At that instant, however, he awoke to find Joḷọk ever so gently tickling his manhood with her self-appointed fingers, causing him to erupt a second embarrassing time. Her self-satisfied, victorious grin seemingly reiterated that she, Joḷọk, was proudly — if temporarily — in control of his sexual life.
Perhaps noting the look of astonishment on his face and wanting to avoid a scolding, she rushed into the garden to draw water as though nothing of consequence had occurred, but he was sure it had. “This young one is good throated but vulnerable to the extreme,” he thought. He had heard of this sort of thing practiced by younger sisters, and it always seemed to end in some sort of disharmony. A man could spill his seed as casually as his bird could poop his goo, but a woman, whether she admits it or not, could not match a man for indifference. In his simple view, he must be careful not to carve a scar inside her. For deep down in their nature — he was now thinking remorsefully of Wisina — a woman, no matter how strong, seemed to crave permanence more than any man. They alone inherited the land and they tied themselves to it. They were the holes along the reef. The ṃaj traveled freely from one to another. “But what about the hole that no ṃaj entered?” he thought. “Would that hole not crave companionship? Was she not ready to comfort nearly any ṃaj that entered?” Yet she was, by nature, unable to cling to the ṃaj. So she longed for him to sink his tail into her innermost cranny, to cling and comfort her there. But alas, he was physically unable to do so and was destined to merely scull backward or forward, maybe to abandon or maybe not. Maybe to be a good companion, maybe to be bad. To him, there was no such thing as a bad hole, only one that was lonely or jealous. But for her to feign indifference or resignation, as the proverb suggested, was to deny her very nature — or so he thought.
Ḷainjin rinsed his face at the well and walked over to the boathouse. There, he grabbed his ring, looped it around the belt of his kilt, and set off along the neat, coral-stone pathway leading toward the ocean side of the island. Here and there, girls were climbing out of their thatched, stilted houses to begin their morning chores. Some were drawing water from wells while others were filling their hands with fallen yellow-and-brown leaves, from the breadfruit trees that shaded the village, and tossing them into compost piles. Perched here and there in a flat-footed stoop, they watched him pass and invariably acknowledged his passing with a multipurpose iọkwe. Boys began to follow in a silent, respectful line behind him. He felt them quietly push and shove to establish a sort of pecking order, probably based on who would address him first should he turn to speak with them. He stopped at each coconut tree and carefully inspected its individual characteristics. He was looking for the healthiest trees, ones that enjoyed good sunlight, had a full crown of fronds, and bore heavy stalks of fruit — but the nuts with lots of water as opposed to the elongated ones with little water used to make rope. On occasion, he would glance back at the boys and catch one or another jokingly imitating his movements. He would smile and the group would break into laughter.
As they continued toward the ocean-side shore, the forest of breadfruit trees began to thin and the coconut trees became more prevalent. He noticed a curious symbol carved into the base of the oldest and tallest trees. When he asked the boys what the symbol meant, they said, in unison, “Aorak.”
“You mean the aorak shell?” he asked them.
“Yes, the aorak shell,” they repeated.
“What does it mean?”
The boys looked at each other, but none wanted to venture an answer.
“Bwebwenato,” said one of the older boys. “Ask Ḷōpedpedin.”
As Ḷainjin proceeded along the path, the coconut groves began to give way to pandanus trees, nearly every branch of which he found laden down at its tip with a single, humungous composite fruit of various shades of orange and green. Just before he arrived at the ocean-side shore, he came to what was obviously the last of the prime coconut trees that he wanted to inspect. He pulled the strips of pandanus that fringed his kilt through his legs from behind and tucked them between his stomach and the waist of his kilt. Then he grabbed onto the trunk with one strong hand on each side and leaned back as he hopped onto it. With his knees spread wide below his chest and his feet flat and pointed out, horizontal to the ground, he hung in balance effortlessly. Reaching upward with both arms and then, grasping higher up on the trunk, he hopped again, still hanging in balance. He repeated this until he reached the top, grabbed one of the sturdiest-looking fronds, and raised himself into the crown.
