Peleiupu pulled the letter she’d written out of her pocket. ‘Will you give him this, please?’ The man nodded. ‘Will you make sure he gets it?’ He nodded vigorously when she extended a sixpence to him.

  ‘I’ll make sure the very generous Mr Tavita receives this important epistle, Madam!’ he said, the money already safe in his left hand behind his back. ‘I promise on my unworthy, poverty-stricken honour that he will receive it and read it, Madam.’

  Sweat was already drenching her clothes. She wrapped her sleeping sheet around her pillow, listened until she was sure everyone was asleep, then slid out of the mosquito net. She tried to control her shaking as she tiptoed around and over the bodies of the other sleepers, and out of the fale.

  The lights of the few anchored ships dotted the harbour. Behind those rose the black shape of Mulinu’u Peninsula, which was propping up the insucking depths of the night sky sprinkled with stars. Still and humid. She wrapped her spare ie lavalava around her body, darted over the empty street and felt her way carefully through the darkness over the massive roots of the talie on the sea wall in front of the LMS church, snuggled down between two roots that were as high as her shoulders, leaned up against the trunk, and started wiping her sweat with her ie lavalava as she waited. The tide was crawling in like a slow fat animal.

  She peered over the edge of the roots. A thin dark shadow was moving towards her from the direction of the market, over the path along the sea wall. As she watched she was again gripped by that inexplicable serenity. When the shadow reached the talie it stopped and turned towards her.

  ‘Pele, Pele?’ Tavita whispered. She stood up and beckoned him towards her. He slid his way over the roots and dropped down into her narrow sheltered hollow. He smelt of soap and shaving cream; his knee pressed against her leg. She moved her leg away.

  For an awkward while they didn’t know what to say. ‘I think I have some news about Arona,’ he began hesitantly. ‘Picked it up from that shipping company and at the saloon. Maybe just rumours but …’

  ‘Yes, go on,’ she urged.

  ‘That someone who could be him is now on an American ship that goes from Los Angeles to some of the ports in South America. They say it’s someone from Samoa who’s fluent in English and is being trained to be an officer.’

  ‘We keep waiting for him to return — and my mother deep down still blames me for Arona’s departure — but he keeps returning only in story and more stories.’ She paused. ‘One time I think your father said: “Stories, that’s all we are and continue to be after we die.”’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘Arona’s not dead, is he?’

  ‘No!’ was her emphatic reply. ‘No.’

  ‘He — the man at the saloon — gave me your note,’ he tried to turn her away from the pain of Arona’s absence. ‘He said it was from a very beautiful lady.’ The tide lapped at and rubbed its body against the sea wall.

  ‘I’m glad you came, Tavita. I have something important to tell you.’

  ‘I know already.’ Silence again. ‘The tide is coming in,’ he added. ‘We are being foolish meeting like this.’

  ‘I wanted to talk about it with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  She decided he was again reacting in that open palagi way, so she followed his lead. ‘Because — because I have deep feelings for you.’ Stupid, clumsy. Try again.

  ‘I have deep feelings for you too, Pele.’

  ‘I have alofa for you,’ she admitted at last, believing he would continue in his palagi way, but he didn’t.

  ‘It is foolish, Pele. Nothing good will come of our admitting and expressing our true feelings for each other. You must obey your parents and aiga and what you’ve been raised and trained to do.’

  ‘That is what your mother told me to do!’ She was surprised she was angry about it.

  ‘I have not stopped thinking about it since you returned from Vaiuta and I knew I had deep feelings for you, Pele. It has pursued me constantly. But you must marry him, Pele. That is the only choice that will protect you and me and your parents and aiga and our community.’ His odour and warmth had curled around her and she felt utterly safe in it.

  ‘But it is not what your feelings tell you, is it, Tavita?’

  ‘We can’t give in to the wild dictates of our passions,’ he said, reminding her of his father.

  ‘Is that what you’ve been doing in that saloon over the past few weeks?’ He refused to answer. ‘Giving in to the wild dictates of your passions?’

  ‘I’m beginning to behave just like my palagi father,’ he said, surprising her.

