The Navigator

The terrace was cleared; the last brushwood burnt away, the ground open for the cultivators; but Charlie Kamakau was gone. His hut was empty, the ashes of his fire were long cold; the food-scraps decomposed. His tools were gone too and, with them, the relics he had uncovered and cherished as signs of his sacred calling. Only the skull remained, shattered now and strewn in fragments on the sacrificial stone.

Thorkild and Kuhio combed the terrace and the surrounding bush, but the undergrowth was too dense and lush to show traces of his passing. They shouted for him over and over again, but the only answer was a flutter of wings and the shrilling of startled birds. Thorkild was troubled. The last vestiges of logic had been destroyed. Charlie Kamakau had achieved his aim. The clearing was a monument to his prowess and endurance; but he no longer wanted to demonstrate it. Or was his flight only another anguished cry for help?: ‘See! You need me! Come find me!’ The smashed skull spoke of violence; but whether it was a symbolic act or a simple outburst of anger, there was no way to tell. Where was he now? Had he retreated to higher ground – even to the place of the navigators itself? Or was he hovering round the lower slopes, too afraid – or too hostile – to rejoin the group? Carl Magnusson summed up the situation tersely.

‘No point in beating around any longer, Thorkild. You could have the whole camp looking for him and still lose him in that jungle. Let’s go back. You can set a night-watch, and instruct everybody to treat him gently if he’s seen. When you put work-parties up here, and on the timber-slide, you give them the same instruction…If he’s gone bush for good, then there’s nothing more to be done. If he’s working his way home, he’ll communicate in his own time…Sally’s right in one thing. He hasn’t committed any hostile act. You’re right in another. We can’t immobilize ourselves any longer.’

Thorkild took out his knife and scratched on the surface of the sacrificial stone: ‘Great work Charlie! Come down and celebrate – Thorkild, Willy, Carl!’

‘That says it,’ said Willy unhappily. ‘We can’t know whether he’ll believe it.’

‘Let’s take it easy on the way back,’ said Carl Magnusson. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be.’

‘There’s no hurry Carl. I want to have a look at the timber they’ve marked.’

As they plodded down the hillside, it was a relief to talk about simple, concrete things. The boat, they agreed, should be designed by Hernan Castillo, who had made models of almost every craft in the Pacific; the Pahi of the Societies, the Ndrua of Fiji, the Waka Taurua of the Cook Islanders. But before they chose the craft, they must decide, in concert, the nature of the voyage. Would they commit the whole group in a single attempt to return to the nearest known port? Would they send out a small party, two or three, to make the perilous voyage and send back rescuers?

If they chose to set out, all together, they would need a large vessel, double-hulled and decked, to carry them and their water and provisions. To build it would take a long time, much longer than the year that Thorkild had projected. If they chose to send out a small advance party, they must consent to lose skilled and valuable manpower, and resign themselves to a long period of uncertainty about their fate. As they sat, resting under one of the marked trees, Carl Magnusson made a comment which gave Thorkild matter for long reflection.

‘… Once the goal is clear, and is recognized as attainable, I think it’s important to forget the time element altogether. How can I put it? The work is more important than what it produces. The journey is more important than the arrival. It’s an art of living we’ve lost in our mechanic age. I’ve rediscovered it too late, I’m afraid. Even Peter André Lorillard – God wash his starchy soul – has begun to want it…That argument the other night, about too much regulation, is part of the same pattern…People wanting to grow instead of accomplish. They’re beginning to feel, however vaguely, that they could fulfil themselves quite happily on this island…Have you been down to the graves lately, Thorkild?’

‘Molly Kaapu and my Eva put them there,’ said Willy Kuhio. ‘When they go to bathe or look at the fish-traps. It’s a pleasant thing. A kind of prayer, I guess.’

‘That’s what I was coming to.’ Magnusson plucked at an overhanging orchid and held the small purple bloom in his hands. ‘The thing that’s happening to us all. Time is stopping; life is flowering. We’re beginning to contemplate the mysteries. Some of us anyway. I keep wondering who will be our first prophet – and what will waken him and set him speaking.’

‘I hope he doesn’t come too soon.’ Thorkild laughed. ‘I’ve got enough troubles on my plate.’

‘That’s queer …’ Willy Kuhio seized on the thought. ‘My Eva said the other night, the one thing she misses is Church and the prayer meeting on Sunday. I told her we were all different religions, and some people had none at all, so it was best to keep it a private thing.’

‘I haven’t been near a Church in twenty years,’ said Magnusson lightly. ‘But I wonder sometimes about what Kaloni Kienga said, the day he left us: “Each man goes to his god by his own road; but all the gods are images of one”…What do you think, Thorkild?’

‘I rejected Christianity when I left the Sisters. Mostly, I guess, because I didn’t want to live up to it. With my grandfather I was drawn back to the old ways – but that’s an emotional, a poetic thing if you want; although the mana is something very real to me. In that sense, I suppose I’m still a religious man. I have reverence. I have respect. But I don’t think I have anything to teach anybody. However, if Eva, or anyone else, wants to pray or meet or meditate, I’ll join them, gladly.’

‘It helps a lot of folk,’ said Willy Kuhio simply. ‘A hymn to lift up the heart, a prayer against the dark. There’s always a fear in people – and sometimes God is the only one they can tell it to.’

‘I’m rested now.’ Carl Magnusson heaved himself to his feet. ‘Reach me down those orchids, Thorkild. We’ll take some flowers back to the ladies.’

