Tales of the South Pacific Part 23

"Yes, sir."

"Gasoline or Diesel?"

"Diesel." There were no more questions. Commander Hoag thought a moment, studied the map. He was going to make some comment but thought better of it.

"That's all, gentlemen," he said dryly. "You know what this means. Run your roads down here. Oh, yes! That's what I was trying to remember. You'll have to run trucking lines to each end of the airstrip. Pearlstein tells me it will take at least twelve days to make his fill. We'll work both ends and meet in the middle."

The visitors left, and that night our ship started north. Behind us trailed the new ship, with its strange equipment. I noticed particularly that the officers no longer ridiculed the idea of live coral. "That guy may have something," one of the wiriest of the young men said. They did, however, complain bitterly about the extra work. To hear them talk you would have thought it absolutely impossible to build an extra road on Konora.

All arguments ceased, completely, when five troop transports of Marines met us one morning. It was a solemn moment when they hove into sight. We knew what the ships were, and that our lives and fortunes depended upon those Leathernecks. At such moments a bond is established that no subsequent hardships can ever break. From that moment on, the Marines in those ships were our friends. We would see none of them until we hit the beaches they had won for us, and some of them would never speak to us, lying upon the sh.o.r.es... Those Marines were our friends.

Two days later heavy warships swung into line, and next morning we were at Konora. All day our forces alternated between aerial bombardment and naval sh.e.l.lfire. It was awe-inspiring to witness the split-second timing. It was wonderful to contemplate the brains that went into the operation. It was sickening to imagine one's self upon that sh.o.r.e. I recall my thoughts distinctly: "A long time ago the j.a.ps came down like this and sh.e.l.led us on Guadal. Strange, but they'll never do that again!"

In the night great sh.e.l.ls whined through the air, and at 0400 we saw the first Marines go ash.o.r.e. The landing was neither tragic nor easy. It was a routine Marine landing, with some casualties but with planned success. At four-thirty in the afternoon the first SeaBee detachments went ash.o.r.e. They were to throw up huts and a camp area. That night they were attacked by j.a.ps and four SeaBees were killed.

At daybreak our first heavy lighters headed for sh.o.r.e. They carried Luther Billis, a dozen bulldozers, and Lieut. Pearlstein's men. I saw them as they hit the sh.o.r.e. In three minutes a bulldozer edged onto the sand and started for the brush. In four minutes more a tree was toppling. All that day Pearlstein and his men drove madly for the coral hill. It took two companies of Marines to protect them. At sunset that day Pearlstein was halfway to the hill. His men worked all night, with ghostly flares, and two of them were wounded.

One of the wounded men was Luther Billis, who insisted upon being in the front lines. He suffered a superficial flesh wound, but the corps-man who treated him was a bit of a wag. He had with him a homemade purple heart, which he pinned on Billis' pants, since the "big dealer" could not be made to wear a shirt. Next morning Billis barged into the head of the line where they were serving coffee. "I'm a b.l.o.o.d.y hero!" he bellowed. "Special privileges." He then proceeded to revile the Marine Corps in frightful language. "They didn't protect me!" he roared. "Ran away when the going got tough!" The Marines, who had taken a liking to the fat nomad, countered with an improvised sign painted with mercurochrome: Billis Boulevard. The name still stands on Konora.

There were more j.a.ps on the island than we had antic.i.p.ated. It would be incorrect to say that the SeaBees had to stop operations in order to fight the yellow devils, but each working party had to have infantry protection. If Marines were not available, SeaBees had to provide their own snipers. Artisans forty years old who had expected to work in Pearl Harbor and sleep between sheets, swore, b.i.t.c.hed, and grabbed rifles. I doubt if the SeaBees altogether killed two j.a.ps. But they sure used up a pile of ammunition!

By the third day the Marines had a perimeter safely established. That night at seven o'clock Pearlstein reached his first objective: the coral hill. Billis and some rowdies set up a terrific small-arms barrage in honor of the event. The Marine commandant sent a special runner to see what had happened. He was furious when he heard the explanation, and called for Hoag.

