Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 85

Talolo had laid out Louis’s formal clothes—his best white linen suit and his boots polished to a high shine. Dressed and combed, Louis went to Fanny’s room and found her at her desk.

“What are you doing?”

“Writing to Kew Garden,” she said. “I want to get this into the mail.” “Hurry now. It’s time.”

They went out together into the paddock, where their horses were waiting to take Belle, Lloyd, Fanny, and himself to the Apia jail. All of them had taken turns over the past few months, riding down by horseback with food or gifts for the twenty-three chiefs, followers of Mata’ afa who’d landed in jail after their defeat. But today would be di?erent. They were to be guests at a feast hosted by the imprisoned chiefs.

The jail was a dreary little building consisting of one room and six cells. It had been absolutely ?lthy at the beginning of their incarceration, but Louis now paid a man to clean it regularly. Any fool could break out of the jail, but these men stayed of their own accord. It was the responsibility of the prisoners to provide their own support; their people showed up every day with food.

When  Louis and his family  arrived,  they  found an  almost festive scene outside,  with relatives of  the prisoners milling  about.  Entering  the building,  they  were led single-?le through a hallway toward the courtyard behind, surrounded by a corrugated metal fence. Fanny stopped in the hallway and looked into a cell. Inside, an old chief they knew named Po’e lay on a mat, moaning in pain.

“He wasn’t ill when I was here last time,” she said, turning to a younger chief. “Do you know what his sickness is?”

“No.”

In the outdoor courtyard stood a row of makeshift huts put up by the jailer to alleviate the crowding in the fetid jail. Following their guide to the largest hut, Louis detected the smells of roasted pork, oranges, cocoa, and rice. Inside, a gathering of eighteen high chiefs awaited them, along with the jailer, who looked nervous indeed. The main chief, named Auilua,  was  a  magni?cent-looking  creature,  tall  and  muscled,  with  a  square  head  and massive shoulders that were shiny with oil. Around his thick neck, he wore a large ula—a

wreath of dried fruit pods painted brilliant red that Samoans wore on special occasions. Auilua arranged the guests alternately among the chiefs. Fanny was served kava ?rst, as the wife of himself, the high dignitary of the day. Auilua began to speak, and the interpreter said over and over a particular phrase as he translated: “Tusitala, our only friend.”
At the end of the meal, the chiefs approached Fanny and Belle. The men removed their own crimson ulas and put them over the women’s heads, and then Louis’s and Lloyd’s. As they emerged from the hut one by one, it dawned on Louis that there was some surprise in the o?ng, for they were being led to another hut. Inside, they discovered more chiefs and a pile  of  gifts.  Once  again,  Auilua  was  master  of  the  ceremony,  speaking  of  the  objects arrayed  in  front  of  them  as  the  handiwork  of  the  enslaved  chiefs  and  their  families. Exquisite tapas, baskets, fans, and a kava cup were presented to Tusitala with much fanfare.
Then came a promise. When and if the chiefs are released, Auilua announced, they would build a road to Vailima from the main road to show their gratitude for Louis’s unending support.

“Their words are sincere,” the jailer assured him as they prepared to depart. “The chiefs told me this giving of gifts to you has never been done for any other white man by Samoan chiefs.”

“Sir,” Fanny interjected, “I am going to need your help. I want to get Po’e out of here so he can be doctored properly. He looks very, very ill. I trust you will perhaps be engaged in some distraction  when  I  come by  tomorrow and take him? I  will arrange to have him carried up to Vailima.”

The jailer, a softhearted Austrian named Wurmbrand, looked miserable at the idea but agreed to let her spring the old chief from jail on the morrow. Louis smiled in wonder at the turn of events. He knew it shouldn’t surprise him; no matter how storm-tossed his own life had been over the years, Fanny had always found a way to get him to safe ground.

In  the  days  that  followed,  Louis  watched  Fanny  as  she  tended  Po’e  in  Maggie’s  old bedroom. Though she had done the same thing for Louis a thousand times—brewing broths, putting cold cloths on his forehead—he’d not studied the operation from the outside. He was struck by how competently she brought the old man back in stages, until he could stand on his own feet and walk.

He would regret to his dying day that he’d called her a peasant. It’s a grave mistake to

identify a person as one thing especially one’s wife. The woman he saw was kind, skilled, and generous—his wife of old, but so much more than a tender of others; she was every bit the adventurer he fancied himself to be. She could write a book of her own about her life in the South Seas. Courage was her greatest strength, and it had gotten her into places no other whites had been.

Some days she was an explosive engine, but to tamper with her inner workings seemed futile and rather dangerous. She was not his to muck with, anyway. He did not doubt her love or devotion. For the past ?fteen years, she’d spent her lavish valor on him. And all the while he’d pined for Scotland, she had wanted only to be with him.

He meant to explain to her soon something he’d come to understand. She really was an artist, but her art was not something  that would be viewed in  a  museum or contained between the covers of a book. Fanny’s art was in how she had lived her own extraordinary life. She was her best creation.

In trying to nurse Fanny back from her netherworld, he’d rediscovered something within himself. It had done him good to know an essential decency still resided there. That much had not changed. In the end, what really matters? Only kindness. Only making somebody a little happier for your presence.