Breadfruit

by Célestine Vaite

  Moana wants to hold the coconut, and Loana puts it in his hand.

  “This is the legend of the coconut,” she says. “Tell it to your kids.”

  Moana feels sad for the eel. He caresses the coconut. “Just because the eel was ugly. Poor eel, eh.”

  Loana goes on about how beauty, the real beauty that lasts forever, comes from within. The eel was, perhaps, ugly, but his heart was beautiful and pure. His love for Princess Hina was true.

  “Poor eel.” Moana is now kissing the coconut. “Poor prince.”

  Pito, still lying on the sofa like a coconut tree, calls out, “Hina didn’t want the eel because he was an eel—full stop!” In Pito’s opinion, the prince of Lake Vahiria would have been better off mixing with his own kind. There were, for sure, lots of keen and pretty eels swimming about in the river, waiting for the prince’s signal. The eel was stupid, wanting a human for his woman.

  Moana doesn’t feel sorry for the eel anymore. He gives the coconut back to his grandmother. “Stupid eel.”

  And now Moana is going to play outside and Loana is going back to her house. She’s lost her appetite. She rises to her feet and grabs her bag.

  “Ah, come on, Mamie,” Materena pleads. “Don’t pay attention to what Pito says.”

  Giving her mother her best I beg you look, Materena continues. “I went to the market at five o’clock this morning to make sure your ature was fresh.”

  Loana sits down again.

  “Can I get you a glass of wine, Mamie?” Materena asks.

  “No, it’s too early. Later.”

  Materena is really annoyed with Pito. The trouble with Pito is that he can’t understand legends, so he has to ruin them.

  Last time she visited, Loana told the legend of the breadfruit to Leilani. The legend is about a man who transforms himself into a breadfruit tree in the middle of the night so that his woman and children have something to eat. That legend was another story of love, as Loana likes legends about love, just as she likes movies about love and songs about love. Just like Materena.

  Pito had to add his grain of salt then too. “What is this transforming yourself into a tree?” he called out from the sofa. “What use can you be to your woman and children if you’re a tree? Isn’t it better for a man to go hunt some wild pigs or fish to feed his family!”

  Of course Loana got cranky and went home, but today she must stay, because the ma’a Tahiti is in her honor.

  Materena gets the coconut and she’s about to crack it open, but first she feels she should talk to Moana. Explain the legend to him a bit better.

  “Moana, darling!” she calls out.

  Moana immediately responds, “Oui, I’m coming, Mamie.”

  Materena gets him to hold the coconut and sit. “Now,” she begins, “you know your friend Albino.”

  “Yes,” says Moana, “but his name is Vetea.” Vetea is Moana’s best friend from school. Moana talks about him a lot, how his friend Vetea always gets teased at school for being an albino, and Moana got a bruised nose once for defending him. “Why are you talking about my friend Vetea?” Moana asks.

  “Imagine, a little,” Materena goes on. “Your friend Albino, I mean, Vetea, falls in love with a girl, but she doesn’t want him because he’s an albino. How are you going to feel?”

  “Eh, I’m going to be cranky at that girl!” Moana exclaims.

  “And would you tell Vetea that he should just look for a girl who is an albino, just because he’s an albino?”

  “No,” replies Moana softly.

  “And why not?”

  Moana hesitates. “Because God made us equal?”

  Loana is seriously nodding now, she’s very pleased with her grandson’s answer.

  And so Materena’s explanation is over. “All right.” She kisses Moana on the forehead. “You can go and play outside. Give me the coconut.”

  Moana kisses the coconut and gives it to his mother.

  And Materena expertly cracks it open with the machete.

  Lunch is over, and all the food that was on the table got eaten: the raw fish, the baked breadfruit, the taro, the sweet potatoes; and now everybody is feeling like a little lie-down, but Loana wants to help Materena clear up the table before she goes home.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mamie,” Materena says. “You just go home and have a rest.”

  “Thanks for the lunch, girl.” Loana kisses her daughter on the forehead.

