“I know it is frustrating to you,” the man said. “But hostility is not the answer. It is my duty to paint for you as clear a picture as possible, in the interest of moving beyond our impasse.”
Kolone tested the knots and came to stand beside Viliamu, brandishing his rusted machete like a shaman’s staff. They’d agreed that since Viliamu was in charge of taking the hostage, Kolone would do the cutting, collecting blood in bowls to take out and pour into the streams down the road from their village, which had widened into rivers over the past few months, sending tributaries over the paved roads at the edge of town to seep under doors and lick at people’s feet.
“It is sinking,” said the Under-Secretary, his eyes trained on Viliamu’s. His irises were dark and clear, the whites around them bright and sure as the clouds ferrying past Lehaki toward the huge, solid continents over the horizon. “Our early projections suggested we had a few years to address the problem. But if the latest report is correct, we may be looking at a matter of months.”
Viliamu scowled. As if he needed to be told. As if there were no swamped huts abandoned along the shore, no mould crawling up the walls of his house, no drowned taro patches, no salt in the wells. As if he couldn’t smell it in the air, the jet fuel and luxury cologne stink of men like this one, enveloping Lehaki, tainting the breeze. As if his stomach didn’t curdle whenever he looked over at Atiu playing in the precious, dwindling sand. He clenched his teeth. Don’t think about the boy.
“We can’t simply let you stay here, on an island that will soon be erased from the map,” the Under-Secretary said. His brow creased further, his eyes burning with some deep, acrid memory as he stared at the concrete wall, but not — past it, into the invisible distance. He shook his head. “You think you are the only ones,” he said. “But your sea is not the worst of it.” He looked back at his captors. “In my country, millions are dying from drought. This is bigger than you. We are all affected, all implicated. We all must adapt.”
Viliamu tried not to listen. The plan would only work if he stayed focused on the truths he knew. Even if this crime — kidnapping, murder — meant his doom, at least it was a doom he could control. As a child, when there were still many elders who knew the island’s gods, Viliamu had witnessed the ancient ceremonies, the ones where blood was spilled. The ritual slicing of an animal’s neck, usually a pig, accompanied by the speaking of prayers not recorded in any book but passed down through generations, the knowledge thinning out only among Atiu’s generation, after the government had banned the practice of traditional faiths. Viliamu couldn’t remember all the words, but he trusted that the fragments he could conjure would suffice.
He looked at Kolone, who stood there in his Detroit Tigers cap and floral shirt, machete in hand. Kolone was a tank. Viliamu saw no tremble in his lip, detected none of the doubt that ate his own guts. You could throw a whale at Kolone and he’d stand firm. Viliamu was thankful for his friend’s beefy solidity as the Under-Secretary continued his defence, voice infuriatingly calm.
“We are past the point of no return,” he said. “I believe you know this.”
The gun wavered in Viliamu’s hand, as if it were floating in front of him, blown in by the ocean wind. He strained to hear the promise the hissing palms had made: If you kill the man, say the words, pour the blood out into the hungry sea, the magic will work. The process will be reversed. The sands will multiply.
“The ships arrived in Fiji yesterday . . .”
The taro will thrive again. Everyone will forgive you.
“They will be here by the end of the week . . .”
Syda will forgive you.
“I am here to assist in an evacuation that has, technically, already begun.”
Atiu will forgive you.
“Stop talking!” Viliamu snapped. He closed his eyes and imagined Kolone running the blade across the man’s throat, blood pooling in the bowls, the hut filled with gore and the stink of fresh death. He thought of wading through entrails, wet and dead like his flooded taro patch. Rage welled in his chest. The palms hissed: Do it now. Blood is blood! Shaking, he brought the pistol up to shoulder height and aimed it at the Under-Secretary’s head.
“Don’t —”
CROCK-CROCK!
Viliamu stumbled back from the recoil. Debris crumbled and dust plumed from the wall and he could hear Kolone’s muffled shouting through the shockwave of gunfire.
