The Navigator

by Morris West

  There was one more solution, simple and trenchant. He, Gunnar Thorkild, would take the boat and sail, single-handed to Tubuai or the Austral Islands. This would put only one man at risk; and, for the grandson of Kaloni Kienga, the risk would be minimal. This, too, she rejected out of hand. It would leave the tribe without a head. Small as it was, it would disintegrate quickly into warring cells, because there was no one else strong enough to hold them together. He should not, he must not, discount the importance of his moral power; which was, in part, his own creation and, in part, an endowment from the people themselves. The moment he left, they would believe themselves betrayed. If he failed in his mission this anger would be turned on those who had caused it to be undertaken: Lorillard and herself. So, impasse again. Thorkild felt like a man drowning in a bath of feathers. He strode away in search of Adam Briggs.

  Briggs, normally warm and forthcoming in discussion, declined this one altogether. When Thorkild pressed to know why, he explained with deliberate care:

  ‘… This is Charlie Kamakau, all over again; except, this time it’s much more complicated. Everyone has a special case to plead. Let’s start with something very simple: the boat. We all built it, we all own it. We use it for fishing, on which our food supply depends. If we give it up for a mercy mission, which may or may not succeed, our economy’s at risk again…Now, understand; this isn’t me, Adam Briggs, talking. This is the argument you’ll get – and it makes sense! Let’s go further. After a lot of trouble and blood, you’ve finally got a community that’s balanced off and settled down. That doesn’t mean that everyone’s whistling “Moonlight and Roses”; but they’re settled and rubbing along. You pull two men out; and, if they don’t come back, you’ve got two extra women. More trouble and more problems!…But – and this sounds rougher than I mean it to be – if Sally dies and Lorillard dies, there’s grief and loss, but still a balance. Now let’s talk about you. Deep down inside, we all know you’re the man who got us together and brought us here. If things go wrong, we’ve always got someone to blame…you! On the other hand, you’ve done great things – like Franz Harsanyi said in his poem, hammered us and bullied us and held us together like a lynch-pin holds a wheel. Pull out the lynch-pin and we spin into madness. It’d be like the Pope marrying a nun! I was brought up in that kind of madness, Chief. If you couldn’t blame it on the blacks, you’d pin it on the Jews or the Catholics…It’s the scapegoat principle; and the theory is that your back’s broad enough to carry us all…’ He broke off and gave a small, embarrassed laugh. ‘And after all that, will you still believe I bleed for Sally and you; and I’m sure as hell glad I don’t have to decide the issue.’

  ‘So who does decide it?’

  ‘The votes, I guess.’

  ‘Or I do?’

  Briggs looked at him, and shook his head mournfully from side to side.

  ‘No, Chief. Don’t ever try it! This time you lay out all the cards face up, and let the people decide.’

  ‘Sally’s my wife!’

  ‘And you’re our chief.’

  ‘And I have to plead for Sally’s life?’

  ‘I hope not Chief. But if they force you to it, the pleading had better be mighty eloquent.’

  ‘And what about you, Adam?’

  ‘I’ve got a wife too, Chief. And I’m not about to put her to the vote.’

  ‘You mightn’t have a wife, if Sally hadn’t been here to help her.’

  ‘And you, Chief, and the other women! I don’t forget any of that. I just say that today’s a new day and I can’t bet on tomorrow because the horses aren’t posted yet.’

  ‘Well, that says it!…How’s the foot?’

  ‘Almost better thanks.’

  ‘That makes it easier then.’

  ‘Makes what easier?’

  ‘To ask you to nurse Sally when she gets sick, and knock her off when she can’t take any more!’

  ‘You son of a bitch!’

  ‘It’s the name of the game isn’t it? All dogs together in a dog’s world…See you around, Mister Briggs!’

