Henderson's Spear

by Ronald Wright

  Dalton’s scheme for Eddy’s awakening was, in his mind, founded upon sound pedagogical principles. Yet Dalton, as I’ve noted, was hardly the apostle of reason he imagined himself to be. And it must not be forgotten, when contemplating the tragedy that ensued, that quite apart from Eddy’s listlessness, Dalton, however secretive on the matter, was deeply disturbed by the Prince’s wayward physical desires.

  As I write now, approaching a new century in an English winter, it seems absurd to suggest that an upright churchman and royal tutor might have winked at fornication. But Dalton was beside himself with worry, desperate to achieve a coup de théâtre. We were entering the orbit of a fabled island which must have seemed to him, freethinker and sexual reformist, a heaven-sent specific for straightening Cupid’s arrows. No doubt he had read many tales, both factual and fanciful, of the beauty, voluptuousness, and free spirit of Tahitian women.

  Bougainville named Tahiti “New Cythera,” after Aphrodite’s birthplace; and Cook witnessed bacchanalia to make Nero blush. Despite the coming of Europeans, these islands still lay far from the sea-lanes, thousands of miles from the sobering undertow of any copper cable. It seemed to us then, as to so many before, that they might be the last acres of Eden remaining on this Earth, lands of innocence and joy where God kept to the garden shadows, watching but not judging, allowing providential Nature to fill the wants of man; where maidens swam like fish in moonlight pools, and one had only to stretch his hand to pluck the tropic fruit, of which none was forbidden. Ils ne connaissent d’autre Dieu que l’amour.

  Native legend held that Taaroa, the Creator, made the Society Islands from moons he plucked from the sky, leaving aloft only the moon we see today. On Tahiti itself, the days of Taaroa were all but done with the death of the old Queen who, like Thakombau, had been born a heathen. Her Eden fell with her into the endless night of the past, its approaches sealed not by an angel with a flaming sword but by iron steamships flying the tricolore. Yet the Leewards, remotest of Taaroa’s moons, still slumbered fitfully in the primordial dream, still free in the 1880s, if ultimately doomed.

  I know now what goes on where the palm tree blows, how Eden dies of a melancholy for which opium, rum, and death are the only cures, how its white strand is bloodstained, how its soil grows loamy with the bodies of its people as they sicken from the very breath of the white man. Yet when these isles rise up for the first time before ones eyes—ah! it is impossible to believe they are anything less than living shoots of Paradise.

  My first sight of them was Bora Boras mountain, a square, dark thunderhead within a halo of white, so upthrusting that it seemed about to burst, as one day it may, for in the telescope the silhouette resolved into a volcanic tower, slumbering under ferns and vines.

  The wind was freshening astern, giving those on deck the illusion of gliding by magic, for we steamed at the speed of the wind. The only sounds were the slapping of stays and thrash of pistons. I set up my easel and tried to capture the forest greens and turquoise reef as the island slid past, an enchantment, a weathered castle from a far-off age, its lower ramparts shimmering above a still lagoon. We saw no other shipping, not even a native sail. No smoke curled from Bora Boras woods, and the next islands to rise—the twins Raiatea and Tahaa—were still too far off to show any sign of habitation, though their form was clear: a greater and a lesser land within an hourglass of reef.

  Dalton was at the port rail with Eddy, transfixed by the scene. At length he came over to where I worked. “May one peep?” he asked, as he usually did, though his appraisal of my brushwork, a matter of nods and grunts, invariably began before I had time to consent.

  “Les Îles Sous-le-vent! Doesn’t it strike you as extraordinary, Henderson, that this corner of the Earth has any name at all? To the Brahmin sage the physical world is an illusion and we are all mere characters in a dream dreamt by God. Here, before this marvellous scene, I begin to see what he’s driving at. And I see it in your painting there. Well done.”

  I remarked upon the resemblance of Bora Boras volcano to a vast and ancient tower, the relic of a giant race of builders, unknown to Palaeontology, who might have dominated the world and left their mark upon it long before Darwins Adam swung down from the trees. Such fancies did not seem too far-fetched on the Sea of Moons.

  “Gautama the Buddha was once asked to define the length of an aeon. Do you know his answer?”

  I shook my head.

