by Anne Ostby
Maybe Madam Sina is ashamed, I can understand that. I’m ashamed in front of Madam Kat, Lord, although it’s not Vilivo’s fault! Mister Niklas paid my son’s way through school, but even though he has papers, he can’t find a job. I don’t understand it. The roads are bad, the bridges are collapsing in the rainy season, the sea floor is full of sea cucumbers that the Chinese pay good money for, and there’s still no work to be found?
There are so many signs that make me afraid, Lord. I’ve heard the barn owl hoot many times. That empty, cold sound that warns of danger. And I think it’s going to thunder tonight; the snake god is tossing and turning in the mountainside.
—
Dear God, let Madam Sina’s son understand how old he is, and let her be happy that he’s coming.
In Jesus’ holy name. Emeni.
28
Ingrid
It’s not just her feet that are experiencing a new spring in Fiji. Her thoughts, her shoulders, her smile—Ingrid can feel everything becoming looser and smoother. There’s a fair balance in the world. Isn’t that what she’s always known deep inside? That those who work and wait and hold out will finally get to fill their mouths with chocolate?
Some of the equipment they need for the sweet house has already arrived. She and Kat unpacked it yesterday, the new oven, the rolling machine that’s going to finely grind the cocoa mass. Ateca has promised that Vilivo can help assemble it all, Ingrid just hopes he can do it without breaking anything. Her thoughts flit over to Johnny; it would be best if he could make another trip out here again. Just to help us get started, she tells herself. No ulterior motive. One night doesn’t automatically turn into more. Happiness isn’t a guest you can just invite back in.
Sometimes it feels to her like it couldn’t have happened. The narrow bed in the room in Salote’s house, the light they didn’t switch on. The curtainless window covered by a mosquito net. The smell of sweat, his, her own. And as she walked home, the daylight that came, the same bird that called out to her again, crisp and clear. Her steps lighter than before.
It did happen. Ingrid knows it. Wildrid runs the images through her head every night. And Kat knows. Thank goodness Kat knows.
—
The thought of Sina makes a shadow fall over her breakfast plate. Sina has only just had a taste of freedom, Ingrid thinks. Her stubborn I-don’t-care demeanor has softened, and she’s spending more and more time in the kitchen with Ateca to wrest the secrets of roro cooking away from her—how the big rough leaves of the dalo plant must be salted and stirred to exactly the right softness so they don’t bring scratchy discomfort to the throat. She has even tried a sentence or two in vosa vaka-Viti, causing Ateca to burst into the occasional howl of laughter, and Sina’s not usually the one to inspire glee. But now this. Armand. And the bleeding. Which has increased, and gone from something Sina played down to something the doctor insists she take seriously. That too, Ingrid thinks: that she could even sit down last night and tell them straight out what the doctor had said, that’s all part of what the Fiji sunshine has done to them. Warmed them, softened them, opened them up. And now, is it going to be over for Sina before it’s even begun?
—
But she’s not going to let worry take over this morning. Ingrid stares down at her hands as she brushes crumbs off her lap: wrinkles and knobby knuckles, the veins like thick, well-fed worms. But her skin is healthy and well moisturized, the pores plumped with the tropical nectar that is the very air down here, she thinks. An organic collagen injection into every cell, with no side effects and very encouraging long-term effects. Ingrid gets to her feet. New experiences await her. It’s Sunday, and she’s going to church. Not because she finds the toll of the bells irresistible, but because this is yet another piece she wants to add to the puzzle that is Fiji.
She noticed it from the start, that Sundays are sacred here, just the way she remembers them from her childhood: softened, dampened days on which even the weather, rain or shine, was toned down. The difference here is their joy, Ingrid thinks. The anticipation shining in the eyes of the people on their way to church, the evident certainty that they’re about to take part in something good. Or had it been present in Reitvik Church too, in the faces of the single women scattered like black raindrops in the pews on the few times she’d been there? Confirmations and the occasional wedding; the last time must have been ten years ago, when Petter was baptized. Had the same happy conviction been hidden there too, in the out-of-focus pale faces behind the hymnals? She’s rarely given it much thought, church and religion have played minor parts in her life.
