Birdman 5

But he also had another observation, that the islanders no longer sculpted, preserved, or worshipped the moai. If he had travelled inland, he would have seen them littering the pathways like the discarded toys of giants. The moai had started to come down more than the hill. They had started to come down, like the trees that came down before them. The Ancestors were being pushed over, their necks deliberately broken. The last upright statues were reported by Abel Thouars in 1838. There were none standing, other than those that Robyn and I had played with on the outer slopes of Rano Raraku, by 1868. Other indignities were to follow. Eleven were removed from the island, and others re-erected at museums elsewhere. The tsunami that swept away the Tongariki ahu in 1960, had its summer solstice sunset-facing 15 moai restored, including an 86 ton monster, with the help of the Japanese, thirty years later. Just after we left, a Finnish tourist chipped a piece off an ear of one. He was fined $17,000 and banned for the island for three years. Forever would have been better but, as the Rapanui ancestors would substantiate, if they had been talking heads, nothing lasts forever.
Robyn and I descended with the nursery’s descendents, marching past those still frozen in time and space on the slopes. We drove across the navel of the land to the north coast, past Bahia de La Perouse, and the steep long path down to swim naked at the red sand beach at Ovahe. The white sands of Anakena were wider, and there were seven beautiful moai, complete with cylindrical topknots, that Thor Heyerdahl had put right, before he put everything else wrong. Others had been decapitated, and weren’t coming back. Robyn changed behind the blue and white triangles of our hotel umbrella, and we lay under a palm tree from a more conducive Tahitian climate, that had stopped struggling so hard.
A sudden rain put us back in our Suzuki, for the return around the Terevaka northern road, to Hanga Roa. Bill was heading out of the Taura'a, as we were heading in.
“How’d ya go, mate?” He asked.
“Great.” I said.
“Bonza.” He said, condensing the experience of a lifetime and a thousand years of mystery into a quintessential Australian abstraction. And was gone.
We decided to celebrate our wonderful day with a wonderful evening, and took a stroll back down to the harbor, to look for seafood. I spotted a place near the fishing boats, beside the dive shops, and put a little more speed and traction on Robyn’s arm.
“It’s French.” She said. And so it appeared. La Taverne du Pecheur. “Probably more hoity-toity than fish.” And she was right. And she was wrong.
The hoity-toity part was unmistakable, and immediate. The big potbellied owner, Giles, was gigabyte grumpy Gaul, and had just thrown out one customer, for asking for ketchup. His huge handlebar mustache moved more quickly when he was agitated, and he was agitated all the time. The décor was more rustic than it had a right to be, for the print and prices on the menu, but I reminded myself how far away we were from France, or anywhere else. His waitress installed us in a rough-hewn wooden booth, surrounded by more plants than on the entire rest of the island. I could feel him watching me peruse the wine list. Frowning, when he wasn’t barking at the staff. I ordered something midrange, from a decent Puligny vintage. His expression softened ever so slightly, until another couple asked to sit upstairs.
“Non!” He said. And that was all. I summoned up the courage to ask him where he was from.
“Normandie.” He said.
“Calvados.” I said. And we were good. I ordered the seafood platter, and the prawns pil pil, and we were better. It turned out that Giles had ended up in Hanga Roa by marrying a Rapanui woman. Whatever she had done to him, his crustacean crustiness had become a local legend, and he was known to the Chileans as El Vikingo. The food was magnificent.
I cringed when the accent of the new couple landed in the booth beside us. When their order emerged from the kitchen, I didn’t wait long, before a Midwestern whine accompanied it, next door. I think it was something about moisture and the fish. Giles closed the distance from where he had been, to where he would be, without any leather touching the floor.
“The aioli.” He shouted. “The aioli! You have to use the aioli.” I ordered the Crêpes Suzette, figuring he was finished. But I was wrong. The female half of the booth had decided to have an opinion.
“You’re American.” He said.” You don’t know how to eat.”
Perhaps, I thought. But the Polynesians did.