Seconds passed and his hearing came back, tinged with ringing. Kolone stood agape, the machete limp at his side, ballcap askew and dripping sweat, staring at the two jagged craters Viliamu had shot into the concrete, inches to the left of the Under-Secretary’s head. The man just sat there, unmoving, a new intensity in his eyes, a brutal knowledge smouldering somewhere below his polished facade. He smiled and it terrified Viliamu, whose wrist rang with pain from the force of the shots.
“You think I am unfamiliar with gunfire? Warrior?”
Viliamu tried to summon his rage again, but it was choked, as though the Under-Secretary held it in his teeth. He was setting up a killing blow. Viliamu saw how he let his head drop just a touch, how his eyes softened again, cleared of the hatred that had seethed through them for a second, the ghost of some former self that qualified him utterly to preside over matters of life and death.
“Back home, in Angola,” the Under-Secretary said, as though summoning some radioactive nugget from inside his chest to offer to Viliamu like a dark berry, “I have a son. The only one left, of six children. He’s just turned eleven.”
The word exploded in Viliamu’s mind: Atiu, Atiu, Atiu.
“If you have a son, do right by him, as best you can.”
Viliamu felt a shuddering beside him. He turned and saw Kolone — stout giant, father of two — sobbing. They’d spent weeks working themselves into a blind fever, convincing themselves this was the only way, that any cure from the outside could only do more harm. Whenever the question of their sons had come up, Kolone had always quietly passed the rum and said this was all for the kids, in the end. Now here was his friend, his face folding in on itself like a stepped-on jelly.
On the floor below the fresh bullet holes, a hairline crack in the wall admitted a little gully of water.
Without a word, Viliamu turned and walked out into the blazing afternoon sunlight. Kolone followed. The two stood in the humid day, drenched in sweat, and stared at the thinned jungle, the wilting palms with fungus crawling up the trunks like skeletal fingers. Near the base of a tree with its rotten pith exposed, a drowned crab bobbed in the ripple of the advancing waves, its shell separating away from its inner meat.
“Brother,” said Kolone, slapping his Detroit Tigers cap against his thigh, chucking the machete into the mud. “It was crazy, to do this.”
Viliamu looked at his friend. He was remembering an old dress of Syda’s, bright red and covered in a pattern of green vines and flowers of blue and gold. How she’d shone in it, belly swollen with the life she’d trade for her own. He thought of the blows fate had dealt to him, but to others, too. How time extended backward and forward in great expanses that saw islands rise from the sea and crumble back into it, saw whole nations driven mad with thirst. He thought how little the island’s future meant — except to him, except to all of them on Lehaki, their home that would disappear.
“We’re dead, all of us here,” he said. “Born dead.”
Out past the trees, the ocean sighed.
Viliamu clicked the safety on the pistol, jammed it into his belt and went back into the hut, where the Under-Secretary sat, brow barely misted with sweat. He spoke as soon as Viliamu entered.
“If you let me go now, we can pretend this never happened,” he said. “I will tell them we took a wrong turn. That the delay was my fault. No one will know what went on.”
Viliamu walked over to untie the knots.
“Thank you,” the Under-Secretary said. “You are doing the right thing. You have my gratitude.” His bonds loosened, he extended his hand. “My n
ame is Gabriel,” he said. “Gabriel Lukambo.”
As if Viliamu didn’t know his name. As if he hadn’t known it all along.
“I am here to help,” he said. “You, and your families.”
But Viliamu knew: there was no helping, now.
He thought of Atiu, and his knees gave way.
Plumeria and hibiscus. Taro fried in coconut oil, crab and ahi cooking over red coals. Mould, salt, fungus, and moss. All of these were scents that belonged to Lehaki now, scents that awoke in Viliamu’s heart memories that made up the shape of the island he knew and could not imagine leaving. Yet the one scent that destroyed him, the one that made the island whole and blew it apart at once, was the one that, from this day, would always be missing: the warm, nutty scent of Atiu’s hair. Viliamu breathed it in, his face buried in it, as he hugged his son to him for what was probably the last time, feeling the muscles in Atiu’s shoulders and back, the heft of a man, though he shook like a frightened puppy.
