by Morris West
Thorkild smiled. He had never heard Magnusson so eloquent on so arcane a subject. Magnusson continued:
‘As with all legendary skills, there are no statistics of cure or failure; but the principle still holds good in modern therapy. It might hold good for Mark Gilman.’
‘If we had the priesthood and the temple, and the faith on which they were founded.’
‘The boy has faith,’ said Magnusson firmly. ‘He denies it, because most of his household gods have failed him. Your role has changed; but you haven’t failed him yet.’
‘And the rest of it? The priesthood, the temple?’
‘You’re the priest. Even to the rest of us, you’ve assumed a sacred character…Why you and no other, I don’t know. But the mystery is there, visible.’
‘Don’t make jokes like that, Carl!’
‘I’m not joking. I’m saying that, if you prepared him for it – and you’re the only one who could – the boy might benefit from the experience of the god. You needn’t think of it as a cure, but as a rite of passage, that makes him at one stride the man he wants to be.’
‘You’d better spell it Carl – slow and clear eh?’
‘I’m thinking,’ said Carl Magnusson. ‘That, when you take me up to the high place, you take the boy too!’
‘God Almighty!’ Thorkild’s voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘You can’t mean it! You can’t!’
He brooded on it for days. He lay sleepless at night, pondering the enormity of the act which Magnusson had proposed to him: the deliberate manipulation of an adolescent mind, to open it to reality and make the reality tolerable. The risks were all too evident; the prognosis doubtful. And yet…and yet…Every society, religious or secular, had its rituals of passage and initiation, baptism, barmitzvah, ceremonies of mutilation and of purification, rites of knowing and enduring. He remembered his own night in the sacred place on Hiva Oa, when he waited for the mana to enter into him. It was the memory of the calm and the quiet joy which came afterwards, which decided him to commit to the risk.
The decision once made, he must consider how to prepare the boy and, indeed, the whole group, for an event of social and psychic significance. There could be no false note in it, no hint of conspiracy, no taint of theatre, no possibility of a comic slip which would, an instant afterwards, precipitate a tragedy. His own performance must be impeccable, inspired; and – a new strange fear beset him – after it, he too would be forever changed, because he could never belie or gainsay the priestly character he must assume as arbiter of life, death and spiritual affairs.
There was another terror in the thought. Now he was not merely an inheritor, a chronicler, an interpreter. He must, himself, become a maker of images and legends and magical rites full of potency. Magnusson alone would be privy to his secret. But, when Magnusson died there would be no one – ever again – to whom he could unburden himself; because even Sally would consent to the magic, and having consented, would lie forever under its thrall.
It was not all illusion. The reality was mysterious enough: an old man would announce the hour of his encounter with death and walk out to keep it. A boy, sick with the strange malady of youth, must be healed at one stroke into manhood. The tribe must acknowledge, with piety and with gravity, a death and a resurrection.
So, enough of argument! For priest and patient both, the long prelude must begin.
It was late, long after midnight. Thorkild and the boy had sat for hours, observing the transit of the dog-star across the northward heaven. The boy was rocking with fatigue; but he refused to go to bed, because, he said, his mind kept whirling round and round; and he hated to lie, alone and wakeful, in the dark. They walked back to the fire-pit. Thorkild raked the hot coals together and began baking a small fish from the evening’s catch. The boy sat silent, munching a banana, staring into the red heart of the fire. Thorkild said:
‘You did well tonight.’
‘I always do well with stars.’
‘It’s different at sea. You have to contend with the motion.’
‘I know. I’ll learn.’
‘Mark, we have things to talk about.’
‘If it’s about growing up and sex and all that stuff, forget it Chief! I know it all.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
‘If it’s about my mother, I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Have I been rude to someone?’
‘If you have, I don’t know about it.’
‘Well…I’m listening Chief.’
‘Before I start, I must have a promise from you – a man’s promise.’
‘I can’t give that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m not a man. I’m a little boy. That’s what everyone tells me. That’s the way everyone treats me.’
‘Not I.’
‘Well, maybe not quite the same; but you’re still the teacher and the chief. I’m the junior grade student.’
‘And when you’re twice your age, you’ll still be learning and there’ll always be a high man somewhere over you.’
‘If this is another lecture Chief, I’m tired.’
‘It’s not a lecture. I asked you to keep a secret.’
‘No. You asked me for a man’s promise. I said I couldn’t give it.’
‘What promise can you give?’
‘Mine – just mine! Cross my heart, spit in the fire, strike me dead! Good enough?’
‘No. Not good enough!’
‘What do you want…Chief?’
Thorkild did not answer him. He bent and raked the coals away from the leaf-wrapped package, lifted it out with a pair of sticks and laid it on the sand between them. He said:
‘We’ll have to let it cool. Why don’t you cool down too, Mark?’
‘I’m cool.’
‘Mark, who are you?’
‘I’m me – Mark Gilman.’
‘That’s your name. I asked who you are.’
‘I’m me. What you see. The one who’s talking to you.’
