Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [67]
‘I have seen their kingdom,’ I said. ‘I have stepped among their great villages, huts so tall they touch the sky, machines of metal powered by flames, the man-made mountains called cathedrals, erected to house the spirit of their creator, our creator.’
‘We know the white man is no god,’ shouted an elder. ‘His blood runs as red as mine.’
With this popular fact the crowd roared. I stood taller on the prow, the beach below obscured by a swathe of painted bodies, clothed only by jewellery of feathers or shells, a loincloth of calico, and the wild wigs of fuzzed hair, decorated with the bones of fish, birds, hogs, and men.
I told them these passengers were no more divine than they or I, but that my brothers on-board were messengers, that they had dedicated their souls to the Universal Lord, a god, who, even though every man and woman had offended, was merciful and benevolent, granting those who believed His word great blessings on earth, and after death, eternal bliss.
Still, despite my speech, I was a visitor in my own home. The reverends and the crew, stranded in the surf, grimacing smiles upon a trial of fear, knew very well they had run aground on an island of cannibals. Again I went to speak, but the mob was flooding over the gunwales, and as I pushed them back I was pulled out, hauled away by my brother. He prised me from the melee, wanted me gone from the craft before living men were torn to meat. I fought with him to save the reverends, but others pinned my arms.
Then I heard the report of a musket, and believed not that this was a rescue, but the bell for dinner.
Men leapt back from the flare, and when the puff of smoke cleared from he who had pulled the trigger, I saw that it was my father. His black hair was now grey, and though his body had slumped and shrunk with time, his stature among his peers had grown. All stopped and listened when he spoke.
‘My son does not lie.’ He looked me so straight and hard in the eye that once again I was a boy, his son, running naked in the surf. ‘He may look different, and wear the skins of a white man, but his soul remains the same.’
With these saving words we were welcomed to Fiji. Now the warriors helped the reverends and crew ashore. But when I went to hug my father he winced, as though my clothes were the thorns of a spiky bush. I asked how he was and he did not reply, only ordering us to follow him to the king.
I trod close in the steps of my father, yet fearful of his reticence. Behind me my brother, the reverends – as nervous as clucking chicks behind a mother hen – the crew, and what seemed like the whole of Lakemba, women and children, young and old, touching, caressing, and fondling the foreigners. As I recognised my friends, family, and neighbours, and as they too accepted that this Fijian in shirt and trousers was in fact one of them, they sang out their welcomes.
But not my father. Even when I asked him about my mother he said nothing, only gesturing towards the fort of King Nayau, his house the largest on the island, surrounded by a dry-stone wall, a fence of reeds, and wide moat that could not be crossed without swimming.
King Nayau, donning the gauze turban only worn by chiefs, did not rise when we entered, instead solemnly nodding to grant us a seat upon his floor of pandanu mats. Reverends Thomas and Collins, with some composure returned in the comfort of formality, offered the king their gift of an illuminated bible, pushing it across the ground to his majesty in the manner I had previously instructed.