Aita Peapea
Maimiti

The wind began to blow from To’erau, the sky slammed down on the ocean and the sea rolled into Matavai Bay, throwing heavy breakers onto the beach. It was a night of rushing water, and voices were drowned out by the tearing of wind, the rain pouring from the thatch ends, the creaking and shuddering of our walls and roof. Teraura and I lay awake side by side, our ears straining for any sound of calamity, smashing timber or white men’s voices, but there was nothing to hear above the roaring darkness except Itia, who was beside herself, wailing and cutting herself all night so nobody could rest. At first light she and Taina were pushing off a canoe to go out through the surf to the ship, desperate to convince Parai that he should come on shore to safety.

Down at the breadfruit camp men were struggling in the wind to dig a channel for the overflowing stream. Canoes were overturned, branches and trunks thrown to the ground, but our houses were all safe and nobody was hurt.

And there had been a child born. She was the daughter of Teio, a Pare girl who, like me, had been with Itia for years. The baby had come without the protection of the proper rites or the sacred birthing house, so swiftly amid the din of the storm that we had not even heard Teio cry out.

The old women were already shaking their heads about it – a sign, they said. Every day since the white men had been here, tapu had been broken and ignored. Teio’s baby was another sign of trouble, arriving as if deposited by the wind.

We knew Teio had delivered alone so that nobody would be able to kill her baby for the dangerous circumstances of its arrival. Its fate had been under question since her belly had first become evident. The father had not declared himself, and the gossips had plenty to guess at. Was he a manahune boy of no consequence, a man with another family, a cousin? Any prohibition could have been broken: the child was inauspicious. And if it died before claiming its first breath of this world, it would be better. Puaru.

But she had survived, drawn breath and claimed her ihu, her spirit.

‘Help me to protect her, Mauatua,’ Teio whispered to me.

I looked at the baby’s eyes, wide open to the world of light. ‘She is one of us,’ I said.

It was to the ship instead, that death came. It was a man we never saw on shore, a medicine tahua, who died, it was said, of drinking too much of their ’ava. They put his body in a wooden box and buried him in a hole in the ground with very little ceremony, for there was no woman to wail him.

‘If we buried every body in the ground on Tahiti we would have no room left to stand.’

‘Peretane must be a very big place.’

‘Or they are all walking over dead people.’

After the storm Taina and Itia spent days persuading Parai not to go to Aimeo to seek a safer harbour, but to stay nearby. They fed him copiously, and took their relatives on board to flatter him. They accompanied him on walks up in the valleys where the manahune people came out to look at him and the children ran after him. They told him he would be robbed or murdered on Aimeo, which may have been true, for they were not as fond of white men on Aimeo as on Tahiti.

When Parai decided to move the ship only as far as the shelter of Toaroa, next to Pare, adjacent to the sacred house where their children lived, they were overjoyed. Once again, the whole household rolled its mats and returned to Pare.

It seemed everything was going Taina’s way, for now the To’erau winds set in, beating and ripping at any sail that dared to be unfurled. Parai would have to stay at least another moon.

New houses were soon erected and people came to spend the rainy season in the interesting company. Parai and the chiefs entertained each other night after night, on the ship or at Taina’s house, while the sailors began to sleep in the people’s houses and eat from our ovens. On long days of overhanging cloud the tahua tatau was kept busy as the men came to him one after the other for tattoos, the tapping of his bone chisel speaking its secret language, darting like a lizard through the rain.

Sometimes Teraura and I hid ourselves and watched the men working together. They wore loincloths now, even Titriano, their new tattoos on display on their chests and arms. They were fattening up at last, their women rubbed them with monoi, and they sometimes sang as they laboured, in voices rough as bark.

When Parai came among them there was an uneasiness. They worked harder under his eye, but less willingly. Bent backs were striped with scars. Titriano didn’t look up to Parai, he addressed him as an equal, it was in the way he stood, without deference. He looked almost like one of us. Parai was still as pale as a root and never seen without all his heavy clothing. I did not believe they were friends. There was something amiss. The strange talk of slavery, the scars.

