The Happy Isles of Oceania

by Paul Theroux

  A curious aspect of my traveling in Oceania was that I found most people accessible, and I met everyone I wanted to meet. In New Zealand I had wanted to speak to the new Governor-General, the first woman to hold the post, Dame Cath Tizard. She also had the reputation for being enormously shrill and good-hearted. She was notorious for having called one of her political opponents a “fuckwit.” And when asked to apologize, she refused, saying that in fact the man was demonstrably a fuckwit. I left New Zealand before I was able to arrange to see her, but she turned up in Fiji when I was there – she had just come from the United States on a junket (“I think you Americans call it a freebie”), where she had been the guest of a company that sold expensive diet food.

  We met for dinner at a resort restaurant near Nandi – Dame Cath, my friend Andrew, and Jock and Helen, a husband and wife who had fled Scotland some years ago to set up a fitness program in Auckland. I was struck by Jock’s involvement in health matters because he was a heavy smoker and had downed the best part of a bottle of wine not long after we sat down.

  “And you say you’re a mastermind of fitness programs?” I said.

  With a cigarette bouncing in his lips, he said, “What does it matter if you die at the age of sixty, as long as you die with a smile on your face?”

  “I want to die with a smile on my face at the age of a hundred and twenty,” I said.

  “Bloody Americans! Obsessed with extending their lives!”

  Still, I pestered him about his smoking, because with all his talk about health he was such a contradiction, not to say hypocrite. At first he denied that smoking was bad for him. He said he was more stressed when he didn’t smoke. Then he twisted his face at me and said in a rather pathetic way, “I have to smoke. I’m addicted. I can’t stop. I’ve tried everything.’’

  “Americans are always going on about smokers,” Dame Cath Tizard said. “But have you seen how fat they are? Some of them are just incredible.”

  “Fat’s as bad for you as smoking,” Jock said irritably.

  This topic seemed unfortunate since both Jock and Dame Cath were hefty people, but they seemed oblivious of that and indifferent to the anomaly of wolfing down huge helpings of dinner while they talked about fat Americans. Dame Cath paid little attention to Jock and when she did speak it was in a drawling Scottish manner that is a variety of Kiwi speech.

  Dame Cath had an odd, coarse way of eating. She scraped food onto her fork, but before she heaved it she nudged more onto the fork with her thumb. And after she ate the forkful she licked her thumb. Once I caught her grinning at me, but she was not grinning. She was trying to dislodge a bit of food that had found its way between her teeth, and still talking to me and grinning, she began picking her teeth. Having freed the food from her teeth, she glanced at it and pushed it into her mouth.

  Eating in this manner, she said, “People kept telling me I was going to be chosen Governor-General, but I couldn’t believe it, so I just put it out of my mind.”

  “How does one get to be chosen?”

  “Well, that’s just it.” Will, that’s jest ut. “The Queen does the choosing.”

  Her finger was in her mouth, fishing for bits of trapped lamb sinews.

  “When I got the news – in effect, here was the Queen asking me to be Governor-General.”

  And she slurped the food off her finger, and then began again scraping her plate in the waste-not, want-not manner of a Kiwi who had been through the war.

  Jock said, “I know what I’d do!” and raised a glass to the absent Queen of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and Overseas Territories and Commonwealths such as New Zealand.

  “Yes,” I said. “If the Queen asked me to be Governor-General, I would say, ‘As Your Highness commands.”‘

  “It wasn’t that simple,” she said, obviously wanting to make a meal of her dark night of the soul when she received the Royal Command. “I thought about it for two weeks.”

  “I’d think about it for about two seconds,” Jock said. “My daughter said, ‘Don’t be so effing silly, Mum take it!’”

  She smiled, enjoying this chance to tell the story of her ennoblement, and I realized I disliked her politician’s vanity and her interminable way of telling this simple story. She was picking her teeth again, and baring them at me.

  “I was Mayor of Auckland,” she said, somewhat defiantly.

  “More Polynesians in Auckland than in any other city in the world,” I said.

