Deception

DECEPTION

Ships were a delight for the natives of the islands, especially American ships and all would practice their otea native dances and aparimas or hand dance for hours every evening for months in anticipation of their arrival.

As we were entertaining our visiting General Authorities and their wives in Bora bora one balmy evening in 2004, after dinner by torch light, we were mincing our way through the flowered path to our bungalows in the dark, we could hear the faraway drums of one of these dance practices, and Sister Dallenbach turned to me and, with concern in her voice she asked:" What are those sounds? "Oh, they're drums, they are practicing their dances" I answered. " Ohh" she said with relief " I thought the natives were getting restlesss." Elder Dallenbach could only say ' Oh Mary Jane!"

The natives also loved the ships because, not only will they be able to visit many big foreign ships but they would habitually be invited to a very fancy dinner with real china setting and all,and afterward be free to enjoy the ship, meet and chat with the company-starved crewmen on the festive lighted bridge, such a dreamy romantic treat for the girls.

Debates lasted for years about what the bowls of hot water with the floating lime slices were for on the tables, lime tea? room freshner?to put the empty shell fish in, to wash your face with after dinner?

A french man described his arrival at the Papeete quay in the 1800's as an incredible blinding array of shocking bright colored fragrant flowers and fruits, and splashes of islands wraps, and all sorts of hats, baseball like hats made of plaited coconut fibers, or visors with their hair pulled through the open top for the younger radicals, while most of the women shaded themselves with wide brim pandanus straw hats casting shadows on their sleeping nursing children or, to his horrific delight, on the piglets or puppies nursing at their breasts! They gave a new meaning to nourishing pets!

For now the ships are gone, and the youth are still practicing their dances for the next show on the Mariposa Cruise Ship. They finish early so that everyone may go shower and get ready for the Mormon dance.

By the time the traveling young men arrive from Tiva, the dance is well under way.

Terai only danced with her brothers on the perimeter since she is not quite 14 yet to be elligible to go to Church dances. All that Kifa could do is to eye her as he foxtrotted the older girls around the dance floor.
His sideway glances were not lost to Mataute, her father, known as the meaniest man on the island.
Mataute has seen that look before, that 'tinito'(chinese)young man in the red pareo shirt can only spell bothersome trouble. After 22 children, and most of them daughters, he ought to know.

(to be continued in this entry)

NOCTURNAL RENDEZ-VOUS

It was my belief, from what my mother had recounted to me in the new room of my home in Provo, that the whole beginning of our family drama started at this point, on this night after the dance. But according to new knowledge, the dance should have been later and not on the night of the very day they met. Or the night when all hell broke loose at the Hapairai's happened on another night other than that dance night .

Since last July, after listening to tonton Abel(He graduated from being just 'cousin ' to " Uncle" because of age and because he was one of the grandchildren my grandparents adopted , or more correctly fostered, since their family name was never changed) told me how he was right in the middle of my parents "frequentation" or courting. So accordingly, I reconsidered what my mom said to me that might have been ambiguous, and surmised that maybe when she mentioned the dance and the red shirt, and the moon light being so bright that my grandfather recognized my dad right away and blamed my mother for setting up the rendez-vous., she connected two stories without meaning to do so.

Bu according to Abel they met quite a bit before. So here is his tale:

I slept in the long front hall, which had 4 twin beds lined against the wall beneath the flowery curtains blowing in the Leeward breezes. This gave access to all three bedrooms which contained two big beds each. Your mother slept in the first one from the stairs coming up into the sleeping house on stilts.

When I would hear Kifa's footsteps creaking up the stairs, usually about 8:30 to 9 PM, I would part the curtain by from the bed closest to the stairs and look down at him smiling at me.

"Good he didn't forget my treat." I thought.

I 'd get up and go part the curtain to Terai's bedroom and whisper "Ei" and with a tilt of my head toward the steps, she'd hurry and tie her pareu properly and go sit with her guest on the stairs, as Kifa would toss me his bribe, a pork or peanut chow pao(filled steamed rolls), a piece of meat pie, something my family never could afford to buy, to keep my mouth occupied and my mind happy so I wouldn't tell.

As long as I was eating whatever he brought me, they could talk quietly, but as soon as I was done, I'd part the curtain again and say "Ei!, uoti ra! That's enough! " "E haere vau parau! I'm going to tell ! "

So Kifa would reluctantly leave her on the steps where she sat as I watched mercilessly as they said their silent goodbyes with their eyes.

