A Dolphins Dream (17 page)

“I thought you said he sold it.”

“Yes, but he sold it so cheaply that it was the same as stealing.”

“That wasn’t the Indian’s fault.”

Moses ignored Compton and continued, “We don’t want to become like the Maori and the Hawaiians and other islanders who had their land and traditions taken. We want to keep our land and our customs. We have to protect them now because in five years it might be too late.”

“That could be difficult to do.”

“We must become a republic and have Fiji rule.”

“But under what system of government will it rule?”

Moses eyes flashed about the kitchen and came to rest on Compton, who for the first time since he had met Moses, felt he had the advantage and was thoroughly enjoying himself. “I don’t know. All I know is that Sambuka is right to do this.”

“Has the radio been taken over by the government?”

“Yes.”

“Well, in that case you’re just getting Sambuka’s side of it, aren’t you?”

“This is true. The radio say that the Indians are fearful and many are leaving the countryTh

“You can’t blame them for that.” Compton had not seen this side of Moses, so embroiled in the dramas of mankind’s capricious machinations. It was the only time he had seen him disconnected from the natural world and removed from his imperious sense of things. It made him appear weak and became disheartening to witness. Compton suddenly found no joy in feeding the fire that burned so feverishly in Moses’ eyes and thus relented. “I can’t blame the Fijians for wanting to protect their interests. What you say about losing your land and customs to another culture is an old story. The American Indian in my own country lost everything to the white man, their land, their customs, worst of all their dignity. Eventually the values that had kept their culture strong for thousands of years were undermined by the greater influence. The American Indians didn’t care about money. They revered the land and they lost the very thing they cherished most. I don’t know what the answer is.”

Moses was staring out to sea as Compton spoke and it occurred to him that there might be something else on his mind, something he hadn’t mentioned. “What else is there, Moses? Anything I should know?”

“There is no planes.”

“What do you mean, no planes?”

“They’re not flying planes to the islands. You can’t leave here.”

Compton chuckled as if a joke had been played and he hit the table with his fist. “Well, shit. If I’m going to be stuck somewhere, it might as well be in paradise, right?”

Moses grinned, his missing front tooth radiating in its darkness. “I thought you might be angry.”

“Why should I be angry? I’m learning to spear fish, life is good right now. I have no desire to leave.”

“Stuck in paradise, this is it, eh. You stay here on Orchid Beach for as long as you wish, my friend.”

A boatload of brown skinned Fijians were making their way west. Compton stood for a better look.

Moses teased, “It is not Jokatama’s boat. No Sinaca for you, brother.”

“I don’t know how they can dive without fins”, said Compton absently. “The current’s so strong sometimes, it’s unbelievable, and those plastic goggles must hurt like hell at depth.”

“Do not be fooled by the Fiji divers. They know how to use the current and make it push them down. They never fight the ocean, eh, always at ease. They can dive that way all day long.”

“I don’t understand how they can hold position for any length of time in the current.”

“The current is like the wind, eh. It moves around. In a storm you can find a place to stand where there is no wind. They know where those places are in the sea, where the current can’t touch them.”

“Even if that’s possible, and I find it hard to believe, you can’t stay in one place all day. The current has tremendous force.”

“Oh, yes, the current is very powerful. Sometimes you can’t row a boat against it. There have been boats sucked right out to sea and never come back. My mother and sister were taken away in the afternoon. They drifted all night and finished up on Rabi Island twenty miles to the north. Picked up by a fisherman the next morning. They ate the fish they caught and drank coconut milk.”

The boat passed the beach and all on board waved.

Moses waved and shouted, “Bula, Io, vinaka.”

The greeting was returned.

“What are you saying to those people?” asked Compton. “What does eeoo vinaca mean?”

“Io means yes. Io vinaka means, yes please, but we use it as a greeting. When you shout from far away, it is understood."

“Would you teach me some simple words? Just so I could greet people and have an exchange.”

