Tiare in Bloom (6 page)

Pito watches his wife for a while, thinking how tired she looks. He bends down to kiss her on the head, then pauses; he might
wake her up. So, walking very quiet steps, Pito leaves for work, worried a little and starving hungry. He didn’t have much
to eat this morning. There was nothing in the fridge.

Now, lunchtime, he’s devouring his sandwich as if his life depended on it. All the colleagues are — working does make a man
hungry — except for Heifara, sitting with his mouth shut, his eyes staring at the sandwich bought at the snack nearby. He’s
been weird all morning, actually. It’s not like him not to talk.

“Heifara,” Pito says, “
tama’a.
”

Heifara looks at him for a minute before deciding to spill the bucket. “I’m in a difficult situation.”

“
Ah oui?
” Pito asks, to show some interest.

“
Oui,
I’m in a very difficult situation,” Heifara says. He looks at his colleagues to see if they’d like to hear about it, and
they seem interested. So Heifara tells his story about his difficult situation with his wife.

When he came back from his two-week surfing holiday in Huahine, relaxed and in a very good mood, things weren’t quite right.
There was no “Oh,
chéri!
Welcome home! I missed you so much, make love to me!” from his wife.
Non.
Instead, what she actually said was, “I want a separation.”

Heifara admits to his surprised colleagues that
oui,
of course he was shattered. “
Salope,
” he spits.

“Just like that?” Pito asks, confused. The last time Heifara talked about his wife, she couldn’t keep her hands off him, she
was wild with desire. Okay, that was about six months ago, but still, eh? Now she wants a separation?

Heifara confirms the fact with a sad nod and raises his left hand, the one with the missing finger, the finger he lost years
ago when his wedding band was caught in the machine, shredding it to pieces.

Heifara always raises his left hand (since he lost the finger) whenever he talks about his wife. My wife, he says, winking
and raising his left hand as if to say, My wife is worth me having nine fingers instead of ten. But today the raised hand
looks more like it’s saying, I lost a finger because I married that bitch!

Pito remembers when Heifara joined the company and how much he got on everyone’s nerves. When a colleague gave the young recruit
advice regarding work safety, Heifara would say, “Yeah, I know.” Soon Heifara’s nickname was “Monsieur I Know.” Then he lost
a finger and the colleagues said, “Serves him right, he never bloody listens,” but they kept an eye on him for months after
the unfortunate accident. Nobody wanted another lost finger.

Heifara, sad-faced, still has his mutilated hand in the air.

Purée,
Pito thinks, looking at his colleague from under his eyelashes as he finishes his sandwich, is this what a man gets when
he goes away on a short holiday after months working like a dog in the heat and the noise, and for the lowest pay on the island?
“Your wife,” Pito asks, curious, “she was cranky with you when you took off to Huahine for two weeks?”

Heifara informs his audience that
non,
his wife wasn’t cranky at all, and in fact, she had a smile from one ear to the other. “Have a wonderful time!” she said
sweetly when she dropped Heifara off at the domestic terminal. “I hope you’re going to catch millions of waves!”

Millions? Pito tells himself. This is an angry woman talking.

“She said . . .” Heifara’s voice trails off. He needs to find the correct words to express his disenchantment, and the colleagues
aren’t going to hurry him up. They just look at him with compassion because he’s young. If Heifara were their age, they might
have said, “Ah, pull yourself together,
copain,
you’re going to give us a bad name.” But right now, the colleagues, Pito included, are thinking, Take your time, kid, if
we ever came back from holiday and the wife said, “I want a separation,” we would . . . Well,
purée de bonsoir,
there would be holes in the walls.

Anyway, Heifara continues, she told him that she’d been unhappy for the past two years and has tried to tell him about it
but he didn’t listen. “She’s talking
conneries,
” Heifara spits. For instance, his wife said that she’d tried — millions of times — to make him understand that she needed
help around the house. But when Heifara did help with the housework on the weekend, his wife would always get cranky. “Get
out of my way!” she’d growl. “You’re only making things more difficult for me. I have other cats to whip.”

