Hanya Yanagihara - The People in the Trees

Something was beginning to shape in my mind. “Ask him if I can pick one.”

He did, and then turned back to me, shaking his head. “Only people who have reached sixty o’anas can touch an opa’ivu’eke, he says.”

“So you can, because you’re supposed to be sixty o’anas, and he can, because he already is.” Beside me, Fa’a moved from one foot to the other, shifting his weight and gazing into the woods beyond the lake.

Tallent confirmed this with Mua and nodded.

“Ask him — ask him what would happen if you touched an opa’ivu’eke before you made sixty o’anas.”

I saw the agitation in Mua’s face immediately. His answer was long and seemed complicated, and Tallent frowned, so hard was he concentrating on what Mua was saying. A couple of times he stopped Mua and asked him for clarification, and Mua answered him rapidly, his hands fanning the air.

“He says,” Tallent reported, and I could tell that he was excited by the way he was forcing himself to speak so slowly and deliberately, “I could be wrong, but — he says that anyone who touches an opa’ivu’eke brings a great curse upon his family. One of the wrongdoer’s family will reach sixty o’anas and will get to eat the opa’ivu’eke, but after a period of time that person will slowly lose his ama and will become a mo’o kua’au.”

And then, unexpectedly, he smiled at me, just at me, a brilliant, shining smile, and I knew what he was remembering: that first week on the island, when he had told me his story of the hunter and the myth of the mo’o kua’au, the creature who lived without love, without speech, whom Fa’a had seen prowling the woods of Ivu’ivu. Many decades later, I can reflect upon this and acknowledge that his triumph — our triumph — was premature (after all, we had no idea what any of this meant), but at the time it seemed a delirious relief, especially, I imagine, for him: he had not been foolish after all. He had followed a story and it had revealed itself to be — well, if not true, then certainly confirmed. In reality, of course, it was little better or more conclusive than rushing off to New Mexico because you had heard that aliens purportedly lived in some small town there, and then being independently told by the inhabitants of the town that they themselves had seen aliens, but in the moment, logic and its various demands were briefly abandoned.

“Ask him,” I instructed, “what happens when you become a mo’o kua’au.”

Tallent did. “You are banished,” he reported.

“Ask him,” I continued — and I will not lie, I was as excited as Tallent—“if he was banished.”

He did, and for a long time, at least three minutes, Mua said nothing, only looked at the lake, where the opa’ivu’ekes were still performing their simple, avant-garde choreography. When he at last spoke, it was less his answer itself I noted than the sad, whistling sigh on which it rode, so that I knew what he would say even before I heard the word itself.

“E,” he said. Yes .

Back in the village (which now seemed unbearably landlocked and airless and confined), I did my prisoner’s walk through the woods, looping around the clearing again and again before going to my tree. The tree that I had begun to consider my own was a manama and distinguished only by the fact that it was relatively lonely; there were few other trees surrounding it, and I could sit, or even lie, on the thickly piled moss that surrounded it, protecting it from the forest floor. To get to it, I walked fifteen minutes to the west of our camp and then took a right at a particularly vicious-looking orchid, whose urinous blooms spat out two long, spiraling stamens the color of fresh blood.

At the tree I considered what I knew. First, I knew that the U’ivuans thought the opa’ivu’eke sacred. Second, I knew that it was forbidden to touch one unless you had reached sixty o’anas, in which case you were expected to eat one. Third, I knew that in the Ivu’ivuans’ ceremony, only those sixty o’anas or older could join in the eating of the opa’ivu’eke. Fourth, I knew that it was relatively rare for people to reach this advanced age — witness the chief’s vaka’ina, in which only his adviser had been able to join him. That meant that only two of sixty-six people in the village had reached that age. Fifth, I knew that Mua and his compatriots were all at least sixty o’anas (how much over sixty o’anas I couldn’t trouble myself with at the moment), which meant they had all eaten the opa’ivu’eke. And sixth — sixth was Mua’s story of the curse: if someone touches an opa’ivu’eke before his time, he dooms someone in his family to becoming a mo’o kua’au, which leads to banishment.

That much, naturally, was uncomplicated, a simple synthesizing of information. Esme and Tallent could have done it. Esme and Tallent probably had done it. “Obviously,” I heard Esme’s honking voice in my ear, “it’s the opa’ivu’eke.” But what did that mean? Did everyone who ate the opa’ivu’eke become, eventually, a mo’o kua’au? And what did being a mo’o kua’au mean ? Tallent had translated the term as being “without voice,” but with the exception of Eve, all of the dreamers could speak. Not very coherently always, or interestingly, certainly, but they all could. So why had they been banished? And if it was the opa’ivu’eke that was responsible, why did they keep eating it?

Back at camp, I shared with Tallent some of what I had concluded, although I couldn’t share all my suspicions because Esme had approached us, breathing heavily and clomping through the undergrowth as she did. Tallent frowned, concentrating, and eventually it was agreed between us that I should interview the chief. Fa’a was dispatched and a meeting requested.

Later that night, after the villagers had eaten and a group of men had gone hunting for the screeching, red-eyed bats they liked to roast, we were summoned. Once again we were at the fire, the same group of four (though I had tried to suggest that Esme’s presence wouldn’t be necessary and might perhaps be detrimental; given her dislike of the chief since the a’ina’ina ceremony, might not she make her displeasure known and offend him? But she glared at me and announced that she was perfectly capable of keeping silent and would be accompanying us no matter what). Across from us sat the chief, alone but for his hog, who had reverted to his former dusty state, the chewed-bark tips of his tusks splashed with mud. He was masticating something I couldn’t quite distinguish, but every now and again a piece of it — a little three-toed paw, as small as a thumbnail and speckled with a patchy fur — would emerge from between his teeth as he turned his snack around in his mouth.

I knew it was not logical, but I kept looking at the chief as if I might discern something transformed in his appearance. After all, I had seen him participate in two monumental rites of passage, and it seemed only natural that they should have left some sort of significant mark on him or his personality. And although they hadn’t, I did notice that he was wearing something around his neck: a loop of woven vines, from the center of which hung a chipped shard of something hard and glazed, shining dully against his skin.

For a while we all sat in silence, polite and embarrassed yet again, neither side willing to begin. Finally Tallent spoke, and the chief nodded to him.

“I told him we were honored to be invited to join his vaka’ina,” Tallent told us.

“Yes,” said the chief.

There was another silence.

“Chief,” I began, and watched as first his head and then his hog’s moved slowly in my direction, “do you celebrate the vaka’ina often?”