  “And some very sad Indians from Fiji, I’m afraid,” she said. “We’re getting an awful lot of them. But they’re no trouble. I had other problems.”

  One problem widely reported was that she had been faced with repeated calls for her resignation following a government investigation into a project for an entertainment center in Auckland, in which she had been involved which had quadrupled in cost from $25 million to $106 million. In a threadbare and over-taxed country this was not merely excessive, this was egregious and stupid. The opposition and her critics – many of whom had once been her supporters – were eager to see her humiliated before she took up the post of Governor-General.

  “What finally decided you?” I asked, hoping to cut this short.

  “After six years of mayor I was really tired of the hassles,” she said. “And this way, as Governor-General, I could get my superannuation.”

  It seemed to me rather a mundane notion that one would agree to such a post simply in order to qualify for a state pension, but then the New Zealanders are a practical people.

  At that point, out of the blue and fairly tipsy, Jock said he loved New Zealand for its rugby.

  “I hate rugby,” Dame Cath said. “I think it is violent and that it inspires violence. That’s one of the reasons New Zealand is such a violent place. I’m sure rugby,” she went on, though I could not follow her reasoning, “causes a lot of rape.”

  “I was born in Glesgie,” Jock said. “Know how they deal with rapists there? Aw, there was one wee lad raped a girl. They took this lad and kneecapped him. Hammered five-inch spikes through his knees.”

  He waited for a reaction. I put down my fork. No one said anything.

  “He’s not raping anyone now, I can tell you,” Jock said. “He’s in a wheelchair.”

  “I wonder how those men who did it feel,” Dame Cath said, and you knew she thought: Those men were brutalized and remorseful!

  “Bloody happy, I think,” Jock said.

  I said, “Do you think they should introduce kneecapping in New Zealand?”

  “Kneecapping is too good for some of these rapists!” Jock said.

  Mrs Jock, meanwhile, did not say anything.

  The subject of rapists and rugby turned into a discussion about South Africa, which New Zealand had boycotted because of the way the teams were selected. When I introduced the subject of New Zealand playing Fiji in rugby – what about the undemocratic government here? – they winced at me, as though I had farted in church. No one had an answer to this quite simple matter of political oafishness. “Anti-apartheid people say they’re for freedom,” Jock said. “I want to watch my rugby, but I’m not allowed to! What about my freedom?”

  “It’s not a question of freedom,” Dame Cath said. “It’s a question of justice. Apartheid is an injustice.”

  “What do you think of the Fiji constitution?” I said.

  “It’s a proposed constitution,” she said. “Who knows what will happen? Did you say you’re a writer? What sort of books do you write?”

  “All sorts,” I said, but already she seemed bored.

  “I am reading a marvelous book at the moment,” she said. “About John F. Kennedy. It is very naughty – he committed every indiscretion you can name. And with Marilyn Monroe!”

  “I hate those books,” I said.

  “I think it has historical value,” she said.

  Oh, sure you do. It irritated me that this New Zealander, and politician to boot, seemed to be gloating insincerely over a sensational book.

&nbs
p; “But of course you have to admit that your interest in this book is almost purely vulgar,” I said. “That’s the fun of it, right? It’s a cheap thrill, isn’t that the whole point?’’

  She began yammering sanctimoniously about politicians not being above the law and so forth.

  “But you’re a politician,” I said. “And you were a human being before you became a politician.”

  She glared at me and said that politics was her life – well, anyway, until she had been appointed Governor – General. There was something formidable about the way she commanded the table, doing nearly all the talking, being right all the time.

  “So you approve of this type of Kennedy book,” I said. “How would you like it if someone wrote one about New Zealand politicians? Would you write that sort of book?”

  “New Zealand politicians are too bloody boring. They don’t even have sex lives.”

  “Isn’t your husband a politician?” I said. “I left him,” she said.

  “I read somewhere that David Lange has recently run off with his speech-writer and left his wife. What if someone wrote a book about his libido?”

  Dame Cath said, “What do you mean ‘libido’? You mean screwing around?”

  “So to speak. I mean, you say you approve of this type of book, right? It’s a historical document, right? Well, I’m sure you know all sorts of dirt about New Zealand politicians. So would you write a book like this about New Zealand indiscretions?”

