‘Awa entered their systems, swam in their veins like blood, packets of it left each night in little pyramids, workers saying without saying £ pūpūkahi. It didn’t seem to help. Sleepless, terribly alone, at night Jess pored over old photo albums, as if the stained and sepia and termite-pocked faces could tell her Pono’s secret, how to follow in the footsteps of the ancients, how to go on. She studied a snapshot of her mother, Emma, then one of her daughter, Anna, wondering if she had lost her daughter because she, Jess, came from a family of women who were, themselves, so lost. Then one night she saw herself, a dream Pono was dreaming in the deep. She heard Pono’s voice.
“YOU ARE ENTERING MIDDLE LIFE. NEED LESS. DESIRE LESS. MOST THINGS, AFTER ALL, ARE NOT WORTHWHILE. WITHDRAW FROM THEM. TAKE JOY IN STRUGGLING WITH THE LAND. BE TRUE TO BLOOD. ALWAYS FACE THE SEA.”
She woke with a start, dragged her bed across the floor so it faced the ocean. Remembering her dream of Vanya running in green fire, now Jess dreamed of her melting into the soft eye of the jungle, full of her absolute vision. And she dreamed of Rachel, on a ferry, crossing from an island, Hong Kong, to Kowloon on the mainland. A woman alone, on the edge of a continent. She knew within a few days a postcard would arrive from Kowloon.
It came to Jess then that she had inherited part of Pono’s gift, not the full, lush, burdensome gift of kahuna, of life-giving and life-taking, but the smaller gift of dream-seeing, of real-imaginings. She thought of the days prior to Rachel’s departure for Thailand, her calm, her purity of purpose. Jess had flown over to Honolulu to see her off, and each thing she had dreamed would happen, happened.
Arriving in a cab, she had stood in Rachel’s driveway, struck by the grounds, the house, everything manicured, paradoxical and lush, compared to Pono’s sprawling, scrappy, termite-riddled farm. Then Rachel came at her across the lawn at an odd, maniacal tilt, sweeping Jess in circles.
“I have a surprise!” Ceremoniously, she had led Jess across the lawn. There was a teahouse beyond the fish pond, an ornate, winged-roof structure set off by itself. Rachel drew her in that direction.
“Wait a few minutes, then knock.” She had disappeared inside.
The sun was slipping, shooting boulevards into the sea. On the beach below, birds attacked each other instead of courting, and fish seemed to be swimming in lopsided circles. Finally, Jess knocked, removed her shoes and entered the teahouse, dim, and smelling of cedar. Tatami mats covered the floor, the only furnishing a low, black, lacquered table with a tea service, where Rachel knelt, virginal in a white kimono. Her hair was in the geisha style and, like a geisha girl, she bowed her head, seemingly shy.
Jess moved forward, enchanted, and knelt facing her, smelling jasmine tea. There was a window beside them, looking out on the ocean. There was nothing else in the room.
“But ... what is the surprise?”
Rachel seemed to fall into a state of deep meditation, and Jess sat back confused. The sun shifted, light flooded the room. Suddenly the wall behind Rachel resonated. A fierce red dragon was locked in mortal combat with a human warrior, both of them struggling under glass. What was mounted under the glass was large, life-size, and oddly shaped, remotely resembling a mounted deerksin.
The dragon seemed to gather strength each time the light shifted, so its eagle talons lengthened, its great scales glittered, and the goblin nose breathed flames. Above the head of the warrior, maple leaves fell, suggesting mortality. And lower, where the thing angled out in the shape of flattened thighs, blue carp with long eyelashes swam upstream trying to spawn.
Rachel lifted her head, her eyes fixed in a weird, exalted stare. “He was already dying when they killed him. Suffocation from the tattoos.”
Sharp teeth clamped down on Jess’s brain, she felt momentarily blinded. Then she rose unsteadily, and moved to the wall. The thing leapt out like a firmament, garish, blinding, but then up close, the elegance of fine calligraphy. She stared at the wonders of Hiro’s skin, resplendently blue.
On each buttock, swords sliced through bursting red peonies, and yellow warrior lion-dogs barked at his shoulders. Thick green serpents encircled his arms, and around his calves Buddhist prayers curled diagonally. This childless man, who had had no childhood to speak of, had carried, tattooed on his belly, a perfectly etched, fat, laughing, little boy riding a whiskered catfish.
