Tales of the South Pacific

by James A. Michener

  Laurencin was seventeen. Beautiful like Latouche. Marthe was only fifteen when I saw her first. She was the queen of the group. Having lived among older men from the beginning of the war, she had acquired some damned cute little ways. She knew this and kept her soft almond eyes directed down toward her plate. Then once or twice each meal she would raise them at some young officer and knock him silly with her charm. There was a good deal of food spilt at Luana Pori, mostly by young men looking at Marthe.

  Latouche served excellent meals. She butchered a beef at least twice a week, had her natives scour the woods for wild chicken and the shore for sea food. Occasionally, when American hunters bagged a deer up in the hills she would cook it for them. And whenever a food ship arrived from the States, someone would always manage to steal a truck-load of steaks and turkeys and corned beef and succotash and sneak it into Latouche's shed at night and whisper, "Our steward is a louse! He can't cook water. Uses no spices at all!"

  "Ah, well!" Latouche would sympathize. "In the jungle! What you expect? I give this to Noé! We see what he can do with it."

  When dinner was over Latouche led her guests back to the salon, where six or seven attractive French women of the islands were waiting. I never clearly understood who these girls were, where they ate their meals, or how they got to the plantation. They always went home in jeeps.

  The introductions over, Latouche would slip back to the dining house, where I waited for her. "Who are those girls?" I asked one night as she curled up in a chair with me.

  She smiled, a Javanese sort of smile. "I like men," she said. "American men I like very much. Is no good men by themselves all the time." I understand not less than six marriages resulted from Latouche's dinners.

  But for me the best part came when Noé finished removing the dishes and took the pressure lamp back to the kitchen. Then Latouche and I sat in the shadowy darkness of the dining house and played records on the old Victrola her father had brought her from Australia. She loved American music. I had to laugh. I used to sit there in the dark and think of wives of colonels and majors back home telling their bridge clubs, "John gets so lonesome on the islands. The children and I sent him some records last week." And there they were, in Latouche's white dining house.

  There were also some Javanese records. I loved those crazy melodies, especially when Latouche accompanied the wailing music in a singsong voice. When she grew tired, she would kiss me softly in the ear and whisper, "This next one for Mister Bus Adams, special." Then she would play Yvonne Printemps' French recording of "Au clair de la June." She said it was an old record. The machine was not good, and the needle scratched. But the music sounded fine there at the edge of the jungle. You know how it goes. Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. The girl's name is spelled Printemps, but you say it Prantom. You don't sound the final ps, and she can really sing.

  The last record was for Latouche. Then I kissed her, and she closed her eyes, and I could feel her shivering, but not from love. By the way, have you ever heard Hildegarde sing "The last time I saw Paris"? Not much of a song, but brother, when you hear it in a bamboo room, with Latouche Barzan twisting nervously in your arms...

  "Bus?" she whispered. "Paris? What it like?"

  I would try to tell her. I made up a lot, for she was mad to know about Paris. All I remembered was wide beautiful streets and narrow crooked ones. I recalled something about the opera there, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Mostly I had to think of movies I had seen. Once I got started on the Rue Claude Bernard, where I used to live near a cheese market. I embroidered that street until even the cheese merchant wouldn't have known it. But it was worth it, for when the music stopped and my voice with it, Latouche would kiss me wildly and cry, "Oh, Bus! I wish you not married. I wish my husban' he dead. You and I we get married..."

  "Latouche!" I whispered. "For God's sake, don't talk like that."

  "Why not? I wish my husban' he dead up there in the hills. Then everything all right. I marry some nice American."

  "Stop it!"

  "Whatsamatter, Bus? You no wish your wife she dead sometime?"

  "It's not funny, Latouche!" I protested. My forehead was wet.

  "I not say it funny," she mused, quietly buttoning her dress. "I talk very serious. When you kissing me? When you taking my dress off? I s'pose you never wish your wife dead?"

  I felt funny inside. You know how it is. You're out in the islands. You have a wife, but you don't have a wife. Sometimes the idea flashes through your head... Without your thinking it, understand. And you draw back in horror. "What in hell am I saying? What kind of a man am I, anyway?" And all the time a girl like Latouche is in your arms, her black hair about your face, the smell of frangipani everywhere. And when she hammers that question at you, as if she were the horrible little voice... Man, you take a deep breath and you don't answer.

