by Anne Ostby
Out of the corner of her eye, Ingrid can see Lisbeth squirming in her chair, her body turning away from Armand, her chin tilting down.
He forces a laugh, readies a new offensive. “My dear ladies, I’m only trying to help…”
Sina has been sitting in silence. Now she abruptly extinguishes her cigarette in the ashtray.
“I think it’s pretty obvious, Armand. At Vale nei Kat, we help ourselves.”
The disbelief in his face when he looks at his mother; Ingrid holds her breath. Clouds gather in his eyes; his jaw tenses as he sucks in offended air. For one wild moment, Ingrid thinks he might slap his mother; she readies herself to get out of her chair and shield Sina.
But that’s all Armand has to say. His hands shake slightly when he takes a cigarette from the case and lights it. The silence on the porch is broken only by a fat gecko on the wall above the door frame: tock-tock-tock!
Wildrid claps her hands over her mouth to hold back a delighted peal of laughter.
The air in the plantation is green and moist. Ingrid trudges behind Mosese, trying to follow his steady, undulating gait as she swats at the insects buzzing around her head. Mosese wears an inscrutable expression as he stops to let his fingers slide across a yellowish red pod, frees it from the trunk with a quick chop of the knife. He slices it in two, lifts the upper half so the shiny, fat seeds are exposed, perfectly braided together in their sleep, soon to be interrupted. Ingrid doesn’t have to ask; she’s been out here with him so many times that she knows a flawless cocoa fruit when she sees one. She smiles at Mosese and lets Wildrid poke her fingers into the moist white meat surrounding the beans. She digs out one of the brownish red pearls and rubs it between her thumb and index finger. Drags the sharp bittersweet smell down into her lungs.
“Do you have enough help for the harvest?”
Mosese answers the way he usually does, by lifting his head and tipping it back slightly, a sort of backward nod. It took Ingrid a while to understand that the backward nod means yes, or at least not no. But then it might also mean he doesn’t think the question is worthy of an answer. Ingrid has to be content with the knowledge that Mosese has been harvesting the cocoa crop on this plantation for years. He would let them know if he lacked manpower. He has a big family; Ingrid presumes each and every one of them will show up to help.
She tries again. “Is it going to be a good crop?”
Another backward nod.
She gives up. It’s one thing to show interest; bothering and nagging Mosese is another. Still, Ingrid knows that Kat’s Cocoa needs a good harvest; now that she is doing the books, she knows that some money will have to come in soon to make up for all the outgoings. Not least now that they’re in an investment phase, ramping up the production equipment, machines and cooling systems. They may be starting small, but these are considerable expenses. Should she consult Johnny? What if she called him? In an instant, it all comes back: the tiny room, the narrow bed. The rich smell of chocolate on their breath.
Ingrid notices Mosese staring at her, and the worry sinks down deep in her stomach: this chocolate business was her idea, after all. They’d all been fired up by her suggestion, but she’s the one who insisted they go ahead. What if it doesn’t work out?
And so what? Wildrid quickly retorts. Kat was the one who invited us all here to take new chances. This is what we came here for! Pieces of chocolate, snapping free and easy between our fingers. Pleasure melting on our tongues. Come on!
Ingrid lets herself be convinced. Holds the ripened pod in her hand, envisions the shimmering brown seeds melting and transforming into the product they’ve discussed: a pure dark chocolate, made with real cocoa butter, maybe a hint of coconut. She can hear Lisbeth’s voice: “It has to be exclusive, but not too niche. We should focus on the health message, ‘a little piece that’s good for you.’ Market the flavonoids in cocoa that keep the arteries healthy and improve the circulation.”
“A little piece that’s good for you.” “Pieces of happiness.” It’s a clever sales message. Ingrid is sure the others are just as amazed as she is over Lisbeth’s contributions. Not just her enthusiasm, she’s done her research too, and actually seems to have a talent for this. She can’t possibly have learned all this from her daughter’s marketing lessons? Maybe it’s some kind of extension of what she’s always excelled at: improving and making the most of her assets. Accentuating the favorable parts and showing them off to their best advantage.
