Tales of the South Pacific

by James A. Michener

  "But why," a doctor asked, "did you elect to follow De Gaulle, in particular?"

  "De Gaulle?" the Frenchman asked contemptuously. "What's De Gaulle? Who cares what De Gaulle is? He looks puffed up to me. I don't like him." He snorted and waved his hands. "Ah!" he added. "But what De Gaulle stands for! What decent man could do otherwise?"

  After De Becque had been a guest at the hospital several times he proposed that he act as host one night at his plantation. The doctors were delighted. "The nurses, too?" the Frenchman suggested, lifting his shoulders and stretching the word too into three syllables.

  "Why not?" the doctors asked, and a few nights later a small party of Americans chugged up the hill to De Becque's plantation. It was situated upon an extensive plateau overlooking islands and the sea. Most Englishmen and Frenchmen in the islands like their houses abutting on the ocean, but not De Becque. He favored the grand view! And from his veranda there was such a view.

  His house was built in an octagon with one side twice as long as the others. In that side he lived, had a few books, a radio, and an old gramophone. In the other seven sides he had a dining room, a warehouse, a store, a series of bedrooms, and a completely furnished room for guests. In the latter one might expect to find a missionary, a Tonkinese family, a government official, or a trader. On the night of his dinner the room was empty.

  In the center of the octagon was placed the kitchen, a small, low, sooty building into which only the Tonkinese cooks went. From it came a series of fine dishes. Around the one-storied house clustered an odd collection of buildings whose original purposes were long since lost. Tonkinese and natives lived in them and followed their mysterious ways. A Buddhist temple crouched on the edge of the jungle. It gave visiting missionaries much concern, for natives found its tinkling bells and rhythmic drums much more fun than Methodism or provincial Catholicism.

  The long room with its deep veranda faced south, and from it one could see four lovely things: the channel where the great ships lay; the volcanoes of Vanicoro; the vast Pacific; and an old Tonk's flower garden.

  Nellie thought she had never before seen so florid a garden. There were flowers of all kinds, azaleas, single and double hibiscus, hydrangeas, pale yellow roses, and types she did not know. About the garden were flamboyants and bougainvilleas, red flaming bushes. And everywhere there were capriciously placed frangipani trees. De Becque pulled half a dozen branches for his guests and showed them how native men wear the four-leafed, white and yellow flowers in their hair. The nurses smelled the flowers their host gave them, and were delighted. The frangipani was the odor of jungle. It was sweet, distant, and permeating. In addition it had a slightly aphrodisiac quality, a fact which natives learned long ago.

  De Becque's dinner put to shame any the doctors had ever offered him. It started with soup, grilled fresh-water shrimp, lobster and rice, and endive salad. Next came in succession three courses: filet of porterhouse, lamb chop, and a delicious concoction of rice, onions, string beans, and black meat of wild chicken. Then De Becque served the "millionaire's salad" consisting of tender shoot of coconut palm sliced wafer-thin and pressed in olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Cup custard with rum, small cakes, coffee, and a choice of six liqueurs ended the meal. And all this was on the edge of the jungle, 550 miles from Guadalcanal!

  To say that the hospital staff was astounded would be an underestimate of their reactions. "Where did you get lobster?" a doctor inquired. "We catch them here by various means. Out in the deep water."

  "How about the wild chicken?"

  "Those black men you saw by the gate when you came in. They shoot them with arrows or with.22's. They are wonderful shots, I think."

  "I think so, too," the doctor replied. "But where do you get such big shrimp?"

  "Far up the island rivers. You see, my friends, we don't eat this way every day. That's obvious. Not more than once every two weeks. You see for lobster I must tell the men five days in advance. For shrimp a week. For wild chicken, two days."

  "How did you train the natives to serve so well?" Dinah asked. "They actually seemed to enjoy it."

  "I am patient with them," the Frenchman answered. "They make their mistakes on me, and when they serve you they are prepared to do a good job. Isn't it that way at the hospital?"

