Chapter 25: The Man Everyone Wanted to Forgive
The salt-breeze coming off Suva Harbour carried a different texture than the market’s closed heat. It was a wide, open exhalation, scented with marine fuel and damp moss from the sea wall. Ratu Sukuna Park stretched along the waterfront, a narrow belt of green between the criss-crossing traffic of Victoria Parade and the iron-grey sheen of the water. The afternoon sun glinted off the windows of the Civic Centre, sharp and punishing, but under the sprawling canopy of a mature Mahogany tree, there was a pocket of shade and easy congregation.
That’s where he found the source of the laughter.
Taitusi Rayawa held court on a low stone wall, a half-circle of young men and a couple of women orbiting him. He was mid-story, his hands carving shapes in the humid air. He wore board shorts and a faded tank top that showed off well-defined shoulders and the swirling black lines of a traditional veiqia tattoo climbing one calf. His laugh was a rich, punctuating boom that seemed to pull answering smiles from everyone nearby.
“…so I tell the guy, the bass amp isn’t a suggestion, it’s the foundation! You can’t build a party on a whisper!” Another round of laughter. He clasped the shoulder of a man holding a clipboard. “But we’re good now. Sera’s cousin has a truck. Saturday. Sorted.”
The meeting was breaking up, handshakes and backslaps exchanged, promises about lighting rigs and beverage supplies floating in the air. Taitusi scanned the dispersing group, his eyes alive, calculating who still needed a word. They landed on Varek, who stood observing from the path near the fluttering civic flag.
There was no hesitation, no suspicious assessment. Taitusi’s face opened into a smile of pure, undiluted welcome, as if he’d been waiting specifically for this new face to complete the scene. He excused himself with a final, easy nod and strode over, his gait loose-limbed and confident.
“Bula, bula!” he called, his voice a warm instrument. “You look like a man who’s either lost his tour group or found something better. Taitusi.” He extended a hand. His grip was firm, lingering just a second longer than necessary to convey sincere gladness.
“Varek. And definitely the latter. This is a much better view.” Varek gestured toward the harbor, where a rusty inter-island freighter was sliding toward the wharf.
“Best free show in town. The ships, the people, the drama.” Taitusi leaned against the wall, crossing his ankles. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to Varek, who declined with a shake of his head. Taitusi lit his own, took a drag, and exhaled a plume that was snatched away by the breeze. “You’re not from here. Visiting? Working?”
“Reconnecting, in a way. My mother was from the west.”
“Ah, a returning son!” Taitusi’s enthusiasm was immediate, a ready-made narrative slotted into place. “Welcome home, brother. It’s changed, yeah? Faster. Louder. But the heart’s the same. You just gotta know where to listen.”
“I’m trying to learn. It seems like a place where knowing the right people is everything.”
Taitusi’s smile widened, acknowledging a universal truth. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know can get you a generator at eight on a Friday night. That’s what I do. Connect the dots. Make the pieces fit so the music plays on time.” He tapped his temple. “Logistics and good vibes. That’s the business.”
“A social engineer,” Varek said, his tone lightly admiring.
“I like that! Yeah. Engineer of good times.” He took another drag. “So, who have you been connecting with? I know everyone worth knowing.”
Varek let his gaze drift across the park, a man casually reminiscing. “Met a few. A coach at Albert Park. Niyan. Intense guy. Very… protective of his scene.”
A subtle shift. The ember of Taitusi’s cigarette glowed bright as he inhaled. The easy rhythm of his body didn’t freeze, but it settled, like a dancer pausing between beats. “Niyan. Yeah. That’s his brand. Solid guy. Built like a brick shithouse and just as movable.” The words were neutral, but a flatness had entered his voice, ironing out the melodic charm.
“Seems that way. He mentioned a sister. Maraia.”
There it was. The defense arrived not as a flinch, but as a deliberate, almost theatrical relaxation. Taitusi let the name hang in the salt air for a moment, his eyes on the freighter. He nodded slowly, a man acknowledging a distant, bittersweet memory. “Maraia. Good heart. One of the best.” He turned his head back to Varek, his smile still present but now insulated, a layer of glass between the expression and the man behind it. “That was a long time ago. Life moves on, yeah?”
“He implied it ended… badly.”
“Endings here…” Taitusi sighed, a puff of smoke and performance. “They’re never private. Always a family meeting. A community verdict. You don’t just break up with a person here, bro. You break up with their uncles, their cousins, their neighbours.” He shook his head, a picture of weary wisdom. “Some people, they hold onto things. They nurse a grievance like it’s a baby. Makes it hard for everyone to grow.”
“And have you? Grown?”