But it’s a different story here. Church doesn’t just play a major role in Fiji; it’s the warp and the woof, a cornerstone of society. “Along with the system of local chiefs, of course,” Maya had elaborated when they’d discussed it a while ago. Although she sometimes goes off track, Maya’s lectures on the local culture have often been more helpful in navigating unexpected situations than Kat’s half-baked explanations, Ingrid thinks.
“Most iTaukei, ethnic Fijians, are Methodist, and a significant portion of the Indo-Fijian population belongs to the same church,” Maya had read aloud that night from one of her innumerable articles and books about Fiji. Ingrid had lost the thread briefly when Kat took over and started talking about the thorny relationship between the church and the self-proclaimed prime minister Bainimarama after the military coup a few years ago; politics in this country was a complicated landscape, she’d gathered that much. She understood that the coup leader held the real power, that the president was a figurehead, and that the Methodist Church had to suffer both censorship and political intervention.
But what really captivates Ingrid, the reason she’s sitting here this morning in a newly pressed jaba, waiting for Ateca, is the weekly procession down the road. Every Sunday morning, long before the church bells start tolling, the villagers pour out of their homes, headed for the houses of God. Most of them to Father Iosefa’s Methodist church, some to the white chapel where the Assemblies of God congregation gathers. A colorful yet restrained and dignified sight: the men for once out of their loud patterned bula shirts, instead wearing white short-sleeved collared shirts with ties over their dark, knee-length, formal sulus. The women in their finest jabas, many in white, shimmery rayon. Just-washed, damp, curly hair, fresh flowers tucked behind their ears, Bibles in thatched rectangular bags woven especially for this purpose. Neatly groomed kids wearing shoes for the occasion, little girls with their hair in tight braids and boys dressed like miniature versions of their fathers, in dark sulus and clunky sandals. Dishes covered in tinfoil are carried high above heads, scones or cassava cake or boiled dalo to be devoured over a communal lunch after the service. There are smiles and enthusiastic chatter, but the unrestrained belly laughs are missing from the procession of people on their way to church on Sunday morning. A peaceful joy, Ingrid thinks. Not a forced march to church out of fear or coercion. A hushed sense of anticipation at the start of a holy day.
Ateca waves from down the road: “Ni sa yadra, Madam Ingrid, good morning! Are you ready?”
The girl they call Star of the Sea stands beside her. Holding a basket, she nods to Ingrid without a smile.
“I brought Maraia today,” Ateca says. “Her sister is sick, so Sai couldn’t get away from home.”
Ingrid smiles. “How nice that you want to come to church with us, Maraia.”
The girl’s eyes are filled with a golden light, her tiny voice is strong and sure.
“When someone calls, we must come.”
—
Of course the whole thing is in Fijian, Ingrid hadn’t thought about that. She’s picked up a word of the language here and there, but knows she won’t be able to follow a long sermon. She copies Ateca and the others and kicks off her shoes; barefoot seems to be the norm in the church pews. But when the organ, just as excruciatingly sluggish as she remembers it from home, pipes in with the first hymn, she forgets to worry about understanding the language. Th
e members of the little choir, shuffling their sheet music around, look pitiful standing in a corner by the altar, but when they open their mouths and belt out the first note, she is startled: a full vocal orchestra chimes in behind her, in front of her, and all around her; deep, resounding voices in soft, perfect harmony. The whole packed church, standing, sings in several parts, verse after sonorous verse, so both organ and choir fade into the background. Ingrid holds on to the pew in front of her with both hands; the singing thunders through the church and up to the ceiling, meets the sunlight pouring through the open side doors. It beats and rumbles through her body, embraces the wooden cross on the wall by the choir. When the last note glides over into a long hold of “Emeeeni,” she glances at Ateca, astonished.
“You all harmonize like a…choir of angels! How did you learn this?”
