Tiare in Bloom

by Célestine Vaite

  Every now and then, Pito turns to the receptionist, sitting at her desk, still looking a bit pale, to ask the price. “How much for this one?” The price is the same for all of the houses, too expensive, but perhaps he could take a loan at the bank. Here, this one isn’t so bad. Less ugly, more trees.

  “I’m going to see my bank,” he tells the receptionist. “And I come back.”

  “Oui, Monsieur.”

  “Do I need to fill out some papers with you?” Pito doesn’t want to miss out on his house.

  “Oui, Monsieur, you do.” The receptionist attempts a smile. She reaches for a folder on her desk, and explains the whole rent system, including the condition of one month’s rent in advance.

  “One month in advance?”

  “Oui, Monsieur.”

  Well, Pito might see his bank first. He puts his empty cup on the front desk, nods a sharp nod, meaning, I’ll see you shortly, and leaves.

  Pito strides into the bank and joins the queue. There’s a young man over there at the counter who wants to withdraw three hundred francs.

  “Three hundred francs?” the bank teller sniggers.

  “It’s to catch the truck,” the young man says.

  “There’s only two hundred eighty francs in your account.”

  “Can I withdraw two hundred eighty francs?”

  “You need to leave at least two hundred francs in your account.” The bank teller, who’s all made up as if she were off to a ball, explains that one should always leave some funds in one’s account to prevent the account from closing.

  “I close my account, then.” The young man sounds like he’s getting edgy. “I need the money to catch the truck home. I live in Papeno’o.”

  “Fine . . . close your account.” The bank teller punches her keyboard, making sure not to break her long nails. “Give me seven hundred and fifty francs, merci.”

  “What?”

  The bank teller repeats herself: seven hundred and fifty francs. “You need to pay the closing-account fees before I can close your account.”

  “I’ve got no money!” To prove this, the young man turns out the pockets of his ripped shorts.

  “I can’t close your account, then,” the bank teller says.

  “What’s this? A joke?”

  “I don’t make the rules.”

  “Stick your rules up your fat arse!”

  The bank teller throws a death look on that rude customer’s back before singing out, “Next, please!” Poor kid, Pito thinks. Eh, he’s going to give that kid the fare home. Actually, he’s going to do more than that. He’s going to give that kid five hundred francs for the fare and something to eat on the way home.

  “Eh,” Pito says discreetly, the banknote flat in the palm of his hand. “Here.”

  The desperate young man gracefully accepts Pito’s generosity. “Maururu, Monsieur, I’m going to pay you back.” He asks for Pito’s address, but Pito waves a little wave that says, Don’t worry about it, kid. It’s only five hundred francs. I’ve got more money coming my way.

  “I’m here to take out a personal loan,” Pito says to the bank teller, another pretty young woman all made up like she’s off to lunch with the president. “For one hundred thousand francs.”

  “You’re in the wrong queue,” the bank teller says, apparently oblivious to the customer’s shiny wedding-and-funeral suit. She sees all kinds of attire in her job and isn’t one to judge a man by the cloth he’s wearing. She’s more the kind to judge a customer by how much money there is in his bank account, and a customer who needs to take a personal loan for a hundred thousand francs isn’t what she’d call financially established.

  “The wrong queue?” Pito glances over his shoulder to the queue, which has doubled in size in the past ten minutes.

  “The loans department is upstairs.”

  “Upstairs where?”

  “The information desk is over there.”

  Muttering under his breath, Pito proceeds to climb the stairs, joins the correct queue, lands at the right desk, and gets his forms.

  What’s with all the questions? Pito asks himself later, filling out his forms at the information desk under the watchful eye of a friendly-looking Tahitian mama. Who needs to know if I own my house, how much I spend a week, if I have savings . . . question one, question two, if the answer is no, go to question six, question seven . . . Just give me the money, you idiots!

  All these questions are giving Pito a headache, and to make matters worse, he answers question three in the question four box. Merde! He puts a line through his answer and rewrites it again neatly, and again next to the wrong question. Titoi!

