by Albert Wendt
either in their daily routines during any one
of their five seasons: Planting
Building Harvesting Mating Music
One morning Two gashed his left hand on
a coconut husker The crew closed upon him
and laid hands on the bleeding (I too
joined in) and before my amazed eyes
the wound knitted to skin unblemished
A Nei-week later the crews suddenly stopped
working and gazing up at the Cliff hummed
in unison and for the first time I detected
grief in their voices But what had caused it?
I awaited the answer impatiently
After our evening cleansing we assembled on
the malae around a female crew circling
the broken body of a companion
So they did know death I concluded
eager to witness their burial ceremonies
The Nei song of mourning is frightening
on eardrums unused to its pitching
I blocked my ears with tapa fibre
as the song crescendoed to one piercing needle
and the whole cosmos threatened to shatter
Then SNAP it ended and in the trembling silence
the crew carried their companion
up the paths on the cliff face to the third row
of a hundred circles and into the fifth entrance
then outside again without her body to their dirging
that later when everyone else was asleep guided
me up the cliff through the pulsating luminosity
that warned I was breaking a tapu
entering the Sacred Cliff of Circles Nest
of their atua and the Miracles
From behind boulders I watched the nine mourners
who seemed bait teasing the crouching entrance
Icy dew fell during their vigil but they
ignored it I kneaded warmth into
my body and wished the revelations to hurry
It was dawn I recall then the wind began
breathing into the row of Circles and as it blew
the Sacred Cliff sang like a gigantic
arrangement of bone flutes And in that
marvellous celebration I sensed
their atua was speaking but though
I tried theirs was not my vocabulary
The circled nine mourners interpreted
and as if on command reentered the Cave
My heart held still waited for the revelation
Couldn’t believe it and looked again Yes
the dead woman was wholly back in the Ten
resurrected in the fifth Cave of Miracles
in the singing of her atua through
the Sacred Cliff of the 1000 Circles
Now I knew why music was their most
vital connection – it was the essence of
their breathing and mana the golden thread
that wove them to the atua
and Vanimonimo sinewed with Intelligence
No aging or death or decrease because
the number and age of all the species
were perfect for that environment So why
have a Mating Season? (I wouldn’t
see any sexual activity outside that Season)
(6) The Seasons
As I’ve said already they had five seasons
(in a year of ten months ten weeks in a month
ten days to a week) that didn’t coincide
with climatic changes and earth’s natural
cycle as in our civilisations
But though their seasonal pattern was dictated
by their curious mathematics there was always
an abundance of food in any tropical variety
from the land sea and heavens Enough
of every thing for everyone and no wasting
The Planting Season was the months of One and Two
(The arithmetical Tagata-Nei weren’t always
imaginative) Each crew attended to its totem
crop animal bird fish fruit and so forth
Planted nurtured spawned trapped fattened
My belly’s a hungry frenzy teethed like Dracula
as I recall that lush abundance:
yams as round as a woman’s pregnancy (I’m not
exaggerating) taro heavier than the Niuean
variety papaya that juiced your taste buds to
a melodious coming coconuts creamier than
a boy’s buttocks nonu as big as coconuts
and would you believe it parrot fish larger
than grouper that when charcoal roasted
was a song in your gullet? Their clams
were my special addiction sucked down raw
by the tens as was the Nei custom
Could keep sucking them down until eternity
(They were also magic for my central muscle
and now sorely missed in my flaccid aging)
During months Three and Four the Building
Season each crew built storehouses repaired
their quarters with timber and thatch cut from
the smothering mountain forests without permission of
the atua of that region sacrilegious behaviour!
