Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

By E. Hennings

OLD Samu sat on the verandah of his little house lost in deep thought.

He had had an awful shock.

The kava party, last night, had lengthened over all three cock-crows, nearly into daylight, and this morning, when he tried to get up, his legs had given way under him. He had crawled around on all-fours until they supported his body again. That was the beginning of the end, the ignominious end of a kava drunkard.

Sucking his old pipe, he ruminated, his face, still a little ashen from his fright, screwed up in deep wrinkles, and the twinkle gone from his wicked eyes. If he weren’t to become the laughing-stock of the little community, something dras tic had to be done to keep him from the kava bowl.

It occurred to him, now, that of late, after his various drinking bouts, the tone of the men had become rather free and easy, considering that, as a former cap tain, he was a person of some standing.

There was a way out, which not only would prevent him from further over indulgence, but also would restore and enhance his position. He sighed, and moved uneasily where he sat on his haunches, the offending legs tucked under him.

No, it was not easy to make that deci sion; but needs must when the devil drives. He would turn over a new leaf, forsake the kava bowl. He would join the church!

It seemed really a hint from above that yesterday a canoe had called in, with a native preacher (talatala) on board, and since it would sail again to morrow there was no time to be lost.

When all the people had gone into their houses for breakfast, and he knew him self unobserved. Samu rose unsteadily.

After a few attempts, he managed a fairly straight course across the village green to the house where the preacher had been left alone in becoming solitude before the morning service. Samu sat down on the mat and came straight to the point.

“Inia,” he said earnestly, “it is well known to you that this is an ‘empty island’; no village, just a coconut plan tation. The workers come and go.

Sometimes there is a preacher among them and then they are happy. Just now there isn’t and that is not good.

It’s the singing,” he ventured in explana tion. “They eat too much on a Sunday.

“Now, I have given up the seafaring life to spend the rest of my days with mv master here. I have long striven to join the church. Be of a kindness and allow me to act as lay-preacher.”

The talatala looked him over search ingly. In spite of his Sunday best, Samu looked the last person to be entrusted with the spiritual welfare of the flock.

“Are you. by any chance, the man Samu who once took holy orders over on the mainland?”

Samu winced. Then he bent over with a most ingratiating smile and said, with disarming frankness: — “All you’ve heard is true. I did join up in Munivatu. I did get money from the master to buy a Bible and hymnbook, and spent it all in the kava saloons with the pretty girls. I did disgrace myself by being sick of kava in church during service. I was kicked out—but, brother,” here he registered deepest emotion, “I have repented since and led a better life.

Does not the holy book say that the flesh is weak and that those who repent shall be forgiven?”

Now Samu could talk the hindleg off an iron horse and. once going, he pleaded his case with such artistry that the preacher, bewildered and overcome, was persuaded to introduce him during the following service as lay-preacher on probation.

THE congregation was inclined to take it as a great joke, Samu’s reputa tion being what it was, but his easy manner and the eloquence with which he delivered himself from the pulpit surprised them into many a whis pered “Sa matai dina!” (“Well done!

What an expert!”) For a short while, everything went well. Samu, quite the reformed charac ter, kept aloof from his former boon companions. In true Christian spirit, he befriended a lonely youth called Bera, the “Slow One”, the butt of many jokes on account of a misshapen leg. Gradu ally, he wheedled out of his master all

the paraphernalia of a real talatala: white shirt, black necktie, black coat; and, after, by dint of putting on a jolly good show of rapidly failing eyesight, the master’s lady gave him one of her old spectacles (with case, mind you!), his appearance in the pulpit became a real star turn.

However, pride cometh before a fall, and the devil lies ever in waiting for the unwary.

“Bera,” Samu confided to his young admirer, one Sunday morning, whilst they shared tentatively 6d. worth of kava in the seclusion of his house, “we are going to have a po-lotu to-day!”

