TEN
LEEWARD ISLANDS
I AM SITTING WITH my new Tahitian friend Armand in the middle of Topatii. Topatii must be the smallest of all of the Leeward Islands of French Polynesia. No bigger than a tennis court, no higher than a wine bottle above sea level, and covered with ironwood trees, it lies in the middle of the largest passage in the reef on the eastern coast of Huahine. All around it, deep turbulent water streams through the breach from the Pacific Ocean, driven by a hot strong trade wind.
Armand and I have come out to the tiny motu in his outrigger to snorkel, but the wind is too strong, so we’re sitting on the powdery white sand under the ironwood trees, talking. Armand is about twenty-five, solidly built but not fat. He has a mop of thick black hair, a flattened nose, a silver ring through one earlobe and wraparound sunglasses which are usually shoved up on his forehead. Intricate traditional tattooes adorn his wrists. He could be Maori, from Rotorua, or Kaitaia, but he is a Huahinian and a descendant, he assures me, of Omai, the young Raiatean who was taken to England by Cook’s 1774 expedition. On the wall of the hotel where I’m staying, and where Armand works, there’s a huge mural of Omai, standing proud in traditional costume.
Armand speaks Tahitian, French and English with equal facility. ‘Tell me something,’ he says, very serious all of a sudden. ‘I have heard that in New Zealand you drive on the wrong side of the road. Is that true?’
‘We drive on the left, yes.’
Frowning, Armand draws a highway in the coral sand with his hand, a median strip with his finger. ‘You drive –’ he makes an arrow on the left – ‘on this side?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about the car steering wheel? That is on the left too?’
‘No, the steering wheel is on the right.’
‘Ay-yay-yay! On the right?’
‘Right.’
Armand is even more perplexed now. ‘Why do you drive on that side?’ he asks.
‘I suppose because we were settled by the British, and they drive on the left.’
‘So … you must change gears with your left hand?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the cars have to be specially made like that?’
‘Well, yes, but they’re mostly made in Japan, and the Japanese drive on the left too.’
‘They do too?’
‘I’m afraid so. And the Australians, and the Indians. But nearly everyone else in the world drives on the same side as you.’
Armand nods, seemingly satisfied. He gets to his feet and brushes the sand from his blue pareo. ‘Okay, we go to Faie village now.’
Ten minutes later he guides the big outrigger into the still water of the Faie inlet. This notch in Huahine’s eastern side is surrounded by hills, with stands of coconut palms at sea level and, above them, delicately fronded, flat-topped acacia trees. Small clearings on the hillsides are planted with grey, spiky pineapple plants. Amid the luxuriant greenery, they look like sea urchins in a rock pool.
At the head of the inlet Armand ties up to a jetty beside a cluster of other outriggers. As we get out he picks up a bucket from the canoe; in it is the meaty blue-black head of a large tuna.
Faie, three minutes’ walk away, consists of one street of houses, a couple of stores and a new Adventist church. Large mango, breadfruit and citrus trees line the little street. Towering above them, ramparts of volcanic rock, hundreds of metres high, enfold the village. They are covered in dark green bush, and are so high that only a sliver of sky is visible.
Today is Sunday but, being Adventists, the people of Faie village carried out their devotions yesterday, so the shops are open. Children are playing marbles in the dusty street and men are playing petanque alongside them. They greet Armand enthusiastically in Tahitian, joke and laugh as he passes. The difference between the French and Tahitian tongues is marked, and most obvious when Tahitians get together. The latter is guttural, clipped and vowel rich, and comments are inevitably followed by a burst of high-pitched laughter. Tahitians seem to find almost everything a joke.
A small stream channelled by low concrete walls cuts right across the village street. Armand gets down into the stream just below a bridge. The water is very clear and shallow, coming to just above his ankles, and the bed is covered with small round stones. The roots of a huge mango tree have grown down from the concrete wall into the water. I stand on the bank and watch Armand hold the tuna head under the water beside the tree roots and waft it gently to and fro in the slow current. A couple of village men sit on top of the concrete wall on the other side of the stream, smoking and staring down at a sight they must have witnessed many times. A few children, most holding cans of Pepsi, stand behind them, giggling.
Within a minute the first head appears, emerging tentatively from the shadows beneath the tree roots. Then another appears, and a third and a fourth, a row of waving heads and watchful eyes. Then they emerge fully, their sinuous bodies waving gently in the current. There are about a dozen of them. Giant eels. They converge on the tuna head, the smaller ones being shoved aside by a couple of massive ones whose bodies, as thick as a man’s thigh, twist and turn as they gorge on the pink fish meat.
Eeling was a popular pastime of mine when I was a boy. There was something mysterious – even sinister – about the ebony-hued creatures which dwelt in the dark recesses of rivers and lakes in my neighbourhood. Catching them was like hunting, but we never contemplated eating them: they were too repulsive. These Faie eels are dappled, not black like New Zealand eels, but their eyes are just as scary – the same repellent pale blue. There are so many of them tearing at the hapless tuna head that it resembles Medusa with the serpents. Armand tells me that the eels are sacred to the villagers of Faie, as one of their ancestors is believed to have been an eel himself. They feed their eels the offcuts of the fish they catch in the lagoon, and never harm them.
