The Paper I Burned
We were five days returning to Papeete, via Napuka and a brief overnight at Makemo, and the weather held throughout, which it had no particular obligation to do. Manning was a different passenger on the return leg. He slept better. He ate properly. He took the middle watch without being asked, and stood it well enough that I let him take it again. He made no notes that I saw about the island. He read two books from the small shelf in the saloon — a Patrick Leigh Fermor and a volume of Neruda translations — and he talked to Eloa and Hina in the evenings in the cockpit with the slightly formal politeness of a man who had come to understand he was not, and had never been, the most interesting person on the boat.
He left *Maeva* at Taina on the afternoon we made the pass. He paid the balance in euros into my account before he stepped off the boarding ladder, which was his style, and he shook each of our hands, which was not. He thanked Raimana last and longest, which I thought was correct. He did not say anything sentimental. He said to me, privately, as I walked him to the end of the pontoon, "Captain. The manuscript will come to you by the end of the year. You will take it to Napuka."
"I will."
"I hope I meet their reading of it."
"You will meet it or you will not. I will tell you honestly, either way."
"Yes."
He shook my hand again. He went up the pontoon to a taxi that