A Dolphins Dream (24 page)

Moses licked his lips and looked down at the kava and began to squeeze in earnest. Compton could not muster up much, if any, acceptance for what he just heard. But he did understand the power of a belief system, no matter how obscure. Clearly Moses believed and if the village believed and all the other villages in all the islands believed, then how much more true could it be?

Moses poured water into the large bowl and dipped fresh kava root and squeezed. They had drunk nearly a gallon of the first batch. Compton’s brain spun from the narcotic that was making magic of the night sky, which was bursting with stars and the three-quarter moon, upside down in the southern hemisphere, moving among the trees in the towering jungle.

“This place is feeling better to me everyday,” remarked Compton in a voice as tranquil as his surroundings. “Though some days are better than others.” He became amused at the analgesic condition of his body and brain and could not feel the mosquitoes feeding on his arms and legs. 

“Today is important,” proclaimed Moses. “You can’t keep yesterday and you can’t catch tomorrow. Today is where the Fiji lives, the whole day and maybe all the night. They laugh at yesterday and make jokes. Tomorrow, they say, maybe we go fishing, maybe not.”

“I used to have a ready answer for that kind of existential philosophy,” said Compton, beginning to slur his words. “But these days I’m not so sure.”

“To not be sure of such things is wisdom,” granted Moses dipping another bowl.

Well into the second gallon Compton could not feel his legs beneath him and was having trouble getting to his feet.

“This stuff is wicked,“ he said.

Moses came over and helped him stand and they walked on the beach together.

“Moses, you have been very kind to me, extremely kind. You have brought me food and water, doing nice things all the time. Is it because a white person is special in Fiji?”

Moses blinked and looked away from Compton, then turned and faced him directly. “In Fiji, all visitors are special. You increase yourself, Keli. You are not special because you are white or because you come from America or that you have a bit of money. All visitors are treated the same, even those who have mean spirits."

Chagrined, Compton knew nowhere else to go with conversation and inanely asked, “Even the mean spirited? Why is that?”

“They are the other side of us, eh. Without them we know less of ourselves.”

Moses’ remark fell misunderstood on Compton who swayed in his tracks.

“The fact is that I’m a white man in this very brown world.”

“Keli, most Fijians believe that a white person is weak and unfit for the life of a man. They come to the resorts like women in pants and we have pity for them. It is plain they are less then us, eh. We try to make them feel strong and equal. We give them what we have. You do not see this because, like the others, you are filled with yourself. I would not say this, but in your way you have asked to know.”

They returned to the kitchen table and Compton collapsed on the bench in full realization of Moses’ words.

“You are right. As I have grown strong here I am beginning to see just how weak I was, weak in the mind and the body and the spirit. I see that the weaker a man is the more he is filled with the illusion of himself. It is a horrible state to come to terms with. I…” Compton paused realizing he had revealed more than he intended.

“I’m sorry, Moses. I’m… such generosity does not exist where I come from. People just don’t act this way.”

“It is not an act, Keli. It is knowing a hard life. We don’t move this life around. Nature is too big to move around.”

“It’s incredible here,” said Compton, throwing his arms out to the sea. “I’ve got a front row seat right here on this little beach. I’ll never look at a TV again. The sea and the wind and rain are awesome.”    

“The sea is the strongest force in nature, eh. It whispers and roars and knocks you about. It is greater than all the rest of nature, even the hurricane. It breaks men and feeds them at the same time. I never know what the day will have for me, a full one or death. When you live on the sea you learn if you are a man or a boy. You look into the sea and it tells you. It shows the true self. When I’m in my boat, I know who is me. When I was in the city, always looking in the mirror, I was who I thought I was. There is a difference, eh.“        

Compton was holding his head in his hands talking to the table.

“I think that’s my trouble. I don’t think I really know who I am. I don’t think I ever really knew.”

“Stop thinking so much! Let nature have its way with you. Live like a free man who owns nothing but has the right to use everything that nature gives.”

Compton held out the coconut cup to Moses for a refill.

