The Navigator Read online

  ‘Molly’s right,’ said Carl Magnusson with a grin. ‘Read it one way it’s a dirty joke. Read it another and there’s blood on the beach. Any ideas Gunnar?’

  ‘Give me time, Carl. Give them time too…What do the women say about it Molly?’

  ‘What women say and what they do is two different things. You know that Kaloni – and if you don’t, you should. But in the end, they’re the ones that’s going to decide. Me…? I’d put ’em all in one big house and let the men come visiting. Them that want one man, have him, them that want more make their own arrangements. If they make children – and they will – the children belong to everybody. One thing I’m sure of Kaloni …’

  ‘What’s that Molly?’

  ‘You keep your big nose out of it. Let me handle the girls until I ask different. O.K.?’

  ‘It’s good advice.’ Carl Magnusson laughed painfully. ‘That was one thing everyone agreed. They wanted Molly Kaapu as mother of the tribe.’

  ‘Mother, hell!’ Molly Kaapu exploded. ‘I could still give some of those babies a tumble they’d never forget. You too, Carl Magnusson, if you hadn’t worn yourself out chasing dollars and fancy wives.’

  ‘Maybe you should see me off that way Molly. One big bang and then bury me with a lei round my neck.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said Molly Kaapu tartly. ‘But there’s one that might go off before you.’

  Thorkild was instantly wary.

  ‘Who’s that Molly?’

  ‘That little girl of yours, Jenny. She won’t say so, but she got hurt when we hit the rock. She’s just dragging herself around. If she carries to her full time, I’m a millionaire’s play-girl.’

  ‘Has Sally Anderton had a look at her?’

  ‘Sure. But she only says wait and see.’

  ‘Then the girl shouldn’t be working.’

  ‘So what should she do, lie in the sun all day, scared and sorry for herself? Grow up Kaloni! This is women’s business. Leave it to us! You got plenty else to worry about.’

  ‘Like the Frigate Bird …’ Carl Magnusson pointed to the channel where the breakers tossed high over the hulk and sluiced white foam over her decks. ‘There’s a hell of a lot more we could salvage before she breaks up.’

  ‘Not in this sea Carl. We’ll wait for the next low tide, take a party aboard, and swim around inside her. Now that we’ve got the canoe we can ferry stuff back and forth quite quickly.’

  Carl Magnusson gave him an odd sidelong look and said deliberately:

  ‘You might, just might, be able to salvage some of Lorillard’s radio equipment: the signal buoys for instance, or enough parts to put a transmitter together.’

  ‘We could try.’

  ‘How hard?’ asked Carl Magnusson coolly. ‘And before you answer, let me say I haven’t raised the question with Lorillard or anyone else. I figure if he’s Navy-trained he should think of it himself. On the other hand, you’re the high chief. So may be it’s your duty to do something.’

  ‘Or it could be a higher duty to concentrate all our efforts to establish this community and make it self-sufficient before we distract it with faint hopes…I’ll think about it.’

  Carl Magnusson turned to Molly Kaapu.

  ‘What do you say, mother Molly?’

  ‘I say mind your own business, old man. You got a judgement coming up and you don’t want to answer to any more mischief. You do what your head tells you Kaloni. Pay no mind to anyone else.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ Carl Magnusson grimaced as the pain took him again. ‘But back there, you made a contract. Your labour and the fruits of it belong to the community. You breach that bargain at your peril.’

  A long hour before sunset, the house was finished and the whole group stood and surveyed it with triumph. It was no palace; they would admit that. A great architect – but only a great one – might cavil at certain defects. The craftsmen of other islands might note that the bamboo frames were slightly askew, and the palm roof was roughly laid and the walls were not woven but simply laced against the frame like a brushwood fence. Still it was, beyond dispute, a house that would keep them dry, and filter the wind and even afford a certain privacy, because it was divided by a rough screen so that the women might be private to themselves and sleep together if they chose. Outside, there was a space, swept clear of debris, with a cooking pit and a raised oven of stones, and a rough shelter to keep their firewood dry, and house their miscellany of salvage. They were proud of their handiwork, eager as children to be praised and, for a moment, solemn at this first small promise of permanence and continuity.

