are of great use, by contributing to the freshness and moisture of the ground, and partly supply the want of salutary shade of the trees which the inhabitants were so imprudent as to cut down, in times, no doubt, very remote, by which their country lies fully exposed to the rays of the sun, and is destitute of running springs and streams . . .
. . . M. de Langle and myself had no doubt that this people owed the misfortune of their situation to the imprudence of their ancestors . . .
Greer was reading this one evening in the main room of theresidencial when Mahina came in.
“Iorana, Doctora!” She cradled several cans of peaches. “Look.Peti .” She set the cans, one at a time, on the edge of her desk. “Ramon give uspeti .”
“Iorana,Mahina.”
She glanced down at Greer’s book. “Thedoctora always work.”
“I know. Another European travelogue of Easter Island. Do you know about any tree stories in the island legends? Trees that once grew here? When Hotu Matua came?”
“I’ve already told you the story of Hau Maka, and of the dream soul who flew toward the sun and found the most beautiful island.”
“In that story, were there trees?”
“There was everything.” She sat behind her desk. “The fish and the fruit and the flowers. The dream soul sees everything she desires.”
“La Pérouse says that the islanders cut trees down. And I’ve found a strange pollen type in my cores, at the lowest level, and I’m wondering if there’s anything in the oral tradition about trees.”
“There is one story I heard as a child, but it is only legend, as you say. It is not for your science.”
“Try me.”
“Well, it is the story of how the big tree came to be. There was a woman, Sina, who loved the man Tuna, but she could not have him. Forbidden. She had many other men, suitors, you say, and the suitors came together to capture Tuna in a big net. The night before they kill him, Sina came to see him, to sayiorana , and Tuna says the next morning she must plant his head in the ground and it will grow a large tree that will remind her of him.”
Greer wrote this down, and Mahina examined it to make sure it followed her account. It was the same motif that appeared in every mythology—the tree-spirit, the Maypole, tales of death and regeneration, sacrifice and growth. Human life was always bound to plant life. In Australia and the Philippines, trees were thought to hold the spirits of dead ancestors. The Russian Kostrubonku and Indian Kangara held funerals for dead vegetation. According to Norse myth, Odin created the first man and woman from two logs he found by the shore.
These stories tried to explain the world, to make sense of the wilderness that surrounded primitive people. Why tell a story of a large tree when none grew?
“It is make-believe,” said Mahina.
“Vegetation myth,” said Greer. “But useful.”
“Myth,” repeated Mahina. “Because we have no big trees here.” She walked over to Greer and examined the first few pages of the book. “La Pérouse. Yes, it is good.”
“A lot of pages wasted complaining of stolen hats.”
“Hats?”
“Hau,” said Greer, pointing to her head. “Every travel account so far describes an almost obsessive theft of hats. The islanders seemed to like them.”
Mahina pondered this for a moment.
“Maybe,” she said, “they need the shade.”
It was the first week of November, summer, but gray clouds hung overhead all morning. The crowd stared expectantly at the sky, hoping that if it rained, it would at least begin soon, before they rolled back their sleeves, wrapped their hands around the fibrous rope, and began dragging themoai down the hill.
Burke-Jones, dressed in safari gear, stood over a diorama on the hood of his Jeep. He had assigned each small figure a number correlating to one of the fifty life-size humans awaiting his instructions.
There was a great excitement in the air; Greer could feel it. For the past week everybody had been talking about this day. Burke-Jones’s announcement at the conference had, in fact, catalyzed the island. Almost one hundred islanders were now milling about the grassy slopes of Rano Raraku, themoai quarry, waiting to see how their ancestors had done it. For Burke-Jones, for Vicente, even for Greer, this was a scientific experiment. But for the Rapa Nui this was not a fact to be filed away, this was their heritage, the epic of their ancestors.
The logistics, however, were daunting. The fifty volunteers first had to stand in a long line that snaked through dozens of fallenmoai as Burke-Jones handed each one a numbered placard on a necklace of string. He then called people over in groups of five, and showed them on his diorama where to stand. When her group was called, Greer was surprised to see that Burke-Jones had included himself—a small toothpick figure beside a red matchbox Jeep in exactly the position he was standing. She was relieved to know there were researchers more obsessive than she was. He had assigned each group a team leader—toothpicks with red tips. Theirs was Sven.
“Oh, no,” said Vicente, sporting a number “34” placard over his tan shirt. He had rolled up the sleeves, and was wearing khaki shorts rather than his usual pants.
“It’s about time I got some respect,” said Sven.
“There is always room for a coup.” Vicente winked. “It’s in my blood.”
Burke-Jones looked up from the diorama. “Pay very close attention to where you are supposed to stand.” He pointed to a row of toothpick figures. “Team two takes up the middle row on the statue’s northern side.”
Sven turned to Greer and Vicente. “I’ve been informed that team two will take up position on the statue’s—”
“It’s hot, Sven,” Greer said.
“You see how my subordinates speak to me?” Sven asked Burke-Jones.
“What we won’t put ourselves through for science,” sighed Vicente.
Burke-Jones stared fixedly at his diorama. “You have your assignments,” he said. “Team three!”
