Mautu wandered out onto the paepae, allowing the breeze to cool his body. Even from that distance, he recognised Freemeade approaching from the beach, waving to him. Was there something different about the professor? Yes: the thick beard covering the lower half of his face. For about a month Freemeade had been away in the neighbouring villages ‘collecting data from informants’, as he had described it. In that time he and Lalaga and most of their household were happy to be free of Freemeade’s inescapable voice, which analysed and then burdened them with irrefutable opinions and views about ‘the Samoans and their fascinating way of life’.
Mautu wheeled to retreat, but Freemeade waved more furiously. Reluctantly, Mautu waited on the paepae for Freemeade to arrive and then invited him in.
‘It looks very healthy,’ Mautu said, once they were seated.
‘This?’ Freemeade said, pulling at his beard and grinning.
Mautu nodded and said, ‘We envy you papalagi. Samoans can’t grow much hair.’
‘So I’ve noticed,’ Freemeade said, and before Mautu knew it, the professor was off into a detailed scientific explanation of body hair and how it varied from race to race. ‘I got tired of shaving while I was away and decided to let it grow,’ he ended. ‘What I really want to do is discuss some of the things I observed in the other villages. Is that all right?’
‘I want to learn too,’ Mautu lied politely and cursed himself for not being honest.
‘Did you know, sir, that Satoa is now the only village that still clings to one church?’ Freemeade began.
‘Is that so?’ Mautu continued to be polite.
‘Most villages now have two or three different denominations. One has four — the LMS, the Catholics, Methodists, and, recently, the Mormons. But it’s in keeping with what you had in pre-Christian times, isn’t it?’ Mautu nodded appropriately. ‘Samoans had many religions with their own atua and priests. And the survival of each one depended on how able and strong their priests were. Atua came and went. So there’s nothing new in Samoans selecting and promoting many Christian sects. When an atua got too tyrannical, people converted to rival atua …’ Where was the polite, academic researcher, who wanted to learn? Mautu asked himself as he tried to look interested. ‘… By the way, Mautu, our village is the only one in Savai’i that has only one store.’
‘Are you trying to tell me something?’ Mautu heard his irritation find voice.
Freemeade smiled and shook his head. ‘But doesn’t it make sense that if you’re going to have stores, you should have more than one?’ Mautu’s irritation grew when he realised he didn’t know what the professor was referring to. ‘Free enterprise — getting the stores to compete — keeps prices down and the quality of goods and services up, sir.’ He waited for Mautu to catch up. ‘Look at my country: it’s the home of capitalism, of open business competition,’ he continued.
‘But up to now, you’ve been against capitalism,’ Mautu pointed out.
The professor was nimble all right. ‘I was only playing the Devil’s advocate in our previous discussions. I believe firmly in capitalism as the cure for our world’s economic ills, sir. Capitalism, developed properly, will create heaven on Earth for all mankind.’ Looking sadly at Mautu, he continued, ‘Because Samoan society is communal and the group is put before the individual it’s never going to be wealthy or develop the individual talent and initiative so vital to progress.’
‘But why be concerned about that?’ Mautu was sure he now had the professor. ‘You’ve told me in the past that weak, primitive societies like Samoa are going to die out.’
‘But Samoa doesn’t have to be weak and primitive!’
‘If we adopt the American Way: capitalism?’ Mautu intervened. Freemeade nodded. ‘So why are you wearing a beard?’ Mautu continued, remembering the time Freemeade had attacked the philosopher of communism, a German called Karl Marx, jeering even at the man’s wild hair and beard. Freemeade looked nonplussed. ‘Better watch out: if your beard gets any longer, people will call you Karl Marx.’ He laughed and Freemeade had to laugh with him.
Shortly after, when Freemeade resumed talking about what he’d observed in the other villages, Mautu said, politely but firmly, ‘You must be very tired from all your research — go and have a rest and join us later for lotu and food.’
That evening Freemeade appeared for lotu, without his beard. ‘Marx is gone, my friend?’ Mautu remarked.
Freemeade smiled. ‘Yes, he didn’t last long.’
While they ate, with Freemeade in his usual forceful manner describing his recent findings in great detail, Mautu noticed that Lalaga and most of their household, though trying to look engrossed in what Freemeade was saying, had lost interest. Lalaga ate quickly and then disappeared behind the curtains, supposedly to prepare her lessons.
A few nights later, as they lay in their net being lullabied to sleep by the soft rhythmic thudding of rain on the thatching, with Mautu snug against her back, Lalaga asked, ‘Have you noticed that your professor doesn’t stay long after our evening meals?’