  “I can’t write,” she said.

  “I am being hypothetical,” I said, trying to pin her down. “You are in the know. All sorts of secrets. You love to read books about sexual revelations. All I’m saying is – would you be prepared to spill the beans and write the kind of trashy book you like to read?”

  This threw her. She fussed and mumbled, and finally said, “If I thought it would help,” blah-blah-blah.

  “And what if someone wrote a vicious little portrait of you?”

  “Let them,” she said.

  She seemed in the end rather silly and shallow and unimaginative, as well as bossy, vain and cunning, but principled in a smug and meddling way. And a New Zealander to her fingertips, worthy of the Queen’s Honours List.

  In a silence after the meal she hitched her skirt and suddenly spoke up.

  “I once called a man a fuckwit,” she said in her Governor-General’s voice, dredging up one of her political victories. “Of course I didn’t apologize. He was a fuck-wit.”

  13

  Fiji: Vanua Levu and the Islets of Bligh Water

  In Viti Levu, there was no avoiding the tourists. I kept hoping for something wilder, more remote, a bit emptier, no golfers. Yes, here and there, in an isolated part of the island was a valley of dark green jungle, but really what sort of jungle was it when you went for a hike and after a few hours ran into an Indian family picnicking? They had driven there, all eighteen of them, by car on a back road; they left empty squash bottles and orange rinds and cookie wrappers behind – and sometimes chicken bones. It was a fact that some Hindus, especially in Fiji, hid themselves and secretly gobbled meat, the way teenagers in America sneaked illicit cigarettes.

  I heard there was a ferry that sailed from the north coast of Viti Levu, across the twenty-mile-wide channel called Bligh Water, to the much emptier and reputedly rather strange island of Vanua Levu.

  “There are no tourists in Vanua Levu,” an Indian in Nandi told me. “It is too far and too primitive.”

  Perfect. Taking my collapsible kayak and all my equipment, I went there on another paralytic Fijian Sunday, stopping for a curry in Lautoka and, out of curiosity, attending a Methodist church service in the northeast town of Mba. The church was full, but many in the congregation were coughers and fidgeters, and during the long hectoring sermon – in Fijian – a number of people dozed off. Dealing with the sleepers, a smiling Fijian man in a traditional sulu skirt walked up and down the aisle with a long pole, prodding the sleepers and waking them.

  In Rakiraki at the top of the island I visited the grave of a nineteenth-century chief of this area – the Province of Ra – Ratu Udre Udre, who had distinguished himself by eating 800 humans. In a hotel nearby a drunken Australian, seeing my boat, accused me of being a CIA agent. This seemed a reasonable presumption, so I did not deny it. That night, even drunker, he sang tunelessly in the hotel bar while Fijians on the veranda sniggered among themselves and sneaked looks at him through the window. The village nearby was full of aggressive and hysterical dogs; they fought all night, and their barking woke the roosters.

  In the morning I found the ferry landing, Ellington Pier, a rubbly platform near a sugar mill. In the blue distance was Vanua Levu. A sugar worker told me I would have to buy my ticket in the next town, Vaileka. The ticket-seller said the ferry would be at the pier at noon and that I could take my rental car.

  Vaileka, this small town on the north coast of Viti Levu, had a narrow main street and one row of shops. On this hot day the dust on the dry street seemed to blaze. At the shops and the open-air market – no more than twenty fruit-sellers squatting under an enormous fig tree – I bought provisions for a week. It was not a bad place, but it was very small, it had an air of discouragement about it, the rather sleepy atmosphere of an outpost, and in the silence, with so little stirring, it seemed about as out of touch as a town could possibly be. The world was somewhere else.

  That was how it seemed to me: another world. Before I left London, I had been in touch with Salman Rushdie – I wrote to him, he phoned me – and I commiserated with him. I considered him a friend; and his confinement pained me – it was like house arrest. I had suggested that he remove himself to a town like this in Mexico or South America or Australia or the Pacific. I had specifically mentioned Fiji. He could be safe, he could be free, he could write in such a place.

