Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English since 1980

editions.

INTRODUCTION

In many of our Pacific languages nuanua means rainbow, an appropriate description of the diversity of cultures and languages, of fauna and flora found in Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. It also aptly describes the richness and variety of our literatures, both oral and written.

People have been living in some parts of our region for at least 45,000 years. During that enormous span of time we explored the whole Pacific and settled most of it. Our Pacific ancestors were able to sail for hundreds of miles in set directions, to return home and then to repeat those journeys. Through these acts of discovering, exploring and settling the vast Pacific our forebears created and shared a larger inhabited world.

As soon as written languages were introduced into the Pacific in the nineteenth century, literacy spread rapidly, first through Polynesia, then through the rest of our region. Literacy was used primarily by the missionaries to convert the people to Christianity. The first converts were in turn used as missionaries to convert other Pacific countries. Contrary to popular belief, most of the missionaries who won the Pacific for the Christian God were our own people.

Literacy in the indigenous languages also allowed our people to correspond with one another and thereby start a written literature, conduct business and even set up printing presses. As with other introduced technology and influences, we indigenised writing, using it for our own purposes.

Up till the 1960s, most of the written literature about Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia was by outsiders. Only a few literary works by Pacific Islands writers had been published. For example, Florence ‘Johnny’ Frisbie, of the Cook Islands, published Miss Ulysses of Puka Puka (New York: Macmillan, 1948), an autobiographical story of a young girl and her life with her papa’a father on the island of Pukapuka. She has continued writing since and Nuanua contains ‘The Bed’, one of her recent stories. It seems that our literature has come full circle.

Perhaps the first novel by a Pacific Islands writer to be published was Makutu, by Tom and Lydia Davis (1960). This is the tale of a young English doctor and a ‘narrow-minded New England spinster’ who come to work on the imaginary island of Fenua Lei. She is makutu-ed, as it were, for breaking the tapu of the island’s most sacred shrine. It is interesting that after a series of careers as a doctor, scientist and politician, Tom Davis has again published a novel, Vaka (IPS, 1992). An extract from Vaka appears in this book.

But apart from those examples and the work of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell in Aotearoa/New Zealand in the 1950s, poetry, fiction and drama written in English by indigenous writers did not start to emerge until the 1960s and 1970s, with the establishment of high schools and tertiary institutions such as the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific. This literature was part of the process of decolonisation and the cultural revival that was taking place in our region, inspired by and learning from the anti-colonial struggles in Ireland, Africa, the Caribbean, and India, the civil rights movement in the United States, the international student protest movement and the opposition to the Vietnam War.

Though our region remains a mix of the colonial and the post-colonial, what can be called post-colonial literature in English is now well established and growing all the time. For the purposes of this anthology I define Pacific literature as that written or composed by Pacific Islands peoples, especially the indigenous peoples.

Colonial literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama) was part and parcel of the arrogant process of colonialism in which we were viewed as part of the fauna and flora, to be studied, erased, ‘saved’, domesticated, ‘civilised’ or ‘developed’. We were viewed almost wholly from a Eurocentric perspective. That literature was by Europeans who had supposedly ‘discovered’ us and the islands we had discovered and settled over hundreds of years; they were traders, missionaries, colonial adminstrators, development experts, journalists, novelists, poets, anthropologists, literary critics and papalagi settlers and their descendants. Colonial literature assumed, whether consciously or unconsciously, that the coloniser’s language was superior to ours and part of saving and civilising us was therefore to convert us to that language. The results of this were devastating. In Australia, for instance, many Aboriginal languages (and their speakers) were destroyed. In Aotearoa, te reo Maori nearly suffered the same fate, and it is still under threat. In Hawai’i the same thing happened.

If we appeared at all in colonial poetry and fiction we were seen as exotic, as peripheral, as ‘extras’ in the epic, as stereotypes or as noble and heroic forms of escape. In non-fiction we were specimens to be studied and analysed. The histories written about us were really about the colonisers and their activities among us. Much colonial literature justified the very process of colonialism and our conversion to progress and development!

Colonial literature created a whole mythology about us. This is still being perpetuated in some of the supposedly post-colonial anthologies and in writing by the descendants of the Papalagi/Pakeha settlers. Today some writing considered by Pakeha/Papalagi writers to be post-colonial, we consider colonial.

