Paratak, who was seldom distracted from her charm, sat next to Ḷainjin. He had watched his new friend observe the snickering, the provocative smile, and the blush on Etre’s face. He was upset and did not eat his lobster with the relish Ḷainjin expected. Later, he watched Kōkkālọk as she in turn watched the boys move their circle into the bright sun of their practice area and began playing anidep. This was one of Ḷainjin’s unorthodox methods of readying the men for the group coordination required for battle. The anidep, a solid cube the size of a man’s foot made of woven pandanus leaves, was kicked from player to player around their circle. The object was not to allow the anidep to fall to the stones upon which they pranced and clapped in unison as they played. Two claps and a kick as the square circulated about them; two claps and a kick as they launched it from one side to another. Etre was the most outstanding of the group at this sport and had evolved into the group’s shy but natural leader. As they kicked the square with the sides of their feet, now and again, a man’s private parts would bounce into view if his heel accidentally kicked up his kilt. Because of this, she was concentrating intently and being less than well behaved. She would turn to other women and laugh and point with her eyes, and this served to humiliate Paratak even more.
Later that evening, after the practice but before the group returned for jekaro, Kōkkālọk approached Ḷainjin out of Paratak’s sight with several of the netted coconut shells presented to her earlier by the boys.
“I hope you realize that I’m never satisfied by the juice of your jekaro boys,” she said. “I crave only the juice of the man who teaches them. I suppose all your jekaro is going to Liṃanṃan. She must learn to share her good fortune. Poor thing would have to break her back to please you the way I would.”
Ḷainjin could only stare into her playful eyes as she continued more softly before turning.
“None of them can douse the coal that smolders in my belly. They are the smoke that clouds our secret, but it was your drill that sparked the flame,” she said laughingly, as she turned and stepped away. Then she turned her head back once more. “Siss!” She spoke softly, as though attempting to shush a child.
Ḷainjin wondered whether her aim was to get him to cheat on Liṃanṃan or to draw him into another fight with Paratak. Or was it to draw the entire group of them against his new friend? Either way, he realized she would not stop until his Pohnpeian friend met his end, and the longer the issue went unresolved, the more counterproductive it was to their battle plans. Such, in his view, was the fatuous nature of island life, and this was what had always repelled him from it.
A few days later, from the moment he left the village path, crossed the strand, and stepped down upon the rough coral pebbles leading to the ocean reef, Ḷainjin felt the stiff eastern breeze he had been waiting for. As he began washing off his netted jekaro shells in the reef puddles on the ocean-side shore, he began looking forward to getting away, even if only for the day. He filled his palm with coarse beach pebbles and poured them through the mouth of each shell. In turn, he filled them half-full of clear ocean water, covered the mouth of each with his thumb, and shook each one until he was satisfied all residue from the previous day was dislodged from the inside of the shell. Then he shook out the pebbles and rinsed each shell thoroughly. During this morning ritual, it was his habit to focus on the colors as they slowly evolved and illuminated the eastern horizon. After the big storm, the wind had turned variable and light, with morning colors of pink and blue, but he had been waiting for a steady wind from the east and the orange and gray colors that promised to keep it steady. He wanted to explore the bird islets of the atoll’s southern fringing reef and retrace the course that Taknaṃ had set for him the evening they first arrived.
He would need hermit crabs. Therefore, after scrubbing his shells, he walked up from the reef, hung them on a kōņņat tree — hunching low beneath its ocean-stretched branches — and began overturning the large chunks of coral rubble that lined the strand. Under the second or third coral boulder, he found a hermit crab that had no doubt recently crawled there with the intention of sleeping quietly through the sunny part of the day. The armored nocturnal creature, the size of his thumb, was burrowed inside the empty shell of a sea snail and exposed only the surfaces of its large claw and armored shoulders. These aligned perfectly with the circular wall of his cave to shield the cautious crustacean from the world outside. The sea snail had probably been caught off guard by a wave, dislodged from its spot on the reef’s edge, and finally washed up on the reef flat to bake and be eaten by the hermit crab that would inherit its shell. He picked up the shell with the strange creature nestled so neatly inside and imagined it victoriously appropriating the home for itself. Then he envisioned it wading up and down the shore in the moonlight, looking for another dead carcass to pick apart, and all the while carrying its new dwelling on his back for a quick retreat in case it was accosted, for instance, by a pugnacious fish or a still-hungry night bird.
