“Remember me!” teased Liṃanṃan, who had dropped on her knees to the sand to watch his gluttonous exhibition. She now flicked a few fingers of sand at the bird and stood to watch him turn, peer directly at her, and retract his head as though threatening to lunge his beak in response.
She responded, “That’s it, no doubt about it! What a character! I’d roast it on hot rocks before it dies if there was any meat left on it!”
Ḷainjin took the dying octopus from the limb, taking pains to bury it deep in the sand in a place the boy could easily retrieve it, and made him promise to feed the rest of it to the bird daily until he could return. Liṃanṃan teased the bird one more time, and then she and the boy retraced the steps of their mission back to her uncle’s island. Ḷainjin followed, his temperament revived by the events of the day and his throat warmed by the hope that his friend would survive, but he wondered what might have happened to his mate.
Soon they arrived at the pointy beachhead of coarse, brilliant sand that protruded eastward onto the reef at the island’s tip. They were met by two small girls, whom he surmised were the boy’s sisters. Each wore an orange kōņo flower behind each ear. They had emerged hesitantly, and approached as the three trudged up the slowly rising shore. They brought kōņo flower leis, and Ḷainjin had to bow low to allow the girls to shyly, gleefully place them about his neck. They climbed the strand together and entered the shade of her uncle’s village, which, unexpectedly, was immaculately forested and conscientiously kept. There sat countless neatly thatched homes, boat shelters, and cookhouses, all resting upon individual courtyards of coral stone and strung along the interior of a path along the lagoon, beneath the shade of landscaped coconut palms and breadfruit trees. Here and there behind the homes toward the interior were neatly trimmed patches of banana trees.
They followed the path, which was lined periodically with coral slabs half-buried and turned upright and that, no doubt, traced the lagoon shoreline of the islet from end to end. From each home along the path sprang more women with flower leis to drape around their necks until neither could see the path before them without placing a hand to press them close. A cool breeze was gratefully blowing shoreward through the narrow strip of manicured, twisted-trunk pandanus trees. Their sparsely forked, gnarled limbs each ended in green tufts of long, shiny leaves and a single gigantic fruit of spiky, green nodules. Some of these were ripe, and the yellow or orange trim between the nodules’ green caps caught Ḷainjin’s eye. He got the impression that not a single fruit would drop without a hand to catch and process it. These had been purposefully planted along the strand above the lagoon shore, apparently to block the wind of añōneañ that, each season, would sweep the multicolored azure lagoon into a sunstorm blur of salty wind and bluish-gray, whitecapped waves. These trees had blocked his view of this magnificent village on the evening of their arrival. They had sailed past all this on their way to Taknaṃ’s island. At that time, looking shoreward, he could view only the canoes and the fishermen who were unloading them along the lagoon beach.
Everyone, no matter what age, seemed to be engaged in some endeavor. Here, a woman sat softening her pile of pandanus leaves by chafing them around a hardwood stake. There, an elder was felling breadfruit with a long pole amid the branches of a large breadfruit tree. In this cookhouse, a fire was ablaze; in that one, the thin, white smoke of a soon-to-be-covered earth oven was wafting out between its walls of the blackened, upright shafts of split coconut fronds. Children were fetching this and that for their elders while others were scampering among the gentle waves as they lapped upon the lagoon shore and rushed halfway up the sandy beach. They all turned to acknowledge their presence before returning to their work or play. The bestowal of leis continued as they approached the village center, where Ḷainjin’s proa miraculously sat beneath the shade of her uncle’s own boathouse. Close by, in the middle of the village center, a group of young athletes had circled and were clapping and playing a game of anidep.
Liṃanṃan’s uncle, Ḷōtokjān, was standing alone in front of his large, thatched house, which rested on uprights of seasoned coconut trunks. The two men nodded at each other. Tokjān was a man of good humor whose eyes seemed permanently a-twinkle, as though amused by whatever situation he faced. He also appeared acutely aware of everyone and everything in his surroundings and sought no deference from those surrounding him. He had barely begun to welcome Ḷainjin when one of the men playing in his courtyard purposefully kicked the anidep to him, unceremoniously interrupting him. He deftly responded by kicking the woven bundle of leaves straight up in the air. He then turned his back to the circle of men, carefully watched the cube fall from over his shoulder, and kicked it again — this time with the flat of his foot — back into their circle. There, they played on without skipping a beat, methodically clapping one, two, kick, one, two, kick.
“That should satisfy them for a while. They play the day away like children, but they learn to move as one circle of fish. You know because you, too, have been training with my brother’s men this way.”
“There is no better preparation for the coordination required in battle.”
“I agree but tell me. Among which people did you develop all these skills you possess?”
“What skills?” Ḷainjin responded humbly.
“Your modesty is useless among us. Your story precedes you. Our women fly from islet to islet and chatter like birds at nest.”
“I have been a fortunate beneficiary of scraps of knowledge gathered among many island groups.”
Turning to Liṃanṃan, Tokjān said, “You have chosen an orator who chooses his words well — and he’s a good fisherman who will keep you fed!”
With a hearty laugh and a mischievous grin on his face, her uncle turned back to Ḷainjin and said, “Thank you for the fart fish. It’s my favorite too!”