“After almost thirty years,” Rachel whispered, “I deserved to keep something of him, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”
Finally, she possessed Hiro completely, by possessing his armor against the world. Jess thought of a large, defenseless, skinned rabbitlike being roaming the afterlife, and reached out toward the glass, and fainted.
Two days later at Honolulu Airport, Rachel seemed already gone, head turned, gazing at some far destination.
“There’s a stopover in Hong Kong. Is that near Russia?”
“It’s very far.”
She threw her arms round Jess, clinging for a moment. “Isn’t it strange. I don’t know what is near, and what is far!”
“Rachel.” Jess’s voice shook, she struggled, pulled herself together. “Do what you need to do. Don’t do more. Don’t put yourself in danger.”
“Ban is waiting. He will be beside me like a son.”
They stood very still, and Jess felt they were bathed in light, invisible, immune, to others. Time burned in their nostrils. Then they heard the boarding call, a disembodied voice like God, summoning. Rachel moved quickly with long strides, waved at the entrance to the accordion passageway, then seemed to fling herself into a new dimension.
Some nights Jess lay in the dark, groaning, trying to force her dreams. Where is Rachel now? Is Vanya hurt? Wounded? Nothing. Dreams arrived in their time. One day a call came, a voice young and somewhat breathless.
“Mother? Men were here, asking Daddy about you. Are you all right?” Anna’s voice verged on hysteria.
No, I’m not all right. You deserted me. I’m over forty. I’m alone.
“I’m fine. There’s been a little trouble, a mistake. Things will blow over.”
“They said somebody died!”
“People do. My grandmother died. And my grandfather. My cousin, Ming.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. What are you doing there alone?”
“I’m living, Anna. I run a coffee farm. This is my home now.”
“Will you ever come back east? I mean, to visit?”
“Probably not. But you are always welcome here.”
“Right now I ...”
“Someday, when you’re ready.”
“Daddy sends his best. He was worried, too.”
She stumbled through the house, remembering her ex-husband, how toward the end of their marriage everything became a sign for her, that he hated her, or just disliked her. If she wore yellow, he preferred brown. She wore gray, he said she looked bloodless. She dressed in black, he wanted red. She stopped dressing, stopped functioning, stood in her marriage unclaimed. Yet, he was a good father, a provider. He had pressed Anna to make that call.
Sensing her terror, her isolation, the huge task she had undertaken with the farm, one day Run Run took her arm, and walked her through Pono’s room, into a deep closet. In a box were all of Jess’s letters through the years, the decades.
Jess fell to her knees, burying her arms in them. “But she never answered! Never. Not one.”
Run Run sighed. “You nevah know dis but yoah tūtū . . . she no could read or write.”
Jess sat back, looked at her in shock.
“I da one read newspapahs, lettahs to her. I sign checks, everyt’ing. Duke taken away befoah he teach her. By and by, she nevah wanna learn.”
Jess moaned, trying to absorb so much she never understood. “I used to wonder ... I never saw her write things down.”
“You de only one wrote lettahs, Jess. She learn anot’er life from you. Real excitin’ foah her, give her knowledge, dignity, like Duke give her. She grateful. Love you very much.”
They sat for hours, rerea
ding Jess’s letters, Run Run imitating Pono, the way her chest pumped out while Run Run read passages describing Jess’s clinic, her veterinary practice, even surgery. The way she strode back and forth whacking things viciously with her cane, when Run Run read letters describing Jess’s failing marriage, the abdication of her husband and child.
“She live t’rough you,” Run Run said. “You all da t’ings she wanted for yoah mot’er. Now she inside you. You got to live foah her. You da one, Jess. You.”
In a trance, she let Run Run walk her through the fields, this new knowledge delivering her into a dreamlike state so she moved without realizing she was moving. Pono had respected her, had valued her. She listened while Run Run reminded her of all the lives connected to her, through her: Anna, and Rachel, Vanya, Toru. Workers in the field, neighbors bringing her their wounded pets, those who came and simply stood beside her. The Sugai family, other coffee farmers bringing ’awa. Their children who held her hand and took her on heroic walks. It was all a turning wheel, Jess the hub as Pono had been. Run Run repeated and repeated this until Jess started to believe it, began to find the pattern, connect the dots, make sense.
