Town of Love
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Anne Ch. Ostby 2016
English translation © Marie Ostby 2017
Cover design by Sarah Whittaker / TW. Images: foreground © Nisian Hughes / Getty Images; background © primeimages / Getty Images; frangipani and palm leaves © Shutterstock.
Anne Ostby has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
The quotation from Epeli Hau’ofa comes from We Are the Ocean, Selected Works (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Faber and Faber Ltd for permission to reprint lines from the poem ‘The Schooner Flight’ by Derek Walcott in The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 by Derek Walcott (Faber and Faber, 2014).
The translation of the Fijian farewell song ‘Isa Lei’ comes from Rod Ewins, ‘ISA LEI (Fijian song of sad farewell)’.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473543355
ISBN 9780857524874 (cased)
9780857525307 (tpb)
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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We should not be defined by the smallness of our islands, but by the greatness of our oceans.
Epeli Hau’ofa
There are so many islands!
As many islands as the stars at night
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall, and so it always was,
on one hand Venus, on the other Mars;
fall, and are one, just as this earth is one
island in archipelagoes of stars.
Derek Walcott
My dear friend,
Can I still call you that?
The stamps on the letter made you curious, I’m sure, but you’ve probably already realized who it is. Stamps with pictures of iguanas and parrotfish could only come from Kat. A voice from a time long ago, a fellowship we once had. Do you think we could ever find it again?
Thank you for the hugs and the kind words when I needed them the most – I know it wasn’t possible to drop everything and travel across the world for the funeral. From where you are, it must be hard to imagine someone being sung into eternity with a four-part Fijian harmony while the mourners come carrying woven mats, of all things. How many straw mats does a departed one need, you might ask. And I would have to answer, as Ateca explained to me, ‘As many as it takes to honour Mister Niklas’s life.’ So I’ve spread the mats out across the porch. Dried palm fronds in a checkered pattern, an anchor for the body and a firm foundation for the thoughts, which often plunge into the fiery sunsets, alongside the bats, here in Korototoka.
At night the longing comes, the sharp and aching longing for Niklas and the life we lived before. A marathon of global misery, you might say. A long-distance race with a global pandemic or an environmental crisis at every water station? Yes, that too. But I wouldn’t change a thing. The bouts of malaria, the lack of water, the nights of itching flea bites – they taught me to make do. Whether it’s making do without money, toilet paper, shampoo or a blue-chip pension. And so here I am, sitting on a tiny speck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, mateless, but not helpless.
And not friendless, I hope. I have twenty-two acres of cocoa trees and a house with plenty of room. I have a body full of minor aches and pains, but I’ve planted my feet on Fijian earth and I intend to stay here until the last sunset. Why don’t you join me? Leave behind everything that didn’t work out! Bring with you everything that still matters and move into a room in Vale nei Kat, Kat’s House! This can be the place where we find each other again, and if there’s nothing to find, we’ll create something new!
I haven’t been the best at keeping in touch; I know there weren’t many updates from me from Nepal, Afghanistan or Mauritius. But I’ve missed you; I’ve missed everyone in our old gang. I’ve read your letters and emails, admired your pictures of children and grandchildren. And now I wonder, would it be possible to bring us together again, after a gap of over forty years? Do you want to join me, and walk the last leg together? To try to help each other if one of us trips and the other one limps? To dip our aching knees in the warm salty waves and bury our toes in white sand?
I’m not looking for free labour; the plantation is in good hands. Korototoka is a cocoa village and Mosese, the manager, takes care of harvesting, fermenting and drying the beans. But maybe we could start something new here, take a chance together? Perhaps make chocolate, or a delicious-smelling cocoa body lotion – what do you think?
I’m sure you understand why I couldn’t send this via email. A letter can take days and weeks on its journey from one world to another, and the words find the right depth and gravity along the way. As they fall into your hands right now, they’ve had time to mature and soften and be cradled by the paper’s curve, ready to entice you here. Can you taste the flavour of papaya and coconut? Can you hear the wind whistling through the palm trees on the beach? Can you see the arc of the horizon, where the Pacific Ocean meets the sky?
Of course, if the ice-scraper, the engine heater and the electricity bill are more tempting, please put this in a drawer, never to be opened again. A letter can easily disappear on its way across the seas, and the postal service from the Pacific is more unreliable than a tropical cyclone or a Fijian ministry post. In which case, you never received it, and no questions will be asked.
So I’m going to send this now, stroking my fingers across the stamps for luck, hoping the wind will send you to me. Maybe Vale nei Kat can be a home for all of us, a Women’s House where we can dream, hope, drink, laugh, fight and cry together. Until the wind sweeps us out over the waves and it’s our mats that are carried up the stairs and spread wide across the porch.
Lolomas,
Kat
‘I’M BROKE! I’M so sorry.’
They haven’t seen each other in decades, and the first thing Sina finds herself blurting out to Kat is the depressing state of her finances – for goodness’ sake! She bites down on her lip hard, fighting the quiver, and opens her arms to the tall, smiling woman with the sunglasses on her head.
‘I … Oh, Kat! It’s so good to see you. You look amazing!’
In the arrivals hall at Nadi Airport, strumming a cheerful welcome melody, a ukulele band greets the shorts-clad tourists. The singer in a brightly patterned shirt and a flower tucked behind his ear winks at Sina, who quickly shuffles closer to Kat.
‘Bula!’
Sina’s worried frown gets lost in her friend’s welcome hug. ‘Bula vinaka! You’re here now, that’s what matters. One thing at a time, it will all work out. Let me look at you.’ Kat pushes Sina away, flashing her a big, sparkling smile, and it’s just like old times. She pulls her close again for another hug. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually here!’
‘Me neither!’
Sina chokes back a few tears. She’s trembling with exhaustion after a journey that took her nearly forty-eight hours, and another loud opening chord from the ukulele trio startles her. A pair of wide hips draped in an orange floral pattern comes swaying towards her: ‘Bula, madam. Welcome to Fiji!’ The woman, smile aglow with a hundred luminous white teeth, places a flower garland around Sina’s neck. Sina grips her luggage trolley tightly and stumbles after Kat as she heads out into the dark, hot, humid October night. Korototoka is a two-hour drive away.
The darkness is thicker than it is back home. As soon as they put the bright lights of the airport behind them, it’s like being in a tunnel without walls, so close and yet so open it makes Sina dizzy.
‘Look at the stars,’ Kat encourages her, and Sina glances up and out of the open window. The night sky is a maze of shining dots, a frozen explosion of fireworks. Her head tips back; she has to pull her gaze back into the car. Kat looks at her and smiles. ‘Pretty amazing, huh?’ Suddenly she slams on the brakes. Sina lurches forward and the seat belt catches her; she gets a glimpse of a scrawny horse careering towards the side of the road. Kat shakes her head and drives on, a little slower now.
‘It can be dangerous driving through the villages at night. The animals roam free – you never know when a cow will just appear in the middle of the road.’
The ocean on one side, trees on the other; sand dunes; fields with plants she doesn’t recognize. ‘Sugar cane,’ Kat nods. ‘Sugar and corn are the two most important crops here.’
The darkness is occasionally punctuated by clusters of houses; a light bulb flickers here and there. Sina squints to make out the shapes of the buildings, sees that some of those alongside the road are just small sheds made of corrugated metal. Is this how they’re going to live? She’s the first to arrive in Fiji; Ingrid and Lisbeth will be arriving over the next few weeks. And eventually Maya, too – apparently there were some health problems she had to discuss with her doctor first. An unsettled feeling surges through Sina: Is there room for all of them? She hopes they won’t be crammed in on top of each other.
But Vale nei Kat is no corrugated metal shed. As they approach Korototoka, they drive along a narrow path with houses on both sides. ‘This is the main road,’ Kat explains. It winds down towards the beach, and at the end of the street Kat turns right into a courtyard: ‘And we’re here!’
She parks outside a large one-storey house with a roof that juts out like a pointy hat in the middle. A wide porch with an overhang wraps around the entire front side. The roof above the porch is supported by three columns with coarse ropes wound around them. A couple of small sheds line the perimeter of the courtyard, and a path edged with round stones disappears around the back of the house. There are wicker chairs and a hammock on the porch, illuminated by the glow of torches at the foot of the stairs.
As Sina tumbles out of the car, a mosquito-netted screen door creaks open and a short, stocky figure appears, with a frizzy mane of hair like a halo in the lamplight.
‘Bula vinaka, Madam. Welcome!’
Kat had warned her that the housekeeper would probably be waiting for them, even though it’s late. ‘Come and say hello to Ateca,’ she says now, as she drags Sina’s suitcase up the stairs. ‘She’s so excited that you’ve arrived.’
Sina stretches out her hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’ But instead of reaching out her chubby hand in return, Ateca claps it over her mouth, which doesn’t stop the laughter from bubbling out between her fingers. Her whole body writhes in cheerful spasms as she hurries to take the suitcase from Kat: ‘I’ll bring it inside for Madam.’
Sina doesn’t know what surprises her more: the unexpected laughter, or being called ‘madam’ for the first time in her life. But she forgets it as soon as Kat waves her over to the porch railing.
‘You can’t see the view now, in the dark, but you can hear it, right?’
Sina can hear it. With her face turned towards the sea, she can hear Fiji welcoming her. A rush of sand against sand, a rhythm of water and moonlight and promises she can’t decode. The breeze is warm against her clammy skin, a gust of something sweet and satisfied, a drop of honey on her tongue.
Between the house and the beach is a belt of tall, thin tree trunks, standing dark against the pale moon. ‘Are those the cocoa trees you were talking about?’ Sina asks, but Kat shakes her head.
‘No, no. The plantation is a little further away, on the other side of the village. These are coconut palms; they grow everywhere here.’
She grabs Sina by the shoulders and gives her a hug. ‘You’re going to love it here, Sina,’ she says. ‘Everything is going to work out just fine.’
Sina nods. Repeats it to herself, like an echo she wants to summon into being. Everything is going to work out just fine.
But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s broke. Not a penny to her name. Sina can’t believe she actually went through with it. Closed the door and left it all behind: the house, the leak around the chimney and the car that needs new snow tyres. Here she is in a strange bed in a foreign land, penniless. And so is Armand. Sina tosses and turns and heaves a deep sigh. But when isn’t Armand broke? Broke could be his middle name, she thinks, and pictures her son’s face in his passport photo with ‘Armand B. Guttormsen’ printed below.
His passport is filled with stamps. From Argentina, where he stayed behind when the oil tanker sailed on. ‘I didn’t mean to, Mum,’ he had said. ‘They gave the wrong information about when it was supposed to leave!’ In Russia, it was the casinos that drew him. ‘It’s a dead cert. There’s a flood of cash over there – they don’t know what to do with it all!’ Real estate in the Caribbean: ‘They showed me the properties, picture-perfect views, right on the beach. How could I have known the deeds were fake?’ Secret, exciting oil riches in Canada, a luxury resort on the east coast of Malaysia: ‘A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, you have no idea! Just add some tourists with fat wallets and it’ll be a gold mine!’
But there’s been very little gold and she’s always been the mine, Sina thinks, and pulls the thin sheet tighter around her. A mine that’s been emptied, no, vacuumed out for all that glittered and then some. She turns over on her side as the wind fills the darkness beyond the mosquito-screened windows with foreign sounds: the rustle of dry palm leaves, the rolling thunder that lies beneath everything and is the ocean.
She can’t believe she’s here. Sina Guttormsen, sixty-six years old, retired, new resident of a house, no, a bure is what they call it, in Fiji. Fiji! She hadn’t even known where it was – she had pulled out a map of the South Pacific and pored over the tiny dots north of New Zealand, like crumbs torn off the east coast of Australia and scattered carelessly across the ocean between Vanuatu and Tonga. The Pacific Ocean! Her heart beats dry and hard in her chest. Her heart, over the eternal, patient rumble out there.
The kitchen in 19C Rugdeveien, three months earlier. Another lousy summer day was coming to an end, another afternoon with cups of coffee that stood lukewarm, waiting. She had tried the TV, tried a magazine, tried her luck – on the lotto card, the usual five correct numbers out of seven; on the Find Love Over 60 website, no new faces. Six cigarette butts in the ashtray and the silence in the kitchen like dust in her mouth. The wall clock with the red plastic frame gobbled up the time in quick chomps: What-now? Will-you-do-it? Why-not? The letter from Kat on the table in front of her.
Sina, you’ve probably torn open the envelope with a worried knot in your stomach: What is it now? Who is it on the other side of the world that wants something from me?
There’s nothing to worry about. No one who wants to trick or scam you. It’s an invitation. To warm winds and gentle nights, a wicker chair on a porch with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Do you want it? Will you dare to come?
She had jumped in her chair when the phone rang. The house phone in the hallway, a long, high-pitched whine, a relic from the past in grey plastic. A shout from someone who still has her landline number in their address book.
‘Hello?’
A small hesitation, and she was about to repeat herself, her voice slightly more impatient. Just impatient, not scared – Armand never calls the home number. He always wants to catch her when she’s most unprepared.
‘Sina?’
‘Yes?’
‘Hi … It’s Lisbeth.’
Lisbeth. Her voice was exactly the same, hoarse and slow. The last paragraph of Kat’s letter seemed to glow in Sina’s mind: In which case, you never received it, and no questions will be asked.
She could just play dumb, deny everything when her old high-school friend asked if she, too, had received a letter from the South Pacific. A silly letter with a ridiculous proposition, an arrogant assumption that they, the poor idiots at home, had nothing better to do in their little lives than drop everything instantly and jump on a plane for a reunion with Katrine Vale.
‘Hi.’
Sina knew she had already betrayed herself. By neither acting surprised nor making her tone dismissive, she had sold herself out. Revealed that an identical letter with stamps bearing iguanas and tropical birds lay on her kitchen table, too, this Thursday in July. Removed the option of ducking out.
‘Did you … Did you get a letter too?’
‘Yes. Today.’
‘You too. From Kat.’
Sina could picture Lisbeth’s mouth with the matte pink lips as she stated this with a sigh.
‘She …’
What was she going to say? What had she thought after the single handwritten sheet of paper had been read, crumpled up, smoothed out again, and reread?
‘She hasn’t changed a bit.’
‘Nope …’
A chuckle of surprise from Lisbeth, like a tiny animal ducking out of a trap.
More hesitation. Sina had let the seconds tick on and on between them until she couldn’t stand it any longer.
‘Well, a trip to the South Pacific, damn, wouldn’t that be nice! If you can afford it, that is.’
It was as easy as ever. Just as easy to throw Lisbeth off as it had always been. Sina knew it as soon as she uttered the words: the tiniest jibe at her fortune acquired by marriage would put a crack in Lisbeth’s confidence, make her insecurity and self-doubt seep through the layers of make-up. Make her run her long fingers nervously through her hair. Sina hadn’t seen that quick hand motion in years, but she suspected the dark brown locks were as voluminous as ever, stiff with hairspray.
When the poison arrow darted out of her mouth, she’d regretted it immediately – oh, be quiet, Sina, stop it! Let her be. Even Lisbeth has grown old. Did she say that out loud? Even Lisbeth must have grown old, and vulnerable in a whole new way. The way that starts to claw around your eyes just after thirty, grabs the corners of your mouth and yanks them down around forty, drains the colour from your hair and sends the bills from the dentist soaring.
‘Yes.’
Lisbeth’s voice was still non-committal, as limp as a handshake between two people whose paths will never cross again. But the pause after that one small word was too long, too probing. Searching for someone to lead the way, or maybe just someone to spend time with.
And now here Sina is, jet-lagged, her sinuses itching from an aeroplane cold, awed that it has taken an island in the South Pacific to bring them together again. Not just for some extreme high-school reunion, but to actually live together. In a bure with straw mats on the porch and only Kat to keep them together. A home for old ladies! The thought looms like a monster behind her eyelids. What has she done? What has she ended up with here? Four walls – so thin! She can hear the sound of the flushing toilet trickle like a springtime stream through the house – around a simple single bed and promises of moonlight over a sandy beach. Has she sold herself out? Sina, the cautious, guarded one? She tries to calm herself down. Pull yourself together, you’ve only rented out the apartment; it isn’t sold. You can go home whenever you want.
But of course she can’t. She can’t accept the money Kat has said she’ll gladly lend her for the airfare if she changes her mind. How would she ever pay it back? With all of Armand’s need for money, plus rent and groceries? She never buys expensive food, and her little car uses barely any fuel. She almost never drives it, preferring to cycle. But still, it’s always about money, has always been about money. The day before Armand’s twelfth birthday – was it really thirty-four years ago? – when she had only thirty kroner in her wallet. She had tried to explain to him that they couldn’t have a party on the actual day, but maybe later, after her pay packet arrived … He had looked at her without a word, turned on his heel and walked out, his back an exclamation mark of spite. She had made spaghetti and meatballs, with a candle stuck in the middle of his plate, and had sung ‘Happy Birthday’ as she carried it over to the table. He hadn’t even smiled.
She doesn’t quite know what she was thinking when she decided to leave. She, Sina, go live in a crazy little commune in Fiji? Sina Guttormsen, retail cashier, library patron, cautious and vigilant cyclist. With traces of early arthritis in her hands and a muffin top that protrudes further over the waistband of her trousers than she can bring herself to address. Single-mother Sina Guttormsen, whose timid existence was contained within an apartment in one of the oldest buildings in Reitvik, one eye on her boy, the other on her purse. Still, she knew that life well, she could manage it and live with it. But this? She turns over on her back and inhales through an open mouth, sucking the warm, humid air into her lungs, as if swallowing steam in the sauna. The narrow line of tiny ants running across the table. The almost overwhelming smell of frangipani. Kat’s hands, so happy around hers. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually here!’
The handbag on the chair by the window holds her passport, a coffee-stained boarding-pass stub, and the keys to 19C Rugdeveien. A see-through plastic bag with her lipstick, a small bottle of hand sanitizer and a mini tube of hand cream. A mobile phone without a functioning SIM card.
Sina sits up straight and uses the sheet to wipe the sweat from the nape of her neck. She locates the plastic bottle on the floor by the bed, takes a sip of the lukewarm water. Vale nei Kat. Kat’s house. But food costs money in Kat’s house, too. Splitting the bills means everyone has to contribute; electricity, soap and toilet paper have their price wherever you live. She briefly wonders, ‘They do use toilet paper here, right?’ before remembering that yes, she’d seen a roll hanging from a loop of braided rope on the bathroom wall.
How can Kat have become so rich? Sina’s mind jumps directly from the toilet paper question to the subject of Kat’s wealth. How can she be the owner of a cocoa farm? A house and twenty-two acres of land, with a manager to take care of the day-to-day running of the place, and additional hired hands for the harvest – isn’t that what she said in the car? Kat, with no more education than the rest of them, who just took off the summer after graduation and got on a plane with a Swede with long curls. And ended up with a life for the adventure storybooks. Three years here, four years there, six years there: building a girls’ school in Afghanistan, bringing solar panels to rural India, establishing a fair-trade coffee farm in Guatemala. Typhoid fever after a meditation retreat in Nepal, blood poisoning from a deep-water coral cut after diving with whales in Tonga. Her passport must look a lot like Armand’s: a flurry of stamps and visas and special permits. But unlike Armand, she really did it all, Sina thinks as she lies back down, trying to avoid the sweaty damp patch on her pillow. Kat had achieved things. She had moved forward, bearing the typhoid and the malaria like battle scars, gold stars, proof of what she and Niklas had accomplished. The aid they had given the local people, the wells they had dug, the sanitation course they had brought for village midwives that had lowered infant mortality rates by twenty per cent.
Armand’s stomach parasites are less of a badge of honour than Kat’s typhoid or malaria. The stamps in his passport are drab and faded, reminders of fiascos that make him look smaller and more pathetic each time he appears on her doorstep with a new excuse. The investment schemes that fell through, the broken promises and unreliable partners, the local idiots who couldn’t see an opportunity when it fell into their laps. That’s when she opens her door and empties her bank account of the meagre savings she’s managed to scrape together since the last time he stood there. He’s her child – what else can she do?
She had managed to stop herself from asking Lisbeth how much she was ready to pay for her trip. How much more expensive is it to travel first class? Business? Sina has never done either. She wonders what it would feel like never to have to ask how much something costs. She doesn’t know much about Maya’s or Ingrid’s finances, but at least they’ve spent their lives working. In good jobs, as far as she knows. Ingrid as bookkeeper for the County Bus Service, or Chief Accountant as she’s heard they call it now. Good grades in every subject opened up plenty of opportunities for smart girls like her. Those who didn’t spend beyond their means and kept a close eye on their reputations. Surely Ingrid has a good chunk of money saved up, more than enough for a ticket to Fiji.
Maya went to teacher training college and ended up teaching in high school. She married Steinar, no surprise that he became an administrator eventually – there was something about his nose, the flaring nostrils, or the glasses perched on it, something hawkish. A teacher couple may never be rich, Sina thinks, but Maya must have enough savings to get her to Fiji. She and Steinar only had one child: a daughter, married to a foreigner. An artist type who paints landscapes, Sina’s seen him in the paper several times. She wouldn’t have minded if Armand had married a foreigner. Even if he’d moved abroad. No problem. If only he’d settled down with someone, found something – anything – to give him some stability. Images flicker through her groggy mind: Armand with a dark-haired woman, maybe Asian, like the downstairs neighbours in the apartment building back home. The eternal wish, the prayer that hangs suspended like a thin thread between her lips and a god with whom she has no relationship: if only Armand could do something, anything! I’m sixty-six, Sina thinks and rubs her fists into her eyes. Sixty-six years old and on the run from my son.
On the threshold of her first uneasy dream under the Southern Cross, Sina meets Kat again.
‘I’m broke,’ she says. ‘I can’t afford to be here.’
‘There are fish in the sea,’ Kat says. ‘There’s no need to go hungry.’
‘I can bake,’ Sina replies.
‘Five loaves of bread,’ Kat says. ‘There’s enough to go around.’
DEAR GOD, I know what Madam Kat and Mister Niklas have done for me. I’ve often thanked you for them giving me this job. You know how hard it was for me after the bus crash that made me a widow; how afraid I was that Vilivo and I weren’t going to make it. I worked hard, and you helped me, Lord. You made the maize and the beans grow in the garden so I could sell them on the side of the road, and you made my chickens lay eggs every day. And one afternoon, when the doi tree blossomed, you brought the wheels of Mister Niklas’s car to a stop in front of my house. You put the words on his tongue when he asked if I knew anybody who could help him and his wife in the house, and when he mentioned the salary, I knew it was you who brought him into my life. When I understood that Vilivo’s tuition would be paid, that he would graduate from Form Six with certificate in hand, I knew it was you that made blessings rain over me.
You sent Mister Niklas to help me when I was alone. And now it’s Madam Kat who is alone, and she’s filling the house with her sisters. I can see that she needs them, Lord, and they need her too. None of them seems to have a man in their lives, and their children don’t live with them. So it seems better for them to have come here. Sisters aren’t necessarily born from the same mother.
Madam Kat has told me stories about her friends from her country that lies many oceans away. About how people from the same village don’t live with their own kin. It sounds sad, and unsafe. Madam Kat has been here a long time – she knows Korototoka – but the other madams who have come, Lord? They’re going to live here, grow old here, and I’m the one who will have to watch over them. Be merciful and show me how I can do this.
Madam Lisbeth, for one. Most of the time she doesn’t look so happy. I saw it the very first day she was here: how she hesitates when someone speaks to her. As if she never quite knows the right answer. And why does she stand in front of the mirror, looking over her shoulder? Why does she change her clothes all the time, even though they’re not dirty?
Madam Sina has eyes as sharp as the swamp harrier. She smokes cigarettes on the porch with Madam Lisbeth. But she doesn’t look happy either. Her worries have drawn thick lines around her mouth, and her voice is hard and sour. Is there something she fears, Lord?
Madam Ingrid is the largest of the madams. She has long, strong arms and wants to help out everywhere. The very first day she came, she wanted to go out into the plantation with Mosese and find out everything about the cocoa. How can I tell her that sometimes it’s better to stay quiet and just watch and learn?
And soon there will be yet another madam arriving, one I know nothing about. I hope she’s healthy and strong with a happy heart.
Madam Kat trusts me, Lord. She says it often: ‘Ateca, what would I do without you?’ I have to protect her, just as she protects me. Help me keep her and her sisters safe, so no evil casts its shadow over them.
And Vilivo, Lord. Keep the shadows away from my son, too. Help him and let him find work, so he can support himself, become an adult and start a family.
In Jesus’ holy name. Emeni.
SHE PEERS AT herself in the little mirror over the sink, and the woman staring back at her looks surprised. The gaze of a newborn, rimmed with crow’s feet; white cracks in brown icing. It’s only taken Ingrid a few weeks to establish her tan, as if the pigment had been lying in wait all these years, reluctant to make itself known. Kat has warned them against the sun. She’s still oddly pale-skinned herself, even after years spent under tropical skies.
