Casca 17: The Warrior (7 page)

Repressing a shudder, Casca looked around. The other organs were being shared out among the village elders. The heart was on a banana leaf before Semele, and the old chief sat waiting, looking expectantly at Casca.

"You're holding up dinner, your chiefness," he heard Sandy say as he realized that he was expected to start the feast.

He couldn't possibly do it. Then he looked up at the hundred expectant faces and realized that he couldn't possibly not do it. "Oh, no," he groaned.

"Sweetbreads we call 'em at home." Sandy chuckled. "They're considered a delicacy
. 'Course, we get 'em off bulls." He chuckled some more and all the people around joined in.

The fire pit was now being filled with stones, and women were hacking the body into pieces, wrapping each piece in banana leaves and placing them on the hot stones together with enormous quantities of taro, cassava, and yams. Then the pit was filled in, covering the meat with earth.

He heard a sharp intake of breath and glanced around to see that the smile had left Sandy's face as he was handed the man's barbecued liver. "Oy mon, I don't think I can do this," he groaned.

A polite cough from the old chief alerted Casca that he had stalled about as long as politeness would allow. All around him men were waiting for him to eat so that they, too, could start on the tasty morsels before them.

"They call roasted man long pig," Larsen said. "It's probably not so bad."

"An acquired taste I suppose," Casca muttered, and picking up the prick, chewed off one of the balls.

To his amazement he found the meat tender and tasty.

He looked around him at the grinning faces as a dozen men followed his example and began to eat. Semele took to the heart with gusto, but the others took one big bite of their piece of offal and passed the rest along.

Relieved to discover this way out of his predicament, Casca, while chewing lustily on one of the late departed's most precious possessions, passed the rest to the man next to him.

The reaction was immediate, and on all sides Casca saw consternation. Everybody had stopped eating and they were looking worriedly at Casca. He didn't need to be told that he was about to create a bad omen. If the war chief did not wish to eat the vanquished foe, it would clearly suggest doubt about the victory.

He moved quickly to dispel any such notions.

He stood, belched, farted, thumped his chest and sat again on the floor, taking back the banana leaf and quickly biting off the other testicle.

The cannibals shrugged and returned their attention to their meal. They didn't understand Casca's little routine, and probably presumed that it was a custom amongst whites when they were eating their enemies. They returned their attention to what they were eating while Casca tried to decide which end of the penis would be the least revolting to start chewing. A disinclination to take the head into his mouth made him decide to start at the base, and he found the meat even tastier than the pig organ he had eaten two months earlier in San Francisco.

The children had now tired of their rope game and were racing for the sea, whooping and shouting and dragging with them the many yards of the warrior's entrails, the contents of which were smeared all over their bodies.

They leaped laughing into the water and sat in the shallows, inch by inch squeezing out the excreta from the intestines and thoroughly washing them in the sea.

When the fire pit was opened and the leaf-wrapped parcels of meat were passed around, Casca was in turn presented with an arm and a leg, but to his immense relief he was only expected to nibble
a mouthful and pass along the rest. He then made a great show of eating a great deal, keeping his mouth and his hands full of the vegetable roots so that nobody thought to offer him more meat.

In a remarkably short space of time there was nothing left of the enemy but a few bones that children were breaking open with stones to get at the
marrow. The whole village had participated in the feast, so that nobody had eaten more than a few mouthfuls of the body.

Yet the meat seemed to have a strange effect. Some of the younger warriors who may have eaten more than anybody else were staggering about as though drunk. Several of them were crudely fondling girls who were responding lewdly and enthusiastically, although until now Casca had seen only the most modest behavior in public. He felt himself to be on the edge of stupor and had to struggle to stay awake, while all around him there developed something like one of the orgies he once used to attend in Rome.

Some music started up on the wooden drums and the stringed instruments, and men and women began to dance. Their movements and gestures became increasingly sensual, the dancers getting more and more excited.

From time to time a couple would stop dancing, seize each other hungrily and quickly leave the scene, almost running into the jungle or behind a house, anywhere, it seemed, where they could quickly set about satisfying their raging lust. Some of them barely bothered to get out of sight.

Others would leave the dancing and come to where most of the people were seated and dance before them, offering themselves to the one they had chosen.

