Under the Wide and Starry Sky (32 page)

Of course they knew. What was she thinking? They had all seen her suffer for things that flew out of her mouth. They'd seen her near paralyzed while she went over and over some falling-out with a loved one. “You make people out to be perfect saints,” Louis had chided her. “And when they fall off the pedestal, then you turn on ‘em.” It was an ugly truth about her nature that she hadn't wanted to hear.

Belle was blood; Fanny loved her fiercely, however estranged they had become. And she would love Austin as utterly.

“Will you go back to Bournemouth after the trip?” Belle had asked during lunch. “Perhaps,” Fanny lied. She never wanted to set foot in England again. Henley and the others had made sure of that. By now word of her supposed plagiarism was surely making the rounds in London's literary salons. Henley hated her enough to spread such calumny. A return to Skerryvore was unthinkable, at least for now.
They took my home right out from under me,
she wanted to tell Belle. But she didn't.

There were many things that went unsaid. Such as the fact that Fanny had been in town for weeks before contacting Belle. When she arrived in San Francisco and visited her old doctor, she'd learned she had a throat tumor and had undergone an operation. Until she knew the tumor was benign, she believed she might be dying. When writing to Louis back in Saranac, Fanny pretended she was quite recovered from the hurt of Henley's insult, so as not to worry her husband any further. In fact, the mere thought of it sent her into a torment.
How can I even defend myself?
To write about the matter to Fanny Sitwell or Sidney Colvin would be to exacerbate the situation. Surely they knew of the mess.

She had lain in a San Francisco hospital bed, feeling desperately alone and devastated by the cruelty of the London liars. It was all she could do to keep from reaching for the bottles of arsenic and morphia that stood on her bedside table and ending the agony with a couple of swallows.

Louis had a sense of loyalty to old friends that bordered on the ridiculous. These monsters were the very people he had named as heirs in his will! Would he change it now that he'd been betrayed? Not likely. When she began to heal, her rage had grown. She wrote an angry letter to Baxter about her will, cursing Henley and Katharine as slanderers and murderers, knowing full well that he was a friend to them, as Louis had been.
While they eat their bread from my hand—and oh, they will do that—I shall smile, wish it were poison that might wither their bodies as they have my heart.

She had exploded righteously and, when she cooled off, sent a calmer second letter to Baxter. But she was done with the London crowd. Whom would she miss among those people? Only Fanny Sitwell and Sidney Colvin. And Henry James, God bless him. A note had arrived this very morning that made her love him all the more.
I wish I could make you homesick and somehow persuade you to return,
he'd written to them.

Fanny thought about what lay ahead. She hated and feared the sea. She would never say so to Louis; of course. She had secured the schooner knowing full well she would be sick and terrified every day of the voyage. They were betting much of their money on the chance that a six-month cruise might save his life. Now there was nothing to do but wait and let the hand reveal itself.

At five
A.M.
on June 26, a tug pulled the
Casco
out through the Golden Gate to open sea. “See you in Honolulu!” Belle shouted from the dock.

Fanny waved and waved at the figures of her daughter and grandson until they disappeared in the foggy morning. Then she turned her back to the shore and faced the wide ocean.

“Aw-haw-haw!” Louis shouted above the roar of the waves. The
Casco,
sleek as a giant marlin, was slicing through the Pacific waters at a furious speed, the world ahead of it a vast blue-gray where sky melded into sea. In the next moment, though, the yacht was heeling so near the ocean's skin that Louis feared he might topple over the bulwark. In front of him, the blue expanse had disappeared behind the starboard side of the boat. Salt water sprayed his face.

“She's runnin' with a bone in her teeth!” he called out joyously to Lloyd, who was clinging to his spectacles with one hand and a shroud with the other. “Do you know how many miles this wild vessel has covered in the past twenty-four hours? Two hundred fifty-six!”

“Woo-hoo!” the boy called back. “That's better than a steamer!” When the boat righted itself, they clambered below.

“I'm mortal hungry,” Louis said to Fanny. “Any dainties down here?”