"I won't have your men firing that way!" he snapped.

"Yes, sir!" Hoag replied briskly. But he said nothing to anybody about the rebuke.

On the fifth day, with tractors and bulldozers making a shambles of Konora, I went to see how the live-coral project was developing. In the lagoon, within the protecting angle of the bend, an energetic crew had established a dredging process. They had half a dozen ma.s.sive steel maws which they sank onto the coral bottom. The maws were then slowly dragged onto the beach, where a tripping device threw the collected coral into piles. As I watched, a giant steam shovel came slowly out of the jungle behind me, like a pterodactyl. It moved with horrible slowness, crunchingness, and grinding. It took up a position on the beach from which it could scoop up the live coral. Trucks were already waiting for their first loads.

"Would you like to see what we're getting?" an officer asked me. I went with him to the farthest dredge. We waited until a fresh batch was hauled in and tripped. Then we stepped forward to examine the catch.

In the crushed pile at our feet we saw a wonderland. Coral grows like an underwater bush. It is of many colors, ranging from exquisite pastel greens to violent, bleeding reds. There is blue coral, orange, purple, gray, amethyst, and even now and then a bush of stark, black coral. Like human beings, it grows white as it approaches death.

The officer broke off a branch of living coral and handed it to me. It was purple, and was composed of a stony base, already calcified. Next that was a pulpy, mineral segment, pale white in color. The extreme tip was almost purely vegetable. It exuded a sticky milk which smelled noxiously. Over all were suction caps like those on the tentacles of an octopus. They were potential tips which had not matured.

It was impossible to believe that this tiny organism and its stony sh.e.l.l had raised the island on which we stood and was at that moment raising thousands of new islands throughout the Pacific, most of which would never break the waves but would remain subterranean palaces of rare wonder. It was equally difficult to believe that the evil smelling whitish milk would shortly go to work for the SeaBees!

The days dragged on. I saw little of Pearlstein, but I heard that he had run into all sorts of trouble. On the seventh day he got more than his share. A j.a.p bomber came over, one of nine that tried, and laid an egg right on Pearlstein's steam shovel. Killed two men and wounded one. The shovel was wrecked. I was sent up to see what I could do to get him another.

Pearlstein had tears in his eyes. "G.o.ddam it all," he said. "You try and try! Then something like this happens!" He surveyed the ruined shovel. I knew little about machinery, but it seemed to me that the shovel was not too badly wrecked. After the dead bodies were removed, we studied what was left of the machinery.

"Billis?" I asked. "Couldn't you run that without the controls? I mean, couldn't you counterweight it with a tractor? The boom still works."

Billis and his men looked at the complex job I had set them. "It could be done, sir," the dirty fat man said. "But it would take..."

"Let's start right away!" Pearlstein cried when he perceived what might be done. "Look, fellows. All we'll have to do is bulldoze the coral over here. We won't move the shovel again. Let's see what we can do!" I left Pearlstein, bare to the waist, high up the boom of the shovel, loosening some bolts.

At night we could hear shots in the jungle. Some men swore that j.a.ps had infiltrated the lines and stolen food. Others were afraid to sleep. But gradually the lines were pushed back and back. There were now apparently no j.a.ps within the knee. And Marines had landed at each tip, so that two tightly compressing pockets were all that remained for the yellow men.

On the eighth day New Zealanders put on a terrific air show for us. Two squadrons of j.a.p fighters came over and shot us up fairly badly. Eight men were wounded and three killed. But the New Zealanders, in their crushing style, drove the j.a.ps into the sea. Everybody stopped work, of course, and we counted seven j.a.p planes crash either in the sea or on Konora. One wild j.a.p tried to crash on the airstrip but instead crashed into the coral hill, where he completely demolished Pearlstein's improvised shovel and injured four men.