‘What do you mean?’ Mautu asked.
‘I’ve heard stories from other villages.’
‘What stories?’ Mautu was sitting up, dreading the panic that was firing his belly. ‘What stories? Months ago, Sao told me about Freemeade questioning our children in an inappropriate way, and I warned him about it. Is that it?’ He could feel it: his panic re-igniting the ‘worry diarrhoea’ he’d started to suffer as soon as the professor had returned from his latest research trip.
‘About his being with other men.’
‘Why, why did you have to tell me that?’ he demanded.
‘Because you’re responsible for him. And at least it’s not our village saying that …’
‘But why tell me? You know my stomach’s been playing up!’
‘You brought him here and got Satoa to be the “object of his research”.’
He was hurt by her lack of sympathy; the familiar jabs and twitches in his stomach worsened. ‘Why did I ever agree to let him come here?’
‘Because he healed me …’
‘And we had to reciprocate …’
‘You didn’t have to. Samoa and the fa’a-Samoa were already reciprocating by letting him do his research. He claims he’s doing it for our benefit, putting us on the scientific map of the world, and adding to the world’s pool of knowledge …’
‘We personally owe him a debt — your health, Lalaga …’
‘He invited himself here — you couldn’t refuse him. And how were we to know that he is … is …’
‘An arrogant collector of cultures? He may know and understand much about us but, unlike our friend Barker, he’d never dream of living permanently with us.’ Mautu clung on to Lalaga, wanting to melt totally into her and not have to get up in the morning and deal with Professor Fiapoto and the vengeful return of his worry diarrhoea.
The rain was gone; everything outside dripped and glistened. Dawn could barely penetrate the dark clouds that clogged the sky. A lone rooster crowed from the other end of the village. Surprised by his pulsing hardness, Mautu debated against Lalaga’s warm body, decided against it, and slid out of the net.
It snagged for an incredible instant in the corners of his eyes, and he shut his eyes firmly against it. But it pierced right through the centre of his sight down into his fears: Semisi sneaking out of the side of Freemeade’s fale into the stand of bananas. No, couldn’t be! He then cursed the Devil for putting it there. He looked again, and gasped audibly, his stomach now a twisting bundle of pain. Another youth — one of Semisi’s friends — was raising a row of blinds and creeping out.
Mautu staggered up and, clutching his belly, tried not to trip over the sleepers as he stumbled towards the latrines.
That morning he rushed to the latrine five times, feeling as if he were turning into painful, liquidy excrement and stench. Each time he grunted and dribbled and blasted, his end threatened to split apart, and his resolve to confront Freedmeade dribbled away. Until Lalaga returned from school at midday and found him pale and shivering and lying foetus-like in their net, and asked him why he hadn’t sent someone to get medicine from his doctor friend. ‘I don’t want to ever see that man again!’ he muttered. She got some anti-diarrhoea medicine from Semisi at Freemeade’s clinic, and plugged him up with that.
Why was the Almighty plaguing him with such demanding problems? Why were other people causing problems that had little to do with him personally, but that he had to deal with because he was their pastor? The shadowy, flickering imagery of Semisi and his friend and the frightening implications of their furtive presence in Freemeade’s fale in the evil dead of night kept tidal-waving through his self-pity. He just wanted to stay in bed and be sick forever. And for two days he did, wallowing lushly in his household’s sensitive and indulgent care. Fearing a visit from Freemeade, he put the word out that he was too sick to receive visitors.
In the almost midnight dark, Mautu squatted in the banana stand outside Freemeade’s fale, relieved there weren’t many mosquitoes about. The space smelled of damp and mould, and occasionally he felt ants crawling over his feet.
Two rows of blinds at the back of the fale were still up, and the turned-down lamp on Freemeade’s desk spilled a weak, watery light onto the paepae. He couldn’t see Freemeade. He waited.
A blur of movement? The blinds fell down in an almost audible chat-chat-chat and a figure wrapped in a sleeping sheet was slipping into the fale. Puffttt! And the lamp was out. Darkness. Muffled conversation. Freemeade and Semisi. The stones of the paepae clicked and clacked as someone walked over them. A row of blinds was pushed aside noiselessly and another person entered the fale. More whispering. Semisi’s suppressed, high-pitched laughter. Freemeade shushing him. Silence. Shuffling over mats. Pillows falling onto the floor.
Expecting another panic attack, Mautu steadied himself. Nothing. Not a twitch. He wasn’t even angry or shocked any more. He was in control, sure of what God wanted him to do.