A
number of pretty young girls did this before Casca, and two or three times he was about to get to his feet and accept their offer when suddenly the girl would turn and go back to the other dancers.

When this happened yet again Casca saw the moment when the girl changed her mind. She looked as if she'd been threatened.

Casca looked behind him to see the seated Vivita looking up at the girl. The expression on her face was more of disdain than anger, her mouth partly open, drawn down at the corners, her eyes staring coldly at the younger girl.

The girl seemed to be in heat, and for a little while tried to ignore Vivita's cold stare, concentrating on displaying her charms to Casca. He was fascinated at the duel between the two women, and lusting for the younger one, who was surely his for the taking. He watched Vivita carefully, but she didn't glance at him.

The hell with it
, he decided.
After all, I am a war chief, the hero of the day, and I'm being offered one of the fruits of victory. If I had to chew my way through that damned cooked prick, I might as well accept what's being offered here too
.

He started to rise, glancing at Vivita, who still ignored him but jerked her head up to concentrate her gaze on the eyes of the lewdly dancing girl. The girl's eyes fell, the fire went out of her dance, and she backed away.

Annoyed, Casca turned to look at Vivita. Now she returned his look with a slight smile and a meaningful tilt of her head toward the hut where they had slept. Strong desire for this powerful woman seized Casca, and he got to his feet. Vivita's smile broadened and Casca found himself enchanted by her gap-toothed grin as she, too, got up. With his arm around her they headed for the hut.

Vivita's slow, calm demeanor concealed the urges within her that had been fired by the rare treat of red meat. She hungrily twined her body to Casca's and sank with him to the grass sleeping mat, her hands and lips and breasts and thighs all trying to join with him at once in a frenzy of desire that grew and grew and did not diminish when she quickly reached an orgasm.

Her urgent demands didn't cease as Casca strove to please her, wondering where he himself found the sustained energy. Vivita pushed her body against his, her arms and legs enwrapping him completely, her mouth devouring his. Only when Casca at last collapsed in a long-delayed shuddering climax did she relax, but still held him to her.

In what seemed only a few minutes she renewed her demands. Casca responded willingly enough, but wondered whether he would be able to match her seemingly unlimited desires. The thought crossed his mind that it was a damn good thing that wars amongst these cannibals ended with the eating of only one man.

The next morning just before sunrise Vivita served him a breakfast of fish soup and cassava, and again alerted him that this was a day of much activity in the village and that he should be out and about and participating.

He made his way to the chief's house, meeting along the way Sandy and Ulf, who had been similarly sent from their huts by their women. Most of the men of the village seemed to be present, and shortly Larsen and others of the
Rangaroa's
crew arrived.

Everybody seemed very much at ease, and there was none of the tension or excitement of the previous morning. Casca could not quite tell what was going on, but it was clear he was not important in it. Looking around, he noticed Sonolo and saw that he, too, seemed to have been relegated to a position of unimportance.

Semele and Mbolo were conferring mainly with Sakuvi, whom Casca had seen previously in positions of honor but had not heard participating in this fashion. Today, however, Sakuvi seemed to be in charge.

And so it proved. At a word from Sakuvi everybody moved off, as if to some long-standing arrangement, and Casca noticed that several of the men carried bulging tapa sacks. The crew of the
Rangaroa
tagged on to the end of the party as they left the village and walked for about a mile, climbing the slopes of the mountain until they came to a small plateau.

Casca was faintly puzzled. If he had correctly understood what he'd heard about the terrain, they must be getting close to the territory disputed with the Lakuvi village.

They stopped at a large, cleared patch of ground which looked as if it had been prepared for sowing with some sort of crop. Digging sticks, axes, and other implements lay about the field.

Casca was pleased to see all these tools, as he had noticed that none of the men carried any sort of weapon, so that should the Lakuvi attack them, his .38 would have been the only defense available. He didn't doubt that it would be sufficient, unless Cakabau's muskets should also arrive.

Men picked up the implements and studied them as if they had never seen them before, comparing one with another and making complimentary or disparaging remarks about them.

As usual the bright young Scot was the first of the white men to understand what was going on. "Oy, mon, it's planting time. It's fa
rmers we're going to be today. I'll bet this is the land that's been won from the enemy."

