The absent treatment of sorcerers has no effect on the white man, so natives say; but old Thakombau, inwardly infuriated by a snub, might or might not have been the instrument that changed England’s royal succession.
In the early ’80’s, H.M.S. Bacchante brought two royal midshipmen to Fiji. They were the Duke of Clarence, heir to the throne, and his younger brother Prince George, who later became King George V. Ex-King Thakombau was the nearest thing to a monarch that Fiji could produce, and now he was a Christian. He entertained the visitors at a great kava ceremony where the long line of meke singers sat cross-legged and clapped hands to the chanted welcome, “Mbula, mbula mai!” Dancers had impersonated the animals, birds and fishes, comedians had impersonated dogs quarreling over a bone, long lines of men had coiled across the green in the contortions of the snake-god Dengei, or undulated in the beautiful surf dance. There was the presentation of the tambua. To the Fijian this sacred whale’s tooth is the prize of prizes; it is gold, it is magic. If a tribesman offers a tambua to you, you may refuse the gift; if you take it you must grant any boon the giver asks—even the murder of your best friend, the yielding up of your favorite wife. There’s a long tale of crime and punishment connected with the giving of the tambua.
This was royal ceremony. Maybe in the back of Thakombau’s sly head there was a picture of another meke over which he had presided often in his days of power. The Dance of the Cannibals.... Massed warriors were roaring out the notes to the boom of heavy drums.... Human meat was about to be cooked.... High voices in a savage tenor would cry out, “Puaka balavu!”... The bodies were ready for the oven.... Then, “Sa rawa tu!”—“It is prepared.”
The English royal visitors had settled under the flower-pavilion and the makers of yanggona were at work. They were making kava by the old method—chew the root and spit the juice into a great bowl. The drink was ready. The honorable cupbearer knelt and received a portion in a polished coconut shell, rose and bore the cup to the more important guest. Offering it, he knelt before Britain’s heir apparent. But Clarence, who had seen native saliva go into the bowl, was not amused, so the story goes. He pushed the cup aside and made a wry face. Grim silence followed. The cupbearer rose and knelt before young George, whose tact was equal to the occasion. He took the shell and tossed his portion off with gusto; then reached down and spun the cup across the mat—the highest compliment. Loud clapping of hands with cries of “Mbula vinaka!”
The time came for King Thakombau to make his speech. With florid generosity he dwelt upon the greatness of England and the benefits Victoria had conferred upon his people. Then abruptly he turned to the Duke of Clarence and said, “You have been afraid to drink the yanggona of Fiji. A true man knows no fear. Because you are not brave you will never become King of Veretania.” Then pointing to George, “You are a brave young man, you are not afraid of our customs. You will be the King, and a great one.”
The Duke of Clarence died without succeeding to the throne. George became King of England. Yet they say that the native draunikau has no effect on a white man, and that puts a big hole in the story. From time immemorial, on the other hand, the chief has had the right to bewitch. Thakombau, on or off the throne, was a king; and there is some reason to believe that he used his ancient right.
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A recent case of witchcraft struck in high places and involved two of Thakombau’s grandsons, Ratu Pope (pronounced Pope-ee) and Ratu Sukuna.
Ratu Sukuna graduated from Oxford with a degree in law. Caucasian in feature, handsome by any standard, Sukuna offered himself to the Empire in 1914; because his Empire refused the service of natives, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion, gained his sergeancy and a decoration, and came home with a well-earned wound-stripe. He was one of the few properly educated Fijians. True, Ratu Devi, his brother, later studied medicine in New Zealand. Devi’s annoyance was his great personal charm with women in the wards, who wouldn’t let him alone. In Fiji he is now an unusually successful District Medical Officer.
Ratu Sukuna holds important government positions in Fiji, where he is in the anomalous position of one who tries to carry two races on his shoulders. In England and France he adapted himself to foreign languages and customs. In his heart, under the borrowed gloss of alien culture, he is still sufficiently Melanesian to avoid the ancestral graveyard after dusk; the educated half of him scoffs at the idea of ghosts, yet he admits freely that when he passes the family plot in the dark of the moon he feels an unpleasant something clawing at his shoulders.