Ingrid really wants to believe. Wants it so much her stomach churns, that Kat’s Chocolate is going to become a reality, sending aromatic, succulent pieces of happiness across the seas. Little mouthfuls of tropical love from a beach in paradise.
But it’s a risk. It’s costly, and they have to keep their accounts in check. Ingrid knows what she personally contributes to the fellowship every month, and a quick calculation tells her that even if the others are paying the same, it’s not enough to cover the big investments they need to make in addition to daily upkeep of the house and utilities. And paying for Mosese and Ateca and Akuila. And Vilivo. And Armand. She shudders. Kat hasn’t mentioned who is paying for the parasite’s room and board, but Ingrid is sure she knows the answer.
Maybe Kat has a personal stash, a source of income outside the cocoa business? Could Niklas have left her a ton of money? Ingrid shakes her head faintly, picturing him: tall, magnificent Niklas. Broad smile and big ideas. Ingrid has visited them all over the world, and his voice rumbles in the background of all her memories: enthusiastic, intense, determined that all problems were there to be solved. Everyone could see he worshipped the ground Kat walked on…Ingrid frowns. No, “worshipped” isn’t quite the right word. He brought her in. Counted on her. Yes, he counted on her, 100 percent. Through thick and thin. Niklas and Kat were a team unlike any she’d ever seen. Completely united. Wide open, Ingrid thinks. No secrets.
Yes, she decides, it is possible. It might be that Niklas left something for Kat after all.
—
But Kat doesn’t want to talk about money.
“I wouldn’t have invited you all down here if I was broke,” she says casually when Ingrid gets her on her own a few days later. She dismisses the offer to go through the numbers and the budget one more time. “The harvest will be what it normally is; it’ll be fine. It’s like this every year; it’s natural for the budget to swing up and down from season to season. This isn’t the County Bus Service, you know!” She laughs and elbows Ingrid. “Don’t be so worried. You’re the one who wanted to make chocolate, right? So we’re going to have to take some risks!”
Ingrid has no intention of asking, but it just spills out of her: “Did Niklas leave you some kind of cushion? When he—”
Something stiffens around Kat’s mouth, and Ingrid immediately regrets it. “Sorry, I know—”
“That he wasn’t planning to drown?”
Ingrid feels the muscles in her throat tense, flounders around for words. “Kat, you know I didn’t mean…”
But her friend’s gaze is far away. The breathing under her white shirt is calm and regular as she gets up from the porch steps they’re seated on. “Come,” is all she says.
The sunset is only a few minutes away; it’s low tide, and Kat picks up her pace along the beach. Her feet kick up little fans of sand with each step, and she stays silent as they approach a row of boats that lie stranded on the beach, mute and waiting. When they reach them, she turns her back to the water and walks up toward the belt of palm leaves, seaweed, plastic bottles, and ends of rope that mark the edge of high tide. Ingrid follows a few steps behind, and sees Kat halt in the shadow of the hull of one of the larger boats, lying under a palm tree. She turns around and stands frozen, staring down toward the strip of seaweed and driftwood, or maybe out across the ocean. The sunset gathers itself in an orange bundle of rays, and in just a few minutes the day is sucked away, disappearing into a drain of pink and purple.
Kat, still under the tree, waves Ingrid over. “Look,”
she says, and points toward the water, which is now just a dark, undulating line across the horizon.
Ingrid squints, and thinks she sees the shape of a boat near the shore, a dark, immovable animal. “What am I looking at?” she asks. “It got dark so quickly.”
Kat doesn’t respond. She stays still a while before bending down and removing one of her sandals. Clears out some seaweed and puts it back on. “If we stay here any longer, the mosquitoes will eat us alive.”
—
After dinner, Ingrid wants to be alone. She shuts the door to her room and finds the light switch on her wall. A movement at the edge of the mirror startles her, a flash of a shadow that halts on the mirror frame when she gets closer. The gecko stands frozen: black, beady eyes, gray-green skin. Revoltingly rubbery, the little lizard hasn’t got a trace of anything cute to compensate. Suddenly Ingrid is struck by compassion for the unattractive reptile trying to freeze itself into invisibility. “Poor thing,” she says softly, and carefully approaches it with her finger. Its lumpy body doesn’t move; Ingrid’s nail is a millimeter from touching it when it suddenly jumps. It chirps loudly as it vanishes behind the frame. A grayish green tail is left behind under the mirror, curling in on itself like a newly hatched snake. Ingrid jerks back, but Wildrid leans forward, picks up the squirming tail, and cradles it in her palm.