She padded away to the galley. Louis pulled off his wet shirt and laughed. Above the pallid skin protected by his trousers, he saw his arms and chest were already turning brown from a week in the sun. By God, dare he say it out loud?
I feel wonderful.

The first couple of days at sea, he had kept to his cabin, as had everyone in the family, including Valentine. Even Captain Otis, who acted the part of the salty sea dog, had been unable to come to meals for the first two days. Only Maggie Stevenson possessed unassailable sea legs. She ate like a sailor and strode the planks as if she'd been born on a boat. Her single concession to nausea was to pass up at breakfast red herring and mutton chops on the first day. She had been on deck ever since, happily knitting Lloyd a pair of socks as the schooner raced southwest.

Fanny suffered the worst. For three days, she was too seasick to partake of anything but sips of water and a rare ship biscuit. On the fourth day of the voyage, she shakily crept from her bunk, barefoot and dressed in one of her new
holokus.
What Otis and the crew thought of her, Louis could only guess. She had worn her hair cut just above shoulder length for some time, and though he was used to it, she was the only woman he knew who wore it in that fashion. When he saw her sitting on the deck with that mop of curls shaking furiously in the wind as she smoked and stared fixedly at the horizon to steady her stomach, even Louis could see that his wife made quite an unconventional picture. He suspected her manner disconcerted Otis, who steered clear of her.

“He has us pegged as wealthy eccentrics,” Fanny said when they discussed the captain's cool attitude.

“Well, any customer who can spend two thousand pounds on a six-month cruise must seem rich indeed to him,” Louis said.

“Little does he know it's most of your inheritance.”

This morning Fanny had started the day badly with Otis by striking up a conversation with his helmsman while he was seated at the wheel, which was located in the cockpit where they all gathered. She had peppered the Russian with a dozen questions when Otis instructed her not to talk to the man while he was steering. Louis could tell the captain preferred Fanny out of sight, in her berth. He probably preferred all of them in their berths. Even Maggie had incited Otis's ire when she walked along a narrow part of the deck too close to the rail.

“What would you do if my mother-in-law fell overboard?” Fanny asked provocatively after the captain chastised the sprightly woman.

Otis stared ahead impassively. “Note it in the log,” he said.

The voyage, so far, had been easy and was beginning to take on a rhythm. Louis was the first passenger out of his berth at dawn. He helped raise the American flag that the vessel had come equipped with, then hoisted the Union Jack that he'd provided. As the sun rose and the smell of coffee floated through the open companionway door, Louis breathed deep the salty air and blessed the sun, blessed the four pilot birds that had followed them since they left San Francisco, blessed the flying fish that glided above the blue-green waters with their fins outspread. If there were a finer way to begin a day, he couldn't conceive it. After a while, he forced himself to go below, where he would lie in his bed and write furiously. He felt a supreme urgency to get down on paper the things he was seeing, the comments of the sailors, the laconic remarks of Otis, whom he knew he would transmute into a fictional character someday.

Without a cabin boy, a position Otis had failed to fill before departure, Valentine took on the morning job of folding up the bunks so the area could become a sitting room. Lloyd's job was official photographer, documenting the cruise with pictures that might be used in the South Seas book. Fanny was chief consultant regarding food and injuries. She remained queasy, but her seasickness did not keep the cook from coming to her regularly for instructions, or the injured mate, who tumbled during a storm and had to have his head sewn up.

The doctoring kept her mind focused during some of the terrifying weather of the cruise. A squall would descend upon the
Casco
in the midst of calm weather and throw the inhabitants around like rag dolls. After three days of squalls, with the lee rail dipping below the foaming sea and the wood of the boat groaning as if to break under the punching waves, even Louis quailed. He crawled to the berths, where the women had taken refuge, and called out, “I never should have subjected you all to this!”

Fanny stuck her greenish face out of the bed curtain. “The timber remembers it used to be an oak trunk,” she said bravely. “It wouldn't dare split.”

