The Atua Man

by John Stephenson

  “A curse was put on him,” David replied with a straight face.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  David tied the dinghy up to Mata‘i, and the boys climbed on board.

  Melanie was in the cockpit weeping. When she saw Jason, she flew into his arms. “He’s gone,” she sobbed. She hugged Jason so tight that he could hardly breathe. He gently pushed her away and, at the same time, embraced her with his eyes. Her relief came with a shudder, and she sat back down on the cockpit bench. Knowing her father was dead, she shook her head at Jason, and the tears came again. Jason went aft and descended into the owner’s cabin.

  David sat down next to Melanie and put his arms around her. He held her until she stopped crying. Then David felt an incredible peace come over him. It wiped his mind of all thoughts and filled him with joy. At first, he started to resist it. Why would he feel joy at someone’s death? But he found he couldn’t resist it. He didn’t judge the feeling; he didn’t question it. He just accepted it as the grace of God. David hoped Melanie felt it too, but he didn’t look at her for fear of losing the moment.

  Melanie shook David from his meditation and pointed to the aft cabin. An intense light radiated from the portholes and the passageway. They grabbed hold of each other and waited. The light grew, like a musical chord reaching climax, and then it was gone. All that was left was a pale blue glow.

  Jason came out and sat across the cockpit from his shipmates. He smiled. “He’s fine. Asked me what the fuck I was doing here. I told him we had to finish our voyage.”

  “This is crazy.” Melanie jumped up and went in to see her father.

  “I’ve got to get out of these clothes.” Jason kicked off his boots and stripped off his shirt and pants. For the first time David saw that he was covered in native tattoos – front to back, shoulders to ankles. They looked like they had been there for years. There was no redness around the ink. David knew that in native cultures the tattoos were powerful talismans, portals to another world where death and life coexisted in a different dimension. These same tattoo designs had shocked and intrigued the early European explorers of the Pacific. They were one of the elements that began a debate as to what was civilized and what was savage, and that debate continues to this day.

  David started to comment, but Jason raised his tattooed arm, “I’ll tell you later.” Jason ducked below to find his own clothes.

  As David looked back at the island, the images of the past couple of days flooded his mind, like the tattoos covering Jason’s body. Everything he thought he knew had been destroyed here, in the Hiva Islands. He knew nothing. Right, wrong, good, evil; it no longer made any sense. Jason had just healed the man who wanted to kill him. Could all sins be forgiven? Were they now going to sail home to civilization and pretend nothing had changed? He wasn’t sure he could do that.

  Melanie came back on deck. “Dad wants to go home. Are you guys ready?”

  Half an hour later the crew had the dinghy stowed, the anchor up, and Mata‘i was sailing out of Taiohae Bay under a sunny sky. They left the fête before the finale on July fourteenth, Bastille Day. They sailed away from the crowds and the people hoping to glimpse a bit of native culture. They had more than fulfilled the purpose of the voyage, but in ways no one had anticipated.

  It took all day to sail around the west side of Nuku Hiva to Anaho Bay. They had the place to themselves. The deep bay was a perfect anchorage with flat, pristine water and a crescent of white sand. There was no permanent settlement, only a few shacks for fisherman, and the land was lush with coconut trees.

  They stayed there a week, eating fish they had caught, picking pamplemousse, hiking the ridge behind the bay, and snorkeling the one untouched reef in the island chain. They played music and began to heal.

  PART III

  Chapter 41

  Honolulu – Los Angeles – London

  August 9, 1989

  Ala Wai Yacht Harbor

  The Mata‘i’s arrival in Honolulu was a microcosm of the trip in general, with Larry back to his old tricks. Before reaching Honolulu, Larry didn’t want to toss overboard the remaining pamplemousse they had gathered at Anaho, so David, Melanie, and Jason peeled and segmented what fruit was left and put the pieces in plastic bags. Larry reasoned that without the skin the fruit couldn’t be denied entry. It was another of Larry’s make-work miscalculations. All the plastic bags were confiscated. Jason was beyond commenting on Larry’s blunders, and Melanie laughed in disbelief. But David told Larry off in front of the inspectors. He let fly with all of his frustrations and anger at Larry’s behavior while Larry tried to eat as much of the fruit as he could.

