An Inventory of Losses

by Judith Schalansky

  Yet it was not these long-unchallenged claims that piqued my interest, but the islands whose one-time existence and subsequent disappearance are vouched for in numerous accounts, and especially the testimonies referring to the sunken isle of Tuanaki, owing in some part, no doubt, to its sonorous name, which has the ring of a long-lost magic word, but above all to the strange reports about the inhabitants of this island stating that fighting was entirely unknown to them and the word “war” was not familiar to them in any of its unpleasant shades of meaning, something that, out of some deep-seated remnant of childlike hope, I was immediately disposed to believe, even if at the same time it reminded me of the wishful utopian dreams outlined in countless treatises that went so far as to claim that another world was possible, but that—as the often verbose descriptions of their increasingly elaborate and hence inhospitable social systems went to show—it was generally only preferable to the existing world in theory. So against my better judgment, I, like so many before me, set out on a search for a land that knew no memory, but only the present, a land in which violence, hardship, and death were forgotten, being unknown. And so Tuanaki appeared before me—every bit as magnificent as the sources suggest: an atoll of three islands rising only slightly above sea level in the shallow milky-blue waters of a shimmering lagoon teeming with fish, protected from pounding breakers and relentless tides by a coral reef, home to slender skyward-reaching coconut palms and lush fruit trees, inhabited by a peace-loving people of unrivaled friendliness, in short, a delightful place which, for simplicity’s sake, I pictured in my mind’s eye as paradise, differentiated from that much-vaunted archetype only by the subtle yet significant fact that no knowledge whatsoever was contained within the fruits of its trees besides that truism that it was more of a blessing to stay here than to go, for, as I soon discovered to my astonishment, in this part of the world the Garden of Eden was held to be a place of refuge rather than one of banishment.

  The reports describing this improbable patch of land were just detailed enough to plausibly prove that it did indeed once exist, even if the chronometer never determined its exact position, for neither Tasman nor Wallis, neither Bougainville nor even a captain of some wayward whaling ship ever sighted its gentle shores. Again and again I studied the routes of the major South Sea expeditions, followed the dashed and dotted lines across the graticule and through the paper ocean, and compared them with the presumed position of that island that, in a rush of imperial sentiment, I had marked in the bottommost empty square.

  There was no doubt about it: the explorer celebrated to this day by a small continent as the greatest of all its many seafarers to have crisscrossed the globe, must have only narrowly missed Tuanaki on his third and final voyage. Indeed it must have been only just out of sight when his two vessels, launched originally as colliers in the Whitby fog, passed by it on March 27, 1777—with sails billowing, proud as frigates, in full regalia. It was more than a month since James Cook’s long-serving flagship Resolution and her newer, more maneuverable consort ship Discovery had weighed anchors in their customary bay in Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand, as a slight breeze blew up, and traveled through the strait named after their captain, after two days finally leaving behind them the hills of Port Palliser, which shimmered blackish-green in the mist, and heading out to the open sea. But the winds were not in their favor. Fresh, changeable breezes were followed by miserable windless spells, and rain-swept squalls by torturous lulls. Even the drift of the westerly winds, which should have carried them with familiar constancy northeast into the same circle of longitude as Otahaiti, failed—contrary to all seasonal forecasts—to materialize, leaving an ever more worrying distance between them and the next anchorage. A lot of time had already been wasted. And with every passing day, hope faded further of still being able to sail along the coast of New Albion during the approaching northern summer in search of the entrance to that much-attested passage which, on the incomplete charts, promised the long-awaited shortening of the maritime route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. For the dream of that corridor, fringed with pack ice yet still navigable, was old and stubborn like all cosmographers’ dreams and had become all the more pressing since the vision of a vast southern continent had had to be abandoned after Cook, in his quest for this legendary land, had plowed the southern seas in huge, sweeping zigzags and discovered nothing but mountains of ice.

  So the two ships drifted along with limp sails, and that booming silence began to settle on them, so fundamentally different from the peaceful hush of my library existence. Sometimes, though, I could hear the rolling, long-drawn-out groundswell, the taunting of the fine weather, the endless litany of waves forever welling up and subsiding that once seduced Magellan into describing this ocean as the “peaceful” one, a ghostly harmony, the remorseless sound of eternity, more terrifying than the most violent storm, which at least is bound to blow over in time.