  “You know Salman Rushdie?” I asked several Muslims in this distant place, Vaileka.

  “Yes,” one said. “He must die.”

  And the other said, “Rushdie is a devil.”

  There were pairs of Mormons in Vaileka, too, which was proof that the town was not as Melanesian as it seemed.

  Back at the pier I waited for the ferry. Lizards skittered on the pilings. Birds of prey came and went. Fish jumped. There was no ferry at noon. I listened to news of the Gulf War on my short-wave: more bombing missions, no invasion, a great anxiety over the possible use of nerve gas.

  An Indian fished from the pier.

  I asked him, “Where is the ferry?”

  “Him leave ready. Ten clark.”

  I thought, Damn, but when I questioned him further he appeared not to understand English. He also began to clamber among the rotten pilings humming to himself and I thought he might be demented.

  Another Indian sauntered by. He had been burned black by the sun. He was whistling through the gap in his teeth. I asked him about the ferry that was supposed to have come at noon. It was now nearly two.

  “Fiji time,” he said.

  This was a frequent response in Fiji – no offense was meant or taken. Most people laughed about lateness or irregular hours. It simply meant: wait.

  But then I saw the black smudge on the horizon, which swelled into a top-heavy ferry, its white hull streaming with rust stains. It was a typical Pacific ferry, down to its greasy decks and broken fixtures and its pretty name painted over Chinese characters – Pacific ferries were always cast-offs, second-hand vessels from Hong Kong or Taiwan that someone had managed to sell to a coconut kingdom instead of to a scrapyard.

  This one was called the Princess Ashika. It docked; six timber trucks heavily laden with logs rolled off it and headed down the dirt road that led away from the pier. I drove on board. I was the only passenger. Within fifteen minutes we were at sea – no time-wasting at all.

  The Princess Ashika was soon rolling across Bligh Water in a thirty-knot headwind and bright sunshine. With a steady wind like this blowing west across this part of the Pacific it was not hard to see why Capt
ain Bligh had made such good progress on his epic forty-eight-day journey in an open boat, with eighteen of his men, after the mutiny on the Bounty. They had been cast adrift by Fletcher Christian off Tonga, and had sailed among these islands, between Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Captain Bligh was the first European to map this part of Viti Levu. Bligh had sailed onward, through the Coral Sea, past the Queensland coast and Cape York, squeezing through the Torres Strait, and finally reached landfall at Kupang in Timor. It had been a voyage of almost 4000 miles, and his men had been frightened for most of the way – a fear of cannibals, mostly, and amply justified. In fact, just after their longboat passed this point several canoes crewed by fierce Fijians gave chase and kept after them almost until Bligh had cleared the Yasawas, about twenty-odd miles west of here.

  Passing this way, Bligh had looked at the islands and described the landscape in his log, remarking on the “cockscomb mountains.” It was an accurate image. The mountains were high and green, with gently rounded lobe-like peaks. Clouds gathered around the summits of the old volcanoes inland, but the coast was bright, and even on this north coast of Viti Levu, which was as quiet as the island could be, it was possible to ascertain that Viti Levu had been spoken for. It was not that the island was crowded, but rather that it was settled. It was farmed and deforested. In a word, it was possessed.

  I hoped for better in Vanua Levu. This ferry was headed for a small pier at the southwestern tip of the island, Nabouwalu. No one I had spoken to knew anything about Nabouwalu – so I was heartened.

  Since I was the only passenger – this ship was used mostly for ferrying timber to Viti Levu – the crew had little to do en route. They sat on the broken benches in an upper-deck lounge watching a video. The movie, ostensibly a costume adventure about a band of pirates looking for treasure in the West Indies, was a thin excuse for showing sex and violence – two rapes, the beating of a woman, lots of cleavage, a simulated act of sodomy (a pirate and a busty, gasping woman in a hiked-up prom gown) and a number of whippings. Dungeons and rats figured in a number of scenes. The Fijian deckhands laughed delightedly at the rapes and were so riveted by the floggings that they almost missed the docking procedure and had to be summoned by the captain.