Hina’aro

Rehua came along the black sand spit in the afternoon heat. There was only one man on guard at the Popa’a camp, his gun hanging at his side and a piece of white cloth knotted on top of his head. He straightened up as Rehua approached and watched him intently.

‘Good afternoon to you,’ said Rehua, speaking the foreign words with practised care.

The man grinned and returned the greeting.

Rehua stopped to look at the plants the white men had carefully uprooted. Hundreds and hundreds of them, neatly lined up in rows in the shade of white cloth awnings. He was amazed at the dedication of purpose, to sail for ten moons across open ocean to fetch plants for their king. And the men themselves, some of them so puny and sickly looking that it was a miracle they had survived the journey. Their skin naked and hairy, reddened by the sun like roasted pigs. Yet the women were clamouring to make love to these unwholesome savages. And they had guns. Not only were they skilful navigators, but their gods must be very powerful.

The white man spoke again. ‘Good tattoo,’ he said, admiringly.

Rehua let him admire, vain of the powerful symbols that braced his calves and circled his shoulders.

The white man began to indicate things he recognised on Rehua’s body, naming them with his language – island, canoe, turtle, ocean – those words full of tongue and spittle. ‘I want tattoo,’ he began to announce in gesture.

‘Tattoo! For you?’ Rehua laughed. ‘Tattoo is for the gods. Tattoo is blood and pain.’ Then he had an idea. ‘You give me gun, I take you to tahua tatau.’

The white man laughed heartily, then looked at him slyly. He lifted the gun to his shoulder and eyed Rehua along its length. ‘You want gun?’ he said.

Rehua stood his ground, even put his hands to his ears, waiting for the flash of fire and thunder. But nothing happened. It was his turn to laugh. ‘Friend,’ he said.

‘Friend,’ repeated the white man. He lowered his weapon.

Along the shore Rehua came upon other white men lying in the shade with a group of women and youngsters attending to them, decorating them with flowers, caressing their limbs and dancing for them. If he was amazed by the white men’s purposefulness, he was equally disdainful of his own people’s adulation of the scruffy strangers, and fearful for their gullibility. Only yesterday he had been aboard the ship, up on the deck among the crowd, admiring the fine timberwork and ingenious gadgets, when a startling sight had appeared in one of the openings from below – a head of yellow hair, elaborately dressed and stuck with glittering ornaments. Everybody had turned to look as the pale, smiling face of a white woman emerged, her stiff body draped in a colourfully decorated garment. Rehua had realised straight away that it was nothing but a fake, made up with cloth and hair, for amusement, but some people had been fooled by the trick – an old woman rushed forward to offer gifts of food. Such humiliation. To cover his embarrassment Rehua had laughed as loudly as the sailors when Parai seized the fake head by the hair and tossed it into the crowd while the women shrieked with horror.

But he had felt the same disappointment as they did, afterwards. He would like to meet one of their women. The infamous Mai had boasted of his exploits with them, during his sojourn on Aimeo in Rehua’s boyhood.

‘Why you bring no women?’ he had turned to ask of the man at his side, the chief they called Titriano.

Titriano smiled wryly. ‘You take women on your war canoes?’ he asked in return.

Rehua had been startled by this seeming admission of the ship’s real purpose, and phrased his reply with care. ‘Not on war canoes. But when we go to find new land, we take women.’

‘New land, yes. Tahitinui! Very good land, plenty of women!’ Titriano had joked.

Rehua tried to follow the white man’s mind, to judge whether his jokes had a more serious meaning, or were meant to confuse him. It was true what Maimiti had said – that the foreigners would be difficult to overcome – but he didn’t believe that it would be impossible. Women were their weak point, this much he understood.

He continued along the shore, taking the path towards Itia and Taina’s encampment. At Poino’s house he stepped in among a gathering of men drinking ’ava. He took his place among others of his rank and the cup came to him in turn. They had all tasted the Peretane ’ava by now and knew its fiery potency. It had already made their own brew of chewed root seem less appetising. ‘The Peretane rama is made of sugar cane,’ Taina announced. ‘We must find out how.’

‘I have heard a tahua say that the Peretane drink begins to kill you from the first swallow,’ said one of the older men.

‘The sailors drink it every day, they look weak and small, but they have great strength and fortitude. It’s said they held the ship into the wind in a terrible storm for forty days, and not one man died.’

The magnitude of this feat was neither unappreciated, nor quite believed.

‘The rama sustains them when they have not enough food.’

‘And when their chief orders them to be beaten.’

