Tatjana Soli - The Last Good Paradise

“Trust me on this.”

Dex sat in her director’s chair (dug up from the yacht of a movie producer who had been a former guest).

“How you doing?” she said gently.

“You didn’t care if I bled to death.”

“A doctor will be here any minute. Not my fault that they couldn’t find a boat last night, huh?”

“If anyone cared, one of the ones docked here could have made the trip.”

Wende nodded, frowned. “The sun comes up. You give your speech, Cooked gives his, bam, we’re done.”

“We’re done, too, that’s what you’re saying.”

She moved in close to him. “Today, Dex, you are doing something great. You are helping people who don’t have a voice. You are putting your fame to a higher purpose. You are touching on the wings of greatness. I, for one, have never been as turned on by you as I am this very minute. Think what it’s going to do to your fans. Think Lennon, Clapton, Bono.”

Dex blinked. “And us?”

“Let’s not have things messy right now.”

“You used me.”

Dex had never cared so deeply now that she didn’t.

* * *

The red disk of the sun rose out of the primal broth of ocean as the Crusoe live cam returned to shaky, computer-generated faux life, capturing the light on the water and the pole in front of it in a symbolically powerful crucifixion tableau. Unbeknownst to the experts, the live cam had been moved and pointed in a different direction in order to capture that very sunrise (Loren had purposely avoided such a location for its commercial vulgarity, much preferring the more subtle Japanese aesthetic of a slow lightening of sky, water, and sand to represent the passage of time), confusing the calculations of the experts and bringing the island a few more hours of splendid isolation.

The faint throbbing of drums grew louder and louder as they approached. The eight “Cannibal Henchmen” ( Daily Star ), as they were now known in the world press, came on, but this time they weren’t restraining a bound Dex. They were forming an escort. Although Wende had considered dragging the whole thing out, Ann had convinced her to end the charade as quickly as possible. Dex walked solemnly between his former jailors. They had removed some of his bruise makeup and applied cover-up to the real bruises so that the damage wasn’t a reminder of yesterday’s brutality. Wende didn’t want the audience thinking that this turnabout was coerced Stockholm syndrome stuff.

Dex stepped in front of the “cannibals,” who formed a fierce backdrop behind him.

“I’m Dex Cooper from the band Prospero. As some of you may know by now, I came to the islands to rest and write music with my girl … my former … anyway…”

Dex coughed, looking down. Either he was lost deep in thought or he had forgotten his lines.

“The point is, I was here purely as a tourist, in love with the beauty of the place and making music, when I was abducted by this Polynesian tribe of indigenous peoples. By the way, they find the term ‘cannibal’ highly insulting and inflammatory. They prefer the term ‘ Ma ‘ohi .’ More on that later.

“Of course, I was really scared at first, and then, when I realized the whole cannibalism thing wasn’t going to happen, I was just pissed that my vacation was being ruined.”

Wende cringed. Dex was rambling. She’d asked him point-blank if he could improvise, and he’d said yes, but he was going off message.

“Thing is, these guys are cool. They’ve told me about the generations of mistreatment they have suffered under. Tomato, tomahto; potato, potahto; territory, colony — far as I can tell, they’re all the same. Thing is, these people are one with their environment. They’ve told me about the land being poisoned. The oceans, too. There are areas where the fish they used to eat now make them sick. Cancer, leukemia, birth defects — they’ve got them all here. In record-high numbers. And even though it happened a long time ago, like in the ’60s and ’70s, the effects are as if it happened yesterday. They kidnapped me in frustration because no one will listen. Not the government, not the world press, and, well, you’re listening now, aren’t you? Not for the right reasons, but sometimes we have to have something jammed down our throat, have our nose busted, our ribs cracked in order to get our attention, don’t we?”

My man came through, Wende thought, and made a fist pump for victory. She signaled Cooked to go on.

“This is one of the leading businessmen in the area, Vane ‘Cooked’ Teriieroo, and he owns the buff resort where I’ve been staying. He’s involved himself in negotiating my release. He’ll take over now.”

Cooked came on, wooden and nervous. “We know that the people of the world might not believe us. They think we, to use the words of the great Shakespeare, make ‘much ado about nothing.’ But the great doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote in 1964 to our freedom leader, the great Teariki, ‘Long before receiving your letter, I was worried about the fate of the Polynesian people. I have been fighting against all atomic weapons and nuclear tests since 1955. It is sad to learn that they have been forced on the inhabitants of your islands. Yet I know that the French Parliament would not come to your assistance…’”

Wende’s eyes glazed over. She was dying a thousand professional deaths. She’d begged, begged , him not to read the letter because it would suck energy from the telecast, but no. It dragged. Should have been paraphrased. Viewer attention span, people!

“‘Those who claim that these tests are harmless are liars. Like many other persons, I am ashamed of the Parliament’s attitude on this matter. The Parliament and the general public are sacrificing you. I feel sorry for you and shall continue to do so … Who could imagine that France would be willing to deliver its own citizens to the military in this manner?’”

Like an ace pitcher, Cooked shook off the signs from Wende to cut short. “The testing finally stopped in 1996. Its effects have not.”

He read from another paper that listed the number of thyroid and reproductive cancers in the affected populations, the number of birth defects and infertilities. He listed contaminant levels in the ocean, and then hit on one of their primary concerns: Moruroa and Fangataufa, where the most intensive nuclear testing occurred. “Islands that are now radioactive time bombs.”

Dex had moved off to the side of Cooked to give him center stage. He bowed his head to concentrate on the words, except that not only did he bow his head, he also closed his eyes, and started to sway ever so slightly, as if he were listening to the most uplifting gospel. A look of ecstasy passed onto his face that couldn’t be caused by the bureaucratic droning of Cooked, thus inadvertently stealing the show. Was he listening to music through his earbuds? Never share the stage with children, animals, or rock stars.

Cooked continued. “We do not believe that the radioactive poisons are imprisoned in the rock. We believe there is leakage. Moruroa is nearing collapse, which will spill large amounts of radioactive plutonium into the ocean, affecting all of the South Pacific and reaching Asia and the Americas also. Why is nothing being done, except to keep people out of these areas?”

A seismic shift was happening within Cooked. His words were tamped down and bloodless on the outside because he was trying to not burst out in tears, not start shouting and parading, fulfilling the stereotype of the childish native unable to control his emotions. These words were not dry statistics to him. They were wounds. They cracked his heart open. He suddenly understood Titi’s point, that his previous methods — setting bags of dog crap on fire in front of politicians’ houses in Papeete, planning to blow up hotel rooms — had been wrongheaded, that the dignity of words and reason were the only path toward getting respect. In those few moments on the camera, as he bored the news networks, to the point that they would end up excerpting his speech or cutting it entirely, he had finally grown up.