The Way of Wanderlust (33 page)

“You got one!” Retire shouted. “Pull it in, pull it in!”

For a moment I stared dumbly at the pole, then childhood muscle memory kicked in and I began to pull up and reel in, pull up and reel in.

“That's right!” Retire said. “Another twenty minutes and you have fish!”

Pull up, reel in, pull up, reel in. It seemed like forever and my arms felt like stone but eventually I got the fish to the side of the boat and Retire swooped down with a net and hefted it in. It was a modest-sized queenfish, but big enough to keep, Retire said.

“Make good dinner for my friend,” he winked.

Before the morning was over, I'd reeled in two more queenfish and a rainbow-colored parrotfish.

“Big party tonight!” Retire beamed.

Later, back on land, Retire took me for a drive along the coast. A lush green tangle of vines, bushes, and trees climbed into the interior; bright yellow and white blossoms and plump papaya, banana, pawpaw, coconut, and mango hung heavy from boughs; simple one-story cinderblock houses, painted in tropical reds, greens, and blues, showed immaculate lawns and vegetable plots—with here and there stately granite family tombs set among them; goats and chickens and baby pigs wandered heedless by the road; on a palm-strung clothesline, multi-colored pareus wafted in the breeze like Polynesian prayer flags; children in crisp red-and-white and green-and-white uniforms played volleyball in a school yard; and always the blue-green waters glinted in the lagoon.

About fifteen minutes into our tour we passed a group of houses set back from the road. An elderly man sitting on the stoop of the middle home waved toward us. Instinctively I looked toward Retire, but he was watching the road. I glanced behind us to see who he was waving at, but there was no one. Then I realized—he was waving at me! I waved back. A few houses later, a young mother with a plump pink-dressed toddler at her knee was standing outside. Would she wave? Yes! We passed a couple of kids kicking a soccer ball on a lawn. Yes! A white-haired woman pedaling in the opposite direction; three middle-aged men in a truck. Yes and yes! Soon I felt like the mayor of Aitutaki, waving at everyone I passed and being waved at in return, with smiles as bright as the sun all around.

We swerved inland, bouncing along wild boar trails under ponderous branches and past slapping vines to the summit of the central hill, Maungapu, the island's highest point at 400 feet, which legend says was brought from Rarotonga by Aitutaki warriors who decided the island needed a mountain. Retire showed me the plot of land where he planned to build his “Retire-ment” house someday, and took me to a number of
marae
, the traditional pre-Christianity meeting and ceremonial sites which are marked by elaborate arrangements of massive boulders. Retire showed me one set of blood-chilling rocks where he told me human sacrifices were performed.

“See,” he said, pointing to one peculiarly chiseled stone, “this is where the man's neck was held for the sacrifice, and this”—he pointed to a slithering rivulet of rock—“is where the blood ran down and was collected.” He looked at me appraisingly. “What size neck you have?”

In ensuing days I met woodcarvers and pareu-makers, schoolteachers and hotel owners, chefs and tour guides and Internet entrepreneurs. I met thirty-something Maoris whose parents had emigrated to New Zealand and Australia and who had moved back for the grounded values and saner pace; teenage Aitutakians who planned to head for the bright lights of Auckland or Sydney as soon as they could; Westerners who had visited on holiday and never left. Some people worried about the influx of travelers and the ongoing building boom, which was evident: When I compared the tourist maps for July-December 2004 and January-July 2005, four new hotels had opened, plus a new tourist shop and a dive operation, and on my island explorations I saw a half-dozen new hotels in various stages of completion. Some complained that outside money was going to seep into the economy and unbalance the place; others lamented the islanders' dependence on canned goods from New Zealand and the youngsters' indifference to preserving local ways and words. Clearly, the island was not without its anxieties, yet to this 21st-century refugee, the place seemed as close to peace, plenty, and paradise as I'd ever come.

Those feelings crystallized one day on a visit to the motu known as One Foot Island. Through a serendipitous arrangement a skipper dropped me alone on the motu in the morning and said I could hitch a ride back with a lagoon tour group that would arrive in the afternoon. In my mind I immediately became a Cook Islands castaway, the lord of my private island. Surveying my domain, I turned a corner to a scene that simply took my breath away: a brilliant scimitar of white-sand beach washed by a transparent lagoon, green near the shore, then green-blue, then blue-black as it deepened. Arcing palm trees lined the beach, their fronds green, yellow, and brown against a deep blue sky. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry. I waded into the baptismal sea, the air warm and swaddling, the water buoyant and serene.

I began my last day on Aitutaki by attending the 6:30
a.m
. service at the main church in Arutanga, the oldest in the Cook Islands, a majestic limestone structure with stained-glass windows and painted ceilings. Aitutaki was the island where the pioneering 19th-century English missionary John Williams, of the London Missionary Society, entrusted a Polynesian convert, Papeiha, with the conversion of the locals. Papeiha was so proficient that he was later moved to Rarotonga, where he was similarly successful. By the start of the 20th century, virtually all Cook Islanders were Christians. A double-sided monument to these two persuasive preachers graces the weathered churchyard.

