‘I’m fifty-five years old today,’ Barker said to Mautu as they sat in cane chairs facing each other on the store veranda overlooking the malae. Poto, as usual, sat beside her husband’s chair, on the floor. Peleiupu sat on the floor beside her father’s chair. They were having a breakfast of strong tea and cabin bread, which some of the women had served. ‘Fifty-five is old, isn’t it?’ Barker asked. Mautu nodded as he dunked his cabin bread in his mug of tea. ‘Not many people here or in England live beyond forty,’ Barker continued. ‘I’ve been lucky. Haven’t been seriously ill, ever …’
‘Only once when you had the mumu,’ Poto interrupted.
‘I forgot about that,’ Barker said. ‘But it was not serious.’
‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ Mautu asked him.
Shaking his head, Barker said, ‘I’m not hungry.’ He paused. ‘How old are you?’
‘Nearly forty-five,’ replied Mautu.
‘The oldest man I’ve ever known was a Chinaman we took aboard in Hong Kong. About eighty, he was. Small fist of a chap but very, very tough. Never said anything — not to me, anyway. Bloody pagan he was. So you see, Mautu, we don’t need to be Christians to live a long life.’ Mautu refused to take the bait. ‘The next oldest was Hindu. As black as midnight, and at seventy-something years old, not a wrinkle on his face. Another heathen. In fact, the longest-living people I’ve met were not Christians!’ Mautu refused to reply. ‘If old age is proof of the gods’ blessings, then the pagan gods are more powerful!’ Pausing dramatically and staring at Mautu from under lowered bushy eyebrows, he said, ‘Perhaps your God doesn’t exist!’
‘Going to be a good mango season,’ Mautu said in English, gazing up at the mango trees to their right shading the store. The high sprawling trees were pink with blossoms and buds.
‘Yes, this going to be a rich harvest of mangoes.’ Poto said.
Peleiupu, noticing the quiet desperation on Barker’s face, wanted her father to offer their friend some consolation, an answer to grasp at. Mautu pushed away his food tray, then, looking at Barker, asked, ‘Why is God’s existence important to you if you do not believe in Him?’
‘It isn’t important!’
‘Then you don’t need to chase your own questions.’ Mautu glanced up at the mango trees again. ‘Yes, the mangoes, they are going to be plentiful this season.’
‘Why do you always talk in riddles?’
‘It is you who deals in riddles!’ Mautu replied. Barker looked away.
Peleiupu timed it perfectly: just before Barker could jab his frustration at Mautu she jumped up and picked up her father’s tray.
‘Thank you, Pele,’ Poto said, pushing her foodmat forward. Peleiupu stood looking at Barker’s tray.
‘Yes, take mine too,’ he said finally.
‘But you have not eaten!’ Mautu insisted.
‘It’s not the food of this world that I need.’
‘Not even sweet mangoes,’ joked Mautu.
For the first time that morning Barker relaxed and, looking up at the mango trees, said, ‘Perhaps the sticky juice of the mango can hold my tattered fifty-five-year-old body together for a while longer.’
Poto laughed softly. ‘You’re still healthy!’ Barker ignored her.
When Peleiupu returned from the kitchen fale a few minutes later Barker said, ‘Pele looks more like Lalaga than you.’
‘Yes, she really does,’ Poto echoed.
‘Then she is not beautiful!’ chuckled Mautu. Embarrassed, Peleiupu avoided looking at them and sat down behind Mautu’s chair.
‘I wish my children were like Pele. The brats are total savages!’ Barker said. Poto looked hurt.
‘Like their father perhaps,’ Mautu quipped.
‘I’m not a savage!’ Barker pretended to be hurt.
‘You are a palagi savage!’ Poto joked.
‘You don’t believe in the English God. Or English civilisation. You don’t respect other papalagi, not even the missionary, so Poto is right: you are a palagi savage,’ Mautu said.
‘But I do believe in other things.’
‘What?’ Mautu trapped him. Once again Peleiupu sensed that Barker was a tight knot of pain. ‘What?’ Mautu whispered.
‘Yes, in what, my savage palagi?’ Poto asked.
‘In many things!’ Barker stood up suddenly and, turning his back to Mautu, recited: ‘I believe in birth; I believe in death; I believe in thirst, hunger, pain, desire, joy — because I can experience all those. I believe in the earth, the sea, the sky. In birds too. And mangoes. Especially mangoes because I’ll be tasting their delicious flesh in a few months’ time.’ Wheeling to face Mautu, he tried to smile. ‘I have no need to believe in a supreme being, in a god: I don’t need such a crutch!’
