by Morris West
‘Why don’t you go and freshen up Gunnar? Jenny and I will serve.’
He had never been noted for discretion, but this time he had the grace to keep his mouth shut and be grateful in silence. It was only after the meal was over and – miracle upon miracle! – Jenny and Mark were washing dishes in the kitchen that Martha Gilman said the words of absolution:
‘You’re a clown, Gunnar. But a sweet clown. If she wants to stay I’ll keep her. I could use some help and God knows she needs somewhere to nest for a while. So, we’ll see…Now, what’s this I hear about your appointment?’
‘Hey! Whose phone have you been tapping?’
‘None of your business. Now tell me.’
‘They’ve offered me a three-year appointment as associate professor. But tenure and the Chair – No! Anderson’s offered me six months’ study leave to prove my thesis – which is great; except nobody’s come up with the money to finance the kind of expedition it needs.’
‘You’re a whore Gunnar Thorkild!’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘It isn’t meant to be. I read your thesis, remember. I drew the maps and the illustrations. I believed what I read about your ancestors: how they paddled and sailed without lodestone, without charts; how they lived on island fruits and ocean fish and made landfalls on tiny atolls and big islands like this one. I believed the voyages you yourself had made on the luggers and copra-boats and alone with your grandfather. Now I hear you talking about sponsorships and expeditions and all the dreck that goes with them. You weren’t sponsored then. Why do you need it now? Or have you lost your nerve?…You’ve sat here in this room and I’ve seen dreams in a small boy’s eyes when you talked. I’ve heard your students – even that poor dumb chick in there – tell how you’ve opened up horizons they had never dreamed in their lives before. Now – what are you? Some kind of sophomore sex symbol, talking high and acting low and playing out your little games of benevolence like this one today! Where has the big man gone – the son of the daughter of Kaloni Kienga, the sacred navigator? Will he go home to prepare his grandfather for his voyage to the island of the tradewinds?’
The vigour and the venom of her attack stunned him for a moment. He had known her in tempers and tantrums, and had always found words to coax her out of them; but this was cold anger, contemptuous and lethal. She was thrusting for the kill at crotch and heart and jugular; but he would not give her the satisfaction of engaging in the duel. He said curtly:
‘Shut up Martha! If you’re in the dog-days I’m sorry. If you’re in trouble I’ll try to help. But don’t play bitch-games with me.’
‘You’re a bastard Thorkild.’
‘That’s not news sweetheart. It’s on my birth certificate.’
‘You’re so damn prodigal. You waste so much that other people would give their eyes for – talent, opportunity, freedom.’
‘And since when do I have to account for my life to you, or anyone else?’
‘Because you are accountable…that’s just the point. Today, on an impulse you’ve changed three lives, Jenny’s, mine and Mark’s…I’m not grudging what I’ve done. I think it will turn out fine. My point is that you made the change without asking. You’ve imposed a situation on us all; yet when you’ve finished here tonight you’ll walk away whistling Dixie as though nothing has happened. It’s the same in your lecture-room. Every lesson you teach is consequential for someone. Every time you cock your hat at some new girl there’s a consequence for her. But you don’t seem to care. You’re…I don’t know…You’re …’
‘Haphaole,’ said Gunnar Thorkild quietly. ‘Half-white, and all adrift. That’s really what you’re trying to say.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, Martha. Yes!…Oh, I know it isn’t a colour thing or a race-prejudice. But it does have to do with what I am, and what seems to you a lack of – what’s the fashionable word? – commitment. I’m a tribal man, not a group man. In a tribe you don’t make commitments, you are committed, from birth to death, to sharing and loving and suffering and relationships that go back to the old gods. You fish together and you share the catch. Families exchange their children with no loss to the child and no shock to the order of things. In a haole group it’s different. The family’s destroyed or wilted. You have to insist on what you are, prove your identity and then dedicate all of it or part of it as the price of admission to the group. I’m not a team man, a faculty man, a company man. I refuse to work at conformity. I’m just me…You’re hating me because I seem to have a freedom that is denied to you. But you let me come and go because I don’t make demands on you, and you can shut the door in my face. My colleagues damn me because they say I’m uncomfortable to work with. The truth is I have no past they are interested to share and no future I’m prepared to mortgage to their demands. So, I’m an oddity…like a man who’s lost his shadow. Nothing will change that. Not even if I strip mother-naked and walk like Christ on the water from Diamond Head to Puka-Puka!…’
She was near to tears, but she would not be silenced. She pleaded with him desperately.