Even in Australia, Aotearoa and Hawai’i, which from the viewpoint of their indigenous populations are still colonies, our post-colonial literature declares itself to be different from and opposed to colonial literature. We need only read the work of the Aboriginal playwright Jack Davis and the novelist Mudrooroo, the Maori writers Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera and Keri Hulme and the Hawaiian poets Joseph Balaz and Haunani Kay Trask to see that.

How does our literature show itself to be post-colonial? By what it says and how it says it. We have indigenised and enriched the language of the colonisers and used it to declare our independence and uniqueness; to analyse colonialism itself and its effects upon us; to free ourselves of the mythologies created about us in colonial literature.

Colonialism has changed us radically but I don’t support the outmoded and racist theories, such as the fatal impact theory, which underpin most colonial literature about us. According to these theories and views, we, the indigenous, have been hapless victims and losers in the process of cultural contact and interaction; our cultures have been ‘diluted’ and ‘corrupted’; we have even ‘lost’ them. All cultures are becoming, changing in order to survive, absorbing foreign influences, continuing, growing. But that doesn’t mean they become any less Samoan or any less Tongan. We and our cultures have survived and adapted when we were expected to die, vanish, under the influence of supposedly stronger superior cultures and their technologies. Our story of the Pacific is that of marvellous endurance, survival and dynamic adaptation, despite enormous suffering under colonialism in some of our countries. We have survived through our own efforts and ingenuity. We have indigenised much that was colonial or foreign to suit ourselves, creating new blends and forms. We have even indigenised Western art forms, including the novel.

For me the post in post-colonial does not just mean after; it also means around, through, out of, alongside, and against. In the new literatures in English it means all these. Our literature has, since the 1960s, been inventing and defining itself, clearing a space for itself in relation to colonial (and other) literature. It is not surprising that our literature began and gained euphoric power and mana within and alongside the movements for political independence in our region; movements which worked to decolonise our countries and to forge national identities rooted firmly in our own ways of life and in our own pasts. Post-colonial literature was part of the drive for roots, cultural revival and rebirth. (Its most recent political phase is the attack on our corrupt elites and the injustices perpetuated by neo-colonialism.) And as our anti-colonial political movements were inspired by other anti-colonial movements, our literature was inspired by and learned from the post-colonial literatures that emerged out of those movements.

Our literature puts us at centre stage, with our accents, dress, good and evil, dreams and visions. As in other former colonies, much of our early literature is nationalistic, angry, protesting, lamenting a huge loss. That loss is defined differently from country to country. The literature attempts to reconstruct what has been lost or changed. Consequently much of it is a fabulous storehouse of anthropology, sociology, art, religion, history, dance and music. Novels like The Crocodile, Maiba, Potiki, the bone people, Leaves of the Banyan Tree and Dr Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World show this well.

Much of our early literature saw the colonial and the indigenous as in irreconcilable opposition, the colonial as the evil destroyer; no benefits at all were seen in colonialism or the emergence of blends and mixtures and fusions of the indigenous and the foreign, even though our literature itself is living proof of that. It is often modernist and uses the realist mode — here again is the influence of Western/colonial art, literature and education on our writers. Much of our fiction is of political and social commitment, with a heavily tragic, pessimistic vision of our times; it shows the other features of modernism too: deliberate ambiguity and complexity, irony, unified structures and characterisation, the search for originality and uniqueness, and the concealment of artifice in the hope of transcending time and place. You can read Eliot, Yeats, Pound, Forster, Auden, Woolf, Faulkner, Hemingway, Wright, Ellison, Lessing and others in that literature.

Many of these influences came to the Pacific through our writers’ university education and reading and through literature courses which also included post-colonial writers like V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Bessie Head, Ngugi wa Thiongo, and Kwei Armah. The so-called magic realism of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez has also entered our literature. So now we have a complex and expansive blend of realism and magic realism in our writing. But at the heart of all this are the indigenous ingredients: the techniques of oral storytelling and other oral traditions; art, dance and music; and indigenous philosophies and visions.

