The People in the Trees: A Novel

by Hanya Yanagihara

“He says,” Tallent reported, and I could tell that he was excited by the way he was forcing himself to speak so slowly and deliberately, “I could be wrong, but—he says that anyone who touches an opa’ivu’eke brings a great curse upon his family. One of the wrongdoer’s family will reach sixty o’anas and will get to eat the opa’ivu’eke, but after a period of time that person will slowly lose his ama and will become a mo’o kua’au.”

  And then, unexpectedly, he smiled at me, just at me, a brilliant, shining smile, and I knew what he was remembering: that first week on the island, when he had told me his story of the hunter and the myth of the mo’o kua’au, the creature who lived without love, without speech, whom Fa’a had seen prowling the woods of Ivu’ivu. Many decades later, I can reflect upon this and acknowledge that his triumph—our triumph—was premature (after all, we had no idea what any of this meant), but at the time it seemed a delirious relief, especially, I imagine, for him: he had not been foolish after all. He had followed a story and it had revealed itself to be—well, if not true, then certainly confirmed. In reality, of course, it was little better or more conclusive than rushing off to New Mexico because you had heard that aliens purportedly lived in some small town there, and then being independently told by the inhabitants of the town that they themselves had seen aliens, but in the moment, logic and its various demands were briefly abandoned.

  “Ask him,” I instructed, “what happens when you become a mo’o kua’au.”

  Tallent did. “You are banished,” he reported.

  “Ask him,” I continued—and I will not lie, I was as excited as Tallent—“if he was banished.”

  He did, and for a long time, at least three minutes, Mua said nothing, only looked at the lake, where the opa’ivu’ekes were still performing their simple, avant-garde choreography. When he at last spoke, it was less his answer itself I noted than the sad, whistling sigh on which it rode, so that I knew what he would say even before I heard the word itself.

  “E,” he said. Yes.

  Back in the village (which now seemed unbearably landlocked and airless and confined), I did my prisoner’s walk through the woods, looping around the clearing again and again before going to my tree. The tree that I had begun to consider my own was a manama and distinguished only by the fact that it was relatively lonely; there were few other trees surrounding it, and I could sit, or even lie, on the thickly piled moss that surrounded it, protecting it from the forest floor. To get to it, I walked fifteen minutes to the west of our camp and then took a right at a particularly vicious-looking orchid, whose urinous blooms spat out two long, spiraling stamens the color of fresh blood.

  At the tree I considered what I knew. First, I knew that the U’ivuans thought the opa’ivu’eke sacred. Second, I knew that it was forbidden to touch one unless you had reached sixty o’anas, in which case you were expected to eat one. Third, I knew that in the Ivu’ivuans’ ceremony, only those sixty o’anas or older could join in the eating of the opa’ivu’eke. Fourth, I knew that it was relatively rare for people to reach this advanced age—witness the chief’s vaka’ina, in which only his adviser had been able to join him. That meant that only two of sixty-six people in the village had reached that age. Fifth, I knew that Mua and his compatriots were all at least sixty o’anas (how much over sixty o’anas I couldn’t trouble myself with at the moment), which meant they had all eaten the opa’ivu’eke. And sixth—sixth was Mua’s story of the curse: if someone touches an opa’ivu’eke before his time, he dooms someone in his family to becoming a mo’o kua’au, which leads to banishment.

  That much, naturally, was uncomplicated, a simple synthesizing of information. Esme and Tallent could have done it. Esme and Tallent probably had done it. “Obviously,” I heard Esme’s honking voice in my ear, “it’s the opa’ivu’eke.” But what did that mean? Did everyone who ate the opa’ivu’eke become, eventually, a mo’o kua’au? And what did being a mo’o kua’au mean? Tallent had translated the term as being “without voice,” but with the exception of Eve, all of the dreamers could speak. Not very coherently always, or interestingly, certainly, but they all could. So why had they been banished? And if it was the opa’ivu’eke that was responsible, why did they keep eating it?

