The Navigator Read online

  ‘I’m not laughing, girl,’ said Thorkild soberly. ‘I spent last night in a sacred place, where the mana of the ancestors is very potent. I, too, felt things that I can’t put into words, for all the scholarship that’s been drummed into me. But I can tell you, from my own experience, the feeling’s one thing and the meaning may be quite, quite different. Don’t brood on it; otherwise you’ll haunt yourself with phantoms out of your own head.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right; but, don’t bullshit me Professor! Do you believe in mana or not?’

  ‘Yes, I believe in it.’

  ‘And you’ve experienced it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then hold my hand and tell me there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘There…I’m holding your hand.’

  ‘Now tell me.’

  ‘Monica O’Grady, there’s nothing to worry about.’

  But what he could not tell her, what he could hardly admit to himself, was that her hands were cold as his grandfather’s; that, even as he spoke, his mouth was full of the salt taste of blood, and in his ears was the echo of the old chant:

  ‘I see her among the stars,

  Dancing,

  Dancing with voyagers long dead.’

  Three days sailing, with stiff winds and a favourable current, brought them past the Islands of Disappointment and down among the Tuamotus, that long string of coral reefs and low islets and atolls whose names were made of music: Mataiva, Kaukura, Taharea, Nengonengo. It was a region of sudden beauties and small surprises, the shape of clouds, the flight of sea-birds, the flurry of shoaling fish. There were dangers too. The currents that set around the atolls were strong and irregular; and there were reefs and shallows still unmarked on the charts.

  Kaloni the Navigator used neither chart nor compass. For him, the journey was plotted by other symbols, written in the sky, and in the sea itself. The high gods had made an orderly world. The sun, the moon, the stars, moved in courses that were set from the beginning of things. The sea, calm or turbulent, had a law of its own: the currents were bent in a regular fashion by each island they encountered; the grounds wells told the path of storms, near or distant; driftwood told of land to windward; sea-weed spoke of a reef, up-current. The light itself was at the service of the knowing ones. The green of a distant lagoon was reflected from the base of a cloud and back again to the sea. The clouds that were pulled by the updraught were better landmarks than mountains. The birds themselves, terns and frigates and boobies and migrating curlew, pointed the way to land.

  Withal, the navigator himself must co-operate. He must be confident in the high ones; but never arrogant or boastful. He must observe the rituals that indicated his respect for the gods and his dependence on their favour. He, too, had his place in the order of things; and, if he ruptured the order, he must inevitably perish.

  While Kaloni the Navigator sailed his own course, Magnusson and Lorillard plotted it on their charts by their own mathematics of sunsights and radar and radio. Even Lorillard was forced to admit that the difference was minimal, and that the margin of error was generally against him, because the Pilot Book would not tell him how the current ran round a small atoll or how the updraught swung the wind from hour to hour. Still, he had the grace to admit it; and his attitude to Thorkild and to the old navigator took on a new shade of deference.

  Magnusson too had changed. He was less abrupt, less irritable, more withdrawn, as though the presence of the old navigator were a constant reminder of his own mortality. On the evening of the third day, when they had passed Makemo Island and were reaching down to Motutunga, he came up to join Thorkild at the wheel. He asked:

  ‘What time do we make Motutunga?’

  ‘About four in the morning.’

  ‘What’s our heading?’

  ‘Two hundred and ten magnetic. There’s a big compass variation here, nearly twelve degrees.’

  ‘If we stay on this course, that’s the last land we’ll see for five hundred miles.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We’re coming down into your empty triangle. Has your grandfather said when he wants to leave us?’

  ‘Soon. That’s all he’s said.’

  ‘How are our supplies?’

  ‘Water, fine. Fuel, we’re almost full. We’ve sailed most of the time and the generators don’t eat much. We’re a bit light on fresh fruit and vegetables; but there’s plenty of canned and frozen stuff. The boys have been catching enough fish for one meal a day all round…Something on your mind, Carl?’

  ‘In my bones, more like. Everything’s been too easy so far, too placid.’