  “Forms are really hard to fill out, eh?” says the mama at the information desk, to be nice. She has a very special spot for Tahitian people having difficulty filling out forms, she used to be like that too. Now she’s a crack at filling out forms, of course.

  “You’re not wrong,” Pito agrees, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Why are you taking a personal loan?” the mama asks nicely. “To buy a car?”

  “A car? I don’t even have my driver’s license.” He explains that he just needs about one hundred thousand francs to pay the rent for a month.

  “One hundred thousand francs? We don’t have loans for one hundred thousand francs, you’d best apply for a carte bleue.”

  “You don’t have loans for one hundred thousand francs? What kind of bank is this?”

  The nice Tahitian mama, faithful to her employer, takes on a cranky face. “It’s the same with all the banks.”

  Merde, all of this exercise is getting on Pito’s nerves. It’s enough that he hardly slept last night, and it’s enough that he’s sweating away like a sumo in his suit. What he needs more right now is a nice cool beer. Or then again, maybe three.

  On beer number six Pito hits the road, walking because all his money is gone, the whole lot. Even when it starts to rain (unexpectedly, as it often does on this fertile island) Pito is still walking, with nowhere to go.

  Two kinds of people walking by the side of the road get a lift; the people we’d like to know more, and the people we feel sorry for. You would think that a Tahitian man wearing a suit on a weekday and walking in the rain would fit both of the above categories.

  But Pito is still walking. He’s not cursing people driving by and not stopping, he just puts one foot in front of the other like a robot. All the way back to familiar Faa’a.

  Getting Some but Not in Your Own Backyard

  The expression “Don’t shit in your own backyard” means what it says: don’t be an idiot or you will get caught, and next thing you know, you will be in the caca up to here. To put it simply, don’t fool around with someone you know, or worse, someone your man or woman knows. This rule also applies to anyone who lives in the neighborhood. If you must fool around, go somewhere discreet, and pick someone discreet.

  When it comes to things like these, Pito is not an idiot. He knows all about the mess and the disaster that comes with shitting in your own backyard. Two of his cousins — sisters — had a combat, and one of them (the sister of the wronged woman) lost an eye. What is a woman without both her eyes? What a waste, and this for a brief encounter with the brother-in-law. As for the sisters, who used to be so close, they haven’t spoken a word in twelve years now, despite the aunties’ repeated attempts to reconcile them with prayers. And to think that when they were little, they used to tell everyone that when they die they’d like to sleep side by side.

  You will never see Pito doing any shitting in his own backyard. But when a man isn’t getting any in his backyard, he needs to visit someone else’s.

  Here, yesterday at the Chinese store, Loma gave him the eye and for the first time ever, Pito found Loma breathtakingly beautiful. Loma! The least attractive woman of the Mahi tribe! But that moment she gave Pito the eye, she looked very interesting and he was just about to give her the eye back, when a voice inside his head shouted, “No shitting
in your own backyard! And especially not with big-mouth Loma!”

  But Pito found Rita pretty when she came to visit Materena yesterday afternoon, despite her doing her sad face because — so Pito guessed — she got her period. Rita has lost a lot of weight since trying to conceive, and Pito has never seen her look that good. Pito didn’t know Rita had cheekbones.

  Now, sitting at the bar with his colleagues on this hot Friday afternoon, payday, is giving Pito interesting ideas, and why not? His wife doesn’t love him, Pito can see it by the way she looks at him, like he’s a noodle, an idiot. Well, let’s see what happens when the wife looks at the husband like he’s an idiot — he goes and plays!

  Pito is more sad than cranky, though. He’s sad because . . . well, who knows? He’s just sad, that’s it. Materena changed so much, or perhaps he’s just started to notice things about her, perhaps she’s always been edgy and distant but he never paid attention.

