by Carlos Eyles
As the girls continued to work in the kitchen, Moses and Compton set upon the meal. Mariah sat with them at the table, but did not eat.
“This meal is excellent,” complimented Compton between mouthfuls. “Do you always eat this well?”
Moses in obvious delight replied, “It is amazing what they cook on a fire, eh? You have not eaten Fiji food?”
“No, this is my first. Does it all come from your garden?”
“All of it. We have breadfruit, taro, cassava root, bele, tomatoes, yams, carrots, onions, pumpkin, pawpaw, banana, beans, coconut and a few pineapple.”
“Last winter,” said Mariah, “the hurricane came and we lost our garden. This is a new one. We had to live on wild yams and cassava root and fish for a long time. But now we have pawpaw and bele and breadfruit. We have plenty now.”
Compton glanced around the house. “You had a hurricane here? Did it do much damage?”
“I was the only one here,” recounted Moses. “Everyone was on Taveuni for the holiday. It tore off the roof. I was under Mariah’s bed for two days trying to stay dry. A hurricane is a terrible fright, eh? So full of nature.”
“After our boat ride, I’m surprised you’re afraid of hurricanes.”
Moses beamed. “The ocean is not the place to be afraid, eh. That was jes’ a bit of wind and sea today. It get much worse than that.”
“Does anything scare you, Moses, besides hurricanes?”
Moses pondered the question. “Roads scare me.”
“Roads?”
“Roads bring the people with money who want to take from the island. If the roads come, our peaceful life in the bush is over. They have tried twice to build roads, but the jungle was too strong for their machines. The trees dulled their chainsaws and broke their backs and they ran out of money.“
The room became silent and Compton felt uneasy without knowing why. He asked Mariah what she feared most. She too gave the question thought before answering.
“People,” she said finally.
Compton’s uneasiness grew to discomfort when he realized that she didn’t mean just any people, she meant white people, as Moses as much said.
Moses stood up from the table. “Let’s take our tea in the other room and let the woman have their meal.” He brought the lantern from the table and led the way into the matted room where he sat cross-legged with his back against the far wall. Compton followed suit and Mariah reclined against a pillow. The matting was immaculately clean and had the soft leathery texture of skin. Beneath it was another mat that cushioned their weight and further softened the floor. In the warmth of the lantern light, with a full belly, the discomfort of a few moments ago was forgotten and Compton wondered aloud, “Why didn’t the girls eat with us?”
Moses, who was watching the smoke twist out of the lantern, lifted his head to the question. “They eat later. Fiji girls do all the cooking and the washing and the cleaning. They are very busy. No time to play. But they have their boyfriends and get pregnant anyhow.” He giggled at the girl’s plight.
“And the boys,” asked Compton. “What do they do?”
“They fetch the wood for the stove and dig the crops. When they come to twelve they go with the men to fish or work in the garden. The boy learns to carry the weight of himself, eh. In the home the girls answer to the woman, and she answers to the man. In the village the man answers to the chief. Everyone respects the elders. If the father dies, as my father did, then the eldest of the family, who is Esther, rules the family.”
“Lately,” continued Moses, “the traditions are being forgotten. The city steals the boys, as it stole me. They go to Suva, and don’t come back. That is why Sambuka take over the islands, so that Fiji keep its traditions and not lose them to the Indians and the Europeans who want our land.”
Moss’ voice trembled with emotion and Compton shifted to another topic. “You know, this has been quite a day for me and I am exhausted. Moses, can you show me where I am to sleep?
“We put the net up for you,” Moses announced in the midst of gathering himself up from the floor.
Mariah had already gotten up and was pulling out a mosquito netting from under the bed. Compton helped her tie the corners of the net to nails driven into the thick-branched ceiling beams. When it was done, she gave him a blanket and a pillow and he climbed under the net and lay on his back fully clothed. The lantern light flicked across the ceiling in strange, vaguely demonic shapes, and he felt as if the passage across the Tasman Strait had deposited him with a family that was completely removed from any visible constructs of the century from which he had departed less than a week ago. It was at once as unsettling as it was invigorating. And the conflict it bred was not unlike his personal battles in which he, more often than not, had became just another casualty in the war against himself.
