by Ferenc Máté
“No. A demi.”
She offered her hands full of water to Guillaume. He drank, and when he was done, he kissed her wrist. She pulled them away gently and filled her hands again. “This Ki’i,” Guillaume said pensively. “What color are his eyes?”
“Blue,” Joya said. “Big and dark and blue.” And added in the same breath, “You have to leave the island. They know you’re alive. Kids jump here all the time.”
“I’m certainly no kid. It almost killed me.”
“Ki’i will hunt you. He hates the French. He wants war.”
“The frigate is coming with the cannon.”
“And the French will kill us all.”�
“I know,” Guillaume said. “That is why I’m here.”
“To kill us?”
“No. Just the one who wants the war.”
“Sometimes I want war.”
“Sometimes so do I.”
She drank, tipping her hands, pouring the cool water down her throat. Then she said, wiping her mouth, “Sometimes I forget that you are a French soldier.”
“I’m worse now.” Guillaume sighed. “Now I’m a secret agent.”
“What is a secret agent?” Joya asked.
“He’s a man who . . .” But his voice trailed off as he picked up a stone and threw it into the sea. The rings spread quickly, then vanished. “He’s a man who no one knows.”
Joya smiled sadly. “I’m a man who no one knows.”
Guillaume reached out and touched the gentle face. “I know you,” he said. It struck him then, that he had seldom thought of Joya as a man. To him, she had always just been Joya, the one he loved. As delicate and graceful as any island woman, but more gentle and more kind. He loved her for that. He loved him for that.
THIS HEAT CAN KILL YOU, Darina thought. She had left the path to find the running water she heard deep in the shadows, but the sound now seemed far off and she stopped, confused. She had climbed hard, hurrying, pushing herself up the rocks, sure-footed on the rough ground, pouring sweat so her shirt stuck to her skin and her short hair hung drenched. The sun kept climbing. Birds stopped singing. Nothing moved. But her.
She went on, her heart pounding in her head. She pushed through the stifling undergrowth toward the faint sound and thought, Maybe it’s just a mirage of the ears. Come on, Darina, she chided herself, don’t lose your mind now. There is no mirage of ears. Your brother’s laughter was no mirage. Neither is the sound of running water.
The thick growth scratched her face and arms and tore her shirt, but the sound of water grew louder, and a breath of cool air came through the vines. Then, through the dark green growth, she saw water cascade into a pool among boulders. She pushed through and waded in, peeling off her shirt and pushing it under to rinse out the sweat. She pulled it out and held it above her head so the water ran over her hot skin in rivulets.
JOYA CAME BACK from the deep shadows of the grotto with her cupped hands full of water and held them out to Guillaume.
“It’s hot,” she said. “You have to drink.”
“Yes,” he said distractedly. “This Ki’i, how did he get to be . . . ?”
“I’m not sure,” Joya said. “He was the man of Lil’bit. She’s called that because that’s what she answers no matter what you ask her. She lives in a cove because she likes the waves.
“One day the Aranui sailed in with supplies. You remember the Aranui? Old steamer of Mr. Chan. He can take you to Tahiti or the Tuamotus. You’ll be safe there.”
“And you?” Guillaume asked, looking away, not wanting to see her face when she replied.
She stepped to the water’s edge and delicately fished out the remnants of her crown of gardenias from the swell. “One day the Aranui brought this demi. A bit Kanaka, bit Chinese, bit something else, who knows . . . from Tahiti. She looked down on us. Savages, she called us. Eaters of men. She had golden skin and hair the color of white sand; nice and straight, not like our hair of wild horses. My father took her as his daughter. Then she was princess of Hiva Oa.”
“Ki’i fell in love with this demi, but he wasn’t Ki’i then. He was just pale and white, with those big blue eyes. He fell in love and he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Finally, one night, the demi let him in her bed. For just one night. She wanted to try him out. She promised to marry him, but she wouldn’t give him her bed again until then. She said to Ki’i, ‘I am the princess of Hiva Oa. I cannot marry a man without tattoos. Real tattoos that show what wars he has fought, pictures of battles he has won.’
