At the funeral Pastor Cobbett stood by the grave and preached great moving words so that we all wept for this good woman who was dead, but before the pastor ended Mr. Morgan left the graveyard and returned to the lagoon beach, where he walked for many hours. Finally the pastor said to me, “You must talk with him. He would be offended if I did.”
I followed him until he turned and saw me unexpectedly. Again he grabbed my arm imploringly and asked in a hushed voice, “Have you ever seen a star like that? Casting a shadow across the lagoon?”
I said that at Matareva we often saw that star and he threw his hands across his face and cried, “There was so much Maeva could have shown me!” He walked off in agony and I watched him for a long time. Finally I went up to him and said, “Morgan Tane, I think we should go to the Chinaman’s and have a beer.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said.
We went to Ah Kim’s and opened two bottles, but after drinking only part of his Mr. Morgan said, “I think I’ll go to bed.”
We expected this upheaval of his world to bring Mr. Morgan at last into the heart of our village, but instead it drove him further from us. He did not even bother to recover his daughter from the house along the beach, and the family living there were very happy to keep the girl as their own, for they prized a white man’s child.
So once more we forgot Mr. Morgan. He caused no trouble, spent his money cautiously. Sometimes from my school window I would see him shuffling barefooted along the beach, his shirt open, his pants hanging low upon his hips. Often he did not shave and for days on end we might not see him. His daughter Turia was growing up, a bright, fine-limbed girl like her mother. Once Pastor Cobbett, now seventy-six, found her with a sailor off an Australian ship and punished her on the spot. Mr. Morgan, when he heard of this, said she probably deserved it.
That is how things were in 1941, and then one day a schooner called to say that Honolulu had been bombed. We had an old radio on Matareva and under Pastor Cobbett’s excited urgings a man from the schooner got it working. For days on end the pastor sat transfixed before it, piecing together the news of war in our ocean. He borrowed a map from my school and called the head men of the village together. He proved it inevitable that Japan would invade Matareva and to prevent this organized a complete lookout system, a line of fighters for the beaches and a hiding place for the radio.
Early in his operations the frenzied little missionary approached Mr. Morgan, who said, “The Japs’ll never bother with this dump.”
“But in war we must be prepared!” the pastor argued.
“I fought my war,” Mr. Morgan replied.
“But it’s your nation that is threatened!” Cobbett cried angrily.
“They’re tough. They can look out for themselves.”
He would take no part in the wild plans evolved by the pastor, but when the government destroyer put into our lagoon and reviewed what Cobbett had done the defense minister said, “Remarkable! Remarkable! All we need give you chaps is a radio for sending as well as receiving.” Later the government had to impose strict rules about this radio, for Pastor Cobbett reported voluminously every four hours.
Yet it was this radio which finally brought Matareva full into the war. Pastor Cobbett was listening one rainy, windswept afternoon when he heard the lonely signal of an American plane, lost in a violent storm. He rushed into the road crying, “Plane trying to find Bora Bora!” We hurried to the radio and heard a plea for any kind of help.
I was handed the microphone, and for twenty minutes I repeated over and over, “C-47. C-47. This is Matareva. Bad storm outside the reef, but you can land in the lagoon.” It was weird and haunting to be sending words that might never be heard. Then finally came the crackling whisper: “Matareva. Matareva. We cannot land on water. Have you level ground?” The men about me argued for a moment and I reported, “C-47. C-47. There is no land. Crash on calm water a hundred yards from shore. Our canoes will save you.” I said this fifteen times and at last we heard the bewildered pilot: “I cannot get there before dark. Matareva. Matareva.”
A tall figure stepped beside me, barefooted, stoop-shouldered, no shirt. Mr. Morgan said, “We’ll put lights on the motus. Lights around the lagoon.”
“C-47,” I cried in the flat voice that betrays no hope, no fear. “We will light the lagoon as follows.” I started to explain but the pilot broke in: “How will we know where the shore is?”