He remembered Pedpedin’s story of the invading ri-Pit, who thought they, too, were safe, wrapped up as they were in their shells of tightly woven coconut-husk fiber, only to have their glorious story of female capture come to an end by the pointy shell of a different kind of snail that once thought it, too, was safe inside its impenetrable cave. He grabbed a rounded stone from the shore, placed the snail’s shell on the flat of a rock, and with a firm tap, smashed it apart. His little friend immediately righted itself and tried to scramble away. It was to no avail, as Ḷainjin quickly picked it up by its back with one hand and pinched off its soft, digit-like abdomen with the other. The crippled creature — minus its most-treasured body part — then scrambled for cover as Ḷainjin continued to overturn other craggy-shaped boulders of sun-bleached coral that had washed up and treat the inhabitants he surprised in likewise manner until he had collected a small mound of these bite-sized marine delicacies with which he intended to catch his favorite fish. Then he stripped the leaflets from one-half of a coconut frond from a sapling he found growing above the strand, and tore them again until he had two sets of six connected leaflets. With those, he quickly wove a basket for his bait.
After jekaro, Ḷainjin announced he was going fart fishing along the southern fringing reef and, not unexpectedly, Liṃanṃan announced she would accompany him. He longed for a day of solitude, yet she wanted to visit her uncle on the westernmost islet of the atoll.
As they were about to depart, Taknaṃ brought them a stalk of Ḷainjin’s latest favorite variety of pandanus. “Bring me a big dijiñ,” she said, as she stuck her tongue out. She was imitating the fish whose gut, when the fish is quickly hauled up from the bottom, often protrudes through its mouth upon reaching the surface. She crossed her eyes at the same time in such hilarious fashion that Liṃanṃan and Ḷainjin were still laughing as they raised their sail and began gliding very slowly down the long western shaft of the adze-shaped island to an islet that lay next to the passageway into the ocean that they had targeted during the storm. Ḷainjin had to paddle them across the sheltered waters to make headway as only the very top of their sail caught the faint breezes that wound their way through the dense forests of the islet to windward.
He prized the dijiñ, or fart fish, for its firm white meat. Due to its insatiable desire for crabmeat, its thick lips, and its puckered mouth, it was very easy to catch by hook. It was true enough that the fish did invariably release gas from its anus upon landing, but he thought the ancestors should have called this the kissing fish rather than the fart fish. Sometimes, when tired, he preferred to crunch up the brittle bodies of hermit crabs, anchor his boat to a coral head, and chum the water over a period, hoping to attract a circle of fart fish. But for the most part, Ḷainjin was not the type of fisherman who was inclined toward stationary activity. He did not like to wait for luck, which to him, involved a search. As he had been raised by the sea, movement seemed the natural order of things.
Liṃanṃan, perhaps sensing him lost in thou
ght, jealously tried to capture his attention by pulling up her skirts and gently caressing his leg with her toes. Now and then, she would turn back to shore and wave innocently to someone on the shoreline. Yes, it is true he had been looking forward to a day by himself. They had intertwined their lives — with the sole exceptions being his time with the boys and with Paratak — and their private parts had become toys for each other’s child’s play. As usual, she was in the process of successfully turning his penchant for lonely introspection into the pleasure of being in her ever-desirous and ever-creative company.
“Remind me again why you wanted to come fishing today?”