  “Once every thousand years a man climbs a mountain with a cloth in his hand. He gives the mountain one wipe and goes away. That mountain will be worn to nothing before an aeon passes! The Buddha should never be taken literally. Yet science now tells us that the days of Creation were long indeed. The world was in place aeons before our simian minds began to ponder their own existence. And I have no doubt it will be spinning still, sunrise after sunrise, for aeons more after our moment in the sun is gone; when nothing shall remain of us but fossils in stone and a few great works—pyramids, castles, canals, viaducts—fading like smiles from the planet’s face.”

  These musings were ended by the bark of Captain Skinner ordering us below. He did not like the weather, saying a westerly at this season in these waters was sure to be trouble. Almost as he spoke, the wind outpaced the ship, tipping her chin into the swells. My poor watercolour was ripped from its pins and blown to sea, where it drew a sour inspection from a frigate bird.

  Skinner ran up a steadying jib and let the ship have her head, on past Raiatea, past Huahine, on across the open sea towards Tahiti. He did not explain his actions. My conjecture is that he was making a reconnaissance to satisfy himself no warships were at the Leewards or bound there from the Windwards. Around five, when the wind had abated after a swift run of several hours, the lookout sang that he could see Tahiti’s 100m. I took my telescope and went aloft, finding myself swung about the foretop like a monkey on a stick. But once settled in my perch, I caught sight of a great heap of cumulus on the horizon, turning gold in the last of the sun. I must have stayed aloft an hour, watching flying fish leap from the shadow of our bow, as the shining albacore closed on them, and slip back into the water like thrown coins. The gold reddened and the image began to melt into the rosy dusk. Then came a brief glimpse of land under the cloud, a cone that could only be Orohena, the great mountain of Tahiti—seven thousand feet high and visible from seventy miles.

  Neither I nor the lookout descried any sail or smoke. In that lonely Sea of Moons we might have been back in the days before any brimstone blew across a quarterdeck; before steam-engines clambered into hulls and began puffing back and forth across the world.

  Skinner held course until the light failed, then ordered bare spars and turned half circle, back to the Leewards and the embers where the sun had drowned.

  We steamed half that night, cutting through oncoming seas, confident no man-of-war could catch us, even had our trace been sighted.

  I was awakened in the small hours by a clang of the engine telegraph and a change in rhythm as the revolutions slowed. The ship flumped on the swell for a while, then steadied quickly. The menacing seethe and dunt of a reef grew loud in my porthole. I threw a native cloth around my waist and went on deck. The binnacle was unlit, but the trollish form silhouetted at the helm was unmistakably Skinner himself. The wind had dropped, or rather we were sheltered from it, for strips of buttonhook cloud were driving across the moon.

  I made out a black mass of cliffs or hills dead ahead and the phosphorescent grin of the reef astern, nothing more. Skinner seemed to steer by smell, by the perfume of orange blossom, gardenia, and wet earth wafting from the darkness. It was madness, I thought, to be under way like this, however slowly. A strange flute was trilling to port, whilst a conch moaned to starboard, as if we were being lured onshore by wreckers.

  Dark walls drew in, the sky shrank to a wedge, the scent of land grew strong, the screw throbbing no quicker than a heartbeat. We were inching up a narrow bay or estuary. With a sudden hiss and flurry the engine reversed. The hea
rtbeat stopped.

  The anchors made a shallow dive.

  Thirteen

  TAHITI

  Women’s Prison

  Taiohae, Nuku Hiva. October 23, 1989.

  Dear Bob:

  Living here on the beach where Melville and my father ran away, the crossover land of stray whites and errant locals, the place where our centuries have made their deepest erasure of island time. You see, I’ve done my homework. I’m also literally on the beach, sitting at a picnic table beneath a barringtonia, which drops red and white brushes every night on the strand.

  I’m staying at Hotel Hikokua, the best my budget will allow, a tiny guest house just above the tideline where jetsam gathers. I include myself: I am certainly jetsam. The Marquesans let you know. These are the Surly Isles, though one can hardly blame them.

