The Navigator Page 14

  ‘Now? In the immediate future? Almost nil. Later, when we’re settled and can design and build a boat – maybe.’

  ‘Still only maybe?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You see what I mean, don’t you? If we’re stuck here, well, Peter and I can make a new life. If we’re not and I have a baby and …’

  ‘What do you want me to say Martha?’

  ‘I want you to tell me what to do.’

  ‘Can’t Lorillard tell you?’

  ‘He says he’d be willing to stay here for ever with me.’

  ‘That’s the answer then – if you believe him.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ve never seen him tested. But if you believe him, go ahead. You can’t keep juggling oranges all your life. You have to let ’em drop some time.’

  ‘Thanks old friend.’ She took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips. ‘I’m sorry I used you for a fetish doll. Sally Anderton’s a lucky girl. I hope she knows it. Goodnight Chief.’

  As she hurried away towards the beach he asked himself, with bleak irony, what Peter Lorillard would say when he raised the question of the signal buoys.

  Somewhere in the small hours of the morning, Thorkild was awakened by the sound of scuffling and women’s voices, behind the partition. A moment later, Sally was beside him, strained and urgent:

  ‘Jenny’s going to abort. The water’s broken, the labour will begin very soon. Stoke up the fire. Get us some kind of light. Get me some water.’

  ‘We’ve got nothing to boil it in!’

  ‘Oh Christ! Spring water then…And give me a sterile knife to cut the cord. But we need light…’

  ‘Bring her outside. We’ve still got the moon and the fire.’ ‘We can’t!’

  ‘She’ll be warmer and you can see what you’re doing. I’ll call you when I’m ready.’

  He hurried outside cursing the new madness. He piled brambles on the dying fire, snatched up the axe and went charging through the jungle fringe to the fei trees. He hacked down a whole plant, dragged it back to the fire-pit and spread the broad green leaves like a coverlet on the sand. He went down to the beach and began gathering armfuls of sea-weed and driftwood and the husks of coconuts to pile on the fire. He went to the spring and filled half a dozen coconut cups with fresh water. Then he went back inside the hut, where Jenny was already groaning with the first spasms. He waited until the spasms had passed then carried her out, with the women trailing after him. He laid her down on the leaf mat beside the fire. Molly Kaapu squatted at her head, making a pillow of her lap. Martha Gilman and Charlie Kamakau’s wife knelt on either side, gripping her hands. Sally Anderton knelt between her spread legs. Ellen Ching and Yoko braced her feet.

  When the spasms began again, Jenny screamed, and the men came tumbling bleary-eyed out of the hut. Thorkild shouted at them to get inside and stay there. He whittled and cleaned a piece of wood and held it to Jenny’s mouth so that she could bite on it as she wrestled and thrust, to the urgings of the women. The labour was long and difficult, and when birth came it was a tiny boy child, dead before its entry into life. Sally Anderton was bloody to the elbows, sweating and exhausted, but she completed the operation, silenced the weeping women, and told them brusquely:

  ‘Take her inside. Wrap her in your clothes. Lie with her and keep her warm. And for Christ’s sake stop blubbering. It doesn’t help her one bit!’

  When they had gone she herself wept with savage anger, beating her fists into the sand. Thorkild laid a hand on her shoulder and tried to comfort her. She rejected him fiercely:

  ‘Don’t touch me! Just bury it. Bury it quickly!’

  Gunnar Thorkild wrapped the tiny, bloody corpse in the fei leaves and walked down to the beach. Before he was half-way there, Adam Briggs fell into step beside him. He helped to dig the grave and pile the stones. He sat with Thorkild while he wept, bitterly, silently, until no more tears were left. Then he helped him to his feet and said calmly:

  ‘Enough’s enough man! You can’t carry us all – not all the time! Let’s go home and catch some sleep.’