  When Pito asked Materena to lend him her car for half an hour to go and see his brother Frank, she refused just because he doesn’t have a driver’s license. Materena didn’t care about Pito’s driving experience. She didn’t care that he drove his uncle Perete’s car (on the actual road, Pito insisted, and not on some homemade path) when he was about fifteen years old. The uncle was completely taero, having lost a couple of thousand francs on a rooster fight and drowned his sorrow in drinks, and so he said to Pito, “Kid, drive your uncle to the Chinese restaurant. I’m sad. I need to eat some chow mein.”

  Pito drove his uncle’s car again later, but this time it was to a family reunion. The uncle was sober, but his left foot was swollen because he had stepped on a sea urchin. Pito also drove Auntie Lele’s car . . . anyway, to cut a very long story short, Pito has had many driving experiences. But Materena didn’t care about all that. It was more important for her to be mean.

  And perhaps she’s mean because she wants Pito out of her life to make way for her Chinese boyfriend. Oui, perhaps that’s the reason. Yesterday Pito checked the answering machine — just to see, a question of curiosity. There were five messages, three from his mother asking Materena (three times) if she would like to buy a packet of raffle tickets to help Mama Roti’s bingo association. First prize: a healthy piglet; second prize: five kilos of tamanu oranges; third prize — Mama Roti got cut off. The other two messages were from Rita (sounding very sad), asking Materena to call back.

  “Jojo!” Pito softly calls out. A nod to the left, a hand around an empty glass, and Jojo gets into action. Jojo, affectionately called Siki — a six-foot tower of black strength complete with two golden teeth—fills Pito’s glass.

  “Eh, Siki,” another regular says in what has become a familiar refrain, “when are we going to see a woman behind the bar?”

  “Behind the bar isn’t the place for a woman.” Jojo gives the same answer he’s been using for the past twenty years. In Jojo’s world, women are to sit comfortably at the tables enjoying their drink, and not behind the bar serving drunken men. Jojo once got very mad at one of his clients who dared mention that he was cutting off both his legs by not having a woman behind the bar. The client said, “A woman behind the bar brings in business. A beautiful woman, of course, and young too, because nobody wants to be served by some meme, some old hag.”

  Jojo lifted that client (literally) and threw him out of his bar. In Jojo’s world, memes are not old hags, they are respectable grandmothers. That client wasn’t a regular, otherwise he would have known about Jojo’s sacred and sanctified respect for women. Criticize this respect at your own risk, it has made Jojo a very rich man. A poor Kanak waiter when he emigrated from New Caledonia, Jojo now owns a bar, and he paid the fares of his three brothers and their families to Tahiti. Jojo’s brothers are replicas of Jojo, and women know that if they want to enjoy a few quiet drinks without being pestered, go to Jojo’s.

  Take tonight, for example. There are about fifty women scattered across the large drinking area, along with eighty hopeful men. One of them is Pito’s colleague Heifara, who has been busy planting his seeds in anything that moves lately.

  “Jojo,” Pito softly calls out again. He needs a refill, but all he gets is a glass of water.

  “Drink this first,” Jojo commands with his don’t-argue-with-me booming voice. “Then we’ll talk.”

  Pito drinks his glass of water in one go. You have to do what Jojo says, otherwise he just picks you up and throws you outside.

  “How’s everything, my friend?” The booming voice is now a concerned whisper.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “The family’s good?”

  “The family’s good.”

  Jojo affectionately pats Pito on the shoulder and goes back to his occupations.

  “The family’s good,” Pito mutters under his breath, half turning to the crowd. There’s Heifara deep in conversation with a forty-something woman who is right now doing a forced smile.

  “Pito, where are you, copain?” a colleague nudges. “You’re not saying a word tonight.”

  “I don’t feel like talking.” To you lot, Pito means.

