Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 13: Simon of the Marquesas, conclusion...

continued...

"A long time ago, I met a girl while I was fishing in the lagoon on the other side of the island," he said as he waved over the ridge, "...and she had my child.  But back then I thought life was only about Simon, so I left the far lagoon and returned to the village." He narrowed his eyes and looked out past the horizon. "There I met another girl, a wild one, and went to live with her. She wanted things, so I went to work on the copra boats – there were many more of them back then. I sailed all over and made money, and spent it all on my life with the wild village woman."  He shook his head sadly, looked up into their eyes, and began to turn a little magical.

"One day I was fishing in the lagoon, and a shark swam up to my boat and he began to talk to me.  He said: 'This is no way for you to live. You will never be what you are meant to be living your life this way. You must return to the far lagoon, to the girl you left. She is there – I saw her the other day, she is raising your child.You must go back and live there, and take care of your family.'  But how can I take care of them, if I do not work the copra boats?  I asked him. Il a me dît: 'You will fish in the far lagoon, and you will carve tiki to celebrate the gifts of a true life, and that way you will be able to take care of your family.'  Then he swam away."  Simon seemed to be telling the God's truth.

"So I left the village woman with all the things I had bought her, and returned to the girl in the far lagoon, and our child, and we had more children.  And I took care of my family," he looked around at the kids emerging now from everywhere, smiling, "and I still do...and these are children of those children's children!"  He laughed and showed the kids off, and they laughed too.

At that very moment, the Aranui's first horn bellowed out over the bay.  Koko asked "How much is the large tiki?" and I think Simon told him two hundred francs, which was only about thirty dollars then, but  Koko hadn't brought along any money at all. They said their goodbyes, gave Simon a hug, and hurried back down the hill, but by the time they reached the shore, they knew they had to go back for that tiki. The other tourists were already in the whaling boat. Up to their thighs in the surf, Koko and Grace took up a collection. The woman who'd won a lottery in Ohio lent them the two hundred francs, and they ran back up the valley together in case if they were left, they'd be stuck together for the month until the Aranui's return.

When they got back to Simon's shed, he was waiting for them. The second horn sounded from the ship below. "I knew that you would return."  He laughed. " This is your tiki. You had to come back for it."  Koko picked up the heavy stone, and felt it's energy charge up his arms and fill his heart. Grace felt it too, standing next to him. They paid Simon, hugged him goodbye again, and Koko folded the tiki into his arms and headed back down the hill, Grace running out in front to hold the boat at the shore, if she could.

By the time they got back to the beach, the crew members were waving them in frantically. The seas had picked up, and it was tough clamoring on board, and even tougher rowing out through the surf.  As they pulled up alongside the ship, the waves were pitching the small boat up and down eight or ten feet.

The crew always boarded the paying passengers first, and one of them snatched the tiki as two others hoisted Grace and Koko on board at the top of a wave. They looked back at a worried island woman and her new-born, still being pitched up and down in the boat alongside. One of the rowers took the infant in one hand and raised the little one up overhead with the rising wave. Then, in a magical moment as the wave reached it's peak, a brawny crewman reached down from the Aranui's deck, and as securely and tenderly as you'd pick up a perfect peach, he took the baby with one hand and passed him to safety. On the next violent wave up, he grabbed the mother by her outstretched arm, and as though she were as light as straw, lifted her straight up and on to the deck. They handed her baby back to her as if such things took place every day, because here- of course, they did.

The crew were, to a man, incredible physical specimens. They hoisted and stowed the whaler with easy dexterity. One of them ran like a cat along the railing, despite the wallowing seas. They were some of the most amazing fellows Grace and Koko had ever seen, and every night on the top patio deck, where the free passengers slept under the stars, they brought out their guitars, tiples, and spoons, and sang the most beautiful island melodies.

Koko was thinking of Simon, of his color-of-the-lagoon smiling eyes, as he tried to explain the bomb-shaped volcanic rock past the skeptical Customs officers at L.A. International.

