The Adventures of Vela Read online

  The Adventures of Vela

  Albert Wendt

  In memory of Hone Tuwhare

  and Epeli Hau’ofa

  Note: Some of the characters in this novel actually exist/existed in real life. However, the lives the author has given them are largely fictitious.

  Contents

  Book One: Beginnings

  1 The Adoption

  2 Vela’s Beginnings

  3 Mulialofa

  4 The Contest

  5 War Correspondent

  Book Two: The Chronicles of Nafanua

  6 Arrival

  7 Nafanua Unleashes

  8 All Night Recital

  9 In Search

  10 Exemption and Riddle

  11 (((A Breather)))

  12 Uiga-o-Vae

  13 Grave by the Sea

  Book Three: Travel

  14 Nei

  15 Olfact

  16 Nightflight

  17 A Sequence

  Book Four: The Last Adventure

  18 The Return

  19 The Priest’s Tale

  20 Nafanua Returns

  21 The Final Revelations

  Copyright

  Book One:

  Beginnings

  1

  The Adoption

  Is Vela of my dreaming? Or am I the object of his?

  Now he’s got me perceiving through his riddles and metaphysics

  Truth is we can’t survive without each other in a planet teethed

  with silver dollars and ruled by aitu of various fang shapes

  and skin colour or as Vela has sung:

  All streets lead to the Fale of Terror

  Above its front door is this question

  WHAT’S ALOFA GOT TO DO WITH MONEY?

  Merchants with bible-black eyes and smiles

  as bright as new coins hook themselves

  to the ice-blue walls inside

  Assess in orderly litanies the various cuts

  decide on weights and prices

  the profit and sources of supply

  and at their meetings echo this refrain

  What’s alofa got to do with money?

  What’s alofa got to do with a person’s price?

  Literally one morning I woke to him sleeping beside me

  in a public ward Moto’otua Hospital

  Admittedly he was in the next bed and tubed to hanging bottles

  feeding his anaesthetized slumber

  Like me his lifelong duodenal ulcer had perforated

  corroding poisons into his centre the surgeons slit

  open and mopped out that midnight

  (I’d come two weeks before and my stitched

  belly was healing nicely)

  So figuratively our mutual dependence was born

  of the same planet-wide malady: the Sacred Moa bursting

  to let us wear our Century’s medal — upright belly scar morse-coded

  both sides with stitchdots a wicked centipede

  permanently crawling upwards: Camus’ Sisyphus

  repeating the Mountain Odysseus tied to Rock and Eagle

  Yeats’ glad-eyed seers climbing Lapis Lazuli Mountain

  Maui in Hine’s unforgiving tunnel Kuki Kaa fixed

  into my vocabulary and Baxter detailed in our coffee bar conversations

  and carried to a Wanganui Jerusalem which filled his questing

  mouth with the communion bread of aroha (Vela later admired

  my translations of Baxter’s sonnets)

  Enough free-flowing symbolism back to a perforated Vela sieving

  sleep as Mahatma Gandhi’s physical reincarnation

  ebony hide tightly gathering in frugal bone and muscle

  scars not folds fat honed away by perilous journeys endured for generations

  a mythical creature polished to lava hardness but now caught

  in the solid grasp of that hospital siever of the sick and dying

  For days he was curtained with doctors and nurses

  who broke in and out of his coma and replenished his feeding bottles

  though they pronounced him dying: he’d been found bleeding

  from every orifice on the Town Clock steps

  What heartless children would abandon

  their father! Nurse Fa’afetai whimpered (Very un-Samoan I suggested)

  The other perforated ulcers in our ward agreed we were losing

  alofa in our hunt for the mighty Tala

  Aunt Ita Old Testament prophet of my upbringing had visited

  and injected fear of eternal damnation and for my promised

  return to God’s correct premises she’d prayed success into my operation

  Grateful for her divine intervention I was sticking religiously to diet

  and exercise regulations reducing stress by avoiding other victims’ problems

  However Gandhi’s abandoned reincarnation — the resemblance was uncanny —

  kept corroding that resolution as if he’d chosen me

  his last disciple witness accomplice

  Each day I fled his curtained silence to the veranda

  and in gay view of Mt Vaea where RLS is tombed for tourists

  feasted on my son’s science fiction collection

  (My wife brought love in my favourite soups

  My daughters continued my conversion to Cartland

  and the Mills and Boon stable)

  He slipped into my night sleep as flyingfox — cheeky batwinged rat

  squealing estatically as it devoured upsidedown my dreams’ marrow

  (Later he’d reveal that was his atua and insist I tell him

  all the stories about Dracula Batman and Batwoman who from then on he referred to as his ‘revered cousins’)

  Zipp! Pause Zippp! Pause Zippp!

