Tiare in Bloom (10 page)

The love song ends, the couples are still holding each other, waiting for the next song, hopefully another slow one, but the
musicians attack a frantic
tamure.
It’s time for proper dancing. Couples detach from each other, but it doesn’t mean the flirting and the teasing are over.
Tamure
dancing is very suggestive, an opportunity for women to show their partner the degree of their sensuality.

Beautiful cousins Materena and Lily rush to the dance floor, and . . . ah, they are certainly numero uno on the dance floor
tonight, dancing close to each other, laughing with their heads thrown back, showing off their throats, hair falling in their
eyes.

When the song finishes, they kick their shoes off, hurry to the bar for another drink, and dance some more —
tamure,
reggae, fox-trot,
valse
. . . Slow dance? No problems, the cousins can dance that dance too, and dancing slowly, their bodies pressed together, Materena’s
hand around her cousin’s waist, Lily’s hand on Materena’s shoulder, they dance, smile, close their eyes, unfazed at being
the center of attention.

Men smirk, women smack their men on the face. Men whistle, women smack their men on the face. Men stare in disbelief, women
smack their men on the face. Meanwhile, Materena and Lily continue to please themselves in between dancing, drinking, and
celebrating the night. They’ve come here to have fun, and that is exactly what they are doing.

Hours later, the cousins are exhausted, exhilarated, and the designated driver — way too drunk to drive now — falls on a seat
near the dance floor to breathe a little. Cousin Lily, drunk too but still bursting with energy, keeps on dancing.

The band attacks “Les Femmes d’Amérique,” an upbeat song about how American women are the prettiest but to have them you must
have dollars, whereas in Tahiti, we have them for nothing. Vive Tahiti! The island of love! Tahitian women on the dance floor
clap their hands with delight.

Materena, still slouched on her seat, is thinking, Who wrote this stupid song? She quickly rises to her feet at the sight
of her cousin barging towards the stage, pushing dancers out of her way. Next, Lily is grabbing the microphone from the fat
singer. The music instantly stops as two Mr. Muscle bouncers hurry to get that mad woman off the stage.

“Who wrote this stupid song?” she’s yelling. “I demand to know! Women are not free, anywhere in the world! Women are —”

Lily gets carried off the stage before she can finish her passionate feminist speech, straight to the door, where Materena
is waiting.

“We sleep in the car,” Materena says, taking her cousin by the hand.

“
Ah non!
” Lily protests aloud. “I’m not seventeen anymore. I don’t sleep in cars, I sleep at the hotel,
merci.
”

Luckily there’s a hotel not far away from the club, a famous hotel — renowned as a place where marriages get wrecked.
Boîte à merde,
women call it: “can of shit.” But it’s good enough for Lily and Materena, who just need somewhere to put their heads down.

“That would be one room or two?” the wide-awake and smiling hotel receptionist asks politely. In this business, it’s best
never to assume anything.

“Cousin?” Materena’s head is spinning; she’s holding on to her pillow tight and wishing she didn’t have to put her head down.

“
Oui,
Cousin,” says Lily, who’s doing the same.

“Have you ever been with a woman?” Materena already knows the answer, but in these situations it’s best to pretend you’re
in the dark.

“Four.”

“Four!” Materena didn’t know there were four women. Materena knew there was one woman, since she had caught the two of them
in the throes of passion a long time ago (it was an accident), and she thought Lily’s experience with a woman was a once-in-a-lifetime
experience, for something different to do. “Four?”

“Four,” Lily confirms, yawning.

“If you had to compare between a woman lover and a man lover, who is better?”

Lily ponders for a while, a long while. Has she gone to sleep? “Cousin?” Materena calls out softly.

“There’s nothing to compare.” But Lily adds that her women lovers were more affectionate and tender, and they kissed better
too, much better. Women put a lot of thought into kissing, Lily insists, it’s not kissing to get to the act in record time,
it’s kissing to say words. And when a woman holds you in her arms, you know that she really means it, you can feel it with
every single pore of your skin. Making love to a woman is, well, in Lily’s opinion anyway, magic, sensational, utterly romantic,
and sweet. She doesn’t make you feel like you’re just a hole. The hole is not the center of the lovemaking between women.
There’s no center because everything counts.

