The Atua Man: A Novel

The same morning, while David watched a tourist being tattooed at Taiohae, four men, tuhuna patutikis, masters of tattooing, were covering Jason‘s torso and limbs with their traditional designs. Jason lay on his back in the middle of the high stone platform. The girls were gone, not allowed to watch this sacred work. There was nothing modern in the me‘ae. The tattoo instruments were traditional—bone and mallet and charcoal ink. The native clothing was made from bark cloth, not Western material.

Jason awoke from his drug induced sleep, slapping at his body where the patutiki artists were working on him, as if he were swatting at mosquitoes. He shouted and struggled to get up, but the men shoved him down, with one man putting a knee on his chest. To Jason’s horror he was being made into a Hiva man of high rank. The tuhuna O‘ono, the master of the ritual, rushed over with a sheep’s bladder filled with kava. He shoved the nipple of the kava pouch into Jason‘s mouth. Jason gagged, struggling to fight them off. After they had forced the drink down his throat, Jason relaxed and couldn’t move. The patutiki practitioners turned him onto his stomach and proceded to work on his back, chanting while they formed their designs.

The tapping of the ink into his skin sent Jason into another state of mind. In this altered mindset, he could perceive the patterns being etched into his body. He saw the might of the sea in wave-like patterns intertwined with the symbols of the turtle, the whale, and the spikey fins of the a‘ahi. He felt the life of the land surge with the shapes of the fern, and the taro and the breadfruit. He became aware of these images through the minds of the patutiki artists. As they tattooed, they prayed, each to the god they represented. The most powerful tuhunas, the high priests, worked around his lower torso, the place in his body where his mana originated. They directed the tuhuna patutikis to carve, in thick black ink, semblances of the pantheon of their gods. The images were as contemporary as they were ancient, and their purpose was to connect Jason to these people, to this island. Jason wasn‘t being made a Hiva man, they were making him an embodied god—an Atua Man.

Jason didn’t need tattoos to connect him to the gods. He already knew his relationship to the divine. He had already experienced his unity with his fellow brothers and sisters. He did not need tattoos to connect him to the life of the planet or tell him how he should live to keep harmony and abundance flowing into the world. Dr. Green came to him, imparting a message: neither human good nor human evil is real. The source of life is beyond human comprehension. Remain detached and be free.