adzes, and poi-pounders of phallic design. When he and Kapiolani
made their royal progresses around the islands, their hosts had to
hide away their personal relics. For to the king, in theory,
belongs all property of his people; and with Kalakaua, when it came
to the old things, theory and practice were one.
“From him my father, Kanau, got the collecting bee in his bonnet,
and Hiwilani was likewise infected. But father was modern to his
finger-tips. He believed neither in the gods of the kahunas”
(priests) “nor of the missionaries. He didn’t believe in anything
except sugar stocks, horse-breeding, and that his grandfather had
been a fool in not collecting a few Isaac Davises and John Youngs
and brass carronades before he went to war with Kamehameha. So he
collected curios in the pure collector’s spirit; but my mother took
it seriously. That was why she went in for bones. I remember,
too, she had an ugly old stone-idol she used to yammer to and crawl
around on the floor before. It’s in the Deacon Museum now. I sent
it there after her death, and her collection of bones to the Royal
Mausoleum in Olokona.
“I don’t know whether you remember her father was Kaaukuu. Well,
he was, and he was a giant. When they built the Mausoleum, his
bones, nicely cleaned and preserved, were dug out of their hiding-
place, and placed in the Mausoleum. Hiwilani had an old retainer,
Ahuna. She stole the key from Kanau one night, and made Ahuna go
and steal her father’s bones out of the Mausoleum. I know. And he
must have been a giant. She kept him in one of her big jars. One
day, when I was a tidy size of a lad, and curious to know if
Kaaukuu was as big as tradition had him, I fished his intact lower
jaw out of the jar, and the wrappings, and tried it on. I stuck my
head right through it, and it rested around my neck and on my
shoulders like a horse collar. And every tooth was in the jaw,
whiter than porcelain, without a cavity, the enamel unstained and
unchipped. I got the walloping of my life for that offence,
although she had to call old Ahuna in to help give it to me. But
the incident served me well. It won her confidence in me that I
was not afraid of the bones of the dead ones, and it won for me my
Oxford education. As you shall see, if that car doesn’t arrive
first.
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
58
“Old Ahuna was one of the real old ones with the hall-mark on him
and branded into him of faithful born-slave service. He knew more
about my mother’s family, and my father’s, than did both of them
put together. And he knew, what no living other knew, the burial-
place of centuries, where were hid the bones of most of her
ancestors and of Kanau’s. Kanau couldn’t worm it out of the old
fellow, who looked upon Kanau as an apostate.
“Hiwilani struggled with the old codger for years. How she ever
succeeded is beyond me. Of course, on the face of it, she was
faithful to the old religion. This might have persuaded Ahuna to
loosen up a little. Or she may have jolted fear into him; for she
knew a lot of the line of chatter of the old Huni sorcerers, and
she could make a noise like being on terms of utmost intimacy with
Uli, who is the chiefest god of sorcery of all the sorcerers. She
could skin the ordinary kahuna lapaau” (medicine man) “when it came
to praying to Lonopuha and Koleamoku; read dreams and visions and
signs and omens and indigestions to beat the band; make the
practitioners under the medicine god, Maiola, look like thirty
cents; pull off a pule hee incantation that would make them dizzy;
and she claimed to a practice of kahuna hoenoho, which is modern
spiritism, second to none. I have myself seen her drink the wind,
throw a fit, and prophesy. The aumakuas were brothers to her when
she slipped offerings to them across the altars of the ruined
heiaus” (temples) “with a line of prayer that was as unintelligible
to me as it was hair-raising. And as for old Ahuna, she could make
him get down on the floor and yammer and bite himself when she
pulled the real mystery dope on him.
“Nevertheless, my private opinion is that it was the anaana stuff
that got him. She snipped off a lock of his hair one day with a
pair of manicure scissors. This lock of hair was what we call the
maunu, meaning the bait. And she took jolly good care to let him
know she had that bit of his hair. Then she tipped it off to him
that she had buried it, and was deeply engaged each night in her
offerings and incantations to Uli.”
“That was the regular praying-to-death?” I queried in the pause of
Prince Akuli’s lighting his cigarette.
“Sure thing,” he nodded. “And Ahuna fell for it. First he tried
to locate the hiding-place of the bait of his hair. Failing that,
he hired a pahiuhiu sorcerer to find it for him. But Hiwilani
queered that game by threatening to the sorcerer to practise apo
leo on him, which is the art of permanently depriving a person of
the power of speech without otherwise injuring him.
“Then it was that Ahuna began to pine away and get more like a
corpse every day. In desperation he appealed to Kanau. I happened
to be present. You have heard what sort of a man my father was.
“‘Pig!’ he called Ahuna. ‘Swine-brains! Stinking fish! Die and
be done with it. You are a fool. It is all nonsense. There is
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
59
nothing in anything. The drunken haole, Howard, can prove the
missionaries wrong. Square-face gin proves Howard wrong. The
doctors say he won’t last six months. Even square-face gin lies.
Life is a liar, too. And here are hard times upon us, and a slump
in sugar. Glanders has got into my brood mares. I wish I could
lie down and sleep for a hundred years, and wake up to find sugar
up a hundred points.’
“Father was something of a philosopher himself, with a bitter wit
and a trick of spitting out staccato epigrams. He clapped his
hands. ‘Bring me a high-ball,’ he commanded; ‘no, bring me two
high-balls.’ Then he turned on Ahuna. ‘Go and let yourself die,
old heathen, survival of darkness, blight of the Pit that you are.
But don’t die on these premises. I desire merriment and laughter,
and the sweet tickling of music, and the beauty of youthful motion,
not the croaking of sick toads and googly-eyed corpses about me
still afoot on their shaky legs. I’ll be that way soon enough if I
live long enough. And it will be my everlasting regret if I don’t
live long enough. Why in hell did I sink that last twenty thousand
into Curtis’s plantation? Howard warned me the slump was coming,
but I thought it was the square-face making him lie. And Curtis
has blown his brains out, and his head luna has run away with his
daughter, and the sugar chemist has got typhoid, and everything’s
going to smash.’
“He clapped his hands for his servants, and commanded: ‘Bring me
my singing boys. And the hula dancers–plenty of them. And send
for old Howard. Somebody’s got to pay, and I’ll shorten his six
months of life by a month. But above all, music. Let there be
music. It is stronger than drink, and quicker than opium.’
“He with his music druggery! It was his father, the old savage,
who was entertained on board a French frigate, and for the first
time heard an orchestra. When the little concert was over, the
captain, to find which piece he liked best, asked which piece he’d
like repeated. Well, when grandfather got done describing, what
piece do you think it was?”
I gave up, while the Prince lighted a fresh cigarette.
“Why, it was the first one, of course. Not the real first one, but
the tuning up that preceded it.”
I nodded, with eyes and face mirthful of appreciation, and Prince
Akuli, with another apprehensive glance at the old wahine and her
half-made hala lei, returned to his tale of the bones of his
ancestors.
“It was somewhere around this stage of the game that old Ahuna gave
in to Hiwilani. He didn’t exactly give in. He compromised.
That’s where I come in. If he would bring her the bones of her
mother, and of her grandfather (who was the father of Kaaukuu, and
who by tradition was rumoured to have been even bigger than his
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
60
giant son, she would return to Ahuna the bait of his hair she was