“Everything?”

“Everything,” Lily confirms. “They notice the little things, and it’s because they pay attention, they don’t have just the
hole in their mind.” Here, Lily elaborates, she has a beauty spot on the left lip of her little sister, and none of her men
lovers have ever noticed it, but her female lovers have — the four of them. “And you know that I never make love in the dark.”

“
Non,
I didn’t know that.”

“Well, I detest sex in the dark, I want my lover to see the expression on my face.”

“Hum.” Well, Materena likes sex in the dark. As far as she’s concerned, darkness is a woman’s best friend, especially when
she’s had a few children.

“Anyway,” Lily yawns, “you see my point about men not paying attention?”

“Oh
oui,
it’s like with Pito —”

“He has other qualities.”

“Like what?”

“You already know, Cousin, since you’ve been with him for so long . . . How long again?”

Materena delivers the sentence. “Twenty years.”

“Twenty years.” Lily’s voice is full of . . . is it admiration? “So many couples don’t even make it past six months, imagine
a little twenty years. What’s three hundred and sixty-five days times twenty? Wait, three hundred and sixty-five times ten
is three thousand six hundred and fifty, then times this by two . . . my God, you’ve been with Pito for seven thousand and
three hundred days! You two have walked a very long path together . . .”

But Lily doesn’t want to talk about her cousin’s relationship with her husband, how it is nearly a quarter of a century. “I
can’t believe the love of my life is a historian,” she rambles on. “As long as he’s wonderful like my father, that’s all I
ask, and maybe my historian has a bit of feminine in him, who knows . . .”

Lily is sound asleep again now. Materena closes her eyes and starts imagining this and that, making love to a woman, making
love to a rich Chinese man, making love to both of them at the same time . . . Materena opens her eyes and closes them, and
here is her husband making love to a French woman and he’s holding her tight . . .

Materena opens her eyes and closes them. She’s an old woman, a very old woman, so frail and fragile, and for some reason,
her left leg is bandaged. Each step she takes is a torture, but she stoically keeps on walking to the living room, her trembling
hands holding, the best she can, a tray with a plate on it.

“Pito, my husband,” she says with her croaky voice to the old man resting on the sofa, “I made you a chicken soup.”

The old man looks up, then with his long stick turns the TV off — saves all the trouble getting up — and takes the tray. “
Maururu,
wife.”

The old woman bends down for a little kiss on the cheek, grimacing a little because her back hurts, but she wants her kiss
so much that she persists. Her dear husband is too busy slurping away at his soup to notice.

Materena opens her eyes and closes them.

This time it is pitch-black. Good, she needs her beauty sleep. Mass is tomorrow.

A
ccording to Heifara, when a woman tells her man that it’s finished without even giving him the chance to redeem himself and
win her back, there’s another man on the horizon.

“Apparently,” Heifara repeats to Pito.

“
Oui,
” Pito admits, “apparently, but it’s not always true. Sometimes, it’s just too late.”

“But a man has got to know.” And that is why, Heifara explains, he’s hired a detective.

“A detective? Why? You don’t have relatives who can spy on your wife?”

“I don’t want the relatives to be involved, because you know how it is with the relatives, they twist everything, they add
information, they delete, they exaggerate . . . detectives are better, they tell you the truth, they give you evidence.” Heifara
continues on about how he could have hired two of his cousins who don’t work but the problem is that Juanita knows Heifara’s
family, from the uncles to the aunties, the first cousins, the second cousins, et cetera. When it comes to family Juanita
has the memory of an elephant. She remembers likes, dislikes, birthdays, birthmarks — everything.

If she were to notice Heifara’s cousins following her around, she’d immediately recognize them, even if they were disguised,
and suspect them of spying on her under her ex-husband’s instructions. Next thing, she’d be on the telephone yelling at Heifara,
calling him
bizzaroid,
and threatening to send a few of her relatives his way . . . It would come to be a big family mess. So it’s best to send
the detective into the field.