      

It seemed then that being with Grace would always be, so at the time he failed to pay proper attention to Simon's story of responsibility in love. Likewise, he failed to fully grasp the allegory of the empty materialism of the village woman, and true direction in the words of the shark-spirit, until many years later. He never saw the stone again, Grace kept it when they parted, but he never forgot it's weight, the stone carver's hut, the handing of the baby, or that enchanted night music under a million stars, rolling over the violet South Pacific, the Southern Cross slowly laying over on it's side.

 "Life can only be understood backwards, 

            but it must be lived forwards."

                                                                    Søren Kierkegaard

The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is now available everywhere, but ask for it it at your local bookstore! 

Tales of the Koko Lion, Part 13: Simon of the Marquesas.

With the Aranui anchored about a hundred and fifty yards offshore the blue-green Pacific behind them, Grace and Koko trekked up the dry path overlooking the windward side of Nuku Hiva, one of the five Marquesas Islands the little copra freighter stopped at on it's thirty five day trip out of Papeété. They could see the whaling boats carrying materials into shore, and ferrying passengers, local islanders, out to the ship so they could hitch a free ride to one of the other islands, or pay a little for a ride to the Tuamotus, Rangiroa, or back to Tahiti.

The two followed the even incline up out of the creek valley, up the side of the hill where the forest thinned out a bit. The Aranui's "Social Director," a young Frenchman, had told them they might find tiki, his catch-all term for something of interest, up on the hill path, but warned them that with the first sounding of the ship's horn they had to hurry back, because the second horn meant au revoir to all passengers left behind on the island.

It felt like they'd gone a little far, the other dozen or so paying passengers chose to stay below in the village, but something had a hold of them, leading them farther up the path. At first there was just a little girl, about four or five, dirty in a simple cotton dress, pulling on her lower lip. She turned and ran up the path to a small clearing, to a shed coming into view around the bend. As they approached there was another dusty, barefoot boy the same age stepping out of the thatch-roofed shed. He stood behind a crude, homemade table like a counter boy in a shop. On the table was a small selection of stone carvings ranging in size from a few inches long to the largest, an elongated football-shaped stone about thirteen inches long and seven inches across, with a beautiful bas-relief of of a lizard, or a salamander carved out of the top half.

Through the doorway of the shed, they could see a worn wooden mallet and broken screwdrivers on the corner of a little table, and a man's weathered foot in the triangle of sunlight. The man set his foot down on the dirt floor and stood, hitching up his shorts. He stepped out the door of the shed and alongside the little boy.

"Vous ete ici!" he exclaimed in a certain kind of french that Koko could just make out. He said it with that same open- armed lack of surprise that Grace and Koko had been met with so often in their past year of travel around the world. Everywhere they went there were people, usually older local people, who seemed to recognize them- who greeted them like old friends. Like they'd been awaiting their arrival.

"Vous venez pour votre Tiki." the man said, motioning to the table. Koko reached out and shook his rough hand. He was not too tall, a little bent, and very brown, wearing an open short-sleeved shirt. His body was a twilight powerhouse, banded muscles wrapped around his frame, hands and feet splayed and lumpy. His face was deeply creased. His hair was a mass of pushed-back collar-length ringlets, shiny as though with coconut oil, mostly grey with satin black underneath. He was old, but you couldn't tell how old. His eyes shimmered a light blue-green, little versions of the lagoon that rose in him with the tide.

"Je suis Simon. Je fait lés Tikis." His speech was mellifluous and pidgeony as he swung his hand over the table. Koko had a little trouble translating until he watched Simon's eyes, and then his ear began to hear perfectly.

"These are some of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren," he said, rubbing the head of the little boy who hid behind his leg, motioning to the little girl who stood by the shed, pulling on her lower lip. Koko and Grace couldn't seem to take their eyes off the one tiki, the salamander stone. Koko touched it and tilted it up for a look.

"That is the very first creature. It says something to you. Every creature came from that."

" Dessous, tournéz..." Simon says, motioning as though to turn the tiki over. Koko picked it up -it was heavier than he'd expected as he turned it. There on the smooth oval underside, were the cut-in eyes and crescent toothed mouth of a shark. "Aaahhhh..." said the two in unison. Simon's eyes widened as he smiled.

"I'll tell you why the shark," said Simon. "It spoke to me. Il a dit a moi..." Then he began to tell his story...

to be continued...