This made the white men furious and they said, “The Fijians are no better than the Indians.” Then someone explained that it was not right for the white governor to yell his head off. Ask the chiefs. So when it was made plain to the chiefs, they returned to their villages and said which men must go. It was funny, there weren’t enough uniforms to dress all the men who came down from the hills.
The governor said later that there were never such fighters as the Fijians. Two of Takala’s friends were decorated by the Americans, eight by the British, and one of them got the highest military honor in the world.
But Takala does not like fighting. A smart young Fijian who had been to college in New Zealand talked with him one night and told how the black people of Africa had been overrun by Indians, too, and of how they had started a riot about it, and of how lots of Indians were killed. Takala said that was foolishness. If the Indians want more land, give it to them. If the Chinese want to own stores, let them. What Takala wanted was a clean place to sleep, a good wife, a string of fish now and then. He also wanted some children, but his had died.
The Americans, during the war, made a favorable impression on men like Takala. He liked their beer—he is not allowed to drink in Fiji—and preferred their free and easy ways to the more sober ways of Englishmen. But by and large Americans made less impression on Fiji than on any of the other islands. Several plane loads of the islands’ most beautiful white and half-caste girls were flown to New Caledonia to serve as secretaries to American officers, and some of them married their bosses. Others went to the States to work. But today, the Americans are remembered principally for the useful buildings they left behind. One hospital has become a sanitarium for treating tubercular patients. Another is a training school for native teachers. A group of supply sheds has become the poorhouse.
One reason the impact of America was so slight is that Fiji is an intensely British colony. Fijians gave their lands personally to Queen Victoria, and except for the introduction of Indians, the British have given the Fijians a remarkably good government. The ties between the two countries are powerful. When a slice of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding cake reached Fiji, it was raffled off for $70, and the money given to charity. The cake was then cut up. A thimbleful went to a Fiji girl at school in New Zealand, where it was divided among sixteen classmates. A fragment went to Australia, where it was on display. A portion went to Pitcairn Island, and at Guadalcanal, the American and British officers at the airbase auctioned it off and bought presents for the local leper colony.
The most substantial memorial to the Americans is the massive airbase, at Nadi (pronounced Nandi). Improved and enlarged by the New Zealanders, it is now the crossroads of the South Pacific. French planes from New Caledonia cross here on their way to Tahiti. New Zealand planes use it as a base for flights eastward to Samoa. Pan-American, Canadian, Dutch, Indian, Australian, and powerful British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines planes stop here on flights to America from Australia. The importance of Fiji to aviation is only now being discovered.
Therefore, it’s surprising to find that the British, in order to lure dollars into Suva, which is 150 miles from Nadi on a wretched road, have decided to abandon Nadi and build a fog-bound airport on the reefs near Suva. The new drome will bring planes right into Suva’s front door, and also perilously near the lowering mountains that hide in fog nearby. As one commercial pilot said, “They can build their new strip, but they better keep the old one open, because that’s where I’ll land.”
The fight for dollars is just as acute in Fiji as elsewhere. Tourists are welcomed. American cars are dreamed about as wonderful things that used to be seen in Fiji years ago. American currency is hoarded whenever possible. Police searched a Chinese joint for opium and found hidden dollars. The owner was fined more for the currency than he would have been had they found opium.
It’s a magnificent land. It is appreciated by Englishmen as one of the jewels in the Commonwealth, and they strive to keep the old ways intact. When a proper British lady left the G.P.H., she asked, as travelers should, whom she must tip. She was told: the head waiter, her personal waiter, the boy who served coffee in the lounge, the boy who served tea in bed each morning at 6:30, the room boy who made the bed, the shoe boy, the sink boy, and—here it becomes ridiculous—the boy who brought drinking water and the boy who put the ice in, for they were two different servants.