“Even yoah ex-husband connected in dere somewhere,” Run Run said. “Widdout him, you nevah have dat child. Look, maybe even dese cop-jerks connected to yoah wheel. Not so bad have someone spyin’ all da time. Make you more conscious what you do. Each t’ing come moah important.”
They were still watched, would always be watched: passing cars, a figure on a hill, light glancing off binoculars.
“Just remember, Jess. All a wheel, you da hub. Pono say me dat. She see it in you years ago. Say you quiet, steady, akamai. Just like yoah mama.”
Mother, lost somewhere in the grid of time.
One night Jess woke up in the sea. How she got there from her bed, she didn’t know. She stroked for hours, moon baubling her shoulders. She swam like a racer, arms spinning in her sockets, swam like a starving creature for whom the sea was food. Just like my mother, and Tūtū. A race of swimmers, ocean in our genes. Now they’re dead, rumored to he dead. But where is proof? Mother! Pono! Nothing left to touch, to look upon. Nothing left to mourn.
She stopped stroking, hung sobbing in the sea, a human buoy. And all around, they took shape behind the waves, listening to her heartbeat. She cried so hard, she didn’t feel their gathering. And when the ocean towed her down, each and each, they gently nudged her up to air. Jess felt nothing, only fatigue. Weary of crying, of swimming, she wanted sleep. In the morning, she would believe she dreamed it, the midnight swim, rough/raspy feel against her skin, a sense of being lifted from the deep, pushed toward home and shallow waters. Yet, her hair was tacky from the sea, and in her arms and legs a tingling, as if they had brushed against sandpaper.
After that, no one could keep her from the ocean. It took her in again, purging, strengthening. She sat on beaches eating seaweed, dragged home prawns and mussels for cleaning. She deep-dived, watching clever he’e outsmart moray eels. Sometimes a he’e wrapped its tentacles round her leg, emphatically clinging. Jess would drag it to the shallows, stroking its arms, patting its head until the arms fluttered out, a Hindu dancer, and gracefully it floated off. She developed muscles, her back and legs grew strong. Run Run saw the difference, the subtle heft.
“Just like yoah tūtū,” she said. “By and by you start to sleep less. Swim moah and moah. Swimmin’ become foah you anot’er form of sleep.”
Hele Loa
* * *
To Go, With No Hope of Returning
NOW SHE LIVED BY OLDER LAWS. A slow and ancient pace. Absorbing each day like a sponge, swallowing, becoming nature, flora, bark. When they sat very still they saw birds so archaic, so unknown, they had no names for them. And then the rampant undergrowth—vines, mangroves—the hidden life where ancient ghosts reposed. They learned to think like animals, eat anything, roots, vegetation. Some things they killed were so small, with so little flesh, they ate the viscera.
There were wild goat, boar, deer, but she had come to hate the slaughter of such things. In their first month, Vanya’s month of little stutterings, speech and senses slowly resurrecting, they killed a boar out of sheer hunger. But in the carcass of that thing lay sadness, an echoing reproach. Each kill now seemed to contribute to the death of this wild and sacred valley. When helicopters flew in too low, birds dropped dead of fright. One day old-timers brought the news, $20,000 on her head.
“Time to be off,” Simon said. “Boat could get us out at night, a little cruiser to Tarawa, the Solomons, on down to Darwin.”
She shook her head. “Once we start moving, we’re predictable, they’ll track us. Anyway, my place is here. As long as I’m around it makes folks think. Maybe some of the things they think are important will begin to look kind of stupid.”
“You mean, they might find bombs more appealing than Primo and VCRs.”
“I mean, Simon, they might begin to think of pride.”
One day a bush parted, a soldier pointed a rifle at her. Vanya smiled, thinking This is the one who will kill me. Simon came up behind him, clapped his ears with simultaneous blows of his outstretched palms. The man went down and out.
“Learned that from the Abos.” He picked up the rifle, slung it across his shoulders. “He’ll wake with ringing in his ears, won’t remember seeing you, won’t recall a thing.”