  "Tell me, M. De Becque," an inquisitive doctor asked, "how long did it take you to organize and build this plantation?"

  "Twenty-six years," De Becque said. "I came here as a young man."

  "You chop it out of the jungle yourself?"

  "With some natives and a family of Javanese workers."

  "The yellow people I saw outside. They're not Javanese, are they?"

  "No," De Becque replied. "They're Tonkinese. Very fine workers. We bring them over from Tonkin China."

  "Twenty-six years!" an older doctor said. "Wonder what I'll have to show for my life at the end of twenty-six years?"

  "You were willing to throw all this away in the event that Pétain won?" Dinah inquired. The Frenchman smiled at her.

  "I thought this was the war to prove that Pétain could never win," he said graciously. "You Americans worry about De Gaulle and De Gaullists, and yet every one of you acts as if he were a De Gaullist. Your speeches and your actions don't coincide."

  After dinner the guests sat in the screened-in veranda. A doctor had brought along two mosquito bombs to keep the pests away. Their host served whiskey, beer, coke, ginger ale, root beer, and rum. As the evening wore on and a fine crescent moon rose into the midnight sky, talk turned to the islands.

  "How can a man have stayed so healthy here?" one doctor inquired.

  "Hard work and temperate living," the Frenchman replied. "I serve a great deal of alcohol but use it sparingly myself. I have tried to do all things in moderation."

  The nurses wondered what "all things" covered. "Do you think other white people could live in the tropics, too?" one asked. "That is, as well as you have?"

  "They do," he said. "I think will power has a lot to do with it. You take the island of Malaita in the Solomons. Oh, what a place! Yet a man I know well, fellow named Anderson. He found life there quite successful."

  "Tell me, M. De Becque," a nurse asked. "Is it true that most white men in the tropics are running away from something?"

  The Frenchman turned in his chair to face his impertinent questioner. She was a young girl, so he smiled. "Yes," he said. "I believe that is true. Suppose that I was running away from something. Where could I find a lovelier spot than this?" He swept his hand across the front of the veranda and pointed toward the silent peaks of Vanicoro. As a matter of fact," he said in a quiet voice, "is not each of you running away from something? You were not married yet, your lovers were at war, or your wives were beginning to bore you. I don't think it wise to inquire too closely into reasons why anybody is anywhere!" He smiled at the embarrassed nurse.

  "Oh, M. De Becque!" she said. "I didn't mean it that way!"

  "I know you didn't, my dear! But that's the way I understand the question. It's no good to think that all the men in Marseilles are normal and happy without secrets and everyone out here is a fugitive! That sort of thinking is foolish in today's world. I wonder how many men and women in Marseilles envy me right now?"

  It was after midnight, and the nurses had to return. They were reluctant to leave the plantation. At the gateway where the jeeps were parked M. De Becque detached Nellie from the group. She had stood so that he could if he were so minded. "Ensign Forbush," he said. "You have shown great interest in my home. I would like to have you visit the plantation again."

  "I should like to," Nellie replied frankly.

  "With your permission I shall stop by for you one afternoon. You would enjoy my cacao grove."

  Three days later, in the cacao grove, Nellie admitted that she had never seen anything which so impressed her with its natural, unexploited beauty. Within that grove she was to spend many of the happiest hours she would ever know, and one of the bitterest.


  Plantation owners in the tropics usually plant their coconut trees in stately rows along the ocean front and inland for a mile or two. Grass is kept closely cropped beneath the trees so that fallen nuts can be gathered without difficulty. Most coconut groves look very neat. The tall palms appear like thin ballet dancers with fantastic headdresses. But a cacao grove grows haphazardly. It usually forms the boundary between plantation and jungle. Trees spring up helter-skelter from year to year, and around them jungle brush proliferates. At times it is difficult to tell where cacao trees end and violent jungle begins.

