Tiare in Bloom (12 page)

When it comes to things like these, Pito is not an idiot. He knows all about the mess and the disaster that comes with shitting
in your own backyard. Two of his cousins — sisters — had a combat, and one of them (the sister of the wronged woman) lost
an eye. What is a woman without both her eyes? What a waste, and this for a brief encounter with the brother-in-law. As for
the sisters, who used to be so close, they haven’t spoken a word in twelve years now, despite the aunties’ repeated attempts
to reconcile them with prayers. And to think that when they were little, they used to tell everyone that when they die they’d
like to sleep side by side.

You will never see Pito doing any shitting in his own backyard. But when a man isn’t getting any in his backyard, he needs
to visit someone else’s.

Here, yesterday at the Chinese store, Loma gave him the eye and for the first time ever, Pito found Loma breathtakingly beautiful.
Loma! The least attractive woman of the Mahi tribe! But that moment she gave Pito the eye, she looked very interesting and
he was just about to give her the eye back, when a voice inside his head shouted, “No shitting in your own backyard! And especially
not with big-mouth Loma!”

But Pito found Rita pretty when she came to visit Materena yesterday afternoon, despite her doing her sad face because — so
Pito guessed — she got her period. Rita has lost a lot of weight since trying to conceive, and Pito has never seen her look
that good. Pito didn’t know Rita had cheekbones.

Now, sitting at the bar with his colleagues on this hot Friday afternoon, payday, is giving Pito interesting ideas, and why
not? His wife doesn’t love him, Pito can see it by the way she looks at him, like he’s a noodle, an idiot. Well, let’s see
what happens when the wife looks at the husband like he’s an idiot — he goes and plays!

Pito is more sad than cranky, though. He’s sad because . . . well, who knows? He’s just sad, that’s it. Materena changed so
much, or perhaps he’s just started to notice things about her, perhaps she’s always been edgy and distant but he never paid
attention.

When Pito asked Materena to lend him her car for half an hour to go and see his brother Frank, she refused just because he
doesn’t have a driver’s license. Materena didn’t care about Pito’s driving experience. She didn’t care that he drove his uncle
Perete’s car (on the actual road, Pito insisted, and not on some homemade path) when he was about fifteen years old. The uncle
was completely
taero,
having lost a couple of thousand francs on a rooster fight and drowned his sorrow in drinks, and so he said to Pito, “Kid,
drive your uncle to the Chinese restaurant. I’m sad. I need to eat some chow mein.”

Pito drove his uncle’s car again later, but this time it was to a family reunion. The uncle was sober, but his left foot was
swollen because he had stepped on a sea urchin. Pito also drove Auntie Lele’s car . . . anyway, to cut a very long story short,
Pito has had many driving experiences. But Materena didn’t care about all that. It was more important for her to be mean.

And perhaps she’s mean because she wants Pito out of her life to make way for her Chinese boyfriend.
Oui,
perhaps that’s the reason. Yesterday Pito checked the answering machine — just to see, a question of curiosity. There were
five messages, three from his mother asking Materena (three times) if she would like to buy a packet of raffle tickets to
help Mama Roti’s bingo association. First prize: a healthy piglet; second prize: five kilos of tamanu oranges; third prize
— Mama Roti got cut off. The other two messages were from Rita (sounding very sad), asking Materena to call back.

“Jojo!” Pito softly calls out. A nod to the left, a hand around an empty glass, and Jojo gets into action. Jojo, affectionately
called Siki — a six-foot tower of black strength complete with two golden teeth—fills Pito’s glass.

“Eh, Siki,” another regular says in what has become a familiar refrain, “when are we going to see a woman behind the bar?”

“Behind the bar isn’t the place for a woman.” Jojo gives the same answer he’s been using for the past twenty years. In Jojo’s
world, women are to sit comfortably at the tables enjoying their drink, and not behind the bar serving drunken men. Jojo once
got very mad at one of his clients who dared mention that he was cutting off both his legs by not having a woman behind the
bar. The client said, “A woman behind the bar brings in business. A beautiful woman, of course, and young too, because nobody
wants to be served by some
meme,
some old hag.”

