Tapairu
Mauatua

It was Maunu, not Teraura, who came with me to Pare to be a tapairu at the court of Tu and Itia.

Teraura had not come to the women’s house that moon, and everyone soon knew that she had found the man who could strike to life a child in her womb.

His family at Hitiaa wanted the child to be born to them, so she rolled her mats and bundled together her treasures, some cloth that I had patterned with the quill for her, her secret amulets and the pearl-shell earrings she wore when she was dancing. Nari’i gave her a roll of fine white cloth. Hinuia’s ritual was for the safe delivery of her new life. Her mother gave her the paoniho, to draw the blood of grief and joy.

She was happy, smiling, when she climbed into his canoe; he was handsome and proud. The women were pleased for her. They approved of his family and the correct way the arrangements had been made. Talking all at once, they anticipated a healthy son, congratulated her mother on such a successful match.

I went alone to weep. Aue, I wept for my solitude.

Ever more the woman, Maunu, yet on the way up the slopes of Tahara’a the day we left, he was like an uncle, keeping pace behind me, guiding my steps upward, not letting me stop until we reached the top.

There we gained our breath and viewed the two chiefdoms, the one behind us, the one ahead. When I saw the smoke rising from the cookhouse of my old home my throat began to tighten, to think of Nari’i and Hinuia left there alone.

‘No, look this way,’ said Maunu, turning me gently.

The smoke from numberless cooking fires was drifting up the valleys of Pare. Large canoes were beached along the shore and we could hear the mingled rhythms of drums and tapa beaters.

‘Hei, they are making a big welcome for us!’ he said. ‘This is our big chance, Mauatua – we’ll be the belles of Pare!’

‘You, maybe, Maunu.’

‘They’ll soon fatten you up. No more tears, e hine, the feast awaits us. Maunu’s time has come!’ He headed off downhill, shrieking and giggling, hardly waiting for me to keep up with him.

When we arrived he regained his decorum, put on his haughtiest manners to impress Itia’s servants as they took us to her.

‘I come with Mauatua, and her mistress is to be my mistress,’ he told her.

She smiled her wide generous smile. ‘Turn around,’ she commanded.

He turned gracefully, enjoying being on show. The other girls began to giggle. One threw a flower at him.

‘Is he not a fine man, girls? Better he came than that firebrand Teraura, ne?’ Her laughter came from deep in her chest, like something bubbling up and overflowing, shaking her breasts. ‘This one, I keep for myself.’

After this he was always near her. She took him for her taio and gave him a high position as guardian of the tupu, the sacred cast-offs of her body. The clippings of her nails, the hair cut from her head, her worn-out or discarded garments, it was Maunu’s job to take them all to the tiri a pera, the burial pit on the marae, safe there from any kind of malicious tampering, or sorcery which could threaten her life. It was the position of greatest trust.

The tapairu shared her house. We had a wing of our own, and no ghosts assailed me there. No, it was full of the dreams and vanities of young women, gossip, laughter, songs and games. It was a difficult place to keep anything hidden. Before I had been there two nights everyone knew about the book rolled up in my sleeping mat. ‘It was a white man who gave you this?’ they asked.

I told them it was Mai who had given it to me, but of course some did not believe it. They passed it round, fingering and exclaiming.

‘What is it? What do all these marks mean?’

‘The stories of the white men’s god, told by the white men’s signs.’

Soon they had seen the pieces of barkcloth I had patterned with the signs and the word was out that Mauatua was making new designs on cloth.

The girl called Tuaonoa was the first to ask me to put those designs on a pareu for her. I agreed because she was ari’i, from the chiefdom of Paea, higher in rank than myself. She brought me the piece of cloth, larger than any I had patterned before, soft and smooth. First, I used my new scissors to trim the rough edges. Their cutting beak was so swift and sure it guided my hand as if it were a living thing, snipping this way, that way, until it had made a border like sharks’ teeth, as sharp and fine as the handsome features of Tuaonoa herself. Then I mixed the dye and began to draw the signs along the borders, one following the other, around and around. I opened the leaves at random, and copied what I saw.

And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest therein; 2 That thou shalt take of the first fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shall put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name there.

