by Graeme Lay
‘That is something,’ the barman drawls back wearily, ‘that I just can’t tell you. Only place I ever bin to in the Pacific is right here in Taang-ga.’ With extreme lethargy and much sighing, Bill tells me his background. He and Joyce had run what he calls a ‘sanitorial maintenance operation’ (could he mean cleaning business, I wonder) in Chicago, but the Illinois winters had got too cold for them. So they read books on the Pacific, decided on Tonga, wrote to the government, and were offered a two-year work and residence permit if they would run the Keleti Beach Resort. They sold up everything and came here six months ago.
‘So how do you like it?’
Bill sucks his gums, swallows, pulls at the crepey skin on his neck. ‘Wal, it is warmer than Chicago, no question ’bout that. I mean, the john hasn’t frozen over here yet … But as far as the tourist trade’s concerned …’ For the third time he leaves his sentence unfinished, and instead looks out over the lounge, leaving its emptiness to speak for itself. I feel sorry for him, and as an expression of sympathy order another two beers for Rob and myself. As Bill brings them, I say, ‘Are you staying in one of the fales, Rob?’
‘Fook no, oim in the dorm-it-tory block down the path.’
‘Oh? What number?’
‘Noomber Two.’
I pause, look at him intently. ‘Did you arrive late this afternoon?’
He grins inanely. ‘Thut’s right.’ He blinks with the effort of recalling even his recent past. ‘Uctually, I was a bit pissed. ’Ad a few too many beers on the plane, like. Thun I ’ad a ruff taxi ride ’ere, and chooked oop in me room.’ He brings the lager up to his lips and sips gratefully. ‘Oim all right now, though. Now oiv ’ad a few beers …’
I like the Keleti Beach Resort. It doesn’t bother me that it has Albanian architecture, or that it’s way out of town. It’s quiet working in my dormitory room (Rob hasn’t vomited or collapsed the furniture again), the food is tolerable, the beer cold, and when the words don’t flow I just get up and stroll down to the little cove and watch the sea making fountains through the blow-holes. What is strange about the place is that it has so few guests. They can now be counted on the toes of one and a half feet, because Darryl and Angela have folded their tent and stolen away in the night.
They’ve been replaced by a trio of beautiful young Italians – two men and a woman, all in their early twenties – who look as though they might be filming a Louis Vuitton advertisement. The Italians breakfast early, radiating a style and sophistication that looks out of place in the concrete and plastic dining room, then vanish in a taxi, returning, still radiant and voluble, as the sun is going down. Apart from this stunning ménage à trois, there is Rob, me and a sweet, darkly tanned Danish couple who are so ancient and wrinkled they look as if they’ve been dug out of a peat bog in Jutland. They totter to the beach in the morning, sleep in the afternoon and watch old films in a corner of the lounge each evening.
Rob is a drunk, a no-hoper and a layabout of the first order. I like him a lot. I like his dark sense of humour, his fecklessness, anarchy and total dedication to the booze. There’s something likeable about a thorough, amusing drunk, the way he lives for the day and so obviously relishes getting totally pissed at every opportunity. At any time from breakfast onwards, Rob is at the bar, swaying on the stool in front of the steel reinforcing mesh, waving his glass about as if he’s conducting the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. And as he drinks he expounds on his life in the Pacific.
‘Oi loov Feegee, y’gnaw? Oi live in a village, a little village, wiv the chief – the rut-too’s daughter. She … what the fook’s ’er name again? Hahahahahaha … She’s all roight, y’naw? I still cun’t think of ’er name, but it’ll coom it’ll coom … Anyway Graeme, oim a sparky by trade, an electrician, so oim a bit oova magic mun like, t’the Feeg-geeans, to the fuzzee-wuzzees. Oi fix their videos und their toasters and thut, und when oi do, they give me presents, like a case of VB Bitter. Hahahahaha …’
It isn’t hard to picture Rob in ‘his’ village, lurching about among the empty VB cans, mending the occasional fuse or broken iron to demonstrate his magic: reprehensible behaviour in one way, but in another just part of an old English colonial tradition involving the white man who is a failure at home but an outrageous success in the outermost reaches of the Empire. He will eventually drown in a lake of lager, and it will be the most pleasurable experience of a short, untidy life which has overflowed with self-indulgence and self-abuse.
