Pieces of Happiness

by Anne Ostby

  —

  “We need stones,” Vilivo explains as he turns up the road toward a house that consists of a few aluminum sheets on a rickety frame. A shadow appears from between the trees behind the house; the man is so skinny, Lisbeth is tempted to climb out of the truck and help him carry the large round rocks he retrieves from a pit behind some bushes. But he and Vilivo manage to lug them onto the truck bed, alongside bundles of dry yellowish brown firewood. Lisbeth counts about twenty-five stones. “What are they for, Vilivo?”

  He looks at her, surprised, and the laughter begins to bubble at the back of his throat. “You want to make a lovo without stones, ma’am?”

  She’s not quite sure what this means—is he making fun of her? Is it some kind of stone soup they’re making?

  It’s not until Mosese and his brother arrive with shovels on Friday afternoon and dig a hole behind the pumpkin patch that grows enormous that Lisbeth realizes what it is she’s playing hostess to. They’re going to bury the food! They will light a fire on the smooth, round stones and place the food on top and bury the whole thing in soil and sand. She shudders. The food isn’t going to be cooked in pots and pans in the kitchen. It’s going to be wrapped in leaves and twigs from the trees, packed down with bird shit and aphids, and roasted on an underground fire! The party she has planned, with tablecloths and Christmas napkins, withers before her eyes; what is this really going to be like? Ateca tells her they don’t need to worry about chairs and tables; there are plenty of ibe. More than enough mats? Does she mean they’re supposed to serve dinner on the ground?

  —

  On Saturday afternoon, Ateca and six other women sit cross-legged on the porch. Nestled between them are big plastic bowls of bluish white milk squeezed from the coconut meat Jone’s sons have been scraping for hours, with Ingrid’s good help. She wanders around barefoot in a faded sulu she’s borrowed from Ateca, with printed letters reading “Golden Treasure Resort” running down the side. Ateca sits next to Litia, Mosese’s wife. They make little packets of roro, leaves of the dalo plant, and fill them with coconut milk and a fatty brown mush scooped out of cans labeled “corned mutton.” Based on Ateca’s delighted expression, Lisbeth realizes this must be the long-awaited palusami. Roro and soupy, fatty sheep’s meat from a can, cooked in coconut milk? Ingrid comes toward them; her glasses are splattered with coconut spray, and she flits nimbly past a pile of banana leaves next to the wall. “Can I see, Ateca? How do you do it?” Litia’s face grows darker, she hunches her shoulders over her work and inches herself further behind Ateca, away from Ingrid. Lisbeth furrows her eyebrows in surprise but doesn’t have time to wonder why. She turns around, her eyes scanning for Kat. She spots her friend on her way around the house and runs after her: “How are we going to set the table? Silverware and, I don’t know…how many are we expecting?”

  Something in Kat’s quiet eyes makes her stop; she feels her cheeks flush without knowing why.

  “How many are we expecting?” Kat repeats slowly.

  “Yes, I have to…”

  Decorate, she wants to say. Make sure there are enough serving spoons and flower vases and folded napkins for every guest.

  But the words won’t come out. They don’t fit in here; they’re meaningless to Jone, who has walked all the steps of his life on this beach. Tea lights in matching holders won’t make the lovo taste better to Ateca’s church ladies.

  Hot and flustered, Lisbeth forces herself to look Kat right in the face. So what’s left for her to do?

  She’s looked forward to this party so much. This is something she knows—arranging, planning, decorating, displaying. What else does she have to contribute besides napkin-folding? She lacks Ingrid’s fearless appetite for mud crabs and other challenges, and Sina seems content to play a cameo role without too many lines. Maya is the passenger who’s brought along her own little world of books and enlightened conversation. Kat is the captain, and Lisbeth’s not even sure whether she qualifies as the ship’s cat.

  “I just wanted to…” The words are on the tip of her tongue. “Just wanted to do something. To be somebody.”

  Suddenly she hears her own voice on the porch on the chocolate evening, when she’d gotten to her feet. “Pieces of happiness,” she’d said. Her own idea. The silence around her, the approval in Ingrid’s eyes. Kat’s astonished “Wow!”