Now it is night in Fiji. An immense moon shines above the islands and creates a fairyland within the coral reefs. Industrious Indians set fire to their cane fields to burn away the refuse, and flames dance among coconut trees like mysterious swamp fires. Relaxed Fijians sit cross-legged in their huts drinking yaqona, singing, haggling over tribal problems. Chinese merchants have gathered at Bau for a game of mah jong. Half-castes are attending a dance in Suva; and in the Fiji Club, dour Englishmen convince themselves that the present administration is no damned better than the last. But the island moon, indifferent to the petty contentions of these groups, makes the night a thing of heavenly beauty.
It is interesting, at such a time, to speculate on what might have happened had the American Government accepted Fiji’s rump offer of cession. Would these islands have prospered under American guidance? In what respects would they be better or worse off?
Well, if we had accepted the islands, the Indians would probably never have got to Fiji. Not that we are wiser than the British. After all, we imported Chinese to build our railways, Mexicans to grow our sugar beets, and Japanese to tend Hawaiian pineapple; but we would not have had access to Indians. Therefore, life now would be better, for any laborers we might have dragged in would have been more digestible than the Indians. No matter what irresponsible mistakes we made in other fields, there would now be some solution to the race problem. Negroes and whites in America get along together better than do the Indians and Fijians in Fiji.
Under our rule, the natives would not be so well off as they are now. Americans do not colonize well and the glorious Fijian savage would not have impressed slave-conscious Americans as he did the British. It is probable that a figure of immense capacity like Oxford-trained Sir Lala Sakunu, the Fijian leader, would not have developed under Yankee squatterism. He would not have been allowed to leave the islands for Harvard.
The governors of Fiji would probably have been a dreary line of Navy officers who couldn’t make the grade as admirals and who were accordingly given a two-year holiday in Suva for consolation. The accidental good governor would have been preceded by some good-time Charlie and followed by a man who drank so much he had to be kept off battleships. Disruptive changes of policy would have come with each administration.
There would now be no stately administration building, no railroad, no tradition of justice built upon local conditions. Suva might be larger than it is now—and dirtier—filled with Americans who damned the Fijian as the Briton now damns the Indian.
The big event in Fijian history would have been the discovery of gold. The islands would have been gutted in the ensuing years; the mines would now be defunct, and the fortunes would have been carried off to Minnesota or New York, instead of to Australia and London.
About 1935, American capital would have wakened up to the fact that in an air age, Fiji was about the hottest bet in the ocean. There would now be an airfield at Nadi so big that any plane in the world could land. There would be a fancy hotel with big refrigerators out of which would come just about the same food as is now served. But at three times the cost.
The moon drifts behind a cloud and rain falls on Suva. The islands assume a majestic melancholy, and it is fruitless to speculate further. Fiji exists as it is, a tantalizing problem.
The Mynah Birds
It is interesting to speculate upon what might have happened had the American Government accepted the offer of cession.
In 1949 the United States closed down its consulate in Fiji for lack of business. But two years later the inflamed Patel case threatened the civil peace of this colony, an
d a distinguished young American was hurried back as an official observer. Mr. Louis McGurn was then thirty-eight, unmarried, trained in the hard schools of Palestine, South Africa and India. He was reported to have a very bright future in the State Department.
Unobtrusively he set up quarters in the Grand Pacific Hotel and let it be known that he had arrived to take a long vacation. He hired taxi cabs and took trips to various parts of the island, stopping overnight at one or another of the good hotels. He waited for two things: the arrival in Suva of the well-known British judge, Sir Charles Jacquemart, and the report of the civil action he had recently started in the courts of Boston, whose outcome had not yet been determined when he left hurriedly for Fiji.
To McGurn, the green lands of Fiji were a dream come true. As a child he had sat with Grandmother Richardson and listened to horrible accounts of these Cannibal Isles. A Boston ancestor, one Luke Richardson, had wandered to Fiji with a shipload of trinkets. Exchanging them for a cargo of sandalwood, he set out to make his fortune in China. But as he was about to haul anchor, Fijian savages fell upon his ship.
“Then,” said Grandmother Richardson, “the wild men dragged the crew ashore and tortured ’em. They were terrible cruel. They ripped the skin off their feet and jabbed ’em in the belly with torches to make ’em dance in misery.”
