40. In Search of Our Granny

I had decided that I should go and try to gain an appointment with Netto. He was reasonably accessible in the court house offices near Our Granny’s house but, when I arrived home, my father had a message to say that I was expected for lunch, the next day, at Manaku Jim’s house. I had not anticipated such a quick response so I needed to give some thought to what, exactly, I expected to ask him.

I wondered whether I should focus the interview on the details of the way that the force of Guardians had developed or concentrate on his knowledge of our Granny herself. He is her closest living relative and in the end, I concluded that I should take the opportunity to ask about his illustrious ancestor.

I could gain a good deal of information about the Guardians from my father and the other old timers among his friends. They could, however, throw little light on the argument about what Our Granny would want us to do that is at the heart of everything that happens in our world. There are almost as many views on this as there are people on the island. From the day that she retired from active life, people have argued and discussed, disagreed and fallen out.

I was actually there on the day that she left us. Unfortunately, however, my memories of the occasion are those of a child. I can remember that we ate a vegetable curry with coconuts and bananas. It was sweet and sticky and curiously lacking in flavour with a sort of puke yellow colour that somehow matched its taste. I felt nauseous and went to lie down in the shade while the other kids ran around screaming.

Then there was just confusion. I heard someone say “She’s gone home.” No-one knew what to do next. Most people waited, sitting on their picnic blankets and wondering whether she would come back. After a while, people started to drift off and my mother came and yelled at me for a while for having gone off on my own. Which struck me at the time (and still does, to an extent) as being very unfair. But I digress.

The point is that my personal memories shed no light on the turning point of our times so I have to rely on what other people remember. And that, of course, depends very much on whose memories we are talking about.

What everyone can agree on is that it was Granny’s Name Day celebration and that the sun was overhead. From there it all goes wrong. It turns out that people do not even agree on Our Granny’s original name. For those who say that her name was Manaku Chuacha, her name day was in the second part of the year when the sun passes from North to South. The others, who are equally certain that her name was Manaku Nemboline say that the sun was moving South to North.

Be that as it may, Granny’s name day had become the focus of the whole island by this time. Everyone gathered in the clearing in the village and Granny would come out to greet the crowd of people. Whereas once she had been regularly seen about the village, over the years she had gradually appeared less and less until, at the end, she would rely on her Gardeners to look after her everyday needs and her Name Day each year was the only time that people could rely on seeing her.

Of course this had made the Name Day correspondingly more important. People who needed her decision – on a marriage proposal, an inheritance, the punishment for a crime now all tried to speak to her at once. Clearly she could never deal with all these issues in just one day and, by the end, elaborate ploys were already being used to gain her attention. People would offer the gardeners enormous bribes in the time leading up to the Name Day.

The Guardians of The Tractor, then as now, had their own favourite representatives who were expected to ensure that the most important issues were addressed and Our Granny, as the link between the island’s past and its future, was also always prepared to make time for the questions of the traditional healers.

There is no reliable account of the issues that were brought before her on that last Name Day. Some people say that she dealt mainly with issues of land utilisation. Some maintain that it was a complex discussion of cross-cousin marriage and the precise relationship between two young people. Still others allege that she was asked to decide the fate of a woman caught in adultery.

In any case, by the middle of the afternoon, it seems that she decided to return to her house. She said that she was tired and the precise words she used are at the centre of every dispute to this day. Did she simply say that she was tired and needed to rest? Did she say that she was tired of the litigious disputes of the people? Did she say that she was tired of the people and of their lack adherence to tradition? Each faction has a view and each view is different. I can only report what I have been told.

A Guardian that I met while I lived at Our Granny’s house told me: “My uncle was one of those to whom she spoke regularly. She had, herself, appointed him to learn the driving of The Tractor only three or four years after the Americans returned to their home.

He had been instructed to obtain permission for a new field in what is now the banana plantation. As he was waiting for his opportunity to speak to Our Granny, he noticed that she did not look well. She was very frail by this time; probably nearly seventy years old and yet she listened carefully to the dispute before her. It was a complex decision about the paternity of a child born to a young girl who had had a relationship with a married man.

Having made her decision, she simply went back to her house to avoid the heat of the day. The confusion was caused because everyone expected her to return later. They waited but in the end, they had to apply to her house the next day and received permission to plough the new field.”

Convincing stuff, you may think, and the field exists to this day to support the story and yet…

From a pamphlet issued by Hama Batu’s Fundamental Truth Society I can quote: “Our Granny’s retreat from the world was her sign to us that she could not tolerate any longer the terrible evils brought into our midst by the idolatrous worshippers of The False Tractor. Before she left us she declared that the new worldly ways brought by this Great Satan were an abomination to be abhorred and fought against in a Holy War.

On her last meeting with her people, Our Granny was asked to judge cases of incest between cousins, of destruction of the natural environment and of drunkenness and immorality. And it came to pass that when she saw the iniquity of the people. Then she addressed all those gathered together and said ‘I am tired of this people and the evil that they do. I go into my house that I may not see their departure from the ways of the ancestors.’

And they that heard her sat in fear and trembling until the night fell because they feared her words and saw the wickedness of their ways.”

They say in the pamphlet that they base this on the evidence of four young men who were waiting for a judgement and later joined Hama Batu’s Shadows as a result of what they heard.

You can imagine that the truth of what actually happened seemed critically important to me as I set out to tell this story, so I asked my father what he remembered.

“She was clearly extremely upset.” He replied. “It was a very hot day. The sun beat down on the crowd and most of the people were interested only in the party. Remember that for us this was at the end of a time of austerity when we still often went hungry.

People were eating and drinking and enjoying themselves. They were not paying the attention to Our Granny that she deserved. After all, it was thanks to her that we had enough to eat and drink. People should have been grateful but all that they were interested in was drinking themselves into a stupor.

A group of young men were running around and making a noise so that she could hardly hear what people were asking her. You could not blame her for wanting to deal with the important things she was being asked in a quieter environment. They should have had more respect for Her but then a fight broke out and your mother became worried and went to search for you. When I next looked over to where She had been, She had left us.”

“What exact words did she use as she was going?” I asked.
“That is impossible to say.” He replied, “There was so much noise and distraction that there is no way anyone could have heard. All that we know for sure is that she left us and she has never been seen in public since that day.”

Having gained an audience with Manaku Jim, which both Bahla and I had thought quite unlikely, I now realised that the resolution of these questions was tantalisingly close. As a child, Jim is said to have been a favourite of Our Granny and he would almost certainly know the exact circumstances of her departure. He was probably still in contact with her and might even be able to tell us directly about Her life today. The idea of gaining an insight into what lay behind her instructions to the Gardeners, what logic she followed, and the type of information on which her decisions were based was intriguing.

On impulse, I took the photograph that I had retrieved from the ruins of Rega’s desk and her sketches and placed them with my notebooks. I thought that if I could validate one of her drawings that would be something that she would have liked. Then I thought of the beautiful painting of Our Granny that she had given to me and added that to the pile.

It had been her favourite and, I suspect, the one that she thought might be the best likeness. In part, it was its realism that she felt would have prevented Tahmo Lukuni from approving it. In the years since the fire, that portrait had travelled with me, more a link with the artist than with Our Granny. Perhaps, I thought, it might now reveal itself to be both.