  ‘We’ve been lucky. The further south we get, the more chance of a big blow.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean…Oh hell! What’s the use of hedging. Everything you told me about your grandfather is true. I’ve seen it, sensed it. Now, I have to believe that the island is true, too. Has he given you a course for it yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Talked about it?’

  ‘Not a word, except that night on Hiva Oa when he promised that we would come to it.’

  ‘Does he ever talk about his own death: how it will be, when it will come?’

  ‘He wouldn’t, Carl. He came to terms with it long ago. Now, in a sense, he’s already involved in the act.’

  ‘I wish to Christ I could come to terms with mine.’

  ‘It’s a long way off Carl!’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you, my boy, I’m so goddam jealous of every day; I hate to see the sun go down…Sometimes, I’m so resentful of those young ones down there on deck, I can hardly bring myself to be civil. Crazy, isn’t it? It might be easier if I had some of my own brood around. But, then again, it mightn’t. I’d be riding herd on them the way I always did…Anyway I didn’t come up here to sing you a jeremiad. I want to tell you something. When your grandfather leaves us, I want you to take command of the Frigate Bird.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake!’

  Magnusson gave a small sour chuckle.

  ‘In the log we’ll show medical reasons. In fact I’m tossing you a hot potato. Blame yourself. You told me you found something obscene about turning your grandfather’s death into a naval exercise. Now, I find it that way, myself. I can’t break faith with my friends in the Navy; but you have no commitment to them. When you’re in command you can order Lorillard to break off communications and resume them at your discretion …’

  ‘Carl, you’re an old monster!’

  ‘I know it. I used to enjoy it…There’s another thing. If anything should happen to me, you’ll find money in the ship’s safe, enough to complete the voyage home.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you!’

  ‘Shut up, man, and listen! You’ll also find a sealed envelope addressed to you. It’s a deed of gift, signed and witnessed. The Frigate Bird, and everything in her, will belong to you.’

  ‘That’s madness!’

  ‘Why? She’s mine. I can do what I like with her. I’d rather you have her than anyone else.’

  ‘I couldn’t take her, Carl. She’s worth a fortune.’

  ‘It’s done. There’s no discussion. How you dispose of her afterwards is your own business.’

  ‘Does Sally know about this?’

  ‘No. And you’re not going to tell her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because she’ll make the same fuss you did. She expects me to be bright and breezy and Jack-me-hearty, every day and all day. I don’t feel like that. I feel bleak and old; and I’d give every damn dollar I’ve ever earned to go out the way your grandfather’s going, with no enmities, and one of his own blood to set him on the way …’

  ‘Carl, what can I say? If you want friends you have them: Sally and me. If you want a shoulder to lean on, use mine. But for God’s sake, man! It comes free…Believe that!’

  ‘For a man like me, that’s the hardest thing in the world to believe. Here! Let me have the wheel for a while. They’re making music on de
ck. Go find your woman and join them.’

  He was glad to go, glad to be freed from the plague of pity and the shame that a man should be reduced to buy it with a gift. Then in a rush of recollection the words of Flanagan S.J. came back to him:

  ‘… The mana will come; but you will suffer from it. People will lean on you; you will fall under their weight. You will try to flee them, but they will never let you escape …

  When he walked forward, he saw his students and the Kauai men gathered round Ellen Ching and Molly Kaapu and Yoko Nagamuna, who were dancing a hula to Simon Cohen’s guitar. They shouted for him to join them. He peeled off his shirt and stepped into the ring, beating his hands to the rhythm, feeling the sap rise in his loins, glad to shut out the lone gull-cry of age and discontent.

  4

  The following day, Kaloni Kienga announced the time and the manner of his going. When night fell, and the first stars came, they would heave-to and put him overside in his canoe. He would sail southwards, they would cruise northwards, until he was lost beyond the horizon. Then, and only then, might they come about and set their own course for the island. He begged that there should be no concourse and no ceremony. Only Magnusson and Charlie Kamakau and Briggs and Thorkild should be on deck to cast him off and wave him away. Thorkild should explain the sacredness and the privacy of the act, lest he, Kaloni Kienga should be deemed discourteous or ungrateful.