“And he’s got a lot of business in Tahiti, your detective?” Pito asks out of pure curiosity.

“Oh
oui.
” Then, lowering his voice a notch, Heifara goes on. “Do you know that the rate of infidelity in Tahiti is something like
sixty percent?”

“Sixty percent?” Pito has always known about infidelity (three of his uncles were caught in the act), but he didn’t know the
rate to be so high. He thought it was something like thirty percent.

“Sixty percent,” Heifara confirms gloomily. “And do you know which one is more likely to be unfaithful?”

“The husband?” Pito is not talking from experience but from what he’s heard in the family.

“
Non,
the wife.”

“The wife!”
Non,
Pito doesn’t believe it. He simply can’t imagine his aunties being unfaithful. His aunties are saints! They raised the children,
cleaned the house, washed the clothes, cooked, went to church. Then they raised the grandchildren, cleaned the house, washed
the clothes, cooked, and went to church.

But Heifara insists that sixty percent of wives are unfaithful because, according to his detective anyway, wives often feel
unfulfilled. They are the wife, the mother, the cook, the cleaner, and the day comes when they explode. They go looking somewhere
else, pack their bags, or show you the door.

Two days later . . .

Pito knows for certain that if Materena ever shows him the door, he will not be living with his mother. One night with her
nearly drove him mad, he can’t believe he lived with that insane woman for eighteen years. Perhaps it’s just something you
do when you’re young — you put up with your mother and her strange ways because you don’t know any better. But a man of a
certain age, like Pito, who’s forty-two,
knows
that the grass is greener on the other side.

Not that he actually packed his bags to move back in with his mother last night;
non,
he just took himself and a couple of beers. Mama Roti was quite shocked to see him at her door. “What are you doing here?”
she asked.

“My wife is giving me the shits, I’m sleeping here tonight,” he replied.

Mama Roti wasn’t pleased at all. “
Aue,
” she said, “it doesn’t mean you can come and annoy me. I have my habits. Sort your problems out with your wife. I told you
to do something special for Materena.”

Pito ignored his mother’s remark and stepped into the house. By eight o’clock he was ready to flee, but he stayed because
. . . well, he didn’t know where else to go. He thought about staying with one of his brothers, but then there’s the problem
with the wives. Then he thought about staying with Ati, but Ati is on a mission to find himself a suitable wife, the last
thing he needs right now is a mate landing on him. Then Pito thought about staying at a hotel, but he had no money, and payday
is not for three days. And so he endured his insane mother.

She burned the stew (and blamed Pito), then she talked during the whole movie. For some reason Mama Roti felt Pito needed
to know what was about to happen: “The police are going to find him . . . His wife is going to die.” Whenever Pito exclaimed,
“Mama!” Mama Roti said, “I’ve seen this movie before.” And on top of the annoying movie commentary, Mama snores! Pito could
hear her from his bedroom, the bedroom he once shared with his three brothers. He finally succeeded in falling asleep at about
midnight, only to be woken up at three a.m. by the sound of clanging coming from the kitchen. Pito got up to see what was
going on.

“I can’t sleep,” huffed Mama Roti, rearranging the pots and pans in her kitchen cupboards. “It’s like this when you get old,
the world is turned upside down.” Pito went back to bed, and when he got up this morning, for some reason his knees were hurting
him. And his mother said, “It’s because you don’t want to kneel.”

Ah,
non,
there’s no way Pito could live with his mother again! And as for living with Materena, it is going to be worse, Pito knows.
When Pito came back from his mother’s house, Materena didn’t look too enchanted. She looked straight into Pito’s eyes and
said, “You’re back? Already?”

So there’s only one thing for him to do: visit a real-estate agent.

Pito has never rented a house in his life, but he’s feeling very confident. His younger son is renting in Bora-Bora. He has
a bungalow by the sea, which he shares with his fiancée. Moana could have had a proper house, and could own it too, with compliments
of his rich father- and mother-in-law, but he wants to get his house with his own money.

Ah, if Pito were Moana, he would have accepted the generous offer. Vahine’s parents are only trying to thank their son-in-law
for having taken their problem daughter off their hands.