by Morris West
‘You understand Chief; I’m not cursing you; but…’
‘I understand Barbara. You just get yourself well.’
‘I’m well now. Sally says I can get up for a while tomorrow; but how can I walk around, all cut up like this?’
‘The girls will give you their dresses. No one will see the scars. You’re lucky. Your face is unmarked.’
‘I know. That was another thing Simon said. Because of me his face is marked up and Tioto’s lost the use of one hand. I didn’t do it. I didn’t want it to happen!’
‘They know that. We all know it.’
‘But where does that leave me? What man’s ever going to want me once he sees me stripped?’
‘Have you ever been to Suva, Barbara?’ He looked as solemn as a preacher at a funeral.
‘Suva? No. Why?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you a secret; and if you tell the doctor I’m a dead man. In Suva there’s a girl called one-eyed Pat Patel. She’s half Fijian, quarter Indian and the rest Australian beachcomber. She’s got one glass eye, wears a black wig because she’s bald without it and she’s got a big snake tattooed round her middle. She’s as ugly as sin and worth a million dollars Australian, all of which she earned in bed!’
‘You’re making all this up, Chief.’
‘Cross my heart! I don’t know whether it’s the snake or the wig that does it! See you later!’
By the time he reached the timber stand he was fuming. He positioned himself at the smaller tree where Cohen was working, and fell into rhythm with him. When they took their first breath, he said:
‘I called in to see Barbara this morning.’
‘Oh yes?’ Cohen’s indifference was monumental.
‘She was very upset.’
‘That’s the way she was last night.’
‘She told me what you’d said to her.’
‘Did she now?’ He stood straddle-legged, balancing the axe in his hands, smiling at Thorkild. ‘Well, she never was very discreet…Besides, Thorkild, when you hold a man up by the ears and drop him in the dreck, what should he do? Sink or swim?’
Thorkild hit him. The blow rolled him over and over down the slide. He got up slowly, and climbed back, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He bent to pick up the axe, but Thorkild trod it into the rotted leaves. Cohen looked at him with contempt and loathing.
‘All you need now, Thorkild, is jack-boots and a bullwhip, and you’ve got it made! I’m moving out – up to the terrace!’
To which, when he had gone, Franz Harsanyi added a protest of his own:
‘I know he’s a turd with women; but that was damned ugly. You start with fists. You end with axes and jack-knives.’
‘Let’s cut timber,’ said Adam Briggs dryly. ‘I’m working out a bride-price!’
‘Up there on the mountain …’ Molly Kaapu was pounding out a paste of coconut and breadfruit. ‘… They’re doing just fine. They’ve got one hut built and they’re half-way finished another. They’ve found a new spring for fresh water and they’ve started a taro patch…Willy and Eva, they’re happy like love-birds. You know that old kapu place? Well, Eva, she’s put up a big bamboo cross and she hangs flowers on it every day…She says it makes her feel easy up there. Martha? She’s O.K. Lorillard ain’t no ball of fire and he talks like he’s writing a Navy report, but he’s kind to her and they’re rubbing along. They figure they’d like to be legalized and written into the log like the others…And what’s this I hear about you and that young Simon?’
‘If you know it Molly, don’t ask me.’
‘So I won’t ask you, Kaloni. I’ll tell you. And you listen to old Mother Molly because she’s been around a lot longer than you…All the time you make the same big mistake!’
‘For God’s sake Molly. I know I make mistakes; but…’
‘You’re not hearing me Kaloni! I said one mistake – one big one – You’re still haphaole. You don’t come together like you did when your grandfather was with us.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Good! So that’s where we start. You don’t understand what you are and what these people want from you. They don’t want you to cut timber, sweeten the girls when they get the curse, run round the island looking for clay-pits or whatever. They don’t want you mixing in their quarrels. They want you apart and different. That’s the way it was in the old days. The chief didn’t build boats, he made the feasts that kept the builders working. He didn’t make arguments. He settled them when they were brought to him. You don’t do that. You got your sticky fingers stirring everywhere. And you make a big, big mess!’
