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  “He’s only my husband on paper,” says Juanita. “If he was really my husband, he wouldn’t leave me at home with the kids all the time to go surfing. Sometimes I feel that his surfboard is his wife. He tells me, ‘Surfing is my religion,’ but when he gets his needs, it’s me that’s his religion. Get lost! And he never helps me with the house, the kids . . . rien de quelque chose. It’s like I’m his slave.”

  Two months ago in bed, the day before Juanita’s husband went for yet another surfing holiday, Juanita told him that she wanted to talk to him about their marital problems. Next second, he was shouting at her, “Merde! You are a real boil, you know? Stop masturbating your mind!” Then he kicked the quilt and turned his back on his crying wife.

  So Juanita is divorcing her husband. She knows her mother will be very disappointed because she’s from the generation that doesn’t expect much from their husband. But this is Juanita’s life. She wants a real husband, a real man, not a living room doll. Juanita keeps on talking and Materena keeps on saying oui. Her oui says, “I hear you, girl, go on, give me more information.” Meanwhile Materena’s two assistants behind the glass window are slicing their throats with their fingers, meaning, Cut! Cut now!

  Ah hia hia, this is the hardest part of the job for Materena. Cutting people off, especially cutting off a woman pouring her heart out, but Materena has to be fair to the other women calling, she can’t keep them waiting for too long. Otherwise, they’ll hang up and switch to another station.

  Ati explained when she started working at the radio that the time limit for someone to be on air is forty-five seconds because that’s how long it takes to tell a good yarn. More than that and it’s just blabbing. Juanita has been talking for nearly one minute and a half. Materena leans forward and softly, diplomatically, says, “Juanita, let’s see if our next caller has a story that might help you. Keep listening to Radio Tefana, we need to help each other.”

  “Pardon,” Juanita cackles. “I talk too much, Heifara always says that.”

  Ouf, Materena is so relieved Juanita didn’t get cranky, unlike one of her callers, an old woman who went on and on about how these days old people are not respected when Materena told her (diplomatically) that her time was up.

  Eh well, you can’t make everybody happy.

  Materena thanks Juanita, presses the button, and is immediately connected to the next caller, who doesn’t want to give her name and who only has one thing to say to Juanita.

  “Life is not a fairy tale, the Prince Charming doesn’t stay charming forever, he turns back into a frog.”

  The following caller urges Juanita not to throw the pillow out of the window and to remember what attracted her to Heifara at the beginning of their story. Wasn’t it his surfing? The salt on his skin? Didn’t she brag to her girlfriends, “Guess what! My boyfriend is a surfer!”?

  “It happens,” the caller continues, speaking with a maternal voice, “that the thing that attracts us at the beginning is the thing that annoys us later on, but it doesn’t mean we should divorce, my chérie.”

  The next caller has a solution. “Speaking of pillows, I’ve been married for eleven years, and my husband is a real husband, not a work in progress. He sweeps the floors, he hangs the clothes on the line, and he’s a father hen with the children, it’s like he’s the one who gave birth to them!” The woman sighs like she can’t believe how lucky she is. “As soon as he does his parara,” she continues, “like go out with his friends, waste his money, tell the children to go away, mock my war wounds —”

  “War wounds?” Materena wants to know.

  “Well, my stretch marks,” the caller explains, cackling, with Materena joining in.

  She continues, “So, when my man is like that, I get my bottle of ylang-ylang and sprinkle a few drops on his pillow at night while he’s asleep.” The woman swears that the scent of the ylang-ylang does something to a man’s brain, because when her husband wakes up in the morning, he looks at her with surprised eyes and exclaims, “Who is this beautiful woman in my bed?” After that, he’s like hypnotized, he gives her compliments and does all that she asks. Sometimes, she doesn’t even have to ask. It’s the world in reverse!

  The lucky woman has been using that trick for ten years now, and for your information, sisters, here’s the address where she religiously buys her magic potion twice a year.

