The Adventures of Vela Read online

  shaping the net of his ears to snare

  the lullabies of allthings

  In his old age veins clogged with night he was to sing:

  We can’t rewalk the exact footprints

  we make in the stories of our lives

  But we’ll hear again our footsteps

  like the lullabies our parents sang us

  the moment our stories end

  Perhaps out of our footprints

  our children will nurse wiser lullabies

  Aside One

  In my telling there’ll be many asides —

  my style wanders but I promise

  they’ll all tie up finally to our songmaker

  Everything is intelligent said Pythagoras

  Everything is relative said Einstein

  Everything is floating

  We’re atua with arseholes

  and a man called Freud is dead

  said Dr Farani my crazy neighbour

  What’s an arithmetician a dreaming

  physicist and a wise madman got to do

  with our songmaker? you may ask

  (And who was Freud? And what

  are they doing in our pre-

  Papalagi saga?)

  Sang our songmaker:

  Through my songs I explore

  all my possibilities to sustain myself

  I’m Pythagoras Einstein Falani

  and Freud I’m everyone

  I’m everything

  And everything is intelligent

  relative and we are atua excreting our deaths:

  we can imagine ourselves immortal

  yet know we must revert

  to Tagaloa’s maggots

  We’re holy rock ’n’ rollers looking for seats

  in Tagaloa’s rocking band

  So c’mon babies suck up and shoot

  out the joy of all who we can be

  Tagaloaalagi Boss Atua won’t let us self-destruct

  We’re holy rock ’n’ rollers searching

  for the unique beat of our land

  (6) Pig

  Even songmakers are reefed on

  the inevitable mystery of cock

  springing fatly and humming

  The taulasea split his foreskin’s tightness

  It bled but a week of stinging

  seawater healed it

  One night on the beach

  his penis sprang roundheaded and demanding

  He discovered it a onestringed instrument

  of exquisite pleasure and he played

  it tightly into the sultry To’elau

  weaving around him like a temptress

  Fia mea! Fia mea! he chanted

  monotonely to the beat of his composing hand

  (he’d heard his brothers’ urgent singing

  in the secrecy of the pigpens)

  He hummed to his instrument’s centre

  Then POW it spat whitely into the To’elau’s clutching

  Addicted he played it nightly sometimes furiously

  when in the fale’s communal dark he heard

  his brothers and their wives furtively thinging

  ‘I’ve so much to give away

  but no woman’ll have it’ he sang

  in his erect loneliness

  In our country pigs are aristocratic

  (Sometimes fed better than our children)

  Our songmaker’s duty was to feed those beauties daily

  Kinky stench of pig and mud

  in the grunting darkness the moon as round

  as a raunchy sauali’i’s testicle

  sniffing wetnoses of pig nudging his crevices

  ‘Hold still! Hold still! Hold still!’ he sang

  to his thighs pumping

  ‘Hold stiiiill you beauty!’ And into

  the hot clutch of slippery pig

  he shot his gift no woman wanted

  That week as he fed his beauties

  and sucked in their heady odour

  the song caught in the net of his head

  one he was never to make public

  but crooned under his breath whenever

  he thinged woman man or beast:

  Pig is best

  Pig is delicious

  Pig is true aristocracy

  Pig Pig Pig!

  Pig never spits back

  So hold still my lovely hold still

  (By the way he never ate pork again)

  3

  Mulialofa

  (1) The Taulasea from Lona

  Mentors are absent

  from the first twenty years

  of Vela’s chronicles

  With other heroes

  there are narratives of wise teachers —

  usually a toothless grandfather (or grandmother)

  But for Vela

  not even a waywardly expert aunt

  is mentioned

  Neglect rejection loneliness

  were probably themes

  of these two decades

  One revealing fragment:

  Hurry up do this do that!

  Quick or I’ll come and slap your mouth!

  Watch out or I’ll break your jaw!

  May you be cooked in a umu!

  I’ll come and trample you!

  Hurry son of a stinking pig!

  The sau’ai’ll come and eat you!

  Life’s a slap here there everywhere!

  Life’s a kick here there everywhere!

