Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 60

“Land!”

Fanny heard Louis’s shout as if in a dream. She lifted her head o? the pillow, shook it, then slid down from her bed. Maggie was already standing there in her robe. The lantern in her hand lit the soles of Valentine’s feet, which were coming down at them from her berth overhead. The women hurried along the hallway and up the ladder to the deck, where they found  Louis  and  the  captain  staring  through  binoculars  into  the  near  darkness.  Louis handed the glasses to Fanny. A long low shadow spread itself wide across the distance. “Morning comes on fast here,” the captain said. But this morning was spreading lazily, to reveal a thick patch of clouds sitting atop the water.

Otis ordered the crew to cruise along the northern shore of Nuka Hiva island with Anaho Bay as their goal. The cook came up with co?ee and passed around cups as they watched the dawn give way to day. “There are the two peaks!” someone shouted. Within the hour, the captain had sailed into the bay and dropped anchor.

Bright light illuminated the bank of fog lying on the water between the Casco and Nuka Hiva. The block of white covered their view of the beach, but above and behind the cloud layer, they saw brilliant green peaks rise up to points in the blue sky. Through the white mass, a black form appeared. Lloyd was the ?rst to spot it. “Canoe!” he shouted. Paddles projected from either side. As the form grew larger in the distance, they saw a ?gure stand up and sit down. Two men came into focus, dressed in proper linen pants and coats. Fanny, Maggie, and Valentine hurried below to dress. When they came back up, the men in the canoe were bobbing alongside the schooner.

“Permission to come aboard?” the white man called. “Permission granted,” Otis replied.

A ladder was thrown over the side, and the men climbed into the Casco.  “Regler,” the white man introduced himself with a German accent. “And this is Chief Taipi-Kikino.” The chief, a good six feet tall, had two parallel blue bands tattooed across his nose and cheeks; he  was  a  smiling  man  with  beautiful  white  teeth  and  bronze  skin  that  gleamed  with fragrant coconut oil. He shook their hands, then shook them again. In the distance, Fanny spotted two more canoes emerging from the low-hanging white cloud.
“Valentine,  go below quick and prepare tea.  More visitors,” she said,  nodding  in  the

direction of the canoes.

In the time it took Regler to explain that he was a trader living on Nuka Hiva, a dozen native men had climbed up the ladder—giant men in loincloths with tattooed thighs and arms, knives at their waists, and handsome, glowering faces. They brought with them an assortment of items—plaited straw hats, oranges, coconuts, bananas—and held them out for sale.

The turn toward commerce took Fanny by surprise. Apart from the Stevenson party’s greetings, no cordialities had passed among them. An odd period of staring ensued.
“All right. Tell them I will buy the bananas,” Fanny said.

“The man wants a dollar,” Regler said rather apologetically. “For a bunch of bananas? Tell him twenty-five cents. And that’s too much.” The native men snorted their disgust when Regler translated. One of them swept his arm about to take in the schooner and its ?ne trappings.  “You no rich?” he said
ironically. A round of taunting laughter went up.

Before Fanny knew what was happening, the men were swarming the boat, with Louis in anxious pursuit.

“Dear heavens,” Maggie whispered. “We’re at their mercy.”

Fanny went below so Valentine wouldn’t be frightened. She found the girl quaking in the galley; the cook was nowhere in sight. Fanny stood at the entrance of the kitchen and waved away the men when they poked their heads through the door.

When the natives had departed, everyone on board stared at one another in wonder.
“How extraordinary,” Louis said.

“It’s  not  really  how  they  are,”  Regler  said.  The  trader  had a  clean-shaven  chin  and preposterously long  and curly hair growing  from his cheeks, like sheepskin  saddlebags. “What you saw just now was a bit of posturing. When you befriend them, you will ?nd they won’t accept money for food. With these folks, food isn’t something you own. They give it as a gift, and they know eventually they’ll be reimbursed, so to speak. There is a lot of back and forth with the gift-giving. Sometimes it wears a man out.” He laughed. “Why don’t you come with me to the island, Captain Otis? I will ?nd you chickens and coconut milk and co?ee—whatever supplies you need. And the chief has o?ered to take your letters over to the next bay.”

Maggie jumped in glee at the news of a mail steamer. They all promptly retrieved their letters.  Regler  turned  to  Lloyd,  who  had  stood  dumbfounded  on  deck  during  the  visit. “Young fellow, you come, too. We will need extra hands.”

While the men were gone, yet another canoe arrived, this time with fourteen men and boys led by the chief of chiefs, Ko’oamua. The chief might have been wearing a suit of clothes, so thoroughly was his body tattooed with blue arabesques. Maggie didn’t ?inch at the sight of his nakedness. He came bearing gifts of welcome and showed every sign that he was a ?ne gentleman. He and his men followed Louis in single ?le on a tour through the fore and after cabins and up the forecastle companion. They all settled on the ?oor of the cockpit  and  stared  at  Lloyd’s  typewriter,  which  was  set  up  on  the  table.  By  way  of entertainment,  Louis  asked  their  names  and  typed  each  phonetically,  handing  out  the individual strips of paper. Ko’oamua took over the typewriter at that point and punched out the names of each of his family members.

