Henderson's Spear

by Ronald Wright

  Not long after Bacchante reached England in the summer of 1882, I fell very ill and remained so for many years. I was invalided out of the Navy in ’84, and my health allowed me to undertake few duties until I was sent to the Gold Coast a decade later. The medicos couldn’t agree on what was wrong, though they did agree I was lucky to survive. I leave it for my reader to judge whether a human hand lay behind this or any subsequent illness. To this day, I do not know; I merely have suspicions. And, as I’ve already said, these may be nothing more than delusions. I pray that they are. Nevertheless, I cannot rule out the possibility that, should I die prematurely, the manner of my death may finally illuminate the truth. For this reason I have set down this account and now seal it for the rest of my life.

  I shall end by underlining that not a word of these things has ever escaped my confidence, nor shall it until these papers are opened. I will however confess to one harmless lapse in the erasure of all trace of that excursion to the Leeward Islands.

  Some days after we’d left that archipelago far behind, and the east winds normal to the region had returned to speed us westward, Dalton must have remembered the spear and shield presented to Prince Edward. They’d been stowed in the hold by Skinners steward, Hon Sen. One night I was on deck for a late stroll when I saw the Chinaman about to heave these items over the side. Green turtle shells and old flags are common enough, but I recalled at that moment how intrigued I’d been by the antique workmanship of the great Tahitian spear. No sooner had this thought come to mind than I remembered the one whose pretty hands had clasped it on the sunny morning when the tableau of Britannia was enacted for Prince Eddy.

  I laid an arresting hand on the stewards shoulder, and placed an arresting half-guinea in his palm, explaining that the other half would greet the spear’s discreet transfer to my ship. A similar tip to a bluejacket saw the spear well stowed in a dark recess of Bacchantes magazine.

  So it is that I have kept, through all these years, one strange memento of my island love. And I wonder sometimes whether she still has the silver keepsake that I left with her.

  If you, dear Ivry, are my reader, I pray you will forgive my youthful indiscretions as well as my adult silences. I believe I have not misjudged you by thinking that, should I depart this Earth in your lifetime, you would rather have my candour than a sinister mystery. You have often paid me the compliment of saying I am aptly named, so I leave you this frank and private memoir,

  Your ever loving and devoted Frank.

  Fifteen

  TAHITI

  Women’s Prison

  IT RAINED ON AND OFF FOR DAYS IN TAIPIVAI, rain like a child’s tears: sudden, copious, without apparent cause, as if the pent emotions of the atmosphere simply got the better of it. The showers ended in the same spirit, sun beaming through the last drops, a smile after sorrow.

  I found a good place to stay—the only place—an airy cabin with bright coral curtains. Unlike Happar, Typee still lives, home to a few dozen families near the rivers mouth. Madame Kekela, my landlady, was descended from the ancient tribe. But my lodgings might have been in the Dordogne: jam and baguette with coffee on her verandah in the morning, fresh flowers on my table in the afternoon. She was a stocky woman in her late forties. Her husband was away, working on a freighter. Their children had grown and left for Tahiti. She’d travelled a bit herself—San Francisco and New Zealand—which gave her the idea to cater for wanderers and Melville buffs who made their way to Taipivai.

  The river bordered her property, behind a waterlogged orchard of breadfruit and bananas. Further upstream it was a stony torrent, but here it ran deep between mud banks. A contemplative heron often stood beside a whirlpool, and great land crabs scuttled about looking for dry burrows, scratching at my door on rainy nights.

  Madame Kekela was a heavy smoker, and the nono flies were making me one too. We’d sit on her verandah for a while in the evenings, puffing away. Jon’s picture rang no bells, but she listened to my story and offered to put the word around. She agreed that Tari Kautai was the man to see. He’d been chief of Taipivai when she was little, during the Second World War. Later he went into the police, though she wasn’t sure when. “He is the oldest in the valley. No one can say precisely how old—not even himself. That’s old, no?”

  “Will he talk to me?”

  “Take him a bottle.” Her motherly face smiled in the light of a match. “Then he’ll talk. And take some flowers from my garden. He has a young woman with him. She moved in not long ago. A cousin, he says, from Hiva Oa. She’s got a little girl. The story is her husband left her. But we never heard about this cousin before. People are talking.” She laughed. “Can you imagine? He’s old as a turtle!”

