by Morris West
‘Thank you. Tell me the poem again – in the morning.’
‘Go to sleep, Sally.’
‘What about you?’
‘Soon…Goodnight Mrs. Thorkild.’
He drew the covers over her and went out, sniffing the air, heavy with sea-spray and fire-smoke, and the cloying vapour of the jungle. There was a figure standing by the gnomon. He walked down to see who it was. Magnusson hailed him softly.
‘Thorkild? It’s me, Carl.’
‘Anything the matter?’
‘Nothing. I don’t sleep very well…I’d love a good cigar.’
‘Sorry, we’re fresh out.’
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Beautiful.’
‘Would you believe it? Finally, I think I’m a happy man.’
‘I’m glad Carl.’
‘There’s a fat old woman in the bed next to mine. She snores and farts all night and in the morning she kisses me awake and I love her…Are you happy, Thorkild?’
‘I’m getting there, Carl.’
‘Lend me your arm. I’d like to go down to the beach.’
They settled themselves just above the tideline. Thorkild began shredding a palm-leaf, while Magnusson tossed coral fragments into the water, and talked in rambling monologue.
‘… I’ve been looking for a word all day. Now I’ve found it. It’s what I’ve come to finally: tranquillity…I drank too much last night. I felt foul this morning. But under it all I was tranquil…There’s something I want to tell you; but you must promise to keep it a secret…I’ve lost the sight of one eye – the left one. I know what happened…a blood vessel burst, back there somewhere. Don’t try to look shocked! You and I are way beyond hypocrisies. It’s a kind of admonition, I’d say. I’ve seen enough. It’s time I started looking inwards and making some judgements…I’d like to ask you a favour.’
‘Anything.’
‘How do you figure the account between you and me?’
‘I still owe you, Carl.’
‘Then I want to claim the debt…Now listen and don’t interrupt! One day, soon – I’ll tell you when – I want you to take me up to the high place where your grandfather is.’
‘Carl, it’s a hell of a climb!’
‘So we do it the easy way. We can stay overnight on the terrace with Willy and Eva. But I want to go there, Gunnar!’
‘I’ll take you.’
‘And I want you to leave me there.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘Carl, listen to me!’
‘You listen to me!…Your grandfather was older than I am. I saw you lower him over the side of the Frigate Bird. I saw him sail off, with all his manhood intact, to meet his ancestors in the high place. I wanted to go with him. I pleaded to be taken, remember? I couldn’t imagine, and I still can’t, any better way for a man to meet his end and make the last debate with his Maker. I don’t want to die here, in bed, like a vegetable, one sense failing after the other, while the women mourn around me and the whole tribe waits for it to be over, so they can go about their own business again…I’m a proud man, Thorkild. Don’t make me plead!’
‘Carl, that’s the last thing I want to do. But will you hear me – just for one moment.’
‘Make it short then.’
‘Okay…Here it is. You’re a big man and a lonely man. I promised myself that, when your time came, I’d be there, like a son offering the pieties, holding your hands, closing your eyes, kissing you goodbye.’
‘You think I didn’t know that? You think I don’t want it? More than most I need the pieties. But do them my way, eh son?’
‘Carl, it’s so lonely up there!’
‘Was your grandfather lonely?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I promise you he wasn’t. Look, I’ve been an adventurer all my life. I won. I lost. I went out hunting again – women, money, power, everything! Not because I needed them, but because, always there was one more mountain, one more river and behind them all, the light – a will-o’-the-wisp maybe, but still a light to follow. It’s there, up on the high place; and you’re going to take me to it!’
‘I wish Flanagan were here,’ said Thorkild with sublime irrelevance.
‘Why Flanagan?’
‘Because he told me this would happen.’ He laughed, foolishly, at the recollection. ‘He said one day, you’d climb on my back like the old man of the sea and I’d beg and beg to get you off.’
‘Strange man, Flanagan,’ said Carl Magnusson absently. ‘He told me something different. He said I could ride you to hell but I’d never break your back…Well? What’s the answer?’
