Tales of the South Pacific Part 13

"You speak well," he said.

"The sisters teach us fine, French," she said, demonstrating that her words were not false.

"You will be a beautiful woman," he ventured, but the manner in which he spoke clearly intimated that he was appraising a growth that he himself would never see. The girl sensed this at once, and tears came into her eyes.

"What is your name?" Cable asked, for he did not see the tears.

"Liat," she said. "That is how the French sisters p.r.o.nounce my name."

"Like you, it's lovely," he replied, truthfully. "We sit under this tree. Then we see the path... if anybody comes."

He pulled the half-naked Liat to the earth beside him. Unafraid, and yet vastly unhappy, the girl nestled her black head against his tan bosom. Their skins were almost identical!

"Who is Mary?" he asked.

"Which Mary?" she countered.

"The woman that brought me," he replied.

"My mother," she answered.

"Your mother?" he repeated, his tone betraying his thoughts.

"Yes," the girl explained. "She said that you were very fine. She wanted me to love you."

"Did... she want you... to...?" Cable pointed nervously at the two shirts.

"I don't know," the girl said. Then she looked up at the Marine's dark face. "I wanted to, I think," she said simply.

Lt. Joe Cable could say nothing. As he tried to think, words eluded him. He knew that he was very happy. He knew that almost any of the officers of his unit would have envied him that moment on the hillside at Bali-ha'i. The regrets and moral questionings would come later. For the moment, with Liat upon his bare arms, he could defeat any incipient doubts.

Within an hour the shirts were dry. Cable put his on and then helped Liat into hers. Reluctantly he held the bundled smock over her head while she stretched her firm and lovely arms toward the sky. Hers was a motion and a picture he would never forget. At that moment, reaching toward the tall trees and the high peaks of Vanicoro, Liat was the very spirit of Bali-ha'i. In days to come that lovely statuette in brown marble was to be the magnet which would draw him back to the island time after time after time. Liat and the tall peaks of Vanicoro would become great, indefatigable beacons in the jungle night and cool mirrors in the jungle heat. Liat and the peaks were engraved upon his heart. He was aware of this fact as he allowed the smock to slip down her arms and hide her exquisite body. It is not certain that Liat was aware of what had transpired in the Marine's heart and mind and imagery, but she knew that for herself the wonder and the waiting were over.

As they walked down the gently sloping path toward the hospital, they met old b.l.o.o.d.y Mary waddling up to meet them. She was perspiring slightly, and her breath was uneven, but as she met them she smiled very broadly, and with great happiness in her wrinkled face. "You like?" she asked, in English. Cable grinned at her, and Liat, seeing him happy, likewise smiled. Together the three conspirators, none knowing exactly what the other thought, but all equally involved, entered the small, barren, white hospital.

There Sister Marie Clement, from Bordeaux, had a small repast awaiting them. Atabrine Benny was there, as were two French ladies and a native medical pract.i.tioner who had studied with Dr. Lambert in Fiji. Talk was in French, in English, and occasionally in Pidgin when some native came to the door with his excited problems.

The hospital room was small, like a doctor's reception room in Southern France. It was very white, and had no furniture. Those who wished to sit used built-in benches along the wall, where patients waited for the doctor. A hospital go-cart with a piece of gla.s.s for a top was wheeled in with wine, cake, much tropical fruit, and thick cheese sandwiches.

"I am very pleased to see you, lieutenant," Sister Marie Clement said in low, sweet French.

Lt. Cable, vastly ill at ease, bowed low and acknowledged her welcome. Then he spoke to the French ladies, each of which wondered why she had not brought her daughter to the hospital. Benny, sensing nothing, moved toward Liat and grinned at her, saying in his barbarous French, "A fine morning." Liat bowed slightly and agreed.

b.l.o.o.d.y Mary was definitely unwelcome in the salon of the hospital, but it was she who had brought the handsome Marine, so she and her daughter had to be tolerated. The old harridan made the most of her visit, ate heartily, beamed at her hosts, showed her funereal teeth to the French women at every opportunity, and felt just wonderful.