Across the room, Mariah was already in bed and breathing heavily. In the far corner Bala and Adi spoke in whispered voices behind a hanging blanket that afforded them a small measure of privacy. In the silence of the hut the drone of the jungle insects rose to a grinding din. Compton, in his conflictive state, found comfort under the flimsy netting and, though missing the irony of his present circumstance or because of it, soon fell into deep sleep.
At three o’clock in the morning Compton was awakened by the diabolical shriek of a rooster prematurely announcing the dawn. Again at four and five o’clock the rooster announced his presence and was joined by two others, all of whom dueled until the sun was well up. Compton felt he had scarcely slept and when the roosters fell silent he drifted back into fitful sleep. He awoke later drugged by the depth of his slumber unsure of where he was or how long he had been asleep. Upon regaining his bearings, he was astonished to learn it was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning.
Breakfast of pawpaw, eggs, bread and tea were hot on the table when Compton came into the kitchen. Bala was by herself, offering no explanation as to the whereabouts of the others. Shortly after finishing breakfast Mariah came into the kitchen with an armful of vegetables, closely followed by Adi who was sweating profusely and caked with dirt. “Good morning, good morning. Did you sleep well?” inquired Mariah.
“Very well, until the roosters started singing.”
Mariah cackled. “The roosters take a turn in the morning. There is never a chance of waking late. The gardening must be done before it is hot. You are the first to sleep past six o’clock.”
Compton said softly to himself as he rose from the table, ”And I’ll probably be the last.”
Mariah overheard the mutter and said, “Probably,” and cocked an ear as if to hear him better.
Embarrassed, Compton sheepishly grinned. “The breakfast was first rate, thank you. I think I’ll have a look around the place if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, look around,” offered Mariah. “The toilet is down the path towards the sea. The small hut on the right.”
The path was bordered with exotic, brightly stippled flowers of delicate breeding and strange combinations of colors -- blue with orange, yellow with white and purples. The mangroves were to the left and to the right was dense jungle except for a section of land cleared for a stand of scaly trees heavy with the ripening, yellow papaya. He found the outhouse easily and at the sighting realized Mariah had anticipated his needs almost as if she were reading his thoughts.
He returned from the outhouse and found Mariah sitting on a bench that looked out the open doorway past the wandering chickens to the dense mangroves. Feeling awkward, he assumed an air of indifferent casualness and sat down beside her.
“ing is gaining and losing, eh,” she said wearily. “Gaining and losing, I never know which is better.”
Compton, in his discomfort, responded quickly, “Well, I’d guess that gaining is always better than losing.”
Mariah looked at him with eyes filled in equal parts of sadness and wisdom and gave an ever so slight shrug of her weighted shoulders, along with a despondent sort of smile conveying her knowledge of his i
gnorance. The gesture, unlike the reply, did not go unnoticed and he vowed to keep his mouth shut when in doubt of the question much less an answer.
They sat in a silence that rendered Compton to distraction, but he was not about to speak. She finally set her cup of tea down and tore an inch wide strip, six inches long from an old newspaper. Carefully laying a pinch of leaf tobacco down its center, she rolled a thin cigarette, lit it and sucked hard. “When I smoke this newspaper the words go inside me,“ she laughed, “but I never get any smarter.”
Compton fielded this remark with more confidence reading it as an opportunity to exhibit his humility. “Well, I used to read words and believed they’d make me smarter. I’m not so sure they really did.”
Mariah nodded but did not comment, choosing instead to gaze at the chickens that pecked at ground near their feet. Bala worked silently in the kitchen, grinding roots into mash and squeezing it into milk while Adi stoked the fire.
Mariah smoked her cigarette and Compton absently became aware of his breaths.
