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"Carpet?" I said, pinching my eyebrows imagining how the rough surface of our jerry-rigged deck could be converted into something as smooth and comfortable as the broadloomed floor of my house back home.
Teuila took my hand and we shimmied down a nearby vine, then she led me a little deeper into the forest where she hacked off some wide strips of bark from a mulberry tree. Then she climbed a coconut tree and passed down a handful of long palm fronds. When we returned to the banyan tree, we cut and lay the thick pieces of bark horizontally across the webbed floor until all the gaps between the poles were covered, then we sat down again.
"Better?" Te' asked.
"Definitely," I said, surprised at how similar her construction technique was to the conventional wood-frame houses I'd seen built in the Midwest. "It's still a bit hard though. Will we sleep on it like this?"
"There's one last step," she said, handing me one of the palm fronds. "Now we're going to make the carpet."
She began tearing the leaves into one-inch-wide strips, laying the strips on the floor in neat parallel lines. Then she placed another strip perpendicular across the leaves and deftly wove it over and under each of the underlying strands. With each successive strand, the leaves began to form a beautiful two-foot-square mat of interlaced leaves that looked as pretty as any placemat I'd find at Crate & Barrel or Target. When she finished, Te' lay the mat over the bark and asked me to sit on it. The soft leaves absorbed my weight and felt as soft as carpet.
"This feels almost as comfortable as my broadloom back home," I said, running my hands over the cushiony mat. "But it's much prettier. The two of us might be able to find a whole new vocation when we return to the United States. People would pay big bucks for this kind of natural fabric. What else can you use this stuff for?"
"We use the same weaving technique to make baskets, handbags, fishnets, all kinds of useful objects," Te' said.
I shook my head at the myriad uses of the island's natural resources.
"You guys really are self-sufficient on this little island, aren't you?"
Te' smiled at me as she thinned her eyes.
"Are you sure you want to go back to America?"
"Ask me in another week or two. I'm growing more fond of this lifestyle with each passing day."
"Help me weave some more mats then," Te' said, happy to see me beginning to enjoy the crafts of her tribe. "We need to cover the whole floor and add a few more layers for extra cushioning."
"Our very own wall-to-wall carpet," I nodded.
As the two of us continued weaving our natural-fiber mats, I looked up at Te' and smiled with a silly grin.
"What are you thinking?" she asked. "You look like a child who's just discovered her first pearl shell."
"I'm just so happy to be with you," I said. "All this nesting makes me realize there's nowhere else I'd rather be in the entire world."
14
After we finished building our carpet of plant leaves, Te' and I made love until we fell asleep exhausted under the warm canopy of our new home. The last thing I remembered before my lids fell heavily over my eyes was the sight of the luminescent figs gleaming like Christmas tree ornaments in the fading light of the setting sun. In the morning, we picked some more fruit from the branches above us and playfully rubbed the sticky pulp all over our naked bodies before going for a cleansing dip in the lagoon.
As I emerged from the surf gazing at Te's sexy tanned body, I could hardly believe my luck. Fate, or happenstance, had landed me in a tropical paradise with the woman of my dreams. We spent the next half hour spearing fish for breakfast, then she placed the catch in a small holding pen we'd built out of large rocks near the shore.
"No fresh sushi for us this morning?" I asked, wondering why she wasn't filleting the fish right away as she had yesterday.
"I thought this might be a good time to teach you the next essential step in your survival skills. I need to teach you how to build a fire. You never know when you might need one. Besides, fresh fish tastes even better when it's grilled over an open flame."
"I was wondering when we were going to get around to that. But are you sure it's safe? I thought you wanted to keep a low profile in case your father came snooping around."
"There's an art to building a fire with a low smoke signature," Te' said. "Just as there is to building one with a strong smoke signal, which might come in handy later. Let me show you how to gather the necessary ingredients."
By now, the soles of my feet had fully healed and all the rubbing on the sandy beach and jungle floor had begun to form a thick, leathery second skin. I was surprised how comfortable it was to scamper across just about any surface without any external protection. More importantly, Teuila's cut had finally closed and she was able to remove her bandage and use her hand freely. Now the only items of clothing either one of us wore was my fading cargo shorts and her tapa-cloth dress, re-fashioned as a wraparound loincloth. It felt exhilarating to traipse about our corner of the forest completely topless, unconcerned about the judging eyes of our neighbors.
Te' led me back into the forest where we began collecting dead twigs of varying thickness. When we had a handful, we returned to the edge of the beach where she dumped the pile in our old sleeping pit.
"There are three things to keep in mind when building a fire you don't want anybody to see," she instructed. "The first is the smell of burning material. We have an onshore breeze today, so at least we're protected from people approaching from the sea. The second is the appearance of the flame, which is why we're building this fire in a pit protected from surrounding lines of sight.
"But the biggest danger is from the smoke, which can be detected from further distances. The trick is to use the driest and smallest materials, so the fire burns more efficiently and doesn't smother. But first, we have to get it started, and for that we need some special materials."
Teuila grasped the shank of her adze and began scraping the blade along the edge of one of the longer branches, producing thin curly strands of dried pulp. Then she picked up the pile of filaments and rubbed them between her hands, breaking them into finer, shorter pieces.