When Tuaonoa wrapped herself in this pareu she appeared as no woman of Tahiti had ever appeared before. The clipped edging and border of silent black words created an effect that everyone turned to see, and desired for herself. More and more cloth was brought to me to decorate. One day Itia called me to her. Maunu was cutting her hair for her: already he was her most personal attendant. He pulled up the glistening black curls one by one and snipped the ends, looking at me over her head and raising his eyebrows, grinning. He was very happy at Pare. Sharing Itia’s mat was the old woman who had come with her from Aimeo, a servant from her childhood, swinging a fan entirely covered in tufts of tiny red parrot breast feathers. Itia smiled at me lazily. ‘Ah Mauatua,’ she said. ‘Sit, sit here beside me. Tell me about this beautiful cloth you’re making. Is it true that you are decorating it with the white men’s signs?’

‘It is true. I copy them from the book given to me by Mai, who brought it from Peretane.’

‘Sacred signs they say.’

‘It is a book of sacred signs.’

‘It is good then, very good. We shall be ready for the white men when they come back.’

‘Let us hope they come back soon.’

‘Indeed. And the white men’s sacred signs would only be understood by persons of high birth, would they not, by priests and noblemen and chiefs?’

‘That may be so.’

‘So you should make them only for persons of high birth. Not for servants or commoners.’ She let these words linger between us.

Maunu pursed his lips, pulled out a curl and snipped. The old serving woman gave a sigh, as if she was falling asleep, her head nodding.

‘You may make such cloth for me, Mauatua,’ Itia went on. ‘You may colour it with mati and re’a, the fig and turmeric that give the colours of royalty. It will be the finest cloth on Tahiti.’

She lifted a mirror that lay beside her and viewed her hair. Her laughter welled up from the deep spring of her satisfaction. ‘The best cloth,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, it is good, very very good. Only the best at Pare, ne?’

To make dye from mati figs required much patience. Many baskets of the small yellow fruits must be gathered. They must be pinched and squeezed for their milky juice, which was dripped into water. Broad leaves from the tou tree were laid in the water until they absorbed it, spread out on banana leaves, gently turned and shaken. Slowly, their veins began to turn red, so when the leaves were twisted in bundles of coconut fibre, the fibre was soon wet with redness. The colour of the sacred blood which flowed to us from the gods. Red clothes were a long labour.

Yellow was less troublesome to produce. There were trees and plants which would give up their yellowness, for the trouble only of grating a root or soaking some bark. Several other girls came to the work with me, and Itia sent her old servant, who was skilled in the selection of plants and preparation of dyes and would sit stripping bark all day in one corner, praying only for brown, for the deep dark brown that would confirm her expertise.

Sometimes Itia herself came and sat among us. She was extravagant with red and we would have to send for more mati figs. Day after day we sat in the shade among the heaps of leaves and fruits, bowls and graters around us, the lengths of cloth spread out before me. Cloth for pareu and ahufara shawls, for tiputa cloaks and dance costumes, for Itia not only wore these garments herself, but gave them away to important guests and favoured friends, and the cloth we made must have eventually arrived on the farthest islands.

We began to press ferns and leaves and mosses into the dyes and onto the fabrics, making flowery patterns like the ones stamped onto the lengths of foreign cloth which had come from the ships, and I copied signs from the book among the leaves, letting them become tendrils and buds, or building them row on row into stripes and squares dividing the flowers. Red on yellow, brown on red, yellow on white, different combinations emerging each time we began a new piece.

With the red stain on my fingers I was exempt from all other forms of work. I did not have to prepare food or grate coconut. My fingers were no longer tormented by the counting and remembering of fara weaving, and I did not even have to beat tapa any more if I didn’t want to, although often I took up the mallet for the pleasure of it. The best food from the ovens was my portion and many gifts came from Itia. Feathered fans, shining necklaces, mats and belts, gourds of monoi. For the first time in my life I was arrayed like an ari’i, like the highborn girl Maoiti had always insisted I was.

Other girls grew fat and smooth-skinned, and none more so than my cousin Auo. The tattoos on her buttocks had taken twice as long as mine, so ample were they, and the pareu I made for her took twice as long to dye and pattern. Entire bowls of monoi were rubbed into her belly. Her radiant fatness was the summit of her achievement, first choice was hers among the ari’i and ra’atira men who came seeking wives. She was almost too big to even dance by the time her marriage arrangements were made with Metuaro, a relative of Itia’s from her marae on Aimeo.