Heifara used to help his wife doing the shopping too but everything he’d put in the cart was the wrong thing. “I never buy
that brand!” she’d snap, putting whatever he’d picked back on the shelf. She said that she’d tried — millions of times — to
tell Heifara that she needed him to spend more time at home. But when Heifara would make an effort, sitting on the couch with
his wife to watch TV instead of going out drinking with his
copains,
she’d say, “Stop touching me! I’m watching a movie! If you think it’s easy looking after two small children all day, you
have nothing in the head!”

Anyway, the wife told Heifara all of this the day he came home from his wonderful surfing holiday. She also criticized his
hair (not combed), his breath (foul), his table manners (worse), his dressing style (
zéro
), his snoring, and the way he listens to her with only one ear . . . She called him selfish and then hit him with the news
of the century: “I want a separation. Read my lips. It’s finished. I don’t want to be jam given to pigs anymore.”

“What am I supposed to do, eh?” young Heifara asks his colleagues. But the older men have nothing to say, not even Pito, the
colleague who has been with the same woman the longest. But they’re all thinking the same thing: Is this what my woman thinks
about me?

“How come you didn’t ask your wife to go with you on your holiday?” This question just popped into Pito’s head. He doesn’t
know why, especially when he already knows the reason why Heifara went on his holiday alone, and presently the colleagues
are giving Pito strange looks, meaning, What? Are you insane? If the wife comes, the holiday isn’t a holiday anymore!

“My wife coming with me?” Heifara laughs a faint laugh. “Are you insane?” He explains that firstly, his wife would have commanded
him to leave his surfboards at home, and secondly, she would have changed the holiday destination to a place like Hawaii because
of the shopping. And then Heifara would have had to spend his hard-earned holiday following his wife from one shop to the
next, carrying shopping bags filled with cheap
conneries.

“She loves cheap
conneries,
” Heifara says. “She’s always buying cheap
conneries,
like plastic baskets, there are plastic baskets all over the house, and they are filled with cheap
conneries
like plastic fruit. Who keeps plastic fruit in plastic baskets? Plastic apples? Plastic bananas? She loves plastic containers
too, but how many plastic containers does someone need, eh? I don’t think hundreds. She’s obsessed with plastic things.”

The colleagues nod, but it’s time to get back to work. They don’t get paid to listen to complicated stories.

Half an hour later, Heifara is still talking about his wife to Pito, the colleague nearest to him, but the sad voice is now
bitter.

“And then she said,” Heifara spits, sweating away over a plank of wood, “ ‘Smile! Stop doing that sad face. When I look at
you, I want to give you slaps!’ And then I said, ‘What’s there to be happy about? You ruined my life, you
salope.
You’ve got the house, you’ve got the kids, I’ve got
peau de balle et variété!
Peanuts!’ And then she said, ‘You should have listened to me when you had the chance to.’ Then I said, ‘I was always there
for you,
salope,
I paid for all those plastic things.’ Then she said, ‘Women don’t care about things! Women want love! They don’t want to
be the bread crumbs!’ And then I said, ‘Women don’t care about plastic things?’ And then she said, ‘Ah, for once you’re not
deaf!’ So I grabbed all of her stupid fucking plastic things, her stupid fucking plastic bananas, her stupid fucking plastic
apples, and I threw them out of the kitchen window, and next thing, she was yelling her head off, ‘Stop! My fruit didn’t do
anything to you! Stop!’ And then I said, ‘I thought you said that women don’t care about plastic things?’ She spit in my face,
so I grabbed her by the hair and —”

Pito, worried, looks up.

“And,” Heifara continues, breathing heavily, “and then she said, ‘Touch me and my father is going to turn you into mincemeat.’
I let go of her hair and went to bed, and the next day this
salope
said —”

“Heifara,” Pito, relieved, interrupts. “Concentrate on your work.”

“I’m concentrating,” Heifara reassures his colleague, and continues, his eyes on the plank he’s cutting. “And then she said
that her lawyer informed her that she was entitled to sixty percent of my pay. And then I said, ‘Tell your lawyer to go fuck
himself.’ And then she said, ‘If you don’t give me sixty percent of your pay, I’m reporting you to the tribunal.’ And then
I said, ‘You
salope,
’ and then she said, ‘You better mind your words or you can forget about having the children on the weekends.’ And then I
said . . .” Heifara’s voice trails off.

