Luxury Link 4

    “I absolutely loathe luxury. It is the one thing I cannot stand.”
                                                                                Brigitte Bardot


Only one island over was the weakest luxury link in the chain. Robyn and I had booked the catamaran because ‘it was just like Bora Bora had been fifty years earlier.’ Bardot would have loved the place. The French tricolor rippled off the stern, and the waterspouts and flying fish skimmed and skittered over the surface of the waves.
Green. We had arrived there. There was no other landing place. Maupiti was green. Then there was blue. We continued there. Maupiti was blue. Blue barrels full of noni, blue sky, and blue water. Other than for the soaring grey cliffs and white sand and the occasional rust red roof, Maupiti was green and blue.
Alain, who met us with his boat at the jetty, had brought the customary fragrant tiare leis, but he tossed them over our necks like he’d rather be doing the driving than the welcoming. I don’t think we ever heard him speak. But his smile, and the wrap-around sunglasses pasted to his head, told us he was glad to have us there. He was aiming for the small lagoon islet of Motu Tuanai, and Pension Poe Iti. The owners, José and Gerald, were away, but their dream was still awake. The pension was self-sustained in power, from photovoltaic cells and a tall wind turbine. It had solar hot water heaters, and potable water from a desalinization system on the property. Gerald may have been self-sufficient, but he would eventually realize that this was not the same as secure.
There were flowers, and coconut and other fruit trees. Two of the flowers had come down to the white sand shoreline to greet us. They couldn’t have been more different. One was Polynesian, the other Parisian. The French woman was thin and pale, with puffy eyes, long black forehead bangs and a ponytail off to the side, and not quite white teeth. She wore sandals, a stainless steel wristwatch halfway up her arm, and a pink gardenia behind her right ear. The large canvas handbag hung over her shoulder seemed out of place, until you realized where she kept her Gitanes, and her lighter. Monique was a guest, on her mission abroad to update travel information for the more urbane citoyens of the Fifth Republic.
In contrast, the Tahitian woman was the picture of health. Brown and barefoot, rotund and raucous, the ivory smile below her flat nose reflected the afternoon sunlight above the two giant green leaf imprints on her fuschia dress. Yoyo was José and Gerald’s chef, chambermaid, and chargé d'affaires.
She looked like Bloody Mary would have, if Rodgers and Hammerstein had portrayed Bloody Mary without betel nut and rough skin, and the opposite of vulgarity. Yoyo was all class. If you try, you'll find me, where the sky meets the sea.
Here am I your special island. Come to me. Come to me.
Four tan dogs were asleep against the breakwater.
“Maeva.” Said Yoyo, welcoming us. “Ils sont tous frères et sœurs. Comme nous.” Brothers and sisters, like us. She showed Robyn and I to our small bungalow. The red hibiscus scattered on the bed were large enough to sleep in their own shadows.
By the time we unpacked, the dogs were dozing again, on our porch. But when Robyn and I tried to sneak off for an early evening walk around our motu, they sprang into life, as if they had been trained to lead the way. Four upright curled tails, wallaby-bounced ahead of us, on the clanking clinker coral strand. They led us over cracked volcanic rock shelves along a beach lined with more scrub-like vegetation and more sea smell than we had found on Bora Bora, whose mountains still loomed on the horizon in the distance. Perhaps it had been like this, fifty years earlier, before the luxury link had forever weakened the primeval Tahitian food chain. But even here, the hundreds of red and white crabs that formed a missing link, looked French, like Citroëns or Renaults in a continually moving territorial traffic jam, defending their turf far too sideways to progress, ours, the dogs, or that of the Fifth Republic. The Mount Tiriano cliffs on the main island were rugged and square, like the white church with the red roof under them, in Vaiea across the lagoon.
Poisson cru and poulet fafa waited for us on the plastic tablecloth of the Poe Iti dining hall on our return. We shared our wine with Monique, but Yoyo didn’t drink.
“Je reçois heureux sur les étoiles.” She said. I get happy on the stars. When they came out later, they put the grapes to shame.
The dogs were still asleep on our porch next morning, where Robyn and left them after breakfast, to walk around the main island. Alain took us across to Vaiea, and arranged to pick us up a few hours later. The town appeared abandoned, and the first interesting sign of human habitation, was an interesting sign. Stop! Filariose. I had thought that Elephantiasis, and the swollen limbs and basketball-size scrotums I had seen in books of human oddities and tropical medicine, had been eradicated, as did many imperfect experts on the disease. But roundworms were still peddling their life cycles through mosquito proboscises, and I had another reason to encourage Robyn to keep the screens closed.