  Larry hadn’t radioed his wife Helen of his arrival, and when the agricultural inspectors left, Larry took his shore phone from his storage locker and plugged it in. He still had a dial tone and called Helen, leaving a message that they had arrived. He retrieved Jason’s log from the aft cabin and tallied up the last few pages of expenses and told Jason he owed him $832. David and Melanie were outraged. Jason just laughed. The crew gathered up their gear and called a cab. Melanie invited them to stay at her mother’s house for a few days, leaving Larry alone on the boat.

  David declined Melanie’s offer to stay with them and found a cheap hotel in Waikiki. He needed to be alone to reflect on what had taken place. Jason spent three days at Melanie’s mother’s house. He sat by her pool, drank gallons of iced tea, and tried to figure out what to do next. He thought about Lillian constantly. He called his mother in Los Angeles and found out that Lillian was in London. Elizabeth wouldn’t tell him any more than that. Melanie couldn’t share anything about Larry with her mother, and when her mother questioned her about Jason, she wouldn’t answer those questions either. So, Melanie’s mother left the kids alone and went on with her life. Melanie spent most of her time with her high-school friends, away from her mother, her house, and Jason.

  Every time Jason looked at his body, covered as it was in tattoos, it brought to mind the horror and insight of his Hiva ritual. On the sail home the tattoos hadn’t bothered him—being at sea on the Mata‘i made them seem natural. Larry could barely look at Jason, though. For all his supposed love for the islanders, he couldn’t get over his bigotry that tattooed people were lower class and stupid. The tattoos made David cringe, because he felt the pain, both emotional and physical, that had come with them. Melanie, on the other hand, thought they were cool. Now, back in the States, Jason viewed them as symbols of a culture he wanted nothing more to do with. He felt disfigured and he worried about how Lillian would react. Would she still love him?

  In the backyard of Melanie’s mother’s Kahala house, Jason reflected on what had happened to him and struggled to find some kind of rationale for his reactions to the rituals on Hakamaii. He had reacted like a normal man during the sexual rites, yet the whole situation disgusted him. He felt like he had been raped. He prayed none of those girls would bear his child, but the thought of having children pleased him. Eventually he understood how Spirit had embraced him until he was so united in oneness that the physical dimension dissolved, saving his life on the sacrificial altar. Would that ever happen again? Had he fulfilled what every mystery school required of a master—the death of the mortal self for the immortality of the spirit? Would he be living in a resurrected state of consciousness? He didn’t know. It was all a jumble of ideas and theories and physical sensations that, if pulled together into some semblance of reason might reveal a greater spectrum of life.

  Jason knew that life was not just a product of matter. If it was, he could not have escaped the psychological manipulation and drugs of the tahunas. Life was an expression of the unseen reality of individual being. Without the mental conditioning imposed by the relative reality of Newtonian physics, any physical condition could be changed. If Jason could get others to believe what he had experienced in the spiritual realm during that horrendous ritual, perhaps he could change the perception of humanity. Jason had escaped from death, and it confirmed the mystical
principle which stated that a person consciously realizing the oneness of infinite consciousness is untouched by material cause and effect. Human belief never enters the mystical dimension. Jason firmly believed that the hundredth-monkey effect was true. He felt that an idea in consciousness, when accepted by enough people, could change the way humanity saw the world. There had to be a critical mass to everything, and perhaps sharing his experience in Hakamaii would start that ball rolling.

  For David the trip seemed like an interruption to his life. He would never forget the experience, yet there was much about the voyage that he wanted to forget. He questioned everything. Could he even go back to whom he was before he got the telegram in Barcelona that began it all? Jason had warned him that it might be a life defining experience, and it was. But as much as David loved Jason, he didn’t want to be involved in Jason’s life anymore. He made a mental note to “say no” to any and all requests by Jason St. John.