Once back in their net he slid up against Lalaga, who was on her back and snoring softly through her mouth. He caressed the tops of her thighs and, slowly lifting her left leg, scissored his left leg across hers. Sometimes she loved pretending she was asleep while he was making love to her. He loved it too. Gently, so as not to wake her, he caressed her until she was moist and he was hard, and he slid in. His whole body sighed Ahh, Ahh! as he pushed in. He moved slowly, her snoring stopped, and he knew she was only pretending sleep, and that intensified his desire. Pictures of what he imagined was occurring in Freemeade’s fale also added to his strength and pleasure. No arrogant, sick professor was going to interfere with him and his people and get away with it! he told himself in American English. He moved harder and faster. She tightened and pushed back …
For three days, when Freemeade came for their lotu and meals, Mautu behaved as if nothing were wrong. Soon after every meal, Freemeade would say he was tired and return to his fale. And Mautu delayed acting.
‘It is a very delicate subject,’ Sao said as soon as Mautu was seated. (Sao had sent for him.) ‘A subject Christian and civilised people shouldn’t discuss, but people are starting to talk not only here but in other villages. To be blunt, sir, Freemeade, your palagi, is behaving like the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah. Do you get my meaning, sir?’ Mautu nodded. Right then Tavita entered and sat down at the back. ‘I’ve sent for Tavita because he was the one with the courage to bring the matter to my attention.’
‘I was asked by Poto and Vaomatua to do so, sir,’ Tavita said.
‘See how serious it is, Reverend?’ Sao emphasised. ‘Tavita, you tell the Reverend about the other villages.’
‘Reverend, there are stories about him … about him being with other men.’
‘Like in Sodom and Gomorrah,’ Sao interrupted. ‘Behaviour unbecoming of civilised humans.’ Clearing his throat, he added, ‘As you know, Reverend, Semisi and his kind have a place in our society. We tolerate and love them because they are our flesh and blood, and they are excellent aiga members: they are loyal, hard-working, and they serve us, their elders, with enormous love and generosity. So I don’t mind your professor being one of Semisi’s kind. No one minds. Papalagi may also allow such behaviour in their society. However, he is a famous, highly educated seeker of knowledge who we have admitted to study us. In return we have accorded him the respect we reserve for ali’i and servants of God like yourself, sir. And we expected him to behave like an ali’i. He hasn’t. He has shamed his aristocratic family, and betrayed the trust and friendship you and our village have put in him.’
‘People in the other villages are joking about him,’ Tavita prompted his grandfather.
‘Soon your palagi will be the brunt of ridicule and contempt even in our village. We don’t want that to happen, do we, Reverend?’
‘I will see to it, sir,’ Mautu promised, and asked if he could borrow Tavita for a while.
‘I don’t want to know what you’re going to do or how you’re going to do it,’ Sao ended their conversation.
Once out of Sao’s hearing, Mautu ordered Tavita to have a fautasi and crew ready for a dawn departure, and a group of trusted people to help the professor pack that night. No one else was to be told about this. No one.
To stop Freemeade from coming for their usual evening meal Mautu arranged for his meal to be delivered to him. While their household prepared for bed, Tavita signalled to Mautu from the edge of the light, and with Roni, Mikaele and two other men, they hurried to Freemeade’s fale.
The blinds were drawn already. Mautu told the others to wait outside. He would conduct their conversation in English, he decided. That way he could discuss the tapu topic more freely.
Dressed only in an ie lavalava, Freemeade was at his desk, writing. Mautu felt as if he were encased in a birthsac of utterly calm fluid, ready to exercise God’s and his village’s will and justice. Freemeade glanced up at him over the rims of his glasses. ‘Have you come, sir?’ he greeted Mautu in Samoan.
Mautu sat down in the canvas chair. ‘Violence may erupt in Satoa if we don’t do something about it, Professor.’ He was pleased at Freemeade’s puzzled expression. ‘I need your help to stop it.’ Freemeade nodded. ‘You have to leave Satoa immediately, sir.’ Total puzzlement in Freemeade’s eyes. ‘You have to.’
‘But … but why and for how long?’ Freemeade asked, his hands clutching the arms of his chair.
‘For good, my friend.’ Freemeade’s eyes threatened to burst, his mouth widened in disbelief. ‘Yes, for good, Professor.’ ‘But … but … but …’ Freemeade stuttered.
‘You know why, Professor. You know why!’ Freemeade struggled out of his chair, fists clenched. ‘You have no defence, sir,’ Mautu continued his attack. ‘And we do not need to discuss your offences.’