  Back at camp, I shared with Tallent some of what I had concluded, although I couldn’t share all my suspicions because Esme had approached us, breathing heavily and clomping through the undergrowth as she did. Tallent frowned, concentrating, and eventually it was agreed between us that I should interview the chief. Fa’a was dispatched and a meeting requested.

  Later that night, after the villagers had eaten and a group of men had gone hunting for the screeching, red-eyed bats they liked to roast, we were summoned. Once again we were at the fire, the same group of four (though I had tried to suggest that Esme’s presence wouldn’t be necessary and might perhaps be detrimental; given her dislike of the chief since the a’ina’ina ceremony, might not she make her displeasure known and offend him? But she glared at me and announced that she was perfectly capable of keeping silent and would be accompanying us no matter what). Across from us sat the chief, alone but for his hog, who had reverted to his former dusty state, the chewed-bark tips of his tusks splashed with mud. He was masticating something I couldn’t quite distinguish, but every now and again a piece of it—a little three-toed paw, as small as a thumbnail and speckled with a patchy fur—would emerge from between his teeth as he turned his snack around in his mouth.

  I knew it was not logical, but I kept looking at the chief as if I might discern something transformed in his appearance. After all, I had seen him participate in two monumental rites of passage, and it seemed only natural that they should have left some sort of significant mark on him or his personality. And although they hadn’t, I did notice that he was wearing something around his neck: a loop of woven vines, from the center of which hung a chipped shard of something hard and glazed, shining dully against his skin.

  For a while we all sat in silence, polite and embarrassed yet again, neither side willing to begin. Finally Tallent spoke, and the chief nodded to him.

  “I told him we were honored to be invited to join his vaka’ina,” Tallent told us.

  “Yes,” said the chief.

  There was another silence.

  “Chief,” I began, and watched as first his head and then his hog’s moved slowly in my direction, “do you celebrate the vaka’ina often?”

  “Oh, no,” said the chief (naturally, this was all being translated by Tallent).

  “When was the last one?”

  “Three o’anas ago. It was Lawa’eke’s vaka’ina.” His voice was unexpectedly gentle. With one hand he held his spear, and with the other he stroked his hog’s back in long, smooth sweeps, the hog making contented rumbling purrs as he did so. I saw Tallent scribble in his notebook: “Lawa’eke appx. 63 o’anas?”

  “And Lawa’eke was the one who joined you in eating at your vaka’ina?”

  “E.”

  “And at Lawa’eke’s vaka’ina, did anyone eat the opa’ivu’eke with him?”

  “E.”

  “Who?”

  “Three others.”

  “May we speak to them?”

  “They are not here any longer.”

  “They died?”

  “No, they did not die.”

  I wasn’t sure how to continue. “Where are they, then?”

  “Away.”

  “Where away?”

  He gestured with his free hand, lifting it from the hog’s back and indicating the woods beyond. “Away.”

  “When did they go?”

  He tilted his head to one side, thinking. “About one o’ana ago.”

  “And why did they go away?”

  “Because they were becoming mo’o kua’aus.”

  I could feel Tallent tense beside me, could hear his breath change. “How did you know they were becoming mo’o kua’aus?”

  “I could see them change. We could all see them change.”
/>   “What do the changes look like?”

  “First they forgot to do things. They would go into the forest to hunt and not return. They would forget to take their spears with them. They would throw their spears at things and then return without them and we would have to look through the forest to retrieve them. Then they would tell the same story again and again. Their speech would sometimes lack sense. Then we knew that they were cursed and that soon they would be mo’o kua’aus.”

  “And so what happened?”

  “Our best hunters took them very deep into the forest, farther than any of them had ever gone before, and left them there. It took the hunters many days to walk back to us. Before they left, we had to remind them that they were cursed and that they could not stay in the village because they were becoming mo’o kua’aus.”

  We were all quiet. “Did you ever see them again?”

