Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [17]
“Excellent,” I said. “Je parle français très bon.”
As a child in Canada I had attended a bilingual school, which would have been very useful if I had remained in Canada, but I didn’t, and ever since then I had been wondering when exactly my French skills, which I thought considerable, would ever be brought to use. Sylvia, however, who had lived in France, wasn’t quite as confident in my French as I was, and after watching me struggle to find the exact bons mots to describe our predicament, she proceeded to engage the driver with an animated summation of our woes. As I listened I was willing to concede that her French was a little more très bon than mine, but what I found more remarkable was the fluency of the truck driver. We could not possibly be farther from France than we were in Vanuatu, and yet here was an indigenous islander speaking French with the refinement of a Parisian. I am never surprised anymore when I hear someone speak English. It is, these days, everyone’s second language. But when I hear an Indonesian speak Dutch or a Mozambican utter Portuguese or a Ni-Vanuatu truck driver holding forth in French, I am always astonished at the reach and sweep of colonialism. This thought was further impressed upon me by the sight of several Melanesian women descending from the truck bed wearing the sort of frocks typically worn by Amish women in Pennsylvania. The colonists themselves, of course, had moved on to string bikinis and Speedos, but on Efate the islanders retained the stern modesty imposed by missionaries a century ago. I resolved that if ever we did go skinny-dipping again, we should do so only on a kastom island, where the Ni-Vanuatu had greeted the missionaries’ austere dictates by eating them.
“He’s got a chain,” Sylvia said with undisguised glee a few minutes later. “He can tow us out.”
“Pas de problème,” the bearded man said.
I nearly kissed him, in the French way, but he wisely moved on, leaving us to mingle with his curious passengers. They were Catholics returning from a church service in the next village. I apologized for delaying their return home with our troubles, but they didn’t seem to mind, though one effervescent young woman gently noted that one must be careful when driving on the road. I wanted to point out that in my country we wouldn’t call this a road. We would call it mud and leave it at that. But it seemed impolite, and the conversation moved on to the only topic that mattered in the Pacific: How many children did we have? When we explained that we didn’t have any, a heavy gloom descended, and sensing the sadness and woe—in the Pacific, there is no greater tragedy than a childless couple—we hastened to add that we hoped to start a family very soon, possibly here in Vanuatu. This lifted everyone’s spirits, but the pity they felt for us was palpable.
By this time, the men had attached a chain connecting the two vehicles, and I left Sylvia to be soothed and comforted by the women while I sought to somehow make myself useful. This was difficult, since I have no particular aptitude for the mechanical realm. When I hear words such as transmission or carburetor, my brain immediately shuts down, as if it were encased behind thick steel trapdoors, where it sits idly protecting itself from any knowledge pertaining to cars. I shifted around, gave a thoughtful tug at the chain, nodded in satisfaction, furrowed my brow in concentration, and otherwise pretended to have vast amounts of experience pulling SUVs out of the mud. The truck driver started his engine, which began emitting powerful vroom-vrooms, and he leaned out the window, watching me with a cryptic expression.
“Nous sommes près, monsieur,” he said.
Great, I thought. Right. Well. Carry on, if you please. I crossed my arms and beheld the scene with what I hoped was the detached professionalism of a tow-truck driver. Any moment now, the SUV would leap forth from the mire. Yes, any moment now…but the driver was still studying me with anticipation.
I should be doing something, I knew, but what? I tried to think logically. The big truck