  Their eyes meet. “I know,” Kat says. “But you don’t need to. All these people expect is…joy. They don’t need to be served or entertained or impressed. It’s not your responsibility to make sure they have a good time. We’ll make certain there’s plenty of good food and good company. The rest they’ll handle on their own.”

  —

  Good food and good company. By the time the men dig into the smoldering pile of soil with shovels and unearth one banana-leaf packet after another, Lisbeth has forgotten the aphids and snails. The steaming hot packets dripping with meaty juice envelop the yard and the porch in an aromatic haze of anticipation. Deft hands peel away the scorched banana leaves and place glistening cuts of meat and succulent whole roasted chickens onto generous plastic trays.

  The palusami, with pearls of fat swimming in coconut milk with lumps of thin skin floating on top, is ladled out of a big green basin. Lisbeth looks around at the hands shamelessly heaping more onto their plates, large bodies softly sinking onto straw mats and surrendering to the comfort of satiated bellies. Wide-framed men and heavyset women, smooth young calf muscles below shorts, naked kids’ feet tripping in between the adults’ crossed legs. Someone’s strumming the first few chords on a guitar; the laughter rolls off the porch and invites the fireflies in the yard to dance. Never again, Lisbeth thinks. I’m not going to fold another napkin for the rest of my life. The absurd thought makes her laugh out loud all of a sudden, a hoarse, unfamiliar sound. She claps her hand over her mouth and her gaze meets a pair of dark, somber eyes under golden brown bangs. The little girl who sells pawpaw by the side of the road is standing right in front of her; her upper lip bears an orange shadow of Fanta. She’s saying something, Lisbeth has to lean forward to hear. “You’re pretty, Nau,” she says. She extends a skinny hand and strokes the long skirt made of shimmering blue Thai silk, Lisbeth’s version of a sulu. She doesn’t understand the name the girl is calling her and automatically wants to take a step back, pull her skirt away from the sticky kid fingers, but she stays put. The girl has a shell in her other hand, and now she holds it out to Lisbeth. A yellowish white treasure, a gesture of affection in her palm. Lisbeth takes it wordlessly, runs her fingers over the smooth spiral with wavy edges. The pale-pink mother-of-pearl mouth, a silent entrance to secrets and mysteries.

  She bends down on one knee; the Thai silk absorbs the muddy soil at the bottom of the veranda stairs.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Vinaka.”

  Without thinking she pulls off her gold necklace, the one with the Venetian-style pattern, a gift from Harald. She can feel her hands trembling as she carefully fastens it around the slender brown neck.

  “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Maraia,” the girl replies. “It means star of the sea.”

  —

  A few hours later, it’s hard to tell the hosts apart from the guests. Eight or ten women—Lisbeth recognizes Jone’s wife and daughters-in-law among them—clean up food scraps and empty dishes while squealing with laughter. The door from the kitchen out to the backyard stays open; propane tanks are carried in and garbage bags are thrown out; someone shouts Akuila’s name and gives the guard a plate with a piece of fish and a few thick slices of dalo. The music ebbs and flows from the porch. Kat sits on the bottom step, talking softly to a woman whose little girl is half asleep in her lap. It’s the girl with the shell; the gold necklace glints in the light from the torches.

  Two young boys sit strumming their guitars; Lisbeth thinks their songs sound familiar and foreign all at once. She doesn’t understand the words, but something about the melodies reminds her of choir class at sch
ool. A mix of melancholy ballad, country twang, and the Salvation Army. Sometimes one of the boys starts singing along, sometimes both of them, sometimes voices from the kitchen and from the darkness under the trees join in, forming sudden, beautiful harmonies.

  “Do you know ‘Amazing Grace’?”

  It’s Ingrid who asks the question as she stands by the boys in her bright green sulu jaba. Lisbeth cringes; did she really have to copy their clothing to such an extreme? But there’s a glow surrounding Ingrid. The large flowered pattern seems to soften her step, make her face warmer, more delicate, wide open.

  The boys confer, and one of them strikes a few practice chords before hitting the right one, strumming his fingers down the strings.

  Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me…

  The song isn’t just a string of words everybody knows. It’s a voice in unison, a common breath, a joyful stream of notes, something broad and magnificent. Grace, Lisbeth thinks. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. It means something here.