  “Eh, what’s one lunch compared to all the food you put in my stomach over the years?” Materena replies.

  After a few more kisses, Loana leaves and Leilani decides to go with her grandmother to keep her company. The boys go outside for a game of marbles, and Materena retreats to her bedroom. She’s a bit upset and couldn’t care less about the mess in the kitchen.

  She’s in bed now. She pulls the quilt over her head as if to escape. The lunch was good and everybody chatted away, but Materena did not say one single word to Pito. She didn’t even look at him. It was like he wasn’t sitting on the other side of the table.

  And here is Pito now, coming into the bedroom.

  “Go on your sofa.” These are Materena’s first words to Pito in the last two hours.

  Pito hops into bed, and now he’s trying to get under the quilt.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” Materena says.

  “Ah, come on, darling,” Pito says.

  “Why do you always have to ruin Mamie’s legends?” Materena’s tone of voice is definitely not friendly.

  “What!” Pito exclaims. “Is this why you’re cranky at me?” He tries to pull the quilt away, but Materena grips it firmly.

  “The trouble with you,” Materena says, “is that you don’t understand anything when it’s about love, you only understand things when they’re about a whole lot of nothing!”

  Pito whistles. Materena jumps out of bed and marches to the kitchen, and you can hear the banging of pots and pans miles away.

  Tupapa’u

  Later, when Pito goes into the kitchen to get his Akim comic, he finds Materena looking very serious while she’s washing the dishes.

  “You’re still cranky with me?” Pito cackles.

  No answer from Materena.

  By nighttime Materena, defrosting the fridge, is still not talking to Pito. But now he starts to whistle, and Materena knows very well it’s best to whistle only during the day.

  When you whistle at night you’re calling the tupapa’u—wandering spirit—to come pay you a visit. Materena knows a story about a woman who liked to whistle at night while she supervised the cooking on the fire. One night, a tupapa’u with beef legs came to pay her a visit. The woman jumped with fright and landed straight in the cooking pot. She became mad after that experience. She never whistled again, not even during the day.

  Materena never whistles at night. Her kids never whistle at night. But Pito, yes.

  He’s whistling louder and Materena can’t bear it any longer. It’s not like she’s afraid of tupapa’u, but she doesn’t want a strange apparition.

  “Pito—stop whistling.” There. Materena has just broken her silence.

  Pito keeps on whistling. He’s in the mood to whistle and nobody is going to make him stop. He will whistle till he’s sick of it.

  According to Materena, there are good tupapa’u and there are bad tupapa’u. When the air circling you is hot—it’s a good one. When the air is cold and there’s a foul smell—it’s a bad one. Watch out.

  Bad tupapa’u are usually dead people who don’t want to be dead, and they’re angry with everyone who’s alive.

  The good tupapa’u, they just wander around until they’re ready to go where they are supposed to go. They come into your house and do tricks on you, little tricks like moving something around, and they watch you looking for that something, they listen to you say: “I thought I put the washing powder on the kitchen table. Where is it now?”—and they laugh. For them it’s a joke.

  The bad tupapa’u do worse tricks. They
come into your head. They make you scared. They want you to do strange things.

  “Pito, stop whistling!” Materena is ordering him.

  “Materena, you just concentrate on your fridge.” Pito flicks a page of his comic.

  Wandering spirits come to you even if you don’t whistle, but when you whistle it’s more guaranteed that they will come pay you a visit. They can talk to you too.

  Materena remembers when she was about eight years old. She was helping her mother make a tifaifai quilt when a foul smell penetrated the living room.

  Loana stopped stitching and looked around. “Go your way,” she said. “I didn’t invite you into my house.”

  The tupapa’u didn’t go away when Loana stood up and faced the wall.

  “What?” Loana rolled her hands into fists. “What do you dare tell me? This is not my land? Speak up, I can’t hear you!”

  Materena gripped the quilt, scared; her mother looked like she was possessed.

  “I’m Mahi blood! This land belongs to me! My father is Apoto Mahi!” Loana was yelling by then.