‘Molly, we don’t have that much manpower!’
‘And we don’t need it. If there was just you and me, Kaloni, we could live on one hour’s work a day…What are you trying to do? Build a State capital or something? Who cares?’
‘They do!’
‘Only because you keep making them care. When you were in your house back home, you were a bigger man than you are here. People wanted to see you; because you knew things, and you didn’t make fights, and you could smile and sing…and when you got all balled up I could straighten you out in ten minutes. Not any more! No sir!’
‘So what do I do Molly?’
‘Step back; talk less; do less…Maybe take the boy with you – because he needs a man to teach him a man’s ways – and see what else we have in this place. You’ve got to be a real chief, Kaloni; you’ve got to have secrets that everybody needs and nobody else knows, not even your own woman!’
He knew she was right. He could not, for the life of him, see what to do about it. All his effort, all his planning had been dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge, the sharing of skills, so that in the event of death or casualty, the skill and the knowledge would still reside in the community. Now, a gossiping old woman had shown him that he was committed to a fallacy. The identity and the security of the community depended on the existence and the exercise of power. Knowledge was an instrument of power. It must be preserved, but it must be reserved also, an arcane and sacred deposit in the hands of kings, priests or commissars. This was the essence of kapu, the foundation of respect for established order. The king might die of the plague or fade gibbering into senility; but kingship remained inviolate, because none could exercise it without the mana. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man was paramount. After every revolution they shouted for the genius who knew how to run the water supply and where the records were buried.
It was a dangerous and tendentious proposition; but perhaps less dangerous than a defective and confused scholar, waving the banner of democracy over a lost island. Think about it then – the exploitable mystery. God? Not here, not with this tribe. For most of them God was folklore, fantasy, allegory, a riddle without an answer. Besides, Gunnar Thorkild had no patent to proclaim redemption, lay on hands, drive out spirits…But he was a navigator. He dealt in time, space and motion; dimensions so simple and yet so complex that common folk abdicated them to the experts without firing a shot. Ask any average healthy red-blooded citizen to make an act of faith in a creating, conserving Deity, he would hedge, hesitate, qualify and gloss – and might well ask to have you certified. Ask him, however, to step into an aircraft, a submarine, a space capsule, and he would cheerfully risk his life, wife, mistress or first-born, on hearsay testimony that the pilot knew his job!
So why leave them complacent? Make them value the secret science. Write the theology for them. Make them reverence the sacred lore: rotational time and corrected universal time and ephemeral time; vectors of forces and the calculation of linear progression over a curved surface! Let them see clearly that, without the magical powers of Gunnar Thorkild, they might well set out for Papeete and end locked in ice among the penguins of the South Pole.
The first step was to establish exclusive claim and deny access to the vulgar. Therefore he collected from Franz Harsanyi all the books, charts and other salvage from the wheelhouse of the Frigate Bird,
and transferred them to his own hut. His explanation was accepted without question; while their boat was building he must reconstruct the mathematics of the voyage and establish the position of the island by solar and sidereal observations. The second step was to attach and train the neophyte, Mark Gilman. So one evening, after supper, he walked the boy down to the beach and told him:
‘Mark, I’m going to lay a man’s job on you. We’re building a boat to get us home. I’m going to teach you, from the beginning, everything, but everything you need to know to get it there.’
‘Why me, Uncle Gunsmoke?’
‘Because you’ll remember, when the others like Adam Briggs or Peter Lorillard forget or get sick or maybe even die. That memory of yours makes you a very important person because you can hold the knowledge of centuries in your brain-box.’
‘What do I have to do?’