‘Have you Sao’s and the fono’s authority to do this?’
‘Yes, it was Sao who instructed me to come and tell you. I am your host and friend so I am responsible for what you do in Satoa, sir.’
Freemeade smashed his fists down on the desk. Papers and bottles scattered. ‘You are bloated with your own self-importance, Mautu: fat and corrupted by power! And these people follow you blindly.’
‘We don’t want all of Satoa to hear us, do we, sir? We don’t want your crimes and sins to be known to everyone, do we? Let’s do it the civilised way, the educated way. You’ve studied us long enough, Professor, to know what that way is.’ Freemeade slumped into his chair, hands to his mouth. ‘After you leave, no one in Satoa or elsewhere will know the real reason for your unexpected departure. We’ll tell them you had to return to your father’s funeral.’
‘What about what I’ve done for you and Lalaga?’
‘Look what we’ve done for you, Professor. On your return to your capitalist Heaven-on-Earth, America, and your illustrious university, you will write up your research, lecture on it, and publish it in books that will astound and change the papalagi world. You’ll be more famous and richer than you are now, sir. Isn’t that enough, Professor?’
‘I’ll not be talked to like that and ordered out by some … by some …’
‘… By some ignorant savage?’ Tavita’s threat in Samoan came over Freemeade’s head. Freemeade turned. Tavita took three measured steps towards him. ‘I, the savage, I now tell you to get out before we …’
‘That’s enough!’ Mautu ordered Tavita. ‘Tavita and his men will help you pack tonight,’ Mautu said to Freemeade. ‘A fautasi will take you to Apia. Even the neighbouring villages aren’t safe for you any more.’ He reached over to console his friend. Freemeade jerked his arm away. ‘I am sorry it had to end this way.’ Mautu turned and strode out of the fale into the darkness.
At morning lotu, his voice rich with sadness, Mautu informed his surprised household that the professor, their dear friend, had left during the night to return to America and his father’s funeral at Boston. By midday every Satoan knew about it.
Sao and Tavita ordered Semisi not to ever mention ‘Freemeade’s secret activities’. ‘Control your mouth or I’ll control it for you!’ Sao threatened his loquacious grandson, who controlled his mouth for a desperate two days and then unleashed it, secretly, to all the customers who shopped at his store, who in turn unleashed it to whoever was willing to be surprised and horrified and entertained …
Led and managed by Peleiupu and Tavita, Lalaga’s gardening project flourished: every aiga now had a vegetable garden and enjoyed a healthier diet, though it took a while for most Satoans to acquire a taste for the new vegetables — beans, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, eggplant, spring onions, pumpkins and squash. In one of his sermons Mautu prescribed these vegetables as ‘miracle food for the muscles, eyes, heart, intestines and soul’. Sao went one better: he stated in a sermon that ‘Our Lord tuned His sacred spirit on the miraculous vegetables that we now enjoy.’ Only their relatives knew that during the week Mautu and Sao ate only beans, and then the beans had to be fried with expensive corned beef ‘to make it taste’, Mautu instructed.
At to’ona’i Mautu demonstrated that he enjoyed all God’s vegetables by eating them enthusiastically in large quantities in full view of the other reluctant elders. Only Lalaga knew that her husband suffered wild flatulence after each of his Sunday vegetable binges.
From behind his store counter Semisi recommended eggplant — especially the large, bulbous, round, purple-black variety — to all his customers, claiming sensuously it was the remedy for flaccidity and lack of stamina. ‘One beautiful, strong eggplant and you can last all day and night!’
Throughout Savai’i, Satoa became known as Le Nu’u o le Au Aivao, the Village of Grass-eaters. Some Satoans were ashamed and hurt by that until Mautu proclaimed from the pulpit that ‘only the ignorant and uneducated from the back’ would think that about God’s vegetables, whose health properties and scientific value for the humble human body had been explained to them by the most educated person ever to visit Samoa, Professor Freemeade of Harvard University. ‘Let the uneducated wallow in their bad health and ignorance, while we, who know and understand the latest findings in science, continue to enjoy good physical and spiritual health, consuming God’s vegetables,’ he concluded.
In early January Mautu and Lalaga, in a fautasi tautaied by Tavita, took Naomi to Upolu and Vaiuta School. In their farewell in the principal’s office they all wept together, but Naomi was glad she was going to be away from Satoa and her parents and the arduous workload thrust upon her, particularly by her mother. She would continue to miss Peleiupu and Ruta, though.