  ‘No, you’re not. Your father rarely gave in to his passions.’ She knelt and, leaning forward, put her arms around his shoulders. He tried to push her away but she was determined. She pressed her cheek down on his head and tightened her embrace.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. But his arms came around her back and he pressed his face into her neck.

  Then with lucid clarity she told him what she wanted to do. At first he kept saying no, no, no, but as she shushed him and explained her reasons, he withdrew into what she interpreted as acceptance. She kissed him quickly on the mouth, withdrew, rolled over the tree root behind her and started crawling over the maze of roots through the darkness.

  Just before she fell asleep, she knew Arona would support her decision.

  The Consequences

  Wings fully outstretched, the frigate bird hovered high above the heart of Fagaloto Bay, the midday light gleaming on its body as his breath stretched and stretched out towards it. A woman’s voice breaking from the depths of her moa in that seemingly endless wailing for the dead surged into his sleep, noosed his throat, tightened and pulled him out into the cool, dew-drenched morning. Of Apia. The pastor’s house. Preparations for Peleiupu’s wedding. And Lalaga beside him, with a letter crunched up in her strangling hands, bent forward. ‘What has happened?’ Mautu whispered. ‘What is it?’

  She started beating at her face with the letter and her hands. He grasped her hands, stilled them. ‘That’s enough!’ he ordered. She flung the letter at Mautu and away from herself as if it were a poisonous creature. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. But when he recognised the handwriting in the letter as Peleiupu’s, panic surged up from the pit of his moa. If someone had warned him previously that one day one of his children would threaten to destroy his family, he would have dismissed it as unthinkable. If that someone had identified the threat as Peleiupu, he would have laughed. But now as he panicked and struggled to control it, afraid to straighten out the letter and read it, he knew. ‘Lalaga, I promise God will make everything right, eventually.’ He flattened out the letter on the floor, shut his eyes momentarily, and then read. Lalaga twitched, her body contorting wildly, then sagging in his embrace. Right then Ruta and Naomi pulled up the side of the net and knelt down beside them.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Ruta asked, sitting down beside her mother. Mautu released Lalaga into her arms. ‘Get me some water and a towel,’ Ruta instructed Naomi. ‘She’s unconscious.’ By then pastor Leupega and his wife and other people were around the net. ‘She’ll be all right,’ Ruta reassured them. ‘She’s just fainted from the heat.’

  When Naomi returned, Ruta wet the towel and started washing her mother’s face with it. Mautu hid the letter under his leg. ‘We have a friend who is a doctor,’ the pastor said. Before Mautu could stop him, Leupega instructed his wife to send someone to fetch the doctor. ‘He lives just next door.’

  Ruta placed two pillows under Lalaga’s head, and Naomi covered her with a sleeping sheet. Ruta started massaging Lalaga’s forehead with coconut oil. The other women took the net down and stretched a curtain across that section of the fale, giving Lalaga privacy. Lost for something to do, Mautu massaged Lalaga’s arms. ‘She’s been too busy and worried about the wedding,’ he offered. His hosts agreed, adding that the high humidity and heat didn’t help.

  Mautu and his daughters looked at one another when they saw the spindly papalagi man, with a handlebar moustache and dressed in a white singlet and ie lavalava and sandals, entering the fale, carrying a small leather bag. Head bowed, he hurried to them and sat down cross-legged beside Lalaga.

  ‘Welcome, sir,’ the pastor greeted him in Samoan.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Pastor and your sacred family,’ the man replied in Samoan with an American accent. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘My wife has fallen ill suddenly, sir,’ Mautu replied in English.

  The man held Lalaga’s right wrist and started taking her pulse. He asked if Lalaga had been unconscious for long then using his stethoscope, he listened to her heart and breathing. He opened a vial and held it under her nostrils. Lalaga’s head jerked away and she opened her eyes, struggling to speak. The doctor held her shoulders and, gazing down into her eyes, said, ‘You’ll be all right; you’re with your family.’

  Mautu bent forward so Lalaga could look up into his face. ‘You just fainted,’ he whispered. She continued struggling to speak.

  ‘Has she suffered any serious illness before?’ the doctor asked Mautu, who shook his head. ‘I think she’s suffered a minor stroke,’ the doctor said. ‘Has she been under a lot of strain recently?’