“I’ll drink to that! To free men who own nothing!” he shouted.

“Bula, vinaka vaka levu,” chorused Moses.

“Also to Sinaca!” blared Compton. “I want Sinaca! I’ll do anything to see her.”

“It is not so easy, Keli. You have to ask her parents to walk with her. But first you must be invited to the village.”

“If I get invited to the village, what do I say to her? What do I do?’

“Jes’ be yourself. Believe you are the most handsome man on the island and you have much to offer. Be keen for the soft signals of women. They are very cunning in their ways but all women like sex.  They like it seven times more than a man.”

Compton burst out laughing and Moses poured another cup of kava.

“Seven times! How did you arrive at that figure? Must have been some long and involved research.”

“I learned when I was fourteen that women like sex more than the man. I had a girlfriend and she was thirteen and every time we kiss she wants to screw. She was hungry for it. She couldn’t hide it like a woman. She shook for it. Later I saw that women hide it until their moment. Until their bodies take over and they shake and want more. They could not get enough once they let go. But there are some who hold so tightly that they never shake, they never want more. They are giving a favor instead of enjoying. It’s the last they see of me.”

“Jesus, I wish I’d known that when I was fifteen. Hell, I wish I’d known that when I was thirty-five.”

“All Fiji man know this, that is why they only screw once or twice a month after they marry. Sometimes once every two months. It is the way the man takes control of his house or the woman will be boss and the man becomes weak and no good.”

“In America the men make love to the woman three, four times a week,” said Compton, his head back in his hands.

Moses let out a low whistle and poured the kava.

“And who is the boss in America?”

“Well, the man thinks he’s the boss but I’m not so sure.”

“Men are foolish, eh. Women are built for sex. They can enjoy it longer and better than men. It is to their favor to have the man believe their need is less. Jes’ as it is in our favor to have sex once a month. It is a battle, eh. If the woman is in control she will ruin the man but the man won’t ruin the woman, she is too strong.”

“Once a month seems pretty drastic.” Compton was shaking his head in imagined abstinence.

“In Fiji the men are in control and everyone is happy. Everyone does their work and has children and are good parents. Nobody is running off with somebody else. No divorce here. Divorce is very high in America, eh. Maybe because the woman is in control of the sex.”

“Having sex once a month is a hell of a price. How do you manage to get by?”

“Nothing to do with getting by. Most men get sex out of themselves when they are young. There are more important things than sex, eh. More important things than women."

“I think it’s too late for me. I didn’t get enough sex when I was young. Then it was with the same girl for a long time. She was always holding back. She made me crazy.”

Moses downed a slug of kava and broke into a fit of laughter. “You see what they can do! You see! Still you are crazy! You look at Sinaca and you are ready to go crazy again!”

Moses passed the cup to Compton and he drank.

“White folks don’t have their sex act together, so it comes out kind of crazy. We either have too much or not enough.”

Moses grinned. “Make you more crazy than you already are, eh.”

Compton nodded in agreement, “Yeah, if that’s possible.”

“You wait, let Sinaca come. The woman have the urge more than the man. She find a way to fill her need. Woman are smarter than men in these things. No need to go crazy, eh.”

“I’ll take your advice, wait and see what happens.”

They finished the second gallon and Moses began to mix a third.

Compton shook his head, “I’ve had enough, Moses. I can barely stand up now.”

“Right, then. It’s late. Time to eat.”

“Eat? I can’t eat anything,” whined Compton, propping his head in one hand. “Everything is spinning.”

“That bad, eh. Low tide for you tomorrow.”

Moses gathered up the kava and the bowls and was in his boat roaring off into the pitch-black sea at top speed before Compton moved from his seat. He staggered into the bure and collapsed under the netting. The room spun him to sleep and he dreamed unremembered, narcotic dreams.

Compton laid beneath the netting expecting the dullness of sleep to give way to a headache. A terrible hollowness consumed him instead, as though all the blood from his body had been drained away and replaced with brake fluid. He could not hold a simple thought. He made coffee and drank two cups but nothing changed. He wandered the beach, absently looking for shells but soon propped himself up against the fallen tree in self-imposed catatonia.