‘But you continue to search …’
‘Not for God!”
‘… across all the Earth’s seas and islands …’
‘Not for God!’
‘Why have you searched all these fifty-five years?’
‘Not for God, I tell you!’
‘Then for what, for whom?’
Peleiupu saw Barker’s huge hands as helpless anchors dangling into the emptiness around him, and she wanted to reach out and hold up their immense weight of doubt. She glanced at Poto, who looked immensely sad as she contemplated her husband.
‘As I have said already, the things I can feel and taste and experience, those are enough for me.’
‘If that is enough, then you don’t need to keep asking me … You don’t need anybody, my friend,’ Mautu insisted.
‘That is right,’ Poto said.
It was as though the mellow morning light had solidified around them into a healing hand, and, for a long moment, they said nothing.
‘I don’t know what answers you seek,’ Mautu said. He reached out and touched the back of Barker’s hand. Barker sat down again. Poto put a hand on his bare foot and started caressing it. ‘All I know is you are an English lord who was shipwrecked on a desert island full of sun and sky and mangoes and need nothing else!’
‘Yes, I am the civilised English lord shipwrecked in paradise and have no need of a Christian God, missionaries, other white-skinned lords, or crucifixes!’ He laughed softly and clutched Mautu’s shoulder. ‘I am a pagan in the midst of so much plenty. I am fifty-five years old today and I seek nothing and need nothing!’
‘Perhaps just mangoes?’ Mautu quipped.
‘Yes, perhaps mangoes!’
They laughed and their laughter lost itself in the thick foliage of the mango trees, as Poto and Peleiupu watched them.
‘Our annual church fono is to be held in two weeks’ time,’ Mautu said to Barker. ‘Will you take us again in your fautasi?’
‘Yes, but on one condition.’
‘And what is that?’
‘That you take Pele and Arona with you.’ Barker winked at Peleiupu.
‘You should let her go — she’d love it!’ Poto encouraged.
‘Do you want to go?’ Mautu asked Peleiupu. She nodded. ‘You’d better ask your mother, then.’ She wanted him to ask Lalaga but knew she would have to face her.
‘We’ll leave you and your party at Salua, and I’ll take Pele and Arona into Apia.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Mautu insisted.
‘Don’t you trust your palagi pagan friend to care properly for your children?’
‘It’s not that,’ mumbled Mautu. ‘I don’t like Apia.’
‘Apia, and the whole life that goes with it, is here to stay whether you like it or not. Your children will have to live with it.’ He reached over and ruffled Peleiupu’s hair. ‘And Pele can cope with anything, including Apia! She watches and learns and understands quickly. Don’t you, Pele?’ Peleiupu blushed. ‘She is fortunate.’
Poto smiled at Peleiupu. ‘And you can come and get some money from me before you leave, to spend in all those rich shops in Apia,’ she told her.
Later, as they walked away from Barker’s store, Peleiupu glanced up at the mango trees: the dark green foliage, peppered pink and red with flowers, stirred like slow spring water. She shimmered with joy at the thought of visiting Apia.
‘Do you like Barker?’ Mautu asked. She nodded. ‘Why?’
She pondered and said, ‘He is a very sad man, eh?’
‘Barker is right about you: you do watch and learn and understand.’
They walked in silence the rest of the way.
‘Mautu,’ she pleaded as they walked up the back paepae of their fale, ‘I want to go with Barker to Apia.’
‘All right,’ he whispered. Lalaga was weaving a mat in the centre of their fale. ‘But you had better ask your mother.’ Before she could insist on him doing it, he hurried to his desk at the other end of the fale.
‘How is the papalagi gentleman?’ Lalaga asked her. She had taken to calling Barker that but there was no malice in it.
‘He is well,’ Peleiupu replied formally, thus undermining Lalaga’s line of attack. ‘Let me do it.’ She sat down. Lalaga slid away and let her continue the weaving.
For a while they said nothing and, as Lalaga observed Peleiupu’s deft hands and fingers weaving the mat, like quick spiders, she experienced an upwelling pride in her daughter: at fifteen Peleiupu was already an expert weaver of mats, and highly skilled in other female crafts. Everything came easily to her — too easily, Lalaga often thought. ‘It is a gift from God,’ Mautu had once allayed Lalaga’s fears about Peleiupu. Even her English was now better than Mautu’s. Yet Peleiupu always made herself appear less skilled than other people in order to make them feel more secure in her presence. For this, Lalaga loved her deeply, knowing that Peleiupu would not use her gift, her superior talents, to harm others.
