Inheritance (17 page)

‘They?’

‘All three boys – two English and one handsome Italian – that part was real – with a bottle of Chianti. They pushed in and sat down beside me, rather drunk, saying they were coming to cheer me up. “Have a drink,” they said, “then you might feel like coming to the party.” Again, I was too shy to send them away.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ says Ann, trying to make light of
the story. ‘The feisty Elena Levamanaia?’

Elena strokes Ann’s head where it rests now on her knee. ‘I was out of my element, Ani, and alone. Who can behave as they’d wish in those times? I sat up in bed, accepted a drink, pretended to be friendly; tried to be the party girl they were looking for. Of course it got worse. I became light-headed very quickly. The Italian started to stroke my arm, which rather excited me at first, but then one of the other boys joined in on the other side, and I became frightened.’

‘Why didn’t you call out? There must have been people within earshot.’

‘Oh yes there were, there were. Why didn’t I call out? Shame again? I was in my nightdress and didn’t want anyone to see me. The boys were laughing. They thought it all a great joke. “Don’t be afraid,” one of them said. “We won’t hurt you – it’s just a bit of fun. Come on sweetie, enjoy yourself.” But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I hated every minute of their pawing. In the end I fought them with all my strength, silently but with hate in my heart. That excited them even more. One of them …’ Elena stopped speaking.

Ann turns up to look at her friend. ‘Oh Elena, did they rape you?’

‘No. Not completely. I was too strong for them. But one of them couldn’t hold back his excitement and made a mess on my sleeping bag. He told me I was a frigid bitch and to go back to whatever backwoods I’d crawled out of. Then they all went. Off, noisy and laughing, to their party at the mill.’

Elena sighs. Wipes at the tears with the back of her hand. ‘I was never there at that party. That’s the true
version. Not a laugh a minute. I have felt shame ever since. Perhaps what he said was right – perhaps I am frigid.’

Ann laughs. ‘You are the warmest, most lively person I’ve ever met.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Ann nods. The silence between them is comfortable. I have missed this good friend, she thinks, more than I knew.

The room has grown colder. Ann goes to bank up the fire, but Elena halts her. She rises from her chair, graceful despite her bulk. ‘Time I should go, Ani my dear friend. Thank you for listening. I must drive back to Invercargill tonight, and then Wellington early in the morning.’ She cups Ann’s face in her hand, rubbing gently. ‘You are tired. And we must both work tomorrow.’

‘I knew you would come,’ Ann says quietly at the door. ‘But I don’t really understand why. Why did you come, Elena? Why take so much trouble? All this is in the past.’

‘To me not.’ Elena’s voice comes smiling from the darkened drive. ‘I do not share your palagi sense of time. Past and present live together. Remember that time at the archaeological site? On that great mound?’

Ann waits, trying to grasp the connection, but no further comment is offered. She sees Elena’s moonlit hand raised beside the car. Then the door slams and she drives away. She watches as Elena climbs out to manage the gate, drives through and stops to latch it again. She can’t see if there is a final wave.

As she tidies away coffee cups, turns out lights, Ann admits to herself the pleasure of Elena’s visit. The good
times have been locked away securely with the bad, she thinks. I had forgotten entirely that there were good times. She wonders if Elena has other bad times to remember. Not Ann’s, but others of her own. The thought that they will meet again is a pleasure – a dangerous anticipation. No meeting has been planned but they both know it will happen. What an aching pleasure it would be to sit with Elena again and tell the truth, as Elena has just done. The whole story. In the tapestry of these twenty good years – ones to be proud of – is woven a single twisted thread of worry and guilt. Has she done the right thing? Should Francesca have always known the truth?

Elena is the person she could tell. But what might she break in the process?

Elena

W
ell, I will need to tread lightly as they say. Not so easy for a big woman! Especially one of my nature. Why did I take the trouble, she asked? A good question. I asked myself the same on that long drive in the dark back to my cold hotel bed. Part, of course, was the allure of that young woman who may be the niece I have longed to nurture. But part also is tied up with Jeanie herself. The friends I have are mostly casual. Jeanie is different. I would not tell that story of the dreadful time in Florence to anyone else. Not to Teo. Not to my mother – especially not my mother! I know I’m looked upon as strange – an unmarried Samoan woman! But the idea of married life – or life with a man, I suppose I should say – simply doesn’t interest me. Nothing particularly strange about that from my point of view. My work is satisfying. But the loss of Jeanie has left a hole in the weave of my life that no one else has filled. I can’t really
explain it. Nor do I feel the need to.

