Tales of the South Pacific (29 page)

Then came the anxious peering! Was that Bali-ha'i? There! No, over toward the deepest gully? Was that it? Like all things waited for, in due and natural time the tiny island appeared. As always, it was nestled against the shoreline of the stronger island.

But there was nothing old and familiar about the channel when it appeared around the headland of Bali-ha'i. No! It was as if such a channel had never been seen before. There was a golden quality about it, for now the sun was red. What had been deep blue before was now gray; and the white sand was whiter. And everything looked different... that is, everything except the hospital, for it was still very white upon the hillside, and behind it, unseen from the bay, there was a Tonk hut, all white and red with wattled walls! It was there. Of that you could be sure!

Soon bells were ringing their fine antiphonies. People streamed down to the pier, some not yet fully awakened. Little boys popped into little canoes, and native girls appeared, still tucking in the ends of their sarongs. Clear in the red morning sunlight danced their small breasts, and in their arms there were pineapples, and all the air was a censer of delight as tropical fruit spread its abundant aroma. I tell you, I have climbed ashore on many a South Pacific rickety pier in the early morning, and although no Liat ever waited for me behind the second row of coconut trees, I can guess what Joe Cable felt that morning.

At any rate, Atabrine Benny could guess! He stood in the boat and watched his many friends cheering him. Had he been a sentimentalist... that is, more than he already was... he might have had tears in his eyes. Not being a sentimentalist, he turned to Cable and grinned his foolish face into a fine, toothy smile. "Best goddamned job in the Navy!" he said. Cable winked at him, and nodded.

When the first flood of welcome was exhausted, the Marine studied how he might find Liat. He was certain that she must, by now, know of his coming. So gradually pulling away from the crowd, he started to make his path toward the hospital. Unwilling to let him disappear so easily, boys and girls followed him. He began to feel uneasy and conspicuous, when he was saved by an unforseen intervention. Upon the path he met birdlike Sister Marie Clement.

"Bon jour, monsieur!" she said in lilting Bordeaux French.

Cable nodded stiffly and acknowledged her friendly greeting. "Today," she continued, "we shall expect you and Monsieur Benny for luncheon at one o'clock. The French people are expecting you." She nodded and bowed and smiled, and Cable had to accept her kind offer. His mother had often instructed him that one of the finest courtesies women can extend... one of the few, in fact... is an invitation to a dinner prepared by themselves. A gentleman must accept, and graciously.

Cable was more than usually disposed to accept, for the intervention of the sister meant that he was free of the pestering children. Hurriedly he darted up the path, around the hospital, and on toward Bloody Mary's hut. He moved so fast, in fact, that Liat, watching his progress from behind a coconut tree, was barely able to hurry to her hut and herd her relatives away. They left by a back door and did not meet the tall Marine as he approached the front.

"Hello!" he said in dry, agonized voice. Blood was in his head. His breath, from climbing and anticipation, was harsh. His hands were nervous, but as he stood there tall in the doorway, he was, to Liat, the finest man she had ever seen.

"Hello!" she replied. This time she did not wait beside the wall. She advanced to meet him in the middle of the small room. She was still kissing him when his wild hands had finished undressing her, and, later she kissed him while he slept on the earthen floor.

About eleven Liat suggested that they walk along a jungle trail to the cliffs. Cable agreed and they set off, barefooted Tonk in the lead, tall Marine swinging a branch he had torn from a small tree. When they reached the cliffs of Bali-ha'i they were about three hundred feet above the pounding surf below. There were two or three delectable places where the cliff was overhanging. There, with no safeguard of any kind, one could look far below his feet to coral piles upon which the surging water boiled and spouted. Liat stood at these places and looked straight down. Her eyes showed no excitement, but her heart pounded faster beneath her white smock. Cable could not force himself to stand near the edge, so Liat described the scene to him in French.

Then, for a while, they sat near the cliff and talked. Strange, but all the things Cable could not write to Bryn Mawr flooded out in half-French, half-English sentences. Liat followed his thoughts with ease, and soon she was telling him of Tonkin China. She lived eighty miles from Hanoi near the Chinese border. Her parents came to the islands when she was nine. They had been here eight years. They had re-enlisted, because life was better here, and a pretty girl could learn French, could learn to read and write, might even... marry... a planter.

