There is no doubt left to shield us from the violence of Nadia’s future, and returning to her own perspective makes that knowledge particularly wrenching. Her description fills in the blanks of the story.
the first time we’re at Les 3 Brasseurs on the waterfront we’re invited by his friend who lends us the apartment the champagne leaves me more and more heavily dazed come on Nadia give it a bit of effort it’s for the rent I don’t really see that Mathieu is selling my body another friend to reconnect the phone turn the lights back on bills keep coming Mathieu likes living large I got you a massage license and a diary to keep track of your appointments he sets the price for a happy ending for length of time weekday or weekend daytime or nighttime I sink down in guilt humiliation disgust for myself I’ve got to get another place this is going great you’re an ace Mathieu’s well organised little ads in the daily papers business cards in the bars and clubs that he goes to without me I have regulars one-offs my diary is full sometimes I dream of a normal job but I have no degree I know no one my parents think I’m living a dream life I don’t say anything on the phone I don’t know anyone in Tahiti my breathing is breathless
As Mathieu’s perspective intrudes more and more into Nadia’s section, we feel her voice being erased even as we know it will soon be extinguished altogether. Again we see how the form of Spitz’s writing reflects the composition of a patchwork tableau; while the section is entirely from Nadia’s perspective, the ‘I’ that represents Mathieu’s manipulation is legible without articulated distinction because of its placement in relation to Nadia’s own inner thoughts.
With Nadia’s final intervention, the fit of each piece into the tīfaifai is now clear: the third perspective is a client, Nadia has been pressured into sex work by Mathieu, and the three characters meet in a violent final section that is no less shocking for its inevitability. We follow the murderer’s final tumultuous experience of quicksilver emotions.
the cold water doesn't deter my sex that keeps getting harder even in the flow from the tap really need to jerk off I’m too close I hold off I want to come down her throat that’s what I’m here for to finally get what my wife won’t give me I don’t want to put on the condom she hands me I just want her to suck me off now right away for her mouth to sooth me of this painful swelling I point at my sex her mouth I can’t find the French words you don’t have enough money for a blow job humiliation anger confusion flare in my body in my mind all the insults come together and go quiet in an overpowering rage squeeze the throat that she won’t give me tie her to the bed of every false promise I flee this nightmare the apartment door opens a guy comes into view he tries to lock himself in the bathroom the ball of rage smashes open when I smash his face against the sink
The language of this final section, the final piece of the tīfaifai, confronts us with a final coarseness of texture. In ending the story with the killer’s perspective, Spitz performatively echoes the Nadia’s silencing and leaves the reader no escape from the immediacy of the violence she portrays. We are left far from the touristic postcard, instead holding a scene of brutality whose fictional nature nevertheless grants greater access to reality than a postcard’s photography is capable of.
As the second story in the collection, ‘Nadia’ reaffirms the writing style Spitz has introduced while further confronting the reader with brutally affective language to portray the violence the story depicts. Each story of the collection presents an unconnected narrative, each protagonist faced with situations in which they are subject to and/or perpetrators of violence that spectacularly undermines the ideal of Tahiti as the ‘last earthly paradise.’ In piecing together these largely unconnected stories, Spitz constructs a depiction of life on Tahiti, a landscape of diverse experience, fragments that speak to a unified story.
Even as Spitz has constructed tīfaifai of singular authorship, she has encouraged authors from across Oceania to contribute to a collective patchwork of many pens. In the 2004 special edition of literary journal Littéramā’ohi (a journal she helped found and for which she served as editor for many years) entitled ‘Oceanian Encounters,’1 Spitz again used the concept of tīfaifai to describe the coming together of authors from across the Pacific.
this volume of Littérama’ohi tifaifai of seams inked printed edited like the germ of all possible2
In many ways, Spitz has pieced together tīfaifai as a singular author and as one pen among many. She encourages her community to join in the creation.