Features of the postmodern can also be seen. Like the post-colonial, postmodernist literature is still defining itself, clearing a space for itself, declaring itself against some of the tenets of modernism. The postmodern is deliberately pastiche and parody; it is playful and does not bother to hide the process that writing is; it is self-referential and consciously literary; it is often anti-elitist and goes for the ‘discontinuous narrative’ and inconsistent character development; it sees art as a commodity, the reader and buyer as crucial participants in the making of art; it sees reality as relative and changing; it is often a mix of realism, fantasy, autobiography, parody, and so on; it tends to condemn the moralistic and didactic features of realist fiction. Postmodernist writers like Calvino and Eco have been influential in our region. However, postmodernism is not new to Pacific indigenous cultures, where storytelling is always seen as a process which changes according to the mood of the teller and the reactions of her audience, and where art is a commodity produced for the community.

Lali

Lali: A Pacific Anthology, published in 1980 and reprinted several times, was my first attempt to anthologise a representative selection of prose and poetry in English from the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Samoa. Initially when I planned Lali, I wanted to include in it work by Tangata Maori, Tangata Aborigine and Tangata Hawai’i. But in the end I decided to confine the selection to English and to the countries I’ve mentioned for the following reasons. There are over 1200 different languages in our region; it is impossible to anthologise in one volume all the literatures in those languages. The writing by Tangata Maori, Tangata Aborigine and Tangata Aborigine was already being anthologised in their countries. Being more conversant with the writing in English, I restricted the anthology to that language which, after two hundred years in our region, is now our major language for regional communication, education, business and trade. Through my work at the University of the South Pacific from 1975 to 1987 I helped encourage, foster and publish that writing, particularly in the countries of that university’s region. So I drew mainly on the literatures of those countries.

The same constraints and considerations have made me restrict the selection in Nuanua to prose (mainly fiction) and poetry in English and to the same countries. I have chosen only from work published since 1980.

After Nuanua the urgent need is to publish national anthologies in our indigenous languages. Whatever money is available should be devoted to that. If our indigenous languages are to remain strong and inventive their literatures should be taught and read widely.

A word of caution: Lali and Nuanua may create the impression that the strongest and most extensive literature in our region is represented by fiction and poetry. That is not so. Like writers everywhere, more Pacific writers write non-fiction than fiction or poetry or drama. Led and inspired by the publishing programme of the University of the South Pacific’s Institute of Pacific Studies, under the dedicated editorship of Ron Crocombe, our writers have produced works of history, autobiography, economics, politics, geography, sociology, science and much more.

The literatures in our indigenous languages continue to flourish and grow. Our oral literatures, which stretch back hundreds of years, are astounding collections of mythologies, genealogies, poetry, stories, songs, chants and incantations. These are still our richest literatures even though most of them have not been recorded or passed on to our young people through our education systems. Many of our writers continue to draw their strength and inspiration from our oral traditions; some reuse or reinvent our ancient mythologies to map the present, some use the techniques of oral storytelling and recitation and oratory. There are many examples of this in Nuanua. John Kasaipwalova’s Sail the Midnight Sun and Rexford Orotaloa’s stories in Suremada take the use of those techniques to greater heights.

Since Lali

Much has changed in our region since the publication of Lali. At that time there was no country called Vanuatu: now the New Hebrides has become independent Vanuatu. Most of our countries are now either independent or self-governing. However Indonesia, the US and France continue to hold on to most of their Pacific territories, using them as nuclear testing sites and military bases. After the US was forced out of Vietnam it turned many of its Pacific territories, especially in Micronesia, into heavily armed and sophisticated military complexes; and thus denies the indigenous people their political independence. Though American Samoa is still an American territory, I have grouped it in this book with Western Samoa because our fa’a-Samoa and aiga ties are still firm. In New Caledonia, French Polynesia, East Timor and West Irian the indigenous movements for independence have gained strength although many of their leaders and supporters have been killed or imprisoned by the colonial settlers and authorities. A literature in French by the indigenous peoples is developing but not as fast as ours in English,

The indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, Australia and Hawai’i, now minority groups in their countries, continue their valiant struggle for sovereignty and self-determination. That struggle has led to a remarkable renaissance in indigenous ways of life and in all the arts. The Tangata Maori renaissance with its exciting developments in the arts is a truly innovative movement of wordwide significance. Our artists and writers in other Pacific countries are learning from it.

Decolonisation still inspires much of our writing. Colonialism, racism, modernisation and their effects on us remain major preoccupations in our literature. A sense of profound loss still pervades that writing. At the same time in those countries struggling for their independence the writing is full of anger and of hope.