Mautu was scraping coconuts into a tanoa and feeding the chickens with it when he saw Lalaga approaching. Every time he scattered a handful of scraped coconut among the large flock, the chickens squawked and fought for it. He tried to ignore the strong smell of drying mud, coconut and the latrines.
Lalaga’s shadow netted him. ‘Your most-loving daughter Ruta is now becoming known as a healer,’ she said. ‘A visitor from your pagan village is here — he told me Ruta’s going to have powers greater even than your pagan sister!’ She paused, he remained silent. ‘Your selfish wealthy daughter Pele is with child.’ He dropped the empty coconut shell into the basket. ‘She told me this afternoon before she left school.’ Peleiupu was twenty-six. Tears blurred his vision when he looked up at Lalaga. ‘It’s been almost four years since they married and people, as you know, were starting to talk,’ she continued. His tears dripped down his face and he didn’t try to hide them from her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. Noisily he sucked back the phlegm and tears in his throat. ‘You’re not a child!’ she tried to joke. She could be so insensitive, he decided. He sucked back his tears, caught them in one ball at the back of his throat and then SSSHHHRRRAAATTT, he spat the ball at the chickens, scattering them. ‘A’e, that’s not hygienic!’ she berated him.
‘I don’t care,’ he whispered and, for no reason, he started laughing softly. ‘I don’t care!’ He paused, laughing still. ‘It’s going to be a girl, a girl, a beautiful girl!’ he chanted.
‘Have all the chickens come in?’ she asked. When he didn’t reply, she called, ‘Ku, ku, ku, ku!’ A speckled hen, trailed by her brood of chicks, rushed from the undergrowth; a few others surged in from other directions. She scooped up handfuls of coconut and scattered it among the newcomers.
‘Has Pele fulfilled your demands?’ he asked. She looked away. ‘Has she? I want to talk to my daughter again, now!’ She started walking away. ‘Why did you force her to stop seeing me?’
She stopped and, with her back to him, said, ‘Because you were the one who spoilt her. If she’d been raised like our other daughters, she wouldn’t have betrayed us.’
‘Hasn’t she paid enough for that?’
She shook her head and said defiantly, ‘Not yet! No, not yet!’ He let her go.
He continued scraping the coconuts and feeding the chickens, which swirledand regrouped according to where the coconut landed. In his imagination he saw a little girl, who looked just like Peleiupu when she’d been that age, trying not to fall over as she wandered through the chickens. Eyes as huge as a morning sky, smile as wide and winning as a morning tide. Chortling, cooing. Ah, his beautiful, wondrous granddaughter!
He bathed and changed into a clean ie lavalava and the colourful floral shirt Peleiupu had given him for Christmas, leaving the shirt unbuttoned because it was hot. ‘Where are you going?’ Lalaga asked. ‘It’ll be lotu soon.’
‘Visiting,’ he replied, and then strode out of their fale and down to the malae.
The breeze was dragging the evening shorewards from the horizon, and being butted by the palms and trees along the beach. Some children were playing outside the church; they paused and smiled at him. He told them to go home: it was time for lotu. Smoke billowed from the kitchen fale as aiga prepared their evening meal, and was swallowed up quickly by the falling darkness. The chorus of cicadas started. Some of the elders invited him into their homes; he declined.
The strong smell of kerosene invaded his nostrils as he entered the store. Poto was at the counter, reading the Bible. At the far side Semisi was weighing bags of sugar on the small scales, and whistling. As Mautu had expected, Peleiupu was immersed in recording accounts in a large ledger. No Tavita.
He stood, saying nothing.
Poto glanced up and said, ‘Sir, have you come?’ He nodded.
‘Get Mautu a chair, Semisi.’ Semisi pushed Mautu the chair he’d been sitting on. Peleiupu shut the ledger and got up. Poto saved him from having to plead with his daughter. ‘Pele, don’t go. I think your father has come to talk to you.’
‘And Tavita if he is around?’ he asked.
Poto started leaving. ‘Semisi, you come too.’ They left quickly.
Awkwardly he stood gazing out through the front door at the darkness that was gliding in over the beach, and trying to find the words to say to her, knowing she found it difficult making small talk. When he glanced at her, she too was looking out the door. She looked drawn and tired, the mellow soft contours of youth were gone from her face.
‘It’s the anniversary of Barker’s death next week, isn’t it?’ he heard himself asking.
‘Yes, I think so,’ she replied. ‘Tavita and Poto are organising for us to visit him.’
