The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

referred to Barbara and her mother. Barbara wanted nothing more than to lose herself in the pleasures of Polynesia. She’d not record this event for her dishonorable father. Nor would she allow her mother to interfere, which is why she’d promised, if her mother would allow her to go alone, to spend the whole next day helping with the language project. So, her mother held back and told them to have a nice time.

Corie took Barbara’s hand as they strolled along the sandy beach. “Your mother does not wish to come?”

“She has work to do.” Barbara blotted out the thought of her mother and her endless demands. She wanted to live like a native Tahitian, to abandon herself to the islanders’ easy ways.

The celebrants had gathered at an inlet where a meandering river met the ocean. Bowls of colorful foods lined a table, with brown-skinned women and girls fussing over the arrangements and laying out wood-carved serving plates and bowls. Young men, their skin glistening in the sun’s lengthening rays, surrounded an earth oven covered with banana leaves. Some of them bent over and removed the leaves, peeking at a suckling pig beneath them.

Barbara made her way around the spirited group, greeting those she knew, who in turn introduced her to the others. She hadn’t mastered much Tahitian, but when she spoke in French, the islanders responded in kind. It was comforting—being a world away from her troubles, with people who knew nothing of her old life.

When the men finished carving the pig, the party settled in clusters on the ground and feasted on it, along with fish and vegetables soaked in coconut milk, a sweet pudding baked in banana leaves, and juicy papaya slices. Barbara felt a little queer—light-headed and dull of appetite—but she couldn’t resist trying bites of every single offering.

As the darkening sky inked over the sunset, the party milled and rearranged itself. A few men stoked the fire, two others gathered guitars, four took up three-foot-high cylinder drums, and the rest seated themselves in a ring around the fire. The music makers strummed and drummed, and the steady throbbing music drifted over the circle and into the darkness. Five women wandered into the middle of the ring and did an arm-twisting and hip-jerking dance. Some men joined them, high-stepping and keeping their trunks level at the same time—like trotting horses. The fire’s blaze tinted the women’s hair orange and glinted off the men’s bronze bodies.

Corie, who’d been sitting beside Barbara, rose and entered the circle. Barbara watched her twist and twirl. As the beat picked up, Corie danced faster and faster, her eyes flashing with gleeful abandon, her arms weaving against the screen of surging smoke. When she whooped with joy, her teeth shone brightly in her thrust-up face.

More and more of the group rose and entered the circle of dancers until only Barbara, and a few older women remained. Corie’s brother Tane danced up to her and held out his hands, inviting her to join the celebration. Barbara hesitated. The dancers looked so sure of themselves, so beautiful in their abandon; she felt shy and clumsy in their presence.

Yet as she watched the dancers stomping and weaving, her muscles twitched and ached for release. Tane’s feet bounced with the beat, and he kept his hands out, smiling his invitation. Why not, Barbara thought: Why shouldn’t I be as free as these islanders? She placed her hands in Tane’s. He levered her up and pulled her into the fray.

Barbara blended in with the sweat-burnished dancers, pounding her feet and throwing up her arms, imitating the women’s movements. Their arms and torsos swayed and swung, as fluid and graceful as grass rippling in the wind. But her limbs felt jerky and awkward, even as a quickening force gathered in her and propelled her on. A chant rose in her: Me, child of nature, me, island creature.

Harder and harder, the drummers beat their husky drums. The deep thrums steeped her every cell as if these fleshy forms had joined and their hearts beat together. Her mind swirled with dizzying images—of the horizon twirling around her, of palm branches trembling in the breeze, of stars reeling overhead.

Fire sparks darted from the flames. Against the air’s hot pliant waves, the dancers’ arms shimmied in sinuous shapes. Barbara felt connected to the dancers by an electric-like charge; she gorged on the quiver and tremor of mingling muscles and skin.

Energy surged in her core, pulsing down her torso, into her legs, out her arms. She gave herself over to dance and merged with the bounding bodies, stomping her feet and twisting her hips. Oh, pure abandon. Such sweet freedom. Her shoulders and arms brushed and stroked against the others, imparting and partaking of the coursing ecstasy. She turned delirious, wild, mindless.

The drummers thumped, louder and faster, until they could beat no harder, no faster. They crowned the ceremony with rounds of off-beat thumps and flung their arms skyward. The dancers whooped in response and all dashed for the beach. Tane grabbed Barbara’s hand and pulled her along with the throng. All paused at the water’s edge to toss off clothes and sandals.

Barbara undid her pareu, cast it over the slanting trunk of a coconut tree, and bounded into the shallows. The revelers dove and surfaced, turning a swathe of the sea into an explosion of splashing bodies. Barbara raced to join them, stepping high against the water’s resistance, and plunged in. Her overheated skin sizzled at the coolness. She surfaced with a shriek and plunged again and again, becoming one with the water. She gave herself over to its delicious surges and swirling grasp, treading gently, moaning with delight.

Tane swam up to her and beckoned her shoreward. They swam and splashed, turning corkscrews and playing the waves. They reached shallow water. Tane sat; waves washed over his chest; he floated in, then out. She knelt and tried to steady him against the coursing water. A wave surprised her, flopping her forward. They