“Vinaka also means good and thank you. Sega vinaka means no thank you. Bula means life, but it is the same as hello. You are the vulage, the visitor. Kai vulage is a European visitor. So when you see a boat you shout, Bula, Io vinaka. Ahey shout it back. Soon all the villages will know you. Meikeli, they will say. That is your Fiji name for Michael. Keli, for your friends. When we visit the village they will say Keli.”

“When are we going to visit the village?”

“Ha! You want Sinaca! You must get a villager to speak for you.  Then Chief Isikeli gives permission. It takes time. It is not a fast thing.  They are cautious.”

“Why?”

“They remember the missionaries who caused big trouble when they brought religion. They stopped the old Fijians from eating each other and then make us fearful of God and scare hell out of us. They say the devil is in us and make us ashamed.”

“Is that why Christianity is so strong here? Guilt for the cannibal sins of their ancestors?”

“Maybe this is it. From one end to the other, we don’t get it right.” Moses shook his head and laughed at the spiritual plight of his people, then in the length of a blink he became serious. “Do you believe in God, Keli?”

“I don’t know, Moses. I think the concept of God might be a simple answer to some very complicated questions. Maybe there are no answers, or the answer is different for each one of us. Plato, a great thinker, said that man invented God as the perfect ideal of himself. Something to shoot for in our quest for moral perfection.”

Moses shook his head at the idea. “Who would want to be perfect?”

“I don’t know. From what I’ve seen, Moses, you are about as perfect as any man I’ve met. You shall be my God.” Compton stood up and genuflected to him, bearing upon his face a wide grin.

Moses did not laugh as Compton had expected. Solemnly, he gazed out to sea, then turned to Compton. “I wouldn’t want to be any man’s God. Soon they would want to kill me because nobody likes to have a God around where he can see their foolishness. I only know God when I fish. When my mind is not working and I hold the line.  Everything goes still, even though I know it is moving. When everything is still, that is when God shows up.”

“I’ve never known God but I do know that something very different happens to me when I’m under the water. A quiet comes over me and slows everything down. Like I can see with something other than my eyes.”

“Yes, yes, when I hold the line, it is that way. The ocean runs up the line and into my arm like a river. It feels like church should feel, very holy, very peaceful. The ocean is my church. The Open Ocean Church, eh.”

“You sound like someone who has spent more than a little time in church.”

“I went. It was between times of drinking and whoring in Suva. I didn’t know what to do after carrying on that way. Which direction should I take?  I ask my uncle and my aunt and the other relatives in Suva. The women told me to go to church. My first day in church the Methodist minister said, ‘There is one soul here today that is here for repentance.’ I knew he was talking about me, so I stood up and he received me and I was forgiven. But it wasn’t enough that he forgave me. What did he know of me? So I went to church two and three times a week waiting for something to happen. They talked and I listened and they took my money. Then a job came up in the church and I thought I would test God for the job. I waited three days. I thought if the job is for me then it will be waiting. When I went to the church, I was the only one who came for it.”

“Not a very popular job?”

“I was to watch the money and see who was coming to church and who was staying home. If someone didn’t show up after two weeks, I tell the minister and he goes off to the house. I kept things running, eh. The money was going for a newsletter and it paid for the minister’s travel. But nothing was going to the poor. I told him this. He say it was a business and that other things were more important. I spoke my mind. ‘What’s more important than helping others, isn’t that what a church is suppose to d’ He say, ‘We help them spiritually, that’s what a church is suppose to do. We help them in ways you can’t understand.’”

‘I understand enough,’ I said, and quit the job. I haven’t gone back to church.”

“Well, he was honest with you. Religion is a business.”

“This is it, eh, a business? But God is not a business, eh.”

“No, God is not a business. But can you tell me what life is all about, how does it work, in the grand scheme of things?”

Moses understood the depth of the question far better than Compton and he waved a tattooed arm at the jungle. “One day I lie on this beach. My mind very still. A leaf fell from that tree and the wind from the sea pushed it back into the jungle. I watched it and knew that it was me. It showed me how life happens over and over again.”

