Hawaii - James Michener [28]
"He'll be tired before she is!" one old woman predicted.
"Show him what Havaiki's famous for, Rere," another screamed.
"Don't let him stop till he begs for mercy," the first added.
"Auwe!" another cried. "Make the moon hide its face for shame!"
"Remember what I taught you, Rere!" the first chanter shouted. "Don't make him do all the work."
When the advice became almost unbearably clinical, the general audience collapsed into gales of merriment, the music halted, and everyone rolled about the earth in animal joy. What delight the wildness of sex brought with it. Then the tiniest drum--no more than eight inches of hollowed-out branch beaten with a wand--would begin a wild, high rhythm that could almost compel a man to dance, and larger drums would pick it up, and soon some other of Teroro's men would begin dancing with a dark Havaiki girl and they too would go into the shadows accompanied by ribald advice from the lusty old women, for an island hula was meaningless unless at its climactic moment a man and woman so desired each other that they were propelled explosively into fulfillment.
Teroro alone was not captured by the mystery and joy of this night. He did not even look up when the leading heckler shouted, "I always thought there was something wrong with the men of Bora Bora. Tetua, dance over there and tell me is he's capable!" A marvelous young girl of fifteen danced almost on Teroro's toes, flashing her body very close to his. When he ignored her, she ran laughing into the middle of the fire-rimmed circle and shouted, "He can't do!”
The old woman cackled above the drums, "I keep wondering how they have babies on Bora Bora. Men from Havaiki must swim over at night!"
At this sally Teroro had to look up, and against his will he had to smile at the raucous old woman, for islanders loved wit and liked to acknowledge it, even when directed against themselves. The old chanter, seeing that she had pierced Teroro's indifference, cried passionately, "Auwe! If I were only twenty years younger, I'd explain to you what men were made for!" When the crowd roared she shouted, "I can even yet!" And she started an outrageous hula, moving toward Teroro with her white hair dancing in the night and the memory of great sexual feats animating her hips. She was prepared to make a great fool of Teroro, but at this moment a famous chief of Havaiki, fat Tatai who guarded the temple, appeared and said quietly, "We would like you to eat with us, Teroro." And he led the young chief away from the fires, but not away from the old woman's biting tongue, for as the two men disappeared she screamed, "Oh, now I understand. It's men he likes."
Fat Tatai laughed and said, "Only death will silence that one's tongue." He led Teroro to the outskirts of the village, where his imposing family grounds had for centuries been enclosed on three sides by a rock wall head-high, the fourth side free to open on the ocean. As he entered the enclosure, Teroro saw dimly eight or nine grass houses and he could identify each: the main sleeping hall, the women's hall, the women's cook house, and the separate houses for each of Tatai's favorite wives. It was to the men's area that fat Tatai took his guest, and there, in moonlight and to the music of waves, the feast was spread.
Teroro had barely finished licking burnt pig fat from his fingers when to the west of the compound a tiny drum, beaten frantically with a length of wood, began its persuasive chatter, followed by the steadier throbbing of several big drums as the musicians entered. "I wonder why Tatai bothered to set such a feast for me?" Teroro mused, pushing away the food. He wandered to a group seated by a fire and watched casually the figures that began to materialize from the night's soft shadows. They were the women of the Havaiki chiefs, and in tones less raucous than Teroro had recently heard in the village square, they began the haunting strains of old island love songs, and the bitterness went