The Far Reaches (25 page)

Sister Mary Kathleen leaned forward. “Faith is not easy to explain, ‘tis true, but if a man does not believe in miracles, how else does he explain himself? Is it not a miracle that a man exists at all? If there is a watch, is this not evidence of a watchmaker? We are the best proof of the hand of God.”

Chief Kalapa nodded understanding, if not agreement, then looked at his three wives, who had been pretending not to be listening. “What do you women think of these things?” he asked. When none answered save with a shrug, he smiled with satisfaction. “You see? Here is a strange thing. The women of the Far Reaches are satisfied to be wives and mothers and cooks and gardeners. They do not think the deep thoughts such as I and the other men do. Yet you European women, you think like men. How did that come about?”

“I cannot believe your women don't have deep thoughts,” Sister Mary Kathleen answered. Then she spoke to Mori, the wife who seemed to be the first among the three. “Mori, do ye ever think why things are as they are? Why ye as a woman can never be a chief, for instance?”

Mori, who had a streak of silver in her long ebony hair and was maturely beautiful, pondered the question, then replied, “It is true we women do not exercise authority, but we are allowed to own land. When we are married, we carry our land into the marriage but retain control of it. This is the way it has always been and allows a balance between men and women in our affairs. It also causes the best lands to be mixed around the various families, never always and forever in the hands of one.” She glanced meaningfully at Chief Kalapa and added, “I am quite capable of thinking deep thoughts, husband, though I choose to let them run toward family, such as when our sons should be allowed to go out to sea on the outriggers, or when our daughters are ready for sex. You have no inkling of these things.”

Chief Kalapa grunted dismissively at his wife's pronouncements, but Sister Mary Kathleen noticed he chose not to argue with them, either. Instead, this time it was he who changed the subject. “Sister, our children need a school. Would you be their teacher?”

She was as pleased as she was astonished at the proposal. “Faith! It has always been a dream of mine, to be a teacher.”

“Yet you became a nun.”

“I did, yes, sor, but I hoped some day I would also be able to teach. I love children.”

“I noticed that you were enjoying their company,” Chief Kalapa said approvingly. “Since the missionaries left two years ago, the children's education has suffered. They need to learn to read and write, as well as our language, our history, the history of the world, English, and arithmetic.”

She could hardly breathe, so pleasurable was the idea to her. “I would do me best, Chief Kalapa. I thank ye!”

“But none of your religion,” he cautioned. “We have no use for your plaster saints. We are Christian, but we also love our old gods. You must not interfere with our beliefs.”

“I understand,” she said. “Where will me school be located?”

“I shall have a suitable structure built for you beside the boathouse.”

“'Tis a fine chief ye are,” she said, “to care about the children's education.”

“What he cares about is that they not make too much noise while he is trying to sleep,” Mori said, as the other wives tittered.

Chief Kalapa frowned. “First wife, you should speak only when spoken to.”

“I shall try to remember that, husband,” Mori answered, smiling triumphantly.

After the meal, as the wives were taking up the plates and cups and feeding
the dogs and cats with the leftovers, Chief Kalapa leaned forward with his hands on his bare knees and contemplated Sister Mary Kathleen for so long that she began to feel uncomfortable. Finally, he said, “I should like very much to speak with you further, but not here. Would you join me on the beach?”

She agreed, and so they strolled down the common road toward the lagoon. “You should pray, Sister,” the chief said. “Make a show of it. It is not seemly for an unmarried woman to be walking alongside a married man after dark, even you. It will be believed that we are going somewhere to have sex. If you pray, and loudly, they will assume you are trying to make me into a good Catholic, you see.”

Sister Mary Kathleen complied, praying an Our Father while taking note of the eyes watching them from the huts as they passed. At the beach, before the shimmering lagoon, the chief said, “I have talked to Nango and the other young gentlemen who came with you. Of course, I know them all very well. They are of royal blood from the house of Ruka. Nango, as I'm certain you know, is the first son of Chief Namu, who he said died at the hands of the Japanese. By the way, I have given them permission to bury Tomoru's bones on this island until he can be moved to Ruka.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “As for Nango, I saw his father murdered. Colonel Yoshu used a sword to take off his head. Chief Namu died bravely with the name of his people on his last breath.”