“Which one of you is coming up?” he challenged the boys.
They looked at each other again, and then one of the older lads charged the tree and began climbing. The others made fun of him because, in his hasty enthusiasm, he had forgotten to pull a tail between his legs and tuck it into the waist of his kilt, so his butt crack and dangling manhood showed there for all to laugh at. From the top of the tree, Ḷainjin felt a refreshing breeze as he watched the dim yellow-orange glare of the sun peeking through the gray clouds on the horizon. It illuminated the troughs, and it gave shadow to the crests as they curled upon the reef’s edge and rippled across the flat before splashing against the rocks, shorehead, and coral stones that covered the rock-strewn shore.
“That was the source of the stones covering the path and the source of the mound of stones the village rested upon,” he thought. He imagined women coming and going, each carrying a coconut-leaf basket through the village, ostensibly to gather stones. This, of course, would mask their true goal, to empty their bowels at the water’s edge and allow the outgoing tide to disperse the contents onto the vast reef and surrounding waters. He struggled to calculate the concept of a single basket of stones per woman per day. How many hundreds of seasons must it have taken to create the path and raise the height of the village by a hand or two? Then, of course, the women would declare “stone mornings,” when the lot of them would gather and form a procession to pass the baskets, one to another, to cover over a chosen area. Yet again, how many of these stone mornings did it take to raise the village to its current height?
Meanwhile, the boy had reached the spiraled crown of the tree, tucked in his tail and maneuvered himself until he was leaning against a frond across from him. “Iọkwe,” said Ḷainjin, acknowledging the lad. “They call me—”
“Ḷōpako!” proclaimed the adolescent with a laugh.
“And what is your name?”
“Etre.”
“Is your mother from this island?” he asked.
The boy raised his eyebrows and wheezed in customary affirmation.
Then Ḷainjin asked him, “Do any of the men of this island make jekaro?”
The boy lowered his eyebrows, raised his lower lip, and twitched his head abruptly one time to indicate no.
“Do you know what jekaro is?”
Ḷainjin got the same response.
“Good for you. That means you have the opportunity to be the first man on your island to learn how.”
The adolescent beamed with eagerness.
“Okay, we’ve been looking for the best prospects, but there’s no way to tell if a tree is a good tree for jekaro until you cut it to see if it bleeds well. Did you know that a coconut tree produces one bunch of coconuts under each moon?”
The boy, not one for words, wheezed and simultaneously raised his eyebrows in agreement.
“What is this?” asked Ḷainjin, pointing, and forcing a response.
“Jinniprañ,” the boy responded.
“Right, we call that jinniprañ. Once it breaks open, it has these little branches,” continued Ḷainjin, touching them with his finger to illustrate. “Look at all these little flowers on each branch. Some of these flowers will grow into those tiny yellow coconuts you see on this one over here.
“What’s this?” asked Ḷainjin, putting his hand on a green flower bud nearly as thick as his curled hand and almost as long as the boy’s arm.
“Utak ṇe,” he answered.
“Right
, this is the bud from which the jinniprañ will burst. The tree sprouts one from the base of every frond, and the little yellow coconuts begin to grow on it. Under the moon’s cycles, they turn green, and after a season, the coconuts are good to drink. After two seasons, or around thirteen cycles of the moon, the coconut husk starts to turn brown. The shell inside has become hard, and the meat is ready to grate and jiraal.”
“Correct.” The boy laughed as he nodded abruptly.
“Here, look at this one.” Ḷainjin showed him a new bud sprouting from the next of the remaining fronds spiraling up and around the crown of the tree. “Exactly after one moon’s cycle, it will be the size of the other one and it will be ready to cut. In other words, we can start tapping one new flower bud each cycle of the moon. The day to start is either maroklep or jetñōl.”
“But maroklep was three nights ago.”
