Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [97]
Telling each fairy tale with a straight face I am an actor of the highest order. Though while I have some use I shall not complain. If I am busied Naraqino has less reason to make me the object of his idle violence.
15 August 1835
Before the skeleton joists of the unfinished chapel, the rev. preached officially for the first time since the baptism. Using Naraqino as the shining example of conversion, not one of the congregation failed to volunteer their soul to Jesus.
16 August 1835
Today the rev. and I formally moved into the mission compound, an enclosure consisting of the rapidly rising chapel, a large hut and stores, all surrounded by a bamboo fence, with the post tips cut to a sharpened point – in defence of attacks from those loyal to King Tanoa.
On moving in I wrongly presumed that I would be sharing the central hut with the rev., but what I mistook for the stores was in fact my accommodation.
17 August 1835
Attendances of the services burgeon. Each day the population of a nearby village is visited by a troop of Naraqino’s men and ‘encouraged’ to attend the morning worship.
It is unlikely that stone-throwers will spoil the rev.’ s oration, as warriors are posted at the edge of the crowd during each sermon, ensuring against attack, as well as dissent from within the congregation.
19 August 1835
This morning, hanging by their heels from trees outside the grand house of Naraqino, were two men accused of spying for King Tanoa. Naraqino plans to roast and feast on the bodies this evening, eating them entire but for the heads, which he will send back in a canoe to the shores of Rewa, ‘so that the subjects of my heathen brother can see what power the mighty Christians possess!’
The rev., despite regretting the bloodshed with his words, seems more and more unconcerned with Naraqino’s bastardising of the Gospel.
21 August 1835
Again another schoolhouse has been constructed. Again, at the command of the rev., I shall instruct the men and he the women.
I look forward to returning to the classroom, so that once more I may be invigorated by the joy of reading, of tuning a soul to the music of words.
24 August 1835
Today the chapel was completed. A crooked spire of trunks twists towards the stars, and a fine pulpit of polished teak stands at the end of a stately hall, the floor inlaid with large flat stones hauled up from the beach. On top of the stones are mats braided from pandanu leaves, seats for the congregation. The only chair in the chapel is for Naraqino, with a space either side reserved for his concubines to keep him fanned with fresh air.
During the opening sermon, the rev. preaching love and humility as Naraqino perched on his chair above his subjects, grinning like a manic gargoyle, the thought crossed my mind that God had departed, leaving Fiji in the hands of the sinners and the wicked.
27 August 1835
The daily service and instruction of letters has assumed a routine calmness after the tumult of the preceding weeks. Once more I am thrilled to see my students read their first words. After only a morning of phonetics they were able to sound out the name of their own country.
Strange I did not write our country? Yes, I am Fijian, my skin, hair, eyes, arms, mouth and nose is Fijian. But my soul, that what cannot be seen or labelled, is beginning to feel like an impostor in its own body.
28 August 1835
As nervous as my pupils to have Naraqino present, I spent the entire morning instructing an apprehensive class how to write his name. Before students were permitted to leave the schoolhouse, Naraqino inspected each patch of dirt – smoothed earth for want of a slate – using the barrel of his musket to dally above the letters, while the quaking men below sounded out the name of their chief.
Naraqino