“Good luck, Randolph,” Greer said.
“Promptly, please!”
The volunteers were clearly put out by this rigid show of authority. Teams three and four walked away from the Jeep disgruntled, and Sven eventually gave up on his own game, threw his arm around Burke-Jones, and said: “No society, no matter how advanced, could have been as organized as you. Let’s get started with the shimmying.” But Burke-Jones would not be swayed from his agenda.
It took over an hour, but soon everyone had a number, knew where to stand, and had been assigned a group leader. Vicente, who had brought a camera, took shots of Burke-Jones as he delegated and pointed and examined his diorama, and as he then compared it, with a look of amazement, to the scene before him. It was remarkable, thought Greer: on one hillside, three orders of magnitude. The toothpick people, the life-size volunteers, and above them, on the crater, flat on its back, a twenty-foot stone giant to be hauled down the hill to loom above everything.
As things were about to start, Vicente turned his camera over to Mahina, asking her to document the experiment. She stood off to the side with dozens of islanders, the older and meeker who had come to watch. Greer was one of only two wome
n who would be pulling, and she had had to fight Burke-Jones for the chance. He wanted to replicate the historic conditions, and it was a near certainty women hadn’t helped move themoai. Vicente finally persuaded him she couldn’t hinder the results. He had pointed to Sven across the dinner table: “Let’s face it. They certainly didn’t have Swedes to help, or British architects to coordinate.”
Isabel, who had stayed on for the experiment, stood by Mahina in pink culottes and white tennis shoes, her arms crossed. Every few minutes she dipped her head, inched her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, scanned the volunteers, Sven in particular, and then tapped her glasses back into place.
“Positions!” called Burke-Jones, and the crowd approached the supine statue. A web of ropes, handmade from theTriumfetta semitriloba trees flown in from Tahiti, had been lashed around its neck. For the past several nights, Greer and Sven and Vicente had gathered at the Residencial Ao Popohanga, where Mahina taught them and several of her friends to weave the fibers. They had made over two hundred yards of rope, which now hung in loose lines about the statue like locks of hair.
Burke-Jones blew his whistle three times, and everyone crouched and lifted their ropes, tentacles coming to life. Greer sunk her feet deep into the grass, bent her legs, and prepared herself. Vicente was in front of her, Sven in front of him. The whistle blew—two long, one short—and all the teams heaved. Greer’s face flooded with the heat of exertion. Her palms burned around the rough fibers of the rope. She shifted her weight from leg to leg, but no matter her position, every muscle rebelled. All sorts of sounds began springing up. Grunts, moans, a distinctMi madre . Someone on the statue’s other side cursed Burke-Jones. Finally the whistle blew, and all of them, dizzied and hot, let the ropes drop and collapsed in the grass.
Several women from the audience waved canteens at the volunteers. Vicente and Greer sipped from their own.
“This will be a long day, I think.”
Disappointment had already set in among the volunteers. They drank their water, wiped their foreheads, leaned against the statue. Greer carefully stretched her neck, which was now bothering her for the first time in over a year.
Again came the whistle. They lifted their ropes. Burke-Jones blew again. Greer could feel the furnace of her muscles burning, the skin on her hands chafing against the coarse rope. Again the quit whistle. Nothing.
Burke-Jones had clearly anticipated this. Three of the team leaders were summoned, and a project of collecting stones began. Within an hour a pile of rocks had been wedged beneath themoai ’s head—this might raise the statue enough to get some leverage on the ropes. While the rocks were set in place, the sun reached its full height. Volunteers tied scarves and bandanas over their heads, doused their necks with canteen water. Only a slight breeze rolled off the ocean. When Greer looked toward the coast, she saw Luka Tepano on his horse at the bottom of the hill. He was studying the motions of the volunteers, the ropes being tested, the stones being rolled. This was a good distance from the woman’s cave, and it seemed he’d come simply to watch. He appeared transfixed, but when Greer looked a few minutes later, he was gone.
A team of volunteers flanked the head, seated so their feet could further wedge the stones beneath themoai as it was pulled. Again, the whistle blew; this time Burke-Jones had ordered a rocking motion, in the hopes that the simultaneous force of all fifty people would help.Uno. Dos. Tres. Hee-yaa! Etahi. Erua. Etoru. Hee-yaa! Then on the opposite side shouts exploded, and the whistle spluttered, the sound of a referee madly calling a time-out. Everyone released their ropes. With Vicente and Sven in tow, Greer ran to the other side: Team number three, five panting men, were heaped on top of a very disgruntled team four. One of the ropes had snapped.
Burke-Jones called a lunch break while he examined the torn rope and made adjustments on his diorama. Mahina had come down the hill to sit with Greer and Vicente, and Isabel stretched out her legs in the grass. They all shielded their eyes from the sun.
“These ropes aren’t strong enough,” said Vicente. “Perhaps if they were thicker.”
“Let’s hope it’s the ropes,” said Sven, “because I don’t want to think we’re not strong enough.”
Vicente sighed. “Poor Burke-Jones. He has been planning this for months.”
“Well, Burke-Jones will get the job done,” said Sven. “I have faith in the man. He has plans A through Z filed away in his mind. We may be here all day, all week, but he’ll get it done.”