“Do you live in the city?” asked Mariah, briefly startling Compton.
“Well, I moved around. Mostly I lived in the suburbs of a city.”
Mariah drew deep inhales and exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl to the ceiling.
“I’ve been to the city. I stayed in Suva with my daughter, Corin. Have you been to Suva?’
“No, I came straight from Nadi.”
“They always lookin’ at their watches in Suva. My daughter and her husband, they always late for somewhere. Rushin’ about. That is no life. That is the poorest way a man can live. I don’ understand why young people go to the city when everythin’ is here.”
Compton nodded in agreement, played it safe. “It is very quiet here, very peaceful.”
“They want their own things. They want money.”
Compton grew bold. “There’s nothing wrong with money. In America, you have to have it just to get by, lots of it.”
She looked and blinked with those deep brown eyes revealing things unknown to him and he wondered why he undertook to speak at all to such wisdom.
“Here we don’ need money, not much. We need rain. The rain don’ make us look at our watches, eh. When it comes, it comes. The rain is not in a hurry.”
Mariah smoked the newspaper down to a nub and let it drop on the coral floor. She blew out the last of the smoke. “It was better at the beach,” she said to the smoke.
Compton, fearful of another inane comment on his part, waited for her to continue but she watched the smoke wind its way into the light of the window and disappear. Eventually he could not contain himself in the deafening silence. “Do you like being so far away from other people?”
“It was lonely with a family. My husband was out and about and the children was gone. I got chickens to keep me company. When my husband died, Esther went to Suva and found Moses and brought him home. It’s not lonely when you have a family. You have a family?”
“My mother and father are divorced. I have a son but I don’t see him much.” Compton turned away from her insightful eyes and looked at the coral floor, feeling the pain of his loss etching its way across his face. Mariah did not reply and he reluctantly continued almost in a whisper. “He lives with his mother. My wife, well ex-wife. We’re divorced.’’
“I’m happy for my children. Moses’ a good man. He doesn’t work the garden like he should, he fishes, spends his money on the fuel. It’s a foolish waste, eh. But he loves the sea. He knows it well. It is a love, eh. What can you do? It’s a better life than the city. The city make him sick. He come back with very thin eyes. The cities make people sick.”
“You have everything you need here,” said Compton filled with false courage, “food, shelter, your health. It looks like Moses takes pretty good care of you.”
“Oh, that Moses, he makes me laugh. He makes Esther frown. Once she give him a hundred dollars that she save from her job to buy the farm a few things for Christmas. He was gone for tree days, drunk and runnin’ about with woman. Nobody give him money after that. He no differen’ then all Fiji men. They no good with easy money. They jes’ spend it on grog and end up fightin’. They don’t need money. They family always have a house for ‘em and there is fruit on the trees and fish in the sea.”
Mariah stared in silence at the chickens for such a length of time that Compton began to shift in his seat, which caused her to turn to him and ask, “What is marijuana? Do you smoke it?”
Compton was unprepared for the question that appeared out of, well, the smoke-filled haze. Clearly she was looking for something other than casual conversation, and he answered carefully. “I smoked it when I was younger.”
“It is bad, yeah?”
“There are far worse drugs than marijuana. Like anything, if you smoked it all the time it would be unhealthy for you, just like alcohol.”
“I think Moses take it. It is a worry. What does it do?”
“Well, for different people it does different things. I used to dream about things I’d like to do.”
“Yes, dreamin’ is better than work,” she laughed, then abruptly frowned. “They put a man in jail for five years if he have marijuana. That is the law. Five years of your life! Fijian boys come out crazy. Five years ends their life.”
“That’s a harsh law.” Compton paused for a long moment, then asked, “Why are you asking these questions?”
“You are American, you know about drugs.” She paused. “More Americans be comin’ here, and bring their ideas. I’m afraid Moses will do as my husban’ and get drunk on the marijuana and sell our property to ‘em. You know the law say every Fijian must have their property. But if they sell it, that is all they get. We used to live down by the beach, on the other side of the hill. There’s no mosquitoes there and we could fish off the beach but my husband sol’ it and now we live here.”
