Hawaii - James Michener [514]
Overcome by his vision of past and future, he desired to revel in the accidental now, and reached out from the shaded area where she had placed him, trying to catch her leg again, but she deftly evaded him and went to a pit where yams and taro had been baking, and she now proceeded to break the latter into small purplish pieces, rich in starch, while the yams she held in her hands for a moment, showing them to her lover. "These are what our sailors call the Little Eyes of Heaven," she laughed, pointing to the eyes of the yam, which clustered like the constellation whose rising in the east heralds the Polynesian New Year.
Finally, Tehani chopped the onions and then mixed all the vegetables in with the thick, rich coconut milk, and after she had washed her hands in the lagoon, she came back and sat cross-legged before Hale, her sarong pulled far up to expose soft brown thighs, and her breasts free in the sunlight. "It's a game we play," she explained, and with him in the shadows and she in the sunlight, she started slapping his shoulders, and as she hummed her coconut song, she indicated that he was to slap hers, and in this way she passed from his shoulders to his forearms, to his flanks, to his hips and finally to his thighs, and as the game grew more intense the slaps grew gentler and her song slower, until with a culminating gesture that started out to be a slap but which ended as an embrace, Hale caught her sarong and started pulling it away, but she cried softly in her own language, "Not in the sunlight, Hale-tane," and he understood, and swept her up in his arms and carried her into the grass house, where the game reached its intended conclusion.
Toward noon she asked him in French, "Do you like the way we make our poisson cru in Bora Bora?" And she brought in the fish, well saturated in sun and lime juice, and Hale saw that the tuna was no longer red but an inviting gray-white. Into it she mixed the prepared coconut milk with its burden of taro and onions and yams. Next she tossed in a few shellfish for flavor, and over the whole she sprinkled the freshly grated, juicy coconut. With her bare right hand she stirred the ingredients and finally offered her guest three fingers full of Bora Bora raw fish.
"This is how we feed our men on this island," she teased. "Can your girls do as well?" When Hale laughed, she pushed the dripping fish into his mouth and chuckled when the white milk ran down his chin and across his naked chest. "You are so sloppy!" she chided. "But you are such an adorable man, Hale-tane. You can laugh. You are tender. You dance like an angel. And you are strong in bed. You are a man any girl could love. Tell me," she begged, "do your girls at home love you?"
"Yes," he said truthfully, "they do."
"Do they sometimes play games like the slapping game with you, and then chase you around the house just for the fun of being with you?"
"No," he replied.
"I am sorry, Hale-tane," she said. "The years go by very fast and soon . . ." She pointed to an old woman searching for shellfish along the shore: "Then we play no more games." It was with the sadness of the world turning in space, or of the universe drifting madly through the darkness, that she said these words in island French: "Et bientot c'est tout fini et nous ne jouons plus."
"Is that why your father builds you a house of your own when, you're fifteen?" Hale asked. "So you can learn the proper games?"
"Yes," she explained. "No sensible man would want to marry me unless he knew that I understood how to make love properly. Men are happiest when a girl has proved she can have a baby, and do you know what I hope, Hale-tane? I hope that when you fly away tomorrow you leave in here a baby for me." She patted her flat brown stomach which