  Never in his life had he felt so resentful or so solitary. He went down to the beach, pushed out the boat, hoisted the sail and took it racing up and down the lagoon, in a frenzy of frustration and anger. He skirted the reef dangerously, slalomed through the coral heads, swung close inshore so that his bottom was inches off the sand, then out again, shouting and cursing at the top of his voice! A small group gathered on the beach to watch his antics. He ignored them. They would still be there, applauding the butchery, when Sally came to die and Lorillard and anyone else who could not tolerate the obscenity of the universe.

  Carl Magnusson, you old pirate, I wish I were up there with you, looking down like the Gautama himself, on this spinning-wheel of creation. I wish I could talk to you now, Carl! I wish I could know what you know; see it plain; read it, calm and simple as a petroglyph…dancing figures on black volcanic stone. I’m going home Carl. I’m beaching this thing and going home, but what do I do when I get there? Carl, I searched all my life for this place. You helped me find it. I knew, the moment I saw it, breached the magic portal, it was my place. Now they’ve defiled it for me. What do I do?

  His anger spent at last, he beached the boat and walked up to the cascade to refresh himself. He found Yoko Nagamuna kneeling by the spring, washing taro tubers in preparation for the evening meal. She was swollen now and moved awkwardly, like a comical doll. Thorkild walked into the pool and began helping her to wash the vegetables. He asked:

  ‘How are you feeling, Yoko?’

  ‘Not bad. The baby’s moving a lot. I’m retaining too much fluid, Sally says; but otherwise I’m O.K.…I’ll be glad when it’s over.’

  ‘Hernan is treating you well?’

  ‘Oh sure, he treats everything well – sticks, stones, people. He just doesn’t get excited about anything. Sometimes I could scream. He’s as methodical as a clock. All I hear is the ticking. Sometimes I wish he’d beat me or shout at me just to break the monotony!’

  ‘Don’t knock the placid life, sweetheart! It’s got a lot to recommend it.’

  ‘What’s this I hear about Sally?’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  She gave him her old, mischief-maker smile.

  ‘No way to keep secrets in this place, Chief. I heard Jenny and Adam quarrelling in their hut. Naturally I listened. That’s how I knew about Sally and what you want to do. You’ve got problems! Seems we may all have a problem.’

  ‘So, let’s talk about your part of it, Yoko…What do you think I should do?’

  She laughed in his face.

  ‘Oh no, Chief! Not that way! You come clean with me first! Are you canvassing votes, asking for advice, or counting heads?’

  ‘Frankly, my little geisha, I’d like to break a few heads!’

  ‘Mine too?’

  ‘You know I never hit pregnant women or men with spectacles…I’ll rephrase the question. Two people need urgent medical attention. We want to get off the island. I want to mount an escape mission that involves risking their lives and two others, but which has a reasonable chance of success. Would you agree to it or not?’

  ‘So you’re counting heads and canvassing votes.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Will you go or not?’

  ‘Either way.’

  ‘If you go, I say no. If you stay, I’ll vote for the mission.’

  ‘And I didn’t think you cared!’

  ‘I care for me, Chief. Just me!… If you’re around I’ll know there’s someone who will spare me half a thought sometimes. If you’re not, then I’m just a little Nisei girl with a baby she doesn’t want and a protector who’ll dump her the first chance he gets. Also, if your wife’s gone, there’ll be a little more of you to share among the rest of us…That’s my answer.’

  ‘Anything to add to it?’

  She gave him a sidelong conspirator’s look.

  ‘I watched you out on the lagoon. You were like a crazy man. The
others saw it too. They were worried you’d break the boat. I wasn’t. I just wondered what put the burr under your tail…Want to tell it to your little geisha? Or do you think I’d make mischief out of that too?’

  ‘Would you, Yoko?’

  ‘For what?’ She tapped her swollen belly. ‘I’ve got all the mischief I can handle in there. What’s bothering you Chief?’

  He hoisted himself out of the pool and sat down on the bank beside her.