‘What did your father and the papalagi discuss this morning?’ Lalaga asked, expecting Peleiupu, as usual, to see if anyone else was listening, before replying.
Peleiupu looked around the fale, then said, ‘Mautu says it’s going to be a good mango season this year.’
But Lalaga wasn’t going to be deflected that easily. ‘What did the papalagi gentleman and your father, the prophet, talk about?’
‘The usual,’ said Peleiupu. Her hands worked more quickly.
‘And what is the usual?’
‘The search for God.’ Peleiupu’s hands stopped their furious weaving. ‘You believe in God, eh?’ she asked, looking intently at Lalaga.
‘Of course I do!’ Lalaga protested.
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘You thought so!’ Lalaga was now angry and upset.
‘Lalaga, some people don’t believe in God.’
Lalaga was frightened by what she felt she had to ask. ‘Are you one of those people?’
Peleiupu’s hands continued their nimble weaving. Shaking her head and gazing down at what she was doing, she said, ‘Barker doesn’t believe and I think many other papalagi are the same.’
‘I know that,’ sighed Lalaga, but when she noticed the abrupt halt in Peleiupu’s weaving she tensed again.
‘Mautu believes, doesn’t he?’
‘How can you ask such a thing? Your … your father is a servant of God!’
Peleiupu reacted as if she hadn’t noticed Lalaga’s anger, and said, ‘All I meant was that Mautu sometimes doubts.’
‘Doubts what?’ Lalaga insisted.
‘God,’ was all Peleiupu said.
‘Peleiupu!’ Mautu called to her.
‘Get me a drink of water.’
Peleiupu scrambled up and out of the fale, leaving Lalaga gasping for meaning, an answer, like a fish kicking at the end of a line.
Lalaga continued her weaving but Peleiupu’s revelation about Mautu’s doubts kept picking at her.
Peleiupu was soon back with a mug of water for Mautu. Raising the drink to his mouth, Mautu whispered, ‘What are you and you mother arguing about?’
‘Nothing,’ she whispered back. ‘I just told her that you sometimes doubt the existence of God.’ Mautu choked and coughed the water out in a splutter. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she asked. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and, trying to steady his trembling hands, drank the rest of the water slowly.
‘Have you asked her about going to Apia?’ He handed her the empty mug.
She shook her head. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’
‘It’s best that you ask,’ he whispered, avoiding her eyes. Before she could plead he added, ‘Go now. I’ve got a lot of work to do.’ He picked up his pen.
She hesitated for a moment, turned swiftly and hurried out of the fale.
‘We haven’t finished talking!’ Lalaga called her back.
Peleiupu went over and sat down beside her. She was confused by her mother’s unexpected anger and her father’s timidity. Everything was straightforward but adults, especially parents, made things complicated, stupidly unreasonable, she thought. She was only fifteen yet she had to be so patient with their lack of understanding, their slow decision-making, and the eternal complications they made of their lives and everyone else’s. Most of them were so unwise — yes, that was her conclusion.
‘Going to be a good mango season,’ she remarked. She tried to erase her confusion with the thought of fat, succulent mangoes, but couldn’t. Beside her, Lalaga’s presence was a solid rock pillar. She wasn’t going to offer to do any more weaving. ‘Where are Arona and the other children?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lalaga replied. She looked at Peleiupu’s profile and realised that her daughter no longer referred to herself as a child. It wasn’t out of any pretence or arrogance: Peleiupu simply did not think of herself as a child. And, physically, she was quickly blossoming into a woman, tall and supple, who wasn’t going to acquire Mautu’s bulk. She wasn’t self-conscious about this physical transformation either. It was as if, anticipating well beforehand every change in her life, she adjusted to it before it took place.
‘Very hot, eh?’ Peleiupu observed, noticing the beads of sweat slithering down her mother’s arms and face. ‘Where’s everybody gone?’ All the neighbouring fale appeared empty of people.
‘Working in their plantations or fishing, you know that!’
‘Yes,’ sighed Peleiupu, ‘but where are Arona and Ruta and Naomi and the other children of our aiga?’
‘Swimming, probably. Now stop your questions. Here, you weave.’
While Peleiupu worked, Lalaga watched her. When she looked out of the fale and saw that their mango trees beside the road were covered with blossoms she heard herself saying, ‘Yes, it is going to be a rich mango harvest.’