36
Lisbeth
It’s ridiculous, of course, and she just knows the others are laughing at her. Maybe they’re talking about it among themselves, maybe not. Lisbeth hides her face in her hands. Armand’s twenty years younger than she is, for God’s sake! A hopeless slacker; haven’t she and Harald called him that over and over? How bad they feel for Sina, that her son is so…useless. She’s even asked Harald if he would give the boy a chance in the store, but he’s put his foot down there: “We’ve helped Sina because she’s your friend. Not exactly eye candy behind the counter, but at least she does her job. But that lazy bum of a son? I won’t take him in!”
She doesn’t even think about Harald that much anymore. She’s stopped believing he’ll try to fetch her home. The little she’s heard from him and about him has been from Linda: Dad feels betrayed, her first accusatory emails read. And eventually: Dad’s doing fine. Not a word about a separation or other formalities; it seems he’s pretending nothing is wrong. Lisbeth is surprised at how little it hurts. And she and Linda have other things to talk about. New things, in a new way.
Still, it’s embarrassing, this thing with Armand. Not that anything has happened…how inappropriate, oh dear me! But what is she supposed to do? When he sits down beside her in the evenings and winks at her after one of Ingrid’s harsh quips, as if the two of them are secretly laughing at the others. Calling them the “loonies” when they’re not there, rolling his eyes so only she can see, when, at 10 p.m., after the meal, Maya asks whether dinner will be soon.
She’d been mortified when Ateca had entered her room without knocking the other day: “Sorry, Madam Lisbeth, I thought you were out.” She quickly retreated, but not before she’d gotten a glance of Lisbeth in front of the mirror, in the lingerie set she almost hadn’t remembered bringing with her: silky black lace, a push-up bra. What was she thinking? She’d tossed the lingerie back in the drawer at once, and told herself that she’d only wanted to try it on, God knows she’s put on weight in Fiji, she wanted to see if it still fit.
Armand is no dreamboat either, far from it. The glimpses she’s gotten of his belly between the bottom few buttons of his shirt, the reddish blond tufts of hair she’d rather not have seen. So why does she still bring out her lipstick for an extra touch-up before dinner? Smooth her hair down whenever she hears “Hey, ladies!” outside the door? She’s not sure. But there’s something in his gaze when it slides across her, something she has missed. He shows up every morning, spends a few hours drinking their coffee, using their Internet, lying in their hammock, and commenting on how lucky they are: “You girls really live in paradise, I hope you know that!” As if he’s been sent out as some kind of inspector who begrudges them their pensions and wants to make sure they’re not having too much fun.
The others think she’s being foolish, she knows that. But it’s the only way she knows how to be; it’s not her style to reject a man’s advances! Lisbeth gets up from the edge of the bed. Armand isn’t a man, stop it now! He’s Sina’s son. And that’s what makes it so unbearably shameful. The distance, the shadow of hostility in Sina’s eyes that makes uncertainty flicker in Lisbeth’s chest. Hostility and…disdain?
It’s not the butterflies in her stomach that make her wink back at Armand and laugh at his jokes. No butterflies anywhere else, for that matter—that’s not it. Just a sadness over the inevitability of years going by. The young mugger who took her money. The smell of sweat and greed, the feeling of his skin beneath her fingertips. Salesi, she knows his name now. Knows that the closest she’ll ever get to him is a pair of black shoes with green stripes.
—
“Where are you going, Ateca?”
Kat’s voice from the living room.
“I thought I’d see what Jone caught this morning, Madam Kat. If he has any good snapper, maybe I could bring you some?”
Lisbeth gets up on an impulse. “I’ll come with you, Ateca,” she says quickly. “You can show me how to pick out the best fish.”