  ‘Two things Yoko. Sally refuses to go; and even if I manage to persuade her, I’m still in a jam. There are only three men I can count on to sail the boat with Lorillard: myself, Willy Kuhio, Adam Briggs. The fairest way to make the choice would be by drawing lots. Now, if I can’t go, that leaves two. And this morning Adam made it clear he wanted no part of it. I can’t understand why. I’ve always been closer to him than any of the other men; and he’d always told me the one thing he wanted to be was a great navigator…This morning, though, he was like a stranger. At the end there were hard words, harder still to unsay …’

  ‘And you don’t know why?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘You may not believe me.’ She was hesitant and subdued. ‘Then you’ll think I’m making more trouble…And I’m not, because I’m so damn tired; and I’m scared of having this baby; and I’m lonely because Hernan doesn’t care; and even if I deserve it, that’s hard to take now…’

  She began to weep, in an odd whimpering way like a hurt puppy. Thorkild reached out to touch her. She drew away.

  ‘Don’t do that please! I’m messy and ugly and I don’t want pity or kindness. I know I’m a bitch. I always have been. But now I’d like a little loving for a change…Even Ellen’s kind of loving would do!’

  ‘Let’s share the crumbs!’ said Thorkild, with a grin. ‘Dry your eyes, geisha girl! Tell me how I fouled-up with Adam.’

  ‘He feels you’re a threat to him.’

  ‘For Pete’s sake, why?’

  ‘Oh dear! It’s all so complicated – so goddam silly. And yet it’s not his fault …’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Well, in the first place, he knew you were Jenny’s big love. So long as you were there, he could get nowhere. You stepped back. It was like handing her to him on a plate. At first he was so much in love with her it didn’t matter. Now he’s had time to brood on it. Next, you started training young Mark Gilman, pushing Adam into second place. You’d promised, remember, to make him a great sailor like yourself …’

  ‘How do you know all this, Yoko?’

  ‘I told you. I heard the argument. Some of it was ugly. There’s something else too. When your grandfather was on board the Frigate Bird, he made some kind of prophecy that, one day, Jenny would bear a chief’s son!’

  ‘My God! I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Jenny hasn’t. Whether she believed it or not, it became a sort of party-piece with her, like a school-girl’s first visit to a fortune-teller: the tall dark man in her life and all that. At first she and Adam made a joke of it; but the joke’s worn thin. So, today, when you talked to Adam and he saw that he might be chosen to go, and that Jenny would be left here on the island, and that you’d be without your wife…You see, it all adds up, doesn’t it?’

  ‘To a bloody, stupid mess.’

  ‘And you can’t, you mustn’t try to clear it up,’ said Yoko Nagamuna. ‘Just leave it there and hope it will go away. But for everyone’s sake you had to know…And believe me, please! That’s not mischief.’

  ‘I believe. Let’s bury that one shall we?’

  ‘That’s the trouble, Chief. You can’t bury anything. You plant it and it springs up one fine day – like armed men, or the trees that eat the temple. It’s a hard lesson; I’m afraid I learnt it too late in the day.’

  ‘You’ve taught me something,’ said Gunnar Thorkild quietly.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Some geisha look better without the wig and the war-paint…Thanks!’

  There was another blow coming. The air was too still. To the east, the clouds were piling, into a black solid front. Already the sea was rising and the sea-birds flying home to their crannies on the high crater. It was the season, now, when the big ones built up: hurricanes that swept along Capricorn, clear to the coast of Queensland. There was no time now for arguments and recriminations. This was elemental danger. They had to secure themselves against it.

  Thorkild hurried, shouting, about the camp. The boat, the canvas canoe and the raft must be hauled right to the upper edge of the camp. All tools and utensils must be stowed in the store-hut. The hot coals from the fire-pit should be collected in a pierced tin can and carried with dry firewood to a deep cranny in the rock-face. Food and drink should be collected for use during the storm. They would all shelter in the huts under the lee of the cliff, away from falling coconuts that would split their skulls, or trees that a great wind could uproot like match-sticks. If the huts went, they would take to the jungle and shelter with the folk on the terrace. Move, everybody! Move!

