Hanya Yanagihara - The People in the Trees

“Oh, no,” said the chief (naturally, this was all being translated by Tallent).

“When was the last one?”

“Three o’anas ago. It was Lawa’eke’s vaka’ina.” His voice was unexpectedly gentle. With one hand he held his spear, and with the other he stroked his hog’s back in long, smooth sweeps, the hog making contented rumbling purrs as he did so. I saw Tallent scribble in his notebook: “Lawa’eke appx. 63 o’anas?”

“And Lawa’eke was the one who joined you in eating at your vaka’ina?”

“E.”

“And at Lawa’eke’s vaka’ina, did anyone eat the opa’ivu’eke with him?”

“E.”

“Who?”

“Three others.”

“May we speak to them?”

“They are not here any longer.”

“They died?”

“No, they did not die.”

I wasn’t sure how to continue. “Where are they, then?”

“Away.”

“Where away?”

He gestured with his free hand, lifting it from the hog’s back and indicating the woods beyond. “Away.”

“When did they go?”

He tilted his head to one side, thinking. “About one o’ana ago.”

“And why did they go away?”

“Because they were becoming mo’o kua’aus.”

I could feel Tallent tense beside me, could hear his breath change. “How did you know they were becoming mo’o kua’aus?”

“I could see them change. We could all see them change.”

“What do the changes look like?”

“First they forgot to do things. They would go into the forest to hunt and not return. They would forget to take their spears with them. They would throw their spears at things and then return without them and we would have to look through the forest to retrieve them. Then they would tell the same story again and again. Their speech would sometimes lack sense. Then we knew that they were cursed and that soon they would be mo’o kua’aus.”

“And so what happened?”

“Our best hunters took them very deep into the forest, farther than any of them had ever gone before, and left them there. It took the hunters many days to walk back to us. Before they left, we had to remind them that they were cursed and that they could not stay in the village because they were becoming mo’o kua’aus.”

We were all quiet. “Did you ever see them again?”

He made a sudden sharp noise, like two wood clappers smacking against one another, which I later recognized as laughter, and jutted his chin in the direction of the dreamers. “E.”

“The dreamers?” Esme asked in surprise, and the chief glanced over at her, and she flushed.

“Who?” I asked the chief.

“Mua,” he said, and I could hear the distaste in his voice.

“So Mua was one of the people you led into the forest a year ago,” I said.

“Not me. Others.”

“All right. But do you recognize anyone else over there?” I asked. “The other two who had to go away?”

He peered over at them, though if his eyesight was as bad as Fa’a’s and the others’, I very much doubted he’d be able to make out their forms, much less their faces. “No,” he said.

“No?” I asked him. “Not the others? Not Ivaiva or Va’ana? Not Ukavi or Vanu?”

He looked at me steadily. “No.”

“No, they were not the ones who were led away, or no, you don’t know them?”

He shifted on the ground. “They were not the ones we led away.” Ah , I thought. He does know them .

“So,” I continued, slowly now, “last o’ana, some of the hunters took Mua and two others who were becoming mo’o kua’aus into the forest, but the only one of those three you’ve seen recently is Mua, correct?”

He looked impatient. “E,” he said.

“And what happened to the others?”

He tipped his head to the side, which I had begun to recognize was a sign that he was thinking but was also something of a shrug. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Your father,” I began, and then stopped. The chief waited. “Your father,” I said, “did he celebrate his vaka’ina?”

“No,” he answered swiftly. “I am the first in our family. But Lawa’eke’s father did.”

“Where is he?”

“He is here.”

“He is?” I looked around as if I would somehow recognize him, as if I might see him hefting himself out of the meat pit or strolling toward us. “Why wasn’t he at your vaka’ina?”

“He is unwell.”

“Unwell in what way?”

The chief sighed, and I thought — though it was difficult to tell — that I read sorrow in the flat, unknowable surfaces of his face, or perhaps regret. “He has become a mo’o kua’au.”

“So — so will you have to take him away?”

“E.”

“When did he become a mo’o kua’au?”

He tilted his head again. “Some time ago. At first it was slow. But now he really is a mo’o kua’au.”

“But you kept him here?”

He made a strange gesture with his head, a sort of sideways wag. “He is Lawa’eke’s father,” he said, after a long pause. We were silent for a while.

“When did he celebrate his vaka’ina?”

He thought. “I was a child,” he said finally. “It was shortly after my a’ina’ina.” He smiled suddenly, and I saw that his teeth were the same discolored chips as Fa’a’s. “He was my initiator.” I could feel, if not see, Esme stiffen at his words.

I did not know how Tallent would feel about my next request, and indeed, when I asked, he paused before translating and looked at me quickly before he did so. “May we meet him?”

The chief was silent for such a long time now that I feared I had offended him, and for a moment the only sounds were his hog enthusiastically sucking on the remains of whatever poor creature he was enjoying and the background shrieking of the children and the guttural barking of the women. But then he grunted and climbed to his feet, and we followed him and his lumbering hog through the village and to the back of the ninth hut, to the exact manama tree behind which lay the secret path.

But this time there was, tied to the tree with some of that thick palm-leaf braid — a short, strong length of it, with a noose at one end that I’d assumed was for leading hogs — a man. Did he resemble Lawa’eke? I suppose, although I was having difficulty remembering what Lawa’eke looked like and what exactly distinguished him from, say, the chief (although I seemed to recall that he was shorter). This man certainly did not appear to be much older than the chief — perhaps his skin was slightly breadier in appearance, leavened somehow, although that could have been from the heat, or too much water, or lack of it, or a dozen other causes — and he too had his spear and his enormous shrub of hair and, like the chief, a leathery cord around his neck, from which dripped several stony splintery shapes. 45

We all stood in a half-ring around Lawa’eke’s father, watching him sleep. A fly circled above his open mouth, darting closer and closer as if playing a game with itself. Behind me, Tallent was quietly questioning the chief, and the chief was giving brief replies. If the chief was correct, then Lawa’eke’s father was around 110 years old.

Back at our station, I considered this. (After some minutes of staring at Lawa’eke’s father, there seemed to be nothing else to do — the chief had not wanted to wake him, and indeed, when I reached down to poke him, he said something in a tone even I could not ignore — and so we had gone back to our respective sides of the clearing.) I had asked Fa’a to fetch Mua for me, and he now appeared from within the darkness, pulling Mua by the arm, Mua yawning and staggering, Fa’a’s normally unreadable face wearing an expression of great disapproval. Beside me, Tallent sighed. Esme was, thank god, at the river.