When the weather calmed, she went back into the galley to teach the cook how to season his bland meat dishes. One afternoon while she was going through a storage cabinet in the pantry, she called to Louis: “What is a sail doing in here?” Louis reached back into the corner cabinet where some pans were stacked. He tugged at the canvas, which felt heavy. When he got it out on the floor, he saw it was wrapped around two iron weights. Also tucked inside was a small flag—American. “It's nothing,” Louis said, “just overflow.” But he knew perfectly well what it was. Otis had packed away the necessities for a burial at sea. In that moment he understood how the captain viewed Louis's frail self: food for the fish.

That evening, when the dour Otis bit into the chicken on his plate, he looked up in wonder. “What's this?” he asked.

“A Mexican sauce I used to make in Monterey. It's called salsa,” Fanny said. “A little hot, but tasty, don't you think?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes watering. “Yes.”

After dinner, everyone assembled for the big event of the day—the viewing of the sunset—then adjourned to the cockpit “drawing room,” where they gathered around the table, studying the chart.

“I haven't been to Polynesia,” Captain Otis said when they pinpointed the island of Nuka Hiva, their first destination, “but the directory says there are two distinct sharp peaks.”

“Oh,” Maggie said. “I thought you had already traveled to the Marquesas.”

“I know a number of men who have,” he said.

“Did they speak of cannibals?” Valentine asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “but these were old sailors. They sailed there some time ago.”

Louis didn't say it out loud, but the directory of which the captain spoke—

A Directory for the Navigation of the South Seas
—also made reference to the morals of Marquesan women. Back in Saranac, when they were poring over the thick book one frigid evening, Lloyd had read aloud a paragraph to Louis and Maggie that caused them all to sit up straight: “The one great feature which distinguishes these natives in the eyes of Europeans is their unbounded licentiousness. The women … appear to have not the slightest idea of chastity or delicacy.”

Sitting in his buffalo coat by the fire, Louis had raised his brows and said slyly, “Nuka Hiva was Melville's first stop on his voyage.”

“‘Their whole conduct, gesture, and motive appear directed to one end,'” Lloyd had continued reading from the directory that night back in Saranac, despite the deep sighs coming from Maggie Stevenson. “‘Their character has been often portrayed, and must be familiar to all readers of the Pacific voyages. It is a point, too, which ought to weigh much with the commander who would bring his ship here.'”

Maggie had changed the subject back then as she did now, by taking out a deck of cards. She teamed with the captain in a game of whist and roundly defeated the others.

Sensing that the ice was finally thawing between the taciturn captain and his passengers, Louis ventured an observation that he'd been wanting to explore. “I realize this is not your boat. But don't you think the
Casco
is overrigged and oversparred? I wonder if a racing boat, glorious as it is, is suited for this kind of cruise.”

Louis immediately regretted the question, as the captain didn't answer but merely withdrew to his own quarters.
Just when I was making headway with the man!
Louis chastised himself.

Maggie Stevenson, oblivious to any turmoil, started another hand of whist. When Otis emerged from his cabin, he was carrying a bottle of brandy. “Oh, good,” Maggie cried. “I will deal you in.” Otis poured small glasses of brandy all around.

“How nice,” Maggie cooed. “May I propose a toast?” She raised her glass to the captain, the Russian at the wheel and another sailor standing by, Valentine, and her family members one by one.
“To the Cascos!”

There were smiles all around.

“Now, tell me,” Maggie said to the captain when she'd quaffed her brandy, “have you ever read
Treasure Island
?”

Louis flinched. How like his mother to embarrass him. She asked almost everyone

she met this question. Louis waited for the usual “I liked it” that people offered, especially those who hadn't read it.

Otis drew on his pipe, smiled slightly, then lifted his glass and clinked it to Maggie's. “Yo ho ho,” the captain said.

“Land!”

