The Navigator

by Morris West

  ‘You could.’

  ‘I couldn’t and you know it. There’s Mark and now there’s Jenny. And I’ve spent four years building a business that keeps us in reasonable comfort. If there were only me, I’d toss it away tomorrow. But I can’t, and that’s the end of it.’

  ‘You’re frowning again, Martha. I like you better when you smile.’

  ‘That better?’

  ‘Much. Look at me!’

  ‘I’m looking.’

  ‘Now be quiet and listen!’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘This isn’t party talk and wouldn’t it be wonderful if…This is truth Martha. If you want to come on this voyage, I’ll take you. I’ll take Mark and Jenny too. The places are mine to dispose of – so the offer’s clear and open. When we come back I’ll stake you to a new start in business. If we don’t come back – and I’ll read you all the risks and possibilities – then, all I can say is, I’ll share what happens with you, good and bad …’

  She gaped at him in utter disbelief. She shook her head slowly from side to side as if to clear it of mists and noises. Then she began to laugh, softly and uncontrollably.

  ‘My God!… I just don’t believe it!’

  ‘I told you – it’s the truth.’

  ‘But why? Why should you of all people saddle yourself with a widow, an eleven-year-old boy, and a pregnant girl? It’s – it’s madness!’

  ‘All the rest of it could be madness too – the old gods, the island of the navigators, Magnusson’s dream of finding a new land before he dies, me the inheritor of the mana…But just suppose it isn’t, eh? Suppose we make our landfall and find the last new place on the planet? I’m carrying a whole future with me – a woman, a boy, a girl with tomorrow in her womb…They travelled like that in olden times. The migrant peoples do it still – with plants and livestock and children…Even without you, my sweet, there’ll be a whole tribe aboard the Frigate Bird. Why not join it? Why not give the boy an adventure he’ll remember all his life. Why not let the girl have a cherishing she’d never get in any city midden?’

  ‘She may not want to come.’

  ‘Ask her. The question is, do you want to come?’

  ‘Why me? Why not any of your other women?’

  ‘Because you’re a good artist and a good cartographer and I need someone to keep my records. Is that reason enough?’

  ‘No. There are other artists, better, cheaper and childless.’

  ‘Give me another reason then.’

  ‘It’s a long voyage. You need a mistress.’

  ‘There are others, cheaper, and childless.’

  ‘You’re a bastard.’

  He laughed and clamped his big hands on her wrists, holding them hard against the table-top.

  ‘Don’t let’s play games with each other Martha! For whatever it may mean, you and Mark are the nearest I’ve got to family – and I’m not talking about a small selfish cellule, but the big, neighbourly, loving and quarrelling thing, where all doors are open and everyone’s fingers are in the poi bowl. I know it isn’t exclusive enough or possessive enough for some – maybe it isn’t for you – but it’s all I know, the only situation in which I’m comfortable and happy…It isn’t something I’ve dreamed up for you. I’ve said the same to Magnusson. It’s very simple.’

  ‘Is it Gunnar?’

  ‘You asked for reasons. We gave already. What more do you want?’ ‘You could say you loved me.’

  ‘I could – and then you’d want to know how much and why and what’s the difference between you and other women and what do I want to do about it…? And I won’t know what to say.’

  ‘Because you’re scared?’

  ‘No! Because there’s two of me. One is going back to the ancestors – and it’s a long dark journey and he can’t answer to anyone for what may happen on the way. The other me is here, with all the girls for playmates and no woman to hold and call his own. For what it’s worth – and it may not be very much – you’re the nearest and the dearest.’

  ‘And you’ve never once invited me to sleep with you.’

  ‘Would you have said yes?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’d probably have used you like a fetish doll and stuck pins all over you.’

  ‘You may feel like that tomorrow.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been so screwed up for so long – it’s hard to break the habit. I nag at Mark, I snap on the telephone, I lay little traps for men to walk into and then wonder why I’m making the living pay for the dead.’

  ‘I’m offering you the oldest cure in the world – a long sea voyage.’

  ‘Let me think about it, talk to Mark and Jenny.’