Ateca shrugs. “The ear and the voice know what tones belong together. They’re friends. One knows what the other needs. You just let the notes come into your mouth and flow out between your lips.”
She smiles and folds her hands in her lap. A slow and heavy man comes up the center aisle and begins to read from a sheet of paper. Ingrid recognizes a few words as names, names of men and women, and there’s nodding and sighing all around her. Ateca leans in toward her: “He’s telling us who needs help, who’s grieving, who’s sick, and who we should pray for.”
Back in Norway, Ingrid might have looked away and smiled politely. But here, barefoot in a long skirt, her body still filled with sparkling song, the only thing she can do is nod, and wonder.
“I’m heading home now,” she says softly to Ateca when the blessing is complete and Father Iosefa leads the procession down the center aisle to stand in the doorway and greet each congregant leaving the church. The silver cross on his chest glitters in the white light.
“But it’s time for the lunch!”
“I know, Ateca, but I promised to come home and help Kat with…”
She can’t quite find the words to complete her white lie, but it doesn’t matter. Ateca knows as well as Ingrid that the service and the singing have been enough for her to take in this morning.
Ateca flashes a wide, calm smile. “See you tomorrow.”
From inside the sanctuary, they can hear cups clinking and a man’s voice bursting into a peal of laughter.
—
She takes the long way home. Instead of walking past the chief’s bure and down the main road, Ingrid goes the opposite way, through a cassava field and down to the beach.
She knows she wants to stay in Fiji. There’s nothing she misses about the County Bus Service office with its gray cubicles and the humming printer in the corner. Not the lunch breaks when everyone always sat in the same seats, not her coworker’s long-winded stories about his dachshund’s kidney stones. Her apartment is empty for now, but she’s planning to have Kjell arrange for a tenant starting in the fall. Not that she’s desperate for money, her savings go a long way down here, but she no longer needs the security of an empty apartment waiting for her back home. Kjell will moan and complain, no doubt, but he’ll help her. Her brother will see the wisdom in getting a return on the unused capital that’s just sitting there gathering dust. As long as she doesn’t ask him to sell it. Real estate, the only truly safe investment, he won’t help her rid herself of that. Ingrid will have to settle for renting it out.
Wildrid wants to sell up. Wildrid doesn’t look back, doesn’t cling to old security blankets. Wildrid wants to sell her place back home and buy into Kat’s Chocolate. Acquire a share of Jone’s boat, plant yellow honeydew in the field behind Kat’s vale—why wouldn’t the Rakiraki market appreciate something new? Wildrid has no patience for learning the meticulous art of straw-weaving, but she wants to dance on the firm, soft mat’s surface, sit cross-legged and pound her fists into the floor in a meke. Unlike Ingrid, Wildrid can dance: since her big feet have always been barefoot, she can stomp with the right force and intuitive rhythm as she sings and claps along with the drums. Wildrid totally masters the hip-swinging, the rotating pelvic pulse that makes the masi-cloth draped around the sulu crackle when she twirls around in age-old stories that can be told only through movement. What use does Wildrid have for an apartment in Norway? She’s on the verge of buying a bra made of coconut shell halves!
Ingrid rounds the corner down by the cassava field that nobody seems to own, and catches her first glimpse of the ocean. The glinting white flashes across her field of vision, sparks behind her eyelids. Wildrid laughs and throws her arms wide open.
—
Kat is sitting by the sewing machine when she gets home. The needle works its way across a colorful piece of bula fabric, red and white flowers on an orange background. She stops when she sees Ingrid in the doorway, unplugs the sewing machine, and gets to her feet. “Let’s go sit outside for a while. Do you mind checking if there’s any iced tea left in the fridge?”
The afternoon slumps hot and heavy over Vale nei Kat. A pool of condensation forms around the pitcher on the table; Kat shuts her eyes and nearly dozes off. But a heavy, pulsating beat is still rippling through Ingrid’s hips, and she tosses the question on the table: “Can you dance, Kat?”
