by Morris West
‘It’s a goddam madness!’ said Simon Cohen. ‘It’s like setting up the house of all nations, and asking us to take our pick of the girls.’
‘You had your pick,’ said Yoko Nagamuna acidly. ‘You just can’t make up your mind.’
‘You can’t blame him,’ said Franz Harsanyi mildly. ‘None of us – and only a few of you women – contemplated the permanence we face now.’
‘And we still don’t face it,’ Hernan Castillo reminded them. ‘We still have two, three months before we are forced to decide.’
‘In which case,’ said Jenny. ‘It makes sense for us to withdraw ourselves. I’m certain I don’t want to fall pregnant again. I’m sure Barbara doesn’t. From this point the risk is all ours.’
‘It sounds like blackmail to me,’ said Simon Cohen.
‘It’s only blackmail,’ said Hernan Castillo in his detached fashion, ‘if you’re threatened in your own property. None of us, except Willy, have any rights in our women…It seems to me there’s a lot to talk about and nothing to fight about.’
‘I agree,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘The women have made their point. If we do stay here, we do depend on them for survival and continuity. I say we go along with it. When do you want to start this arrangement?’
‘Now, Chief,’ said Molly Kaapu. ‘Right now.’
‘In that case,’ said Thorkild heavily. ‘There’s work to do to get the houses ready. Let’s go to it…’
That night, while the others were busy around the fire-pit, preparing the evening meal, gossiping and grumbling about this new and arbitrary change in their lives, Thorkild walked down to the beach with Molly Kaapu. Molly wheezed and chuckled with amusement.
‘So what happens when the mule won’t drink, Kaloni? You let him go thirsty awhile. That Simon Cohen, he’s the bright one. He sees what it means.’
‘Who started all this?’ asked Thorkild moodily.
‘I did,’ said Molly Kaapu. ‘I got the thought – the others had the words.’
‘I hope you’ve got better thoughts, Molly. And simpler words too Sure, it would be great if everyone paired off and lived happily ever after, but they won’t. What happens when the man wants one woman and she doesn’t want him? One of them has got to settle for second best.’
‘And some,’ said Molly Kaapu, ‘… some like me, have to settle down with no one at all. That’s how it always comes out in the end.’
‘It’s not the end I’m thinking of.’ Thorkild picked up a piece of driftwood and sent it flying out across the water. ‘It’s the beginning. Who makes the first step?’
‘You do, Kaloni,’ said Molly Kaapu placidly. ‘You do.’
Thorkild stared at her in angry amazement.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re alone now, Kaloni. What are you going to do? Stay alone all your life? You’re not made like that; and it wouldn’t be good for the rest of us. So, sooner or later you have to find yourself a wife. If you wait for the others it’s you who gets second best. I don’t want to see that happen. The others don’t, either. They need you strong and contented and happy.’
‘So that’s the meaning of this bloody little comedy!…A matchmaking for the Chief.’
‘That’s my idea.’ Molly Kaapu shrugged. ‘The others are thinking of themselves.’
‘Tell me what the women are thinking,’ said Gunnar Thorkild.
‘That takes a little saying, Kaloni. Ellen Ching, she’s happy with her Franz – as happy as she would be with any man. Perhaps in the end they stay together. Simon and Barbara?… That would work too if he would say just once, “Okay, you’re my woman.” Barbara doesn’t ask much, but she wants more than just to be a toy he can pick up and put down when he is tired of playing. Hernan and Yoko? She’s the problem. She wants more than he can give. He is content because most of his life is lived in his head and in his hands. If you wanted, you could have Yoko.’
‘No way in the world,’ said Thorkild wryly. ‘I want a quiet life, with a loving woman.’
‘So you see,’ said Molly triumphantly. ‘You know what you want. Which one is it?’
‘Martha Gilman will need to be protected.’
‘That’s your conscience talking,’ said Molly tartly. ‘Not your heart. Not your head either. Why didn’t you marry Martha before?’
‘You know as well as I do, Molly. Things never came together for us.’
‘What makes you think they come together now? I watch Martha. When she wants to talk with a man she talks with Tioto. When she wants a woman for company, it’s Ellen Ching. What does that tell you?’
‘I’m damned if I know.’
‘Then I tell you, Kaloni. Always she wants to be the one on top. She wants a man who’s not quite a man. She wants a woman who’s not quite a woman. That way, she stays a little bit unhappy all her life. She doesn’t want more children. Believe me, this is the last…Do you want children, Kaloni? Do you want sons in your house?’
‘I did once, Molly.’
