Coconut Chaos

by Diana Souhami

  Our French guide was impatient and his driving fast and erratic. He considered himself underpaid. Lady Myre sat in the front with him, the rest of us held on tight in the back. We followed the coast road to Matavai Bay, where the Bounty had anchored. There was only a glimpse of a grey, metallic, ferrous-oxide beach shrouded with rain, the coastline sprawl of a modern town, and no ship on the horizon. The driver wouldn’t let us get out of the jeep. There wasn’t time, he said. He turned inland along a rough track. On either side were steep mountains with white clouds trapped on their jagged peaks. He looked over his shoulder to inform us: ‘We will go to the central crater of the island. To the Papeeno River. To the hydroelectric power station. And then we will return to the hotel.’

  ‘Slow, please, slow,’ said the Chinese lady. He took no notice or didn’t hear. ‘Papeete means “City of Springing Water”,’ he turned to say. ‘There are five hundred waterfalls on the island.’ The Israeli couple addressed him excitably in Hebrew. ‘Hoopla,’ Lady Myre sang as we hit a pothole. She’d shown the same enthusiasm in a small boat at sea in a force twelve gale. The Chinese lady began talking to herself in her original tongue.

  I looked at the green valley and retreated to thoughts of Bligh and the gardener David Nelson in breeches, waistcoats and neckcloths, setting up camp by the streams and potting breadfruit plants; of the tribal chiefs, tattooed, long-haired, wrapped in cloth and decorated with feathers; of the women cooking on ovens of stones. It seemed strange there were now no settlements in these valleys, so fertile with waterfalls and dense vegetation.

  The tribal Tahitians had felt such connection to this land. To give birth a woman squatted on her heels with a helper behind her pushing the child out. The umbilical cord was then buried in the land to become the land. Taaroa was their god of first creation. For aeons of time he’d lain in the darkness of his shell, then cracked it open as he pushed it apart. The upper half became the dome of the sky, the lower became the foundation of the earth, the seabed, the earth’s crust. Not so far off, I thought, from Gaia, the biosphere, the thin spherical shell around the incandescent centre of the earth. Other Tahitian gods created stars, the sea, islands, the winds and tides. They filled the sea with fish, the sky with birds. Then followed more interventionist gods: of thieving, canoe-building, tattooing.

  Festivals of thanksgiving and prayers were to celebrate the ripening of fruit, the harvest, the averting of disaster. A booby bird alighting on a turbulent sea meant the water would calm, the sight of an albatross meant luck for canoeists, the white sea swallow was a messenger of peace. In tribes they worked with the island. It lived with them. They interpreted the moonlit stillness, the fall of meteors, the flight of clouds. Unseen gods inhabited the hills, woods and seashore. They heard the cry of spirits in the screech of nightbirds, felt them in gusts of wind, tasted them in the flesh of crabmeat.

  Tahitian men were as murderous as their visitors. They fought with spears, clubs, stones, bows and arrows, and axes honed from pearl shell. They ran their victim through with a rasp made from the serrated backbone of a stingray or with a forked stick studded with sharks’ teeth. A victor might beat his victim’s body to a pulp, cut a slit through it large enough for his own head, then wear it poncho-fashion. If a chief fathered a child with a woman who was not of his class, it was killed before it drew its first breath. The physically infirm were rejected. The insane were avoided but respected as inspired or possessed by some god.

  The death of those who were loved was met with great display. The bereaved gashed themselves and chopped off their own finger joints. The corpse was bathed and rubbed with scented oils, and prayers were said to protect the departing soul. When the soul had left, the body rotted away. Its skull was then polished and stored.

  We stopped for a minute at the crater, a huge hole lined with ash. I thought of the sound of that explosion and the colour of fire, and how the night after Christian’s coconut saga the volcano at Tofua erupted as the Bounty passed in the dark, so he couldn’t jump ship because the crew came up on deck to watch.

  Lady Myre ignored me and photographed the driver. He gave up telling us about Tahiti. He picked a large taro leaf in which rainwater had collected and told us to do the same. He then took birdseed from the jeep and strewed it around. Chickens scurried out from the bushes and a parakeet flew down. He said rats had destroyed many birds of the valley.