  At the point where his cacao and coconut met, De Becque had long ago built himself a pavilion big enough for two or three people. Its base was teak wood in eighteen-inch planks, its half-sides of woven coconut palm, and its roof of heavy thatch. Two benches of mahogany and two massive, comfortable chairs of teak were the only pieces of furniture. Four grotesque rootoos, native masks carved of coconut log, decorated the four corners. Two were incredibly long-nosed jungle gods and two were native views of white women, with red lips. The masks gave color to what might otherwise have been a barren pavilion.

  It is doubtful, however, if anything could be barren within a cacao grove. As Nellie waited in the pavilion while De Becque talked with his natives, she could hardly believe that what she had thought of as the monotonous jungle could be so varied. Above her flew an endless variety of birds. White, green, red, purple, and yellow lorikeets more beautiful than any bird except the quetzal swirled and eddied through the grove. Their harsh cries were modified by the delicate chirping of a graceful swallow like bird that flew in great profusion among the cacao trees. This gracious bird was sooty black except for a white breast and belly. Gliding and twisting through the shadows it looked like a shadow itself. Then, bursting into the sunlight, its white body shone brilliantly. At times sea birds flew as far inland as the cacao grove, and occasionally a gaunt hawk from the distant hills would settle there for a day and drive the darting swallows away.

  But it was the cacao tree that won Nellie's admiration. The cacao is small, hardly more than a bush, reaching at most twenty feet in height. It has a sturdy trunk, thick branches about five feet from the ground, and grows symmetrically. Its leaves are brilliantly glistened like poison ivy, only more shimmering. And they are of myriad color! Some are pale green, others darkest green, some purple, some almost blue, or gray, or bright yellow. And on most trees at least fifty leaves are brilliant vermillion, shading off to scarlet and deep red. Each leaf is iridescent, and dead leaves drop immediately from the tree.

  A cacao grove, in rainy weather, is a mournful and lovely place. In bright sunlight it is a hall of mirrors, and at dusk it has a quality of deep jungle quiet and mysteriousness that is equaled nowhere else in the tropics. In large measure these attributes are aided by the beauty of the cacao pods themselves. They grow in fairy-tale manner. In late January and February the cacao puts out buds that will later grow into pods. They appear without reason at the strangest places! Two inches from the ground on a barren, stiff trunk, a pod will suddenly appear. On one branch there may be a dozen pods. On another, none. In the crevice formed where a branch leaves the trunk a cluster of pods may appear and the branch itself may be bare. A mature cacao in full season looks as if someone had stood at a distance and flung a huge handful of random pods upon it.

  At first the miniature pods are light purple. Then as they grow to full size, they become a weird greenish purple, like the paintings of Georges Bracque. Next they are all green, and from then on they become the chameleons of the jungle. On one tree mature pods, which now look like elongated cantaloupes seven and eight inches long, will be bright green, golden yellow, reddish yellow, red, purple, and greenish purple. And on each tree a few will be dead, charred, black, ugly, with small holes where rats have eaten out the sweet seeds, which, when toasted and ground, become cocoa. While Nellie waited for De Becque to finish the work he was doing, she studied the grove and mused upon the perverseness of people whereby cacao in French becomes cocoa in English. The multicolored lorikeets, the iridescent leaves, and the flaming cacao pods formed a superb picture for a hot afternoon. Later, when her host appeared, tall, stooped, and breathing hard, she asked him to sit by her.

  "Why did you build this pavilion?" she asked.

  "I like to be near the jungle," he said, remaining in the doorway.

  "Do you come here on rainy days? Is it nice then, too?"

  "It's best on rainy days," he said. "But it's strange. The place serves no purpose. It's too far from the kitchen to eat here. There's no bed, and it isn't screened in. Yet I think I like it better than any place on my plantation."

  "I was looking at the cacaos," Nellie said in a sing-song kind of voice. To herself she was saying, "I shall marry this man. This shall be my life from now on. This hillside shall be my home. And in the afternoons he and I will sit here." Aloud she continued, "They arc beautiful, aren't they?"

