The Navigator

by Morris West

  ‘This is truth and consequences, sonny-boy! You’ve got one girl pregnant, and she doesn’t want you. Barbara’s carved up, but she’ll recover. I’m not a stud-master mating mares and stallions; but we’ve got to get some kind of stability into our arrangements. Those scars you’ve got tell you what happens when that stability is destroyed. So, sixty-four dollar question: what are you going to do?’

  Cohen took it coolly enough. So far as life on the island was concerned, he’d as lief shack with Barbara as anyone else…She was good in bed; she had a sense of humour; and the scars wouldn’t show in the dark…Simple Simon was a pragmatist. So, no problem, no complications …

  Thorkild hesitated a long time over his next move and then, uneasily, decided to pin his faith to the brusque Chinese common sense of Ellen Ching. She agreed, without hesitation, to preserve his confidence. He told her of his talk with Yoko Nagamuna, of his own fears, and of the arrangement he had concluded with Simon Cohen. He added:

  ‘I’m not setting up as a marriage broker. I’m looking for advice.’

  Ellen Ching gave him a small, frigid smile, folded her hands in her lap and told him:

  ‘I learnt a long time ago that you settle for what you are and what you can have…I’ve always been a two-way switch. Yoko’s always known it but I’d as soon play girl-games with her as with a rattle-snake! Franz Harsanyi and I? Well, he’s soft and kind with a head full of dreams – a poet I guess. He thinks he’s in love with me, but that’s only because I understand him and we don’t fight, and he feels warmer with me than I do with him. If it helps you to have me as his Hausfrau, I’ve no objections – and he’ll think he’s married the Mona Lisa…If you’re wondering why I’m so easy about this you might as well know I’m not the Hakka matriarch you thought I was. I’m scared stiff of children and I’m all sewn up inside so I can’t have them.’

  ‘Tell me about Hernan Castillo.’

  ‘He’s cute isn’t he? Small, brown, handsome, courteous, good-humoured. The best of both worlds…But make no mistake, Chief. He’s pure artist. Solid bronze – totally self-sufficient! You heard him. What you can’t use you throw away!…Oh boy…!’

  ‘What are Yoko’s chances with him?’

  ‘She’s a tough one herself. With me out of the running, she’ll make out fine. So long as Hernan’s got his sticks and stones to play with, you could mate him with a hole in a wall and he wouldn’t know the difference.’ She relaxed and gave him a sidelong sardonic smile. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Chief?’

  ‘No!…I’m sailing by the seat of my pants.’

  ‘Some people might say you were acting like a first-class fascist.’

  ‘What’s the alternative? Another blow-up?’

  ‘Hey-hey! I’m on your side, remember! I like a nice orderly life too, which reminds me – when you’ve finished police rounds, your own girl could use a little loving care. She’s starting to fray at the edges.’

  ‘Thanks Ellen. You’re a pal!’

  ‘I also come in season like any other girl. You’re on fair notice, Chief. Don’t leave any loose change lying around. I can still be tempted!’

  After which salutary counsel he went off in search of Jenny. He found her at the water’s edge scaling and cleaning fish and laying them out on fresh leaves. Her eyes lit up when she saw him and she made a comic face of disgust.

  ‘I hate this job!…All guts and gore!’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you Jenny.’

  ‘You look awfully serious. Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘No…but maybe I’m about to make a big mistake. I’ve made quite a few lately.’

  ‘I don’t think you have…and I said it last night around the fire!’

  ‘Jenny, yesterday was one of the worst days in my life…We were talking about killing a man because he couldn’t accommodate to reality. Maybe in the end I have killed him.’

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. You can’t.’

  ‘To tell you the truth Jenny, some of the blame lies on poor Charlie himself. He turned away from real life, and ended in a world of nightmare and fantasy.’

  ‘I know …’

  ‘And that’s what you’re doing now, Jenny!’