Men were opening the sacks, upending them to tip out carefully cut pieces of taro, cassava, and sweet potato. Within a few minutes everybody was at work, digging holes, planting seeds, and covering them with earth. Casca and the crew joined in somewhat awkwardly, neither soldiering nor sailing being ideal preparation for farming. But they were soon working diligently along with the others.

The sun climbed the sky and the day grew hotter and hotter, but the work showed no sign of slackening. Casca enjoyed it, sweat running from every pore of his body.

When the sun was high in the sky a number of women appeared, carrying on their heads great pots of water and parcels wrapped in banana leaves. They placed these on the ground and squatted beside them.

The men continued working their way along the planting rows until they came close to the women. Then they would stop and squat alongside them. Casca and the crew followed suit, and when everybody was sitting, the women opened the packages and distributed the food—whole small fish, breadfruit, cassava and taro, papayas and bananas.

Vivita was among the women, but she paid no attention to Casca, and chatted only with the other women. Although there was some conversation between the men and the women, it was collective and quite impersonal.

Casca ate hungrily, washing down the food with some of the water. He noticed that there was a great deal of water, and more women arrived carrying yet more, which they placed around the edges of the field.

As the men finished eating they went back to work and the women headed off down the hill to the village.

Casca worked contentedly for some hours. He was just beginning to think that he'd had about enough farming for one day when he noticed that men were stopping work as they came to the end of a row, congregating at one end of the field. He quickly finished the row he was working on and joined them.

Conversation was brisk and light
-hearted. Casca could barely understand any of it, but it seemed to be concerned with the day's work and general farming matters.

As the sun dipped behind the mountain and threw cool shade over the field, the men got up from their rest and took up the pots that the women had placed around the field, using them to water the new plantings. Then everybody headed off down the mountain toward the village.

Along the way they crossed a small stream and dipped the pots full of clear mountain water. Then they bathed away the sweat and the dirt of the day's work, the grown men gamboling in the water like little boys.

Heading back to the village, they carried the water with them, and Casca noticed that it took two men carrying the pots between them by the handles to carry down the mountain what each woman had carried up on her head.

When they arrived back at the village the evening meal was cooking, several women busy inside the cooking house. Many more were sitting around outside, chatting.

Each little group of women sat around an earthenware pot, and from time to time one or another of them would lean over the pot and spit what was in her mouth into it. Then she would take another mouthful of a stringy looking root and go back to chewing.

Casca was intrigued. No men, not even the smallest boys, were chewing upon the root, and Casca had never seen this root presented at a meal.

"What is this root?" he asked.

Setole, Mbolo's sister, who was almost as big as her brother, smiled up at him as she leaned forward to dribble a mouthful into the pot.

"Kava," she said. "We make it now, you drink tonight." Casca managed to nod and smile as he moved away from the unedifying scene as quickly as he could.

"So that's why the women don't drink it at night," Liam laughed, "they've already had the best of it."

For the next several days Casca spent his time with the farmers, enjoying the work, the cheerful company, the after-work bath in the stream, and then the huge nightly meal and the long, relaxing kava session in the chief's house.

From these nights in the chief's house Casca got an insight into the everyday management of the village. With neither the threat of war nor the excitement of the special event of the arrival of the
Rangaroa
, he saw that there was a considerable change in people's roles.

The young women no longer occupied the front of the room, as they had on the night that the
Rangaroa
arrived, but chatted quietly at the back while the older women, wives, and mothers took a very lively part in every discussion.

Semele and Mbolo still occupied the most privileged positions, but where on earlier nights had sat the war chiefs, Sonolo and Casca, and the principal warriors, these places were now occupied by Sakuvi and Dukuni and others whom Casca has seen taking part in the defense of the village, but without any special distinction or authority.

Sakuvi and these others now dominated the conversation, together with a number of the women. From the few words he could understand, it seemed to Casca that the discussions were entirely concerned with crops and planting, the phases of the moon, fishing, building, the mundane matters that kept the village functioning day to day.

Semele was all questions, and as always, every question searched to the heart of the matter under discussion, his great, woolly head describing arcs of wonderment, puzzlement, comprehension, decision.

Casca watched this primitive monarch and wondered. Here in the chief's house, and at all the ceremonies he had seen, Semele always occupied a superior position. But only in the chief's house, it seemed, was he paramount. In the ordinary day to day life of the village, nobody paid him any deference, got out of his way, or even, it seemed to Casca, accorded him due respect.