Sometimes at night Louis could imagine his feet with no soles. He would sweat and recall what happened next. “These cannibals grabbed the tormented men and dashed their heads against a sacred altar. Then they cut ’em apart, baked ’em and ate ’em.”
Captain Richardson had been saved by three foul-mouthed Australians, who proceeded to massacre forty-seven savages for sport. This made the captain feel better, and three years later he was back with more trinkets. This time he won his fortune and in later years spoke well of Australians. He left the city of Sydney $20,000 when he died.
In his travels about the islands McGurn easily recognized the bloody scenes described by his ancestor in the latter’s book: Ten Years in the Waters of the South Seas, Including Pertinent Observations on the State of Our Trade with China and the East. Such discoveries gave him a sense of identification with Fiji.
Yet at the same time, his duties in the Cannibal Isles occasioned a sense of bitterness, for they reminded him of the fact that in spite of his regrettable name he was essentially a Richardson, of Boston. It had been easy, during the latter years of the preceding century, for the Richardsons to forget old Cap’n Luke’s near piracy and opium trade. On his hundreds of thousands of dollars—nursed into millions—a substantial Boston family had been built.
Then, in 1911, Emily Richardson had revolted against her family and had run off with a dreadful Irishman, Timmy McGurn. He had died in a Monte Carlo brawl, but not before siring a son Louis and fixing upon that child the guttural name of McGurn. As soon as he got into Harvard, young McGurn insisted that he be called Louis Richardson McGurn, and when he introduced himself he placed so much emphasis on the second name that strangers often had to ask him to repeat the last.
It was toward the end of February, in the rainy summer season, that Sir Charles Jacquemart and his family finally arrived by plane from the Kenya Colony in Africa. They took rooms at the G.P.H. and that afternoon McGurn reported to Washington. “Sir Charles has appeared on the scene. Both factions, Indians and Fijians, trust him without cavil and the trial should soon begin. I knew of him when I served in Africa and he is a man of absolute probity.”
It pleased McGurn that Sir Charles was to have a room next his own. He liked titles. He was no snob, having seen Palestinian Jews and Australian wharfies knock the spots off snobs, but he did think it appropriate that governments recognize with appropriate titles those of its citizens who lived and worked in such a way as to bring honor upon a nation. In the war, he had known a French baron of incredible bravery, and he felt that the man’s actions were inspired partly because he was of noble lineage. He himself had often dreamed of being Sir Louis. So even if titles were forbidden Americans, he intended living his life as Sir Louis. In the war against Japan that determination had won him two decorations. It had also accounted for his rapid advancement in the State Department.
Therefore, when he had finished his confidential report, he selected a neatly pressed suit, shined his shoes once more, and put on a sedate tie. Then he sat primly on the verandah outside his room and waited.
He had been sipping gin and tonic for some minutes when the French doors nearby opened. A large woman of fifty-five appeared. She wore a lacy dress favored by British women in the tropics, and after adjusting it carefully, allowed her large bulk to sink into a rattan chair which creaked painfully as it conformed to the bulges of her body. She shifted twice and then sighed.
“We’ve been coming here for thirty years and those mountains across the bay are finer …” She lapsed into a wheezing silence.
McGurn rose and made a little bow. “May I presume?” he began.
“Pshaw!” the plump lady interrupted. “No ceremony with me. I’m Lady Jacquemart. That gin and tonic you’re drinkin’?”
McGurn was flustered for a moment and then said, “I’m Louis Richardson McGurn.”
“Don’t mumble,” Lady Jacquemart snapped. “What’s that last name?”
“McGurn.”
“How’d’ja spell it?”
Painfully, Louis spelled out the ugly name. “My father was born in England,” he elaborated. “Surrey.”
“Sounds like a boxer’s name,” Lady Jacquemart said approvingly.
“I used to box,” McGurn replied.
