by Albert Wendt
the opulent wall of tourist hotels
We’re walking on the most expensive
grains of sand in the world! Hone said
You laughed at that truth
and were trapped by teenage girls (Tongans?)
who wound lei round your innocent necks
and charged you $10 each for their aloha
Later that week you saw Last Tango in Paris
On your way back over the beach
you asked Wonder what brand
of butter Brando used?
Good Kiwi Anchor! Hone replied
You laughed at that fair dinkum truth
as you danced over those most expensive
grains of sand …
Waikiki again fifteen years later and five storeys
up in the Rainbow Wing
She is around you like the tide
and you are around her
looking down over her shoulder
at the large colony of tourists tightly
sunning on the beach at ferocious noon
Slow exquisite thrust and pull thrust and pull
So high the blazing light on the sea
and the dark creatures sunning
So high so high how were you to know
your marriage was going to shatter?
You hold onto Reina’s arm and watch
Te Ra is free at last
The beach the bay the marae the sky
burn with its weaving light
Whatuwhiwhi the woven mat of life
Wonderful wonderful You are now a better songmaker
than I ever was Vela murmured at the end of my telling
during which he’d wept silently laughed
and encouraged me with Malie Malo le saunoa!
Now I must meet your Reina and my mokopuna he said
I rang Reina that night to come for the weekend
Book Four:
The Last Adventure
18
The Return
(1) Ponsonby
While lunching with Reina at a Ponsonby café
Vela as if slipping a slick coin into a stack of them said
I miss Samoa and Falealupo
Reina who didn’t know asked Where is Falealupo?
At the edge of the world where the sun sets I joked
Yes Vela said wistfully where Nafanua has been waiting for me
That was a surprise I wanted him to elaborate
Because his appearance was so unusual everyone
stared at him wherever we went I was used to it
but Reina wasn’t so while we waited for his explanation
she turned to the staring room and in a clear voice said
Who the hell are you staring at?
Yeah haven’t you seen a God before? Vela laughed
I’m better looking than Ben Kingsley I’m a holy
rock ’n’ roller in Lord Tagaloa’s hypnotic band!
In Reina’s laughter and the look on her face
I saw adoration for the ugly Vela whose presence
you couldn’t avoid in that pretentious café
All our life together he said to me I’ve deliberately not
told you what happened to Nafanua and Her queendom
when the Albino missionaries came Now you’re ready
and we must return to that tale’s locale and Nafanua
who’s been waiting all these years When he stopped there
I sensed again that huge feeling of loss that overwhelmed
whenever he allowed memory to intrude
a feeling I now knew well from the breakup of my marriage
I don’t really want to return but I must he said and I have you now
to record the fulfillment of Nafanua’s final prophecy and my release
Right then the redhaired waitress with the purple smile arrived with our order
Ah how I miss human meat! Vela exclaimed digging into his well-done lamb
That night Reina wanted to know about this ‘ugly crazy
wonderful man’ and why I’d never talked about him
He’s an epic and I’m writing it all down I said and one day
after Vela is ‘released’ I’ll let you read it
‘Released?’ she chose to pursue the pain I didn’t want to enter
Soon we’ll know that too soon I promised
Another Aside
By now many of you may be asking how come none
of Vela’s adventures are set in or about the world as it is
Why are his stories in the dimension of tall tales and sci-fi?
Is he a believer in the many-world theory of reality?
Can we believe he’s over 300 years old an anachronism
who’s totally out-of-it? Can you trust me his chronicler?