‘I take you and I leave you. And may God have mercy on my stupid soul.’
‘Amen,’ said Carl Magnusson. ‘Take me home to bed.’
The departure of the uplanders made a curious impression on everyone. They were not going far. The track to the terrace was now a well-beaten thoroughfare. The food-carriers made the journey every couple of days, to take up fresh fish and bring down fruits and vegetables. It was rather that, for the first time since their arrival on the island, they had achieved a sense of family, of tribe, of intimate mutuality. Tools were left to be repaired. There were new ones to be taken back. Concerns had been expressed. A currency of kisses and embraces, of arguments and issues, had been established. Just before they left, Simon Cohen came to see Thorkild and informed him in his usual graceless fashion:
‘I spoke to Barbara, told her I was sorry and asked whether she’d join me on the mountain. She said she’d wait till she was better; and then she’d think about it. Also she’d have to ask the Chief.’
‘She can go or stay, just as she pleases.’
‘If she asks your advice, what will you say?’
‘Nothing. She has to decide for herself. What about you and me?’
‘The same. Nothing. We don’t have to like each other to get along.’
‘True. You’re welcome down here any time.’
‘Well, that’s it I guess. Aloha!’
‘Aloha!’
Martha Gilman too, came to bid him goodbye and make a kind of peace.
‘I see what you’re doing with Mark. I’m sure it’s good for him; but he’s just a little boy and he still needs some mothering.’
‘He gets it Martha.’ Thorkild was careful with her. ‘Molly Kaapu spoils him and Jenny’s always making a fuss of him and Sally keeps an eye on his health. Don’t worry. Enjoy your own life.’
‘I’m trying, believe me.’
‘Don’t try too hard.’
‘Gunnar, I want to be down here when the baby comes.’
‘Of course.’
‘I know Peter won’t like it, but…’
‘He’ll come to it. Relax woman!’
‘I need you around to teach me…We had good days, didn’t we?’
‘Because we put good things into them!’
‘Kiss me?’
‘We’ll always be kissing cousins Martha. Take care now! Aloha!’
As he stood waving them up the hill, Adam Briggs was beside him. It was he who pronounced the simple, haunting epilogue:
‘There were times Chief when I thought we’d tear ourselves to pieces like cats in a bag. Now we’re human folk again. It’s not the new Jerusalem, but we might – we just might – start building it.’
9
They had gained something; they had lost something: the sense of urgency, the unspoken desperation, that had driven them, both to effort and to conflict, during their first weeks of sojourn on the island. They were no longer plagued by monotony, understanding now that the slow rhythm of their days, like the rhythm of tide and surf, of sun and rain-shower, was more satisfying and more productive than the short frenetic bursts of energy by which they had worn out so much of their old lives.
The boat could not be made with hacking and slashing. It must grow slowly under their patient hands, as the original timber had grown in the forest. The best fish came in with th
e tide. They must wait for low water to garner the reef. The women too, imposed their own, instinctive demand for domesticity and order. Two of them were breeding. Others hoped to breed. They wanted no wild excursions or exuberant plans. Emotions, too, became shallower and more subdued; since there was nothing to stimulate yearning and few objects to satisfy it. The married had, perforce, to be satisfied with their choice; and if the unmarried chose – as it seemed they sometimes did – to play other games, it had small consequence in the life of the community.
There was a slow, but perceptible, flush of decoration in the camp. People collected shells and coral branches, and pieces of driftwood. Ellen Ching began to bring down orchids and hibiscus and ginger flowers, to plant in baskets and in pockets, dug out of the sand and filled with mulch and earth. Yoko Nagamuna made cowrie necklaces and bracelets. Sally and Molly and Barbara were beating pieces of tapa bark and trying out vegetable dyes to print them afterwards. Tioto had made a bamboo raft which could be poled around the reef. Franz Harsanyi was scribbling furiously on the fly-leaves and margins of their books and was darkly secretive about what he wrote.
