Tales of the South Pacific (28 page)

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 damned 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..."

"Hell, 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 crap, 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 breasts, and buttocks 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 passed 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 God, 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 hell they are!" an older officer cried. "They are like so much hell! 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.

"Hell, 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.

"Hell, no!" the judge replied impartially.

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

"All right," Eddie assented. "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 damned 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 cumulus 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 Bloody 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, Bloody 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 Bloody 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 Jap charges on Guadalcanal. 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 assumed 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, Bloody 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 Jap 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.

"No, Mary! That's too much!" the shadowy buyer would protest.

"So-and-so you, brother!" Mary would cackle, offering the irresistible delicacy to some other willing buyer. While Cable watched, she sold nine bottles. That meant thirty-six dollars. She was getting sixteen dollars a quart for mere torpedo juice doctored up to taste like whiskey! And she was stealing the torp juice! It was a safe bet some sailor from the torpedo shop was involved in the deal.

In the shadow of his tree, Cable thought for a long time as to what he should do. In the end he went back to his hut and tried to sleep.

He stayed away from Bloody Mary for three days, but each day Vanicoro, or its volcanoes, or its pillar of cloud, did something different, and Cable's entire being was drawn to the island. He was therefore well prepared to see Atabrine Benny when the little man hurried into his quarters one evening and said, "Good news, lieutenant! I'm taking a surprise trip to Bali-ha'i tomorrow at four. Got to take some serum over to the nurses. Want to come along?"

Cable leaped from his chair! "You bet I do!" he cried. The deal was set, and at 0400 next morning, in a fine rain, Cable drove up to the landing, parked his jeep; and hurried into the small boat. Only Benny and the crew were there.

"Ting, ting!" went the bell. The motor hummed for a moment and then burst into irritated profanity, like Bloody Mary when a soldier nettled her. The bow of the craft swung free, ropes were cast off, and the boat headed for the dark, rain-swept sea. Never, since he had left Princeton to play football against Yale, had Joe Cable experienced the almost unbearable excitement which overpowered him at that moment. Only those who have set out before dawn to visit some silent island, or to invade some Jap position, or to sail across the tropic seas to a lover can even imagine the pounding of the human heart at such a moment. Cable stood in the prow of the boat and let the warmish rain play across his heated face. By the time the shrouded sun was up, Vanicoro and the tall peaks were clearly visible.