  Another:

  Tane’s forest wears a melting cloak of dew

  When the forest was born

  Some immense atua paced this track

  Its tears are on the stones

  Come back kind atua

  Come back be my friend

  And one sure verse still sung today:

  A shadow in Pili’s crawling

  Stalker of loneliness in the forest of Tane’s head

  Companion of atua in the stream’s whispering

  and wild boar breaking the bonds

  of the Fue-Tagata

  Thirsty drinker of dew the La sucks up at noon

  Vela is pigeon soaring

  Vela is the sweep of wings the lift

  of swift sky and the Atu’olo tumbling

  away to Fagaloa and Mulifanua

  Then out of the sunset

  came the abundant Taulasea from Lona

  (with his bundle of cures):

  Mulialofa Loving-Arse or Arse-for-Loving

  or the Arse-End-of-Love

  Mulialofa-Ailalolagi Mulialofa-Eater-of-Worlds

  Mulialofa-Taulasea-o-Fatu Mulialofa-Healer-of-Hearts

  who in a week of soft nights with

  ti leaves coconut oil herbs

  and incanting hands reduced

  Vela’s father’s ‘burden’ to sling-

  less proportions and hooked

  him on the cure

  and Mulialofa became aiga indispensable

  The women giggled

  the men guarded their rear

  and Vela fell in love

  (2) Solo a Mulialofa

  (Mulialofa as songmaker

  composed many songs and poems

  Only one remains though)

  Tepa i le Lagituaiva Look up at the Ninth Heaven

  Tepa i le sami i’ila Look at the glittering sea

  O fea le ao? Which is the head?

  O fea le i’u? Which is the tail?

  Tino o le tane Body of a man

  A’o mana’oga o se fafine But the desires of a woman

  Atua o le atunu’u Gods of the country

  Fa’alogo mai i la’u tagi: Listen to my pleading:

  Sui lo’u tino e pei na Change my body as

  Sui e Tagaloa fua o le Fue-Tagata Tagaloa changed the fruit of the Fue-tagata

  Sui o’u totoga i le tama’ita’i Change me into a woman

  Pei o le ma’a taula Like the anchor stone

  O le va’a a Tuli Of Tuli’s canoe

  Na pa’ulia i Amuli That ran aground at Amu
li

  Fia manava mai le malemo Want to breathe from the drowning

  Ia maua le va fafine To find the split of woman

  Ae le o le tu a le tama Not the erection of the male

  (3) Solo mo Mulialofa

  (Vela composed many songs expressing

  his love for Mulialofa but in my research

  I’ve found only the following four sonnets)

  (i) Mouth and Tongue

  You taught me that mouth and tongue know

  more languages than talk

  languages subtle dazzlingly various

  in awakening the blood’s fire

  Quivering trail of lips and breath down the spine

  and smooth flank light as a butterfly’s dance

  Lazy lick of tongue shaping the affluent geography

  of nipple belly navel heart

  soft inside of thigh the spring of cock

  singing and mouth closing moistly around

  Slow suck and pulling upwards

  draining all of me to stem and head

  and filling my moa with alofa

  that will hold me to you forever

  (ii) Nose

  You showed me too that the nostrils’ gift

  is apt entry into the celebrating blood

  Nose fossicking from head to toe in hair

  ear-round the twist of urgent saliva

  tongue armpit sweat and thick hair

  splendid with musk and urgency

  Over trembling skin pores opening

  all the vapours drunk with messages of love

  into all the forbidden crevices valleys

  circling down to arsehole —

  yes I can say it now without shame —

  arsehole! stenchhole! shithole of exquisite smells!

  Love knows no forbidden territory

  or boundaries imposed on the heart

  (iii) Hands

  Today my spine creaks like a dead tree

  and your long healing hands

  perform their miracle again in

  the spellbound eye of my fading memory

  Their supple slip and squeeze unclenching

  the luminous pains of my youth

  each finger a gift soothing every vein

  of yearning in the deep Po-o-Mana’oga

  all young people have to endure

  to unravel the body’s demanding tides

  Hands that teach all the body over

  until I’m again as green and singing

  as the heart of the youth

  that I was and loved you

  (iv) Cures

  My father too laughed behind your back

  ‘Like a woman!’ they said but they needed

  your cures for knitting broken masalo

  and the easily-wounded loto

  through your mending of diseased flesh

  and the body marked by sorcery

  For instance my heartless father you unslung

  from the curse of his whale-heavy balls

  and he could once again outcreep

  swift young women in their midnight fale

  and run fleetly away if their relatives

  awoke and gave honourable chase

  At first I was ashamed to love another man

  but you cured my agaga of that

  4

  The Contest

  ‘We are the remembered cord

  that stretches across the abyss

  of all that we’ve forgotten

  We don’t inherit the past

  but a creation of our remembering’

  sang Vela

  (1)

  The contest remains a divining bowl of seawater

  in my decaying skull (in it I read again the

  tides of my life):