  I didn't blame Latouche for wanting her husband dead. Achille Barzan was a pretty poor sort, the son of French peasants who had been deported to Noumea years before for some crime, no one remembered what. They had chopped their plantation from the jungle. Alone they planted coconut trees and nursed cacao bushes into trees. They lived like less than pigs for eight long years, getting no returns, going deeper into debt. Then, just as the plantation started to make money, their son married Latouche De Becque, bastard daughter of a renegade Frenchman who lived with one colored girl after another. Their only comfort was that Latouche had brought a dowry. Her father stole it from some planter up north. And the girl was good-looking.

  "Too good-looking!" old Madame Barzan observed. "She'll bring sorrow to our son. Mark my words."

  The old woman had early detected Latouche's willfulness. It was no surprise to her, therefore, when Achille had to knock her down and forbid her to visit Noumea. Nor could the family do anything to make her stop ridiculing old Pétain. The Barzans, mother, father, son, saw clearly that only the grim marshal's plan of work and discipline could save France.

  "Why, look!" Achille said. "Every De Gaullist in the islands is what Pétain said in his speech. Undisciplined!" In Noumea, where people understood such things, most substantial men were Pétainists. Only the rabble were De Gaullists. Latouche herself was proof of that. A half-caste! A bastard half-caste, too! You might as well call her a De Gaullist. The words meant about the same.

  The Barzans were pleasantly surprised, therefore, when Latouche suddenly became disciplined, accepted her husband's judgment, and became a respectable Pétainist. They were even more surprised when two boats put into the bay and a group of fiery men, led by Latouche's own father, stormed ashore and placed everyone under arrest. Everyone, that is, except Achille, who fled to the jungle.

  "There they are!" Latouche reported icily. Standing before the two miserable Barzans she denounced them. "They want to give up," she laid with disdain.

  "Take them away," Latouche's father ordered.

  At this old Madame Barzan's peasant mind snapped. "Thief! Whore!" she screamed, beating at Latouche with her bare hands. An undersized De Gaullist from Efate tried to stop her outcries, but old man Barzan thought his wife was being attacked. Grabbing a stick of wood, he lunged at the little man and beat him over the head.

  "Throw them in jail!" Latouche's father commanded.

  Madame Barzan, gabbling of "thieves and murderers and whores," died in the boat. The old man remained in jail. The little fellow he had beaten was still affected after two years. His head jerked and he couldn't pronounce the letter s.

  Latouche rarely spoke of the wretched family. She brought her three sisters to the plantation before the Americans came. She reasoned that the Yanks would occupy Luana Pori. She wanted her sisters ready. Even during the agonizing days of the Coral Sea battles she refused to move inland. "I think Americans, they win. If they lose, I finished anyway. Japs probably make that dirty bastard Achille Barzan commissioner of Luana Pori, I s'pose."

  Shortly after she told me about her husband I left the Navy camp and moved up to the plantation. Latouche and I had one of
the little white houses among the flower gardens. It was made of bamboo, immaculately clean. Six or eight of Latouche's dresses hung along one wall. On the other was a colored print showing a street in Paris. Six books were on the wicker table. Gone with the Wind and five Tauchnitz editions of German novels. There were two chairs, one covered with flowered chintz.

  Latouche and I were very happy in that little house. Mostly she wore a halter made of some cheap print from Australia and a pair of expensive twill shorts a colonel had got her from Lord and Taylor's, in New York. She went barefooted. We slept through the hot afternoons, waiting for the crowd to come out for dinner. Noé would bring us cold limeades, slipping into the little house whether we were dressed or not.

  I often try to recall what I wrote my wife during those days. "Darling: The deep sores on my wrists are better now. It is cooler on this island." But the sores that ate at my heart, I didn't tell her about them.

  It was about this time that Lt. Col. Haricot led his raid on the plantation. He stormed into the salon one night about seven and stood at attention like a gauleiter. "Everything on this plantation stolen from the United States government will be hauled away tomorrow morning," he announced. He even clapped his hands, and a very young lieutenant made a note of the order. Then he nodded to a French woman much older than Latouche and started to go.

  "But I own everything," Latouche said, interrupting his passage.

  "Are you the madame's daughter?" he asked, pompously.

  "I am the madame!" Latouche replied, nodding. "Madame Barzan!"

  Haricot, who had been given his job of civil affairs officer because of a year's French he'd had in Terre Haute high school, bowed low and said, "Eh, bien, Madame Barzan..."

  "I know!" Latouche cried. "I know very well, Colonel Haricot. You think I some mean old woman steal government property from U. S. A." She pouted at him.

  "No," he replied cajolingly. "Not steal. But you have it all the same, and I've got to get it back."