  Mine host, a taciturn Nuku Hivan, cuts a figure like Schwarzenegger playing the Illustrated Man. A promising extra for my film. His tattoos are mysterious. No hearts and anchors and winged swords. They look like hieroglyphs or heraldry, and are a work-in-progress. The left foot is done from toenails to mid-calf but the right one isn’t, so he seems to be wearing one blue tartan sock. Round his neck is a choker of whirls and chevrons. Each shoulder and elbow has a large dark oval, as if he once wore a motorcycle jacket of which only the pads remain, while the right forearm is intricately inscribed to the wrist, stopping short of his divers Rolex (a fake). I asked what this armful might mean: C’est une longue histoire, M’selle. What kind of story? Longue.

  His daily attire: hot pink bathing trunks, yellow flip-flops, a seashell necklace. All morning he reads bodybuilder mags, sips Hinano beer, and is augustly drunk by lunch, when friends drop in to watch TV and help him eat the profits. His wife—a pretty waif with a baby on her hip, a mauve pareu round her waist, and nothing above it save a black lace bra—eventually drives them away by swearing a blue streak in Marquesan.

  Yesterday afternoon the tattooist came to continue the Work, and my siesta was punctuated not by the tap-tap-tap of mallet on sharks tooth that Melville describes, but a familiar mechanical buzzing. The twentieth-century gear is an old Philishave with a needle soldered to the heads. The artist was carrying dog-eared photocopies of Krusenstern, Steinen, and Willowdean Handy; hence the designs, entirely authentic, recorded before the last original canvases rotted with their owners. Long story indeed.

  My neighbours. Room 3: a tall Tahitian, a nurse I think, her black hair in a single plait to her bum.

  Room 4, next to mine: a vintage Kiwi hippie “finding himself.” Possibly a divorced computer salesman. Spends long hours practising the ukulele. This morning I uttered a threat to fill it with concrete.

  Room 5, across the passage: an Englishman, about my age, toffish voice and an expensive surfboard he “never travels without.” Bummed with the Marquesas because there’s nowhere to go surfing “unless one fancies being splattered on the rocks.” His girlfriend, a wilting rose named Lavinia, is tired of travel and very bored with the surfboard. She talks about the kitchen she wants to put in their Hampstead house. She touched her knee to mine last night at dinner and kept it there. Enough of man, apparently.

  But I don’t want to talk kitchens. Come here and rescue me, you old wanker.

  Missing you like hell. Come and treat me to Chez Merivi, Melville’s Place, the best and most romantic on the island. Gorgeous view and you’d like the owner, an exiled American comme toi. I’ve a lot to tell you, especially about those contacts of yours. We’ve been “helping the police.” I’ll save that for next time, when things have shaken out. Nothing yet on my dad, but the police are also helping me.

  XXXXXX Liv

  Well, I was missing him, and I don’t mind letting you peek at my letters (parts of them). I owe you so much—twenty-two years—yet I don’t know how much of this you really want or need. In low moments I think you may be getting in touch just for the medical records, to make sure there’s nothing nasty up the family tree. And that’s fine. If those are all you want, you shall have them with my blessing. This long letter to you is, above all, about the blood in our veins. Whether you and I will ever have more than blood in common remains to be seen.

  We returned to the gendarmerie at four that first day in Taiohae, and went back there every day for a week, but no word came from Papeete. Strange how that brash port now loomed in our minds as a metropolis, as it did for the Marquesans. The police took sworn statements and asked us tactfully not to leave town without letting them know.

  Sergeant Benoit wasn’t sure, at first, how to take my own search. I think the story of Jon seemed almost as incredible to him as the unprecedented matter of the girl. The Ça alors and Mon Dieus came thickly. But he listened and tried to help. No immigration records survived from those days. His were routinely sent to Papeete after five years and kept, he thought, for five more before being discarded or sent on microfiche to Paris. The police records of the Marquesas—he indicated some metal cabinets—went back twenty years. Anything older would also have been sent to a warehouse in Papeete, where … he shrugged and allowed himself a smile, “Let us just say, Mademoiselle, that the little grey mice and the little white ants have relieved many a felon of his anxieties.”

  I left him my father’s details, asking if someone might be able to go through the records. Or perhaps, if they were too busy, I could look myself? The latter was out of the question, especially as I and my friends were under investigation. But he introduced me to Heikua, his secretary, asking her to spend any slack hours on my request.