The news of Charlie Kamakau’s disappearance made everyone uneasy; but Thorkild took pains to abate their fears. So long as people were moving about the camp there was no danger. A watch would be kept from midnight until dawn, two men dividing it between them. No knives or other evident weapons would be carried; but a bamboo stave could be kept handy for any unlikely emergency. If Charlie were seen, he should be addressed calmly and invited to eat and drink at the fire-pit. He should not be challenged or pursued, but made to feel free to come and go at will. Barbara Kamakau’s movements were restricted to the campsite and to the beach. If, after a period, there were no signs of Charlie, the precautions might be relaxed. The first night watch would be split between Lorillard and Tioto…Thorkild would share the roster with the rest. It was agreed that, with these simple precautions, everyone could relax and sleep quietly at night.

Franz Harsanyi profited by their good humour to press for a trial of his memory game. So, Thorkild began with a simple lesson on the stars of the southern hemisphere, their movements and the legends associated with them in the folk-lore of the Polynesians. He made them cover their eyes and then draw the constellations in the sand, then lift their heads and identify them and name the stars in the order of their magnitude. By the end, even Simon Cohen had joined the game, singing the names into a pattern which they chanted in unison.

Aldebaran, Alrilam

Betelgeuse and Bellatrix

Pollux and Procyon …

As Ellen Ching remarked afterwards, it was strictly a kid’s game, but it beat hell out of mugging or campus cocktail parties. Yoko Nagamuna, who had done well at the recognition, made a prim little lecture about the long tradition of geisha games, and how people – especially men! – were always children at heart. Thorkild nodded and smiled and then walked down to the beach with Sally. They pushed out the canoe and paddled across the lagoon, away from the inrush of the channel, and into the slack water where they could lie, cradled in the wooden shell, drifting slowly under the stars.

‘Last night,’ said Sally drowsily, ‘I was so miserable I wanted to dig a hole in the sand and bury myself. You and I were fighting about poor Charlie Kamakau. I was jealous of Martha Gilman, because she’s started a baby to Peter Lorillard, and so far I haven’t been able to give you anything but sex and arguments. I was so mad with Jenny, I wanted to shake her and tell her, for God’s sake, to go out and get laid and come back smiling for once! And to add to it all I had the curse and had to improvise napkins – which is one of the problems the great Chief ignores in this primitive kingdom!…But today, everything was different. For the first time I found myself singing, and gossiping like a housewife with Molly Kaapu, and making jokes with Adam Briggs. I felt all cuddly and domestic; and I couldn’t wait for you to get home…Silly, isn’t it?’

‘Not to me, girl. When I took off around the island yesterday, I was desperate, chewed up like shark-bait. Now, I’m better too.’

‘Tell me something, honestly. Would you really like a child of your own?…I mean here, in this place.’

‘Yes, I would. Better here than anywhere, I think. He’d have so much love spent on him…Did I ever tell you how it was in the old days?’

‘Well, you know, in spite of all the violence and the cruelty and the tyranny, there was always a sense of grace and beauty and generosity…Strangers came; you invited them to food and drink. At the meal, no one must talk of sour or sad things. Troubles, like food, must be shared…They called it “putting together again”. If a woman couldn’t have a child, she was given one by another family…As for sex, it was the most natural thing in the world. It was everywhere, even in shells and stones. A pregnant woman looked for a female god-stone on which to give birth. If a man-child was born, his piko – the navel-cord and the after-birth – were buried in a cave, so that he would remain bound to the ancestral earth. When he was circumcised they tied a flower to the wound, to say that he was a man and his maleness was beautiful…One of the things I’ve never understood is the madness that makes us demand to kill the unborn. At the same time, I understand the anarchist who wants to blow up our midden cities and let grass and trees grow through the ruins. Rousseau’s noble savage wasn’t just a romantic fiction; but we’ve put men on the moon and elevated torture to a fine art…Yes, I’d like our child to be born here! And I’d like to keep him and his mother here, always.’

‘Because once we make contact with the outside world everything will change – even thee and me!’

‘I’ll still be a doctor. You’ll be the great scholar, with tenure and a Chair and a world-wide reputation.’

‘There’s no answer. I’m lying out here and looking at you and thinking that your eyes have stars in them, and your breasts are beautiful and you’re warm to lie with and easy to laugh with – and a bitch to fight!…Also that we’ve got through one more day, and who’s going to cut timber and who’s going to work on the plantation terrace and how the hell will we cope with day-flying mosquitoes…And if you don’t start paddling we’ll be on the reef!’

By the time they reached the beach, the crowd was waiting – shocked and sinister and angry. Peter Lorillard gave him the story. They had just dispersed to their huts. He had taken up his post by the fire when he heard a cry from the store-hut. Charlie Kamakau had cut his way through the matting wall and was waiting in ambush behind the pile of salvage. He had attacked Barbara with a knife. She was badly wounded but alive. Tioto and Simon Cohen had disarmed him. They, too, were hurt. Charlie Kamakau was bound and insensible after his beating.

The scene around the fire-pit was a gory one. Barbara was slashed on breasts, arms and belly and was bleeding profusely. Tioto’s hands were cut and Simon Cohen was torn along the neck and the jawline. Sally Anderton organized the women quickly to cleanse the men’s wounds and staunch their bleeding, while she set to work, with Thorkild, on Barbara Kamakau. It was fast, rough surgery: cleanse and clamp and sew; then start on the next lesion. It would leave scars. There would be no cosmetic treatment to obliterate them afterwards; but the girl would live, and the boys would mend quickly; except that Tioto would be maimed afterwards, because the tendons of his left palm were severed.