On my visit the main church was closed for restoration, but when I entered the spare, humble side building where the service was being held, about two dozen people nodded and smiled at me. The women wore fancy woven-pandanus hats and bright floral muumuus and the men were in crisp polo or aloha-style shirts. The room itself had cloud-white cinderblock walls, sky-blue windows, about two dozen plain wooden benches, and a varnished wooden ceiling. At 6:30 precisely a preacher in a suit and tie began to speak in Cook Islands Maori. As he spoke a gentle breeze blew through the unscreened windows, a choir of cocks cock-a-doodle-doo'd, the wind swayed in the trees, and the mingled scents of tropical blooms and moist earth wafted in. After a while the preacher stopped speaking and the congregation rose all together. Suddenly a torrent of song surged forth; all two dozen parishioners were singing at full voice, pouring all their bodies into the song. The melody soared, subsided, soared again, the voices pounding, straining, merging, lilting, rising, falling, filling the humble space and seeming to lift the entire building, the entire island, with their force.

Later that day, as dusk was falling, Retire rejoined me. “Big surprise tonight. Island Night. Buffet and performance. Perfect for you!”

We drove to an open-air, thatched-roof restaurant called Samade, a stone's throw from the lagoon on the placid powdery stretch of Ootu Beach. Tourists sat at about fifteen tables set in the sand. The evening began with a sumptuous buffet featuring more than a dozen platters: pork cooked the traditional way in an underground oven, tuna, chicken, beets, tomatoes, cucumber, papaya salad, and
ekamata
(raw fish marinated in lime and coconut)—all washed down with cold Steinlager beer.

After we had feasted for an hour, a half-dozen musicians trooped in bearing ukuleles and wooden drums, then groups of young dancers stepped onto the floor in pandanus skirts and coconut bras and began informal, enthusiastic renditions of the dances I'd watched four nights before. Their passion and energy were infectious, and with the warm, caressing air, the delicious food, the music mingling with the stars, and the dancers' supple limbs and exuberant smiles, it was easy to get lulled into the spirit of the dance. At one point, I returned from getting seconds at the buffet table to find Retire gone; then I spotted him with the musicians, banging away on a homemade drum. And at the end of the evening, when a young beauty with copper skin and flowing hair materialized before me and invited me to dance, I found myself suddenly on that sandy stage, hips swaying and legs pounding as they never had before.

Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa! Pumpa-pumpa-pumpa-pumpa!
My feet were pistoning as fast as they could, trying to convince the ancient gods—and my undulating partner—that I was a worthy warrior. In my mind I was barefoot and dressed in green
ti
leaves with black tattoos on my legs and arms and a crown of white and yellow flowers on my head, and I was fending off all enemies with a long spear and a menacing glare.

Time slowed, and all the discoveries of my five-day stay coursed through me: the island's slow, stately pace, the warmth of the people and their fervent faith, the soul-soaring beauty of the place, the bountiful humor I had encountered in all, the sense of plenty in papaya, mango, and pawpaw, the sense of peace in palm tree, lagoon, and beach, the answering power of pure belief. The leg-thumping, heart-pumping rhythms reached my deepest core like a key, turning and turning, unlocking mysteries that seemed even older than me.

And suddenly I found myself in a place I'd never been but knew instinctively. Drums pounded, hips swayed, gardenia perfumed the balmy, palmy, mango-slow scene. In an instant I recognized this South Seas culmination: I had found the island of Salvation.

When my dad passed away in November 2007, it took me half a year to begin to come to terms with his passing and many more months to feel “normal” in the world again. I didn't realize it at the time, but in retrospect, the journey described in this piece, which took place eight months after his death, was an essential part of that process. I was in the Lake Garda region of northern Italy leading a travel writing workshop. As part of our activities, we were making daily excursions in the area, to wineries, markets, and museums. My dad had served in Italy during World War II, and so I had been thinking about him throughout the trip, but he wasn't explicitly in my mind the day we decided to visit the violin museum in Cremona. As a result, what happened there, and the lessons it imparted about the special people in our lives, seems all the more powerful and precious to me.

MY DAD PASSED AWAY IN NOVEMBER OF
2007. He enjoyed a long and full life and died after a relatively swift and painless decline, so I have no unfinished longings or regrets about his life. But there are still times when I wish he were by my side so we could share something we both exulted in.

In his waning months, I understood on some level the inevitability of his demise, but no matter how I tried, I could not prepare myself for his death, or the gaping hole it would leave in the fabric of my life. Eight months later, I realized that I couldn't prepare myself for something else that would happen after he passed away: how the intricate weave of his life would continue to thread through my days.

I was on a two-week tour of northern Italy. I was with a small group of people who had never met before the trip, and we were bonding and braiding and dissembling as such groups do—fussing over idiosyncrasies and annoyances, sharing deep-rooted passions, planting and watering dreams that were just beginning to bloom.