Chapter One: The Fellowship Of The Nerd
“Well, here I am tonight in Tahiti.”
• • •
“Looking for a bed tonight?”
In his imagination it had been a dusky, Polynesian maiden who was going to ask this question, not the burly Frenchman that currently stood before him in the fast-emptying wasteland between the comfortably familiar bureaucracy of passport control and baggage reclaim, and the great unknown night, separation from which he was protected only by the insufficient barrier of two sets of double swing doors. That aside, the fact of the matter was that he was looking for a bed for the night and with only one offer on the mattress, beggars can’t be choosers.
It was two o’clock in the morning and Stuart had just stepped off the previous evening’s Air New Zealand departure from LAX, destination Faaa International Airport, on the island of Tahiti. It had been a journey off the map. The group of islands that collectively make up French Polynesia, and of which Tahiti is the largest, did not even feature in Stuart’s atlas. Tiny specks lost in the vast blue expanse of South Pacific Ocean, they did not warrant the double page spread which would be needed to truly give an indication of their isolation from the nearest land mass of any significance. They were little fish lost in a big pond. But, it was not a random pin stuck in a map that brought Stuart to these remote shores, it was a further step into imagination. Or perhaps, more accurately, a step backwards into the boyhood fantasies of a bookish adolescent. Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herman Melville: hadn’t they all followed the same route? Voyages of self discovery and adventure. Paul Gauguin too: the search for a lost innocence. They had all come here. Rupert Brooke - romantic soldier poet. Somerset Maugham. These islands had held them all under their spell. The young Stuart had devoured their collective outpourings and built in his mind his own personal Pacific idyll, a place of escape from his own urban reality. The older Stuart now had the financial - bourgeois? - means to visit his fantasy. Mistake? He had made a few.
Mutiny on the Bounty: Fletcher Christian had set the trend. The archetypal opt-outer. The first lotus-eating hippy, who had inspired a modern-day generation of backpackers to follow in his rebellious footsteps. Of affluent backpackers that is.
“What’s with the suitcase?” They were the first words the Frenchman had uttered since his initial invitation.
“I’m sorry?”
“I didn’t clock you as one of us at first.” The words were Hollywood American, but the accent gave them a Mediterranean softness. “No one - and I mean no one - has a suitcase.”
“Eh?” It had been a long flight. It was the middle of the night. It was his first real stop-over. He was innocent. He was naïve. He was not expecting to have to partake in lateral thinking competitions mere minutes after having stepped off the plane. He had an excuse for being dumb.
“I thought you were with the tour. They have cases. Club-Med, you know? More Samsonite than Superman.”
Stuart still looked vague.
“I almost missed you altogether, and what would you have done then?”
“I don’t know,” apologised Stuart.
“Backpacks. That’s what all the other have got. You won’t get very far with one of these.” The Gallic giant gave Stuart’s pale green suitcase a friendly kick. “Useless.” The single word seemed to make a mental association for him as he made a conversational leap. “Are you English?”
Finally a topic of conversation he was comfortable with, “Yes.”
• • •
He was sitting in the back of an open-air truck. There were three of them. A blonde - weren’t they all? - German called Stefan - weren’t they all? - and a loud - weren’t they all? - American called Courtney. The Frenchman was somewhere up front, presumably driving. He had no idea of where he was going, but he still had his pale green suitcase with him, and at the moment that seemed like quite a positive thing to cling on to.
“So what’s your name?” It was the American speaking.
“Stuart. With a ‘u’ ‘a’.”
“Withayooay? Weird name, guy. What’s that? Australian?”
“No, I’m English. I mean, Stuart with a ‘u’ ‘a’. You know? Rather than an ‘e’ ‘w’.”
“Oh, right. Yeh.” Silence.
The truck was travelling along a two-lane, unlit carriageway. The lights of the airport complex had diminished to a hazy corona in the sky behind; ahead the only illuminations were the headlights of occasional oncoming cars, until they too had passed and blackness enveloped the three travellers once again.
“Does any one know where we are go-ing?” It was the German who spoke now. The sentence slowly and precisely intonated; each alternate syllable rising then falling in a clipped lilt, the words spilling out as they matched the rise and fall of the truck’s suspension as it bobbled back and forth along the pitted tarmac.
The other two exchanged a glance before replying in unison, “No.” All three looked towards the cab, where the broad shoulders and lowered head of the Frenchman could just about be made out as a silhouette behind the glass, taking them they knew not where. He seemed oblivious to their observation and speculation. The orange flare of a cigarette appeared fleetingly at the side of his face, before the bright spark was discarded, flicked through the side window, to leave a surprisingly long trail of glowing embers as a momentary marker to the van’s night-time passage, looking like cat’s eyes on the road or landing lights on a runway. Stuart saw a road sign flash past.
“Papeete,” he said, knowledgeably.
“Oh, right. Yeh.” Silence. So this was the famous camaraderie of travellers he had been hearing all about.