They both looked at Liṃanṃan, who blushed, giggled, and looked away just in time to watch the anidep, kicked astray, land close to her. Abruptly and in unladylike fashion, she punted the anidep back into the circle.
“She has always been both the lovely girl and the boy her father never had. In truth, she would rather be there among that circle of men than helping her aunt cook the fish you caught and brought to us.”
Liṃanṃan, returning and hearing the last part about the fish, responded, “Uncle, if you remember, I brought the fish — and I caught more of them than he did!”
The men looked at each other’s eyes, each watching the other surrender in amusement, both beguiled in their own way by her girlish charm. With mutual regard for her, they bonded with a laugh and a nod that required no other response.
“Okay,” said Liṃanṃan, “I’ll go talk to my aunt, and she’ll tell me all your secret battle plans!” She scrunched her nose at them and headed toward her aunt’s cookhouse just as the anidep interrupted them a second time.
Tokjān seemingly had not taken his awareness from the game during his engagement with them and kicked the light yet solid object back to the circle. There, it was clapped, clapped, and kick-passed from one player to another around the circle — until one innocently turned his back as a sign to all and responded to a high kick-pass by flicking the woven cube with the flat of his foot back over the heads on the other side of the circle toward Tokjān for a third time. He glanced at Ḷainjin for an instant with the same mischievous twinkle in his eye. Then, simultaneously grimacing and shrugging his shoulders in surrender to the group, he deftly repelled the anidep flitting toward him with a flick of his toes high into the air straight above him. He glanced into Ḷainjin’s eyes again as the anidep descended and then, with the side of his other foot, gently passed it to him before moving a little toward the circle. Ḷainjin, tossing aside his flower leis, likewise passed it back to him, again a little ahead of him, and vice versa. They did this repeatedly until both men could join the circle and become fully engaged in the game.
The reasoning behind why the anidep game appealed to Ḷain
jin as the best way to practice the art of battle is because there is much you can learn from the eyes of a man attacking you. The first rule of battle is to keep your eyes on your opponent. Once the anidep is kicked, every man in the circle senses who it was kicked to. It may be a good kick. It may be a poor one, in which case others must intervene to pass the anidep back to the player whose kick went awry for a second try. So the goal of the game is not just to not allow the anidep to fall to the ground; it is to train the group to act as one. Like a circle of baitfish surrounded by prey, the circle maintains constant motion yet keeps its integrity as a single opponent.
Once the group achieves absolute unanimity of action and exhibits such accord for an extended period of infallible play, the leader stops the action and the men reach for their spears. They are ready to begin the jebwa. And so it was that the man shark was able to merge with others who had been playing this game together since childhood, and then blend into the group and become one with it. As the circle continued to clap in rhythm with flawless play, the word spread quickly throughout the village. Men and women dropped their chores. Children scampered from the beach to watch, and the men’s sisters and chosen ones gathered their spears for them — and, of course, their aje — and silently took their place in the first row of onlookers who gathered. At last, Tokjān grabbed the anidep and held it high as an expression of mutual triumph, and as a sign for the call of the triton shell to be blown. He took Ḷainjin by the hand and led him to a mat laid out before his house. The men sat, and so did all around — except the players, each of whom was busy receiving his spear and donning his head lei to compel proper posture for the dance.
Rālik Islanders fought in groups of four that rotate so that no man’s back remains unprotected and no opponent fights only one man. Their totem is the lowly stingray, which mesmerizes its enemy with its ugly face and graceful movement until attacked, when it instantaneously responds with an unanticipated, lightning-fast strike. The men contort their faces in rage induced by the ever-constant beat of the aje and the piercing ululations of their sisters and chosen ones. They twirl their spears and clack them one against the other, and then one man turns away to tease the opponent with a clear shot at his back, immediately defended by a twirling member of the group ready to parry or strike at any ill-timed response.
The jebwa was a fierce enactment of this classic fighting style passed along from previous generations for so many seasons that the ancient words of the chant had long ago lost their context and seemed as though of a different language. Yet the rhythms, the odd poetry of the words, and the stylized motions of the dance never failed to nourish the present and bring forth the spirit of these ancestors, their glorious accomplishments, and the heroic lives they must have lived.
The men lined up in six groups of four. The triton shell sounded once more. The women’s ululation began, and the drums began to beat. Onlookers continued to rush into the opening as the auburn rays of the evening sun beamed between the inland palm leaves and splashed upon the dancers as they stood there, upon the thick bed of coral stones laid down by these spirits of the past now being called forth to mingle among them. The du began a mysterious, rhythmic chant as they beat in unison upon their drums. In a high pitch, each called to her champion, and each man in turn responded with such a fierce clacking of hardwood spears that all anticipated one might break, and with a mysterious, lower-pitched chant in response to the du. As the dance commenced, per tradition, the spirits of the past began to mingle, first among the du and then among the dancers. All the performers began to creep out of themselves, leaving shells to be crept into by these spirits who perhaps had been wandering aimlessly from shore to shore but were now called forth to defend against unwanted intruders. The very face of the mildest woman among them became that of the fiercest warrior imaginable, seemingly capable of the bravest of deeds, with no regard for life but only for victory and the utter defeat of this foe before her. Likewise, the onlookers seemed summoned, and likewise, they responded. A handful of elders paced back and forth among the dancers, encouraging them as they would were they in actual battle.