Fanny heard Louis's shout as if in a dream. She lifted her head off the pillow, shook it, then slid down from her bed. Maggie was already standing there in her robe. The lantern in her hand lit the soles of Valentine's feet, which were coming down at them from her berth overhead. The women hurried along the hallway and up the ladder to the deck, where they found Louis and the captain staring through binoculars into the near darkness. Louis handed the glasses to Fanny. A long low shadow spread itself wide across the distance. “Morning comes on fast here,” the captain said. But this morning was spreading lazily, to reveal a thick patch of clouds sitting atop the water.

Otis ordered the crew to cruise along the northern shore of Nuka Hiva island with Anaho Bay as their goal. The cook came up with coffee and passed around cups as they watched the dawn give way to day. “There are the two peaks!” someone shouted. Within the hour, the captain had sailed into the bay and dropped anchor.

Bright light illuminated the bank of fog lying on the water between the
Casco
and Nuka Hiva. The block of white covered their view of the beach, but above and behind the cloud layer, they saw brilliant green peaks rise up to points in the blue sky. Through the white mass, a black form appeared. Lloyd was the first to spot it. “Canoe!” he shouted. Paddles projected from either side. As the form grew larger in the distance, they saw a figure stand up and sit down. Two men came into focus, dressed in proper linen pants and coats. Fanny, Maggie, and Valentine hurried below to dress. When they came back up, the men in the canoe were bobbing alongside the schooner.

“Permission to come aboard?” the white man called.

“Permission granted,” Otis replied.

A ladder was thrown over the side, and the men climbed into the
Casco.
“Regler,” the white man introduced himself with a German accent. “And this is Chief Taipi-Kikino.” The chief, a good six feet tall, had two parallel blue bands tattooed across his nose and cheeks; he was a smiling man with beautiful white teeth and bronze skin that gleamed with fragrant coconut oil. He shook their hands, then shook them again. In the distance, Fanny spotted two more canoes emerging from the low-hanging white cloud.

“Valentine, go below quick and prepare tea. More visitors,” she said, nodding in the direction of the canoes.

In the time it took Regler to explain that he was a trader living on Nuka Hiva, a dozen native men had climbed up the ladder—giant men in loincloths with tattooed thighs and arms, knives at their waists, and handsome, glowering faces. They brought with them an assortment of items—plaited straw hats, oranges, coconuts, bananas—and held them out for sale.

The turn toward commerce took Fanny by surprise. Apart from the Stevenson party's greetings, no cordialities had passed among them. An odd period of staring ensued.

“All right. Tell them I will buy the bananas,” Fanny said.

“The man wants a dollar,” Regler said rather apologetically.

“For a bunch of bananas? Tell him twenty-five cents. And that's too much.”

The native men snorted their disgust when Regler translated. One of them swept

his arm about to take in the schooner and its fine trappings. “You no rich?” he said ironically. A round of taunting laughter went up.

Before Fanny knew what was happening, the men were swarming the boat, with Louis in anxious pursuit.

“Dear heavens,” Maggie whispered. “We're at their mercy.”

Fanny went below so Valentine wouldn't be frightened. She found the girl quaking in the galley; the cook was nowhere in sight. Fanny stood at the entrance of the kitchen and waved away the men when they poked their heads through the door.

When the natives had departed, everyone on board stared at one another in wonder.

“How extraordinary,” Louis said.

“It's not really how they are,” Regler said. The trader had a clean-shaven chin and preposterously long and curly hair growing from his cheeks, like sheepskin saddlebags. “What you saw just now was a bit of posturing. When you befriend them, you will find they won't accept money for food. With these folks, food isn't something you own. They give it as a gift, and they know eventually they'll be reimbursed, so to speak. There is a lot of back and forth with the gift-giving. Sometimes it wears a man out.” He laughed. “Why don't you come with me to the island, Captain Otis? I will find you chickens and coconut milk and coffee—whatever supplies you need. And the chief has offered to take your letters over to the next bay.”

Maggie jumped in glee at the news of a mail steamer. They all promptly retrieved their letters. Regler turned to Lloyd, who had stood dumbfounded on deck during the visit. “Young fellow, you come, too. We will need extra hands.”