Out on the surf, the Zodiacs bobbed and whined, packed with more people than Viliamu could count. The only number that mattered was: most. Most everyone he’d ever known. Most everyone on Lehaki. They pulled away in waves, like a raid in reverse, buzzing out to the huge cargo ferries moored offshore, which Gabriel Lukambo, former child soldier turned Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, had sent to deliver the people from their condemned island. President Munan strode the length of the swamped beach, praising the evacuation efforts, patting the backs of the weeping as they stumbled into boats to nowhere, telling them that some things were beyond anyone’s control. Baptiste followed behind him, a hollowed-out look in his eyes.
They all knew full well that Lehaki wasn’t sinking. That the sea was rising up to engulf it, swollen by the chunk of Antarctic shelf that had slouched down into the Southern Ocean eighteen months ago. The water was angry, and Lehaki was only the first sacrifice. All those people in Oahu, London, New York, they thought it would never reach them — that the sea could only rise so far. That their cities of towers and light would be untouched. But Viliamu knew better. The sea would come for everyone, in time. Most would flee for higher ground, evacuate their homes, like in Lehaki.
But not all. Some would stand to bear witness.
Atiu heaved with sobs, grabbing at his father’s shirt. Viliamu ran his hand over his son’s back, trying to calm his quivering.
“Why, why?” Atiu said, over and over, tears staining his face. Viliamu’s stomach squirmed like a speared ray. Now, more than ever, he owed his son the truth. Because our island is dying and I cannot stop it. Because I could not face you, standing on a foreign place, having lived and allowed our home to be destroyed. Because I am powerless except for the hope that you’ll keep our story alive for as long as there’s dry land to walk on. Because your mother is dead, and I am dead, but you can still live. Yet he feared speaking would bring emotion over him like a breaking wave and turn his last chunks of resolve to mud. He couldn’t risk it.
It had been arranged for Atiu to travel with his Aunt Teata, relocating to a UN-run camp on the Australian mainland. Viliamu knew it would be hard for Atiu, unbearably hard. But it was still more of a future than remained here. Gabriel Lukambo had been right — whether it was sinking or being swallowed up, Lehaki was already gone.
Viliamu pulled back, clenched his jaw. Risked words.
“No matter where you end up, you are my son,” he said. “Mine and your mother’s. You were born on Lehaki. Do not forget.”
“Why can’t you come?” Atiu asked. There was no understanding this. Not for years.
Viliamu shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The grey hulk trailed a column of smoke and moaned like a stuck whale as it made its slow turn to begin the journey back to solid ground. Viliamu wondered how long Atiu would stay up on the crowded deck, leaning on the rail, peering back through tears at the row of faces on shore shrinking to the size of raisins. He wondered if somewhere, out in the world, Syda’s ghost was waiting for their son, to place a hand on his shoulder and tell him to let go of the past.
There were only seven of them left, all men. Viliamu, Kolone, and five others with too much pride and despair in their hearts, too much love for Lehaki, to imagine themselves as refugees. They stood in a line just above the foamy tide, watching the ferries turn to ghosts in the waning light.
Viliamu was the first to turn around. He scoured the treeline at the edge of the beach, looking for whatever dry sticks remained. Tonight, they would have a fire to honour the old gods, shuck clams for dinner, sit in a circle around the flames to share bottles of rum, chew betel, and discuss the days ahead. Whether they might build a monument to stand over the waves, marking where Lehaki had been; or whether they were better off spreading the sands thin with shovels and hoes. Whether to round up the last hogs for a memorial feast, or to meditate and starve. Whether to speak the names of the loved ones they had watched being taken away — sons and daughters, wives and mothers — or to keep the names locked inside their hearts, and let the palms be their whispering chorus. Whether to sit and wait for the sea to cover their homes in water, or to walk out into it willingly, until their heads were submerged.