  The rain washed into me. I hated the bumpy drive and I wasn’t at ease with this group. I felt I’d lost the path to Pitcairn and the fragments of connection to the past. And I grieved the gap that was growing between Lady Myre and me. I looked at her straight back and ridiculous rainhat and felt sad.

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  Lady Myre didn’t return to the hotel after the tour. The French guide showed her the town. In the afternoon I went alone to the exhibition about the Polynesian canoe. The Museum of Tahiti was in a coconut grove by the lagoon with a view through trees to the island of Moorea.

  I walked past displays about the birth of the island. Projected on to a screen was the eruption of the volcano and the sinking of the reef. Behind glass were large pieces of dead coral, sponges, the shells of sea urchins and lobsters, models of fish from the lagoon, photographs of white sharks, tiger sharks, tuna, flying fish and dolphins. The ‘War Room’ was filled with slings, spears, truncheons and clubs, wooden gods and feathered headdresses, drums and nasal flutes and conch shells. There were contrived displays of games, celebrations and funerals, showcases of tapa cloth made from beaten bark, sandals made from rope, crowns adorned with pearls and dolphins’ teeth, fans of coconut-palm fronds, tiaras of seashells and tortoise shells, bracelets of woven hair, rings made from tropical birds’ feathers. There was a whole room about tattooing; all the instruments – the combs of tortoiseshell and bone, the little mallets to punch the comb into the skin – the geometric designs for warriors and chiefs, patterns for rites of passage and their meanings.

  Something of what Tahiti had been was here behind glass. I thought of my walk through Harrods when I was looking for Rosie’s blouse. The same sense of so much stuff and all of it temporal. None of it kept death away.

  In the Va’a exhibition was a reconstruction of a wondrous looking ocean-going canoe forty feet long, with huge steering paddles and bailers and stone anchors. There were outrigger paddling canoes of the sort used for fishing expeditions and outrigger sailing canoes for voyaging across the sea. The painstaking work of construction was shown: how the planking was sewn to the hull with ties of coir and the wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, how pandana leaves were plaited to serve as sails, and fishbones used as needles. Samuel Wallis, when he reached Tahiti in 1767, ordered the destruction of all the canoes moored in Matavai Bay.

  The Tahitians had used the ocean as a thoroughfare. They sailed with the protection of gods, saw divine providence in the rising sun, were beckoned home by a tranquil sea. Again it seemed to me that those who went to Pitcairn would not have been deterred by the burning of the Bounty. Pitcairn was not their home. They’d return to where their umbilical cord was buried.

  Wanting tea and cake and souvenirs, I got le truc to the market. I bought black pearls and bright pareus and took photos of stalls of pineapples, mangoes, breadfruit, fish and flowers. I wished that Lady Myre was with me. Without her, all that I saw belonged to museums. She was my muse. Her smile lit up my life. I hurried back to the hotel. She was not in our room. I found her stretched out on a lounger by the pool with a Tahitian cocktail and a copy of Hello! magazine. I asked her if she’d have supper with me. She gave me a cold look, but to my relief she said she would.

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  Lady Myre asked if I thought the wings of the plane wide enough to get us all the way to Dubai. And she was surprised to be served no more than a beaker of banana juice, which she fortified with rum. She wore clothes acquired in the Tahiti market: a trouser suit printed with unlikely animals living under coconut palms and a panama hat adorned with shells. Once again I told her that Tubuai was a small isl
and in the Austral Group where Fletcher Christian and his wayward crew had made unsuccessful attempts to settle. She told me to hold her hand and try to keep my thoughts about Fletcher Christian to myself.

  She must have known we weren’t heading for Dubai in this small twin-engined plane. I suspected she wasn’t confused at all. I never knew when she was teasing or telling the truth. It wasn’t that I thought she lied, it was just that the truth was an uncertain concept. I put it down to her time as entertainment staff with the Shaw Savill Line, and all those years in provincial rep – shooting herself every night for three months in Hedda Gabler.