  Nothing was going to happen quickly. And the benign languor of the island must have begun to soak into me, for I saw how unreasonable, how métropolitan, it would be to expect that anything should.

  I was bitterly homesick, missing Lottie and Mother, missing Jon—my old idea of him seemed so distant now, and my imaginings of what I might find were washing away in the tides of daily life. And I was thinking of a Yankee in a rainy city at the top right-hand corner of this ocean, of the day he looked at the postmark on a letter I’d hoped might tell me everything, and which was starting to seem a dead end.

  If there were clues, they were forgotten or so deeply buried I hadn’t the archaeological skill to unearth them. No one remembered the 1950s, or wanted to. The Marquesans seemed to live in a continual present. Most were young, younger than I, their numbers bouncing back from catastrophic decline. I’d seen the figures: perhaps 80,000 on these islands when contact with the outside world began; by 1860 fewer than 10,000; by 1920 only 2,000. In 1936 a mere 1,300 Marquesans were counted, and experts foretold their imminent extinction. Syphilis, smallpox, tuberculosis, alcohol, opium, murder, suicide.

  The Nuku Hiva I saw was twenty miles across, with this one small town and two or three tiny hamlets. But old Nuku Hiva had been a teeming, edgy place, ethnically and geographically as convoluted as a brain, each valley a nation, each ridge a frontier. That was how the old civilization died, in disease and rum to be sure, but also in a last conflagration of ancient feuds, modern firearms, and despair.

  Small wonder the survivors were so withdrawn, so divorced from their past, so given to silence and drink.

  “I’m fiu with Taiohae!” Natalie and I were having coffee below my hotel, sitting by the middle of the horseshoe beach, opposite the ocean passage, hard below the dark cusp of Muake, at the focal point of the land. “If you’re bored, fed up, exasperated with husband, job, place or weather, the word is fiu. Are we under house arrest or what?”

  There’d been no word from the Tui’s owner, the anonymous angel of Fletcher Christian Tours. Attempts to ring Lars had raised only a recorded voice apologizing for difficulties with the line. Natalie felt watched and trapped in all this beauty, on centre stage in an amphitheatre filled with ghosts. When she left I jotted in my notebook: I have come for ghosts.

  I was seeing him on the road, the way one does at the beginning and end of an affair; your heart quickens, you peer inquiringly—it can’t be! And no, it isn’t. I had a
picture of Jon in my handbag, Lottie on his knee. I’d been stumping up and down streets, knocking on doors like a Jehovah’s Witness, showing it to everyone, especially the old. But what would he look like now, half a lifetime later?

  My father could be anywhere in the world, or dead thirty years, but if I moved on without searching the Marquesas inside out, I’d spend the rest of my life haunted by the thought that while I sat at a café table, he might have shuffled past: the white-haired fisherman disappearing into a shop, the muttering street-sweeper with his head bent, the old fellow in a crash-helmet starting his scooter.

  And if he’d found a woman there might be people like me, my half-brothers and sisters, his Nordic features mingled with their colour. These younger ghosts were everywhere. Many islanders had European looks, a legacy of whalers, beachcombers, slavers, marines, or even of Spaniards from the sixteenth century, when Mendaña fetched up here and butchered hundreds while looking for a New Jerusalem. Several mistook me for a local until I opened my mouth, and of course I was wondering about this. If I had a touch of the tarbrush (as Lottie liked to say), was it only mine? Was that my mother’s secret? Or had it surfaced from deeper in the family gene pool, from Henderson’s time? Jon himself might not be here, but there could well be descendants of the man he’d come looking for, distant cousins of ours walking the street.

  I wanted to go everywhere at once, every village and valley, all six inhabited islands. The task may seem overwhelming to you, as it did to me while I was stuck in Taiohae. But the tiny population was a tragedy in my favour. Only a few dozen people on each island could have been adults in 1953. I’d stay until I’d spoken to them all.

  At the mairie—an old fort that Americans, British, and French had all held at one time or another—I bought a topographical map showing every house and feature on Nuku Hiva, except for white spaces in the mountains where cloud had blanked the aerial survey. The mayor, who had a Xerox machine, helped me make up a poster with Jon’s photo to put in shops and offices: CONNAISSEZ-VOUS CET HOMME?