(After I saw them treat other regions irreverently
I guessed their atua were confined to
the Sacred Cliff and Circles)
Together the crews then repaved the malae
with black pebbles canoed from distant rivers
Weeded and swept their terraces and paths
up to the Cliff but no one dared enter
the wombs of the Circles (I too ate
my liver after I peered into the blue-
black gullet that swallowed forever)
As in our country they offered their first fruits
to their atua For our crew it was our ten
firstborn pigs gutted prepared for cooking
and left with prayers at our Circle entrance –
number 99 in the ninth row of Miracles
Like them I believed the atua would consume
our offering but I couldn’t ignore the stench
of decaying food that soon poured down from
the Circles especially when the wind played
the Cliff to a furiously ecstatic singing
My smelling that foulness was welcomed proof
they’d not converted me to their savage religion
When I mimed my disgust my companions
indicated the air was as fresh as a piglet
(reconfirming my belief that we smell what we believe)
During the harvest I also wondered why they were
storing their surpluses so meticulously
The answer erupted the morning I woke
and pursued them humming to the malae
Took my space on the terrace puzzled
but like them hushed still in anticipation
round eyes locked to the Sacred Cliff where
a playful breeze was tonguing the Circles
giving voice to the atua in the fluting
that grew louder and hypnotically demanded
them to respond to its universal rhythm of
the twobacked creature madly combining
and in a moment I was choking in their
thick-musk mist of women’s sap
and cocks straining to fornicate beyond civilised morality
No! I cried but the scheduled madness
was upon them in an abandoned orgy of
frantic bodies coupling in every imaginable
combination irrespective of gender preference
and (surprisingly) crew membership
The civilised twobacked beast in that free
torrent became the multibacked monster
dreaded by civilised societies pausing
only to devour raw stored surpluses
No sleep even from the unquencha
ble Madness
that raged and raged across the country
in the Nei Season of Fornication the only
time they gave in to their senses utterly
And I too raged in many orifices
but being human couldn’t wield the permanent
erection demanded by the two months multibacking
everywhere anytime almost constantly
No time out even for worship but I figured
their atua through their adherents were frenziedly
coupling for how else could you explain such rapacity?
Such stonehard endurance? Such suicidal
determination to fornicate orgasm out of the Madness?
To a coming to end all comings? (Although
I fled to the mountains I couldn’t escape
the love screeching and stink of sex juices)
For me that Season became a deadly boredom
that reinforced my determination to civilise
my hosts in the Samoan image saving them
for my Atua Tagaloaalagi Who’d created
Every thing out of His boredom
One night still drowning in the miasma of
compulsive fornicating the next morning the Season
of Music — a sedate healing of bodies
depleted by the mad loving Again we gathered
and listened to the atua singing through the Circles
Their fluting spoke of a cosmos content with
its richness of earth breathing to a faultless
timing each creature object and relationship
satisfied with its placing in the Circle
of Intelligence in the Unity’s Dreaming
Their music was that of healing genius
their adherents reechoed in the songs
they composed and performed during the Season
(And the Tagata-Nei in music were by far
our superiors: it was their special mana)
Each day one member of each crew invented
a song in their unique notation
and as he invented brainlinked to
the others they learned it too so that on completion
all 10,000 Tagata-Nei were singing it fluently
each taking a separate part in harmonics
and orchestration beyond my understanding
using voices and rhythms of every known
instrument (and more) every cry and sound
of earth most of which my ear couldn’t capture
100 compositions a day 1000 a week
which we sang each Tenth Day on the malae
to the atua who swallowed and echoed
them back in magnificent complexities
that delighted healed and soothed our spirits
Being pigherders I deemed it proper to teach my crew
the Pig song I’d composed in my young loneliness
Hummed it slowly first till they got it
then sang the words: Pig is best Pig is
delicious Pig is aristocracy Pig Pig Pig! …
The brainlink shattered – they didn’t understand
my word vocabulary but were hungrily curious
so I repeated Number Nine snared it first
then Eight Seven and I danced in their
exploding joy of learning a new language
That Tenth Day they sang my song to their atua
in their uniquely complex orchestration in my
language as if it’d always been theirs
and I quivered with power as I listened
for I now had a way of converting them
(7) The Conversion
Recalling their conversion with hindsight’s
wisdom is to judge it an unforgivable crime
of my sightless arrogance (We each are
histories of guilt beyond redemption but
perhaps the future will learn from my confession)
On the tenth evening of the Tenth Week after
the Music Season the female crews climbed
the Cliff and nested (my premonition) in their Circles
To bonedeep depths I shiver refeeling that night’s
cold stab of rain as I unplaited the women’s
flightpath anticipating barbarous rituals
(Is reality a construct of the imagination’s
fancy? Was that night and those that followed
pure constructs of my prejudiced seeing?
