Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  McGurn liked this splendid panorama, for it seemed to him to represent those values to whose cultivation he had dedicated his life. The British had ruled the world for some centuries and now it had come time for the Americans to assume the burden. This square of beauty indicated how to govern. Build well. The British could easily have governed a bunch of savage islands from mean shacks. But if you believed that one day all the world would know order, you built stately and pillared mansions, even at the edge of the jungle. To do so gave an earnest of your intentions.

  Louis McGurn was willing that his life should be spent in building such edifices throughout the world. But right now he had to talk with young Joe Harvey and drum some sense into the boy’s head. He called a cab and drove out to the airdrome.

  Finding Harvey’s office empty, he walked out into the bright sunlight and looked around. He approached a group of Fijian laborers, giant barefooted blacks with kinky hair and glistening torsos, and asked for Harvey. At the mention of the name every man grinned, and one big chap waved toward a shack a hundred yards beyond. McGurn found Harvey there, alone.

  “Those black boys seem to like you,” McGurn said.

  “They’re my pals,” Harvey replied.

  “And Miss Cadi?”

  Harvey seemed to miss the point of the question. “I met her down at the Galta Milk Bar. She works there. A beauty, eh?”

  “Very attractive,” McGurn said with forced enthusiasm. “But I thought there was a great shortage of Indian women. Don’t the Indian men resent …”

  “Annh!” Harvey sneered. “They don’t scare me.” He whipped out his wallet and showed McGurn a threatening note: “You’ll be sorry if you keep on seeing Pata Cadi.”

  “That’s doesn’t worry you?” McGurn asked.

  “Nah, those punks make me a little bit sick.”

  “I used to be stationed in India,” McGurn said. “Sometimes those men are jolly tough.”

  He had used the wrong word. When he said jolly, young Harvey froze up. There was a moment of silence and then the youngster asked bluntly, “You come down here to warn me about seeing Pata?”

  “What makes you …”

  “Because last night in the movies you almost wet your pants,” Harvey said. “Why in hell do you suppose I stood smack in the middle of the aisle? Because it was eating you so.”

  “Wait a minute,” McGurn said quietly. “You’re jumping at a lot of conclusions.”

  “No, I’m not,” Harvey replied, grinning broadly. “Everybody in town’s been trying to figure you out. You’re here to sort of help out the British, we figure.”

  “Who is we?” McGurn asked patiently.

  “Pata and me.”

  “That was your opinion?”

  “Yes. We are right, weren’t we?”

  “No. I’m dreadfully sorry, but you were totally wrong. I have nothing to do with the British.”

  “Then why do you try to be more English than they are?”

  The conversation had turned into quite an unexpected channel and McGurn was distressed. He said, “I’m simply an American citizen who has lived in India. You’re heading for great trouble.”

  “In the war, I learned how to handle trouble. By the way, what did you do in the war?”

  “Just Germany and New Guinea,” McGurn replied evenly.

  Joe stood back and said in frank approval, “I guess you can claim you saw the war.”

  A nebulous bond of brotherhood-in-arms thus established, McGurn took advantage of it to say, “I’ll admit I came down here to raise the devil about the Indian girl. But what’s really important is this trial. Tempers are very tough. The English would …”

  Again, he had said the wrong word and the fellowship was destroyed. “Mr. McGurn,” the young aviator said, “I owe you the respect you earned in the war. But I don’t care for the English. You came down here to explain British ways to a dumb hick from Kansas City. You’d be surprised at how much I know. I served with the British in Cairo, and even if they did save the world, I don’t want any part of their system.”

  “It’s the best we have in Fiji,” McGurn said quietly.

  “Then I don’t like even the best. I don’t like white people in the saddle and everyone else in the gutter. You may get a thrill out of aping the English. I don’t.”

  “Damn it!” McGurn snapped. “You’re an arrogant young pup. If you only knew how young you are. All over the world civilizations are crumbling. India, Java, China. It’s our duty to help sustain them.”

  “No,” Harvey said abruptly. “Pata and I have talked this out …”

  “What can she know?”

