ONE |
| The day the plane brought the white man was an important one for Managua. |
| He was, as usual, occupied by his translation of Hamlet into language the |
| rest of the tribe would understand, and he could have done without the |
| interruptison because this was the day he had set aside to work on the famous |
| soliloquy. As the only islander who could even read, let alone write, Managua felt |
| the burden of his culture upon his shoulders the way he imagined an old turtle |
| bore the weight of its carapace upon its back: it was certainly a secure home, a |
| comfort and a blessing, but at times like this, when he had a tricky scene to |
| write, it was plenty damn heavy too. |
| Although he later swore about the coming of the white man and the |
| disruption to his work that the resultant excitement caused - not to mention the |
| anxiety to him personally - if truth be told, long before the whirring of the |
| plane’s three propellers stirred the torpid island air, his task was already |
| suffering insufferable disturbances from his wife Lamua who once again had |
| gotten herself into one big sweat about the pig. |
| Is be or is be not, is be one big damn puzzler |
| he had written. He read it over again, allowing his lips to move so he could get |
| the feel of how the words would sound, although he dared not permit even a |
| whisper to escape him. The way Lamua was bustling about the hut, moving this |
| and that (as though she might find the pig here! as if you could conceal even a |
| bantam pig in this single, sparsely furnished room!), any sound from him would |
| be jumped upon like a snake by koku-koku and taken as an invitation to |
| conversation. |
| ‘I is tell you now,’ she muttered. ‘I is eat that pig if is be last thing I is do.’ |
| Managua adjusted his spectacles and peered more intently at his Complete |
| Shakespeare, partly by way of showing Lamua that he was ignoring her but also |
| because the print was so bloody damn small. He must see Miss Lucy about some |
| new reading glasses. This pair seemed to be losing all their strength, but then |
| again that was only to be expected; he had had them for a couple of years and |
| they were second-hand when he got them, or rather second-eye, he told himself. |
| He smiled, congratulating himself on his little joke. It was the kind of joke |
| Shakespeare made all the time, which just showed the benefit of reading the |
| great man, and why it would do the islanders good to see Hamlet. |
| ‘You is better not laugh at me now, man’, snapped Lamua, catching him a |
| cuff round the head as she passed his mat. ‘I is tell you, that bloody pig you is be |
| so fond of is be good as dead.’ |
| Managua squinted at the next line. |
| ‘Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer’ was how Shakespeare had got it. |
| Managua had looked up nobler in the dictionary and realized right away that it |
| was one hard word to translate. The island didn’t have any nobles. There wasn’t |
| even a chief, like he’d heard tell some islands possessed. When something |
| needed to be decided on, all the men just crawled into the kassa house and |
| talked it over until everyone was agreed. If it was some little thing they indulged |
| in some kassa first, which generally meant the matter got decided on pretty |
| damn quick since no-one was usually in a mind to argue. If it was something |
| important then they refrained from kassa on the grounds that they needed to |
| think clearly. But if people were thinking clearly in different directions then they |
| might grind a few kassa seeds, mix up the paste and keep spooning it down until |
| they were all so out of their heads that no-one cared enough to argue about what |
| they decided and just wanted to settle the thing plenty fast so they could really |
| get stuck into the kassa. Kassa pretty much ruled out any necessity for nobles. |
| Lamua was sweeping now and a more disputatious person than Managua |
| might have felt that a disproportionate amount of dust from the hard earth floor |
| was ending up on his books, but he simply brushed it away and got on with his |
| work. |