Eventually when they were together, they'd take me with them way up into the valley jungle, where only the Chinese would want to go, with only a piece of smelly dried fish and steamed rice in their pack , which lasted them for days by foraging the rest of their meals from what grew in the wild .

It was with them that I learned you could eat the "tari'a iore" -mouse ears mushrooms growing on the rotten logs laying around on their vanilla plantation, and that green shredded papayas made a very fine crunchy salad to go with the dried fish and rice. The Chinese could make anything taste delicious.

MOONLITHT TREACHERY

Grandfather Mataute gathered his family around him for the evening prayer, eloquently praising God for his matchless power to forgive and blot out the sins of the sniveling and debauched ways of men, when footsteps came sloshing through the flooded backyard widening to the river delta.

Everone one tries to keep reverent until the Amen, and Granfather leaps up from his kneeling position to peer out the window and spot the intruder.

The moonlight is resplendent in all its glory, you can even see the leaves of the trees grrowing far up the mountains. As as Mataute pans his eyes back and forth to spot anything out of the ordinary, he sees a flash of a red pareo shirt moving through the tall grass toward the sleeping house and calls out with rage:

"I know who you are , you are A Kien's son! Why are you prowling around my house! Make yourself known!"

When KIFA heard the voice he disappeared into the night and listened woefully as the scene turned dark and ugly.

"Terai! You are the perpetrator in this! How dare you behave like a whore at my house, right under my nose. How many time have I told you all that if you bring boys here I will hang you from the rafters above your bed!

Haven't I warn you! How many times did I say it? He roars as he grabs and pulls her up the back stairs going up into the Sleeping House.

"I didn't tell him to come, I swear papa!" Don't lie to me! Kifa heard from his hiding palce, then a scramble, a fall on the ciment landing, a cry of pain, then a shuffle.

"Come with me so I can hang you, I mean what I say and I do what I say!" Mataute menaces through his teeth.

"No Papa, I will never do it again , never, never..." "So you did tell him to come by! I will teach you what I do with liers and whores." he seethes as he pulls Terai by the hair up the stairs as she looks wildly about for an escape. she has not a shadow of a doubt that her father would do just as he says, hang her from the rafters above her bed.

She makes a last effort to break away and falls back to the ciment landing, her clothes ripping off her body from his tight clutch, leaving her just in her white slip and bra. She scramble away and ran into the night

" Terai! Wait! I am so sorry! I didn't mean for all of this to happen! Let me help you! Come I will take you to my house until he cools off in the morning!" he whispers as he grabs her hand from behind a bush.

All night they ran toward the other side of the island retracing the path Kifa knew well even in the dark, for a girl of fourteen it was arduous and treacherous, but she ran as if tupapa'u ghosts were in hot pursuit and on their heels, their stinking hot breath sniggering at her nape, pulling at her hair sticky with dried blood, brimy sea and sweat of terror.

She was silent, except for her labored breathing. Kifa urged her on with tenderness and with grave concern. Would her father really hang her? What now, would he listen to reason come morning or would he be even more incensed?

The lamp in the bakery barn was on when they arrive. His father looks out to the edge of the sea toward the splashing footsteps. "At least he brought a friend with him to help make the bread on time for morning." he says to his wife .

"I wonder what happened to him. He's never been late making the bread every night." she adds, " And who is that with him? It's a girl!"

The warmth of the light and of the ciment ovens put some life back into her mind. The strange features of the typical Chinese frontier store mesmerizes her, the smell of fresh yeast, rising dough, and burning charcoal seeding the air with fecund ripeness, like having babies she imagines, yards and yards of soft baguette dough swelling precariously on their 2x4 beds as they turn a golden hue right before her eyes.

She's been left alone in her discovery, while Kifa is having a very animated conversation with his parents, all in Hakka except for a few words the father exclaims " Mataute! She's his daughter! Aiaiaia!" Her mind doesn't want to go there for now...She watches the flickering flames lick the contour of the baguettes ever so gently coaxing a blush from their puckering, plump lip -like slits. The kiss of death. Yeah that's what I got!

"Eat this, my mother just finished steaming it in the wok for us." Sitting on a log bench near the ovens, he ahnds her a pair of chop sticks and her bowl of food.

The rice is soft and fragrant, the vegetables strange and delicious, but her favorite is the meat.

"E ina'i te ie?" "Is this beef?" Umm! It is delicious, I've never had beef before!" she says shyly, but her eyes shone with childish delight.

