The Mango's Kiss by Albert Wendt

Author:Albert Wendt [Albert Wendt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869798581
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2011-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sweat was already drenching her clothes. She wrapped her sleeping sheet around her pillow, listened until she was sure everyone was asleep, then slid out of the mosquito net. She tried to control her shaking as she tiptoed around and over the bodies of the other sleepers, and out of the fale.

The lights of the few anchored ships dotted the harbour. Behind those rose the black shape of Mulinu’u Peninsula, which was propping up the insucking depths of the night sky sprinkled with stars. Still and humid. She wrapped her spare ie lavalava around her body, darted over the empty street and felt her way carefully through the darkness over the massive roots of the talie on the sea wall in front of the LMS church, snuggled down between two roots that were as high as her shoulders, leaned up against the trunk, and started wiping her sweat with her ie lavalava as she waited. The tide was crawling in like a slow fat animal.

She peered over the edge of the roots. A thin dark shadow was moving towards her from the direction of the market, over the path along the sea wall. As she watched she was again gripped by that inexplicable serenity. When the shadow reached the talie it stopped and turned towards her.

‘Pele, Pele?’ Tavita whispered. She stood up and beckoned him towards her. He slid his way over the roots and dropped down into her narrow sheltered hollow. He smelt of soap and shaving cream; his knee pressed against her leg. She moved her leg away.

For an awkward while they didn’t know what to say. ‘I think I have some news about Arona,’ he began hesitantly. ‘Picked it up from that shipping company and at the saloon. Maybe just rumours but …’

‘Yes, go on,’ she urged.

‘That someone who could be him is now on an American ship that goes from Los Angeles to some of the ports in South America. They say it’s someone from Samoa who’s fluent in English and is being trained to be an officer.’

‘We keep waiting for him to return — and my mother deep down still blames me for Arona’s departure — but he keeps returning only in story and more stories.’ She paused. ‘One time I think your father said: “Stories, that’s all we are and continue to be after we die.”’

‘I suppose so,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘Arona’s not dead, is he?’

‘No!’ was her emphatic reply. ‘No.’

‘He — the man at the saloon — gave me your note,’ he tried to turn her away from the pain of Arona’s absence. ‘He said it was from a very beautiful lady.’ The tide lapped at and rubbed its body against the sea wall.

‘I’m glad you came, Tavita. I have something important to tell you.’

‘I know already.’ Silence again. ‘The tide is coming in,’ he added. ‘We are being foolish meeting like this.’

‘I wanted to talk about it with you.’

‘Why?’

She decided he was again reacting in that open palagi way, so she followed his lead.

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