According to Satoan oral history the first papalagi ship to break into their bay was in 1827. (They’d seen papalagi in other villages before then.) Since then other ships had called in, but it was only Barker who had come in his schooner every three months or so to trade his cargo of axes, bushknives, nails, cloth and other papalagi goods for copra. They began referring to him affectionately as ‘our papalagi’. Sometimes, when there was war between the country’s political factions and Satoa allied itself to one of the factions, Barker brought rifles and ammunition, dynamite and other weapons, and with expert skill showed them how to use them. One time he taught the matai how to use a compass and sextant, then a telescope, a clock, and soap. Another time his cook taught the women how to bake bread, cook stew, and roast stuffed chicken. He took huge delight in introducing papalagi technology, ideas, fashions and fads to Satoa, despite his own constant complaints that papalagi civilisation was corrupt and evil and the missionaries were ‘castrating’ the native peoples. The Satoans, who’d converted to Christianity overnight because their tamaaiga had ordered them to do so, feigned shock at his attack on the new religion, and kept expecting their new atua to strike him down dead.
A bulky man with a bushy beard, wild blond hair and massive hands, which the Satoans believed had killed many people, Barker would stay for a week or so along with his crew, and some of his men would acquire wives, but Barker avoided Satoan women. Not that he wasn’t tempted. However business, he claimed, was business, and better without your clients’ women (and the possibility of jealous Satoan men).
Just before Christmas, during the sixth year of Barker’s visits, an unexpected storm had swept his schooner onto the reef. It sank with everything he owned. Barker and two of his crew were rescued by Sao and members of his aiga. Within a month he had married Poto, Sao’s eldest daughter. (It was good business to marry into the leading aiga, he’d later admit to Mautu.) She’d already eloped with two men but both relationships had failed, so Sao didn’t mind her being the first Satoan to marry a papalagi. Using Poto’s large and influential aiga, Barker collected, cut and dried a rich harvest of copra, built a fautasi and used it to transport the copra to Apia. There he sold it, and was soon back with a new cargo of goods to trade, and three other varieties of mango, which he planted behind their home.
Poto also soon proved to be a shrewd and efficient businesswoman. She got her father to allocate them a large area of land and, again using their aiga’s strong and fit young men, Barker cleared the bush and planted the first commercial plantation of coconut trees in Satoa. They built a store in the middle of their aiga’s compound and Barker left the running of it to Poto. Attached to it, at the back, were three large rooms in which they lived with the numerous children she produced, one every year. Physically, Barker and his children were the most distinct of Satoans: they were all blond-haired, with deeply tanned bodies and blue-green eyes that everyone referred to as cats’ eyes. Some of the children had freckles, which the Satoans called tae lago, flyshit.
The Satoans did not express their condemnation, openly, of Barker as an atheist, a non-believer, but Poto knew it was there and felt humiliated, and told him so, repeatedly. However, despite her nagging accusation that he was a disgrace to his ‘wonderful Christian race’, and Sao’s curt instructions that he attend church, Barker refused to do so. He boasted openly of having no need for Christianity (or Jehovah). He stopped working on Sundays only when Sao and the matai fono threatened to banish him from Satoa if he continued. He also drank his home-made whisky secretly so as not to bring the wrath of the fono upon his aiga. He knew — and was pleased — that Sao and the fono were afraid of him because, even though they knew he was distilling whisky, they didn’t order him to stop.
‘You’re trying to corrupt me with the Devil’s water!’ Poto rejected his attempts to entice her to be his drinking partner. (Later on in their life she’d take the occasional secret nip to ‘warm her blood’.)
When other matai pointed to his son-in-law’s ‘uncivilised ways’ Sao excused him by saying, wistfully, ‘What do you expect from a papalagi?’ Then he said, ‘He is useful, though, to our village.’
At first Poto was ashamed of being married to a papalagi because the Satoans viewed papalagi as strange, inferior creatures. However, as they prospered and she gained power and status, she came to admire and love her husband. She claimed publicly that she loved his ‘strange and independent pagan papalagi ways’.