Since the Second World War, and particularly since independence, there has been a rapid growth in the populations of our countries. Urbanisation is intensifying and is causing political and social dislocation, overcrowding, major health problems, rising crime rates, widespread unemployment and poverty. Most of our governments do not have the resources to create jobs, feed, educate, and house our populations adequately. Consequently foreign aid, in all its forms, has become the biggest industry in our region. Most of our national economies are heavily dependent on it: without it they would collapse. Some of our economies have been described as ‘remittance’ economies, dependent for their survival on money sent by our migrants living abroad. So much for the enchanting myth of South Sea paradises free from foreign influence and control!

Since the 1960s, especially, many of our people have migrated to get work and better education for their children. Countries such as Aotearoa, Hawai’i and the US now have large Pacific Islands populations, including third-generation Pacific Islands people. In 1991 there were almost 168,000 Pacific Islanders (or 5 per cent of the total population) in Aotearoa. They are influencing and changing sports, dance, theatre, art and literature. Some of our writers now live outside their countries of birth. Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, who went to Aotearoa as a young orphan from the Cooks, is now one of that country’s major poets and novelists. The Samoan poet Talosaga Tolovae lived and taught high school in Tokoroa; he died there in August 1994. John Pule went from Niue to Aotearoa when he was five.

Apart from losing many of our most energetic and adventurous people, our countries suffer the other political, social and economic problems and ills which plague most developing countries. Much of our writing focuses on these problems and their effects on individuals, families and communities. Our writing is also examining and attacking the growing corruption and abuse of power in our elites. Disillusionment, irony, anger and cynicism are the most obvious features of that writing.

But our writing also celebrates what all literatures celebrate: love, sorrow, joy, death, pain, happiness, and through it, language and the gift of speaking, saying. Styles range from the lyrical realism of Russell Soaba and Konai Helu Thaman, through the wild and savagely delightful satire of Epeli Hau’ofa and the complex storytelling style of Rexford Orotaloa, to the surrealistic poetry-prose mix of John Pule.

Expanding tertiary education, radio, television and video, newspapers and other media, and the growth in the production, distribution and study of writing within our region have brought our writers closer together, made them aware of what is happening and being written throughout the region. Now the work of our leading writers is influencing the writing of our younger ones. It is also shaping how we see ourselves and our cultures and how we are seen by others, and destroying some of the stereotypes and myths created about us by outsiders.

Selection

As in Lali I have selected stories, extracts from novels, and poems which give a representative picture of what is being written and which, in a combination of ways, have appealed to me as things well discovered, well said, well sung; as things new, striking, energetic; poetry and prose which continue exploring the possibilities of language and what we are and the forces shaping us and our ways of life, giving face and body and voice to us and our magnificent ocean.

We have very few full-time writers — you can’t earn a living from it! Some, like Momoe Malietoa Von Reiche and John Pule, are also artists. Others are bank managers, politicians and advisors to politicians, senior civil servants, actors, dancers and musicians, and teachers in the universities or other educational institutions. Many of the writers who were in Lali are not in Nuanua, either because they have stopped writing altogether or because they have not published new work. One of the main features of our writing is the large number of writers who publish a few pieces and then disappear, perhaps quite appropriately, into the civil service, politics, the professions and business. Some of them, like Vincent Eri (who died in early 1994), Maori Kiki and Paulias Matane, have become businessmen or ambassadors or heads of government departments.

Some of the writers in Lali are here again. Since 1980 many of them have published substantial books of poetry or prose or both. Exciting new writers have also published work over the last fourteen years. They are showing other ways of using English and enriching that language further.

Pacific literature is now taught in many countries within and outside our region. Teachers and researchers are now adding very sensitively to the critical commentary and analysis of our literature. They are also enthusiastic supporters and promoters of it. And more publishers are willing to publish it too.

Anyway, wantoks, here at last is Nuanua.

Malo le onosa’i! Ia manuia pea le tapuaiga!

Over the years taken to compile Nuanua many people have helped and advised me. I am particularly grateful to John Barnett for his detailed and expert editorial assistance, to Elizabeth Caffin and Gillian Kootstra of Auckland University Press, and to Reina Whaitiri, Loata Vuetibau and Helen McArdle of the University of Auckland.

