Pieces of Happiness

by Anne Ostby

  “Nothing! I’m just sitting here and…”

  And what? Dreading Armand’s arrival? Because she doesn’t know what he wants? But of course she knows. Armand is coming to Fiji because something fell through at home; he’s run out of money, and now he hopes something easy and lucrative will fall into his lap here. That he’ll manage to charm his way into something he doesn’t yet know the nature of but is dying to grab ahold of. The chocolate, she thinks suddenly. The adventure she’s going to be a part of. She, Sina. Not Armand.

  “Well, you look terrible,” Maya says. “Come for a walk with me; you’ll feel better.”

  Sina shakes her head. “It’s too hot, I have no energy.”

  Maya doesn’t give up. “It was just as hot yesterday. Come on, I’m sure we’ll pick up a little breeze at some point.”

  But Sina has her excuses ready. “I can’t, I’m going to the doctor. Remember I told you I have an appointment today? Vilivo is driving me to Rakiraki.”

  Maya removes her sunglasses, and the light blue eyes are clear and strong. “Do you want me to come?”

  Sina shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. It’s just a checkup. And a few test results from last time.”

  She hasn’t been able to face talking to them about it. That part of her life was over long ago. So it’s probably nothing, just a couple of episodes, erratic and far between. Dark, slimy bursts from a forgotten place, unwelcome missives from an organ she no longer needs. A nuisance she has chosen to ignore; she doesn’t have time to be sick now that things are happening around here, chocolate production and all the rest. She thinks about it as little as possible. It’s probably nothing.

  But Maya slices through and doesn’t sugar-coat anything.

  “Get it removed,” she says. “I had it all cut out years ago.” Her voice is neutral. “I was bleeding and bleeding, it was just as easy to have it all gone.” She shrugs and looks at Sina. “Don’t be afraid, it makes no difference. For one thing or another.”

  Sina just nods; it’s been a while since that one thing or another has mattered to her in the least. “It’s probably just a little thing,” she says. “I’m not worried.”

  Maya examines her for a moment. “Yes, you are,” she decides. “But I’m telling you, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  —

  Vilivo drops Sina off outside the yellowish gray brick building with a faded red cross painted on the wall. The sign by the door says “Health Center”; brown stripes of rust from the screws run down the plaster. They agree that he’ll come back to get her in an hour, and Sina hurries into the waiting room. “The woman doctor,” as they call him here, is at the clinic only once a week, and the chairs along the walls are filled with pregnant women. Bulging bellies and swollen feet, faces flabby from heat and hormones. They look so young! Some of them have their relatives with them; they sit fingering their cell phones or fidgeting restlessly on their chairs while mothers and aunts talk to each other and break out into sudden howls of laughter. A white-haired, Chinese-looking woman with the impassive face of a sphinx sits in the middle of all this bubbly, exuberant fertility. She wears running shoes and gray pants with knees splayed open; a belly bulges forth under the web of strings crisscrossed between toggles on the front of her tunic; she’s almost the same size as the pregnant young women.

  Sina finds an empty chair. No magazines on the table or water cooler with cups in the corner, only a large scale on the floor next to the counter and a blood pressure monitor on a stand.

  “Madam, please…”

  She’s weighed and measured in front of everyone, and feels sure that the shameless staring doesn’t mean they’re judging her weight, only that they’re generally interested. Everyone here has something they’re forced to share. A thermometer is stuck in her ear and read before the nurse points her back to her chair to wait. It’s clear it might be a while before it’s her turn.

  Sina’s mind wanders back to Armand. Goddamn Armand! she thinks, and glances around the waiting room, afraid that someone’s heard what she’s thinking. Where did her son get 15,000 kroner to buy a ticket to Fiji? Oh, for goodness’ sake, it hits her: he better have bought a round trip! The thought of Armand possibly coming to Fiji without a ticket back home makes Sina feel sick. She can’t wait any longer. She has to tell Kat tonight.

  “Madam Sina, please!”

  She gets up so abruptly that the blood rushes to her head and she has to stand still for a moment before she can walk across the floor and into the doctor’s office.