About every four months Barker took his fautasi to Apia to sell his copra and bought goods for their store. He was now trading all over Savai’i. Poto accompanied him sometimes, to learn to trade. Here again she was a quick and perceptive learner.
He always took any Satoans who wanted to visit Apia. Since he had first settled in Satoa Mautu had made only one trip with Barker, so Lalaga and their aiga and many of the Satoans were surprised when, soon after Iakopo’s death, Mautu again accompanied Barker, and on their return began spending much of his time at Barker’s home. At first they believed Mautu was trying to persuade Barker, the defiant atheist, to return to the church.
It was late afternoon and overcast, dark clouds trailing their immense shadows across the bay. You could see the luminous joy in his eyes, Peleiupu observed as Mautu danced into the fale holding a calico-wrapped parcel. She rushed to him as he sat down beside Lalaga who, caught in his strange luminosity, stopped weaving. A bemused smile on his lips, Mautu kept gazing down at the parcel, and waited. Their other children were soon around him too. Peleiupu glanced up. The clouds were breaking out of the bay into the open sea.
Carefully he unwrapped the parcel while they watched. Then, for a breathless moment, they gazed down at its contents as if they were admiring a newborn baby asleep in its swaddling clothes. It was a book: a thick, black book with gold-edged pages and expensive binding.
‘It’s a gift from Barker,’ Mautu said.
‘It is a beautiful gift,’ Lalaga sighed. Peleiupu managed to stop herself from caressing the book.
‘What book is it?’ asked Arona. The others looked at him.
‘It’s a Bible!’ Naomi belittled him.
‘I know it’s a Bible!’ Arona tried to rescue himself.
‘And it’s in English,’ Peleiupu added.
‘Barker told me he has no further need for it,’ Mautu told Lalaga. ‘Once upon a time he used to go.’
‘To church?’ Lalaga asked. He nodded. ‘But why doesn’t he go any more?’
‘I don’t know.’ When Mautu started rewrapping the parcel, Peleiupu asked if she could do it and he handed it to her. Ruta reached out to intercept it, but Mautu ignored her. ‘Let Pele do it,’ he said. Peleiupu took her time rewrapping the Bible. ‘He’s teaching me English as well,’ Mautu said.
‘What is English?’ Naomi asked.
‘It’s the language of the papalagi.’ Arona got his own back.
‘And the missionaries?’ asked Ruta.
‘Yes,’ Lalaga replied.
‘And God?’ asked Naomi. The children were puzzled when their parents started laughing.
‘You children ask a lot of questions!’ Mautu exclaimed.
‘English is the language of the English who live in England,’ Peleiupu explained to her brother and sisters and was embarrassed (and annoyed) when the adults laughed some more. She turned her back on them and looked out at the bay: the dark clouds were banking up against the horizon and being forced up into the drizzling sky.
From that time on, whenever Mautu was free at night he sat in the light of the lamp, reading and repeating words, then whole sentences, from the English Bible. His sounds, unintelligible to them, were like incantations cast to dispel the darkness. Sometimes the children sat around him and listened until they got bored or fell asleep, then they were put into their nets. He started teaching them some of the English words.
As his English improved, he returned from his lessons with Barker carrying more books, and at night was soon reading parts of those to Lalaga and their children and others in their household who wanted to listen. During school he also read to his students, who listened politely even though they didn’t understand English. Whenever a story enthralled him, he translated it aloud to his listeners, and they loved it. So he did more and more and more of that. Fairytales, fables, parables, adventures, descriptions of other lands, other seas, other sciences, other minds and eyes and dreams. His readings became a treasure house to feed the curiosity and imagination, until their home was full of listeners every night, none of his students stayed away from school, and the church was crammed full every Sunday.