I‘d like to talk to her about my present dilemma. Should I go back to Samoa, as I am called to do? The job offered is good, very good, and I would be in a position to make a difference. Also, a senior matai title is on the table – on the mat, I should say! I have never agreed to accept a title unless I were living in the islands and could fulfil my duties properly. I have never admired those who accept titles while still living overseas. They send money, yes, but that is not the purpose of a title. A matai should be a leader, not a source of income.

Somehow, seeing Jeannie that day in the museum brought back the feeling we had, Teo and I, returning to the islands. We were full of hope, and purpose then, confident of changing things for the better. We were the new, qualified generation, able, under the new constitution, to make a difference in our own country.

And in those first few years I did, I think. The campaign to stamp out the dreaded filariasis disease; the food distribution after the hurricane. But then I saw Teo give in to the old conservative pressures, and I felt myself doing the same. I told myself I could be more use serving our people back in New Zealand, but basically I suppose I was running away before fa‘asamoa got to me too. The old customs are so strong! I see no change, these days, or none for the better. Children still come last in the pecking order, those with new ideas are suspect, conservative elders still hold sway, the pastors are still overfed and greedy. Violence underlies much of fa‘asamoa. My views are unbalanced perhaps; but in my line of business I need to put a little extra weight in the scales.

I think of those cases of donated milk powder, flour and tins of fish and meat, standing idle in the sheds after the hurricane, while the men tried to agree on a good method of distribution. Months, they languished there while the arguments continued. Should each matai be given an amount according to the number of families in his ‘aiga? Or should each village be given a share to distribute? Perhaps the churches – the pastors – should distribute? (I was definitely against that.) In the end the Women’s Committees demanded, and won, the right to distribute. Those powerful women decreed that every man, woman
and child
should get exactly the same, and that distribution would be through the Women’s Committees themselves! They were rigid and scrupulous in the task. A triumph, if somewhat ridiculous when it came to the palagi population. That’s where Jeanie and I came into our own. We followed the distribution teams when they went to palagi homes. Two minutes after the supplies had been handed over, we knocked on the door, carrying large baskets.

‘You don’t really need this food,’ Jeanie or I would point out. ‘The hospital will use your contribution in feeding needy children.’ And we’d stand there, smiling, with our baskets. Mostly the food was given willingly. Would the pastors have given their share to the children? No one dared ask them.

So I rave on. My thoughts – prejudices perhaps? – are a shield against this call to return. Am I stronger now, to resist the old ways? To stand up for the rights of the children who need the protein which their elders consume in such large quantities? To be an advocate for those who arrive at the hospital beaten up because they
questioned a corrupt, but accepted, practice? Perhaps. Or perhaps I will shrug into the comfort of being an elder myself, and will forget all my ideals. That is my fear. I would like to spend the next ten years of my life back in the islands, so that when the millennium arrives I can say: There, I made my mark and my country is the better for it.

Jeanie would not be seduced I think. Jeanie would always question. She is sharper than me. But more vulnerable.

Whatever made her take such a stand? To disappear and change her name? (Hope: what an interesting choice!) Surely being angry with Teo would not be enough?

Jeanie is misguided or over-cautious – or both – to keep Francesca from the truth. But we will see about all that. In time, surely, I will take my niece to Falelua and tell her the history of her blood.

Our family comes from the village of Falelua in the Tuamasaga District, I will tell her. We are of the Malietoa ‘aiga, which is high-born. You can be proud of your Samoan blood. Our line is not the highest of the Malietoa, but respectable enough.

One day I hope to tell Francesca the stories of her bloodline. Even thinking of telling it – of describing our nu‘u on the coast, east of Apia, makes me smile. The beautiful simple fale set among tall coconut and breadfruit trees – our blessed food-givers; the graves of our ancestors, freshly painted white every year, standing comfortingly close behind our fale, the white coral sand raked smooth and clean around them; the two great churches towering over the village – Catholic and LMS – ridiculously ostentatious, she will say (and I
might secretly agree) but a matter of great pride to our nu‘u. Their spires and towers are among the highest in the whole district. I will point upward, inland, to where our village land stretches up to the crest of the green and misty mountains in the distance. Wild jungle, most of it, but nearer to the village our families – our ‘aiga – grow banana and taro, coconuts, mangos, sugarcane, pineapple, pawpaw for the pigs and have a plantation of cacao. See where my mother has a few coffee bushes near the fale, and a patch of beans; and of course flowers for behind our ears, and for lei, and to scent the air. The food gardens in the bush are neatly tended by the men and women of our family, (your family, Francesca) under the orders of our matai. In normal times no one goes hungry. All this I will tell Francesca, my niece, one day.