The Streetcar Goes Sideways Down Cherry Street
My grandfather used to tell a story about Cherry Street. I don’t remember the details — he died years ago, before I left home — but the grand finale was that the streetcar went sideways down Cherry Street. Whether something rammed into it, or it just hopped off the rails, I’ll never know. My mother might, but I won’t ask her.
If you’re not familiar — and some people just don’t come down here — Cherry Street runs south off Lake Shore, where the Don pukes out into the harbour, all the way down to the beach, where it loops back on itself. There are more people here than you’d think. In the summer, anyway. That’s when you get the suburban clubbers jacked on vodka Red Bulls, gunning their Mustangs down Polson all the way to the pier to pretend they’re living in Cabo, which is a stretch, considering you can see the tips of the slag heaps piled along Ship Channel from the patio of the Cabana Pool Bar.
There’s no streetcar along Cherry anymore. It’s Mustangs now, and buses, though most days not very often.
If you go up Unwin Avenue from Cherry, along the strip of parkland where the rave kids used to have summer parties in the brush next to the sailing clubs, you get to the Hearn Generating Station. The first time I saw the Hearn, it was like coming on some huge alien insect sitting in the middle of the industrial blight, with its massive grey smokestack, the walls so steeped with chemical grime that they’re almost weeping. It was like a god, the Hearn: a hidden monster in this city that likes to think it’s so polite, so polished. I loved that building right away, even though I was afraid of it.
I guess you could say it’s because of my grandfather that I know these places. His name was Joseph — a shitty, boring, Biblical name that didn’t do any justice to his rage. He drank Black Label beer, or Bavaria, which he bought because they had the highest percentage for the cheapest price. One of those beers was probably the first booze I ever tasted. He could be really funny, my grandfather. The Cherry Street story got to be kind of a joke with my family for a while, and some days, the good ones, he would go along with it, setting up the last bit like a punchline: and the streetcar went sideways down Cherry Street! That’s probably why it’s the part I remember. I guess I need a few of those things — dumb little refrains from the life I had then — to counter all the other stuff that screams at me so loudly now, garbled and howling, like wind off the lake slamming into the metal walls of a shipping container when you’re inside.
I guess you could also say I know these places because of my mom. Mostly, though, I know them because they’re home.
It was a night in June that the festival came. I’d read about it in NOW magazine, which I pick up in the store where I used to go to buy Felix his kibble. Luminato — what a name. Like an angel of pure light de
scending on the city. The idea to have it at the Hearn was hatched by a foreign programmer, Jurgen or Juri or something. More a fancy New York kind of foreigner than the Toronto kind, who live in Regent Park and drive taxis to support their five kids. My first reaction to the festival was, What the fuck, here come the hipsters into the Port Lands now, like a rash. But when I saw what was planned for the Hearn — who was playing — it made my spine tingle.
Sunn O))) — a band like a planet. Crushing drone metal so loud that, played through the right headphones, it will actually keep you warm at night from the vibrations running through your muscles. Here were these people invading my turf, coming to claim my grimy alien god for their own, by elevating one of my favourite metal bands to the status of an art object. I had to stand my ground. Be present. But it wasn’t just that. Sunn O)))’s shows were legendary. They wore cloaks like druid priests and had walls of amplifiers thirty feet high. To see them in the Hearn — in the belly of the monster? It was irresistible. And it would be easy enough to get in: I knew about all the Hearn’s holes and portals, tunnels and cracks. I’d spent enough nights inside, huddled into my sleeping bag next to Felix, breathing in the lead particles and concrete dust.
The night before the show, I slept behind a dune on Cherry Beach, around the corner from the Hearn. Usually, I sleep at the Field of Dreams by Orphan’s Green, up where Adelaide meets the Parkway. Someone there is always good for smokes or a bit of weed, or more, if you’re looking and have the cash. But I wanted the whole day to scope my best entry into the Hearn. So I risked it at the beach, where people are more liable to fuck with you. Luckily, that night was quiet.
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