by Carlos Eyles
“That’s a bit farfetched, Moses. What do you think?”
“What is farfetched?”
“Sounds crazy to me.”
“This is not crazy, eh. The Sea God lives. Bargains have been made and sacrifices have happened. I know, but I am not sure if Sinaca has done this thing.”
“Moses, you’ve always made good sense to me but this doesn’t make any sense at all. Would you swim with her at night?”
Moses slowly shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Well, if this is true, why would Jokatama allow her to hunt again?”
“It is because of you, Keli. He knew that you would not know that she could spear fish like the men. He did this because he knew that you would have to ask me and that I would speak the truth. He did this so you would stay away from her.”
“Why wouldn’t he want his daughter to see me? Especially since there are no other men in her life and none seem to want any part of her?”
“Jokatama is a good man. He treats his family well. He doesn’t want an outside man to come and make his pretty daughter pregnant or take her to Suva or some other faraway place. He wants her to live as a pure Fijian women in the village. He knows this life is the right one.”
“Moses, I believe you’re telling me the truth as you know it. But I don’t believe for a second that Sinaca has made some kind of pact with an ancient god. She is an exceptional girl, a woman who has a rare combination of talent and beauty. I’m not surprised that she can spear fish as good as a man. She’s spent her entire life in the water, why shouldn’t she be expert at spearing fish?”
“That is not all, Keli. She can swim farther than the man and dive deeper. Also, she speaks English.”
“Really?” asked Compton, intrigued. “Where did she learn to speak English?”
“I taught her when she was a little girl. She was very quick. All the time she ask questions. We talked until the trouble started with the Sea God.”
“There are women in America who would laugh at these accusations. There are women in America who can outperform men in every phase of physical activity.”
“We are not in America, Keli.”
“Well, I’m not going to stop trying to see her.”
Moses looked out to sea again, the muscles in his jaw working on the dilemma. “Already, Jokatama must know, eh, but you must respect the Fiji custom. Iou insult the family, Jokatama will make trouble and send his sons to do you harm. He doesn’t want the old women to start clicking their teeth about his daughter again.”
“I will try to adhere to the rules of Fiji custom but I won’t avoid Sinaca.” Compton paused. “Is this some kind of test to see if I have what it takes to court a Fiji woman?”
“No one asks about your courage, Keli. You are the American who hunts for the wailu. But they don’t want you to die as the sacrifice that Sinaca must offer.”
“So you say I could be the next sacrifice to the Sea God?” Compton was smiling now. “You know enough people put their belief into that sort of thing and before you know it, you have a self-fulfilling prophesy.”
“I don’t know what is that but the Sea God will not come for you in the day. Night is when it’s dangerous to be in the water.”
“Well, that’s reassuring, Moses. You have just confirmed my fears.” Compton’s quip escaped Moses altogether and he remained serious and unmoved in his convictions. “You know what bothers me more than anything is your rock solid belief that this is all real. I admit that there are some fairly incredible things going on here. The way you use your intuition is nothing less than remarkable. No doubt you’re operating under a different set of laws than I’ve ever been exposed to but I have to draw the line in a belief of a Sea God.”
Moses shrugged indifferently. “There are many different gods, Keli. If you believe in one then you can believe in ‘em all, eh.”
“What makes you so convinced that the Sea God is real?”
Moses glanced over his shoulder in what was becoming a familiar gesture. “When I was seven years old, before I go to school, I was out on the reefs fishing with my older sister, Alice, and she went around the corner to fish and I stay in the shallow. I was looking down in the water, and far inside I saw a Fiji man all dressed in leaves like the old ones who lived before my great grandfather. He talked to me. I could hear the voice say that spearing fish was the old tradition and that I was given the skill. He say that I had the power of the spearman. Then he went away. This was not the underwater spear fishing but the spearing from the reefs, standing on the top of the coral and waiting to throw the spear. Later, it happened again in a different pool. He was a very dark man and ask me to use the spear like the old ones and it would go where I aimed it. I never stopped thinking about the Fiji man. Whenever I went down to the water I looked for him and he came again and again and say that I had the power. One day I ask my father for a spear and he carved me a small one. It was the most important gift he ever give to me. I think he knew something because I was very young to have the spear. I went to the sea everyday and practiced throwing. It was all I wished to do. I would throw the spear and hit the fish then run across the coral and pin the fish with the spear, then pick it up with my hands. Sometimes I see plenty of fish and sometimes I see the man. If I saw the man I knew I would get a big fish, the wrasses. You have seen them? They swim in the shallow on top of the reefs where it’s warm.”
Compton nodded that he had seen them. “Napoleon wrasses,“ he said without Moses missing a beat.
