Under the Wide and Starry Sky (33 page)

“I want to invite the women to come to the boat tomorrow,” Fanny said. “I don't know if you can arrange it.”

The priest smiled. “I shall see what I can do.”

When the group arrived the next morning, Fanny had jam and hard ship biscuits waiting. Dressed in
holokus
and fragrant with fresh flowers in their hair, the women hardly noticed the tray of food on the table, for they were caught up in their multiple reflections set off by the mirrors lining the walls of the saloon. They were not strangers to mirrors, but many at one time were an oddity, and wildly entertaining. The women lifted their hems to examine the backs of their legs, tilted their heads to admire their faces. In time, their attention turned to the lush velvet on the cushions around the table. One woman hoisted her dress and, exposing legs and buttocks tattooed in spiral patterns, rubbed her bottom on the crimson cushion. Valentine, who was serving tea, pressed her lips tight in quiet horror. But Fanny's mind filled with a picture of herself some ten years ago in Fanny Sitwell's elegant drawing room, lying on a chaise with her foot in a cast while her hosts stared at her as if she had just leaped out of a gulch in the wild and woolly American West. Fanny remembered vividly the one odd longing in her mind that day: to bury her face in the luxury of Mrs. Sitwell's velvet curtains and thereby confirm everyone's worst instincts about her class and character.

Fanny took the woman's hand and placed it on the velvet curtains of the ship windows. Then she put her own face against the fabric to demonstrate, and encouraged the woman to do the same. When the native woman had given her cheeks a satisfying rub, her great brown eyes looked at Fanny seriously. She ran a finger along the tanned skin of Fanny's forearm, then touched her own arm. “All same you,” she said.

“To think we were wearing buffalo coats a few weeks ago,” Maggie Stevenson remarked. She had put on her widow's veil for the priest's visit and wore shoes over her bare feet, unlike her daughter-in-law, who had stopped making such concessions some time ago.

The family, along with the priest, were all sitting on the deck of the
Casco,
feeling the soft bulge of each wave as it lifted and lowered the boat before breaking into tinsel-bright strands on the shore.

“It doesn't seem real,” Fanny said. “The beauty of this place—of these people—is beyond anything I ever conceived. “

“Yet there is a sadness, a kind of defeat I have sensed here and there among them,” Louis said. “Or am I imagining that?”

“No, you are not imagining. They have lost much,” the priest said. “To diseases, to alcohol and opium—the gifts of civilization. There are many suicides. If you chip away at their culture, people forget who they are.” He looked at Louis. “I know what you are wondering. How dare I speak of such loss if I am part of the cause?”

Louis conceded the point with a nod.

“I believe we have done some good by helping to end cannibalism. As for the rest, I don't know,” the priest said. “When I came here, the bishop said to me, ‘You are coming into a culture that is more civilized than our own.' I have pondered that remark a great deal.”

Polite eaters of human flesh? Suicides in paradise? None of it added up, and Louis had no real sense whether the reported facts were correct. Yet for him, there were strands of familiarity in the stories.

“When the English defeated the Scottish, they deposed clan chiefs and stripped the people of their kilts and bagpipes,” he told Fanny that night before retiring. “They weighted down their lilting Gaelic tongues with the thumping ballast of official English.”

“How odd to feel sympathy for cannibals that their old ways have been taken away,” Fanny said. “But there it is.”

Louis shook his head. “I wonder how it is on other islands, where there has been less contact with foreigners. Are their populations declining? Are the people of other islands as deeply depressed as the Marquesans appear to be?”

“If they have been stripped of their identities, I should think so,” Fanny mused.

Louis shook his head. “I cannot help but think of the Highlanders.”

“Oh, Louis, you can't compare all the world to Scotland at every turn.”

“No, I suppose not. On our island, we much preferred drawing and quartering. Though the old Scots shared one decorating pleasure with these island peoples: displaying heads on pikes around the old homestead. Otherwise, I admit our savagery is entirely different.”

In the near darkness, Fanny threw a
holoku
over her head, pulled the blanket from her berth, then felt her way along the passage leading to the companionway. Her bare feet found the steps, counted them. Up on deck, she made out the figure of her husband in his striped trader's pajamas, sitting cross-legged near the railing. She sank down next to him, wrapped them both in her blanket, and rested her head on his shoulder. The only sounds were the lapping of waves against the hull and the cry of a single bird flying overhead. As first light came up on the little island of Hiva Oa, they sat there together like theatergoers, silent and watching.

“It's yet another restaging of the Creation,” he whispered. “Are you weary of the same old thing?”

She laughed. “I never grow tired of it.”

The island's mountains, darkly furred with foliage, formed a silhouette behind two strips of clouds. A veil of mist covering the peak loomed gray as lead. But on the water's surface, cloud wisps lit white by the hidden sun danced across the glittering waves. All parts of the picture—clouds, waves, light and dark air, even the mountains—appeared to be undulating together.

“I think I could live and die here,” she said.

“You smell like coconut.” His fingers stroked her neck, then sought her breasts. He groped around in the folds of fabric. “Does that thing you wear have a drawstring at the bottom as well as the top?” he asked.

“Let's go to your berth, love.”

“You said you felt odd about—”

“They're not up yet.”

Louis's tiny cabin had a narrow bed with a blanket and a finely woven little pillow made from pandanus leaves that a Marquesan had presented to him. Immediately beside the bed was a projecting shelf that served as a desk. The porthole in his room was open, and a cool breeze blew across her face. She heard sheep bleating hungrily on the hillside near Anaho beach, heard the chink of crockery in the galley as she felt the pulse of his heart quicken against hers.

It was Louis who broke the silence afterward. “I woke up this morning,” he said softly, “and I had to convince myself yet again that this whole spectacle”—he pointed toward the window—“this morning in eternity is not a dream. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? To be here, living an adventure bigger than anything I dreamed of as a boy is one thing, but to be here and be
well
, not just well but feeling positively spruce, is beyond all—”

His voice cracked. A beam of sun shone through the window and lit tears rolling down his cheeks. She squeezed his hand to comfort him but, in the next moment, saw him smiling broadly. “Do you see what an infant I've become?” He laughed. “Yesterday I stood in the surf and let the waves simply knock me over. I picked up shells like those children I used to watch on the beach at Bournemouth. And do you know, a little sea creature crawled out of his house to have a look at me. No child could have been more wonderstruck than I at that tiny speck of life. I have spent most of my days on this planet trying to get well. And now, to have hope of good health? It is a whole new world for me, Fanny.

“I want to write a book on the South Seas, “ he said as he pulled on his clothes. “There is so much here. The history of these people, their myths, the language subtleties. I will write chapters and take parts of what I write to send McClure as travel letters. Two birds with one stone. I can already see it's going to be a devil of a big book.”

“I haven't seen you this well in such a long time.” She embraced him. “You've never had such rich characters to write up. I am so happy.”

Louis's strength had grown steadily from the moment the sea air hit his lungs. He pranced around the
Casco
as it heeled and heaved, surefooted as a mountain goat. He
looked
different. There was meat on his bones, though anyone seeing him for the first time would take him for a starveling. But to Fanny, who had lifted and turned his body through long, terrifying nights in Oakland and Hyeres and Bournemouth, he was a new man. To see the wind billowing his shirt as he clung to a shroud, to see such wild joy in his eyes, was something she had frankly despaired of ever witnessing again. The wonder of his good health struck her as it struck him: a miracle.

It wasn't only Louis who had been altered by the trip. Maggie Stevenson had shown herself to be a woman Fanny hadn't known existed. “She's returned to the girl she was before her marriage, I think,” Louis observed. “It makes me realize how heavily my father influenced her.” And Lloyd—how changed
he
was. He seemed charged with excitement. He was making photographs, writing stories, participating as an adult in the gatherings they'd had with natives.

Fanny had been taking notes on an irregular basis, and she sat down now to try to capture what she was feeling.

Fanny went to the back of the box where she kept her correspondence, pulled out the note, and pinned it to the page she had just written.

In the dining room of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, the Cascos fell upon their roast-beef dinner with near-savage gusto.

Belle laughed. “You're starving!”

“We are,” Fanny admitted to her daughter, who sat at the long and groaning table with her husband and Austin. She noticed how much better Belle looked than she had in San Francisco. She had made it back to Hawaii, as they'd hoped, and it had warmed Fanny's heart to see her girl waiting on the dock in Honolulu.

“Our supplies on the boat were very nearly gone,” Fanny said. “Had we run into foul weather, we would have been in real trouble. But the wind was cooperative.”

“Cooperative?”
Captain Otis laughed. “It was a gale-force squall got us here, Mrs. Stevenson.”

“I saw your arrival,” Belle said. “It was a miracle you didn't slam into another boat.”

“To our braw captain,” Louis called out to Otis. Glasses were hoisted up and down the table. “Thank you for that splendid landing.”

“One of the many miracles of this voyage,” Fanny said. Her eyes met the captain's at that moment, and she saw him nod solemnly. She looked down the table at Maggie, Lloyd, Valentine, and the sailors. They were all nodding.