  ‘I can’t give you too long. If you’re not coming, I’ll have to choose others.’

  ‘When do you want to know?’

  ‘Tomorrow night. I’m giving a party at my place. If you’re joining the Frigate Bird, be there, all three of you. If you decide against it, there’s no harm done, and we’ll still be friends…Well, I promised you an early night…’

  ‘I think I’d like a nightcap somewhere.’

  ‘Sure. Where would you like to go? The Barefoot Bar?’

  ‘Why not your place?’

  ‘Because if you weren’t so screwed up Mrs Gilman, you’d know there was no charge for family. Some other time, eh?’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Thorkild. Thank you, very, very much!’

  On the night of the party Carl Magnusson arrived an hour before the other guests. He had things to talk about, he said, and besides he hated to barge in on a whole crowd of people. He needed to take them slowly, one by one. Molly Kaapu and Dulcie were already there, laying out food and liquor, and there was a moment’s comedy when Molly stood staring at the visitor and then burst into a long wheezing chuckle.

  ‘Now look at him! Little Carlie! My, my, how he’s grown! Don’t you remember me, Carl Magnusson? I used to work at your place when you was half grown and you used to chase me round the house!’

  Magnusson stared at her in disbelief and then he too burst into laughter.

  ‘My God! Molly Kaapu! What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I work for the man. And this here’s Dulcie, my daughter. Just as well I could run fast or she might have been yours!’

  The encounter put the old man in a good humour. He cast an approving eye over the room and its furnishings and commented:

  ‘You’ve got a pleasant place here Thorkild.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘I hate mess and clutter.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘That’s a good drink.’

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘These people coming tonight. They’re your choice for the voyage?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What happens if I don’t like any of ’em?’

  ‘You say why and we talk about it in private, afterwards.’

  ‘Fair enough. Do you want to tell me about them?’

  ‘You’ve seen the student records. There are three outsiders you don’t know about. I’d rather you meet them cold, and make your own judgement. Anything I said at this moment would sound like special pleading.’

  ‘Let’s talk about the island.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ve been studying your documents, and your source references, and making some guesses of my own. I’d like to check them with you. Have you got any charts of the Pacific?’

  ‘Several. I’ll bring them down.’

  ‘No. I’d rather not have anyone else know what we’re discussing. Can we work upstairs?’

  ‘Well…sure.’

  Thorkild led the way to his bedroom and held the door open for the old man to enter. Magnusson marched to the centre of the floor and stood a long moment, surveying the sparse, cell-like chamber. He said soberly:

  ‘So you live alone, eh?’

  ‘Here, yes.’

  ‘And I’m intruding. I beg your pardon.’

  ‘You’re a guest. My house is yours.’

  �
��Thank you. What charts have you got?’

  ‘French Navy, U.S. Navy and a British Admiralty routing chart. That’s the one that makes most sense for this discussion.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it demonstrates how easy it would be to miss a small land mass.’

  He crossed to the farther wall and, from under a pelmet, pulled down a canvas-backed chart of the Pacific Ocean. The superscription read 5128(6) June – Routeing Chart, South Pacific Ocean. The chart was a maze of lines, each of which indicated a shipping route and the distance in nautical miles, Suva to Panama, 6323; Honolulu to Valparaiso, 5912; Apia to Tahiti, 1303…The criss-cross of routes made a variety of geometric shapes, small and large, across the surface of the map. Magnusson studied it for a few moments and then turned to Thorkild:

  ‘Now show me where you think your island lies.’

  Thorkild picked up a pencil from the desk and laid the point of it on Papeete in the Society Islands.

  ‘Start from there. South-west there is the route from Papeete to Wellington. South-east, the route from Papeete to the Magellan Straits. Between those there’s a big blank triangle where no routes are shown until you hit the line from Panama to Sydney…that line there running just south of Marotiri Island. Are you with me so far?’

  ‘I’m with you,’ said Magnusson. ‘I’m waiting to hear the arguments.’

