Surviving Paradise (17 page)

Put more concretely, Marshallese Time meant that if someone said X would happen at Y time, then there was a 40 percent chance that X would happen, and 5 percent chance that it would happen at Y time. I cannot count the number of appointments I made that left me waiting like an idiot until I realized my friend was not going to show up and probably had never intended to. My island companions were as aware of Marshallese Time as I was—they called it
awa in majel
(“time of the Marshall Islands”) and cited it with a chuckle whenever a schedule was broken. That chuckle was not resignation to an unfortunate fact of life. Rather, it was an acknowledgment of something they valued and enjoyed. This was their way of life, and they saw no reason to change it.

The islanders' careful guardianship of knowledge, virtuous dishonesty, and hazy scheduling sometimes made life easy for me. If my friends could stand me up with impunity, then so could I. If I felt
obligated to see someone I didn't want to see, I would make an appointment and then secretly renege. It was just as well; chances were the other person wouldn't show up either. It was a no-show standing up a no-show. It was a joyful liberation to be able to break this ironclad American rule. I also suspected that when the men
bwebwenato
ed with me, they had other commitments. Marshallese Time allowed them to shrug off those responsibilities and chat with me, which I loved. In America, people would say they were too busy even if they were not; here, they would say they weren't busy even if they were. Also, I imagined the islanders' desire to spare me from unpleasant truths had saved me from hourly bulletins on my cultural felonies.

So that was the “magical” part of this laxness that Will Randall described. But when I wanted to join a sailing expedition, it fell more in the “bloody irritating” category. The men might tell me a canoe was about to launch, but, more than half the time, that would be a sympathetic lie. How could I get them to tell me the truth? I tried to hide my hopes and casually ask, “So are you going sailing today, or staying on the island to play games?” But alas, their empathy verged on telepathy. They saw straight through my false indifference, and told me what I wanted to hear. Their lies were so kind, and so aggravating.

Even when a canoe trip really was afoot, I had to machete my way through half-truths in order to get a ride. For the entire morning, I would ask when the canoe was going to launch, and the answer was always “
kiio
.” Although the dictionary translated this word as “now,” the real meaning appeared to be “some time between a little while ago and two hours from now.” So I would wait, and wait, and wait some more—until, suddenly, all the sailors would gather from different directions. If
kiio
was such a vague term, how did all the men know to come at the same time? Maybe
kiio
meant “when the tide is just right,” and they could all tell when that perfect moment had come.

So by the time they kicked off the expedition, I had usually given up. Even if I had persisted, the fishermen would often launch the canoe from the other end of the island, and I would arrive too late. Or I would ask a man if anyone was planning to go sailing that day, express my fervent desire to participate, and he would tell me vaguely that there was one group of men who were planning to. Then, an hour later, I would see that the man had told me the truth but had
neglected to mention that he was a member of that group of men, and of course he knew exactly when and where that canoe would launch.

In my own country, I would be criminally dense if I didn't take all of this as a hint that they didn't want me along. But here in the Marshall Islands, I wasn't so sure. Their gladness to include me in anything else I invited myself to, and my overwhelming desire to unwind from the claustrophobia of school, made me ignore any possibility that they didn't want me aboard.

So I persevered, and, several times, I was rewarded. It proved to be worth the effort, which is saying a great deal.

I weaseled my way into a canoe ride one breezy Saturday morning in late October with the boys: Lisson, Fredlee, and Joja. Today, fishing was to be not just for fun and food, but also for the Marshallese observance of International Women's Day. The men were catching fish for the women, in order to thank them. None of the fair sex were to be aboard, though, because of an old belief that women would cause bad luck if they accompanied men on fishing expeditions. Maybe that belief flowed from native Marshallese understandings of fortune, gender, and contamination. Or maybe it was just a way for the men to have time to themselves for bonding and dirty jokes.

The men promised to show me the World War II fighter plane that now formed a decomposing monument on the lagoon floor. The fact that they were willing to postpone the almost sacred task of fishing in order to show me this sight eased my fear that they had never wanted me along.

