Under the Wide and Starry Sky (34 page)

“You're about to get your wish, Mr. Stevenson,” Captain Reid said. The slender young Scot, topped as usual by his tartan bonnet, took a final gulp from a tin cup before returning his attention to the ship's wheel.

“Which wish is that?”

“For a
braw
adventure, sir. The
Equator
shall make for Apemama.”

“Apemama? The home of …”

“Tembinoka, aye.”

Fanny saw Louis's back straighten and his eyes shoot sparks. “The Napoleon of the Gilberts?”

“The same,” Reid replied.

Louis giggled jubilantly.

“Have you met him?” Fanny asked.

“Oh, yes. Several times. You will, too—he does all his own trading. He comes aboard and sometimes stays overnight. Eats our food, which is all for the good, because it means we have something that he wants. He has a huge appetite for new objects.” Reid laughed. “He has a huge appetite.”

“And he has copra …”

“Houses of it. That's how he sells it. By the houseful.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

Reid's brows went up. “Well, I don't cross him. He has killed coldheartedly in his day. They say he murdered one of his wives who betrayed him. Put her rotting corpse out in front of his palace as a lesson to the others. He won't let whites stay on his island but for one broken-down old fellow who is a recluse. Oh, he allowed a missionary to stay around long enough to teach him English, then booted him off. He won't even let traveling natives from other islands stay. No, Tembinoka must be the only man in charge, you see. He has a few chaps as lieutenants, but mostly, he is surrounded by his women. Has a whole harem.” Reid turned to his first mate. “Smarten up the ship. We are headed into Apemama.”

In a few minutes, sailors with mops and buckets were scrubbing decks and overhauling the trading room. In the distance, Fanny could see the slender strip of atoll and its interior lagoon. “So small a kingdom for so great an ogre,” she mused aloud.

The
Equator
edged carefully through shoals until they dropped anchor. The sun was so glaringly bright upon the beach that the glittering white strip seemed to bore into Fanny's retinas. Onshore she saw a village smattered with high-roofed huts but no people. Apart from the sound of the waves, the scene was eerily quiet.

“Now we wait for our visitor,” Reid said.

Soon enough, a handful of people appeared. A boat carrying the king and a large ladder approached the ship. “He once had a ship's ladder collapse under him,” Reid explained. “Now he brings his own.”

Fanny understood the need when she spied the king climbing onto the
Equator
's deck. Tembinoka's large head of black hair came up over the ship's railing, and then his great brown forearms lifted up a massive body attired in a costume that stole her breath away. It was a cardinal-red velvet uniform so braided and beribboned, she wondered if somehow the king had seen a Gilbert and Sullivan production. If his costume revealed a giddy streak, his face did not. He had a hawkish nose, piercing black eyes, and a fiercely sober mouth.
He's all business,
she thought.

After Reid introduced the king to Louis and Fanny, Tembinoka began his appraisal of the trading room's contents. Bored quickly by the bolts of fabric and appliances, he moved through the ship, poking his head into every cabin. When he got to Fanny's room, he spied a dressing case that caught his fancy.

“It is utterly worthless,” she whispered to Louis, “certainly useless for a man. I keep my hair combs and such in there.”

“I am afraid we can't sell it,” Louis piped up.

The king looked at his face for the first time. “How much?” Tembinoka asked in his high voice, clearly having assumed that Louis was starting a round of haggling.

“Gift from a friend,” Louis said, “so sorry.”

The king looked at him wearily, like a man accustomed to a familiar gambit.
“Kaupoi.”
He smirked. Fanny suspected the word meant “rich man” or, more cynically, “Mr. Important.” Tembinoka took a bag of coins from a retainer and spread out twenty pounds in gold. Twenty pounds!

Louis said, “I don't sell anything. Please accept this as a gift.”

Fanny emptied the case and Louis put it into the king's hands. They watched in horror as his features melted with shame. He was accustomed to being cheated by white men but was startled by white generosity. When he prepared to depart the boat with Fanny's case under his arm, Louis seized the moment. “Might my wife and I stay on your island for a couple of weeks while the
Equator
makes its rounds to other islands?” he blurted out.

The king dropped his head and did not respond, only descended his kingly ladder. Within a short time, a carved wooden jewel box appeared as replacement for the gift, but no answer to Louis's question came with it.

“Why do you want to stay on his island?” Fanny asked.

“Because he is a story, I can tell already,” Louis said. “He is like no one else.”

When Tembinoka returned early the next morning, they were seated at breakfast. Upon his approach, Fanny surmised the king was bringing one of his women, for she spied a dress in the distance. In fact, it was Tembinoka himself coming into the saloon, attired in a woman's green silk frock, a pith helmet, and blue glass spectacles. He sat across from them, and after a few syllables of greeting, proceeded to stare silently at each of them. Fanny squirmed under his inspection and made work of chasing her eggs across the plate with her fork so as not to have to look up again. Louis chatted on gaily as if it were all perfectly normal. Captain Reid interjected that Louis was a knowledgeable man whose main interest in the South Seas was to come to Apemama and report back to Queen Victoria all he'd learned. At that point, Louis's jaw dropped and he fell silent.

After what seemed an eternity of staring, the king said simply, “You good man, you no lie” and “You good woman. You come my island.”

