J. Maarten Troost - The Sex Lives of Cannibals

The station itself was nothing much to look at. It looked like a rural school with single-story buildings and tin roofs. The most striking feature was the massive satellite dishes. The complex was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Just outside the gate, we got off our bicycles.

I looked at Sylvia.

“I think we should,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Sylvia asked.

“Yes. We must.”

“You’re right. It’s necessary.”

“ Free Tibet now! ” we shouted.

And then we pedaled like hell before they shot us.

SHORTLY THEREAFTER, Sylvia was dispatched to the Federated States of Micronesia, where she would donate the hospital equipment that the government of Kiribati had declined to accept. With Sylvia traveling—and oh, how I envied her—I decided to have my fish and rice at the Otintaii Hotel, which offered a deceptively impressive menu, though in fact it could rarely scrounge up anything more than fish and rice. There, I discovered a veritable Chinatown. I passed the time guessing who represented Chinese officialdom and who was there to buy I-Kiribati passports, a lucrative sideline for the government of Kiribati, particularly in the months leading up to Hong Kong’s absorption by China. The Hong Kong Chinese were easy to spot. The men display flash, and the women, unaware of local cultural mores, display flesh. The differences between a Shanghai merchant and a Beijing lackey were more subtle, but the shoes gave everything away. The bureaucrats wore plastic sandals; the merchants genuine imitation leather.

I was sitting by myself when a young Chinese man asked if he could join me. There were no other seats available. He sat down, and though his English was halting and my Chinese nonexistent, we got to talking. He was an engineer, a recent graduate from Beijing University, and he was on Tarawa to help finish the Chinese Embassy. “I want to build the most beautiful building in Kiribati,” he said. He was affable. I found it curious that he got his degree at Beijing University. Only the country’s elite studied there, the children of the Communist Party’s leaders. I asked him about the demonstrations in 1989, when thousands of students, particularly from Beijing University, demanded reform.

“They were misguided,” he said. “China is a very great country.”

He looked deeply uncomfortable.

“What about the massacre in Tiananmen Square?” I asked.

Before he could respond, an older Chinese man, clearly someone of authority, walked over from the next table and pointedly put out his cigarette in the ashtray in front of me, all the while staring at the young engineer.

“Excuse me,” the engineer said. “I have found another seat.”

I spent the rest of the evening alone.

When Sylvia returned, I told her about the incident. Obviously, the Chinese smoker was a political officer. I also updated her on the latest rumors. There was a second submarine. More guns had been spotted.

“Oh good. More information to pass on,” she said.

“Pass on to whom?” I asked.

“The American ambassador to the Marshall Islands.”

“Excuse me? You’re informing the Americans about the Chinese on Tarawa?”

“Uh-huh. I met with her in Majuro and told her everything I knew.”

“Not knew. Heard , as in rumored.”

“Whatever. She wrote it all down, and asked me to keep her updated.”

This was an interesting project for Sylvia to pursue. Of all the guidebooks to the Pacific, only one mentioned Kiribati. And in that guidebook, FSP was described as a CIA front. This had outraged Sylvia.

“I thought you were going to send a letter to that guidebook,” I said.

“I am.”

“But now you’re spying for the U.S. government.”

“Yes. But it’s a secret.”

Some months later, when the American ambassador arrived on Tarawa to attend Independence Day celebrations—had another year passed already?—Sylvia offered her the latest intelligence on Chinese activities in Kiribati. More submarines. Where the Secret Room was in the embassy. The strength of their defenses around the tracking station. The payoffs to the government to keep quiet. The spike in Chinese activities whenever the Americans tested their missile defense system. Sylvia was thorough. She was also undeterred when the source of the rumors regarding the submarines and the guns turned out to be an I-Matang prankster.

“So what?” she said. “You agree that the Chinese are using the satellite tracking station to spy on what’s happening on Kwajalein?”

“I do.”

“And you agree that the Chinese are corrupting the government?”

“I do.”

“And you agree that the Chinese are the biggest polluters on Tarawa?”

“I do, though I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” she said. “And if I can make their lives a little more difficult, then I’m happy to do it.”

Beware the wrath of the roused environmentalist. Which is perhaps why not long after we left Tarawa, four American F-16s did a few low-level flyovers above the satellite tracking station. Which may have led to the Chinese taking down an American spy plane off the southern coast of China. I’m not saying these events are connected. But I’m not saying they’re not.

In which the Author shares some thoughts on what it means to Dissipate, to Wither Away, Dissolute-like, and how one becomes perversely Emboldened by the inevitability of decay, the sure knowledge that today, possibly tomorrow, the Body will be unwell, which leads to Recklessness, Stupidity even, in the conduct of Everyday Life.

I am not sure when it happened, but at some point during my time on Tarawa I stopped wearing a seat belt. I saw nothing unusual in having the pickup truck filled with gas from a pump that was smoking, delivered by an attendant who himself was smoking. The sight of three-year-olds piled precariously on speeding mopeds no longer filled me with wonder. Body boarding in bone-crushing surf was an activity to be savored. Digging flies out of ever-deepening cuts became a thoughtless little habit. Four-day-old tuna? How ’bout sashimi? Six cans of Victoria Bitter? Why not? And hey, smoke ’em if you got ’em.

I’d become immune to disease, not physically, but psychologically. Nothing fazed me. “Do you remember that consultant from New Zealand?” Sylvia asked. “The one who was here to train the police force? Well, his office just sent a fax. Apparently, he’s in the hospital with cholera and leptospirosis. They thought we should know.”

“What’s leptospirosis?”

“Something to do with rat urine.”

“Well, he shouldn’t have had the rat urine… Hey, I found some fresh sea worms for dinner.”

I took it all in stride. Cholera, leptospirosis, hepatitis, leprosy, tuberculosis, dysentery, hookworms, roundworms, tapeworms, mysterious viral diseases, septic infections, there were so many diseases to contend with on Tarawa that it was best to ignore them altogether. Beyond boiling drinking water, there wasn’t much that could be done. What happens happens, I thought. It could always be worse. That’s what I told Sylvia when she was felled by dengue fever.

“I feel like I’m dying,” she said. “Every bone in my body hurts.”

“You’re not dying,” I contended. “Unless its hemorrhagic dengue fever.”

“There’s no cure for that.”

“No there isn’t. But at least it’s not Ebola. Just relax. You’ll probably feel better in about two weeks.”

And she did.

On Onotoa, in the far southern Gilbert Islands, it seemed perfectly normal to have a meal of salt fish in a maneaba where fifty-odd shark fins were drying in the rafters. Afterward, I went swimming. When I did come across a shark in the shallows above the reef, I just smacked the palm of my hand hard on the surface of the water, and off it swam. Sharks had become an irritant, nothing more.