A FEW MONTHS AGO, while surf-boarding across the shallows near Windward Village, I was swept into a depression in the reef where a rapid current washed me through the breakers into the open sea. It was as much as my life was worth and I knew it.
The sun was just setting behind a heavy screen of storm clouds; half a gale chopped the sea to whitecaps; and between me and the shore was a line of gigantic breakers raising their backs twenty feet above the jagged coral to crash with terrific violence the whole length of the reef. Even a Puka-Pukan would have considered it impossible to regain the shore.
I had clung to my surf-board, a piece of one by four planking, four feet long. It buoyed me up somewhat; otherwise I could not have survived three minutes in that frothy sea.
The news was yelled across the island and soon the beach was black with people; some of the stronger men were on the reef vainly trying to throw me pieces of wood. They watched me with morbid excitement, for they expected momentarily to witness my last agonies.
Three desperate chances were open to me. One was to swim round to the lee side of the island, a distance of about five miles. This was impossible; night was setting in and the gale increasing. Furthermore, my strength was rapidly ebbing in the fight for breath against the waves that constantly bashed against my face. Or I might wait for a canoe to cross the lagoon to the lee reef and come round to me. Only the largest of the canoes could have weathered that sea, and at least two hours would be needed to make the passage. I should be dead long before they could reach me.
The third chance was to swim straight for the reef, and this I did, without hope of getting across but with a strangely exhilarating determination not to give up my life without a struggle. I have sometimes had moments of absurd panic while swimming in deep water far out from shore, as when turtle-fishing with Benny; but now I was nerved by a sort of reckless courage and looked forward without fear to the coming fight, as though the combers were human enemies whom I should somehow injure before they crushed and buried me. When one believes that death is inevitable one is indifferent to everything except a final splendid demonstration of one’s ego – at least, so it was with me that murky evening, a chip flung, buried, raised, derided by the relentless sea.
Coming within the grasp of the combers, I looked back again to see an immense wave about to hurl itself upon me. All my courage ebbed in an instant. The struggle was too hopeless; the contrast between that mighty wall of water and my puny self was too clearly apparent.
Then, strangely, my courage returned. I refused to lose this last opportunity for self-assertion. As the comber curled to fall, I dived straight into it as the only means of protecting myself from its impact.
I could feel the concussion as it hurled itself on the reef; the water became milky with foam, and I knew that I was being tossed about perilously close to the jagged coral.
Fighting my way to the surface, I found my head buried in two feet of foam. I beat the water frantically, trying to raise myself above that layer of soft choking froth. My lungs were bursting when it had subsided sufficiently for me to gasp the fresh air.
I scarcely had time to empty and refill my lungs before another comber reared above me with the malice of a cat playing with a mouse.
Subconsciously I was fighting the greatest battle of all, suppressing an almost overpowering fear which prompted me to dive, fill my lungs with water, and put an end to the struggle. But consciously I was still exhilarated: I was ending my life with gusto, with almost sensual gratification.
The comber fell just as I was diving. Half-stunned, I was whirled around like a chip. I had a vague impression that my head had grazed the coral; in fact, as I afterwards learned, a deep gash had been laid open halfway across my scalp. It now seemed that the end was at hand, for again there was the deep layer of light foam above my head. I held my breath, expecting to hear the peculiar hissing sound of the next toppling sea.
As the foam subsided, coughing and gasping for breath I exerted my last strength, making a few feeble strokes towards the reef, now but a few yards distant. Dimly I could see naked figures along the reef gesticulating frantically. I knew that they were warning me of the approach of the next breaker, but I didn’t turn my head. There was nothing more that I could do. In my own mind I was already dead, for I had been through the terror of dying, and the final annihilating stroke had only been delayed for a few seconds, that was all. On the beach I saw a hazy line that seemed to waver and melt into blackness as I watched it. I knew it was the villagers standing as close as they could to get to me, watching the end.
There was now less than a fathom of water beneath me, and even if I had had the strength, I could not have dived. I heard the roaring of the oncoming comber; lights flashed in the darkness, and in that second I saw, with uncanny vividness, the form of my mother sitting in her armchair, quietly knitting and gazing up at me with her thoughtful, compassionate eyes.
I lived, of course, but it was a near thing. The last comber had buried me, hurled me across the reef, and rolled me like a log to a spot where the natives rushed out to grasp me.