“I was the best reef spearman on the island and everyone knew that I had the gift. Sometimes I could see a fish fifty feet away and throw the spear high and it would come down and hit the fish and kill it. When I was fifteen the man stopped coming into the pools and I stopped looking for him. A few years after, I went to Suva. When Esther brought me back I thought about spearing again and carved a new spear and went out to the reefs. I still had the skill and began to spear the fish. One week I speared two big wrasses both over ten kilos. Three days after, I dream of a big fish and I went and saw this great fish far out on the reef. I threw the spear andit flew like a bird by itself. It hit the wrasse and it jumped out of the water. It was over thirty kilos and it shook the spear out. No one ever speared a fish from the reef that weighed so much. I went out and found my spear and picked it up. It was hot, like fire in my hands. I couldn’t hold it and threw it ashore. My hand was hot and my body got very hot. I was scared and went to the Genuine Village. I go to my friend, David, very weak with bumps coming out on my skin. We didn’t know what was happening. They say I was talking to somebody who wasn’t there and it scared all the women. The healer Diloloma came. She looked at me and then rubbed herbs over my body. She told the women that my spirit was not in my body. I went into a long sleep and when I woke I was full of sweat and very weak. Diloloma ask me to stop spearing the fish. She said that the Sea God was trying to take my life for the fish it had given me. And I never speared another fish again. That is why I don’t dive with the spear.”
Compton was rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, it makes some sense now.”
Moses looked out on to the Tasman Strait and waved his tattooed arm across the panorama.
“The sea is more powerful than the land. More powerful than the hurricane. The hurricane does nothing to the sea. The next day it is the same. There is more in the sea than in the sky. If there is a God, it must live in the sea, eh.”
“Moses, you’ve again proposed an idea that is beyond debate. You’re probably right. If there is a God, it must live in the sea.”
25
The sound of the outboard ceased at the reef line. Compton could not see Moses in the moonless shadows until he had poled to the beach. They loaded gear and soon after clearing the reef, the sky began to glow from an indistinct source on the eastern horizon. A whisper entered Compton, like a withered leaf blown from the tree of the unconscious; insignificant, scarcely observed. “Take care of the spear.” The leaf settled, lost among the
others, and was instantly forgotten.
They skimmed across a coal oil sea where not a breath of air or a ripple of sea prevailed. In the half-light of dawn the sea contained secrets that appeared to lie just beneath the surface. When they stopped and anchored and Compton submerged beneath the veil of the surface, the secrets became manifest. A low voltage tension carried through the water on its own stream. Schools of fish quivered at the nearness of death, their vulnerability tangible, and there was a bitter taste to the water. It was the time to feed and to be fed upon. In the ink blue water, beyond the visibility of a few feet, lay the vast unknown that simmered like a limitless cauldron fusing potions that had never been drunk. It was the unknown of the mind as it was the unknown in nature and for Compton there was no distinction. In this seething blood boil from which all life emerged there laid its antithesis, the very real possibility of vanishing from the world without a trace. In the acknowledgement of this understanding he became, as he always did when entering the water on the deep reef, hyper-alert, and attempted to listen his way through the water, or smell, if he could, the danger that prowled on the other side of sight. Muscles stiffened and he drew constricted breaths as if he were already deep and breathing through gills.
When the sun had not quite broken the horizon he was able to see the coral reef seventy feet below. It pulsated with a blue glow as though it were gelatinous and floated unattached to the sea floor. The baitfish nervously reflected the tension moving as a single unit, observing with a thousand eyes and sensing with half as many, lateral lines. Now, with every breath the blue hue of the ocean grew lighter and when the sun tipped the horizon the pale blue vanished altogether and the water crystallized and became as the air of dawn.
Compton descended to forty feet and caught the movement at te edge of the reef. Continuing to drop down to sixty feet, he paralleled a large tuna, the sequins of its metallic silver skin catching the light against darkened depths. It’s movement was fluid like liquid stainless steel through clear ice. It exuded a power that he had never witnessed in the water. It was fearless of him and came in close.
Aiming at the spot behind the pectoral fin, he pulled the trigger. The spear struck the tuna and though the shot was true, the fish bolted to the edge of the reef with a power that was unimaginable. It nearly wrenched the gun from his hand but the gun had gained a significance that only a hunter who had depended of such tools would understand and he would not, could not, let it go. The fish hauled the man to the depths with such ease it was as if he did not exist. Time had taken a warped turn and Compton seemed to be observing the event from the inside out in a kind of slow motion. He was simultaneously equalizing his ears, for the depths became great, as he was kicking furiously trying in some way to turn the fish. Though the fish gave no indication of turning or even acknowledging he was attached to it, he continued to try. He was down well over a hundred feet moving along a coral shelf at a speed that all but dislodged his face mask had he not held it to his face while clearing his ears. He could not stop the fish, and he could not let go of the gun. In the core of this surreal world he realized that the fish would kill him if he did not let go of the gun. It was the constriction in his throat, the desperate need for air, that made the connection to reality that ultimately forced his fingers to open and release the gun. In that instant time resumed its flow and he dared to look up to the surface that appeared light years away, orbiting in another universe. He began a ponderous climb back towards the edge of his own world. As he ascended he watched the fish barrel down the reef and out of sight, the spear gun dancing behind it like some wild stick creature gone berserk. He did not look up at the surface again, for the distance was too great and it would only steal his air at the prospect of his task. But his legs were strong and carried him faithfully, as faithfully as his body had ever responded and when he reached the surface and exhaled a deep breath and inhaled again it was like being reborn into a new body.