“Now we can appreciate how hard a task it was to move these things,” said Vicente.
Greer was thinking of the tree legend Mahina had told her. She’d been reading further and had found a similar myth from other Polynesian islands—the myth of the coconut palm. Of course, there hadn’t been a trace of coconut palm pollen in any of her cores. The unknown pollen was still unidentified—neither Kew nor the Swedish Museum of Natural History was able to name it. They both suggested she send a sample to Strasbourg, France, where a new International Laboratory of Pollen Sciences had just been established, staffed with the best pollen-typing experts from around the world. She’d done just that and crossed her fingers. Whatever it was, the species was endemic to the island, and so far removed from any parent plant, it had lost all traces of its inheritance. But what if it were some sort of palm? A large tree used for construction, strong enough to move themoai ? Ropes and stones clearly weren’t sufficient, a thought that had apparently occurred to Burke-Jones as well, who was now distributing five-foot gnarled planks from specially flown-in Japanese pagoda trees—the closest match to thetoromiro tree that had once covered the island.
Planks in hand, their numbered placards flipping in the wind, the volunteers looked like a group of marathoners preparing to riot. They dragged their wedges up the grassy hill and reassembled around the statue. Greer doubted this would work—pagoda wood wasn’t very sturdy, and the planks were too short to be of much use. What were needed were planks as long as the statue, fifteen to twenty feet, that could slide the statue on its back.
The whistle blew. Half the volunteers were still pulling ropes, team three was still wedging stones, but now two teams were shoving planks beneath themoai ’s head, trying to use the wood as levers. Then came a crackling as one by one the planks snapped, and then another rope was torn in half. Burke-Jones sounded the whistle, defeated.
Greer sat to catch her breath. Some of the spectators had already left, like fans heading home when their team’s score is too low for hope. Mahina, though, remained, taking pictures of volunteers collapsed in the grass. Greer looked at her watch—almost four—and knew that soon Burke-Jones would have to call it a day.
Greer, weary, glanced toward the coastal path where the Jeeps were parked and the horses tethered, and there was Luka Tepano again. This time the woman from the cave was seated behind him on his horse, holding one hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. They slowly approached the site, but stopped at a distance of about forty yards, staring at the scaffolding. Sven, deep in conversation with Isabel, who was dabbing his forehead with a lace handkerchief, didn’t notice them. Only Greer seemed aware of their presence, and lifted her hand to wave.
“How many strikes until you’re out?” Sven was asking.
“The last time is the luckiest, no?” asked Vicente.
“Forty-eight men, two women, a hell of a lot of rocks, and trees. How many trees did he get, Greer?”
“Ten pagoda,” she said, pulled back to the group. “And fifteensemitriloba for the rope.”
“Twenty-five trees,” said Sven. “You can’t accuse the man of not trying.”
“Poor Burke-Jones,” sighed Greer, watching him rearrange his diorama, “soon we’re actually going to have to try moving this thing with toothpicks and dental floss. We’ve nothing else left.”
“We have our effort,” said Vicente. “And our spirit.”
They took their positions once again, now on themoai ’s other side—Burke-Jones had shuffled everyone around, as though simple
rearrangement might offset the ineptitude of their tools. Greer noticed Luka and the old woman were still watching. The whistle blew, the last fragments of pagoda wood were jabbed into the ground, the ropes were held like lifelines, the rocks rolled. Curses flew through the air as the volunteers, on this last attempt, gave their all. But when the quit whistle finally sounded, Greer dropped the rope and stepped back from themoai with enormous relief. A silence descended on the scene; the crowd looked to Burke-Jones, whose face, fixed on the statue, was expressionless.
“I think he’s going to want the whole bucket of pisco tonight,” said Sven.
“He looks ill,” said Vicente. They all three wiped the sweat from their faces, and stumbled toward the Jeep.
“Let’s call it a day,” said Sven, patting Burke-Jones’s back.
“Randolph,” said Vicente, “you’ve done a great thing here. We must always test our hypotheses, and follow the answers wherever they lead us.”
“I see an ice-cold pisco sour in your hand, my friend.”
Burke-Jones’s mouth hung open for a moment, then closed. It was as though after six hours of unprecedented activity, he had spent himself. He had, it seemed, nothing left to say.
“Randolph,” began Greer, “I think what we saw here today might be related to something else I’m seeing in my cores—”
Burke-Jones nodded slowly, then climbed into the Jeep, started the engine, and drove off. The diorama, which had been resting on the hood, flew into the air and fell to the grass, the matchbox Jeep landing exactly where the actual Jeep had sat, the small toothpick figures scattering in the wind.
When Greer returned to theresidencial that night, there was a letter from the International Laboratory of Pollen Sciences in Strasbourg waiting beneath her door. She tore open the small envelope. The letter was handwritten:
Jesus! I don’t have a thing here that resembles that little critter you sent me, but I would bet my ass it’s a palm species. Call it an informed hunch. You’ll need some proof though, verification (all good scientists do, don’t they?). Maybe look for macrofossils. Fossilized leaves, bark, nuts.
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