‘Has he?’ Mautu asked. ‘Just think, you could sail around the world!’

  ‘Yes, he has asked me,’ Arona replied.

  ‘Good, good!’ exclaimed Mautu. ‘If only I was younger.’ Peleiupu caught Lalaga gazing at Arona and knew that Lalaga wasn’t going to allow Arona to sail away from being the pastor she wanted him to be.

  That Sunday after to’ona’i, while everyone rested in the fale, Mautu reminded Peleiupu about reading aloud to him. He got her to bring his favourite collection of stories, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

  So while he lay, covered with his sleeping sheet, his eyes shut, his head resting on his bamboo ali, she read to him.

  ‘Are you not well?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Then concentrate and read properly! You’re ruining a very exciting story!’

  She tried. She had read it many times to him, but he was like a child: he wanted his favourite stories repeated over and over again. She was fed up with Babu and his jungle friends and their ridiculous adventures, but she didn’t dare tell her father, so she persevered.

  Straight after the second story she said, ‘Arona told me to tell you that Barker wants to see you tomorrow.’ The lie was so easy.

  ‘Remind me tomorrow morning,’ he murmured. ‘I want to see his designs for the alia.’

  ‘He should have asked you earlier,’ she tested him.

  ‘Yes’ he said. And she knew then that he was hurt that Barker had left him out of his alia project. She pretended to be looking through the book for another story to read, then, pausing dramatically, asked, ‘Since you became pastor here, how many people have died from the Disease?’

  ‘What disease?’ He sounded as if he were falling asleep.

  ‘The Disease of Satoa.’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘What causes it?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Some of my students asked me about it. I have got to give them an answer tomorrow.’ Again it wasn’t difficult to lie.

  ‘I’ve tried to find the answer in the papalagi medical books but I haven’t been able to: my English isn’t good enough, and my understanding of the sciences is very inadequate.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps you should read the books yourself, your English is now better than mine. Or, why don’t you ask Barker. He’s seen people dying from the Disease. Come with me tomorrow and ask him.’ Her lies had led her back to Barker. ‘Now let me sleep,’ he sighed.

  Next morning Mautu didn’t need to be reminded about going to see Barker. He hurried through his morning meal and told Lalaga where he was going. That afternoon, before Lalaga could ask her to do something else, Peleiupu dismissed her classes, told Ruta and Naomi that Mautu wanted to see her at Barker’s, and left. She hadn’t seen Barker for a few weeks so she dreaded what she might find.

  Poto and another woman were weaving mats at the far side of Barker’s fale. Seated at the desk at the centre of the fale, Barker and Mautu were discussing the drawings of the alia, which were spread out over the desk. It was clear to Peleiupu, as she approached, that the two women were pretending not to be listening to what the men were saying, and she remembered, regretfully, that because she was now a young woman it was not proper for her to be a confidante of her father and Barker. People accepted that Mautu and Barker treated her as a son and, at times, as an equal, but that was no comfort because she knew — and Lalaga reminded her often — that now she had to keep her distance. Only papalagi daughters treated their fathers in that over-familiar way, discussing everything with them openly, publicly.

  Arona and Tavita were in the new shelter, which extended from the right side of the fale, sawing through a hefty log. When they saw her, Tavita smiled. It was so restrictive, she thought. She could not now even talk freely with her brother or any of the boys she had grown up with.

  ‘Come and see these,’ Barker called as soon as he saw her. She nodded but veered off to the back of the fale. ‘No, come through the front!’ Barker instructed. She wished he wouldn’t treat her so equally, not in front of other people. She insisted on doing the proper thing, entering the fale through the back. ‘Here, come to the table,’ Barker said. But she sat down beside Poto.

  ‘It’s all right here,’ she said. ‘I came to see Poto.’

  ‘It going to be a magnificent alia,’ Mautu said.

  Soon the two men were again immersed in their discussion.