‘Mautu said that this morning.’ Peleiupu paused in her work and, gazing at Lalaga, said, ‘Funny how you can make an important observation the property of everyone by just pointing it out to someone else. Of course it has to be an observation that is important to those other people. Like the other morning, while Arona and I and the other children were in our plantation collecting coconuts, I suddenly heard the silence in all that growth …’
‘Heard it?’
‘Yes, I heard the silence — it was deep and still, a huge, kind presence around us and in us … And when I heard it I told Arona to stand still and listen to it. He did. I told him to shut his eyes. He did. Then I asked him if he was hearing it. He nodded. Then we asked the others in turn to listen. And when we had all had a turn, we closed our eyes together and listened as a group. And we all heard it and allowed it to become part of us.’
‘What did you think that particular silence was?’
‘It was the island itself,’ Peleiupu explained. ‘The silence of these islands. It must have been here when God created our country. And has always been here.’
‘But why is it important?’
‘I don’t know yet how to explain it,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it is important because if we refuse to hear it, or let it be part of us, we will become other creatures … I don’t know. Arona knows better. He doesn’t let his thinking get in the way. He just knows. He lets things become what they are in himself. I can’t explain it.’ She continued weaving. ‘It is bad to think too much, Barker keeps telling Mautu. He is right …’
‘But he does nothing else but chase his thoughts round and round!’ laughed Lalaga. ‘That’s why he can’t believe in anything!’
‘That’s the palagi way, that’s how palagi people are.’
‘And your father?’
Aware that Lalaga had once again led her deftly to a discussion she wanted to avoid, Peleiupu said, ‘May I go for a swim?’ Before Lalaga could pin her down, Peleiupu turned and called, ‘Mautu, may I go for a swim?’
‘All right,’ he replied.
And Peleiupu was out of the fale and running towards the pool.
Lalaga continued to weave her mat, refusing to ask Mautu about his doubts because he was, like Peleiupu, adept at dodging her questions.
It was almost midday and the sun was snared in a smother of thick cloud that seemed to have oozed out of the sky’s belly. Only the soft quick squeaking and scratching of Lalaga’s fingers against the pandanus strands cut at the silence. Occasionally she heard Mautu shift in his wooden chair. Mangoes, she thought inadvertently, and then cursed herself for having thought it. Why did her daughter understand more than she? She had no right to — she was only a child!
On their way home from the pool Peleiupu edged up to Arona and whispered, ‘Do you want to visit Apia?’ Arona looked straight ahead: a brother, at his age, should no longer be seen displaying affection for his sister. ‘Barker and Mautu will take us if we want to go.’
‘Who said?’ Arona asked.
‘Not too loud!’ she whispered. Ruta, Naomi and the others were too busy talking among themselves to hear anyway. ‘Mautu and Lalaga and the elders are attending the church fono at Salua. Do you want to go?’ He nodded once. ‘Lalaga hasn’t said we can, though,’ she added, hoping he would volunteer to persuade her. He said nothing. ‘Did you hear?’ He nodded once. ‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Well what?’
‘We won’t be able to go if Lalaga says no!’
‘You ask her, then,’ was his curt reply. He looked so aloof in the noon sun, with the droplets of water glistening like fish scales in his hair and over his body, that she hesitated from persuading him any further.
‘You’re her favourite,’ she ventured.
‘I’ll ask Lalaga,’ Ruta volunteered.
‘Ask her what?’ Peleiupu snapped.
‘Whatever you want me to!’
‘It is not your concern,’ Arona said firmly, just like their father when he wanted quiet. Ruta shrugged her shoulders and resumed her whispered conversation with her friends.
They noticed that some older girls and boys were gathering in the fale classrooms for their afternoon lessons. Lalaga was still weaving.
‘I’ll ask her,’ Arona said finally, and then walked away.
As usual, after lotu and their evening meal Mautu conducted an English lesson with Lalaga, his children and the brightest Satoa children. (Two years earlier, Lalaga had persuaded him to include the latter in his English class.) During these lessons, whenever Mautu didn’t know the meaning of words or their correct pronunciation, he called on Peleiupu. However, he always checked later with Barker. Sometimes when Mautu couldn’t take the class Peleiupu took it, and, secretly, Lalaga and the others preferred her relaxed, democratic, patient style. Mautu also gave her the students’ written assignments and exercises to mark.