  ‘O.K. First argument – very general. A large blank space on the map, off the shipping and air routes. Second argument, more interesting. All the legends say the island lies beyond the path of A’a, the glowing one. That’s Sirius the dog-star, whose orbit is about 17° South Latitude. It lies also beyond the shining black path of the god Kanaloa, which is the Tropic of Capricorn – 27° South. Look at the centre of the empty triangle. That’s about 30° South, so it fits the legend. Now! …’ Thorkild began to trace a series of lines on the chart. ‘These are some of the known routes of the island navigators. All of them go through that empty triangle …’

  ‘So, why no record of colonization or settlement?’

  ‘Wrong question Mr Magnusson. There is a record – but, in oral legend, because the Polynesians had no system of writing. What’s missing is an account of its life or its people. But the same applies to Pitcairn. When Fletcher Christian arrived there with his mutineers, they found no inhabitants but many relics of an older occupation …’ He broke off and faced Magnusson with a quizzical challenge. ‘You said you had some conclusions of your own. How do they match with mine?’

  ‘Near enough to make me believe our voyage is worth while.’

  ‘Good! That’s one thing we won’t be quarrelling about.’

  Magnusson gave him a sharp sidelong look.

  ‘And why should we quarrel at all, Mr Thorkild?’

  ‘We shouldn’t; but we’re the sort of men who will. We might as well get as many contentious matters as possible out of the way before we start.’

  ‘Can you think of any at this moment?’

  ‘Specifically no; but let’s try a few subjects. If I understood you correctly, it would be your intention to annex this island to the United States, occupy it, and claim land rights to ourselves.’

  ‘Right! And unless some kapu there intervenes, you would go along with that?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve chosen the people to that end, young ones, men and women who I believe would be open to a new life and capable of continuing it if they were left alone.’

  ‘Colonists in fact?’

  ‘But not takers. If this place is already occupied by an indigenous people, we claim no rights at all over them, because we will have none.’

  ‘I think,’ said Magnusson slowly, ‘I think I’d like another drink while I take that under advisement.’

  When Thorkild came back with the drink, he found Magnusson sprawled in the chair, reading one of the manuscript volumes of his lectures. Magnusson took the glass, absently mumbled a word of thanks and went on reading. After a while he looked up and said:

  ‘Is this stuff all original?’

  ‘Unless it’s marked otherwise, yes.’

  ‘This piece for instance.’ He turned back to the manuscript and began reading.’… The oceanic horizon is vast. The island habitat is small. Its frontier is the outer reef. The community is confined and inbred. Its activities are traditional, and repetitive, modulated to the tones of the weather and the rhythm of the ocean. Prowess is acclaimed – the strong swimmer, the clever fisherman, the chanter or the skilful navigator. But there is no question of attainment, as continental man, metropolitan man understands the term. What is there to attain? Rank comes by birth. Privilege belongs only to the high-born. And what is there to possess, when what is grown or caught is consumed at the next meal? Of course, if you intrude into this system new and alien elements, the changes are swift and sometimes catastrophic…’ Magnusson broke off the reading.’… I like that Thorkild. I begin to like you too. I’ll buy your argument. We don’t intrude where we have no rights.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve thought about the crew question. Two of my boys have wives. I’ve told them they can bring them, provided they work. The other two are only interested in each other. There’s a minor problem though. I’ve lost my cook. He’ll sign on for a cruise, not for a long voyage.’

  ‘Molly Kaapu’s a good cook.’

  ‘She’s a rowdy old bawd and she takes up a lot of room. Still, she’d be easier to live with than a stranger. Let me see what I can find first. If no one better turns up, you can offer her the job.’ He grinned with impish amusement. ‘It looks as if you’ll get your wish, Thorkild. We’ll soon be a bloody Noah’s Ark! Still, it’ll make a change from some of the bores I’ve carried.’

  Wary though he was, Thorkild could not refuse the old man a salute for his skill. He was like an expert fisherman, who let the marlin run, and then brought him up, short and surprised, with the barb snagged deeper in his jaw. There was no malice in the game. It was a conscious art, a duellist’s exercise, precise, determined, self-satisfying and quite ruthless.

