And the same darkness that fell on the deserted village on the hill in the wilderness fell protectively over the noisy mushrooming garden of children.

  Daughter of the Mango Season

  ‘I’m fifty-five years old today,’ Barker said to Mautu as they sat in cane chairs facing each other on the store veranda overlooking the malae. Poto, as usual, sat beside her husband’s chair, on the floor. Peleiupu sat on the floor beside her father’s chair. They were having a breakfast of strong tea and cabin bread, which some of the women had served. ‘Fifty-five is old, isn’t it?’ Barker asked. Mautu nodded as he dunked his cabin bread in his mug of tea. ‘Not many people here or in England live beyond forty,’ Barker continued. ‘I’ve been lucky. Haven’t been seriously ill, ever …’

  ‘Only once when you had the mumu,’ Poto interrupted.

  ‘I forgot about that,’ Barker said. ‘But it was not serious.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ Mautu asked him.

  Shaking his head, Barker said, ‘I’m not hungry.’ He paused. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nearly forty-five,’ replied Mautu.

  ‘The oldest man I’ve ever known was a Chinaman we took aboard in Hong Kong. About eighty, he was. Small fist of a chap but very, very tough. Never said anything — not to me, anyway. Bloody pagan he was. So you see, Mautu, we don’t need to be Christians to live a long life.’ Mautu refused to take the bait. ‘The next oldest was Hindu. As black as midnight, and at seventy-something years old, not a wrinkle on his face. Another heathen. In fact, the longest-living people I’ve met were not Christians!’ Mautu refused to reply. ‘If old age is proof of the gods’ blessings, then the pagan gods are more powerful!’ Pausing dramatically and staring at Mautu from under lowered bushy eyebrows, he said, ‘Perhaps your God doesn’t exist!’

  ‘Going to be a good mango season,’ Mautu said in English, gazing up at the mango trees to their right shading the store. The high sprawling trees were pink with blossoms and buds.

  ‘Yes, this going to be a rich harvest of mangoes.’ Poto said.

  Peleiupu, noticing the quiet desperation on Barker’s face, wanted her father to offer their friend some consolation, an answer to grasp at. Mautu pushed away his food tray, then, looking at Barker, asked, ‘Why is God’s existence important to you if you do not believe in Him?’

  ‘It isn’t important!’

  ‘Then you don’t need to chase your own questions.’ Mautu glanced up at the mango trees again. ‘Yes, the mangoes, they are going to be plentiful this season.’

  ‘Why do you always talk in riddles?’

  ‘It is you who deals in riddles!’ Mautu replied. Barker looked away.

  Peleiupu timed it perfectly: just before Barker could jab his frustration at Mautu she jumped up and picked up her father’s tray.

  ‘Thank you, Pele,’ Poto said, pushing her foodmat forward. Peleiupu stood looking at Barker’s tray.

  ‘Yes, take mine too,’ he said finally.

  ‘But you have not eaten!’ Mautu insisted.

  ‘It’s not the food of this world that I need.’

  ‘Not even sweet mangoes,’ joked Mautu.

  For the first time that morning Barker relaxed and, looking up at the mango trees, said, ‘Perhaps the sticky juice of the mango can hold my tattered fifty-five-year-old body together for a while longer.’

  Poto laughed softly. ‘You’re still healthy!’ Barker ignored her.

  When Peleiupu returned from the kitchen fale a few minutes later Barker said, ‘Pele looks more like Lalaga than you.’

  ‘Yes, she really does,’ Poto echoed.

  ‘Then she is not beautiful!’ chuckled Mautu. Embarrassed, Peleiupu avoided looking at them and sat down behind Mautu’s chair.

  ‘I wish my children were like Pele. The brats are total savages!’ Barker said. Poto looked hurt.

  ‘Like their father perhaps,’ Mautu quipped.

  ‘I’m not a savage!’ Barker pretended to be hurt.

  ‘You are a palagi savage!’ Poto joked.

  ‘You don’t believe in the English God. Or English civilisation. You don’t respect other papalagi, not even the missionary, so Poto is right: you are a palagi savage,’ Mautu said.

  ‘But I do believe in other things.’