But I get the impression that for Joyce and Bill life has been long and largely luckless, and that one of their unluckier decisions was the one to leave the United States and move to Tonga. For Joyce this realisation manifests itself in a rejection of all things ‘Taan-gun’ (even after a year in the country, she can’t pronounce its name properly). At every opportunity she rails against the people, the climate, the politics, the economy, the king, the church, even the food: ‘Do you know that last year the Taan-guns had to import coconuts from the Cook Islands? Coconuts!’
Bill, in contrast, is afflicted with a tiredness which is exhausting to watch. Everything he does is done slowly and to the accompaniment of sighs and groans. Even when he sits at reception, glumly reading a novel I’ve lent him, he groans every time he turns the page, not over the progress of the plot (it is a Maurice Gee novel), but with the extreme effort it requires to move on to the next page. I don’t think Tonga has done this to him. Bill looks the sort of guy who was born exhausted.
Then, on my fourth morning at the resort, as I walk past reception on my way to breakfast, I am startled to see that Joyce is transformed. She is vivacious, goggle-eyed with joy.
‘Guess what, Graeme? Guess what?’
‘You’ve found a Tongan you like?’ I feel like replying, but instead I say lamely, ‘I’ve no idea, Joyce.’
She makes little clapping movements with her hands. ‘The whole fucking Pap-oo Noo Gin-yin mini-games team is comin’ here tonight fer a party! A hunert and twenny of the mother-fuckers!’
She pours out the details. The Papua New Guinea team has booked in for dinner at seven o’clock. After the meal there will be a dance. But why the Keleti Beach Resort? I can’t resist asking. Unoffended, Joyce explains that no other place on the island would take such a large group at short notice.
‘Wow,’ I reply, impressed but still doubtful. ‘Can you cope with as many as that?’
Joyce’s eyes retract, her lids half close. ‘At forty puh-ungga a head, we’ll fucking well cope, all right.’ She leans across the desk and calls out to where Bill is readying the van for a trip into Nuku’alofa for supplies. ‘Bill! Bill! Soy sauce! Don’t ferget the soy sauce! Twenny bottles!’
Later, as I sit at the bar after a long day at my laptop, Rob raises his glass. ‘Bula vinaka, my son.’
‘And malo ei lelei to you, Rob. Had a good day?’
‘Aw yeah, not so bud. Few beers after breakfast, bit oova kip after loonch, game o’ table tennis wiv Latu, few more beers after thut. Now oim all ready for the party.’ Av you seen what’s ’appening outside?’
Rob leads me to the windows of the lounge. At the far end of the concrete quadrangle, above the cliff that faces the sea, a number of men are busying themselves with microphones, amplifiers, drums and a big switchboard. Flex entrails cover the floor, and big speakers have been set up on either side of the thatched shelter.
‘Who are they?’
‘Pup-oo New Gin-yins. Boogers uv brought their own bund.’
Three coaches pull up, and the partygoers – groups of young men and women dressed in vivid red and yellow tracksuit tops, black pants with red patterned stripes up the sides, and dark-coloured sneakers – enter the resort tentatively, self-consciously. Their faces are coal-black, their hair frizzy, their teeth almost luminously white. Many of the men are shorter than the women, but they’re perfectly proportioned, muscular and neat, while the female team members are lithe and slender. Latu, in bright white T-shirt bearing a Keleti Beach logo, tracksuit pants and white s
neakers, ushers the guests to the metal tables around the quadrangle. He is assisted by a small European boy, a Palagi, in a tupenu and Roman sandals. Both of them carry woven pandanus trays.
Soon the tables are full, men on one side of the quadrangle, women on the other. It’s dark now, and the coloured lights are switched on. There are no festivities yet; the team members just sit, sipping Coca-Cola or cream soda from the can, occasionally standing up to photograph one another. Each flash of the camera is followed by a burst of mirth and the exposure of teeth as dazzling as the flash.