This ancient arrangement of high-pitched chant, drumbeat, responsive chorus, fierce dancing, twirling, and the rhythmic clack of sharpened spears captivated all who watched, and none turned away. Each throat shivered as its spirit slipped out, mingled among the others, and then timidly retreated, only to venture forth again and yet again to the enrapturing call of the jebwa. As the dance progressed, each new stanza brought a quickening of beat, more enraged countenances on the dancers, a more boisterous and responsive chorus from the men, and a more ferocious percussion of spears. The greater the quickening, the faster the step, and the more rapid the twirling, the more dangerous the result of a single misstep or other movement out of place. Yet the men progressed through the mesmerizing line dance with flawless, fearless, methodical execution as though they were the legs of a centipede that gracefully curls in one instantaneous motion to bite with one end and excrete its paralyzing poison with the other.
Then suddenly, in the middle of the lengthy dance, the elders’ pacing came to a sudden stop. Each held his hands high to signal the pause, and from the center of the second row of the dancers facing them, two spears were flung high into the air to curl above the group and fall, one after the other, with a thud, piercing straight into the stone-covered earth toward the mat upon which Tokjān and Ḷainjin sat. The dancing stopped. The chanting and drumming faded into silence. The expectation in the air was palpable. The group had summoned them to join, and two from the group stepped aside. Tokjān turned his rascally eyes to Ḷainjin, who nodded, rose with him, grasped a spear, and twirled it in unison with his partner to the resumed chanting as they parried their way forward into the group. Then, as the drum beating began again, the men took their places with a violent clashing of spears, initiating a reaction that rippled outward down both sides of the lines of dancers and into the audience surrounding them — and an even more spirited pace of dancing briskly resumed.
Like his previous engagement in the game of anidep, Ḷainjin sought to blend into the group rather than glare among the others. His movements, though accurate and sufficiently quick, did not equal, much less exceed, the passion of his partner or the ferocity of the preceding performance. Liṃanṃan, who had obtained a drum from someone, rushed to the du, voicing a piercing ululation. The high pitch of her chanting rose above the others to inspiring affect, especially upon her chosen one, who parried a particularly violent clash of spears from her uncle that served to raise the spirit of the dance to a new high. Thereafter, previous tentativeness in Ḷainjin’s dancing disappeared. As the pace of the dance accelerated, the awareness that she had such emotional control of him wound its way among the spirits in the crowd, and they responded by enthusiastically accepting the newcomer as one of them.
The dance continued until the sun’s rays were completely absorbed by the well-planted forest surrounding them, and a welcome breeze sweeping over the lagoon had begun to cool the sweat that had sprung upon him. No sooner had the dance ended than Liṃanṃan cast herself at the feet of her uncle and begged him loudly to “overlook the embarrassing failure of her chosen one’s performance” and “to spare his life out of pity for her.” At this, Ḷainjin dropped to one knee as though ready to receive whatever punishment his victor was about to deliver. Liṃanṃan enacted this tradition as a lesson in humility. It was for the benefit of the young girls in the audience, to teach them the proper way to beg for the life of a brother should he fail in battle. Her uncle, in response, praised Ḷainjin’s ability as a warrior, thanked him with a broad smile for the fish he had caught as tribute, and promised to spare his life “to dance before these children again and again until he was so old Liṃanṃan would have to parry his spear for him.”
At this, the surrounding audience burst into laughter, and the captivating dance, the realistic enactment, and the ancestral lesson were over until another day. It was time for all to r
etreat into themselves and resume their various tasks before the night settled into the green, ever-growing forest surrounding their elegant village and crept upon the surrounding white coral beaches and multicolored reefs. Each of these supported a multitude of large-eyed nocturnal marine animals, each voraciously struggling to satisfy its seemingly insatiable appetite. It was time for the spirits that had wandered these calm shores and had, for generations, guarded the ocean passageway of this diminutive string of islets and sand cays to fade into the darkness in which they thrived. And to fade, as would the very perceptibility of these shores if not for the sometimes cloud-dimmed yet ever-astounding universe of starlight overhead, coupled with the faint flickering of the cooking fires visible mostly to the mother turtles searching for their places on the sand. Visible among these two erratic rows of atolls, each up-cropped from the depths, each an isolated pinnacle, nearly lost from the others amid the vast, everchanging expanse of deep, treacherous water separating them. Time for their inhabitants to wrap themselves in the comforting assurance that, but for the marine creatures that stirred in the darkness below and the fowl fluttering home to their nests in the starlight to feed their young or their mates at nest with their daily catch, their way of life was isolated. Thus, as they had for hundreds upon hundreds of seasons, they slept peacefully, protected in their seclusion from all but the occasional windblown fishermen or the bravest of seafarers, who had been taught their location and possessed the courage, knowledge, and fortitude to follow the secret seamarks to seek them out.
Man Shark Page 25