“To pay my respects to Uncle.” She responded with the playful look of someone who is providing an excuse to another who knows it is a less than complete explanation. At that point, a gust of wind caught the belly of their loosely trimmed sail and blew it taut with an eruptive flap that required Liṃanṃan to further secure the line, and ṇatọọn a bit to restore balance to their accelerated advance across the now-rippling lagoon waters. As she did so, Ḷainjin watched her deftly reposition herself as she moved her rear forward and braced herself with the strong toes of her left foot, levered against the starboard hull, and those of her right, against the edge of the stern deck upon which he sat.
“But you’re probably thinking I’ll cause bad luck to your fishing by breaking your concentration!” She laughed as she determinedly kicked his knees apart and further braced herself by placing the ball of her foot directly between his thighs and forcing him to scoot quickly backward to protect his hanging parts from being scrunched. The breeze had loosened her bundled, thick hair as the wind propelled them over the deep, dark corals that marked the edge of a steep drop-off into the depths below. She freed her hair, wild and tangled, with a seductive whip of her long neck as their eyes met and her toe touched him, and then she scrunched her nose and dared giggle. “Concentrate on this, man shark!” And then she mimicked the face that her grandmother had surprised them with earlier. They laughed and laughed again as each, in turn, made the silly face and attempted to outdo the other until they approached the light blue shoal that jutted out near the island’s end.
This was where Ḷainjin wanted to begin. He reached below for their fishing lines as he abruptly released his oar to dangle from its line tied to its windward bulwark, and then began separating the two neatly coiled lines he had prepared earlier. Their craft gently turned about in a wide, drifting arc that nearly reversed their heading and left the sail flapping and their bow pointed a bit off wind. They began their drift. Liṃanṃan released their halyard and lowered the yard until it kissed the boom, both hung in place by boom halyards on either side that ran through an eye on the masthead. She took her place in the forehatch and rested her rear against the foredeck. He placed the basket of bait within reach of each at the yoke between them.
Each line ended with valuable hooks and netted sinker balls ground from kapwōr. The moment he handed her one of the lines, the competition began. Each rushed to bait their hooks, drop the weighted lines into the water, and unfurrow the lines as they slipped through their fingers. Finally, as the baits approached the sandy bottom of the light blue water below, they attempted to outchant each other.
“Tartok im kein liitiō, bwe? Ijañin eoḷōk! Ellok im toto wōt! Ellok im toto wōt!” she chanted.
“Kok, kok, kok, kok! Wōde im ajoḶe! Wōde im ajoḷe!” he responded, as each tried to out-energize the other.
Strikes came simultaneously, but while Liṃanṃan’s hands moved slowly as she carefully nursed her catch toward the surface, Ḷainjin, having lost his, whipped his line in as fast as possible, allowing it to fly into the water behind him to reach its end again and rebait his hook. She landed her fish on the outrigger platform, where, true to form, the stomach of the thing had inverted and was protruding between its thick lips. She carefully covered its head with her palm, applying pressure to prevent it from flopping, and then slid her fingers down its back to close its sharp dorsal spines before clamping it firmly between her fingers and thumb. Finally, she steered the writhing, farting fish to her mouth and crunched down on its skull to permanently quiet it. Eventually, she glanced at Ḷainjin as she wiped her mouth with the back of her wetted hand and repeated the funny face her grandmother had taught them.
In the interim, Ḷainjin had rebaited and resunk his hook and was waiting impatiently for another strike, but he could not concentrate properly, laughing as he was at her antics.
“Don’t be a sucky fish! Do not be a kissy fish! Chew down on it!” he barked good-humoredly, irritated at losing the first round. He glanced about, judging their drift and estimating where they were headed across the azure lip of the lagoon’s dark blue mouth. He knew you could only catch this fish along the lagoon’s reef slope, on the sandy bottom in light blue water, with the biggest ones caught along the stretch of fifty or so ñeñe before the edge of the steep drop-off into the atoll’s central abyss.
Liṃanṃan placed her fish on the outrigger platform and removed a big, round basket she had earlier woven from coconut leaflets and stowed in the hull beneath the foredeck. She secured it beneath the platform but above the lagoon water that gently lapped against the hull. The dark stripes of the light grayish-blue fish had faded, and all life had passed from it by the time she flopped it into the basket.
