by Ferenc Máté
He felt a wave of nausea at the thought that under that swarm might be the head he loved.
IN A SLEEP NO DEEP ENOUGH enough for dreams, Darina leaned against the tree. When she heard someone yell out, she looked up but saw only the gloomy jungle and the sea, and the girl asleep in her doorway.
Then she heard a loud curse and behind her the jungle parted, and, limping through the trees, holding his thigh with blood seeping between his fingers, came Nello.
When he saw her he stopped. “Are you all right?” he asked, then walked into the sea. “Lava rock,” Nello hissed. “Cuts like coral.” He rolled the leg of his pants above his knee, then washed the wound. The gash was short but deep. “Do you know how to sew?”
The girl had awakened in her hut, and now sat looking at the blood coloring the man’s leg.
SHE SLID FROM HER DOORWAY, tying her pareu around her waist, but instead of coming toward them, she went to a thicket of leathery, heart-shaped leaves. She picked their yellow flowers, then came and stopped in front of Nello. The flowers were mostly closed, but some showed a ring of red deep in the crumpled petals.
“C’est trés bon pour la blessure,” she said softly, pointing at the wound.
Nello smiled. “You are a doctor?”
“A lil’bit,” she replied.
She knelt before him and, with great concentration, dabbed the wound dry with a corner of her skirt. Then, one by one, she laid the flowers across the gash. She squeezed them down with the palm of her hand. Nello watched her. The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty, her face unlined, sincere, brown but light enough to show freckles bloom. Her eyebrows almost touched, her lower lip a gentle pout, and her large dark eyes watched his to make sure she was causing no discomfort. What a beautiful child, he thought. Ravissante, the French say. No wonder sailors were bewitched in these islands.
She worked with a great calm, her long fingers gently placing the petals, pushing hair from her eyes, her hair shiny, black, and wavy like the sea. Her skin was smooth, with pearls of sweat, and rising from her body was the smell of coconut oil and spices. Nello couldn’t take his eyes off the muscles above her breasts. And her scent filled his head. In all those weeks at sea, in that confined closeness, he couldn’t remember smelling Darina at all.
The girl finished laying the flowers, then she tore a long strip from the bottom of her pareu and wrapped it around his leg, tying a perfect figure-eight knot at the end.
“You’re a sailor too,” Nello said.
She looked up; her freckles shifted as she smiled. “A lil’bit . . .” she laughed.
From far away came the roll of drums and her smile vanished as quickly as it had come.
“Why did you come here?” she asked, turning to Darina, but stopped suddenly when she saw Darina’s eyes glowing deep blue in the pale light.
“What is it?” Darina asked.
“Nothing,” the girl lied, and looked away.
Darina told her about searching for her brother, his age, how he liked to draw, how he had painted pictures in Tahiti, his laughter and his blue eyes just like hers.
“Many blue-eye men come,” the girl said, looking off. “Then they go away.”
She got up and dragged her board into the sea, floated it along the shore, her pareu swirling in the foam. When she was far away, she unwrapped her pareu and left it on the sand, lay on the board on her stomach, and, keeping her toes in the air so as not to tempt the sharks, she paddled with strong, long strokes out to the point, where there was nothing but rocks, long waves, and surf. She sang a soft melody that rose and fell with the heaving of the sea.
Chapter 36
Escape to the side, Guillaume heard his sergeant yelling, never ahead. He rolled just far enough off the path to have the foliage cover him. The first naked feet, those of a child, walked by near his face, followed by the flattened, toes-sticking-sideways of old women who had spent long days walking in the sand and long nights dancing wildly in the grass. Next came the feet of many young women, and he wondered if he could recognize the ones that had walked with him so many times along the shore.
The women sang a cheerful hymn, and men’s gruff bellows answered from afar with the thunderous sounds of the pahu anaana, the great hollow rosewood-covered-with-sharkskin drum. The voices were unguarded, exuberant, and he thought, I love these people, I even love their feet. How could I have left?
