“Paratak, I’m jealous! He should have given me the title! Here, Ḷōpako, scratch one on my tit so I can get tribute too!”
“No! No! Do not mar your beauty. Scar for old turtle like me! Ḷōpako bring you tribute every day. No need scar!”
“Then I’ll have him make me an eel pit, and if he breaks his bargain, I’ll push him in,” she responded.
“Only one problem, lucky for Ḷōpako: no stones,” Paratak said.
“Then I’ll have him throw the eels down a well,” she argued.
The men looked at each other with laughter in their eyes and then turned to Liṃanṃan and responded.
“You must build on reef,” said Paratak.
“Sea eels cannot drink well water,” added Ḷainjin.
“Oh, so you two are in absolute agreement on this! Well, I am going to consult with Likōkkālọk. We may build it in the passageway between the islands — big enough for both of you! Ḷōpako, how did you catch the eels for this high chief whatever his name? No tricks allowed this time! Paratak will be my witness if you lie to me!”
“If I tell you how I caught the eels, do you promise to grant us a pardon and not throw us into your pit with them?”
“I promise to consult with Paratak, and if he agrees you are telling the truth and if you show me, not just tell me, I will agree to spare your life. However, you must still bring tribute to me, twice a day! I need fattening up!”
The two men looked at each other with laughter still in their eyes. “If you show her how to trap eels, she can catch herself and we have big trouble,” Paratak offered.
“But If I don’t show her, we get no pardon and we are in bigger trouble!” Ḷainjin said.
“We caught either way.”
“Trapped like eels ourselves,” Ḷainjin agreed.
“Women of Rālik too demand.”
“They give us no rest.”
“They moon,” Paratak cried. He laughed and pointed to the round, white ball shining at them in the clear eastern horizon.
“That is right! We are the tide forced to chase after them to and fro!”
“No rest!”
“They can’t even make up their minds! They call us to shore, and as soon as we get there, they send us away again!”
“Very demand!”
“Not at all like women of Pohnpei, wouldn’t you say?” Ḷainjin said.
“No demand,” the Pohnpeian responded.
“That’s right, and they treat us like chiefs! Every night they rub us down with coconut oil.”
“And bring shell of sakau from flat stone that sing out.”
“Right, and…”
“Enough! You men stick together like a circle of pathetic baitfish! That is why you are so easy for us women to catch. Now stop stalling, and show me how you caught those eels for that chief surrounded by all those Pohnpeian female sucker fish!”
“All right, I’m going to demonstrate. Here, you be my eel.”
Ḷainjin took one of Paratak’s baskets to cushion her rear and sat her down upon large boulders on the shore just above him.
“Pretend this is the crevice at the reef’s edge that you searched out and found and made into a home that you never want to abandon. You will eat every fish that enters your little domain. The waves are breaking on the reef above you, and there is much current. You sway your head back and forth as the current swishes in and out of your crevice so your prey gets used to seeing you move back and forth and is less likely to escape your lunge when you make your move to grasp it. Go ahead. You must sway your body to and fro like an eel.”
Liṃanṃan began swaying back and forth, carefully keeping her legs tightly covered by her skirts in deference to Paratak as she sat above him.
“No, not like that — put a wriggle into it! Use your shoulders more!”
Giggling, she began to sway in a slow, squirming motion, and Ḷainjin rushed up the strand. He cut a stick the length of his hand and the thickness of his thumb and began to sharpen it at both ends as he watched her swaying about on the rock. Paratak started laughing at her, but that only seemed to encourage her the more.
“Come and catch me, man shark,” she dared. She opened her mouth, revealing her perfect white teeth in the moonlight, and then made a ridiculous face that made both men laugh.
Ḷainjin made a notch toward one end of the sharp stick. Taking the fiber cord from her fire bow and securing it at the notch, he told Paratak to stand by at the ready with his basket and resumed his instruction.
“First we need to change that mouth! You have the mouth of a turtle. It works like this.” He demonstrated by hinging his large hands at the wrists and opening and closing them.
