And yet here I am. I am him. Sixty-seven years old. The same hands as his: bones wrapped in brown paper. I thought I’d turn out different somehow. I guess we all did.
But we all turn out like those in that cave, peering out when the sun lances in just right. All those who thought things would go a bit different. We’re fools like that. Laughing, our faces all teeth.
The tourists in their little boats kept coming, a dozen or so a year braving the heavy seas and the far distance. They all asked us about the cave of bones. Someone must’ve written about it somewhere, or the people on boats gossiped the same way islanders did. They took pictures of the bones, wanted to know if it was ceremonial, the way we buried our ancestors here. What was the meaning of this place? What significance did it hold? So many questions.
I realized I didn’t have the answers. But I didn’t tell them that. They had pockets full of shiny coins, and they’d brought canned meats and reading glasses for my grandmother, so Tui and I told them there was much dancing with fire and many special songs and we did a dance we learned in school and pretended it was the cannibal dance, and these people went away impressed and with lighter pockets.
But now I wanted to know. So I asked our chief, who was very old at the time.
He laughed at the idea of ceremony.
“Those were the bones of our enemies,” he told me. “After we ate them, we threw the scraps in that hole up there so the dogs wouldn’t drag them out again. That’s a rubbish bin.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Even I had thought that cave must’ve meant something in the past. Too many people sleeping in there for it to mean nothing. But the chief is never wrong.
Tui and I tried telling tourists the truth, but their disappointment was too much for us. So we practiced a bit and got much better with our dancing. Everyone wants a life to mean something, even if it’s not theirs.
It’s a fine filament that holds us to the past. So fine we can’t see it even if we know it’s there and try our hardest to look. Gossamer is the word I like best. It doesn’t sound like a real word, gossamer. More like what someone might name one of those small boats that sail into our lagoon. An invisible thing all wings and whispers.
We’ve lost the thread that goes back to our ancestors who knew how to sail. Now we take longboats with loud Yamahas and run over to Ogea Levu to trade with our neighbors. It’s six miles between the islands, which is plenty far when the winds are high. Far enough that we rarely go. Only in an emergency.
An emergency like now.
When the phone went out, it was like another filament making itself known, this tiny little connection to the rest of the world. The phone was where we placed our orders with our families for the next supply ship. It was where we heard the voices of our children, and they heard the voices of their children. It held the two generations on the outsides together.
I don’t know how we ever lived without it, but we used to. And now it feels like we can’t. It’s been five long months since the phone worked. It’s been five long months since a supply ship came. Summer is ending, the time of cyclones abating, and we grow anxious. I try not to let my grandchildren see it in my face, but half the time I go fishing, I do not go to fish. I leave the lagoon through the narrow cut and I sit out beyond the reef on the bobbing sea and I stare at the horizon, wishing for a trail of smoke, a white sail, a rusty prow, the contrail of a jetliner, or any sign that God has not forgotten us.
Coconuts and fish. I tell the grandchildren to not complain. We make the same jokes that have amused us for centuries, and we laugh with our teeth, and things are worse over on Ogea Levu, so some of them have moved onto a bare patch of beach near us, and I can hear the wind in the caves rattling bones of old as tribes kept distant are pushed into close proximity.
Gossamer. That’s what holds us together.
When my Maru got sick, she went back to her village to get better. The phone and supply ships made it feel like I could reach her when the time was right. Now there is no word. My wife of forty-one years is beyond my reach.
The grandchildren ask if she’s okay. Even though we’re the ones who’ve run out of sugar and flour. I sit on the reef and gaze toward Suva.
What else can I do?
I saw the sail first.
The white cloth like a towering wave that refused to break. It grew bigger, and I paddled back to the village to let them know that tourists were coming again. This was before I knew better. We can’t call them tourists, the ones who arrive here now.
Refugees is the word.
Survivors.
It’s been almost a year since the last supply ship. No one knows why, and we’ve lost the ability to go see for ourselves. No one remembers how to sail or navigate. We only go to islands we can see—never over the horizon. And we ran out of petrol for the Yamahas months ago.
We paddle to fish these days. Old canoes made of hollowed trees were pulled from the woods and found to still float. They’re easier to maneuver by paddle than the fiberglass longboats made in New Zealand. One of the old longboats we used to fight over now sits upturned on the beach, thrown there by a storm, and nobody has bothered to right it. It’s no good without the motor.
Oh, but the first white sail on the horizon in more than a year! A sail full of hope. Finally, some kind of contact. I roused the village and we gathered on the shore as the small boat steered through the passage. The rattle of chain and the splash of anchor, and we waded out with happy hearts to receive them and ask if the world has forgotten us, if our children send word, what is going on in Suva.
A German man, gaunt and grizzled, fell from the boat and collapsed into my arms. He was starving, he said. He looked mostly dead, ribs like furrows plowed into the soil, all bones, like someone who belonged in a cave. Every heart in the village broke in that moment, and I’m ashamed to say it wasn’t for him that we were crushed. It was for ourselves.
The man spoke little English, but we made enough of his gibberish to know fear for the first time. He spoke of a world without power, a world where machines went haywire. Some say the machines did it themselves and some say it was crazy people who broke the machines on purpose. A world where bombs had become machines with their own minds and clouds of ash covered entire continents. We listened beneath blue skies, on our little green island surrounded by sea and fish, and some walked away rather than believe, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
The man said even in Suva people had gone crazy fighting over scraps. The big city only ever had a week of supplies at a time. A week. Big ships from New Zealand came with great containers. A week!
Even we planned for longer. The man said his wife had been murdered. I could hear the wind in the caves. I thought of my sweet Maru and part of me knew she was gone. An emptiness grew inside me. An urge to scream that I hadn’t felt since I was a boy.
Our neighbors from Ogea Levu have started a small settlement on the south coast of our island, abandoning their ancient homes to be nearer to us and our lagoon of fish.
There’s much discussion about this. In Fiji, everything belongs to someone. Every coconut is owned. We have a rite here of sevusevu where we seek permission to visit someone else’s land. Kava is presented; we drink together; and permission is always granted. Of course we welcomed our neighbors. Because we didn’t think that they would stay.
The German’s name is Klaus, and he and I have become friends. He is a terrible fisherman, but getting better. I marveled that a man who lives on a boat couldn’t take fish from the sea more easily. He marveled that a man who lives on an island doesn’t know how to sail from one to another.