  ‘I…I don’t understand.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to make you understand. You’re the luckiest girl alive. You’ve got a good man, head-over-heels in love with you. You love him too; but you won’t admit it, because you think you’re in love with me…No don’t turn away! You’re going to hear this and understand it. I love you Jenny – but the way a father loves his daughter and wants to protect her and see she gets the best deal in life. But that’s it! End quote, period, finish! If you have fantasies about me making love to you, forget ’em! I’d be impotent – not because you’re not beautiful or desirable, but because, to me you’re kapu: forbidden! Now, there are two choices: take the sweet fruit and eat it; love the man who belongs to you; enjoy the love he’s offering you; be glad of the other love that surrounds you…Or climb that cliff, jump off, and let the sharks eat you for dinner! I’ll be sorry; we’ll all be sorry. But the next day we’ll go about our normal business; because we’ve only got a small life; and we can’t spend one more goddam bit of it on you!’

  He turned on his heel and left her, squatting in the shallows, sobbing like a child over a broken doll. As he walked into the camp he found Adam Briggs, raking out the first charcoal from the kiln and putting it into baskets. Thorkild tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to your girl, on the beach!’

  ‘Did she say anything about me?’

  ‘I didn’t give her a chance. I told her she could either marry you or feed herself to the sharks.’

  ‘Hell man!’ Briggs was horror-struck. ‘That’s no way to talk to the girl!’

  ‘You know a better one, go try it! I’ve run out of words!’

  Briggs took off like a sprinter from the block. Thorkild shrugged and went over to inspect the mash can. The mixture looked foul, but it was fermenting steadily. It was real grade A jungle juice, potent enough to put a leap on the lame or blow the heads off the unwary.

  Sally Anderton was standing, drenched and dishevelled, under the cascade, washing clothes. Thorkild plunged in beside her and clasped her in his arms. ‘That’s enough, woman! Cease and desist! Chief’s orders!’

  ‘Please Gunnar! Can’t you see I’m busy!’

  ‘We’re all busy! Lorillard’s making like a great pioneer in the jungle. Franz Harsanyi and Ellen Ching are moving house. Adam, I hope, is proposing to Jenny. Castillo’s working on the plans he’s got to show me this afternoon. And you and I, my love, are going to work at being civil and sweet and sexy with each other!’

  ‘You have been a busy preacher, haven’t you? Three shot-gun weddings in twenty-four hours. It must be a record. I just hope they stick.’

  ‘Even if they don’t, it slows things down for a space…Come on, let’s see you smile.’

  ‘I don’t feel like smiling. I’m just goddam fed up, with myself and everyone else! And I don’t feel like making love either!’

  ‘Did I ask?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Easy sweetheart! Easy! …’ He lifted her in his arms, carried her out of the pool and set her down on the soft moss of the bank and she lay there, weeping quietly, while he sponged her dry and then pillowed her head in his lap, and soothed her with soft crooning words…‘You can’t mend the world, Doctor Anderton. You can only try to go on loving it, which is sometimes harder to do than hating. One day I’ll take you up to the place where my grandfather, Kaloni, sits with his ancestors and mine. At first sight it’s eerie, shocking: old bones in a high place and the sea-birds, predatory and indifferent, wheeling over them…Then the meaning comes home to you. Those men up there had encountered all the terrors of the sea: the great storms; the long calms when the water ran out and they must suck the sea dew from rags, or chew the raw flesh of fishes to slake their thirst; the big wh
ite shark that leaps from the water to attack an unsuspecting paddler, or a woman trailing her hand in the current; the sickness and the dying and the bodies thrown overboard in the darkness…But the end, the end you see up there, is peace. They’re above the storms, beyond the reach of the highest waves. They see the sun rise and set and the great march of the constellations. The wind is a menace no longer, but music. That’s the last thing they know; and the knowing makes the past plain and the future a pillow on which to rest…You can rest too Sally; and I’ll sing you a song for your sleeping.

  ‘Under the pikake tree

  The air is sweet,

  But I cannot taste it.

  The sky is full of flowers,

  But I cannot see them,

  Because my lover’s face

  Is there

  And his lips are on my mouth.’

