The Navigator Read online

  ‘It’s an interesting idea; but you’re snookered aren’t you? I won’t charter. You can’t afford to buy. What do you do now?’

  ‘I keep looking for a vessel I can afford. If I don’t find it by the end of the month I leave and go to my grandfather on Hiva Oa. I have the feeling his time is running out. I must be there to prepare him for his last journey.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Carl Magnusson sourly, ‘I wonder if our grandchildren will have the same thought? …’

  Gunnar Thorkild said nothing. The old man frowned:

  ‘You’re embarrassed? Why? A family like ours – we build empires and dynasties and then have to call in the mercenaries to protect us. When I die the mercenaries will take over – trustees, bankers, boards of directors, lawyers. What do they know or care about the old pieties …’ He broke off and thrust a long thick forefinger at Thorkild’s breastbone. ‘As I said, you’re snookered! So I’m going to make you an offer. I’ll finance your expedition: yourself and ten bodies of your choice – the rest I’ll choose. I’ll sail the Frigate Bird with my crew, and you direct the operation from the time we pick up your grandfather, until we mutually agree to break off and come home. I pay all bills and you assign to me all rights of publication and other exploitation of all records and discoveries, financial rewards therefrom to be split sixty to me, forty to you. One more thing. It’s a take-or-leave-it deal. No haggling. No whys or wherefores. And you decide now! – Well, Thorkild, what do you say?’

  ‘I leave it,’ said Gunnar Thorkild flatly.

  The old man gaped at him:

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I leave it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if it’s a good deal, it will stand reflection and discussion. If it’s a bad one it won’t; and besides, there are things I can’t trade, Mr Magnusson, because they don’t belong to me, but to my mother’s people. You’re being very generous. I know I’ll never get an offer like this again. If you’ll excuse me, I won’t waste any more of your time.’

  ‘Sit down!’ said Carl Magnusson harshly. ‘Let’s start again! Even before I had your letter, I’d heard about you – from your Jesuit friend Flanagan. I trust him because, like me, he’s living on borrowed time…’

  On the white beach of Hiva Oa, Kaloni the navigator sat and watched the rising of the new-born moon He was not alone now, because this was a night of feasting, when he took his rightful place beside the chief, and called alternately with him the genealogies that linked them to the old high gods; Kane the supreme, Lono the fruitful, Ku the powerful and Kanaloa, Lord of the deep sea. Alone, he intoned the hymn to Kanaloa, and all the guardian spirits beneath him Then, when the dancing was done the chief called for silence, and Kaloni stepped forward to pronounce his own obit:

  ‘The high gods have told me,

  One moon more,

  I shall stay with you

  When Hina shows herself again

  I shall go,

  Like the white sea-bird.

  Kaloni Kienga the Navigator

  Will make his last voyage.

  You will not follow me,

  But when I go,

  You will throw flowers into the sea,

  The waves will carry them to me,

  Beyond the path of the shining one,

  Beyond the black path of the God Kanaloa.’

  When he had finished there was silence again, and out of the silence the maidens came one by one to hang leis about his neck, and the young men, after them, to pile fruit at his feet. Then, when they retired the chief himself came, carrying a paddle, carved with the symbol of the god Kanaloa and gave it into his hands and blessed him:

  ‘May Kanaloa protect you,

  And Hina shine on your passage,

  And may the high chiefs and the navigators receive you,

  In peace and with joy.’

  Kaloni closed his eyes and let the blessing flow over him. When he opened them again the beach was empty. There were only the flowers and the fruit and the cook-fires, for a memory of what had happened: he was dispensed now from human commerce. He was consigned to the ancestors. He was ritually dead. He had only to wait for the next new moon, when the black ship would come to carry him to the home of the navigators, the island-of-the-tradewinds.

