by John Harding
He rounded the headland and the Captain Cook came into view and something below the surface of his brain, an undertow from last night, tugged at him. His mind struggled to grasp this thing that was always just out of reach, without success, and then, in the way that often occurs, his thoughts returned to where they’d been a moment earlier. When he’d first spoken to Managua about his wife, Managua had said that now he could only see her in the kassa house. But whenever he’d been there with Managua the older man was only ever talking to his father. Pilua had never appeared to him. Of course it could well be that the same dead person didn’t show up every time you entered the kassa house, it could be that sometimes Managua saw his father and sometimes his late wife. But it could also be that she never appeared for a very simple reason. Because she wasn’t dead. William couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this before. It was like one of those cartoons, where a light bulb goes on inside a character’s head. And then, his mind leaping now, that image enabled him to close his fingers around the lost memory. A light! That was what he had seen. A light shining out as he swooped down over the Captain Cook. And how could there be a light when he wasn’t there? The only lights in the hotel, so far as he knew, were the oil burners the natives had given him. And William had extinguished them all before he went off last night to the kassa house. Naturally William could be 100 per cent certain of this since the lights were the only things he checked when he left the hotel. He had no burglar alarms, no hi-fis, no electrical devices at all, no door or window locks, no doors or windows even. He had to check the lights, not only because he didn’t want some accident to destroy the half of the hotel that was left, or rather had been built, but also by default, for the want of anything else to check. There was only one conclusion to be drawn. Someone else had been in the hotel. And now, closing his eyes, he confirmed that the light could not have been a moment of carelessness from him, a rare checking failure, because it had been shining from an upstairs window and he had not ventured to the hotel’s upper floor after that one occasion when he had been struck on the head.
As he approached the hotel from the beach he thought of how he’d lain on his mahogany bed and listened to the tapping sound from above. What else but the sound of an artificial foot moving about upstairs? And that other noise, that lighter skittering sound. What else but the light step of a woman? A woman confined perhaps for years to this building, dancing maybe from an excess of pent-up energy, easing the frustration of her imprisonment. It all made sense now. What better place for Managua to hide his supposed dead wife and child – the child whose existence William suddenly realized was the reason for all this subterfuge – than the unfinished hotel, especially once he had disseminated a rumour that it was inhabited by evil spirits? Close enough to visit them and take them essential supplies, but somewhere they were likely to remain undisturbed, until the visit of an obstinate foreigner who refused the blandishments of the bukumatula house.
William quickened his step. The answer to his quest had been, if not right under, then right above, his own nose all the time he had been here. No wonder that when Managua had guessed William had not only stayed at Lucy’s last night but had eaten there as well he had chosen not to invoke the taboo but had enjoyed himself by making William eat another breakfast, the very breakfast that was now weighing so heavily in William’s bowels as he tried to hurry to the hotel. The old man hadn’t wanted to discourage William from staying at Lucy’s, well away from the hotel.
Inside the hotel entrance he listened. He thought he heard the skittering noise, but there was no tapping. What was he thinking of? Of course there wasn’t! How could there be when he had just left Managua back at the village plotting his literary sensation? He hastened to the stairway and when he examined it realized that though it was precarious even Managua would still be able to ascend it, especially as there would be no concern about symmetry for a man with an artificial leg.
He went up the stairs as fast as he dared. There were a couple of near-falls but he made it to the top, even remembering not to put his weight on the creaky top step. He listened carefully, but he didn’t hear the skittering sound again. Pilua and her child must have heard him. He could sense them standing motionless, holding their breath, fearful of the slightest noise that might alert him to their presence. He didn’t this time make the mistake of opening the doors on the front side of the hotel that he now knew led to nothing but the precipice he’d been pushed over before. He crept along the corridor and set his hand on the handle of the first door on the beach side. He turned it slowly and as quietly as possible and then flung the door open fast. The room was a concrete shell and quite empty. But as he turned, he heard the skittering noise again. He crept noiselessly along the corridor, although even as he did so, he realized caution was unnecessary. There was no escape from any of the rooms save via this corridor and the staircase behind him that he’d come up. The balconies on the beach side were surely too high for a woman to jump from. He set his hand upon the handle of the next door and as he turned it, he heard the skittering within. Without further ado he threw open the door and found himself face to face with the source of the noise. A pair of beady black eyes stared back at him.