  Taipivai village occupied only the lowest part of the valley, straggling along one side of the river for about a mile, up and down from a small wooden church. A tiny shop sold soap, batteries, cigarettes, and dubious tinned meats named Klik and Spork. I bought a carton of Gitanes and pinned one of my posters by the door.

  The houses were mostly clapboard bungalows smothered in clouds of bougainvillea, some built on ancient platforms. I stopped at every one and showed Jon’s picture. People were sympathetic and not in the least surprised—Polynesians, I found, took matters of family and descent very seriously. Some even became talkative, speaking of situations like mine among themselves: men who’d never returned from fishing trips, from jobs across the sea; women who’d run away to Papeete and never been heard from again. But so few were old. At least half the villagers were children. I met only five who’d been adults in 1953.

  Two of these were an old couple who lived up the valley by a neglected coconut grove belonging to the church. The wife began to speak then stopped herself. When I pressed her, she said very hesitantly that she thought she recalled a white man being found dead in Taipivai, in the 1950s; the husband said it was the 1970s, and not a white man, merely an unidentified skeleton—someone who’d drowned or fallen from the cliffs.

  I felt disheartened. Their story was unsettling but too vague; nobody else recalled anything like it. And Tari Kautai was taking a long time. A new hip in a man his age was no joke, no matter how amusing it might be to Sergeant Benoit. What if there were complications? He might never be well enough to come home. And why should his memory be better than anyone else’s? I decided to give him a few more days. After that I’d have to take my chances on Nuku Hiva’s roads, making my way over the mountains to Hatiheu, the last village of any size. If I learned nothing there, I’d have to roam the rest of the island, going to every farm and fishing camp.

  Each day I went out, taking a lunch, and each evening Madame Kekela read my face and shook her head. When I’d spoken to every living soul in Taipivai, I began exploring the upper valley, finding my way through guava thickets and banyans to an imposing platform called Paepae Merivi, said to be where Melville had stayed, half guest, half captive of the Typees. Like all the finer ruins, it was made of boulders skilfully fitted without mortar, with a flight of steps at the front; the back had a raised footing of cut stone for the wooden house, the rest being an open terrace where Fayaway’s family had buried their dead and spent their sunny days. Melville’s or not, it would look good on film, its mystery deepened by the thick woods all around and the snarling river below.

  High on a slope I saw the “taboo grove” he’d feared, scene of “horrible idols, heathenish rites and human sacrifices.” It was eerie even now, with its deified ancestors overthrown by missionaries and time. The stone tiki figures were roughly life-size, some headless, others without feet or on their backs. Perhaps they had once been fearsome; now they were merely outlandish and forlorn. More poignant than their physical decay was the thought that these ancestors had lost their descendants. No one alive remembered who these beings were; and in losing their past, the offspring, like you and me, had lost their way.

  They made me think of you, of who and where you might be now. I pictured you here, the two of us searching for your grandfather o
n these mountains in the sea.

  As I got to know the valley, I saw that Typee had been a garden city from one end to the other, a succession of terraced orchards, houses, temples, and dancing platforms, running below the mountain walls for several miles. It must have been home to thousands.

  The Vaiahu fork, which I’d seen from above, and which Melville had described as a park-like mix of buildings and fruit trees, is completely cut off and overgrown today, not even a game trail leading in towards the falls at its head. But the main branch has a track as far as a small hydroelectric plant that lights the village. One morning I walked up there, beyond all the ruins, determined to reach the twin cascade of Teuakueenui, the Two Great Eels, down which Melville and Toby had tumbled like shot monkeys.

  It looked easy on the map, but wasn’t. Above the hydro shed the valley was very narrow, and looked as wild as in 1842. I had to spider over boulders beneath trees crowding the torrent’s edge, or wade to my thighs in fast water. I saw no machete cuts, no sign that anyone had come this way in years.

  After an hour I reached the end, a great broken bowl of dark basalt, water-carved from mountains boiling with mist. Here the Two Great Eels thundered into a broad, revolving pool.