At first the Satoans — particularly Sao and the deacons — were upset with him for spending so much time with Barker, their papalagi but a pagan. However, as time passed and they saw no harmful effects on Mautu, they accepted it. Finally they encouraged him enthusiastically when his sermons became fabulous stories about God’s territories beyond the reefs; about courageous papalagi missionaries conquering the savage kingdoms of darkest Africa and Asia; about evil and miserly papalagi millionaires and kings seeing the Light and giving their wealth to the poor; about papalagi explorers traversing the deserts and the lands of ice and snow, defeating heathen armies and destroying their idolatrous gods; about miraculous sciences, such as alchemy, that produced gold from worthless matter; about astrology, which explained your fate in the patterns of the stars; about the Church’s valiant fight against slavery, heathenism, cannibalism and more. It was all irrefutable proof of God’s existence and beneficence and mana. Yes, their pastor had been freed by his son’s death, then freed further by the knowledge he was acquiring from those books. He was now capable of making them believe anything.
Many would remember him for the rest of their lives, up there in his pulpit clothed with the intense morning light, his eyes afire with the new vision, his vibrant voice reaching into their hearts and souls and setting them alight.
Early in their friendship, Mautu sensed that Barker didn’t want to visit his home, so he didn’t invite him. However, whenever he stayed away for more than a day, Barker sent one of his children to fetch him. As Mautu’s English improved and he could converse in it for long periods, Barker’s need for his company seemed to deepen, for in Satoa no one else spoke English, and Barker refused to learn Samoan properly.
At this time Mautu started taking the eleven-year-old Peleiupu almost everywhere he went, including Barker’s home. It was as if Peleiupu’s presence were his protection.
On Peleiupu’s first visit with Mautu to Barker’s they stopped at the front door and she almost choked with the stench of flying-fox and unwashed bodies and mould that surged from the room. She coughed politely and tried to ignore it.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Mautu whispered. She followed him into the gloom.
He sat down in the cane chair by the door and she sat cross-legged on the floor at his feet. ‘He’ll be here soon,’ he told her.
Her eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom. On the large bed at the far side was a jumble of clothes, books and other paraphernalia. Above it, against the wall, were shelves that were cluttered with more books, jars and strange implements she’d not seen before. Chairs, tables and a tangle of iron boxes and tools were scattered around the room. Never before had Peleiupu seen such wealth, but she thought it was a pity not one window was open to let out the sickening smell, which her father didn’t seem to notice. With a few more visits she too would get used to the smell.
Then the back door was pulled open and Barker, a looming shadow outlined momentarily against the daylight behind him, thrust himself into the room. Immediately Peleiupu recognised the source of the flying-fox smell.
‘Greetings, Reverend Pastor and daughter!’ He greeted them in English.
‘Good morning, Mr Barker!’ Mautu replied slowly in English as Barker wove through the clutter and sank into the throne-like chair opposite them.
‘Excellent English, Mr Mautu,’ Barker exclaimed, smiling. ‘Excellent!’
Mautu and Peleiupu watched while he used the front end of his stained shirt to wipe the sweat off his hands, face and beard, and finally off his bulging neck, all the while congratulating Mautu on the quality of his English. Afraid yet fascinated by Barker, Peleiupu wanted to be invisible. However, as the two men talked, with Barker saying most, his heavy hands sweeping through the air, she lost her fear and her fascination intensified. This was the first papalagi she’d seen up close. Like other Satoan children she was convinced that papalagi of Barker’s size were creatures to be avoided. Possessors of strange powers, knowledge and secrets, they had to be respected but were also uncivilised, pagan and cruel. The missionaries were the only civilised papalagi in Samoa. She was also captivated by the odd mixture of English and Samoan that Barker used. For instance, ‘Reverend, o oe le kagaka piko sili laga English in legei akunu’u.’ He paused, his face screwed up as he tried to find the Samoan to continue with. ‘Ia, you are the best kaukala in English. Some day ka o i Pelekania, lo’u akunu’u agasala!’
They visited Barker again two days later. His unruly gaggle of children were milling around him and Poto. Peleiupu crouched behind Mautu’s legs, afraid of the children’s rudeness and their cat-like eyes, which all seemed to fasten on her at once. ‘Go, go!’ Poto ordered them.