When Sally had finished, the wounded were dosed with the last of the ship’s morphine and put to rest in the huts, with the women to nurse them during the night. Then Thorkild, Sally and Peter Lorillard walked over to the store-hut where Willy Kuhio was standing guard over Charlie Kamakau. He was trussed like a chicken, in cordage salvaged from the ship. He was bruised and bloody, but conscious now, and uncannily calm. Sally Anderton sponged his face and gave him water and spoke to him gently:

‘They won’t blame me for that. I tried. I can try again afterwards. Could you take these ropes off me? I’m very tired. I’d like to sleep.’

‘I’ll give you something to make you sleep Charlie; but the ropes must stay on. Otherwise you’ll do more harm.’

‘You wounded Tioto who is your friend, and Simon Cohen who used to play music and sing for you.’

‘Only because they tried to stop me. They shouldn’t have done that! Barbara was the bad one.’

‘All right Charlie. I’ll be back in a moment to give you something for sleep. Stay quiet now. No one will hurt you.’

She walked out of the hut, signing to Thorkild and Lorillard to follow her. She answered their question before they uttered it.

‘He’s gone – far gone. I’ll fill him up with barbiturate and let him sleep. He may be more rational in the morning; though I doubt it.’

‘You put him to sleep and let Thorkild and me take him out to the deep water and dump him. It would be a mercy for him and everybody else.’

‘It would also be murder,’ said Thorkild. ‘If he’s lucid in the morning, he must answer for himself. If he’s not, we’ll discuss, in full meeting, what’s to be done with him.’

‘Listen man! You’re the big Chief. I’m one of your counsellors and I’ll guarantee you the votes of the others. Why don’t we settle this thing now, cleanly and mercifully? Why put everyone through another agony? Haven’t you ever heard of triage? You get a mess of wounded. You sort ’em out – one, two, three – those you can save, those you might and those that already have the mark of death on them. You let them go as painlessly as possible…I’ve been through it. If you haven’t the stomach for it I’ll do it myself.’

‘You won’t – and here’s why! We’re one tribe with a sick member. Our responsibility is both personal and collective. We’ll face it together; because, whatever is done, we’ll all have to live with it afterwards. We’ll have no heroes and no scapegoats. Clear?’

‘If you like.’ Thorkild was grim. ‘But you dispose of other people’s lives too easily Lorillard – your wife’s, your kids’, ours too! Those signal buoys weren’t all in the hold. Two at least were in your cabin! You were testing them the day I took command.’

‘I don’t want to prove it. I left you to make the decision. I’m not complaining about it. But I don’t trust you enough to have you as judge, jury and executioner…You’ve finished your watch, mister! Now go to bed, for God’s sake!’

Sally Anderton’s prognosis proved wrong. When they saw him early in the morning, Charlie Kamakau was lucid, if still a long way from normality. He remembered what he had done; but he spoke of it as if there were two men concerned, the one possessed and driven by the other. He spoke of himself as Charlie and of the other as the kapu man. When the kapu man held the club and the magic pestle in his hands, voices spoke to him in the old tongue: big, commanding voices, telling him that the fruit would wither and the land lie sterile unless blood were poured to make it fertile. He believed the voices, because he knew how it was in the old days…Charlie still hated Barbara, but not enough to kill her. He would like Thorkild to tell everyone Charlie was sorry for their trouble – Barbara too, because she was punished now, and she would not be able to flaunt herself and destroy other men. Charlie understood he must be tried; but he did not want to be present or to speak, in case he should be shamed again. If Carl Magnusson and the Chief would explain things, that was all he asked. He didn’t really care whether he lived or died. One day everyone would eat from the land he had opened up. He had proved, hadn’t he, that he was a man?…He could not understand why he was still bound. Charlie meant no evil to anyone; but the kapu man must be obeyed.

Outside, while the others were still moving sluggishly about their waking tasks, Gunnar Thorkild briefed Sally Anderton on her part in the council. He, himself, would ask her some questions which she would answer to the best of her ability. For the rest, she was free to join in the discussion or abstain from it. What were the questions? In fairness to the group, he must reserve them. She agreed, wearily. The sooner the whole mess was cleared up the better. Barbara was too sick to be present. She was still in shock and there were disquieting signs of infection. She warned Thorkild he would face a hostile and demoralized assembly. To add to their joys, Carl Magnusson was not well. The long walk up the mountain and the night’s disturbance had sent his blood pressure soaring; but he still insisted on attending the meeting. She herself was holding up, but she would be glad if Thorkild would take a swim with her before the assembly.

As they walked down to the beach, Martha Gilman joined them. She was worried about Mark. She had asked him to look after Barbara while the discussion was going on. He had refused sulkily and Lorillard had slapped him. Then she and Lorillard had quarrelled and he had accused her of destroying his necessary authority over the boy. Thorkild grinned sourly at this last gratuitous mess. He told Martha:

‘… I think the boy should be at the meeting, Martha. He’ll get a rough lesson in tribal morality; and – who knows? – he may even have something to contribute to the discussion. You don’t have to back down. I’ll just tell him I’ve over-ruled your decision; because I think it’s time he learned to behave like a man.’

Half an hour later, they were all gathered, some sitting, some standing, others sprawled on the sand, with Thorkild seated on an upturned can facing them, as if he and not Charlie Kamakau were under indictment. He waited until they were settled and silent, then rose to address them, not as a high man this time, but as an equal, puzzled and perturbed.

