Rising slowly to his feet, Malaetasi said, ‘When we leave here the tulafale of our aiga and I will visit his aiga and arrange everything.’ He left the room quickly.

  ‘There is nothing to be afraid of,’ Talaola said, placing her hand over Lalaga’s. Lalaga nodded once. Her mother’s smell reminded her of dew-wet earth drying in the morning sun. ‘We are all very proud of you,’ Talaola whispered. Lalaga found herself gazing into her reflection in the tears in her mother’s eyes.

  As soon as she entered her dormitory Sinaula, her best friend, and the rest of her graduating class hemmed her in, wanting to know what had happened. From past experience she knew she had to tell them immediately or they’d continue embarrassing her. So she did.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Sinaula asked. ‘Yes!’ the others chorused. She told them.

  ‘How do you feel about marrying someone you’ve not even met?’ someone asked. Lalaga shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘We have no choice in the matter!’ Sinaula reminded them. ‘We are not papalagi, who are free to marry who they want and for love.’

  ‘No, we’re not papalagi,’ Lalaga emphasised. ‘But I’m sure my parents and Misi Peta have chosen a man I will respect.’

  ‘Yes, a good servant of God!’ Sinaula stopped the others’ embarrassing curiosity. ‘And Lalaga is lucky she’s getting married. We’re still waiting for our choices to be made for us.’ The others nodded. ‘Anyway, if you don’t know who you’re marrying, you may be in for pleasant surprises!’ she added. Some of the others laughed.

  ‘You may also be in for unpleasant surprises!’ a pessimist offered. Lalaga glanced at Sinaula.

  ‘As a pastor Lalaga’s husband will have to behave,’ Sinaula declared. The pessimist had to agree. Sinaula had a way of ultimately getting her way with the other students.

  The others dispersed soon after. Sinaula sat holding Lalaga’s arm. ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘Most of the Vaiuta women have married pastors who were chosen for them. That’s how my parents married — and they’re still together, despite the fact that my mother bosses him around.’

  During the day the others kidded her about the kind of man Mautu was going to be, and she tried not to get annoyed. Sometimes she dreaded how and what Mautu was going to be and had to consult Sinaula, who consoled her with alluring pictures of an ideal marriage, ideal ‘touching of bodies’, ideal children.

  It was during arithmetic class that Sinaula came in and said something to their teacher. ‘Misi Peta wants to see you in her office,’ their teacher called to Lalaga. She knew, and her heart threatened to clog her throat. She rose unsteadily to her feet and, head bowed, headed for the door. Sinaula brushed her shoulder gently as she hurried past.

  Her feet were leading her. She kept swallowing back. No one in the corridor, streaks of sunlight striped the floor ahead. She watched her feet treading on the light, disturbing the almost invisible particles of dust that rose slowly into the air.

  She stopped in the open doorway. ‘Come in,’ Misi Peta called. Lalaga’s right foot was the first to step over the threshold.

  She refused to look at anyone, focusing her attention on the area directly in front of her feet.

  ‘Sit down over there,’ a male papalagi voice invited her. She caught his hand pointing at the chair near the door. She sat down. Ahead at the corner of her vision was the outline of Misi Simaila, sitting in the cane chair behind Misi Peta’s desk. Misi Simaila was a regular visitor to Vaiuta. In the right-hand corner, facing the missionaries, was a young man, immense and in a white shirt and ie lavalava. Her heart was like a live bird trapped at the back of her mouth. For the rest of their meeting most of her attention would be on him.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Misi Simaila said in Samoan. His accent was less pronounced than Misi Peta’s. Lalaga forced her vision to inch up. Misi Simaila appeared to have no flesh on his skeleton. ‘Let us pray,’ he declared. Bluish veins, a network of them, were visible through his jade-white skin, and his green eyes were embedded deeply in their sockets. Lalaga knew from his previous visits that, despite his austere appearance, he was kind and gentle — the first papalagi she hadn’t been afraid of. Misi Simaila’s prayer was short and uttered precisely. He finished, pursed his thin lips and said in Samoan, ‘It is good that we are meeting here today…’ From there Lalaga would hear only bits of Misi Simaila’s conversation; her attention was now on Mautu, on the huge sweep of his shoulders and head, the square bulky forehead, the downcast eyes. ‘…We know, Mautu and Lalaga,’ she heard Misi Simaila saying, ‘that you will be happy together and that your children will be exceptional children of the Light …’