Jojo lifted that client (literally) and threw him out of his bar. In Jojo’s world,
memes
are not old hags, they are respectable grandmothers. That client wasn’t a regular, otherwise he would have known about Jojo’s
sacred and sanctified respect for women. Criticize this respect at your own risk, it has made Jojo a very rich man. A poor
Kanak waiter when he emigrated from New Caledonia, Jojo now owns a bar, and he paid the fares of his three brothers and their
families to Tahiti. Jojo’s brothers are replicas of Jojo, and women know that if they want to enjoy a few quiet drinks without
being pestered, go to Jojo’s.

Take tonight, for example. There are about fifty women scattered across the large drinking area, along with eighty hopeful
men. One of them is Pito’s colleague Heifara, who has been busy planting his seeds in anything that moves lately.

“Jojo,” Pito softly calls out again. He needs a refill, but all he gets is a glass of water.

“Drink this first,” Jojo commands with his don’t-argue-with-me booming voice. “Then we’ll talk.”

Pito drinks his glass of water in one go. You have to do what Jojo says, otherwise he just picks you up and throws you outside.

“How’s everything, my friend?” The booming voice is now a concerned whisper.

“Everything’s fine.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“The family’s good?”

“The family’s good.”

Jojo affectionately pats Pito on the shoulder and goes back to his occupations.

“The family’s good,” Pito mutters under his breath, half turning to the crowd. There’s Heifara deep in conversation with a
forty-something woman who is right now doing a forced smile.

“Pito, where are you,
copain?
” a colleague nudges. “You’re not saying a word tonight.”

“I don’t feel like talking.” To you lot, Pito means.

Okay, then, since Pito doesn’t feel like talking, nobody is going to talk to him. Nearly every Friday there’s a colleague
who doesn’t feel like talking, and tonight it is Pito’s turn. When this happens, nobody asks questions, the person who doesn’t
feel like talking is left alone with his thoughts. The bar is often the place where men feel liberated to do a little
examen de la conscience,
to go deep down in their conscience and think about important things, like their relationships with their woman, children,
siblings. Eyelids closed, they replay their lives, list their faults, the promises they haven’t kept . . .

But Pito is not doing any self-analysis, he’s just watching Heifara carry on with his seduction plan, which isn’t going well,
considering the bored expression on the woman’s face. Perhaps Heifara is talking too much. Perhaps he’s showing off and he’s
starting to get on the woman’s nerves. Here she is, nodding, but her eyes are elsewhere. They are on the ceiling, they are
on other men, they are here and there, and then they are on Pito.

They are on the ceiling again.

They are on Pito.

Here and there, and on Pito again.

Pito doesn’t wink. He just looks at her with his beautiful sad eyes. She arches one of her eyebrows, meaning, Eh, you at the
bar looking at me, why are you so sad? then smiles. Pito smiles back. She smiles again and runs her fingers through her hair.
Pito notices her wedding ring. Ten minutes later, as she discreetly leaves the bar while Heifara is in the toilets, she gives
Pito the look, the look that says —
Coucou,
look at me closely, I’m interested!

Pito quickly finishes his drink and follows the interested woman outside.

She is waiting for him behind a tree.

“Where’s your husband?” he asks out of politeness.

“In New Zealand, get in the car.”

Once in the car speeding away towards Tipaerui, Pito glances at his future lover from the corner of his eye, and he’s feeling
less and less interested. Why is that? Who knows! He’s not interested because he’s not interested, okay? There’s nothing to
explain. He changed his mind, that’s all. That woman just doesn’t look as appetizing as she did in the bar. And plus, she
has smelly feet, she doesn’t clean her feet properly. Materena scrubs her feet every day. With perfumed soap.

Also, what if that woman finds out who Pito is — Materena’s husband — and what if she finds out who Materena is and starts
blabbing about how she had sex with the husband of that woman with the popular radio show. People will laugh at Materena.
They will say, “Ha! Maybe she has the most popular radio show in Tahiti but can she keep her husband’s
moa
in his pants? Apparently not!”

Plus, it might be very flattering when a woman you don’t know wants you, but the way Pito sees the situation, it’s more flattering
when it’s a woman who knows you to your last pubic hair who wants you. Now that’s something to brag about to your
copains.

