Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [99]
The river is the border between the quarrelling brothers, and villagers that pass from one parish to the other are doomed. Of course, all know this, and unless on-board a war canoe with a legion of warriors, would not attempt to cross. But this morning, high tide lifted several Rewans from the reef. The current flowed too fierce to swim against, and all the unfortunates could do was to beat the sea to keep from drowning. Meanwhile the Bau shore thronged with a cruel audience, laughing and shrieking, knowing that the Rewans would either drown or wash upon their sands. Even when sharks threatened to cut the ghastly entertainment short, Naraqino launched a canoe of men with spears, driving them off so that his dinner could not be poached.
Naraqino immediately snatched the women for wives, while warriors trussed and bound the men. Teenage sons of the principal elders prepared their bows and spears, for one of the prisoners was to be live sport, running prey, so that the boys could hone their skills of murder. The petrified man was thus untied and released into the bush, chased by a mob of boys hungry for death. They brought back his body in parts, limbs dangled from their hands and teeth like faithful hunting dogs.
Naraqino started a fire beneath the feet of the remaining men. They kicked at the flames licking their toes. When Naraqino stepped forward and chopped off the arm of a man I had seen swear his soul to Jesus Christ in the chapel at Rewa, God fled.
And then I ran. I ran before the arm was cooked enough for the guests of Naraqino to take a bite. For sitting at the grand table with the rest of the diners, merrily toasting the charred flesh with a bowl of kava, was the beaming Rev. Thomas.
14 September 1835
For two nights I have slept away from the Bau, curled beneath the trees and the stars, seeking answers to why God must allow such murder and cruelty.
After the slaughter of the Rewans, they who had done nothing but fish the reef for their families, I grabbed my satchel and stormed away from the village, from the chapel, Naraqino and the Rev. Thomas. I took flight into the bush, deeper and deeper, beyond the farms of kava and plantations of taro, to the paths where none walk, until I was utterly alone.
For one day and night I did not stop to rest, eat or sleep. My legs walked as if driven by their own volition. I was neither thirsty nor hungry. Then, and I do not know why, I shed my clothes, left them shrivelled upon the earth, like skin, like a snake had sloughed its scales. I was naked, liberated to feel the breeze upon my flesh, unadorned with the trees and the birds. Again I was a newborn, no space between the glory of creation and myself. I had left behind the trivia of civilisation, both Fijian and English, to inhabit once more the womb of nature. I followed the path to a small stream, wading through the shallows until I came across a bend that had slowed the current to a standstill. In this limpid pool I floated beneath an array of sun-shot leaves, no less beautiful than a stained-glass window or cathedral roof. Above parrots squawked and flashed their wings. Coconuts thudded to the earth, a rhythm worked from the sun and the rain, not the hands of man.
In that pool, my thoughts came as clear as the water flowed. I knew there and then the ways of one kingdom are no truer than the other. If Fiji had chanced upon guns, books, and God, it would be the white man fetching my shoes and sweeping the floor, bound and chained in a ship of slaves. With pen, page, and gunpowder, God and the white man have sailed the seven seas as righteous pirates, armed with disease and doctrine, a cannonball and bible.
Before I rose from the water, I dug my hand into the stream bed and scooped a lump of clay on to my palm. I realised it is I alone who is responsible for its fashioning.
God is not dead, because God never lived.
15 September 1835
This morning a troop of Naraqino’s men passed within yards of where I lay sleeping in the brushwood. Two were armed with muskets, and three