  “In her own way, Mr. McGurn, she knows more than you do.”

  “I should like to meet this remarkable girl.”

  “It would do you a lot of good,” Harvey said. “How about dinner with us? Tonight?”

  “In public? The three of us? Well, hardly!” Instinctively, McGurn cringed.

  Joe Harvey was disgusted. “You afraid the British might object? Okay, skip it. Go have a pot of tea and quit worrying. I’m shipping home next week. This job’s done.”

  The diplomat tried not to show his relief. Aloud he reflected, “A week? A lot could happen in a week. I don’t suppose you’d promise to stay away from Miss Cadi during that time?”

  Harvey slammed open the door. “Why don’t you get the hell out of here?” he snapped.

  As he left, McGurn said with deep compassion, “I came out here, Joe, to warn you. Don’t get hurt.”

  Harvey laughed “I’m not the kind that gets hurt,” he said.

  At the airdrome gate, Louis McGurn rang for a taxi. In a few minutes, a mournful Indian arrived in a new Ford. “Nice car,” McGurn said as he climbed in. The Indian said nothing. On the way into the Triangle, the American asked, “What do you think of the new wing to the government buildings?” There was no reply and he repeated the question.

  Very cautiously, the Hindu slowed down and said, with no inflection, “Traffic court. Where they fine you for speeding.” At the Triangle, McGurn tipped the man a bob. There was no acknowledgment.

  The American left the main business streets of Suva and sought out the Galta Milk Bar. Behind the counter, stood slim, neat Pata Cadi.

  “Miss Cadi,” McGurn began.

  “Yes, Mr. Harvey just called and said you’d be in to see me.”

  Louis McGurn smiled stiffly and nodded. “It would be good if we could talk,” he said.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Would you be embarrassed if we talked by the canal?”

  “Not at all,” he said, waiting until she had gone around the counter and called to her assistant. A very black girl came forward and took command of the bar.

  They walked slowly up the main commercial street of Suva, passing countless Indian shops where huddled men sat all day making suits or selling ghee. Finally, they came to where a small canal drained a swamp, and along the southern edge of this canal, they entered the green-pillared arcade that led into the Morris Hedstrom South Seas Store. They stood by the wall of this arcade and looked down at the opposite edge of the canal where Fijians and Indians and Chinese and half-castes conducted a noisy market.

  “This has always reminded me of Venice,” McGurn began.

  “It reminds me of something much more precious,” the Indian girl replied. “This is where Joe first kissed me.” She paused and Louis McGurn studied her sharply. She had the wide forehead and thin nostrils that distinguished the patrician women of his own family. She also used the excellent diction that they had used. He had gone to Galta Milk Bar to lecture a peasant, but this charming gentlewoman was disconcerting. Most disconcerting.

  He leaned back against a pillar and stared at the dark canal waters, groping for his next words. Pata continued, “I must put your mind at rest, Mr. McGurn. This is not a casual island romance. I saw too many of them during the war. The white man never marries the colored girl.”

  “Then you really love this American?” Mc
Gurn asked.

  “In a hopeless sort of way … yes. But not hopeless, either. All the men I’ve ever known have been tied up in knots. The English are the worst. The Australians are not so bad, but they are so pathologically afraid of anyone with color. Ashamed of owning that great empty continent with so many hungry colored people breathing down their necks. Once we thought the Americans were the world’s free men, but you are frightened too, and we poor Indians are the prisoners of fear. Into this mess of futility Joe Harvey …” She stopped and blushed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this except that we consider you a very important person … I mean, you being a member of the State Department.”

  McGurn denied this. “I’m only a visitor.”

  Pata Cadi smiled frankly. “Every interested person in Fiji knows who you are, Mr. McGurn. After all, there are many people in India who respect you very much.”

  “Very well,” McGurn said. “Since you know I served in India you will respect me when I say that your affair with Joe Harvey …”

  “It is not an affair … yet.”

  “It can end only in tragedy.”

  “And your mission, Mr. McGurn. You know, of course, that it too can end only in tragedy.”

  “What do you mean?” McGurn asked abruptly, no longer the diplomat.

