Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [90]
We had come to believe that nothing was more revered in Fiji than a baby. I had begun to refer to him as our little ratu, or chief, and when, one evening, we were invited to attend a party at the neighbor’s house, I looked forward to introducing our ratu to the other ratus who gathered there each evening to drink kava. In Fiji, kava is pounded, rather than ground, as it is in Vanuatu, and in the afternoons, throughout Suva, the air carried the clang-clang of kava being prepared. That night, while the kava was being pounded, a fleet of high-end SUVs arrived at the neighbor’s house to deposit some of Fiji’s highest-ranking chiefs. Our neighbor was a commoner, but as the owner of the country’s largest shipping company, he was wealthy and clearly well connected.
With Lukas in my arms, I ambled next door.
“Come,” said our jovial neighbor. “The ladies are inside. And the boys are over there, watching the game.” He gestured to what appeared to be a shed. “I’ll introduce you to the boys, and you can have a few shells.”
Social occasions in Fiji, we found, often had a time-warp feel to them. The 1960s had never happened here; the men would gather around the kava bowl, and women were expected to cluster among themselves and talk about whatever it is that women talk about—casserole recipes, presumably.
“Do you want me to take the baby?” Sylvia asked.
“No, it’s all right. I’ll take him to meet the boys.”
Inside the shed, the chiefs were gathered around a television. A rugby game was on. New Zealand versus Australia.
“A shell?” offered a rotund man in a formal sulu.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the proffered kava. Lukas immediately reached for it. “Not until you’re at least two years old.”
“This is Ratu V,” said my neighbor. “And that is Ratu I, and Ratu S, and Ratu T, and, of course, Ratu L.”
A lot of ratus. I recognized a few of them. They were ministers in the caretaker government. I had, apparently, stumbled across the proverbial backroom. There was a lot of power in this room. If I were a Fijian commoner, I would have been trembling. One wrong word, an inopportune gesture, and I could shame my family’s name forever. But I wasn’t a Fijian commoner. I was just a regular commoner.
“Nice to meet you. And this is Lukas,” I said, raising the baby. He warbled and drooled his acknowledgments. “He’s my ratu.”
Silence. Cold, hard glares. The chiefs regarded me with undisguised hostility. Lukas drooled some more.
I had apparently made a faux pas. I hadn’t meant to cause offense. Come on, guys, I thought, it was just a little joke. Lighten up. But they didn’t lighten up. No doubt, if this had happened in the past, they’d be sharpening their cannibal forks. Instead, they turned their attention back to the game. The ratus had homes in Australia and New Zealand, and they followed the game with interest. The kava was generously dished out. But not to me.
Well, I thought as I slipped back outside with Lukas. It was true what I said. “You are my chief,” I said to him.
He grunted magnanimously.
When I told Anna about the encounter, she laughed mirthfully.
“Ratu Lukas,” she chuckled, taking the baby. “I do not think you will be drinking kava with the ratus again.”
ONE MORNING, I FOUND MYSELF IN THE OFFICES OF Consort Shipping. Our house had become a temporary refuge for Sylvia’s colleagues from around the Pacific. FSPI was holding its annual meeting in Suva, and for a week or so we found ourselves surrounded by people we had known since we first arrived in the South Pacific years ago. Work and family life blended easily on the islands, and it was heartening to watch the country director of FSP Kiribati give us news about our old dogs on Tarawa—still alive!—while Lukas dozed contentedly in her arms. Since our house was spilling over with people, and the little ratu’s feet rarely touched the ground as he was passed around like a giggly talisman, I thought I’d spend