  Yet this ocean was neither peaceful nor placid, for in its darkest depths lurked indomitable forces that were certain to return. Its seabed was fissured and furrowed, the earth’s crust riven with submarine trenches and peaks, unhealed scars from that prehistoric age when the as yet undivided continents, adrift as a single mass in the global ocean, were torn asunder by colossal forces and rammed up against the earth’s mantle until their plates were forced, some over, some under each other, down into plunging abysses, up into clear daylight, surrendered to the laws of nature, which know neither mercy nor justice. Water submerged the volcanic cones, and myriads of corals colonized the rims of their craters, building reefs in the light of the sun, the skeletons of new atolls, on whose fertile floors the seeds carried by washed-up branches flourished, while the extinct volcanoes sank down to the dark seabed far below—on the timescale of infinity. And in the midst of this even now still inaudible din, below decks the livestock—the bull, the cows, their calves, the rams, ewes, and goats—bleated and lowed with hunger, while the stallion and the mares whinnied, the peacock and his hens screeched, and the poultry clucked. Never before had Cook carried so many animals on board, but on this voyage, at the king’s express wish, he had brought along half an ark, which, like the menagerie of the original model, was assembled with reproduction in mind, and he wondered how Noah had contrived to feed all the hungry mouths, which devoured as much in the way of provisions as an entire ship’s company.

  On the fifteenth day on the open sea, way off their intended course, the captain, who, as the ship’s cooper records in his journal, was particularly concerned about the welfare of the horses, gave the order for eight sheep that were supposed to have populated a South Sea island with their kind to be slaughtered in order to save on hay, supplies of which were steadily dwindling. But some of the meat disappeared from the mess even before it could be prepared, a petty act of theft that had been repeated once too often. The captain sensed insubordination, he sensed betrayal and even—as he docked the meat ration for the entire crew until the culprit was turned in, at which the men refused to touch even that meager meal—mutiny. The word, an unlit match under the scorching sun, its sole purpose to ignite sparks, hung in the air for a few interminable days during which the wind veered around once more, now blowing from a southerly direction, and seemed to tip the commander from his characteristic aloofness into pure rage. Cook stamped and ranted, a tall, lonely figure, and his curses resounded all the way down to the munitions store. Suspicion rather than worry was now gnawing at his heart, and the image many of the men had of him as a strict but fair father figure darkened during those days to that of an aging despot, as unpredictable as the winds. Anyone so inclined may see in the disquieting events of that passage, and in the fact that Cook himself made not a single mention of these episodes in his diary, the seeds of that chain of events that, two years later in a bay on Owyhee, would put a violent end to his life.

  But for now the remaining days of a month that seemed to go on interminably ticked by, a month in which time had long since transfo
rmed itself into that eternity verging on standstill, in which a single hour and a single day no longer counted for anything. Albatrosses and petrels circled the ships, flying fish flitted through the dry air, porpoises and dolphins swam past, as did a swarm of tiny globular jellyfish about the size of musket balls. Once a large white bird with a red tail appeared, promising land nearby though none could be made out, and on another occasion a thick tree trunk, which had been floating in the water for so long that it was covered in a pale layer of barnacles resembling oozing pus.

  Then finally, at 10:00 a.m. on March 29, 1777, the Discovery, traveling ahead on the leeward side, hoisted the red, white, and blue flag of Holland, the signal for a sighting of land. At almost the same moment the gray-blue shimmering coast became visible on the northeastern horizon from the masthead of the Resolution as well, barely more real than a mirage. The ships headed for the unknown strip of land twinkling in the distance until the sun went down, and tacked all night until the break of day, approaching to within a distance of about four miles of the island, whose south side must have presented an almost painfully enchanting image in the light of the sun as it rose out of the water. Profoundly moved by the heavenly sight, several of the crew members immediately took up quills and brushes, using watery colors and brushstrokes displaying varying degrees of skill to capture the auspicious panorama somewhere other than in unreliable memory: the hills of moderate height shimmering purple in the morning sun, their wooded summits with their many-hued trees and scattered palm crowns, the lush dense green vegetation of the hillsides, the coconuts, breadfruit, and plantain visible through the bluish-pink haze.