  Peleiupu asked Poto where her children were. Next door, she told her. Peleiupu had never felt close to Poto. She had tried to but Poto just didn’t interest her: what she talked about, what she did bored Peleiupu. That was how she felt about most of the women. Their being women, in Satoan terms, was too narrow, and she didn’t want to be like that, but she had to disguise her dissatisfaction. For instance, right then, while she pretended she was interested in what Poto was saying, her attention was on Barker and Mautu and the alia. She wanted to be part of the alia, the building of it, but the way of Satoa denied her that: she was a young woman, a child still, who had to stay away from what was male and adult. It was so unfair. Barker and Mautu had taken her out into the boundless adventure that was the world, but the Satoan way wasn’t allowing her the full dimensions and richness of that adventure.

  Once, when she’d explained how she felt to Lalaga, her mother had told her to be satisfied she was a very intelligent girl who would one day marry a man of God and help spread God’s message in the pagan Pacific.

  ‘… And how are my children doing at school?’ Poto broke into her thoughts.

  ‘Doing well,’ Peleiupu replied.

  ‘I hope they’re not too naughty!’

  ‘No, they’re well behaved.’

  Poto continued talking about her children while Peleiupu observed Barker surreptitiously. Only the sun-bleached tips of his hair and his blue-green eyes showed he wasn’t Samoan. And you had to listen carefully to his Samoan to know he had an accent. He had succeeded in ‘going native’, he was fond of telling visitors; and Mautu kept telling him he now belonged to Satoa.

  There was no new blemish on his skin, no change in his mannerisms and speech; in fact he appeared healthier, happier, and openly enthusiastic about what he was describing to Mautu as ‘our new project: a ship to outspeed any thing, even death’.

  ‘You know what an alia is?’ Mautu saved her. She nodded. ‘We’re going to build a modern one: lighter, faster and stronger than any built before.’ In his voice Peleiupu once again detected that limitless delight which, years before, had driven their search for gold.

  Peleiupu couldn’t sleep that night. It started raining at midnight, and the incessant drone strengthened the grip of the darkness around her. Over and over, she examined Barker at his desk with Mautu, looking for the sign he had the Disease. But where? Where?

  At dawn, in a dream, she was in a warm, slow-circling current. The alia, white as bone, black mast veined with fissures, and winged with a white sail fat with the wind pushing the craft forward, sailed into the centre of her head and circled and circled with the current that was now her completely. No one on board, just the silent circling vessel tracing the veins in the water, in her, lifting her up, up, up, the sail shimmering and shivering in the invisible breeze. And she was the sail, her body stretched out in one taut skin with the wind singing through her pores.

  Suddenly (and she didn’t want to see it) she was kneeling on the deck that joined the two hulls, beside a corpse that was covered up to its neck with ie toga. She leaned forward but a blinding light burst up out of the mound of mats, and, as her mouth started swallowing the light, it turned into a solid, choking liquid that tasted like blood …

  The memory of the dream gripped her all day while she taught her classes.

  When she remembered that Hawaiians buried their chiefs at sea by placing them on canoes and sailing them out into the horizon, she hurried out of her classroom and, hiding among the bookshelves in the main fale, she prayed.

  When she got up to return to her class she glanced back at where she’d been sitting. On the mat were three large drops of blood. She clamped her hands over her mouth. She looked down at her dress. A thin red stain extended from below her belly to the hem.

  She waited under the breadfruit tree until Filivai was alone in her fale, then she entered. Since their meeting years before, when Filivai had warned her about her special gift, Peleiupu had not visited her. They met often around the village but never referred to that meeting.

  Filivai greeted her formally and then said, ‘It’s been a long time, eh?’ Pele nodded. ‘Are your parents well?’ Pele nodded again and waited for Filivai to continue talking, but she didn’t, so she looked up at her. ‘Are you well?’ Filivai asked. Peleiupu looked at the mat. ‘Something is wrong?’

  ‘Is there a cure for our Disease?’ Peleiupu couldn’t stop the question.

  ‘I don’t understand your question,’ Filivai replied. ‘Are you referring to your gift?’

  Peleiupu shook her head. ‘I’m asking about the Satoan Disease.’

  ‘I know of no cure for that. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Have you — or anyone else — tried to find a cure?’

  ‘I haven’t, but some others have tried.’