Compton strung his lips tightly together in feigned sympathy. “This is still paradise. It’s very peaceful here.”
“Yes, very nice, but it’s not the beach.”
Compton had been holding an empty cup of tea for some time and in the awkwardness of Mariah’s loss he stood to throw the dregs into the swampy water but they fell short and landed on a white stone where he left them for the high tide to consume. Mariah rose and, moving gracefully, glided over to the sullied stone, gazed at it for a moment, then in deliberate fashion scooped up the dregs and walked over to the flower garden where she tossed them away. “You got plenty enough to think about already,” she said.
Compton apologized. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to dirty up the place.”
Mariah laughed and dismissed his apology with a wave of her hand. “This old place got so much dirt already you can’t tell the new from the old.”
Compton shrugged, embarrassed.
Mariah shook her head slowly, the laughter still in her eyes. “What you want to do is take a bath, eh. Down the path to the sea.”
Mariah spoke to the girls in the kitchen in Fijian, and shortly Adi appeared with a bar of soap and a fresh towel. In that moment Compton was struck by the generosity and kindness of these impoverished people who were so willing to give to an absolute stranger. Yet despite their benevolence he had the srong sense there was something they wanted from him. What exactly it was, however, was unclear and he pondered their motives while heading down the flowered path. All this was so new, nothing he had experienced before, no frame of references. The people, the place, the uncanny way Mariah could anticipate his thoughts. It was all so surreal. Had he been out of touch too long with people who were real? Who carried no agenda? Do such people even exist?
He came upon several pools at the sea’s edge but could not determine which one of the four was fresh. The sea is right here, he thought, surely they must all be salty. He began to taste the water and found the first two pools indeed salty but the third pool, to his amazement, was fresh. Must be some kind of spring, right here at the sea’s edge. He disrobed and slid into t
he pool, which was somewhat colder than the seawater. This place contradicts itself, he mused. Nothing appears to be what it is. He soaped up in the invigorating water. While this has the makings of a rather unique experience, I won’t be here long. What would I do? Where is there to go? This sort of existence would get boring quickly. I’ll stay until Moses goes off to Taveuni and then head back with him. The decision brought a comfort and he found himself thoroughly enjoying the remainder of his bath.
He finished and sat on a smooth rock, naked to the sun, and allowed himself to dry in its warmth. A freighter passed in the distance and he considered hopping aboard such a ship and maybe checkout the other islands. But there was an odd and almost powerful yearning to be in the water rather than on it.
The sun felt delicious on his skin and he lay back on the rock and closed his eyes. He fell asleep and dreamed of attending school and that everything was underwater and his pencil and books kept floating away and he struggled to retrieve them. The dream was brief and real, almost a daydream, and it momentarily left him confused when he awoke.
He wandered back to the rumpled shack where the girls were cooking and Mariah was nowhere to be seen. Adi brought him lemon grass tea and a bowl of coconut chips. He tried to strike up a conversation with her but she shyly retreated into the kitchen. Although it was mid-afternoon and Compton had missed lunch, and while he was not particularly hungry, the coconut seemed to be the perfect snack.
He had just finished the chips when Mariah emerged from her bedroom and beckoned with a long brown hand. “Come, I show you the garden.” She led the way west down a narrow path along the mangroves, past a stone collared fresh water well. Beyond the well was a half acre of cleared land, where well groomed rows of green standing vegetables shimmered in rich black soil.
Mariah gestured to the first row of plants. “This is bele. It is like the spinach. And this,” she said pointing to a spade-leafed plant with a narrow stem, “is taro. We eat the leaf, the stem and the root. Cassava root there, kumala, we eat the root. It is like the sweet potato. Also, egg plant.” Further down the garden Compton recognized tomatoes, several avocado trees, a lemon tree, bananas, yams and pineapples. “There is the breadfruit tree. You know breadfruit?”