They streamed past Mautu and Peleiupu, shouting and laughing and pushing one another. Tavita, the oldest one and about Peleiupu’s age, hesitated in front of Peleiupu, smiled and extended a ripe nonu towards her. Peleiupu moved back. ‘Take it,’ Poto encouraged her.
‘Yes, take it,’ Barker said in Samoan. ‘My children are not usually generous.’ Peleiupu almost snatched it out of Tavita’s hand. He chortled and skipped off.
Though Barker and Mautu did most of the talking, Poto seemed to be there always, a quiet, persistent reminder they weren’t alone in the world. Peleiupu sensed early that there was a deep current of affection between Barker and Poto. Later when they got up to leave, Poto gave her some sugar and flour to take home for their aiga, and lollies for herself.
It was during her seventh visit that she first observed a strange power in her vision. It scared her at first, and she would never tell anyone about it.
In the usual gloom, Barker was again in his high-backed chair, which made him appear as if he had a large hump on his shoulders, and Mautu was reading easily from the English Bible. Barker listened with his eyes half closed. Whenever Mautu stumbled over a word, Barker corrected him. Incredibly, Peleiupu saw a white glow emanating from Barker and growing until it was about a foot thick and illuminating every detail of his features and clothes. She shut her eyes tightly, but when she looked again it was still there. Now it was exposing in heightened detail Barker’s fiery freckles, the black streaks of dirt and grease, the wrinkles and blue scars and bulging veins of his face and neck and arms and hands, the bristling body hair which reminded her of the fur of a dog, the black dirt lodged in his uncut fingernails, the rotting food particles and decay in his teeth, the stains and tears and holes in his clothes, the blood pulsing and cruising through his body. And as the rhythm of Barker’s breathing inhabited her, she knew — and dreaded knowing — that the rhythm was ending, soon.
That night, in a vivid and disturbing dream, she saw his bones, like sharp coral, breaking through his putrefying body, the flesh flaking off like tattered clothing.
She never again saw the fearful luminosity around Barker, but as she grew more fond of him she experienced an inexplicable sadness.
The saddest times began when Mautu’s love of books became more important than talking to Barker and he stayed away from Barker’s house. Barker would send Tavita to demand that he come at once.
‘You don’t care for my company any more?’ Barker demanded in English as soon as they were seated. Poto was weaving a mat on the floor beside his chair. ‘You don’t care any more now that you’ve stolen my language and books!’
‘Don’t be silly!’ Poto tried to calm him. ‘The pastor didn’t come to listen to your — your pain.’
He waved her away. ‘He’s stolen my language and books!’
Mautu was patient with him, reassuring him of his friendship, respect and gratitude. ‘And how can I steal your English language?’ he joked. ‘I speak it so badly, and it surely belongs to anyone who learns it.’ He paused. ‘And, Mr Barker, you can go right ahead and steal my language, which you speak very badly!’
‘Reverend, ga ou kago foa’i aku la’u English ia oe. I gave you my English!’ Barker was smiling again.
‘It is a barbaric-sounding language, Mr Barker!’ Mautu said in Samoan.
‘It’s a language that sounds like ducks quacking!’ Poto remarked.
‘Not as barbaric as German!’ Barker laughed. Peleiupu remembered Barker telling them that the Germans were establishing themselves in Apia at the time.
‘He longs for his home in England,’ Poto said to Peleiupu, again giving her food to take home.
On their way home Peleiupu asked Mautu to tell her what Barker’s anger had been about. ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘He accused me of being an ungrateful native who steals from generous benefactors like himself and gives nothing in return.’
‘But what have you stolen from him?’ she asked.
‘His language and some of his knowledge. But he knows that in return I have given him my friendship. That’s why his anger never lasts.’ He stopped, smiling. ‘He’s a very lonely person who needs company. No matter how harshly he criticises his own kind and their way of life, he is still far away from home.’ She didn’t understand fully but she would come to in the years to follow.
That night Mautu started telling his family about Barker’s life.