When Armand gouges out the tuna’s eyes and tosses them into the water, the eels go into a frenzy. The largest, a monster a couple of metres long, pushes the rest away, swallows an eyeball, then slides backward into his lair, his watchful head still protruding. I think how easy it would be to spear him.
Armand sees me staring, and laughs. ‘You want to hold him? He won’t mind.’
He scoops up another one, only a fraction smaller, and strokes its side as if it were a cat. ‘Like this, see?’
‘Not today, thanks.’
Later we sit under a tree in the village with a shopkeeper and his wife, drinking Pepsi and eating warm butter cake flavoured with locally grown vanilla. The shopkeeper wears only a yellow pareu, and his big belly is brown and perfectly round. Armand tells him something in Tahitian and the other man’s eyes grow huge with disbelief. Looking at me incredulously, he exhales and says, ‘Aaaaaeeee …’
‘What did you say?’ I ask Armand.
He swallows some cake. ‘I told him that in your country the cars go on the wrong side of the road.’ It is honeymoon season in the South Pacific. Couples come from the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan and Italy, but mainly from Italy. Tahiti and its surrounding islands are especially popular with young Italians, and they and the other honeymooners make up most of the guests at my hotel in Huahine. The other group are geriatric French couples, so that surrounding me are either the young and the beautiful or the elderly and the decrepit, with only me in the middle.
It’s interesting to sit and study the honeymooners. They are like a separate species, something from a David Attenborough documentary, as they carry out their post-courtship rituals. They change outfits several times a day, depending on whether they’re strolling beside the lagoon, lounging by the pool, having lunch or having dinner. And although they do a lot of public touching and eye-gazing, you can tell that, for some of them, things are not quite as idyllic as the pre-wedding publicity led them to believe. The new husbands often look distracted, the new wives have an edge of anxiety.
One couple catches everyone’s attention because they are so physically striking. He is American, about twenty-four, tall, with dark, fashionably cut short hair, a Roman nose and clear green eyes. He walks about the hotel with the confidence and command of a young courtroom lawyer on the way up. She is tall too, and fair, her long blonde hair tumbling down over her shoulders. Her face is not as beautiful as his, but her figure compensates. She has the long, perfect legs and the erect carriage of the catwalk. From her deportment and constant change of clothes, she can be nothing but a Californian model. Both are bronzed, and neither will need cosmetic surgery for at least five years. I come to think of them as Lance and Carol.
Lance and Carol have what is called an ‘overwater bungalow’, a unit connected to the rest of the resort by a narrow wooden bridge. Many times a day Carol walks over the bridge, bearing coffee, fruit juice, beer and cocktails on a tray from the bar. The recipient of all these fluids, Lance, emerges from the bungalow mainly for meals, dressed in designer jeans, boat shoes, and a floral shirt open to the navel to reveal his hairless chest and glittering gold chain. Carol hangs on his arm, and as they pass the bar and the mural of Omai on their way to the dining room, for the benefit of the other guests – and in particular the elderly ones – she nuzzles Lance’s neck and slides her long fingers over his tight buttocks.
I thought I was the only one to notice these performances until I met Mario and Gina, from Italy, who joined me on a trip around Huahine in Armand’s outrigger. They are honeymooners too. Mario is small and athletic; Gina is tall and powerfully built. He is a telecommunications technician and a soccer player; she is a physiotherapist and a top softballer. Gina, Amazonian in her bikini, swims a lot; Mario, swift and nimble, plays football on the beach with the Tahitian guys who work at the hotel. They all want Mario, whom they call Ronaldo, on their side.
The difference between Lance and Carol and Mario and Gina is marked. The Italians are perfectly natural – they don’t act out honeymoon roles. But you can tell they are a well-matched pair who enjoy each other’s company. I suspect they’ve probably lived together for some time.
Mario, Gina and I are sitting at the bar talking rugby – the presence of John Kirwan as coach of the Italian side, Kirwan’s Italian family and his team’s modest performance at the World Cup have popularised rugby in sports-crazed Italy – when Gina nudges Mario: ‘Look, therra she goes again …’
It is Carol, striding through the hotel lounge bearing a tray holding two garish cocktails with straws sticking out of the tall glasses. Other heads turn at the sight of her long, slim legs, tiny shorts and golden hair. The eyes of three elderly Frenchmen sitting by the bar grow bulbous as they track her movements. Carol walks majestically across the bridge, then disappears into the bungalow.
Gina laughs. ‘I theenk she does thees all day, working for heem.’
‘It’s what they call room service,’ I suggest. ‘Usually it’s the hotel staff who provide it, though.’
