Landfalls (41 page)

Maybe his people mistook him for a possum or something. Of
course
people don't look or sound like possums. You and I know that. But it wouldn't be the first stupid thing
they've
done.

What stupid thing did
I
do? Taking this? That wasn't stupid; it was smart. Look—you can carry whatever you need for the whole day, and the inside stays dry. Put your hand in and see. What's inside? I haven't really had a chance to look till now, but it's all harmless. Look—I think this might be a drawing stick. Because here's something with pictures of trees and birds inside. Go ahead, take it. It's not going to bite you. What are you afraid of? How could it be dangerous? They're not going to come looking for it. Oh! Now it's in the mud. What did you do that for?

What? Why was I running just now? Because after I left the dead man, I heard their weapons again, and I didn't want to get hit.

You still think I did it, don't you? Why would I kill one of them? To take their things?
You're
the one who wants to drive them away. Why were
you
running? In fact, you were supposed to be hunting today. Where's your spear? And where's the dog? She ran away when the weapon went off? Oh, so you heard that too.

Why didn't you say so?

Maybe you're trying to blame me for something you did.

I did
not
kill him.

I
didn't
.

Did
you
?

Final page of the journal of Claude-Fran
ç
ois-Joseph de Receveur, chaplain of the
Astrolabe
:

… from Lavaux does alleviate the pain, but I distrust how much I enjoy the stupefaction. I begin almost to long for the first twinge of pain so I can indulge in its remedy. I am afraid to ask him for more—and afraid not to.

I invited Lamartini
è
re to accompany me today, but could not persuade him. Poor anxious man. Exploring in the wild like this is, I suppose, an act of faith. I mean to enjoy it. And to find something new. Sir Joseph Banks discovered a hundred plants when he came to this place with Cook—is it vain to hope he left one or two species for me?

On my way, I met an Englishman and woman, two wretched souls who had run away from the convicts' settlement just north of here. Her name was Ann Smith; he called himself Peter Paris and spoke a very odd sort of French. He said they didn't know where to go, as they had been rejected by us some days before but hated the colony and feared the natives. When I told them I could not possibly help them aboard, they asked me to marry them. “So we may finish whatever life we have left with God's blessing,” the man said.

It was unorthodox in every way, of course, but God forgive me, I consented. Which is to say I mumbled what I could remember of a service I have had no need to perform for years. Then I gave them my bread, as they looked famished.

And now I am comfortably ensconced in a great mangrove tree, on a large limb shaped by nature into a perfect seat. I have discovered that the undersides of the mangrove leaves are gritty with salt. This remarkable species appears to excrete salt through its leaves; thus it survives the salinity of the water in which it grows. If only men could do this—shed from their bodies and their selves the things that would destroy them.

 

TWELVE

SKULL HOUSE

Vanikoro, Solomon Islands, August 1791

Captain Edward Edwards stands on the deck of the HMS
Pandora
, looking at a small island to the northwest. The island is steep and densely forested. Even the sides and summit of its one abrupt mountain are thickly covered with trees. The
Pandora
lies less than a mile from the reef that tightly girdles the island, but a low haze obscures the shoreline, and Edwards cannot make out anything like boats or houses. He knows it is inhabited, however, for a narrow plume of white smoke rises from the island's western side. It rises over the haze, over the abundant trees, and into the hot tropical sky.

Edwards wonders briefly about the smoke and whose fire it might be. He has fourteen prisoners on board—
Bounty
mutineers he captured in Tahiti—and more remain at large somewhere in this endless Pacific. But it has been three months since Tahiti, stopping at one island after another, and he has found no trace of the other mutineers. He can hardly stop at every speck of land rising out of the deep. If he needed wood or water, that would be different. But he does not. It is time to make haste. Time to return to England, to deliver for trial the mutineers he has. He directs one of his lieutenants to determine the island's longitude and latitude and decides to call it Pitt's Island, in honor of the prime minister. And then he orders the
Pandora
to proceed on its westerly course—toward, as it happens, shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef just two weeks hence; a terrible open-boat voyage to Batavia; court-martial back in England; criticism for his cruelty to the prisoners, most of whom are acquitted; and the rest of his life spent on land and the half-pay list.