She immediately resumed fishing, and the very moment her bait hit bottom, she surprised Ḷainjin with another funny face as she attended to a second suitor, this one more hesitant than her first. He in turn whipped in his line again, only to find the bait not taken, and lowered it once more with a snarl as she landed her second fart fish and carefully disposed of it. He played out his line quickly while, at the same time, keeping it as taut as possible so he could recoil it the instant he felt the slightest tug. As soon as he hit bottom, he raised his bait a few ñeñe to avoid getting his hook caught in one of the few coral heads that dotted the shoal below. “Come on,” he growled again, as Liṃanṃan lowered her baited line once more. She made a face as he glanced at her hurrying to beat him yet again. Finally, his line went taut, as did hers, and they landed their fish nearly simultaneously. Then, as their current course at drift would take them into water too deep to fish, Ḷainjin decided to reposition their craft.
Liṃanṃan raised the halyard, and Ḷainjin sheeted in as he dipped his oar into the water. The wind quickly brought them closer to the coral at the edge of the light blue water that stretched westward, parallel to the fringing reef connecting the island’s sandy tip to the first of a series of reef-connected islets and cays. They each caught a fish there, and then Ḷainjin sailed them past the first islet — the shoal there had too many corals and dropped off too rapidly. They soon reached a long stretch of open reef with downward-sloping sand that preceded the bird islets where Ḷainjin expected his fart fish to be plentiful. The sun was still low in the sky and the wind still cool against their skin when they began their drift. The moon had been small in the western sky before sunrise, and the time of spring tides had passed so the reef would not drain bare. The sound of buñtokrōk swelling upon its southern edge was less dramatic than would have been the case a few days past. They drifted three times toward the first bird islet, and the fishing was so productive they tacked back twice to repeat their drift. The light blue water where these fish circled by day and slept by night was of moderate depth. Near the end of the afternoon, their basket was full, and Liṃanṃan had many fish to take as tribute to her uncle but ended up embarrassed by a small mishap that resulted in a learning experience for her.
Fart fish liked to circle coral heads and feed close to the sandy bottom surrounding them. They had been fishing with about ten ñeñe of line in waters that varied between five and ten ñeñe in depth, and Ḷainjin had been warning her to keep her bait above any coral heads over which they drifted. She continued to catch more fish than he did, primarily — as they found out — because she had been fishing dangerously close to t
hem. Of course, she eventually ran out of luck and got her line snagged!
About halfway through the afternoon, as the wet fiber line was slipping though his calloused fingers, her sudden, frantic cry surprised him.
“Ḷōpako, my hook is caught on the coral. What should I do?”
He handed her his line and told her to retrieve it. Then he grabbed his oar and quickly paddled into the wind, his immense strength easily overcoming the friction of their outstretched sail to bring them back across the rippling water to the spot above the coral head she had snagged. Once she had recovered his line, he asked her to attempt to free her line while he continued to paddle windward of the spot where it had caught. For some reason, she was unable to free her tackle and became visibly frightened by his gasping in and out for breath — like a man dying — but he had no time to explain. He untied the oar, gave it to her, and told her to keep paddling from the bow. He jumped up onto the yoke behind her and just as quickly dropped his kilt. He then dove into the water, found the line, and caught it with the thumb of his outstretched hand. He followed it downward through the blurry water, his big feet propelling him toward the white sand that surrounded the dark mound of coral on the bottom. About halfway down, the pain in his head became too intense for him to continue. Holding onto the line, he temporarily inverted by releasing half the air in his lungs. Then he pinched his nose, sneezed hard to relieve the pain, and dove again, down to the line’s end. There, he released the last of his air. Without buoyancy and sitting amid the coral, he peacefully untangled her line and gave it two gentle tugs as a sign for her to retrieve it.
Man Shark Page 23
