Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [98]
2 September 1835
More sermons and lessons. My translation duties diminish as the rev. advances his Fijian. Rather than wandering the village inviting trouble, I stay within the compound.
4 September 1835
About to put pen to page an hour ago, Naraqino and his cohorts paid me a visit. Ever fearful of something he does not understand, he flung my journal into the trees after failing to decipher what I had written. I explained that it contained no more than what I had experienced on any particular day, and by no means was it something to be used against his chiefdom of Bau. Lying through my teeth, I then told him that if anything it was a document to praise his character and intelligence. Still suspicious, he then asked who was my ruler.
‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘It is you, Chief Naraqino of Bau.’
He smiled at my answer, but not a gleam of joy, more the razored glint of a shark about to bite. ‘Fool!’ he roared. ‘My brother is your King!’ He kicked my ink pot across the pandanu mats, splashing the walls of the hut blue, like royal blood. ‘Next time you write, you write about me!’
These very words I write are forbidden. I have been ordered to commit Naraqino’s tales of heroism and bravery to paper, so that when one day all of Fiji may hear the ‘speaking book’ they will know who should have been the ‘real ruler of this kingdom, even before the shores of Rewa washed red with blood’.
5 September 1835
So now I write this journal farther up the hill, in a thicket of brushwood beyond the schoolhouse where none but the insects may see me.
I have said more prayers to Jesus since arriving in Bau than on the entire voyage from England to New Holland. I pray once more that the Lord hears my call and brings His love to where there is none.
10 September 1835
Again I have had to retire to the cover of the bush to write my journal. Naraqino has been firing muskets at parrots, and I do not wish to be a target for his practice.
Below, beyond the drooping palms leaves, I can hear women giggling in the schoolhouse. The rev. still prefers a curriculum devised solely by him, and I am curious to hear what and how he teaches. I have also noticed that either the men learn English quicker than women, or, Lord forgive my pride, that I am a better instructor.
I will creep to the schoolhouse and observe.
What I have just seen answers all my questions – why the schoolhouse has always been so far removed from the village, and why the rev. does not divulge the contents of his instruction.
When I peeked over the window frame the women were engaged in copying the alphabet from the blackboard, all in utter silence before their patches of smoothed dirt on the floor.
Until two of the women began chatting, and the Rev. barked, ‘Silence!’ from the small study at the rear, I knew not where he was. Still below the line of the window I crawled on, stopping only when I heard the rev. mumbling through the Lord’s Prayer: ‘ … hallowed be thy name.’ I dared not lift my head for being discovered, so adjusted my gaze until I could find a gap between the timbers to spy.
And there he was, yes, reciting the Lord’s prayer, reciting the Lord’s prayer with his trousers heaped around his ankles, a young woman on her knees before him, on her knees as though in worship, so close she could only listen and not speak for her mouth was full of the rev. and his Christian teachings.
11 September 1835
I have not slept. Again I have read Matthew 19:10–12 and tried once more to understand something about desire and faith, that the rev. was not disguising himself as some demigod to fulfil his depravities. I have avoided him the entire day and would prefer the sun to set without my eyes resting upon his person.
12 September 1835
If the Lord God is here I pray that He show Himself, for the sins of Rev. Thomas now pale against