  For the party, therefore, he had devised his own tactic, simple and elementary. He knew from experience that the impact of young minds, the thrust of personalities eager to affirm themselves, was strong and often disconcerting. He would let Magnusson take the full brunt of it, translate for himself the gestures and the jargon, wait out the silences, answer the challenges, blunt or subtle, from the young bulls and their attendant females. He himself would intervene only to present the drinks and draw off the garrulous to let the quiet ones speak. Only for Martha Gilman and Jenny would he stand as advocate, and then plead if he had to, softly but tenaciously. In the end, Magnusson must tire first. He was maimed and ageing. He was on strange tribal ground. The newness and the numbers were against him. The students themselves were an exotic group with some formidable attainments.

  There was Franz Harsanyi, son of Hungarian immigrants, a gangling, shock-haired youth with pebble spectacles, who was working on a comparative study of the sixty and more Polynesian dialects. There was Adam Briggs, a Negro from Alabama, studying under the G.I. Bill of Rights, who had – for some secret reason – interested himself in land rights and their transmission by verbal memory among the archipelagoes.

  There was Hernan Castillo, part Malay, part Spanish, whose father brewed beer in Manila. He was a low-level student but a beautiful craftsman who had made, with his own hands, a collection of miniature island sea-craft, perfect to the last detail. Last of the male contingent was Simon Cohen, who looked like a rag-picker and was in fact an ardent musicologist, a scavenger of chants and songs and dances, which had earned him a Unesco grant.

  The three women made an equally incongruous group: Monica O’Grady, a sad-eyed, horse-faced girl from San Francisco, with a bawdy tongue and a passion for prehistoric pottery and stone artifacts; Yoko Nagamuna, a doll-like girl from Okinawa who studied nutrition and the marriage market with equal fervour; and for a final surprise, Ellen Ching, half Chinese, half Hawaiian
who danced hulas for the tourists to pay for her studies in the botany of the Pacific.

  Some of them were friends. None of them, so far as he knew, were lovers. Each of them had a chameleon talent of conformity and contradiction. All of them had the quality he prized, a continuing curiosity; a zest and enjoyment of the things they did. How they would react under the stress of enforced companionship and the discomforts of sea-travel he did not know. In an odd fashion he wanted to rely on Magnusson’s judgement of them, yet could not and would not concede his right to make it.

  Before the party was an hour old, he was forced to admit that Carl Magnusson was a master of social strategy. In spite of his infirmity, he moved freely around the group, never fumbling a name or a personal detail. He smiled, was gracious, never condescended, was always interested and ready with a joke to take the weight off the talk. By the time the meal was served he was perched on the divan like a satrap, with Mark Gilman curled up beside him, and Jenny squatting at his feet, feeding him morsels from her plate, while he engaged the whole company in a running debate on the geopolitics of the Pacific Basin. It was a conductor’s triumph, and on the stroke of eleven, he finished it with a flourish. He held up his hand for silence and announced, with a laugh of deprecation:

  ‘I’m an old man and I’ve got to get to bed. I guess we’ve all been on trial here tonight – me as well as you. So let’s wrap it up quickly. I’ll be very happy to have all of you aboard the Frigate Bird. But you’ve got to feel happy to come. So let’s have a show of hands. Who’s ready to sign on?’

  Every hand was raised. Magnusson grinned and nodded approval. Then he went on:

  ‘Good! Now let’s settle the protocol once and for all. A ship’s a dictatorship. There’s only one boss. That’s me. Professor Thorkild’s your teacher, but he’s my mate. He’ll try to turn you men into seamen, and I’m sure you women know enough about housekeeping to run a clean and tidy ship. You’ll need valid passports and visas for French, British and New Zealand Pacific territories. You’ll need all the normal shots and a doctor’s certificate that you’re free from any communicable disease. Which reminds me…Your private relationships are not my concern; but if you’re drunk on board or catch clap ashore, you’re flown home from the next port of call. Any questions?…Good! We sail in two weeks. I hope I’ll learn something from you all. Thanks for your company. Stay and finish your party. If you wouldn’t mind driving me home, Professor …?’