Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [86]
“Ah,” I said. “I know that many Pacific Islanders used fish bones as tools.”
He gazed attentively, no doubt amazed by my knowledge.
“The I-Kiribati, for instance,” I went on, “used fish bones for hooks and shark teeth for swords. They even put blowfish on their heads, using them like helmets.”
“Well,” he said, studying the relic. “It is calcified. You should take your find to the park ranger.”
My thoughts exactly. I trudged on through a more wooded area. There was a cacophony of noise, like a thousand rattling rattlesnakes. Were the gods displeased?
When I arrived at the ranger station, I showed the relic to the Fijian woman there. She seemed amused.
“Is the ranger in?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He’s in Suva.”
Excellent, I thought. I was headed back to Suva the following day. “Do you think I might be able to bring this to him in Suva?”
“You want to bring this to the park ranger in Suva?”
“Yes, if it’s not too much trouble. I understand, though, if you want to keep it here.”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “You may take it to Suva.”
She wrote down the appropriate address. It seemed a trifle irresponsible to let a stranger wander off with what might very well be an important discovery illuminating the history of the ancient Fijians. Nevertheless, I happily drove off with my artifact.
I found Sylvia sitting by the pool at the Fijian, chatting amicably with the Australian woman who had recommended rigorous napping for the last weeks of pregnancy. “This is Beth,” Sylvia said, introducing us.
“Look what I found,” I said, showing them my discovery. “I’m taking it to the park ranger in Suva.”
“You’re bringing a cuttlefish bone to the park ranger?” Beth asked, looking at me rather oddly. How is it, I wondered, that everyone around here seems to know what a cuttlefish is?
“Well,” I said, “I think it might be very old. And did you look at the sharp edges? It looks like a tool to me.”
“We give them to budgies to gnaw on.”
“Budgies?”
“It’s a pet bird. They love chewing on cuttlebones.”
“But…how would this cuttlebone find its way over a hundred-foot sand dune?” I asked.
“They’re very light,” Beth said. “The wind probably blew it. Why don’t you smell it?”
To my dismay, it smelled like dead fish.
ONE MORNING, WHILE I WAS BROWSING THROUGH THE bookstore at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, I came across a book called Misconceptions, by the writer Naomi Wolf. There had once been a bookstore in Nuku’alofa, the capital of Tonga, but it had burned down, leaving the USP bookstore as the last remaining outpost of literature in the South Pacific. Very often, a shop in Fiji would decide to call itself a bookstore, but invariably it sold little more than stationery. As the sole proprietor of books in Oceania, the USP bookshop had a remarkably small selection, a fact that caused me no great loss of sleep. I do not respond well to too much choice, and very often in the U.S., whenever I set foot inside a book emporium containing thousands of titles, I’d leave empty-handed, confounded by options. Choice was not a problem in Suva, however, and presented with so little to choose from, I bought whatever caught my eye. Misconceptions was about the author’s experiences with motherhood. Well, isn’t that something, I thought. Sylvia was on the cusp of motherhood, and so I purchased the book, thinking that she might like to read a little about what awaited her.
At home, I dipped into the book, idly scanning its pages. And then I began to read it more thoroughly. Apparently, motherhood wasn’t so wonderful. Indeed, motherhood sounded grim and awful, a curse borne by women.
“Where’s that book you got?” Sylvia asked.
“Uh…I don’t know,” I lied.
In truth, I had hidden the book in the deepest recesses of a closet. This was no time for negativity. I had no idea what having a baby entailed. Indeed, the very idea of having a child still seemed a little amorphous to me. I did, of course, realize that something was afoot. Despite evidence to the contrary, I knew that Sylvia hadn’t swallowed a basketball. But still, the knowledge that