Hawaii - James Michener [27]
It was at this moment, in the sacred temple of Oro, with the bodies of his finest men dangling before him and strewn upon the altar, that King Tamatoa whispered in his heart: "Oro, you have triumphed. You are the ultimate god, and I am powerless to oppose you." When he had said these words of contrition, a great peace came over him and he saw, as if in a revealing vision, how foolish he had been to combat the will of the inevitable. New gods were being born, and new gods conquer; but what Tamatoa did not realize was that the contentment of soul which his confession induced was merely the prerequisite for a decision toward which he had been fumbling for some months, but from which he had always hitherto retreated. Now that he had accepted the obvious--that Oro had conquered--the next obvious conclusion was easy to reach, and in the stillness of the morning Tamatoa said the fatal words for the first time, and in uttering them an enormous burden was lifted from his heart: "We will depart from Bora Bora and leave it to you. Oro. We will go upon the sea and find other islands where we can worship our own gods."
During the rest of the convocation, King Tamatoa did not confide his decision to anyone, not even to Teroro. In fact, he avoided his hot-headed younger brother, but he did summon Mato, to whom he spoke harshly: "I hold you responsible for my brother's life, Mato. If he has plots afoot, I am sure you are part of them. He must not die, even if you have to tie him to the canoe. He must not die. I need him now more than ever."
So when Teroro convened his bewildered companions to dream up some new fantasy, Mato spoke first: "We must go back to Bora Bora and plan our revenge."
"We'll go back and work out a plan," shark-faced Pa seconded.
With the decision taken from his hands Teroro could only mutter, "We will have revenge! That we will have!" and thinking only of some utter destruction and disaster, he bided his time.
WHEN A CONVOCATION ended, the priests wisely withdrew and encouraged the population to release its tensions in a wild, spontaneous celebration that sometimes lasted for three days. Now women were free to join their men, and musicians crowded the night with echoes. Beautiful girls, flashing bits of brown radiance dressed in skirts of aromatic leaves, swept into the mad hula of Havaiki and danced provocatively before the visitors of other islands, as if to challenge: "Do the women of Tahiti have soft breasts like ours? Can they move their knees to music the way we can?"
One spectator watched the dances and muttered to himself, "May the women of Havaiki be damned." Teroro would take no part in the celebration. Neither the magic hammering of the excited drums, nor the sweet voices of older women chanting love songs, nor the beauty of the girls enticed him to join the dancers. When special beauties, their bodies illuminated by palm-frond torches and etched in smoke from the fires where pigs roasted, danced past him in direct invitation, he would look at the ground and mutter to himself, "I will destroy this island. I will kill every priest of Oro. I will desolate . .."
His men could not maintain such powerful resolve. One by one the young chiefs threw aside their spears, wiped their hands on their bare chests and leaped into the dancing circle, shouting and entering into the wild gyrations of the Havaiki hula. When they had driven themselves into an ecstasy, they would leap high into the air, slap their thighs and prance for a moment before their equally frenzied partners. Then each would pause, look at the other, and break into laughter, whereupon the girl would unconcernedly start to walk idly toward the shadows, her partner following with equal unconcern until at the last they gave a cry and rushed together to the seclusion of some protected glade.
As they disappeared, old women in the chanting circle were free