Is Ateca looking at her a little strangely? Lisbeth thinks she can see a glimpse of the black lace lingerie in the corner of her eye, but they’re just going to have to get past this. Kat nods in approval, and Lisbeth fetches her white straw hat. The red ribbon along the brim matches her skirt this Tuesday afternoon.
It’s as if he’s been waiting for them. Armand comes gliding out of the shadows alongside one of the sheds above the pier. “Hey, girls!” Without asking he falls into step with them, staying close when they near Jone’s boat, where his sons are sorting the fishing tackle.
It must have been a good morning out on the reef: blue parrotfish, shimmering silver mackerel, and a giant red grouper lie in a tub of water. Ateca squeezes the fish with practiced hands, checks that the eyes are clear and the gills are bright orange. She finally settles on two medium-sized fish and looks up at Lisbeth sideways: “Maybe we could make kokoda, has Mister Armand had that yet?”
Lisbeth isn’t too crazy about Fijian food in general, but the lime-marinated raw fish in coconut milk, seasoned with chile and onion, has become one of her favorites. “But it’s a lot of work, isn’t it, Ateca? It takes time?”
Ateca smiles. “Madam Ingrid can grate the coconuts. She’s got good feet. And Madam Sina can help me chop up the fish.”
“I can help too,” Lisbeth hurries to interject. She can at least chop the onions and chile; Ateca doesn’t need to make her sound totally useless!
“Kokoda sounds exciting.” Armand flashes Ateca his broadest smile. “You have to teach me how to make such a specialty. There’s way too much canned food and too many TV dinners in a bachelor’s kitchen, you know.”
Ateca glances at Lisbeth, who suddenly can’t help but smirk a little: Armand’s request for Ateca’s pity has fallen on deaf ears. The image of bosso Armand alone in the kitchen, cooking for himself without a single woman nearby, is obviously not one she can picture.
“I can keep the glasses filled, at least,” he continues, and takes a step toward her. “And set the table with Maya. Help her count to six.”
Lisbeth can’t believe he’s winking at her. A rapid little jeering laugh with a flutter of his eyelid. Something cracks inside Lisbeth’s head—a balloon popping, a tiny explosion. Armand’s reddish face grows blurry in front of her; her voice quivers, but not from tears.
“Of course you can help,” she says. “But just leave Maya alone.”
Thankfully he doesn’t come in when they return with the fish. Ateca goes straight to the kitchen, and Lisbeth stops when she spots Maya standing in the doorway to her room, gripping the door frame. She’s wearing a hat and a nightgown, and her eyes are
full of fear. Lisbeth understands at once. The afternoon light is telling Maya it’s time for her walk on the beach, but she can’t find the way, and Sina isn’t there.
But the Star of the Sea is there. Maraia suddenly appears beside them and loosens Maya’s iron grip on the door frame. “Come on, Nau,” she says, and leads her back into her room. Lisbeth retreats, and has taken a seat in a wicker chair on the porch when they reappear, Maya in her old blue dress and Maraia in a bula dress Lisbeth has never seen before. Bright, happy colors: white and red on an orange background. When Maraia puts her hand in Maya’s, Lisbeth sees that it fits like a key in a lock.
“Sushi,” Armand says, and smacks his lips after consuming his third helping. “Even back home in meat-and-potatoes land, people have started to see what delicacies the rest of the world has to offer. Of course, those of us who’ve traveled quite a bit have tried more than frozen pizza and tuna casserole and have a slightly more refined palate, but this—” He flashes a huge grin across the dinner table. “Not many people can say they’ve tried this.”
Lisbeth looks at him wearily. She can’t be bothered to correct him, to point out that kokoda isn’t sushi. What would it matter if she said so? Armand will always know best, no matter what.
But Maya’s having a good night, and, heaving a deep breath, she explains: “Kokoda isn’t actually sushi, it’s fish cooked in lime juice. Ceviche, which is made in Central and South America, is prepared in the same way. It’s a chemical process, the citric acid denatures the proteins in the flesh of the fish so the molecules change their structure, and—”
“Of course I know that!”
His interruption isn’t good-natured, it’s brusque, and Maya looks confused. She pushes herself out to the edge of her chair and continues. “It’s quite interesting, really. I can’t quite remember where the method comes from; I’ve read about it, but…”