51. To Dinner

Tahmo Lukuni’s speech was much longer than Jim’s and focussed (although that is the wrong word) on the greatness of Our Granny and her Gardeners, on the abilities and sad death of the artist, on the quality of the work and on many other things that no-one will ever remember.

“And so,” he finished, “it gives me great joy to unveil this masterpiece to the honour and glory of Our Granny!”

With a flourish, he seized the curtain concealing the picture and pulled it violently downwards. Having been attached to hooks to be lifted upwards, it remained firmly in position so that his hands slipped down and his heavily built bulk lost balance and staggered two steps forward. A muffled titter came from the audience and Lukuni glared angrily at the crowd.

“I unveil this masterpiece to the honour and glory of Our Granny!” he repeated belligerently and, taking hold of the curtain, dragged it downwards with all his weight. The fabric was strong and at first it seemed as if it might resist even this determined onslaught. Suddenly, however, the hook holding one end of it came out of the wall and the cloth at the other began to tear so that the curtain hung down on a thin strip next to the portrait which swung crazily from side to side and came to rest at an acute angle on one end of its cord.

Lukuni glowered at the audience, which was reduced to stunned silence, and stumped away to one side, leaving Manaku Jim to straighten the picture and invite everyone to take a closer look at it before making their way back to the marquee for food.

Most of the spectators had never seen a painting like Rega’s and were overcome with surprise and admiration for its realistic execution and natural colours so I left them to admire it and began to make my way back to the tent. As I did so, I was attracted by the delicious aroma of cooking to another new structure behind the gallery, a barbecue pit on which a number of pigs were being roasted. Iliva was supervising operations and greeted me warmly as I passed.

“Langanipa built it for me,” she said, “it’s better than anything else I’ve ever been able to cook with.”

I looked at the construction, which was shaped in cross section like a capital letter M with coals in the central trough for roasting and ovens, in which vegetables and bread were being baked, built into the inverted Vs on each side.

“Very Langanipa,” I commented, “I didn’t know that he had been involved in this. He didn’t sound as if he was at all interested in coming here.”

“Yes,” Iliva said, “Manaku Jim was so pleased with the ‘best barbecue in the world’ that Langanipa was afraid he might show it off to the crowds. You know how that would have embarrassed him.”

Returning to the tent, I found Langanipa himself seated alone at their table.

“You never told me that you had designed a barbecue.” I said.

“It was quite an interesting project,” he answered, “One of the problems was how to regulate the airflow and the oven temperatures. In the end I had to put a suspended floor into the charcoal trench with vents under the coal bed and dampers at the end to control the oxygen supply.”

We spoke for a while until Fasi and Bahla arrived and then I went back to my place at the table, where enormous serving dishes of roast pork, chicken and baked vegetables were being placed ready for the returning guests. Gradually the other diners came back into the room and began helping themselves copiously from jugs of fruit punch and beer. Tahmo Lukuni was clearly still smarting from the debacle of the unveiling and I could hear him remonstrating with Jim about the quality of workmanship in mounting the curtain and demanding punishment for the craftsman involved.

As the tent filled up, the noise of different conversations began to increase, each group beginning to speak louder to make themselves heard over the hubbub. My friends, the football players, were among the last to arrive and it transpired that they had a secret stash of especially potent punch hidden somewhere on the veranda of the house.

“We brought you some of our special mix, Tommu,” Rombo said, “You should taste this stuff. Gomal makes it to a secret recipe they have in the townships. It’ll knock you out.”

“Thanks,” I said, placing the bowl they gave me next to my plate, “I’ll taste it as soon as I’ve finished my beer.”

The footballers began helping themselves to the food and Kara, next to me, filled her own plate and heaped a large portion onto mine.

“Thank you,” I said, “but I don’t think that I can eat all that.”

“Nonsense, Tommu,” she laughed, “you need building up. Look at what Lomu and Tahmo Lukuni are eating.”

Taking a mouthful of food, I glanced over to where the Gardeners were seated, with Lomu and Lukuni on either side of Manaku Jim. Netto had served himself a small portion of meat and vegetables and was picking at it thoughtfully. Beyond him, the other two were, as Kara had observed, making significant inroads on plates piled high with food. Speaking through a mouthful, Lukuni was still complaining about the way that the curtain had been hung over the painting, even as he loaded another enormous spoon full of the food from his plate.

Netto had summed things up well when he observed that leaders needed to show no signs of recognising any point of view but their own. Lomu, sat with his left arm guarding his plate of food while his right hand carried a continuous flow of meat and vegetables wrapped in flatbread to his mouth. He reminded me of nothing so much as a giant frog. I wondered whether his carapace of self confidence would have been dented if he could see himself now but decided probably not. Whatever strengths the senior Gardeners might have, graceful table manners were not among them.

For all the justifications that Netto had offered for the war and the sacrifices needed to pursue it, it was clear that they were not impacting the men on either side of Manaku Jim. It was strange to think of the cost to Manesh and people like him who had sacrificed (in his case, literally) limb and life for the cause while those who had instigated the policy of confrontation remained unaffected. One could not help but feel that Hasiki had a point when he suggested that the Village as a whole might have been better off by treating the insurgency as a simple police matter.

In the end, the policy of confrontation, rather than reducing the number of Hama Batu’s followers and the support they received, seemed to have had the opposite effect. I thought of the ease with which Hama Batu had been able to abstract my manuscript from the heart of the Village and the help he must have had in suddenly appearing in my living room. One had to feel that Netto’s suggestion that we now faced a clearly identified external enemy must contain at least an element of wishful thinking.

I wondered whether Our Granny was aware of the evening’s celebrations. It would have been a great coup if Manaku Jim could have persuaded his mother to attend the unveiling of her portrait. In the end, I supposed, she would probably have been too frail to come. Taking the dates that Jim had given me, she would now be a hundred years old if, indeed, she was still alive.

Then a thought struck me suddenly like a shock of cold water. What if Our Granny were dead? How would anyone know if the Gardeners did not tell? And they would certainly have no interest in publicising so embarrassing a fact. Manaku Jim would probably know if she were no longer alive but he, too, would have every interest in concealing it. Perhaps she had actually passed away years ago. That would certainly be consistent with the fact that no one had seen anything of her.

I couldn’t very well ask Netto about this and, in any case, I knew what his answer would be. The life, death or even existence of the physical Granny was irrelevant. The perfect Idea of Our Granny was what was important and that was something that had always been there and would remain forever. The physical woman who embodied the Idea was useful only in explaining it to simple Villagers and that was where her importance ended.

I thought of Hama Batu’s contradictory interpretation of Our Granny, Our Granny Frum, as he had referred to her. I had more or less assumed that it was possible, in the final analysis to find out whether his or the Gardener’s view was correct by locating Our Physical Granny and asking her. If she was simply an idea, then that was no longer an option. In fact, the two sides could continue to argue forever and there was not even a theoretical way of resolving the question.

As soon as one side found a flaw or inconsistency in the other’s position, then their opponents would be able to shift their ground, producing ever more complex and convoluted explanations and adjustments because there was no possible way of disproving something based on an idea. Our Granny could just as well be a man or a monkey or a giant spider from another world. There was no way, ever, of knowing. In the end she just had to be taken on faith and Hama Batu’s faith was every bit as good as the Gardener’s.

They were just one of millions of possible faiths that people could have and every one, in the end could choose themselves what they believed. It would not be surprising to find that the Americans and the other tribes against which they had been fighting had not one, but millions of Grannies and Fathers and Spirits and so on. And, in principle, there was no way of deciding between them.

The thought shocked me with its logic. Under those circumstances, no matter what you believed there were likely to be more people who disagreed with you than agreed. And if they felt that ideas were more important than the physical reality then they would be prepared to sacrifice the entire physical world in favour of their beliefs.

It was a good thing, I decided, that neither Hama Batu nor the Gardeners possessed a weapon powerful enough to destroy our island. From what I had seen, neither would have bee shy about using it if they had.

At this point, my train of thought was interrupted by Kara.

“Tommu,” she said, “You have been awfully quiet. Are you all right? You’ve hardly touched your food.”