  I studied those pictures, which still conveyed a sense of the longing that had inspired them, in a stuffy room in the cartography department, whose milky windows, as I discovered on inquiry, could not be opened as the pictures had to be protected. Among the sketches was also the chart drawn by the Discovery’s navigator, to whom the task had fallen of recording the dimensions of the island and sketching its cartographic outlines insofar as was possible from the sloop in which he circumnavigated the modestly sized land. The sheet showing the island, whose peaks, indicated with bold strokes, might just as easily have been a whorl of hair on a person’s head, was framed with a double line and headed with a doubly absurd name, the chancery script solemnly labeling this as a depiction of “Discovery’s Island.” One more name, I thought, one more untenable assertion, as presumptuous and vain as the age-old custom that gave rise to it.

  For gathered for some time now on the beach were the people who, though they did not realize it themselves, had been discovered and were to be assigned the role—essential for the purpose of any report from far-off lands—of the Natives. Accordingly, the islanders had already taken up position, clubs on shoulders, spears at the ready, and the more of them emerged from the shade of the wooded embankment into the morning light, the louder and more urgent their guttural singing grew. They swung their weapons, hoisted them in the air over and over in time with their shouts—whether with threatening or welcoming intent it was impossible to say, even after much peering through the telescope. For although the crowd of now some two hundred was brought markedly closer by the eyepiece, the wood, brass, and glass instrument proved useless for clarifying any matters of real consequence. Despite the genuine curiosity, despite the eloquent descriptions of their language and gestures, physique and clothing, even down to the way they wore their hair and the decoration on their skin, and despite the undeniable precision with which this tribe could then be compared with others in these respects, their view of these people, formed before a single word had been uttered, missed all that was truly of the essence, since it recognized only foreign versus familiar, similar versus different, since it separated that which was one and the same and drew boundaries where there were none, like the overly distinct ragged coastlines on the nautical charts which purported to know where the water ends and the land begins.

  I spent a long time thinking about who is truly capable of interpreting signs, the language of muskets and swivel guns, the numerous right and left hands, be they raised or extended, the wild or controlled behavior, the skewered limbs over an open fire, the touching of nose against nose, a vertically held banana or laurel branch, gestures of greeting, symbols of concord, of cannibalism. What was peace and what was war, what was a beginning and what was an end, what was mercy and what was guile, I wondered as I slumped down on one of the dark-red velvet-upholstered seats in the cafeteria, and observed the people around me preoccupied with their food. The sharing of the same food, the nightly sitting together in the glow of a fire, the exchanging of a thirst-quenching coconut for ironwork and trinkets?

  So people stood on the shore, teetered through the shallow water, and reportedly waded out to the reef, dancing and with shrill cries. But what was going through their minds? Who was I to decide that? At the time, although I had no shortage of invitations from abroad, I was leading the life of a home dweller, of a library frequenter, permanently on the lookout for new research subjects to shed light on some hidden source of my existence and lend some kind of meaning to my life by the semblance of a daily work routine. So once again: they thought what they thought, and they saw what they saw, and they were right.