  —

  “Surgery,” the doctor says. “That’s the best option. Just to be safe.”

  Maybe the conversation with Maya should have prepared her for this, but Sina still stares at him blankly. Surgery?

  “Have it all removed,” he continues. “Ovaries too.” He smiles, but his smile is frayed at the edges. “The pap smear shows that there may be something that’s not quite right.”

  May be. She doesn’t catch the rest of it. Something about the risk being very low, in all likelihood, and surgery will be all she needs. “That way you’ll be done with it,” he says.

  Low risk? Does that mean cancer, or is he unsure? She can’t bring herself to ask, just nods in time to the pen he taps on the table as he speaks.

  “For women your age, it’s usually best to have everything removed.”

  She opens her mouth, mumbles something in reply.

  She has to plan; she has to think; she has to find the money. She says she’ll call when she’s decided what she wants to do.

  26

  Kat

  The others don’t know that Sina doesn’t pay as much as them every month. Her outburst that first night—how could I break her confidence? Reveal to them that her first thought on arrival, palms swaying in the soft evening breeze, was whether she could afford it? Evy Forgad punctually transfers Maya’s contributions into my account in Norway. Ingrid pays her share in local currency, and Lisbeth has transferred what she calls “the BMW money” to me and asked me to tell her when it’s used up. That moment between Sina and me at the airport, the need that gnawed at her, that’s nobody else’s business.

  And she can’t say no to Armand, that much is obvious. She looked more dejected than ever when she mumbled that her son “wants to come see how I’m doing. He really wants to see with his own eyes that I’m doing well.” Dear God—isn’t he ashamed? Almost fifty years old and here he comes, whining to Mom when the money runs out. Why should it be any harder for him than for anyone else to find a job and make it on his own?

  —

  It couldn’t have come at a worse time, period. Now that we’re in full swing with the sweet house and I’ve managed to talk Mosese into joining our new venture. My manager is still skeptical about the chocolate business, but I’ve assured him that his responsibilities will stay the same. The only thing that will change is that we’ll take a small part of the cocoa we usually sell off and use it for ourselves. I described the product to him: dark chocolate, a pure taste of Fiji, wrapped in cellophane and packaged into neat boxes. But Mosese is no chocolate lover. The cocoa beans he checks by biting into them are bitter and fresh; that’s the only standard he knows and cares about.

  Either way, there’s nothing we can do about Armand. He’s coming to Korototoka, and Ateca and I have arranged for him to stay with Litia and Mosese. I have no plans to offer him a room in Vale nei Kat.

  Ingrid tries to be optimistic: “I think he won’t stay that long. He’ll get bored here with us old ladies, I’m sure.” She tries to make me laugh: “We can put him on the chores rota. When he sees that he has to take a turn cooking dinner, he’ll make himself scarce.”

  But I’m not in the mood for jokes. “He’ll come down here to be fed, you can be sure of that. Where else would he go? He probably doesn’t have a penny to his name.”

  Ingrid nods. Her smile fades, and she looks around to make sure nobody else is nearby. “You’re right,” she says. “But I’m even more worried ab
out how he’s going to handle the jealousy. Jealousy and dependency are not a good combination.”

  Jealousy—what does she mean? I’m about to ask, but hold back when Maya comes round the corner and climbs up on the porch. She slowly removes her sandals and sinks down into a chair. “Sina?” she says with a question mark, and looks around. “Isn’t Sina here?”

  For the most part I think it was a dream. Like when you’ve seen childhood pictures of yourself and you’re not sure whether it’s the situation you remember or just the picture. You shake your head and tell yourself it’s impossible, you were too young, you’ve just looked at the album so many times that you think you remember being there. Only the picture is real; the memory’s invented.

  The images from the last balolo night aren’t in any album. But I’ve had them described to me, time and time again, until the details are as crystal-clear as if I’d been standing on the beach when they pulled him out. As if I’d crouched down in the shadows behind a boat pulled ashore and seen it all myself in the cold white moonlight. It’s only the incomprehensible reality, that he’s no longer there in bed beside me in the morning, that tells me it must have happened. But I wasn’t there. I couldn’t have been there.