‘… We are here to decide the fate of a fellow human being, a comrade of our voyage and our misfortune. We must decide it together, with all the wisdom and compassion we can command. I stress “together”, because we cannot make any single one a scapegoat for our decisions. Some of you know, and some of you do not, the history of the Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn. Even today, that tiny community is haunted by the memory of murder and violence perpetrated by its founders. We must spare ourselves and our children such a horrible burden. We must make our decision in common, and bear, in common, the responsibility for it. Everyone must speak. Everyone must vote – even the boy, Mark Gilman here, because he will inherit the consequences of what we now decide. As your Chief I shall begin; then, as each one speaks, all of you must feel free to challenge or interrogate. Have I made myself clear? ‘… Doctor Sally Anderton, will you stand please?’

‘Again, in your opinion, is he competent to answer for what he has done before this assembly.’

‘I don’t think I’m competent to do that. I’m a physician with a very limited experience of mental diseases.’

‘Thank you Doctor. Now …’ He was very calm, very judicial. ‘… The question is clear: what do we do with a sick and incompetent man who has committed violence, who may repeat it, for whom the best opinion we have offers no guarantee of cure. You may specify by statement or amplify the issue by question. Carl Magnusson?’

‘A question for you Chief. Can we separate him permanently and securely from the rest of us?’

‘To you then, Sally: what would happen if we confined him permanently in or near the camp?’

‘I say Charlie had a bad run. He did bad things, sure; but I think he would come back, if we hold him quiet a while.’

‘Well…no, I can’t. I’d like to think about it while the rest of you talk.’

‘I’ve already stated my opinion. The man is, unfortunately, beyond help. I think we should dispose of him mercifully.’

‘Charlie’s my friend. Everybody knows that, eh? But if we can’t cure him and can’t separate him, I say we put him to sleep quietly.’

‘We talked about this all night. We think – but we can’t promise – if we took Charlie away, not back to the terrace but higher up or lower down, and we worked with him and looked after him, maybe he’d come good again. Trouble is we couldn’t lock him up, we wouldn’t. But we’d be willing to try – if the rest were willing to take the risk.’

‘Thanks Willy. Thank you too, Eva…Now I think we should hear from Mark Gilman.’

‘I’m like my mother. I don’t know. All I say is we got no right to kill someone, just like that, because it stops everything. I mean, there’s no afterwards. It just finishes there. Besides, who’s going to do it? And what do we say to them afterwards?’

‘Pass. I’ll wait for the vote – which, by the way, should be secret.’ ‘Point taken. Franz Harsanyi?’

‘If you accept Willy and Eva’s suggestion, I’ll go with them and help. It’s a long chance, but I’d be willing to take it.’

‘Let me put it this way. If you can’t work a stone, you throw it away. If you can’t work a tree, you fell another one. I’m for a quick, clean solution; and in the end I think Charlie Kamakau would be grateful for it.’

‘I’m with Willy and Eva and Franz. If you’ll let them look after him. I’ll help.’

‘Yes I do.’ She was obviously under strain, but her voice was steady and she chose her words with singular care. ‘The abstainers simply duck the issue and hide themselves behind a secret vote. They help us not at all. They wash their hands like Pilate and give themselves an easy option for afterwards. Two solutions only have been offered. Death, or a kind of open therapy in a volunteer community. I have to say, with the deepest regret, that I do not believe that solution will work. Our group will be split and will become so much more vulnerable. Those who have the custody of Charlie will have a responsibility that none of us dare lay upon them. I think he may be curable. I cannot, in any good conscience, promise that he is. So we come to the next solution: death. It can be quick. It can be painless. It may well be the most merciful solution. Let me show you.’ She held up the hypodermic syringe from the ship’s medicine chest. ‘All you have to do is inject a bubble of air into a vein. The patient will die, in a brief spasm, as soon as the bubble reaches the heart. There’s only one question: who will do it? I will not, because I swore to cure, not to harm. Will you, Peter? You Yoko? You Hernan? Any of you abstainers? If that’s the way the vote goes, someone has to do it.’

No one spoke. No one raised a hand. She passed the syringe to Thorkild and sat down. A moment later Tioto announced:

Gunnar Thorkild stood up, tall and grotesque against the flare of the lamps. He said in a flat toneless voice:

‘I agree with everyone who has spoken here tonight – with those in favour of a merciful elimination, those who would offer themselves as voluntary custodians, those who, for whatever reason, abstain from offering an opinion. None of us must blame another for any thoughts expressed here tonight. Banishment is impossible – and even if possible, it would be an inhuman torture. Death, administered as Sally Anderton describes, would be a discreet mercy. Custody would be an intolerable and corrupting burden on the custodians, and might expose us all later to recrimination and dissension. So what do we do? Kill a man we cannot cure? Attempt dangerously, a cure beyond our small resources? There is no argument that does not carry long and dangerous consequences. I therefore have decided to use the authority with which you have invested me, and the mana with which my ancestors have endowed me. Here is what we will do.

Adam Briggs, you will rig the canoe, with mast and sail, paddles and fishing tackle and a knife. Molly Kaapu, you will provision it – with water and fruit and whatever else we have. We will give Charlie the boat and let him sail wherever he can. He is a good navigator. He has a better chance of survival than most, if he wishes to take it. Nothing that he has done here can touch him anywhere else in the world, because we are beyond the jurisdiction of any state or law. The sea has given new life, new hope to other men, perhaps it will do the same for Charlie Kamakau. Will you agree by vote?’