  He could not sleep. He cleaned up the mess by the fire-pit. He prowled about in the false dawn, gathering fuel and fruit. He pushed out the canoe and fished for an hour, so that when the camp was roused he could offer them food and bustle them about the day’s tasks before they felt the full impact of the omens. He could lend them no pity. He could not afford to let them pity themselves. He told them:

  ‘… Last night was a sad thing, but it’s done, finished. Jenny is alive and will bear other children. We have to go on with the business of living and help her to do the same…The tide’s low this morning. I want to mount a full-scale salvage operation on the Frigate Bird before she breaks up altogether. Peter Lorillard will be in charge. Pick the men you want, Peter, but make sure they can all swim and dive, because you’re going to have to submerge inside the hull and grope about for whatever you can find. Do you think your signal buoys would still be serviceable?’

  ‘Possibly, yes.’

  ‘Make those a priority. See if they can be got out without risking anyone’s neck. Where were they stored?’

  ‘In a box in the hold. We may not be able to get down that far. Besides, they’re quite bulky.’

  ‘Try anyway. What about other radio gear?’

  ‘Useless without power supply.’

  ‘Forget it then. Next priority, metal containers. Last night we didn’t even have a vessel to boil water. After that tools and metal …’ He managed a pale joke, ‘And if you can lay your hands on any of Carl’s liquor, bring that too!…For the rest, strip the ship. But if the sea gets up and she starts to move, quit. It’s my guess she’ll be sucked back into the big deep. Understood?’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Hernan Castillo?’

  ‘Here!’

  ‘I want you to start making as many tools as you can – adzes, simple cultivators, anything you can devise for clearing and building and planting up on the terrace…Molly, Eva, we need baskets, and mats for sleeping and for the walls of the hut. We need fibre for binding. Some of you know how to make these things. Teach the others and get all the women working…Except Ellen Ching. I want her with me today. I want you too, Tioto. Bring a knife. We’re going to start exploring the island. We’ll be back before sunset…Any questions?’

  ‘Just one Chief.’ It was Franz Harsanyi who spoke. ‘Shouldn’t we try to salvage books and charts and papers as well? I know they’ll be water-spoiled, and some will be useless, but we’ve got to find some way of preserving the knowledge we hold between us. We can’t let it die. I want to say more about this later, but while we’re working on the ship …’

  ‘Agreed, Franz. So long as it’s understood that the means of survival come first. We’ll talk later, as you suggest. Anyone else?’

  ‘The medicine chest,’ said Sally Anderton. ‘It’s in Carl’s stateroom in a cupboard under his bunk. It’s a large squarish metal box. I’d like that given high priority.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ said Peter Lorillard. ‘It’s a sight more important than the signal buoys, which may not work anyway.’

  Thorkild said casually:

  ‘You’re in charge, Peter. Make your own assessment when you get on board. Sort yourselves out quickly. Time and the sea are against us. Ellen and Tioto, be ready to leave in ten minutes. I want to see you first, Sally.’

  As she walked with him towards the hut, she said:

  ‘Darling, I didn’t mean to hurt you last night.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I felt so horribly futile and helpless. I wish you’d take me with you today.’

  ‘I can’t. I need Ellen because she’s a botanist. I want Tioto because he’s a gossip and a scandal-monger. If there are social problems brewing – and I think there may be – I’ll hear about them. When you’re working with the women I want you to keep your ears open too.’

  She stopped dead in her tracks an
d stared at him.

  ‘My God! You’re a real politician. I’ve never seen this side of you before. I’m not sure I like it.’

  ‘Don’t judge me!’ He was harsh and strained. ‘I’ve buried three dead in forty-eight hours, and there are eighteen living souls depending on me still. I’ve put Lorillard in charge of salvage so that he’ll have to make a decision that I don’t want to make; because if it’s the wrong one it will damage my authority and the people who depend on its exercise. If that makes me a politician – so be it! Here or in Honolulu, man’s still a political animal; and until he’s learnt to govern himself, faith, hope and charity aren’t enough. I don’t ask you to approve what I do, only to understand it. I can’t fight on two fronts, Sally.’

  ‘Don’t shut me out then. Help me to understand.’

  ‘I’ll try. How’s Jenny?’

  ‘Miserable. But, unless there’s a big infection, she’ll live.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Of course. She’s been asking for you. Do me a favour, Gunnar. Meet me by the waterfall before you go.’