“So Ki’i went to war. Against the French. All alone. He knew how to work those sticks that go boom. He stole them in Tahiti where they build roads. He blew up a bridge at Papeete and a tunnel in the mountains. And some shacks. Each blowup was a story for tattoos. When he was covered, he came back to the demi. By then she was like this,” and she drew a bloated dome around her belly. “With his child.”
“At first the demi looked at the tattoos. She looked fascinated at each picture. But then she looked at all of him covered from head to toe—even his ears. And she laughed. She couldn’t stop laughing. The next day she told him she couldn’t marry a man who looked so very silly.
“Ki’i went away for a long time. He came back on the Aranui one moon ago to get his son. And every day he plans the war against the French.”
A breeze came up and the sea shone, rippled and blinding in the sunlight.
“And his son?” Guillaume asked.
“Not born yet. Maybe born tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
“But you said it was a son.”
“No. He came to get it if it was a son.”
“And if it’s a girl?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’ll kill it. Sometimes we do that.”
Guillaume felt a chill.
“And the demi?”
“She’s in seclusion at the lagoon to have her child.”
The sun beat down hot now. Guillaume drew back into the gentleness of the shade. This will be easy, he told himself. This should be very easy. Find the demi with child and you’ll find the man.
“I have to go talk to him,” he said. “But I’ll be back for you.”
Chapter 43
Dugger ran up the slope of red earth, with a rifle slung on straps over each shoulder, the butts of the rifles banging against his hips, and the sweat pouring in streams into his eyes. Some goddamn paradise, he hissed, where the natives welcome you with open arms.
His mouth was dry from thirst. He wished something would move in the bush: a goat or a wild boar or even a parakeet that he could blast with a shot. Then he’d feel better. Just to have someone feel worse than him.
He had given himself an hour to find Nello, but the hour had passed long ago. Another half hour, he said to himself, and not a minute more, because then he was turning back and getting on the ketch and hauling anchor and hoisting sail and getting the hell out of here to some island where . . . Where what? Where there was nothing, that’s what. A few palms for shade and some birds for color. And maybe a turtle. He’d like to have a turtle. Calm, slow, couldn’t give a damn about the bloody world. When he’s fed up, he just draws his head into his shell to get some sleep. What he’d give right now for a bit of sleep. And water. He could do without sleep, but he needed water.
KATE MOVED SLOWLY ACROSS THE DECK, holding on to rigging at every step so as not to stretch her stitches.
The Finn had found the hook and line, and sat with his legs over the rail, fishing off the stern. “You should keep moving,” he suggested. “Or you’ll stiffen up.”
“It doesn’t hurt much,” she said.
“You’re one tough lady, lady.” the Finn smiled.
Kate glanced at the stump of his hand, then moved on. “Cappy said that if he’s not back by dark, we should sail out of here. To go where?”
“Oh, he’ll be back,” the Finn said. “He’s too mean not to be back.”
”Does he seem very mean?” Kate asked.
“Mean enough to ma
ke it back.”
Kate stopped and caught her breath. She had moved to where she could see and hear Testard softly raving in the shade. The color had left his features long ago. His face looked like wax, his lips open with dryness.
“He needs water,” Kate said.
“He needs a lot more than water,” the Finn replied.
Testard took no notice. “We French are kind and sensitive, not like the English who crush those they conquer . . .”
The Finn wrapped his fishing line on the head of a stanchion and went below. He came back with a tin cup dripping water, knelt, held up Testard’s head, and poured it in his mouth. Testard drank. And raved. Then he stopped. “Finn,” he whispered. “Where is the frigate? This is no frigate. It’s a silly boat with sails.”
“It’s coming,” the Finn said.
“Yes . . .” Testard whispered. He turned his head and looked down at his stitches and the blood caked hard and black along and among them. His eyes came alive with fright. “Finn,” he whispered, “I don’t want to die . . .”
“Who does?”
“No. No!” Testard objected. “I don’t want to die on this silly ship. I want to go home.”