A

LBERT

T

UAOPEPE

W

ENDT

Auckland, Aotearoa, 1994

COOK ISLANDS

ALISTAIR TE ARIKI CAMPBELL

from The Frigate Bird

It was the first time I’d met the Purple Lady. I passed her as I walked up the outside stairs to my motel unit. It was dark, but there was a little light from a window above my head — enough to see that her face was as smooth as an egg and that she was wearing a purple coat. I can’t explain why I felt uneasy, because she was ordinary enough and polite as well. In response to my greeting, she flashed her teeth at me — and big shiny teeth they were.

I’d had an exhausting day on the Northerner express and arrived late in Auckland. I took a taxi to my motel and after a few drinks in the house bar I went to bed, trying not to be aware of the disgusting bed-cover, which was grimy and reeked of stale sweat and cheap perfume. This was supposed to be a high-class motel, and I couldn’t understand why my room was so obviously substandard. I had always got on well with the management, so why did they give me this room? I was puzzled and irritable.

It seemed I’d no sooner closed my eyes than I woke up to the sound of gentle knocking on my door. I cursed and put on the light and was thoroughly confused. I thought I was still at home and kept opening a door and finding myself in the wardrobe, tangled up with clothes-hangers and my jacket and overcoat. And where there should have been a door leading to the living-room there was a blank wall. I finally sorted out where I was and opened the front door, only to find that the secret knocker had gone.

I was now in a state of panic — the rats were in the house. I had the heebie-jeebies. I was going nuts again. I was certainly not in the right frame of mind to fly to Rarotonga and from there take a boat to Penrhyn, my mother’s homeland. Only yesterday my sister had asked me why I was going. Good question, I thought, but aloud I told her I had promised my editor a story about our childhood in the Islands.

I took a taxi to the airport and felt my spirits sinking all the way. Not even the dry sense of humour of the gruff taxi-driver could raise them. But I did manage a ghost of a smile when he told me about one particular passenger he’d picked up.

‘Even an old fellow like me,’ he said, ‘is got at by women who want to have sex in the cab. One night a handsome well-spoken woman in her early forties — a night nurse at some hospital — tried it on. She waved a ten-dollar note in my face and said, I don’t suppose you can change this. Hop over to the back and we’ll call it quits.

‘I looked at her through the rear-vision mirror and said, No thanks — I have plenty of change.

The flight to Rarotonga was a nightmare, and when we arrived in the early hours in the humid heat, I felt a wreck. Fortunately, I got through customs without the usual hold-up. I checked in at my motel, took a sleeping tablet and went to bed utterly wretched. Why did I think of that building society manager with whom I had discussed my loan application? I told him I was short of money, but things would get better.

He looked at me and said mournfully, ‘Things never get better, mate.’

Several times I get up in the night and go to the toilet, and in my delirium I argue with that sad defeated man. ‘Should I send a loan application to God? I shall ask him for a sound mind. Surely that’s not asking for too much.’

There’s a deep sigh from my familiar in the corner. I shall get to know him well before journey’s end.

A young girl brings in my breakfast. I tell her I’m from Wellington.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘that’s no good.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘No — but my friends have, and they say it’s no good.’

I tell her that her friends are mistaken, but she wanders off with a pretty shrug of her shoulders. She is about eighteen, plump and breasty. But now she comes back and leans against the door and asks me, ‘Do you know that lady in the purple coat? She got here last night when you did — on the bus.’

Panic flares in my stomach. How can that be? I saw no such person either on the plane or in the bus that brought me and a few sleepy guests to this motel.

‘No — I don’t know her.’

Later in the morning I visit the local doctor, a heavy owl-eyed Scot, and tell him I’m depressed. He asks me to describe my symptoms, and I mention a feeling of panic, insomnia and heavy legs. He looks searchingly at me and writes out a prescription for a hundred and twenty anti-depressant tablets. ‘Take four each night before bed. You should start feeling better again in about a fortnight or three weeks.’ Why does he look at me with such bitterness? Three weeks! How can I possibly last that long?

Feeling better now that I am stocked up with enough tablets to see me through the voyage, I buy some food to take back to my unit: a filled roll, a bag of oranges and a large pawpaw. I try to eat the roll, but my mouth is too dry. Eating is going to be a problem on board, and that worries me. I’ll have to stick to fruit. I am exhausted. That encounter with the doctor has drained me of energy. I sprawl on my bed and watch a tiny white lizard. He is swift and agile. He darts forward, flicks out his tongue, withdraws, darts forward again, withdraws — then vanishes. How can I bear this agony?

