Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [74]
The capital of Fiji is not the sort of city that goes out of its way to make a good first impression. WELCOME TO SUVA said the sign beside an enormous mountain of garbage, a heaving mound of trash that emptied into Suva Harbor. This would be the town dump. Well, it can only get better from here, you think. A moment later we slowed for a road-improvement project that passed through a flooded cemetery. Construction crews were busy widening the road. I suppose the plan was to just pretend that there weren’t any dead bodies. A road grader would smooth dirt until a grave got in the way. Then the road would be graded again from the other side. A moment later, the bus brought us alongside what seemed like a caricature of the grimmest prison you could imagine. Think of where the pasha of Yemen in the thirteenth century would throw those who displeased him, and you might be able to envision Suva Prison, a foreboding, ancient, thick-walled edifice from which you could almost hear the howls of prisoners chained to the walls.
Suva, clearly, was not the South Pacific found in brochures. I made my way to the Peninsula Hotel and was surprised to find that I had checked into what appeared to be, in almost every detail, my college dorm room in Boston. It had the same institutional white cinder-block walls, the same neutral furniture bolted into the floor, and I half-expected to find a keg hidden in the shower. Darkness had descended, and I started down the hill toward town, hoping to find the Hare Krishna Restaurant I had patronized on my visit three years earlier. Walking, I discovered that Fijian towns all seemed to have one thing in common. Typically, on islands in the South Pacific, women tended to give me a curious glance, as they might a straying goat, and then return to their activities. In Suva, however, as in Nadi, I couldn’t walk five yards without a woman offering a pssst here and a pssst there, all promising something carnal and illicit. Walking past a bus stop where a dozen Fijian girls idled, I felt like a rock star. Girls threw their bodies at me. Possibly they thought I was immensely good looking. Or possibly not. I did discover, however, that if you want to make prostitutes laugh, just mention that you’re declining their very generous offer on the grounds that you’re married.
After satisfying a hankering for Samosas, I strolled along Victoria Parade. Here at last were a goodly number of bars. Fiji, alas, did not have nakamals. Choosing at random, I walked into a bar calling itself Signals. It was loud and dark, and I stumbled toward the bar, sensing people around me but not really seeing them. It was only after a bottle of Fiji Bitter had been set down before me that my eyes began to grow accustomed to the lack of light. I looked at the booths, scanned the dance floor, glanced at the other patrons loitering at the bar, and came to the inescapable conclusion that I was presently in a Chinese brothel.
“WHERE YOU FROM?” asked an Asian woman, yelling above the throbbing music as she settled onto the stool next to mine.
“VANUATU,” I said, to be difficult.
“WHERE?”
“VANUATU.”
“WHERE’S THAT?”
“NEXT TO FIJI.”
I strummed my fingers on the bar. All the women in the bar were Asian, as were most of the men. I guessed they were Chinese fishermen. They had an air of hard living about them.
“YOU WANT TO DANCE?”
A potbellied Westerner was on the dance