Thinking only of his spear gun, he quickly regained himself and swam in the direction the tuna was last heading. At a hundred yards a flash of light in the depths brought him to a halt. At the reef’s edge the tuna struggled against a taunt line that had looped a large coral head. Tremendous pressure was being applied to the line and it appeared to have begun to fray as the struggling fish ran it hard along the razor sharp coral in deep water over a hundred feet. While regaining his breath Compton recalled his premonition and realized the extent of his misjudgment.
Though he had just been to a hundred feet, he did not get there under his own power and, exhausted from the ordeal, did not consider a dive. The fish remained beyond his depth limit. Even if he could have dived to that depth, there was too much pressure on the line to unwrap it. He dove for the fish with scarcely a notion of a plan and half-way down the muffled snap of the line ended all speculation. The tuna surged away from the reef, swimming slowly and vanishing into the blue with twenty feet of line trailing behind it and the spear dangling uselessly at its side. The wooden gun stock, free of the shooting line, seemed to hang in the water but was in fact slowly rising, and when it floated up to sixty feet he swam down and retrieved it. He ascended to the surface and signaled the boat. Moses pulled alongside and Compton tossed in the gunstock sans spear. When he had climbed into the boat Moses asked, ”Was it the Silver Fish?”
Compton picked up the stock and threw it against the thwart. “No, a tuna, a big tuna, over a hundred pounds. It took everything. I to tha’t stop it. I heard the little voice…”
Moses raised his eyebrows as if to speak but said nothing.
“I should have listened,” continued Compton. “It was all there, I knew I would get into a big one. Now I’ve got nothing, no spear, no point, nothing.” Compton paused in thought. “We have to go to Somosomo for a spear shaft.”
“No spear shafts there brother, only the guns.”
“You mean I have to buy another gun just to get a spear shaft?
“That’s right.”
“That‘s ridiculous. What happens when someone loses a spear here?’
“No Fiji man can afford the spear guns and if they have one, they make sure they don’t lose the shaft, like Aprosa. Mostly the Australians buy them and take them when they leave.”
“If that’s the only solution then I guess we buy another gun.”
Moses reached for the spear gun and turned it over in his hand. “There is a man on Taveuni who works with the metal. Maybe he fix it up. You be spearing fish very soon again.”
“Yeah, in the meantime that tuna will go off and die somewhere. It makes me sick to have that happen.”
“It will feed the hunger of the sea, there is no waste, eh.”
The truth of Moses’ words was of little solace as Compton gazed out over the vacant surface of the sea that had consumed more than his spear.
“When are you going to Taveuni?”
“I get a fish first, eh.”
“I’ll pay for the fuel,” pushed Compton.
“It would be a waste to not have a fish to sell. There is time for everything. The fish and the reef have nowhere to go, eh.”
Compton lifted his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Of course you’re right. I’m just pissed at myself. I knew I shouldn’t have taken the shot. I hate being stupid.”
“There is no disgrace in being foolish.”
The skies had turned to gray in the short time Compton had been in the water and Moses began to haul up the anchor. “Rain, coming soon.”
Halfway back to Orchid Beach the skies had gathered and were now unloading with remorseless vengeance. They could not see the island for the gray sheets of rain and before they reached the beach, Compton was obliged to bail out the rising water that gathered in the bottom of the boat.
The rain hammered the thatched roof of the kitchen and the men had to shout to be heard. Compton made tea and its warmth was welcomed. They sipped and listened and shook their heads at the maelstrom that descended and occupied their souls. When the rain f
inally abated and Compton stood to refill Moses empty cup, he pointed to his formerly infected shins. “The red is gone. Mama Doc’s medicine fix you up good.”
“Yeah, that stuff really worked. Frankly I’m surprised but that could just be my Western mind working out its conflicts.”
“She fix up the children in the village and make their bellies well, also pull the teeth. There is not too many medicine people left on Qamea. There was a good one named Bob. His mother is Diloloma, the number one healer. He was very good even when he was young. One night my friend Steven Morris was drinking with him on that long beach that was my father’s. In the early night, Bob say that a girl would come. The kava made Steven forget but after awhile he saw the light of a boat coming. Four men came ashore and lifted a blanket with a girl inside. She could not move or find her breath. She was dying. Her father was a teacher at the school on Taveuni, an educated man, and he brought her to Bob instead of the hospital. He say there wasn’t enough time for the hospital but everyone knew that he believed in the healer and not the hospital. Bob passed the kava around and then went out and found herbs to mix with the kava. The girl drank it and in ten minutes she was walking and breathing.”
Compton was unable to contain his skepticism. “Could he have planned it out, to fool your friend?”
“No, Steve had been with this fellow all day and all night. They had talked to no one. There was no trick in what he did. It is a knowledge of plants, eh, of the earth medicine.”
“I’d like to meet him. Is he still living on the beach?”
“He is in jail. They arrested him two years ago and put him in jail for being a doctor without permission.”
Compton let out an audible sigh. “What happened to his mother? Is she still around?”
“Diloloma became afraid and moved out of the village. She only heals very sick ones who know the way to her bure in the jungle. She is in sorrow because her son goes crazy in jail.”