If only Captain Edwards had stopped at the island that day! He would have been astounded to discover a Frenchman there, a lone survivor of the Lap
é
rouse expedition, missing for three years. If Edwards had rescued this man, if he had been the one to discover what had become of the voyage, he would be known today as more than the unhappy captor of
Bounty
mutineers. He might have been awarded a knighthood, or even the L
é
gion d'honneur, and come down to us as Sir or Chevalier Edward Edwards. He would surely have received another command at sea. And he would figure more prominently in our tale. But he did not stop, and we must proceed on that basis.

*   *   *

Edwards did not see any people when he passed the island, but the islanders could see him—or rather, they could see the
Pandora.
They did not call their home Pitt's Island, of course. They called it—they
still
call it—Vanikoro, and it is, in fact,
two
islands, one small and one even smaller, a fact not visible from the deck of the
Pandora.
The Vanikorans understood their island to be one of many that made up the world. Theirs was a half-day sail by canoe to their nearest neighbor, Utupua; a day's sail to Ndeni beyond it; and two days to Tikopia, a trading neighbor in the direction of the rising sun. They rarely had the need or desire to sail out any farther. A three days' sail was usually the result of bad weather or errors in judgment. Four days' sail was their name for suicide.

In the village of Paeu on the island's western flank, the sight of the
Pandora
created a commotion. In fact, the smoke Edwards saw from the island—the smoke that told him it was inhabited, the smoke he briefly wondered about—had been set in order to attract his attention. That it failed to do so caused one person on the island to despair, brought relief to another, and gave the rest something to talk about for several days.

The children had seen the ship first. Old enough to wander away from mothers but too young to help all day with chores, they spent their time fearlessly climbing for coconuts and diving for seashells, and one of them—there was considerable disagreement later as to
which
one of them—saw the frigate as it approached from the east. The older children knew what it was, for they could remember the last time they had seen a ship. Actually, it had been
two
ships, and their arrival had caused trouble, although the children did not know exactly what
sort
of trouble. Now here was another one. After a moment of silent surprise, the children raced from the beach to tell the others.

Most of the men of Paeu were fishing on the north side of the island that morning and never saw the ship, only learning of it later, when they returned to the village. So when the children ran to spread the news, most ran to the women, who were inland, tending to infants or vegetable gardens or bead making. A few of the children ran to the chief elder, who was too old to fish and spent most of his time chewing betel nuts and bothering his wife. And Alu, who was the fastest boy, ran to get the man they called Vo.

Vo was young enough and strong enough to fish with the other men, but had never been expected to and accompanied them only occasionally. He was the only man left on the island from the two ships that had come before. When Alu came running up from the beach, Vo was outside his sago-palm-thatched house, sharpening a knife while seated on a round stone that had come from his ship. His wife, Oriela, was frowning over a patch of taro plants that had unaccountably wilted overnight. Their child, slung to Oriela's back, greeted Alu's breathless arrival with an open-mouthed grin.

“Vaso! Vaso!”
Alu shouted. Vo set the knife down and looked up at the excited boy. He could not remember what
vaso
meant, but he liked Alu and allowed the boy to drag him away toward the beach. No doubt he was required for one of the children's games. It happened often enough.

Oriela knew it was no game, for she remembered what
vaso
meant. She straightened up and noisily exhaled, as if she had been holding her breath a long time in anticipation of this exact moment. She watched Alu take her husband away, then followed them down the same worn path toward the water.

When Vo saw the
Pandora
lying just offshore, he remembered.
Vaso
was his word; he had taught it to them.

“See?” Alu was shouting. “Just like your
vaso
.”

Not
just
like, Vo thought, trying to make out the ship's details through the hazy noon glare. But like enough. It was a frigate. Was it French? He squinted, trying to make out the flags and wishing, not for the first or last time, that he had managed to save a spyglass for himself.