Thorkild, for his part, was constantly busy with the education of Mark Gilman. There was a space reserved for them near the sun-clock, where they had set up a pendulum and laid out a large square of sand, swept smooth every morning, on which they drew diagrams and worked out problems of trigonometry and navigation. For optics, Hernan Castillo had made, to Thorkild’s design, a quadrant which involved sighting through an auger-hole across the surface of water in a coconut shell and sliding a pointer across a fixed scale.
The boy drank in knowledge avidly. He would repeat a whole series of procedures and calculations without a slur or a mistake. He had an almost demonic urge to excel; and when, as he sometimes did, he caught Thorkild out in an error of calculation, he would whoop with joy and shout it to any who would listen around the camp. For the rest, he remained wary and secretive, lapsing into silence on any question that touched his private thoughts or his social relationships. With the women he was alternately shy and cocky. When Ellen Ching ducked him in the water for some impertinence, he sulked away from her for days afterwards. When Jenny was alone, he sidled close to her; but as soon as Adam Briggs came near, he scuttled away, furtive as a field-mouse.
The only one with whom he was prepared to unbend was Carl Magnusson. He would walk with him, deep in colloquy on the beach. Sometimes, when the old man was low and disinclined for company, he would eat with him outside his hut; but never once did he hint at the subject of their talks. Thorkild insisted that, every two weeks at least, he must join the messengers to the terrace and visit his mother. Always he returned, silent and resentful, full of small spites which Thorkild affected not to notice. It was hard enough for the boy to be deprived of the companionship of his peers. It was too much to expect him to be more perfect than his elders.
One day, about six weeks after the luau, Barbara Kamakau announced that she was ready to join Simon Cohen on the mountain. She would go up with the messengers, talk to him, and if he were still of the same mind, she would stay. She summed it up with plaintive dignity:
‘It’s no great romance, Chief; I know that. But it’s better than being alone. I wish I had more brains, so I could talk about the things that interest him. But I know how to keep him happy in bed; so I guess it balances out. If he gets tired of me, I’ll come back to the beach. Only one thing worries me. I don’t want to finish on the waterfront in Honolulu with a baby that hasn’t got a father.’
‘Whatever happens,’ Sally Anderton assured her, ‘the Chief and I will see that you’re cared for. That’s a promise, Barbara.’
‘I believe it. I don’t say things very well; but if ever you need me I’ll come running…Well, here we go, up the mountain. I just hope Charlie doesn’t come back to haunt me.’
‘How could he? He’s probably sitting in a bar in Honolulu right now.’
‘No, he isn’t. That much I know.’
‘How can you know it Barbara?’
‘Nobody’s come to find us, have they? Charlie hated me, but not the rest of you. He loved Mr Magnusson. No, he’s dead!’
‘Then forget him!’
‘Yes. That’s best. Wish me luck.’
When she had gone, dragging and uncertain, to join the messengers, Sally turned to Thorkild.
‘What do you really think happened to Charlie?’
‘I’ll read you the odds, sweetheart. Even money he’s dead. Long money he’s landed crazy on some piddling atoll, and is trying to make some French official understand who he is and where he came from. Longest odds of all, he’s home in Honolulu and the Navy’s scouring the seas to rescue us.’
‘And you live with that every day?’
‘No!’ He rejected the thought utterly. ‘Understand me Sally! I weigh the odds. I decide. Then I forget it; because I can’t afford to think back. Even you – and God knows, I love you so much my heart breaks – I toss into the balance and weigh with the rest of them. Lorillard taught me that. Triage: save whom you can and forget the rest. It was Flanagan’s proposition too: do the best you can for the most and let God make up the balance-sheet!’
‘Don’t talk like that. It frightens me.’
The hell it does! You know! What did you tell me when Jenny’s baby was born? Bury it! The child’s dead. We have to live tomorrow. So mop up the blood and be done with it!’
‘And you, my husband?’
‘I bury the dead and solace the living – and die the little death with my woman each night. You wanted to mate with the high one. That’s what it means!’