I manage to call a taxi — that takes some doing — and I share it with a young Singaporean Chinese who is here to attend a seminar on making concrete bricks from coral sand. He is under the impression that I am paying the fare for both of us and is inordinately grateful. His face drops when I pay only for myself. I feel too apprehensive to worry about his feelings. For there she is — the same dirty old ship that took my sister and me to Penrhyn some years ago. I remember her squalor and stench and I have to steel myself before I can face going aboard.

I haven’t mentioned that I saw the Purple Lady yesterday — how could I forget? I had to steady myself against a tree. The Premier’s limousine passed me, pennants fluttering, and there she was looking out at me, big teeth exposed in a grimace. The Premier must then have said something funny, because both were laughing, and he was holding a finger to his sunglasses to stop them falling off. It was so bizarre that my skin crawled. The car stopped — and I fled to lose myself in the crowd.

The odd thing is that the breasty young Island girl keeps popping up everywhere I go. It may sound paranoid, but I suspect that she and the Purple Lady are in this thing together — though don’t ask me what thing. And once I caught her laughing. Sometimes I become so tense that I move like a puppet — jerky and uncoordinated. When crossing the road, I take a step forward and snap my head to the left. There’s no fluency in my movements — it is stomp, stomp, stomp, on my wooden legs. Is it any wonder that the Island girl laughed? But I hate her for it.

I had to fight for my bunk. I had moved my gear into the cabin and was resting up in my bunk when a young man — actually, little more than a pretty boy — came in, black eyes flashing, and said severely, ‘What are you doing in that bunk?’

I was flabbergasted. ‘Doing? What do you think I’m doing? The cabin boy brought me here — and I’m staying put. Yours is the lower bunk.’

‘It’s not my bunk — it’s my mother’s,’ he said, sulkily.

The mother turned out to be a reasonable woman. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I told her.

‘That’s all right,’ she said.

This little spat drained me of all my energy, and I was relieved when they went out and left me alone. I was so tired, I actually fell asleep, which I seldom do during the day, and when I woke up we were at sea. I was again disoriented and at first had no idea where I was and how I’d got there. Worse still, my mouth tasted vile, and I was in a blue funk. The ship was rolling heavily. One moment my feet were higher than my head, and the next the reverse was true. I had the awful feeling that when my feet were uppermost fluid was seeping from my stomach into my mouth. I sat up in despair. If that was the case, I was done for. It was 1.30 a.m. Should I get the skipper out of bed and explain to him my predicament? Would he be prepared to turn the ship round and return to Rarotonga? He’d think I was mad if I told him that the drug wouldn’t work as long as it seeped into my mouth. Should I put it to him — for he seemed a reasonable bloke — that if I had a bunk that ran parallel to the ship the problem would be solved?

Then, in a flash, the solution came. What if I kept my head at all times higher than my body? There’d be no leakage then. An inspiration — brilliant! I arranged my pillows against the bulkhead and sat bolt upright. And at once I had doubts. I would have to sit that way throughout the entire voyage. I’d look ridiculous — and the little kids would come and point their fingers at me and laugh. Then came another flash. If I was suffering from seepage, than surely the others would be too, but you don’t see them sitting up in their bunks and whining about it. Why? Because we are all engineered so that these things don’t happen — stupid! I felt much as Rutherford must have done when he split the atom.

I tried to have my first meal with the others, but the food, curried chicken, turned to ashes in my mouth. My whole body was on fire, and whoosh — I had an attack of prickly heat, spreading downwards from my head, until my whole body was on fire.

‘Not eating?’ asked the cook.

‘Not hungry,’ I replied, pushing my plate away and beating a hasty retreat.

The woman who has the bunk below me tells me she’s going to Penrhyn to buy pearls. She is married to a Penrhyn man and knows the people well. She’s like a doll — never a hair out of place, clear blue porcelain eyes and a flawless complexion. Naturally, I call her Living Doll. She tells me we won’t reach Penrhyn until the weekend after next. I count on my fingers and work out that the tablets should be biting by then.