‘And why? …’ Peter Lorillard was bitter as wormwood. ‘… Why didn’t you propose this solution at the beginning?’

‘Don’t be angry Mister Lorillard.’ Eva Kuhio reached out to touch him. ‘None of us knows what bread costs until we do our own shopping.’

‘I reject that!’ Lorillard was shaking with fury. ‘I say the man we elected as our chief has deliberately trapped us into a series of admissions or opinions, that damage our esteem of one another. He did this in order to cement his own authority, by offering a simple solution of which he was already aware. I say this was a crude and cruel political trick, and that a man who would perpetrate it is unfit to lead us.’

‘Those are hard words Mister Lorillard.’ Adam Briggs was instantly on his feet. ‘I don’t deny your right to state any case before this group. But, now you’ve put this one, I’d like to examine it. You say the Chief deliberately trapped us. How?’

‘By the oldest trick in the book – procedure! He knew that by following the formality he could force us to disclose our opinions and withhold his own.’

‘I fail to see that. I have great respect for anyone who can confront a harsh decision with courage. I’ve seen more combat than you. I’ve had to weigh one man’s death against the safety of others – and decide to kill him or let him die…Even our abstainers helped us – and here I disagree with Sally Anderton – because they preserved a necessary attitude of caution…Also, to submit to this open encounter over an issue of life and death was – as the Chief stated it to be – vital to us all.’

‘Two more points then. You called this a simple solution. I don’t see it as simple, either for the man who proposed it or for Charlie Kamakau. It involves a deprivation of one of our big assets, a seaworthy craft. It commits a sick man to an enormous risk – even while it appears to offer him a hope of cure and of safety. It takes one burden off our backs – but leaves us with another one: the knowledge that we cannot, as yet, cope with aberrants and misfits – which any of us could still become.’

‘You’re on my side now Briggs!’ Lorillard seized on the thought. ‘The solution was made to look simple. In truth it isn’t. Its only virtue is that it makes the Chief look humane and compassionate, and the rest of us either cowards or cold-hearted executioners. Now, what’s your last point?’

‘Procedure again,’ said Adam Briggs calmly. ‘The solution was not imposed, it was proposed for a vote.’

‘Then let’s stick to procedure, eh? We’ve got three different proposals before us – death, community therapy, or this…this buccaneering gesture of sending a ship’s Jonah off in an open boat! I insist all three be put to the vote.’

‘Before we do that,’ said Carl Magnusson heavily, ‘some others of us might like to speak. Me for instance. I reserved a position. Now I’d like to state it. There’s one point on which we all agree. We confess that we cannot guarantee safe custody or adequate therapy for Charlie Kamakau. Some of us want to try it, without guarantees. The rest want Charlie eliminated from the community…I say it’s time we stopped talking about him as an absent cipher. I’d like us to see him, sick or well, in this assembly.’

‘I think we’re all scared,’ Martha Gilman cut in quickly. ‘We’ve never really looked at ourselves before.’

‘I’m going to end the discussion. My integrity has been called in question. I cannot serve you without your full confidence. So, I resign, here and now. I’m no longer your Chief, just Gunnar Thorkild. I’m going to rig the canoe, which I remind you, belonged to my grandfather. I’m going to load it and put Charlie in it and let him go. If any of you want to stop me, you’re welcome to try …’

He left them, and walked over to the store-hut. A few moments later he came out, with Charlie Kamakau, stooped and shambling beside him. They looked neither to right nor left, but headed straight for the beach where they began stepping the mast on the canoe. Then Molly Kaapu got up, and with Jenny at her heels gathered up a half-dozen water-gourds, and set off for the cascade. A moment later Adam Briggs and Tioto set off into the bush with knives and hatchets. Peter Andre Lorillard said with wintry malice:

‘I’ve got a patient,’ said Sally Anderton. ‘Lend me a hand please Ellen.’

‘I guess we start thinking about a new election,’ said Yoko Nagamuna amiably.

‘You think about it, sweetheart!’ Carl Magnusson climbed wearily to his feet. ‘I’m going to say goodbye to a friend.’

Charlie Kamakau had not uttered a word from the moment Thorkild had entered the hut and explained his situation. Thorkild made no effort to engage him in talk, but as they worked he kept up a simple, toneless monologue.

‘… From here Charlie, you head north making as much easting as you can. You’ll end up either in the lower Cooks or the Austral Islands…You’ve got fishing tackle. You’ll need to conserve water, but you’ll make it if you’re careful…Now keep in mind, no one, no one in the world, can touch you for what’s happened here. But you don’t even have to mention it…When you make your landfall, explain that you were bosun on the Frigate Bird and you volunteered to make a single-handed journey to bring help…I’ll confirm that, so will your other friends…The only thing is you must never, never come back here…You keep going, north by east, and at night you steer on the dog-star, between the rising and the zenith…You forget everything, except that you’re going home. There are no voices, no kapu… nothing but the new landfall…’

There was no sign that he heard or understood; except that all his movements were seaman-like and purposive. Watched by the little group of helpers, he tested the rigging for strain; he raised and lowered the sail; he stowed the food and the water-gourds and the tackle neatly to his hand. Tioto went to him and embraced him. He stood rigid as a tree and made no response to the gesture. Carl Magnusson held out his hand and said:

Charlie Kamakau ignored him. He squatted in the shallows, voided his bowels and his bladder, then pushed the canoe into the water, hauled himself inboard and without a backward glance, paddled towards the channel.