  ‘Why haven’t you?’

  Filivai used the end of her ie lavalava to wipe the dried sleep out of the corners of her eyes. ‘Because there is no cure. During my life I’ve seen thirteen people die from it, and I’ve made certain observations about it.’

  When she didn’t continue, Peleiupu asked, ‘Will you tell me?’

  ‘First, you must tell me why you want to find a cure. Is someone you know ill with it?’

  Peleiupu nodded. ‘It is not my parents.’

  ‘You see clearly, always. So I won’t lie to you. Let’s go for a walk,’ Filivai instructed her. ‘And pick the leaves I need for my medicines.’

  Peleiupu helped her up to her unsteady feet and handed her her siapo tiputa, which she put on. ‘Come, I need you to lean on. My old body weighs on me like a sick animal.’ She wound her left arm over Peleiupu’s shoulders and, putting some of her weight on Pele, asked, ‘I’m not too heavy, eh?’ Peleiupu smiled.

  As they picked a path through the shrubs and undergrowth Filivai described to her the various medical concoctions she made and the ailments they cured. She stopped periodically and asked Peleiupu to pick the leaves of one plant or another. Whenever they disturbed some insects and birds and the creatures escaped into the greenery, Filivai identified each one for Peleiupu.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’ Filivai asked. Peleiupu nodded. Filivai then told her what she’d observed about their Disease.

  Of the thirteen victims she had seen, two had been young children, five had been in their twenties, and the rest had been old. Eight, she recalled, had been male. ‘So you see, it can claim anyone of any age or sex.’ She pondered for a moment and then said, ‘Yes, not all of them were direct descendants of our people either. Three, I remember, came here from somewhere else. However, they lived here for over fifteen years. You could say that all thirteen belonged to Satoa, or had decided Satoa was their home, the place in which they wanted to die. No stranger ever contracts our Disease.’

  The walking was tiring the old woman so she got Peleiupu to sit her down on a boulder in the shade of some cacao trees. She gathered her breath and continued. ‘Of the four I knew well and helped nurse through their dreadful ordeal, all wanted to die.’ Peleiupu looked at her. ‘Yes, Pele, they wanted to die. One of them admitted it to me: the other three didn’t know they suffered the wish to die…’

  ‘But how did you know?’

  Filivai gazed up at her. ‘How do you know?’ Peleiupu looked away. ‘Yes, Pele, all the victims of our Disease want to die and be buried here in Satoa.’ Peleiupu refused to believe it of Barker and was going to say so, but Filivai said, ‘I don’t want to know who it is, Pele. Not yet.’ Reaching up, she grasped Peleiupu’s arms and pulled herself to her feet. ‘I’m old, Pele, and it’s not easy carrying the pain of my own carcass, let alone sharing someone else’s pain. You understand?’ Peleiupu nodded. ‘Let’s continue to pick leaves to cure simpler maladies!’ she chuckled. They moved deeper into the cool vegetation.

  ‘When I was convinced all the victims wanted to die, I thought I’d discovered the cure: restore the person’s will to live and the Disease would leave his body…’

  ‘And?’ Peleiupu urged.

  ‘I tried it with the first two victims. With their loved ones, I tried to make them see their death-wish, to see it clearly and want to live. But it didn’t work. Don’t ask me why. We thought we’d succeeded bu …’ She scrutinised Peleiupu’s face and said, ‘You’re telling yourself: where Filivai failed, I’m going to succeed, I’m going to get the victim to believe she doesn’t belong to Satoa and that she is suffering from the wish to die. Am I correct, eh?’ Peleiupu nodded. ‘And once that is done, our Disease will leave her alone?’ Peleiupu nodded again. ‘But there is another question which, if you haven’t arrived at it already, you’ll eventually face after suffering hours, days, months watching the victim dying. It’s this: Perhaps our Disease is a blessing, a reward for a life of virtue and goodness? Remember, God is a god of love not cruelty.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Peleiupu.