  "A rugged tree," he said. "Not like coconuts. But they don't pay as well."

  "Mr. De Becque," she began. "That sounds silly, doesn't it. I meant M. De Becque."

  "Why don't you call me Emile?"

  "I should like to," she said half laughing in self-consciousness.

  To himself De Becque said, "This is what I have been waiting for. All the long years. Who ever thought a fresh, smiling girl like this would climb up my hill? It was worth waiting for. I wonder..."

  "Emile?" Nellie began. "May I ask you a question?"

  "Of course you may," he replied smiling.

  "Why did you leave France?"

  There was a long pause. Nellie and Emile studied one another across the little distance of the pavilion. Outside swallows darted through the cacao trees and lorikeets screamed at them for trespass. It was a jungle day, warm, heavy, thick with sunlight.

  "It was not to my discredit," the Frenchman replied.

  "I know that," Nellie assured him.

  "I killed a man," Emile went on, dreamily, his voice blending into the heavy silence of the cacao grove.

  "Why?" Nellie asked, not the least disturbed. It seemed as natural a mode of behavior for Emile De Becque as writing a letter. He had said, "I killed a man," and she was relieved that it was not something serious.

  "A town bully. A town cheat. It was in a little place near Marseilles. Everyone was glad to see him die, and the fault was his. But they thought I should leave. The police investigated for three days, giving me time to get away. I could not make up my mind and an old man who had been a sailor told me, 'I was on an island once. The men wore pig's teeth and the women wore nothing. Anything you planted would grow on that island. With a little money a daring man could make a fine living there and become rich.' I listened to him, my mind in revolt. Then he said something that decided me: 'And opposite the island is another island with two volcanoes. You can see them all the time.' That did it. My mother had always wanted to see Naples. She read a book about Pompeii and wanted to see Naples. She never did. Lived all her life right near Marseilles. I clapped the old sailor on the back and shouted, 'You have a good idea, old man! I'll see two volcanoes!' I left that night, and the next day the police came to my home. 'Where is Emile De Becque?' they demanded. 'He is wanted for murder.' The old people in the house said, 'He ran away!'

  'The scoundrel!' said the police. 'If he comes back, we'll arrest him. Mark our words, we'll get him!' They were furious, and all the time I was sitting in a cafe in Marseilles, waiting four days for a ship. They knew it and were afraid to send news to Marseilles, because they knew that sometimes ships lay over three or four days. Finally they sent a young fellow in to spy me out. He found that I was gone, and posters soon appeared in Marseilles. But I have never gone back."

  "How did you kill him?" Nellie asked, surprised at her courage.

  "With a knife," Emile said, showing some satisfaction, even at that distance.

  "You've never regretted being out here, have you?" she asked.

  "Never!" he said emphaticall
y and simply. Then he added a peculiar comment. "This plantation is worth more than a hundred thousand dollars."

  In the cacao pavilion the two strangers looked at one another. Each had a half smile. De Becque's gold tooth showed. Nellie's infectious grin fought for possession of her full lips. She thought that he was not an old man, and yet not a young man, either. He was a respected man, wealthy, a man with deep ideas. He was one who killed with a knife, came out for De Gaulle, and was to have led resistance against the Japs.

  "Nellie," he said quietly, scarcely audible above the lorikeets. "In the hottest months you could go to Australia." Nellie made no reply. She merely watched De Becque as he rose, crossed the silent pavilion, and bent over her. She raised her lips. Although he merely brushed her lips with his, she had the distinct impression that she had been kissed by a man, a whole man, a man worthy to be loved.

  He sat upon the arm of her teakwood chair for several minutes. "I must go soon," she said quietly. As she rose, standing beside him, she noticed that her nose came to his shoulder. Standing there, with it pressed against his moist shirt, she asked, "Are you married, Emile?"

  "No," he replied.

  "I'm so glad," she murmured, pressing her funny nose deep into his shoulder. He patted her on the head and led the way down the long path that wound among the coconuts.