  Materena wanted to go get the crucifix, she knew tupapa’u couldn’t stand the sight of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross, but she was too scared to make a movement.

  Loana went to open the door and, pointing outside, she said, very calmly, “Leave now or I will curse you—you will wander for the eternity. You will never see the face of God.”

  Cold air rushed behind Materena’s neck—then the door slammed. Loana got back to her quilt.

  “Girl,” she said, “don’t you worry—he’s gone.”

  Materena shivers. Pito’s whistling is even louder now.

  “Pito—please stop whistling.” Materena is begging him.

  She tells him the story about her mother and the tupapa’u. Pito just laughs. In his opinion Loana had a bit too much to drink that night and had a hallucination.

  Materena tells him the story about the beef legs. Pito laughs even more. In his opinion, that story is fabricated—it’s a story mothers tell their children when they muck around too much at night. “I’m going to call the beef legs.” Pito heard that sentence a few times from his mother. But she never called the beef legs, since there’s no beef legs to respond to the calling.

  In Pito’s opinion, tupapa’u don’t exist. They are in the imagination. When you’re dead, you’re dead—you become ashes, it’s finished.

  “And what about my cousin Mori when he saw a hairy man come out of a grave as he was walking past the cemetery one night . . . ?” Materena is beginning to feel a bit cold.

  Pito laughs again.

  “And the white lady who hitchhikes by the side of the road and sometimes she comes into your car without you even stopping—you look into the rearview mirror and there she is, on the backseat, smiling at you?” This is another one of Mori’s stories. By now Materena’s really got the shivers.

  Again Pito laughs. “Your cousin Mori, he’s the king of invented stories.”

  Pito goes on about how he’s been in a car many times at night and the only people he’s seen hitchhiking were hoodlums.

  Pito whistles a happy tune and shakes his shoulders.

  Materena goes back to her defrosting. “Keep whistling, Pito. But don’t say I didn’t warn you that a wandering spirit will come pay you a visit.”

  Then an idea comes into Materena’s mind. “Pito.”

  Pito looks up because Materena is now whispering and only two seconds ago she was almost shouting.

  Materena drops the sponge. Her eyes are wide open, like she’s afraid. “Pito… look behind you, there’s… there’s . . .”

  At that precise moment, a ten-pound breadfruit crashes onto the tin roof, and cold air (from the open fridge) penetrates Materena’s skin.

  She jumps on Pito. Pito falls off the chair. And Materena and Pito are on the floor.

  “You stupid bitch woman!” Pito is all pale now. “What were you trying to do? Scare me?”

  First Day Here

  That Pito, Materena says in her head, walking to the Chinese store. He likes to think he’s so tough, but he’s not tough at all, he’s afraid of geckos, he’s afraid of tupapa’u . . .

  Materena can see Pito’s face again. He was so pale! Ah, if she were to put the news on the coconut radio, there would be laughing all over the place. It would be her revenge for all the bad things Pito did to her… like proposing to her when he didn’t mean it.

  Bastard. If Materena were mean… but she’s not, this is the problem. She’s tempted to spill the bucket, though, bumping into Cousin Mori and other cousins… And here’s Cousin Teva.

  Drinking alone, with his head down. That is very different.

  Materena walks up to him. “Teva,” she says, “are you all right?”

  He’s holding a picture of a young woman. The young woman looks very serious as she grates a coconut.

  “It’s Manuia,” Teva says.

  “Ah. She looks strong.” Materena has heard about Manuia and how Teva was going to marry her.

  “Manuia got married last month.” Teva starts to cry. “Mama sent me the news.”

  Materena puts a reassuring arm on Teva’s shoulder. She’s got mixed emotions. She feels sorry for him, but she also thinks that he deserves to cry. He’s come to Tahiti with plans and done nothing about them.

  This is the story of Teva’s arrival in Tahiti as Loana told it to Materena.

  He is seventeen and leaving his island for the first time.