  8

  The ship, said Hernan Castillo, must be easy to build, easy to sail. It would be folly to try to emulate the great builders of the Pacific: the Marquesans, the Samoans, the men of Fiji, who used an elaborate joinery, with flanged planks and caulkings of sap, and a variety of curves for stem and stern. The simplest design was that of the Vaka, the long, trading canoe of Puka-Puka, which could be hollowed from a single log, trimmed by a single outrigger and fitted with two masts and sails resembling a modern Bermuda main.

  They should build it to carry six, but to be sailed or paddled by four men. The method of building was set down rigidly by Castillo. The larger and the smaller tree would be cut, trimmed and hauled to the beach. The smaller tree would be worked first, into the outrigger so that they might practise their prentice hands and not spoil the big timber. They would shape the exterior hull first, then cut out the interior, using fire to char the core and stone adzes to chip it out afterwards. The outrigger itself would be hollow like the main hull, so they could use it, meanwhile, for fishing the lagoon or the deeps near the coast.

  For the sails they could resew the canvas from the ship and resplice the cordage; but they would need also palm fibre and sennit for bindings and lashings; and this must be provided by the women. He himself, Hernan Castillo, would direct the work; and he would now give them some lessons in how to fell a hardwood with a stone adze. You did not hack into it like a Canadian woodsman with his blue-steel axe. You cut two circles around the trunk, one about a foot above the other. You cut them deep as you could go, eating transversely into the wood. Then you changed stroke and cut downwards until you had pared away the intervening mass. Then you continued, transverse, vertical, until you had nibbled away the trunk like a beaver, and it would fall whichever way you chose…There was also an incantation which made for successful work. It said, more or less, ‘Today, O tree, you are a tree…tomorrow we are going to turn you into a man-tree!’ There was also a counsel for the women ‘a tata tu i kete’ – the axeman’s strength was in his belly and he needed good food to keep him working.

  ‘… So now,’ said Castillo with a monkey-grin of triumph, ‘you start chopping. I’ll keep your tools sharp and teach the women what they have to know and celebrate my nuptials with that very persistent lady, Yoko Nagamuna, who has talked me into what passes for matrimony.’

  The work was slower and harder than they had ever imagined. The stone axes bruised the wood before they cut it. Their short hafts jarred bone and muscle. At the end of a day’s labour the smaller tree was still standing and the larger one looked as though it would still be there ten years later. The women had made their own discovery: that they would need a mountain of thread and fibre…Which prompted a reminder from Carl Magnusson that they still had a great many tomorrows, and Mark Gilman was turning the chips into charcoal and, maybe Castillo, the toolmaker, should think about turning some of the scrap metal into other, more serviceable tools.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ Castillo agreed. ‘We can generate enough heat. We can cast in sand. We need a crucible to melt the metal. Any ideas?’

  ‘Clay,’ said Gunnar Thorkild. ‘We found pottery on the terrace.’

  ‘No guarantee that it was made on this island.’

  ‘The island’s volcanic,’ said Carl Magnusson. ‘Clay is formed both by weathering and a hydrothermal process. Chances are we’d find some deposits if we looked for them.’

  ‘Let’s make it a holiday project,’ said Franz Harsanyi. ‘We should begin to move around the island; otherwise we’ll all get claustrophobia. We should make rest days and begin to enjoy them.’

  ‘The boy’s got brains!’ Molly Kaapu was enthusiastic. ‘We go visiting, exploring. I keep thinking of them gull-eggs up on the cliffs…’

  ‘Clay,’ said Hernan Castillo stubbornly. ‘White, red, blue…’

  ‘Let’s forget work and make some music,’ said Jenny. ‘Get your flute Simon.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was short and irritable. ‘I promised to sit with Barbara for a while.’

  ‘Be patient with her,’ said Sally quietly. ‘She’s still feverish and fretful.’

  ‘For God’s sake! I’m not a monster.’

  ‘I’m sorry Simon.’

  As he hurried away across the compound, Yoko Nagamuna made a large operatic gesture.

  ‘Ah! Sweet mystery of life …!’

  ‘Don’t knock it kid!’ said Adam Briggs softly. ‘It’s all we’ve got.’

  Jenny laid a hand on his arm and asked:

  ‘May I tell them please?’

  ‘I guess now’s as good a time as any.’