"Who told you that?" Cable asked, terribly jealous.

"My mother."

"But it's not true!"

"But it is true," the girl replied in lilting French, in much the same way that Sister Marie Clement spoke. "Two white men in Efate have Tonkinese wives. And a trader wants to marry me, too. Jacques Benoit, who has a plantation, asked my mother." Artlessly... or perhaps with great artfulness... Liat told of Benoit's wooing. "But now he's going with a nurse. A white nurse! That's because I'm not on the island. Maybe he will marry her!"

Cable hushed her silly chatter with kisses and asked her to lead him to the hospital. "Why?" she cried.

"For dinner," he explained.

"But dinner! It is down there. In my hut. It's all ready!" she insisted with some show of fury. "It's waiting. I made it myself."

"When could you have made dinner?" Cable asked. "When did you have time?"

"Early this morning," she replied, simply. "I saw you coming. I watch here every morning for the boat. I knew you would come back."

Cable followed her small, brown arm as it pointed over the sea toward his island. Clouds covered it, as always, and to him the ocean looked barren and forbidding; but to Liat it was a glorious thing, a carpet way that would bring Cable back to her again and again.

"I can't eat with you," Cable explained. "I promised Sister Marie Clement."

"Sister Clement!" the beautiful girl cried. "No! Not with Sister Clement. With French girls. You wait! All the French people will be there. With their daughters, too! You wait!"

"I don't believe it, Liat!" Cable protested.

"Of course, it's true. You shall see," and she began to cry. The tears Were real. They were tears of deep sorrow and perplexity. She clutched his arm. "If I were a French girl, it would be all right, wouldn't it?"

"Liat! Don't say such things!"

"But what will happen? Look! You won't even have dinner with me! And I can't go with you."

"Why not?" Cable asked, snapping his fingers. "Why not? I'll take you with me! Come, we'll go together. You shall be my guest. I am proud of you! I am!"

"But I have no shoes!" Liat sobbed. She was very happy, but she had no shoes.

"You shall go barefoot then! I insist that you go with me!" And so, throwing discretion to hell, ignoring every precept his mother had carefully taught him in the rigorous school of Philadelphia and Main Line society, Cable half dragged, half carried the girl he loved down the jungle path, away from the gaunt cliffs, away from the pounding sea, and into the very maelstrom of the hospital.

Sister Marie Clement, with the austere grandeur that transcends provincial society, professed to see nothing awry in having the Tonkinese girl attend the soiree. After all, Liat was the finest pupil she had so far had in the islands. The girl was a true gem of the Orient. Would that more of the yellow girls were like her!

But to the French women-and their daughters-the Tonkinese girl was a frightful affront. The meal, an excellent one, was completely spoiled for them. Liat perceived this in a moment. As a woman, she reveled in her triumph; as a good mission Tonkinese who did not chew betelnut and who was a Christian instead of a Buddhist, she was shy, reserved, and deferential. She acted as if she "knew her place," and indeed, she did. Her place was beside Joe Cable, and that is where she was and where she stayed.

The dismal dinner over-only Atabrine Benny enjoyed it-a leisurely procession started for the pier. Liat, secure in her victory, left Cable abruptly at the hospital. He walked with the French ladies and conversed as charmingly as his command of the language would permit. "Perhaps we were wrong! Perhaps we misjudged the dear boy!" the women thought. Sister Marie Clement, walking behind them, mused on the ways of the world. "The Marine is a clever boy!" she thought. In her nun's garb she knew more of the human heart than the stiff French women who had presumably shared several: their husbands' and their children's.

On Vanicoro the watchers perceived all that had happened on the island that day. They saw the boat come-but not before Liat saw it -and now they heard the bells' fine music. One brave soul, of whom there appears to be one or more in every human group, grunted to his friends that now was the time. He would see if there was fine cloth for the asking. He would see!

So, amidst universal prophecy of destruction and failure, this tested warrior crept toward his hidden outrigger and prepared for the great adventure. He himself was dressed in war clothes: a tightly woven string from which leaves hung behind and to which a penis wrapper was attached in front. He had a hibiscus in his hair. In his canoe he had pineapples and one irreplaceable personal treasure. Cloth looked good to him and, the gods of the volcano willing, by nightfall he would himself be wearing cloth about his loins.