So it was that they found themselves living in Apemama. Tembinoka ordered that four houses on stilts should be moved to the spot of their choice on the beach. Lloyd and Fanny and Louis watched in amazement as many sets of legs moved together under the big upturned-basket houses they called
maniaps.
If one of the movers tarried in his work, the king aimed his Winchester just above the offender's head, and the fellow stepped livelier.

“I can only assume some locals have been displaced because we are here,” Louis worried aloud. “That can't be too good for neighborly relations.”

When the huts were in place, Tembinoka decreed that his subjects should observe an invisible
tapu
circle around the group of houses. The king walked the circumference himself so that no misunderstandings might occur. No native was to go inside that circle or disturb the newcomers in any way. Then he made clear his expectations of the Stevensons. He wanted to come to their house when the spirit moved him, to enjoy what they were eating. If he did not come, they were to send a plate of their dinner to his compound. His people would work for Louis and Fanny, but only Tembinoka could give them orders. And one other thing: He liked it quiet. No noise.

The latter prohibition was stunningly evident that first night on the beach. Huddled under a mosquito net with a pot of insect powder burning nearby, Fanny and Louis listened for some sounds of life in the village but heard only the gentle lapping of waves.

In the following days, the king showed them his kingdom. He met them each day in a dazzling new costume fitted carefully to his figure, each garment bearing exaggerated dimensions of features one found in traditional clothing, and each made up in vibrant fabrics with decorative flourishes unlike any they'd ever seen. Tembinoka had a style distinctly his own. On the morning he was to show them his storehouses, he appeared in a turquoise silk morning coat with tails that fell to his heels.

“That is a lovely color,” Fanny said, and she meant it. “It is the color of the sea.”

Tembinoka nodded at the compliment. He led them to his palace, a collection of rustic buildings surrounded by a fence. Inside the huts, women of every age, shape, and manner of dress moved about, attending to their responsibilities. Some cleaned, some nursed babies. A few slept on mats. Taking them all in with a sweep of his arm, the king said, “My family.” He summoned his first wife and introduced her formally to Fanny and Louis. The oldest of the women, she seemed gracious and on perfectly good terms with the other wives in the household.

The king summoned a woman in charge of firearms, who returned with a case containing a dissembled pistol that he specifically asked for. Then Tembinoka directed a different woman—this one in charge of napery—to show Fanny recently acquired embroidered napkins.

Next he took them to a large building where a grim-faced woman in charge of its contents unlocked the door and ushered them in. Piled from floor to ceiling were the machinery and fripperies of civilization that the king had managed to lay his hands on: bolts of fabric, piles of blue eyeglasses, feathered hats, high-button shoes in every size, barrels of tin cups, jars of ointment with lids gone rusty, axes, Winchesters, cases of tobacco, spittoons, inkpots, clocks, and stoves.

After the tour, they sat on the king's terrace and drank
kava
. It soon became clear why the chief was allowing them to stay: He had his own agenda. He pressed them with questions. How many fathoms high is Windsor Castle? the palace builder wanted to know. How much did it cost to buy a schooner in Sydney? Evidently, the king's choice to preserve the islanders from the influence of other cultures meant he was in quarantine, too.

From navigation and building, his thoughts turned to medicine. The girl in charge arrived as instructed, holding a bottle of laxative syrup.

“You savvy?” he asked Fanny.

“Yes, I know it.”

“Good?”

“I use this.” Fanny wrote down the word
Castoria
for him.

“Betta?”

“Much better,” Fanny said. “The ship carries it. We will get some for you when the
Equator
returns.”

The king pulled a meerschaum pipe from his pocket. He signaled a young lady who stayed nearby with matches and tobacco. As all his subjects were required to do when they approached him, she crouched and then crawled over to him.

In his simple English, Tembinoka told the legend of his family's beginnings—the first parents being a heroic woman and a shark—about the wars his ancestors had waged, the wars he had waged, and the uncle he had to send away from the island for betraying him. He talked of his own power and how he liked things organized. Fanny's instincts about Tembinoka were confirmed as he talked on. Despite his tight-fisted approach to governing, he talked of how deeply he cared for his people. The king was a smart fellow. He was not only the ruler of some three thousand people, he was their chief poet, architect, historian, philosopher, and inventor.

In the evening, as they left the king's quarters, Fanny noticed old crones sitting intermittently along the enclosing fence. These were the palace guards, she learned later, who watched through the night for any irregularities. They communicated with each other by throwing stones.

That night Louis and Fanny stayed awake for hours under the mosquito net, scribbling madly into their diaries by the light of a lantern, intent on noting every exotic detail they had witnessed.

“Where are the men?” Fanny wondered aloud.

“They're out there, in the huts and elsewhere, but they're invisible, aren't they? Obviously, they hold inferior positions, except a few of his trusted minions. Did you notice those fellows who came in to confer with Tembinoka about doings in the village? I'm sure they were spies. They must come in every day to fill his ear.”

“The king is keeping a tight lid on his strange little paradise,” Fanny said.

Louis scratched his head. “I suppose Tembinoka thinks he can maintain control of his kingdom by keeping outsiders away, especially whites. You can't blame him. But his quarantine can't last. His little cache of Winchesters is nothing against the German or French or American powers. When one of those countries decides he has something they want, he is going to topple. And along with him will go the identity of the people—their oral history, the legends, the songs. Isn't that how these things work?”