“This is your mouth talking all day with your sister,” he joked. He kept his wrists hinged and clapped repeatedly as he encouraged Paratak to play the part of her sister, Joḷọk. Ḷainjin began imitating Liṃanṃan talking to Joḷọk, and Paratak imitated him.
“Paratak, stop talking and ready your basket! Liṃanṃan! Why have you stopped swaying? You must enchant your prey with your movement, back and forth, back and forth. That’s better!”
Ḷainjin stood back and watched his silly-looking actors as they played their parts in his little demonstration. He laughed to himself and wondered what these antics would look like from the perspective of an onlooker. “Surely, this little play would memorialize their adventure on the reef like no other,” he thought, as he glanced at the moon. It had shrunk as it rose but was now illuminating the vast expanse before them and reflecting up from the calm, glistening puddles of water spread across the desolate reef flat in both directions.
“An eel’s mouth,” he continued, “works like this.” He demonstrated again with his hands. This time, he unhinged them at the wrists, moving one up and one down and back together again to demonstrate how an eel can grasp and hold onto something much larger than its small mouth.
“Liṃanṃan, your mouth is too small. Use your arms to extend your eel body and pretend your hands are your mouth. Do not stop swaying! Remember you are doing a little dance to mesmerize your prey.”
“Paratak, you stop swaying! You are not the eel here! You must stand ready on the reef to entrap this thing once I coax it from its hole in the reef!”
“Ready now!” cried Paratak.
“All right, now both of you keep this up while I fetch my bait.”
Both continued to enact their parts, with Liṃanṃan periodically pretending to lunge at Paratak and him pretending to respond by threatening to cover her with his basket. Both continued to laugh at the other’s silly poses as Ḷainjin rushed back up the strand to break a terminal cluster of leaves from a kōņņat branch.
“This is my delicious-looking fish,” he explained, opening the slipknot at the end of the bow string. He tied it to the stick he had sharpened at both ends, slipped it over his hand, and tightened it around the wrist that held the fish of leaves.
“Now here comes the fish,” he announced, holding the stick in his hand but concealing it beneath the leaves. “Liṃanṃan, keep swaying to entice the fish leaves to come closer. Now you are ready — lunge at the fish and clasp hold of it!”
She clapped her hands over the fish leaves, and at the same time, Ḷainjin pivoted his hand, causing the stick to twist vertically and preventing her from pressing down upon his hand.
“That hurts!” she cried. He pulled her toward him off the rock, which she abandoned without hesitation to alleviate the pain in her hands from the sharpened stick. At which point Paratak threw the basket over her head. He hugged the feisty, squealing woman with much pleasure on his face as Ḷainjin tugged on the twine and freed the pointed stick from her grasp.
“Paratak! Refuse to release her until she grants us reprieve from her eel pit!”
“Okay! Okay!” she cried, as his little demonstration came to a satisfactory end. The trio settled back down and made themselves as comfortable as possible on the cragged coral stones. Liṃanṃan ke
pt Paratak’s basket as a prize and placed it below her to soften her nest. He did the same and Ḷainjin sprawled out upon the stones, happy enough, just this once, to be perched above the ocean and not amid its constant flux. The tide was almost out. The coral caverns at the reef’s edge echoed the incessant plunging sounds of the swells thundering into them and then sucking the water from their shallow cliffs before flooding them once again with splashing, moonlit froth.
“Paratak, tell us the story of your journey from Pohnpei to Rālik in that tiny canoe of yours.”
“That, was one big mistake!”
“A big mistake because you ended up here, or because the cause of your voyage was due to a mistake!”
“Yes!” he answered, missing the distinction Ḷainjin was trying to draw from him. “Fishing was too good!”