  We landed to a view of a perfect South Sea island, so other than Pitcairn: white sand ringed with palms, a clear, still lagoon and surf breaking over the encircling reef. Melinde greeted us with garlands of flowers, took us to her house, showed us our bedroom and place to wash and where to hire bicycles. From the window was a view of the bay and swaying palms.

  Lady Myre wanted to rest and listen to her iPod, so I walked to the shore. At my feet were big, curled oyster shells. A chicken rooted for ants in the sand. There was a crude carved notice nailed to a post: Baie Sanglante La Bounty 30 Mai 1789. It wasn’t hard to imagine the anchored ship, the Tubuaians grouped to watch, the pirogues paddling out, the persuasion of nails and feathers, the astonishment and fear of the chief who went on board and for the first time ever saw pigs, goats, dogs and even a cow. It was unsurprising that a young man stole the azimuth compass when he heard of its magical use. And then the panic: the Tubuaians throwing stones, Christian ordering fire, a dozen islanders killed, the clear water of the bay stained red. Baie Sanglante – the Bay of Blood.

  Now fishes weaved around in bright, translucent water. I walked along the shore to the site of Fort George. There was little to see of Christian’s settlement – only a field one hundred feet square, a wire enclosure, a few ditches, a notice board. The site was idyllic, near the river, by the sea. The climate was gentle, the soil fertile. Here was all that was needed for survival except trust, safety and fairness. It was hard to imagine how Christian thought a fort with a drawbridge and moat feasible in such a place, in the name of an English king. It seemed as anomalous and bizarre as Laval’s cathedral on Mangareva. But the Tubuaians weren’t going to help build Christian’s folly. They were united in hostility, they’d destroy it when they could. This field was a testimony to a desperate venture by men on the run, cornered by wrongdoing and with no place to go.

  I walked for a while along a mountain path, on a carpet of pine needles, past pale-green firs, breadfruit trees and unfurling ferns. I saw butterflies, iguanas and feral cats. Time and the sea eroded all things. Change happened in so many ways: by riding roughshod over the lives of others, by the perversion of gunfire and by the volcano’s answer to the might of arms.

  Lady Myre seemed content that the island had all the features of a South Sea brochure: coconut palms and silver sand. She sang as she cycled on her hired bike ‘I am the Wife of Mao Tse-tung’ by John Adams, ‘When All is Said and Done’ by ABBA. When she complained of thirst, we stopped by the shore to get liquid from a fallen coconut. She stabbed inconsequentially at its husk with scissors from her manicure set. Waist-high in the green water of the lagoon was a figure from Polynesia’s past. Above his head he held a five-pronged spear. He stood as motionless as a heron waiting for a fish. ‘Monsieur,’ called Lady Myre. He turned, the spear still shoulder high, his body glistening in the sun, his hair tied into a ponytail, his shoulders rippling. She beckoned him and he waded towards her. His wet thin shorts clung to him. His arms, chest and calves were all symmetrically tattooed.

  ‘Monsieur. Pouvez-vous me dire how on earth I get into this coconut? Là?’ asked Lady Myre gesticulating with her scissors. ‘Or là?’ The fisherman took the green drupe from her, pounded it against a protruding spike, tore at its husk then handed it back.

  ‘What now?’ she asked and looked at him helplessly.

  He pointed to the growing end of the seed: ‘Les yeux et la bouche’ – he pointed to his eyes and mouth, then made a stabbing motion at these soft parts of the seed. Lady Myre pierced a hole in the bouche with her scissors and to her surprise could then drink from it.

  I thought of Bligh and Fletcher Christian. ‘Damn your blood you have stolen my coconuts,’ Bligh was supposed to have said. ‘I was dry. I thought it of no consequence. I took one only,’ was Christian’s answer.

  The fisherman waded back into the green lagoon. Beyond him was the white fringe of the reef. Again he held his spear at shoulder level. He drove it into the sea then turned with a fish the size of a small canoe. It glinted silver – as silver as his spear and as the sunlight on the sea.