  An older man steps out of the shadow of the bougainvillea that droops heavily over the railing. A white short-sleeved shirt, and a gray, knee-length sulu in the style worn by all those who hold official positions. Short and barefoot, he plants his stocky legs wide as the young guitarist continues to play. His voice is mild, but clear and deliberate when he opens his mouth. Lisbeth can’t comprehend the words, but understands that the man is leading them in prayer when she sees heads bow all around her. Long words full of big round vowels dance on the wistful melody. A young woman beside her moves her lips silently with her eyes closed; Maraia’s mother folds her arms around her daughter. When the man stops and a sighing chorus of “Emeni” echoes across the porch, there’s a moment of silence. A beat, a breath, a twinkle of the Southern Cross before the guitar changes key. “Silent night,” the Christmas guests intone in perfect clarity. “Holy night,” Lisbeth whispers, stroking her thumb across the soft, hopeful mouth of a seashell.

  17

  Kat

  We’re jumping right into it! Not wildly and recklessly, but we do have to make a few long-term investments. An oven for roasting the beans, equipment for grinding the nibs and pressing the cocoa mass. A conch machine and molds for the chocolate bars. Ingrid and I have done some rough calculations, and my inheritance plus the money from the house in Norway will be enough to get us started.

  —

  Am I doing this mostly for Niklas? Because I want to hear him cheering me on in the back of my mind? I’m not sure. It’s so hard to know what I owe him.

  What I told the others is true: we had briefly toyed with the idea of taking the next step and giving chocolate a try. I just haven’t had the energy. Haven’t mustered up the strength for anything but letting things run their daily course under Mosese’s watchful eye.

  Of course I’ve been bothered by the thought that Niklas would be disappointed. He thought I was as passionate about the farm as he was, or at least he wanted to think so. He wouldn’t have understood my passivity, my withdrawal. Is it because of my guilty conscience that I let Ingrid talk me into it? Sometimes I see it from the other side, and it seems totally ridiculous: a group of bumbling, liver-spotted old ladies in a house far from home, with their whole lives’ worth of baggage in tow. What have I set in motion here? Is there any chance this could possibly work?

  It might just be the others’ enthusiasm that’s seducing me. They’re happy in Korototoka, that much is obvious. Watching them crane their necks toward the sun and curl their bare toes in the sand brings a smile to my face every day. But the spark in Ingrid’s words when she brought up the chocolate was more than that; she sounded like a teenager in love! The smile that enveloped her whole face, the hair gleefully bobbing up and down. And Lisbeth’s excitement as she jumped up and started chiming in with ideas. Lisbeth! But isn’t this exactly what I’ve learned from my years with Niklas? How a team project fosters not only unity but a new kind of happiness? In rediscovering oneself by mastering new things unexpectedly. Yes. I want us to make Kat’s Chocolate work.

  —

  It’ll be important to get Mosese on board. Kat’s Cocoa wouldn’t exist without him, and Kat’s Chocolate won’t either. I’ll freely admit that our walks in the plantation, in dense, damp, suffocating underbrush, is a chore I don’t take much joy in. If I could get away with it, I’d gladly never go again, but hand him the reins and tell him, “Just do your best, I’m sure it’ll be great!” But I do have to make the rounds with him occasionally—they’re my trees; it’s my responsibility.

  The wiry figure ahead of me walks on and on, I swat away at the insects and nearly lose sight of him. For practical reasons he keeps the cacao trees trimmed to eye level; the pods are in various stages of maturation. The large, drop-shaped capsules glisten in shades of gold, yellow, orange, stoplight red, and brown with specks of violet. I’m no seasoned cocoa farmer, but I know enough to say that Theobroma cacao, the food of the gods, is a picky, sensitive lady. The temperature has to be between 75 and 85 degrees for her to thrive, with a consistent humidity. When the mercury rises above 85, as it often does here on the north coast of Viti Levu, I can read Mosese’s worried face like a thermometer.

  Niklas, as usual, could see only the positive. “That’s why it’s genius to have a farm that already has full-grown trees,” he enthused when we were considering the purchase. “The tall trees, papaya and banana and all the others that form a canopy of shade, will protect the cacao plants and keep the humidity in check. That way we won’t have to irrigate, and it will mostly run itself!”