“The man knows some English but not enough. And God knows, we haven’t a syllable of theirs. It’s bloody frustrating not to be able to talk to them,” Louis said to Fanny.  “We might as well be from di?erent planets.” He was thumbing madly through a book about Polynesian languages.

Fanny shrugged. She went to the supply of gifts she had brought from San Francisco and handed around some cheap cigars. The men burst into smiles and left peacefully.

“There aren’t that many of them left, not compared to their old numbers,” Regler said that evening over dinner on the boat.  “They’ve had sickness of all kinds—cholera, smallpox, syphilis. Taipi-Kikino is a chief, but the big chief is Ko’oamua, whom you also met today. He’s been converted by the missionaries. It wasn’t that long ago, though, you could see him striding proudly along the beach right there.” Regler pointed to the stretch of sand opposite the Casco. “He was wearing a tapa cloth around him. And out from its folds, what did he pull? A human arm that he chewed bites out of I suppose it belonged to one of his enemies —former, that is. They call human flesh ‘long pig.’ The man appeared to enjoy it, all right.” “Long pig. How picturesque,” Fanny said.

Between courses, Regler raked his ?ngers thoughtfully through his whiskers. “The days of long pig are over with now. So will be the tattooing, if the French have their way. They’re against it. Too much a reminder of the old savage days. The fact is, the natives won’t stop

with their tattoos. Some things you can’t take away from people,” he mused. “Get a look at Queen Vaekehu’s tattoos if you go visit her, which you should. She’s gone missionary, but at one time her legs were the main attraction for visitors to the island.”

In the morning, they all went ashore. As their canoe approached the beach, the people of Anaho stopped to get a good look at them. There were women among the men, most of them half-clad and damp. It appeared they were returning home from a morning bath. When  Fanny, in  a holoku, and Maggie, in a proper dress and veil, stepped onshore, the women  came  forward and startled them  by  calling  out,  “Hello!  Hello!” Another  in  the crowd—a man who had come aboard the Casco yesterday—gestured toward Louis with his eyes and said to the gathered, “Ona.” A round of nodding followed.

“What does that mean?” Louis asked Frère Michel, a jolly young French priest who had joined the greeting party.

“‘Owner,’” he responded. “It is a word of respect. It means you are trés riche, monsieur.” Fanny watched Louis—so pale and slender a specimen compared to these strapping men
—fairly beam with pleasure at his new notoriety.

“Some  of  them  speak  pidgin  English,”  the  priest  said, “but  do  not  assume  they comprehend everything you say. Would you like a tour?”

Fanny, Louis, Maggie, and Lloyd followed Frère Michel, who was joined by Taipi-Kikino and Regler. Fanny guessed which of the locals had “gone missionary” by what they were wearing. A few men wore European-style pants; some women wore holokus.
They visited a large oblong building with an open gallery set on a platform of stones. Several people—a family, it appeared—promptly emerged from the thatched-roof house to stare back at the “Cascos,” as they now called themselves. In a matter of moments, Fanny and her family were welcome guests sitting on the ?oor in the house’s central open room on woven mats.

“Look closely at the mat upon which you are sitting,” Frère Michel said. “It is made of tree  bark  and  has  probably  taken  the  woman  of  the  house  a  year  to  make.  It  is  the islander’s greatest wealth, these tapas. Some of them have been in families for decades.” The priest nodded toward a man preparing a drink.  “And that is kava. You will drink it often here.”

Fanny watched the man prepare the drink. He chewed on a plant root until it was in shreds, then added water and mixed it in a wooden bowl, which was passed around to

them. Maggie shot a horrified glance at Fanny as she sipped the liquid, but took the bowl in her turn  and made a  show,  at least,  of  sipping.  Next they  were served roasted pig  on banana leaves and mashed breadfruit covered in coconut cream.

“Would you ask the hostess if she will share her recipe?” Fanny requested. Soon the priest was translating the simple instructions.

“I want to give them something,” Fanny said to her family as they prepared to depart. “Have you anything at all?” Louis and Lloyd searched their pockets while Maggie held the tip of her widow’s veil, as if she feared Fanny might snatch it o? her head. In her pocket, Fanny felt her tobacco pouch and papers.