That night we had a hurried meeting. It was decided that the steam shovel at the live coral pits should be moved to the hillside. For if the gully was not filled, it mattered little whether live coral were available or not. Therefore, at 2100 a strange procession set out across Konora. Billis rode in front on his favorite bulldozer. Any tree that might hinder pa.s.sage of the steam shovel was knocked over. It was astonishing to me how easily a huge tree could be uprooted and shoved aside. Billis later told me it was because the roots had nowhere to go. They could not penetrate the coral.

Slowly, with horrible noises, we inched our way along the jungle trails. At one place water had collected and the bulldozer bogged down. We waited an hour till another came to haul it free. Then together, like monsters, they shoved tree after tree into that depression. Slowly, the giant shovel edged its way onto the bridge, into the middle and across. By that time Billis was on ahead, knocking down a banyan.

At the foot of the hill six tractors threw down cables and inched the shovel up the incline. At dawn it was in place. At dawn a smart young ensign at the live coral pits had completed a platform arrangement whereby dredge loads could be emptied directly into trucks. At dawn work went on.

All this time Commander Hoag was a great, restless reservoir of energy. He worked with all hands, helped to build the platform at the live coral pits. He was constantly with the wounded and had to bite his lip when he watched a fine young friend lose a leg. But mostly he was on the airstrip. It progressed so slowly. G.o.d, it crawled along!

Starting from either end two companies with tractors had knocked down all the trees and pushed them into the southern extremities of the ravine. Hoag would not permit trees to be used as filler for the airstrip itself. That must be coral. Next the foot or so of topsoil was bulldozed away to block the highest section of the ravine. In this way the normal flow of rain water was diverted into the ocean without crossing the strip. That left a long, fine stretch of native coral rock, broken in the middle by the ravine.

Again starting from either end, bulldozers slowly pushed the top layer of coral toward the ravine. By that time Pearlstein's trucks were beginning to roll. Coral from the hillside rumbled to the airstrip twenty-four hours a day. At the same time, live coral from the sea was hauled to the two ends. Six steam rollers worked back and forth constantly. At the north side of the strip, a company of carpenters built a control tower. Electricians had already completed two identical power plants and were installing flood lights. From then on day and night were the same on Konora.

As yet no one but Hoag was sure the airstrip would be completed on time. With his permission I sent Admiral Kester a message telling him to schedule bombers for the field at the appointed time. On the sixteenth day the bombers would be there! We wondered if there would be a field for them to land on?

At this point a wonderful thing happened. Luther Billis disappeared for two days! We thought he was dead, lying somewhere in the bush, but on the evening of the second day he appeared in camp with two j.a.panese Samurai swords. He gave one to Commander Hoag just before he was thrown into the brig. After dinner the Marine commandant came over and asked if Commander Hoag wouldn't please drop charges against Billis. It seems some Marines had been saying how tough they were, and Billis listened for a while and then bet them that he could go down the west leg and get himself a sword, which they wouldn't be able to do down the east leg. It seems that Billis had won, and it wasn't quite right, the Marines thought, that he should be punished. Besides, he told them where the j.a.p camp was.

Commander Hoag thought for a while and released the "big dealer." Billis told us all about it. Seems his old lady ran a newsstand in Pittsburgh. He sent her a j.a.p ear from Guadal and she hung it up in the store. People came from all over to see it. He'd promised her a j.a.p sword, too, so he thought he'd better be getting one. He was going to send it to Pittsburgh. What Commander Hoag did with his was the old man's worry.

That night we had torrential rains. Floodlights on the field silhouetted men working in water up to their ankles. The gully, thank heavens, held. The dirt and trees had really diverted the rains. In the morning there was hardly any sign of water. Men who had slept through the deluge refused to believe there had been one.

By this time the milk trucks were running. The drivers were subjected to merciless ridicule, especially one who forgot to turn the spigots off and arrived with an empty truck. That day one of Pearlstein's drivers, coming down the hill at a great clip, overturned and was killed. The truck was ruined beyond repair. A SeaBee was then stationed at the dangerous spot to warn drivers to keep their speed down, but next day another truck went right on over. The driver merely broke both legs, but the truck was wrecked.

"I can't make them slow down!" Lieut. Pearlstein objected. "They know the schedule!"

The j.a.ps knew the schedule, too, apparently, for they started sending large numbers of bombers over at night plus four or five solitary nuisance raiders. "We'll have to turn off the lights," Commander Hoag reluctantly decided. But when work lagged way behind schedule, he announced that the twenty-four hour shift would be resumed.

American night fighters were sent to help us. They knocked down two j.a.p bombers the first night we kept the lights on, and from then on not one SeaBee was killed by bombing. Men working on the strip could not praise our aviators enough. It was a good feeling, having Yank fighters upstairs.

On the morning of the fifteenth day Lieut. Pearlstein, gaunt, unshaven, and nervous, reported to Commander Hoag. "You can finish the airstrip, sir. The gully won't take any more coral." Hoag said nothing. Held out his hand and shook Pearlstein's warmly. As the lieutenant was about to leave, Hoag made a suggestion.

"Why don't you sleep on one of the ships tonight? You could use some rest."

That afternoon a strange incident occurred, one which I have thought about time and again. An SBD flying medium high cover tangled with a j.a.p intruder and shot it down. The Nip went flaming into the sea. They always tried to hit the runway, but this one failed. Before he took his last long fling, however, he did manage to pepper the SBD, and the pilot had a difficult choice to make. He could try a water landing, or he could head for the uncompleted airfield.

"Clear the middle of the strip!" he called to the tower. "I'm coming in."

When his intention was apparent, Commander Hoag became almost insane with fury. "Stop that plane!" he shouted to the operations officer, but the officer ignored him. Hoag had no right to give such an order. Trembling, he watched the SBD approach, swerve badly when the unfilled portion loomed ahead, and slide past on a thin strip that had been filled.

The enlisted men cheered wildly at the superb landing. They stormed around the plane. Brandishing his revolver, Commander Hoag shouted that everyone was to go back to work immediately. He was like a wild man.

From the c.o.c.kpit of the SBD climbed Bus Adams. He grinned at me and reached for the commander's hand. "You had no right to land here!" Hoag stormed. "I expressly forbade it. Look at the mess you've made!"

Adams looked at me and tapped his forehead. "No, no!" I wigwagged.

"Get that plane off the strip at once. Shove it off if you have to!" Hoag shouted. He refused to speak further to Bus. When the plane had been pulled into a revetment by men who wondered how Bus had ever brought her in, Commander Hoag stormed from the field.

That night he came to see Bus and me. He was worn and haggard. He looked like an old man. He would not sit with us, nor would he permit us to interrupt his apology: "For six weeks I've done nothing but plan and fight to have this strip ready for bombers on the sixteenth day. We've had to fight rains, accidents, changes, and every d.a.m.ned thing else. Then this afternoon you land. I guess my nerves must have snapped. You see, sir," he said, addressing Bus, "we've lost a lot of men on this strip. Every foot has been paid for. It's not to be misused lightly."

He left us. I don't know whether he got any sleep that night for next morning, still haggard, he was up and waiting at 0700. It was the sixteenth day, and bombers were due from Guadalca.n.a.l and Munda. The gully was filled. On the seash.o.r.e trucks were idle, and upon the hill the great shovel rested. On the legs of the island desperate j.a.ps connived at ways to outwit Marines. And all over the Pacific tremendous preparations for taking Kuralei were in motion. It was a solemn day.

Then, from the east, specks appeared. They were! They were the bombers! In the radio tower orders were issued. The specks increased in size geometrically, fabulously. In grandeur they buzzed the field, finest in the Pacific. Then they formed a traffic circle and the first bomber to land on Konora roared in. The strip was springy, fine, borne up by living coral, and the determination of free men. At this precise moment three j.a.panese soldiers who had been lurking near the field in starving silence dashed from their cover and tried to charge the bomber.

Two were shot by Marines, but the third man plunged madly on. Screaming, wild, disheveled, his eyes popping from his horrible head, this primitive indecent thing surged on like his inscrutable ancestors. Clutching a grenade to his belly and shouting Banzai, he threw himself forward and knocked Commander Hoag to the ground.

The grenade exploded! It took the mad j.a.p to a heaven reserved for the hara-kiri boys. It took Commander Hoag, a free man, a man of thought and dignity, a man for whom other men would die... This horrible, indecent, meaningless act of madness took Hoag to his death. But above, the bombers wheeled and came in for their landings, whence they would proceed to Kuralei, to Manila, and to Tokyo.

THOSE WHO FRATERNIZE.

"THE loneliness! The longing!" An aviator was throwing words into the cool night at Konora. We knew the landing on Kuralei was not far off. We were thinking of hungry things.

One of the words. .h.i.t Bus Adams. "d.a.m.n!" he cried. "I tell you! Sometimes out here I've had a longing that almost broke my guts in two." Stars blazed over the silent lagoon. "To bomb a j.a.p ship! To see a football game in the snow. To kiss the Frenchman's daughter."

The last bottle of beer had been drained. It was time to go to bed, but we stayed on beneath the coconut trees. Bus watched Orion upside down in the topsy-turvy sky. "Have I ever told you about the Frenchman's daughter?" he asked. We leaned forward. A Frenchman! And his daughter! It sounded like a fine, s.e.xy story. In many ways it was.

There were two houses at Luana Pori-Bus began. There was the Red House for enlisted men. In there the charge was five dollars, and you had to wait in line. At the Green House the charge was ten dollars, but business was conducted more or less on a higher tone. The Green House was for officers, of course.

From what I hear the Red House was a sordid affair. The girls were mostly Javanese or half-caste Melanesians. True, a couple of pretty French girls were kept as bait, but at the Red House you didn't bother much about looks. After all, it wasn't an art gallery.

The girls at the Green House were of a different sort. They could talk with you in English, play the tinny piano, and even serve tea in the society manner. With them it was a matter of professional pride to include in their operations some of the social refinements. Might be a dance, a bridge party, or a tea. Even a formal dinner. At the Green House you didn't just go up and knock on the door and ask for the girls. If you had done that a surprised elderly French lady would have appeared and shown real confusion. There were various ways of getting to visit the Green House. In time you discovered what they were. If you were interested.

Right here I want to make one point perfectly clear. The Frenchman's daughter had nothing to do with the two houses at Luana Pori. Of that I am convinced. I know that Lt. Col. Haricot thought he had proof that she owned them. I don't believe it. And as for her father-in-law's wild charge that his son met her in the Pink House, down in Noumea... well, he was a crazy old coot who would have said anything. You know that he finally beat his brains out against the wall of his prison cell. Actually.

The girl was part Javanese. She was about twenty-three, weighed less than a hundred pounds, and was five feet three. She was slim, wiry, and self-confident. She had wide shoulders and thin hips. Her fingers were very long. A Marine said that when she stroked an old man's cheek "it was like she was playing the violin."

She had a small head, but not a pinhead, you understand. She made it seem smaller by wearing her hair parted in the middle and drawn tightly over her ears. She had many variations of this hair-do. The one I liked best was when she tucked a frangipani behind her left ear. You know the frangipani? A white, waxy flower. Very sweet. Looks like the dogwood. But darker. The same way she looked like all the beautiful girls you've ever known. But darker.

Her old man was the planter I told you about. Quite a character. Lived up north. Her mother was a Javanese servant girl. It was hard to tell which of her parents she was like. She was an Oriental, that's true. She had the slant eyes. But she had French traits, too. Like her old man she was clever, witty, pensive, industrious, hot-tempered, and-well-pretty d.a.m.ned s.e.xy. In a nice way, you understand. Nothing rough! At other times she was mystical and brooding, silent as a cat. She got these things from her Buddhist mother.

I met her, said Bus, in the d.a.m.nedest way. Put into the airstrip at Luana Pori and borrowed a jeep. I drove up past the two houses to her plantation. You know, white picket fence and big flower garden. "Madame Barzan," I said. "Up north. A pilot was shot down. He died. Not in my arms exactly. But he told me..."

She smiled at me with her little head on one side. "I hear all about you, Mister Bus Adams. At the airport they say, 'He one good guy.' Knock off that stuff, Bus. You like to have dinner here tonight?"

I think, said Bus, everyone who dined with Latouche Barzan will agree that dinner with her was a memorable affair. On her plantation were many small houses. What they were all for I never knew. One was a marvelous salon. It was made of woven bamboo, floor, roofing and side panels. In it were twelve or fifteen chairs, four small tables, three long benches and a bar. Before dinner we gathered there for drinks.

You could find most of the officers on Luana Pori at Latouche's. Everyone was welcome. We all loved to watch her placid Oriental mask break into naughty French lights and shadows when she was teasing some elderly colonel for some tires for her Australian car or a truckload of oil for her generator. She would pout and suck in her high cheeks. And then, if you were a man standing near her, you had to fight hard to keep from kissing her. She knew this, for I've often seen her rub very close to some older officer and laugh at his dumb jokes until I'm sure the old fool's head was in a whirl. That was how she got so much of the equipment she needed.

"Ah, major!" she would pout. "I like to build one small house for butcher. How I gonna get some cement? You got some Portland Cement?"

Not that she was stingy with her money. As you'll see, she fed half the American Army on Luana Pori. But there wasn't anything to spend money on. If the Army had cement... Well, it was only sensible to invite the Army to dinner.

"Bus?" she asked me one night. "Where I get some Remington.22 sh.e.l.ls?"

"What in the world do you want with.22 sh.e.l.ls?" I asked.

"For shoot wild chicken! How you think we catch wild chicken we serve here all time? Salt on his tail?" She laughed softly at her joke.

No matter what you paid for her dinners, they were worth it. A door lock, an ice machine, new copper wiring, an aviation clock set in mahogany from a propeller. They were well spent.

About seven in the evening Noe, the Javanese servant, would announce dinner in a high voice. We would then pa.s.s from the salon to the dining house. This was severely plain, with one very long table made of jungle planks rubbed brown. Latouche sat at the head of the table. I sat beside her, at first. While we waited for the soup to be served there was a moment of great antic.i.p.ation. Then Latouche's three sisters entered.

First was Josephine. She was nineteen. More Javanese than Latouche. Slim and with b.r.e.a.s.t.s you could sleep on forever. She was engaged to a Marine sergeant. He pulled the engagement gag so he could live with her while he was on Luana Pori. But when he almost got killed on Konora, he became like a wild man. His CO. let him hitch-hike back more than two thousand miles to marry her. She was like that.

Laurencin was seventeen. Beautiful like Latouche. Marthe was only fifteen when I saw her first. She was the queen of the group. Having lived among older men from the beginning of the war, she had acquired some d.a.m.ned cute little ways. She knew this and kept her soft almond eyes directed down toward her plate. Then once or twice each meal she would raise them at some young officer and knock him silly with her charm. There was a good deal of food spilt at Luana Pori, mostly by young men looking at Marthe.

Latouche served excellent meals. She butchered a beef at least twice a week, had her natives scour the woods for wild chicken and the sh.o.r.e for sea food. Occasionally, when American hunters bagged a deer up in the hills she would cook it for them. And whenever a food ship arrived from the States, someone would always manage to steal a truck-load of steaks and turkeys and corned beef and succotash and sneak it into Latouche's shed at night and whisper, "Our steward is a louse! He can't cook water. Uses no spices at all!"

"Ah, well!" Latouche would sympathize. "In the jungle! What you expect? I give this to Noe! We see what he can do with it."

When dinner was over Latouche led her guests back to the salon, where six or seven attractive French women of the islands were waiting. I never clearly understood who these girls were, where they ate their meals, or how they got to the plantation. They always went home in jeeps.

The introductions over, Latouche would slip back to the dining house, where I waited for her. "Who are those girls?" I asked one night as she curled up in a chair with me.

She smiled, a Javanese sort of smile. "I like men," she said. "American men I like very much. Is no good men by themselves all the time." I understand not less than six marriages resulted from Latouche's dinners.

But for me the best part came when Noe finished removing the dishes and took the pressure lamp back to the kitchen. Then Latouche and I sat in the shadowy darkness of the dining house and played records on the old Victrola her father had brought her from Australia. She loved American music. I had to laugh. I used to sit there in the dark and think of wives of colonels and majors back home telling their bridge clubs, "John gets so lonesome on the islands. The children and I sent him some records last week." And there they were, in Latouche's white dining house.

There were also some Javanese records. I loved those crazy melodies, especially when Latouche accompanied the wailing music in a singsong voice. When she grew tired, she would kiss me softly in the ear and whisper, "This next one for Mister Bus Adams, special." Then she would play Yvonne Printemps' French recording of "Au clair de la June." She said it was an old record. The machine was not good, and the needle scratched. But the music sounded fine there at the edge of the jungle. You know how it goes. Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. The girl's name is spelled Printemps, but you say it Prantom. You don't sound the final ps, and she can really sing.

The last record was for Latouche. Then I kissed her, and she closed her eyes, and I could feel her shivering, but not from love. By the way, have you ever heard Hildegarde sing "The last time I saw Paris"? Not much of a song, but brother, when you hear it in a bamboo room, with Latouche Barzan twisting nervously in your arms...

"Bus?" she whispered. "Paris? What it like?"

I would try to tell her. I made up a lot, for she was mad to know about Paris. All I remembered was wide beautiful streets and narrow crooked ones. I recalled something about the opera there, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Mostly I had to think of movies I had seen. Once I got started on the Rue Claude Bernard, where I used to live near a cheese market. I embroidered that street until even the cheese merchant wouldn't have known it. But it was worth it, for when the music stopped and my voice with it, Latouche would kiss me wildly and cry, "Oh, Bus! I wish you not married. I wish my husban' he dead. You and I we get married..."

"Latouche!" I whispered. "For G.o.d's sake, don't talk like that."

"Why not? I wish my husban' he dead up there in the hills. Then everything all right. I marry some nice American."

"Stop it!"

"Whatsamatter, Bus? You no wish your wife she dead sometime?"

"It's not funny, Latouche!" I protested. My forehead was wet.

"I not say it funny," she mused, quietly b.u.t.toning her dress. "I talk very serious. When you kissing me? When you taking my dress off? I s'pose you never wish your wife dead?"

I felt funny inside. You know how it is. You're out in the islands. You have a wife, but you don't have a wife. Sometimes the idea flashes through your head... Without your thinking it, understand. And you draw back in horror. "What in h.e.l.l am I saying? What kind of a man am I, anyway?" And all the time a girl like Latouche is in your arms, her black hair about your face, the smell of frangipani everywhere. And when she hammers that question at you, as if she were the horrible little voice... Man, you take a deep breath and you don't answer.

I didn't blame Latouche for wanting her husband dead. Achille Barzan was a pretty poor sort, the son of French peasants who had been deported to Noumea years before for some crime, no one remembered what. They had chopped their plantation from the jungle. Alone they planted coconut trees and nursed cacao bushes into trees. They lived like less than pigs for eight long years, getting no returns, going deeper into debt. Then, just as the plantation started to make money, their son married Latouche De Becque, b.a.s.t.a.r.d daughter of a renegade Frenchman who lived with one colored girl after another. Their only comfort was that Latouche had brought a dowry. Her father stole it from some planter up north. And the girl was good-looking.

"Too good-looking!" old Madame Barzan observed. "She'll bring sorrow to our son. Mark my words."

The old woman had early detected Latouche's willfulness. It was no surprise to her, therefore, when Achille had to knock her down and forbid her to visit Noumea. Nor could the family do anything to make her stop ridiculing old Petain. The Barzans, mother, father, son, saw clearly that only the grim marshal's plan of work and discipline could save France.