While the men were gone, yet another canoe arrived, this time with fourteen men and boys led by the chief of chiefs, Ko'oamua. The chief might have been wearing a suit of clothes, so thoroughly was his body tattooed with blue arabesques. Maggie didn't flinch at the sight of his nakedness. He came bearing gifts of welcome and showed every sign that he was a fine gentleman. He and his men followed Louis in single file on a tour through the fore and after cabins and up the forecastle companion. They all settled on the floor of the cockpit and stared at Lloyd's typewriter, which was set up on the table. By way of entertainment, Louis asked their names and typed each phonetically, handing out the individual strips of paper. Ko'oamua took over the typewriter at that point and punched out the names of each of his family members.

“The man knows some English but not enough. And God knows, we haven't a syllable of theirs. It's bloody frustrating not to be able to talk to them,” Louis said to Fanny. “We might as well be from different planets.” He was thumbing madly through a book about Polynesian languages.

Fanny shrugged. She went to the supply of gifts she had brought from San Francisco and handed around some cheap cigars. The men burst into smiles and left peacefully.

“There aren't that many of them left, not compared to their old numbers,” Regler said that evening over dinner on the boat. “They've had sickness of all kinds—cholera, smallpox, syphilis. Taipi-Kikino is a chief, but the big chief is Ko'oamua, whom you also met today. He's been converted by the missionaries. It wasn't that long ago, though, you could see him striding proudly along the beach right there.” Regler pointed to the stretch of sand opposite the
Casco.
“He was wearing a tapa cloth around him. And out from its folds, what did he pull? A human arm that he chewed bites out of I suppose it belonged to one of his enemies—former, that is. They call human flesh ‘long pig.' The man appeared to enjoy it, all right.”

“
Long pig. How picturesque,” Fanny said.

Between courses, Regler raked his fingers thoughtfully through his whiskers. “The days of long pig are over with now. So will be the tattooing, if the French have their way. They're against it. Too much a reminder of the old savage days. The fact is, the natives won't stop with their tattoos. Some things you can't take away from people,” he mused. “Get a look at Queen Vaekehu's tattoos if you go visit her, which you should. She's gone missionary, but at one time her legs were the main attraction for visitors to the island.”

In the morning, they all went ashore. As their canoe approached the beach, the people of Anaho stopped to get a good look at them. There were women among the men, most of them half-clad and damp. It appeared they were returning home from a morning bath. When Fanny, in a
holoku,
and Maggie, in a proper dress and veil, stepped onshore, the women came forward and startled them by calling out, “Hello! Hello!” Another in the crowd—a man who had come aboard the
Casco
yesterday—gestured toward Louis with his eyes and said to the gathered,
“Ona.”
A round of nodding followed.

“What does that mean?” Louis asked Frère Michel, a jolly young French priest who had joined the greeting party.

“‘Owner,'” he responded. “It is a word of respect. It means you are
trés riche, monsieur.
”

Fanny watched Louis—so pale and slender a specimen compared to these strapping men—fairly beam with pleasure at his new notoriety.

“Some of them speak pidgin English,” the priest said, “but do not assume they comprehend everything you say. Would you like a tour?”

Fanny, Louis, Maggie, and Lloyd followed Frère Michel, who was joined by Taipi-Kikino and Regler. Fanny guessed which of the locals had “gone missionary” by what they were wearing. A few men wore European-style pants; some women wore
holokus.

They visited a large oblong building with an open gallery set on a platform of stones. Several people—a family, it appeared—promptly emerged from the thatched-roof house to stare back at the “Cascos,” as they now called themselves. In a matter of moments, Fanny and her family were welcome guests sitting on the floor in the house's central open room on woven mats.

“Look closely at the mat upon which you are sitting,” Frère Michel said. “It is made of tree bark and has probably taken the woman of the house a year to make. It is the islander's greatest wealth, these
tapas.
Some of them have been in families for decades.” The priest nodded toward a man preparing a drink. “And that is
kava.
You will drink it often here.”