‘Your mother has told me you are with child.’ He was surprised at the spluttering sound of his voice. She nodded once, her hands clasped together on the counter. ‘I am very happy,’ he murmured. She gazed directly at him for the first time. ‘So is your mother. It will be our first grandchild.’ There was a long pause as she struggled to reply. ‘You have been punished enough, Pele,’ he said.
‘I had no other choice, Papa,’ she began. ‘I chose to follow my heart, knowing it would bring shame and pain to you and Lalaga. For that I am very sorry.’
‘But you do not regret it?’
‘No, I do not regret marrying Tavita.’ He’d always admired and loved her determination and honesty.
‘Your mother and I and our community have made you pay dearly for it …’
‘They certainly have …’
‘… and your mother continues to exact her payment.’
‘Yes, she certainly does, but I knew Tavita and I would have to pay for a lifetime, for our choice.’
‘I am satisfied. That is what I came to tell you. From here on, I’m ignoring Lalaga’s demands on you and Tavita. So promise me you’ll not keep away from me?’
She nodded. ‘My mother is like me, Papa. She finds it difficult forgiving anyone who has hurt her and her aiga. So when she finds out what you’ve done, how’s she going to react?’
‘The usual way, but I’ll do my usual back — I’ll just ignore her.’
Just then Tavita entered and, seeing Mautu, looked at Peleiupu. ‘It’s all right, Tavita, I’m no longer keeping Lalaga’s contract with you,’ Mautu told him, smiling. ‘And I want to come with you when you visit your father’s grave next week.’ Tavita nodded and asked if he would conduct the memorial service. Mautu agreed. Silence. ‘It’s going to be a girl, eh?’ Mautu asked. They looked puzzled. ‘Your first child?’ Tavita grinned; Peleiupu shrugged her shoulders. ‘May I name her?’ he requested. ‘I’ll consult Sao, of course.’
‘Sir, it would be an honour for us,’ Tavita said.
‘Sao and I will come up with a relevant and poetic name.’ Mautu tingled with joy.
As the dark settled into Satoa, the chorus of cicadas and the evening hymns embraced it. ‘Shouldn’t you hurry home for lotu, Papa?’ Peleiupu asked.
‘You can have lotu with us,’ Tavita invited him.
‘I don’t feel like being in a lotu tonight,’ Mautu said. ‘Let’s just stay here and talk.’ He wanted to know about their life since they married in American Samoa.
‘It might bring back painful memories,’ Peleiupu cautioned.
‘Leave out the bits that might,’ he joked.
So while the sound of lotu and cicadas and mosquitoes measured the edge of their hearing, Peleiupu and Tavita did what he wanted. By the end of it they could barely see one another in the darkness. Tavita lit a lamp.
‘I hope my granddaughter doesn’t look like your father!’ Mautu joked with Tavita.
Peleiupu laughed softly. ‘Papa’s right — your father wasn’t handsome!’
‘No, he wasn’t handsome like you, Tavita!’ Mautu emphasised. They laughed about that.
‘Anyway, how do you know it’s going to be a girl?’ Tavita asked.
‘Because God whispered it to me on my way here.’ They laughed about that too.
Tavita went to the shelves and started getting goods for Mautu to take home.
‘No, I don’t need that,’ Mautu insisted. ‘All I need is your alofa and forgiveness. We’ve made you pay far more than you needed to. I’m proud of your service to our church, our school and our village.’ He turned to leave. Peleiupu stopped him and straightened his collar and buttoned his shirt. ‘By the way, are you keeping an eye on Ruta?’ he remembered.
‘Yes, every time the Lady Poto calls in a Fagaloto, I send her and Lefatu some supplies,’ she replied. ‘Everyone there loves her.’
It had rained all night and, as he picked his way over the soggy ground to the school, mud oozed up between his toes, so he had to wipe his feet on the sacking in the doorway into the classroom. Lalaga, Peleiupu and the other teachers were there already.
‘We need to continue our classes in gardening,’ Lalaga was telling the others.
Mautu sat down beside Peleiupu, who smiled at him and didn’t move away. ‘Do we need to do that?’ he asked Lalaga. ‘All our families have gardens now and can’t eat all the vegetables they produce.’
‘Yes, our family is feeding the surplus to the pigs,’ one of the others said.
‘I support Mautu’s view,’ said Peleiupu. The other avoided looking at Lalaga. ‘Those who’ve been trained can teach the rest of their families,’ she added. The tension intensified as Lalaga struggled to reply. ‘And Tavita and I can’t continue teaching gardening — we have a lot of other work.’