‘I understand what you’re saying. You can’t let your personal peace reside in other men’s mouths – in their gossip and hearsay. But this is different. Your integrity as a scholar is in question. Your authority as a teacher is under challenge. You must answer the challenge, or abdicate!’
‘Which means a voyage of exploration, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Which means a ship and crew and supplies – in other words, money.’
‘You’ve got money.’
‘Ten thousand dollars in the bank.’
‘And salary, and a house, and a valuable library and a car…’
‘And you think I should gamble all that on this single enterprise?’
‘I think you must, otherwise the record stands against you. You’re finished as a teacher and a scholar; and you will have discredited your mother’s people.’
‘Why the hell should you care about me or my mother’s people?’
‘Because I’m fond of you and Mark adores you – and I’d like to know there was one man in a dog’s world we could both respect!…Now will you please go home. I don’t think I can take any more tonight.’
He woke next morning, red-eyed and unrested, at his desk in the sound-proof room, with a note pad full of scrawled figures under his hand. The figures showed that if he borrowed against his assets, he could come up with forty thousand dollars in cash and it would take him ten years of bone-poor living to pay off the loan. His first lecture did not begin until eleven, so he shaved and showered, drank half-a-pint of orange-juice and drove down to Red Mulligan’s boat-yard at Ala Moana.
Red was an ex-marine with a beer-belly and a blasphemous tongue and a shrewd eye for a sucker, who ran the best yard and the soundest brokerage business in the islands. His wife was a bustling, roly-poly woman who looked after the office and chivvied the painters and riggers and carpenters and kept Red sober during working hours. They were an ill-assorted couple, but good friends, pawky and generous and full of the salty gossip of the waterfront. Over a mug of coffee in the carpenter’s shop Gunnar Thorkild laid out his first tentative plans:
‘… I know what I want Red: something like a Baltic trader or an island lugger, three hundred tons, a hundred feet over-all, three masted with one squaresail for the trades. I want a slow-revving engine, one of those old thumpers that will keep going even under water! I want basic accommodation for thirty people, students and crew. And I want you to sign in blood that her hull’s got no worms and her spars and rigging are sound.’
‘You’re talking about an antique,’ said Red Mulligan. ‘And if you want one that’s safe for the big seas out there, you’re going to have to pay for it. How much can you afford?’
‘Thirty thousand – tops.’
Red Mulligan looked at him with the pity which the Irish keep for drunks and spoiled priests and congenital idiots. He shook his head slowly from side to side while his bell
y gurgled in protest at the insanity. Finally he stretched out two arms like tree-trunks and laid his hands on Thorkild’s shoulders. There were genuine tears in his voice:
‘Doc! For thirty thousand here’s what you can do. You can go to any travel agent, pick up two first-class tickets for a round-the-world tour. You can phone up Helen’s Dating Service and she’ll give you a choice of fifty broads to take along. You can have yourself lodged, laid and liquored for six months and still come home with money in your jeans. But a Baltic trader – forget it! You know what a boat like that is, Doc? It’s nothin’ but a big hole in the sea for suckers to pour money into and smart guys like me to take money out of. Do you read me Doc? Do you read me?’
‘Loud and clear,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘But you’ve told me yourself that boats change hands like used cars. People find they can’t afford the upkeep, so sometimes the yards attach them for unpaid bills. Why don’t you see what you can find?’