  Okay, then, since Pito doesn’t feel like talking, nobody is going to talk to him. Nearly every Friday there’s a colleague who doesn’t feel like talking, and tonight it is Pito’s turn. When this happens, nobody asks questions, the person who doesn’t feel like talking is left alone with his thoughts. The bar is often the place where men feel liberated to do a little examen de la conscience, to go deep down in their conscience and think about important things, like their relationships with their woman, children, siblings. Eyelids closed, they replay their lives, list their faults, the promises they haven’t kept . . .

  But Pito is not doing any self-analysis, he’s just watching Heifara carry on with his seduction plan, which isn’t going well, considering the bored expression on the woman’s face. Perhaps Heifara is talking too much. Perhaps he’s showing off and he’s starting to get on the woman’s nerves. Here she is, nodding, but her eyes are elsewhere. They are on the ceiling, they are on other men, they are here and there, and then they are on Pito.

  They are on the ceiling again.

  They are on Pito.

  Here and there, and on Pito again.

  Pito doesn’t wink. He just looks at her with his beautiful sad eyes. She arches one of her eyebrows, meaning, Eh, you at the bar looking at me, why are you so sad? then smiles. Pito smiles back. She smiles again and runs her fingers through her hair. Pito notices her wedding ring. Ten minutes later, as she discreetly leaves the bar while Heifara is in the toilets, she gives Pito the look, the look that says — Coucou, look at me closely, I’m interested!

  Pito quickly finishes his drink and follows the interested woman outside.

  She is waiting for him behind a tree.

  “Where’s your husband?” he asks out of politeness.

  “In New Zealand, get in the car.”

  Once in the car speeding away towards Tipaerui, Pito glances at his future lover from the corner of his eye, and he’s feeling less and less interested. Why is that? Who knows! He’s not interested because he’s not interested, okay? There’s nothing to explain. He changed his mind, that’s all. That woman just doesn’t look as appetizing as she did in the bar. And plus, she has smelly feet, she doesn’t clean her feet properly. Materena scrubs her feet every day. With perfumed soap.

  Also, what if that woman finds out who Pito is — Materena’s husband — and what if she finds out who Materena is and starts blabbing about how she had sex with the husband of that woman with the popular radio show. People will laugh at Materena. They will say, “Ha! Maybe she has the most popular radio show in Tahiti but can she keep her husband’s moa in his pants? Apparently not!”

  Plus, it might be very flattering when a woman you don’t know wants you, but the way Pito sees the situation, it’s more flattering when it’s a woman who knows you to your last pubic hair who wants you. Now that
’s something to brag about to your copains.

  “I changed my mind,” Pito says calmly after his analysis. “Can you drop me in Faa’a?”

  “What!” the woman shrieks, angry. “We’re nearly at my house! Do you take me for an idiot or what?”

  Well, now Pito is definitely not interested. “Eh, stop the car.” It’s an order.

  She stops the car in front of a house. All the lights inside are turned on.

  “Who’s in my house?” the woman asks her companion, as if he’d know.

  Seconds later, the front door opens and out comes a man. Pito suspects it to be the husband, judging from how the woman shrieks and orders Pito to slide down the seat.

  “Chéri!” she calls out, quickly getting out of the car. “I thought you were coming home tomorrow.”

  “I wanted to surprise you, Suzette,” Pito hears the husband say. The husband doesn’t even ask his wife where she’s been.

  “What a nice surprise!” The wife sounds like she really means it. “I’m so happy!”

  Purée, Pito thinks. Women are actresses.

  “Miss me?” the husband asks.

  “Oh oui, I missed your company.”

  “Just my company? Nothing else?”

  There’s a cackle, and Pito suspects the husband has pinched his wife on the bottom, something like that. A little shout, and next thing the car starts to rock backwards and forwards. Pito suspects the married couple to be going at it on the hood of the car.

  “Let’s go in the house,” Suzette says in a very sultry voice. “The neighbors might see us.”

  “I don’t care, they can watch if they want to.”

  The car shakes again, and the husband sounds like he’s having a really good time. Then it’s all over.

  “How are the children?” the husband asks, after a gap as they do themselves up.

  “They’re fine.”

  “And the grandchildren?”