  Misi Peta spoke as soon as Misi Simaila had finished. Lalaga heard little of what she said either. A cool sweat was growing, comforting her unease. ‘… Now we want you to meet Mautu,’ Misi Peta declared. Immediately Lalaga’s sweat turned cold. She was on her trembling legs and being dragged by her precocious feet towards Mautu, who was standing and trying not to look at her. Her feet took her into his shadow and his coconut-oil scent.

  She couldn’t look up at his face. All she saw was his large feet with uncut nails under which black dirt was embedded, feet with the small toes flaring outwards, with healed sore scars and bulging veins, feet that seemed anchored to the floor with a force that couldn’t be severed. Tentatively she extended her right hand, and for an instant her hand was drowned in his smothering grip. She pulled it out quickly and almost ran back to her seat.

  ‘Congratulations!’ Misi Simaila said, smiling.

  Back in Malaelua she soon discovered she had no say in her marriage arrangements. She wanted Sinaula to be her bridesmaid. Her father and the elders agreed but they also decided there were to be five others representing the important branches of their aiga. Behind the scenes her aunts, the most vocal and bullying being Gutu, her father’s oldest sister, and the other women argued about who those were to be, almost resulting in a physical fight between Gutu and two of her younger sisters. Malaetasi again had to rule. Next, those same aunts and their husbands argued over who was to provide her wedding dress, so her father ruled that she was to have three. After another long debate about the wedding cake, during which his sisters again quarrelled — they each wanted to provide the cake — Malaetasi again had to rule that Talaola’s aiga was to do it. His sisters wept bitterly. When they calmed down, which didn’t take long, they insisted that the cake be at least ten tiers high, befitting the status of the Malaetasi and their aiga. Lalaga watched her poor mother fuming but knew she wouldn’t say anything publicly.

  The guest list offered another opportunity for squabbling. It was unanimous that the list would include Misi Peta, Misi Simaila, Lalaga’s and Mautu’s other teachers and their wives, their pastor and the other Lotu Ta’iti pastors and their wives from the neighbouring villages, the wedding party’s parents and their friends, and Mautu’s aiga. But problems arose when Malaetasi ruled to invite only the matai, deacons and their wives of Malaelua, and the main matai of their aiga throughout Samoa. He was reminded, especially by the vocal Gutu, of others and more others. ‘What’s going to happen when other relatives and friends hear they haven’t been invited?’ she argued. ‘What are people going to say about our aiga — that we’re mean and poor nobodies!’ Until in a suppressed rage Malaetasi declared, ‘Invite the lot!’ and stormed out of the fale, muttering that he was going out to try to find enough food to feed ‘the hungry multitudes.’ The list would continue expanding until anyone who wanted to come could come. You couldn’t turn anyone away, anyway — it was mean to do so, and the Aiga Malaetasi was the most generous aiga in Samoa. God would provide, Gutu kept chorusing.

  Fed up with the endless work and the squabbling, Lalaga simply wanted her wedding to be over with. ‘Why do we have to go through all this?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘Because it’s important to your aiga, because you’re marrying a Man of God,’ she replied.

  ‘But you didn’t get married in church at first,’ Lalaga reminded her.

  A long pause. ‘No, but your father and I are not educated — and we were young, we still followed pagan ways. Later when your father wanted to be a deacon we got married in church.’

  Sinaula and her mother arrived three days before the wedding, and Sinaula took control of Lalaga and the tasks she had to perform. For instance, after the young men cut coconut fronds and timber from the bush, she and the other women helped them build long shelters on the malae for the wedding feast. Sinaula organised the women and they decorated the church, tidied the church grounds and the whole Malaetasi compound; they gathered flowers and made ula for the wedding party and main guests. Lalaga envied Sinaula for the way men, while appearing to be distancing themselves, were all attracted to her. ‘They’re all crazy about you!’ she whispered to her friend.

