Atoll Tale: Yarns of the Remote South Pacific

We entered the only pass into Manihi on a clear day with casual sailing winds coming over the land and across the lagoon. The entrance to the atoll, barely the width of an avenue, welcomed us with an incoming tide. The water that carried us was a moving glass, magnifying and distorting the white coral formations below, a funhouse mirror melted and flowing into the strange ring of land. Wild, carnival colored fish, clearly visible below the warped surface, passed on other-worldly errands, inattentive to our arrival. This was the first land that had been sighted in a few weeks, and all of us were excited to explore. But nearing the much awaited firm earth we were settled upon by an uneasy feeling, an uncanny stillness, maybe just the normal stillness of land, or a faint and unsettling smell, maybe just the ever present but unnoticed effluvium of loam and root and human dwelling not present at sea.

 

The small town, run between the outer coral crust that skirts the island and the sandy inner ring, ends abruptly at the edge of the pass. A few townsfolk, hung with muted yellow or red work shirts and over sized shoes, watched silently and intently without any gesture that revealed welcome or surprise as we ghosted through the scar in the otherwise complete ring of land and shallow coral. The sun overhead cast deep shadows from the men’s brows and over their dark sockets, accentuating their sculls and making it impossible to see within. We returned their stares dumbly, unable to break free of the silence and slow uncomfortable drift of their glare, we were train passengers on adjacent and opposing tracks, looking through the windows into each other’s passing lives, a moment exploded and frozen, which then quickly collapses back onto itself as the train continues down the line.

 

The quantity of water that is traded in and out of the lagoon each half-day is so great that the boat is levitated, as if on the back of a benevolent leviathan, and handed through the notch. We slipped past a collection of lashed and woven pickets in the tide that were bent and have been bent for thousands of tides, in and out, one hour calmed and later taught against whatever apparatus holds them below. Is it an ancient fishing device placed by storm blown castaways trying to make do? or by the current inhabitance? It’s impossible to tell. We floated on.

 

 

Spit into the lagoon the waters clouded and calmed and we drifted out of the tide’s river. There were no other boats, it was mid day, there were no people about on the shore of the town. The sun was reflected across a great open lake, quiet as a mirror. The far shores and motus barely visible, bleached by the bright reflections of the day, or by the centuries of cloudless sun. On the near shore we could see dusty streets but nothing moving save a few shy and hung dogs slipping from shade to shade. We made for the far edge of the town-motu, discussing the qualities and possibilities of anchorages. Finding no sandy patch and we anchored several hundred meters off shore in mounds and pits of coral and rock, imagining what distance sufficient to keep the insects from our blood. I had never been to an atoll, I had hardly conceived of one. We had been at sea for two weeks and were low on any provisions that might have been considered more than necessary for survival, we had no refrigeration, and though we peppered our meals with creativity we were in need of fresh foods, even fresh cans, if that has any meaning at all.

 

We quickly arranged ourselves the best we could without clean clothing or enough water for proper washing. We landed the dingy at the near tip of the motu on whose far side all of the people lived. There was a crude boat ramp and a park with some squat trees. A few small black-tip reef sharks were fishing in the shallows, their fins taught signal flags whose purpose out of water was confusing to me, who are they warning of their approach?

 

As we bottomed out the dingy the small doglike sharks slinked away and we carried the boat off of the beach and up to a tree, purposelessly tying it around the trunk. The road to town was deserted. We walked past low houses that were set back from the coral road and guarded by dry shrubs or makeshift fences. The light was so white the shade made by the overhangs of the houses was impenetrable to the eyes. No one came out to look us over. We walked past an empty intersection where the road splits into two, making parallel tracks along the length of the short town. The lagoon was visible between the houses as was the ocean on the other side. Not a hundred meters divided the two.

We walked past one house where under the sentinel shrubbery a lame puppy of suckling age sat whimpering. There was no obvious mother about, though there were ragged looking dogs, some with pendulous teats, trotting in the periphery. We made to continue but the puppy hobbled after us, dragging a twisted leg and squeaking the only call it knew. We carried the puppy across to a neighbor, having come to no response from the house in front of which the poor creature sat. A fat woman in a plastic chair, immobile and well fitted into her seat, shooed us away. Not mine, not mine, she complained.

 

Strangers and newly arrived we thought it best to leave the puppy in the shade, mewing as we found it, like a lost kitten. We continued through the town until we reached the stone edge where we had recently rode in through the pass. The end of the road made a sort of plaza with one ancient and improbable tree surrounded by heaving and root broken brickwork. The store was shuttered and the men who had watched us arrive were nowhere about. We returned by the other street, convinced that midday was the cause of the emptiness, that yes it was wretchedly hot and we had no reason nor did anyone for being in the street. We could come back after the sun was lower.

 

Approaching the intersection where the small stretch of parallel streets ended, or began, we saw a small group of boys heading back toward the town, their faces serious, shy and closed. The smallest one, dressed in a sand dusted New York Knicks jersey and tattered turquoise shorts with the pockets hanging out of rips in the sides was dangling the lame puppy unthinkingly. He held his starched gaze on us as he walked, then ran, hurrying to keep up with his elders.

 

Back at the boat we lunched on a can of Mexican tuna and pan fried biscuits made with the last of our weeviled flour. A boat had silently approached us and a man beckoned us to come out. On deck we saw an open aluminum skiff with bits of working tackle, fishing gear and gas cans. The man smiling at us seemed more an over grown boy. He was wearing a striped green shirt with several large holes in the fabric, he was wet from diving and there were a few parrotfish in the bilge with holes in them. How are you, where do you come from? We exchanged origin stories and explained where and how we came. Our story was not uncommon, any sailboat coming here would tell more or less the same. Eventually he wanted to trade, he had pearls, he wanted to know if we had bullets, shot gun shells or a GPS.

 

I can’t remember his name exactly, it stated with a V, I have it written down somewhere. He was affable and shy and would not negotiate, replying to any offer to trade agreeably. Not having any shotgun shells or GPS to spare we traded a few bottles of costarican rum and a pocket knife for a bag of rough looking pearls, some the size of hazelnuts, none of any great value in the market, but spectacular to us none-the less. V told us that he had been to Tahiti once, in high school, as many of the Tuamotan youths do, but that he had returned after and not left the island since. He said his father and he worked sometimes on a copra farm, cutting dry coconuts in half with broad axes, popping the flesh out like the fatty linings of monkey skulls and setting the meat out to dry in the sun. We had seen greasy burlap bags of the dried stuff stacked higher than the men stacking them sitting on remote docks awaiting monthly transfer to the one processing plant in Tahiti, which made coconut oil for export. We showed V a jar of coconut oil that had been stowaway in the back of some cooking cabinet in the galley since California, likely bought at a whole foods market for the price of a weeks pay splitting and debraining coconuts. V said he had never seen coconut oil. Maybe this was a lie that resulted from some shyness or sense of hospitality that we did not understand. We gave him the half full jar of perfectly clear oil.

 

Before leaving he asked us if we smoked, using the international sign, touching his pinched fingers to his lips and grinning with eyebrows cocked. Politely we told him that sure we smoked, but we didn’t need any right now. Maybe there was a miscommunication, he seemed confused for a second, but smiled anyway as he stepped into his skiff and shoved off.

 

 

We spent the afternoon carelessly draped around the boat, not making memories. When the sun was a fist above the bottom of the sky we once again loaded ourselves into the dingy and ventured into the town. It was as though a great rotary had turned and replaced the town with a new one, identical in construction but now populated with every type of colorfully clad citizen: groups of young girls in bright dresses, teams of boys playing soccer in the school yards, housewives collected on the now revealed porches. It was as though the town was entirely conceived as a greeting party for our arrival, everyone was turned to us, each group, gathered at intervals along the street leading to the square, facing us, each in their turn with a smile and greeting nod, not engaging us in any prolonged way, just grinning and watching. The effect was not all together unpleasant but it engendered an uneasy feeling that we were the butt of some yet to be fulfilled practical joke, or that someone had planned a surprise party for us and everyone was engaged to ensure we arrived at the appointed time.

 

Eventually one of the girls from a group listening to music on a phone next to a closed shop, or former shop, spoke to us. We could not understand at first what she had said but knew that we were to go off the street and down a path since she was pointing that way. They are down here, she said, gesturing to a foot worn path through a thicket and along the side of a painted cement or coral house.

 

Shortly a thin man with a bent spine that made him seem to duck invisible branches as he approached joined us. Without introduction or elaboration he beckoned us to follow him. In his skipping limp he led us down through the cuts between ramshackle buildings hung in sheets of roofing tin like mouse barracks made of cast off beer cans. Though encumbered by injury or insanity our guide quickly out stepped us and was lost behind a corner of thicket. Breaking through the hole the trail emerged into a small open ground that was possibly the front yard, or back yard, or shared court of a few houses that were set against the back beaches facing west and open to the low sun. Dark orange light stretched across the yard and silhouetted the swollen knuckles of dry tree branches holding onto the shoreline in desperate posture against the wind, though the air was still.

 

A dog approached merrily but suddenly stopped to sniff a spot of earth between us and a group of men standing against the light. We approached them, the men, or they us, and soon we were all standing about, our feet timidly circling one another in shifting approaches and retreats. In total we were a group of 6, our party of three and theirs, nowhere in the company was the hunched man. One of the men spoke in a clear English and welcomed us with a great smile. His face was wrinkled well beyond his years, though he was not young. The deep creases around his eyes and down along his cheeks gave the impression of an actors mask made to communicate joy across a great distance. You could not see into the eyeholes and I wondered that he could see out they were so closely pressed by the lifting of his cheeks. His hair was dusty brown and straight, combed and well laid but also with a thickness that made it seem dirty. His companions stood close but I cannot recall any details about them as they never spoke. The attention that the leader demanded with his great smile and inviting tone caused him to be set out against the dark backdrop, shadowing all else in my memory.

 

We conversed and he told us in a familiar way that he had been expecting us and that he was the father of V, and that he was some man of importance, sub chief or other. All the while he was talking he was reaching into the folds of his clothes and arranging some dark paper and matted roots and sticks in his cupped palm. Soon he was mumbling through a large overwrought cigarette that sat on his lips like a cancerous cigar blanched and bloated from disease. Finished with the tools of the business he put away the ingredients and without stopping his story or looking down he lit the cigar and a bright cloud of smoke enveloped us, the suns last true rays cutting through it like lasers. The smoke was shared around the group and it was clear that to abstain would be an insult, like refusing to eat at a feast held in your honor.

 

The sun set into a lost and empty spot of pacific water far to the west of us. As the dome of its bald and burning skull slipped below the water there was a reverent silence, and then the shadows were softened and the darkness began to fall in earnest. Soon we were back on the road and walking out of town toward the landing, the streets once again completely depopulated, with the blue light of the moon already glowing off the hard coral underfoot and all around. No one much spoke as we walked. The dingy engine sent its scream clear across the flat open water. We cut through the surface of the great star reflected pond, and from above we appeared to send trailing tentacles behind us, like a squid gently trolling the surface of the night sky.

 

Later while at the Bora Bora Yacht Club we heard of another boat that had visited Manihi and had a similar story to tell. They had been amazed at how much marijuana there was offered them and had the strange sense that the man with the great smile was at the center of it’s trade. The whole island seemed involved in some secret affair, small as it was and lacking any other real enterprise or diversion for its populous. Although our experience was strange, even in the context of the remote islands we were stopping at, we never met with anything but generosity and kindness. Once when we were looking for fuel for the dingy, carrying our empty gerry can as one does, a couple on a motor bike spotted us and insisted that they be allowed to top up our can, free of charge. But our friends who followed us had some issues with things going missing from the boat. Like us they were the only yacht in the lagoon and the towns people had a strange knowledge of their whereabouts even when they were not together. If one wished to know where the other was they could simply ask anyone on the street and they would point the way. While our friends were out in the town, likely as part of a ritual smoke in their honor, a GPS went missing from their boat. It is impossible to say who took it, but apparently such equipment is greatly valued on that lost and mysterious island.