"I'd like to be, under the sea, in an octopus' garden in the shade.
He'd let us in, knows where we've been, in his octopus' garden in the shade.
I'd ask my friends to come and see an octopus' garden with me" - The Beatles
O le fale oe le Fe’e : the house of the Octopus.
‘Do you mean an animal- a real octopus... or a man who was like
an octopus?’ the priest asked. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘O le Fe’e na sau mai Fiti.’ murmured the brown man,
crouching to sit on a large flat-topped stone.
‘The Octopus came out of Fiji... an aitu,’ Williams
translated, without being asked.
‘Aitu?’ the priest again.
‘A spirit,’ Williams went on.
‘A demon?’ furthered the priest.
‘Probably not- neither good nor bad’ Williams countered patiently.
‘Sometimes an animal… perhaps a man’ the old man went on. Williams
translated softly.
The priest watched the old man’s eyes twinkle and wondered
at his age. He could have been anywhere between thirty and seventy- his eyes
were bright but narrowed by the sun and his close cropped hair was black. His
stomach was flat and the tendons in his timber coloured forearms rippled gently
below the skin, though he held his machete loosely.
‘…maybe he was a man like an octopus, or an octopus like a
man… maybe he had many hands or he moved as though he had many hands…,’, the
old man continued. ‘Perhaps he could change himself, and become like the stones
and the coral, to hide... or to watch’.
The priest looked around the clearing they sat in, at the
large, crumbling blocks of white stone- seemingly frozen in the act of tumbling
to the grass. They were collectively disorganised, and yet unmistakeably placed
in a rough circle, stacked in places. He and Williams had already walked more
than a day from the ocean. Cut coral blocks could not get here easily- no man would be able to carry them alone. Several
thick wooden poles still stood, mossy and branchless within the broken block walls.
The old man talked on: ‘When he came, first he came
near to Apia, he rested a little while on the beach. But it did not suit him,
perhaps there were already aitu there, or too many people, but he
left the sea. He must have followed the river… he could not be too far from
water.’
The priest sympathised. The walk up had been through thick,
green jungle, made more dense by the oppressive humidity. His ankles and calves
ached from balancing, as they had marched over uneven lava boulders lining the river which they had
followed up the valley. He congratulated himself
again on not yet having removed his jacket and tie- no small concession to the heat
and atmosphere. He had already consumed a pint or more of water, and he was no
octopus.
‘He lived first in a cave,’ the old man stated, as though his conviction were rising.
‘There’s plenty around.’ Williams waved vaguely at the
surrounding basalt stone cliffs, peeking from the jungle below the mountainous spurs.
‘To build his home- he must have had help- many aitu
came.’
‘Bloody plenty of them’ thought the priest… ‘there’s a spirit
for morning, noon and night every day of the week- for every battle and cause.’
The priest had already experienced great difficulty in trying to convince people
there could be only one God. They laughed at the thought. ‘Your one God would be too
busy’ one prospect had commented seriously. ‘To watch over my brother fishing,
and my children playing, and my wife working and to still be with me when I call
on him to help me gamble.’
The old man had settled into his story now, and carried on
without prompting. ‘One day, before his house was finished, some women came to
bathe in the river nearby. One was heavily pregnant… when the time came, she
cried out in pain. The baby did not come quickly.’
‘The aitu who were helping the fe’e to build
his home heard her cries and they fled the noise. The fe’e followed up
the mountain.‘
A rumble rolled up the valley and Williams looked up at the
sky, to see it bruised, grey and purple toward the harbour they had come
from. Rain was coming, and they would not be able to stay much longer.
‘For a time the fe’e waited’ the old man stared out
at the rising storm above the ocean. ‘But eventually, he became impatient and
he grumbled.’
‘He had a found a perfect place for a home, and had even begun to
build it, now he wanted to return to it. The fe’e sent an aitu
as a messenger to the village that the women had come from. It is near here.’
‘The fe’e said tell them “I will go to the place where I was
before. I will be the matua of the land and their sign in all things. I
will return to my home.”’
‘He came back?’ asked the Priest, turning as a small stream
of dust and pebbles tricked from the nearest blocks. Nothing else moved. The
jungle, noisy and bustling with birds on the hike up, was now still and silent.
‘Ioe’
‘An agreement was made’ added Williams. ‘Now the villages in
this region use the Octopus as an emblem, a symbol for their warriors and
canoes.’
‘Faititili o le fe'e tautala‘ ended the old man,
standing and tapping his machete on a stone as he gazed out at the skyline. ‘O le taimi nei e alu’
‘Faititili? Thunder’ guessed the priest. ‘Is he afraid?’
‘Perhaps... but not of the weather. It’s time to go’ Williams
stood up and looked around the clearing for the porters. He pretended not to notice a thick green vine retracting, disappearing behind one of the nearby stones.
This story has been adapted from the sources below:
'A
SAMOAN LEGEND'- presumed by J. C. Williams, Esq., the British Consul at Apia
“O
LE FALE-O-LE-FE'E”: OR, RUINS OF AN OLD SAMOAN TEMPLE by Rev John B Stair
