Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [82]
“Do you have a sock?” James asked. James was a Ni-Vanuatu carpenter I had befriended over a kava bowl at the home of a mutual acquaintance.
“A sock?”
“For the kava.”
“Ah…of course.”
I had remained loyal to the kava from Vanuatu, and it wasn’t long after we arrived in Fiji that I found the stall in the covered market that sold it. James respected my sophisticated palate, and now and then we had a sock or two of kava together. Soon we were all gathered around the kava bowl, men and women of disparate cultures sitting on woven mats on a balcony overlooking the island where George Speight was imprisoned, and as the sky reddened with the sun’s descent, I knew that at least here, on a hillside in Suva, peace and harmony reigned.
ONE OF THE GREAT ADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN FIJI, OF course, was living in Fiji. Suva, with its pervasive sense of doom and gloom, was technically in Fiji, but now and then, whenever events warranted, we had a hankering for the Other Fiji, the one George Clooney visited. Though still a rare sight in Suva, tourists had begun to return to the islands. For the visitors lounging around the resort pools, the coup was something the hotel employees whispered about as they fetched another round of daiquiris. As they admired the ocean vista from a verandah, local politics, no doubt, was the furthest thing from their minds. This was paradise, after all. And I understood. We too enjoyed the vista, even in Suva. From our house, we had a view of Nukulau Island, a picturesque islet that had once been the Suva equivalent of Central Park in New York, an outlet for urban steam. It was a picnic island, a place where the inhabitants of Suva took their families for an afternoon of swimming and frolicking. Regrettably, the island had now been transformed into a prison for George Speight and his fellow conspirators.
Though we couldn’t escape this reminder of recent events, we appreciated the view nevertheless. Most mornings, I settled myself on the balcony with my laptop, and as my eyes passed over the slums below and the navy patrol boat ferrying supplies to the prisoners, I’d recall our lives in Kiribati. I had found a publisher for my book, which was very exciting. “See,” I had told Sylvia, “I can earn a living.” More important, I now had an answer for my offspring. We had intuited correctly: a sonogram had revealed that Sylvia was carrying a boy. Years from now, I envisioned him asking, “I know Mom was working when I was born, but what did you do?” I had been worried that I’d have nothing more to say than a mumbled “writing” as I set off for my job manning the deep fryer. I might still be destined for the deep fryer, I thought, but at least I’d have a book to show the little one, though it occurred to me, as I finished a chapter on the mating habits of dogs in Kiribati, that I might not let him read it until he turned eighteen.
One morning, as we brought our coffee to the balcony we sensed that something was amiss. The view had been strangely altered. We felt somehow higher. It had rained throughout the night, but now the sun shone brightly. There was clarity, too much clarity. Everything seemed so much more open. Hey, I thought, there used to be a tree there. Peering over the edge of the balcony, we gasped and instinctively retreated back into the house. While we had slept, our backyard had disappeared. All of it. Where once there had been a gentle hillside planted with banana trees, coconut trees, and cassava, now there was air.
“Are we safe here?” Sylvia asked.
I had no idea. We had heard nothing, felt nothing. I cautiously returned to the balcony. While just the day before it had been a mere ten-foot drop to the ground below, we were now perched above a fifty-foot chasm. Looking down, I was suddenly horrified to see where the tons of mud and debris had fallen. Below us lived