Ḷainjin had suspected such. He knew a root cause of much misfortune at sea was a fisher not heeding the weather looming about him because his attention was absorbed elsewhere. Not so the navigators, who pride themselves on planning their every move based on the surrounding sky. “Paratak’s voyage was a lucky one despite the hardship, but was caused by a poor decision,” he thought, and then considered dropping the inquiry, assuming Paratak would prefer to tell the story among men — suspecting, of course, that a woman like Liṃanṃan would prove incapable of keeping the Pohnpeian’s admission of foolishness to herself.
“Fishing good — catching fat, black-brown fish with big mouth,” he continued.
“That must be Paratak’s way of describing the fish called kūro,” Ḷainjin thought, then cringed at the idea of having to sustain himself by eating such a fish raw. He hated eating the uncooked, soft flesh of fish that moped about the bottom of the lagoon, preferring the more muscular flesh, when eaten raw, of the fast swimmers or even the reef chewers.
He offered to change the subject. “You mean kūro. Did anyone ever tell you that you can catch that fish by the boatful in the passageways to the ocean during the moon preceding añōneañ?”
“No understand añōneañ,” replied Paratak.
Ḷainjin was about to elaborate on one of his favorite subjects when Paratak interrupted him and returned to his story. “Bad weather all day — many cloud,” he began, waving his hands above him as if drawing clouds against the background of the clear night sky. “My father warns me, no good to fish” — he scrunched his brow and shook his finger to demonstrate his father cautioning him — “but I take his canoe because my family need fish to eat.” Paratak trailed both hands, palms cupped, behind him, pretending to pull a canoe by its outrigger platform across the sand. “That one is strong canoe, but not to sail.” He pretended to paddle. “I paddle but wind too strong for favorite place to fish so I paddle downwind. Then I set anchor to fish. It is good to fish, that place. By afternoon many fish but wind more strong and cloud…” He pointed his index finger to the sky again and whistled as he flicked it forward repeatedly to demonstrate how quickly the clouds were passing overhead. As he held his hand out in front of him, he began demonstrating waves on the surface of the water by repeatedly scooping his fingers down and then up. “Enough fish! Time to go home,” he continued.
Ḷainjin recognized these signs as characteristics of a ļañ eḷap in the making. Paratak couldn’t have been directly in its path or he never would have survived, but the gradually increasing wind and the upper clouds streaming faster than the wind generating the surface waves below were both classic signs, and he knew exactly what was coming next. Paratak had trapped himself!
“But no can pull up anchor!” Paratak pretended to paddle furiously and then placed his imaginary oar at his side to pull on an imaginary anchor line to no avail.
“What was his problem?” asked Liṃanṃan, captivated by the panic Paratak was trying to demonstrate.
“His first mistake was to fish too long and allow the wind to trap him at anchor.”
“How?”
Ḷainjin explained. “He can’t reach a vantage point to release it. Every time he paddles to where there is enough slack to release the anchor stone lodged in the coral below… By the time he lays aside his paddle and grabs the line, the wind carries the canoe back and blows his anchor line taut again. He’s stuck.”
“Why can’t he just cut the line?”
“Well, if he loses his father’s anchor line, his father will be proved right in warning him not to go fishing. He has caught many fish, so he has accomplished his goal despite the rough conditions. He wants to try once again, and then once more. It becomes a matter of pride,” Ḷainjin said.
Paratak nodded. “Yes, yes, I have father’s knife. Father has many knife but only one anchor line. So I keep trying to free, but wind gets stronger and stronger and now my arms hurt and sky getting dark and I’m all—”
“Frustrated out of your mind,” Ḷainjin said.
“Oh, no, now he cuts the line! Now that it’s too late…” Liṃanṃan said. “He should have just stayed—”
Ḷainjin cut her short with a frown.
“Now too late,” conceded Paratak, his head between his palms, his elbows on his knees. He’d been seemingly transported back to the instant after he cut the line and his canoe blew off, like a leaf in the storm. “I paddle hard but wind and wave push me out into ocean.”
Now Paratak had reached the part of his story that Ḷainjin had been curious about. He asked, “How did you ever survive in that tiny fishing canoe?!”