‘It’s not a question of finding her,’ said Red Mulligan slowly. ‘I know where she is right now.’
‘Where?’
‘Two miles from here at Mort Faraday’s Marina.’
‘Who owns her?’
‘Carl Magnusson.’
‘The cannery man?’
‘The cannery man, the freight-line man, the you-name-it-he’s-in-it man, the God-us-and-the-Dillinghams man…Yeah, that Magnusson.’
‘How much is he asking for her?’
‘Two hundred and twenty-five thousand.’
‘What will he take?’
‘Two hundred and twenty-five thousand.’
‘Like that, eh?’
‘The hardest nose in the business, buddy boy.’
‘I’d still like to see the vessel.’
‘I’ll call Mort Faraday. When do you want to go?’
‘Now, if possible.’
‘Do me a favour, eh Doc. Make like you’ve got the money and you’re just being careful about spending it. Mort and I do a lot of business together and I don’t want to spoil a beautiful friendship …’
Fifteen minutes later Gunnar Thorkild was standing on the deck of the Frigate Bird – three hundred tons of Baltic trader, barquentine rigged, powered by twin MAN diesels, converted from North Sea freighter to a cadet training ship and finally to a rich man’s yacht, with teak decks and gleaming bright work and sails immaculate as table-linen and cordage white as the day it was bought. The engine-room was like a surgical theatre and the wheelhouse was a navigator’s heaven. For Gunnar Thorkild it was love at first sight – and despair the instant afterwards.
At the price – if one had the price – the vessel was a gift. But to man and maintain her in this pristine splendour would require another fortune. Mort Faraday, the broker, commented hopefully:
‘She’s a beauty eh?’
‘How does Magnusson run her?’
‘Skippers her himself – at least he did before his illness – and crews her with island boys from his place on Kauai.’
‘Has she ever been chartered?’
‘Never and nohow! We’ve had big offers from big names. Magnusson would as lief rent you his wife as this beauty.’
‘Why’s he selling then?’
‘Like I said, he had an illness last year – a stroke. He’s recovered, but it’s left him with one gimpy leg and an arm that’s not as good as it used to be. I guess he’s just decided the Frigate Bird’s one thing too many.’
‘Any chance he’d shade the price?’
‘Would you, if she were yours?’
‘No, I guess not.’
‘Tell you what though. At this price, which is a steal, our finance company would come through with a seventy-five per cent loan, over a five year term. If you bought her and exploited her for charter, you could manage that easily.’
‘Let me think about it. Is Magnusson in town?’
‘Far as I know. He doesn’t go far from home these days. But if you’re thinking of a private haggle, forget it. He’ll chew you up like pop-corn – if you ever got to see him, which isn’t too easy.’
‘Thanks for the tip. How long to get her ready for sea?’
‘Man! As long as it takes you to buy fresh stores and load ’em. Her tanks are full, there’s dry goods and a deep-freeze full of meat and a full inventory of spares and duplicate systems. All you have to do is press the starter and motor off the mooring. I swear to you, you’ll never find another buy like this one …’
‘I believe you Mort,’ said Gunnar Thorkild amiably. ‘I’ll be back. Take care now.’
‘You take care Professor. I hate to lose a sale …’
As he drove slowly out to the University through the press of morning traffic, Gunnar Thorkild was already composing the letter which would be delivered by messenger that same evening to Carl Magnusson.
The house of Carl Magnusson was like the man himself, separate, discreet, privileged, a low-built bungalow of teakwood and volcanic stone, set in a tropic garden where lawns and shrubberies rolled down to the water’s edge. There were wrought iron gates and a guardian to open them. Who came here came by grant and never by right; and high secrets of state and of commerce had been talked in the drawing-room and on the lanai that looked out over the pool and the horizon beyond the reef.
