Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

“Two moons he was there, silent. I worked faster than before, because I had no designs to make. I only traced those of the years before. But the suffering was even greater, and when I struck the bone-needles upon his eyelids he groaned through his closed mouth. Every day I worked as long as he could endure. Sometimes he all but died away, but the omi omi, the rubbing, made him again aware, and as I went on I gained hope myself. His own skin was by nature as that of the white orchid, and the weeks in the patiki out of the sunlight, with the oil and the saffron, made it as when he was child. The milk was driven into a thousand little holes in the flesh, and by magic it changed the black of ama to white. I think some wonder made it do so, but you should know such things. I left the shark until the last, but long before I came to it the gods had spoken. Faded slowly the candlenut soot, and crept out, as the silver-fish in the caves of Hana Hevane, the bright color of that foreigner.

“Many times his eyes, when I let loose the lids, lifted to mine in inquiry, but I was without answer. Yet nearer I felt the day when I would possess that gun and canoe and the barrels of rum.

“It came. A week had gone since I had touched with the needles his face, and most of it he had slept. Now he was round with sleep and food, and one morning when he awoke, I seized him by the hand and said, ‘Kaoha!’ The tapu was ended; the task was done.”

“And he?” I said greedily.

“He was as a man who wakes from a dream of horror. He said not a word, but went with me and with my daughter and the babe down the trail to this village. Here he stole silently to his pool, and, lying down, he looked long into it. Then he made a wild cry as if he had come to a precipice in the dark and been kept from falling to death by the mere gleam of fungus on a tree. He fell back, and for a little while was without mind. Awake again, he rushed about the village clasping each one he met in his arms, rubbing noses with the girls, and singing queer songs—himenes to e aave—of his island. His laughter rang in the groves. Now he was as when he had come to us, gay, kind, and without deep thought.

“The gods had for that moon made him theirs, for soon came a canoe with news that a ship of his country was at Taiohae. Never did a man act more quickly. He made a feast, and to it he invited the village. A day it took to prepare it, the pigs in the earth, the popoi, the fish cooked on the coral stones, the fruits, and the nuts. To it he gave all his rum, and he handed me his gun, the paddles of his canoe, and his coats.

“But Po, the devil of night, crouched for him. The canoe to take him to Taiohae was in the water, waiting but the end of the koina kai. Plentifully all drank the rich rum, but Tokihi most. Titihuti even he had greeted, and she sat beside him. She was now loath to have him go; you know woman. She leaned against him, and her eyes promised him aught that he would. She was more beautiful than on that night when she had spurned him, and she struck from him a spark of her own willful fancy. He took her a moment to his bosom, held her as the wave holds the rock before it recedes, and then, as the madness she ever made crept upon him, he drew back from her, held her again a fierce moment, and, dashing his cup to the earth, he turned upon her in fury.

“It was the evil noon. The eye of the sun was straight upon him, and as he cursed her, and shouted that now he was free from her, the blood rushed into his face, and painted there scarlet as the hibiscus the marks of the tattooing. The black ama the magic had erased now shone red. The stripes across his eyes and face were like the scars a burning brand leaves, and the shark of the lodge was a leper’s sign upon his brow.

“‘Mutu!’ I cried, for I saw death in the air if he knew, and all the gifts lost to me. ‘Silence!’ And the tribe heeded. No quiver, no glance showed the foreigner that one had seen what he himself had not. Titihuti fastened her gaze on him a fleeting second, and then began the dance of leave-taking.

“We raised the chant: