Fiji Night

A Sketch By "Cina"

THE half caste and I sat opposite each other on the matted floor of the bure. The faint sounds of the vil lage came through the open doors; a, dog barked, a child cried.

“Talo,” said the old grey Fijian on my left. There was a slight stir around the kava bowl and a girl came forward yagona bowl in her two out-stretched hands, demurely. Damn it! It wasn’t the “yalewa gone” I wanted to see.

We all drank. I endeavoured to see, through the dim lamplight, the young girl who sat quietly and beautifully with others in the shadows beyond. The tapa hanging on the wall made a sharp pat tern of black and white in the gloom.

All were served; a slow clapping of hands followed each draining of the coconut bowl.

The big wooden lali near the church rang out, tapping out the hour in quick successive groups of threes. Nine o’clock.

The old man on my left droned on in his never-ending “talanoa”.

Yes, she was handsome, that Marama; what a gorgeous straight back, what breasts, what delicious carriage of the dark, shadowed head.

HIGH above the Koro, in his European frame house, the Tui Kakawa lay dying of witchcraft.

All day yesterday, a white Govern ment launch had battered through the spray-flung waves of the Koro Sea. In its cabin lay a puking Secretary of Native Affairs, with his portfolio and bottle of sea-sick tablets. At each soul heaving lurch of the boat, the S.N.A. cursed the gods who, in the beginning, elected that an island should be a piece of land completely surrounded by water.

Also he cursed all witchcraft, witch doctors and witches, all and severally, from the far off dark doings of Astarte to Ma Shipton.

He sought to bring reason to the terror stricken mind of the bewitched chief.

And here was I bewitched by a shadow in a corner.

Outside a native pounded kava in a wooden tabili, but quietly. Young men passed in and out without noise, fetch ing water, mixing the mash of the yagona.

UP in the house among , the trees the Tui Kakawa groaned in his bed. Re cently he had been promoted to Government office. He was New Zealand educated, and had served in France in 1917 with a labour corps. He was a first class bat, a Rugger player, an after din ner speaker who. in immaculate even ing dress, held all comers. A man of parts, European in all his outlook—or he thought he was, until this ancient fear crept out of the dark jungle and twined its chill fingers around his heart.

What could white men do against the jungle-witchcraft, the fatal drau-drau that had its black beginnings in the birth-place of his race—Africa? The night they had told him, he had borne the news bravely, but now it had him in its cold grip. He was dying of fear!

They had told him of the men who had gathered around his grandfather’s grave at the dark of the moon; of yagona made and libations poured on the mound;

of incantations and black prayers in the dark. Raising the dead to pursue him, raising the ghosts to chase him down the dark ways of death!

Fetch the witchdoctors —to hell with European quacks! They gave him a pain in the neck. And, by God, he had a pain in the neck!

The District Medical Officer said it was an abscess near the ear. An opera tion — “O, dark gods of Viti, save me! Send your priests, concoct, compound an anti dote—a drau-drau stronger than those who vex my soul!”

At dead of night his witchdoctors ap proached the desecrated grave. Kava was made, a root of the kava plant placed upright on the burial mound. Should, said the grave-faced men, the “Takona” of kava be dry on the following morn, should the root have fallen pointing to the rising moon, nothing on earth, above or below the earth, could save the Tui Kakawa.

“Talo,” said the old man. We drank, each from our cups.

Yes, indeed! On the morn the “Takona” was empty, the root of kava had fallen.

The Tui Kakawa would die—and was dying.

Why? Because the men of the black magic, the men of the drau ni kau, of the dread drau-drau, had said so.

I LOOKED out of the door of the bure at the light burning in the chief’s house. The S.N.A. would be there, bathed and refreshed, his internal organs at rest. He would be arguing softly but emphatically with the agonised man.

“Suva Hospital—most modem treatment —soon get over it!” Sanity, sanity, all is sanity—or vexation of spirit.

Suva Hospital! Modern treatment for mediaeval sorcery! Suva Hospital, half way house to Naicobocobo. The Tui Kakawa cried silently to his gods and devils —“Tevoros” whose names even he did not know —“Tevoros” from deep down the times, from the phallus-worshiping age. He remembered seeing little oval stone offerings in the groves. The great snake god—who, white men said, was only a Tongan adventurer. A Tongan!

Bloody fools! Help me. O gods—gods of the trees, mountains and rivers! And the great shark god of the sea, Dakuwaqa.

Looking out, we saw the long line of lanterns descend from the high house, the bearers carrying the litter through the silent village to the beach, where the white launch was waiting.

The S.N.A.’s arguments had prevailed.

“In the name of sanity,” A modern oper ation for a pain in the neck.

Suva bound! The S.N.A. slipped a sea sick tablet into his mouth and sighed with a sense of duty well done, and with apprehension of the coming voyage.

“rpALO,” said the old man. It was “my” i. girl this time. She came and knelt before me, proffering the drink.

She was a peach—though dusky. The pressure of her little finger on mine, as I handed back the empty bowl, told me I had not waited in vain.

Later, we went our ways in the dark.

The half-caste bade me, “Goodnight”.

As I lay on the high, mat-heaped bed I wondered aloud on the strange ways of magic.

Marama, a most modern miss, closed my lips with her mouth. Her dark eyes had fear in them as she whispered, “Sa tabu, Turaga!”