‘Why?’ Tioto begged dolefully of no one in particular. ‘Why did he go like that? We were his friends. He knew that much.’

‘We failed him,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘Lorillard and the others were right. He wanted us to kill him.’

Now that it was done, he felt empty and aimless, craving like an alcoholic for strong liquor and solitude. The others sensed his mood and huddled away from him, talking in low tones among themselves. For want of anything better to do he went in to see Barbara Kamakau. Sally had just changed her dressings and was bathing her face with cool water. She was feverish and in much pain, but she held out a limp hand in greeting.

‘Nobody hates you, girl. We want you well and smiling. We’ve ordered flowers and chocolates by the next flight!’

‘Crazy like a fox!’ Sally was tart and unsmiling. ‘Now get out of here and let the girl rest.’

He walked over to the store-hut, picked up a hatchet, a seaman’s knife, an auger and a bundle of lashings and headed out of the camp towards the uplands. Half a mile from the camp he found what he was looking for: a fresh stand of bamboo growing near a large, flat rock. With more simple satisfaction than he had felt for a long time, he settled down to work, choosing the canes, testing them for strength and flexibility, cutting and grading them. It was nearly nightfall when he completed his project – a simple canoe frame, large enough to carry two men. When the frame was lined with palm-matting and covered with sail-canvas, it would make a craft serviceable enough for fishing the lagoon and the reef.

He gathered up his tools, hoisted the frame on to his shoulders and walked back to the camp. He set the frame down near the fire-pit, brought out a length of sail-cloth and a few pieces of matting, and, by the light of the fire and the torches, demonstrated how the covering should be done. It was a day’s work at most. They would not be too long deprived. As he walked back to his hut, Sally fell into step beside him and announced acidly:

‘Before you start playing lone ranger, my love, give a thought to the little woman back at the ranch.’

‘I didn’t think. I’m sorry. I wanted them to have that damn boat today…It’s rather neat, don’t you think?’

‘Then why did you resign? There were good things happening at that meeting. Hard things were said, sure! Lorillard was certainly insulting – but no one else. And you had eloquent and faithful defenders. I have to say this my love, you disappointed me. You put yourself and everyone else in a false position …’

‘I’m sorry; but I don’t see it like that. I’m an old-fashioned man. I was taught to give respect. I expect to get it.’

‘You didn’t give it today. You breached the bargain you made at the beginning – open talk, decisions in common. And do you know why? Because you weren’t prepared to trust us to make a decent, human decision. You robbed us all – yes, me too! – of a fundamental right…It’s a terrible thing to say to the man I love. But I mean it Gunnar. I mean every word of it.’

‘Don’t be flippant. It doesn’t become you…See you later. I’m going over to help with the supper.’

She was right and he knew it. He had breached a contract. He had invaded the rights of those who had made it with sole faith in Gunnar Thorkild, scholar, gentleman, respected inheritor of an older tradition than their own. Why had he done it? Wounded pride was no answer. He had already dealt out his own insult to Peter Lorillard. Fear of the votes? That was too flimsy a pretext, with so many and so eloquent voices in favour of compassion. The real reason lay much deeper, and was much more shameful. The history of the alii, the high ones, was a seductive legend. The mana which they transmitted to him was a gift as dangerous as the Midas touch or the god-like empery of the Caesars. It tempted, if not to tyranny, at least to a taste for homage and the smell of incense. He had repeated the same mistake as he had made in his academic career. He had demanded too much credence for too little evidence; too much tolerance for too arrogant a presumption.

Almost immediately, reaction began, and he swung violently from guilt to resentment. Why the devil should he make kow-tows to a small group of professional grumblers – Simon Cohen and Yoko, and Peter Lorillard? Why should they have the right, denied to him, of perpetual carping and negation? Well, let Lorillard or Castillo or Cohen try their backsides in the chief’s chair. He himself was glad to be out of it! The first smell of cooking wafted across from the fire-pit; but tonight he had no appetite either for food or company. He strolled down to the beach, built himself a backrest in the sand and sat staring out across the lagoon, trying, as his grandfather had taught him, to plait himself together again.

This time it was not so easy. Behind him he could hear, muted by distance, the talk and laughter around the fire. Before him was the big ocean, tossing now with the turbulence of a distant storm, which would make Charlie Kamakau’s first passage a nightmare. Had he himself been asked to lay the odds on his own survival in such circumstances, he would have put them at three to one in his favour. He was skilled, sane, never seasick, and mere distance held no terrors for him. Charlie Kamakau too, was a good sailor; but his experience was on large vessels, not in small island craft; and even for a man, sane and healthy, the solitude of the great sea was a constant threat.

Which brought him by a round turn, to the vessel which they now must build for themselves. The big craft, like the Ndrua of the Fijians, and the old Hawaiin Wa’a Kaulua, took, sometimes, years to build. They were capable of very long journeys; but to sail them required more skill and endurance than his own people could command. The old migrants lived on them for long periods; but they were wet, uncomfortable, and in big seas, they rode like roller-coasters. Besides, with Charlie Kamakau gone, and Tioto maimed in one hand, their manpower was seriously depleted. Carl Magnusson was a diminishing force and the casualties among the women – Jenny, Barbara, and Martha now pregnant – were a further handicap. With a small start of surprise, he realized that he was thinking as if he were still chief and arbiter of their destiny…He heard a footfall in the sand behind him. When he turned he saw that it was Yoko Nagamuna. She asked in her little-girl voice:

‘They’re all talking their heads off round the fire. Everybody’s so serious…blah-blah-blah! I got bored.’