  He made a sudden sharp noise, like two wood clappers smacking against one another, which I later recognized as laughter, and jutted his chin in the direction of the dreamers. “E.”

  “The dreamers?” Esme asked in surprise, and the chief glanced over at her, and she flushed.

  “Who?” I asked the chief.

  “Mua,” he said, and I could hear the distaste in his voice.

  “So Mua was one of the people you led into the forest a year ago,” I said.

  “Not me. Others.”

  “All right. But do you recognize anyone else over there?” I asked. “The other two who had to go away?”

  He peered over at them, though if his eyesight was as bad as Fa’a’s and the others’, I very much doubted he’d be able to make out their forms, much less their faces. “No,” he said.

  “No?” I asked him. “Not the others? Not Ivaiva or Va’ana? Not Ukavi or Vanu?”

  He looked at me steadily. “No.”

  “No, they were not the ones who were led away, or no, you don’t know them?”

  He shifted on the ground. “They were not the ones we led away.” Ah, I thought. He does know them.

  “So,” I continued, slowly now, “last o’ana, some of the hunters took Mua and two others who were becoming mo’o kua’aus into the forest, but the only one of those three you’ve seen recently is Mua, correct?”

  He looked impatient. “E,” he said.

  “And what happened to the others?”

  He tipped his head to the side, which I had begun to recognize was a sign that he was thinking but was also something of a shrug. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Your father,” I began, and then stopped. The chief waited. “Your father,” I said, “did he celebrate his vaka’ina?”

  “No,” he answered swiftly. “I am the first in our family. But Lawa’eke’s father did.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He is here.”

  “He is?” I looked around as if I would somehow recognize him, as if I might see him hefting himself out of the meat pit or strolling toward us. “Why wasn’t he at your vaka’ina?”

  “He is unwell.”

  “Unwell in what way?”

  The chief sighed, and I thought—though it was difficult to tell—that I read sorrow in the flat, unknowable surfaces of his face, or perhaps regret. “He has become a mo’o kua’au.”

  “So—so will you have to take him away?”

  “E.”

  “When did he become a mo’o kua’au?”

  He tilted his head again. “Some time ago. At first it was slow. But now he really is a mo’o kua’au.”

  “But you kept him here?”

  He made a strange gesture with his head, a sort of sideways wag. “He is Lawa’eke’s father,” he said, after a long pause. We were silent for a while.

  “When did he celebrate his vaka’ina?”

  He thought. “I was a child,” he said finally. “It was shortly after my a’ina’ina.” He smiled suddenly, and I saw that his teeth were the same discolored chips as Fa’a’s. “He was my initiator.” I could feel, if not see, Esme stiffen at his words.

  I did not know how Tallent would feel about my next request, and indeed, when I asked, he paused before translating and looked at me quickly before he did so. “May we meet him?”

  The chief was silent for such a long time now that I feared I had offended him, and for a moment the only sounds were his hog enthusiastically sucking on the remains of whatever poor creature he was enjoying and the background shrieking of the children and the guttural barking of the women. But then he grunted and climbed to his feet, and we followed him and his lumbering hog through the village and to the back of the ninth hut, to the exact manama tree behind which lay the secret path.

  But this time there was, tied to the tree with some of that thick palm-leaf braid—a short, strong length of it, with a noose at one end that I’d assumed was for leading hogs—a man. Did he resemble Lawa’eke? I suppose, although I was having difficulty remembering what Lawa’eke looked like and what exactly distinguished him from, say, the chief (although I seemed to recall that he was shorter). This man certainly did not appear to be much older than the chief—perhaps his skin was slightly breadier in appearance, leavened somehow, although that could have been from the heat, or too much water, or lack of it, or a dozen other causes—and he too had his spear and his enormous shrub of hair and, like the chief, a leathery cord around his neck, from which dripped several stony splintery shapes.45

  We all stood in a half-ring around Lawa’eke’s father, watching him sleep. A fly circled above his open mouth, darting closer and closer as if playing a game with itself. Behind me, Tallent was quietly questioning the chief, and the chief was giving brief replies. If the chief was correct, then Lawa’eke’s father was around 110 years old.