  And I was awake to the final Zipppp! of my dying neighbour uncurtaining

  the morning and then crosslegged he started unplugging his lifelines

  Nurse Nurse! I shouted unwilling to be accomplice

  to his suicide pinning his arms sidewards (God he stank like flyingfox)

  Nurse Fa’afetai and another wrestled him prone to mattress

  and chastised him for ingratitude

  No verbal protest but his bulbous eyes were fired at my betrayal

  Verandawards I retreated while Nurse Fa’afetai doped him

  back to sleeping obedience

  She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t dying

  as Dr Falani had predicted (Vela hated fulfilling others’ prophecies)

  Judas! The snake hiss stung me to his mischevious chortling

  as he picked his toenails and raised black pick to nose to savour

  Did you speak? I asked but he ignored me and inhaled the fragrance

  of his toedirt (Connoisseur of Toejam my children later labelled him)

  By evening without permission he’d discarded his lifelines

  and was roosterfit for dinner which he unpicked of meat

  eating only the overcooked veggies toothless mouth pumping like an

  accordion

  Day after day after day so Coleridge might’ve written

  Vela maintained his haughty silence refusing all medicine and our existence

  Poor beggar’s nuts! Some patients whispered

  Manic depressive! Dr Falani Freud’s disciple interpreted

  Nothing true alofa can’t cure! Nurse Fa’afetai offered

  Why can’t others’ problems leave me alone! I protested to my wife

  But he’s only pintsize she insisted

  He’s the weight of our total history the mountain of ash

  smothering my night breathing I told her

  That night secretly I packed to escape homewa
rds

  Don’t go his whisper blew the mountain skywards

  Sit listen to the tales of my journey

  And I was trapped in the sieve of his breathing

  So he began night after night and out of the hospital

  to my home wife children year after year after year plaiting

  the delicate rope across the abyss of our forgetting

  Sometimes he’d disappear I never asked where

  but guessed to recharge breath at the source of all stories

  or to win more heirs to his chronicles

  Vela the Cooked

  Vela my adopted father who taught

  me the biology of language

  Tagaloaalagi whispered into Vanimonimo

  Vela who appointed me his chronicler

  in the written script of the Albinos

  2

  Vela’s Beginnings

  Runt to complete the litter of six brothers and five sisters (remember

  Christ had twelve disciples) but unlike Maui Ti’iti’iatalaga

  and our other superheroes he wasn’t born of a randy atua

  and delighted accepting mortal: his ringwormed father had to carry

  his filariasis-bloated balls around in a sling

  his mother bred heirs in obstinate silence and was always hungry for pork

  (They’d squeezed him in one rainy afternoon in their taro patch

  in between weeding and planting — too quick a squeeze they hadn’t enjoyed it)

  Unlike our ancestral demigods he was to be

  no ingenious faitogafiti

  no lusty adventurer

  no reckless stealer of fire ‘oso and ava

  no expert fisher-up of islands

  no conqueror of Mafui’e Atua of Earthquakes

  no plaiter of magical snares

  no snarer and beater-up of arrogant La

  no suicidal challenger of death Goddesses

  He wasn’t even to be his parents’ favourite

  to be envied despised picked on by jealous older kin

  In truth they’d let him fatten his sinews

  off their uncomplaining generosity

  (afterall aiga must feed aiga)

  Our grand songmaker was to be punily unheroic

  inventing his beauty in songs fished up out

  of his moa the storehouse of our genesis:

  (1) Le Tupu’aga

  In the Beginning there was only Tagaloaalagi

  Living in the Vanimonimo

  Only He

  No Sky no Land

  Only He in the Vanimonimo

  He created Everything

  Out of where He stood

  Grew the Papa

  Tagaloa said to the Papa Give birth!

  And Papata’oto was born

  And then Papasosolo

  And Papalaua’au and other different Papa

  With His right hand Tagaloa struck the Papa

  And Ele’ele was born the Father of Humankind

  And Sea was also born to cover

  All the Papa

  Tagaloa looked to His right

  And Water was born

  He said to the Papa Give Birth!