  “What can happen to this island of Fiji?” the Indian girl asked. “Its tragedy is inevitable. Look! Over there in the shadows! Billimoria, watching us!”

  McGurn made no movement except to step closer to the Indian girl, as if he were trying to date her rather than interrogate her. “Is Billimoria in love with you?” he asked bluntly.

  “Him? He loves no one! He hates. He hates the British. He hates the Americans. He hates me because I love a white man.” She stared into the canal. “Like Hitler he dwells a great deal on foreign men ravishing our women.”

  “What does he hope to get out of it?” McGurn asked. “Would Indians follow a Christian?”

  “He’s no Christian!” Pata cried scornfully. “He was a convert only to get a free education. Now he’s a Hindu again and most Indians commend his duplicity.”

  McGurn whipped about and caught sight of Billimoria hiding by the Kuo Min Tang building. “A sinister man like that hates you, and you’re not worried?”

  “No!” she said firmly. “I will not allow a fanatic to tell me what I must do. I don’t care about his dream of a great Indian Empire or the marching soul of Gandhi. I want merely a home where I can live in peace.” Her face flushed. “These islands, here, could be the paradise we seek. Free Indians and happy natives and such white men as would work with us.”

  “Now you sound like Billimoria!”

  “I’m willing to wait for time to accomplish these things. But Billimoria … He reads wild magazines from India that actually call upon Indians to murder white men who do not stand at attention when the anthem is played! Can you imagine that?” She stamped her foot.

  McGurn had to laugh at her tiny anger. “Joe told me I should talk with you. Now I understand why.” Automatically he gave her his professional smile then immediately sensed that here was someone who merited more than conventional gestures. He perceived her as one of that inarticulate group who are always on the verge of making things work. They never do because tragedy—war or pestilence or a new election or death—intervenes. Yet they try.

  “Miss Cadi,” he said abruptly, “I come to you as a suppliant. If you have no fear of Billimoria, please at least help me. He wants to see something happen to you. He could start a riot. Wreck the trial. Make the British seem …”

  “You are like a very old man,” Pata said quietly. “You want to hold things together as they are … a little longer … just a little longer.”

  With intense fervor McGurn said, “I hope you find a better way. Until then, please don’t see Joe again … at least until the trial’s over.”

  Pata smiled directly at the diplomat. “You’re asking me to give up the last few days I have with Harvey?”

  “And you refuse?”

  “You may be a statesman,” the girl said, “but you’ve a lot to learn about love.”

  Suddenly Louis McGurn of Boston acknowledged that he had come upon a fresh, hard, honest human being. He bowed before her as he would have done to Lady Jacquemart and said, “I wish that statesmen could put their trust in people like you.”

  “You don’t?” the girl asked in surprise.

  “There are not enough of you,” McGurn replied.

  “Then may God have mercy on you,” Pata said.

  “I was about to say that to you,” McGurn replied, deeply moved.

  They shook hands and Louis McGurn returned to the G.P.H. about as agitated as he had ever been. The chimes rang for dinner before he gained control of himself, but he had not finished ordering before he felt a familiar tug at his elbow. It was the mournful Indian messenger with news: “A man waits outside to see you.”

  “Oh, not again!” McGurn groaned. He had hoped to talk with Toni after dinner, but since he had never in his diplomatic life chosen pleasure before duty, he turned his back on the Jacquemart table and followed his dark guide.

  In the shadows he found Billimoria, more forlorn and cadaverous than ever. “Good evening,” McGurn said.

  “Good evening, sir,” the Indian said warmly. He reached for McGurn’s hand and pumped it eagerly. “I was so relieved to hear that you went to see both Harvey and Miss Cadi. I appreciate your co-operation.”

  “That’s hardly the word,” McGurn said with extra suavity. He had sworn that no matter what Billimoria said tonight, he would not become ruffled.

  “I’m sorry, sir, indeed I am,” Billimoria apologized. “I am aware that like any public servant …”

  “I’m on vacation,” McGurn insisted, pleasantly.