Now “lotu” is the church service, and a “po-lotu” a continuous one, held every first Sunday in the new month. All the neighbouring villages take part, entering the church separately whilst singing their hymns and, in due course, religious fervour rises to a high pitch, culminating at times in rather unexpected if not embarrassing manifestations.

“A po-lotu?” Bera gasped. “But would you know how to manage that?”

“Why should I not?” retorted Samu rather nettled, “when my father was a talatala all his life—” checking himself suddenly when he realised that the long hidden cat was out of the bag at last!

Hastily he talked on to cover the slip: “Since we have three different gangs, they can come in separately, like vil lages, and once we get them going there is no saying what confessions may not be made.” He gave Bera a broad wink —there was that trouble of pretty Seleni’s, which kept them all guessing, and though the trouble itself was only too obvious by now, the perpetrator was still unknown.

Bera eyed his protector rather anxi ously as he tossed off another cup-full

of the beverage which, to the uninitiated, looks exactly like last week’s soap-suds left in the wash boiler. But, presently, he loped off to take the word round the different houses.

When seen next, Samu had taken the seat of honour in the ring round the kava bowl, on the verandah of the head man’s house, and when the time came for morning service the “lali”, a hol lowed wooden log used by the Fijians as drum as well as church bell, called in vain.

“It’s my rheumatism,” explained Samu to the loyal youth after he had tried to balance himself on wobbly legs. “It always comes on like this when the wind goes round to the north. Be a good boy and tell them I am too busy preparing a fine sermon for this evening.”

The po-lotu promised to be a great event, judging by the various prepara tions that Sunday afternoon. Bera kept close watch on Samu’s house, where the door had remained closed ever since his return from the >kava party in the morning.

At last, when the evening meal passed without a sign of his friend, anxiety drove him to push the door open. There was Samu lying on the mat, in blissful oblivion, beside an empty kava bowl which, to judge from the still wet ring under its rim, had once been full! How had the old reprobate managed to get the stuff? Perhaps, by sending a child to the plantation store. Or had it been gratuitously supplied by somebody envi ous of his glory, or for the sake of a practical joke?

Neither violent shaking nor a bucket of cold water had the slightest effect.

Samu just grunted like a full hog, and succumbed again, an inert mass.

Slowly the “lali” began to toll. Bera

became desperate in his efforts. He made a mixture of a little kava with a hand ful of those small wild chili peppers which nearly bite your head off, and forced it down his throat. It really roused him from his stupour, and what little he managed to say was most un talatala-like.

“The service! The lali!” urged Bera, dragging him into a sitting position.

“Get up! The po-lotu!”

“Tell ’em t’ go t’ hell!” Samu drawled with a dreadful leer, and the next moment he was dead to the world again.

BY that time, dressed in their very best, oiled, scented and neatly coif fured, the congregation had filled the house serving as church. Singing their hymns, one gang had entered after the other, received by those already pre sent with more hymns, and they had sung ever since.

Now, silence had fallen on the congre gation. People began to look at each other: what had become of the preacher?

The headman gave out another hymn.

It had 10 verses and gave the talatala ample time to make an appearance.

When the 10 verses came to an end, with the pulpit still empty, a marked uneasiness came over the crowd. The elders put their heads together, the women cuffed their restless offspring, the girls giggled and the boys showed off.

Suddenly, a deep silence fell on the crowd. In the door stood Bera, dis hevelled, and shrinking from the ordeal before him. Blindly, he made his way to his seat among the young men, where he remained sitting with his head bowed deep in shame and confusion. But the tension of the assembly slowly forced him up. He stood, lifted his head, blinked his eyes in rapid succession, cleared his

throat —but no sound would come. He struggled desperately and at last man aged:— “The talatala—can’t come ”

A big lump rose chokingly in his throat right up to his Adam’s apple. He drew a deep breath, swallowed hard and then said simply and brokenly:— “The talatala —is—drunk.”

Samu, I am sorry to say, is a confirmed invalid by now. He crawls around in his hut on all-fours, and the children peep in and laugh at him. The men still get a lot of fun out of cracking jokes about his fall from grace.