A blue heron appeared in the shallows, standing stock still over a tide pool. He watched it for a time, became distracted and when he looked again it had vanished as if it had never been there at all. The kingfisher perched on a far branch that extended out over the water. Suddenly it plummeted headlong into the shallows and reemerged with a piece of light flickering in its beak. Tips of greenery sprouted from every twig on the fallen tree and he wondered if they had done so in the precise moment before he caught sight of them. He went to the kitchen and wrote:

The kava has drilled a hole leaving me drained and empty, like a washed up shell on the beach.
The sea sounds roll into the hollow of my unlived past,
and reverberate in distant echoes.
The wild, abstract patterns of the tree branches against
the gray sky suspends over me like demons of the future.
The rock and crab, the heron and the kingfisher inhabit the present and I do not feel separate from them.

Compton put down the pen and returned to the warmth of the sand, where he immediately fell asleep. He dreamed of flight beneath the ocean, soaring free as a bird, gliding wherever he pleased in the liquid atmosphere. He swam with a silver creature that was without scales and as slick as mercury. It had the face of Sinaca and together they made lightning leaps about this inner sea.

He awoke in the late afternoon and felt surprisingly refreshed, almost cleansed. Moses had not come and he went to bed early without supper and did not dream again.

In the late afternoon of the following day Moses came with pawpaw and belle. He also brought a gift of smoked mackerel with shredded coconut and minced red pepper.

“And how was yesterday, my friend? Low tide, eh. That kava is bad stuff,” joked Moses in mock sympathy.

“Low tide is a good description. I had a strange day. It was like my personality had been erased or something. I had weird dreams of flying in the ocean. Very pleasant, though.”

“I brought some rain water to use for a bath,” said Moses, pointing to his nose in an exaggerated way. “Some soap, too.”

“Tomorrow,” announced Moses with a grand gesture worthy of a senator, “we go to the village of my sister, Judith, and you must smell like a pineapple. When we are there we see Aprosa at the Genuine Village. We stay for supper.”

As he spoke, Moses laid out Mariah’s meal on the table. “This clears the head and gives life to the mouth. Eat with your fingers.”

The mix of pepper with the shredded coconut and the smoked flavor of the fish was exquisite, and Compton so commented. Moses wordlessly nodded in agreement while eating voraciously. Between mouthfuls Moses explained that the three villages on the island lay along the same shoreline on the southwest side of the island and the one furthest east with the favored protection from the winds was the Genuine Village and also the home of Sinaca. It was built and lived in under the old traditions. The homes were of thatch and tree limb, had no electricity nor running water. Everyone worked for the benefit of the community and the chief determined the priorities of the village. The second village, which Moses called, The Half Done Village, was that of his sister Judith. The bures were built of milled timber with tin roofs. There was electricity, a school and running water. They had sought independence and so had no real chief, though there was a headman who represented the village at various gatherings. Moses knew little of the third village other than it was the home of the Paramount Chief and was more westernized than the other two villages. 

“It has a poor feel to it, I don’t much care for it.”  

“Tell me more of the old village,” asked Compton.

“There is no use in talking. You must walk it and smell it. Touch its skin for yourself, eh.” Then he stood and excused himself. “Mariah needs me back in the garden.”

“Thank her for the meal.”

“We were pigs, eh.”

A clean, white bag filled the bow of the boat. “When I go visiting,” explained Moses, “I always take a gift of vegetables. It is the Fiji way.”

They sped west under high, thin, gossamer clouds. The seas were glassed out and at full throttle they ran parallel with the island at the edge of the coral shelf, turning a prominent point that had thrust its way into sapphire depths and where verdant jungle appeared to grow out of the self-same water. They came upon a deep bay that opened wide to a long, sandy beach lined with coconut trees. Far offshore, nearly hidden in the lush foliage, stood several thatched bures. Smoke curled out from small, secluded fires and a boat was drawn high up on the sand. Moses pointed towards the settlement.