‘And you want them still! You want one to sit in your place when you are gone, to whom the mana will pass, as it passed from your grandfather to you. You owe us that, Kaloni. You owe it to the children after us. Think about it. Think hard about it. You don’t belong to yourself any more. You put four lives out there on the big water. If there are none to take their place, then I tell you, Kaloni, you have betrayed them; you have betrayed us …’
In their new bachelor lodgings the men were angry. They had not only been rejected, they had been made to feel ridiculous and inadequate. They were men, weren’t they? They weren’t just stallions to be led out to stud. If the women didn’t want to breed, to hell with it. Better they didn’t, because then there would be fewer mouths to feed. All this talk of continuity and carrying on the tribe…who cared? Once the big boat was built, they would all be off the island. Besides, what was being offered? None of the merchandise was fresh. Comfort in bed carried a mighty high price-tag. Gunnar Thorkild let them rant on until they ran out of words, then he reminded them soberly:
‘Isn’t it time we threw our excess luggage overboard? None of the ideas or systems we brought with us has much relevance any more. All we’ve got is ourselves, the sea and the land. We’ve got to fish the sea and work the land. When we get too old to do it, what happens? We sit on the beach and die…Unless there is someone else to put the food in our mouths. That’s the real meaning of continuity. The women know it better than we do. They know that its promise resides in them and not in us. It doesn’t help us to deny a simple fact of life.’
‘It’s easy for you to talk,’ said Simon Cohen bitterly. ‘You’re the big man. You’ve only got to shake the tree and the best apples fall into your lap.’
‘So you pick first, Mr Cohen! But remember, the apple you get is the apple you eat.’
‘And that goes for the women too,’ said Hernan Castillo quietly. ‘None of us is any great bargain.’
‘We could make a lottery,’ giggled Tioto. ‘We put all the names in a shell and let the women pick them. Maybe that way I end up with Ellen Ching and the Chief ends with Molly Kaapu.’
‘Which might be a very comfortable solution,’ said Thorkild with a grin. Then, serious again, he went on. ‘Now that you’ve got the gripes out of your system, what are you going to do?’
‘What do you suggest, Chief?’ asked Franz Harsanyi.
‘Old island custom,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘You spread your mat outside the woman’s house and sleep there every night until she invites you in.’
‘And where will you put your mat, Chief?’ It was Tioto who asked the question.
‘I wait,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘I defer to you other anxious fellows.’
‘Not good enough!’ said Simon Cohen. ‘So long as you’re in the market, the rest of us are out of it. You spread your mat, Thorkild, we’ll take the leavings.’
It was Hernan Castillo who had the last word. He turned to Simon Cohen and faced him with a question.
‘When Yoko has her baby, Simon, who’s going to be there holding her hand – you or me?’
A month passed, and another, in a monotonous rhythm of wind and surf and sunlight and rainsquall. Food was gathered, distributed, eaten: food was gathered again. The sow littered and there was meat a-plenty and belly-aches afterwards. The new houses were built. They made liquor to lift their courage, and talk – iterminable talk – about the voyagers in their little boat.
They had perished at sea. They were wrecked on some tiny atoll and must make their way to another and another before they came to civilization. They had lost the bearings of the island and were trying to work them out again. They were snarled in red-tape, arguing with faceless officials in nameless places…Slowly, the arguments were dropped, one by one. Slowly, the sickness of deferred hope passed into a low fever of regret – a regret no longer poignant, but simply familiar, like an old infection that came back when the weather changed.
The sickness showed itself in strange ways. Martha Gilman began to cultivate the company of Hernan Castillo to whom she poured out every day her fears for her son’s safety while Castillo soothed her with long matter-of-fact recitals of incredible sea rescues and tales of survival. Simon Cohen, tentatively at first, and then with a fanatic persistence, pursued Yoko Nagamuna. He wanted to be the father of his own child. He wanted to make amends for his casual infidelity. He could love her. He did love her. He would stand with her now and always. Yoko, for her part, treated him with a refinement of malice. He was the last man in the world whom she would wish to have as her husband. When the child grew up she would teach it to hate him. She could not bear the thought of sleeping and living with a man who knew only to satisfy himself but not his woman. Their high, screaming arguments became at first an entertainment, and then a nightly irritation to the camp. In the end, Cohen literally spread a mat outside the door of her hut, so that he was there when she went to bed and still there when she walked to the beach every morning. Jenny, obsessed with guilts about Adam Briggs, sought every moment to be with Thorkild; and, when he was not there, she turned to Ellen Ching, who courted her with a grave gentleness, to which, more than once, she seemed ready to succumb. Willy Kuhio and Eva quarrelled for a while and then began to separate themselves from the rest of the community. They worked together. They went fishing together. Sometimes they slept together on the beach before returning separately to their own quarters. Eva Kuhio begged that at least a few would join her in a nightly prayer of intercession for the lost ones. Sometimes Thorkild and Molly Kaapu would join her. Sometimes Franz and Martha Gilman and Tioto. Molly, herself, began to suffer from recurrent fits of depression, snapping at Thorkild, and then forcing Franz Harsanyi to lament with her over the mess and disruption of their lives.
For Thorkild it was a ravaging time. He was plagued with guilts about Sally Anderton and the others. He became solitary and morose. His sexual drive seemed to have deserted him. When this woman, or that, came to him with smiles or plaintive tears, he rejected her. When Molly Kaapu blamed him for his indecision, he snapped at her brutally. When she insisted that only he could end their misery, he was adamant that they would wait out the term that had been set. They must never be able to accuse him of the ultimate tyranny; that he had robbed them of their illusions. To which Molly had always the same answer: He should let them dream, yes; but he should not force them to endure his own nightmares.