‘Mark, I look at you, and I don’t believe what I see. I know how old you are and I know you’re older. I hear the words and I know they mean something different. You tell me what you feel, and it’s a fairy-tale! Level with me Mark!’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because I need you – the real you!’
‘You don’t need anybody.’
‘Do you like Mister Magnusson?’
‘You know I do.’
‘He’s going to die, Mark.’
‘Everybody dies. What’s different with him?’
‘Not much. It will happen soon; that’s all.’
‘How soon?’
‘Have some fish. It’s good. I like the way the skin comes off with the leaves, don’t you?’
‘Why don’t you talk to me properly?’
‘Because you don’t want it. I talk of a man dying and you play games! You bore me. Go to bed!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Chief.’
‘So Carl Magnusson is going to die; and you ask me, what’s different!’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘What did you mean?’
‘I mean, people use dying for an excuse…Like my mother…“Your poor father’s dead. Now there’s only the two of us. We must care for each other, Mark!” Or Jenny: “My Adam could die, Mark. How dare you be so cruel.” Like that’s shit, man!’
‘So, go to bed.’
‘I want to know about Mr Magnusson.’
‘Ask him yourself.’
‘Please, Chief!’
‘He’s going to die. Already he’s half blind. He lies awake at night and hears death walking outside the door. He’s told me that, because I’m his friend, and my grandfather was his friend. But he doesn’t want to die here, with people crying round his bed. He wants me to take him up to the high place, where my grandfather is, so that he can die up there, among the great men of the past. And I’m goin
g to take him and leave him…The secret is, he asked for you to go with him – because he loves you and he sees what I can’t see; a man called Mark Gilman.’
‘I’ll go. I want to go!’
‘How can you, after what you’ve just said?’
‘I wasn’t talking about him.’
‘All the dead look alike Mark – and the same flowers grow over them all. Problem is, a man’s last hours belong only to him. No one has the right to intrude with complaints or excuses or fears or hates. Those who will be left behind, must be able to give him friendship and peace and an unselfish prayer. If you can’t do that, don’t come.’
‘Why doesn’t he want the others? – Willy and Adam and …’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is he going to kill himself?’
‘No. Did you think he would?’
‘My father did.’
‘Not the way I heard it, Mark.’
‘Oh yes! That’s what the lecturers said at school – Heroin addiction is suicide, slower than most, but equally sure.’
‘Let me ask you something, Mark. It’s about Charlie Kamakau.’
‘What about him?’
‘Some of our people voted to kill him. You voted against it. Why?’
‘Because killing him was pointless. Death doesn’t change things. It just stops them.’
‘Then why did you wish death on Adam Briggs?’
‘I didn’t. I…’
An instant later he would have been up and away, but Thorkild clamped an iron hand on his shoulder and held him.
‘Let me go!’
‘Be quiet! You wished Adam dead because you want his woman…That’s a man’s thought. You wish Lorillard dead, and the child your mother is carrying, because you want your mother only for yourself…That’s a child’s thought. Both are destructive; because, as you said yourself, death only stops things. It wouldn’t change Jenny’s love for Adam, or your mother’s desire to bear another child…You’re lonely, living in a dark room, trying to change from boy to man, as the caterpillar changes into a moth. You want to get out. You can. The key’s in your hand; but you’re taming it the wrong way, locking yourself inside with your fears and your griefs and your hates…Mark…a strange and solemn thing is happening. Inside that hut over there is a man – a real Kāne, full of courage and dignity. He knows he’s going to die. He’s asking his friends to link arms with him and walk him up the last miles to his resting place. You’re one of those friends. I’m the other. The journey’s long. The place, when you come to it first, is frightening; but there is peace there for Carl Magnusson. For me there is the company of my great ancestors. For you, Mark, there is something else – the thing that will make you, once and for all, a man.’
The boy was still now, staring across the compound at the dark doorway of Magnusson’s hut. In a small, unsteady voice, he said:
‘I want to come; but I’m afraid.’
‘I was afraid Mark, when I went up to find my grandfather. Magnusson is afraid too; but he’s going, just the same.’
‘What is this – this thing up there?’
‘I can’t describe it to you Mark. There are no words for it…Tell me, do you remember your Bible?’
‘Some, yes.’
‘Remember the story of Moses going up the mountain to receive the law from God…When he came down, the people couldn’t look upon his face because it was so bright and shining, with the glory and the terror he’d witnessed?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Well, where you are going – if you go – there is a terror and a glory too. There will be a moment when it will seem unbearable…But I promise you this: when that moment passes, and you walk down to the terrace and the beach, you won’t have to say anything or prove anything, any more. People will look at you and know that Mark Gilman is a man.’
‘Will you be with me, all the time?’
‘It’s a sacred place. I’m its guardian. I must be there.’
‘I’ll come.’
‘Then you should tell Carl Magnusson yourself in the morning…And remember, until he is ready to announce it, this is a secret between the three of us.’
‘Yes, a secret.’
‘We should go to bed now.’
‘Please – one question.’
‘Yes Mark?’
‘What would happen if I didn’t go?’