“I changed my mind,” Pito says calmly after his analysis. “Can you drop me in Faa’a?”

“What!” the woman shrieks, angry. “We’re nearly at my house! Do you take me for an idiot or what?”

Well, now Pito is
definitely
not interested. “Eh, stop the car.” It’s an order.

She stops the car in front of a house. All the lights inside are turned on.

“Who’s in my house?” the woman asks her companion, as if he’d know.

Seconds later, the front door opens and out comes a man. Pito suspects it to be the husband, judging from how the woman shrieks
and orders Pito to slide down the seat.

“
Chéri!
” she calls out, quickly getting out of the car. “I thought you were coming home tomorrow.”

“I wanted to surprise you, Suzette,” Pito hears the husband say. The husband doesn’t even ask his wife where she’s been.

“What a nice surprise!” The wife sounds like she really means it. “I’m so happy!”

Purée,
Pito thinks. Women are actresses.

“Miss me?” the husband asks.

“Oh
oui,
I missed your company.”

“Just my company? Nothing else?”

There’s a cackle, and Pito suspects the husband has pinched his wife on the bottom, something like that. A little shout, and
next thing the car starts to rock backwards and forwards. Pito suspects the married couple to be going at it on the hood of
the car.

“Let’s go in the house,” Suzette says in a very sultry voice. “The neighbors might see us.”

“I don’t care, they can watch if they want to.”

The car shakes again, and the husband sounds like he’s having a really good time. Then it’s all over.

“How are the children?” the husband asks, after a gap as they do themselves up.

“They’re fine.”

“And the grandchildren?”

The
grandchildren?
Pito shouts in his head. She’s a grandmother!

“Let’s go in the house.” This is Suzette’s answer to her husband’s question about the grandchildren. “I’m cold.”

Okay, the coast is clear, but to make sure, Pito waits for a few minutes more, then sneaks out of the car and starts running.
He stops a hundred feet further on for a few breaths and continues to run, stops again, runs, stops . . . until it’s safe
to walk. He walks his normal walk. He walks and thinks about this and that, his little escapade, and how Materena will be
greeting him.

The light is on, and this means Materena is awake, but perhaps she left the light on out of consideration for Pito because
she decided to be nice for a change.

Pito takes a deep breath. This is what he plans to do. Walk in the house a different man. Walk in and take Materena in his
arms, kiss her tenderly, and hold her tight, and say, “Materena . . . you’re the woman of my life, give me one more chance.”
Something like that.

Pito opens the door, walks in, and this is what he sees: Materena sitting on the sofa, crying her eyes out with a baby sound
asleep in her arms. For a second Pito thinks that he’s hallucinating. He widens his eyes, but Materena is still sitting on
the sofa, crying her eyes out with a baby sound asleep in her arms.

“Who’s that baby?”

Materena lifts her crying eyes to Pito and tenderly kisses the baby on the forehead.

“Our
mootua.
”

T
iare,
alleged
baby daughter of Materena and Pito’s eldest son, Tamatoa, is fast asleep in her
alleged
Auntie Leilani’s bed, with pillows on both sides of her tiny body. Her name, Tiare, a flower name, the white, sweet-scented
flower, is also the emblem of Tahiti.

Materena softly kisses the baby’s head, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, sighs, and, walking out of the room, gives
Pito the let’s-go signal. She stops by the door to have one more look at that baby who fell from the sky, closes the door
halfway, and whispers, “Pito, I’m going to make us a coffee, we need to talk.” Once in the kitchen she adds for good measure,
“I know you don’t like to talk about serious things but —”

“I’ll make the coffee,” Pito interrupts, which is as good as him saying, Stop talking
merde,
Materena, are you a mind reader or what? He fills the saucepan with water, puts it on the stove, grabs two cups, gets the
Nescafé jar out of the
garde-manger,
all of this without a word. Meanwhile Materena, at the kitchen table, briefs him on the situation.

Only two hours ago, Materena was looking at photos in the family album after coming home from finishing her show, when somebody
knocked on the front door.
Oui?
she called out, thinking, Who’s that visiting me at this hour?