  ‘It deserves a blessing,’ said Martha Gilman. ‘The Chief should speak.’

  ‘This is our first home,’ said Gunnar Thorkild simply. ‘We have built it with our own hands in a sacred place. I pray that we may live in it safely and at peace. Amen.’

  ‘We should make a feast tonight,’ said Molly Kaapu. ‘We should put flowers in our hair and sing and dance.’

  ‘I haven’t got a darn thing to wear,’ said Ellen Ching.

  They laughed then, a high happy laughter that released, for the first time, all the tensions of the last two days.

  ‘Let’s go swimming,’ said Franz Harsanyi. ‘I stink like a pole-cat.’

  ‘Leave your clothes here,’ said Sally Anderton. ‘I’ll soak them in fresh water. If you get salt in them they’ll never dry.’

  There was a brief self-conscious moment when they peeled off their clothes and trooped down to the beach laughing and shouting like children let out of school while Jenny, swollen and awkward, waddled behind with Adam Briggs at her side. Carl Magnusson growled approval.

  ‘I wondered how that would happen. Bright girl Sally!’ Then he added: ‘Do you think you could do something with this shoulder? It hurts like hell.’

  ‘Not much I can do Carl, except immobilize it better. Here, let’s try…’

  ‘It’s my good arm, dammit! I feel helpless as a baby. Everyone else is working. I’m limping around like the village idiot.’

  ‘There…is that better?’

  ‘A little. Thanks …’

  ‘You stay here with me, Carlie boy,’ Molly Kaapu told him firmly. ‘You can talk to me while I make the fire and start supper. You and me aren’t made for skinny-dipping.’

  Sally Anderton gathered up the pile of cast-off clothing, and carried it over to the spring. Gunnar Thorkild followed her and watched as she took off her own clothes and tossed them into the pool.

  ‘Give me yours too, Gunnar. Then you can help me rinse and wring them.’

  Thorkild obeyed, laughing.

  ‘Now we’re really back to nature, aren’t we? These rags won’t last long. Then we’ll be down to loin-cloths.’

  ‘Sooner the better. The sooner we throw off the past, the better we’ll be…Do you think you could stop being a great chief for a while and make love to me?’

  ‘The way you are woman, I’d have to clean you up first.’

  ‘Clean me up! Look at yourself, you’re smutty as a sweep!’

  They played like children under the waterfall. They teased and tumbled each other in the pool. They made love hungrily on the mossy bank. They lay together afterwards, calm and content, dappled by the late sun, lulled by the water music and the long whisper of the wind through the tufted palms.

  ‘I’m happy now,’ said Sally Anderton. ‘This morning I was afraid.’

  ‘For God’s sake, why?’

  ‘After that first vote, when you stood up and made that big, solemn speech, you looked so remote, so different. It was as if you weren’t part of us at all, as if you’d come from some other world. I thought I knew you, every limb and every pulse-beat. Suddenly you were a stranger – threatening and dangerous. It wasn’t only me. The others felt it too.’

  ‘Is that why they changed things – limited my authority?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And was it unanimous, as Carl said?’

  ‘It was. I agreed with the others.’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m still the same Gunnar Thorkild.’

  ‘Oh no, dear heart. You’re not. Not since the night you went ashore in Hiva Oa to find your grandfather. Before that you were half a dozen men, rolled into a bundle and tied with string. Now, there’s only one of you, and I haven’t learnt all of him yet…So long as we can be like this, I’m not sure that I want to know any more.’

  ‘Do you know I love you Sally?’

  ‘That, I do know.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Can you doubt it?’

  ‘No. I only hope I don’t make you carry too heavy a load.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like me, and all that’s behind me and all that lies ahead. For the first time in my life I’ve found a woman to whom I can surrender myself absolutely and truly. I’ve done that. I did it the first night we made love on the Frigate Bird. Now there are other claims on me. There will be more and more; and every claim I pay leaves less for you. All I can promise is to make up as much of the balance as I can…Do you understand what I’m trying to say?’