  2

  Gunnar Thorkild had demanded discussion; he got it in gluttonous measure – a rude lesson in the usages and consequences of power. He wanted clear terms and definitions. Carl Magnusson gave them to him, phrase by hammered phrase:

  ‘… What we want to do and what we say we want to do are two different things…Why? Because we’re mounting a voyage of maritime discovery, to find an island which exists so far only in legend. If we reveal our true intent, we become objects of political scrutiny. We’ll be cruising at first in French territorial waters, where they have a large naval force and an intelligence screen to protect their atomic experiments. We’ll be sailing in my ship and I am known to have certain affiliations in the State Department and the Navy. Suppose we do find our island. An interesting question then arises: who owns it? In theory we do. We can annex it to ourselves by a unilateral act and demonstrable possession – provided of course we can defend it against other claimants, which we obviously can’t…So we annex it in the name of the United States and claim land rights to ourselves…You never thought of that? Imagine what the press would make of it, especially with the Magnusson name involved. And I’m damn sure the French would have a destroyer on our tail, tracking us by radar every mile from Hiva Oa! So whatever you’ve said to anyone, up to now, my dear Thorkild, we’re going to retract and replace with a fiction that the press and your colleagues will accept and hopefully embellish. They’ve laughed you out of court already, so that helps …!’

  Gunnar Thorkild thought about it for a moment and then nodded agreement.

  ‘The simpler the story, the easier to tell. Local philanthropist Carl Magnusson invites assistant professor Gunnar Thorkild and a group of senior students on a summer cruise of the South Pacific. Students will trace the migrations of the early navigators, study local dialects and customs, and collect folk music period.’

  ‘Fine! Except I’ll have my public relations people dress it up. We might as well make some profit out of it! Now, you and me. You’ve told me a moment may come when you feel obliged, for reasons of tribal loyalty, to keep certain information secret. I accept that, provided you accept that I am free to proceed on the basis of my own information and my own deductions, even if it means violating the secrecy or possession of a place which is sacred to you?’

  ‘If that situation arose,’ said Thorkild, ‘I would have to separate myself from you and from the enterprise.’

  ‘And from any further participation in its profits or advantages?’

  ‘Agreed. But I might also feel obliged to oppose you, actively.’

  ‘I’m a rough man to fight,’ said Magnusson. ‘Just be warned. Now let’s talk about personnel. It will be a long voyage. We’d better be damn sure we can all live together. The crew first. I’m the skipper. You move in as mate and navigator. I have four boys from Kauai with my cook and a galley-boy. That’s eight bodies and it’s ample, provided the guests share cleaning and serving.’

  ‘That’s eight males,’ said Thorkild with a grin. ‘It’s Navy style, traditional but tedious. I prefer the tribal way: men, women and children with a litter of pigs for good measure.’

  ‘No pigs!’ Magnusson laughed. It was the first time Thorkild had seen him genuinely amused. ‘The women, yes. The children…well, that depends whose they are. My wife won’t come. She hates the sea and she’ll be glad of a rest from my company. So I’m inviting Sally Anderton. She’s a physician of merit and a damned attractive woman as well. I’d like to get Gabe Greenaway who’s a naval hydrographer and Mildred his girl-friend who used to be a marine biologist at Woods Hole. They’re old friends and good shipmates…That’s all so far. What are your thoughts?’

  ‘None, yet. But I think we need
a community that has some shape to it.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because, the moment we slip our moorings and head south we’re a group in hazard. We’re navigating in dangerous waters. We face storm and shipwreck like any other mariners. We’d reduce the hazard if the group had some sort of shape, some look of family. For instance, you want to have the passengers in some kind of sexual balance; yet you accept without question six boys from Kauai with no sexual companionship at all. I think that’s dangerous. It needs rethinking …’

  For a moment it seemed as though Magnusson would explode into anger, but he recovered himself and pronounced flatly:

  ‘Let’s get something straight Thorkild. On my ship it’s two worlds: the forepeak and the afterdeck, and the captain’s the only bridge in between. There’s courtesy, but no community high-jinks. The crew are there to work the ship, the passengers to enjoy it.’