It was easy to be content at Pare. Every day sumptuous foods were brought to the cookhouses: sweet fe’i carried down from the high valleys, tuna fish as big as a man, nets of jumping shrimp. A constant stream of carriers was kept busy and the aroma that filled the valley of Pare when the ovens were opened was famous in all Tahiti. There was no shortage of anything. Music called from every garden and grove and in the heat of the day we bathed at the springs and gossiped in the shade among the murmuring green pigeons. In the evening torches were lit, canoes pushed off from the sand and laughter was heard from the shadows. At Itia’s house the tapairu were practising their newest dance and children darted among the musicians or copied the girls move for move.

There were always young men visiting. The sons of under-chiefs, whose homes were in the valleys, came for their training in the arts of war or the secrets of the high marae. They attended the schools of navigation and genealogy, dancing and oratory. Like the girls, they chose their skill and developed it under the tutelage of the experts. The old ways of Tahiti were still strong, even though there were knives made of metal now, shirts of foreign fabric, and foods grown from foreign seeds.

At the centre was always Itia, constantly surrounded by servants and waiting maids, guests and relatives. The burden of sacredness which had been hers and her husband’s had been transferred to their first-born, a boy, who henceforth carried the full rank and title that had been his father’s, Tu Nui e A’a i te Atua.

He and his younger brother and sister lived unseen across the river, closed off and protected from the world by a maze of stone walls. They were cared for by a crowd of sanctified servants and elders who were the only persons allowed to touch the children’s tapu heads and limbs, or prepare their food, those children of the maro ura, the red-feather girdle.

His name and sacredness passed to his heir, Tu had the high priest announce a new name for his own new status. Taina. Freed from the constraints of tapu, which had even prevented their feet from touching unsanctified ground, he and Itia enjoyed their guests to the full. Everyone came to Pare in those years. The feasting and dancing, the tournaments in archery and wrestling and surf riding, came one upon other, as if we were all already in Rotunoanoa, the heaven of eternal pleasures.

My birth father, Te Aha Huri Fenua, was often among the guests in those times. He greeted me correctly, as a woman. His frizzy Paumotuan hair was going grey, and he wore a boar’s tusk at his throat. My half sisters also came on a visit from Papara, and for three days they followed me everywhere, making me garlands like Teraura used to, and weaving me a belt studded with shells, singing songs of sisterly affection, as they wove.

Our sister is as tall as the bamboo
That sways on the mountain side
What is it that your eyes see from up there sister,
Looking out across the sea?
Will you think of us when you wear this gift we weave?

I promised to make them new pareu for their tattooing feasts.

For what was my hunger in those years?

‘Come!’ the other girls called to me, with welcoming smiles. ‘Come to the tapa board, come and beat with us, our work is not complete without you. Here is your beater.’

They moved over for me. My hands fell willingly to the work of forgetfulness. My arms began to sing with the rhythm, in my ears beat the women’s drums which have beaten for generations, calling out. Grandmothers, aunts, foremothers, all can be heard in the rhythm, calling to one another down the generations. The gods are familiar with our sound, the canoes bear home to it. They do not ask me what I long for. Women beat. Women long. Women sing. Cloth flows from the board as words from the lips.

Patterns and designs flowed from my hand like roaming thoughts, reaching out to the edges of the known world, piling up like clouds at the horizon. Ships in sail began to appear on the borders, blown over billows of silent words.

But there the glorious LORD will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king, he will save us. Their recipients marvelled at these works and wanted more.

But for all the advantages of wealth and high standing the book had brought me, still I sometimes feared the unknown god it concealed. When I looked at the completed work, coloured and trimmed, draped around the shoulders of the chiefess or the waist of a dancer, I was in awe of its unknown power.

I returned frequently to the marae at Matavai to make prayers and offerings to our ancestor goddess. The gifts on her altar were few now: weeds sprang from between the paving stones and fallen leaves lay undisturbed on the walls, but I did not neglect her for I knew she had guided my hand, that she had brought the white ships I longed for, showed me the gifts that would bring me what I desired. I offered to her not only flowers and food, but fragments of cloth with their secrets rolled tightly within them.