We are standing off Aitutaki and there’s a lot of movement on deck. Somebody throws a sack of oranges into the cabin, and I sit up and see one of my cabin mates peeling a green orange with a flick-knife. He is a powerfully built man, about my age. He is a Penrhyn man, with that little dash of pride that Penrhyn people seem to have.

He hands me the peeled orange, and I thank him. I tell him what Living Doll has told me about marrying a Penrhyn Islander, and he snorts angrily.

‘He married to an Australian man, not a Penrhyn man.’

I’ve noticed that Islanders sometimes say ‘he’ when they mean ‘she’. Why did Living Doll lie? Is she part of the conspiracy? She looks squeaky clean, but you can never be sure.

I feel safe in my bunk. It’s my castle, and if it comes to the Final Test, it will be fought here.

Last night I had a strange and terrifying experience. I could sense the Giant Toad — have I mentioned him to you? No? Well, I could sense him stirring in my solar plexus, but before he could harm me I lobbed a hand grenade — a tablet — at him and set him back. But he stirred again and grew so huge — to an increasing roll of drums — that I had to fling five more grenades at him and knock him for a six. Then suddenly all sorts of things happened — like in a Marx Brothers movie. Rockets went off in the sky, my ears whistled, my nose steamed, and nerves all over my body popped and sizzled. All of which I found so interesting I stood aside — so to speak — and observed. But I didn’t forget my deep breathing. I was conscious that I might be under surveillance, so I kept my mouth under the sheet.

As far as I know, Living Doll is the only person on board who knows of my condition. I told her yesterday I was having a nervous breakdown, and she was kind enough to fetch me a glass of water so I could take my pills. But I can’t get over her lying to me.

Another quite extraordinary thing happened to me — when was it? I get so confused, it’s frightening. Anyway, I felt this nerve twitch in my solar plexus. It inched its way like a worm up my body and round my heart, then headed for my neck. A door slammed and the nerve went out like a light. This happened several times until the nerve took a new course, went straight up my body and my neck, made contact with my brain and blew a fuse. The flash made me gasp and sit up. This happened many times, and I felt I had to defend myself by concentrating hard and thwarting the Enemy. I heard Living Doll asking me if I was all right, but I wasn’t letting on. You can’t be too cautious in enemy country. Was it appropriate that I thought of Jacob wrestling with the Angel?

I am certain now that the crew is aware of my condition — and the passengers too. I heard two boys go past, and one said to the other, ‘That fellow there is going crazy.’ I was so indignant I almost called out. And the other night, when the deck passengers were holding their evening service, I was convinced they were praying for my soul. They believed I was possessed by demons and they were exorcising them with gusto.

I have been worrying about Living Doll. Is she one of them? I saw her teeth when she snapped at the cabin boy, and they looked awfully big and white and sharp. I need no reminding of when I saw them before.

There’s a fat pig of a man who drifts about the passenger quarters. He has the loudest voice I have ever heard — and doesn’t he use it. He’s in the next cabin at this very moment, bellowing like a bull. Big Mouth, I call him. The other day I got so angry with his shouting that I went next door and asked him to keep his voice down. He was so astonished, he stood there and gawped at me. It had occurred to me that he was one of them, but no, he can’t be — he’s too stupid.

We’re plodding along somewhere in the wide Pacific. My muscular friend tells me we should reach Manihiki at midnight. I don’t know if I can trust him altogether. That knife looks awfully sharp — and he’s a bad-tempered man, easily aroused to fury. He hacks the top off a drinking coconut as if decapitating an enemy — a good man to have on your side in a brawl. He hands me the coconut he has topped, and I drink gratefully. He’s a wild man is Muscles, but he’s all right.

I realise now that I have been barmy. It takes a lot to admit such a thing — you’ll agree, I’m sure. Well, I should have been able to read the signs, but somebody keeps changing the rules. Last night I went to the toilet, and was trying to piss, when I heard the Devil roaring in fury. I opened the door and looked out and saw nobody. I tried to piss again, but my knees were knocking together, and nothing came. The roaring started up again, and I was so scared I almost took to my heels. Then I made a big discovery: that was no Devil roaring but the sea in the outlet pipe. At least I think it was. I popped another pill to be on the safe side.

What does the Devil look like? His face is that of a huge insect, brown and armour-plated, with hundreds of eyes. That’s all I’m allowed to say. And the Praying Mantis is his courtier at table. Courteous to your face, but look away and — wow! — he’s crunching your head like a stick of celery.