After luncheon everyone inspected the other room of the hospital, a barren place with beds for Tonkinese patients, who, in the manner of their country, slept upon bare boards. Upon one such bed, worn shiny from long use, lay an old Tonkinese man with a broken leg. Not understanding a word that was said to him, he smiled and smiled. But when b.l.o.o.d.y Mary saw him she loosed a stream of consoling Tonkinese and betel juice, and the old man grinned happily. "Mary," thought Cable, "has a way of making everyone happy. It's a great gift-"

At three the entire a.s.sembly walked slowly down the path to the white sands. Again the gardens were more lovely than a dream of the imagination. The coconut trees alternately stood straight toward the peaks of Vanicoro or inclined at crazy angles toward the sea. A row of papaya trees, newly planted, lifted their snakelike trunks into the air as if to hand each wayfarer a cl.u.s.ter of their delicious melons. It was midafternoon in the tropics, and everywhere the great heat flooded down, but nowhere more torrentially than in the hearts of Lt. Cable and Liat.

Unable to clasp one another fervently as they stood side by side on the rickety pier, they were also not free to indulge in the orgy of gazing that each had to fight against. Liat held out her hand as Cable stepped into the boat.

"Au revoir," she said quietly.

"I will return," Cable whispered.

Then the same improvisator of the morning began to ring the bell up in the school. Thus inspired, Benny grasped his once more and together the two carillonneurs pealed out their fine, lilting, inspired farewell. Again music swept through the narrow channel. Again little boys and old men pushed their outriggers over white sands. Blue water lapped the prow of the small boat, and suddenly the engine exploded! There was a noisy sputtering. The engine coughed like an old man confused by chattering, then caught its breath and hammered out a steady rhythm.

"Cast her loose!" the c.o.xswain cried, and the boat stood out from the pier. The boat's bell rang clearly, conservatively now, for each sound meant a message. But far up on the hillside the native boy pealed his unrestricted bell as if his heart were breaking. And the sound sped down the hillside, over the waters, even up to the peaks of Vanicoro, until everyone's heart was filled with music.

"Goodbye, goodbye!" shouted Benny to all his friends.

"Au revoir!" cried the French women and their daughters.

"Goo'bye!" cried the native girls, and the native boys threw rocks at the wake left by the disappearing boat.

Liat, on the pier, watched her mother and Lt. Cable sail away. Then she turned slowly and walked back to the beach where her father and his nephew and wife waited, each wondering what had happened that morning, up in the red and white hut.

On Vanicoro the silent watchers followed the boat far out to sea. To do so, they had to look directly toward the setting sun, but since the setting sun was holy, they had no mind to consider their own discomfort. Long before these savages left their posts among the shadows of the great volcanoes, each person on Bali-ha'i had forgotten the frail craft. That is, each person but Liat.

Next morning Lt. Cable rose from his sack and stepped out upon the beach as he had done every morning since he arrived on the island. But this morning he stopped sharply. There on the eastern horizon was Vanicoro in complete outline! Down the beach a friend cried out, "Look at that d.a.m.ned island! I've never seen it so bright before. It's like a mirage!"

From their huts other Marines appeared to study the peaks of the mysterious island. All agreed that never before had Vanicoro been so clearly defined. It is a miracle of the South Pacific that islands which are relatively only a few miles away are rarely seen. Hot air, rising constantly from steaming jungles, makes omnipresent clouds hover above each island. So dense are they that usually they obscure and often completely hide the islands they attend. So it is that an island like Vanicoro, only sixteen miles away, might rarely be seen, and then only after torrential rains had swept the sky clear of all but high rain clouds, equalizing temperatures over the entire vast sea. Then, for a few hours, islands far distant might be seen. At times land ninety miles away could be detected by a clear eye. But whenever such distances could be seen, it was always because there had been a great rain, and one could look for ninety or a hundred miles beneath menacing, fast-scudding clouds.

"It must have rained last night," an officer observed. "It must have. Look at the island." There was further discussion of when and for how long it rained, but Cable took no part in this. All that he knew was that Vanicoro, which he had never before seen from his hut, was strangely visible. It was so clear upon the waters that one might even... No, that was impossible. Bali-ha'i, at this distance, was merely a part of Vanicoro.

