Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 68

Louis ambled through Apia on his horse, Jack. The town was alive with the afternoon noise of children, dogs, and chickens in the fenced yards adjoining the low wood houses. He had spent the past few hours sitting on Moors’s verandah drinking sti? co?ee and chewing on local politics. They had a view of the harbor, where an overturned German man-o’-war appeared like a political cartoon titled “Samoan Troubles.” Louis knew enough about recent history to see the wrecked ship as a sad symbol for the mess created in Samoa by Germany, Britain, and the U.S.

“Samoa  is no di?erent from any other little outpost,” Moors had said.  “Once the big powers put money in a foreign place. So they insert themselves into local politics.” The trader pointed toward the ship. “Mind you, it wasn’t more than a year ago there were six men-o’-war out there, all of ‘em spoiling for a ?ght.” He snorted. “A hurricane settled that ti?. Tossed those ships over like toys in a tub. Killed two hundred sailors. That’s when the Powers ?gured out they were three big dogs ?ghtin’ over a mighty small bone. They had their Berlin conference; the Germans put their puppet, Malietoa Laupepa in the king’s seat; and they agreed to send over a ‘chief justice’ to settle disputes among all the parties.” He put a plug of tobacco in his cheek. “It can’t be done.”

Moors’s knowledge of tribal rivalries and the ?nancial interests of the Powers had been useful in Louis’s letters for McClure’s newspapers. Better yet was the trader’s knowledge of the island’s hidden wonders. He had already led Louis on afternoon rides through the bush to blue lagoons where locals bathed, and to lava caves where swiftlets swooped past them in the darkness, calling out to each other in clicks.

As Jack turned toward Vailima, Louis saw bare-breasted girls along the road, beautiful brown girls wearing ?owers in their hair, bead necklaces, and scanty kilt-like lavalavas tied round their waists. He smiled at the notion that his eyes had grown accustomed to such naked beauty. What would Baxter or Colvin do upon encountering such females? Fall from their mounts, no doubt.

The air grew silent and the path rougher as he rode beside a  high lime hedge, then ascended the hill into the bush. On  either side, ropy vines wound around thick trunks, knitted themselves through branches, and hung down like fat snakes from the great canopy to the thick scrub below. Louis passed through a tiny village just below his own land where

a family was drinking kava in their open-sided house. The lanterns were already glowing. “Talofa!” someone greeted to him from beneath the thatched roof.

At a bend in the road was a clearing where he often stopped to look up at Vailima and down  at  the  coastline.  To  the  west  of  Apia  lay  a  string  of  German  settlements  that continued along the coast until they reached Mulinuu, the o?cial seat of the Samoan king. Louis  could  see  distinctly  the  coconut  and  cacao  plantations  owned  by  the  Hamburg company with a very long name that everybody called “The German Firm.” “It might as well be an arm of the German government,” Moors had groused.

In Apia and to the east, English and Americans populated the coast. It was a cruel irony that while the natives preferred to live along the water, whites had claimed the harbor section of Upolu’s northern shoreline. Forced to live away from the town in areas where decent  roads  and  basic  amenities  ended,  the  native  people  moved  through  Apia  as foreigners. That center of commerce was run by white administrators for the white settlers and was immune to the rule of the native king. But the white kingdom was not a happy one. The town, jointly held by whites of di?erent nationalities, was divided into bickering camps.

Louis shaded his eyes and studied the coastline. All around the island, the surf crashed up and over the coral reefs. He turned toward Vailima, where he saw a windowpane in the new house glint copper gold as it caught the sun.

They had been living on the island for three months, sheltering in the cottage. The house was a simple structure, a two-story clapboard with three main rooms on the ?rst ?oor and ?ve bedrooms upstairs. The house’s size made the locals gasp. He and Fanny didn’t think it was too big; they would use every square inch of it for their extended family. What made it extravagant was the fact that all the building materials had to be imported, either from the States or from Australia  and New Zealand. Everything: nails, window glass, doorknobs, redwood boards. The German Firm had taken the contract and gotten the materials from the harbor to Vailima by dray horse and cart, up the treacherous, furrowed road from Apia. Dinner will be  waiting,  he  thought, such as it is. There was a  provisions shortage that Moors insisted would be temporary, caused by the fact that the men-o’-war hadn’t come into Apia harbor for extended stays of late. With the reduction in population, suppliers were not shipping food into the town as they once did. Fanny’s garden would soon be producing, but in the interim, they ate a lot of breadfruit. The night before, he and Fanny

had shared one avocado for supper.

When the conch shell was blown to call in anyone out in the ?elds, it would be he and Fanny who gathered at the table, along with Henry and Lafaele, two Samoan members of the household. Henry Simele was a bright, strong, plain-faced fellow who oversaw the day workers and did whatever job was required. When he began working with them, he’d asked Louis to teach him how to speak more complex English, or “long expressions,” as he called it, in exchange for Samoan-language instruction. The two met every evening for a mutual lesson.  Henry  always  arrived freshly  bathed,  his  chest  decorated in  fern  garlands  or  a ?ower wreath. It turned out he was a chief on his own island of Savaii, but he had to work at Vailima to earn money for all the feasts he was expected to host.

Fanny was especially fond of Lafaele, a loyal fellow whom she was trying to turn into a gardener.  He  was  a  ?ne-looking  man:  muscular,  with  curled hair  gone  red from  using slaked lime on it. Louis suspected the name to be a version of Raphael, so he called him “the Archangel.” He was that—good-hearted, and a great believer in the supernatural.
Both men seemed to regard Vailima as home. Louis was touched when Henry said, “Our house is a gentle house.” At one of the early social gatherings he and Fanny attended in Apia, the wife of a diplomat advised Louis to treat his servants like family: “You’ll get more work out of them.” Louis had been o?ended by the crassness of her remark, though he’d already witnessed the nugget of truth in the statement. His familiarity with the Scottish clan system helped him make sense of Samoan life. The extended family was at the heart of both cultures. Everyone knew his role in the scheme of things, showed the proper respect for superiors and elders, and drew identity from the clan.

In a couple of months, once they were in the big house, Lloyd would return with the contents of  the Bournemouth  house, Louis’s mother would join  them, and if  they could persuade Belle, she and Joe and Austin would take over the Pineapple Cottage, as they called the little place they were living in now. When it was ?nished, the new place would look  like  a  barracks.  It  was  not  a  Highland  country  house—the  sort  of  building  his countrymen might picture as the ideal home. But it would be enough for him. And the prospect  of  his  own  extended  clan  settling  around  him  in  Samoa  was  enormously comforting. He wouldn’t be lonely.

“Talofa,” Louis called out when he saw Henry standing at the gate of the paddock. “Hello Tusitala,” Henry said.

Tusitala. Louis smiled to himself as he rode his horse to the barn. His new native name pleased him. Teller of Tales.