The question was a soft probe. Taitusi met it with a prepared sincerity. He dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his heel, and looked at Varek with eyes that seemed to actively project honesty. “I’ve tried. I’m not that guy anymore. We were kids. I made mistakes. Who doesn’t?” He leaned forward, confiding. “The past is a country, man. I don’t live there anymore.”
“You have a new country now, then? Lusiana?”
The change was instant and instructive. Where Maraia’s name had brought a polished, defensive nostalgia, Lusiana’s name invoked a softer, more present tenrision. His posture eased into something gentler, but the transformation had a rehearsed quality, like a man reminding himself of his lines. “Lusi. Yeah. She’s… she’s solid. Different. Understands the life, the late nights. Doesn’t live in the past.” He said it as if convincing himself as much as Varek. “She’s got a good head for business. Ambitious. We’re building something real.”
It was the right answer. Perhaps even a true one. But it was delivered like a pledge he was practicing.
“That’s good,” Varek said, nodding. “A fresh start. Must be difficult, though, with the old country… what was the phrase Niyan used?… insisting you’re a ‘broken thread.’”
The harbour was suddenly very interesting to Taitusi. He stared out at the water, his jaw working softly. The charm evaporated, leaving behind something raw and uneasy. The cheerful strategist of good times was gone, replaced by a man seeing storm clouds on a clear horizon. The mention of Niyan hadn’t angered him; it had diverted him, pulling his focus to a looming, immovable object.
“Niyan,” he said, the word tasting of something metallic. “He sees the world in straight lines. Right and wrong. Good people and bad people. No room for… complexity.” He finally looked back, and for a fleeting second, Varek saw it: not guilt, but a resenting frustration. The frustration of a man who believed his own evolution was being unfairly judged by the fossilized version of him someone else kept in a mental drawer. “He decided what I was a long time ago. Nothing I do changes that. So why try?”
Some men do not lie, Varek thought, watching the play of conflicted truth on Taitusi’s face. They simply arrange truth so forgiveness arrives first. The narrative was clean: the past was a foreign country, the ex’s family were prison-wardens of grudge, the new love was a redemption song. It was a compelling arrangement. It might even be mostly true. But it was an arrangement designed to pre-empt blame, to frame any lingering pain from Maraia’s side as a failure to move on, rather than a consequence of his own actions.
“It sounds lonely,” Varek offered, the empathy in his voice a precise tool. “To be forever defined by an old version of yourself. To have your growth denied.”
The resonance was physical. Taitusi’s shoulders dropped a fraction, as if a weight had been shared. He found another cigarette, his movements slower. “You get it. It’s like… you reinvent yourself, you build something new, but they only want to visit the ruins.” He lit the cigarette, the flame trembling slightly in the breeze. “You know Maraia… she’s okay, though?”
The question slipped out, quiet and unarranged. It was the first unorchestrated thing he’d said. Concern, or morbid curiosity, or a thread of ownership he couldn’t sever. It hung between them, a tiny crack in the fresh-start facade.
Varek filed it away. “She seemed quiet. Capable. Guarded.”
Taitusi nodded, staring at the ground between his feet. “She guards everything.” He took a long, final drag and flicked the cigarette in a high arc toward a trash bin. It missed, landing on the pavement. He didn’t notice. “Look, I gotta run. Soundcheck at the Bay. Good meeting you, Varek. Maybe I’ll see you Saturday night. Big event at the village hall.”
He was already moving, the charismatic shell reassembling itself with each step. He raised a hand in farewell, the easy grin back, but it didn’t reach the eyes that kept drifting, unsettled, toward the city, toward the old geography of his mistakes.
Varek watched him go. A man of rhythm and warmth, engineering good times while fleeing a silent referendum that was always in session. He wasn’t a bad man. He was something more useful and more dangerous: a regretful man who had learned to frame his regret as someone else’s intolerance. He was a potential lever. And levers, once their point of balance was found, could move immovable objects.
The freighter on the harbour sounded a long, low blast, a profound note that vibrated in the chest. It was a sound of departure, of leaving one port for another, of the deep, indifferent water waiting in between.
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Grand Pacific Hotel, Suva, Fiji — on Victoria Parade, overlooking Suva Harbour. The Grand Pacific Hotel is a real historic hotel in Suva, built in 1914 and located on the main seafront on Victoria Parade.
The Grand Pacific Hotel rose from the seafront like a preserved relic of another century’s confidence, its white colonial columns and wide verandas standing in stark, graceful opposition to the functional concrete of the growing city. The air conditioning inside the high-ceilinged lobby was a shock, a dry, antiseptic chill that instantly evaporated the harbour’s moisture from Varek’s skin. The space whispered of polished teak, faint gardenia from immense floral arrangements, and the quiet click of fine china from the high tea service in the sunlit atrium.
He took a seat in a wingback chair near a tall window framing the harbour, the water slowly turning from beaten steel to bruised purple as evening gathered. He didn’t wait long.