  I took off my clothes and stood in the spray. I swam into deep water and let it take me round and round beneath the shifting arc of a rainbow. I thought of Henderson and Tiurai, their waterfall romance, and how, ultimately, they seemed to have led both Jon and me to this island they had never seen.

  The voice of the falls drowned every other sound, though from time to time I thought I heard a human voice, calling or singing. I glanced around, but it was only a trick of my ears, or perhaps the chiming of stones washed down from the heights.

  Next morning I woke to the throb of a helicopter, shockingly loud, echoing between the canyon walls. I’d slept late, and my first thought was that the chopper had come for me, caught me unawares, and I hadn’t time to lose myself in the woods. My legs were stiff, and the din was fading by the time I got to the window. The craft looked small and old, a bulbous dragonfly body with a thin tail, like a Bell I used to hire for aerial shots.

  Madame Kekela broke into a wide smile at breakfast—Tari Kautai was home! I waited two more days while she gathered the news. It was good. His operation had gone well; they’d kept him in Papeete for such a long time because of his age, nothing more.

  He lived on a windy headland down the Typee bay, overlooking the beach where Melville fled Nuku Hiva. Here the river meets the sea, a brown surge into clear jade.

  I turned up late in the afternoon, to catch him fresh from his siesta. A baby was crying inside. A short plump woman of about thirty came out at my knock, and I gave her a spray of oleanders and hibiscus. She seemed a country person, shy and plainly dressed in a dark green shift. Without a word she led me through a banana grove against the house.

  The old Typee was slumped in an armchair on his back porch, the ocean flopping and seething on the shingle below. Chickens and puppies dozed by his feet. He had been braiding rope. Nearby were sacks of coconut fibre and new coils hanging from the eaves. He wore one earring and a pair of khaki shorts. His flesh was lean, pale yellow, and vaguely translucent like a mummy s. A zipper of neat stitches ran up his thigh. He had a good head of iron-grey hair, a coarse goatee, and thick eyebrows ending in long whiskers like the feelers of a prawn. He might have been anywhere from seventy to ninety years old. If he’s eighty, I thought, he’d have been about my age when Jon posted that letter.

  “He won’t speak to you outside,” the woman said. “He can’t hear over the surf.” She eased him up and helped him into the dark interior. The window louvres were closed, admitting only slats of light. When my eyes adjusted I saw that it was one large room, with sleeping quarters behind a cotton screen. There was a pleasant smell of strong tobacco, dried fruit, sinnet, spices. I gave him my name.

  “Speak up, please!” He settled himself into a chair and motioned for me to sit opposite, across a small table made from a cable drum. I repeated who I was and briefly why I’d come, adding that Madame Kekela and Sergeant Benoit had suggested I visit him. If this was an inconvenient time, perhaps I could come back another day?

  “Not at all, Mademoiselle.” His hands ran inquiringly over the bottle I presented, recognizing its shape, the best Taiohae could provide. “Johnny Walker!” He chuckled amiably, showing empty gums and wide eyes like milky quartz. The young woman went outside.

  “I don’t see well any more. They told me I should let them do my cataracts. I told them I’d think about it. But I won’t. I’d have to wear glasses!” He touched my arm.

  He was surprisingly vigorous, contorting his face histrionically like a character in a silent movie, the shrimp whiskers adding greatly to the effect. He made me think of Fidel Castro at his most engaging, in seductive interviews with pretty foreign journalists. His French was good, the product of a Catholic boarding school.

  “A knife at my eyes! I won’t have it,” he repeated, gripping my arm more urgently. “I said I’ve seen enough.” He released me and paused; then, “Will you allow me, Mademoiselle, to touch your face?”

  His fingers, bony and calloused from years of rope-making, walked lightly over my skin as if reading Braille. The woman came back with three glasses and some water on a tray. “My young cousin,” he said. “Martine. Her name is Martine. She’s looking after me.” We shook hands.

  “If you feel strong enough,” I began. “I’d like to ask about a long time ago. Nineteen fifty-three. Do you remember a stranger, an Englishman, turning up on Nuku Hiva back then?”

  “I’m plenty strong enough! They fuss so much. Wouldn’t let me home for weeks. I’ve never liked Papeete. Do you?”

  “Not much,” I said. Martine patted his shoulder, reminding him what I’d asked.

