Castaway by Lucy Irvine

Author:Lucy Irvine [Irvine, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-04-30T10:04:21+00:00

Diary

This is a side ofTuinlife of which I never want to lose sight or sensation; to crouch animal-childlike under a wongai tree and forage among the earth and leaves for ripe fallen fruit. The high branches dance a dappling shade over the area of search, tossing their brilliant load in the sun and sea breeze. The fruit does not fall until it is mauve-black and soft, when it plummets, heavy with juice, to nestle like a softly glowing secret in the dry leaves beneath the tree. The white pigeons ofTuin are quick to swoop down and feast here. Their sharp beaks drive into the skin of the wongai and stud the smooth-ness with pockmarks, leaving handy holes for the ants to ravage in their turn. The sun shrivels and dries the mauve fruit within hours, making glistening, delectable prunes of the wongai after two or three days. Naked there beneath the tree I feel totally in my element. Eyes roving in a sweeping motion, hands gently turning the leaves, I work my way gradually around the entire windfall area, taking care not to miss the fruit directly beneath feet and knees.

Sometimes the tree affords no more than a handful of ripe wongai. As my eye alights upon one shining out richly from the leaf debris, a small delicious surge of satisfaction rises up in me and I move forward to take the fruit between my fingers, careless of the peckmarks of birds or a skin damaged in falling. The action of hand to mouth is unconscious. Suddenly the fruit is there, pressed to my lips, the flesh breaks between my teeth and the taste is on my tongue. I roll the pear-shaped pit around in my mouth until the next wongai is about to go in, then spit it on to the ground where it joins the many others stripped before me by the birds. On and on I go, from tree to tree, like a great appreciative human hoover.

If there are plenty of fruit I work on a vague and very flexible system of eat one, keep one, slowly filling my sari pouch with those I do not instantly devour. I pick the unripe red ones to ripen in camp for G, spread out on an old piece of fishing net I found caught on a tree overhanging the northern rocks. Within three days they are soft and ready to eat.

Under a ripe wongai tree I have about as much self-control as a child let loose in a sweet shop. I know that my shrunken belly will swell, that my bowels will weaken and cry out for a reprieve, but I do not care. I go on stuffing the fruit into my mouth, both hands working, until I collapse, bulging and roll-eyed, against the trunk of the tree and laugh happily to myself, greedy animal-child that I have become.

Consumption of wongai fruit on a massive scale seemed to give me a new lease of life. My flagging energy revived and I made a concentrated effort to build up the wood store against the wet days ahead.

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