  There was darkness first, as if a black pall had been laid over the land. Out of the darkness came lightning – great, jagged tongues licking down from the sky, and, an instant after, deafening thunder-claps whose echoes rolled over them like avenging chariots. Then the rain came, torrents of it, lashed and swept by the hurricane wind that spiralled around the solitary cone-shaped island in the middle of an empty sea.

  The noise was deafening, the thunder, the relentless slam of the rain, the banshee howl of the wind, the pounding of the surf and the surge of the wash over the tide mark, and into the compound itself. Tall palms were uprooted bodily. Others were snapped clean in two. The unsheltered huts collapsed like card houses, their thatch torn off, their walls shredded. Those under the lee of the cliff fared a little better. Their frames held; but the roofs sagged and leaked and their matting walls were breached, drenching the occupants with icy water. The track to the terraces became a muddy torrent, scouring through the camp, littering it with jungle debris. The only thing that held firm was the great log which was to be their boat; but they watched anxiously hour after hour as the sea wash and the mountain torrents surged around it.

  Long after night-fall the storm was still raging, as if it were anchored forever like Prometheus to the mountain. There was no lightning now, only the incessant wail of the wind and the beat of the rain, and the ominous surge of the sea. The huts were awash. They could not light fires or torches. They ate what they could hold down, and voided themselves in corners, and then huddled together for comfort against the whirling nightmare.

  Then, slowly, the nightmare passed. The wind dropped; the rain ceased; and the moon showed pale and grim through the ragged curtain of clouds. They walked out, shin deep in water, to survey the damage. The big log was still there. The canoe was awash but intact. For the rest it was like the abomination of desolation. The store-house had collapsed and water was pouring through the ruins. Five huts had been totally destroyed. Their taro patch was a quagmire; and half the precious coconut trees had been uprooted or snapped. The whole beach was a welter of white foam. The compound was a swamp, covered with nameless refuse.

  For a while no one said anything. Some of the women were weeping quietly. The men were too stunned even to curse. They waited for Thorkild to give them a lead. He was nowhere to be seen. It was as if he had been whirled away by the wind or swallowed by the sea. A few moments later they saw him, crawling like some bedraggled animal, from under the wreckage of the store-hut. He was carrying two bottles of bourbon, the last of Magnusson’s stock and a small can of diesel. He announced calmly:

  ‘First we have a drink. Then you girls bale out the hollow in the big canoe. We’ll use that for the fire-pit. Bring down the coals and the firewood from the rock. Scrape up what food is left and we’ll make something warm. Jump to it now! We start work at first light.’

  The clear, bright dawn made a mockery of the ruin that surrounded them; but Thorkild gave them no time to bewail their misf
ortune. He sent Mark Gilman up the mountain to see how the terrace folk had fared and to solicit their help if they could spare it. Then, he harried his abject tribe like a slave driver. The standing huts must be drained, swept, thatched and walled. The stores must be salvaged, dried, re-stacked and placed under temporary cover. The compound must be cleared of litter, the fire-pit emptied and refuelled. Fallen coconuts must be collected and stacked. The canoe and the raft must be checked for damage and damaged lashings renewed. The ruined huts should be demolished. The logs of the fallen palms would be useful. They should be sized and stacked. Later they could be used to frame a stouter building…The fallen fronds would serve for thread and thatch…Someone should check the fish traps to see if any had survived. Later, when the lagoon calmed down, they should fish for their supper…He would brook no grumbling or complaints. The means of life were still to hand. Worse things happened in earthquakes and forest-fires.

  At midday, Mark Gilman came back with Willy Kuhio and Simon Cohen. They brought meat, fresh fruit and news. On the plateau they had fared better. The mountain walls had sheltered them from the main force of the wind. The houses had held, although the roofs had leaked badly. The main damage was to the garden plots themselves where newly opened topsoil had been washed away. Lorillard was working, now, with the women, to replace the lost soil and stake up the young plants. Willy and Simon would stay down as long as they were needed. The early inhabitants must have known something; settling up there instead of on the beach. By nightfall the site was habitable again; although they would have to share sleeping quarters until the new huts were built.