登陆注册
37349100000027

第27章 SHIN-BONES(2)

In the eleventh century A.D., by the Lakanaii historians, at the time brothers and sisters mated because none existed to excel them, their rank received a boost of new blood of rank that was next to heaven's door.One Hoikemaha, steering by the stars and the ancient traditions, arrived in a great double-canoe from Samoa.He married a lesser alii of Lakanaii, and when his three sons were grown, returned with them to Samoa to bring back his own youngest brother.But with him he brought back Kumi, the son of Tui Manua, which latter's rank was highest in all Polynesia, and barely second to that of the demigods and gods.So the estimable seed of Kumi, eight centuries before, had entered into the aliis of Lakanaii, and been passed down by them in the undeviating line to reposit in Prince Akuli.

Him I first met, talking with an Oxford accent, in the officers' mess ofthe Black Watch in South Africa.This was just before that famous regiment was cut to pieces at Magersfontein.He had as much right to be in that mess as he had to his accent, for he was Oxford-educated and held the Queen's Commission.With him, as his guest, taking a look at the war, was Prince Cupid, so nicknamed, but the true prince of all Hawaii, including Lakanaii, whose real and legal title was Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, and who might have been the living King of Hawaii Nei had it not been for the haole (white man) Revolution and Annexation--this, despite the fact that Prince Cupid's alii genealogy was lesser to the heaven-boosted genealogy of Prince Akuli.For Prince Akuli might have been King of Lakanaii, and of all Hawaii, perhaps, had not his grandfather been soundly thrashed by the first and greatest of the Kamehamehas.

This had occurred in the year 1810, in the booming days of the sandalwood trade, and in the same year that the King of Kauai came in, and was good, and ate out of Kamehameha's hand.Prince Akuli's grandfather, in that year, had received his trouncing and subjugating because he was "old school." He had not imaged island empire in terms of gunpowder and haole gunners.Kamehameha, farther-visioned, had annexed the service of haoles, including such men as Isaac Davis, mate and sole survivor of the massacred crew of the schooner Fair American, and John Young, captured boatswain of the snow Eleanor.And Isaac Davis, and John Young, and others of their waywardly adventurous ilk, with six-pounder brass carronades from the captured Iphigenia and Fair American, had destroyed the war canoes and shattered the morale of the King of Lakanaii's land- fighters, receiving duly in return from Kamehameha, according to agreement: Isaac Davis, six hundred mature and fat hogs; John Young, five hundred of the same described pork on the hoof that was split.

And so, out of all incests and lusts of the primitive cultures and beast- man's gropings toward the stature of manhood, out of all red murders, and brute battlings, and matings with the younger brothers of the demigods, world-polished, Oxford-accented, twentieth century to the tick of the second, comes Prince Akuli, Prince Squid, pure- veined Polynesian, a living bridge across the thousand centuries, comrade, friend, and fellow-traveller out of his wrecked seven- thousand-dollar limousine, marooned with me in a begonia paradise fourteen hundred feet above the sea, and his island metropolis of Olokona, to tell me of his mother, who reverted in her old age to ancientness of religious concept and ancestor worship, and collected and surrounded herself with the charnel bones of those who had been her forerunners back in the darkness of time.

"King Kalakaua started this collecting fad, over on Oahu," Prince Akuli continued."And his queen, Kapiolani, caught the fad from him.They collected everything--old makaloa mats, old tapas, old calabashes, old double-canoes, and idols which the priests had saved from the general destruction in 1819.I haven't seen a pearl-shell fish-hook in years, but I swear that Kalakaua accumulated ten thousand of them, to say nothing of human jaw-bone fish-hooks, and feather cloaks, and capes and helmets, and stone 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.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 千金小姐倒追日记

    千金小姐倒追日记

    (别名:《调戏妖孽美男》)千金小姐姜敏儿童鞋离家出走在韩国当了个廉价洗碗工,路遇醉酒美男还见色心起地拖回家上下其手。这娃实在胆大包天,为了靠近那人各种的没原则矫情装逼易推倒……偏偏还没人看得出来她是在——倒追!好吧,姜敏儿同志郑重声明:喂!美男童鞋,两年前在中国,可是你把我拖进酒店的!姑娘我可先给了你钱了……你好歹先把义务给尽了啊!!
  • 皇家医学院:神医魅江湖

    皇家医学院:神医魅江湖

    作为医者,她应该高兴穿越的大陆医者为尊!可为毛她的几个小手术吸引了越来越多的靓男帅哥!她是医术卓绝,随性洒脱,可还没潇洒到见一个爱一个的地步!那谁谁谁?抢什么抢?她是医者,不是超市的特价商品!
  • 校草殿下霸道爱

    校草殿下霸道爱

    他的身上处处散发着忧郁的气息,自从遇见了她,一切都被改变了......
  • 见过沙包大的拳头没有

    见过沙包大的拳头没有

    小胖子的减肥之旅减肥加运气!减肥成功变身欧皇!重新来一次学生时代吧!
  • 小点子,对付大男人

    小点子,对付大男人

    韩国女性研究专家张英淑女士针对围城中离婚率节节攀升的现状,凭借东方女性特有的含蓄与温柔,通过柔情、聪慧、执着、情趣、忠诚五个部分,围绕沟通?智慧?宽容?付出?忠贞?支持?理解与爱,以行云流水的爱情胸怀,汇成切实可行的秘笈,让爱在婚姻中也能保持鲜活。
  • 人之运

    人之运

    运之道,乃人心之道。人心齐,则气运不散,薪火长明。
  • 阅天下

    阅天下

    《阅天下》上卷:谁解连环宫廷争储引发江湖纷乱,局走幻势谁是幕后赢家。每一次人生选择交织捆绑着多少人的命运,每一次命运的牵引又抛出多少难以抉择的命题。
  • 天行

    天行

    号称“北辰骑神”的天才玩家以自创的“牧马冲锋流”战术击败了国服第一弓手北冥雪,被誉为天纵战榜第一骑士的他,却受到小人排挤,最终离开了效力已久的银狐俱乐部。是沉沦,还是再次崛起?恰逢其时,月恒集团第四款游戏“天行”正式上线,虚拟世界再起风云!
  • 腹黑总裁:小娇妻,往哪儿逃!

    腹黑总裁:小娇妻,往哪儿逃!

    米觞羽本想远离豪门的纠葛,却又一不小心睡了自己的未婚夫。不行,为了自由她要逃!不行,为了幸福他要追!路遇跳广场舞的大妈,拦住米觞羽问她:“身后那个帅气的小伙儿是你男朋友?”米觞羽眼眸一转,哭兮兮,“不,那是我儿子!我是他小妈,可这小混账竟然想占有我!”大妈一听那还了得,正义化身当街殴打顾氏总裁顾延风……只可惜,米觞羽终究还是被顾延风压在他的五指山下。顾延风邪魅一笑靠近她的樱唇,“怎么不逃了?我的小妈?”一场阴谋的靠近,他食髓知味;一场关于谁先爱上谁的赌局,他输得一败涂地。但最后,却又甘之如饴……
  • 传世藏书-世说新语(上)

    传世藏书-世说新语(上)

    《传世藏书》是一套囊括我国从先秦到晚清历代重要典籍的大型丛书。精选有深远历史影响的一流名著一千余种,门类从经书到小说,从科学到艺术及至闲适杂书,应有尽有。全书分经、史、子、集四库,每库又分若干部类,共计二亿五千万字、一百二十三册,总计一万四千印张,二十一万一千二百页,定价:98000.00元。是继《四库全书》二百年来最大的古籍整理工程。