  ‘Yes, we’re getting ready for our daughter’s wedding,’ Mautu mumbled in English. ‘We’ve come all the way from Satoa. I’m the pastor there.’

  ‘And which daughter is getting married?’ the doctor asked, smiling at Ruta and Naomi.

  ‘Not us,’ Naomi replied in English.

  ‘Our other sister who’s not here at the moment,’ Ruta added in Samoan.

  ‘We’ll have to get your mother well for the wedding, eh!’ The doctor fished a bottle of pills out of his bag, handed it to Ruta and told her the dosage. ‘She may recover quickly, or it may take a while. She can’t be shifted for now.’ He got up. ‘I’ll come and see her again this evening. If she gets worse, come and get me immediately.’ Mautu thanked him; Leupega invited him to stay for the morning meal but he declined.

  As the doctor left through the back of the fale Leupega told Mautu he was Professor Mardrek Freemeade from Harvard University, America, an anthropologist who was also a medical doctor.

  They sang a hymn and Leupega prayed for the restoration of Lalaga’s health, then he and his household went to prepare the morning meal.

  ‘She is conscious but she can’t speak,’ Ruta said to Mautu. They looked down into her eyes, which were alive with panic as she tried to say something but couldn’t.

  ‘It’s all right, Lalaga,’ Mautu consoled. ‘You try and rest.’

  ‘Have you noticed?’ Naomi asked. ‘The left side of her mouth is partly paralysed.’

  ‘It is your selfish sister who has done this!’ Mautu declared softly, so only his daughters heard. ‘She has decided …’ He couldn’t say it. He bowed his head, then holding up the letter, he muttered, ‘I will never forgive her if anything happens to your mother! She has betrayed your mother, me, us, our aiga!’ Ruta took the letter and read it. ‘No one else must know the contents of that letter,’ he instructed them. ‘No one. We must try and minimise the effects of this on everyone, especially on your mother.’

  That afternoon he met the Satoan elders and the leaders of the two fautasi crews and instructed one crew to return to Satoa and inform Sao and the matai council of Lalaga’s serious illness and the indefinite postponement of the wedding. They would return to Satoa when Lalaga was able to travel; meanwhile Sao and the other deacons were to carry out his pastoral duties. The other crew was sent to Fagaloto to instruct his aiga to meet the Aiga Sa-Tutete’e and ask that the wedding be postponed.

  Without him telling them, the crews knew they were not to mention what an elder described, out of Mautu’s hearing, as ‘that pagan afakasi’s evil, unforgivable, disgraceful actions eloping with our beloved pastor’s innocent daughter’. Yes, what do you expect from the ‘intestine of a papalagi trader’? his wife echoed. Someone reminded them that Tavita was also their ali’i’s grandson, so their ali’i had to take some responsibility for disgracing and shaming their pastor; and because Sao was their ali’i they, as a village, were to blame too. All Samoa was going to hear of their guilt, their moral laxity in allowing such a sin to occur. And what a sin — the grandson of their ali’i running off with their pastor’s daughter. This had not happened in any other God-fearing Christian village!

  Just before evening lotu Professor Freemeade came to see Lalaga and told them she was improving. He got Lalaga to indicate she understood everything he said by raising her right hand. Ruta asked if the paralysis would disappear eventually. The possibilities were very good, he said. Before he left he asked Mautu if he could come and study their way of life in Satoa. It would be an honour, Mautu replied.

  After the evening meal, during which everyone avoided reference to Peleiupu’s absence, Mautu retreated with his daughters to Lalaga behind the curtain. Using herbs and techniques she’d learned from Lefatu, Ruta massaged her mother carefully until Lalaga fell into a deep sleep. Ruta was to do this every morning and night after the doctor’s visits, without his knowledge. While she worked, Mautu would pray fervently for Lalaga’s recovery. He agreed to Naomi’s suggestion that if the papalagi doctor couldn’t heal Lalaga fully, they should take her to Lefatu when they returned to Satoa.