  As for Thorkild, when he turned south again, he should sail all night on the guide-stars which would be shown to him, and all the next day on the same course. When night fell again he would be in the eastward current, and must sail against it, watching the flow of the te lapa, the underwater lightning. At dawn he would see the cloud, under which lay the Island of the Navigators; and, if the sky were overcast or confused, the manuvakai, the look-out bird, would show him the way. All this was long in the telling, with a wealth of image and detail that only a feeler-of-the-sea could understand. He made Thorkild rehearse it, over and over, until every point was clear as if it were written on his palm.

  Then he told of the island. It was not like the low islands, a hump of sand and coral. It rose high and steep out of the sea. It was round like a kava bowl, and on one side the lip of the bowl was broken. In front of the broken lip there was a small beach and, before the beach, a reef, out of which rose a single, sentinel rock, the crag of a submerged mountain. To make the channel, one must keep the rock on the left hand and drive close into it. Outside the reef there was no anchorage, because the coral and the rock fell away into enormous deeps inhabited by monstrous fish. The rock itself was inhabited by the guardian spirits of the island, relatives of the sea-god, upon whose favour a safe entry depended…If he passed the rock and came safe into the lagoon, then he could approach the island without fear, and climb to the high place, where those who had arrived before him sat where they had died, looking out to sea. That was where he, Kaloni Kienga would be found, if the gods permitted him a safe arrival…This was what he had been told by his own father. More he could not tell, because he did not know. Now, since he must sail all night, he must rest; and, as there would be movement on deck all day, he would be glad to rest in Thorkild’s cabin.

  As they went down the companion-way they came face-to-face with Sally Anderton, who was coming up on deck. The old man stretched out a hand to stay her. He turned to Thorkild:

  ‘This is your woman?’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked Sally Anderton.

  ‘He asks if you are my woman.’

  ‘Tell him yes. And tell him I want to make a son for the grandson of Kaloni.’

  Thorkild translated. The old man nodded gravely.

  ‘It is good, if the gods approve. Say that I wish her well.’

  ‘I wish him well too,’ said Sally Anderton. ‘Before he goes, he should speak to Carl. He’s very depressed.’

  Thorkild explained. Kaloni hesitated a moment and then agreed.

  ‘Let me speak with him now. Afterwards I must rest.’

  ‘I’ll see you on deck, Gunnar.’

  ‘Do me a favour Sally. Explain to the others that my grandfather wants to go quietly. He asks that there be only four people on deck when he leaves. That’s Briggs, Charlie Kamakau, Magnusson and myself. I’d be grateful if they’d respect that wish.’

  ‘They will.’ She took the old man’s hand and held it to her lips. ‘I pray you have a good voyage, Navigator.’

  ‘And for you,’ said Kaloni Kienga, ‘I pray a safe sleeping with my daughter’s son …’

  Carl Magnusson received the news calmly. He begged the old man to be seated and offered him whisky and made a toast to his journey. Then he turned to Thorkild:

  ‘Tell your grandfather I wish I were going with him.’

  Kaloni Kienga smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Every man goes to his own gods by his own road.’

  ‘Can you read my road, Navigator?’

  ‘I do not know your gods.’

  ‘I have none,’ said Carl Magnusson.

  ‘Even when the stars are hidden, they are still there. The gods wait, even for the unknowing.’

  ‘How will they receive us?’

  ‘They neither receive us nor reject us. We are always in their hold, like fish in the sea, like birds in the air.’

  ‘Why are your gods different from others?’

  ‘They are not different; we give them different names.’

  ‘Why are there so many for you, for others only one?’

  ‘Because we see the many and we tell the many, even while we dream the one which we cannot see. Why do you trouble yourself with these things?’

  ‘Because I am afraid. Have you never been afraid, Navigator?’

