"The last name has nothing to do with the first name." The son was getting annoyed now. "Not everything has a deep meaning."
"Children are so easily embarrassed," said the father. "Ashamed. Must put the best face on everything. The holy island, its name is really 'Ata Atua, which means, 'Laugh, God!'"
"Then it would be pronounced 'Atatua instead of Atatua," the son corrected again. "Shadow of the God, that's what the name really means, if it means anything besides just the holy island."
"My son is a literalist," said the father. "Everything so serious. Can't hear a joke when God shouts it in his ear."
"It's you always shouting jokes in my ear, Father," said the son with a smile. "How could I possibly hear the jokes of the God?"
This was the only time the father didn't laugh. "My son has a dead ear for humor. He thought that was a joke."
Wang-mu looked at Peter, who was smiling as if he understood what was so funny with these people all the time. She wondered if he had even noticed that no one had introduced these males, except by their relationship to Grace Drinker. Had they no names?
Never mind, the food is good, and even if you don't get Samoan humor, their laughter and good spirits were so contagious that it was impossible not to feel happy and at ease in their company.
"Do you think we have enough?" asked the father, when his daughter brought in the last fish, a large pink-fleshed sea creature garnished with something that glistened--Wang-mu's first thought was a sugar glaze, but who would do that to a fish?
At once his children answered him, as if
it were a ritual in the family: "Ua lava!"
The name of a philosophy? Or just Samoan slang for "enough already"? Or both at once?
Only when the last fish was half eaten did Grace Drinker herself come in, making no apology for not having spoken to them when she passed them more than two hours before. A breeze off the sea was cooling down the open-walled room, and, outside, light rain fell in fits and starts as the sun kept trying and failing to sink into the water to the west. Grace sat at the low table, directly between Peter and Wang-mu, who had thought they were sitting next to each other with no room for another person, especially not a person of such ample surface area as Grace. But somehow there was room, if not when she began to sit, then certainly by the time she finished the process, and once her greetings were done, she managed what the family had not--she polished off the last fish and ended up licking her fingers and laughing just as maniacally as her husband at all the jokes he told.
And then, suddenly, Grace leaned over to Wang-mu and said, quite seriously, "All right, Chinese girl, what's your scam?"
"Scam?" asked Wang-mu.
"You mean I have to get the confession from the white boy? They train these boys to lie, you know. If you're white they don't let you grow up to adulthood if you haven't mastered the art of pretending to say one thing while actually intending to do another."
Peter was appalled.
Suddenly the whole family erupted in laughter. "Bad hospitality!" cried Grace's husband. "Did you see their faces? They thought she meant it!"
"But I do mean it," said Grace. "You both intend to lie to me. Arrived on a starship yesterday? From Moskva?" Suddenly she burst into what sounded like pretty convincing Russian, perhaps of the dialect spoken on Moskva.
Wang-mu had no idea how to respond. But she didn't have to. Peter was the one with Jane in his ear, and he immediately answered her, "I hope to learn Samoan while I'm assigned here on Pacifica. I won't accomplish that by babbling in Russian, however you might try to goad me with cruel references to my countrymen's amorous proclivities and lack of pulchritude."
Grace laughed. "You see, Chinese girl?" she said. "Lie lie lie. And so lofty-sounding as he does it. Of course he has that jewel in his ear to help him. Tell the truth, neither one of you speaks a lick of Russian."
Peter looked grim and vaguely sick. Wang-mu put him out of his misery--though at the risk of infuriating him. "Of course it's a lie," said Wang-mu. "The truth is simply too unbelievable."
"But the truth is the only thing worth believing, isn't it?" asked Grace's son.
"If you can know it," said Wang-mu. "But if you won't believe the truth, someone has to help you come up with plausible lies, don't they?"
"I can make up my own," said Grace. "Day before yesterday a white boy and a Chinese girl visited my friend Aimaina Hikari on a world at least twenty years' voyage away. They told him things that disturbed his entire equilibrium so he could hardly function. Today a white boy and a Chinese girl, telling different lies from the ones told by his pair, of course, but nevertheless lying their lips off, these two come to me wanting to get my help or permission or advice about seeing Malu--"
"Malu means 'being calm,' " added Grace's husband cheerfully.
"Are you still awake?" asked Grace. "Weren't you hungry? Didn't you eat?"
"I'm full but fascinated," answered her husband. "Go on, expose them!"
"I want to know who you are and how you got here," said Grace.
"That would be very hard to explain," said Peter.