‘So many things I can’t begin to tell them all at once. We’ll work at them every day and sometimes at night…I’ll teach you about time. We’ll make a clock. I’ll show you how to measure speed with a Dutchman’s log. We’ll make a quadrant like the old sailors used, and I’ll show you how to shoot the stars with a coconut. When we’re finished, you’ll know enough navigation to sail to any port in the world. What we don’t have in our books we’ll reconstruct for ourselves…Are you willing to try?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good. We’ll start tomorrow…Now here’s the important part. We don’t just have to navigate a boat. We have to navigate people as well: give them confidence, make sure they trust us and obey us in time of crisis. For example, in an aircraft, you don’t have passengers rushing up to the cock-pit to tell the captain what to do – not even if they’re pilots themselves. He doesn’t tell them what he’s doing either. His job is private, secret, because he can’t waste time spelling out why and wherefore…You and I must be the same. The people will learn to respect us, not only because we know, but because they don’t. Is that clear?’
‘I think so …’
‘Later on, when the boat is nearly finished, we’ll begin teaching Adam Briggs. But for the moment, it’s just you and me…like the magician and his assistant.’
‘And when I know how the tricks are done, I’ll be a magician too.’
‘That’s right!’
‘Now I understand what Peter Lorillard meant.’
‘Oh, what’s that?’
‘Something he said, while you were down on the beach with Charlie Kamakau. He said you were a great one for pulling rabbits out of hats; but the real master was the rabbit who could wave a wand and make the magician disappear!’
‘And that’s how good you’d like to be, eh?’
‘That’s how good I’m going to be, Uncle Gunsmoke. You wait and see!’
His laugh was limpid as water; but Gunnar Thorkild felt an odd shiver of fear, as if he had heard the wind whispering through the empty mouth of a skull.
The trees were felled, stripped, hauled down the slide and rolled, with Herculean labour, to the building-place on the beach. The liquor was made, skimmed, strained through fabric and pronounced by Sally fit – if not exactly advisable – for human consumption. The fire-pit was filled with fuel. The huts were garlanded with flowers, frangipani, and hibiscus and slipper orchids from the high slopes. Lorillard and Willy Kuhio had delivered the wedding gift from the terrace farm: a young hog trapped and speared in a thicket, and carried down on bamboo poles. The women had vied with each other to produce a variety of exotic confections – a luau worthy of this first festive occasion on the island.
Magnusson, with gravity and irony, had phrased the entries for the log; a bill of divorcement for Peter Andre Lorillard, who claimed cause but was deprived by misadventure of legal decision; a certificate of marriage for three couples who, having declared their desire and intention to live publicly and honourably as man and wife, were so recognized by the community. He had also transcribed the formula of the vows, and the notes for a short homily which he, as the patriarch of the group, proposed to deliver. It would, as he put it to Thorkild, lay balm to certain wounds and offer a hope to the unregenerate. Thorkild himself was a shade less than happy:
‘Lorillard doesn’t need regeneration. He’s so damn sanctimonious about the whole business, I want to throw up.’ He made a mimicry of Lorillard’s fruity accent. ‘They love the life up there. They feel content and neighbourly. It’s marvellous the way things grow. And Simon is a tower of strength…I’m sure he is, but he’s also a good hater. He wouldn’t even shake my hand when he arrived.’
‘Forget it.’ Magnusson dismissed the subject with a gesture. ‘You’re removed from all that, now. You can pretend it doesn’t exist – I’m glad to see you’re taking my advice.’
‘Your advice?’
‘Molly’s then.’ Magnusson grinned like a happy satyr. ‘I wrote the score; she wrote the words. You, thank God, were bright enough to understand the song…One thing I do understand, Thorkild, is the usage of authority. You can keep an idiot on the throne for half a century provided no one hears him talk, sees him eat or knows what he does in bed!’
‘Thanks for the compliment!’
‘It’s the best advice you’ve had in your life. Admit it! The awe is building up beautifully. They treat you like an alchemist, with the first lead brick ready for transmutation. That sundial or whatever it is, is very impressive. Young Mark is a joy to see. I’ve never seen a kid so absorbed.’
‘He’s an odd one Carl. He’s coming into early puberty. All the signs are there: the highs, the lows, the aggressions. But there’s something else. It’s a firefly thing: now you see it, now you don’t; a kind of furtive mockery, as if he’s just lying in ambush, waiting to spring a trap.’
‘On whom?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He could be jealous of Lorillard; even of the baby Martha’s carrying.’