  ‘What?’ Mautu trapped him. Once again Peleiupu sensed that Barker was a tight knot of pain. ‘What?’ Mautu whispered.

  ‘Yes, in what, my savage palagi?’ Poto asked.

  ‘In many things!’ Barker stood up suddenly and, turning his back to Mautu, recited: ‘I believe in birth; I believe in death; I believe in thirst, hunger, pain, desire, joy — because I can experience all those. I believe in the earth, the sea, the sky. In birds too. And mangoes. Especially mangoes because I’ll be tasting their delicious flesh in a few months’ time.’ Wheeling to face Mautu, he tried to smile. ‘I have no need to believe in a supreme being, in a god: I don’t need such a crutch!’

  ‘But you continue to search …’

  ‘Not for God!”

  ‘… across all the Earth’s seas and islands …’

  ‘Not for God!’

  ‘Why have you searched all these fifty-five years?’

  ‘Not for God, I tell you!’

  ‘Then for what, for whom?’

  Peleiupu saw Barker’s huge hands as helpless anchors dangling into the emptiness around him, and she wanted to reach out and hold up their immense weight of doubt. She glanced at Poto, who looked immensely sad as she contemplated her husband.

  ‘As I have said already, the things I can feel and taste and experience, those are enough for me.’

  ‘If that is enough, then you don’t need to keep asking me … You don’t need anybody, my friend,’ Mautu insisted.

  ‘That is right,’ Poto said.

  It was as though the mellow morning light had solidified around them into a healing hand, and, for a long moment, they said nothing.

  ‘I don’t know what answers you seek,’ Mautu said. He reached out and touched the back of Barker’s hand. Barker sat down again. Poto put a hand on his bare foot and started caressing it. ‘All I know is you are an English lord who was shipwrecked on a desert island full of sun and sky and mangoes and need nothing else!’

  ‘Yes, I am the civilised English lord shipwrecked in paradise and have no need of a Christian God, missionaries, other white-skinned lords, or crucifixes!’ He laughed softly and clutched Mautu’s shoulder. ‘I am a pagan in the midst of so much plenty. I am fifty-five years old today and I seek nothing and need nothing!’

  ‘Perhaps just mangoes?’ Mautu quipped.

  ‘Yes, perhaps mangoes!’

  They laughed and their laughter lost itself in the thick foliage of the mango trees, as Poto and Peleiupu watched them.

  ‘Our annual church fono is to be held in two weeks’ time,’ Mautu said to Barker. ‘Will you take us again in your fautasi?’

  ‘Yes, but on one condition.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘That you take Pele and Arona with you.’ Barker winked at Peleiupu.

  ‘You should let her go — she’d love it!’ Poto encouraged.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ Mautu asked Peleiupu. She nodded. ‘You’d better ask your mother, then.’ She wanted him to ask Lalaga but knew she would have to face her.

  ‘We’ll leave you and your party at Salua, and I’ll take Pele and Arona into Apia.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mautu insisted.

  ‘Don’t you trust your palagi pagan friend to care properly for your children?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ mumbled Mautu. ‘I don’t like Apia.’

  ‘Apia, and the whole life that goes with it, is here to stay whether you like it or not. Your children will have to live with it.’ He reached over and ruffled Peleiupu’s hair. ‘And Pele can cope with anything, including Apia! She watches and learns and understands quickly. Don’t you, Pele?’ Peleiupu blushed. ‘She is fortunate.’

  Poto smiled at Peleiupu. ‘And you can come and get some money from me before you leave, to spend in all those rich shops in Apia,’ she told her.

  Later, as they walked away from Barker’s store, Peleiupu glanced up at the mango trees: the dark green foliage, peppered pink and red with flowers, stirred like slow spring water. She shimmered with joy at the thought of visiting Apia.

  ‘Do you like Barker?’ Mautu asked. She nodded. ‘Why?’

  She pondered and said, ‘He is a very sad man, eh?’

  ‘Barker is right about you: you do watch and learn and understand.’

  They walked in silence the rest of the way.

  ‘Mautu,’ she pleaded as they walked up the back paepae of their fale, ‘I want to go with Barker to Apia.’