After the lesson that night Peleiupu and the older girls strung up the mosquito nets, and soon all the children were in the nets and falling asleep. Instead of sitting up with her parents, Peleiupu got into the net where she slept with Ruta, Naomi and three other girls, pulled her sheet up to her chin and pretended to be sleeping. Intermittently, however, she would peer through her half-closed eyelids at her parents and Arona, who were playing cards beside the lamp a few paces away, awaiting, with a frantic tension, Lalaga’s decision about their going to Apia.
As if someone had suddenly pulled back a curtain, she was awake. It was bright morning and the other children were outside picking up the fallen leaves. Peleiupu rolled out, untied the net, folded it with her sleeping sheet and placed it on the lowest rafter with the sleeping mats.
Arona and three of his friends were scraping coconuts behind the kitchen fale, to feed the chickens, but because there were no girls with them she couldn’t go and ask him.
At the drums of rainwater under the breadfruit trees she filled a basin, washed her face and combed her hair, all the time keeping an eye on her brother.
As she helped the other girls to cook their morning meal in the kitchen fale, she tried not to think of Lalaga’s decision. When she saw Arona strolling alone through the scatter of banana trees towards the beach she got up and pretended to be going to the lavatory, which was at the edge of the beach behind a thick stand of palm trees.
‘What did she say?’ she called to him. He was standing up to his thighs in the sea, his back to her, washing a coconut strainer he had brought with him. He continued as if he hadn’t heard her. She moved up to the water’s edge. The stench of decaying coral invaded her nostrils. ‘What did Lalaga say?’ she repeated. Raising the strainer with both hands, Arona squeezed it in one long drawn-out action, and the water dribbled through his hands like solid white smoke and splattered into the surface of the sea.
Without looking at her, he walked back towards the beach. ‘She will decide tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ she cried, stamping her right foot into the thickly wet sand. He nodded and started walking past her. ‘But why?’
He had never seen her so agitated before, and he felt an affinity to her, knowing she was capable of losing control of her emotions just like other people. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll let us go,’ he said.
‘She had better!’ Peleiupu snapped.
There was no one else in the main fale as she sat with Arona facing Lalaga, who, she sensed, was avoiding her eyes. In the pit of her belly a ferocious beast was inflating itself, threatening to fill every nook and cranny of her being. She could hardly breathe; sobs were breaking up from her chest like huge bubbles about to burst and she swallowed them down repeatedly.
‘… Arona may come with us,’ Lalaga was saying, ‘but you’ll have to stay and run our classes …’
‘I won’t. No!’ The choking cry broke out of her mouth. She slapped at her knees and was sobbing.
‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’ ordered Lalaga. ‘No child talks to her mother like that!’
‘I want to go!’ Peleiupu cried. She sprang up, fists clenched at her sides, her huge tears dripping down to the mat. ‘I’m going!’
‘I won’t allow any child of mine to talk to me like that! Hear me?’ Lalaga rehitched her ie lavalava. ‘If you don’t watch out, I’ll beat you!’
Peleiupu scuttled across the fale. At the threshold she wheeled, wiped her face fiercely with her hands, and called, ‘I’m going and you can’t stop me!’
‘Get me the broom!’ Lalaga ordered Arona.
Peleiupu jumped down onto the grass and started running across the malae.
‘You wait!’ Lalaga threatened. ‘You wait until I get you tonight!’
They watched Peleiupu disappearing into a stand of bananas and into the plantations. ‘Go and bring her back, now!’ Lalaga ordered Arona, who rose slowly, glanced at her, and started ambling out of the fale. ‘And hurry up!’ she chased him.
For a while Lalaga stood on the front paepae gazing after her children, her whole body quivering with anger. Then, realising that the neighbours were watching her, she retreated to her weaving.
‘I’ll show her,’ she kept repeating. ‘She thinks she knows more than her own mother! Just wait. I’ve spent my life slaving for her. Just wait!’
A short while later, however, when she remembered how determined her daughter was, she visualised Peleiupu in a fragile canoe paddling suicidally across the hungry straits which would inevitably swallow her up. Then, more frightening still, she imagined Peleiupu up in a tree fixing a noose around her neck. She scrambled up and out into the classrooms and instructed the older students to help Arona search for Peleiupu.
The undergrowth was a dense green sea sucking her into its depths as she ran, her feet making plopping, sucking sounds in the muddy track. ‘I’ll show her! I’ll show her!’ Peleiupu repeated. Ahead, the ifi tree was a massive mother, with arms outstretched to welcome her.
She jumped up, clung to the lowest branch, kicked up and then, branch by branch, climbed until she reached a platform of interlocking branches. She lay down there on her back and cried up into the maze of leaves and branches and thin rays of light.