‘Make sure you cover up and don’t be stingy with the sunscreen. I promise you, after a while you’re not going to care much about having a tan.’
Ingrid isn’t quite there yet. Every day since she came to Korototoka, she’s thought about how far too much of her life has been spent inside. Work, home, home, work. Inside the apartment, inside the office, inside the car. For years her brother Kjell had tried to convince her to get a dog. ‘It’ll be a way for you to get exercise every day, and it’ll keep you company!’ His wife had echoed this suggestion: ‘Yes, wouldn’t it be nice for you to have some company!’ But Ingrid had suspected that Gro’s enthusiasm for the family Irish setter was mostly rooted in the dog’s ability to get her husband out of the house for the week-long hunting trip each autumn. Ingrid has never had any desire for a dog, or any other pet for that matter.
Nor had she ever been part of the group of women from work who went hiking in Jotunheimen every summer, with their lightweight sleeping pads and their thermos mugs that could quickly be repurposed as ear warmers. She would go for the occasional nature walk on a Sunday morning, but nothing too far and nothing too tiring.
She found greater joy in Simon and Petter, Kjell and Gro’s grandchildren. They are closer to her than to their own grandparents, she’s fairly confident of that. When Simon couldn’t quite get the hang of reading right away, it was Aunt Ingrid who had the patience to sit with him and practise with letter and word flashcards. At her house, Petter was allowed to eat his snack on the couch, or bring in a shabby stray cat. Of course she understood that parenting young children while working full-time was exhausting, of course she didn’t mind having the boys sleep over when their mother had to travel for work and their dad was on the night shift. They get along, the boys and her, that’s just the way it is. She doesn’t make a big fuss of them when they come over, but she enjoys cooking for them – tacos, pizza, chicken wings, nothing fancy. Is it because they’re so young that it’s so easy to be around them? No expectations that they should have something in common. The two dark-haired heads on the couch, bent over their mobile phones or card games. Simon and Petter. The best thing in her life.
When Kat’s letter arrived, Ingrid had made herself a cup of coffee before sitting down to study it. Strangely, she didn’t find herself surprised by the invitation – could she call it that? The challenge? The summons? Maybe she’d always known that, behind the prim blouse with the turned-down collar and the glasses on a string around her neck, one day it would be Wildrid’s turn. Wildrid, her secret inner twin. The one who had stayed home when Kat took off all those years ago, but who had silently nodded and understood. Whose eager fingers trembled as she read down the lines of Kat’s handwriting.
Ingrid, I bet you’ve been standing there a while with the letter in your hand before opening it. Maybe you set it aside for a minute while you made yourself a cup of coffee. Be honest, haven’t you been waiting for this? You’ve visited us in several of the places we’ve lived; you know it’s not all about cocktails by the pool and fun in the sun. You know there are power cuts and water shortages, mosquitoes and malaria. But I think you’ll still be brave enough. Brave enough to go for presenting a united front against loneliness and TV dinners, against arthritis and empty nights. Wearing a floral bula dress and sipping from a bilo filled with kava.
Ingrid had put down her coffee cup as she felt a ripple that started in her chest and spread through her body, a feeling she at last managed to identify: she was homesick, for a place she’d never been to. From her hands holding the sheet of paper, all the way up to her lips parting in a flustered smile, she yearned for Fiji. For Kat, the bird whose wings she’d only ever seen from below as she spread them out, soaring high up above.
She knows precisely the moment the bird took flight. From a table in the shade outside Nilsens Café in Reitvik, one August day in 1965. The silence lay thick and perplexing across the table but, as usual, Kat didn’t seem to notice the tense mood around her. Her dark, shiny hair cascaded over her shoulders and beckoned them closer, into a hushed circle of admiring moons orbiting the sun. What had she just said? Leaving tomorrow? India? Goa? Maybe Nepal or Sri Lanka?
Ingrid had looked around for help – did anyone else understand what was going on?
But Sina had sat quietly, hunched over, her gaze empty and disinterested, in a world of her own – Kat might as well have said Mars or Jupiter as far as she was concerned! Lisbeth scrunched up her nose, as if she could already smell the unfamiliar spices and foreign-tasting food. Maya’s expression of disbelief had been combined with something else – was it the hint of a smirk? Something self-righteous and complacent she had taken out of the pocket of her sturdy brown skirt. The butterflies in Ingrid’s own stomach, which had been fluttering since Kat had called earlier that afternoon and asked them all to meet at the coffee shop, turned into hissing, flailing bats. Where did Maya, who had been accepted only into a silly teacher training college, get off looking so smug? Ingrid could easily have got a place there too, and Kat as well, if she’d wanted!
‘Niklas has been to India before.’
Kat’s voice echoed from somewhere far away.
‘The cost of living is low there, and it won’t be hard to find a job for a few days or weeks. He knows somebody in an ashram in Madhya Pradesh, who …’
As Kat kept talking, the words rolled around in Ingrid’s head, forming meaningless patterns: ashram, meditation, yogi. She stared at the table’s surface, one finger slowly tracing the rim of her coffee cup. The bookkeeping course she was about to start would guarantee her a job, no doubt. Enough money to live on her own eventually, security to take out a loan for a mortgage on an apartment in a few years’ time. Close to the park, she imagined. Near the town centre, so she wouldn’t need a car.