Compton bent, listening.

“Our lives are like the leaves on a tree in a great forest. Many different trees, many different leaves. We sprout and grow and turn to the sunshine and drink the rain. We are happy and because we are high above the ground we believe that we are superior to all things below us. We think our branch is the only branch of worth and that our tree is the most important tree in the forest. But we are many and our thoughts are very small. Life is long and we turn colors and then we begin to dry up and a wind comes and blows us to the ground. That is our death. But we do not end. We dry up to small pieces and then to dust and the rain sends us into the ground where we feed a new and different tree. We go up through the roots and very slowly climb to the branches and then to the twigs, waiting to become another leaf.”

“And so it goes,” interrupted Compton. “From tree to tree, from life to life.”

“Yes, and each time we think our tree is the most important tree in the forest.”

The veined sea lay like a marble slab that reflected the sun onto Taveuni, and the glimmering tufts of the coconut trees quivered like wind blown flaxen in the balmy morning. Moses would not be here this day, the chores of the farm had been neglected of late and Compton lay beneath the fallen tree and contemplated the new leaves that had doubled in size since he was last aware of them. One could read time by this tree, he realized. At least by the week, perhaps even by the day. And the tides keep a precise hourly watch both day and night. The galactic hourglass of the moon and sun preside over it all. Removing his watch from his wrist he had the urge to throw it into the water. Instead he dug a deep hole under the tree and placed it there and then covered it up. I’ll dig it up the day I leave, he promised himself.            

The sun crept higher and exploded through the jungle’s capillaries of canopy and into the shallow water transforming coral heads great and small into prismatic jewels. A voice from the sea, whispered in the soft sounds of the shore break, beckoned and he slipped on his diving gear and entered the water.

Drifting out past the coral head that housed the pulsating fish, then gliding down the reef over polychromed fish that fluttered like other-worldly hummingbirds, he caught the current moving east towards the point.

Into slow, fluid, descents he soared towards the bottom catching the joyful sensation of underwater flight. The fish peeked out from their caves to watch, then darted back when he turned for the surface. Ascending from one such dive, hugging a high, breaking reef, he spied the large tail of a fish extending over the edge of the reef and halted his ascent. Half hidden by coral, he slowly lifted his head over the top of the reef and, not five feet away, finned a barracuda nearly seven feet long and as big around as a file cabinet. It was the largest fish he had ever seen. Its mouth was open and a cluster of blue wrasses were picking food from between its stiletto teeth. The wrasses worked diligently and when the barracuda twitched violently they darted out from its jaws, returning moments later to continue their task. The gun with its single wrap of shooting line was pointed at the barracuda’s spine. From this distance he would never have a better opportunity for a kill shot. Would Aprosa take this shot? What, he wondered, would a barracuda this size do if he didn’t kill it instantly? Would it rip the gun from his hand, or worse? It was foolhardy to consider spearing it.   Compton had been impressed with the skills of Aprosa, now he admired his courage. The gun remained pointed at the spine of the fish as if it knew what to do and was waiting for some final authority to release the trigger finger to its task. When the barracuda caught sight of the gun it instantly slid off the reef and circled in wary, agitated movements. Perhaps it was angry, thought Compton, to have allowed a man to come so close. He surfaced for a breath and the fish retreated to the blue expanse and was absorbed.

The sighting of the barracuda stirred his blood and he began to search out a fish for dinner. He dove into caves, waited at outcroppings and hid in the recesses of coral ledges, looking for the perfect shot on the right fish. But the fish were always too quick or, more precisely, he was too slow to pull the trigger in those instantaneous moments they would appear and the shot would present itself. When the opportunities did present themselves, a thought would enfold the sighting, “a big one,” or “be quick” or “fish,” and the moment would be lost.

When finally he let the spear fly more out of frustration than a clear sighting, it was hurried and poorly placed. A small coral trout weighing no more than five pounds fought wildly against the spear and tore itself apart in breaking loose. It swam to a long cave at the bottom of a fingered reef and disappeared.