The thought startled him! Was that, after all, true? Were Bali-ha'i and all its people merely a part of the grim and brooding old cannibal island? Were Liat and her unfathomable mother merely descendants from the elder savages? No! The idea was preposterous. Tonkinese were in reality Chinese, sort of the way Canadians were Americans, only a little different. And Chinese were the oldest civilized people on earth. He thought of Liat. She was clean, immaculately so. Her teeth were white. Her ankles were delicate, like those of a girl of family in Philadelphia.

As he said that word, a thousand fears a.s.sailed him. That afternoon he would write to his mother... and to the junior at Bryn Mawr. The letter to his mother was difficult, but not impossible. He told her of the islands, of the mission, of the school bell, and of the hospital. He dwelt upon Sister Marie Clement but made no mention of b.l.o.o.d.y Mary... nor of her daughter.

But writing to his sweetheart was another thing! On the one hand he could not do as he did with his mother, write in the placid a.s.sumption that even if she knew she would forgive him. And on the other hand he dared not even hint at what had happened. He could make no admissions of any sort. In fact, when he postponed writing to Bryn Mawr at all that day, Lt. Cable acknowledged that he had reached a great impa.s.se in his life. At that time he did not know that never again, as long as he lived, would he write to that girl in Philadelphia. He would try several times thereafter, but false words would not come, and true words he dared not write.

That evening in the officers' club a group of Marines fell to discussing the phenomenon of the morning, when Vanicoro had been so near that you could almost see ravines upon its face. "I'd like to see that island," one officer observed. "It's quite a place, I'm told. One of the tribes up there in the hills preserves heads and sometimes sells them. Cost about twenty bucks apiece. I know a guy sent two home to a museum. Box got sent to his home by mistake, and his old lady fainted."

"Very primitive place," another observed. "I flew over it the other day. Say, those two volcanoes are sure something to see. The west one... Well, that is the left one as you're coming in. Well, you can fly right down into it. There's a lake right in it, and it's one d.a.m.ned weird place, I can tell you."

"Do the natives live near the volcanoes?" a young officer inquired.

"One of the traders told me no," the flier replied. "Say, Cable. You know one of the traders. You know, that atabrine guy. Does he know Vanicoro at all?"

"He's never told me about it, if he does," Cable replied.

"Well, I understand the natives there are among the most primitive in all these islands. Filthy, backward, plenty tough guys. They were the last to eat one another, you know."

"What I don't see," the young Marine mused aloud, "is how Hollywood dares to cook up the tripe it does. Boy, oh boy! The reaming they give the American public."

"It's just good, clean malarkey," a newcomer observed. "What harm does it do? Any time Dorothy Lamour wants to wobble them blinkers at me, OK. I ain't kicking."

"What I mean," the young officer insisted, "is that it gives a very wrong impression. I have a girl back in Minneapolis..."

"h.e.l.l, you'd be lucky if you had a picture of a girl!"

"Well, anyway, this is a pretty fine girl, and she writes to me the other day. OK, listen!" And the young fellow, amply blushing, unfolded a letter and began to read: "Dear Eddie, I certainly hope you are not dating one of those luscious South Sea beauties we see so much of in the movies. If you do, I'm afraid you'll never come back to me. After all, Minneapolis is pretty cold, and if we wore what they wear... well, you get the idea!"

"Take it from me, Eddie. That bimbo is trying to make you."

"Is that bad?" Eddie cried, throwing his hands up in the air and waving the letter.

"It ain't good, Eddie. Not when you're out here and she's in Minneapolis. Tell me. Did she ever talk like that when you were there? Right with her?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, she didn't. But I think she's beginning to miss me, now that I'm out here."

"Don't fall for that c.r.a.p, Eddie," his counselor warned. "She's the type of girl can't write too hot a letter, but when you turn up on the spot, she thinks maybe she better not turn off the light! I know a dozen girls like that."

"For your information, this girl isn't like that. Personally, I think she loves me. Anyway, I'm not taking any chances. Look at the picture I'm sending her tonight!" From his shirt pocket Eddie produced a horrendous picture of a Melanesian woman with frizzled hair, sagging b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and b.u.t.tocks like a Colorado mesa. She was wearing a frond of palm leaves.

"Now that's what I call a woman!" one Marine observed. Others whistled. Several wanted copies for their girls.