“Good afternoon, sir. Welcome to the Grand Pacific. Can I bring you a menu for afternoon tea, or perhaps something from the bar?”
Her voice was a practiced melody, warm and efficient. Lusiana Veitayaki stood with her hands lightly clasped, her posture erect in the crisp, cream-coloured hotel blouse and dark skirt. Her smile was immediate and inclusive, making him feel like a valued regular, not a random guest in a lobby chair. Her makeup was flawless, her hair secured in a neat knot, every detail projecting a competent, unassailable calm.
“Just a sparkling water with lime, thank you,” Varek said, returning a softer version of her smile.
“Of course. One moment.”
She moved away, a study in economical motion. He watched her speak quietly to a colleague at the service station, a brief, professional exchange. When she returned with the glass on a small tray, her smile was freshly applied, a perfect product of her hospitality training.
“Here you are. Visiting Suva for long?”
“A while. Getting a sense of the place. It’s a city of layers.”
“It really is,” she agreed, her head tilting in polite interest. “The market, the history, the people. Everyone has a story.” It was a line she likely used often, but she delivered it with a convincing freshness.
“I’m starting to learn a few. Even met a local celebrity, of sorts. Taitusi Rayawa.”
The change was not a crack, but a subtle recalibration. The warmth in her eyes didn’t vanish, but it cooled, becoming more focused, more assessive. Her fingers, resting on the edge of the tray she held, tightened their grip just enough to whiten the knuckles. It was the only tell.
“Taitusi? Yes, he’s… well-known. In certain circles.” Her voice was careful, each word placed like a chess piece.
“Seems to be the man who makes things happen. He mentioned he was with someone who understands the life. That must be you.”
Her smile softened then, becoming more personal, but also more guarded. “We’re together, yes. He’s very driven. It’s exciting.” She said ‘exciting’ like it was a job requirement, a quality to be endured as much as enjoyed.
“It must be. The event promotion world seems all-consuming. Leaves room for little else, I’d imagine.” He took a slow sip of his water. “He spoke highly of you. Said you were ambitious. A fresh start.”
The word ‘fresh’ did it. A faint, almost imperceptible tension pulled at the corner of her mouth. The professional mask was impeccable, but the woman beneath it was suddenly, palpably tired. “It is a fresh start. We focus on the future. On building.”
“That’s wise. The past can be a heavy anchor.” He let the observation hang, watching her eyes. They flickered to the darkening harbour, a place to momentarily rest from his gaze. “Though it seems some anchors have long chains here. A man like Taitusi… he probably has a lot of history in a small city.”
Her composure was magnificent, a feat of will. She gave a slight, elegant shrug. “Everyone has a past. It’s about where you choose to point your energy.”
“Exactly.” He leaned forward slightly, his tone conversational, confidential. “But it must be difficult sometimes. When the past has a name, and a face, and still walks the same market, breathes the same air.” He paused, then delivered the name softly, like laying down a card. “Maraia.”
The name didn’t strike her like a slap. It seeped into her, a slow, cold diffusion. The bright, attentive hospitality in her face dissolved, not into anger, but into a profound and weary resignation. Her shoulders, held so perfectly straight, dropped a millimeter. She looked, for the first time, like someone standing in a perpetual shade she could never quite leave.
She didn’t deny it. She didn’t flare up. She simply absorbed it, her gaze now steady and dull on the patterned carpet. “Maraia is… a good person.” The statement was flat, heavy with a complicated truth.
“I believe that. She seems it. But being a ‘good person’ isn’t always the point, is it?” Varek’s voice was gentle, almost therapeutic. “The point is she exists. And because she exists, you are perpetually… compared. Not by him, maybe. But by everyone else. The ghost of what was, haunting the reality of what is.”
Lusiana’s breath escaped in a quiet, controlled sigh. It was the sound of a truth finally heard aloud. She looked at him, and the defenses were down. “He says it’s over. He says that chapter is closed. I believe him.” She said it like a mantra she was struggling to hold onto.
“I’m sure you do. And I’m sure he believes it, too.” Varek paused, choosing his final question with surgical precision. “But what does it feel like, Lusiana, to be someone’s fresh start? To be the present tense, when everyone around you is still whispering in the past?”
Her eyes glistened, not with tears, but with a hard, polished sheen of unshed emotion. She blinked, and the professional veil descended again, swift and total. Her smile returned, wider than before, a brilliant, empty performance of reassurance.
“It feels like the future,” she said, her voice regaining its melodic hospitality lilt, now stripped of all genuine warmth. “And I’ll be the one helping to build it. Now, please excuse me, I’m needed at the desk.”
She turned and walked away, her steps measured and even on the polished floor, a portrait of perfect composure moving back into the golden light of the lobby, leaving the darkness gathering outside the window behind.