Our vessel was named
Limama
(“Mom”). It was perched between the dirt and the beach so that it could be quickly deployed but not carried away at high tide. Launching the canoe across this field of shells, rocks, and decaying coconuts required a special technique. (But of course, so did most everything on this island, including taking a shower in the morning from a bucket of water.) The men placed palm fronds crosswise in front of the canoe to act as rollers. Then Joja said “
eeeeeeee-EPP,
” which seemed to mean nothing but “everyone push . . .
now,
” and everyone did just that. When the canoe had passed over the palm fronds, the men placed them in front again. After a few repetitions, the craft was in the water.

“
Uwe
” (“get on”), Lisson told me. They gave me the “chief's seat”—the square platform between the hull and the outrigger, and the only place on the canoe where I had a fighting chance of staying dry. Lisson claimed the tiny platform on the other side of the mast, while Fredlee and Joja straddled the ends of the hull with their feet nearly in the water. They shouted quick commands to one another as they pulled on this rope, untied that one, let another one slack, and retied the first one with expert speed.

The triangular blue sail unfurled. Everything was in its correct orientation, and the anchor was up. But the canoe stood still for another thirty seconds. Then, as if mentally willed to do so, it began to move. This happened every time I rode on a canoe, and I never understood what final adjustment set the whole contraption into motion. It seemed like a telepathic command.

As we set out into the lagoon, I felt what I always felt at the beginning of a sea journey. The sail inflated, the bow sliced through the water, the land retreated behind us, and all my frustrations as a teacher or man alone in a foreign land became an old and faded dream. The past unhitched from my mind and I saw only a blissful present. It was the most perfect moment in any sea voyage, not in the least because I couldn't possibly have gotten seasick yet.

Then the mast fell over.

A rope snapped, sending the mast and sail down in a flurry of falling objects. A heavy beam nearly hit my head. But far from revealing my companions' incompetence, this gave them an extra chance to prove their skill. They had to remount the mast and sail mid-voyage. Half an hour later, they had somehow achieved this using only the ropes available to them. In the United States, a vehicular breakdown would be occasion for cursing. Here it was occasion for laughter.

We were on our way again. The sail caught the wind perfectly and the craft all but skipped over the water. Earlier that morning, the canoe had rested heavily on the beach, utterly inert. Now it felt weightless. Dryness soon became only a memory. Fredlee and Joja, straddling the ends of the canoe, were partly underwater half of the time, and high in the air the rest of the time. Even the chief's seat got sprayed, but the water was warm before the wind cooled it down. Fredlee dutifully bailed the body of the canoe with half a plastic jug attached to a stick.

Soon we were more than a mile from Ujae, and I could see its whole length without turning my head. Through the water, I could make out the ghostly form of a sunken plane. The men reefed the sail. While Lisson cast a fishing line, Joja and I prepared to get in the water. I saw Joja scrubbing his snorkel mask with some sort of tuber. He explained that it was the aerial root of the pandanus tree—one of the curious appendages that propped the tree up at the base—and that it would prevent the mask from fogging up. The soapy innards of the root were far more effective than saliva, which I had been taught to use in America. They were also preferable to the islanders' other technique of chewing a palm leaf and spitting its green juice into the mask. I wondered how they had learned this skill. Using native plants in ingenious ways epitomized the word “traditional,” but here they were doing so to clean a snorkel mask.

Joja and I entered the water. Thirty feet below me, a decaying plane rested on the sandy bottom of the lagoon. Far from fouling the reef, the hulk seemed a boon for underwater life: coral sprouted from the twin engines, and fish surrounded the coral. This was just one of many war relics in the country. Several islands were littered with rusting Japanese artillery, bunkers, and command centers. One of the old military buildings had been converted into a church, and bomb craters were now used as wet pits for growing taro. I suspected that the bullet I once found in the sand had the same origin. The bottom of Bikini Lagoon was the final resting place for entire fleets of ships that had been sunk on purpose by nuclear bombs. These artifacts, which included an aircraft carrier, now formed the basis for a successful Bikini Atoll diving business and had become a mecca for wreck enthusiasts. Nuclear testing hadn't destroyed what little tourism this country had; it had created it.

The women on Ujae were expecting fish—we couldn't play all day. We sailed farther into the lagoon, and the men attached lead weights to their fishing lines and dropped them into the blue depths. Soon they were pulling up little ambassadors of that alien world: sparkling white coral and weird deep-lagoon fish that I had never seen before. The fish sported unusual colors and patterns—one was bright red, and another was brown with brilliant crimson gills that flared up like fire when the creature gasped for water. Each time an object was
reeled to the surface, in the moment after it became visible but before it had left the water, it was bathed in an ethereal blue light, glowing bright against the dark backdrop of the water.

True to form, the men kicked off a good-natured fishing competition. The scoring was inspired by baseball: each fish counted as one base, and four fish was a home run. Keeping close score, it became clear that Joja was falling behind. Lisson had scored a home run and Fredlee was on third, but Joja hadn't even reached first. It was in this way that I learned about a most interesting Marshallese belief: a man who had sex at night would have bad luck at fishing the next day. (The same was supposed to be true of a man who had eaten crab, but somehow that wasn't as exciting.)

The belief, it appeared, served mainly as fodder for teasing unlucky fishermen. If Joja hadn't scored a home run at fishing, then he must have scored a home run the night before. Lisson found a red spot on Joja's neck and decided it was a hickey. Apparently the English word “kissmark” had found its way into Marshallese as
kijmaak
. So Joja earned a new nickname, using the masculine prefix that is used for such things: he was now La-Kijmaak. I took it upon myself, nobly, to introduce the men to the American word “hickey.” Now he had another nickname: La-Hickey.

(Joja never lived the incident down. For weeks afterward, men would ask me to recount the story, the humor tripled by the fact that the
ribelle
was narrating. When word got out that I was aware of the no-sex belief, men would ask me expectantly why a certain individual had come back with such a paltry catch of fish, and I would dutifully give them the answer they wanted: it was because he was having so much sex, with so many women, the night before. This was funny by itself, but when the white man said it, it was arguably the funniest joke in the world.)

On the canoe, Joja's dubious hickey might easily have filled half an hour with extremely sophisticated entertainment, but it was at that moment that the mood abruptly changed. Fredlee pulled up half a fish. It was the front end of a bread-loaf-sized creature, with the back end cleanly bitten off. The pattern of semicircular indentations along the severed edge left no doubt of that. To me this was ominous; to my companions, this was exciting.

“There must be sharks around here,” said Lisson. “We might catch one.”

Yes, they ate sharks. They pointed out that it was quite fair—sharks ate people and people ate sharks.

Then Fredlee felt a very powerful tug. He reeled the creature to the surface until we could all see it. He had hooked a shark. It was rare to see these islanders showing anything less than perfect composure, but these were exceptional circumstances. Several things started happening at once. The shark thrashed mightily from side to side, its small size more than compensated by its rage. Lisson shouted “
Mane!
” (“hit it! kill it!”) while Joja reached for a machete. Fredlee said, “It'll bite me!” and kept the animal on two feet of line. I knew my duty at times like these, and that was to stay the hell out of the way. It just so happened that, in that instance, my duty and my desire coincided.

The line snapped before Joja could make good use of the machete, and the creature from the blue lagoon disappeared instantaneously into the depths. The fish had won—we would not catch a shark that day.

The men had found action, danger, and humor. But they hadn't found many fish. Deeming the latter goal to be at least as important as the former, the men resolved to do some netfishing. We set sail farther into the lagoon, several miles along the reef, until Ujae Island was no closer than its nearest uninhabited neighbor. We passed by light blue areas in the lagoon, as if spotlights were shining up from the seafloor. These were patch reefs: coral mountains that had grown from the depths of the lagoon almost to the surface, stopping only at the point where they would be exposed to the air at low tide. On a few atolls, these coralline mounds had broken the surface and formed islands in the middle of the lagoon, wreaking havoc with the standard Marshallese binary of lagoon side/ocean side.