This was ‘her tree’ — her refuge whenever she was troubled. When she had first discovered it five years previously it had intimidated her with its heavy brooding presence: it was like an octopus, she had thought. Its rich, fertile smell of mould had made her think of supernatural beasts. However, one morning after a nasty quarrel with Arona and Lalaga she had found herself up in the ifi’s cool, protective shade and, as she had lain on the platform, the tree’s breathing and aromatic odour had healed her hurt.
Soon after that she had heard Filivai, the Satoa taulasea, say that certain trees, in pre-Christian times, had been the homes of certain aitu and atua. After about fifty years of missionary preaching, aitu had become evil beings to be feared, and there was now only one atua. Her ifi tree had an aitu, she had come to believe after hours of relaxing in its dark green healing. And her tree was part of nature, a spiritual force she kept reading about in English books.
She often wondered which ancient aitu lived in her tree, and in her imagination tried to give it form. She tried her mother, then the taulasea Filivai, then various other women she admired. One day she pictured her tree’s aitu as one of Snow White’s dwarfs; she tried the supernatural beings she had read about in Barker’s books — the Cyclops, the genii, the unicorn. None of them fitted. Then she tried all the animals she knew, and all the fish and other sea creatures. Her patient search led her deeper into the fabulous garden of her imagination. Years later, especially in moments of crisis, she would realise that in her search for her tree’s aitu she had explored and groped her way towards the wisdom of her imagination, to a faith that lay beyond logic and belief.
One overcast afternoon, as she had sat cross-legged on the platform, hands on her knees, her back straight, gazing motionlessly into the green foliage, she had let her thoughts settle into a pool so still a whisper could shatter it. She waited. She thought she was dreaming: she saw herself sitting cross-legged on the platform. She waited. Gradually, almost as if a slow melting were radiating through her pores into all the corners of her being, she inhaled the tangy odour of the moss that covered the bark of her tree, like a cloak. She relaxed, with an ecstatic sigh, and the odour not only filled her but the sky and bush and all the creatures in it. Everything was drunk with it. And she knew that the presence of the moss’s odour was the aitu of her tree, and now it was in her soul.
When she had surfaced from the spell, evening was starting to cover her tree like a silk black garment.
A few days later, when she had begun to doubt her faith in her aitu, she had wandered to Filivai’s home and played a game of lape with Filivai’s grandchildren. Halfway through the boisterous game she had pretended she had taken ill and had gone into Filivai’s fale.
Filivai was using a stone pestle to pound a mixture of leaves and coconut oil. The pungent odour of the potion reminded Peleiupu of her tree’s aitu, as she sat down opposite Filivai, a few paces away. Because she was thought of by the Satoans as Mautu’s very gifted daughter, she was welcomed in all their homes at any time. However, like almost all Satoans she was wary of Filivai, because she was a healer not only of physical ailments but of ma’i aitu. Filivai’s powers, she had heard Satoans whisper, came from the days of the Darkness: she was heir to an evil heritage that the missionaries and pastors had tried to exorcise. But unlike other taulasea Peleiupu had heard about, Filivai was an earnest Christian who only healed ma’i aitu if it was absolutely unavoidable. And before performing such healing she always asked Mautu, her pastor, for permission to do so. Her father, Peleiupu remembered, had never refused Filivai, and she wondered why. Later in her life Peleiupu would observe that her people’s belief in the Christian atua, the Holy Spirit, was only the top third of a pyramid that included, in its three-dimensional body and belly, a feared assembly of savage aitu, sauali’i, sauai and the papalagi-introduced ghosts, vampires, Frankensteins, demons, devils and Satan. Linked to this observation would come the perception that all living creatures were part of a world inhabited by other beings that were visible and invisible, benevolent and destructive.
Now that they were Christians, the Satoans tried not to discuss those other beings within Mautu’s hearing. From what Peleiupu had heard and observed, she knew that many Satoans, especially the elders, sometimes met and talked with some of the spirits of their ancestors, at times suffered the wrath of those spirits, and were sometimes possessed by them. Even her parents, who professed utter faith in reason and the Bible, were not free of the feared menagerie that inhabited the murky depths of the pyramid. To her death Lalaga would deny the existence of the menagerie but Peleiupu knew Lalaga feared its existence. On the other hand, her father, whose ancestors had been taulaaitu, as he read more would come to believe more profoundly and without fear in what he would call ‘that other reality’, in which dwelled the banished spirits of his taulaaitu ancestors and their Atua Fatutapu and all the other presences and spirits. Being a Christian pastor, Mautu would never reveal this to his congregation, but Peleiupu would know and love him more abundantly for it.
