Missus

Maku And His

The Tale of an Errant Cook Is.

Cornet Player

By “Tukapa Koko”

IT was through John D. Rockefeller, senior, that I met Maku and the Nordic gentleman known to his fellow-whites as “Rustic-Bower Rawley”.

Messrs. Rawley and Maku were not in troduced by the wealthy American in person—he was too busy at the time be ing dead; though why, with all that pile of dollars to bribe the Reaper, I can’t understand.

John D., however, was survived by the Institute he had founded. This valuable society had made arrangements with our Administration to supply to each Cook Islands household a free sanitary out fitting of the “deep-pit” type, without any strings tied thereunto. All one had to do was apply, and assist Maku in the moulding of the cement “potera”, as natives called it, that formed the main adjunct to that cleanliness which is next to godliness.

The erector of rustic bowers, Maku’s overlord, was a fair, short chappie with a West-Riding accent. He was a nice fellow; in spite of his regrettable choice of profession, he was well liked. Maku was a tall, gangling Aitutakian half-caste —a sort of Abe The Rail-Splitter, tup

pence coloured and less the whiskers, but with the legs and nose all present and correct.

They for my own household most satisfactorily, and Mr. Rawley and I were great friends. Rawley was an in teresting chap and he was a good talker, too, when one got used to his burr.

Maku, beside his architectural abilities, was a cornet player of some note. Not having been able to hear Paderewski, I do not say Maku was better; but the Aitutakian was able to render “Yes, Sir, that’s my Offspring” with vim, brio, elan and dash. Mangaia was holding dances at the time; and when Maku assisted with his cornet, he endeared himself to one and all.

This was just what Tutara, the stout sharer of Maku’s joys and sorrows, whom he had brought with him, feared and objected to. Maku, I fear, was something of a Don Juan of the sanitary profession.

His great talents —musical, I mean—pub licly displayed, made him the admired of certain gay Mangaian damsels, and Tutara became aware of a certain lone liness, Like the Benedict in the anecdote, Maku at times seemed to forget that he was married!

It all came to a head when the sanitary instrumentalist was detected by a most basely suspicious and evil-minded Mangaia “cop” in a “delicto” that Tutara,

without waiting to hear the defence, de cided was too “flagrante” to overlook.

Maku was about seven feet high, while she was a little brown dumpling of a woman. She could not reach Maku’s ear with anything but epithets; but her eye lighted on the cornet, and, as Freud tells us, repressed emotion tends to vent itself on the nearest object.

I was aroused from a day-dream by the sound of violent altercation, and a strange, metallic bumping that seemed to come from the clump of palms at the bottom of neighbour-pro-tem Maku’s garden. I looked that way; Tutara was enjoying revenge, not waiting for the Deity to' repay, as Scripture warns us is wisest when we are sinned against.

Gone was Tutara’s Mission-inspired, church-member meekness, her patient sufferance of wrong. The cornet, banged against the palm-tree by the “woman scorned”, with all the power of her stout arm, could not stand the gaff. It gave up its pistons and springs—the latter, joyful in release, sprang in all directions with cheery pings—and, finally, the ghost.

It is a characteristic of the Polynesian that, once a moral offender has been punished, the sin is considered atoned for. Tutara’s rage began to cool, for she remembered that the wind-instrument was not Maku’s personal property, but that of the Aitutaki Brass Band, by whom it had been lent for the period of Maku’s sanitary tour of the Group.

The effort, too, had been weakening, for Tutara was not at that time in a condition to be worried with domestic troubles and disputes. She celebrated her victory by throwing a party—herself!

Maku, erring spouse, was smitten to sym pathy and repentance as his wronged wife fell among the fragments of the late music-horn in a twelve-stone faint.

Next day, all was well. Maku, forgiven, made cement “potera” and, with a blithe whistle, rendered the National Anthem of Rarotonga—the paternal declaration I have previously mentioned, which is howled by dogs on that Island — with brio and vim once more.

Along with his reputation, he, plumber, repaired the abused instrument with solder and pious repentance, and next dance was rendering his chef-d’oeuvre as usual.

But Tutara was there too, church member or no church member!