  On their third night ashore, Jason, David, and Melanie had dinner at the private Outrigger Canoe Club, thanks to Melanie’s membership. There was a touch of sadness in the air. Watching the sunset, the three friends realized how much the South Pacific had changed them. Jason, usually blunt and outgoing, was reserved and thoughtful. David, who had always deferred to Jason now demanded to know where he stood with his friends. If they weren’t as close as they were, David would have just drifted away. But he needed clarity to move on. Specifically, he wanted to know if Melanie and Jason loved each other. If they did it would free Lillian up for him.

  “Are you going back to Lillian?” David asked, rather bluntly. He looked at Melanie for her reaction. David was sure Melanie had fallen in love with Jason.

  Melanie pointedly examined her drink.

  Jason laughed. “Do you want to duel me for her?”

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  Jason reached across the table and took hold of David’s arm. “You know I love her… And I love you.” He turned to Melanie and said, “And I love you.”

  Now Melanie laughed. “You two are the closest people in the world to me, but at this moment I’ve lived with you both long enough.”

  “You’re not in love with J.J.?”

  “No, Dave, I’m not. And I’m not in love with you either.” She pushed her chair back from the table. “Jesus Christ, you guys, has three days ashore rotted your brains?”

  David turned to Jason, “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know, Dave. I really don’t know. I need time to figure it all out.”

  “What about you?” Jason looked at Melanie.

  Melanie glanced at her shipmates, “I need to go somewhere where I can think and maybe find a rational explanation to what we all experienced.”

  Jason stood up. “I’ve got to get out of here, too.”

  Melanie wandered over to the seawall and stared out to sea. David and Jason joined her. She was crying softly. The boys put their arms around her.

  “I love you two so much, but I don’t think I ever want to see you again,” said Melanie.

  The trio stood there for a few moments until Jason said, “I’m going back to L.A. Want to come with me Dave?”

  David pulled away. “No.” He kissed them both and left.

  Melanie kissed Jason on both cheeks, in the French manner. “Good luck,” She said and left.

  Jason was suddenly all alone.

  Melanie couldn’t stay with her mother any longer and refused to get into the “I told you so” battles with her about Larry. She also needed to get out of Honolulu, but she didn’t want to go back to the Mainland. Having witnessed her father laid flat from a curse, and then resurrected, threatened all that she had believed. Had he actually died? What did Jason do and who was he really? She was still an atheist, but it was now necessary to put the recent bizarre events into some sort of rational order.

  Her solution was on the island of Kauai. It meant asking something of Larry, which she didn’t want to do. Larry had some land on Hanalei Bay, a couple of acres on the west end of the beach with an old cottage on it. Melanie wanted to use it for a few months and Larry was happy to please his daughter.

  Finding a reason, an explanation for what she had seen, was all that mattered to her. Jason had told her that she was to be the witness; but what exactly had she seen? Melanie began ordering every book she could find on the paranormal, mysticism and quantum theory. Soon books were arriving daily that filled every corner of her cottage. Most people went there to vacation, to play on the beach, to drink and eat and make holiday friendships. Melanie shunned all that. Her world became a mix of religious beliefs battling the quantum physicists and the materialists. After a couple of months, she became known as the Hermit of Hanalei. Her friends left her alone, and when she did emerge from the cottage ten months later, she decided to start a tour business. She discovered that she loved showing people her island and making money. In that respect, she was her father’s daughter. She found a niche in the tourist industry and became very successful—successful enough that she didn’t have to ask her father for anything again. And, she would not talk about her hermit period to anyone.

  Los Angeles

  September 1989

  David bought Jason a plane ticket to Los Angeles. On the flight over the Pacific Jason thought about how to tell his mother about his experiences. She had told Jason that it would be an initiation, and that he must pay attention. Of course, she was right.