Thorkild turned the question over and over, groping for the words to answer it. Finally he found them:
‘Nothing would happen Mark. You would remain, as you are now, searching, confused, at odds with yourself and everyone else. You would grow in time to a man’s age and a man’s estate. But always, for the rest of your life, you would be haunted by the feeling that you had mislaid a part of yourself, the part that you would have found on the mountain…That’s what would have happened to me if it hadn’t been for my grandfather. Even so, it took me more than half a lifetime to find what I had missed.’
‘Thank you for telling me, Chief.’
‘Thank you for listening…Cover the fire before you leave it. Goodnight, Mark.’
The smaller canoe, which would later become the outrigger of the larger craft, was finished at last. It was long and narrow; so they balanced it with another and smaller outrigger cut from a sapling and lashed to thick poles of bamboo. They stepped a mast and made a small matting sail and spent a week cruising it round the lagoon, testing the balance before committing it to the big sea outside.
Because it was a new, tangible triumph, a lift to their hopes and hearts, Thorkild commanded a big luau to celebrate it. A fresh batch of liquor was brewing, the terrace folk were invited down to spend a day’s fishing and a night’s feasting, and watch the first deep-sea trial of the new vessel. Adam Briggs was bitterly disappointed because he was still hampered by his injured foot, and must content himself with being a passenger inside the lagoon. Mark Gilman was elated because Thorkild had pronounced that this should be the first test of his skill as a navigator. Carl Magnusson limped about the camp, exhorting all and sundry to make this a day and a night to remember; because – hell and blazes! – to build a ship was a proud thing and he had launched several in his time, but none so beautiful as this one!
The terrace-folk came down laden with gifts – fruit, taro and pig-meat, and the news that they had now penned a sow and a boar in a bamboo stockade and the sow would soon have a litter. Willy and Eva Kuhio were placid and cheerful as ever. Willy was as happy with the boat as though he had built it with his own hands. Simon Cohen was a surprise. He had put on weight and acquired a sense of humour, and had brought down new instruments, a pair of pigskin drums, a set of pan-pipes and a curious one-stringed instrument from which he managed to scrape out a passable tune. Barbara was full of chatter and eager for gossip. Martha Gilman, thickening now and tired after the walk, was content to sit in the shade and let the activity flow round her. She was delighted at Mark’s enthusiasm and the new, if still uneasy, freedom of his approaches to her. Peter Lorillard looked unwell. He had lost weight. His skin was pasty, his eyes, red and sunken. He had had a cold and a sore throat – nothing much; but yes, he would be glad if Sally could examine him before he went back.
The weather was kind to them. The sky was clear, the wind fair and steady, the sea comfortable. In the morning they sailed the lagoon in threes and fours, so that everyone who wished could try the new boat. At midday they ate a light meal and then Thorkild announced the big sea-trial. Willy Kuhio, Hernan Castillo, Tioto and Mark Gilman would take the boat out through the channel and make a course which he had laid – two hours out, two hours back. Mark Gilman would navigate. The others would handle the sail and the paddles. They would be back just before sunset when the turn of the tide would carry them home past the sentinel rock.
Martha Gilman paled visibly as she saw them push out and head for the break in the reef. Thorkild patted her shoulders and admonished her:
‘He has to do it Martha. Don’t try to hold him.’
&
nbsp; ‘You’re a hard man, Gunnar.’
‘I’m also a good teacher. Trust me. Trust the boy too.’
He broke off and stood watching, nodding his satisfaction as they cleared the channel and headed out, reaching across the wind, picking up speed as they cleared the last bluff. Peter Lorillard gave a whistle of surprise.
‘My God, she’s fast!’
‘Twelve – fifteen knots,’ grinned Thorkild. ‘Not bad for amateur builders, eh?’
‘How long’s your course?’
‘About forty miles.’
‘And you think the boy can handle it, first time out?’
‘I’m sure of it…Listen Peter, if you’re not feeling well, why don’t you bring Martha down here to the beach for a spell. I can send Franz Harsanyi and Ellen Ching up to take your place.’
‘No thanks. I prefer my own bailiwick.’
‘The neighbours are friendly,’ said Martha Gilman, acidly. ‘That helps of course!’
‘For God’s sake, Martha! Must you?’
‘Excuse me,’ said Thorkild hastily. ‘I’ve got to talk to Sally.’
He found her, sitting in a shady spot on the beach, talking with Eva Kuhio. He sat down with them, and was immediately drawn into their talk.
‘Eva was telling me,’ said Sally, ‘that Peter and Martha are quarrelling a lot. Peter hasn’t been well – one look at him and I’m already worried. Martha nags him out of the house and then wonders why he spends so much time with Simon and Barbara.’
‘They don’t mean harm,’ Eva hastened to explain. ‘They’re jokey people, you know. He likes to talk sexy. She likes to play sexy, and there’s no problem for Willy and me. Peter Lorillard likes a joke too; and he’s always been free with his hands; again, what’s the harm? But Martha always makes a big mouthful of it…If she’d laugh and relax, he’d like better to be with her. Still, maybe when the baby comes…’