  ‘Sure. I won’t be long.’

  Lying on the floor of the hut, wrapped in the clothes of the other women, Jenny, the dumpling child, looked like a rag doll, discarded after play-time. Her face, framed in lank hair, was pinched. There were dark hollows under her eyes. When she saw him she gave him a tearful smile and held out a limp, clammy hand.

  ‘Hi, Prof!’

  ‘Hi, Jenny!’ He squatted on the ground beside her and smoothed back the hair from her forehead. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Lousy. I’m sorry I gave you such a bad night.’

  ‘All part of the service.’

  ‘Where did you bury it?’

  ‘Down on the beach, with the others.’

  ‘Will I be able to have another one?’

  ‘Sure you will. Several probably.’

  ‘Your grandfather promised that, didn’t he? He said there was more than one fruit on the tree.’

  ‘So he did. I’d almost forgotten.’

  ‘And he said I’d bear a chief’s son.’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘I’m glad this one’s dead. Billy Spaulding’s baby wouldn’t really fit with us, would it?’

  ‘Well, the old people used to say whatever happens is good, otherwise the gods wouldn’t allow it. You rest now. I’ll be back to see you later. Is there anything you want?’

  ‘No. I’ll sleep. Will you kiss me?’

  He bent and kissed her and she held him for a moment and then lay back with a little sigh of contentment.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I remember you carrying me out last night, and how you held me, just like my father when I was tiny. I’ll be better soon, won’t I?’

  ‘Very soon. Sleep tight.’

  He drew the ragged covers about her and walked out to meet Sally Anderton by the waterfall. As they kissed and clung together, she begged him:

  ‘Don’t let them eat you up. Keep something for me please!’

  ‘Hush now, sweetheart. I love you.’

  ‘You’re my man, but you’re their lifeline. Their hold is stronger than mine.’

  ‘Sally, look at me! Don’t be scared. Love’s the one thing that grows as you spend it.’

  ‘But life isn’t! Time isn’t! If you don’t use it right, you turn round one day and look back at a wasteland.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s the terrible thing. I see you standing there with the group, and you’re taller and stronger than any of them and I’m proud of you and I wouldn’t want you to be anything else. But I’m scared too, because I know you can never be wholly mine. I know it’s selfish and stupid – and I’m old enough to know better, but that’s the way I feel and I can’t help myself. Don’t blame me, please!’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ said Gunnar Thorkild sombrely. ‘But I can’t escape what I am either: what the ancestors made me, what these people have chosen me to be and do. You’re the first woman I’ve truly loved. You’re the haven I turn to out of every storm…But if that isn’t enough – God help us both!’

  The purpose of the journey, as he explained it to Ellen Ching and Tioto, was two-fold: to examine with an expert eye the animal and vegetable resources of the island, and to find, if possible, the high place of which Kaloni the Navigator had spoken. He had already established the fact of a previous habitation of the island and there was probably an animal population, pigs or dogs descended from their original imports. These could be dangerous if met unawares so they armed themselves with bamboo staves sharpened at one end. They would go first to the terrace where, with Mark Gilman, he had found the pottery shard. From there they would climb to the level of the crater rim, and begin to circle it, marking a route for others to follow at a later time. They would time their journey by the sun, turning about just after midday to avoid being overtaken by darkness in the upland rain-forest.

  His companions were a useful pair. For all his sexual oddity, Tioto was intelligent, resourceful and witty. He had been a sailor, a hairdresser, a night-club singer, a barman and a gymnast. He was strong as an ox, and a colourful talker in the old language and in English. Ellen Ching was an agreeable blend of Chinese pragmatism and island humour. Her mind worked like an abacus, clickety-click, and the mathematics of her own life had always been meticulously ordered. As they began their march towards the uplands, she talked freely and openly about the future:

  ‘… I don’t know how far you’ve thought ahead, Chief, but once you open up land for cultivation, you’ll have a whole set of new structures.’

  ‘In what way, Ellen?’