One night I had this experience. It was decidedly odd. I thought I was lying in my bunk, which kept moving its position to different parts of the ship. It was a dream of dissolution, I suppose. Then, as I was dropping off, I thought I was lying alongside some kind of stockyard that was divided into small pens containing no animals. One moment Big Mouth was bawling beside me, and the next he was half a mile away, shouting his stupid mouth off. You wouldn’t have him for a friend, would you? Anyway, he must have been trying to tell me something — but God knows what.

Rua the cook is an odd bird, I must say. He looks no more than a grubby kid, but he’s all of twenty-five. He’s small and stocky, with lank black hair through which he peers uncomprehendingly at the world. His face is shiny with sweat. He speaks slowly and incoherently. I can’t understand what he’s trying to say most of the time. It makes me mad. Is he drunk or popping pills? Muscles comes in and urges me to eat, ‘Go on — have your breakfast. Eat. Kaikai good today.’

‘What did you have for breakfast?’

He clams up and looks uneasy, as if he’s given too much away. I rephrase the question, but it’s no good — I’ve lost him.

We are standing off Manihiki, and though it’s still early in the morning, it seems that the whole population is swarming all over the ship. Outside my cabin, the winch is chugging away. Groan, groan, groan go the steel hawsers unloading the cargo and, later in the day, loading copra. It’s strange that although the engines are making a hell of a din you can talk quite softly and be heard. There are many strong smells about, from smoking oil to the stench of the bilge, but no matter how overpowering these may be you can still smell a fart.

Big Mouth is back. He went ashore to terrorise the natives and is now next door thundering in his usual style, but I take no notice of him. It would be clear to a blind man that he’s trying to rile me, but I have other things to worry me and I ignore him. I’m not getting any better. There was rain about, but I think it bypassed us. I stare through the porthole, feeling absolutely rotten. We are passing a string of pretty islets, some quite tiny and supporting a few palm trees, others quite big and densely covered.

The men are trawling for barracuda, big game fish that fight to the end. There is much laughter and horseplay. They hack at the struggling fish and slice off chunks to hand around. It becomes a feeding frenzy — the knives flash and raw gobbets are consumed. Even I get caught up in the excitement, grab a piece and scuttle off to my hidey-hole. But, alas! I gag on it and almost choke. This is a hell of a life. I lie down.

I must have slept, for it’s quite dark now and we are lying off some island, engine stilled. Rakahanga — no, by God! Manihiki. Living Doll tells me we’ve come back to pick up passengers. I am confused. I thought the plan was to pick them up on the way back from Penrhyn. ‘It’s all changed,’ she says.

‘Are we sailing direct to Rarotonga after leaving Penrhyn?’

‘Nobody knows.’

‘Nobody knows!’ Think of it. It’s a farcical situation. I’m terrified of the irrational. It seems pretty barmy to trawl for fish in a cargo ship, wasting hours of time (not to mention oil), when we could have sailed to Rakahanga. I now learn we have returned to Manihiki to pick up a Catholic priest to take him to Rakahanga. Even a priest at the heart of this confusion does little to ease my mind. And what was it that Living Doll said to me when she returned to the ship after going ashore? ‘Oh, by the way — a lady sends her regards …’ That was below the belt.

‘A la-lady?’ I stammered.

‘Yes — she sends her regards.’ Living Doll laughed. ‘And her nose is purple, too. She must have been drinking.’

How could she laugh when my mind was at risk? Suddenly I was frying inside my skin. I felt weak and very threatened. I had to lie down.

I’m in the eleventh day of my Great Ordeal, and I don’t feel the slightest bit better. In fact, I feel worse — much worse. I’m in terror of the Giant Toad.

The Fat Boy who occupies the fourth bunk in the cabin came in just then — he must have scented blood — looked around and went out again. He’s a glutton. He sometimes lies in his bunk and eats steadily for an hour or more — biscuits, oranges, bananas, sweets, coconut flesh — all are stuffed into the gaping hole in his face. Fatty is from Penrhyn, I’m told. Heaven preserve me — we might be related! Which reminds me — I expected Rua to bring me my dinner. Stuff you, mate! I’ll survive in spite of you.

Will they ever be able to transplant minds? One day they may have the technology and