Teraura liked to speculate endlessly on their different attributes, their bodies, their voices, their strength. She changed her mind many times about which one she wanted. ‘Stay with Eti,’ I told her. ‘Eti is Titriano’s friend. We will all remain together.’

‘When?’

‘When it happens. Something will happen. Rehua wants to take the ship.’

‘They are crazy, those men!’

‘Aimeo men. We can’t trust them. If they get the guns it will cause big trouble.’

‘We have to trick them.’

I could trust Teraura to think of a trick.

Who are these people?
We don’t know them.
Popa’a, the strangers. Who were their grandfathers?
From this land, from that land, our grandfathers never knew of them.
Strange spirits they have brought among us,
The priests warned us,
Goblins!

Sons of women, arousing fierce desires. Rehua enjoyed the heat of the flame, we burned it hot under the gnashing palms, matching each other like wrestlers. Wordless.

And the other thing grew in me like a ni’au palm breaking forth.

‘We will kill Parai. Titriano will be with us.’

‘I’m staying with you.’

‘We’ll climb up the anchor cable.’

‘Hush, someone can be listening.’

‘At dawn the birds leave for the fishing grounds.’

‘Make him your taio.’

‘Be patient, woman.’

‘Someone else will claim him.’

‘Your haste is indecent. I enjoy your lust for him. Let me feel it again.’

Rehua.

In the morning it was Titriano my eyes hungered for. I looked for him secretly, and when I let him catch sight of me, I saw that his hunger was equal. He flirted with other women under my eyes and made love with one or two of them, but it did not change the way he looked at me. We watched each other.

Then three men escaped. Their taio helped them, gave them a va’a and food and told them the direction to sail for Tetiaroa.

Taina sent ra’atira off in all directions to capture them for his friend Parai.

‘Why must they come back? Are they not free?’

This I asked Titriano under dripping leaves at nightfall.

‘We need every man to sail the ship.’

‘You can take Tahiti men.’

He spoke some words in English. There was anger in them. He struggled in Tahitian. ‘England is not like Tahiti. We must obey our chief,’ he said.

‘You are angry. Parai is angry. Anger between friends is a bad thing.’

‘You are right. He is a good man. I know his children.’

I pictured the white children, playing there beyond the horizon. ‘Maybe he misses them. He doesn’t like Tahiti as much as you do.’

‘He wanted to come here. Tahiti, Tahiti. It would make him important. A big chief, like Cook.’

‘He needs a woman.’

‘He is a fool.’

The floggings were next. At Teraura’s insistence I went out to Bounty that day. We were not allowed on board and we crowded on the canoes below. The men all stood in ranks on the deck in silence, their eyes like stones. When the first blow was struck they did not react.

The weapon was raised again, and the victim’s woman broke the silence with her outcry.

Again, and we saw the flesh peel under the blow.

For the first time, I dragged the shark’s tooth across my scalp, knowing the satisfaction of its bite, and let anguish pour forth as the blows resounded. The sun was darkened and blood rained from the sky.

‘Soon,’ said Rehua. ‘There will be nobody to defend Parai, he’ll die alone. You and Teraura will go on board with Itia’s women. Drink with them, eat with them, and steal the thing to open the gun chest.’

‘What if we can’t find it?’

‘It’s the man who works iron that keeps it. Make love to him while Teraura steals it. Wait on board until we come. I will come first, up the anchor cable under the prow where the watch cannot see. The lazy dog will be sleeping. Be ready for me.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow night.’

I hoped Teraura had thought of something.

‘Aita peapea,’ she said, ‘no trouble.’

‘What must we do?’

‘Wait until tomorrow.’

There was a commotion on the beach before the cocks had stopped crowing next morning and we rushed down to see what had happened.

Parai was standing remonstrating with Taina. His face was bright red and he raved in a mixture of savage English and ragged Tahitian, gesturing wildly with a pistol in each hand. He was a head shorter than Taina, but I could see the alarm on my cousin’s face. He’d always been easily frightened.

