Peter Pišťanek - The Wooden Village

“God Almighty!” Martin curses and his gaze wanders murderously to the sky. Then his eyes rest in despair on the horizon. The flaming orange sun is slowly setting, making a lovely picture with the line of foaming surf and rustling palms. “What a bloody business,” says Martin.

“Do me the honour of being a guest in my modest dwelling,” suggests the king. “Tomorrow, I’ll let you have a man and a catamaran to take you to Kalalau. No problem, as they say. Do you agree?”

Martin sighs and shrugs his shoulders. The king takes this to be consent. He claps his dry hands twice and two beautiful native girls come up to Martin and hang wreaths of aromatic flowers around his neck. Another native woman with thick black braids and a flower in her hair gives him half a coconut with some yellowish drink.

“Piña colada with Bacardi on ice,” says Tioka III, noticing him hesitating.

The procession, led by Martin and the King, walks from the beach to the trees, and then the roofs of the palm leaf dwellings come into sight.

“You may be curious to know where I learned my English so well,” says the king proudly. “I went to the local mission primary school,” he boasts, before Martin can react.

Martin knows that he should pretend to take at least a polite interest in the king’s education, but he still hasn’t got over his unpleasant surprise. He stares at the neat huts that look like huts in tourist brochures.

“I know Dr Gershwitz,” the King informs him when they sit down on a clearing among the huts. “She was here, too, a few weeks ago.”

Martin looks askance at Tioka III.

“She showed an interest in our… well, love customs,” says the king. “Especially in our custom of offering a guest the company of our women.”

Martin finishes his drink and a pretty native beauty gives him another coconut.

“You know,” says the king, “on our island this tradition has been kept for centuries… when a stranger comes here, we offer him all our women. The stranger can take his choice. How many women he makes happy with his company is up to him, but it shouldn’t be less than ten… Well, in a nutshell, it’s our tradition here, you understand.”

Martin nods. “It’s an interesting tradition,” he says.

“A female stranger is offered our men,” says the King. “The most handsome and the youngest ones. And this was the custom that your wife studied here. She bestowed her company and made twenty-eight of the best fishermen of our island happy. One after another, including myself. She is a very good woman. I am sure you are very happy together…”

Martin absentmindedly nods. “She isn’t my wife yet,” he mumbles. “But we are happy, indeed.”

“And so, dear friend, I am asking you to make your choice,” says the king and claps his dry hands.

Several native beauties line up in front of Martin with seductive smiles on their lips.

Martin’s mouth turns dry. He looks around nervously. The king and the elders in his suite observe him intensely. Martin knocks back the piña colada and puts the coconut down.

“This ancient tradition applies to you, too, my friend,” says the king. “And all the more because you are the man who flew down from the sky. I know, I know,” the king assures Martin, “we all saw the aeroplane and we know that the Americans have landed on the moon, too. But from the point of view of folklore, you are, whether you like it or not, Ahuhuai Tahuhuneui, the Man from the Sky.”

Martin begins to explain. He is unbelievably tired. He is no Ahuhay-Tahuhay. Bratislava-Vienna-Hong Kong-Manila-Port Moresby, and so on. All of it with little rest. His body desires anything but sex. He wants to sleep, sleep, sleep. He doesn’t want to offend the honourable Tioka III, but he really is in no state to perform as local tradition prescribes…

“Our tradition can cope with that, too,” smiles the king. He claps his dry hands twice and a pretty girl brings a wooden box. The king opens the box and shows the guest its contents, a green powder.

“What is it?” Junec asks.

“It’s the extract of a plant called ramaateua,” says the king. “When you rub it into your genitals, you’ll have no problem favouring a hundred, what do I mean by a hundred, TWO HUNDRED of our women, one after the other! I can’t see any problem here.”

Martin’s glazed eyes inspect the beauties paraded in front of him. They are all gorgeous, well built, with smooth milk-coffee complexions, long legs and shoulders as broad as competition swimmers’.

“Is there no way of refusing this honour in a way that doesn’t offend anyone?” he asks after a certain inner struggle.

“But certainly,” says the King. “If you are determined not to honour us with your favours, all you have to do is get up and shout aloud: ‘Uouiauaue!’ That means you are rejecting it. In that case,” Tioka III claps his dry hands twice, “a different destiny awaits you…”

After hearing the king clap, the natives stand aside and behind them Martin spots a huge cauldron blackened by smoke and years of use.

“This is traditional, too,” says the King. “As a mission primary school graduate and believing Christian, I am not very proud of it, but the mission is far away on the island of Tokelau, and we and the kettle are here. An old superstition says that when you eat human flesh, it passes all the good features of that person on to you. You are Ahuhuai Tahuhuneui, the Man from Sky. Your good features will pass on to us whether you sleep with our women, or we eat you for supper…”

The king’s face is friendly and good-natured. Thunderstruck, Martin looks now at the king, now at the kettle.

“Hang on,” he says. “Are you telling me that you’d kill me and boil me in that cauldron?”

Tioka III shakes his head with a kindly smile. “No, my friend. We wouldn’t kill you. We’d boil you alive. Don’t you know that brains of people slowly cooked alive happen to be this region’s greatest delicacy? A man who goes mad from horrendous pain has everything addled in his brain. That gives the brain meat an excellent taste.”

Martin is trembling with horror. He averts his gaze from the cauldron that is so menacingly close. The beautiful native women, full of suspense and excitement, dance.

“And it really has to be at least ten of them?” Martin asks Tioka III.

“It does,” nods the king.

“And if it were fewer?” Martin cautiously enquires.

“In that case I’m very sorry,” says the king, pointing to the cauldron.

“I see,” says Martin.

The king shakes the box of powder. “With the help of ramaateua you’ll have no problem making the entire island happy,” he says.

Sighing heavily, Martin gets up and heads for the hut. The beautiful women, twittering enthusiastically, follow him.

“Hey!” Tioka III, lifting up the box of aphrodisiac, calls after Junec. “And apply it generously,” he advises him amiably. Martin takes the box and turns it in his fingers. He goes to the hut, dimly lit by a flickering fire in the hearth and by the naked bodies of native beauties, ready to receive the favours of Ahuhuai Tahuhuneui, the Man from the Sky.

* * *

Day is breaking by the time that Ahuhuai Tahuhuneui gets round to the last native beauty. Despite the extract of ramaateua, things didn’t go all that smoothly. When the Man from the Sky finished his last bout of lovemaking, he collapsed onto the mat and fell into a deep sleep, oblivious of the throbbing, searing pain in his badly abraded genitals.

By the time he awakes, the sun is high. The rippling surf makes him want to sleep, so he spends more time in sweet slumber. His gold Rolex stopped when he landed on the beach, so he has no idea what time it is.