by Morris West
Towards the end of the third month, Yoko Nagamuna’s baby was born. A tiny black-haired girl child. Simon Cohen was there; and when they laid the child in his arms he wept over it and kissed it and laid it back at her breast and sat with Yoko until she lapsed into an exhausted sleep. Barbara Kamakau smiled and told Molly Kaapu afterwards that – give her time with her Franz – she would make a man child to cover that one and a dozen others. Three weeks later, Martha Gilman came to term; and that was a long, screaming battle which finally produced a son whom she held up to Hernan Castillo and demanded that he be named Peter Mark and made a Christian with Willy and Eva as his god-parents. Hernan Castillo gave her the gift he had carved to celebrate the event: man, woman and child, all seated in the cup of a pikake flower.
A man and a woman made a new beginning. A new beginning demanded a feast and a feast was made at which Molly Kaapu, garlanded with flowers, held the two infants in her arms and pronounced them promised and betrothed and ready to wed as soon as they knew what to do with themselves and each other.
Simon Cohen announced that he had found a song for the occasion. Yoko stood with him and Barbara and Franz Harsanyi and they intoned together the old happy chant of the returning lovers:
‘I have waited a long time.
I have tossed flowers into the sea.
I have seen the waves take them.
I have sent my heart to follow them.
Now my love comes back,
My high-born love,
Riding on the waves,
Wearing my flowers in her hair
And on her breast.’
When the cheering and the clapping had subsided Gunnar Thorkild rose in his place and commanded silence. He looked grey and lonely, like the sentinel rock at the entrance to the channel. He did not orate like a high chief: he spoke softly and simply:
‘My friends, this is a glad day because we have welcomed children into our land. They are the more precious to us because they take the place of those who are lost to us and are our promise of the future. Now we are back at the beginning of things. On this small island we have experienced the full cycle of human existence. We began with death, which we thought was unendurable. Today we have two new lives which promise that we will endure as a new people. I would like you to think on that…the newness of things. We are not any longer the same people who sailed here in the Frigate Bird. All of us are changed. All of us are scarred in some fashion. All of us have learnt that, without each other, without love and companionship and support we are lost and helpless like leaves blown in the trade-wind. I, too, am changed. I, who was so arrogant a man, have found myself humbled before you. I failed you in so many ways. I have blood on my hands, guilts on my conscience which I can never purge out. Like you, I have needed and I have found at last a woman to support me.’…He paused and took the lei from his own neck and laid it over Jenny’s head. Then he went on. ‘This is my woman. This is the wife of your Chief. She will bear my son, the great-grandson of Kaloni the Navigator, on whom one day, the mana will descend…Last night I went up to the high place to commune with my grandfather and with Carl Magnusson and all the great ones of the past. They gave me only this hard word: the navigator has no choice but to sail on until he makes the land-fall, or the sea swallows him because it was so determined at the foundation of all things. What more can I say to you who have trusted me? I have brought you thus far, I shall try to hold you safe hereafter…God help us all…!’
He stepped down from the dais and left them without another word. They watched him as he walked slowly down to the beach. They urged Jenny to follow him but she refused. They saw him stand by the water’s edge, arms outflung in supplication, a giant figure, black against the rising moon.
Postscript
Extract from report No. 375/AC from the Administrative Agent Iles Tubuai to the Administrator of Colonies, Papeete:
‘…On the fifteenth of this month, after three days of high wind and heavy seas, villagers on this island reported an outrigger canoe washed up on the beach. The canoe was of a type not normally seen in the region. The toolmarks and lashings were not of local workmanship. Extensive inquiries confirm that no inhabitants of either the Iles Tubuai or the Iles Australes have been reported missing at sea.
‘Normally, I should have disposed of the matter at this point. However, it may have reference to another curious report, as yet unconfirmed, that a youth, said to be European, has been found wandering distraught and exhausted on the Ile Raivavae and claiming that he is descended from the Polynesian sea-god, Kanaloa.
‘The story, which came from native sources, is curious in other particulars. The boy is said to speak fluently in local dialect, and to be able to recite long passages of ancient chants and legends. He carries an old carved paddle which he claims was a gift from a long-dead island navigator. For the rest, it seems that he has been able to render no rational account of who he is or where he came from. I leave today, by lugger, to investigate. I shall communicate further in due course …’
