Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [35]
My first thought when I barge into these noisy festivities is that the tribe has caught wind of my amazing news already and they're celebrating being sprung from their decades-old straitjacket of superstition and ignorance. But according to Joe, who I think is beginning to tire of my wild theories, because he's not smiling as much as he used to, that's not the case. These dances are a routine, held every week, he insists. Furthermore, they're regarded as sacred religious events by the islanders, who are apparently more than a little upset by my ridiculous “prancing to the left, hopping to the right” dance technique.
And another thing, while we're at it, he throws in: the tribe certainly doesn't want to hear my news about John Frum not living inside the volcano and the whole thing being a hoax. That, he advises earnestly, is something I'd be wise to keep to myself—okay?
“Sure—but—”
“Okay, Cash?”
“Er … yeah, okay, okay.”
On that peculiar note, I figure it's time to head on out.
“Before you go, though,” Joe jumps in, “you should drink kava.”
“Oh, no thanks,” I reply very firmly.
After what he told me in the market about how it's made, not a single drop will ever be passing Sir's lips, of that I am certain. Kava is one aspect of the rich indigenous Tanna lifestyle that can happily remain a mystery. Sorry.
“Joe's right,” Eric chimes in. “You can't leave without trying it. It would be a great way to end the show.”
And blow me if everyone else doesn't agree with him! It would be the perfect way to wind things up, they insist. After all, how can I find kava at the start of the episode and not drink it by the end? The viewers will be so disappointed.
“So?” I dig my heels in. “They'll get over it. I mean …”
The bottom line is, I don't do drugs. I smoked weed once at my friend Len's condo in Santa Monica and it triggered a major paranoid episode. Within minutes, I became convinced I was trapped inside a photocopier and some seabirds were conspiring to kill me. I've never touched the stuff since.
“… er …”
“But not here,” Eric adds, somehow interpreting my “er” as a gung-ho yes. “We'll get some on the way back.”
Our clandestine kava-drinking session happens an hour later at the hotel, in a spot in the grounds that Mark's rigged with lights to make it kind of look like the John Frum village if you're not paying close attention.
Kava bars are a staple of Tanna life. They're all over the island. Little wooden shacks set back from the roadside with lanterns burning outside to draw customers. On the way here, Joe stopped off to buy a small quantity of kava already prepared, which he now pours into a small bowl he brought from the hotel kitchen.
“Okay—action.”
“Come on, Cash—drink,” he says seductively, pushing the bowl to my lips.
After it's been dug up, sliced up, mashed up, chewed by prepubescent children, spat out, strained, mixed with water, and stirred, kava becomes an unattractive purple color, thin in consistency, not unlike emulsion paint. Because it smells of nothing at all, that makes it deceptively innocuous.
“Drink, Cash,” Joe says again. “Driiiiiink.”
Crouching anxiously by the roots of a tree, I can hear the surf beating on the shore to my left and staff members laughing in the restaurant, competing with the chatter of my conscience. “Don't do this,” it's saying. “You know what happened last time.”
The camera's rolling, all