‘A one-way ticket,’ Kat was saying. ‘Interrail through Europe, and after that we’ll hitch-hike if need be.’
The silence around the table had continued. Lisbeth dangled a cigarette between pink fingernails. Sina wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth inside her coat, which was far too large and heavy for the warm summer afternoon.
‘Oh, come on! Be a little bit happy for me!’ Kat’s smile was warm, broad, all-embracing. As always, it had won them over before they could even realize they’d had doubts. ‘The world is so much bigger than Reitvik! I want to see more of it!’
Something in Ingrid had held back. A knot had been tied in the enthusiasm that wanted to bubble up in her throat and fly out of her mouth like a sparkling balloon: ‘Of course! How wonderful!’ Instead, she hadn’t been able to get the image of Niklas out of her head. His hair, longer than Kat’s; the laughter lines around his eyes that revealed he’d long since graduated into adulthood. He had travelled penniless around South America and seen more than they’d ever read about in all their books combined. While they’d been making their little plans, this Swedish boy – no, man, he was nearly ten years older than them! – had worked as a fruit-picker in New Zealand and a ski instructor in Canada.
So this was what Kat wanted. She’d talked about ‘working for a year before I decide on university’ but had never come up with any concrete plan as far as Ingrid knew. Not until Niklas had shown up earlier that summer, offering his services as a house painter and handyman. ‘He’s planning to go to Nordkapp,’ Kat had explained, and sure enough, Niklas had vanished for a few weeks but had come right back. And here was Kat describing his next disappearing act, in which she herself would be taking part. ‘Mum and Dad are going to ask you,’ she said, staring each one of them down in turn. ‘So you might as well tell them the truth: I really don’t know where we’re going.’
Her laugh had skittered like pearls over their empty coffee cups and crumpled napkins and made their ice-cream melt and drip from their cones. ‘Don’t look so sad, Ingrid,’ she had said, putting her hand over her friend’s. ‘Just think of all the stories I’ll have when I come back!’
They had all nodded; Maya even choked out a ‘How exciting!’ But Ingrid had only one thought: this, right here, is where it happens. This is where we go our separate ways. Teacher training college in Hamar for Maya. Lisbeth getting married here in Reitvik. Sina – God knows what’s going on behind her sullen face. If she gets a job, she’ll probably stay here too. But Kat is leaving. The wind dies down. Our sails hang limp and aimless. The centre dissolves into a million little dust particles and becomes an endless, dreary void. This, right here, is where we go our separate ways.
‘Foolish,’ was Kjell’s reaction when she told him about Fiji. ‘What are you talking about; have you lost your mind? You’re way too—’
He stopped himself in time, but Ingrid heard the word as it butted up against the inside of his lips. Old. You’re way too old. Her brother, only four years her junior, apparently felt qualified to decide what kinds of opportunities had expired for her. Moving to the South Pacific was obviously one of them.
She finished his sentence. ‘Too old, Kjell? Too old to do anything but sit at home and wait for my pension to come in? Catch Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and maybe go on a cruise to Denmark every once in a while?’
‘What do you mean? There are plenty of other things …’
‘Like what? A bus trip to Tallinn? Going to Sweden once or twice a year with you to buy cheap meat? Perhaps be crazy enough to accept a tandem skydive as a seventieth birthday present?’
‘OK, but … the South Pacific, Ingrid! What do you know about that? And you haven’t seen Kat in … I don’t know how many years?’
What do you know about the South Pacific? she wanted to ask, but didn’t. Kjell knew very little about anything at all, truth be told. Except hunting dogs. And car tyres. As the purchasing manager for a tyre company, there was hardly a detail about vulcanization, tread depth and balancing he didn’t know by heart.
And she really did know a lot more about Fiji than he did. The very same night the letter arrived, she’d searched the internet. She found out the country’s population (under a million), the number of islands (one hundred or so inhabited, more than three hundred total), the ethnic background of the population (around forty per cent of Indian heritage, the rest of Melanesian descent), their religion (Christian, largely Methodist; Hindu; and some Muslim), the major industries (tourism, sugar production, copra). ‘Quite a bit,’ she could have replied to her brother. But he didn’t wait for a response.
‘This isn’t like you at all, Ingrid! To just throw your whole life out the window, it’s totally … irresponsible!’
Couldn’t he hear himself talking? Who on earth did he think she was responsible for, besides herself? Kat’s words danced in front of her eyes. Leave behind everything that didn’t work out! Bring with you everything that still matters!
‘I’ve always taken care of myself, Kjell, and I intend to keep doing that. I’ve paid off my mortgage, and I have enough in the bank to buy a ticket back whenever I want. What are you getting so upset about – can’t you be happy for me? Don’t you think I deserve a little dark chocolate and coconut? Haven’t I eaten enough boiled potatoes and herring in my life?’
Her brother’s glazed-over look showed her that he understood nothing – boiled potatoes and herring, what was she talking about? He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and tried another approach. ‘Well, what about us? The boys – Simon and Petter are going to miss you so much! And Arve too,’ he added hastily, as an afterthought. ‘He’ll think you’ve gone insane!’