If he wished to go fishing, the fishermen reluctantly made room for him in the canoe, making rude remarks about his size and usefulness, although he wielded his paddle as effortlessly and effectively as any. At the farm plots he hoed and raked and weeded as industriously as anybody. And around the village children were always trying to trip him up, or to creep up on him and take him by surprise, shrieking in delight when they succeeded and his mighty bulk would leave the ground in fright or in a well-feigned simulation of it. Mbolo came in for similar treatment, and responded in the same way.

Casca also noticed that everybody in the village brought to Semele's feet the slightest thing that bothered them. Anybody, it seemed, could stop the chief anywhere, anytime, and pour his troubles into his ear.

Semele would listen with his infinite patience, ask his perceptive questions,
roll his great head. And often, Casca noticed, the supplicant would go away smiling, leaving Semele wearing a worried frown.

Not
a job to be sought after, Casca thought, and he wondered how it had come to Semele.

"
A job and a half mon, ain't it?" Sandy chuckled beside him, as if reading his thoughts.

"Not one for me, I'll be bound."

"Oy mon, not so loud. They've always an eye out for the next chief, and him who wants it least is him who gets it."

Casca was aware that the young Scot was smarter and more inquisitive than himself. "Is Semele the son of a chief, d'you
know?"

"Of course he is."

"Ah," Casca said, thinking he understood.

"But his father, the old chief, was nae his sire."

"What are you talking about?" Casca demanded.

"Semele came here as a young man from one of the Fiji islands, and after a while the old chief moved him up, treating him like his own son until he was more or less his deputy, and eventually chief."

"So why did the old chief adopt him?"

"Lookit, mon, lookit.
Excellence. Excellence and reluctance is what's looked for."

A
twinge of his well-honed survival instinct surfaced in Casca. He was already a war chief. "But they wouldn't want to make a man chief against his will, would they?"

"Especially and only against your will, m'boy.
And you're halfway there already, I'm thinking."

"Well, they'd be making a bad mistake," Casca grunted. "In the first place I sure don't intend to stay here, and I could never do Semele's job anyway. Sooner or later I'd fuck up if I tried it."

"No matter." Sandy laughed. "When you fuck up too badly, they'll eat you with all due respect. And sing your song for a hundred years."

The bilo of kava passed back and forth, and the discussions proceeded exactly as they had on the matter of warfare. Topics were raised and bandied back and forth, everybody who had an opinion expressing it. Semele asked penetrating questions, Mbolo made the occasional remark, and eventually Semele pulled together all the various threads, a decision was made, and a new topic was introduced.

Meanwhile the hollowed-out coconut shell never stopped moving from the bowl full of kava to one or another of the people and back to be refilled and passed again, the women only taking an occasional ceremonial bib while the men consumed enormous quantities of the stuff.

Casca tried drinking more of it himself, having overcome his distaste for it and its mode of preparation, but apart from the vaguely pleasant numbness in his mouth and a faint tingling on his tongue, he could feel little effect.

It might have been that the attack of the Lakuvi had never taken place. In fact it seemed to Casca that to these people yesterday had already ceased to exist, that it had never existed in the first place.

The story of the day's events was down in the oral annals of the tribe. In both villages the story would be told from time to time. Because of Casca's role in the events, the story might well be still told in another hundred years.

But right now Watalo, the carpenter chief, was the one closest to Semele, and it was to him that the old man directed his penetrating questions, each reply being as thoughtfully considered as those in the warfare discussions. Casca had been told that the discussion was about the building of a new temple to replace the one destroyed in the hurricane that had brought the
Rangaroa
to the island. His agile linguistic ear put together the few words that he understood with the many that he didn't. It wasn't too hard for someone who had spent so many lifetimes learning so many different languages.

These people really loved to talk. The chief would roll out a beautifully sonorous question about, it seemed, roof thatch and the high plain where the grass for it grew and the distance to the village and the phases of the moon. And the carpenter chief would roll back the same question in slightly different words while he thought about it. And from all over the room, one after another, people would restate the question as they contributed thoughts or information, or just conversation on the topic.

Casca realized that this process of involving the whole village in the matter had also happened the night before the battle.