  “Strangers? Many strangers came to Nuku Hiva in those days. The government sent them here after the war. Gave them land. We had a man with no lungs. Mustard gas! And there were …,” he groped for words he hadn’t used in years, “pacifists. Conscientious objectors. The authorities wanted them off Tahiti. Some of them never went home. They fell in love with Nuku Hiva girls.” He smiled towards Martine. He seemed to be talking about the forties. Or even the twenties. I steered him back to 1953. What was he doing then? Was he a policeman in Taiohae, or still chief of Taipivai?

  “I was chief three times. Cant remember the years. Why do you want to know?”

  “The man I’m looking for was my father.”

  The bottle stood unopened beside three empty tumblers and a pitcher of water. I wondered if he was waiting for me.

  “Shall I?”

  “Bien sûr!”

  “Santé!” Raised glasses in the semi-darkness. Kautai swallowed greedily, set down his glass, and sent a bony hand to the floor for a tobacco pouch. He began rolling a huge cigarette in a six-inch square of newspaper. “Why did your father come to Nuku Hiva?”

  “To hide, maybe.” I explained about the Korean War, the downing of Jon’s plane. “I think he was unwell. I don’t know how. Perhaps he was confused.” I didn’t know the French for shell-shock or post-traumatic syndrome. “It’s also possible he was looking for someone. Someone called Henderson. A Demi. This person might have come from the Leewards. From Raiatea.”

  “Ah! Les Îles Sous-le-vent.” The lovely name fell dreamily from Kautai’s tortoise lips. He knew them well; he’d worked on a gunboat before the war. He put down his cigarette and beckoned.

  “Let me feel your face again.”

  “I don’t look much like my father,” I said. “He was fair, blue eyes, average height. I’m dark and tall.”

  “Yes, I know.” From the darkness under the roof came a geckos call, like the kissing sound one makes at a baby or a cat. His hands took a longer, deeper reading than before. “The bones!” He laughed. “You might almost be Maohi!”

  My looks again. Several had called me that—the Tahitian form of Maori, meaning any Polynesian.
/>   “Except my nose.”

  “Oui! Except your nose!”

  The Typee sat back pensively, nearly invisible in the darkening house. From behind the curtain came whimpering and suckling. Martine and her baby His baby? I’ve still no idea, but I wouldn’t rule it out. The light between the boards faded quickly, as the sun slipped behind the Hapaa mountain.

  “I can tell you a story,” he said abruptly. “For a long time I have believed that one day I would have to tell this story. For many years I hoped to tell it. Lately I’ve been thinking it is better to forget. It may not be your story. It may be the wrong story altogether. But if it is yours, it will be very sad for you. Do you want to hear it? You should think carefully.”

  “It’s always better to know.”

  “So one thinks when one is young! When one is old there’s too much time for going over things. The sorrows of a lifetime run through the mind. Again and again before your eyes, when all you want is sleep. I wish I knew less! But the older I get the more clearly things come back.” He gave a brittle laugh, then resumed smoking and taking sips of whisky like a lizard.

  What tormented the old fellow? I lit up, kept quiet, as if mulling over what he’d said. But I agreed with Frank: Explanations, however distressing, are more consoling than mysteries.

  “I should like to hear everything you can tell me, Monsieur.”

  “Very well. You’ve decided. I remember those years. It was the time of the big bomb scare. The Lucky Dragon. I was constable in Taiohae.”

  “You mean the H-bomb tests?”

  He nodded. “The American bombs. Boom!” His glowing cigarette traced a mushroom cloud in the twilight. “They were a long way from Nuku Hiva, but wind and water go anywhere, no? Each was bigger than the one before. There was a ship, a fishing vessel—Chinese, Japanese, I’m not sure. But I remember her name. The Lucky Dragon. One doesn’t forget a name like that, not after what happened. Her crew saw blossom floating down from the sky. Pink petals, settling on them like when you sleep under a hutu tree. And they felt lucky. Heaven was smiling! You know how the Chinese are.” He coughed again, his face stony. “Soon all those men are dying. And people on some islands too. It was the …,” he fished for the word, “retombées. The fallout. People here were frightened. ‘Kaoha, Tari,’ they’d say, ‘if this is what the Americans are doing, what will the Russians do?’”