Pito looks up.

“And then I said nothing. If I don’t see my kids, I die.” Heifara’s lips quiver.

The young father is about to do his crying cinema, so Pito gives him a quick, affectionate tap on the shoulder and goes back
to work. Meanwhile, tears are plopping out of Heifara’s eyes. “And then I said, ‘Please give me one more chance,’ and then
she said, ‘Where were you when I needed you? I’ve tried to save our marriage but you didn’t care, and now it’s my turn not
to care.’ And then she went on and on about things that I told her years ago when we were just boyfriend and girlfriend .
. . But I never told her that I was going to take her to Paris one day. I never told her that I was going to write her name
on my surfboard. She’s crazy. I said to her, ‘You’re fucking crazy.’ Next thing, she was yelling her head off, ‘Don’t tell
me that I’m crazy!’ I said, ‘Shut up, you
salope.
’ And —”

“You know, she’s right,” Pito says.

“Who?” Heifara asks.

“Your wife, what’s her name again?”

“Juanita?”

“
Oui,
her, your wife.”

“What about my wife?”

“She’s right.”

“About what?”

“Do you listen to yourself talk sometimes?” Pito looks at his colleague, thinking, This kid needs a bit of education. “Rule
number one: never call a woman
salope
to her face.”

“What if she is a
salope?
” Heifara asks.

“Rule number two: learn to shut up and listen.”

“Is this what you do?” Heifara asks, very seriously. “With your wife?”

Pito has to think about this one. “It depends on the situation.”

“Do you go on holidays with your wife?”

“My wife likes nothing I like.” By this Pito means fishing, soccer, reading comics in bed, and drinking at the bar.

Later, in the truck on his way home, Pito thinks about that holiday he took years ago . . . it must be twelve years ago, because
Moana broke his arm the day before . . . Anyway, when he came home, Materena gave him the silent treatment for three days
and he didn’t ask her why. He just lived with it. And there was that other time . . . Meanwhile, the seven-year-old opposite
Pito is telling his mother that he has to wear red clothes tomorrow at school. “You’re telling me this now?” the tired mother
says through clenched teeth.

“I told you about the red clothes on Sunday, but you were on the telephone with your boyfriend!” The kid doesn’t care there
are people listening.

When Pito hops off the truck, his mind is made up. Yes, he will spend his next holiday, which is in a few months, with his
wife. They will go to the cinema and watch a kung fu movie; they will go fishing, share a few drinks at the bar, read Akim
comic books in bed, and have sex. Whatever they do, they will have a lot of fun.

There, it’s decided, and since Pito is very serious about this, he will reveal his wonderful plans to Materena as soon as
he gets home. He will commit himself. True commitment — in Pito’s opinion — is not given for peace and quiet and it’s definitely
not because there’s something to gain at the end. When commitment is given, words become sacred, they’re not just words.

For example, when Pito tells Materena he’ll take the garbage out, he isn’t really committing himself, it’s just words so that
she’ll get off his back or so he can get into her pants. When he tells Materena he’ll climb up the breadfruit tree to get
her a breadfruit, it isn’t commitment either, it’s just words so she’ll get off his back or so he can get into her pants.

Pito would be the first to admit he’s told Materena, “
Oui,
I’m going to do it,” many times but didn’t get around to living up to his promise because, well, because he got satisfied,
or he forgot.

But when Pito says something he really means, you can rely on him one hundred percent. When Pito says he’ll put food on the
table, he will. When Pito says he’ll keep his job until retirement in loving memory of his uncle who got him that job, he
will. When Pito says he’ll mow his mother’s garden until the day she dies, he will. And when Pito says that he’ll spend his
next holiday with his wife, that’s what will happen.

Pito finds Materena in their daughter’s bedroom staring at the world map taped to the wall. “Ah, you’re feeling better.” Pito’s
voice is full of honey, and he’s smiling a big loving smile. “And what country are you looking at, Madame?”

Materena, with pursed lips and dangerous cranky eyes, shrugs her shoulders and leaves the room, flicking her hair in her husband’s
face on her way.

“I was thinking of spending my next holiday with you,
chérie!
” Pito calls out, following his wife out of the room.