  A week before Christmas, 1879, the wedding took place. It was a day without the threat of rain — an auspicious day for her wedding, her mother had whispered to her before they left their fale for the church. In the bright light at the end of the long aisle that divided the packed congregation stood Misi Simaila and their pastor. Misi Simaila glowed in his white suit and looked as if he were going to disintegrate at any moment. To steady her trembling, Lalaga gazed only at Misi Simaila, focused on his vibrant smile, his transparent, infectious happiness, and clung to her father’s arm as they walked up the mat-covered aisle, feeling as if she were wading through thick liquid heat that smelled richly of frangipani.

  At the end of the aisle to her left stood Sinaula and her bridesmaids; to her right, Mautu and his groomsmen. Lalaga and her father stopped between the two groups. Misi Simaila stepped forward. Her father handed her to Mautu, who held her hand carefully, gingerly.

  ‘We are gathered here this beautiful morning …’ Misi Simaila began in Samoan.

  Lalaga concentrated on Misi Simaila’s facial expressions, voice and gestures but didn’t hear much of what he was saying. She knew the wedding service by heart, having learnt it at Vaiuta. Once when she gazed up at the light behind Misi Simaila she wished it would absorb her unto itself and she’d be free. Drops of sweat trickling down her back returned her to the present and she glanced up at Misi Simaila to find him gesturing to her and Mautu to step forward. She refused to look at Mautu as his trembling fingers sheathed the ring around her finger. She refused to look up at him when he lifted her veil, hesitated, pushed his face at hers and pecked her on the cheek.

  The wedding dress clung wetly to her as they walked back down the aisle. This time she looked around and smiled at everyone: Misi Peta and her mother grinning and weeping; her father trying to look stern, unmoved; Aunt Gutu smiling and calling, ‘Be happy, Lalaga!’; the friends she’d known all her life — some crying openly, some waving, some avoiding looking at her as if they didn’t want to say goodbye.

  For a moment the light blinded her when they emerged from the church into the crowd, which clapped and called out their congratulations. Waves of children lapped around her and the wedding party. She bent down and kissed many of the children.

  The wedding dress was a heavy wet skin that squished around her when they crossed the malae to the main fale. There, Mautu and the bridesmaids and groomsmen were served fresh green coconuts and cake, while Lalaga, helped by Sinaula and directed by the over-efficient Gutu, changed into her second wedding dress, behind the curtain that had been strung across the fale. ‘How is it?’ Sinaula whispered.

  ‘I’m going to survive,’ she replied, and when Sinaula looked questioningly at her, smiled and repeated, ‘Yes, I’m going to survive.’

  When they emerged from behind the curtain Lalaga looked directly at Mautu for the first time. He smiled but looked away. One of the bridesmaids handed her a coconut, she raised it to her lips and drank long and deep, paused, took a deep breath and took another long drink, yet another and another until the nut was empty, and her whole breath and body were saturated with a defiant coolness. She sat down in the chair beside Mautu, pressed her knee against his and, almost as if she were doing it accidentally, placed her hand on his arm, which lay on his thigh. He didn’t move a muscle, or indicate that he knew she was touching him. So she pressed harder, and continued gazing at his profile. Eventually he turned and looked across at her. When she smiled, he smiled back but again looked away.

  As with everything else, Gutu had taken charge of the wedding feast. She told everyone weddings were a papalagi institution and their aiga would show their ignorance if they didn’t do everything properly, correctly, according to the papalagi way. So immediately in front of the fale, in the shelter for the wedding party, a long table (made up of two tables borrowed from the pastor) had been set with chairs (borrowed from around the village), white tablecloths and knives and forks and expensive dinner plates and glasses (the first to be seen in Satoa), with the largest ten-tiered wedding cake ever seen in Satoa dominating everything. Women trained by Gutu as waitresses over a severe three days were fanning the flies away from the food at the main table. Eyes as sharp as newly honed knives, but with a wide smile fixed on her round face, Gutu moved about welcoming the guests and supervising the ushers, who were seating them on the mats beside the long rows of food in the other shelters. No chairs or expensive cutlery or crockery for them — just plain fingers, palm-leaf containers and foodmats.