  And Tuite’elagi and Ilu were born

  And Mamao the Woman

  And Niuao and Lua’ao the Son

  In that manner Tagaloa created

  Everything else

  Until Tagata Loto

  Atamai Finagalo and Masalo were born

  There ended the children of Tagaloaalagi and the Papa

  (2) Vela’s Birth

  The Lulu Atua of his aiga swept in at his birth

  and perched on the fale rafters

  gazing down

  In the Atua’s moonbright silence

  he was to hear his death song

  at the moment of his birth

  Death

  Death is

  Death is a song

  To hear it early is to decipher

  all paths to all songs

  Each song wellcaught wellshaped wellsung

  illuminates the ocean path that dances

  from the Fafā at Falealupo World’s End

  and the agaga begin their shuffle

  to Pulotu Estate of Saveasi’uleo half-man

  half-congereel who cannibalized his brothers

  in the waves and in repentance retreated

  to Pulotu to await the promised fulfillment

  of his genealogy in Nafanua his daughter

  the Clot-of-Blood-that-was-Hidden

  Atua undefeated uniter of our islands

  last to relent to the Albino aitu

  with their magic Book and preaching sticks

  Our songmaker started in the Lulu’s gazing

  and like us had to pace the lava channel

  until he was agaga in Tagaloa’s reflection

  leaping up into Saveasi’uleo’s inventive mouth

  (and the promise of time without end)

  to survive each shade of Po:

  Potagotago Night-that-Gropes

  loto searches for the yearning body

  Pouliuli Night-that-is-Black

  agaga can’t map the moa’s geography

  Posoloatoa Night-that-is-Forever

  when fear in the soul has no ending

  Pomalemo Night-that-Drowns

  finagalo is abandoned in the formless tide

  Potuputupu Night-that-Grows

  mana’o reaches the atua’s bowels

  Pofanau Night-for-Giving-Birth

  Tagaloa’s maggots become human

  Pomaliu Night-for-Dying

  masalo is convinced there is an ending

  Poula Night-for-Abandonment

  the senses break into dance and orgy

  loto agaga fear finagalo mana’o

  maggots masalo fuse in the uninhibited

  conjunction of sprung phallus and vulva

  and we are born with wisdom

  (3) His First Song

  Uncauled but slick still with amniotic fluid and blood

  roped to his mother as the impatient midwife drags

  him out he slaps into the Ao and screams/sings:

  Va-Va-Va-Va-aaa!

  His first song is of the Va the Space between all things

  like the birth fluid holding all in the Unity-that-is-All

  Va the relationships that must be nursed and nurtured

  Va the Harmony in which we are one: stone bird fire

  air fish atua blood bone shit sound colour cloud

  tree smoke eye lizard turtle shark

  The raftered Lulu deciphered our songmaker’s first song

  and decided ‘All his life he’ll want to swim back up

  his mother’s sacred passage’

  (But remember brothers Maui in

  his valiant quest for immortality was ground

  to sad meat in Hine’s obsidian channel!)

  (4) His Name

  Our ancestral superstars sometimes

  took their names from

  their birthday’s omens

  No auspicious signs on our

  songmaker’s day though: the midwife griped

  about not being fed

  the placenta was shoved

  into a shallow hole under a palm (dogs

  would dig it up that night and devour it)

  in Niusā the Sacred

  PalmGrove the wind dozed

  in the conch’s mouth

  no vaisalo for

  the exhausted mother who didn’t care

  what name he got

  in the bay his brothers

  raised their night lobster traps

  and found them empty

  their father snored on

  under sad dreams floundering in

  the rafters of the aumaga’s fale

  Someone suggested Vela Cooked

  because he looked red and hot

  (The records don’t identify the suggester)

  So Vela it was to be

  Ordinary Hom
ely Easy

  on the tongue and to forget

  Over the elusive stretch of his self-

  making he was to be called

  (in order of aging):

  Velaputa Fat-Vela who at

  two was as cuddly as

  a succulent suckling pig

  Velavaetoga Yaw-footed-Vela who at

  twelve sprouted screamingly painful yaws

  as large as hibiscus flowers

  Velasoso Stupid-Vela who at

  fifteen stuttered at the girls

  and tripped over their cruel giggles

  Velafaipese Vela-the-Songmaker who at

  twenty and the arrival of Mulialofa

  sang his gay way everywhere

  Velalēāu Vela-Can’t-Reach who at

  thirty was wifeless (or haremless as was

  the practice) and childless

  Vela-ma-le-Ma’ila Vela-with-the-Scar

  who at thirty-five got speared in the arse

  for seducing the blind widower next door

  Etc

  Etc

  Etc

  (5) Songs of the To’elau

  Yet unfluent in the sea’s languages

  in the beach’s dreaming in the coral’s pain

  in the turtle’s talk in the dolphin’s leaping

  in the sue’s slow dance in the octopus’s grasp

  at ten he could catch the To’elau’s fluent skip

  sweep and leap its quivering caress on his skin

  its wise songs of islands to the south where

  men ate dogs sharks and one another sucking up

  the blood’s salt tunes and mana and hung

  their agaga from āoa trees to dry

  and the fat daughters of Po suckled insatiable aitu

  with dog claws and pig mouths on the milk

  of the earth’s languages

  as his lean mother had tuned him at her hungry breasts