From low hanging trees he pushed his canoe clear and into the channel. The afternoon sun was in his eyes, but with steady stroke he pushed it toward the bells. It was a moment before anyone on Bali-ha'i saw him coming. Then Liat saw him from the coconut where she stood surveying the scene. She could not tell the others, but soon Sister Marie Clement, with her inquisitive French eye, saw him, too, and she called out the news.

Everyone stopped what he was doing and watched the man of Vanicoro draw closer. Native girls looked at him and wondered if they had looked so frightened once. Little boys started yelling at him in island tongues he could not understand, and Cable waited in the boat.

With steady stroke the man approached. The wonder in the eyes and minds of the people who watched him could not approach the alternate hopes and fears that assailed this savage as he brought his frail canoe alongside Benny's boat. Meticulously shipping his paddle, he quietly arranged his single strand of clothing, sought his biggest pineapples, and stood up, thrusting the fruit into Cable's hands.

"It's a gift," Benny whispered. "They always bring a gift!" Cable took the fruit and placed it reverently in the bottom of his boat. Benny nudged him roughly. "You must give him something. You must do so. You gotta give him something."

"What shall I offer him?"

"Here! Give him this knife." Benny produced a rusty but serviceable knife. Patiently, Cable explained the knife to the savage. At first the man was bewildered, but when Benny rudely grabbed the weapon and sliced a piece of juice-dripping pineapple, the black man understood and grinned. He had never seen a penknife before.

But it was cloth he wanted! Dimly he perceived that with cloth went a certain dignity. Men with penknives, for example. They wore cloth. Grabbing Cable's shirt he endeavored to explain, but the Marine, not understanding, pushed him away. The native was startled, and began to wonder if his mournful advisers on Vanicoro were not right. But having come this far, he was willing to see the thing through. He grabbed at the shirt again. Again Cable was about to rebuff him when Benny caught the significance of the act.

"He wants some cloth!" the druggist shouted. Then rummaging through the duffel bag he always carried on these trips, he produced three long lengths of bright red rayon-silk parachute cloth. Cloth, and red, too! The native stared in complete disbelief. He hoped... that is, he wished he dared to hope... that one piece of that cloth might be his. He was unprepared, therefore, when Cable caught up the armful and tossed all the pieces into the outrigger!

For a moment the native was unable to do anything but stare at the unbelievable treasure. He fingered it, gently. Then he held one piece out to its magnificent breadth. A tip trailed in the water, and he made a lunge for it. Cable grasped his arm, and at that the bewildered savage broke down completely. From the bottom of his outrigger he dragged forth his greatest prize. Carefully, and with some regret, he handed it up to Cable. Then, without a sound, he grasped his paddle and was off across the bay, his heart pounding faster than when he had first ventured forth upon his expedition.

To Cable his departure went unnoticed, for in his hands he held a dried human head! The features were intact. It was presumably the head of a man, a warrior, no doubt. The eyelids were sewn shut with strands of palm leaf. Pine needles had been stuffed into the nose to preserve its shape. The hair was long, both on the head and face. The gashing wound of the neck was sewn together into a little knot. There were no scars to speak of death and no signs to speak of life. It was nothing but a human head, a small, insignificant round object from which living and thoughts had fled, or been banished.

Cable sat transfixed with his gift. He had seen a Jap's head roll off one morning in bright sunlight. But that was nothing like this. This was a human head, here in his hands. Bewildered, he could not decide what to do with it.

"Chuck it in the boat, lieutenant!" Benny advised. "Somebody always wants something like that." Cable gently laid the grisly object on a tarpaulin. French women on the pier looked away. Little boys laughed. In some of their homes, not so very long ago, such heads had been common gossip, the way gasoline drums, GI cots, and bayonets now were.

But on Vanicoro excitement went beyond all bounds. Of course, only men were allowed to handle the cloth, and only men heard the first telling of the story, but eventually it sifted down even to the women. And as Benny's boat sailed into the sacred sunset, men looked at the cloth, studied the brave fellow who had secured it, and wondered.