Having instructed the men at the table to roll cigarettes, she rose with the others and went outside, where dancers had gathered to entertain the visitors. A fellow pounded a barrel as ?ve men leaped about, escalating their jig into gymnastics as they climbed upon each other’s shoulders and jumped o?. Some of the native people milling about were nearly naked, wearing only a rolled-up piece of fabric around their waists. Others had on lavalavas, large  handkerchiefs  tied  at  the  waist  that  covered  the  private  parts.  The  men  sported extraordinary tattoos on their ?anks and thighs that so completely covered their skin, they appeared to be wearing tight pants down to their knees. Yet others mixed European-style clothing with native garb. A few of the men had white lime caked in their hair. It seemed that everyone wore a sprig of nature: a ?ower behind the ear, a wreath around the neck, tendrils of vines wrapping the midsection. The fragrance of the ?owers mixed with the smells of ginger, coconut oil, and the dung of fat black pigs moving among the audience with the kind of freedom she’d heard cows enjoyed in India.

Fanny began to laugh. What a strange turn life has taken!

When the dancing ?nished, an elderly man burst into song. “What is he saying?” Fanny asked Regler when the song had gone on for some time.

“It is a story about your visit. A rich man and his wife have arrived in a silver ship to this island. He is composing it as he goes. That is what the people do here.”
Next came a tour of a girls’ school run by nuns, and then the church, where Frère Michel took them into his little o?ce to make a pot of co?ee. Fanny could see the caution on Louis’s face. He was entering the camp of the enemy: a missionary, and a Catholic one, at that. She watched him walk over to the bookcase to scan the titles and take the man’s measure.

“It  is  not  the  co?ee  you  are  accustomed  to,”  the  priest  warned.  He  shrugged.  “One adapts.”

“I am trying to adjust to their manners.” Louis laughed. “Yesterday we were ridiculed for not buying their coconuts, and today they opened their homes and served us coconuts.”
The priest folded his hands in his lap. “Yesterday’s display re?ects how these people are treated by traders. They expect to be cheated, and they were perhaps trying to establish their power in the bargaining. It was a performance, in a way. Today is far more sincere. They have a rather complex sense of etiquette.”

“Yes?”

“It has evolved over time, I think. They haven’t anything like a court system. No legal structure to speak of,” the priest said. “No mechanism for appealing wrongs. In the absence of  laws,  it’s  rather  useful  to  have  strict  rules  of  etiquette,  don’t  you  think?  They  tell everyone how to behave. There are rules for all sorts of things. One doesn’t just wake up a chief in the morning, for example. You must tickle his feet. Their tapus are their laws. There are tapus for fish, for women …”

“Yes?”

“If they ?nd there are fewer ?sh in an area, they will declare a tapu for that place until the fish come back.”

“And the ones for women?” Fanny asked.

“Ah, women can do very little. They marry young and have many restrictions. On some islands, the women are not permitted to eat meat. So the men form clubs and cook and eat together. On this island, the chief recently removed the tapu against women using roads that men have built, which is all the roads. Up to now, they had to walk through ?elds. If they wanted to cross the road, they had to wade through a stream. They cannot use a man’s saddle for their horses—that’s another tapu, though I don’t know the origin of it. Some chief became annoyed with his wife borrowing his equipment too often, I suppose. But the women are clever. They have ?gured a way around it. It seems they are permitted to use the saddle of someone who is not a native. My saddle is borrowed quite a lot, as is Mr. Regler’s. And so it goes.”

“I want to invite the women to come to the boat tomorrow,” Fanny said. “I don’t know if you can arrange it.”

The priest smiled. “I shall see what I can do.”

When the group arrived the next morning, Fanny had jam and hard ship biscuits waiting. Dressed in holokus and fragrant with fresh ?owers in their hair, the women hardly noticed the tray of food on the table, for they were caught up in their multiple re?ections set o? by the mirrors lining the walls of the saloon. They were not strangers to mirrors, but many at one time were an oddity, and wildly entertaining. The women lifted their hems to examine the backs of their legs, tilted their heads to admire their faces. In time, their attention turned to the lush velvet on the cushions around the table. One woman hoisted her dress and,  exposing  legs  and buttocks  tattooed in  spiral  patterns,  rubbed her  bottom  on  the crimson cushion. Valentine, who was serving tea, pressed her lips tight in quiet horror. But Fanny’s mind ?lled with a picture of herself some ten years ago in Fanny Sitwell’s elegant drawing room, lying on a chaise with her foot in a cast while her hosts stared at her as if she  had  just  leaped  out  of  a  gulch  in  the  wild  and  woolly  American  West.  Fanny remembered vividly the one odd longing in her mind that day: to bury her face in the luxury of Mrs. Sitwell’s velvet curtains and thereby con?rm everyone’s worst instincts about her class and character.

Fanny took the woman’s hand and placed it on the velvet curtains of the ship windows. Then she put her own face against the fabric to demonstrate, and encouraged the woman to do the same. When the native woman had given her cheeks a satisfying rub, her great brown eyes looked at Fanny seriously. She ran a ?nger along the tanned skin of Fanny’s forearm, then touched her own arm. “All same you,” she said.