  ‘Think of this, Pele: if God is a god of love, would He inflict our Disease on someone as punishment or as a reward?’ She paused and added, ‘All thirteen victims I knew led exemplary Christian lives.’ Before Peleiupu could say it, Filivai held up her hand and said, ‘No, don’t tell me who it is or that she has not led a virtuous life. I don’t want to know just yet.’

  After they stored the leaves in a basket under the bed in the fale, Filivai said, ‘Pele, I try to cure what is within my power to cure. Many years ago I learned, after much suffering caused by too much hope, to accept the limitations of my ability, my gift, call it what you like. I learned, with great bitterness but with wisdom, that I couldn’t heal the world or be greater, more powerful, than I was or am.’ She reached over and brushed back Peleiupu’s hair, then added, ‘Your gift is much greater than mine but it also has limitations. You continue to hope. You believe you can heal the world. For your sake — and the sake of anyone you love or will love — learn quickly your limitations, then hope within them. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Peleiupu, but she was convinced she could save Barker.

  ‘You’re going to try, eh?’ Filivai laughed. ‘Go now. God may help you win!’

  For nearly a month Peleiupu struggled with the science and medical books in their library. She realised, not long after she started, that she didn’t have the basic scientific knowledge to understand the books, but she persevered, using dictionaries and encyclopaedias to decipher unfamiliar terms and formulae. The less she understood the more tenacious she became. Even when she was doing other chores, her mind battled with the maze of terminology. She could recall, word by word, sentence by sentence, formula by formula, whole areas of what she had read but she understood little of it. She decided she needed a teacher. When she told her father she was trying to teach their students some science and needed someone to explain the books to her, he suggested Barker. All her attempts to save Barker seemed always to return to him.

  Next morning, with an armful of books, she accompanied Mautu to Barker’s home.

  ‘Now, what is it you want to know?’ Barker asked. ‘I hope you don’t expect me to read all those books!’

  Peleiupu shook her head and said, ‘I need to know about diseases, so I can teach our students better hygiene and health.’

  ‘All right, fire ahead. I probably won’t be able to answer most of them.’

  ‘What causes human illness?’ she began.

  ‘Many things. But germs cause most of them.’

  ‘And germs?’

  He explained in detail what they were and how they could be destroyed. She knew this already but she wanted him to lead her, step by step, from what she knew into the jungle she needed to see, tree by tree, vine by vine, and far away from any awareness of why she wanted that information.

  She got him, later, to discuss epidemic diseases, such as measles, smallpox, influenza and mumps, which, Barker pointed out, the papalagi had introduced into the Pacific and which were killing hundreds of islanders who were not immune to them. She asked him about immunity, and he explained.

  ‘Most medicines merely help strengthen the body’s natural defences,’ he said.

  ‘But why are there diseases we can’t cure?’ she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Because we haven’t discovered what causes them. Or what those diseases are …’

  ‘I need help,’ Mautu called to him. Mautu was working on the drawings.

  ‘Coming,’ Barker replied. ‘Let’s continue later,’ he told Peleiupu. He stood up. ‘By the way, young lady, not all diseases have physical causes. And I’m not referring to aitu. Sometimes your spirit, your soul is ill. This shows itself in the body. And your books won’t tell you much about those illnesses.’

  While she waited for him to return she skimmed through the books, and sometimes observed the craftsmen working on the alia in the alia shelter. Arona and Tavita were among them. Tavita smiled at her every time she looked over.

  An hour or so later, when she knew Barker was too absorbed in the alia, she headed home. As she went past the shelter Tavita waved to her. She smiled back.

  Their meals were now tuned to Mautu’s excited narratives about the alia: its history, the various types and their uses. He concentrated on describing how fleets of alia were used in warfare and how certain warrior matai in the past had conquered Samoa by using swifter alia fleets and better naval tactics than their enemies. He went on to describe many of the great British naval victories he had read about. From there he descended into the mythology of the Odyssey and, later, Sinbad’s adventures. Whenever he taught his classes, which was rarely now since he spent most of his day building the alia, he took his students adventuring with Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook, Abel Tasman, Vasco da Gama, and their heroic Polynesian ancestors who, using mighty alia, had discovered and settled the Pacific Islands scattered over millions of square miles of ocean.