‘Tell me you love me.’
‘I love you. Heart of my heart, I love you!’
Hernan Castillo, offspring of Spanish conquistadores and Malay princesses, and Filipino beer barons and soft ladies with puffed sleeves and private pews in Manila Cathedral, had problems of his own. Not great problems, he added, smiling, not immediate ones, but problems, nonetheless. It was like this: here he was shacked up with a woman who was carrying another man’s child; he didn’t mind that, she was comfortable, useful and grateful – something of a bitch, sure, but, you know, grateful. Here he was, building a boat, which he had designed to take them back to civilization. No dispute so far? None at all. Good! Now, if the boat came out of his head, he figured he had the right to sail on it. Yes or no?
Yes and no. Gunnar Thorkild toyed reluctantly with this new jesuitical logic. The boat was being built by many hands. Even the women had claims on it. But suppose – just suppose – the designer’s claim were paramount, and he were one of the first to sail. What then?
Then, said Hernan Castillo, scion of diverse matings, another question arose. He wanted no other claims filed against him – like paternity suits and maintenance for another man’s love-child. Now, sure, it was all a long way off. But he was building this goddam boat, because he knew it would goddam sail – and tomorrow might be a year away, but it would come and he’d like some kind of insurance policy. His first girl-friend had been a Japanese and they were sweet as honey; but they spun webs around a man; and, if the webs didn’t hold, they’d run amok with a carving knife to cut off his balls; or they’d stick their heads in a gas oven, and when they were pulled out, make a denunciation to the police. So – with fair notice – would the Chief think about it and advise him how to handle an awkward affair?
The Chief would think about it. But the Chief suggested, wearily, that the decision ought to be deferred, at least until the child was born. All tribal matters were recorded in the log. A ship’s log was good evidence in civil or criminal suit. But for Christ’s sake man, don’t start rocking the boat before we’ve even built it! Of course not! Hernan Castillo was as magnanimous as a grandee. So long as the position was clear, he was happy to trust to the wisdom of the Chief…And by the way, if they wanted him to cast metal, he still needed a crucible. Perhaps someone, soon, might go looking for a clay dig?
When he had gone, bounding like a ru
bber ball across the compound, Thorkild was shaken with laughter. There was no way you could win, no way they could let you win. They were like moles under a croquet lawn: as soon as you had flattened one mound they threw up another. It was the nature of the beast. They weren’t malicious. They demanded attention for their singular needs and their singular merits and tears for their Job-like miseries. Give them paradise today and they would still dream themselves into hell, out of sheer boredom.
What amused him most was how little Castillo understood what he was asking. He had designed the boat. He was happy to build it. But in fact he had never in his life, sailed a native craft on a big ocean. Since he had come to the island, he had never been outside the reef. It would be interesting to see what happened when he went out on the first sea-trials; for Thorkild was resolved that every man and woman on the island must go out, before the crew was chosen for the voyage. They must go, not for a pleasure cruise round the island but far offshore, fishing and cruising by day and night, until they were as near to sea creatures as he could make them. He could not afford to risk a year’s labour, a sea-worthy craft and six lives and all hope of rescue, on untrained land-lubbers. Later, as they fished together in the lagoon, he developed the thought for Adam Briggs:
‘… I propose to train three skippers: Lorillard, Willy Kuhio and you, Adam. The boy will work as navigator with each of you. I’ll work you and the boat like an orchestra until the harmony’s as perfect as we can make it. Then I’ll make the choice.’
Briggs seemed reluctant to accept the idea. He pondered over it for a moment and then said:
‘But I thought you’d lead the expedition, Chief.’
‘No Adam. I thought about it a long time and decided against it. It’s a question of morale – and if you like, insurance. The advance party will be going home, with a very good chance of making a safe landfall. The rest will be left just wondering and hoping. They’ll need a strong hand to hold them together. If we lose the advance party, we have to start again from the beginning, with less manpower and much lower spirits. I’m better equipped to handle that problem than anybody else…How are things with you and Jenny?’