‘What’s happened to your sense of humour, Prof? You always used to be good for a laugh or two.’

‘Do you know the story of the woman who was snatched by the gorilla at the zoo? He pulled her inside the cage, slammed the door and started to undress her. She screamed to her husband: “What do I do Harry? What do I do?” Her husband shrugged and said, “Tell him you’ve got a headache!”’

‘There’s another version,’ said Yoko, straight-faced. ‘Where the woman steps into the cage. A few minutes later she’s back, shaking her head: “No use!” she says. “Just like my husband. Psychic impotence!” ’

‘Save your tears,’ said Yoko. ‘Next week she turned lesbian and lived happily ever after with a beauty editor.’

‘I’m in love with Hernan Castillo – and he couldn’t care less because he’s in love with Ellen Ching and she couldn’t care less either, because she’s got Franz Harsanyi but she’d rather have me, and I’m not interested.’

‘It’s a mess of worms, Professor! Which explains why I am one very bitchy lady.’

‘You’ve got your hands full already, haven’t you? What with Sally and Jenny and Martha Gilman…Don’t you yearn for that nice little bachelor apartment in Honolulu?’

‘Yes I do. You make mischief. When it snaps back and bites you, you make more mischief. That’ll scare anyone off – man or gorilla!’

‘Listen woman! We’re all lonely. All scared…Even when you’re in love you wake up in the dark and see hobgoblins on the ceiling. Look at that sea! It’s boiling! Charlie Kamakau’s out there, alone; and I sent him.’

‘And your Sally’s back there at the fire talking some mish-mash about “putting things together again”! Why isn’t she here with you?’

‘Lay off, Yoko!’ Thorkild heaved himself to his feet. ‘Sally’s had a rougher time than any of us; and she’s worried as hell because she’s almost out of drugs.’

‘I’m worried about that as well,’ said Yoko Nagamuna. ‘Which makes another little item for your log-book. I’m pregnant too. One night on the beach with Simon Cohen…and not a very good one at that! So how does that grab you, oh wise one!’

‘Don’t be! I bought it; just don’t spit in my eye. I never thought I’d say it to you; but I could use a kind word…Will you walk me down to the end of the beach?’

‘Oh yes, there is. I have a message for you. Because I belong to the opposition, they sent me as a kind of ambassador. They want you to be chief again.’

They had kept a place for him at the fire-pit. They had baked a small fish and a sweet of fei and coconut for the meal he had missed. They had appointed Lorillard to speak for them, but before he did so, Thorkild made his peace:

‘I have an apology to make. I behaved badly. I broke the contract we made together. I hope you’ll all forgive me.’

‘It’s clear that most of our problems arise out of personality conflicts. We all agree that we need to separate the conflicting elements. We also agree that we still need a chief as the focus of our unity. So we hope you’ll consent to resume, Thorkild.’

‘Martha and I, Willy Kuhio and Eva, will colonize the terraces and cultivate them. If our health holds good – and Sally will give us a regular check-up – we’ll stay there. That leaves yourself, Franz, Hernan Castillo, Briggs and Simon Cohen, five able-bodied men for the boat-building, with Carl, Tioto and the women for all the rest of the jobs. Young Mark says he would like to stay down here. If we need a rest or a change of scenery we swop jobs…Does that make sense?’

‘Until we learn to hunt or domesticate the pigs, you’ll have to supply us with fish…We’ll send you down fruit and vegetables…There’s one other thing…Subject to the general authority of the chief and the tribe, we’d like to – well – do things our own way on the terrace. No offence, but…’

‘So let’s drink to a quiet life.’ Carl Magnusson held up a bottle of liquor. ‘We’ve got six quarts left after this. We’ll give two to the mountain folk and save the rest for births and funerals!’

One thing was now abundantly clear to Thorkild. The beach-side community had the advantage in manpower; but it was now much less stable than before. It was idle to expect that either the men or the women would adjust themselves easily to a situation fraught with so much stress. So, without consulting anyone, he made a risky decision. First he called Simon Cohen and told him bluntly:

‘This is truth and consequences, sonny-boy! You’ve got one girl pregnant, and she doesn’t want you. Barbara’s carved up, but she’ll recover. I’m not a stud-master mating mares and stallions; but we’ve got to get some kind of stability into our arrangements. Those scars you’ve got tell you what happens when that stability is destroyed. So, sixty-four dollar question: what are you going to do?’

Cohen took it coolly enough. So far as life on the island was concerned, he’d as lief shack with Barbara as anyone else…She was good in bed; she had a sense of humour; and the scars wouldn’t show in the dark…Simple Simon was a pragmatist. So, no problem, no complications …

Thorkild hesitated a long time over his next move and then, uneasily, decided to pin his faith to the brusque Chinese common sense of Ellen Ching. She agreed, without hesitation, to preserve his confidence. He told her of his talk with Yoko Nagamuna, of his own fears, and of the arrangement he had concluded with Simon Cohen. He added:

Ellen Ching gave him a small, frigid smile, folded her hands in her lap and told him:

‘I learnt a long time ago that you settle for what you are and what you can have…I’ve always been a two-way switch. Yoko’s always known it but I’d as soon play girl-games with her as with a rattle-snake! Franz Harsanyi and I? Well, he’s soft and kind with a head full of dreams – a poet I guess. He thinks he’s in love with me, but that’s only because I understand him and we don’t fight, and he feels warmer with me than I do with him. If it helps you to have me as his Hausfrau, I’ve no objections – and he’ll think he’s married the Mona Lisa…If you’re wondering why I’m so easy about this you might as well know I’m not the Hakka matriarch you thought I was. I’m scared stiff of children and I’m all sewn up inside so I can’t have them.’