Fanny watched the man prepare the drink. He chewed on a plant root until it was in shreds, then added water and mixed it in a wooden bowl, which was passed around to them. Maggie shot a horrified glance at Fanny as she sipped the liquid, but took the bowl in her turn and made a show, at least, of sipping. Next they were served roasted pig on banana leaves and mashed breadfruit covered in coconut cream.

“Would you ask the hostess if she will share her recipe?” Fanny requested. Soon the priest was translating the simple instructions.

“I want to give them something,” Fanny said to her family as they prepared to depart. “Have you anything at all?” Louis and Lloyd searched their pockets while Maggie held the tip of her widow's veil, as if she feared Fanny might snatch it off her head. In her pocket, Fanny felt her tobacco pouch and papers.

Having instructed the men at the table to roll cigarettes, she rose with the others and went outside, where dancers had gathered to entertain the visitors. A fellow pounded a barrel as five men leaped about, escalating their jig into gymnastics as they climbed upon each other's shoulders and jumped off. Some of the native people milling about were nearly naked, wearing only a rolled-up piece of fabric around their waists. Others had on
lavalavas,
large handkerchiefs tied at the waist that covered the private parts. The men sported extraordinary tattoos on their flanks and thighs that so completely covered their skin, they appeared to be wearing tight pants down to their knees. Yet others mixed European-style clothing with native garb. A few of the men had white lime caked in their hair. It seemed that everyone wore a sprig of nature: a flower behind the ear, a wreath around the neck, tendrils of vines wrapping the midsection. The fragrance of the flowers mixed with the smells of ginger, coconut oil, and the dung of fat black pigs moving among the audience with the kind of freedom she'd heard cows enjoyed in India.

Fanny began to laugh.
What a strange turn life has taken!

When the dancing finished, an elderly man burst into song. “What is he saying?” Fanny asked Regler when the song had gone on for some time.

“It is a story about your visit. A rich man and his wife have arrived in a silver ship to this island. He is composing it as he goes. That is what the people do here.”

Next came a tour of a girls' school run by nuns, and then the church, where Frère Michel took them into his little office to make a pot of coffee. Fanny could see the caution on Louis's face. He was entering the camp of the enemy: a missionary, and a Catholic one, at that. She watched him walk over to the bookcase to scan the titles and take the man's measure.

“It is not the coffee you are accustomed to,” the priest warned. He shrugged. “One adapts.”

“I am trying to adjust to their manners.” Louis laughed. “Yesterday we were ridiculed for not buying their coconuts, and today they opened their homes and
served
us coconuts.”

The priest folded his hands in his lap. “Yesterday's display reflects how these people are treated by traders. They expect to be cheated, and they were perhaps trying to establish their power in the bargaining. It was a performance, in a way. Today is far more sincere. They have a rather complex sense of etiquette.”

“Yes?”

“It has evolved over time, I think. They haven't anything like a court system. No legal structure to speak of,” the priest said. “No mechanism for appealing wrongs. In the absence of laws, it's rather useful to have strict rules of etiquette, don't you think? They tell everyone how to behave. There are rules for all sorts of things. One doesn't just wake up a chief in the morning, for example. You must tickle his feet. Their
tapus
are their laws. There are
tapus
for fish, for women …”

“Yes?”

“If they find there are fewer fish in an area, they will declare a
tapu
for that place until the fish come back.”

“And the ones for women?” Fanny asked.

“Ah, women can do very little. They marry young and have many restrictions. On some islands, the women are not permitted to eat meat. So the men form clubs and cook and eat together. On this island, the chief recently removed the
tapu
against women using roads that men have built, which is all the roads. Up to now, they had to walk through fields. If they wanted to cross the road, they had to wade through a stream. They cannot use a man's saddle for their horses—that's another
tapu,
though I don't know the origin of it. Some chief became annoyed with his wife borrowing his equipment too often, I suppose. But the women are clever. They have figured a way around it. It seems they are permitted to use the saddle of someone who is not a native. My saddle is borrowed quite a lot, as is Mr. Regler's. And so it goes.”