William was too amazed to react quickly. Not so the pig. It looked from him to the open doorway and was through it even as William tried too late to slam it shut. He heard it squealing as it shot back and forth along the corridor, its trotters on the concrete making the familiar skittering noise that had so alarmed him all those nights ago. And then, the squealing and skittering stopped and he heard a shuffle and a tap, a shuffle and a tap. Then that too ceased.
‘Come, come, little Cordelia, is be no need for be afraid. Here, I is have tasty orange fungi for you. Here, you is eat.’ Hearing the seductive tone of Managua’s voice, William at once understood the reasonableness of Lamua’s jealousy. The shuffle and tap resumed and William felt the door move against him. He stood aside and Managua walked in, the pig under his arm.
‘Ah, is be as I is think. Is be you gwanga who is frighten my little pet.’
‘You might have told me you were keeping it here. The darn thing kept me awake at night. I was scared out of my wits.’
Managua carefully closed the door before setting the pig on the ground. He stroked it lovingly and the pig licked his fingers and looked up at him with what William could only describe as adoration. Managua put his hand in the bag that was slung over his shoulder and fed the pig some more fungi. He turned to William. ‘I is not tell because I is not want for everyone is find out. My wife is want for kill this pig.’
‘What makes you think I’d tell Lamua? I can keep a secret, you know.’
Managua’s look was steely. ‘No gwanga, I is not think you is can. Life on this island is be good. Even with one leg is be better than life you Americans is have, I is think. But you is must open you big American mouth and tell everything. And for what? For dollars! For buy things! Things we is not need. Things we is not want. You is open you mouth and is destroy this island. You is think I is trust you with life of my little pig?’
What could William say to such an imputation of his integrity? A slur that was even greater than intended since he hadn’t Managua’s high regard for the pig in question, because he, unlike the native, had seen other, larger breeds of pigs and so knew just how runty and ugly this one was. William stood and stared at the older man in silence, while Managua glared at him, at the same time feeding and fondling the pig which lovingly nuzzled its silky ears against his hand.
The silence was broken not by William thinking of an adequate riposte – he couldn’t – but by a loud creak that both men instantly recognized as someone putting a foot upon the top step of the ruined staircase. They heard the soft pad of footsteps along the corridor. They watched as the handle of the door began to turn. As though instinctively, Managua bent and scooped up the pig, just as the door was flung open.
‘I is know I is find you here with this damn pig!’ Lamua flew at Managu
a like a fury. She balled her fists and began beating him about the head. Simultaneously she let fly with a salvo of kicks and then screamed in pain as her naked foot made contact with his artificial leg. She paused to bend and rub it, confining herself the while to spitting out insults. ‘I is catch you with you sweetheart now! I is find you is make fug-a-fug with you precious little sow!’