“Paddle into night but still drifting out to sea. Wave break on bow and make water into boat so must bail.” He went on repeatedly depicting the paddling and the bailing and demonstrating increasing weariness as he continued. “So one by one, I must throw away my black-brown fish.” He portrayed himself reluctantly tossing away his fish, a difficult task and last resort for any fisherman or survivor who realized they will have one less fish to eat.
“Give me one,” interrupted Liṃanṃan, interjecting a little levity into the Pohnpeian’s sad story. He chuckled as he pretended to throw her a fish.
“This would have made a marvelous meal for your family,” she went on, pretending to bite right into the middle of the fish and then pretending to eat it.
“Then my father speaks to me and tells me to tie bailer to one wrist and my paddle to other and tie my knife to outrigger boom.”
Ḷainjin broke in. “Just in time,” he said.
“Just in time,” Paratak nodded. Next wave swamp canoe, and I jump into water to bail out and then again and same again until I realize cannot paddle. I cannot stay inside boat! Must tie wrist with loop under outrigger platform, hang in water, and let wind carry.”
“Oh, Paratak, that was very, very smart! That made up for everything you did wrong. That was perfect! Liṃanṃan, do you understand what he thought to do?”
“No.”
“He gave up his futile attempt to paddle back to the island, so he put his boat into a dead drift with his kubaak naturally facing the wind and his hull no longer pointing into the waves. That prevented any further swamping. Then he tied down everything he needed to survive. He got into the water next to his bailed canoe. He tied the leftover anchor line to his wrists, strapped himself to his outrigger platform with his arms slung over his hull, and just hung there. He was resting with his head suspended out of the water, but his body was drifting under his boat as the waves pushed it along. His weight lifted his kubaak and probably even helped to prevent his hull from swamping again. Very clever, Paratak! How many fish did you have left, after all the swamping?”
“Eleven.”
“When did you start to eat them?”
“Right away. I ate two first night!
“During one night, you ate two raw kūro? That is disgusting! That’s like gnawing off both your feet,” Liṃanṃan joked.
“I cleaned them. I skinned them. I ate them — all of them. What would you do?”
“I’d dry them in the sun and ration them day by day,” she answered.
“Next day, no s
un! Only wind and rain for two days.”
“He did exactly the right thing,” Ḷainjin said, in defense of the Pohnpeian’s strategy. “He ate all he had before it spoiled. Then he collected enough rainwater to sustain him on his long journey.”
“Paratak!” cried Liṃanṃan, kicking him hard on the knee with the heel of her foot. “You ate eleven raw kūro in one night and one day? How did you do that?”
He looked at her with a shy grin on his face, as though she was his mother scolding him. “They fit inside,” he answered, holding his arms wide as if to say there was nothing else he could do. “I am hungry. I am cold.” Then he smiled broadly. “So hungry I could eat your foot!” he joked, pretending to grab hold of it, and they all laughed at his joke.
“How many days before you got back into your boat?” asked Ḷainjin, wondering how he survived the cold sickness. “Perhaps by keeping his torso out of the water as much as possible,” he was thinking.
“In, out — too many times — keep trying because cold — keep swamping because wave — day three, much rain but less wind. I clean boat, collect rainwater, and paddle for island.”
“How did you know which direction to paddle?” asked Liṃanṃan.
“Only one way to paddle in big wave — keep behind!”
She looked to Ḷainjin for interpretation.
“The typhoon missed the island but set up a tailwind that generated immense eastward-flowing waves. These waves interfaced with kāleptak, an eastward-flowing current—”
Liṃanṃan interrupted. “I know kāleptak. My father is a navigator.”
“Okay, so because he realized it was futile to try to fight both wave and current, he turned away from his island and followed the surge eastward.” He turned to Paratak. “How many days did you paddle?”
“Two days strong — then one day weak — then too much hungry to continue… So I removed outrigger plank, lie on boat water in hull, and cover face with paddle to die.” Demonstrating, he lay down on the stones with his arms on his chest and pretended to sleep.
Man Shark Page 21