“Is that so? Nango did not provide that detail.”

“That is because he was not there. What else did Nango tell you?” she asked, fearing the answer.

Chief Kalapa waved his hands dismissively. “Very little. He said everything I wanted to know was better told by you. Now, Sister, I bid you tell me what happened to the royal fella boys, and to you at the hands of the Japonee. As chief, these are things I should know.”

She took off her slippers and walked ankle-deep into the surf, letting the clean sea water flush across her bare feet and drag at her tattered, grimy habit. “Nango and the other young men of the royal families were rounded up by Colonel Yoshu. He wished to humiliate, disgrace, and dishonor them so that his authority would be unquestioned. He turned them over to his troops who … wanted them.”

“Ah,” the chief said and went directly to the heart of the matter. “Nango and the others were the object of debased sexual practices, then. I feared as much. And what of you?”

“What of me? I am a nun.”

“Does that mean you are immune from being debased by others so inclined?”

“They left me alone.”

“Why?”

“Because Colonel Yoshu so ordered.”

“You were not tortured? Not at all?”

“Not in the same way.”

“Why would he show any kindness toward you? Did he not order the other nuns to be killed?”

“Yes.”

“But not you? I do not understand.”

“It is not decent for me to say more.”

“How did you escape?” Chief Kalapa pressed.

She studied the lagoon and then looked up to the stars. There were mil-lions lying athwart the edge of the galaxy, a river of light. She wished she could rise into the sky and dance along the celestial stream. But such was the playground of angels and, she hoped, her sweet Saint Monessa. The sea washed heavily against her knees, the tide inexorably coming in. She backed out of the water and stood in the dry sand. “One day,” she said, “Nango secretly visited me and told me that he and the other fella boys planned to take some outriggers and leave, even though it was under the penalty of instant death if caught.”

“That was brave of him, was it not?”

“Yes. Very brave. When he offered to take me with him, I agreed.”

“Had you tried to escape before?”

“I had no opportunity.”

“You were in prison?”

“I was in Colonel Yoshu's house when Nango offered escape.”

“What did you do in his house?”

“Existed. I was locked in my room much of the time.”

Chief Kalapa frowned. “Your story is odd. I think there is something wrong with it. But what I need most is to know why Colonel Yoshu is chasing you.”

She said nothing, her lips pressed together, and kept studying the lagoon and the black, star-strewn sky above it.

“Do you have nothing more to say?” Chief Kalapa demanded.

Her reply was a sad whisper. “What does it matter, after all? I am here now. What is, is.”

Chief Kalapa pressed a finger against his lips, an expression of frustration, and said, “I do not know if I should let you teach our children. You harbor a terrible secret, of that I am certain. I shall have to think on it. Now, Sister, I must bid you a very good night. Here are Nanura and Palula. They are widows without children and have room for you in their house.”

The two women, who had obviously waited in the shadows for the chief to give them a signal, appeared and urged her to follow them, and this she had done.

Now Sister Mary Kathleen lay on the mat beside the sleeping sisters, and tried to stop thinking, to let sleep take her into the oblivion she desired. She was suffering, and it occurred to her that perhaps that was what God wanted from her most of all.
Would you ask Him why, Saint Monessa?
she prayed, and, as if in response, she heard somewhere, far into the jungle and the night, a creature screaming, whether in pain or fright, she did not know. She prayed for that creature, and for all the creatures on earth who were in pain or frightened, and then, unwillingly, she allowed a prayer to escape from her lips for a man she was certain was also suffering, though he was evil and corrupted and had taken from her that which she wanted more than life itself.