“Three minutes ago I asked if that was gin and tonic,” Lady Jacquemart laughed. The American blushed and poured her a drink. She produced a small lace handkerchief and wiped the perspiration off her upper lip. When she reached for the drink, McGurn bowed slightly.
“You’ve got demmed pretty manners for an American,” she said. “Where’dja learn ’em?”
“Boston,” he said proudly.
“Stuffy place,” she snorted. “I prefer Carolina. I like hot lands with plenty of niggers.”
McGurn winced and peeked about to see if any of the colored servants had heard, but Lady Jacquemart continued sharply. “Don’t cringe. They’re niggers. In the Empire they are.”
The American coughed and said, “We’ve been carefully taught not to say ‘Empire’ any longer.”
“Empire?” Lady Jacquemart exploded. “What’ve they been tellin’ you? It’s a Commonwealth? Fiddle-de-cock! Fiji belongs personally to the King, bless ’im, and if we’re not smack in the middle of the Empire right now, you can fry me for dinner.”
Before he could answer she turned and yelled sharply, “Antonia!” There was no reply and she called again. Then she nudged McGurn in the arm. “ ’Dja mind pokin’ your head in that second door and callin’ my daughter?”
McGurn rose, placed his gin carefully on the wicker table, and moved down the verandah to a pair of closely locked French doors. He tapped politely and then shrugged his shoulders at the Englishwoman.
“Give it a good bang,” she directed, kicking out with her left foot.
McGurn obeyed and heard a sharp voice inside the room. “What’s the row?” Before he could reply, the doors burst open and before him stood a bonny English girl of twenty-two. She had a mop of red hair, a smooth, highly colored face and broad shoulders like her mother. She was barefooted and wore only a slip. Seeing McGurn, she cried, “Hullo, wrong room?”
The American bowed and said with an amused smile, “Your mother.”
The girl cried, “O.K., Mums. Be right with you.”
“Get some clothes on,” her mother commanded without even looking at the door.
“Roger wilco!” the girl laughed. As she pulled the French doors inward, she left her head sticking out so that she could smile at McGurn. “Thanks awfully,” she said. “I’ll look better in a moment.”
Again McGurn smiled his amusement and bowed. When he returned to his chair, he said,
“Attractive girl, your daughter.”
“She’d go around naked if I didn’t watch her,” Lady Jacquemart snorted. “She grew up in hot lands.”
“Not in England?”
“Heavens, no! We despise England, as a place to live. Too demmed cold. Sir Charles”—she called her husband S’Chalz—“has had a roving commission. Wherever there was trouble, they sent him. He’s here now to clean up a notorious case.”
“Yes. There’s great discussion of it.”
“Those wretched Injians!” Lady Jacquemart snapped. She uttered the last word with obvious distaste.
McGurn cleared his throat and said slowly, “If Sir Charles thinks that of the Indians, I’m surprised …”
Lady Jacquemart chuckled. “Never impute my thoughts to S’Chalz. I’m really an old gossip. S’Chalz, on the other hand, is the soul of rectitude.”
She could have chosen no more fitting word to describe her husband, who now appeared on the verandah. Sir Charles was some six-feet-three and weighed less than a hundred and sixty. He had gray hair and a black moustache, which he dyed. He was rigidly erect and his face had the impersonal glaze of the complete judge.
“ ’Lo Chalz,” his wife said.
“Evenin’, Maud,” he grunted.
His wife began, “This is a young American …” but Sir Charles totally ignored McGurn. Then followed a long silence as the judge sat down. Lady Jacquemart winked at McGurn and shrugged her shoulders. She said nothing, for it was agreed between the judge and his wife that in company he would set the topics of conversation. In this way, he avoided embarrassment over the trials he might be conducting. Finally he said in a doleful voice, “It’s quiet here by the bay.”
The subject having been nominated, like trumps at whist, McGurn played one of his small cards. He said, “It’s quiet now, but in the morning the birds make a fearful clatter.”
At this, Sir Charles noticed the American. “Mynahs,” he grunted.
Return to Paradise Page 17