Something in her stings when she realizes she doesn’t know the answer. She and Kat, haven’t they been best friends forever? And yet, a faded memory of senior prom at Reitvik High in the mid-1960s, that’s not what she means. She’s wondering if Kat can…dance?
A long sideways glance under a pair of sunglasses perched high on her forehead. “You mean Fijian? Meke?”
Ingrid nods. That’s what she means.
“No, not really. I’ve watched a lot of mekes, but it can be complicated. It’s a story, kind of, about a historic event or something. The same steps and moves are repeated in many of them, but I don’t think it’s something you can just”—she lifts her hands and forms air quotes around the word—“learn.”
Ingrid waits as Kat tries to explain. “Meke is more than a dance, it’s…a way of passing down stories. Ensuring that myths and traditions survive.”
“Like our folktales,” Maya’s voice chimes in. She suddenly appears at the bottom of the stairs, peering up at Kat and Ingrid. Her pale forehead is moist with beads of sweat under the frizzy red mop of hair; she fans herself with the straw hat in her hand. “God, it’s hot!”
“Well, you are out walking at the worst possible time of day,” Kat says, and gets up from the chair in the shade. “Come have a drink, I’ll get you a glass.”
She sets out toward the screen door, but halts and turns around. “It’s not quite the same as our folktales, actually. Meke is more concerned with the spiritual. A connection to the other side, in a way, where the ancestors live.”
Ingrid has stretched out in the hammock; she closes her eyes and sways back and forth. Maya grows quiet in her chair; the thunder of waves crashing in over the deserted beach is the only sound. A heavy rumble rolling in, deep and vibrating, and then lighter, fluttering notes as the waves roll back out. The symphony envelops Ingrid, the hammock floats away in a cascade of song, fills her ears so the blood rushes to her head.
Wildrid is stomping with bare feet. She bows her head behind the woven fan as the dancers enter in procession, clapping their hollow, curved palms to the beat of the thumping dance drum, lali ni meke. A garland made of pink frangipani flowers and vibrant green leaves adorns her neck; the scent covers her face like a veil. Her hips start to rotate, gathering up the story to be told. Spears brandished by men with faces painted black; the chief’s beautiful daughters, traded for costly whale teeth. Canoes paddled with rhythmic strokes; gods raging and fighting until islands sink into the sea. What was once here and must never be forgotten.
Ingrid’s Sunday jaba has a border of purple flowers. In the quiet heat on the porch, they sway back and forth, big and blossoming, like a wish someone has just said out loud.
29
Lisbeth
“It’s disgusting,” Lisbeth says with a shudder, and lights
a cigarette. “Just revolting, plain and simple! What kind of swine would do something like this?”
The headlines appear in the local newspaper almost daily, usually hidden at the bottom of a page toward the back: “Grandfather Sentenced to 18 Months for Raping Grandchild.” “Sexual Abuse of 10-Year-Old Daughter.” “Baby Raped, 39-Year-Old Arrested.”
“I can’t imagine it. But I guess it happens all over the world.” She sighs and blows out a cloud of smoke.
“Mm-hmm.” Kat gives her a long look. “It does. But the statistics here in the South Pacific are worse than the world average. They say that on a global scale, one in three women will experience rape or abuse over the course of her life. In the South Pacific it’s three out of five.”
“Oh dear me, but why?” Lisbeth furrows her eyebrows. “I thought the culture here emphasized…protecting their own, in a way?”
“Yes.” Kat takes a moment to think. “But ‘culture’ is a word that can cover up a lot of crap. It’s part of the ‘culture’ here for men to help themselves to women, even little girls. And the vast majority of rapes and assaults are never reported.”
“Why not?”
“Because the assailant is usually a family member. Kids here are surrounded by big brothers and uncles and cousins and grandfathers who come and go as they please—these are people they grow up with. So if a girl is raped by an uncle she’s known her whole life, how easy is it to then take it to the police? It’ll have consequences for the whole family, the whole village, most likely. So they’d rather keep quiet.”
“Well, this isn’t the only place that happens, goddammit!”