She launched herself at her husband once more, this time seizing the arm under which the pig was tucked and digging her nails into it as she attempted to loosen Managua’s grip on the animal. The pig began to scream in descant to Lamua’s own screams. It would have been difficult to say which screams were the most horrible, but most people would probably have gone for the pig’s. Then William noticed a sudden reduction in the noise level, a halving in fact, although he couldn’t at first understand why because Lamua had her back to him and he couldn’t see what she was doing to Managua. He took a step or two sideways to get a better view and saw Lamua had sunk her teeth into Managua’s pig-holding arm and was thus unable to vocalize. At this point the volume level went up again as Managua let out a cry or two himself, supplying the bassline that had so far been lacking in the hullabaloo. There was a great deal of pushing and shoving and for a moment or two it wasn’t clear to William just what was happening and then he saw Managua had tugged his arm free of his wife’s dental attentions but only at the cost of dropping the pig. The animal hit the floor running and shot out the door like a bullet. Lamua let go of Managua and was through the door almost as fast as the pig, slamming it shut after her as she went. Managua paused only for a second to rub the bite mark on his arm before he took hold of the door handle and pulled at the door. It didn’t open. William went to help him. With evident irritation at having to accept assistance from a man whose character he had so recently roundly abused, Managua let go the door handle and used his hand to massage his bite wound. William found that the door, evidently warped from being left open to the elements for so many years, had stuck after being so forcefully slammed. It took William some time to manipulate it free and it was just as he was opening it that he heard someone speak. At first he thought Lamua must be talking to the pig, but as she wasn’t screaming or threatening he knew it couldn’t be so. He opened the door, but before he could walk through it Managua barged him aside and exited first.
William pursued Managua along the corridor to the room where all the noise was coming from. He arrived to find the old man blocking the doorway, staring at what he found there. Peering over his shoulder William saw Lamua confronting a woman of about her own age, to whom, it would seem, she had reassigned her disaffection from the pig for she was midstream in another tirade whose gist William couldn’t catch. At once, he knew this woman could be none other than the elusive Pilua and realized his first instinct about the secret occupant of the hotel had been right. Of course it had! Why would the pig have needed a light? What was it going to do, sit up late and read Shakespeare?
Pilua stood motionless, calmly accepting Lamua’s insults. There was a movement behind her and William saw a teenage girl, of sixteen or seventeen perhaps. She was exceptionally beautiful, but that wasn’t what caused William’s jaw to drop. What he saw was that her skin was the colour of this morning’s breakfast tablecloth or the foaming surf he’d compared it to. She had her mother’s looks, a glance at them both told him that, but no hint of her colour; the girl’s skin was as white as his own.
William was too busy staring at the girl to bother looking, but if he had, he would have found there was no sign of the pig.
FORTY-SIX
TO UNDERSTAND HOW Lamua came to be at the Captain Cook and what had driven her to brave its evil spirits in search of the pig it is necessary to go back a few hours. For as far back as he could remember Lintoa had wanted only one thing: to be a boy. Now he wanted something else too. He wanted Perlua. He wanted to marry the beautiful white girl he had seen on the balcony of the Captain Cook, bathing herself in the light of the moon. This second desire naturally increased the intensity of the first. He wanted Perlua on his arm as he strutted about the village in his pubic leaf for all the world to see. He couldn’t see her with him tottering on high heels and clad in a cast-off, too-small, pink dress.
Lintoa was sixteen years old. It would be two years before he could choose his sex. What if some other youth discovered Perlua before then? Much as Lintoa believed her protestations of eternal love, how would they stack up when she was offered the choice between some other fine fellow bulging out of a pubic leaf and him trying not to look pretty in pink?
What was he to do? Every day he had to hide his love was torture. Every moment he was not with Perlua he was beside himself with worry that she might be spotted by someone else.
Tigua knew something was wrong, of course. He and Lintoa had been inseparable from the time they put on their first grass skirts. He could read Lintoa’s face the way Managua read a book. He saw there the things hidden from everyone else.
‘What is be matter with you?’ he asked one day. ‘Half time you is walk around as if you is be half asleep like man who is have too much kassa—’
‘Huh!’ interpolated Lintoa. That Huh! meant that the chance – being allowed into the kassa house to imbibe the stuff – would be a fine thing and they both understood that, though Tigua ignored the exclamation.
‘—and half time you is be like pig with sore arse.’
‘Nothing is be matter,’ muttered Lintoa, ‘’cept this damn bra strap,’ and he began fiddling with it so meticulously that it didn’t fool Tigua for a moment.
‘This is be me you is be talk with, you is remember?’ said Tigua. ‘I is know something is be wrong. I is can see you is not be self.’
‘I is never be self since first day I is be born,’ snapped Lintoa. ‘Self is be boy, I is made for be girl.’