“Tell us!” Belle said.

The stories flowed. Captain Otis, who had been a surly, monosyllabic taskmaster at the beginning of the voyage, waxed poetic as he described with animated hands the tattooed legs of Queen Vaekehu. “For sheer beauty, I would say Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas was the most magnificent,” Otis said. “But the most beautiful of the Polynesian people we met were the Tahitians.” Fanny had heard those very words come out of her husband's mouth a couple of days ago. It struck her that the captain had made a study of Louis's style and opinions.

“Aye.” Maggie sighed. “Big, muscled men over six feet tall, with luminous brown eyes …”

“… tattooed fore and aft …” Louis interjected.

“… just magnificent creatures, very well set up.”

“Aunt Maggie!” Lloyd lowered his head and looked at her over his spectacles. “I didn't know you were taking notice.”

Maggie put her hand up to her mouth in embarrassed delight.

“I will confirm that observation,” Fanny said.

Everyone laughed, and the stories continued: of the things they'd seen in six months, of treacherous coral atolls and broken masts, of Protestant missionary wives bent on covering native flesh with fabric, of Catholic priests who descended into slovenly habits and unclean appearance in the absence of wives. They talked of the Tahitian princess who saved Louis's life by feeding him fish soup when he fell ill with fever, and of Ori a Ori, her Tahitian subchief who adopted Louis as a brother, moved out of his house, and gave it over to the Stevensons, even feeding them for weeks as Louis recovered from the one real sickness he'd had since they left. They talked of the magical beauty of Hiva-Oa, where the French missionaries' battle against cannibalism had been only partly successful, where the repugnant cannibal chief Moipu spoke nostalgically of the human hand as his favorite morsel.

“The Pacific,” Louis mused aloud, “is a strange place indeed. It's as if—” Just then the telephone in the dining room rang, and he nearly leaped from his chair. “Dear God,” he said, “would someone stop that bleating thing?”

Everyone laughed except Louis, who was genuinely irritated.

“You were sayin?” Belle said.

“It's as if the nineteenth century exists here only in spots. I don't know what to make of it entirely, but I consider myself lucky to have seen it before it changes.” The Cascos fell silent, as if Louis had just spoken a truth for all of them.

Now a leave-taking was imminent. Louis had told Otis that the
Casco
should return to San Francisco without them. They were out of funds and would have to stay in Hawaii until money from
Scribner's
or McClure found its way to Honolulu. That might take another three or four months. Then they would board a steamer to Sydney and eventually travel to England. Neither Fanny nor Louis had an appetite to race through winter weather to San Francisco on the
Casco.
There were embraces all around when the dinner ended, and a teary farewell to Valentine. Loyal Valentine, the funny, sometimes petulant young woman who had attended so faithfully to Louis during the past six years, would be moving to San Franciso to start her own life.

Outside, electric streetlights illuminated a passing streetcar. Louis stopped to gaze at the stars, which he did every night wherever he was, but tonight the lights made it difficult. “Let's get a cottage at Waikiki,” he said as he and Fanny walked to the guesthouse where they were staying the night. “I can't bear all this progress.”

Living on the beach, they marked time at Waikiki, waiting for word from Baxter that money was back in the depleted coffers. Louis worked on his South Seas book but was growing restless in his limbo. When Belle came with Austin to visit them, Louis took long walks with them, collecting shells and tossing rocks with the boy. The child provided some distraction, and the visits comforted Fanny, who was relieved to see Belle's attitude toward Louis softening. The girl had blamed him entirely for the breakup of her parents' marriage.

Once, when he was out on such a stroll, Fanny went to his desk to look at the pages he had written. What she found shocked her. Louis had divided his work into sections, including language, songs, history, and myths, even some botany. It dawned on her that he was writing a science book, not the sort of colorful travel material for which he was already known. What on earth was he thinking?

What she saw on the desk was an outline written by a layman intent upon a scholarly paper about the South Sea islands and islanders, a layman whose own brain, brilliant as it was, could not remember the names of trees and flowers for any length of time. It was simply not his strength. Even if it were, it would take twenty years of living in these islands to write such a book. Louis kept crowing that no other white people, except perhaps Melville, had ever experienced what they had in these islands. Perhaps. But Melville had the good sense not to turn his knowledge into a scientific treatise. Fanny grabbed a couple of sheets of paper and went to her own desk to write a letter to Colvin.

Fanny hurriedly sealed the letter inside an envelope and hid it between the pages of a book before Louis returned. Tomorrow, when she went into town, she would post it.