At Matavai I would sit with Hinuia for a while. Her look was dark, as if a shadow had fallen on her. She had heard, of course, of my work. ‘E hine, I fear the white gods are stealing your soul,’ she sighed. ‘This book you copy from, it is full of their secrets is it not? Can the spirit of your grandmother come to you and guide you while you surround yourself with their power?’

‘I believe it is the will of the gods, priestess,’ I answered her.

‘How is it that a girl so young knows the will of the gods?’ She started up suddenly. ‘Was it the will of the gods that your grandmother died of the fe’e? That your uncles died in their prime? The work of spirits of darkness and wickedness, servants of our enemies come to lay waste our marae and cast down our mana! Taking even our daughters from our houses, filling them with foolish fantasies ...’

‘The curse of Vehiatua has no power over me, patea.’

‘Is that what you believe, e hine?’

‘The new gods are already among us, the white man cannot be turned away, these are new times ... ’

‘There will be death and disease, this I see. There are demons among the white men too. When will you learn?’

She softened. Her hands reached out to me, protecting. The prayers began to slip from her tongue, the old words, the known words, the words of the generations passed from memory to memory. The voice of the wind in the aito trees I heard, the distant roar of the reef, the lullabies of my grandmother. Then my heart was heavy.

‘E hine,’ she said, ‘when you were born your grandmother wanted your cord buried under the house posts in the usual way, so that you would bring prosperity to your family. But I had a dream which instructed me, and it was I who paddled out to cast the cord into the outer ocean, just as your first blood was also thrown there.’

In my own dreams the white men were walking and talking. Their mysterious, measured voices told me things that I understood, but could not remember or translate when I woke. There was one, clothed in a robe of black which reached the ground, who always beckoned me to follow, and led me between long walls, turning now and then to encourage me on. To either side there were doorways which he opened, just as Mai had described to me, onto enclosed rooms, and in the rooms there was every type of toy and tool of the Popa’a, so many things that there would have been no room for anyone to stand. He explained everything in an unknown language as we went, opening door after door, until the last one. Behind that one was none other than Mai, standing wide armed, eyes staring, as when he had demonstrated the sacrifice of the white god’s son, nailed to a wooden cross. The door closed again. My guide had vanished.

There were other dream men whose behaviour was less mysterious, who pressed themselves against me, I against them, feeling their bodies beneath their strange clothes, they mine. How frustrated and disappointed I was when I awoke, grasping at nothing.

During the afternoons, while we oiled and perfumed ourselves for the evening, plucked the hairs from our bodies (that endless task), combed and arranged our hair, chose our decorations, I would be imagining the attentions of a white man. Many of the young ra’atira with whom we danced and flirted in the evenings would make suggestions to me. Sometimes I responded, if there was one who appealed to me, but often they had to accept my refusal. Other girls became attached to particular young men with whom they shared all the games of love. There was constant gossip and laughter about the men, all their attractions and defects were discussed, their skills as lovers compared in detail.

‘What about you, Mauatua?’ someone would turn to me and ask.

‘It is only a moment’s pleasure,’ I would reply, and this always caused so much merriment that sooner or later someone would ask me again. ‘You should ask him to go longer,’ someone would soon suggest.

‘You must be doing something wrong.’

Then the advice would begin to flow.

‘Grip firmly his testicles’

‘Seize hold of it and pull away before he comes.’

‘Make him drink nono juice.’

‘My lover has no need of such assistance,’ I assured them.

But speculation was a favourite pastime. First it must be the cookhouse servant, Tasted in Darkness. Then a visiting chief who had four wives with him. Next an old widower who, toothless as he was, was yet famous for enticing young girls to his sleeping mat.

Often I longed for Teraura’s tacit complicity. I dreamed of her too. Showers of printed white leaves fell around her as she held up a child with shining pale skin and curls the colour of turmeric dye. As she turned away he stared back over his shoulder at me. A man would take me by the arm, as the foreigners did, we followed ankle deep in a lagoon made red as if by the sunset. Suddenly a curtain lifted, and there sat Tetua on a mat, waiting for me, smiling. She unwrapped her skirts and showed me her leg, healed at last.

By day I covered sheets of cloth with colours wrought from the plants and the soil. By night I wandered in another world, consorting with the shadows of the dead, the living and the unborn, strange familiars.