Rob and I take a seat at a table near the reception area. Rob is growing very agitated. He nudges me excitedly as the women continue to crowd into the courtyard. ‘Hey, look ut thut wun over there, look at the boom on ’er! I never seen so mooch bluk velvet together in wun place …’
A tall Melanesian man in a green blazer steps up to the microphone, and the team quietens in a moment. Speaking first in pidgin, then in English, he calls for ‘impeccable behaviour, self-discipline, good sportsmanship and total commitment’. Then he steps back. ‘I now have much pleasure in calling upon our minister for sport, culture and youthful affairs, the Right Honourable George Banuba!’
Sustained applause greets the movement to the microphone of a tall, heavily built man in white dinner jacket, grey needlecord trousers and open-necked, floral-patterned shirt. He wears tinted glasses and has a bushy black moustache. On behalf of his government he welcomes the team to the games and also calls sternly for impeccable behaviour, self-discipline, good sportsmanship and total commitment.
‘Any team member not behaving in accordance with these rules –’ he pauses, and his audience exchange nervous glances or stare at the floor – ‘will, I assure you, be … finished.’ Allowing another long pause, he glowers at the crowd, then his big fleshy face breaks into a broad grin. ‘But for now, we can eat, drink our soft drinks, and dance. A good games to you all!’
Joyce and her kitchenhands have worked some sort of miracle. The dining-room tables sag under platters of taro, breadfruit, marinated fish, chop suey, cold chicken, cold pork, fresh vegetables, rice, baked beans and a variety of salads. Latu moves proudly among the guests, helping with plates, glasses and chairs as the team members line up for their buffet meal. Joyce, standing by the kitchen door, scrutinises the table through her thick-lensed spectacles. She wears a long black halter-necked dress, and is smoking feverishly. Bill is nowhere to be seen.
Joyce beckons me over, and speaks from the side of her mouth. ‘They’re quite little, you notice that? They probably won’t eat that much. And their manners, I really like their manners. Not like Taan-guns. You ever seen Taan-guns eat?’ She spreads her bare arms wide and makes huge sweeping gestures towards her mouth, from which her cigarette dangles. ‘Taan-guns eat like this.’ She makes the sweeping movement again, removes the cigarette, works her mandibles as far as they will go, then shuts them. ‘That’s how Taan-guns eat.’
After queuing up too, I take my plate out to where Rob is sitting and casting giddy looks over the women in the crowd. The food is mostly heavy, but tasty enough. Certainly the Papua New Guineans are showing total commitment to the meal. And in one respect Joyce is right: they are an extraordinarily polite and well-behaved group. They laugh and chat, but there is no rowdiness of any kind. Usually when I’ve heard mention of Papua New Guinea it’s been in association with the ‘rascals’, and their brutal raping and bashing activities around Port Moresby. But these people constitute the most respectful and self-disciplined sports team I’ve ever seen. They’re also very happy; it shows in their beaming faces and their open laughter. The PNG mini-games team are having the time of their lives.
At the far end of the courtyard the band launches into a reggae number, and several of the Papua New Guineans leap up and begin to boogie. In some cases the men cross the yard and choose a partner; in others women get up and dance in a line without male assistance. The dancing snowballs and in minutes the joint is jumping.
The Right Honourable George Banuba is sitting at a table beside mine and Rob’s. With him are three strapping, unsmiling young men in pale brown safari suits. The minister seems in semi-jocular mood, tapping one foot to the beat, but from time to time he frowns and sweeps the dance floor with his gaze, searching for any breach of good conduct. Rob returns from the bar with four bottles of Royal lager and lines them up carefully on our table. Slopping some into his glass, he asks me: ‘Well,’ av you enjoyed the Keleti Beach Resort thun, me old Kiwi mate?’
‘I have, Rob, I have. I mean, it’s not the Sheraton, but it’s been good enough for me.’
Then he holds an imaginary microphone in front of my face. ‘And what do you think of Tong-ga, Sir?’
I clear my throat. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Tonga that a decent revolution wouldn’t fix.’