“So we are late, and the bud won’t drip at its full potential. But you’ll like the taste, and it will fill you up and strengthen your spirit. I was raised drinking jekaro as a substitute for my mother’s milk. It’s good for you,” said Ḷainjin, as he took his knife and cut off the top of the bud in one swift motion. “Think about this, do you know of any living thing stronger than a coconut tree? Is it not what you will tie yourself to when the ļañ eḷap brings ocean water over the island? Jekaro is the blood of this tree. Think about the strength you will get from drinking it. Okay, that is it for your first directions. I will meet you here at sunset for your next lesson. Don’t be late! If the girls are still luring you to hang around the pandanus patch, I’ll have to assign your tree to another lad or take it for myself.”
“Not me. The girls make fun of me,” admitted Etre.
“Well, just wait! They will line up to ask for a sip of your jekaro!” Ḷainjin told him. The boy beamed a second time and tilted his head in disbelief.
Ḷainjin climbed back down from the tree and launched himself back down the path to the next one he had decided to inspect. “Who’s next?”
And so it went until they had cut a bud on all the trees that were on the new moon cycle. The others, he explained, would be ready in ten or eleven days. His legs were very sore from all the climbing, and he needed to rest.
Back at the irooj’s dwellings, Taknaṃ was steeping nen fruit placed in rainwater in a jāpe atop the hot stones of her uncovered earth oven. She motioned to him to join her for a coconut shell of the traditional morning tea. He entered the open-sided, thatched cookhouse and sat with her before the still, smokeless hearth, slowly sipping the distasteful — yet supposedly healthy — liquid from a coconut-shell cup. He noticed that pāle were stored in the rafters beneath the soot-blackened ceiling, a peculiar custom that seemed to him would invite an unwanted fire.
“I’m told Jebrọ was busy shunting his mast to and fro last night,” the old woman joked.
Ḷainjin was not sure how much she knew about the events that had transpired the night before. He was reluctant to comment and just stared at her with the look, he supposed, of a trapped bird.
“Naturally, my son hopes you choose the eldest, if only to fulfill her wishes. Her happiness is his paramount concern, but he would gladly grant you the younger. She vexes him so. As far as I am concerned, you can take your pick of either. They are as different as day is from night. They have always been that way. One is a leader who thinks for herself, manages others, has a mind of her own, and rarely takes advice. The other seeks only to please others, does not think for herself, works hard, and always does what she must with joy in her throat. The older will spend her nights talking to you about the events of the day; the younger will spend the day talking to others about the events of the night!” Breaking into laughter, Taknaṃ said, “A man would have a much simpler and happier life with the younger one!”
“Litaknaṃ, I’m not a man to turn back. I think before I set sail. I may adjust my course, but I never turn back, because I am confident I can handle what is ahead!”
“That’s why they are all crazy for you! You know how to think or not think, and they see your experience in your eyes. You come from the sea, where you had to teach yourself to not think or go crazy with fear and loneliness. Most men we sleep with — and even the sons we raise — will never venture out to where you have been. They will live their lives letting their little ṃaj control their thoughts. As you know, the ṃaj is an ugly, tenacious fish. It’s too bad we women crave to be tickled by such things that have sharp teeth pointed back into their throats, making escape from their grasp nearly impossible.”
“Not impossible,” countered Ḷainjin, running his fingers over his forearm. The old woman could not resist running her crooked fingers with swollen knuckles over his scars as well.
“The bigger they are, the more serious their grasp on us,” laughed Taknaṃ. “Those are the marks of a seriously large dāp!”
“These marks are from many more than one.”
“I’m looking forward to those stories, but who can tame things like that? It is true that most women are too willing to settle for the first man with a hard mast to sit on, but desire lasts only until you spy something more desirable walking down the village path. You are a thinker to match her. You think about what you need to say, and you think about what not to say. Maybe you will be happier with the older one. At least you will never be bored; you can spend your lives trying to outthink each other. Here, I’m going to get something to show you.”