He taught the trick to old-timers. They crept up behind soldiers, clapped them hard on both ears. Soldiers reeled, collapsed, and woke up witless, rifleless. He taught Vanya how to hunt small game with bow and arrow fashioned from bamboo and gut. He found leaves to drink as tea that repelled mosquitoes, scorpions, and he found sweet little dream-inducing mussels under reeds in streams. He speared guava, papaya and giant pomelos, made her fruit salads with strange little berries that snapped in her teeth like hard bubbles.
“Antiseptic. Swill it round, saves on toothpaste.”
She chewed and snap! snap! snapped! each small explosion bringing laughter.
“I never thought I ...”
“. . . would laugh in the wilds with a broken-down haole.”
His skin was tanned and leathery now, red hair and mustache dark with bark oil and kukui, extending to a beard kept neatly trimmed. She began to forget his haoleness, except when he was naked. Somehow the pale color mattered less. He was becoming someone she trusted, a man who would face death beside her with great calm. As they sank deeper into that place, threading slowly into rich, green tapestry, it seemed even their coloring turned green, brown with an old bronze overcast.
Their odors were less human. They had begun to absorb the fragrance of flowers, vegetation, humid smell of soil. She felt a slow shedding, of backgrounds, philosophies, even of the sense of time. All they had was each given moment. Some days she felt free of everything, but memory. The Walther, manifest and deadly, bucking in her hands. Her shoulders blown to incandescent pain. A stranger spinning, kneeling, as if she were a priest. Simon calmly taking her hand, walking away with her, forever, from any kind of normal life. Some days she was caring, tender, marveling at his perverse vagary in loving her. Other days, the jagged edge was there.
“Look at us, assassins fucking.”
Some nights she saw the mo’o raise its head, the moon reflected in one eye, and it was time to run—the dangerous thing—miles down to the black sand beach, the valley mouth. She had to touch—not streams, not rivers—but the real thing, ocean, that old catastrophe from whence she came. Had to hear Pono’s watervoice humming in her blood. Locals went first, lined the beaches and treeline, watching for soldiers, infiltrators. Then Vanya and Simon ran low and smooth like mongoose, waited for moon-sucking clouds and, in the temporary black, darted headfirst into full-moon crashing surf.
He knew if not for that, waves pounding her pounding heart, the mothersound connecting her, she might go off, reach out to Jess, or Toru, give herself away. He envied her that blood connection, that ’aumākua love so deep, she would risk everything, her life.
Nights when the surf was calm, locals moving in the background, watching over them, she and Simon walked the shallows with nets, then sat with flashlights, little fish glowing, bubbling and singing, entertaining them.
Weke, Tang, Spanish dancer, Puffer, Moorish Idol. One night a spotted cowfish sat in her palm. Vanya held it to her ear, listening to its high beeps like a child crying. She stroked its side, kissed its little lips, and gently carried it back to the sea. Some days they sat high atop the cliffs in tight, hidden caves overhung with vines, watching far out in the ocean, whales soar and plunge, piping out their songs. Sometimes at sunset they saw schools of shark come home from hunting, swimming in formation, fins high like distant sails. Watching them, one day with no sense of it, she wept. He held her and she wept.
“Rachel thought I hated her. I’ll never see her again. And Jess, always wanting my dark skin! How can I live without them? How can I go on?”
“Talk to me,” he said. “Talk away the grief.”
She told about the early years, girlhood, the house of white sarongs. Pono’s tyranny, her devotion, legends surrounding her, the mystery. And Run Run who kept them all from dying, from killing each other. Laughter, she remembered laughter. And the scent of each other changing, girls sliding into women. Then, slow abdication, Rachel first, one by one the others.
“Not abdication, really, just life. Marriage, children. Divorce. Death.”
She talked for hours, until she slept. And when she woke, she talked again. “Pono did that, woke us, talked to us for hours, like patients, prisoners. Then we would sleep for days and nights. Four of us in one big bed, sleeping and waking exhausted, and sleeping again. Maybe it was all a sleep, a long, long dream.”
She talked about meeting her grandfather, Duke, and that sense of looking at the world differently because they were now safe. They had a history, a link. And she told about Pono and Duke at Shark Bay, their final sleep.
Shark Dialogues Page 56