  ‘All right,’ he whispered. Lalaga was weaving a mat in the centre of their fale. ‘But you had better ask your mother.’ Before she could insist on him doing it, he hurried to his desk at the other end of the fale.

  ‘How is the papalagi gentleman?’ Lalaga asked her. She had taken to calling Barker that but there was no malice in it.

  ‘He is well,’ Peleiupu replied formally, thus undermining Lalaga’s line of attack. ‘Let me do it.’ She sat down. Lalaga slid away and let her continue the weaving.

  For a while they said nothing and, as Lalaga observed Peleiupu’s deft hands and fingers weaving the mat, like quick spiders, she experienced an upwelling pride in her daughter: at fifteen Peleiupu was already an expert weaver of mats, and highly skilled in other female crafts. Everything came easily to her — too easily, Lalaga often thought. ‘It is a gift from God,’ Mautu had once allayed Lalaga’s fears about Peleiupu. Even her English was now better than Mautu’s. Yet Peleiupu always made herself appear less skilled than other people in order to make them feel more secure in her presence. For this, Lalaga loved her deeply, knowing that Peleiupu would not use her gift, her superior talents, to harm others.

  ‘What did your father and the papalagi discuss this morning?’ Lalaga asked, expecting Peleiupu, as usual, to see if anyone else was listening, before replying.

  Peleiupu looked around the fale, then said, ‘Mautu says it’s going to be a good mango season this year.’

  But Lalaga wasn’t going to be deflected that easily. ‘What did the papalagi gentleman and your father, the prophet, talk about?’

  ‘The usual,’ said Peleiupu. Her hands worked more quickly.

  ‘And what is the usual?’

  ‘The search for God.’ Peleiupu’s hands stopped their furious weaving. ‘You believe in God, eh?’ she asked, looking intently at Lalaga.

  ‘Of course I do!’ Lalaga protested.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘You thought so!’ Lalaga was now angry and upset.

  ‘Lalaga, some people don’t believe in God.’

  Lalaga was frightened by what she felt she had to ask. ‘Are you one of those people?’

  Peleiupu’s hands continued their nimble weaving. Shaking her head and gazing down at what she was doing, she said, ‘Barker doesn’t believe and I think many other papalagi are the same.’

  ‘I know that,’ sighed Lalaga, but when she noticed the abrupt halt in Peleiupu’s weaving she tensed again.

  ‘Mautu believes, doesn’t he?’

  ‘How can you ask such a thing? Your … your father is a servant of God!’

  Peleiupu reacted as if she hadn’t noticed Lalaga’s anger, and said, ‘All I meant was that Mautu sometimes doubts.’

  ‘Doubts what?’ Lalaga insisted.

  ‘God,’ was all Peleiupu said.

  ‘Peleiupu!’ Mautu called to her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Get me a drink of water.’

  Peleiupu scrambled up and out of the fale, leaving Lalaga gasping for meaning, an answer, like a fish kicking at the end of a line.

  Lalaga continued her weaving but Peleiupu’s revelation about Mautu’s doubts kept picking at her.

  Peleiupu was soon back with a mug of water for Mautu. Raising the drink to his mouth, Mautu whispered, ‘What are you and you mother arguing about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she whispered back. ‘I just told her that you sometimes doubt the existence of God.’ Mautu choked and coughed the water out in a splutter. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she asked. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and, trying to steady his trembling hands, drank the rest of the water slowly.

  ‘Have you asked her about going to Apia?’ He handed her the empty mug.

  She shook her head. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘It’s best that you ask,’ he whispered, avoiding her eyes. Before she could plead he added, ‘Go now. I’ve got a lot of work to do.’ He picked up his pen.

  She hesitated for a moment, turned swiftly and hurried out of the fale.

  ‘We haven’t finished talking!’ Lalaga called her back.

  Peleiupu went over and sat down beside her. She was confused by her mother’s unexpected anger and her father’s timidity. Everything was straightforward but adults, especially parents, made things complicated, stupidly unreasonable, she thought. She was only fifteen yet she had to be so patient with their lack of understanding, their slow decision-making, and the eternal complications they made of their lives and everyone else’s. Most of them were so unwise — yes, that was her conclusion.