  Back at our station, I considered this. (After some minutes of staring at Lawa’eke’s father, there seemed to be nothing else to do—the chief had not wanted to wake him, and indeed, when I reached down to poke him, he said something in a tone even I could not ignore—and so we had gone back to our respective sides of the clearing.) I had asked Fa’a to fetch Mua for me, and he now appeared from within the darkness, pulling Mua by the arm, Mua yawning and staggering, Fa’a’s normally unreadable face wearing an expression of great disapproval. Beside me, Tallent sighed. Esme was, thank god, at the river.

  “Mua,” I began, making my voice stern, even though I needn’t have bothered, as he would compliantly answer any question posed to him, “this is very important. You once knew the chief, am I correct?”

  He stared at me. “Don’t be frightened,” I told him. “The chief said you should tell me.”

  It was as if I had told him he would be eating nothing but Spam for the rest of his life, so quickly did his face transform itself into a mask of joy, and Tallent looked at me once, warningly, before translating his answer: “Did he?”

  “Oh yes,” I said blithely, unthinkingly cruel. “He said you should tell me everything.”

  He craned his neck upward then, as if directly behind me he’d see the chief, conferring upon him a blessing, but of course the light was gone by then and the chief was nowhere to be seen.

  “We were friends,” he said, his face sad again.

  “The night you were led into the forest—do you remember that?”

  He let out his breath. “Yes. They took us very, very far in and left us. They had to.”

  “When was this?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s all right.” I thought. “The two people you were taken away with—were they men or women?”

  “Men.”

  “Are they here? Are they part of your group?”

  He exhaled again, noisily. I began to discern that he, like the chief, was growing impatient with my questions. But while I had sensed that the chief’s impatience was born out of a sort of weariness with the subject—not to mention a wariness—Mua’s felt different: he was waiting only for me to ask the correct question, after which he could and would tell me all th
at I wanted to know and all that he wanted to say. But “No” was all he replied.

  This went on and on and on, me asking the (apparently) incorrect questions again and again, Mua giving up little smidges of answers with each, so that it was not until late that night, when I sat down with Tallent and we began to work through his notes, that the cumulative information revealed itself as a real story.

  One night—Mua did not know when, as I have stated, but if we were to believe the chief, it would have been around one o’ana ago—Mua and two other men were led into the forest by the hunters. They had all known that this would happen, and indeed, they had been waiting for it. When Mua was younger, he had seen other men and women who were becoming mo’o kua’aus being led into the forest, always late at night, always by the village’s best hunters. In fact, almost all of the people in his group, except for Ika’ana, Vi’iu, and Eve, were people he remembered being led away.

  They walked into the forest for a night and a day and then another night, until on the second night Mua could feel the air around them become crisper and lighter and knew that it was dawn. Each of them had carried a palm-leaf package heavy with food that they had tied to their spears, and although they could keep the food, they had to surrender their spears to the hunters. They had known that their spears would be taken from them, for a mo’o kua’au is not a full human and therefore has no right to carry a spear. But when the moment came for them to sacrifice them, one of Mua’s peers refused.

  “He would not,” Mua recalled. The hunters commanded the man, and threatened him with their own spears before simply attacking him, trying to seize it from his grasp. They were, after all, the best hunters in the village.

  But the man, although becoming a mo’o kua’au, was still strong, and fought back. Years before, Mua said, this man had been one of the people elected to abandon the mo’o kua’aus in the forest. The hunters stabbed at the man, but he dodged their thrusts, springing from place to place, until finally, when even Mua could see him tiring, he turned and sprinted away into the forest, his spear still in his hand.

  One of the hunters made to follow him, but he was stopped by another. “Leave him,” he said. “He’ll only get lost. He won’t find his way back.” And then, without another word, they left, with their spears and two extras.