Mr. Morgan grabbed the microphone. “Come in, you damned fools,” he snapped. “You’ve nowhere else to go. Head between the green lights. Land short of the red ones.” And as I sat there, encouraging the pilot, Mr. Morgan dashed out into the rain and shouted for everyone on Matareva either to get into his canoe or take a light and stand along the reef. When the first lights blew out he cried above the storm, “Pastor! Didn’t you have some extra lanterns in the church?” When a man near the lagoon cried, “No plane can land in this storm,” Mr. Morgan snapped, “If we don’t save them, they’re too dumb to save themselves.”
He took a motor boat and a dozen lanterns wrapped in whatever green cloth the women could provide. He called for volunteers and set out across the lagoon to where the great waves thundered on the reef. Night came, and about the entire lagoon you could see the thin ring of lights, green clusters to the west, a red cluster marking the landing course.
“C-47. C-47,” I called. “Everything is ready. The canoes will be at your side within a minute after you land.”
The pilot called back in an ashen voice, “The lights? All set?”
And then Pastor Cobbett took the microphone and said in a low powerful voice, “Pilot! God will bring your plane in. God is riding with you.”
The wind howled but above it we heard the droning of a crippled motor. We had never seen an airplane at Matareva, and everyone along the lagoon, those with beacons and those who tensely clutched their paddles, stared into the sky. A wavering light appeared and an astonished cry rose from all Matareva. The plane was so big. It was so low.
It came roaring in between the green lights. Its wings dipped perilously toward the water, then straightened. There was a long hiss, a flash of spray and gas tanks exploding in the night.
Instantly our canoes dashed in among the flames and our pearl divers leaped into the crackling waters. Not one American was lost.
We had a night of wild celebration. Each man of Matareva thought himself a true hero. We spoke endlessly of what we had done, whose canoe had been first among the flames, which man had stood knee deep among the sharks, waving his green lantern.
There were six Americans and we were amazed at how young they were. Their navigator, no more than a boy, blubbered when he saw Mr. Morgan. “We had a million dollars’ worth of medicine and radio in that plane. We lost it all.”
“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Mr. Morgan said. He took the six men to his house and for the next three weeks Matareva knew such excitement as we had never experienced before. The talk was all of America, and slowly Mr. Morgan became involved. He said, “Forget Pearl Harbor. We lose lots of battles. But we win lots of wars.” He stared pointedly at Pastor Cobbett and said, “We taught the British all about that.”
Once the plane captain, Harry Faber, said, “It was almost a miracle! I was scared silly but when I got my last instructions from your radio I took off the headphones and said, ‘Here we go!’ Then I heard a voice as clear as I can hear yours saying, ‘You are in God’s care.’ And even though the plane exploded, we all got out.”
“What did the voice sound like?” Mr. Morgan asked.
“Deep. Powerful. Speaking right to me.”
“It was a miracle all right,” Mr. Morgan said disgustedly. But when the picket boat came to take the flyers on to Samoa, he followed them right to the tip end of the wharf and shouted, “Give those Japs hell!”
Now he was truly at war. The picket boat gave him a large map and some colored pins. He kept it at the Chinaman’s, and there he and Pastor Cobbett would sit h
our after hour marking out the radio reports. We called them Churchill and Roosevelt, and when portentous things happened like El Alamein or the entry into Paris, the entire island would celebrate.
When the war ended, an American warship came to Matareva to give the island a scroll thanking us for our part in saving an American crew. The pastor had a big day! He arranged formal ceremonies and appeared in his black suit to give a long invocation. At the end of the prayer an American flag was hoisted over the church and the American officials gave Mr. Morgan a medal “for improvising a landing strip under extreme difficulties.” They also left the flag, which to our surprise Mr. Morgan nailed on the wall of his front room. When boys of our village came to talk with him about America, he served citronade and said, “Now there’s one country you ought to see!”