Ingrid had trouble imagining her absent-minded youngest brother having an opinion on her sanity either way. Arve had plenty of experience of being judged himself. A fond image of him flashed through her mind: the shapeless baseball cap, the blue jeans and zippered brown jacket. The apartment near the university, with the empty fridge and full bookshelves, where one might find a pair of glasses in the freezer or a two-week-old sandwich next to the computer screen.
‘Arve has enough to worry about with himself,’ she said, watching the vein bulge through the thin, freckled skin of Kjell’s forehead.
‘But what kind of security will you have for the future, have you thought about that? What if you get sick? What if you—’
‘Die over there?’
She gazed at him calmly, not letting herself get upset, keeping her voice soft. ‘Then they’ll sing for me and bring straw mats to my house.’
It’s not hard to build a routine when you’re starting from scratch. Ingrid has never lived on a cocoa farm, but neither have any of the others, which means all roles are technically available. Kat and Niklas bought the property only six years ago, and they had just started to get the hang of running it before Niklas’s terrible accident. Kat says very little about what happened; Ingrid doesn’t know any details. Maybe the wound is just too fresh and raw? The only thing Ingrid knows is that Kat wasn’t there at the time.
Mosese, who manages the plantation, oversees its daily operations, as he did under the previous owner. ‘Niklas always followed close on his heels. Everything he knew about cocoa, he learned from Mosese,’ Kat has explained.
But she doesn’t seem to share Niklas’s keen interest in the farm, Ingrid thinks to herself. Wasn’t it she who wrote so enthusiastically in the letter about daring to try something new? To start producing chocolate?
When Mosese comes by once or twice a week to report on the progress of the crop, Kat rarely goes out to greet him of her own accord. And the ageing manager never walks up the four steps to the front door uninvited; he waits at the bottom of the porch until someone appears. Sometimes Ateca comes outside; other times she spots Mosese through the window and shouts loudly, ‘Madam Kat! Mosese is here!’ This is followed by the sudden peal of laughter Ingrid still hasn’t got used to: a laugh that seemingly bursts out without cause and that can last for several minutes. She’s heard it on other occasions, too: among the women selling the pointy brown tavioka roots by the side of the road, among Mosese’s daughters when they sit outside the house at night. A group of children walking by – the laughter can strike them suddenly and explode into loud roars that leave them gasping. Hands slap against thighs and tiny bodies are brought to their knees in glee.
Ateca’s laugh is not meant for an audience, as far as Ingrid can tell, and it erupts spontaneously without her being tickled or hearing a joke. Maybe Ateca simply has a certain amount of laughter stored in her body that must be released every day, like some people have an unwanted excess of stomach gas? Or is it a kind of tic over which she has no control? Ingrid adds ‘Find out why Ateca laughs so much’ to the list of things she doesn’t know about Fiji.
Since Kat shows only a minimal interest in Mosese’s stories about fungal diseases, rodents and fertilizer costs, Ingrid quickly becomes the one who often chats with him on the porch when he stops by. Sometimes she accompanies the sinewy, bow-legged man to the plantation to inspect an especially promising cluster of yellowish cocoa pods, or to sigh with worry when he shows her a larvae attack. Not that she can contribute in any way beyond mere interest, but each afternoon walk in the green, humid cocoa forest infuses her with sweet drops of happiness that flow through her veins, washing away the nauseating office coffee that sloshed around inside her for so many years.
Another thing Ingrid gains from her early days in Fiji is a new appreciation for her feet. Large and solid, they’ve always fulfilled their primary duty: to keep her steady and upright in size eight shoes through autumn storms and other inclement weather. They’ve always been dependable but she’s never quite liked their veiny, hairy appearance. The size of Ingrid’s feet always makes pedicurists consider raising their prices, and she’s never been able to persuade R. Lundes Shoes & Sons to stock a pair with a pretty gold buckle or an elegant ankle strap in her size.
By the front door of Vale nei Kat is a pile of rubber flip flops. Indoor and outdoor pairs, with and without thongs between the toes. Ingrid has acquired three pairs: the first modest, black and simple; the second orange with a hibiscus pattern on the soles. The third is a glamorous pair purchased last time they were in Rakiraki: broad silver stripes down either side, and on top, between the toes, a cluster of plastic jewels.
And Ingrid’s feet have grown determined to live a happier life, that much is clear. Her naked toes fan out joyfully, her soles snugly nestled into their rubber surface, oblivious to mocking stares based on their size. Each foot spreads out in all directions, taking up its rightful space without shame. And it gets compliments!
‘You have nice feet, Madam Ingrid,’ Ateca says one afternoon on the porch. Her smile always invites a smile in return; Ateca is missing a canine tooth in the corner of her mouth, the small black hole like a winking glance amid the row of white. She sits straddling the coconut grater, a useful little tool with four legs. It has a half-moon-shaped blade at the front, which she uses to grate the coconut flesh once the nut is cracked open. The strips of moist white meat fall into a bowl cradled between the soles of her feet.
Ingrid is taken aback. ‘Nice feet?’