"Look, Cable!" one officer cried. "The real South Seas!" He pa.s.sed the repulsive picture to Cable, who looked at it hurriedly and returned it.

"What I don't get," Eddie mused, as he returned the photograph to his pocket, "is how traders out here and planters can marry these women. Or even live with them? My G.o.d, I wouldn't even touch that dame with a ten-foot pole."

"But they do!" an older man insisted. "They do. I've heard of not less than eight well authenticated cases in which white men lived with or married native women."

"Yeah," another added, "but just remember that most of those women were Polynesians, and they're supposed to be beautiful. And some were Tonks, too, I'll bet."

"Melanesians, Polynesians, Tonks!" Eddie cried, thinking of the hot number in cold Minneapolis. "They're all alike."

"The h.e.l.l they are!" an older officer cried. "They are like so much h.e.l.l! There's all the difference in the world! I've seen some mighty lovely Polynesians in Samoa. And don't let anybody sell you short on that."

"You can say that again!" a friend added.

"Don't give me that guff!" Eddie cried contentiously. "Maybe they are pretty. But how many of you would... well, make love to them? Come on, now put up or shut up. Would you?"

"It all depends... If..."

"Tell me yes or no. No hedging."

"You know what the mess cook said. 'They're getting whiter every day.' If I was out here long enough, I can't tell what I'd do."

Eddie was not satisfied with this answer. "We'll poll the club," he announced. Taking the photograph from his pocket he thrust it beneath a fellow officer's nose. "Would you sleep with that?" he cried.

"h.e.l.l, no!" the man replied. The older officer ridiculed the test and grabbed a copy of Life that was lying on the wine table. He shuffled through the pages until he found the picture of an old, withered Italian woman sitting beside the ruins of her home. He thrust this picture before the earlier judge.

"How about that?" he snorted.

"h.e.l.l, no!" the judge replied impartially.

"You're d.a.m.ned right!" the older officer agreed. "You just sit back, Eddie, and let me ask the questions."

"All right," Eddie a.s.sented. "But make 'em fair."

Around the room went the questions, in various forms. Roughly, they all added up to the same idea: "Would you, if the opportunity presented itself, sleep with a woman from the islands?"

"No!" answered all the young officers.

"It depends," said the older men.

"Ask Cable," Eddie shouted. "He's a Princeton man. He's got good sense."

"How you reason!" a friend cried.

"What do you say, Cable?" the inquisitor asked. "Would you sleep with a native girl?"

"No," Cable replied weakly. His voice was not heard above the noise of vigorous side arguments.

"He says No," Eddie reported loudly. "And you men are d.a.m.ned right. Very few self-respecting American men would attempt to knock off a piece of jungle julep. And you can take my word for that!"

But next morning rain clouds were low once more, and on the horizon Vanicoro called to Cable like an echo from some distant life.

That afternoon the rain clouds lifted, and fleecy c.u.mulus clouds were piled one upon the other above the volcanoes until, at sunset, there was a pillar of snowy white upon which the infinite colors of the sunset played. As always, the Marines tarried over their evening meal to watch the strange lights come and go upon that mighty and majestic pillar of cloud. "I've never seen it look so lovely!" the men agreed. From the porch of his Dallas hut Cable watched the subtle procession of lights. As the sun sank lower in the west, colors grew stronger and climbed higher up the great pillar. Finally, only a tip of brilliant red glowed above Vanicoro. It stayed there for a long time, like a marker indicating to Cable where his heart lay that night.

The next afternoon Lt. Cable made his weekly inspection of the camp area. Under the familiar banyan tree he discovered b.l.o.o.d.y Mary doing business openly with her band of admirers. The men rose as their lieutenant approached, and sensing displeasure in his manner, quietly drew off, leaving the old Tonk and the officer together. For several moments neither could think of anything appropriate to say. Then, as if she were greeting an equal, b.l.o.o.d.y Mary said in English, "Fine day, major."

Lt. Cable looked at her for a long time, and nothing more was said. He kicked at the ground a bit, shuffled through her wares with one hand in a desultory manner, still found no words at his command, and left. The old Tonk watched him until his noisy jeep disappeared around a bend. Then she laughed. The Marines came back, and haggling over prices progressed.