  Elizabeth had her assistant pick Jason up at the airport and bring him to her Wilshire Boulevard apartment in Westwood. Elizabeth wasn’t expecting her son to be as changed as he was. When she opened the door, she almost recoiled from him. And Jason hadn’t expected his mother to react in the way she did.

  After Jason had showered and was settled, mother and son sat down to talk. However, Elizabeth wasn’t interested in what had happened in the South Pacific. She didn’t want to hear about the adventure at all. She was only interested in how her son had grown spiritually. What principles he had practiced, and how had they furthered his understanding of the spiritual realm? If he had had a negative experience, then she was sorry and saddened, but the past was over and done. There was no discussion of justice, because she wasn’t interested in karma. Her power lay entirely in the “now moment.”

  Jason asked about Lillian. Elizabeth had received one letter from her after she had settled in London, but nothing since then. She gave Jason Lillian’s address, but her detachment made Jason wonder what had happened between them. He attempted to talk about David and Melanie, and how Helen never showed up at the boat, but she was totally disinterested. She had known that Helen wanted to divorce Larry, and pronounced, “He never got it anyway.” Why then had Jason suffered Larry’s abuse? Why had Elizabeth sanctioned this trip if there was no chance for Larry to realize the spiritual presence? Jason needed some understanding, some emotional comfort from his mother, but Elizabeth was in her detached mode, indifferent to human appearances, including Jason’s distress. When Elizabeth continued to probe what spiritual insights her son had gleaned, he couldn’t tell her. At this point he felt his mother would take his experience, judge it, and put her interpretation to it. He wouldn’t let that happen.

  The next day at breakfast, Elizabeth told her son that he could not stay with her. She had important work to do and assistants coming in daily. He could spend a few nights in the spare bedroom, but he needed to look for a job and find a place to live. She gave him a thousand dollars to get started, and Jason felt the connection between them cut. It was probably time for that to happen, but it still hurt, coming when he was so vulnerable. But she had been a good teacher, and Jason concealed his feelings and kissed her on both cheeks. He was free.

  As Jason cleaned up the breakfast dishes, Dorothy Delany entered the apartment using her key. Elizabeth shouted from the adjoining room that she would be there in a minute, and Dorothy should pick up from where they had left off the day before. Dorothy was like an aunt to Jason and gave
him a warm hug and kiss. She wanted to hear all about his voyage, and what he had learned. The difference between her caring and his mother’s indifference almost made him cry. He told her he was going to write a book about it, and that excited her. What a different response from his mother who had remarked, “What on earth would you have to say?”

  London

  January 1990

  Lillian had left the Pacific, and her life there far behind, both in her mind and geographically. She was now fulfilling her dream and performing in a new play, Charlotte Keatley’s My Mother Said I Never Should at the Royal Court Theater in London. The play was bold and edgy. Lillian’s character was one of four women in a multigenerational story about women and female relationships. The play explored what it meant to be female at various times in the twentieth century. Lillian’s character was a product of the sixties, a hippy girl with a baby that she gave to her sister to raise. In a strange way, playing this role gave Lillian insights into her complex feelings about the two men she loved. She took great cathartic pleasure kicking and screaming on stage, letting out her frustrations for her audience to see.

  It also gave her the independence she craved. For her entire life, people had wanted to control her. Lloyd, Lillian’s father, had never approved of her acting, and he had completely rejected her spiritual study. Her mother, Nancy, loved her creativity but would never contradict Lloyd. And Elizabeth had been grooming her to become Elizabeth’s clone. As much as Lillian loved Elizabeth, she couldn’t put on the persona that Elizabeth deemed necessary to be seen as spiritual. Moving back to England had been the right choice. It freed her from the arrogance of the American exceptionalism she had witnessed in Jason, Larry, and so many people she had encountered in the States. For the first time in her life she was happy to be in England, and in control of her destiny.