We
passed a right-angled breadfruit tree, with a shark’s tail nailed to its trunk.
Its fruit were gigantic, like green basketball scrotums afflicted with
filariasis. Beyond the turtle petroglyphs were a vanilla plantation, walls of
coral and concrete and conch, and a boy and girl on bicycles, who stopped just
long enough under a mango tree, to charm Robyn out of a pen. Our one path
circumambulation continued past an outrigger canoe stenciled with shark and
dolphin fish, through beautiful lush valleys and mountains, and into an ancient
stone marae, under a pillbox–like mountain redoubt, with three lonely coconut
palms on its top. Closer to Vaiea were front yard cement block square graves,
painted white, on which pots of plastic flowers slowly faded in the sun. There
was a strangely inappropriate mural of two fat Polynesians dancing tango, and a
hand-painted Hinano beer label poster, that brought us back to Alain’s smile
and sunglasses, and the fast wake of his outboard home. The dogs got up to
welcome us back, Yoyo prepared another excellent fish dinner, and even Alain
accompanied us on his solar powered keyboard, after the homemade coconut ice
cream.
Yoyo and Monique waved to us from the shore next
morning, as Alain cut the boat on an arc towards the airstrip. The dogs went
back to sleep, as the motu disappeared into our slipstream. We waited in the
hot sun for the weekly flight back to Pape'ete, beside a chalk mural of pink
tiares and fish and a four-masted windjammer. I thought of how I would have
like to meet Gerald, and link to the luxury he had created on his motu. But one
person’s luxury is another person’s loathing. Gerald’s innovations had
generated more than one kind of power. During his birthday party, the
electrical room was set on fire, and a counterweight turnbuckle bolt on one of
his expensive wind turbines was unscrewed, causing the entire structure to
buckle. Resentment
is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
The strangest part was why the dogs hadn’t barked.
“Some people think luxury is
the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the
opposite of vulgarity.”
Coco Chanel
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