A Dolphins Dream (45 page)
One fine morning two months before the wedding, twelve men showed up on the shores of the East Point and raised the frame of a bure in a single day. Moses had had the bure in mind for Keli all along. Keli and Sinaca moved in on their wedding day and in the ensuing months planted a garden, dug a good toilet and cut the mangroves away to provide a full view of the East Point and Taveuni across the Tasman Strait.
The coup and its residual effects died a natural death. Full services were restored to the outer islands and Sambuka went about the business of securing a republic for the Fijians. The international community voiced a mild protest but Fiji was a small, poverty stricken dot on the world map and its indiscretions were soon forgotten, much to the delight of all concerned.
Fishermen and villagers, in their journeys along the East Point, would often see the young couple working together in their garden, cleaning or repairing the bure. For the most part, they saw them in the water, diving and playing like sea creatures. The village declared they had never seen two people more in love.
Several times a week boats filled with Fijians on their way to dive sites would stop and pay their respects, bringing vegetables and other staples. More often than not Keli and Sinaca would come aboard and join the hunt for the day and thus double the take of fish. Once a week Moses would come by in his boat and take Keli and Sinaca out to the deep reef where they would hunt for mackerel. The Silver Fish would make an occasional appearance. Its wound had completely healed, leaving a dimpled scar on its otherwise polished, silver skin. Upon recognizing Keli, it would wheel off into the blue, not to be seen again for another month. Keli and Sinaca would each spear a mackerel, one for themselves and one for Moses, who would sell them both. The proceeds of this amounted to their entire income and was spent at the Indian store for household goods and the occasional luxury items of peanut butter or a tin of cookies. Whatever was left over was saved for special occasions.
Entering their second year on the East Point, Keli became skilled in using the native sling with the free shaft and was diving like a Fijian. Islanders passing the point would see the two naked, diving for their dinner and would give them wide berth, as mortal men would do when coming upon the gods at play.
In their days spent under the water, Sinaca taught Keli the secrets of the sea. He learned how to use the current to stay down and where it was calm in the lee of the reefs and how to catch fish with his bare hands. She showed him that everything under the sea was alive, the coral and stone no less than the grouper in the depths or the clown fish in the anemone. All life had meaning and he did his best to understand the movement of every fish, some of which would lead him to caves he had never known existed. Each reef was a book and every foot of it another page. Sinaca opened up a world that was infinite in its revealed secrets.
One day into the third year of their marriage a fisherman found them working the deep reef without a boat. They had swum that distance in the currents and were planning to swim back with the two mackerel they had speared. Apparently they had been doing it for some time. When word got back to the village, the old women said they had ridden the Sea God to the reefs and were no longer in need of boats or men. The rumors effectively reduced the flow of visitors to their door except, of course, Moses who remained loyal and visited often.
Keli and Sinaca had lived nine joyous years in their bure on the East Point when one day, while diving the deep reef, Keli disappeared. It was reported that he had drowned on a deep dive. His body was never recovered.
Sinaca went into mourning. She would see no visitors other than Moses who would bring supplies from the store on Taveuni. In the course of the weeks and months that followed, it was rumored by more than a few fishermen that Sinaca had been seen gamboling with a dolphin in the deep water off the East Point. The story was eventually confirmed when a boatload of Fijians came upon her as she was embracing a dolphin in the calm water between the finger reefs. The old women said that she was making love to it.
For the next two years Sinaca lived an isolated existence and had no visitors save for Moses, who continued to drop off necessities. He never stayed long and asked no questions. On one such day he made a stop and found Sinaca near death on the bed. She had eaten a fish that had consumed the worms that come out of the sea floor on a full moon in late fall, making its flesh poisonous. She died that evening from ciguatera. The old woman said that the Sea God had finally reclaimed her. Moses and Jokatama buried her in the garden behind the bure on the East Point, for the village preferred that she not be buried on their grounds. This suited Jokatama for he didn't wish the women to speak unkindly of his daughter.
Three days after her burial Moses, returning from Taveuni, swung by close to Orchid Beach to admire the orchids, which were in full bloom. He noticed a large shape resting on the sand. Pulling the boat into shore, he discovered a dolphin had dragged itself up and over the coral, beaching itself high on the sand near the sea wall. It was severely lacerated and had lost a great deal of blood.
He went to the kitchen and made tea and brought it to the beach and sat next to the dolphin. Its skin was dry and split and it bled from its belly, laboring painfully with every breath.
Moses gently stroked its head. "Keli, you have come to be with Sinaca, eh. I thought you might. I remember when we drink tea together here on this beach and talk about ourselves, trying to bring each other to understanding. Here we are again and I think we have the understanding, eh."
The dolphin exhaled a weak breath.
"The dolphins and the whales sometimes push themselves on the beach to die because they have fallen in love while they dreamed a human. A dolphin has only one love for its life, eh. You wish to lie next to your Sinaca. Do not worry my friend, it will be done."
Moses stayed with the dolphin through the night and was with it when it died near dawn. He fetched Aprosa and they carried the dolphin to the garden and dug a pit next to Sinaca where it was buried in a grave unmarked.
For reasons I can scarcely begin to understand much less explain this book has required 25 years of incubation and 3 incarnationso realize its present state. In that time many have lent hands and hearts. In the beginning in New Zealand where the first draft was written and then later abandoned were John and Judy Hare. On Taveuni Rick and Do Cammick. I hope you are all alive and in good health. To Margaret, my wife, who never lost faith, even when I did. David Smith, the book’s wonderful editor and a dear friend finally confirmed Margaret’s undying belief in the value of this work and gave his enormous talent to its conclusion. Finally, I am grateful to Tom Milliken for all he has done in behalf of this and so many of my creative journeys.