withheld the cargo even though they obeyed the missionaries and destroyed the skull masks of their ancestors. Then God in his wisdom realized his mistake and sent his only child, Jesus, down from heaven to earth to make amends with the Ta’un’uuans and compensate them for their unjust suffering.
Jesus was both a black man and a white man, who could transfigure himself into animals and who spoke all the languages on earth.
Jesus told the Ta’un’uuans that he had suffered on the cross as they had suffered under the tattoo needle. He told them to disobey the missionaries and again initiate their bodies through pain, again make skull masks and sing to the masks so that their ancestors would hear them.
Jesus said their ancestors were safe with his father in heaven, which had chairs, tables, and beds, and meals of tinned meat cooked and served by angels, and whiskey for all. Jesus said if they obeyed him, their ancestors would send the cargo, which would arrive by freighter.
Jesus then turned himself into a turtle with human hands and swam off.
CHAPTER SEVEN
hat could they have made of us? Philip stood braced at the skiff’s prow, his Buffalo Bill hair flying, his orange sarong slapping against his blond legs, a sandaled foot up on the gunwale; I was huddled in the bottom of the rolling boat, trying to keep from being ill.
Ta’un’uu, a vertical green eruption garlanded with pink sand and white surf, was about a half mile away.
It was our first stop in the South Seas. We were the only passengers disembarking. The island was too nominal a destination to rate an official port of call, the harbor too shallow an anchorage to accommodate the Pearl of the East. Captain Hirata had agreed to shuttle us ashore by dinghy, and pick us up in ten days’ time on his return voyage from Tarawa.
In the Ta’un’uuans’ cosmology, only what has already been sung into existence is perceivable. In their musical arrangement of space and time, the past is before us, and the future behind. The soul must face his ancestors, while the body steps backward into the unknown.
Philip and I were only as real to them as the refrains we evoked in their ancestors’ songs.
Accordingly, Philip might have been a seventeenth-century sandalwood trader, or an eighteenth-century slaver, or a modern missionary. With his shoulder-length hair and orange “skirt,” he might even have been a missionary’s big blond wife. And me, in my equally inappropriate attire? A boy’s linen suit bought off a sale rack at Macy’s, a Panama hat fastened around my chin with Philip’s shoelaces. Perhaps I was a white ghost modeling the cotton clothes that will one day arrive by cargo ship?
There were about two hundred of them standing on the beach, small-boned people with burnt sienna skin and elaborate hairdos. The men wore foot-long penis gourds, the women straw skirts, the children nothing. Our steamship’s engines must have awakened them at dawn; its enormous hull must have blotted out their sunrise.
Our arrogance must have astonished them.
We didn’t ask permission to enter their fishing waters and land a skiff. We didn’t acknowledge their chief before sloshing onto their beach and wringing out our sodden pant cuffs and sarong.
The two sailors who had motored us ashore started tossing our gear up onto the beach, and we didn’t so much as stop them and face our hosts and ask if these intrusions were wanted, let alone bearable. We were like houseguests who not only show up uninvited but also arrive with mounds of luggage for an indefinite stay: air mattresses, pup tent, Primus stove, hurricane lamps, portable tub, folding easel, and steamer trunks filled with axes and costume jewelry.
The islanders should have done to us what their ancestors did to castaways and beachcombers—club us unconscious, cut us into small pieces, and boil us with sweet potatoes. Instead, they watched with mounting amazement as the two sailors pushed off in the skiff,
Jesus was both a black man and a white man, who could transfigure himself into animals and who spoke all the languages on earth.
Jesus told the Ta’un’uuans that he had suffered on the cross as they had suffered under the tattoo needle. He told them to disobey the missionaries and again initiate their bodies through pain, again make skull masks and sing to the masks so that their ancestors would hear them.
Jesus said their ancestors were safe with his father in heaven, which had chairs, tables, and beds, and meals of tinned meat cooked and served by angels, and whiskey for all. Jesus said if they obeyed him, their ancestors would send the cargo, which would arrive by freighter.
Jesus then turned himself into a turtle with human hands and swam off.
CHAPTER SEVEN
hat could they have made of us? Philip stood braced at the skiff’s prow, his Buffalo Bill hair flying, his orange sarong slapping against his blond legs, a sandaled foot up on the gunwale; I was huddled in the bottom of the rolling boat, trying to keep from being ill.
Ta’un’uu, a vertical green eruption garlanded with pink sand and white surf, was about a half mile away.
It was our first stop in the South Seas. We were the only passengers disembarking. The island was too nominal a destination to rate an official port of call, the harbor too shallow an anchorage to accommodate the Pearl of the East. Captain Hirata had agreed to shuttle us ashore by dinghy, and pick us up in ten days’ time on his return voyage from Tarawa.
In the Ta’un’uuans’ cosmology, only what has already been sung into existence is perceivable. In their musical arrangement of space and time, the past is before us, and the future behind. The soul must face his ancestors, while the body steps backward into the unknown.
Philip and I were only as real to them as the refrains we evoked in their ancestors’ songs.
Accordingly, Philip might have been a seventeenth-century sandalwood trader, or an eighteenth-century slaver, or a modern missionary. With his shoulder-length hair and orange “skirt,” he might even have been a missionary’s big blond wife. And me, in my equally inappropriate attire? A boy’s linen suit bought off a sale rack at Macy’s, a Panama hat fastened around my chin with Philip’s shoelaces. Perhaps I was a white ghost modeling the cotton clothes that will one day arrive by cargo ship?
There were about two hundred of them standing on the beach, small-boned people with burnt sienna skin and elaborate hairdos. The men wore foot-long penis gourds, the women straw skirts, the children nothing. Our steamship’s engines must have awakened them at dawn; its enormous hull must have blotted out their sunrise.
Our arrogance must have astonished them.
We didn’t ask permission to enter their fishing waters and land a skiff. We didn’t acknowledge their chief before sloshing onto their beach and wringing out our sodden pant cuffs and sarong.
The two sailors who had motored us ashore started tossing our gear up onto the beach, and we didn’t so much as stop them and face our hosts and ask if these intrusions were wanted, let alone bearable. We were like houseguests who not only show up uninvited but also arrive with mounds of luggage for an indefinite stay: air mattresses, pup tent, Primus stove, hurricane lamps, portable tub, folding easel, and steamer trunks filled with axes and costume jewelry.
The islanders should have done to us what their ancestors did to castaways and beachcombers—club us unconscious, cut us into small pieces, and boil us with sweet potatoes. Instead, they watched with mounting amazement as the two sailors pushed off in the skiff,
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