‘Or Jenny and Adam Briggs.’
‘I’d never thought of that.’
‘Or it could be just the first sense of strength – knowing that he can master abstruse ideas quicker than other people and retain them more easily. I guess we all needed some anchor at his age. For me it was my grandfather. For him, perhaps, it’s what we’re doing together…Anyway, let’s round up the victims. Got your speech ready?’
‘Graven on my heart,’ said Magnusson piously. ‘Pity I shan’t live to see it published.’
They stood, three couples together, between lighted torches, with Carl Magnusson officiating and the rest of the tribe gathered in front of them. Everyone wore a lei of frangipani blossom. The brides were crowned with flowers. For each couple, Hernan Castillo had made a wedding ring of mother-of-pearl. Magnusson’s speech was short but strangely moving:
‘My friends, we set out in a spirit of adventure to find this island, which has now become our home. We have dead buried here. Love has been found here, life begotten. There are some who are still making trial of their relationship; others who now wish to affirm it, make it permanent and exclusive by a public act of marriage. We offer them our affections and our good wishes. We pray over them in words we can all say with sincerity because they will go on sharing our life and we theirs. We were all spawned out of a common earth, in which we shall sleep finally together, on which I pray we may learn to live peaceably and generously.’
When he had finished he was weeping quietly and without shame – an old weathered man, with the end of his days stark before him. Then he recovered himself and led them through the recitation of the vow and the exchange of rings. Finally, he faced them with a word which was at once a plea and a challenge.
‘One man’s prayer may be another man’s curse. I trust you will all consent to join me in this one: that the Lord of us all, whom we call by so many names, who leads us by different roads to the same end, may look down in mercy on us all. Amen!’
In the brief hush that followed Mark Gilman said loudly:
‘I think it’s all shit! I think God’s a shit too!’
‘Let him go! I’ll bring him home afterwards.’
‘He’s drunk as a fiddler,’ said Simon Cohen cheerfully. ‘I saw him sampling the liquor.’
‘He’s a sad little dog,’ said Ellen Ching. ‘All alone and baying the moon.’
‘Let’s start the party,’ said Sally Anderton firmly. ‘Little dogs always come home to the fire.’
Gunnar Thorkild said nothing. What passed or might pass between the sorcerer and his apprentice was no man’s business but their own.
It was a very drunken evening. The food put fire in their bellies. The liquor was sweet and easy to drink. There were few veils to shed and – God damn! – after hell and high water, what else was left but eat, drink and be merry and kiss the nearest and cuddle the sleepiest and pick up the pieces in the morning. They sang, they danced, they declaimed, they told long stories that tailed away before the climax. They laughed and cried and stroked and clutched and fell apart and toasted absent friends and staggered down to the beach and back again to the liquor can, and in and out of the huts, to fall, finally exhausted, around the hot stones of the fire-pit.
It was good, they said. It was delightful and decorous and delectable and every other dee in the goddam dictionary, thus to divert themselves. They were brothers and sisters, weren’t they? And wives and husbands and lovers, all cast away with no one – not a single, solitary individual – to care whether they were alive or dead! ‘I remember …’ she said; and he remembered and they remembered…‘And for Christ’s sake look at that moon! And is this today, tomorrow or yesterday? Well, who the hell cares? We pay our taxes, don’t we? Then why don’t they send in the Marines? You know about the Marines, don’t you?…You can’t go to bed yet Carl! Need any help Molly? See, that’s love for you! That’s really love! Hello Barbara! Oh! excuse me, Ellen! Tioto, I got to tell you, we really felt bad about you and Malo…Let’s do that! Let’s go, put some flowers on the graves. That’s right! That’s what Carl said. We’re still here. They’re still here. That’s nice. I mean it makes you feel right. One good thing about island weddings, you don’t have to get up in the morning. Now listen Chief! Don’t be like that! We love you. We love Sally too …’ On the far edge of the compound, propped against the stake which was the gnomon of the sun-clock, the boy sat watching, baleful and contemptuous, until the last reveller had sunk to rest and the first sun showed over the flank of the mountain.