  ‘That I understand, in the circumstances that obtained before. For your crew, the ship was an extension of their home and their employment with you. For your passengers it was a pleasure cruise. Now the definitions have changed. The passengers are participating in an enterprise which entails stress and risk, an enterprise whose real purpose may be only half-revealed to them. So we can’t think of them as joyriders. They’ll have to function very quickly as a community. For the crew the definition changes even more abruptly…’

  ‘I don’t see that at all!’

  ‘Give me time to explain it. Whether you admit it or not, there is, de facto, a barrier of class and race aboard your ship!’ ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘Is it? All the crew are Polynesians. I would guess all your guests were haole…No, hear me out Magnusson! From the moment we pick up my grandfather in Hiva Oa the situation changes dramatically. A sacred man comes on board – a kapu man – making his last journey to join the ancestors. Your boys will recognize him as such, even though his dialect will be different and there is two thousand miles of sea between Kauai and Hiva Oa. All you will see, all the others will see, will be an old, white-haired man, tattooed on breast and back and arms, who won’t have very much to say to anyone. Now, how you treat this man, the accommodation you offer him, the respect you pay him, will be a matter of note and concern to your crew…There’s more yet. When Kaloni Kienga leaves us – and he will, because he must make the last part of his voyage alone – I will be the sacred man, the kapu one. That will be known too, almost from the beginning. And all my relationships will be dominated by it…So let’s take our time over this part eh? Let’s be very open and flexible. If you don’t think you can tolerate what it entails, socially, then let’s call off the arrangement, with no hard feelings …’

  Carl Magnusson was patently unhappy. He limped away across the lanai, grunting and muttering, splashed water into a glass, tossed it down at a gulp and then stumped back to face Gunnar Thorkild. He was stony-faced and hostile.

  ‘You’re a subtle bastard, Thorkild! You throw me an argument like that, knowing I have no way to answer it. I know what kapu means, but it doesn’t concern me. It’s outside my culture pattern…That’s been my stand all along, on the whole race problem. You live your way, I’ll live mine – and you marry yours, I’ll marry mine. Let’s build good fences and we’ll all be very happy neighbours.’

  ‘In this case,’ Gunnar Thorkild snapped back savagely, ‘we’ll be living on the same small ship, in jeopardy on the same big ocean. And – for God’s sake! – is it too much to ask you to respect a man who has two thousand years of history and knowledge at his command! On the Frigate Bird you’ve got every damn navigational aid that her electrics will carry. I tell you Kaloni Kienga will sail you to any Pacific landfall you name, without even a compass! God Almighty! What’s at stake for you? Are you afraid he’ll smell? He will. He eats taro root and that gives a man bad breath! But for the rest, you’ll be meeting a man ten times your size with a longer history than either the Magnussons or the Dillinghams – for all the pineapples they’ve dumped on the world. Is that what you’re afraid of?’

  Carl Magnusson’s trap mouth twitched into a thin smile.

  ‘No Thorkild. That’s not it. I’m afraid of what happens on the day when you can claim – truly or falsely we can’t know – that all his knowledge and his power has passed to you!’

  It was a brutal attack, but Gunnar Thorkild made no move to counter it. He sat a long while, lips pursed, eyes half-closed, nodding like a porcelain buddha, as he pondered the import of Magnusson’s words. When finally he spoke, it was with a curious humility and detachment:

  ‘You’re right of course. It’s one thing to claim power. It’s another to possess it truly. And of course there’s no guarantee I won’t misuse it. I don’t really know what to say. I won’t know what to say until the mana of my grandfather passes into me…Forgive me, you do understand what mana means?’

  ‘It means “spirit”, “soul”…something like that.’

  ‘Like, but yet unlike. It means the emanation, the endowment from the high gods, which makes the chief what he is, the great navigator what he is. I have not received it yet. I cannot say what it will do to me. So you’re right to be afraid, but I was not wrong when I told you the rest of it. I believe in my bones that we have to give ourselves the chance to grow together. On the other hand, it’s your ship, your money. Only you can decide whether you want to commit them on these conditions.’

  Magnusson hesitated a moment then held out his hand to Thorkild.