  Next morning, passing the very tiny Oils and Soaps shop, Materena finds fifty women, many with babies in their arms, squeezed against each other and spilling out onto the footpath. There are big women, little women, middle-aged women, young women, women who’d never heard of the magic ylang-ylang until last night on Materena’s program. Materena rarely gets to see her audience. That is the reason she’s here. She doesn’t need a potion, her kids have all grown up. For some reason, she’s also suspecting that the woman who called last night is inside that shop, behind the counter, at the cash register.

  “Eh,” Materena asks a young woman nearby, “you’re here to buy ylang-ylang?”

  “Oui, but it’s not for me, it’s for my sister.” She takes a step forward without a glance at this woman twice her age.

  “Ah, and she has children?” Materena asks.

  “Oui, five, but it’s not the potion that’s going to save her.”

  “Ah bon?” The next question on Materena’s lips is, And what is going to save your sister? But you can’t ask too many questions to people you don’t know. It’s not proper. On radio it goes, but not on the streets.

  “Men are like fruit,” says the young woman with her serious face like she really knows what she’s talking about. “As the French say, there are ripe ones and there are not-ripe ones.” She glances to Materena and nods a firm nod, meaning, yes, this is what I think. “Potions,” she spits, “are for the superstitious. Me, I believe more in the power of the head.”

  Still the Man

  The main story on the coconut radio in the Mahi quartier is still how Pito doesn’t deserve Materena. For a start, she’s very nice compared with her husband, he hasn’t been raised well, that one. You’ll never hear “Iaorana, my arse” coming out of Materena’s mouth! Also, the house where Pito lives belongs to Materena — part of her heritage from her mother — whereas Pito doesn’t have even a handful of soil to his name. Plus, Materena still looks young, you would think she was in her thirties, but the relatives can’t say the same about her husband — he’s not aging well at all. And now Materena is learning to drive!

  The story also goes that Materena tolerated her good-for-nothing husband for years and years because she wanted a father for her children, having grown up without her own father, only uncles. But her children are adults now, they are living their own lives. Materena doesn’t need Pito anymore.

  Ah, just as well Pito isn’t the kind to take gossips seriously. Another man would have panicked, crumbled under the pressure, and complained to his wife about her relatives being horrible to him. But Pito has nerves of steel. It will take much more than gossips to knock out his confidence.

  And so today, with his usual confident demeanor, Pito steps down from the truck — not in Faa’a, but in Punaauia, where he’s from — to see how his mother is and everything; to make sure Mama Roti is still alive.

  Here’s the Ah-Ka Chinese store by the side of the road and Pito instantly feels at home, because he is. He bought thousands of Chinese lollies at this Chinese store when he was a kid. It was much smaller then, and back in those wonderful days the owners of that Chinese store trusted the little people, they gave them credit. These days, they want their money up front.

  But at least children aren’t allowed to buy wine for their grandparents anymore. Pito remembers going to that Chinese store as an eight-year-old to buy a liter of Faragui red wine for his grandfather. He’d say, “It’s for Grand-père,” and Ziou, the Chinese man, would exclaim in disbelief, “Your grandfather is still alive with all that he drinks?”

  Pito stood near the banana tree over there one hundred thousand
times, waiting for the truck to go to school, the market, or to see his copain Ati or a girl he liked. But the old man who used to drink vodka and talk to himself beside the banana tree died — in his bed — when Pito was about ten. He was a great-uncle, a well-known singer through the whole of French Polynesia, admired for his tenor voice. He really had extraordinary lungs, but then his woman ran away with a gardener. End of career. The singer became a drinker.

  Otherwise, nothing much has changed around here in the Tehana quartier. Aunties, older now, are still hanging clothes on the line, watering flowers, gossipping over hibiscus hedges, raking the leaves, minding the great-grandchildren, keeping busy. Pito walks past the row of neat, proud fibro shacks, his eyes firmly on the dirt path. He’s hoping to pass unnoticed, but of course this is impossible.

  “Pito, iti e!”

  Pito looks up and waves to his auntie Philomena, one of his father’s eight sisters, and the one Mama Roti likes the least because she talks to say nothing and asks too many questions. Apparently, Auntie Philomena used to be very reserved in her youth, although this is hard for Pito to believe.