  In the neighbouring fale and circling the malae in the shade were those who’d come with the guests — hundreds of them. The hungry air was thick with the smell of umu-cooked pork, chicken, fish, palusami, faiai, taro, ota, faiai fe’e, povi masima, pisupo and other dishes. Throughout the previous night nearly all the aiga in Malaelua had made umu for the feast. ‘Are you hungry?’ Lalaga asked Mautu.

  Nodding, he said, ‘Yes, and you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m hungry too.’ She felt his hand descending on hers and clasping it. She looked away from him.

  Once she and Mautu were seated at the main table, she again felt she was being watched by everyone and tried to focus only on Mautu, who kept smiling at her. Their pastor said grace, blessing the wedding feast and their marriage, and then everyone started eating.

  For their wedding night her aiga had prepared the small fale by the sea: a new mosquito net, a soft bed of mats, new pillows and sleeping sheets, a lamp, lowered blinds whispering almost inaudibly as the inquisitive sea breeze poked its wispy fingers through them. For a long moment before she said goodbye to Sinaula, who had accompanied her to the fale, she stood on the paepae gazing out at the sea. The breeze was saturated with the smell of decaying coral. As the darkness broke out of the heart of the horizon and spread like soft mud across the sky, the evening chorus of cicadas started.

  ‘Thank you for everything,’ she said. Sinaula put an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘It was a beautiful wedding,’ said Sinaula.

  ‘Yes, but I’m glad it’s over,’ she replied. A flying-fox broke out of the heads of the mango trees by the fale and started flying along the shore. ‘We’ll always be sisters, won’t we?’ she heard herself saying. She turned and held on to Sinaula.

  ‘If you ever need me, I’ll come, Lalaga,’ Sinaula whispered. ‘I’m fortunate to have you as a friend — my best friend.’ She paused. ‘You’re lucky: Mautu is a good man. You know that now, don’t you?’

  The darkness and the chorus of cicadas deepened. Sinaula hurried into the fale and lit the lamp. ‘By the time you get up tomorrow, my mother and I will have left,’ she said, her face glowing in the light of the lamp. ‘Don’t forget: if you ever need me, just send a message.’ Before Lalaga could embrace her, Sinaula kissed her on the cheek and rushed away, up towards the main fale where the women were stringing up the mosquito nets.

  In the lamplight the net shone like a large spider’s web, and as the breeze nudged it, it danced almost imperceptibly. Lalaga hesitated for a while, sat down beside the net, and through a gap in the blinds watched the darkness fill the space outside. When the mosquitoes started stinging her, she lifted the side of the net, rolled onto the bed of mats and, lying on her stomach, embraced a pillow. The pillow smelled faintly of starch and coconut oil. Suddenly the cicadas’ chorus was gone, and all around her in the darkness the huge sea stirred and listened.

  Huufft! Someone’s sharp breath blew out the lamp and she was awake, but didn’t move, sensing that Mautu was lying beside her. He smelled of sweat and coconut oil. Immediately she found herself trying to suppress her frantic breathing.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘It was a very successful day.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. A long pause. Though he was a few feet away his breath on her left shoulder felt like the touch of hot skin.

  ‘Your parents and aiga have been very generous to me.’ Another pause, with a single mosquito drilling at it. ‘You’l … you’ll have to help me say the things I want to say to you.’

  ‘I need help too,’ she admitted.

  ‘You must be very tired,’ he said finally.

  ‘Yes,’ she lied at once.

  ‘Sleep then.’

  They lay awake, listening and waiting for each other. They could hear the tide rising and lapping against the paepae of the fale, and at the edge of their hearing the surf pounded on the reef. When she realised her blouse was soaked with sweat she tugged it off her skin at places and let the air cool her skin. When his elbow brushed against her shoulder she jumped away from the spark.

  ‘There is … there is something I want to confess,’ he said. ‘My flesh has been weak, sinful, since I was fifteen. I am ashamed of my sinful appetite. In me still thrives the pagan whom good missionaries like Misi Simaila are trying to drive away from our country.’ There was a painful pitch in his voice. ‘Even now I am trying so hard not to desire you, not to stain your purity.’