He lived in this way until 1946, when a schooner from Australia dropped by and landed a young man in khaki shorts. Before he had left the wharf our girls were screaming, “Harry Faber! American pilot! He come back!”
He hurried right to Mr. Morgan’s house and clapped the tall man on the shoulders. “I swore I’d get back here to say thanks.” He brought us six crates of things contributed by members of the crew we had saved. There were radios, ice boxes, many jazz records, books and more than a dozen fine Army blankets. “All stolen,” he said proudly.
We made a great festivity for Harry, and the record player was set up in Mr. Morgan’s front room, beneath the flag, where we gathered many nights to hear Bing Crosby.
But before long we noticed that Harry Faber was rarely at these pleasant sessions, and my mother, who always hears these things first, said that he was spending his nights with Turia Vanaavoa, as Mr. Morgan’s daughter was now called.
Soon everyone on the island knew about the love affair, except Mr. Morgan, whom no one told such things. Then one day an old woman said approvingly, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the American married your daughter?”
It took about a minute for the implication of this question to reach his brain. He looked very puzzled and asked, “Turia … Vanaavoa?” He seemed unable to remember that this girl whom he had rejected was his daughter. But next day he found a piece of paper and suddenly his life flamed into purposeful being, as if Turia, and dead Maeva, and lost America, and even the vanquished wardens had all thundered down upon him like stormy waves upon a reef.
He read the paper twice and said, “Damn such nonsense.” Then he carried it straight to Pastor Cobbett and jammed it under his nose. “What do you make of that?” he growled.
The pastor lifted his spectacles, cleared his throat and read the following poem, which is now famous in Matareva:
SONG OF A TROPICAL TRAMP
I have wandered through the islands with hibiscus in my hair,
I’ve surrendered my ambitions for a life that laughs at care,
I have loved an island maiden when the nights were far and fair:
And I’ve seen the constellations upside down.
I have watched canoes go gliding on a fairytale lagoon,
I have heard the sun come raging up a day, a year too soon.
Then I’ve waited for Turia and the rising of the moon:
And I’ve heard the wild sharks twisting near the shore.
When the schooner fled outside the reef to run before the gale,
When palm trees bowed their heads to hear the hurricane’s wild wail,
Then her lips on mine were golden brown and mine on hers were pale:
For I’ve seen the stars surrender to the storm.
Sometimes within the city streets I hear a curlew cry,
I see the reef spume leaping up to meet a cobalt sky.
Then the island fever has me and I think that I must die:
For I’ve seen the atolls baking in the sun.
Pastor Cobbett finished reading and put down his spectacles. “What’s it mean?” Morgan asked.
“The usual bad poetry a young man writes,” the pastor explained. “I never wrote any, but I recognize the stuff.”
“Is it anything serious?”
Cobbett rose and stood with his hands behind his back as if about to deliver a sermon. Then he saw his friend’s agnostic face and changed his mind. “Two kinds of men come to the atolls,” he said simply. “You came here and made a life. You were one of us, and our problems were your problems. You helped us, for better or worse. But other men come like birds of passage. They think it’s part of growing up. To see strange places. To love strange women. Maybe they’re right, but it’s hard on the places. It’s very hard on the women.”
“That’s what I thought it meant,” Mr. Morgan said grimly. “But I never found much time for reading.” Clutching the poem in his hand he strode back to his house, where he found Harry Faber reading a book. “You write this?” he asked.
Harry looked at the poem and said yes.
“It’s time you left Matareva,” Mr. Morgan said.
“What do you mean?”
The old man began to shout, the only time we ever heard him raise his voice. “Damn it all. I didn’t save your life so you could come back and make a fool of my daughter.” We were dumbfounded! We had even forgotten that Turia Vanaavoa was his child, and now after all the years he trembled with fatherly concern!
“Wait a minute, sir!” the flyer protested.
“I said it’s time to go, Harry. You smart guys who come down here like birds of passage. There’s a schooner out there. Get on it!” And that night Harry Faber was on his way to Tahiti.