Or like Pilate wash my hands clean with metaphysics?)
(Each tale discovers its own morality
so you be the judge of my honesty)
From mouth to womb every Cave was clogged
with lava blackness: to Tagata-Nei
a fertile beauty to me the amniotic tide of evil
(Colourblind we’d invent other measures –
the eye’s seed will sprout accordingly) No stir
of sound or motion in the Caves and Vanimonimo
washed clean of stars by the meticulous rain
Bandaged my body with siapo and waited
The next eight nights were as if the Caves
had swallowed the women but I kept
my vigil and in the day flowed
with my crew to the season’s rituals but
without the evening cleansing (Man
we started stinking like malodorous flyingfoxes!)
Head brittle with sleep I raced the tenth night’s
centre when the Caves’ hymen darkness tore
and poured out the unholy smell of menstruating
and kicked awake the men below
to a celebrating humming outside their fale
Menstruation is sickness to civilised nostrils
I struggled not to drown in that nausea
the total Nei world like a cannibal
flower was osmosing into its thriving
(Save me from this uncleanliness I prayed
to Tagaloaalagi) At flood’s end at dawn
the women were reborn of the Caves to the Cliff’s
triumphant singing (Such savage beauty
but lead me not into temptation Tagaloaalagi
Give me the courage to subdue their atua
for your service) When the exhausted
women lean to the bone from their fast-
ing fell asleep on the malae to Ao’s
observing silence I approached the nearest Circle
Feet don’t be scared of the mouth of Darkness
Heart don’t beat so wildly you’ll shatter to pieces
Liver inflate to courage’s balloonfish round-
ness and stop bowels and bladder from
blubbering to cowardly piss and liquid farting
One surprised heartbeat into the entrance
I was suddenly a solid light: my arms legs
every iota were yellow illumination bursting
from my moa to light my forward way
creating the perfectly circled tunnel with walls
layered wetly black with lava roof
a few feet above my head floor of sand
finer than smoke and strangely as I
walked refused my footprints so I stopped
the Cave echoing my heartbeat and concluded
Yes the tunnel was a construct not
a geographic accident but who’d designed it?
I counted 100 paces and was in
the inner chamber: a dome that opened
with my body’s upthrusting light
A hundred feet high to its apex? Glistening
hide of blackness that captured my reflection
when I sat down on the circular floor’s
still centre and knew the cauled air around
was a living womb feeding its future
A magnificent construct no equivalent in
our engineering but it was an Emptiness
I searched with sight and hands to
find no cracks fissures gaps doors
windows no indication of purp
ose
Stamped my feet It stamped right back
Hello! I called It echoed that perfectly
Circled the wall but bumped only into
my reflection and the surprised
smell of my vegetarian body
The technology was beyond my marvelling
and didn’t belong to anything the Tagata-Nei
had fashioned It spoke of divine
ingenuity and dreaming but what atua
would construct such perfect Emptiness
a circled Void that reflected any occupant’s image
And why? Surely such divinities were anchored
in stone wood or live imagery
idols totems? Yet that empty construction
had divine powers – I’d seen a dead
woman resurrected and knew their atua spoke
through the Circles How can an Emptiness give
life and language? Until dawn I sampled
caves in each line of Circles:
All were perfect repetitions
of the first I’d entered and all on
my entry caused my body to become solid fire
that created form out of the Darkness as
I explored them Had foreigners with
abstract atua created this mathematical
hive of Music and Emptiness? If so where
had they come from and gone to? Fell asleep
pondering the riddle which in my dreaming
answered why the Tagata-Nei women
had nested: Around me in the dome’s
ebony skin ten women squatted hands linked
eyes turned inwards then on a signal (from
the Emptiness I sensed) their bodies rolled
to birth rhythms and pushed out
blood (the menstral odour we’d breathed earlier)
that turned floor into scarlet pool
the unshaped fetuses drowned in while
the Emptiness and Nei men below celebrated