It had been the silences that had made him start searching in the first place. Got him thinking that there must be ‘more to life than this’ and ‘there was a great big world out there waiting to be discovered’. There had been the silences when he had asked himself, ‘what am I doing?’; ‘where am I going?’; ‘what have I done with my life?’. There had been the silences that had greeted his attempts at career progression: his requests for a rise; a desk by the window; an electric fan in the summer. Not much to ask. And the silences that had greeted his phone calls: “Hi Tessa, it’s Stuart, can you give me a ring.”; “Hi Tessa, it’s Stuart, not sure if you got my earlier message, can you give me a ring.”; “Hi Tessa, it’s ... no, never mind, I’ll try again.”.
The vehicle sped on into the darkness, slowing only to swerve past a staggering drunk who was captured in the headlight’s beam, rolling with a sailor’s gait across the centre of the carriageway as though it were a pitching boat deck. The Frenchman’s hand was brought down hard on the truck’s horn, and stayed there long after the drunk was just a memory of the night, a harsh siren renting the air. Stuart propped up his suitcase to form a makeshift seat and to cushion himself from the worst jolts on the hard, metal floor of the bucking van, and watched as the endless obscure vegetation at the road’s edge gradually gave way, replaced initially by dark, little shacks, with corrugated tin roofs and sleeping occupants, and eventually by the bright lights of the big city.
A hard ridge of bitumen, undetectable until the truck hit it with a larger than normal bump and which sent its three rear passengers into the air and left them clinging onto the side rails of the cabin for support, indicated the transition from the old airport road to the smooth four-lane Boulevard Pomare, and its tree-lined approach to the capital. Stuart saw bright-fronted boutiques on the right-hand side of the strip; shops and kiosks; deserted food stalls. Beyond the rustling fronds of the palm trees to the left Stuart knew was the Pacific Ocean, although its vast expanse was largely hidden by the myriad masts of a flotilla of boats, both large and small, that were moored along the length of the waterfront. Five, six, or more deep, Stuart couldn’t see the limit of the boats in the darkness, although he could hear their mast bells sound far to the distance across the water, intermittently ringi
ng, revealing their presence like a herd of highland cows scattered across a mountainside. There were lights too, tiny specks on the water, illuminating a small circle of concentric ripples around some nocturnal boatman. Clang, clang, clang. It was an incongruous note in an otherwise sleeping town.
There was a slight pressure on Stuart’s arm, and he turned to look in the direction that Courtney was indicating. A huge four-mast schooner was anchored close to the harbour wall: a beautiful vessel, silent and serene amongst its smaller, noisy brethren. It was too dark to read the name of the boat, although it would have meant nothing to him in any case. The faintest noise as the wind off the sea delicately strummed the taunt ropes and wires fixed at the highest points of the rigging, positively sang of money. Not a vulgar, showy display of wealth, but the quiet confidence that comes with invincibility. You may look little backpackers, but you are not in my league, and never will be.
The truck horn sounded again and swivelling around they saw their driver was trying to draw their attention to two figures standing on the corner of the opposite pavement. Courtney waved as they sped past.
“Mahu,” she laughed, “I’ve read about them.”
Tall and skinny, and with flowers in their hair, the two colourfully attired pedestrians waved energetically back, calling out in a stream of rapid French that Stuart was unable to comprehend. One lifted up a hem of skirt and flashed at the retreating tail-lights, before straightening down the upturned garment with a provocative wiggle, replacing the view of exposed genitalia instead with that of a beaming smile.
Stuart looked across to Courtney, confused, “Wasn’t that a ...”
“Big prick,” Courtney supplied.
“Bloke, I was going to say,” said Stuart. “I thought they were women.”
Stefan suddenly found his voice, “They are Ta-hi-ti’s Third Sex.” He waved his copy of the Lonely Planet Guide, which he had been determinedly trying to read, by the poor light and in the jolting conditions, ever since leaving the airport. “They are trans-vest-ites,” he explained. “You know, men who ...”
“Yes, yes,” Courtney interrupted, impatient at the German’s slow diction, “we know. Men who dress up as women. Mahus, like I said.”
Stefan, once started, was not so easily silenced. “Here though, un-like in Eur-ope they are accept-ed. It is part of their cul-ture.”
“Oh, right. Yeh.” Stuart was secretly relieved to discover that Courtney’s conversation stopper was not exclusively reserved for him. He felt a sudden sympathetic bond with his spurned male companion. From such trivial things could fine friendships spring. A common link between seemingly disparate individuals. The fellowship of the nerd.
Having decided that Papeete was to be the destination of their nocturnal journey, it was something of a surprise to see the well-lit streets of the capital suddenly receding, to once again be replaced by banks of inhospitable shrubs and, more importantly, no obvious accommodation. Apart from the distant luminescence of the multitude of stars above, and the mesmeric yellow beam of the headlamps on the road ahead, all other lights were suddenly extinguished as quickly as the hope of a comfortable hotel bed for the night.
“Where do you think we are going?” asked Stuart after another five minutes of silent journey into night. “Is there a map in that guidebook of yours?” he asked Stefan.
“Yes. But it is too dark to read it.”
“My watch has a dial that lights up,” offered Courtney, pressing a small button on her wrist-strap to produce the tiniest of useless green glows. There was no need for further comment. Stefan and Stuart were united in their joint silence. The fellowship of the nerd had grown to three.