Tigua rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, so we is be back there again? I is be sorry I is ask. You is just must wait, you is not can see that? Boy or girl, there is be one thing you is be and that is be stupid.’
But Lintoa was not stupid. He might not be as quick as Tigua but give him time and he wasn’t so bad at figuring things out, although it has to be said he also had a tendency to be hotheaded and to not think enough before he acted.
And that was what happened now. Lintoa felt that if he waited two years to become a boy, he would lose Perlua. But even Purnu’s magic could not make him a boy now, even if it were available, which of course it was not. Even the best spells could not change the traditions and taboos of the tribe, the little sorcerer had said. But that didn’t mean that something else couldn’t, did it? What if something happened to question all the beliefs of the tribe? Would they then still insist on what was after all a relatively unimportant thing, the age when a she-boy could choose his or her sex?
Lintoa asked himself why Managua had invented the story of his wife and child being killed, why he had hidden them away. What was he trying to conceal? He knew there was something different about Perlua, other than her great beauty, and he asked himself what it was. It didn’t take even Lintoa long to figure it out. She was white. But how could this be? Her mother was brown like the rest of them. Thinking about Pilua he remembered the story of the attack upon her by the three American soldiers. He recalled hearing that they had all been white. And Pilua had given birth to a white child. Could this be a coincidence? Could a white baby have floated to her by mistake?
He thought about the argument between Miss Lucy and the men of the village when she had insisted that men’s sperm makes babies. The men had laughed at the idea. But suppose it were true? Certainly white people like Miss Lucy knew plenty of stuff the islanders didn’t. Suppose she’d been right about this? It would explain why Perlua was white. When you thought about it, it was the only thing that would explain it. She was white because a white man, or rather, three white men, had made her by putting their sperm into Pilua. Far from having no biological father, Perlua had three.
The more he considered the theory, the mo
re plausible it seemed. This was surely why there was a taboo against making fug-a-fug with foreigners, to prevent children being born with different skin colour. No wonder Managua had hidden his daughter! If it were proved that men fathered children then everything on the island would have to change. Men would no longer have to give yams to support their sisters’ children. A man would have to pass his property, such as it was, on to his wife’s children, not, as at present, his sister’s. All the beliefs of the islanders would be overturned. Take the floating babies. How could babies be the souls of the dead returning to life if they came not over the ocean from Tuma, but were injected into their mothers as sperm? Every tradition of birth, marriage and even death would be altered, nothing would stay the same. It would all come crashing down. And in the confusion that followed, in the abandonment of the old values, who was going to object if he took off his dress and put on a pubic leaf? Who the fug-a-fug would care?
Once he’d decided this, Lintoa’s next problem was how to go about revealing Pilua and Perlua’s existence. His first thought was to tell the gwanga, who was desperate to find Pilua because that would make other Americans listen when he told them about the blown-off limbs. Lintoa wasn’t sure why this should be, why Americans would be more inclined to believe a woman who said she had been forced to make fug-a-fug, which was something you couldn’t see, than someone who said they had had their foot blown off by an American bomb, which you could see, or rather, you could not see the foot, that was the whole point, the absence of foot was definite proof. But then, Lintoa had long ago stopped trying to make sense of the Americans, who, when you thought about it, were as loony as the British, just as mad, only with bombs.
The problem with going to the gwanga was Managua, who would see it as a betrayal of the island and its customs. It would bring the old man’s wrath down upon him. Did he really want to be in the bad books of the island’s two most powerful sorcerers? Would not the likelihood then be of him being changed not into a boy but into something with fins or feathers or flippers? He mustn’t forget either that Managua was, he hoped, his future father-in-law even though, of course, he was not Perlua’s father, definitely not, other than by virtue of being married to her mother, although of course, looked at another way, that was how all the fathers on the island regarded themselves in relation to their children. Shit! It was all getting so complicated it made his head hurt. Anyway, all that was by the by. It was obvious he could not tell the gwanga and risk upsetting Managua.