  “Ah, yes. Well, as the older friend, then, your mission was a failure. Mr. Harvey has taken Miss Cadi to a dance. I insist that such behavior is dangerous.”

  McGurn drew in his breath. “Is there anywhere we could speak for a moment?”

  “Here,” Billimoria said.

  “You’ll excuse me. This smacks of conspiracy, doesn’t it?”

  Billimoria smiled. “I have a cab.”

  “I’ll be with you,” McGurn said. “Just a moment.” He hastened indoors and went boldly to Toni’s table. “I had hoped we might have drinks … later,” he began.

  “Why don’t we?” she asked disarmingly.

  “I’ve a beastly meeting …” Toni laughed at his British affectation and waited. “But would you wait up for me? Please?”

  She smiled with tomboy frankness and said, “Sure! I’ll play draughts with the old gentlemen.”

  McGurn bounded back to the cab with unprofessional exuberance, which was dampened when he saw that the driver was the same one he had traveled with that morning. “One of your men?” he asked.

  “I have no men,” Billimoria reassured him. He spoke to the driver in Hindustani and soon the cab wheeled up in front of a Suva tailor’s establishment. A single unshaded light suspended from the ceiling cast an eerie glow upon the bolts of expensive cloth. Four men sat in semi-darkness stitching garments for Europeans.

  McGurn’s wraithlike guide led the way through swinging doors at the rear of the shop. Behind him, the American entered a small room. It was barren. A single chair, a small table, a polychrome portrait of Gandhi and some reading matter in a corner constituted the room’s equipment. “You have the chair,” Billimoria said unctuously.

  “Thank you,” McGurn said with a great show of politeness. “Now what are we to talk about?”

  “Harvey,” Billimoria said menacingly.

  “Good!” McGurn said eagerly. “I have very good news to report to you. I spoke with both Harvey and Miss Cadi and they see the reasonableness of your demands.” He sat back to see what effect this irony would have on the Indian. To his surprise, Billimoria nodded his head sagely.

  “But they’re dancing tonight!” the Indian said.
>
  “Ah, I know. But my friend, we must be patient. Harvey told me he was leaving within the week.”

  The news was unexpected and Billimoria seemed disappointed. “In that time, much could happen,” he whispered hopefully.

  “In that time, nothing must happen,” McGurn said earnestly. “My friend, the trial starts tomorrow. Tempers will be sharpened. Please let’s you and me do nothing to disturb the equilibrium until the trial is ended.”

  “It depends on what happens in the next fifteen days,” Billimoria threatened. “We Indians have watched many white men ogle our girls. And we haven’t liked what followed. We are determined that our race shall not be sullied.”

  “God!” McGurn thought. “Where have I heard that before?” Aloud, he said, “I beg you to be patient, Mr. Billimoria.”

  “We shall be, up to a point.”

  “And then?” McGurn asked calmly. He was determined above all not to get angry with this fool.

  “England is in retreat all over the world.” Billimoria said, standing quiveringly straight. “We threw them out of India. The Boers will throw them out of Africa.”

  “Aren’t you terribly afraid of what the Boers will do to your people … then?”

  “You started it,” Billimoria cried, ignoring the question. “You threw them out of America.”

  “They throw very hard,” McGurn said firmly. It was then that he conceived the idea that Billimoria was really mad. The thin fanatic’s apocalyptic figure in the murky light was one never to be forgotten. McGurn thought, “He is the mad devil whom we all fight.”

  “And so we do not worry,” Billimoria continued softly, “about upsetting one small trial.”

  McGurn thought, “This is completely crazy! My arguing with a maniac like this! I’m not involved in this madness.” He shook his head briefly, as if to cast out evil and proposed, “Let’s promise this, Mr. Billimoria: I’ll speak to Harvey again. And you will promise not to … well, not to disrupt things?”

  “A sacred promise,” Billimoria said dramatically. “On my word as a Christian.”

  McGurn let this pass and shook hands solemnly with the madman. When he left the barren and foreboding room, the same taxi was waiting for him. On the desolate ride back through the rain, he spoke twice to the driver and got no reply. Finally, he said, “Your Mr. Billimoria is very brilliant.”