Birdman 2

The waves crashed into the coast near the cemetery, its ornate graves with the crosses and bright plastic flowers and Polynesian names, beautiful against the open sea. Farther along the shore, past the row of standing stone moai at Ahu Mahai, one with a red scoria topknot, and eyes made from similar red irises, black obsidian pupils, and white coral conjunctivas, we found a huge sentinel brother, at Ahu Akapu. Its massive size hadn’t been accurately suggested by any of the photos I had previously seen, now so imposing against the breeze-blown grass and volcanic rock in the foreground, and the clouds and wide Pacific surf behind. Chestnut horses grazed on the greener areas of brown expanse. We stopped to pose before an inverted boat-shaped skeleton of a more traditional hare paenga dwelling, and to wonder at the baby banana plant, hiding from the winds inside an individual round lava rock wall formation, especially constructed for its protection.
The dirt road led on to the one room Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert, named for the ‘strict, authoritarian and patriarchal’ Bavarian Catholic priest who, in collusion with the Chilean authorities, prevented the Rapanui from working, traveling, or buying imported goods, and publicly censured churchgoers in his sermons based on their private confessions. Inside the museum were their ancestors’ skulls and fishhooks, the most ancient oblong stone ‘potato heads,’ and grotesque emaciated Toromiro pine Moai kavakava statues, with goatees, exposed ribs and vertebrae, and expressions of pain. The humidity had taken its toll on some of the older historical photographs.
Back out along the shore, towards the township of Hanga Roa, a Christmas festival of balloons and bicycles and a carousel for the children to fly around on, was in full merry-go-round. The local fire truck had been polished to a fine cherry red, and three young boys with their own topknots, were scraping a large pig with knives, under one of the few struggling coconut trees that had been originally brought from a more conducive Tahitian climate. The only conifer in sight, a Chilean cedar, drooped under the weight of the tinsel and presents and heat and guilt that hung from its own branches.
Hanga Roa was supposed to have three thousand inhabitants, but they seemed to be hiding from us today, like they had hidden from the Peruvian blackbirders who had looked for them 150 years earlier. It was Christmas on Easter Island. Still, there were signs of sprawling habitation- a dog and a pile of BMX bikes on a porch, kitchen gardens with evidence of recent harvest, vehicles on steep sloped twin cement drives, each the width of a tire, and the odd burst of Tahitian or Chilean pop music from behind a curtain. A cow skull, painted brown, was tied to a post. Down Avenida Atamu Tekana, the movie playing in the theater was Rapa Nui. A life-sized Santa stood guard outside a closed shop selling brown Barbie dolls, and Coca-cola. There were almost no other street names, and no street numbers. On the village walls between two far-flung volcanoes, sharp contrast lines of light and darkness cut between the bright subtropical sun, illuminating the motives, and the simple dark empty shadows, hiding the deeds.
We finished down Caleta Hanga Roa, watching the colorful open Chilean fishing boats move up and down in the harbor. On an island where all the other statues faced inland, there was one lonely statue of Christ, celebrating his birthday in the place named after his resurrection, looking out to sea.