  —

  It’s the same thing every year: the village teems with hectic, electric excitement as everyone gets ready in the days leading up to balolo. November is Vula i Balolo Levu, the month for the big balolo night, and there are homemade nets, baskets, buckets, and fishing lines ready and waiting in all the houses along the road. The one night a year when millions of balolo, tiny sea worms, come up from the deep and transform the surface of the sea into a billowing, undulating carpet. The small deep-water serpent that’s lifted up by the full moon for one single, magical night to lay its eggs and sperm in a gelatinous soup—it’s a gastronomic delicacy the people of Korototoka can’t get enough of.

  I’ll never forget our first year, the descriptions I heard of the balolo’s fantastic colors, how they could vary from red to blue and iridescent green, brown, and yellow. I was slightly less enthused when Ateca explained that only the torso of the worm floats up to spawn: “The heads are left in caves at the bottom of the sea!” Her eager description of the way one would gorge oneself on the slimy creatures hits me with a wave of nausea: “We love balolo, Madam Kat! We scoop it up with our hands—like this!”

  She made scooping motions with her hand and shoveled big handfuls of air into her gaping mouth. “Or we boil it with herbs, or fry it. Or put it in the lovo.”

  I gagged at the thought, picturing the glow-in-the-dark worms in their sticky, swimming millions. Niklas, on the other hand, was rapt as Ateca went on. That it was crucial to be ready at the exact right minute, in the shallows or in a canoe, when the sea suddenly changed color under the full moon and became a swaying mass of rainbow-colored snakes. Who only had a few breathless hours to complete their fertilization cycle, chased by nets and buckets from one side, greedy fish from the other. “We don’t have much time,” Ateca explained. “When the sun comes up, the balolo sinks back to the bottom of the sea and puts its head back on.”

  I shuddered, but Niklas asked, “How do you know exactly when it’s going to happen?”

  Ateca looked at us patiently, as if she wasn’t sure how thoroughly she should bother to explain.

  “We know when it’s the right vula, the right month, Mister Niklas. And when the bananas are ripe on the tree and it’s time to harvest the wild yams, that’s when the balolo comes.”

  I nodded. Why would you need more explanation than that?

  But I was never tempted to go out with them. If Niklas wanted to sit in a shallow canoe and rock back and forth in a crawling sea of worms, roe, and milt, let him.

  —

  Was he upset? Disappointed with my lack of enthusiasm? I tried to compensate for it by going down to the beach that first time. When we were woken by the knocking on the door: “Balolo! Balolo is here!” I got out of bed and went with him. The undulating, rippling ocean, the smell of raw, headless bottom-feeders. The chaos on shore, the men leaping into their boats. Salote running with a bucket in each hand, Ateca and Vilivo, Litia with her daughters-in-law. Niklas’s face aglow with anticipation as he climbed into the boat with Jone. I stood and looked out after them for a while, tracing the shadow moving farther and farther away, swaying in a living, multicolored swarm. A journey I chose not to take with him, illuminated by a moon that followed me all the way home.

  I was in deep sleep when he returned, and didn’t even notice him lying down next to me. When he woke up, I made coffee and asked how it had been. “So did you eat raw balolo with Jone and Vilivo?”

  He laughed in response. Tossed his thick white hair and laughed a rolling belly laugh. “If you choose not to come on an adventure, you have no right to ask questions afterward!”

  —

  He never asked if I wanted to go along after that. Just slipped out of the bed as soon as the loud knock came on the door; I barely heard him when he tiptoed back in the next morning.

  That November night a year and a half ago is now a series of flickering, out-of-focus pictures. Driftwood dancing on the waves. But I know I woke up, know I heard Akuila’s deep voice outside: “Balolo, Mister Niklas! We’re going out now!” I know I lay there, quiet in the dark, and saw his silhouette in the doorway as he left.

  I watched him go, but didn’t say anything. He went out alone.