  ‘The fear is what keeps us alive. In the dying there is no fear. I am already dead…Rest easy. My grandson will do for you what he has done for me.’

  ‘He is my captain, now!’ said Carl Magnusson.

  ‘Trust him,’ said Kaloni the Navigator. ‘He has the mana …’

  When Thorkild went up to the bridge, Charlie Kamakau was at the wheel, and Peter André Lorillard was at the chart table, preparing his coded transmissions to the Navy. Thorkild announced calmly:

  ‘The old man’s asked me to take over command of the Frigate Bird. Charlie, will you inform the crew when you come off watch?’

  ‘Sure, Mr Thorkild – Captain!’

  Lorillard gaped at him.

  ‘Am I to understand this is official?’

  ‘It’s official. The old man will sign the log.’

  ‘I have to inform the Navy.’

  ‘Of course. And tell them we’re closing down transmissions until further notice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me Mr Lorillard. We’re closing down all transmissions until further notice. That will be logged too.’

  ‘But why? What reasons do I give?’

  ‘Two reasons. First we’re making a scientific experiment, closing down all navigational systems, radio, radar, even covering the compass, to follow the methods of ancient Polynesian navigators. If that isn’t enough, then you fall back on Captain’s orders. The Navy will understand that one, I’m sure.’

  ‘The hell they will! There’s a contract for my services and the equipment.’

  ‘I haven’t seen the contract. I didn’t make it. If you can’t take orders from the lawfully appointed skipper, you’re suspended from duty until operations are resumed.’

  ‘I’m under Navy orders.’

  ‘You’re under mine – as crew, passenger or in the brig. Take your pick.’

  ‘I don’t accept that. I shall continue to operate my schedules.’

  ‘If you try it, Mr Lorillard, I’ll confine you to quarters – and I’ll put a fire axe through your equipment and toss it overside. Is that clear?’

  ‘Carl Magnusson’s the owner. I’ll take it up with him.’

  ‘You do that. Do it now, Mister Lorillard!’

  When he had gone, Charlie Kamakau chuckled
and said happily:

  ‘I get the feeling he doesn’t like you, Captain.’

  ‘He’ll get used to it…My grandfather leaves us tonight.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘I want the decks cleared before we put him overside.’

  ‘I heard that too. My boys understand. And Captain …’

  ‘Yes Charlie?’

  ‘They know about the old ways. They’ll be glad to serve under you. They like Mr Magnusson too. He’s a good master; but it’s not the same thing is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not the same thing.’

  ‘Funny…Back home we’ve got all the one label on us. We’re all citizens of the great United States of America; we carry the same passports, live under the same constitution, get slugged with the same taxes. Out here, suddenly, it’s different. The past comes up and smacks us in the teeth…All the stories the old people used to tell us, the customs we used to laugh at, they mean something now. Even you…I heard the kids joking and calling you “Prof”, and telling about your lectures and your love-life. Then, all of a sudden, you’re changed. You’re the high one – and we know it, even if the others don’t. Yeah, it’s sure funny …’

  The tropic dusk lapsed swiftly, and night came down star-bright over the empty sea. Carl Magnusson swung the Frigate Bird into the wind, and she lay there, rocking in the groundswell, while Adam Briggs and Charlie Kamakau checked the stowage and the water-gourds and then unlashed the canoe and hooked it on to the davit blocks.

  Kaloni the Navigator stood apart with Gunnar Thorkild and pointed southwards where Hadar and Rigil Kent, the two bright stars of Centaurus, pricked out from a velvet sky. He showed Thorkild the path they would follow and how he should steer on them. As Thorkild opened his lips to speak the words of farewell, Kaloni silenced him with a gesture and a simple, grave admonition:

  ‘It is all said. All done.’

  Thorkild drew the old man to him and embraced him. Then, together, they went to the rail to watch the canoe being swung out over the side. Kaloni climbed down into it, and they watched as he raised the mast and stayed it, thrust off and paddled out into the wind and raised the bird-wing sail.