I have seen that grin of intense pleasure in her eyes as she told me of that fateful night. While most of the story is clouded over as with a veil of darkness, something forboding and ugly, that veil is parted slightly for a few moments as she reminisces each tantalizing spice on her tongue, her eyes bright with a gamine smile. " Is is meat? she asks.

"It's just fish" he answered her, amused at her naivete. " What you are tasting that's different are the spices. There's garlic, ginger, dried orange rind, dried lemon grass, soy and oyster sauce, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, MSG and sea salt."

" We get salt once in a while, when fishing is great. Are the other spices as expensive?"

"My mother grows most of the stuff except for the sauces, they come from main land China."

'From that time forward I've always had garlic, ginger, and dried orange peels in my cupboard" she confided when she share her story with me on a warm afternoonAugust 26, 1996 . Coming down stairs to see them my father related:

" You mother is so funny, this morning I woke up and realized that it was the 26 th of August , so when she woke up I said to her 'E e cherie e, Happy 35th year of our Anniverssary!' and she whispered ' yeah, 35 years of misery!' She is so blunt !"

I endeavored the whole day to find the right time to coax her to tell me her Story.

I suppose he was not hurt by her reaction , because he understood that she meant all the pains of their life as a sum, starting with 'their story' and ending with what she was feeling that morning, sitted on the bed, looking out over Utah lake from the bay window, her eyes shielded with white cups still from cataract surgery. After all, Dad and I had her fly her to the States after we got an urgent message from Erica, while we were still on our last days of our Holy Land Tour in Athen Greece, that she was in a diabetic shock and to hurry home.

A generation later I still keep garlic, ginger, and dried orange peels religiously as a staple in my cupboard. They make me feel well kept, warm, well nourished, and complete- more accomplished. I am sure that is the way aunt Karesty's grand mother feels when she insist on black olives on her Holiday table. You will have to ask Karesty for that tale.

THE HAPAIRAI MORMON LEGACY

Each Protestant family saved all year for “Tithing Day” which lasted all day and through the night while each family on the island took their turn presenting their contributions, marching up to the deacon with as much pomp as one could muster. The festivities interspersed with the tithing parade went deep into the night, with lively Tarava Chanting lulling the little ones to sleep on mats near their swaying parents.
Each tarava verse in the making as the procession went on.
“I loved listening to aunt____________, she was the island tarava specialist. She would compose each verse on the spot as things would develop during the night and the spirit moved her. Her words were enchanting and sweet to the mouth, very catchy and easy to memorize. It went on all night long, and we sang answering her lead until we lost our voices. I never could be as great as she was” my mother reminisced with me on my pre mission trip in January 2002. This magazine cover illustrates this setting, a swaying sea of cross-legged, white clad singers, responding with delight to the lead call of the standing himene tarava leader, on and on they would repeat a few stanza, then the chorus. And just when everyone got the song, she would surprise the gleeful singers with a new verse on the spot, and they would follow the same pattern but with different words with added serendipities.

At one of those Tithing Festival, when it was time for the Teriipaia family to join the procession with their gift token, a piece of land on the steep hill, the deacon spurned their gift before the people. My grandfather as the local deacon tried to persuade him to apologize but he refused.
To make things worse, when T\the Hapairais and the Teriipaias entered the church the next Sunday with white shirts and ties as was the custom in Tahaa, the Deacon marched them out of the church for not being appropriately clothed with a suit coat exactly like the Zoramites they would read later in the Book of Mormon.

“ They want to treat us this way, we will have our own church. I’m going to Raiatea to invite the Mormon missionaries they hate so much to come and preach to us, maybe their Gospel is more charitable.!” My uncle Teriipaia said.

The first night Elder Childers and his companion arrived they preached to mostly family members filling the dance/movie/ meeting paepae or bowry made of vertical posts with a roof of plaited coconut leaves, Yom Kippur booth style. That’s what they truly were, temporary stalls,huts, or tabernacles during festivals and celebrations. By the second night, the group swelled beyond the reach of the bowry’s single Coleman lantern light, and settled around a fire, where the bewildered missionaries continued teaching.

The Teriipaias were the first to be baptized and the Hapairais last, but once my grandfather was baptized , his whole family except for his two already married daughters who lived in Tahiti took the plunge also.