  Most nights since Lalaga’s collapse Mautu couldn’t sleep. His mind refused to tire as it analysed, lucidly and endlessly, the events that had resulted in Lalaga’s stroke, and his role in those. Lalaga had total and unquestioning faith in God and the value of their work, but he’d doubted, had lost faith countless times, and had allowed the Devil to tempt him into educating his children in the world’s worthless and arrogant knowledge represented by Barker, that tortured atheist. And look how his children had turned out: Arona had fled his promise to be a pastor in order to be a sailor who didn’t bother to communicate with his family; and most evil of all, he’d indulged his eldest daughter into pursuing her selfish desires and thereby trampling on his dignity and that of aiga, church and community. He was to blame for it all, he confessed to Lalaga whenever they were alone. She would press his hands and shake her head. ‘What a shame, what a disgrace!’ he’d cry.

  On Saturday morning Professor Freemeade arrived earlier than usual and, after treating Lalaga, asked Mautu if he’d like to walk with him.

  An overcast sky that wouldn’t rain, a refreshing breeze licking his face, the sea wall empty of people, the smell of acrid woodsmoke. ‘My Samoan is still not very good,’ Professor Freemeade began, in English. ‘When I come to study your village, will you teach me Samoan, sir?’ he asked in Samoan.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not a very good teacher of language,’ Mautu replied. Even the papalagi knew about his guilt and shame and was trying to be kind, he believed.

  A few ships lay in the harbour. None of the dew-covered shops that glittered in the morning light was open yet. Ahead, four fishermen were pulling their canoes out of the water into the shelter of the gigantic pulu trees in front of the Godeffroy Company headquarters. Mautu jumped down to the beach; the American followed.

  A thick flickering tangle of live atule filled the bottoms of the canoes. Mautu greeted the fishermen who were starting to string their fish. They returned his greeting; their skins were goose-pimpled and shrivelled from the cold. ‘A rich catch,’ he remarked. The oldest fisherman, with hair bleached blond by the sun, explained that the atule were running at Fagali’i Bay; they were lucky to have reached it before other fishermen had arrived.

  ‘How much, sir?’ the American asked in Samoan.

  ‘Fifty pence a string,’ the fishermen replied. ‘Your friend speaks beautiful Samoan,’ he said to Mautu. His companions nodded.

  ‘It is not very good,’ the American said. The fishermen grinned. He handed them a shilling and said he wanted two strings.

  Handing him three strings, the fisherman said, ‘The extra one is for being able to speak our language well!’ The fishermen and Mautu laughed.

  Mautu moved to carry the strings of fish but the American refused. He turned and thanked the fishermen.

  ‘They are delicious cooked on coconut shell charcoal,’ Mautu remarked as they resumed their walk.

  ‘You think your wife will like them?’

  ‘She’ll love them: her appetite is returning. She’ll love them even more because I’ll cook them myself.’

  Wavelets pancaked around their feet as they walked on. ‘Please stop me if you think I’m intruding,’ the American began. ‘I know what has occurred, and I want to offer you any help that I can.’ Mautu continued walking.

  ‘My wife and I and our aiga will suffer the consequences of our daughter’s foolish actions forever,’ Mautu heard himself declaring. ‘Our honour has been trampled on, and our disgrace is national and inescapable.’ The American had to walk faster to keep up with him. ‘Right now, I don’t think I have the strength to survive the pain of that disgrace. We can’t hide anywhere.’

  ‘I’m sorry, very sorry,’ the American said.

  In the kitchen fale Mautu ignored the people who were cooking, started a charcoal fire, and, refusing help from the others, he gutted and washed the atule, spread them out over the hot charcoal and watched as they cooked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done any cooking. The enticing smell of the cooking fish made him feel hungry for the first time since Lalaga had fallen ill.

  When the fish was cooked he told Ruta and Naomi he would feed Lalaga. His daughters joined the rest of the household.

  The keen alertness was back in her eyes, he noted. That sharp awareness that missed little that happened around her. And she was again able to mask her true feelings with a smile. She observed his every move as he laid out the meal: fish, fa’alifu talo, bread and butter, and koko. ‘I cooked the atule,’ he boasted. She dug her fingers into the side of a fish, pinched a lump of it, put it in her mouth and, as she chewed it, nodded and smiled. ‘As you know, I used to be a good cook!’ he said. She shook her head, her whole body trembling with laughter. ‘I was not a bad cook?’ he asked. She nodded furiously. He laughed with her. ‘The American professor bought it for you.’