‘I wonder,’ muses Mario, ‘for how long she will do thees.’
‘Never once have I seen heem take her anytheeng,’ adds Gina. ‘I think he ees very … uh …’ She gropes for the right word.
‘Spoilt?’
‘Si, spoilt. He is very spoilt.’
They go off to see the eels being fed and I go off to borrow a bike to ride around the island to Fare. Cycling is my favourite way to enjoy a tropical island. You go fast enough to cover the ground but slow enough to absorb the sights and scents. I pedal through Maeva village, past the store, church, volleyball court and newish museum – Huahine’s lagoon, Lac Fauna Nui, is an enormously important archaeological site – and along the narrow plain that lies at the foot of the pyramid-shaped mountain, Maua Tapu.
The plain is a tangle of banana and coconut palms, bougainvillea, frangipani, breadfruit trees and a smothering creeper called pohue. Every few hundred metres there is a house set among the foliage, with an outrigger tied up on the shore of the lagoon. Interspersed with the rampant vegetation there are small plots of vanilla plants; roadside stalls sell packets of the fragrant orchid pod, along with mangoes, pineapples and bananas. It’s hot and there is a soft head wind, but the going is flat and easy. In forty minutes I’m in Fare.
Both Captain Cook and Bligh of the Bounty knew Fare’s sheltered bay well. It afforded them deep anchorage, and its level, fertile hinterland provided much-needed food crops. But Cook’s relationship with Fare and Huahine was much more personal than Bligh’s. It seems that Cook came to regard Omai almost as a foster son. Returning from England with him in 1777, Cook left him here, in a substantial house filled with provisions, including arms and ammunition. Omai’s worldliness and European possessions, especially his firearms, made him a popular figure. He died of a fever several years after Cook’s departure.
Today Fare is an attractive waterfront town with many trees in its main street and a long line of two-storey shops, cafes and pensions. There is a supermarket and a yacht club beside the marina, and children dive from the concrete wharf into the harbour’s deep, beautifully clear water. I park my bike against a tree and watch the activities. Trucks filled with plantation produce are backed up on the wharf and crowds of people of all ages are sitting about, leaning against their vehicles. Staring out to sea, I recognise the reason for the bustle and crowds. Out in the bay, heading for the passage, is a small orange cargo ship.
The Taporo IV plies the waters between Tahiti, Raiatea, Bora Bora and Huahine, carrying cargo and deck passengers. I watch her swing with surprising speed against the wharf. Everything turns to organised chaos: mooring lines are tossed ashore and, even before they’re made secure, a gangway is down, passengers are descending and cranes are swinging into action. A cargo door crashes open, a ramp is hastily lowered, and a new model Renault drives down it and speeds away. A container is connected to cables and hauled on deck; jandal-wearing Tahitian passengers clutching bags and rolled-up sleeping mats climb aboard; and in only about twenty minutes Taporo IV is on her way again, bound for neighbouring Raiatea.
Before the airlines came and runways were built beside the lagoons, all South Pacific travel must have been like this. Almost every year another island gets a much-needed runway and regular air connection with Tahiti. As I pick up my bike and ride away from the wharf, I can’t help feeling some regret that the days of scheduled inter-island passenger transport by sea are passing into history. It’s hard to get romantic over a squat inter-island plane called an ATR 42. Islands are meant to be approached by sea.
My short flight to Raiatea leaves early next morning. Before dawn I sit in the hotel lobby waiting for my transfer to Huahine’s airport. There was a young, heavily pregnant Tahitian woman behind the desk in the lobby when I arrived, but she went outside a couple of minutes ago and now I’m sitting alone in the semi-darkness, staring at the high, woven pandanus ceiling, the shell chandelier and another mural of Omai.
Suddenly a man bursts in through the entrance and looks about wildly. It is Lance. He is chainless, shoeless and wearing only red shorts,. He is unshaven and his hair is unbrushed. Seeing me, he demands, ‘You speak English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there anyone official here?’
‘There was a woman here a minute ago, but she went outside.’
At that moment, the woman reappears in the hotel entrance. Lance turns to her and asks urgently, ‘Have you got any medicine?’
She points to a closed door. ‘Medicine in there. But it is locked. Not open till seven.’
Lance simulates strangulation, clicks his tongue, stares about apoplectically, swallows to try and gain self-control. Then, inhaling deeply, he fixes the woman with his gaze and says, slowly but still breathlessly, ‘I need toilet paper, lots and lots of toilet paper. And I need water. Lots and lots of fresh water. Toilet paper and water, you understand?’
The woman frowns, nods nervously. ‘In the toilet, there is paper.’ She points across the lobby to another door. ‘In there. I will get you water from the kitchen.’
Lance nods. His tanned, usually handsome face is ashen, his hands are trembling. He sprints over to the toilet to gather up paper. The woman slips off in the direction of the hotel kitchen. Outside, in the growing light, the airport van draws up. I pick up my suitcase. Time to go.