I remember little of what followed, although I have a faint recollection of people carrying me inland, and of the great little Ura waving his arms and crying: ‘He is a superman (toa)! A Puka-Pukan would have been killed by the first wave!’ My pride is so strong that I remember his words more vividly than any other circumstance. He was right: a Puka-Pukan would have philosophically allowed the first wave to kill him, not being sufficiently egotistical to make a final grandiose gesture in the face of death.
That night old William and Mama, Little Sea and Desire sat by my mat. Little Sea had my feet in her lap, massaging them. Desire sat huddled in a corner, whimpering. Mama stroked my forehead, while the whole night through William repeated the story of the incident, adding details with each narration, so that, long before dawn, he had placed me in the same class with Great Stomach, who flew over the sea. It was annoying, to say the least, to have the one thing I wished to forget dinned everlastingly into my ears.
I was aware of a cutting pain in my side and that my breath was coming labouriously, but this was nothing to the mental pain; for when I shut my eyes great combers would rise above me to hang there on the verge of breaking for moments at a time; then they would subside, giving place to others. They seemed to have human faculties and to be leering at me in a cruel, implacable manner. They were screaming that they had pounded the reefs of Puka-Puka for thousands of years and that no mere human should interrupt their endless toil even for a moment.
Towards morning I sent for my medicine chest and took five grains of opium. In a few minutes I was asleep.
I awoke in the evening, coughing up quantities of blood. The pain in my side had grown to a steady burning pang, aggravated by the least movement, and, when I coughed, forcing me to use all my strength to keep from screaming. I could still see the combers rising with horrible deliberation over my head, and I realised vaguely that all during my sleep I had been harassed by a dream-fugue of curling, crashing breakers.
About midnight, after a fit of coughing, I sank back on my mat to feel the pain gradually lessening. Dimness veiled my eyes, and it was with a feeling of immense relief that I awaited the approach of death. To this day I am more than half-convinced that I did die. At any rate, the watchers thought me dead, and all but one of them resigned me to the shades of the ancients.
Half an hour later I awoke, or was revivified. I was dimly conscious, and yet my whole body was as lifeless as though the blood had congealed in my veins. Only my mind functioned, refusing to give up life even though the body was stiff and cold. As though coming from an infinite distance, I could hear the death songs being chanted over me, the patter of footsteps as people ran back and forth on the road below, and the barely audible cry: ‘Ropati is dead! Ropati is dead!’
I believed that I was dead, and I remember the dim thought came to me that, after all‚ there is a life after death, a belief I had always scoffed at.
Little Sea and Desire were wailing, with their bodies thrown across my legs, and who but evil – or, rather, good old Bones, the village libertine, the most degenerate soul on the island, was leaning over me, absolutely refusing to give me up as he vigorously massaged my body with those powerful, gorilla-like hands of his. Without lecherous old Bones I am convinced that I would have died that night; but by some mysterious Polynesian method of massage (tarome)‚ a method which I have often seen used to as much as bring a man out of the grave, Bones saved me. God – if there is one – bless his sinful old soul – if he has any.
Still the death chant went on much as it had over the body of Wail-of-Woe, and at last another half-hour passed before I was sufficiently restored to show signs of life. Consciousness had returned by imperceptible degrees. At first I was only dimly aware of something touching my body lightly. Then I associated this with Bones, whom I could vaguely see leaning over me. A tingling sensation suffused my muscles, much like that one feels when one’s foot is asleep. It was at about this time that I blinked my eyes, bringing the death wail to an abrupt end and sending Bosun-Woman home, doubtless greatly disappointed at being balked in her expectation of revels over a fine white corpse. I can still see the ghastly smile on her witchlike face as she turned to leave; and now, when I meet her in the village, she looks at me as much as to say: ‘Wait, Ropati – just wait! You fooled me once, but I’m in no hurry. I’ll be laying you out one of these fine days.’
What a lovable, incompetent nurse garrulous old Mama was! Little Sea and Desire could have taken much better care of me, but Mama would not hear of it. What! Allow two mere ‘drinking-nuts’ and one of them no more than an undeveloped koua, to nurse me? Never! So dear old Mama settled herself comfortably in my house to attend to my wants.
In the height of my fever she fed me roast pork, lobster, taro pudding and tinned beans; and when convalescent, arrowroot starch, eggs and milk; but thanks to a reasonably good constitution and Bones’s daily massaging, I managed to pull through, and in a month’s time I could sit up and take notice of the world of Puka-Puka.