Titriano stood beside Parai, dressed in his full English costume, his neck cloth soaked with sweat. He was trying to intervene, to explain to Taina what the captain was trying to say, but he was silenced by Parai’s spitting fire, and stood back wooden faced.

At last we understood what had happened. Bounty’s anchor cable had been cut during the night, almost through.

‘I know nothing of this!’ cried Taina. ‘It was not our people. We are your friends!’

Some people turned and ran then, taking to the hills in fear of the guns.

‘I left one strand,’ Teraura told me later. ‘So the ship would not break free. Nobody will be climbing up the cable now. Look.’

On the forepart of Bounty we could see men already at work, building an extra platform so the watch could stand higher and see better.

‘What knife did you use?’

‘Eti gave me one.’

‘Rehua will guess it was us.’

‘I have heard already that it was Ari’ipaea that did it, because his taio had been punished for allowing something to be stolen.’

‘Ari’ipaea, that fool. The ship could have been wrecked on the reef!’

Titriano came looking for me. I let him find me alone, near the river and the sound of water rolling on stones.

‘Who did it?’ he wanted to know.

‘Some men from another island. They wanted guns.

‘Which men? Did they intend to kill us?

‘They intended to take the ship. It was a woman who cut the rope, to prevent them climbing up it.’

‘Is this true?’

‘It is, because the men will be dangerous with guns. It’s good that they did not succeed.’

‘They’ll try again.’

‘No, we’ll protect you from their trouble. We are your friends. Come, I’ll show you where the best jasmine grows.’

I led the way up the narrow path, clambering ahead. The effort of climbing prevented him from asking any more questions.

There was a place there, a dry rock near the jasmine grove. The stones roared beneath the water. At last I was alone with him, away from the chattering girls and the demanding captain.

I wanted to ask him. ‘Is your own home as fine as Tahiti? Are there waterfalls and streams there too? What is the name of the place where you were born?’

The Island of Man, he said it was called.

An important name. The island of sharks, the island of turtles, the island of man. Places we had only dreamed of. He described its shores and mountains to me, its harbour full of ships, and the house made of stone where he grew up. His family had been chiefs there for generations, he said. But now his chiefdom was taken by others, and his mother lived humbly.

‘At Matavai it is the same,’ I explained. ‘It was my family’s chiefdom, but now Taina has taken it. I too must be an honourable servant.’

‘He took it by war?’

‘He needed no weapon. There was no man of our family left to oppose him.’

I looped a long strand of tafifi round his neck, admiring the new tattoo on his chest, a many pointed star that beat above his heart. Venus, the star of Matavai we had gazed at together. ‘Now you look like the chief of Matavai,’ I said.

He laughed, more lover than chief.

‘I do not play, Titriano. With you at my side we can take Matavai back.’

He looked at me startled, a flash of lightning in his eyes.

‘We would have the guns, the men would be with us,’ I continued. ‘It is the ship they desire. We could chase my cousin Taina back to Pare and live as chiefs on our own land, as befits our status.

‘Does not Rehua have that claim upon you, madam?’

‘Rehua does not wish to be the chief of Matavai. He is a navigator, like you. He knows all the stars and can sail to any island. Together, how strong we’ll be, the proudest tribe on Tahiti, with our land and ship, travelling wherever we wish, trading and visiting…’

I watched his thoughts begin to follow that enchanting path. Only to find it blocked. A new look came into his eyes

‘There is but one man who stands in the way,’ he observed.

‘Then that man is in a dangerous place,’ I replied.

He looked around at the mountain scene, the water pouring down over the stones, the rainbows hovering above us. ‘God help us, for we are all in a dangerous place,’ he said. He leapt up and began to cry out in English. To his god perhaps. He struck himself with his fists. It was wrong for me to see and I turned away.

The stones roared beneath the water, water that had poured over the lip of Hinuia’s cave, high above, drowning out his cries.