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning. The soil’s decomposed lava. It’ll grow most things we want; but the growth here is so rapid, it’s a full-time job to cultivate and harvest and hold back the jungle.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you’re going to need a settled agricultural community. At the same time you need fish for protein, and people to build your boat…That’s a shore-line group, pursuing different arts, making another kind of adaptation – even climatically. Feel how different it is up here – sticky, humid; the higher we climb, the more we’re dominated by that big cloud.’

  ‘I don’t see, Ellen, why the division has to be so rigid.’

  ‘In the beginning it won’t be. We’ll all be sharing the same labour. Later, as skills and aptitudes define themselves, the divisions and differences will become clearer. You’ll have to work harder to hold people together.’

  ‘She’s right, Chief.’ Tioto chuckled. ‘You got bananas. I got fish. How many bananas for one fish, eh? You know how long it takes to make a piece of bark cloth? Remember how much it cost in the tourist market? You’re not going to give it away are you? Then you got a man making tools. How much for an axe? Not now, but later, everyone will want to trade. It’s in the blood …’

  ‘Then we’ve got to get it out of the blood Tioto, because it’ll destroy us, like a disease. Remember the agreement we made: everything is held in common?’

  ‘Easy to say Chief. Hard to do. Unless you make like the old chiefs and bury people alive or beat them with stingray barbs…And what about the man-woman thing? Do we have that in common too?’

  Ellen Ching laughed.

  ‘And I never knew you cared, Tioto!’

  ‘Sure I care!’ Tioto was nettled. ‘Charlie Kamakau’s my friend. What happens when Charlie’s wife makes bedroom eyes at one of the haole boys, and they go off into the bushes together? I’ve seen Charlie break a man’s head with a marlin-spike just because he came drunk on board and talked dirty…And what happens if I get horny one night and chase Miss Ching up the beach?’

  ‘I’ll kick your balls off, Tioto.’

  ‘If you kick everybody’s balls off sweetheart, you’ll have a long, lonely life.’

  ‘Then let’s run a sporting house together, Tioto. You greet the customers – I’ll take the cash.’

  ‘Lay off, you
two!’ Thorkild laughed ‘Let’s take a breather. This is the terrace where I came the other day. Give us a rundown on what you’ve seen so far, Ellen.’

  ‘Well, plantains, bananas, coconuts, bread fruit, taro. We know about those. There’s mango and guava. That bush over there is a pepper-plant. You make kava out of the roots – provided your teeth are strong enough to chew them in the first place. We’ve seen husk-shell tomatoes, and sugar cane and wild pineapples. That big tree is a paper-mulberry. You strip off the inner bark to make tapa cloth…The fruit rats that eat the bananas are clean animals. We can eat those too if we’re pushed to it…There’s everything we can ever want, even if we just forage for it. If we cultivate, then we’re so much better off.’

  ‘There’s pig, too,’ said Tioto. ‘Listen!’

  In the thicket to the left they heard snuffling and grunting, and a moment later, a big black sow with a piglet at her heels, trotted across the small clearing. Tioto raised his stave to strike at the piglet but Thorkild stayed his arm.

  ‘Don’t! If there’s a boar back there, he’ll tear the shanks off you. Enough that we know there’s meat to be had.’

  ‘You’re right Chief.’ Tioto relaxed and watched the animals disappear into the undergrowth. ‘How come you think quicker than me? Is that what they teach you at University?’

  ‘That’s what my grandfather taught me, Tioto,’

  ‘Oh yeah! I forgot.’ He shivered involuntarily and looked uneasily about him. ‘Can we move on now? I don’t like this place.’

  It was the second time Thorkild had heard the same thought. This time he was not prepared to dismiss it with a platitude. He asked quietly:

  ‘What’s wrong with it, Tioto?’

  ‘Something bad, something cruel.’

  ‘I don’t feel anything,’ said Ellen Ching in her downright fashion. ‘I see it’s a fertile place. It would be good for us to work!’

  ‘Do you feel anything Chief?’

  ‘No, Tioto. I feel nothing.’

  ‘You’re a high chief and a navigator. You have the mana. Maybe it doesn’t touch you; but I wouldn’t live here for a sackful of dollars.’

  ‘There are other places,’ said Thorkild easily. ‘Let’s push on.’