She went to the house and brought back a large, rolled-up sleeping mat. “This is the sleeping mat the irooj will carry under his arm this evening when he brings Liṃanṃan to you. That is right! This evening you will have her all to yourself. I want you to know that I pounded and pounded the leaves to give her the softest mat possible for this night,” she said, pointing with her eyes to the dekein nin. Have you ever felt a softer mat? This shows the deep regard I hold for my granddaughter, and for the man she has chosen for her very first night. It’s big enough to cover you both under and over, and hide the unspeakable things you intend to do to each other!” She broke into uncontrollable laughter and soothed the uneasiness he felt from the night before.
“Here, eat!” She produced a small basket of the same delicacies he had tasted the evening before. He began eating with gusto.
“So, what do you think of Likōkkālọk? You cannot say we did not warn you about her tricks. Isn’t that the kilt she made for you?”
“What you warned about certainly came to pass,” he replied, continuing to eat. Taknaṃ seemed to enjoy watching him relish the food.
“What I didn’t expect was her telling me the same story you told. I have to respect her straightforward honesty.”
“Respecting her is good, but wearing that kilt is not. That is bait, to give Paratak an excuse to attack you. She is probably hoping you will kill him. He must have watched her making it and would have expected she was making it for him. If he sees you wearing that, it will turn him crazy!”
“Maybe that’s why I put it on,” he said, reaching into the basket and taking out another crisp pouch of breadfruit infused with coconut milk. “Why not get this over with?”
“Well, wouldn’t you want to see him first so you at least know what your adversary looks like?”
“It wouldn’t make any difference. A bully will taunt another man into a fight. A killer will study his prey for a long time and patiently plan the kill, but that also gives his prey an opportunity to foil his plan. One way or the other, I will be able to ‘outthink,’ as you put it, this Pohnpeian — whoever he is, whatever his approach. He cannot be very crafty, getting himself caught at sea in a Pohnpeian fishing canoe. As far as I know, the smart Pohnpeian does not venture out to sea. They pay us to do that!”
He thanked her for the food and retired back into the quiet of his luxurious abode, where he rested on his mat and considered the exciting prospect of the night ahead.
Early that afternoon, Joḷọk brought more food and announced that her father was rea
dy for their walk. So after eating, Ḷainjin left the house he had been awarded and appeared before the irooj, whom he found sitting on a mat laid upon coral stones spread beneath a stilted house that seemed no different from any of the other thatched abodes on the island. Ḷainjin sat before him.
The irooj was admiring the lure he had given him. “I don’t believe this is an unlucky lure. It appears finely crafted — designed to trail flat in the water and not spin. You gifted this to me with rare humility, considering the gift you seek in return.”
“I did not offer that gift as a trade for your daughter. Had I expected you to trade, I would have gifted you more, as I have many others. I thought to myself, ‘How can you trade a wild bird?’ Instead, I offered you the heart of the tuna as a symbol of my willingness to serve you as my chosen’s father. One day a big fish will break that lure away, and it will end up at the bottom of the ocean. Yet on that day, I will serve you still. If the lure is as lucky as you expect it to be, then by that day, my children will surround you and listen to your story of how the big fish got away with it.”
“You are a quiet man, yet you have a gift for speaking,” the irooj acknowledged, slipping the lure into his alele, on the mat next to him. I will grant you my daughter because she wishes it, but first let us walk together.” He led them out from under the house, and they started down the same stone pathway toward the ocean side of the island that Ḷainjin had followed earlier. Perhaps judging that the distance he wanted to cover would take half the afternoon and wishing to avoid the customary hospitality his workers would extend to them, the irooj began their stroll at a strong pace, as a signal to discourage his workers from stopping them as they strolled deliberately by. It was not customary to call out to an irooj, but there was much friendly and repetitive arm waving as they quickly made it all the way to the ocean before the older man began to slow down and speak in earnest.
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