‘How is your father?’ Filivai had greeted her that day.
‘He is well, thank you.
‘And your mother?’
‘She is well too, thank you.’
Filivai trickled more coconut oil into the potion and continued pounding it. Peleiupu watched her. Filivai was over sixty, one of the oldest Satoans, but she looked as young as Lalaga. Only the network of wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks and the looseness of her flesh betrayed her age. Her pendulous breasts, blue-veined around the almost black nipples, hung down to her belly and shook in rhythm to her pounding. She wore only a stained ie lavalava and a towel draped over her shoulders.
‘It’s going to be a good mango season,’ Peleiupu heard herself saying and immediately regretted such a stupid remark.
‘If it rains heavily while the mangoes are in flower, there won’t be many mangoes.’
‘Why not?’
‘The rain will break many of the flowers,’ Filivai said. Peleiupu wanted more details but wasn’t going to be impolite. ‘Is it true you read a lot of books?’ Filivai asked.
‘Not as many as my father or Barker,’ she admitted. Then quickly perceiving the opening, added, ‘Do you like Barker?’
‘He’s married to a woman of my aiga,’ Filivai evaded her.
‘He doesn’t go to church or believe in God, eh?’ Peleiupu sensed that Filivai wasn’t surprised by that.
‘You didn’t come to talk about the papalagi, eh?’ Filivai’s unexpected parry surprised Peleiupu who, for a while, didn’t know how to counter. ‘I’ll wipe my hands, then we’ll talk.’ Using her towel, Filivai started wiping her hands clean of the sticky bits of leaves and oil. ‘How many years are you now?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘But your mind is much, much older.’ Filivai smiled. Peleiupu wondered how Filivai had lost her two top middle teeth; there was a thin, white perpendicular scar on her upper lip also. ‘Your brain is much older!’
Flattery always embarrassed Peleiupu, so she said, ‘I must go!’
‘Don’t go,’ Filivai ordered her gently. ‘I am glad you came to talk with me.’
A short while later they were conversing easily.
‘I have a tree,’ Peleiupu said.
‘What kind of tree?’
‘An ifi. I remember you telling my parents that in the olden days some trees had aitu or atua.’ Peleiupu paused. Filivai nodded. ‘My tree has one.’
‘Have you told your parents that?’ Filivai asked, as if Peleiupu’s revelation weren’t unusual. Peleiupu shook her head. ‘You shouldn’t let them know: they are God’s servants and may not understand.’
‘That is why I came to you.’ No reaction from Filivai. ‘The atua in my tree reveals itself to me through the odour of the tree. Is that possible?’ Filivai nodded. ‘It is a kind atua; it heals my pains, always.’
‘It comes easily, doesn’t it?’ Filivai asked. Peleiupu didn’t comprehend. ‘You know, you see without knowing how you do it. It is a great gift,’ she said. ‘From God,’ she added hurriedly. ‘Because of it most people will be frightened of you. Do your parents know about it?’
‘If you mean I have intelligence then my parents know I have it, especially my mother.’
‘Is she happy about it?’
Peleiupu pondered for a tense moment, and then admitted, ‘Don’t think so.’
‘What about your father?’
‘He knows but he is too busy with his books.’
‘I knew a young girl once: she had the gift too,’ Filivai said, more to herself than to Peleiupu.
‘Were people wary of her?’
‘Yes,’ Filivai emphasised. ‘Yes, very frightened when they discovered she could see into the world of atua and aitu and other presences. A world outlawed by the Church …’
‘What happened to her?’
Filivai gazed at the mat in front of her for a moment. Peleiupu thought she could see tears in her eyes. ‘She is alive. She is a simple healer.’
‘And the gift?’
Filivai looked away. ‘I must continue with my work.’
‘I will go now,’ Peleiupu said, rising reluctantly to her feet.
‘You must learn to hide the gift,’ Filivai said as Peleiupu turned to leave. Peleiupu glanced back at her. ‘Don’t ever try to destroy it. Or betray it. It is what you are.’ Filivai refused to look at her.
‘May I come and see you again — if I need to?’
Filivai nodded once. ‘I don’t have the courage and may not be able to help you.’
‘Thank you. I’ll go now.’ Peleiupu made it easy for her.
‘Don’t expect too much from me!’
Peleiupu walked out onto the malae where the scramble of children were still playing lape.