‘He’s cute isn’t he? Small, brown, handsome, courteous, good-humoured. The best of both worlds…But make no mistake, Chief. He’s pure artist. Solid bronze – totally self-sufficient! You heard him. What you can’t use you throw away!…Oh boy…!’

‘She’s a tough one herself. With me out of the running, she’ll make out fine. So long as Hernan’s got his sticks and stones to play with, you could mate him with a hole in a wall and he wouldn’t know the difference.’ She relaxed and gave him a sidelong sardonic smile. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Chief?’

‘Hey-hey! I’m on your side, remember! I like a nice orderly life too, which reminds me – when you’ve finished police rounds, your own girl could use a little loving care. She’s starting to fray at the edges.’

‘I also come in season like any other girl. You’re on fair notice, Chief. Don’t leave any loose change lying around. I can still be tempted!’

After which salutary counsel he went off in search of Jenny. He found her at the water’s edge scaling and cleaning fish and laying them out on fresh leaves. Her eyes lit up when she saw him and she made a comic face of disgust.

‘No…but maybe I’m about to make a big mistake. I’ve made quite a few lately.’

‘Jenny, yesterday was one of the worst days in my life…We were talking about killing a man because he couldn’t accommodate to reality. Maybe in the end I have killed him.’

‘To tell you the truth Jenny, some of the blame lies on poor Charlie himself. He turned away from real life, and ended in a world of nightmare and fantasy.’

‘Then I’ll have to make you understand. You’re the luckiest girl alive. You’ve got a good man, head-over-heels in love with you. You love him too; but you won’t admit it, because you think you’re in love with me…No don’t turn away! You’re going to hear this and understand it. I love you Jenny – but the way a father loves his daughter and wants to protect her and see she gets the best deal in life. But that’s it! End quote, period, finish! If you have fantasies about me making love to you, forget ’em! I’d be impotent – not because you’re not beautiful or desirable, but because, to me you’re kapu: forbidden! Now, there are two choices: take the sweet fruit and eat it; love the man who belongs to you; enjoy the love he’s offering you; be glad of the other love that surrounds you…Or climb that cliff, jump off, and let the sharks eat you for dinner! I’ll be sorry; we’ll all be sorry. But the next day we’ll go about our normal business; because we’ve only got a small life; and we can’t spend one more goddam bit of it on you!’

He turned on his heel and left her, squatting in the shallows, sobbing like a child over a broken doll. As he walked into the camp he found Adam Briggs, raking out the first charcoal from the kiln and putting it into baskets. Thorkild tapped him on the shoulder.

‘I didn’t give her a chance. I told her she could either marry you or feed herself to the sharks.’

‘Hell man!’ Briggs was horror-struck. ‘That’s no way to talk to the girl!’

Briggs took off like a sprinter from the block. Thorkild shrugged and went over to inspect the mash can. The mixture looked foul, but it was fermenting steadily. It was real grade A jungle juice, potent enough to put a leap on the lame or blow the heads off the unwary.

Sally Anderton was standing, drenched and dishevelled, under the cascade, washing clothes. Thorkild plunged in beside her and clasped her in his arms. ‘That’s enough, woman! Cease and desist! Chief’s orders!’

‘We’re all busy! Lorillard’s making like a great pioneer in the jungle. Franz Harsanyi and Ellen Ching are moving house. Adam, I hope, is proposing to Jenny. Castillo’s working on the plans he’s got to show me this afternoon. And you and I, my love, are going to work at being civil and sweet and sexy with each other!’

‘You have been a busy preacher, haven’t you? Three shot-gun weddings in twenty-four hours. It must be a record. I just hope they stick.’

‘Even if they don’t, it slows things down for a space…Come on, let’s see you smile.’

‘I don’t feel like smiling. I’m just goddam fed up, with myself and everyone else! And I don’t feel like making love either!’

‘Easy sweetheart! Easy! …’ He lifted her in his arms, carried her out of the pool and set her down on the soft moss of the bank and she lay there, weeping quietly, while he sponged her dry and then pillowed her head in his lap, and soothed her with soft crooning words…‘You can’t mend the world, Doctor Anderton. You can only try to go on loving it, which is sometimes harder to do than hating. One day I’ll take you up to the place where my grandfather, Kaloni, sits with his ancestors and mine. At first sight it’s eerie, shocking: old bones in a high place and the sea-birds, predatory and indifferent, wheeling over them…Then the meaning comes home to you. Those men up there had encountered all the terrors of the sea: the great storms; the long calms when the water ran out and they must suck the sea dew from rags, or chew the raw flesh of fishes to slake their thirst; the big white shark that leaps from the water to attack an unsuspecting paddler, or a woman trailing her hand in the current; the sickness and the dying and the bodies thrown overboard in the darkness…But the end, the end you see up there, is peace. They’re above the storms, beyond the reach of the highest waves. They see the sun rise and set and the great march of the constellations. The wind is a menace no longer, but music. That’s the last thing they know; and the knowing makes the past plain and the future a pillow on which to rest…You can rest too Sally; and I’ll sing you a song for your sleeping.

‘Under the pikake tree

The air is sweet,

But I cannot taste it.

The sky is full of flowers,

But I cannot see them,

Because my lover’s face

Is there

And his lips are on my mouth.’

7