  What remains from that night? Pieces of dreams and lies and hopes. Things I’ve heard, stories that are no longer told. But I’m sure that I didn’t run down to the boats on the beach. That I imagined what it would look like down there, but wasn’t there. I know I pictured Litia with her biscuit tin, her sullen scowl softened by the prospect of a delicious meal. I heard Jone’s voice as he ordered his sons around, pictured Vilivo hurrying down to the beach to scarf down handfuls of teeming worms. But I didn’t go down. I wasn’t standing there when Sai came running with the little girl in tow, the girl with caramel-brown curls and light golden skin. I wasn’t there when Niklas passed by them, mother and daughter. When he hurried past them without stopping, sat upright in Akuila’s canoe, and started to prep his camera equipment. When Sai stood beside Ateca and some of the other women, Litia with her biscuit tin and Jone’s daughters holding a fine-mesh fishing net attached to two bamboo poles between them, I was in bed, in my bedroom. And when Akuila’s canoe returned, was emptied of buckets and basins and turned around to head back out, I had no idea that Niklas had stayed at the water’s edge: “You guys go out, I’m going to take a few pictures from here. I think I’ve had enough raw balolo for now.” The laughter in his voice, I’m just imagining it, I didn’t hear it. And when he cast a quick glance at Sai and the little girl before turning his back, I wasn’t there.

  I’ve heard the story in various long-winded versions. In poorly written police reports, in Ateca’s weeping desperation. “I’ve talked to everyone, Madam Kat, and no one saw it. Everyone thought he’d gone home, he’d said to Akuila that he’d had enough balolo. No one heard anything either. He would have shouted if he needed help, right? But no one heard anything. You have to believe it was his heart, Madam Kat. Like it says in the police papers. His heart stopped, and he fell and got caught in the mangrove roots. They’re long and tangled, Madam Kat, and Mister Niklas…they think he got stuck with his head under water. And when Jone’s son found him…Solomone was walking a little further down the beach with his net, and that’s when he saw him. There, in the water.”

  At this point in Ateca’s story, I always have to nod. This is the precise point at which we trade places and it becomes my job to comfort Ateca, to assure her that there’s nothing she could have done, there’s nothing anyone could have done.

  And I wasn’t there. It’s the pictures in my head, the album I flip through in my sleep that makes me invent things. Makes me retrace my steps over to the window and see his back with the black camera backpack disappear as he walks toward the boats and th
e shouting, exhilarated crowd. It’s the things I’ve been told that form pictures in my mind of the boats going out, myself pulling on a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt and sitting there in the dark, fully dressed. I have no emotions about these pictures, no thoughts in my head. Like a movie, I watch myself sitting still for a long, long time. And then going outside and down the porch stairs, walking toward the shouting on the shore, but staying in the shadows, behind the strip of stiff grass and coconut palms that divides the beach from the houses further inland. I know it’s only my confusion, fragments of wishes and fears, that play the movie reel in my mind’s eye at night. I didn’t sit there in the dark behind the boat pulled up on the beach, didn’t see a tall figure with a backpack walking slowly out among the mangrove trees and bending down toward the surface with his eye pressed against the viewfinder. I wasn’t the one who saw him stumble, wave his arms, and fall forward. Reach out his hands to catch himself and drop the camera before his body sank headfirst into knee-deep water with a soft, inaudible splash. I wasn’t the one who stood there, unmoving, without a sound. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there.

  27

  Ateca

  There’s something I don’t understand, Lord. Madam Sina’s son is coming to Korototoka, but why isn’t he staying with her? There’s plenty of room in Vale nei Kat, but that’s not what the madams want. Salote has other guests, so I told Madam Kat that Mosese and Litia have a spare room. But I regretted it later, Lord. Madam Kat has been here in Fiji so long, but she still doesn’t understand that for iTaukei, hospitality is a duty. She didn’t see that it was impossible for Mosese to say no.

  Madam Sina isn’t happy that her son is coming. Her face is hard, like the stones around the foundation of the house. Madam Sina is sa qase, old. She gave her son food and money for school and clothes. He’s an adult now, shouldn’t he be taking responsibility for her? I asked whether he was sick, but she said no. And when I asked if it was hard for young men to get a job in his village too, there was both laughter and tears in her voice. “Armand isn’t young,” she said. “He’s almost fifty, but he doesn’t understand that.” How could her son not know how old he is? Hasn’t he gone to school?