She woke at sunrise to the crowing of the roosters that stalked the village, all seeking dominance over everything they encountered, and sometimes losing their heads at the hands of disgusted villagers as a result. Sister Mary Kathleen arose, noted that the two widows were still asleep, and poked her head outside. Pale blue smoke from the remnants of the evening cooking fires, mixed with a steamy mist off the lagoon, gave the village the washedout quality of a faded photograph. She smelled a smoky, woodsy perfume and found herself inexplicably enchanted with the little town.

She also decided she could no longer stand being dirty. She studied the items scattered about the house and discovered a little pot that was filled with a soft white jelly redolent of coconuts. She dipped her finger in it and put it to her lips and was rewarded with the sharp taste of raw copra soap. Thrilled at the thought of a bath, she drew on the headdress of her habit, then slipped through the village. No one challenged her save the roosters and hens, which clucked in fright and scurried away on their stiff legs, and the dogs who growled low. One of the dogs, a small brown mutt, came up to her with its tail tucked between its legs but its nose raised in apparent hope of a little kindness. She stroked the offered snout, and its tail came out wagging. “Come with me, laddy” she said. “Pertect me from the roosters.” He did, and she had herself a dog.

At the stream, she found herself momentarily perplexed as to how to wash herself and her clothes. She decided she had to get farther from the village and so took a path that paralleled the stream until she came to a small dam of piled-up rocks. Behind it was a pretty little pond, and hanging over it, reminding her of worshipping nuns, were heavy-limbed candlenut trees. On the far end of the pond, there was a little waterfall that gushed in
a torrent between two boulders high on a rocky cliff. The water struck stones as it fell, producing a shower of rainbow drops that played musical notes on the surface of the lake. “ ‘Tis a fine place for a wash, Laddy,” she said to the pup, who now had a name.

She set the pot of soap on the shore and then stripped until she wore only her undergarments. Multicolored birds twittered and hopped in the trees overhead as she dipped her hand into the pot of soap, then vigorously scrubbed the multiple pieces of her habit in the pond and afterward wrung them out and spread them on the rocks of the dam to dry. Then, though she felt most brazen doing it, she took off her undergarments and washed them, too. She looked all around again, still seeing nothing but the little birds and hearing nothing except their singing and the small, singsong notes of the waterfall spray. She scooped a handful of the jelly soap from the pot and carried it to the little waterfall, and there she raised her face to the stream of gushing water and turned and stretched beneath it until the accumulated grime of the voyage was washed away. As she washed her hair, she reveled in the way it squeaked so clean between her fingers. She felt almost as if she were in heaven.
For surely, if ever there was,
she thought,
this is God's own place.

She swam and allowed the sun to do its work, then dressed in her nearly dry habit, clucking her tongue at the bloodstains that permanently stained the scapular and the ring of grime that would forever burnish the hem. Then she studied her reflection in the pond, as she had once done in the silver teapot at the convent in Ballysaggart. She smiled at herself, grateful that Sister Theresa was not on Tahila to fuss at her for her vanity. “Sister Theresa would be displeased with me filthy garment,” she said to her pup. “But what else can I do but what I have done?”

Laddy had no answer except to nuzzle her hand. Then her stomach growled, and she turned back toward the village, though she and the pup had no sooner emerged onto the path than she encountered the two widows. Smiling, they escorted her back to the still-dozing village and thence to their house, where they offered her slices of fresh coconut and juicy, sweet pineapple.

She shared her meal with Laddy; then the widows led her to a house she had not yet visited. This was the Women's House, they explained. Inside the octagonal-shaped structure, she was shown an ancient treadle sewing machine and various bolts of cloth, including one of pure white cotton. It was hers, they said, and she was thrilled. “Thank ye, me darlings,” she said, and both widows replied that she was more than welcome and that they would gladly help her make more of her holy clothes.

They left her then, and Sister Mary Kathleen sat for a while in the Women's House, breathing in the aroma of the clean bolts of cloth and the sweet scent of the bamboo walls and palm-thatched roof. She called for Laddy, who had stationed himself at the doorway, and the pup came inside and crawled into her lap. She stroked his head, cooing to him, telling him what a nice and handsome dog he was, and for just a moment, Sister Mary Kathleen was happy.