  He’s leaving Rangiroa for Tahiti, where people can earn lots of money—easily.

  Many of his relatives have gone before him and they are all doing fine. None of them have come home, because they are doing so well. But he will, in two years. He has a plan. Work very hard, very long hours, save most of his pay, then come home in five years’ time and start a business taking tourists spearfishing on the new speedboat he can afford to buy. And, of course, marry Manuia from the village and have beautiful children with her.

  He promises his mother these things. She says, “Son, once you taste life in Tahiti, you’re not going to want this slow, simple life in Rangiroa. You’re not going to want to be a fisherman.”

  And now he is going aboard the Temehani, which will take him to Tahiti. He watches his mother, his father, his sisters and brothers, standing on the quay, waving. He waves back until he can’t see them anymore.

  He waves for a long time.

  Then Teva sits on the deck and hides his face in his hands.

  Cousin James picks Teva up in Tahiti. Teva hardly recognizes James at first. James has a big gut, a wild beard, and messy hair. He used to have iron muscles from hunting big fish. He used to look clean and healthy. Now he’s a slob. Teva looks at the tattoo on James’s arm. It is a tattoo of a heart and the heart is pierced with an arrow and Teva wants to laugh, but he knows that it isn’t a good idea to laugh at James’s tattoo.

  They kiss and hug. Then they walk toward a rusty old Peugeot.

  “Is this your car?” asks Teva.

  James raises his eyebrows. It means, of course it’s my car, what do you think, that I don’t have a car? Do I look like someone who doesn’t have a car to you? Of course it’s my car, and it’s a good car.

  Teva is surprised about James’s car. The rumor in the village was that James had a new red Honda that could speed faster than Liu Song’s speedboat.

  It takes a while to make the old Peugeot start. Then the car propels itself forward, rattling and squeaking as it goes. Teva wants to laugh, but he knows it’s not a good idea to laugh at James’s rusty Peugeot. And, plus, James is older, so he needs to show a bit of respect.

  “What have you got in that bag?” James asks.

  “Clothes.”

  “You’ve got nice ones for going out… for hunting good-looking women?” asks James, looking at a woman waiting to cross the road.

  “I’m here to work, Cousin.” Teva is serious.

  Cousin James laughs a mocking laugh. “Work! There’s no work
here! Who told you there’s work here! The economy is stuffed, Cousin. You know a bit about the economy?”

  Teva admits that he doesn’t know one bit about the economy.

  “Well, I’m telling you, Cousin, the economy’s stuffed.”

  “You work?” asks Teva.

  “When it suits me.” James furiously toots his horn at the car in front, which is moving too slowly. “Get off the fucking road!” he yells as he accelerates to pass the white Fiat.

  Teva looks at the woman who is driving the Fiat, her chest pressed to the steering wheel like she can’t see the road, and he feels quite uncomfortable, because the woman is a mama and back home you just don’t yell at the mamas. Only the papas can yell at the mamas—not the young people.

  James looks at the driver of the Fiat too as he passes. “Putain, it’s Mama Teta! What is she doing on the road? She’s a bloody public danger.”

  Then James passes a truck and Teva is holding on to his seat.

  “I don’t like people bossing me around.” James continues the discussion about work. “I won’t eat nobody’s merde. Give me two million francs… give me five million francs, I’ll still refuse. Got my pride. What about you? You eat merde if your boss asks you?”

  “Non.”

  “Good,” James says. “Don’t make me sorry we’re related.”

  Teva looks out the car window and thinks about Rangiroa.

  Finally they arrive at Noelene’s house. Her house needs two coats of paint, at least—the place is a wreck. As soon as Teva gets out of the car, big Mama Noelene smothers him with kisses. And then she cries for the whole neighborhood to hear, “Aue, welcome… welcome to my home… welcome, my nephew from Rangiroa!”

  Teva says, “Thank you, Auntie.”

  When Teva’s mother asked Noelene about him staying with her, Noelene promptly sent a message back: Your son is my blood. He can stay at my house. I have a big house.