Better Than Fiction 2 (14 page)

I
t was supposed to have been a romantic week in the tropics, all expenses paid. My boyfriend, Louis, was researching Western Samoa for a screenplay he was about to write, commissioned by an Australian film producer. We hadn’t been together long, about nine months, and were still swimming in the early waves of lust. I packed vintage pornography and a satin bag filled with recently purchased sex toys.

On the plane I was introduced to some of the more unusual aspects of Samoan culture: a native returning home was so morbidly obese, due to an unhealthy Western diet, that he could not fit into the toilet cubicle. Two resigned attendants came to his rescue, holding up blankets around him in the aisle while he dropped his trousers and aimed his piss through the open door and into the bowl. Beside us sat a perfectly coiffed female impersonator, replete with false eyelashes, heavy make-up, and
bee-stung lips. Louis later explained to me that the person was a
fa’afafine
, a boy who’d been raised from birth as a girl, not unusual in Polynesia, especially if a family has no daughters. Most of them made a living in Samoa by performing in cabarets.

We landed on the island of Upolo late at night. Through the open windows of the bus from the airport, I glimpsed traditional thatched huts, bamboo pavilions, and market gardens. The air was cool and fragrant with the scent of frangipani. No wonder Robert Louis Stevenson had chosen to live and write here, I thought. The place was an exquisite paradise.

At the registration counter of the famous Aggie Grey’s Hotel, we were the last to check in, and were assigned the final available
fale
, or traditional hut, in the complex. It was so far away from the main building, however, that we were unable to find it on a map, a piece of paper so riddled with circles and squiggly paths that it looked like an Aboriginal dot painting. After returning to Reception, perplexed and confused, we were assigned a teenage porter who led us on a ten-minute walk along labyrinthine tracks until we reached the chain-link fence that bordered the property. Here, at the end of the very last row of huts, was our very own
fale
, built in the shape of a hexagon and thatched with palm leaves. I didn’t mind being so far from the hotel’s restaurants and swimming pools; the distance would be a bonus, I reasoned, and would provide us with even more privacy and peace.

At dawn the next morning, I was awakened by a loud, industrial throb that sounded like a semi-trailer idling beside the hut. As I crawled out of bed, I could sense the
fale
and the floorboards beneath my bare feet vibrating. Was it an earthquake? I wondered. I opened the door and stuck my head outside: in the light of day, on the other side of the chain-link fence I could see a rudimentary building made of corrugated
iron and a sign that read Bottling Factory.

Louis pulled on a pair of trousers and a shirt and went to complain at the front desk. Twenty minutes later, he returned wet with sweat and told me he’d been fobbed off by the staff, whose ability to speak and understand English had mysteriously escaped them. One attendant, however, had managed to explain, in halting pidgin, that the bottling plant only operated between 6am and 6pm every day, and so shouldn’t interfere with our sleep at night. The relentless revving grew louder, combined with the occasional din of shattering glass. We showered, dressed, and fled the
fale
. After breakfast in one of the hotel pavilions, we took a stroll downtown, following the curve of Apia Harbour. Curiously, for such a hot climate, and in such glare-filled light, there were few awnings or trees to shade the streets. I’d forgotten to bring a hat and yet every store we entered had none in stock. And then I realised that the obese man on the plane the night before had not been an anomaly: just about everywhere I looked, I saw islanders so overweight that some were hyperventilating and finding it difficult to walk.

We bought some local newspapers and retired by the pool back at Aggie Grey’s. I read that the city was experiencing a feral dog problem, with mongrels roaming the streets and attacking pedestrians in packs. I also read that recently there’d been a series of unsolved murders on the island and that local authorities believed the fatalities were linked. While I cooled off in the pool, Louis made another complaint at Reception about the infernal noise filling our
fale
, again to no avail.

After dinner that night we decided to have a cocktail in the hotel bar. We hadn’t drained our first martini glasses, however, before another two were promptly delivered to our table. I glanced up at the waiter, puzzled. ‘Those men over there
wanted to buy you a drink’, he said, and nodded toward three smiling young men a few tables across, obviously islanders, with broad, sinewy shoulders and necks as thick as palm trunks. We raised the glasses to them and nodded a thank you, and they nodded back. Louis immediately told the waiter to deliver another set of cocktails back to them, whatever they were drinking. Minutes later, the men walked over with their drinks and joined us, shaking our hands and introducing themselves. Originally from Samoa, they were cousins who now lived in Sydney, but who’d travelled back to Apia to settle a land dispute. One man, Paul, was set to inherit his father’s side of a particular mountain, a parcel of land that had been passed down in his family, from generation to generation, to the first-born male, for hundreds of years. The only problem was proving it to the Western courts without the benefit of written deeds. Paul also told us that in Australia he lived in Frederick St in Sydenham, and that he worked in building scaffolding for a man called Tom Domican. Paul bought us another round of drinks and then insisted that we come and stay with his family and experience the true Samoan culture. His grandmother would cook for us and he’d take us to some secret beaches that weren’t on tourist maps. He pressed his phone number, written on a coaster, into my hand and made me promise to call him the following day. Louis bundled me out of the bar and into the cool night air. ‘Well, wasn’t he nice?’ I remarked, weaving tipsily along a path beneath flowering vines. ‘I’d rather stay with his family than in that noisy hut.’

Louis linked his arm in mine and drew me closer to him. He explained that he, too, had once lived in Frederick St in Sydenham, on the same side of the road as Tom Domican’s boss, Neddy Smith, who was a notorious Sydney drug trafficker, thief,
and murderer. ‘When Paul says he’s into scaffolding with Tom, it doesn’t mean he’s in the construction business.’ I paused and asked him what he meant. ‘
Scaffolding
is a euphemism. Paul’s one of Neddy’s standover guys and does his dirty work for him. We’re not ringing him tomorrow. We’re staying the fuck away from him.’

At dawn the next morning I was rudely awakened again by the industrial throb of the bottling plant. I thought of Paul’s generous offer to stay with his family, but quickly dismissed it, particularly after a wave of nausea rose through me and I ran for the toilet to throw up. I felt my face flare with fever; sweat rolled down my temples and cheeks. I wiped my face and retched into the toilet again. My elbows and knees began to burn. Had someone slipped a mickey into my drink the night before or was my unexpected illness merely a coincidence? I groaned and staggered back to bed.

‘Fuck this,’ said Louis, after he’d risen, showered, and shaved. Since we’d arrived, he’d complained about the bottling plant noise several times, but the staff at Reception had continued to pretend that they did not understand him. He swept out the door and returned twenty minutes later with two male porters, who proceeded to collect our luggage and convey it along the winding paths and narrow lanes, with Louis and me following, until we came to the main building of the hotel complex. We trailed the porters up a flight of stairs and onto the second floor. One unlocked a door and we were ushered into a huge suite with floor-to-ceiling windows. There were separate living and dining areas, a kitchen, bedroom, modern bathroom, and, most importantly, air conditioning. A wide terrace ran the length of the apartment, affording stunning views of Apia Harbour. ‘This best room in hotel,’ assured one of the porters. ‘This best room
on island.’ Before they left, Louis palmed them each a tip.

By this time I was so dizzy and disoriented that I staggered into the bedroom and sat on a sofa. Louis sat beside me and rested a hand on my forehead.

‘How the hell did you manage this?’ I asked, gesturing vaguely around the apartment. ‘A bribe?’

Louis grinned and shook his head. ‘I told them I was writing a travel article for the
Sydney Morning Herald
about Samoa and their hotel. Suddenly, for some reason, they could understand my English perfectly.’

The cool air and silence were a blessed relief. Louis returned to the living room and I decided to take a nap. I pulled the satin bag of sex toys from my case, popped them into a bedside drawer, and collapsed onto the queen-sized four-poster. There would be no love-making today or tonight, or even the following morning. I was still wracked with nausea and my joints were on fire.

The next four days passed in a hallucinogenic spiral of sweating, spewing, and shitting. I was unable to eat and so began subsisting on martinis and Panadol. The only reception I could find on the TV was a cable channel that showed one movie repeatedly on a loop. Called
Pay it Forward
, it was about the karmic fortune gained by committing good deeds to virtual strangers. I continued to read the local papers daily, following updates on the feral dog epidemic, and the recent spate of unexplained murders. A wife and mother of two had been discovered the day before, stabbed to death on her kitchen floor. The woman had had no known enemies and the police, perplexed, could find no motivation. A concerned neighbour, however, had seen a blonde-haired woman running from the crime scene and escaping on a child’s bicycle.

Louis spent most of his time in the living room, researching
Samoan history. The screenplay he was writing was an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella
The Beach of Falesa
, which Stevenson had written in his home, only a few miles away. The story was about a European man who gets conned into marrying a local girl who secretly is cursed. Louis, too, read the papers each day and discovered an advertisement for a cabaret show, featuring the local
fa’afafine
exotic beauties, at one of the nearby hotels. We hadn’t experienced any Samoan culture since we’d arrived five days before and so that night I forced myself from bed, showered, and dressed, and accompanied him to the event.

The show was to take place inside a long pavilion with a stage at one end. We sat at a bamboo table at the front and ordered martinis. Curtain Up was advertised for 8pm sharp, but by 9.05 the black velvet drapes remained unmoved. After ordering our third cocktail, we heard some yelling from the back of the pavilion and presently a drag queen in her mid-40s, wearing fishnets and a sequined miniskirt, came clacking in high heels down the aisle, calling to someone behind her, ‘Fuckin’ hurry up!’ We turned to see a chubby white man in his late 20s, wearing cargo pants and runners, struggling to carry all of her luggage and equipment: a 1950s beauty case, a cassette player, several garment bags trailing feather boas. They both ran up the stairs and disappeared backstage. Five minutes later, music began to swell through the pavilion and she appeared from behind the curtain and introduced herself as Fifi. She was wearing a red satin gown, her black beehive sitting like a turret on her head, and holding a microphone. But when she recognised the opening trumpets to Shirley Bassey’s ‘Big Spender’, she lifted the mike and yelled backstage, ‘Not that one, you stupid cunt! The other one! My opening!’

Suddenly, the song stopped. We heard a rattle backstage and the sound of glass breaking. She rested a hand on her hip and waited, rolling her eyes to the thatched ceiling. After a minute or so, another song was broadcast, and she launched into lip syncing ‘Black Magic’, by Ella Fitzgerald.

The chubby man returned from backstage and sat at the table next to ours with an older woman. Fifi dedicated most of her songs to ‘my man in the front row’, or to the woman next to him, whom she referred to as ‘my mother-in-law.’ By this time, however, we were more interested in watching the boyfriend, who knew all the words to Fifi’s songs and would mouth every lyric back to her.

It was during the interval that Louis told me that he recognised him. He’d been in the newspapers back home recently. Apparently, two years before, he’d been appointed by the Australian government as a diplomat to Samoa, and had caused a scandal by having fallen in love with a
fa’afafine
and requesting to marry her. Such arrangements are common in Samoa, but not in Australian Foreign Affairs. The man had been given an ultimatum: give up the
fa’afafine
or resign from his position. He’d obviously made his choice, preferring to carry the bags of a demanding diva than a job for life in the diplomatic service. In some ways, I thought, the story sounded like a contemporary corollary to the screenplay Louis was attempting to adapt. When we arrived back at our hotel room, I threw up again, swallowed two Panadol, and flopped back onto the bed.