  ‘I hope I do. We may have to learn to share each other. But not now. Hold me darling. Hold me close.’

  5

  The night came down on a scene of tribal simplicity. Molly Kaapu had marshalled the pake women about the fire-pit and was teaching them the arts of making breadfruit paste and broiling fei, the thick red plantains that cooked sweeter than bananas, and baking a groper fish in a wrapping of leaves. The two wives from Kauai were shredding palm leaves and plaiting lines for the fishermen. Tioto and Willy Kuhio were shaping shells into hooks. Simon Cohen was notching a bamboo tube into a simple flute. Hernan Castillo was trying to make an adze from a chunk of basalt and a gnarled tree-root. Adam Briggs and Charlie Kamakau were making a pair of paddles for the canoe while Franz Harsanyi, Carl Magnusson and Mark Gilman were engaged in some complicated memory game from which all others were excluded. Apart, in the shadows, Gunnar Thorkild sat with Jenny who was tearful and full of miseries.

  ‘I feel so lousy, Prof. I get these pains. It’s like I was all knotted up inside. Then they go away and I just feel sick. I know I’m a drag. Everybody’s kind and careful; but it’s not fair to them…’

  ‘It’s good for them Jenny. They need you to take their minds off their own problems. Besides, you’re important to them for another reason. You’re carrying the first new child that will be born on this island. You’re a precious thing and your baby will be a pride for everybody.’

  ‘I never thought of it like that.’

  ‘Then you should, because it’s true.’

  ‘I’m scared Prof. I mean how it will happen, how much it’ll hurt. There’s no medicine here, no anaesthetic, nothing!’

  ‘Jenny love, women were having babies long before medicine was thought of. You’ve got Sally and Molly Kaapu and Martha. They’ll give you more help than you’d get in most hospitals today.’

  ‘I know that. They’ve been talking to me, trying to explain things. But I’m still scared.’

  ‘When your time is over, you’ll have to help the others, because there’ll be more babies born here for sure.’

  ‘I wonder whose they’ll be?’

  ‘Ours Jenny. They’ll belong to all of us. The children will be the luckiest kids in the world.’

  ‘I wish I belonged to some one. I really do.’

  Thorkild put his arm round her shoulder and drew her close to him.

  ‘Well girl, I guess you belong to me and Martha. I picked you off the beach. Martha took you in.’

  ‘Why didn’t you and Martha get together?’

  ‘I don’t know. The chemistry didn’t work.’

  ‘She’s still in love with you.’

  ‘No she isn’t. We were made to be friends. Not lovers.’

  ‘Will you make it up with her? Say something kind and gentle.’

  ‘Sure, if it would make you feel better.’

  ‘It would make both of us feel better. Lorillard’s all right, I guess. Some ways he’s good for her, but she doesn’t get much support from him.’

  ‘She’s not tied. There are younger and better ones. Franz Harsanyi for instance or Adam Briggs.’

  ‘Funny that!…Here we all are, and nobody’s tied to anyone – except you and Sally. This afternoon we all were swimming together without a stitch on; but it was like a fraternity picnic. I wonder how it’ll work out in the end?’

  ‘I wonder too. Feeling better now?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. I’m sorry to be such a mess. Will you do something for me, Prof? …’

  ‘Sure, what do you want?’

  ‘Promise you won’t laugh?’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Before I go to bed, will you…will you just kiss me goodnight?’

  ‘I’ll kiss you now, chicken – and for bedtime too. Dry your eyes and let’s join the party.’

  As they walked over to the hut Hernan Castillo beckoned to Thorkild and held up the tool on which he had been working.

  ‘Take a look at that, Chief. What do you think of it?’

  ‘It looks great. Have you tried it yet?’

  ‘You try it.’