The heavy feet of men moved past him now, and the smell of fresh fish from a net slung on poles between dark shoulders, followed by clumps of plantains and sheaves of banana leaves, and the sour and sweet smell of poi poi. Then a new sound arose, a sailor’s ukulele, and pair of white man’s feet passed by, covered from the ankles up with tattoos. They stopped a moment, then went on. That must be him, Guillaume thought. I could kill him now. I should kill him now. The drums beat beside his head and the ground shook under him. But what about her? What if I lose her. Lose her for good.
When there were no more feet, he moved to the ledge and looked below. The procession wound down the slope, the torches on the plateau catching them as they went. With his binoculars he searched the crowd for her face.
The men unloaded the poi poi and the fish and banana leaves near a pit. The old man in the white gown came with a long-bladed knife, sliced a big fish open and held it up to the crowd, then dropped it into the pit.
Drums thudded.
The crowd encircled the meae, women toward the land, men toward the sea. A fleshy young girl, wound in tapa cloth, now climbed the meae, where two stone tikis threw shadows at her feet. She danced on her toes, slow and sensuous, and her hips rolled and she swayed. As she raised a bird-of-paradise above her head, she seemed to float.
Guillaume stuffed his white shirt it his bag, and rubbed handfuls of mud onto his face and chest. Crouching low, he began his descent.
The girl danced with more fervor, rolling her hips, thrusting her pelvis, and swung her torso wildly, her long hair making circles in the torchlight. Three men in long leaf skirts leapt up beside her. The biggest one grabbed the edge of the tapa cloth. She spun. Reams of the tapa cloth floated to the stone until she spun naked, her oiled and sweaty flesh glittering in the torchlight.
She danced leaning back with knees bent and parted toward one man, but, as they touched, she danced away. The biggest of the three men moved in and grabbed her thighs. He slid them up his own. She wrapped her legs around him and threw back her head and arms.
“Mon Dieu,” Guillaume said softly, staring through the binoculars, because, near a corner of the meae, he found the face he longed for: the dark eyes glowing with excitement, the smiling mouth warm and wide, the graceful long chin and the thick black hair with a wreath of gardenias askew on the brows.
The man lowered the fleshy girl onto a hollowed stone lined with banana leaves. She writhed slowly. The big man danced over her, then with great care and gentleness he eased himself into her. The girl’s hips pulled back and the man let her. Then he entered her again, gently but deeper. The drums grew softer; women sang. Some cried. Guillaume ran.
He was halfway down the slope, with his eye on the gardenias. The crowd swayed. When the first man rose from the girl, the youngest of the men went and wiped her brow. Then he held her in his arms.
GUILLAUME BACKED INTO A THICKET at the edge of the plateau; the dark pit near him stank of fresh decay, but the wreath of gardenias was less than fifty steps away. After all these years.
Across the plateau, beside the giant drums, the tattooed man’s ukulele fell out of rhythm. Seeing the tall white figure in the thicket, his face turned solemn under the tattoos. He strummed distractedly. Then he began to move.
THE OLD MAN IN THE LONG WHITE ROBE put on a priest’s parrot-feather crown, and, with his long knife pointing down, stepped from the altar and came through the thicket toward the pit. Guillaume withdrew into the woods. The drums grew louder, faster. The second man lowered himself onto the girl. She gripped his waist.
Guillaume watched the prie
st kneel over the pit, reach down, and pull out a small, screeching black pig. He held it by its hind legs; it wriggled in the air. He pushed the pig down onto its stomach, held back its head, and, holding its snout, thrust the long blade through its throat.
But the pig wouldn’t die. It flung its head from side to side, the blade whirling wildly in the light. The old priest held it down as best he could, but the pig thrashed with all its might and the long blade swung and struck the priest below his heart. He gave a cry. Then, still holding the pig, he fell back against the stone.
Guillaume forgot the crowd and the gardenias, forgot every restraint he’d learned as a spy, and ran to the old man and knelt down by his side. The pig still fought. Guillaume pulled out the knife and with a ferocious blow pinned the pig to the ground.