“The frigate will take you.”
“No. I mean home,” he said, now panicked. “There. The island. That’s where I want to die.” A faint smile twitched his lips. “With the stupid shark.”
“Fine,” the Finn said.
“Will you help me?”
“Sure.”
Testard tried to rise.
“Not yet,” the Finn said. “It’s too early yet.”
“You promise?” Testard pleaded.
“Sure,” the Finn said. But to practice his skills at sailing, he tried to loop a rope around a cleat with his stump.
Chapter 44
The girl lay on her back asleep on the mat beside Nello. Her arms were spread like a child’s above her head, open and unprotected, and she breathed long deep breaths of someone unconscious to the world. He got up. His leg had stiffened, but he saw no fresh blood, so he eased himself out of the hut onto the rocks, found his rifle, and began to climb. He used the rifle as a walking stick and scrambled up the slope to the path, changing his mind every few steps about what to do once he found it—whether to keep climbing or head down to the ketch.
Dugger worried him. Dugger’s temper worried him, his headlong dives into mires with no way out, especially with Kate injured and him edgy and no help on the ketch.
He felt bad about Darina. He worried about her innocence that let her go into the night jungle. And he had to admit he missed her. Missed watching her small moves, her simple gestures that said so much more than words. Then he hoped maybe she had somehow come to her senses and had gone back to the ketch. But not likely. She must have gone on. Too goddamn stubborn not to have gone on. Too obsessed. Too Irish.
He scrambled ever upward, his leg aching, his lungs wheezing. He should have brought a coconut to drink. He remembered the gentleness of the girl when she gave him the coconut. That serene face. An honest, caring face. Unprotected, naked, like the rest of her. He stopped and leaned against a rock. The sun was high, the sea the deepest blue, the clouds on the horizon bursting, rising. And down below him the cove, the warm sand, the hut. And her arms. Maybe he should just go back to her arms. Maybe her arms are all you can ask of life, he thought. The barrel of the rifle was slippery in his hand. Which do you chose? And how do you decide? Perchè la vita oggi è veramente troia? Why is life truly a whore today?
THEY LEFT THE HIGH-PRIEST on the plateau where he died. The woman finished washing him, poured coconut oil scented with tiare blossoms onto her hands, then rubbed it gently into his hair. She sealed the gash in his chest with flowers held in place by wrappings of banana leaves, then wrapped him in a piece of tapa. She laid much food around him, in case the spirit got hungry, then angry in the night.
Some people had sobered. Women came and sat around the body and wailed, sometimes dreadful and deafening, sometimes soft and melodious. Men came and took turns recounting stories, mostly invented, of the old man’s bravery, his kindness, his virtues, his wisdom in reading entrails, his skills at sacrifice. Some told funny stories and the women interrupted their wailing and laughed. Then wailed on.
The tattooed man walked slowly around the plateau, talking softly to one man then another, until he had around him four of the biggest and strongest of them all. The fifth one they left behind to dig the grave.
West of the plateau they descended on a serpentine path to the shore. They got into two canoes. The third vessel—a pair of canoes tied together with a platform, like a raft—they dragged behind. They paddled close to the island in the shadow of the bluffs, in the cove where the girl’s hut lay, where they beat away with paddles a school of feeding sharks. They paddled into a low grotto and landed on a tongue of rock. From the shadows, they hauled out a short, knee-high schooner’s cannon. It was wrapped in cloth soaked in pig’s fat, and with two men at each end, and the tattooed man directing, they dragged and lifted the cannon up onto the raft. It sank down to its gunwales. Then they waited, watching a dark smudge grow on the horizon.
GUILLAUME CLIMBED THE ROCK FACE, often resting, all the while glancing up to see if someone was watching. The climb was long. He ended up in a thicket near the saddle and lay in the bush to get back his strength. Below him the women wailed on the plateau.
He circled the maeve with care, keeping in the cover of the scrub, searching for the place where he’d hidden his pack, while glancing down at the people coming and going on the plateau. He looked for the man with tattoos, but he was nowhere.