  “Come here a little,” Auntie Philomena cackles, opening her fat arms to her nephew. “What’s this walking with your eyes on the ground, eh?” She squeezes Pito tight, strangling him almost. “So? How’s life in Faa’a? How’s Materena? How’s her mother? How’s Ati? How are you? I hear Materena is a big star now, eh? How much are they paying her at the radio? More than when she was a cleaner, that’s for sure, eh? I wanted to work at the radio when I was young, but your uncle said it was not a place for a woman, can you believe it? The world has changed, eh? When are they going to give Materena a limousine? When I was young I wanted to drive a car, but your uncle said cars are not for women, can you believe it? The world has changed, eh? Aue, we’re all getting old, Pito, and you too! I remember when you were a baby, you ate a peg, and it came out with your caca two days later! I know you don’t believe me, because your mama told you it’s impossible for a baby to shit out a peg, but I saw that peg with my own eyes. Enfin, you’re here to visit your mama? That’s nice. She looked a bit sick last time I saw her. But how does it feel to be married to a star?” The auntie stops talking and she’s now expecting her nephew to answer.

  “A star?” Pito chuckles. “Materena is still the same.”

  “Stop doing your idiot, Pito, everybody who works at the radio is well known, but Materena is the most popular. And she’s only been at the radio for one year! Imagine a little in ten years! She’s going to be better known than Gabilou. I like Materena’s radio program, it talks about things I understand, like life, love, youth. I told Tonton to listen, but you know your uncle, he just wants to listen to his doum-doum music.” Auntie Philomena stops talking to take a deep breath.

  Okay, it’s now or never! “Allez, Auntie,” Pito jumps in. “I see that you’re busy. I leave you.” Before she starts up her speech again, Pito walks away, nodding in agreement to the words she’s calling out to his back.

  Auntie Maire, watering her flowers with her latest great-grandchild fast asleep in her carriage nearby, stops him two yards further. The eldest sister and the skinniest, she’s the sister-in-law Mama Roti likes the most because she doesn’t talk to say nothing.

  “Pito!” Auntie Maire bends her hose to stop the water flowing and gives her nephew a big kiss on his cheeks. “It’s very nice of you to visit Mama, haere, go . . . don’t let Mama wait, and give my felicitations to Materena for her first year at the radio.”

  Pito gives his promise and keeps walking, only to be stopped yards later by another auntie, and another auntie, and another. At last he reaches the house where he took his first steps, drank his first beer, smoked his first paka, and lost his virginity with a friend of a cousin.

  He was about sixteen and she was more than twenty. It was the big love for Pito, but she dropped him for an older man who worked at the bank. Pito was heartbroken for months, and after that he was a little obsessed with older women for a while. Sitting across from an older woman in a truck, he’d be transfixed, watching as she rolled a cigarette, licking the paper and telling him with her eyes, I bet you’d like me to do that to you, eh, kid? Pito would swallow hard. He’d fantasize about that sexy mama for weeks.

  Enfin, here’s Mama Roti at the door, warned of her son’s visit by the exclamations of the sisters-in-law. As he gets closer, she looks Pito up and down and says, “You’re getting fat.” There’s no Iaorana, how are you, thank you for remembering that I’m alive.

  “I’m the same as last week when you saw me.”

  “Where’s my Materena?”

  Your Materena, eh? Pito snorts, thinking back to the night when he overturned his mother’s kitchen table after she said words about Materena that did not please his ears. Plates and glasses smashed on the floor right before Mama Roti’s horrified eyes, but at least she got Pito’s message: Don’t talk bad about the mother of my children. Pito was drunk and Mama Roti not too far off, and it’s very possible that the words got a bit exaggerated, but they both learned a valuable lesson that night: Don’t drink together. “Materena is in town for her driving lesson.”

  “Driving lesson?” Mama Roti cringes as if she’s just been told an absurd story. “And after? A passport? She has a car at least?” Mama Roti knows many people who take driving lessons and they don’t even have a car. What’s the use of that? Pito informs his mother that actually, yes, Materena has a car. She bought Mama Teta’s Fiat two days ago, to be paid for little by little as per the Tahitian finance tradition. Mama Teta didn’t need the Fiat anymore, having upgraded to driving a minibus since starting her nursing home. That way, she can take her clients to Papeete for their medical checkups and to special outings like bingo.

