Fiyi, rendered in the novel as an island of protected forests and close-knit villages, is more than a tropical backdrop: it brings the narrator’s private disquiet into contact with a community choosing long-term stewardship over immediate profit. His visit moves between practical concerns, ecological inquiry, and a last attempt to confront Ana and José before leaving the island.

Setting and the narrator’s stay

At Maravu Plantation Resort, the narrator seeks a bottle of gin after a gecko has damaged his towel. The resort’s German owner, Jochen Kiess, explains that national law permits the bar to serve alcoholic drinks but forbids selling a whole bottle. The narrator presents the request as compensation for the damage, while offering to pay the bar’s ordinary per-drink price for its contents. Kiess’s good humor eventually prevails over the restriction: the narrator leaves with an unopened bottle of Gordon’s Dry Gin. He takes a hibiscus sprig Laura had pointed out, places it in an empty gin bottle filled with water by the window overlooking the palm grove, and locks the new bottle in his briefcase after opening it and taking a drink to mark it as his.

The episode makes the island’s relaxed setting coexist with the narrator’s anxious rituals. Even a small purchase becomes a negotiation, and the bottle is at once a practical possession and a carefully guarded means of managing his unease. His movements across Fiyi also bring him repeatedly into contact with places and people whose concerns extend beyond his own private preoccupations.

Bouma and forest protection

In Bouma, a village on the eastern part of Taveuni, residents face an offer of substantial foreign currency for land that could be cleared for logging. The choice is difficult: cash is scarce in Bouma and across the Fiji Islands. The villagers nevertheless refuse the logging proposal and support turning the forest into a national park, judging that conservation could provide income for longer than the payment offered for cutting the trees.

The resulting protected area covers five thousand hectares and welcomes ecotourists. Villagers maintain its trails, including railings on steep sections, and provide toilets, picnic areas, and campsites. The example has prompted plans for similar projects elsewhere on the island. The narrator walks through the village, crosses the Bouma River, pays five Fijian dollars to enter the protected area, and receives advice about its seven kilometres of marked trails. He also buys biscuits and water, and warns that lighting a fire could have catastrophic consequences. These concrete arrangements make conservation a local undertaking, sustained through both community labor and tourism rather than an abstract ideal.

Somosomo and the final encounter

On what he identifies as part of his last day on Taveuni, the narrator meets the elders of Somosomo. Still pursuing his investigations, he asks what measures the island has taken in recent years to protect ancient habitats and the endemic plant and animal species that depend on them. The elders tell him that the first British governor of Fiji was Sir Arthur Gordon, whose administration lasted from 1875 to 1880. The name unsettles the narrator because it makes Garden Island sound to him like Gordon Island, a private association sharpened by his long-standing preference for Gordon’s London Dry Gin.

He addresses Vera while explaining that travel makes solitude difficult for him and that she had delegated some of that burden to Gordon; conversations with the gecko had felt like hearing her voice. The recollection links his island journey to his estrangement from Vera, while also showing how the name Gordon bridges his emotional dependence and his drinking.

Later, slightly dizzy, the narrator enters a village shop to ask whether it sells vitamins and unexpectedly finds Ana and José in the crowded store. They leave together. Because he expects to depart the next morning and doubts he will ever see them again, he resolves to make one last attempt at a confrontation. Ana and José are notably reserved, a reserve he connects to the Englishman’s incomprehensible behavior the previous night. Fiyi’s significance thus lies not only in its protected landscapes but also in the approaching departure that makes the narrator’s final encounter with them urgent and uncertain.