Rehua had not been present when Parai had commanded a man to be beaten by one of his shipmates with a thong of skin and metal that flayed open his flesh. He’d seen the scars on their backs though. They were not beautiful, like a tattoo, for which pain must also be endured.

‘Their ’ava gives them the ferocity of wild beasts.’

‘They are men of iron.’

‘With no women.’

‘Obviously, they are afraid to bring their women here in case they are too admiring of our manhood.’

‘Or they mean to steal our women.’

‘There are some they would be welcome to.’

‘Others not, my friend.’

At this talk of women Rehua remembered why he had set out in this direction, and got up to leave. He found Maimiti among Itia’s women, combing and oiling in the shade. It would have been improper for him to enter the women’s area, so he stood a little aside among the trees until he caught her attention. Her green eardrops flashed.

‘A woman should wear the ornaments her grandmother wore,’ said Rehua. ‘Where are Tetua’s black pearls?’

‘Hei, you speak like Hinuia!’ said Maimiti.

‘Guns would be more useful than eardrops,’ said Rehua.

‘You will have to be patient.’

‘They may be intent on taking over our land and women.’

‘Just like Hinuia.’

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘Come,’ she teased. ‘Come with me, let me massage you, e tane?’

She led him away into a secluded place, spread her pareu on the ground and invited his head to her lap. ‘There is one man we should pay attention to,’ she said, tipping up the gourd of oil she had brought and spreading it from her palms to his shoulders.

‘Titriano?’

‘Titriano. He’s the key to everything we want.’

‘You are a clever woman,’ he said.

‘You should make him your bond brother.’

‘Does he not already have a taio?’

‘You’re a more fitting taio to him than any other. He is a navigator too.’

He felt her hands begin to ease the tension he had been carrying in his shoulders, dissolving the knots of distrust and anxiety that had developed. He smiled to himself as he recognised Maimiti’s motives. She was lustful, and curious, like all women, and if he became taio with the white man she would have the privilege of making love with him, as any woman may, according to custom. As it was the white men’s custom to give gifts in return, it could be advantageous. And it put the white man in a position of weakness, for he had no woman to offer in return.

He watched a pair of blue vini birds land in the nearest ni’au palm, where they liked to feed. When he closed his eyes he could hear them murmuring to each other. Pigeons were chanting: nothing had changed. The woman’s hands were bringing memories of his childhood, of his grandmother’s hands, comforting and slow. He let sleep fall over him lightly, her hands still lulling the surface of dream. The ship was riding over a seamless ocean, rising and falling, the vini and u’upa still crooning among the forest masts. He stood at the wheel of the ship, but no effort was needed to hold the rich vessel on course. It skimmed the waves like otaha, the frigate bird.

The white woman came up from below decks, tossing sunlight through her yellow hair. Pulling down the shoulders of her gown she exposed skin of a pale, melting translucence, and as she came closer he saw the embellishment of living insects in her hair, blue and green dragonflies that darted from curl to curl, and dazzling, long-legged beetles that flashed in the light. It was her dainty fingertips sliding over his skin now, knowing exactly where to press, where to stroke, closer, loosening the binding of his loincloth, and closer. He set his course to a distant spot in the blueness of her eyes, a dark tunnel of desire opening wide to admit him until his standing ure was embraced by her full liquid grip. The world of light hummed in his ears a song straining to breaking point, while the ship rolled under him on an ocean bucking with delight.

With ease will a man ride the elements and raho fly willingly to him. This Rehua now knew, for such a dream was about more than one woman’s playful desires. That evening, in the flaring light from a blaze of dried ni’au fronds, Rehua saw the blind man take up his curious instrument and balance it under his chin. He caressed its strings with long, soft strokes, and the instrument seemed to moan a little, as if waking, which startled the children. As his caresses increased and quickened, the instrument replied with quickened rhythm. When he slowed again its voice vibrated on the edge of sorrow. The people were held as if by a spell, mesmerised by its unearthly keening and reeling, their stomachs warmed by swigs from a bottle of rama that was passing from hand to hand in the dark. Rehua watched the dancing begin, in Peretane style, with kicking up of the legs and linking of arms, and a satisfied lassitude overcame him. He was happy to watch them dance till they fell.

Not until later, when the instrument was being tried from hand to hand, protesting with horrible shrieks and groans, while a young girl guided the blind musician’s fingers to other places, did he get up and walk on down the shore until he could see the ship.

It sparkled like a new galaxy there, the work of new gods, fallen from the sky. A gift, a sign, a curse. Sailed into the storm for forty days and not one man lost. No amount of scorn could diminish his awe and admiration.