‘Hahahahahaha … thank you sir, end of interview. You uv bin shot, decup-i-tated und yer ’ead stook on the front of ’is Majesty’s suff-fari wuggun.’
Crimson-faced, Rob rocks back on his chair, attempting at the same time to focus on the people on the now-crowded dance floor. He tips his seat back too far, rocks forward, regains his balance and his glass, but in the process slops beer over his hand and on to the designer trousers of the Right Honourable Minister at the next table.
As Rob’s chair legs crash back to the floor, the minister rises very slowly, very deliberately, making broad sweeping strokes with one hand to remove the lager from his thigh. He then stands over the Englishman, glowers down on him from what seems an enormous height and says in a tone of unmistakable menace, ‘I think … that you … have had … too much to drink.’
Rob swivels in his chair and looks up. He stares at the burly politician for a few moments, getting him into full focus, then says in a tone of total nonchalance, ‘Und I think … that you … ought to go and get fooked.’
As one, the three minders rise from their seats and advance. At the same time the minister’s right hand reaches for the back of Rob’s shirt. Jumping up, I slip between the Papua New Guineans and Rob, who has calmly turned back to attend to the balance of his drink. I hold both my hands up to the minister, who looms as large and menacing as a grizzly bear.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay, he didn’t mean it, really …’
The hostility in the minister’s eyes diminishes, and his hand drops to his side. As it does so, the other three men halt their advance.
I go on. ‘I’m sorry about your trousers, but let’s not let it spoil a great party, okay …’
The minister stands glaring at Rob for a little longer. His big chest rises and falls steadily. Suddenly his face breaks into a gap-toothed grin, although his brown eyes remain unamused. ‘And they always say,’ he says, ‘that it is we natives who can’t hold our liquor.’
The band gets louder, the dancing more joyful. The whole courtyard is a seething mass of grinning, jigging, twisting tracksuited figures. Cameras flash as the team members put the party on record. Rob grins, digs me in the ribs.
‘Not a bud mob, are they? Hey, look ut her …’ He points admiringly to a petite, shapely girl of about eighteen, dancing at the end of a line of swaying female athletes. She is dark, lissom, surpassingly pretty. Rob’s eyes bulge. ‘Cor, oi wouldn’t mind playin’ hide-the-sausage with ’er.’ He waves at the girl, who turns away in embarrassment. Rob subsides into deep thought.
‘Do you know, oi’ve never fooked a white woman. Never.’ Suddenly the band stops. The players step back a little, making room for their jovial, rotund leader, who bends his head to the microphone.
‘Ladies, gentlemen, team members, it gives me very great pleasure to invite a special guest to sing for us tonight. This person is already a star in his own right, and as such is known to many of you. To others he will be strange. But he has agreed to sing for us, and it is my honour, not to mention my privilege, to welcome him to the microphone. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you’ – there is a drum roll from behind him – ‘our minister for spor
t, culture and youthful affairs, the Right Honourable George Banuba!’
Together, Rob and I spin around. Sure enough, the minister is on his feet and beaming. He walks down through the applauding crowd and up to the microphone. Detaching it deftly from its stand, he comes forward. ‘Fellow countrymen and women, I would like to sing a bracket of songs for you, starting with a personal favourite.’ He turns to the guitarist, makes counting-down movements with his head, swings back to the audience. ‘Aha la Bamba la Bamba …’
The audience explode like fireworks, jumping, squealing, grabbing partners, clapping, singing, dancing, snapping their fingers. Rob is yelling and clapping, even Joyce is jumping. The audience won’t let the minister go. He sings Elvis, Stevie Wonder, Abba, the Beatles, Harry Belafonte – nothing seems beyond his repertoire – while his team rocks and rolls and boogies and sings. I decide that if the Papua New Guineans show this amount of commitment on the sports field, they will be unbeatable.
Having saved money by staying in the Keleti Beach dormitory, I decide to treat myself to a proper hotel in town for a couple of nights. Bill runs me into Nuku’alofa in the resort van. ‘Do you think you’ll stay long in Tonga?’ I ask him as we trundle along. He pauses for some time before replying.