The old man’s breathing was ragged; he looked up at Guillaume. “Strong pig,” he said in French, and pushed out a weak smile. Guillaume didn’t respond. He opened the old man’s robe and saw the blood flow with each beat of the heart. He placed his palm gently over it. “Poor pig,” the old man said. “He deserved stronger hands.”
“You are strong,” Guillaume said.
“Who are you?” the old man asked.
“A fool,” Guillaume said.
“I know you, yes?”
“Peut-être,” Guillaume said. “Years ago. When I was young.”
“Mon Dieu!” the old man answered. “You are the one that Joya loved.”
“Joya was love-struck,” Guillaume said.
“Who isn’t?” the old man said. “Why did you come back?”
“For Joya.”
The old man smiled. “Good,” he said.
The drumming and the singing softened.
“How is she?” the old man asked.
“Who?”
“La vierge.”
The girl was sitting up on the meae, with one arm around the boy who had come before to wipe her brow. Her hair had stuck in tangles to her face, but through it Guillaume could see an exhausted smile. The boy was shy. She wrapped him with her body as best she could and she moved for him as much as she could. The boy buried his face into her shoulder.
“She’s fine,” Guillaume said.
“A silly custom.” The old man sighed and winced with pain. Then whispered, “I’m so tired.”
“We’re all tired.”
The old man smiled. “The song is nice.”
Guillaume watched his eyes turn unseeing in the moonlight. They stared past him at the darkness flickering with stars.
THE TATTOOED MAN BACKED OFF THE MEAE. He circled the crowd, strumming his ukulele but never taking his eyes off the bushes where he had seen the white man disappear. Why would a white man come up here? he thought. Who would dare follow, after the shark? Who’d take such a risk? To do what? To whom?
GUILLAUME SAW A SHADOW coming through the woods. He lowered the old man’s head gently to the ground and wiped the caking blood on his hands in the grass. Bent low, behind the rocks, he headed toward the altar, where the crown of gardenias swayed. He headed toward Joya.
The tattooed man followed.
Chapter 37
The stench of the room awoke Dugger with a start. The dead air hung suffocating, dark. He went out. The Finn sat on the bench against the bluff, the rifle on the table before him pointed over the dead shark near the gate. He was picking bits of meat off a plate and chewing them, less out of hunger than boredom. “E aha te hakatu?” he said. “That’s Kanaka for ‘How are you?’”
“Never better,” Dugger said, and wondered how far he’d have to go to get away from the stench. “Anybody back?” he asked hopelessly.
“Not a soul.”
Dugger looked at the bluff above and the shark, which had collapsed as if deflated. “Look. We’re trapped like rats in this courtyard,” he said, only loud enough for the Finn to hear. “One man can pick off the lot of us from up there.”
“I told you the rock curves,” the Finn said with a sigh. “They can’t shoot into the yard.”
“They shot the rope.”
“That was up high.”
“The kid could have shot us from the tree.”
“He’s just their climber. He’s much too small to carry a rifle, never mind fire it.”
“So you’re just going to sit here?”
“You have a better idea?”
“I’m taking her back to the ketch at first light.”
“And your friends?”
My friends? Dugger thought. They can go to hell. One’s more crazy than the other; just crazy about different things. “They know where the ketch is.”
“And if they need help?”
“What help?”
“Help, help. If the Kanakas capture them.” He chewed on a dry hard-cooked piece. “You ever eat dog before?”
“Why would they capture them?”
“I already told you. They want us gone.” He tore a piece of meat from a leg bone with his teeth. “Dog is very good as long as you cook it the native way in the uma. Otherwise you can’t chew it and it stinks.” He got up and took his rifle. “Look. If you want to stay awake, I’ll go home and get some sleep.” And he headed for the gate.
“Can’t you sleep here?”
The Finn laughed. “And be trapped like a rat?” He shouldered his rifle and headed out into the night.
THE DRUMS BOOMED AND THE CROWD DANCED, SWIRLING. The wind swept across the plateau, whipping the torch flames. At a hollowed stone people stopped and with half shells of coconut scooped kawa and drank, with the kawa running down through the sweat on their bare chests.
