Maimiti

Up in the mountains the pearl shell twisted in the gathering wind, turning, turning, turning, first one way, then the other, spinning, spinning, spinning. The moonlight it reeled in sprang back in flashing rays that pulsated at the edges of the old woman’s fading vision. All her words had been spoken now. She had caressed for the last time the dry bone of Tetua’s skull, and smelt the griefs of the flesh no longer. Now the world of light was reduced to a spinning globe, now time stood still, and the powers of her sorcery she released like eels from a trap, for her spirit had nothing to lose, and no need to return.

As the waterspout approached, the men stopped to watch on the deck. It was born out of the black clouds which had boiled up behind them, a cord of light, writhing in the squalling wind. Each saw in it the semblance of all the bog wraiths and bugganes, goblins and banshees he had ever heard of. Every hair of their necks sprang to attention. Yet the sweetness of that thing was unearthly too. Like a woman coming to him at dawn as he woke.

No man uttered a sound. It came so close they looked as one into its wheeling eye, and its keening rustle spoke to each alone. Only in the moment of their submission to its certain embrace did it turn aside, and pass them by as if it had lost interest in them.

A suffocating dread gripped Titriano, as if he had been struck a blow beyond which was not death, but a different kind of unknown darkness suddenly enveloping, the voice of the whirlwind sucking his blood.

The men were being bawled back to their stations, the ship springing to life as favourable gusts refilled the canvas.

Ned Young was at his shoulder. ‘Unwell, Fletcher?’ he breathed into his ear.

Titriano gripped the rail. ‘How should I be unwell?’

‘At the prospect of the voyage yet ahead, perhaps?’ He took the spy glass and lifted it to watch the vanishing waterspout. ‘Damn the bitches. They were full of mischief, were they not?’

The airs of Tahiti came flying on the wind that followed.

‘Do you smell that, Fletcher?’

The men had a strange look to them as their nostrils filled and the sails bellied with the perfume of flowers and oils, the smell that lingered in the paths among the women’s houses, the suffocating breath of desire.

Titriano could not account for the grief it aroused, for the crazy urge to throw himself from the rail and start swimming back.

A waterspout, nothing but a waterspout, a phenomenon of nature! Yet his blood was awake to something else. What stalking thing was it? Now he smelt the foul breath of rotten offerings on the marae, the odour of death. Soon his grief was followed by dread and in another moment fear got hold of his throat, the deck parted beneath his feet and the ocean seemed to yawn open for him.

Then again the longing for Tahiti was upon him, anger and humiliation at his helpless condition would set his blood to boil, until a man no longer had possession of his thoughts and could not sleep for the torments that pursued him, the memories that threatened to madden him.

❖ ❖ ❖

The storm that broke on Tahiti shattered a hundred generations. Nobody knew what direction to run in, or where was his home or who was his chief. Rain washed the blood from the women’s faces; the banana leaves hung in ribbons.

Hungry on the spoiled shore, girls and women regathered at Matavai, to wait.

Teraura, sharpening herself on adversity.

Teio and her baby daughter, still nameless.

Tuaonoa with her proud tattoo, A.S. 1789, and her English name, Jenny.

Vahineatua, the quiet one with busy fingers.

Others too, manahune girls who hoped for their chance to join the white men on their ship.

Maimiti sitting alone at the end of the sand spit, day after day.

Maimiti. Sickness-for-the-sea. She who waits on the shore. ‘It was Hinuia the priestess who gave Mauatua that name.’

‘The old priestess who was the servant of her grandmother.’

‘Her grandmother Tetua Avari’i who passed her dying breath to her.’

‘And the curse of Matavai, they say.’

‘A curse?’

‘Vehiatua’s priests cursed Matavai when her uncle was killed in battle and taken to the enemy marae.’

‘Aue!’

‘Another uncle, Tapuetefa, did not return from fishing. Itia took her to Pare for a tapairu and Matavai was Taina’s for the taking.’

‘Titriano will be her chief.’

‘If he comes back.’

‘He will return.’

‘Is it true Teraura, that she dreamed of two ships, up on the mountain?’

‘Sailing in opposite directions!’

‘Then Titriano is certainly returning.’

‘Aleck will also return.’ It was Jenny who spoke, and the others saw from the lift of her chin that Maimiti was not the only one among them who had ambitions to power. Tuaonoa came from the noblest family of windward Tahiti. Everyone knew that her status was the highest among them, and as a tapairu in Itia’s household, her fierce, haughty manners had attracted only the strongest of men. Now she insisted on the name the Englishmen had called her and they all bent their tongues on it.

‘And Eti, he is coming back too,’ added Teraura, quick to sense the rivalry.

‘Eti is no white man.’

‘But he is a chief on Bounty.’

‘We will see who is a chief when they come back,’ said Jenny.

When the ship reappeared at last on the horizon, dread and desire were hovering like twin ghosts above it. The chants are still on the wind that carries them across the ocean, the fleck of sail hanging forever at the margin of the sky, forever, forever, peeling like a scab that doesn’t heal. The flesh falls from our bones, the sight from our eyes, ghosts ourselves we fly up like birds to guide them to shore with our wheeling and calling, forever, forever, haere mai, haere mai, haere mai!

It was soon known who was on board and who was not. They were halved in number, and more on edge than ever. Where they went the air seemed cut with knives, they were shadow men. A hundred rumours flew about them and the question was on every lip.

‘Where is Parai?’

‘They have killed him.’

‘They fed him to a giant shark that followed them.’

‘There was a battle on the ship and the others were thrown overboard, and Parai was killed in the head with his own gun, the big one.’

‘No, he’s remained at Aitutaki, that is what Titriano says.’

‘Parai lied to us about Tute. Now Titriano lies about Parai.’

‘Why, why do they lie?’

‘Because they are afraid!’

‘But what can they be afraid of, these white chiefs with their big guns?’

‘Who is greater than them? Only their king, who is the owner of all their ships and guns.’

‘And the owner of men.’

‘Pah, their king is ten moons away.’

‘Yet he has told them to go to Aitutaki.’

‘Who will go with them?’

‘Every last pig of Tahiti is being put aboard! As well to go with the pigs, otherwise who knows when any of us eats pork again.’