‘I’ll do it on my own then!’ Lalaga snapped. ‘Do we need to discuss anything else?’ No one responded. ‘So, let’s start our day.’ She jumped up, glared at Mautu and hurried out. Her limp seemed more pronounced.
‘I thought you were in charge of this school!’ Mautu quipped as Peleiupu got up.
‘So did I, so did I!’ Peleiupu said.
At interval Mautu kept well away from Lalaga and Peleiupu. From the playground he saw them through the windows, arguing heatedly. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. Lalaga waved her arms and pointed repeatedly at Peleiupu, who just stood there motionless. Periodically Lalaga would turn her back to her daughter and clutch her face. Their soundless argument, their mime, looked funny and melodramatic.
Lalaga didn’t even wait until the servers had cleared away the remnants of their evening meal. ‘So you and your daughter have reconciled, eh?’ she started.
‘Yes, she and Tavita have atoned for their bad actions as far as I’m concerned. And you have no right banning her from seeing me.’
‘What about our bargain with them?’ she demanded. The embarrassed servers packed quickly and left.
‘You made the bargain, Lalaga, remember? You even told me you weren’t going to tell me the conditions of it.’
Furiously she shook her head and said, ‘Once again you’ve given in to her, allowed her to get away with it.’
‘I have not given in to Pele,’ Mautu stressed. ‘There is nothing to give in to. Pele has paid the price and far more.’
‘You and your spoilt daughter are again siding against me!’ She started weeping. ‘She almost killed me. Your daughter almost killed me!’
‘That’s enough!’ he interrupted. ‘I want our family to be as it was. Pele has paid enough.’ Lalaga buried her face in her hands and continued weeping. ‘The work and responsibilities you and Tavita’s aiga and others have imposed on her would break anyone else.’ He paused, breathing deeply, and then added, ‘Besides she is now with child, remember?’
She slapped at her sides and rolled away through the curtain to where they slept.
Later, she slept well away from him, and, throughout the night, tossed and turned and sighed. She was at school before he was awake, and refused to speak to him when he got there. Throughout the day, she set work for her classes and then just sat at her desk gazing out to sea.
‘She’s very cross with me,’ Mautu told Peleiupu, ‘but I’m not giving in to her.’
‘Neither am I,’ she said. She went in and, while Lalaga glared at her, informed her she couldn’t run the school any more because of other demands. ‘Tavita and I are setting up a bakery.’ She left before her mother could say anything.
When Lalaga reached Mautu at their home she loomed above him. ‘I’m going to have another stroke! Is that what you and your ungrateful daughter want, eh?’ He wrapped his arms around her. She struggled and fought against him. ‘Your daughter wants to see me dead. That’s what!’
‘That is not true, Lalaga. Pele loves you.’
As he held her, her shaking eased away. ‘You have always loved our children more than me,’ she accused him. ‘And Pele the most.’
‘That’s not true, Lalaga.’
That night and all that week she slept away from him, and refused to talk directly to him or Peleiupu. During the week she visited all the wives of the matai, supposedly to discuss their gardens. Mautu knew something was up and warned Peleiupu who hesitated and then said, ‘I don’t want to speak ill of my own mother, but I have to, Papa. She is gathering information about what’s happening in Satoa, and in particular what’s happening to Tavita and me.’ She pondered again and added, ‘She’s trying to get their support.’
‘For what?’
Peleiupu smiled. ‘Papa, I am so like her, I can read her easily. She wants them to help her put me back into “my proper place”. My own mother!’
‘Your mother is not like that, Pele. She is not a devious and calculating person.’
‘You’ve always been a hopeless judge of people, Papa, especially of those close to you!’ Peleiupu laughed.
Hurt by her remark, for he’d always believed he was an astute judge of people, he said, ‘I suppose so.’
With a slow, wicked smile she said, ‘The wives will pledge their support to her, but will not act against me, Papa.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will, Papa, you will soon.’
Two days later, on his counselling round, some of the wives asked him, respectfully, if Lalaga was well; others asked, respectfully, if Peleiupu was well; still others asked, respectfully, if Lalaga and Peleiupu were well together; one, the bravest of them, asked, plainly, if Lalaga and Peleiupu were quarrelling. To her, Mautu told the truth; to the others he pretended surprise that they should even think his wife and daughter were not well, singly, and not well, together.