Once Jeffrey, the village witch-doctor, came to visit me with his bottles of noxious medicines and a leering, conceited smile on his lips. Possibly Bosun-Woman had sent him, aware of his skill at hastening the departure of the ailing. I sent him away with an outburst of curses that only old William could appreciate. The old heathen had increased respect for me from that time on, and I think I have never, either before or since, shown such profane versatility.
One day Mama was sitting by me embroidering with clumsy calloused hands a pillow-slip after her own design. Little Sea had taught her the trick, but Mama would have none of those foolish flower designs. She intended to present me with a pillow-slip which she herself had ‘composed’. There were a dozen big fish chasing, and about to gulp, as many little fish. And there was a red coconut palm growing, apparently, in the middle of a yellow sea. Two figures stood below it and two nuts were falling from the tree straight for the men’s heads. Dear old Mama would laugh and slap her withered shank as she explained the import of the design.
I took up a book but failed to interest myself in it. Presently I asked Little Sea to bring me my photograph album, and showed Mama various scenes and portraits.
One of the first pictures was of myself standing in a small boat holding an albacore in each hand.
‘Oh!’ cried Mama, clapping her hands. ‘a steamboat!’
‘No, no, Mama,’ I said; ‘it’s only a little fishing boat I once owned in Tahiti.’
‘But it’s got a smoke-stack,’ said Mama.
‘No, that’s me, Ropati, standing in the boat.’
Mama held the album at about two inches from her myopic eyes, studying the picture long and intently, muttering to herself the while. At last she shook her head in a sceptical manner. ‘Well, Ropati, it may be you, but it looks like a steamboat to me.’
I turned the page to a photograph of my old Aunt Deborah, surrounded by her family of fifteen.
‘Oh, a mountain!’ cried Mama, after she had examined it for some time.
This may seem absurd, but it is precisely what old Mama said. She had very poor eyesight; furthermore, she had never in her life seen a photograph of any sort until I came to Puka-Puka, and although she knew nothing of either mountains or steamboats, except by hearsay, she was always likening the pictures in my books to one or the other.
‘No, Mama,’ I explained. ‘That is my Aunt Deborah and her fifteen children. You see, the photographer arranged them so that the little ones are at the ends and the tall ones in the middle, so the outline is something like that of a mountain.’
‘Have you ever been on a mountain, Ropati?’
‘Oh, yes, many times.’
‘Is a mountain as high as a coconut tree?’
I turned through the pages, much to Mama’s delight. She saw only mountains and steamboats, but took my word for it that most of the photographs were of my friends and relatives in America. There was Yancey, who kept a grocery store and who used to give me chewing-gum; and Doc Harry, who often came to our house for Sunday dinners, and Uncle Harvey and the Revd Hezekiah and many more. It saddened me to think how far I had drifted from my old life and of the many years that had passed since I had last seen any of the dear ones at home.
I started describing to Mama the wonders of America: its vast plains, its mountains, the mighty lakes and rivers, and the great highways stretching from coast to coast. ‘Just think, Mama,’ I said, ‘if you were to start walking from the Pacific Ocean across America, and could keep going day and night, it would take months to reach the Atlantic Ocean!’
‘You mean, if you were to paddle across,’ said Mama.
‘No,’ I said, ‘walk.’
‘But that’s foolish! You couldn’t walk across the lagoon.’
‘I’ve said nothing about a lagoon.’
‘But how could you cross an island without crossing the lagoon, unless you followed the reef, and that’s not walking across it but around it.’
Mama, never having seen any land but a coral atoll, could not conceive of an island without a lagoon; and of course, to her, America was nothing more than an atoll somewhat larger than Puka-Puka. For a long time I tried to explain, saying that there were mountains and plains where the lagoon should be; but she would always break in with the question: ‘But where is the lagoon, then?’
At last, somewhat exasperated, I said: ‘Damn it! There is no lagoon!’
‘Goddam it! There ain’t none!’ roared old William, who was on the veranda. He had not heard the argument, but had caught my ejaculation. Being accustomed to swearing, particularly at Mama, in season and out of season, he could not let such an opportunity pass.
But Mama still persisted that there must be a lagoon somewhere. So I asked Little Sea to bring me a pencil and paper and drew for Mama the sketch of America Island, arranging matters as best I could so that she could see how things were. She studied the plan for at least ten minutes, while I painstakingly pointed out the different lands, explaining everything in minute detail. Presently she turned the chart upside down. She recognised the peninsula of Florida and the Isthmus of Panama as two smoke-stacks and decided that what I had drawn was really a lovely steamboat.
