"Michener, James - Hawaii" - читать интересную книгу автора (Michener James A)

Hot nights were followed by blazing days, and the only thing that seemed to live in the canoe was the dancing new star as it leaped about in the coconut cup which Teroro studied; and then late one night as the navigator watched his star, he saw on the horizon, lighted by the moon, a breath of storm. It was small at first, and wavering, and Mato whispered, "Is that rain?"
At first Teroro would not reply, and then, with a mighty shout, he roared into the night, "Rain!"
The grass house emptied. The sleeping paddlers wakened and watched as a cloud obscured the moon. A wind rose, and a light capping of the sea could be seen in starlight. It must be a substantial storm, and not a passing squall. It was worth pursuing, and everyone began to paddle furiously. Those with no paddles used their hands, and even the king, distraught with hope, grabbed a bailing bucket from a slave and paddled with it.
How desperately they worked, and how tantalizingly the storm eluded them. Through the remaining portion of the night, the canoe sped on, its men collapsing with thirst and exhaustion, in
FROM THE SUN-SWEPT LAGOON
87
pursuit of the storm. They did not catch it, and as the blazing day came upon them, driving the clouds back to the horizon, and then beyond, an awful misery settled upon the canoe. The paddlers, their strength exhausted in the fruitless quest, lay listless and allowed the sun to beat upon them. Teroro was of no use. Old Tupuna was near death, and the pigs wept protestingly in the waterless heat.
Only the king was active. Sitting cross-legged on his mat he prayed ceaselessly. "Great Tane, you have always been generous to us in the past," he cajoled. "You have given us taro and breadfruit in abundance. You brought our pigs to fatness and birds to our traps. I am grateful to you, Tane. I am loyal to you. I prefer you above all other gods." He continued in this way for many minutes, hot sweat upon his face, reminding the deity of their close and profitable relationships in the past. Then, from the depth of his despair, he pleaded: "Tane, bring us rain."
From a short distance forward, red-eyed Teura heard the king praying and crept back to him, but she brought him terror, not assurance, for she whispered, "The fault is mine, nephew."
"What have you done?" the king asked in spittle-dry tones.
"Two nights before we left Bora Bora I had a dream and I ignored it. A voice came to me crying, 'Teura, you have forgotten me.'"
"What?" the king rasped, catching his aunt's withered arm. "That was my dream."
"A voice crying, Tou have forgotten mel' Was that your dream, too?"
"No," the king replied in ashen tones. "Two stars, combing the heavens, looking for something I had forgotten to put into the canoe."
"Was that why you unpacked everything at the last?" Teura asked.
'Tes."
"And you discovered no lack?"
"Nothing." The two wise people, on whom the success of this voyage now depended, sat despondent. "What have we forgotten?" They could find no answer, but they knew, each now fortified with substantiation from the other, that this voyage was conducted under an evil omen. "What have we forgotten?" they pleaded.
In bleak despair they stared at each other and found no answer, so Teura, her eyes already inflamed from watching the merciless sun, went out to the lifeless platform and prayed for omens, and as she gave her whole being to this duty, the great blue shark came beside the canoe and whispered, "Are you afraid that you will die, Teura?"
"Not for myself," she replied calmly. "I'm an old woman. But my two nephews . . . Isn't there anything you can do for them, Mano?"
"You haven't been watching the horizon," the shark admonished.
"Where?"
"To the left."
And as she looked, she saw a cloud, and then a disturbance ruffling
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the ashen sea, and then the movement of a storm, and rain. "Oh, Mano," she whispered, afraid to believe. "Is the rain coming toward us?"
"Look, Teura," the great blue shark laughed.
"Once before it looked the same," she whispered.
"This time follow me," the blue beast cried, and with a shimmering leap he splashed into the sea, her personal god, her salvation.
With a wild scream she cried, "Rain! Rainl" And all rushed out from the house, and dead sleepers wakened to find a storm bearing down upon them.
"Rain!" they mumbled as it marched across the ocean nearer and nearer.
"It's coming!" Tamatoa shouted. "Our prayers are answered." But old Teura, laughing madly as the benign water struck her face, saw in the heart of the storm her own god, Mano, his blue fin cutting the waves.
Almost as if by command, the near-dying voyagers began to throw off their clothes, their tapa and their shells, until each stood naked in the divine storm, drinking it into their eyes and their blistering armpits and their parched mouths. The winds rose, and the rains increased, but the naked men and women of Bora Bora continued their revel in the slashing waves. The sails came down and the mast of Ta'aroa was almost carried away, and the dogs whined, but the men in the canoe swept the water into their mouths and embraced each other. Into the night the storm continued, and it seemed as if the sections of the canoe must break apart, but no one called for the storm to abate. They fought it and drank it and washed their aching bodies with it, and sailed into the heart of it, and toward morning, exhausted in sheer joy, they watched as the clouds parted and they saw that they were almost under the path of the Seven Little Eyes, and they knew that they must ride with the easterly wind that had brought the storm. Their destination lay somewhere to the west.
IT WAS A I.ONG leg toi.
It was I who engineered the coalition that defeated Senator Sakagawa's radical land reform. It was I who warned Noelani Janders against the needless folly of falling in love with a Japanese boy, and I told Shigeo Sakagawa frankly that he would damage his career if he allowed it; for in an age of Golden Men it is not required that their bloodstreams mingle, but only that their ideas clash on equal footing and remain free to cross-fertilize and bear new fruit.
So at the age of fifty-six I, Hoxworth Hale, have discovered that I, too, am one of those Golden Men who see both the West and the East, who cherish the glowing past and who apprehend the obscure future; and the things I have written of in this memoir are very close to my heart.
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