I love to go back to Falelua and one day I will take you, Francesca. A promise. You will smell the creamy frangipani blossoms which sprout so surprisingly from the bare stubby fingers of the tree. We will tuck a red hibiscus flower behind your ear and roast a pig to welcome you. You will learn to play kilikiti and to dance with those thin arms of yours. We will lie at night on the warm mats in our large fale, side by side under a mosquito net, listening to the surf on the reef which, together with the high tinnitus of the cicadas, is a background to all other comfortable rustling grunting animal sounds of the night. Shall I talk to you in our language until the words begin to take root? There are such stories to tell!

Will my soul mate Jeanie be with us? Maybe, maybe. Let me at least dream.

That terrible day when Jeanie’s father wandered away.

I never knew him well, John O’Dowd. But Jeanie adored him and had been worried about him for some time. He was depressed, she said, not eating properly. Why, I asked, would he be depressed when he had just discovered family – and property – and a new life in our lovely islands? But Jeanie would just shake her head and get on with the bandaging. When it came to her father, Jeanie was reticent. Quite secretive, really. I wondered if it was because of the land dispute between our families. But that never seemed to bother her at other times. Tiresa railed at me for keeping up the friendship, but Teo and I just laughed off the old folk and enjoyed spending time with Jeanie. We were young, then. At the clinic, we’d talk and laugh about anything and everything under the sun as we bandaged those poor swollen limbs, our arms white to the elbows with the warm sticky mixture of plaster and latex, our backs aching with the effort of holding those huge legs as we wound the bandages tightly, tightly, constricting the sagging flesh. The old folk loved her as much as I did; she always had a smile or a joke for them, in her funny mixture of English and Samoan. They would urge us to bind more strongly; would cry out in pleasure as the measurements showed they had lost inches of flesh, would walk out of the clinic proudly, able to lift the leg or the arm a little more freely each week. In that needy time, after the hurricane, the clinic was like a little oasis of hope. That word again.

I had been sent back to Samoa a year earlier, soon
after I qualified, to help manage the filariasis campaign. I stayed for the first months – dosing every man, woman and child in Samoa with the filariasis vaccine. The idea was to eradicate the disease entirely from both islands. A mammoth task. My own mother, Tiresa, had a terrible swollen leg, which she hid under her puletasi, and my aunt was worse – one huge arm as well as the leg. Elephantiasis, they used to call it, which is an appropriate, if demeaning name. The swollen limb, heavy with soggy, spongy tissue, resembles the grey, wrinkled leg of an elephant. It can attack a man’s genitals. I remember an old man in our village who had to support his gigantic scrotum in a sort of wheelbarrow if he wanted to walk at all. It was said in those days, that by the time you had been bitten by ten mosquitoes, you would have the nasty little worms in your blood. Not many palagi ever got to the huge-limb stage – that took years. But I treated an old European nun and there was an English priest who always said he was too busy to come in for bandaging. I believe he couldn’t face being handled by a Samoan lady doctor.

I was proud to help with the work, even in the difficult early times. Will I ever forget the day of the first dose! From morning to night the radio blared out ‘Inu au fualaau’, then a moment later, ‘Manatua ia inu au fualaau!’ – the message to take your pills. The Women’s Committees were out in force, handing out the pills, standing over everyone, even matai, to ensure the doses were taken. The heavier you weighed, the more pills were to be swallowed. Our patele had to down thirty-four while my mother watched sternly. In fa‘asamoa that is not an easy thing to do, even if you are a high-born
woman and head of the district Women’s Committee. That was something to be proud of: we had persuaded the World Health Organization to insist on the Women’s Committees. The matai would have let themselves off, given half a chance!

But worse was next day, when almost all of Samoa fell ill. Those pills had dreadful side effects for those who were badly infected. Stomach cramps, diarrhoea, fever, lassitude. Activity of any sort came to a standstill. Schools and offices closed; no one worked on the plantations. Everyone lay on their mats and moaned. A few older people remembered the great flu epidemic when so many died. Fear spread like a cloud of evil mosquitoes. I was shouted at for bringing such a disaster upon the islands. Oh dear Lord, it was a nightmare. How could we ever persuade the population to take the second dose? And the third? And so on.

But we did, more or less, and the eradication was declared a cautious success. Almost the entire population was clear of the tiny worm, praise the good Lord and the WHO. Those little devil mosquitoes no longer had infected blood to sip and spread. By the time Jeanie arrived, I was back in the islands again, helping with the aftermath – setting up the clinics, calling for volunteer bandagers, constricting the sagging skin, excising extra flesh. Bringing hope.

I could never persuade Tiresa to come in for bandaging. She had taken her pills, but now her huge leg needed to be constricted with bandages.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ I would rail at her, ‘be an example! Look at the way you bullied the patele into taking his pills. After that, the bandaging is nothing!’

But she never would. Was it Jeanie’s presence? Or perhaps mine? Was she ashamed for me to see how huge and deformed her leg was?