  “You have lots of gray hair, Pito.” Mama Roti doesn’t care about Materena’s car. “What’s the story? You’re stressed?”

  “I’ve had gray hair for the past three years.”

  Mama Roti looks into her son’s eyes. “Maybe it’s time for you to put your flag down and do something.”

  “Do something?” Pito asks, wondering what his mother is going on about. “What?”

  “It’s not up to me to tell you,” Mama Roti snaps. “Materena isn’t my wife. I don’t know what she loves. Pito, eh, you were so handsome before, but now you look so old and you’re not even a grandfather yet.”

  “Eh?”

  “When I look at you,” Mama Roti sighs with deep concern, “it’s like you have ten grandchildren.”

  “Eh?” Pito repeats, thinking, Is this a son’s reward when he remembers that his mother is alive? Criticisms and guessing games?

  “Aue, Pito.” More sighing from Mama Roti. “Look at yourself in the mirror now and then, hum?”

  Two hours later, in front of the mirror, Pito is shaving. He shaves when there’s a funeral, a wedding, a baptism, a meeting at work, and when he wants his wife. After the shaving, Pito scrubs his body clean with soap, dabs eau de cologne on his neck . . . in brief, he makes himself beautiful like a prince.

  He thinks fleetingly of how when it’s the wife who’s in the mood, she doesn’t have to use any tricks to interest her husband. She just gives him the look, the look that says, Coucou, look at me closely, I’m interested! And the husband better be interested too, otherwise she gets suspicious. “How come you’re not interested? You have a problem? Another woman?” It’s a cruel world, oui, but Pito isn’t going to waste time philosophizing about it. He’s too busy getting prepared.

  When Materena walks into the house, carrying a big box, Pito — shaved, smiling his uh-huh-huh smile, and puffing out his bare chest — is posing for a Mr. Universe photograph on the sofa.

  Materena bursts out laughing.

  “What?” Pito asks, sucking his belly in. “What is funny?”

  Still laughing, Materena delicately puts the box on the ground and massages her sore arms. “I’m not telling you,” she says. “But that box was heavy.”

  “What did y
ou buy this time?”

  “A thing to put things in.” What Materena means is a multiple-tray rack. “It was reduced by eighty percent.”

  “With you, it’s always reduced by eighty percent,” Pito chuckles, but when he sees Materena rip the box open, his heart sinks. “You’re not going to do this now!” Out come pieces of metal and plastic. “It can’t wait a little?”

  Materena reads the instructions with Pito looking on, amused.

  “Okay, okay,” Materena says, grabbing one of the pieces. “Oui, I put that with that.” She grabs another piece. “Then I do this . . . All right, then, it’s not the right piece, maybe it’s that piece. Non, it’s not that piece either, okay, how about I try with another piece . . . Merde! Okay maybe I’m going to read the instructions again, eh?” She reads. “Okay, oui, I put that piece with that piece, and then non, ah, oui, silly me, it’s that piece . . . non . . . But! Who wrote these stupid instructions? Okay, let’s start from the beginning again.”

  “You’ve got two years?” Pito asks, letting his belly out a bit.

  Materena looks up and starts laughing again. “I can’t look at you, Pito, you’re making me laugh with your belly like that . . . Okay, Materena, concentrate.”

  Pito looks on, stroking his smooth chin. Materena doesn’t understand instructions, it’s like with plumbing, electrical wires, digging holes . . . Pito isn’t making fun of his wife though, it’s not the moment to annoy her.

  “You want me to help you?” he asks sweetly, sucking his belly in again.

  This . . . , says Materena to herself, goes here or here?

  Half an hour later she cracks. “I don’t understand your instructions!” she growls at the piece of paper.

  “You want me to help you?” Pito asks again as he gets off the sofa as naturally as possible. The trick here is not to look like he’s superior. Pito knows from experience (though very limited) helping Materena that when he puts his I’m-superior look on his face, Materena changes her mind about being helped.