  ‘Oh bravo bravissimo,’ called Lady Myre. ‘Gosh, what a dish,’ she said to me. I was unsure what she meant.

  He waded slowly from the sea with no display of pride beyond his innate demeanour of pride. He gestured we should follow him and we wheeled our bicycles to his house. It was built of bamboo with walls woven from coconut leaves. There was a lean-to cookhouse beside it. A canoe rested on the ground. He had built it all himself. He had his own water hole, he cooked on stones set in a bed of ashes, he wove his baskets and mats, made traps for snaring birds, grew vegetables and herbs, he crushed bark and leaves to soothe grazes.

  In a mix of French and mime he told Lady Myre that his wife had died in childbirth a year ago. The fish was for his five children’s supper. He wrote his name, Tahuaiare, in the sand and drew a heart. He said he had many names. She gave her name as ‘Silver’. I wondered if she was mad. He said she was to call him Tahu and that he was looking for a wife. A boy, Muti, brought a mat for her and me. Tahu put two garlands of flowers round her neck. Another child brought a basket of yams, bananas and pineapple. Tahu prepared a fire beneath the stones to get them hot. His eldest daughter, Yolande, seasoned the fish. She was seven.

  Lady Myre admired the many rings in Tahu’s ears. He’d pierced them with a thorn from a lemon tree. He offered to do the same to hers. He told her of a cannibal woman, Hina, who lived in a cave high on Mount Taitaa, and used a net to catch her victims. He talked of the time when Tubuai was ruled by a king and there were chiefs of all the districts. All the time he talked he watched. He watched the sea, noting its colour and the apparent direction of currents. He watched for birds, for particular cloud formations, for the colour of the sky and the direction of the wind.

  He had an accordion and while the stones heated, he serenaded her. She started singing, ‘Bali Hai will call you, any time any day.’ The children banged stones together to accompany her. I left them to it. I said I’d agreed to eat with Melinde and that I wanted to see more of the island before it got dark. As I cycled off, I marvelled how she went straight to the heart of wherever she was. Then subverted it.

  I followed the coast road. Every hundred yards there was a sign: Silence. Culte. Then a church built by Mormons, Latter Day Adventists, Catholics, all keen to save the Polynesians from their own gods and known imagination. The buildings were well-tended but lifeless and not intrinsic to the island.

  Melinde gave me fish, potatoes and bananas. I told her Lady Myre had met a friend and was having a picnic by the sea. She said she supposed that would be Tahu, and that he was a nice man who would look after her. She talked of the island: how there used to be crops of coffee, vanilla, manioc, copra; how the islanders would thatch their houses with coconut leaves and burn coconut oil perfumed with grated sandalwood in their lamps. She said now French Polynesians were like fledglings in a nest with their mouths open. If France, the mother bird, didn’t feed them, they’d starve. The crops were gone, the land eroded. ‘The French gave us the bomb,’ she said. ‘If you live in Normandy, you ask, “Why should we pay taxes to subsidise French Polynesia?” I answer, “Why didn’t you let off the bomb in Normandy? You could never pay us enough.”’

  Lady Myre didn’t come back to Melinde’s that night. Lying awake in another strange bed, I missed the comfort of her arms. I
thought of the way she sang and danced and smiled and how I never knew what she was going to do next. And then I thought of my mother and how I didn’t know how to contact her. She was like a spectre, dead within life, and I couldn’t help her. I felt my journey was over and that it was time to return, though I didn’t know quite what that would mean, or what I’d come for, or what I’d achieved.

  In the morning I cycled back to where I’d left Lady Myre. She was standing in the lagoon with Tahu, both of them statuesque with spears raised. I watched, wondering if they’d catch a fish, hoping they wouldn’t for the fish’s sake. After a while she turned and saw me and waded towards me. She said she was very all right and she’d wed Tahu like a shot if it wasn’t that Roley was such a darling. He was teaching her to spear fish and she’d already caught a mahi mahi. He’d given her a little house all to herself. He was a perfect gentleman and he wooed her with gardenias and oyster shells. She said she’d found the heart of Polynesia.

  I told her I was returning to Tahiti the following day and then to London.