DUGGER STOPPED TO REST. His mouth was so dry his lips stuck to his teeth and he couldn’t swallow. Hearing water cascading in the jungle’s shadows, he pushed toward it. He found the pool’s flicker between the leaves, and he knelt and drank. Then he heard thrashing somewhere in the shadows behind him. It was haphazard, as if some large animal were tangled in the vines.
The thrashing became frantic. He splashed water on his face, filled his hat, and poured water over his back and shoulders. He got up and shouldered the rifles. The water made sucking sounds in his boots. The thrashing had slowed as if the animal were tiring, and now over the burble of the water, and the sounds in his boots, he thought he heard someone gasping for air.
SHE HEARD HIM COMING, but she pushed on without looking back, trying to get away from the cliff to find the path.
Dugger kept yelling at her to stop, beat the jungle with a rifle butt to cut his way toward her, and finally got close enough to grab her. He spun her in anger. “Why the hell didn’t . . .” Then he saw her face. She was scratched and bleeding on her arms and chest, holding her tangled shirt between her breasts, but her face was calm, the eyes cool, her gaze defiant, holding. She caught her breath.
“Why did you run?” he wheezed.
“To find my brother.”
“Alone?” When she didn’t answer, he snapped at her. “What the hell makes you think he’s on this island?”
“When someone shot the rope I heard a chortle.”
“A what?”
“A chortle. It’s a laugh you can’t stop. So you snort. It was my brother.”
“No one else in the world laughs, right?”
“Not like my brother.”
“So why didn’t you yell out to him?”
“I don’t know. I was too shocked. I don’t know.”
“So why are you thrashing through the jungle? Why not use the path?”
“I was thirsty,” she said without any emotion. “I lost the path.”
“And?”
“I’m not thirsty anymore.”
Dugger felt an urge to turn and leave her there. “You’re cut everywhere,” he said. “Put that shirt on. The fewer germs in those cuts, the better. Go back to the sea and wash them out.”
“No!” she said firmly. “I’ll be fine.”
“This is not Galway,” he barked. “You’re not strolling th
rough some goddamn glen! This is hell, where everyone is crazy. Do you think normal people attack others with a shark?”
“Please don’t give me orders. I’m not on your boat anymore.”
He let go of her arm. She had always been distant, but not hard or stupid. Her eyes looked more glazed.
She glanced at his arm, where under the rolled-up sleeve trickled a stream of blood. “You’re cut,” she said. “You should go back and wash it out.”
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her so close he could feel her breath. She didn’t even blink. “I’m not risking my boat for you,” he growled. “As soon as I find Nello, I’m hoisting sail and we’re gone. Do you understand? You’ll be stuck on this rock alone with that crazy priest. ” He pushed her away and gathered up his rifles.
“He’s back there in that cove you passed. With a native girl.”
Dugger stopped, amazed. “The priest?”
“Nello. He fell and hurt his leg. The girl is taking care of him.”
She stared at him without emotion.
Dugger shouldered his rifles. “Look. I don’t know what you’re hiding, but one day you’ll find out that no one gives a damn.”
He took a bearing off the cliff, and as he vanished among the great leaves and specks of flickering light, he called back, “You have half an hour.”
She didn’t follow.
FATHER MURPHY CLASPED HIS HANDS and looked worriedly out to sea, past the ketch and past the point, where the curve of the sea shone a deep blue against the sky. He thought he saw a puff of dark smoke rising, the kind of smoke a steamer leaves when running on full boilers. It might be the old freighter, the Aranui, he lied to himself, coming at the end of the month like clockwork. But it’s not the end of the month; the moon has not yet eaten all the stars. He smiled. “Eating the stars.” That’s how the natives thought the moon filled up each month. They saw the young moon thin and frail with its mouth open wide, then each night they watched it get bigger and brighter as it ate the stars around it until it grew fat and round—as round as the belly of a woman full of child. And having eaten them all, it glowed bright with all their light, and there wasn’t a star left near it in the sky.