  ‘The bargain stands. I’m not a flexible man. You’re not an easy one either. We’ll need some patience with each other. Let’s wrap it up for today and meet again later in the week.’

  ‘Come to my place, Mr Magnusson. There are things I’d like to show you. People I’d like you to meet.’

  ‘Bring them here. I rarely go out these days.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time to make a change,’ said Gunnar Thorkild evenly. ‘Among my people, it’s a shame on the house if a stranger refuses to enter and share the food.’

  ‘Among my people,’ said Carl Magnusson with a grin, ‘good manners are rare – and getting rarer. Give me a call. I’ll be glad to come.’

  When he passed by the Jesuit house to offer his thanks to Flanagan, he found the old man uneasy and dubious about the whole affair. Pressed to explain why, he fussed and fidgeted, turned on the brogue and the blarney, and in ten minutes managed to say nothing at all. Then he fell prey to a migraine so fearsome that even a whisper was like a blacksmith’s hammer in his head. A silent turn around the garden, with Thorkild pushing, relieved him somewhat, and finally he consented to explain himself:

  ‘… Gunnar, my boy, it’s like this. In the old days, when I was raising cash for good causes – collecting dowry money for the bride of Christ as one of my pious superiors put it – I always went straight after the big fish, the fellow with the power. He didn’t have to be a Holy Roman. In fact it was better if he wasn’t. He could skip the message and write the cheque, and then enjoy feeling benevolent afterwards…There was wisdom in the tactic, and it almost always worked, because if you’re rich and potent you can do what the poor man can’t – spread your investment over the board: so much for gilts, so much for equities, so much for patronage, and a flyer on each of the going gods – Jewish, Episcopalian, Roman, Unitarian! After that you’d lay a little on the horses, and some on the fillies – and even a side wager on the syndicate in case they might be useful one day…So, all I needed was a good spiel, and a thick hide and I generally came home with the bacon…Which is exactly what I did for you with Magnusson. I’ve tapped him before. We’ve been nodding friends for a long time. Sure, he said, it was the kind of adventurous project he liked to back; and now it had a special appeal for him…Are you with me Gunnar Thorkild, are you attending?’

  ‘I’m with you Father. I’m just wondering why you’re worried.’

  ‘Well, he told me what had happened to him – the stroke and all that – and it was as if I were looking into a mirror and r
eading my own tiny mind. You see, when first you’re stricken, you wilt; then you fight. It’s a matter of the testicles – the little witnesses you invoke to prove you’re a man. Now, the fight’s good – until the day when you realize you’ll never really win it. You’re damaged. The clock is running against you. Then you start plotting for continuity – invoking love and friendship, buying allies, making leagues and treaties – all of which will terminate the minute they put pennies in your eyes and pull the sheet over your face. You know that. So you turn inwards, looking for that little, bland vagrant soul which, until now, you hadn’t thought about very much. Then you’re scared and sometimes desperate; because at first you see only darkness, and after that shadows and folly-fires and sometimes monsters that raise the hackles and make you feel most wondrous cold…I know it all, because I’ve been there. You’re dangerous then; because you’re cornered and you’re envious and resentful, and sometimes, you can turn destructive…Now that’s what troubles me about you and Carl Magnusson. I know he’s in the dark country. I’m not sure you’re the man to handle him…Maybe this is all double-dutch to you; but…’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Thorkild was suddenly withdrawn and thoughtful. ‘I sensed some of it today, but I didn’t define it as you do. He had to display his power. He wanted to set all the terms of an alliance. I wasn’t prepared to accept them. Then he was afraid of what would happen when the mana of Kaloni the Navigator passed to me …’

  ‘You say he was afraid? Are you sure?’

  ‘No. He said he was afraid – which is different. I thought he was just warning me about getting too big for my breeches; but that wasn’t the whole of it.’

  ‘You’re damn right it wasn’t!’ said Flanagan with sudden vehemence. ‘Not by a long chalk!’

  Thorkild was suddenly afraid for the old man. He was so excited, so vehement, that it seemed his frail body could not support the strain. Thorkild tried to calm him with a smile and an offhand word: