Lost Worlds (57 page)

Apparently I went back with them because I woke in my hotel room very late the following morning and never remembered anything of the journey back along that chronically potholed road. Amazing what good company, good food—and yanggona—does to neutralize the adversities of travel.

The days following my return from the kava bout passed slowly, punctuated by sudden downpours and aftermaths of sticky sluggish air smelling of jungle and rich, wet earth. One morning I drove north past the landing strip to Bouma Falls. Hidden deep in the rain forest, the place was all mine. I sketched the sixty-foot-high cascade and then stripped, dived into the pool at its base, and floated on my back, listening to the roar of the falls and watching two orange-breasted doves do what doves love to do, which seems to consist of making soft reassuring coos and gently nudging one another in an almost constant reaffirmation of their mutual fidelity. A bit sloppy but seductively entrancing. Especially when you’re all alone in a warm, forestbound pool, thinking of home and someone there waiting for you, wondering when your own little reaffirmations would begin again.

I continued on past Bouma into one of the most beautiful corners of this lovely island. No wonder the crew of
Return to the Blue Lagoon
chose the traditional village of Lavena, with its thatched
bures
, its blinding white sands and translucent aquamarine bay, as the setting for its ultraromantic, if notoriously short-lived epic of young love in a South Pacific paradise.

My list of places I’d like to retire to (Retire from what? dear friends ask) keeps growing longer as I continue my travels around the world, but Lavena is somewhere up there close to the top. It’s hard to imagine a more idyllic place: dense forest encroaching on small perfect beaches, the Tobu Vei Tui Falls hidden in the foothills of the island’s mountain spine, another cascade that tumbles off a high clifftop near the village directly into the ocean (World War II ships used to pause at the base of the falls here to refill their freshwater tanks), and a sense of ease and grace of living that makes one seriously question the modern materialistic mores back home.

All I’d need here would be a cozy palm-frond
bure
, a wrap-around sulu for daily dress, a fishing net into which dinner would nonchalantly swim each evening, a basket to collect the fruits that grow abundantly in the wild, a bunch of local friends (kava connoisseurs, of course), a couple of pet doves to make bill ’n’ coo sounds all day long, a shortwave radio so that I could smile (Fijian style, of course) at the frenzied foibles of the world beyond the beach, a lot of sketch pads and writing paper, the occasional barbecued wild pig shared with village friends…and Anne.

So why the hesitation? Why not just move here and stop the fantasizing?

“You could live like a king!” whispered the little seductive enticer inside my head.

I remember something I’d read in the
Cyclopedia of Fiji
about the life of island kings, and it didn’t sound so bad at all:

I suppose the “number of wives” bit might create a few domestic disharmonies with Anne, but other than that she’s a pretty easygoing person, well experienced in the traveling life, undemanding when it comes to material possessions, and a great lover of fresh-caught fish, fruit, and all the simple frivolities of endless time in the surf and the sun.

How should I explain to her my emerging idea of a new life here at Lavena?

“Listen, darling, rent the house—pay the bills, pack a few books and things, give everything else away, load up the cats”—oh, yes, Freddie and Friskie would love it here—“and I’ll meet you in Taveuni and bring you down to this palm-frond
bure
I’ve just built on the beach and we’ll have a kava celebration and then we’ll go fishing and make a
meke
and then…”

I think she’d like the idea.

So—make the call.

When?

Now.

Now?

Why not?

Well—I just might….