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Updated: June 7, 2025
The decoction, Kivi explained, comes from the root, and we set to work to dig it. It was huge, like a gigantic yam, and after we had torn it from the stubborn soil it taxed the strength and agility of two of us to carry it to the paepae of Broken Plate, where the feast was to be.
I slept eight hours, and when I awoke I saw, in the bright oblong of sunlight outside the open door, Kivi squeezing some of the root of evil for a hair of the hound that had bitten him. A journey to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his story of an old war caused by an unfaithful woman.
The feast finished, the guests reclined upon the mats. Women and children were devouring the remnants left upon the leaf platters. The torches had been extinguished, all but one. Its flickering gleam fell upon the aged face of Kivi, and the whites of his eyes caught and reflected the light.
They puffed it; they spat; they put their heads together, and he threw down his cards. Then calmly the Tahitian laid down his own, and they saw that they could have beaten him. They shouted in dismay, and withdrew Kivi, who after some palaver went away with them into the darkness. One or two candlenut torches dimly illumined the figures of the squatting women who remained.
O Lalala appeared to sleep, though when Apporo attempted to withdraw a card he pinned it with his crutch. It was half an hour before the players returned. Kivi crouched to his place without a word, and the others arranged themselves behind him in fixed array, as though they had a cabalistic number-formation in mind.
Immediately after sunset, when the popoi and fish had been eaten, and all had bathed in the brook, when the women had perfumed their bodies and put the scarlet hibiscus in their hair, and after Kivi had drunk thrice of kava, the game began. The valley was deserted, the paepaes empty. No fires twinkled from the mountainsides.
Kivi fell back helpless, grief and kava prostrating him. The torches died down as the winner picked up his spoils and prepared to retire. At this moment a man dashed madly through the grove, displaying two boxes and a handful of separate matches.
The ring of light made blacker the rustling cocoanut grove, the lofty trees of which closed in upon us on every side. Under the gaze of many sparkling eyes Kivi pierced green cocoanuts brought him fresh from the climbing, and poured the cool wine of them over the masticated kava.
A ringing came in my ears as when one puts a seashell to them and hears the drowsy murmur of the tides. My cigarette fell from my fingers. A sirocco blew upon me, hot, stifling. Kivi laughed, and dimly I heard his inquiry: "Veavea? Is it hot?" "E, mahanahana. I am very warm," I struggled to reply. My voice sounded as that of another. I leaned harder against the wall and closed my eyes.
The pipe was made to smoke; Kivi puffed it and so did all who had joined in the purchase of the case from the thieves of Cantonese. Then the cards were dealt by Kivi, who had won the cut. O Lalala and he eyed each other like Japanese wrestlers before the grapple. Their eyes were slits as they put up the ante of five packets each.
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