His baptism day arrived with a fierce rain which turned the usually lazy river near the back of their home into a swollen flood impregnated with red mud, broken limbs and trees, floating coconuts and creatures, all racing each other toward the sea.
The nice pool which was prepared the evening before for the baptism was the first thing that washed away. Everything seems to connive together to stop this saving ordinance from going forward to the very last second.
After my grandfather was buried under the water, he came out of the water another man. The elders put their hands on his head to confer upon him the Gift of the Holy Ghost. As the missionary spoke with his eyes closed and his voice lifted heavenward, the small group around him, eyes wide open, watched with horror as a centipede, almost twelve inches long, crawl across my grandfather’s bare feet only to disappear up into his pant leg.
Grand father knew at once what just crawled onto his feet, even with his closed eyes. He tried to concentrate on the words of the Elder. He knew that the centipede must not sense any fear from him, or any danger, or he will sting. He could not drop his pants quickly enough without frightening it, besides what would all these people think.
He sensed the creature desperately trying to find his way out against the cinch of his belt . He sucked in his stomach to give it room to pass through and continue onto his chest. The spectators followed its wiggling shape through the thin fabric of his white shirt, My grandfather felt his entanneas near his jugular vein, he held his breath until he felt it move upward onto his neck, which he stretched enough to give it room to pass through the tie cinch. He finally breathed again when the centipede crawled out of his shirt collar onto his shoulder where he swatted it with a swift swipe of his hand, just as the Elder said his Amen. His children knew how significant that sign was to their legacy, as if all hell broke loose to prevent their enlightenment and progression, but in the end, the centipede, the evil one, the serpent, the scorpion of old, could not prevail against the power of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and Protector.
But the principle of duality is in all things, Scorpio represents both the serpent's head being crushed by Eve's descendant, and a wise serpent(Joseph Smith admonished his followers to be as harmless as doves but as wise as serpents) as in the brazen Serpent or the Feathered Serpent of the Mayas representing Christ. So it must be with the Centipede we would learn by and by.
Since that time it seemed that the centipede had truly become our family animal totem, being present at each Hapairai funeral.
Big fat ones slithered around the flower bouquets left on my mothers tomb in Hitiaa when my brother Karl went back to say goodbye to her by himself later that evening.
I was stung three times by centipedes, on my hip twice, then the back of my neck in less than 24 hours in the Marquesas as our family attended the Art and Dance Festival there in 2004, their presence, a constant reminder to watch our steps in this world.

The curious thing about it is that we don’t at all regard this sign as malevolent, but more like a reminder of something important, a warning, a confirmation. Heaven knows we did not choose the centipede as our animal totem, it chose us. The American indians say that we must learn the attributes of our totem animal and emulate them.

We are a water people, and where water is, centipedes abound; they are most active during and after a rain.

Did Nephi of the Book of Mormon have problems with centipedes too? His Egyptian name root Naph- water, as in "water is good", seems to have been understood by his South American brothers;the stone temple monuments speak of him and his feat , the Cloud Brother, their leader and prophet.

THE CHINESE LEGACY

San Franscisco was bursting with odd looking and very dirty cow boys their bags of gold couldn’t not clean.
“That is why most of us stay, they need us to keep them clean. We do not have to grovel in the dirt to find gold, they put it in the palm of our hands when they pick up their clean clothes.!” His cousins said persuadingly as they help him carry the last crates of Chinese food staples their father ordered.
“Aah our people can thank you in person for your dependable business. I don’t know how these Americans can subsist on beef, beans, bread and butter, and potatoes every day, some are becoming as large as cows, if they don’t get sick first and die. What have you got for us this time ?” his distant uncle said.
“ Three crates each of dried oysters, dried cuttle-fish, dried fish, sweet rice crackers, dried bamboo sprouts, dried fruits, five kinds of dried vegetables, noodles, dried sea-weed, dried Chinese bacon, dried abalone, peanut oil, dried mushroom, tea, and rice, the usual staples. You said not to bother send dried pork and chicken, since you can have that here.” he responded courteously, as he scanned the humble store weighing his options to stay and make his fortune here or gamble for better elsewhere.
His curiosity of what lay in that great South Pacific ocean and its undiscovered fortunes lured him on to balmier skies.
By the time he returned to China, or rather, by the time he felt sufficiently settled to finally send for his first wife-yes he married one of the servant girl in the meantime, (I don’t know if it was a convenience marriage due to French laws, or if even if it came about in San Francisco where only merchants had wives accompanying them), the boy sold to her and whom LaouSi had adopted during his abcence with his permission, had by this time had a son, and was managing the family estate while his wife, heartbroken, lonely, and angered by his neglect, left him to seek her own fortune in Paris France.
This son was my grandfather Yuen Thin Soy (the French put the last name Yuen first) who got to meet my great grandfather on his death bed, just a few hours before he died in Uturoa, the bustling village of Raiatea, in the upper room of his retail store.
His second wife , the servant, had left him in anticipation of his first wife’s arrival, since the French government did not allow polygamy, to make her life in Jamaica, where family members resided. She took all the gold she could wear on her person. The only other proper place for precious jewels in these uncertain times was under one’s pillow.

