Year of Our Lord 1831

‘Aimata is my name. It means, “Eater Of Eyes.”’

A drowsy sadness filled the queen’s own heavy lidded eyes. A carelessly twisted wreath of leaves had slipped askew on her temple. She lifted a bottle from beside her and sipped thoughtfully from its long neck.

‘Eater of Eyes,’ responded the grandmother politely, her own eyes on the uptilted bottle, remembering. ‘Only the highest chiefs were offered the eye of the sacrifice.’

Aimata smiled now with lazy lips. ‘No more eating of eyes. It is good. Missionaries, very good. Tahiti is a Christian land now.’

‘You have the good book?’

‘The book, yes, we have it written in Tahitian, the people are learning to read it.’

‘Then we are all Christian people.’

She gave a soft, easy laugh. ‘They say we are cousins too,’ she said.

‘Your grandfather was my cousin. Your grandmother knew me when I was as small as this child.’

‘Then truly you are the one Grandmother Itia called the Matavai virgin! They said she sailed away with a white man and nobody heard of her again.’

‘Now she has returned.’

Then they looked from one to the next, eye to eye to eye, the queen, the grandmother and the virgin, and what they saw was their own blood, and all of Tahiti written in it, hot and dark.

‘It is very good that you have returned,’ said the queen. ‘I will give you land, all your people, all you need.’

‘That is the generosity of a true ari’i, your majesty.’

‘Tahiti is your home, cousin.’

Now the gaze of Aimata wandered again, out into the fierce haze of day, the palm tops burning in the wind, the island of Aimeo lost in it. She took another sip from the bottle and sighed. ‘E patea, you have been gone a lifetime. Tahiti is not the place it was in my grandmother’s time. Now we sing only hymns and the missionaries speak over our dead. A Christian land.’

She stood up suddenly, her dress of blue rustling around her hips. ‘Come with me, come.’ She carried the bottle, her skirts sweeping the floor around her bare feet. People were crowded on the verandahs of her palace. Some sat singing, some were drinking from bottles, some were lying sick, being fanned with leaves. They all looked up to her as she passed by. ‘Aimata! Aimata our blessed queen, our ari’i nui!’

She greeted them all by name. Aimata, they begged her. My husband is made to work on the road and we have no food. Aimata, all my sister’s children are sick of the fever. Aimata, my brother was chased and beaten because he did not go to the church on Sunday. Their laments turned to smiles when she greeted them.

‘The ovens are full today,’ she told them. ‘Come and eat, there is plenty for everybody.’

She swept on across the grounds of the palace. Everywhere, people were lying and sitting under the trees. Some got up and followed behind her, an old woman wailing with a bloodstriped face, a hobbling man with sores all over his legs, a row of little children in ragged shirts chanting English songs.

‘Plenty for everybody!’ she repeated.

Aimata! Eater of Eyes!

Outside the long guest-house, built of palm trunks and thatch, the people sat down to wait while she took her guests inside.

‘Here,’ she gestured to them. All was shadow. ‘Here are all the gifts sent from the foreign kings and queens.’

The contents of a fleet of white ships appeared around them. Slowly the eye could pick them out, tossed about as if a great wind had shaken a magic tree.

The queen picked up a mirror and handed it to Margaret. ‘For you,’ she said with a shrug.