Then, slowly, new couplings began to be made. Barbara Kamakau was seen often in the company of Franz Harsanyi. Martha Gilman, heavy now and near her time, would sit for long hours watching Hernan Castillo as he worked on the boat. The quarrels between Yoko Nagamuna and Simon Cohen subsided into a continuous low bickering which, as Tioto said, laughing, at least kept them occupied and let other people get a night’s sleep. Came the day when Ellen Ching accosted Thorkild at the cascade and challenged him abruptly.
‘Chief, I want to talk to you!’
‘About what?’
‘Either you’re a very clever man, Chief, or a very stupid one. I can’t make up my mind.’
‘Have it both ways,’ said Thorkild briefly. ‘I don’t know myself. What’s the problem?’
‘You’re blind if you don’t see it. People are pairing. Martha with Hernan, Franz with Barbara. Even Yoko and Simon are settling into an armed truce.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, Ellen…So, I repeat, what’s the problem?’
‘Three people, Chief. You, me and Jenny…Tioto’s out of it. He always will be.’
‘And I’m to choose between you and Jenny?’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘In what way, Ellen?’
She gave him that slow, sidelong smile and told him:
‘You’d be too much for me, Chief. I’d be too little for you. If you don’t want Jenny, I’ll take her. I’ve always played fair with you, Chief. I’m playing fair now…Oh, don’t look so shocked! You locked the girl in. You made it clear that she was kapu to you, that you’d always be impotent with her. That’s a hell of a thing to lay on any woman, even if it was a lie to protect her.’
‘My God,’ said Gunnar Thorkild softly. ‘I’d never thought of that.’
‘Then think of it now, Chief,’ said Ellen Ching. ‘Time’s running out. Look at us! Compare the life we have now with the life we had when we first came. Then we had order and drive and enthusiasm for what we were doing. Now we’re crawling about, living shabby and unhappy, like sick folk in a lazarette. It has to stop.’
‘How do we stop it?’ asked Thorkild.
She turned away from him, stepped into the pool and began washing herself under the cascade. She beckoned him to join her. As he sluiced his body in the cool water she stretched out a hand and drew him to her. There was an odd, compassionate note in her voice.
‘Chief, you walk about like a blind man. You listen like a deaf man who hears the sounds but not the words. We’re going down-hill. We’ve got to stop and begin climbing up again. We won’t do it until you – yes, you! – make us bury our dead and start living again with whole hearts. That means you’ve got to start living with us. You wonder why I’m handing you to Jenny, whom I could very easily keep for myself. That’s the reason. If this tribe goes down, I’ll go down with it. If it goes up…’ She drew him closer and laid her hands on his breast. ‘If it goes up then there’s still a place for Ellen Ching because the odd ones are as necessary as the normal ones. There’s always a place where they can turn and be welcomed – be happy too in their own way. What about it, Chief?’
Thorkild took her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips.
‘You’re right, Ellen. I know it. It’s the moment I need, the ritual moment, that makes sense to everyone. That’s what I’m waiting for.’
‘Don’t wait too long, Chief. If you miss it, it may never come back. Ritual is a strange thing. Do it right and you make the big hopeful moment that people remember and repeat all their lives. Do it wrong, and the people laugh first and hate you afterwards for making them feel ridiculous.’
‘You’re a wise woman, Ellen,’ said Thorkild with grave affection.
‘Too wise for my own good,’ said Ellen Ching. ‘And I’m not easy to seduce. So get the hell out of here and make things right with a woman who really needs you!’
It was a strange, haunted Jenny who sat with him on the beach that night. The dumpling girl from Sunset Beach had gone away, long since. In her place was a woman, quiet and withdrawn, who listened in silence to his proposal and then told him gravely:
‘I know why you ask me…It’s appropriate. I’m the last one left because they’ve arranged it that way. I don’t mind. I’ve always been in love with you. I still am – although even that’s changed. I’ve passed through a lot of hands. I’ve used up a lot of myself. I don’t really know what’s left of me. Whatever there is, though, I want to keep…because once that’s gone, I’m nobody. I’m scared, Gunnar. Now there are two ghosts between us – Adam and Sally.’
‘This time,
Jenny, they’re friendly ghosts. They’d want us to be peaceful together.’
‘Is that enough? Just to be peaceful?’
‘No, it’s the beginning.’
‘You told me once you’d be impotent with me.’
‘I know …’
‘Now?’
‘Not any more. The kapu is lifted.’
‘As easily as that?’
‘No Jenny, not easily. A woman I loved, I sent out to die with your husband. I exposed a boy to an experience for which he was unready, to influences I could not control. I have guilts to carry – and in a way I suppose that’s my bride-price. I want you now. I need you desperately. The others need us too – to make a new magic for them.’
‘That’s the point,’ said Jenny quietly. ‘That’s the price I’ll have to pay. I’ll never be sure whether you’re marrying me for myself or for them. No please …!’ She closed his lips with her fingertips. ‘Don’t say anything. Just make it easy for me. Show me how to be happy…!’
‘I’ll try, girl,’ said Gunnar Thorkild with grave tenderness. ‘God help me, I’ll try!’