  Thorkild walked over to one of the large palms that fringed the clearing and cut a series of notches in the trunk. The stone blade bit deep but still held firm in the shaft. The little Filipino let out a whoop of joy. Thorkild strode back to the fire-pit to display the miracle.

  ‘Look at this! Hernan made it!’

  Castillo was bubbling with explanations:

  ‘Now we know how to do the notches and the binding we can make other things – knives, hammers. Next thing we have to learn is how to flake and chip the stone to put a good edge on it. If any of you see pieces of basalt like this, pick ’em up and dump them outside the hut…If anybody wants to learn how to do it, I’ll show ’em.’

  ‘Pity we haven’t got a drink, to celebrate,’ said Carl Magnusson.

  ‘Find me a can for the mash,’ said Adam Briggs. ‘and I’ll make you the best moonshine you’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘And I’ll test it first.’ Sally Anderton gave a smiling caution. ‘To make sure you don’t go blind or rot your livers.’

  When they sprawled around the fire-pit to eat supper, they were all elated, full of plans and prospects, great and small: to weave fish-traps and fruit baskets, to find the bark that would make tapa cloth, to make an outrigger and a sail for the canoe, a kneading trough for the women, a press for the oil of the coconut. It was good talk, eager and boisterous and full of hopes.

  When the meal was done, they tossed the scraps into the pit, built up the fire and, led by Simon Cohen, began to sing, raggedly at first, and then in more tranquil harmony. It was an hour of strange, sad beauty with the moon-path on the empty sea, the cadence of the voices rising and falling against the boom of the distant surf and the shoheen-ho of the wind in the palms. They drew close to each other, holding body to body, swaying to old rhythms, sharing wordless memories and untellable fears. Led by Ellen Ching, the Kauai girls and Molly Kaapu danced, while the men chanted the old melodies, hackneyed once for the tourists, but now filled with a new beauty, the nostalgia of a vanished paradise. When they had sung themselves out, Molly Kaapu gave them her own bawdy goodnight.

  ‘See that house there?…That’s where we sleep. It’s boys on one side, girls on the other; because us ladies like to be private sometimes. Those that have other things in mind can dig a nice warm hole on the beach…But watch out for land crabs which can give you a nasty nip in the wrong places. And when you come home, don’t wake the rest of us. Goodnight all …’

  As they dispersed slowly into the darkness, Gunnar Thorkild sat alone, staring into the glowing embers of the fire-pit. Jenny had had her goodnight kiss. Sally had gone to settle Carl Magnusson. The others would dispose themselves in their own fashion in their own times and seasons. For himself there was the problem, which tomorrow would become immediate, of Peter Andre Lorillard and his gadgets. The radio did not trouble him.
There was no hope of raising the generators; and without a power supply the radio would not function. The signal buoys were another matter. If they could be raised and if they were still serviceable, then clearly there was a means, however chancy, of communication with the outside world. Equally clearly, he had no right to refuse that chance to a single one of his castaways. And yet, caught in the magical afterglow of the evening, he found the idea repugnant, as if he were inviting the armed invasion of a sanctuary. Remembering the eager talk, the sudden surge of creative impulse in the whole group, he wondered whether it would have taken place had they still had hopes of a mechanical intervention by a bleating object drifting in a wilderness of sea. Besides, even if he left the damned things to be eaten by the coral, he was not denying hope, only deferring it to a time when they could build their own vessel and send it voyaging with a trained crew…He was still wrestling with the thought when Martha Gilman’s voice startled him out of his reverie:

  ‘Gunnar, can you spare a minute?’

  ‘Sure.’ He scrambled to his feet. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘No. I’ve just settled Mark to sleep. Peter’s waiting for me down on the beach. I wanted to say something.’

  ‘Let me say it.’ Thorkild’s tone was gentle. ‘We’ve been friends too long to go on fighting. If I hurt you, I’m sorry. Can we pick it up from there?’

  ‘Of course. And I’m sorry too. But there’s something else. Peter’s told me about his wife and family in San Diego.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks for letting him tell me; but Gunnar, I have to know this because it changes everything. What are our chances of getting off the island?’