Yuen Thin Soy later married the bride mutually agreed upon by both families, a union calculated to benefit both families.
She was spunky and sassy in her own quiet way. There was nothing she could not do. When her husband did not get around to making her new baby a hanging swing seat, or a tricycle, she would grab the hammer to pull out the boards from the empty Nestle crates and straightened the nails to make them.
My dad remembers watching her in her black silk top and pants, her braid swinging down her back, building a bunk bed out of larger packing crate boards.
For Christmas she would give all the customers a bottle of fine Pineapple Rum she’d brewed for many weeks in the attic of the store, where my youngest uncle Adrien, Ki khong, lured by the delicious fruity aroma, dipped and licked his fingers until he fell asleep drunk near the bubbling vat, while the family looked all over for the missing child. She was definitely not a “Pointsettias Christmas gifts” kind of a person.
My mother remembers well the day her white cloth covered body, along with all the passengers of the hydroplane Catalina which crashed soon after takeoff into the pass between Raiatea and Tahaa, her white dainty feet even my mother who knew her only a very short time, recognized at once, among all the other dead bodies, most of them Chinese relatives returning from a funeral in Tahiti. They were all found still buckled in their seats, the 23 passenger hydroplane sunk at the bottom of Avapiti Pass in Uturoa. I remember pointing it out to sister Simmons from the dining room at the Hawaiki Nui Resort after a grueling day of Zone Conference in 2005.



Le Canso Catalina II A c/n 296 a été construit par Consolidated Vultee à San Diego pour le compte de la RCAF sous matricule 9712. Il est ensuite cédé à la RAF sous matricule V9712, VA712, puis vendu à un privé et porte VR-BAB comme indicatif. Il est acquis par la RAI et immatriculé F-OAVV. Le 19 février 1958, il est détruit lors d’un amerrissage à Raiatea dans les îles Leeward.

Grand father, Kung Kung, as I always called him, was devasted and began a downward spin with gambling and drinking til he died in 1976. He relied on his firstborn son, my father Kifa, Jacques, to carry on the business of the store. And so my father , at a very young age, had learned to work with very little sleep in between. They supplied the whole island with French baguettes which he made every night starting at 12 AM in a home made oven and delivered all of them by breakfast time on his bicycle. I asked him once what was his favorite thing in the world.
“ The sunrise!” he said without hesitation. Much later did it dawned on me the reason for his odd response: He was up and awake and delivering all those baguettes he spent all night making by sunrise every day for years, even to this day he is up and serving the Clinique Cardella personel, and the nearby college students at his Snack Dur Dur by that time. Hard work has not harden him though. It has actually kept him from debauchery and from getting old and decrepit, or is it Kung Fu that keeps him young and limber.

But now we must revert to about a year before all this happened, to the night of that fateful dance.

Kifa along with some friends decide that they must go back to Tiva to get some Mennen aftershave and Nestle concentrated milk out of the store to make their cocktail punch. If they left right after supper, before the sun sets, if they walked and swam really fast they could make it back by the time the dance has really warmed up, 8PM is about right.
Back at the family store, while his friends grabbed the ingredients for the hooch from the shelves, he slipped away to get a red flower island shirt, and plucked a tiare flower bud to tuck behind his ear. Oh he must not forget his boxing gloves, to show off his skills in case of a friendly boxing match.

The trip back was arduous to say the least, a dirt road didn’t quite girdle the island completely, a few stretches could only be traversed by swimming around a point before reaching the shore again. Some places had slippery cliffs to clamber over in the dark, all in the name of fun.
As it is today, the fun parties always seemed to happen at the far end of the island, the Tuamotu calls it “nake”, furthest away from where you are, and the boys took it in stride and made these treacherous jaunts almost every night, taking care to keep their change of clothes dry for the vahines, or rather , for the tamahines , considering how young their were.


The youth made their own party, a guitar or two and a ukulele strumming out “E Vahine Veve Au, O Tahiti Nui I Te Fare Auri, E Te Mau Tamarii, and a gallon of homemade hooch and you were “prime entertainment on the bridge”, which usually ended with gang fights, especially if there were no girls to distract their energies.


“We must restrain ourselves until after the dance. It’s a mormon dance and no drunkards are allowed. And those pretty girls are very picky too.” Kifa said.