  ‘Well …’ She flushed and stammered and then finally got it out. ‘Adam and I, we’ve decided we want to get married – I mean really married – and have it registered in the log, or whatever we do that says we mean it and want to stay together always. Can you arrange it for us Chief? It may sound silly, but …’

  ‘It’s not silly Jenny,’ said Carl Magnusson quietly. ‘It’s an important event for us.’

  ‘We’ll make a feast,’ said Thorkild. ‘Invite the others down. When would you like to do it?’

  Adam Briggs laughed.

  ‘I’ve been waiting so long for her to say yes, the date hardly matters. But let’s make it definite. When the two trees are down and my liquor’s fit to drink, then we’ll do it. One thing I won’t stand for is a dry wedding…’

  Later, as they walked by the lagoon, where Tioto and Mark were night-fishing from the coracle, Sally smiled in the darkness and mocked him affectionately:

  ‘How does it feel, marrying off your foundling?’

  ‘Are you laughing at me, woman?’

  ‘Crying a little too. This was such a cruel place in the beginning.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And they really are in love, aren’t they?’

  ‘Seems so.’

  ‘How will you do it? The ceremony I mean?’

  ‘Well, we have a little speech and a prayer and then they exchange vows and we write it in the log and witness it. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Then we’ll have the luau afterwards.’

  ‘Gunnar, I was thinking …’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Lorillard and Martha. After all, he says he wants to marry her and she’s pregnant and …’

  ‘Now wait a minute! Not me! Not this time! If you want to drop that hint you do it yourself!’

  ‘That’s just what I was thinking. Molly Kaapu and I are taking the day off tomorrow. We’re delivering the fish and the wedding invitation at the same time. Besides, I don’t think we’ll ever have to raise the question.’

  ‘Better you don’t!’

  ‘But, when I tell them you and I are getting married too …’ ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I say, darling. The old way may be good enough for you and your grandfather; but for me, it’s the entry in the log and the witnesses and kiss the bride and all the rest of it…’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’

  ‘Not now darling. You’ll be saved, in the Christian dispensation! And as Chief, you’ll be making a proper contributio
n to public order and decency. Any objections?’

  ‘You’d overrule them anyway.’

  ‘At least, you’re learning, my sweet!’

  ‘So read me the next lesson, Doctor. How do we divorce Peter Andre Lorillard so that he’s free to marry Martha Gilman? Now that she’s caught him – for better or worse – I’d hate to see the bastard wriggle off the hook!’

  ‘And I’ve got a bigger problem for you, Professor.’

  ‘Oh, what?’

  She pointed out across the starlit water to the two figures in the canoe.

  ‘There’s a young boy growing to puberty, with no girls of his own age and his closest companion a very sweet but very gay young man.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’ grumbled Thorkild. ‘Make a woman out of his rib?’

  ‘That might be hard, even for Gunnar Thorkild. The question will be which of us women is going to make him into a man.’

  Next morning on the way up to the timber stand, Thorkild went in to see Barbara Kamakau. The fever had abated during the night. She had slept more peacefully. Sally had bathed her and dressed the wounds. Thorkild sliced a fresh papaya for her and – as she ate – talked through the events in the camp. She was interested at first, then she became moody and withdrawn. Finally she burst out:

  ‘Chief, you’re a kind man. I know you mean well. But you’ve done a terrible thing.’

  ‘What have I done, Barbara?’

  ‘You don’t know; how can I tell you? It’s Simon. He was here last night. He said you ordered him to shack with me, like I was his wife. He said O.K., he didn’t care; there wasn’t much good tail around anyway. So I’d do for while he was here. When we got off the island, he’d go his way. I’d go back where I came from. I said I didn’t want him that much. I never begged for a man in my life. I wouldn’t do it now…He said that’s how it was arranged; so to hell with it. I’d do what he wanted, when he wanted it…Charlie used to call me a whore, but I wasn’t. I never went with a man I didn’t like. And this one I don’t like any more. He’s a pig …!’

  ‘Believe me Barbara I didn’t know. I thought you liked each other! I thought it would help to have him caring for you. I’m sorry…You don’t have to worry now. It’s finished. He won’t bother you any more.’