Hawaii - James Michener [77]
And it was Marama who devised the plan. "The island knows that you have come back for me," she pointed out, "and they recall that my ancestors were priests. When the women for our voyage have been gathered, two of us will go to the High Priest and tell him that we want to take one of the ancient Bora Bora gods with us."
"Will he allow it?" Teroro asked suspiciously.
"He is a priest of Oro," Marama pointed out, "but he is also a Bora Boran, and he will understand our love of this island."
It worked exactly as she planned, but when the time came for delivering the feather-draped red rock of Pere, the High Priest could not bring himself to place such treasure in the hands of a woman, insisting upon transferring the goddess directly to Teroro, and when the latter at last had the soul of Pere in his possession, the wild, passionate soul of the fire goddess, the mother of volcanoes, he wanted to shout in triumph, but instead he laid it aside as if it were only a woman's god, a whim of his wife's, and the High Priest thought the same.
The men were fattened and the food was packed. Twelve women were selected and put on starvation diets to prepare them for the voyage. King Tamatoa's favorite wife was included, for everyone agreed that since their king had produced with his sister a royal heir of greatest sanctity, he should be encouraged to import at least one woman he loved. For seed crops the crew emphasized pigs, bananas and breadfruit. "How we yearn for sweet breadfruit," they explained.
When all was ready, Terroro was startled to see Marama lugging toward the canoe a large bundle wrapped in leaves. "What’s that?" he cried.
"Flowers," his wife replied.
"What do we want with flowers?" Teroro protested.
"I asked Pa and he said there were no flowers." Teroro looked at the other crew members, and they realized for the first time that Havaiki-of-the-North owned no natural blooms. Even so, the bundle seemed excessively large.
"You simply can't take that much, Marama," he protested.
"The gods like flowers," she replied. "Throw out one of the pigs."
The idea was so offensive that the crew would not consider it, but they did compromise on this: they would put back one of the smaller breadfruit, but they all considered Teroro's woman demented.
Then came the task, most joyous and exciting of all, of selecting the children. The men wanted to take only girls, while the women wished only boys, so that the compromise of half and half pleased no one but did have certain sense to commend it. The ten children selected ranged from four years old to twelve: dark-haired, deep-eyed, grinning, white-toothed children. Their very presence made the canoe lighter.
But when all had stepped aboard, Teroro was unaccountably depressed by the gravity or the task he had undertaken, and this time with no guile he went gravely to the High Priest and pleaded: "Bless our journey. Establish the tabus." And the High Priest arranged the gods on the side of the voyagers and cried in a high voice, touching the food for the animals, "This is tabul This is tabu!" And when he had finished, the canoe somehow seemed safer, and it set forth for the long voyage north.
It had barely escaped from the lagoon when Pa, the shark-faced, went for the offensive statue of Oro, to throw it into the deep, but to his surprise Teroro restrained him and said, "It is a god! We will place it reverently on the shore of Havaiki-of-Red-Oro," and when he had led the canoe to that once-hated island, slipping ashore where no lookouts could intercept him, he placed Oro in a sheltered position among rocks, and built a palm-leaf canopy; and he was overcome with the awareness that never again would he see Havaiki, from which he had sprung, and while the canoe waited, he stood on the