That evening there was a peculiar refraction in the air, and the ocean in front of the mess appeared as it had never done before. Fine sunlight, entering the waves at a peculiar angle, were refracted by the intensely white coral. The waves seemed to be green. No, they were green, a green so light as to be almost yellow, and yet a green so brilliant that it far outshone all the leaves on all the trees.

"Look at that lovely water!" a major cried to the men still eating at table. "It must be because the sun is so low and yet so bright."

His fellow officers piled out of their mess and stood along the beach. They marveled at the mystery and discussed it in all the terms they could command. For a few minutes it was concluded that someone had thrown a life-raft dye-marker into the sea and stained it the way men do when they are lost on the great ocean. Then they can be seen by searching planes.

This theory, however, was discarded when it was pointed out that the location of the green sometimes changed abruptly. Mere currents could not account for the rapid mutations. It must, indeed, be the action of the sun.

Whatever the cause, the ocean was a thing of rare beauty that night. Having nothing else to do, the Marines watched it as long as the sun was up. Slowly the green faded into twilight gray. The sun disappeared and flaming clouds shot up beyond the volcanoes at Vanicoro. There the fine symphony of light played itself out. A bird called. Night insects began to cry. Then, like a Mongol rush, night and darkness bore down through the fragmentary tropic twilight. The ocean, and the sun, and the flaming pillar of cloud, and the island were asleep. Night had fallen, and all things were at rest except Cable's furious mind.

His mind worked on and on. Sometimes he would conclude that he would never see Bali-ha'i again. That he would forget the entire incident. That he would never see b.l.o.o.d.y Mary again. That he would erase fat Benny from his mind. That he would ask for an immediate transfer to some other island... farther north.

But not one of these resolutions did he have the slightest intention of following. Never did he even mildly deceive himself that any of those courses were open to him. Well he knew that he was tied to Bali-ha'i by chains of his own making.

That evening he went into his hut and determined that he would write letters to his mother and to the girl whom he had intended to marry... when the war was over. The first letter was dry and stilted. The old easy comments were gone. The fluency of shared experiences was lost. "He was well. He hoped she was well. The ocean was green tonight." That was it: the ocean was green. It was just green. It wasn't a vivid green, or a brilliant green, or a miraculous green, or an iridescent green. It was green, and although half a hundred officers had vocally marveled at the phenomenon, Cable could not share either his or their emotions with his mother.

The letter to his intended wife was not even started. When the paper was on the table before him, Cable knew that he could write nothing upon it. He realized then that what he had experienced in the South Pacific could never be shared with her. He had not told the girl from Bryn Mawr about the j.a.p charges on Guadalca.n.a.l. He hadn't even attempted to tell her about them before he met Liat. He felt that girls in Bryn Mawr wouldn't understand. Or they wouldn't be interested. He had not been able to convey to her his feelings about the islands, nor his long trip into the jungle, nor what he had thought of mysterious Vanicoro even before he had visited Bali-ha'i. Fight against it as he might, Cable had permitted a new world to grow within him. If that world had maintained only a minor importance in his life, all might have been well; but when the hidden world a.s.sumed master importance, then all was lost.

Crumpling the untouched piece of letter paper, Cable grabbed his hat and went out into the tropical night. The quiet ocean lapped the white sands. Coconut trees stood out against the crescent moon. Life had no color; all was gray. It had no sound; all was a meaningless, faint buzz. The camp was quiet, for men and officers alike were at the movies. In the mess hall two disgruntled attendants washed the last of the dishes. Cable walked through the darkened camp, and unwittingly made his way toward the banyan tree.

As he approached the tree, he became slowly aware that people were there. He halted and then moved more cautiously. Sure enough, there in the moonlight, aided by a vest-pocket flashlight, b.l.o.o.d.y Mary was selling half-pint bottles of gut-rotting homemade whiskey. And in large tins by the tree, Marines and soldiers were bringing her torpedo juice, that murderous high-proof alcohol which in the South Pacific is used indiscriminately to drive torpedoes at j.a.p ships and men crazy.

"Fo' dolla'," the old Tonk would demand, holding up a beer bottle with half a pint of so-called whiskey sloshing about inside.