Not anything like, Oriela thought. This one sat tall and bold on the ocean as if it were king of all the
vaso
. It was so large it made the horizon look closer, as though the world had shrunk. Giant cloths billowed out from three great pillars, perfectly straight, that stood up from its middle. Along the side ran a line of black holes that seemed to stare across the distance like hard eyes. If she had not known better, she would have been afraid, she would have thought only a mighty spirit could command such a vessel.

But she did know better; they all did.

The two
vaso
that had brought Vo and the others had not looked proud at all. They had been thrown around in the big storm like uprooted huts, tossed horribly for half a day before collapsing on the reef, belching out their contents over half the island. Much of what washed ashore was wood—an entire forest's worth, it seemed, wood of all sizes and shapes, jagged splinters and smooth planks, solid blocks and tall posts, some of them decorated with pictures and some so elaborately carved or impossibly bent that they could not have been made by ordinary people. The rest of the debris was even stranger—spoiled meat spilling from cracked earthen containers; small tools shaped from shiny, malleable rock; beads made of something harder than seashell that light passed through; hollow objects the height of a small child but so heavy they required two or three villagers to move. And then men, of course, although at first the villagers didn't recognize them as men. Pale, sodden men with wild hair and wilder eyes, men arriving in strange battered canoes or hanging to slabs of wood or flailing themselves through the surge, raging and moaning unintelligibly. And later, for days afterward, the dead, with their distended bellies, blue-gray skin, empty eyes, and bodies ravaged by reef and sharks and seawater.

Now the other villagers—mostly women, drawn to the beach by children, grandchildren, and younger siblings—came to see the
vaso
. The head elder came too, hurrying to the beach with the help of a walking stick. He stood away from Vo and Oriela, and looked out at the ocean. His betel nut–stained fingers tugged at the grizzled hair on his chin. “They have come for revenge,” he said.

“Revenge for what?” Vo said. He was staring at the
vaso
, so he did not notice the way everyone stopped moving or breathing. Even the wind died, as if the spirits themselves were listening for what would happen next.

“Perhaps they have come to take you home,” the elder finally said, and the beach returned to life, everyone breathing again—in, out, stirring up the island breeze. Only Oriela remained still, breath held, till a restless kick from the baby surprised her into taking a step toward Vo.

He had pinched his thumbs and forefingers together and was looking out through the tiny opening between his fingertips. “They're not my people,” he said.

“Who are they?” Oriela asked.

He turned to her in surprise. “Oriela.” It sounded like an apology. He reached out toward the baby. She chirped at him, and he clucked back at her.

“Who are they?” Oriela repeated.

“On-lay,”
he said, or something like it.

“Are they friends of your people?”

Vo laughed. “Sometimes.” He looked back at the
vaso
through his fingertip peephole. “They're not sending anyone,” he said. His face grew blotchy with unhappiness.
“Meh-du,”
he muttered; it was a word he used when he was frustrated or angry.

Oriela watched as his eyes darted from beach to horizon, back to the swaying tops of the palm trees, then out toward the midday sun, lips moving all the while. He looked as if he were chanting, calling a blessing or a curse down on the beach, and the villagers followed his movements, anxious that it be the blessing and not the curse. Oriela could guess what he was doing, for the great
vaso
was drifting away. He was looking for a canoe to take out and wondering if the wind and the tide would help or hinder him. He had told her once that he had been the one on his
vaso
responsible for figuring out where to go. She sometimes wondered how this could be; why would the others have left such an important person behind? But their house was filled with objects he had saved from the broken
vaso
, tools and parts of tools that he told her had once helped him measure the sun and the stars, so maybe it was true. Her people also looked at the sky for help in sailing around the island, and even to neighboring islands and back. But they had no need of these tools, so heavy and so breakable. Anyway, none of that could help him now. Most of the men were out fishing on the other side of the island. The only canoe on the beach was the head elder's, a delicate, decorated vessel used only for ceremonies. It was never taken out past the reef.