The girl Turia was heartbroken. She had a copy of the poem and a guitar player set it to mournful music, which our wahines still sing with tears in their eyes. Mr. Morgan amazed us by insisting that Turia come back to live with him as his daughter. The Vanaavoas made no protest, for they had enjoyed the girl as she grew up and now it was time for her to have a life of her own. She started going with a young man of our village and when she became pregnant told her father that she wished to get married. “It’s high time,” he said.
The wedding was held in church, the last occasion on which Mr. Morgan ever wore a tie. Later he gave a reception in his house, but we noticed that the American flag had been taken down. He gave an embarrassed speech about his daughter’s happiness and then disappeared. When I went home I saw him sitting on the sea wall, the solitary man whom life had subtly surrounded as the coral polyps working on our reef once surrounded a portion of the vast sea and made it habitable. I was inspired to rush up to this man and say that we were proud he had made Matareva his home, but as I moved to do so, I saw that he was sitting with Pastor Cobbett. What they were talking about I do not know.
Polynesia
The prime minister of New Zealand was on the spot. The opposition cried, “Why hasn’t the Governor provided social services for our Polynesian islands?”
Replied the minister in effect, “We have not provided old-age pensions because in Polynesia old people are cared for. We haven’t built orphanages because no child is ever without a home. There is no need for mental hospitals because Polynesian life doesn’t provoke nervous breakdowns. And there is no unemployment insurance because no islander would see his brother starve.”
What kind of people built so gentle a civilization? They originated somewhere in Asia, perhaps in one of the valleys of India. Oppressed by more warlike tribes, they drifted eastward to the Malay peninsula. Even there competition was too keen, so they set forth on what have been termed “the most daring voyages the world has known.” In their small canoes they made the Vikings seem like nervous homebodies.
In penetrating thrusts they touched at all the islands between Malaya and Peru, reaching north to Hawaii, south to New Zealand. When they encountered hostile natives (New Guinea, Solomons) they passed by and set up small holding stations on outskirt islands, so that even now in the midst of savage black areas you often find minute atolls containing fair-skinned Polynesians. In general, however, they pushed ever eastward until they reached the islands they now inhabit
. (Scholars pooh-pooh recent theories about settlement by ancient Peruvians, drifting westward on ocean currents.)
Polynesia—many islands—is vast in extent, meager in land and population. Its thousand atolls reach from the Date Line to the 110th Meridian, 70 degrees compared to 55 for the United States, yet altogether it contains fewer square miles than Connecticut, fewer people than Oklahoma City.
Yet Polynesia’s influence on world thought is far greater than its size would warrant. Musical names like Tahiti, Rarotonga, Bora Bora carry an emotional freight to all the cold countries of the world, and Polynesia, the dying civilization, haunts the minds of white men who destroyed it.
This provocative empire begins at Tonga, the independent kingdom with a parliament of its own. Farther east are the Samoas, the western portion of which, governed by New Zealand on behalf of the United Nations, is probably the finest remaining center of Polynesian life. Nearby is American Samoa, a jovial little island three or four generations behind the rest of Polynesia in cultural advancement. Then come the heavenly and little-known Cooks, owned outright by New Zealand, followed by the world famous Establissements Français de l’Océanie containing immortal Tahiti, the tragic Marquesas and the myriad atolls to the east.
Far to the south lies lonely Pitcairn (British) to which the Bounty mutineers fled, the scene of debauched tragedies and stately aftermaths. Far to the east off the coast of Chile, which governs it, lies enigmatic Easter Island, once the center of an intricate civilization now so completely obliterated that even its prolific writings cannot be deciphered.
People from one group of islands usually do not understand languages used in other groups—about as related as Italian-French-Spanish—but strangers rapidly learn the new speech. For example, the basic Polynesian word for house is whare. In Samoa it becomes fale; in Tahiti fare; in Hawaii hale; in the Cooks are; in the Marquesas hae; in Mangareva hare; in Fiji vale.
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