All the wives started their conversations with him by declaring their love and respect for Lalaga and her ‘remarkable and generous daughter’. Then they left Lalaga out, and heaped praise on his ‘remarkable and generous daughter’, whose great intelligence, judgement, planning, unbelievable capacity for work, money and husband were transforming the whole of Satoa into the most prosperous and progressive community in Samoa.
‘I think I understand now,’ Mautu said to Peleiupu the next day at school. She didn’t know what he was referring to. ‘You know, remember?’ She smiled. ‘Your poor mother doesn’t know, does she?’ She shook her head and smiled again. ‘She hasn’t got a chance, eh?’ Her smile widened, her teeth gleamed. She turned and headed home briskly.
The congregation grew quiet, waiting for the service to start. Mautu knelt in the pulpit and prayed, then sat up and gazed down at the front entrance. Sao, who looked frail and weak, entered with Peleiupu and Tavita supporting him on either side. Their white clothes gleamed in the morning light.
Theirs was a slow procession up the aisle as Sao shuffled and surveyed the congregation, smiling and nodding at the other elders. The congregation exuded an enormous feeling of pride as they observed the procession. Tavita walked with an easy confidence, no longer the shy, self-conscious youth Mautu had known. As for Mautu’s daughter, well, she was playing the role of daughter-in-law perfectly, with the proper degree of shyness, humility and respect, the appropriate lowering of her eyes, and the devoted attention to her ali’i. Unexpectedly, she glanced up at Mautu. He saw a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, the faint trace of a wry smile before she looked away again. At that moment, Mautu understood and was breathless. In the proud possessive way Sao was holding on to Tavita’s and Peleiupu’s arms and displaying them in front of his whole community, his message was clear: these were his heirs. And the congregation was applauding.
Tears threatened again when Mautu remembered Barker and how proud he would have been of his son and Peleiupu, and even prouder that his children were now part of Satoa. When Freemeade’s lecture on afakasi started intruding, he rose to his feet, held on to the front-piece of the pulpit and declared ‘Today is a beautiful day to praise our Lord. Let us begin this service …’
On 3 December 1908, his first grandchild, a girl, was born. Sao and his wife and Lalaga agreed to his choice that their granddaughter be called Lefatu.
It was as if he and his family were back on that first evening when he had brought home the English Bible that Barker had given him, in the expectant hush and stillness of evening with Lalaga and their children circling him and the large parcel in his hands, waiting for him to open it; with the same tightness in his belly as the trembling rippled up from the book and up through his arms into his eyes.
They were waiting for him to open the hefty parcel with the black waterproof canvas wrapping that Poto had brought from Apia, saying she’d been given it by the German firm she traded with. The parcel had been handed to the firm by a black sailor — a Fijian? — from an American ship docked in Apia Harbour. The firm knew Poto was from Satoa, the village to which the parcel was addressed.
Dirt-caked, scratched, hand-written address on white paper stained wet brown, the thin rope around it frayed, the parcel looked as if it had travelled a long way over a long time, and passed from person to person, ship to ship. Now it was with the people who owned it and who desperately wanted to open it but were afraid to do so. Finally Mautu pushed it towards Lalaga, who shook her head once, then reached down and started unknotting the rope. As she untied the rope she rolled it neatly around her right hand and then laid it on the floor, and looked at him.
He watched his hands as they gripped the opening between the central edges of the black canvas wrapping and pulled it open slowly. He looked at Lalaga as she pulled up the lid of the paper box, and looked away from the contents.
‘It’s from him, isn’t it?’ he dared.
‘Don’t know!’ When she glanced at him his arms were in the box almost up to his elbows. A rich satiny smell rose up from the box.
‘Here, you take out the things,’ he said.
Out of the box came three rolls of calico and silk, five long-sleeved shirts, three silk ties, four white hats for church, four dresses …
‘No letter?’ he ventured.
From the depths of the box she took a white envelope and, with a trembling, fearful hand, handed it to him. Slitting it open with his forefinger, he showed her what was in it. Money, notes: a thick wad of money.
‘No letter?’ she asked quietly.
He shook his head. ‘Just money.’
‘I’ll look again,’ she offered. He watched and waited as she searched methodically through the contents, unfolding even the material, emptying everything onto the floor and running her hand along the bottom of the box. He sensed she was trying not to cry.
‘Are we sure it is from him?’ he asked.
Nodding her head furiously, and clutching one of the dresses to her face, she murmured, ‘Yes, yes, it is from Arona, our son, our son!’
And so began another strand in The Tales of Arona the Sailor — of large black parcels, with exotic gifts and money, arriving when the Mautu family least expected them; parcels that came without letters from Arona.