  ‘Going to be a good mango season,’ she remarked. She tried to erase her confusion with the thought of fat, succulent mangoes, but couldn’t. Beside her, Lalaga’s presence was a solid rock pillar. She wasn’t going to offer to do any more weaving. ‘Where are Arona and the other children?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lalaga replied. She looked at Peleiupu’s profile and realised that her daughter no longer referred to herself as a child. It wasn’t out of any pretence or arrogance: Peleiupu simply did not think of herself as a child. And, physically, she was quickly blossoming into a woman, tall and supple, who wasn’t going to acquire Mautu’s bulk. She wasn’t self-conscious about this physical transformation either. It was as if, anticipating well beforehand every change in her life, she adjusted to it before it took place.

  ‘Very hot, eh?’ Peleiupu observed, noticing the beads of sweat slithering down her mother’s arms and face. ‘Where’s everybody gone?’ All the neighbouring fale appeared empty of people.

  ‘Working in their plantations or fishing, you know that!’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Peleiupu, ‘but where are Arona and Ruta and Naomi and the other children of our aiga?’

  ‘Swimming, probably. Now stop your questions. Here, you weave.’

  While Peleiupu worked, Lalaga watched her. When she looked out of the fale and saw that their mango trees beside the road were covered with blossoms she heard herself saying, ‘Yes, it is going to be a rich mango harvest.’

  ‘Mautu said that this morning.’ Peleiupu paused in her work and, gazing at Lalaga, said, ‘Funny how you can make an important observation the property of everyone by just pointing it out to someone else. Of course it has to be an observation that is important to those other people. Like the other morning, while Arona and I and the other children were in our plantation collecting coconuts, I suddenly heard the silence in all that growth …’

  ‘Heard it?’

  ‘Yes, I heard the silence — it was deep and still, a huge, kind presence around us and in us … And when I heard it I told Arona to stand still and listen to it. He did. I told him to shut his eyes. He did. Then I asked him if he was hearing it. He nodded. Then we asked the others in turn to listen. And when we had all had a turn, we closed our eyes together and listened as a group. And we all heard it and allowed it to become part of us.’

  ‘What did you think that particular silence was?’

  ‘It was the island itself,’ Peleiupu explained. ‘The silence of these islands. It must have been here when God created our country. And has always been here.’

  ‘But why is it important?’

  ‘I don’t know yet how to explain it,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it is important because if we refuse to hear it, or let it be part of us, we will become other creatures … I don’t know. Arona knows better. He doesn’t let his thinking get in the way. He just knows. He lets things become what they are in himself. I can’t explain it.’ She continued weaving. ‘It is bad to think too much, Barker keeps telling Mautu. He is right …’

  ‘But he does nothing else but chase his thoughts round and round!’ laughed Lalaga. ‘That’s why he can’t believe in anything!’

  ‘That’s the palagi way, that’s how palagi people are.’

  ‘And your father?’

  Aware that Lalaga had once again led her deftly to a discussion she wanted to avoid, Peleiupu said, ‘May I go for a swim?’ Before Lalaga could pin her down, Peleiupu turned and called, ‘Mautu, may I go for a swim?’

  ‘All right,’ he replied.

  And Peleiupu was out of the fale and running towards the pool.

  Lalaga continued to weave her mat, refusing to ask Mautu about his doubts because he was, like Peleiupu, adept at dodging her questions.

  It was almost midday and the sun was snared in a smother of thick cloud that seemed to have oozed out of the sky’s belly. Only the soft quick squeaking and scratching of Lalaga’s fingers against the pandanus strands cut at the silence. Occasionally she heard Mautu shift in his wooden chair. Mangoes, she thought inadvertently, and then cursed herself for having thought it. Why did her daughter understand more than she? She had no right to — she was only a child!

  On their way home from the pool Peleiupu edged up to Arona and whispered, ‘Do you want to visit Apia?’ Arona looked straight ahead: a brother, at his age, should no longer be seen displaying affection for his sister. ‘Barker and Mautu will take us if we want to go.’