Let me assure you Vela is in the ‘real’ world
and knows it more complexly than us because he’s lived
the longest and travelled the world over For instance
he knows a latte from a cappucinno from a flat white
a chardonnay from a merlot from a Coke from a Vailima
a Sears from a Wal Mart from the Kremlin from the White House
And when I asked him why he never storied his adventures in those
realms he replied That world’s terror is beyond fiction
and my reckoning beyond my tongue’s ability to represent it
and my heart to mourn and forgive it but because it is your birth
and future right you will continue storying it for our mokopuna
and anyone else who wants to understand the unfolding terror
(2) The Return
He spent the next two weeks with Isabella and Tehaa his mokopuna
Barring the television and their parents from our house
and using the internet and a large globe of the planet he filled
their astounded hearts with his stories and knowledge
as an international traveller adventurer explorer
and the most dazzling spinner of yarns they’ll ever know
One evening while he was cooking he called me into
the kitchen and asked me to use the internet to find out
when the next full moon was over the southern Pacific
A few minutes later I returned and using a star map
I’d downloaded from Galaxy Internet Magazine showed him the moon’s
track and said On the First of next month it will be full over Samoa
One day you will be a star navigator and find your way up
into Le Lagituaiva Vela thanked me But for tonight you’ll
have to be happy with my fish ’n’ chips and meat pies
Thanks Kiwi Chef I praised him (Vela’s Kiwi favourites
were delicious but I was tired of eating them every second day
since his return and taking over the kitchen)
Next morning he took his mokopuna on the bus into
Queen Street (I was hurt he didn’t invite me) When they returned
in the afternoon he said they’d seen Batman Returns
Pe’a are our illustrious ancestors so Batman is a cousin Vela professed
and they’re still at Falealupo and we’re visiting them next week
The kids spread their wings like Batman and zoomed round the room
He tossed me an envelope fat with airtickets and told
the children he was sorry but only he and I were going
You won’t like the BO stink of pe’a anyway he consoled them
I just can’t leave my job I lied I have students to teach
It’ll be a break from this house and all the pain it holds for you
Besides don’t you want to see where it all began and meet
some of the players in the stories you’ve recorded? he deliberately
baited me (I shook my head but knew I couldn’t resist the hook)
And I’ll need your help when I meet Her again he begged
That nigh
t I read Reina the Nafanua section of this manuscript
and confessed I was too afraid to venture into the moa of our Tupuaga
and meet Nafanua Whom we betrayed for the Albino cargo
Don’t be silly you weren’t there so She’ll not hold you
guilty she reasoned Besides don’t you want to meet the most
extraordinary being in anyone’s chronicles? I would!
Reina always saw the best in people but I was still profoundly
disturbed by Vela’s reference to Nafanua’s last prophecy
and his release and what those might promise
Fearful but strangely exhilarating to be venturing into
the chronicles I’d created from Vela’s reality — or had
he handed me fiction? For the first time in our life together
I was not to be mere recorder of his telling but a participant
unprotected from the action and accepting
responsibility for whatever consequences eventuated
(3) The Landing
For almost thirty minutes the seven-seater plane danced
like a slightly pickled bird on the upthrusting air currents
between Upolu and Savai’i and into Asau Harbour with Vela
beside the sceptical Palagi pilot conversing knowledgeably about
how his ancestors had sailed Le Vasa Loloa using star maps
he claimed were more detailed than those used by astronauts
Three mornings before when we’d landed in Faleolo Airport
he’d disembarked and had knelt on the tarmac bent forward
and kissed the ground exactly as the Pope had done a few years
before and had been caught in a newspaper photo Vela had seen
It’s been a long time since I left It’s so different — yet the same
he’d said as we’d headed for the terminal and Aggie’s Hotel people
He’d insisted that we not let our aiga know we were coming
We’re booked into Aggie’s Gary Cooper Fale — Coop was my hero
and we’ll celebrate with aiga after we return from Falealupo he’d said
He’d assumed a faultless Peter Sellers Indian accent and the supremely
confident manner of a millionaire as soon as we were in the hotel limousine
Arriving at the hotel at Vaisigano he’d fished his fat wallet out of his robes
handed it over and instructed me to ‘treat the staff well’
I’d pressed twenties each into the bowing hands of the driver and porter
At the front desk a special welcome of manager and his senior
staff awaited us and though I’d felt deeply dishonest I’d obeyed
his previous instructions that he be registered as Rajesh Patel millionaire
Bombay businessman and I was his Samoan aide-de-camp
(Vela had instructed Reina to email Aggie’s those details
Yes Vela knew the real world in all its nuances and how to manipulate it
And in a kinky voyeuristic way I was enjoying his performance
You were part of it weren’t you afraid of being caught? you may ask
No because I was sure Vela would untangle us from that even
And you felt no twinge of guilt? you ask Yes but only for a second!)
Behind the wharf Asau Airport was a tidy grass strip over which our plane
glided smoothly and halted beside a blue landrover (Vela clapped and con-
gratulated our pilot) Once again when Vela disembarked he kissed
the ground rose to his unsteady feet and gazed up at the mountains
and rainforest while the Vaisala Hotel staff beside the landrover watched
The couple who owned the hotel shuffled up with floral ula
and bowing deeply wound them round their guest’s millionaire neck
(Aggie’s people who’d booked us in had impressed upon them
the importance of the eccentric Indian millionaire and his inexplicable
interest in Falealupo at the netherend of the world!)