‘Pele’s in our team!’ one of her friends called.
Peleiupu took a long lingering look at Filivai. Peleiupu waved once. Filivai nodded. Peleiupu decided quickly what she had to do to survive, and skipped into the noisy game of lape, laughing and joking, a girl who appeared to be totally absorbed in the game.
The sun was setting. Two of the search groups had returned only to be instructed by Lalaga to continue the search. Mautu was due home from his fishing trip with Barker and Lalaga didn’t want to face his wrath. Some of the old women came and consoled her as they sat on the paepae, gazing hopefully up at the bush and hills and mountain range that darkened, like a fierce tidal wave, as evening dropped. ‘She’s too smart; she thinks she knows everything!’ Lalaga kept saying. ‘She’s rebellious, disobedient, difficult!’ They nodded in sympathy but none believed Peleiupu was like that.
Then Lalaga saw Mautu at the kitchen fale, pulling his bushknife out of the thatching. She hurried towards him.
‘I know already,’ he called to her. She stopped. He marched past her.
She waited until he was at a safe distance, heading for Barker’s home. ‘That’s why she’s like that!’ she called. ‘You always side with her!’
For a while, as the cicadas cried around her, Lalaga wept. Then she wiped away her tears and returned to sit with the other women in the main fale, waiting for Mautu and Barker and the search parties to return.
‘Mautu and Barker told us to come home,’ Arona informed Lalaga and the elders. They had their lotu, the young people served the elders (nearly all the old men and women of Satoa who hadn’t gone on the search) their evening meal, which they ate in silence, with everyone trying not to look at Lalaga, then the young people ate, bathed, got into their nets and fell asleep, exhausted from tracking through the plantations and bush.
Most of the elders tried to stay awake with Lalaga but fell asleep one by one as the night progressed. Beside the centre lamp Lalaga kept her vigil. At times she prayed for forgiveness, asking God to save her daughter, whom she had mistreated. Every time she dared look into the darkness outside, unwelcome images of a dead Peleiupu jumped into her mind and she would shut her eyes and pray more fervently.
The rooster’s crowing unclenched in the centre of her head, it seemed, forcing her out of her sleep. She was still sitting beside the lamp; the elders, wrapped in their sleeping sheets, lay in rows around her; someone was snoring like a boiling kettle. Dawn was spilling out of the east and splashing across the sky. No Mautu. No Peleiupu. She held back the cry. She staggered up, gripped by the most overwhelming sense of helplessness she had ever experienced. Her daughter: how she loved her!
There were people washing themselves at the drums of rainwater beside the kitchen fale. In the half-light she saw Mautu and Barker. Her feet started running, dragging her with them, towards Mautu before she could stop them, and she watched their quick prints melt in the dew-covered ground.
Mautu turned his back slowly, surely, towards her. She stopped. She looked at the other men. They looked away.
Barker stepped in front of her. ‘Peleiupu is all right,’ he said in Samoan. ‘She sleeping with her sisters …’ Lalaga blocked her mouth with her hands, wheeled, and started hurrying back to the main fale. ‘She came back on her own. We found her in the net when we returned this morning,’ Barker called.
She was ripping up the side of the mosquito net and reaching down at Peleiupu. ‘Don’t you touch my daughter!’ Mautu’s command stopped her. No one moved. Not a sound. As though Mautu’s order had stilled everything. She again tried to push her outstretched hands down towards the sleeping Peleiupu. ‘Don’t!’ Mautu’s threat was final. ‘Let her sleep!’
Lalaga stumbled past him towards the beach.
Mautu got a towel and, with Barker and the other men, headed for the pool. Once they were out of sight, the elders and their children dispersed quietly to their homes, unwilling to face their pastor’s anger.
Ruta, Naomi and the other children (who stayed, during the week, at the pastor’s home) made little noise as they put away the mosquito nets and sleeping mats and then went to the kitchen fale, leaving the spacious main fale to Peleiupu. She was sleeping peacefully in the large net that was shivering, like a live white creature, in the breeze.
No one, not even Arona, would dare mention anything to Peleiupu about her rebellion. Not ever. They all sensed that Mautu wanted it that way.
They also assumed, without asking Mautu or Lalaga, that Peleiupu and Arona were accompanying the elders and Barker to the Salua fono and Apia.
But from that morning on, they noticed that whenever Peleiupu needed to be chastised or disciplined — a rare occurrence — Lalaga left it to Mautu. ‘After all, she is his daughter!’ Lalaga told the Satoans.