  Alopese of Manu’a half-atua half-tagata born

  of the Rock where the La rises and Tagaloa

  hatched his human reflection

  Alopese the Tuimanu’a’s Lord of War who read

  the signs and harnessed the atua’s ferocity

  in the Conch’s whispering

  Diviner of the Word who fattened on the mana

  of defeated heroes the tanifa’s bitter blood

  and the ambidextrous songs of the dolphin

  Reader of the Future who could lift out

  of body as the blue-beaked ti’otala

  that cheekiest of birds

  It was he who ate the night away as he flew

  and at the bright rooster’s call we woke

  he was the unblinking eye of our malae

  Eyes as rapacious as midnight

  tight wrap of muscle and austere sinew

  around his talking staff

  Long hair bleached skullwhite

  with limestone ancient tattooed skin like

  shark’s hide bristling

  Leaning on his staff rooted to earth

  he rose (even the La shivered) to clog

  my moa with fear (and awe)

  ‘I’ve come to meet the one who is man

  and woman gifted who they say can sing all

  the seasons through into the future!’ he called

  ‘There’s no one of that gift here!’

  ‘He is here!’ And his gaze swept over

  and hooked our faletele

  (People who are afraid will sell even family)

  ‘Yes go out!’ my family ordered Mulialofa

  (My father even pushed him out)

  Unleashing his mane to flow down

  his back like black lava (such arrogant

  beauty) he stepped into the narrowing eye

  (In the dying creature that is my body

  our love burns again like a togo fire

  welcoming fishermen from the cold)

  Ten paces was the Va between them

  to leap across in imagery coined by

  the inventive weapons of the unforgiving heart

  The rules were as simple as a spearpoint:

  alofa was the chosen topic each would offer

  four-line verses alternately

  each verse to follow a set rhyme scheme

  and so it would run until one

  was empty of artifice

  then the winner could demand

  anything of the vanquished (even his

  agaga finagalo loto masalo)

  (We circled them watched waited

  for one to tire to bleed to sing himself

  out of contest into infamous humiliation)

  (Art is the devising and disguising

  of tricks that make the leap

  look effortless magical miraculous)

  Guest Alopese was to start

  His opener is a turtle’s egg still

  hatching in the sand of my tongue:

  ‘They say alofa is stored in the Va

  between your heart and your lungs

  They say alofa is a pain

  rich in death’

  Mulialofa’s counter:

  ‘Alofa grows out of the Va

  in Tagaloaalagi’s magnificent head

  They say alofa is a cure

  rich in joy’

  Alopese:

  ‘Alofa is spring water bubbling up

  from unknown depths of earth

  They say alofa is a thirst

  that can’t be quenched’

  Mulialofa:

  ‘Exploring the depths of alofa

  true lovers will find no ending

  Their search is the quench

  for their thirst for alofa’

  So they matched leap for leap

  giving alofa marrow flesh and breath

  and we fed on their succulent imagery

  As word of the contest spread

  all our islands and atua joined

  the witnessing circle to feed spellbound

  The contestants rested at night

  and I would sneak (in our fale) into Mulialofa’s

  reassuring arms — ‘Nothing to fear’ he’d whisper

 
But each night he felt leaner

  as if his daytime verses had fed off his fat

  and the dreams of his exhausted sleep

  Until my frantic mouth couldn’t raise

  his impotent slackness gripped

  by his fear of losing

  By the thirteenth night he was stone

  to my consoling as he wept

  in the drowning sleep of the defeated conjurer

  Next morning under the La’s blade

  he admitted defeat and bowed his head

  to his lean shadow on the breathing grass

  (I’ll remember him always in that pose:

  an atua of polished stone alight with sun

  solid resigned to the penalty of the game)

  ‘I demand his bones’ Alopese said

  The feeding circle (my father among them) wanted

  Mulialofa to pay the just but terrible price

  With long bamboo knife they slit open

  his right leg from groin to toes

  (He didn’t utter a sound)

  Peeled away the bandage of flesh

  (The malae began to drink his blood)

  Broke out the thigh bone

  Tossed it to Alopese who whooped

  sucked out the marrow noisily

  and of the hollow bone made a flute

  He fluted arrogant tunes

  while they unstitched each bone

  from the house of Mulialofa’s flesh

  and tied together with sinnet a Bone-man

  white as smiling teeth who danced

  one-legged to Alopese’s fluting song:

  ‘Bone-man dance like a dog

  Bone-man jump like a shark