Vela thanked them in his most gracious Sellers’ accent and
during our drive round the coast to the hotel maintained an enthralled
silence as he observed the neat villages with their massive churches
and I wondered how he was feeling re-entering Nafanua’s world
now altered beyond his recognition and from which he’d been
exiled over a hundred years before by the Albino missionaries
After years of Christianity and international travel was he still able
to see his birthplace and home as it had been?
At the hotel he was given the most palatial fale on
the small peninsula with its spacious veranda jutting out
over the bay while I occupied the one next to it
After our hosts had gone he got a chilled green coconut out
of the fridge I opened it for him and with my beer we sat on
the veranda and gazed out at the bay that was a sheet of mellowing
sun as it stretched out over a horizon anticipating midday
We’ve landed we’re home he whispered and then —out of fear
happiness relief gratitude or all of those? —he burst into
an uncontrollable sobbing his tiny body threatening to shatter
There we were at the end of the world awaiting Nafanua’s
fulfilment and his release and he was blubbering blubbering
(4) Falealupo
Next morning as the la peered over the eastern range I went to his fale
No more Gandhi robes he was wearing a black ie lavalava
flame-red t-shirt with the word NAFA emblazoned across the chest
black sandals and exuding the joy of a child expecting a huge present
Today we meet our furred brothers and then we’ll visit
Her sanctuary and see where that takes us
At dinner the previous evening the manager had offered us
a driver/guide for our exploration of Falealupo but Vela
had declined saying he knew the area well from
his lifelong studies of its geography fauna flora history
What had inspired him so far away in India to do that? asked the manager
When he was a boy a master storyteller called Vela from Falealupo
had stayed with them and had planted in his being the need
to one day visit Vela’s source of mana and stories
Vela is not a title in our district the manager said Did he have
another name? Not that I know of but he was Nafanua’s
chronicler before Christianity Vela continued his charade
Sir Nafanua is of the Darkness and dangerous the manager warned us
Every thing was still drenched with dew as I drove the landrover
along the coast and was surprised (and offended) when Vela named
and storied each site for me as if Nafanua’s world was still visible
through the transparent mirage of the present a see-through skin
he could peel off when he needed to For me the Palagi world
was the inescapable reality: the tarsealed road and traffic
the stores and houses the large American timber mill denuding
the rainforest and belching choking smoke up into the morning sky
and mountains and the numerous churches like warships some-
times three of them in a small village and when we left the coast and
drove along the range and saw the destruction of the rainforest —
dirt roads bleeding red in the wet hillsides scarred savagely by erosion
large areas of secondary growth smothered in creepers
others reforested inappropriately with gum trees and mahogany —
I wanted to force him to see that truth but didn’t because this was
his return and always there was a purpose to his storying
and his ways of
telling it so as to hold your attention
tricks peculiar to his style of shaping reality
We reached a crossroad and he asked me to again turn coastwards
To our right I noticed a dense remnant of untouched rainforest
with giant banyans at its centre and stopped the landrover
Immediately the forest’s long sad silence slipped into our vehicle
and with it came a weird jumbled squealing I didn’t recognize
until Vela said They’re still here our furred aiga is still here
The tangled rainforest was a blue-green tsunami that almost
reached the sky and made me feel puny as we stood before it
Inexplicably Vela opened his large beach umbrella extended it
over me and we entered the steamy undergrowth and squealing
The dew and batshit dripping heavily from the foliage above thudded
over our umbrella as we slipped and slid over the mud and creepers
In the few rays of sunlight that hit the ground I noticed a layer
of slimy grey material that stank They’re still here Vela offered
as he gazed up into the banyans at the flyingfoxes — more numerous
than the leaves — hanging upsidedown from every branch
We stand in their shit and marvel! I tried joking
Yes as they view us from their upsidedown position
This is Vela I’ve returned! he greeted them
I will never forget the examining silence that immediately
wrapped around us — even the rapid rain of dewdrops and batshit stopped
It was as if every thing especially the flyingfoxes wanted to know our identity
When I gazed up their luminous eyes like an ocean of stars held us
As I promised I have returned Vela continued his arms upstretched
As one being the blue-black mass moved and squeal-talked for a moment