  “Run itself” was a bit of an overstatement, to put it mildly. Mosese makes his rounds in the plantation every day, cutting and clearing and mostly managing to keep the two biggest threats at bay: the fungus that turns the pods black and destroys them, and the rats that climb up and help themselves if you don’t trim the brush around the tree trunks. It’s only in the busy harvest season that extra hands must be hired to help with plucking, fermenting, and drying.

  Out among the trees, behind Mosese, I always feel like the apprentice that I am. But his respect for me, or at least for Niklas, runs too deep for him ever to call me out. He patiently shares his knowledge, again and again: “Here it is, Madam Kat.” I peer at the tree he’s pointing to; the pods growing straight from the trunk are black and shriveled. I ask, although I know the answer, “What can we do about it?” He shakes his head; the fungus is hard to get rid of. But then he suddenly lights up when he cups an orange pod from another tree in his giant hand: “Look at this one, Madam Kat! This one must have more than thirty beans!” With a quick flick of his knife he slices the capsule in two and gives me half—a bowl full of glistening fruit pulp, with brown pearls hidden in the grayish white flesh. The sweet aroma hits me right away as the green flickering light filters its way down through the treetops. A chalice between my fingers.

  Mosese waits patiently, his brown eyes lodged in a knotted wreath of wrinkles. When the lump forms in my throat, he just nods.

  —

  It’s almost a joke that it’s Lisbeth’s daughter who’s going to serve as our liaison back home in Norway. When Lisbeth told me about their conversation, I was skeptical—I certainly hadn’t seen Linda as a business maven. But when I spoke to her directly and heard her ideas, and not least her energy and enthusiasm, I knew what it was I’d seen in Lisbeth’s face. Something undefined that comes into clear view when the lights are switched on. If we make this work, Linda Høie will be the point of contact and distributor for Kat’s Chocolate and our head of marketing in Norway! Pretty incredible, but no stranger than everything else that’s happening these days. The fact that some friends in Suva put me in touch with Johnny Mattson, for example, and that he’s willing to give us some training. The retired chocolate-maker with a past that’s here and there, who now does ocean fishing and enjoys life from his boat anchored at Labasa. “You’ll have to put up with me for a few days if I come all the way over
there,” he said when I invited him. “I’m too old to make the trip one day and come back the next.”

  —

  What I want is to get Maya involved as well. Hasn’t it been proven that engaging in activities and projects can slow the onset of dementia? I see how she often pulls away from us, is gone somewhere for long periods at a time before suddenly snapping back into sharp focus. I try to capture this fragmented existence in the emails I write to Evy, making them truthful without being alarmist. If we’re being honest, can’t we say that Maya has a better life here? The pace of daily life is slow, and the people around her have time and patience.

  I don’t think she’s afraid. I wouldn’t be able to watch fear tearing her to pieces in front of me. Some days she reacts to everything around her with mild surprise, as if spending hours behind a soft veil, that’s how it looks to me. Of course, I’ve read that confusion and anxiety often go hand in hand, and that disorientation is inevitable. But it looks like Ateca has a sixth sense for this. As if just by taking Maya’s hand, she passes on some of her own imperturbable calm; as if some of the strength in her sturdy brown fingers flows over into Maya’s slender bluish white grip. That’s a lesson I’ve learned down here, which I have to remember to lean on. To trust. To let the boat take its own course.

  —

  It’s strange what Fiji does to them all. I watch and wonder. Sina gets stronger when Maya gets weaker. She pulls out a new kind of compassion, something affectionate cloaked in something rough. Maya without Steinar and Sina without Lisbeth, a strange new configuration. I sometimes allow myself a discreet pat on my own shoulder. Isn’t Sina doing better here as well? Away from her son, with all his whining and complaining about money. And Ingrid, she’s practically blossoming! Flowers on her sulu, behind her ear, between her hands—pretty amazing that such a green thumb has been buried in the account books of the County Bus Service all these years. Even Ateca, who regards many of Ingrid’s schemes with a skeptical eye, has admitted that the pumpkins and tomatoes look especially good this year. Did I once see Ingrid as a dog? Now she’s a jungle plant! Strong and resilient and exploding with color!