  This much, though, is as good as certain: that two islanders paddled out to the ships in a canoe with a high, forked stern and did not touch a single one of the gifts tossed in their direction, neither the nails, nor the glass beads, nor the shirt of red cloth. It is also established that one of them was fearless enough to take hold of the rope ladder and climb aboard the Resolution, where he introduced himself as Mourua of the island of Mangaia. He and the captain must have stood facing one another in his cabin for a while, eye to eye, appraising each other, like two animals encountering each other for the first time: two men, the smooth round skull of Mourua versus Cook’s birdlike head; the mild facial features, bright eyes, and full lips of the one, the austere countenance, with a strong nose, thin lips, and penetrating deep-set eyes, of the other; the long black hair bound into a thick bunch on the crown of the head, the already sparse hair concealed beneath a silvery-gray wig; the olive skin marked with black tattoos from shoulder to elbow, next to the pale skin; the knee-length, ivory-colored garment fashioned from bast fibers on the stout, well-fed body, the light-colored breeches paired with the open, gold-braided uniform jacket of navy-blue cloth on the tall, angular figure. Yet the huge scars that disfigured both men seemed to me like a sign of secret affinity, even if the numerous paintings and prints depicting Cook, and the portrait of Mourua produced by the ship’s artist that afternoon, have the good grace to omit them: the long, poorly healed wound on Mourua’s forehead, acquired in fighting, and the bulging burn scar running from between Cook’s right thumb and index finger to his wrist. And as if to seal this moment of unexpected closeness, an iron was handed over, and the Mangaian took it with him when he was ferried back to shore in one of the ship’s boats. The surf was still as rough as ever, and soon all hope of mooring or anchoring was abandoned, for no matter where the plumb line was dropped, it always indicated that the seabed lay too deep and moreover was encrusted with sharp coral. And so the ship’s company was beset by a sense of sorrowful regret at having to leave the island without setting foot on it, a feeling that turned to agonizing disappointment when, in the evening hours, gentle drifts of ambrosial scents were carried over to them on the breeze.

  And it was here that I was abandoned by the eyewitness accounts which, though inviting contradiction, had nevertheless brought me to this point, under the English red ensign on board those blue and yellow ships that would recede into the distance at daybreak the following day. I suddenly found myself all alone on deck, or rather on the shore of an island known to me only from a rough outline on a map, and for a moment I forgot that it was not Tuanaki, but its neighbor Mangaia on which I had been cast up, a rayfish-shaped atoll standing five kilometers above the ocean floor, encircled by a broad
calcium carbonate reef with numerous inner cliffs and excavations made by the beating of the waves, while in the interior, an undulating landscape of damp peaks with dry flanks on the leeward side overlooked uncultivated land and swampy lakes. Mangaia’s own sources also proved eloquent. They detailed who was or became the son of whom, and who had inherited or snatched what title from whom, ever since the days when their forefathers had paddled out eastwards in log boats and canoes, guided by the Dog Star, and settled on these scattered patches of land. But those stories, rather than following the flow of time, traced the paths of blood, which fanned out into different branches and lines of descent, before being repeatedly spilled on the battlefield.

  So I could only conjecture as to how Mourua was received on his return to shore, though, for some probably dubious reason, I had a precise picture in my mind of how his fellow islanders pressed him with questions about the nature and provenance of the pale visitors and came to the unanimous conclusion that they had been sent by Tangaroa, the god once worshipped on Mangaia, who, eons ago, had been defeated in battle by his brother Rongo and had fled out to sea. And I saw in my mind’s eye how, recalling that fateful combat, they made their way together to the stone statue of Rongo a little way inland and gave thanks to him for having put the enemy and his followers to flight one more time. In my feeble imagination it was Mourua who stepped before the idol first and launched into the song of praise with the pride of an honorable man whose powerful physique revealed the veteran warrior. A long time had passed since, as an uncircumcised youth armed with an ironwood club, he had joined the back row of combatants, before working his way forward, battle by battle, fearlessly filling the gaps left by his forebears, and had exchanged his weapon for axes and chiseled basalt spearheads. It was on the ground of the old lagoon, windswept cliffs towering over it like the terraces of a huge amphitheater, that the battle had played out again and again through the ages between the warriors of different clans, the descendants of hostile gods, continuing until the hollow sound of the war drum signaled the battle’s end, and the dancing began, its shrill sounds drowning out the groans of the dying, a bloodcurdling victory chant that reverberated through the night, superseded only as dawn was breaking by the beat of the peace drum. As his prize, the victor could claim the ruler’s title “Mangaia,” no less. Mangaia meant peace, Mangaia meant power, a temporary power that was nevertheless solid enough to allow the titleholder to rule on everything: who was allowed to cultivate and live on which patch of land, and who would be banished to the barren, karstic rocky reef where nothing prospered but dry foliage. It was not uncommon for the losers to remain there in the clammy limestone caves until they were nothing but skin and bone—or had reproduced in such numbers that they were hopeful of winning victory over their one-time conquerors in the next battle. I saw the whites of their eyes flashing in the semidarkness, heard the water dripping from the stalactites onto their heads and necks, tasted the musty air.