A woman, naked but for some pandanus leaves between her legs, picked up a flaming torch. The dancers pulled back to give her room. She swayed, undulating, rising and falling. She leaned back; the torch lit her thighs.
Guillaume crouched low on the edge of the clearing, then turned toward the altar. The drums thudded so loud Guillaume felt the thudding vibrate in his bones. The stench of rotting flesh from the dark pit made him gag. He stayed low and went on to get upwind of the pit.
Five men closed in on the woman with the torch. She leaned back, bent her legs, and offered herself.
Guillaume turned the corner of the altar. Joya’s head bobbed in the crowd just steps away. He wanted just to grab her and vanish with her in the night, off this damned plateau, off this island, sail south, in anything—a skiff, a pirogue, a raft—to some small motu where the lagoon was smooth and the breakers thundered far away. He pushed on. He had lost all instinct for caution and stood at full height, as nervous as a child playing hide-and-seek, trying to reach home.
ACROSS THE WAY, BEHIND THE TIKI, the tattooed man knelt beside the old man on the ground. The old man’s eyes reflected the cold moonlight. Then he raised his hand to the old man’s eyes and closed them. Still on one knee, he lifted the old man in his arms. He was surprised at how little the old man weighed. Holding him in one arm, he picked up the dead pig, leaving the long knife embedded in its neck.
Guillaume waded into the crowd of swaying bodies, into the scent of scorched leaves, smoke, and kawa. Dancers leaned against him smelling of coconut oil and fish; all he wanted was a whiff of gardenias.
The five men engulfed the woman and their limbs entwined. Her cries of delight cut through the thud of drums.
Guillaume stopped. Just beyond his reach, but so close he could smell them, the crown of gardenias glowed. With her head down, she was dancing slower than the others. He pushed aside a sweating back, and reached out and said, “Joya.”
The tattooed man hauled the dead pig and the old man through the bush. He had come to the stream and brushed against great ferns. He picked his way over the wet stones of the stream and marveled at everything so gigantic in the moonlight, and wondered why he never noticed their enormity all these years. And then he wondered if, by magic, he had suddenly grown small.
He passed a man lying facedown in the stream, drinking and smelling of kawa. Beyond the stream he turned toward
the torches and the crowd.
Joya stopped dancing and turned slowly. She looked confused staring into the mudded face, searching for a hint of who stood there. Her eyes and gardenias glowed white in the torchlight. She was smaller than Guillaume remembered her to be, her brow higher, but below the thick eyebrows shone those dark, mesmerizing pupils, enormous and shining like black pearls. Behind her right ear was a wilting hibiscus. She stared, trying to understand this mudded apparition. After a while she asked with all her heart, “Meitai tupapau?” Are you a ghost?
Guillaume tried to wipe the mud from around his eyes. A smile broke in the corners of her mouth. “You’re too dirty to be a ghost,” she said. Then she reached out and touched his face. Her fingers made a slow, curved line from his cheek down to his lips. Her face relaxed, her mouth softened, her eyes became inviting.
Neither of them noticed the drums slowing, voices falling.
Looking at the flower behind her right ear, he uttered, “You’re not taken.”
Instead of a reply, she said without reprimand, “You went so far.”
She ran the tip of her finger through a long crease in his face. “This is new,” she said. Then he saw the dead priest.
The dancers eased their limbs and turned toward where, through the ring of torches, the tattooed man now came. From one arm trailed the bloodstained gown of the priest, from the other the black hide of the bleeding pig.
Between two torches, he stopped. Tears so filled his eyes that he looked completely blind. He seemed to wait for guidance from the crowd. The drums fell silent except for a hesitant one that went on slow, then fast, as if trying to find a rhythm it had lost. From all that silence rose a woman’s voice, melodic and mournful, singing, “Mara mara manue.” One by one, more voices followed, softly, like the endless murmur of the sea.
The tattooed man laid the priest gently on the altar, keeping the knifed pig in his other hand. He looked around for the white face in the crowd. People followed his gaze. Deep in thought, he moved toward Guillaume. The crowd opened to make way, then closed in. Guillaume stepped back. The precipice yawned behind him and, in the updraft, he could smell the sea.