Carl Magnusson himself was a character of forbidding reputation, and singular personal charm. He was a big man, sturdy as a tree, white-haired and ruddy, with a soft voice, and an air of rapt interest in the most banal talk of his guests. His angers were formidable and on occasions destructive, but they were never raucous or violent. It was a matter of public record that he had married four times and begotten six children. All the children were grown and gone away. Since his illness, he had lived in seclusion with a Filipino staff, his fourth wife and a resident secretary.
He received Gunnar Thorkild on the lanai, seated him at a table on which were laid his letter and a complete set of his publications, waited until coffee was served and then put him to the question:
‘Thorkild, I’ve read your letter and your publications. I’ve also informed myself of your personal and academic background. I’m impressed. I’m also puzzled.’
‘Why?’
‘At a critical moment in your career you made a mistake – a big one.’
‘It wasn’t a mistake. It was an act of faith in a great man, my grandfather.’
‘An act of faith – that’s an interesting point of view. One of your colleagues, to whom I spoke yesterday, described it as a surrender to a fairy-tale, a dream out of folk-lore.’
‘It is a dream, Mr Magnusson; but it’s the dream of a whole people. You hear it in one form or another all over the Pacific, from the Gambiers to the Gilberts. The substance of it is always the same: that there is an island, a sacred place where the Alii, the great chiefs and the great navigators go to die…Now this is not the small dreaming of one man. It is what Jung called the great dreaming: the mythos of a whole race dispersed over the biggest ocean on the planet. Behind every great dreaming is a great truth – or even a small one that has assumed a fundamental importance.’
‘And you really believe this island exists?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you believe you can find it?’
‘I know I will find it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘My grandfather will tell me. The knowledge must pass to me and he must pass it. That is the way things are.’
‘Come now Mr Thorkild!… It must happen because that’s the way things are! From a scholar, that’s too much!’
‘How long have you lived in the Islands Mr Magnusson?’
‘We’ve been here four generations, Thorkild!’
‘Then you shouldn’t mock “the way things are” and the things that are handed down. A few miles off the Pali pass there are sacred places, lost for centuries, but if you stumble across them, you will find yourself surrounded and warned away by the guardian families. You know that the trust and the meaning is still transmitted – and
if you don’t you should!’
‘I know,’ Carl Magnusson grinned. ‘I just wondered if you did. For a fellow who wants a favour you’re damned prickly.’
‘I don’t want favours. I want a deal.’
‘What sort of deal?’
‘I want to charter the Frigate Bird.’
‘She’s for sale, not for charter.’
‘I was hoping you’d consider a charter offer.’
‘No. She’s a thing I love, not a commodity.’
‘I understand the loving,’ said Gunnar Thorkild wryly. ‘I fell in love with her myself. There’s no use pretending I can afford her.’
‘Suppose you could. What would you do?’
‘I’d skipper her myself, I’d get a good crew, and a bunch of boys and girls and sail her down to Hiva Oa. I’d put my grandfather and his canoe on board and let him navigate me as far as he was willing. Then I’d put him overside in his own craft and say good-bye to him. After that I would have a choice to make…’
‘What choice?’
‘A hard one. I would know by then how to reach the island. I could turn back, and keep the knowledge to myself. Or sail on, find the place, chart it and then come home and vindicate my reputation as a scholar.’
‘And how do you think you would choose?’
‘That’s the problem. I’m haphaole you see – two men in one skin.’
‘There’s a third choice.’
‘I’ve thought of that too,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘Find the one secret place left on the planet and stay there. It’s a tempting thought.’
‘I could be tempted.’
‘Away from all this?’ Gunnar Thorkild was sceptical.
‘Let me tell you something, Thorkild. When you’re flat on your back and you can’t move and you can’t talk, and the vultures are waiting in the board-room to pick your bones clean, you get a new slant on living …’ He broke off and sat, a long moment, staring at the liver-spots on the back of his hands. Then he said flatly:
