Tales of the South Pacific Part 15

Uncomfortable in his unnecessary sleeping, he tossed and twisted until his clothes began to bind. Sweat ran down the seams in small rivers. Now, as the sun upon the coral grew hotter, his discomfort rose and a kind of half-waking nightmare overtook him, as it attacks all fitful sleepers in the tropics. There were no proportions to his fantasy; like a vision of marihuana his dream consisted merely of geographic shapes propelling themselves into weirder shapes, until his entire mind was filled with whirring and wheeling objects.

At noon some fellow officers endeavored to waken him, but he rolled over soddenly. With a wet forearm, he shooed them away, and continued his sleeping. The same officers, upon returning from chow, decided to have some fun with Cable. One hurried to a near-by shack and returned with an object that caused great merriment among the conspirators. With the aid of string they rigged a suspension over the sleeping man's bed. Then they retired to a corner. When they were hidden, they made a loud noise. What happened next they did not fully antic.i.p.ate.

Instead of drowsily opening his eyes at the noise Cable, for some unknown reason, sat bolt upright. As he did so, his steaming face hit the object which he was supposed to have seen upon waking. It was the grisly head from Vanicoro! It was hanging by the hair. The force with which his face hit the grim object caused it to swing in a long arc. Before he was fully aware of what was happening, the head swung back and bounced several times against his wet face, spreading the tropic sweat. The moisture felt like blood.

With a scream, the Marine sprang from his hot bed and leaped for the door. Outside, he looked back once at the head, still swinging. The hidden men he never saw.

Cable went to the shower and washed off his face and hands. He was frightened, even when he knew what the object was. He was frightened because he had slept so restlessly, because he had awakened so bizarrely, because he had been reprimanded that morning.

"I must get hold of myself," he repeated, over and over again. "What the devil is happening to me?" He straightened his clothes, wiped the sweat from his arms, washed his face again, and returned for his cap. The head was gone.

"I'll go see b.l.o.o.d.y Mary right now," he said with determination. He left his hut, climbed slowly into his jeep and drove down the road toward the banyan tree.

"Hey, sir!" a Marine called. "You got her in second!" He deliberately kept the jeep in that gear so as not to admit that he had been drowsing at the wheel. When the engine heated up, he s.h.i.+fted into high. By then he was near the road leading to the banyan. Again he s.h.i.+fted into second so that any enlisted men near by would hear him coming and have time to hide among the brush. When he reached the banyan, old Mary sat there alone. She grinned as he approached.

"h.e.l.lo, Mary," he said without enthusiasm.

"You like Liat?" the forthright old Tonk asked.

"Colonel say, You go!' This time, you go. And don't come back!" He spoke in English, adding hand movements to enforce his words.

"Me go," Mary said with no disposition to argue. "G.o.ddam colonel." To give effect to her words, she spat into the dust. Cable noticed that she was chewing betel again. She folded her wares as she had often done before, placed them in a small box, and grinned at the lieutenant. "Me go! See!"

Cable, satisfied that she understood and would obey, started to leave, but the old woman grabbed at his arm. Now she spoke in French, her own barbarous version of that lovely language. "You like Liat?" she asked.

Cable blushed deeply. "Yes," he replied. Then he tried to pull his arm loose and climb into his jeep. Mary hauled him back. She sat by her box. Cable was forced to sit upon one of the snakelike roots of the banyan.

"Liat fine girl," Mary observed. "Liat very good girl."

"Yes," the Marine a.s.sented, "she is a lovely girl."

"You marry her?" Mary asked directly.

This was the question that Cable had been fearing for a long time. He tried to mask his emotions as he replied, but looking at the repugnant, betel-stained old harridan he could not. There was a slight revulsion in his voice and manner as he answered her. "I can't," he said.

Mary dropped her pretense of pleasantness at this, insulted by the slight and infuriated that her plans might go awry. "Why not?" she demanded.

"I can't marry her," Cable repeated sullenly.

"You don't love her?" Mary asked, using a word that had no exact counterpart in Tonkinese, where men and women marry for almost any reason except love. It was a western extravagance whose meaning had once been explained to her by Benoit, the planter who wanted to marry Liat.

"I love her, Mary," Cable explained. "But I can't marry her."

"Why not?" the hard woman demanded. "Why not? You go over to Bali-ha'i. You make..." Here Mary demonstrated a filthy gesture commonly used in the Orient. Cable winced and looked away.

"Yes!" the infuriated woman screamed. "All the time you go there and make..."

"Mary! Please!" Cable cried, speaking once more in English. He looked furtively about him. "At least," he thought to himself, "few enlisted men know French, thank heavens!"

"You afraid? I not afraid!" She put her hand to the side of her face, making a megaphone, and shouted: "So-and-so lieutenant go to Bali-ha'i! Make..."

At this insult Cable could not contain himself. He swung his right hand sharply and slapped b.l.o.o.d.y Mary across the face. The effect was startling. The woman perceived that the young man was deeply moved. She had been beaten before by men who were disturbed and unsure of themselves. It was a human thing to do... for a man. She understood. Spitting once more into the dust, she tenderly grasped Cable's arm.

"Why you not marry Liat?" she asked in a low voice of great dignity.

Cable, astonished by what he had done and, like Mary, surprised at the depth of his love for Liat, looked dumbly at the old woman and replied, "I can't. I can't take her home with me."

"Look, lieutenant!" she cried with sudden inspiration. "I have much money. I have three thousand dollars, maybe. In Hanoi my brother, he is rich. Why you not take this money? Live here with Liat? Maybe live in China. Other white men do." She spoke in a persuasive, pleading tone.

"Mary!" he cried in an agony of pain. "I can't. I can't!" Forcing himself free of her grasp, he hurried to his jeep and started it with a roar. Mary pulled herself to her feet and ran over to the side of the car.

"You come back, bimeby?"

He didn't. He stayed away all that day and the next. On the third day, he was awakened from his afternoon nap by Atabrine Benny. "It's none of my business," the fat fellow observed in a confidential whisper, "but I know a boat that's going over to Bali-ha'i tonight. A couple of guys are going fis.h.i.+ng. They cleared it with the patrol craft. They could drop you off." He paused archly. "That is, if you wished to go..." His voice trailed off in fine southern insinuation.

Cable was perplexed for a moment. If he did this thing, he would be involved with other men, and soon his secret would be shared throughout the island, and on other islands, too. It would be like the secret of the naval officer at Luana Pori who crept into the bed of a lovely De Gaullist when her Petainist husband beat it to the hills. Everyone knew it, now.

But Cable's caution was soon drowned in his ardor. "Are you going, too?" he asked. "Good! Then I'll be there. What time?" Arrangements were hurriedly made and Benny, ill at ease in officers' country, slipped away. That night a small craft set out when harbor lights were dimmed. Before midnight it was approaching Bali-ha'i. At quarter past midnight Cable asked if he might use a lantern for a moment. There was some quiet discussion, and one of the men produced a strong flashlight. Slowly, for the s.p.a.ce of three minutes or more, Cable waved the light back and forth. Then, climbing into the small yellow rubber boat which the men let down over the side, he started to row for the cliffs.

"Be careful," Atabrine Benny called to him. "We'll be back for you right here at 0400." Each man then set his watch, like a group of aviators about to make a strike and planning their deathly rendezvous. The craft slipped off in search of bonita and barracuda. Silently, the little yellow lifeboat crawled toward the coral at the foot of the cliff. By the time Cable found a satisfactory place to beach the fragile boat, Liat was on the sh.o.r.e calling softly to him.

Like a surge of unconsolable emotion, Cable leaped from the boat, ran to the lovely girl, and enveloped her in his arms. Her own heart was beating as wildly as his, and by the time she lay upon the sand beneath one of the trees, naked in the s.h.i.+mmering moonlight, Cable's torrential pa.s.sion could restrain itself no longer. He clasped the delicate Tonkinese to him and surrendered all doubts that had made him miserable that week. She was his, she was his, and that single fact outweighed all lesser questions.

Before, in the hut, the love these two had felt for one another had been constrained by the confines of the close walls and by the natural fear that someone would burst in upon them. Now, on the edge of the jungle and the sea, secure in their mutually shared pa.s.sions, they surrendered themselves throughout that night to the rea.s.surances of immortality that men and women can give to one another.

In their slight talk Cable reported his meeting with Liat's mother. When he came to the part in which he said that he could not marry Liat, the girl did not protest, for indeed, in her heart, she had known from the first that this tall Marine could not marry her if he would. And now, under the jungle tree, with the speckled moonlight falling upon their intermingled brown bodies, Liat was not too concerned about the future.

With that rare indifference bred of thousands of years of life in the Orient, the little girl said quietly, "I knew it could never be. My mother dreamed that something great would happen to me. It has. But not what she dreamed. You love me. You will go away somewhere. I will marry somebody else."

"Oh, Liat, Liat!"

"Oh, yes! I shall. My family is almost rich among the Tonkinese." She stopped speaking and then added, "But I wish that you and I could have a baby. A baby that was yours, too. Then, if you went away..."

The little Tonkinese girl grew silent. Perhaps she knew that all over the world women were saying that. For it was war, and the thought and speech were identical in Russia, in New Mexico, in Yokohama, in Dresden, and in Bali-ha'i.

Cable, relaxed, wondered what would happen to a son of his if Liat did become pregnant. It was a happy thought, and he laughed aloud. "What is it, Joe?" she asked, p.r.o.nouncing the J like a Zh.

"I was thinking," he said, "that it would be heaven to have children with you. To live somewhere together. Somewhere like Bali-ha'i." Then soberer thought overtook him. He s.h.i.+vered slightly, and Liat pulled herself closer to him. When she asked what was the matter, he replied, "It is almost four o'clock, and I must meet the boat."

They dressed, and Liat helped him to pull the boat into the water. Holding the craft with one foot, he clasped Liat to him again as if he could never let her go. "How did you know I was coming?" he asked.

"I look every night," she said. "I know you cannot stay away." He kissed her pa.s.sionately and almost roughly shoved her back away from the boat. Then he rowed out slowly to where Atabrine Benny was already flas.h.i.+ng a light.

Three more times Cable made that midnight trip. He was now living in a delirium which carried into waking hours the phantasms that a.s.sailed him when he slept and sweated at noonday. He and Liat were experiencing a pa.s.sion that few couples on this earth are privileged to share. Could it have been indefinitely prolonged, it is probable that their love for one another would have sustained them, regardless of their color, throughout an entire lifetime. This is not certain, however, for Cable and Liat knew of the impossibilities that surrounded them.

Cable, for example, heard from Atabrine Benny that each night when the boat set out for Bali-ha'i, old b.l.o.o.d.y Mary knew about it and watched it go. He half suspected that some of his fellow officers knew of what was going on, for they looked at him strangely; but promptly he realized that perhaps it was because he was looking at them strangely. He moved as in a dream. He no longer said, "Tomorrow I will certainly write to my mother. Tomorrow I will get out that paper work." He was beyond deceiving himself. He knew only that one of these days something would break, a terrible scandal, or a new attack on some island further north, or detachment to some other station. Something unforeseen would rescue him from b.l.o.o.d.y Mary.

Then everything happened at once! Little Eddie, the Marine with a girl in Minneapolis, came bursting into the Officers' Mess one evening and cried, "It's the McCoy! We move north at once! There's going to be a big push somewhere, and we're in on it! We stage up at Bonita Bay!"

"Where do we hit?"

"When do we leave here?"

"Eddie? Did you see the orders? Or is this just guff?"

"Easy on, there. Easy on," Eddie cried, pleased with his importance. "I saw the orders. The colonel showed them to several of us. Where we strike?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? Who cares?"

There was furious discussion. Some men felt that it might be Konora, a small island far up. Others suggested Bougainvillea. One wild theorist proposed Rabaul itself, but like the fool who thought it might even be Kuralei, he was shouted down. It was interesting to note that the wild and general discussion changed not one man's personal opinions as to where the next great strike would be. Even the embryo general who had deduced that Kuralei was the logical place to strike was not deterred by the gibes. He knew he was right.

Next morning the news was made official. Departure from their Present base would be immediate. "What does that mean, sir?"

"Immediately," the colonel replied, and smiled. Later discussion concluded that it meant six or seven days.

Cable was completely perplexed. On one hand the urgency of the move swept him along like one of the boxes being hastily packed. On the other, his tremendous emotional and spiritual involvement with Liat completely dragged him home to Bali-ha'i. In the confusion thus created in his uncertain mind he drifted, praying that Atabrine Benny might stumble along with some suggestion. Significantly, however, he made no effort to find Benny. He methodically packed and hoped.

Strangely, it was not Benny but b.l.o.o.d.y Mary who sensed the problems he would be facing. Fifteen minutes after the colonel had informed his junior officers of the intended move the Tonks knew what was up. It was good news for them, in a way, because for the next few weeks the lid would be off. They could sell whiskey, kill chickens for last-minute barbecues, sell skirts, sell anything that walked or could be carried.

To b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, however, the news was intensely drab. She hurriedly put on her peach-basket hat and shuffled down the road to the banyan tree. She waited there for several hours, and finally, like a piece of battered iron drawn to the magnet, Cable drove up. "Mary!" he cried. "We're leaving!"

"Lieutenant," she asked, in deep earnestness, "you marry Liat?"

"I can't," he moaned. "Oh, G.o.d! Mary, I love her, but I can't."

The broken-toothed old woman pushed him away. In utmost scorn she cursed him, spitting betel juice blackly as she did so. "So-and-so fool. G.o.ddam lieutenant. You be so-and-so sorry. You be bulls.h.i.+t sorry! So-and-so fool!" She turned away from the stunned man and left him sitting bewildered in his jeep.

Spurred by Mary's scorn, he sought out Atabrine Benny. He found the chubby druggist at the Malaria Control headquarters, sitting with his feet higher than his head, drinking beer from a can.

"Come in, lieutenant!" the jovial fellow grunted. "Hear you're going away! Well, I bet I know what you want!"

"You know, Benny?" Cable confessed. "My G.o.d, Benny. I've got to get to Bali-ha'i. I've got to!"

"It's all arranged. I thought it all out yesterday evening when I heard about it. We can make an official trip tomorrow. Be ready at about 0400. OK?" He offered Cable a beer, but the Marine, shocked by what was happening to him, was too unsettled to partic.i.p.ate.

"You'll enjoy it more than I will," he told Benny.

"You'd be surprised how much beer I drink!" the druggist said. "I got a special deal where I get it by the case. Not bad, eh?" He laughed to himself as Cable disappeared into the night.

The next morning at 0400 Benny and Cable climbed into the Atabrine Special and set out across the sea. They were well out of the lee of their own island when sunrise started.

There were dark clouds across the entire sky, lying in thick layers upon one another. At five o'clock streaks of an infinitely delicate pastel yellow began to shoot among these clouds. Then, dramatically, a fiery streak of golden yellow pranced clear across the sky and stayed aloft for several minutes. Other pastel shades of blue and gray and lovely purple flickered in the sky, while great shafts of orange and gold radiated from the intense point at which the sun would later rise. These mighty shafts circled the sky, like golden arrows, and wherever they touched, clouds were swept with light. Cable thought it was like a hundred aurora borealis's smashed into one.

But even as the orange and gold shafts bored vertically through the sky, the limb of the sun appeared at an opening in the clouds where sky and water met. Suddenly the pastel colors disappeared. The golden barbs were turned aside. Now the flaming red of the sun itself took control, and this sovereign color filled sky and ocean. It was not merely red. It was a vivid, swirling, violent color of blood; and it touched every cloud that hung above the water. It filled the boat, and men's hands looked red for the moment. Hills on distant islands were red, and waves that sped away from the prow of the boat were red, too.

As the sun crept higher into the heavens, the unearthly glow started to subside. Again single shafts of light appeared, piercing the remotest clouds like arrows seeking even the wounded. Then the pastel shades of yellow and gold and red and purple took over, and finally, across the entire seascape, the rare and peaceful blue of steel-gray clouds appeared. It was now day. The majestic sun was risen.

Cable gasped as the violence of the scene subsided. Atabrine Benny whistled to one of the boat crew. "You'd think the world would be worn out after a show like that!"

Onward reaching through calm and lovely blue, the small craft sped toward Bali-ha'i. As it rounded the headland and entered the splendid channel Cable had the sensation of one who comes home after a long voyage. Eagerly his eyes sought out the old familiar landmarks. From the hills of Vanicoro to the red and white hut of the Tonks this was rare and sacred land. Nouris.h.i.+ng these thoughts, the young man sat lumped in the boat as it crept along the channel to the ringing of bells that Poe would have loved.

At the pier every face seemed like the face of one he loved, and each face smiled at him as if he were an old friend returned from hazards abroad. He was dismayed, therefore, when Sister Marie Clement stopped him at the sh.o.r.eline.

"I thought you would come!" she said quietly. "We had word of your leaving yesterday."

"How fast bad news travel," he thought. "I suppose even the j.a.ps on Kuralei know it by now." To Sister Clement he said, "Yes. With your permission I came to say goodbye."

"It will be a strange goodbye," Sister Clement replied. "Liat left the island last evening." The good sister was not pleased to convey this news. She took no pleasure in the obvious shock Cable experienced.

"Gone?" he said, not attempting to dissemble his true feelings. "Where could she have gone?" Little boys and girls, black and not knowing what he was suffering, cl.u.s.tered about his knees.

"Go away!" the sister said in Pidgin. Then she turned to Cable. "Liat went home last night. She is going to marry Monsieur Benoit."

"But Sister!" Cable could not speak further. He mumbled something.

"Shall we sit over here?" she suggested. She led him to a rude bench by a coconut tree.

"Going to marry Benoit?" he asked.

"Yes, lieutenant," she replied. "It is strange, is it not, how things work out? Benoit has been a very bad man at times. He has had several children by native women. I understand he tried to marry an American nurse and almost did. Now he returns to his first love, the little Tonkinese girl. You see, nature and G.o.d work together in unforeseen ways to accomplish their common purposes."

Cable remained on the little bench. He did not even rise as Sister Clement, with some sorrow in her heart, bade him good day and climbed the hill to her hospital. Now beauty was gone from the channel, and the island of Bali-ha'i was an empty thing. Like the bloom that drops from a thorn and leaves once more the ugly plant, Liat's going had left behind an island that could be seen in its true light. There were the savage hills of Vanicoro. Here was the useless little island with a few coconut trees and a mysterious wartime family of women. The channel was sometimes blue, but no important craft could ever find harbor there, and those little black children, if left alone, would soon revert to savagery. In great discomfort Cable discovered these things about Bali-ha'i, which a few minutes before had been the pearl of the seas, a veritable paradise. Not having the philosophic turn of mind that Atabrine Benny had, he did not speculate upon the multiple manifestations of truth. He was content to be wretched and terribly alone.

As soon as the homeward trip started, Cable began to lay plans with Benny to visit Jacques Benoit the next morning. Benny, who loved intrigue, agreed to change his schedule so as to accommodate his friend. They would leave early in the morning, and if Benoit wasn't there, why that would be just too bad, and no harm done.

That evening at mess Cable overheard a strange conversation among his fellow officers. As a matter of fact, he didn't really hear much of the conversation, merely a bit of heckling directed at little Eddie, who had that warm number in Minneapolis.

"What are you going to tell her now?" one chap asked.

Eddie blushed and replied, "Well, at that price I figured you can't go wrong."

"And the way you talked!" another chided. At this they burst into laughter and broke up. "What were they talking about?" Cable asked a friend. "Eddie just changed his mind," the other officer replied. "What do you mean?"

"You wouldn't be interested," the officer said stiffly. Cable had rebuffed him so frequently in past weeks that he was not disposed to chat with him now.

As they climbed the small hill leading to Benoit's place, Benny asked Cable if he had heard the news? The news about the two sailors who cut one another up after a heavy load of torpedo juice. "There was something else in the story, but I didn't get it straight. It was out by the Tonk village, and I guess they were fooling around too much. You know how it is with that d.a.m.ned torp juice!"

"Benny," Cable interrupted, not interested in the brawling inevitable at any advanced base, "when we get there, please let me speak to Benoit."

"Sure, sure!" the druggist agreed. "Now look over there. The small lean-to? That's where we hand out the atabrine. The Tonks and natives will line up and you can talk with Benoit." He gave his mournful warning: "Yaaaaaaooooooo!"

From a dirty shack a native girl let out a scream. It was the pill-man! Quickly she brought the heavy memorial conch and tooted a mournful blast upon it. From fields the workers ambled in. Ugh! they were dirty. To Cable the Tonks looked like the endless starving peasantry of China. Natives were sullen-faced and filthy. But to Benny the Tonks looked spirited and friendly. The natives were much cleaner than when he had first visited the plantation months ago.

"Allo, Benny!" a French voice called out. "Pretty early today. What bring you here?" It was Benoit.

"Extra work this week," Benny lied. "You're lookin' good."

"And why not?" the gross Frenchman asked in revolting coyness. "I should be lookin' wery good. I going to be married!"

"You?" Benny cried. "Now that's fine. Do I know the girl?"