  "What you think you take?" Latouche asked, her chin stuck out. "That electric generator," Haricot replied.

  "Colonel Hensley gave me that." The colonel was taken aback by the name.

  "He had no right to do that," he blustered.

  "And I have it rebuilt," Latouche insisted. "No damn good when I get it. Salvaged! See, I got bills right here. I no s'pose you take that away, Colonel Haricot!"

  "Everything goes tomorrow morning. We start at nine o'clock. This stealing of government property has got to stop." He clicked his heels again and left. He'd teach these Frenchmen a thing or two.

  Of course, we worked half the night hiding G. I. gear all through the jungle. In the morning Haricot appeared with his men and hauled away the odds and ends we had overlooked. But they didn't take the generator! Latouche calmly loaded a Marine revolver with American ball cartridges, and stood guard over the power plant. Haricot studied her wryly for a moment and ordered his men elsewhere.

  When the work was completed the colonel appeared in the salon. "Gentlemen," he said dramatically. "This place is now off limits. A guard has been posted! You will all leave!"

  Sure enough, at the white picket fence two soldiers stood guard with automatic rifles. "The heat's on!" an officer whispered to me, but that night we all sneaked back along the shore for dinner in the bare room. Latouche was pleasant and even happy.

  "I jus' find out the colonel is not married! I think we have some very good fun with him!"

  The fun started when the sergeant in charge of the guard applied to the colonel for permission to marry Mlle. Marthe De Becque. "Who's she?" the colonel asked. "Some little tart?"

  "She's Madame Barzan's sister, sir."

  "You mean up at the plantation?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Damn it all! I told you to guard the place, not invade it. How long has this been going on?"

  "I fell in love with her."

  "What were you doing inside the gates?"

  "I wasn't inside the gates, sir! She came outside. That is, after I went inside."

  "What in the world goes on here?" the confused colonel shouted. "You jump in that jeep!"

  Latouche greeted Haricot with demure attention. "Something missing at the camp?" she asked.

  "Sir?" the colonel bellowed at me. "What are you doing here?"

  "Problem at the PT base, sir," I explained. "Important business."

  "Oh!" the colonel replied. After all, it was customary for the Navy to have a lieutenant doing what a colonel did in the Army. He studied me and then turned toward Latouche.

  "Army in trouble, Colonel Haricot?" she asked.

  "This man says he wants to marry your sister."

  "My sister? Laurencin? Noé!" she called. "Send Laurencin."

  "It's Marthe," the sergeant protested, but Latouche ignored him.

  "You shut up!" the colonel ordered.

  Soon Laurencin, blushing prettily, entered the room. She, like her sister, had a sprig of frangipani in her hair.

  "What's this I hear, Laurencin?" Latouche demanded abruptly. "You fall in love with this boy?"

  "It's Marthe!" the sergeant protested.

  "You be still!" Haricot thundered. He was rather enjoying the scene By heavens, he could understand how the young fellow... Laurencin held up her frail hands. "I never seen him before," she said. "What's that?" Haricot demanded. "It's her sister!" the sergeant said again. "I know it's her sister," the colonel shouted.

  "Oh!" Latouche cried in mock embarrassment. "Oh, Colonel Haricot!" She gently pushed the colonel in the chest. "Of course! My other sister! Noé! Ask Marthe to come in!" She took the colonel by the arm and pressed quite closely to him. "Come over to this chair," she suggested. "It's warm today."

  When Marthe came in there was no acting. She went to the sergeant and held his hand. Colonel Haricot, buttered up by now, smiled at the young girl. "And what is your name?"

  "Marthe," the girl replied.

  "And you want to marry my sergeant?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, you can't do it!" Haricot blustered. "Too many marriages out here. Bad for morale."

  This turn of events pleased Latouche highly. She did not want Marthe marrying the first boy she met. As a matter of fact, Latouche had her eye on Haricot as a very proper husband for either Laurencin or Marthe.

  He had money, was not ugly, and looked as if his wife could manage him pretty easily.

  "You hear what the good American officer says, Marthe?" Latouche asked, shrugging her shoulders. "You cannot get married!" Latouche patted the sergeant on the arm. "It's maybe better." Then she returned to Colonel Haricot and brushed against him several times. "I s'pose maybe it's best if the sergeant doesn't stand guard any more. My sisters are so pretty. Always the men fall in love with them."

  "Ah, no! The guard remains!" The colonel bowed stiffly as he had seen Prussians do when delivering unpleasant ultimatums to French girls in the movies.

  Before we went to sleep that afternoon I whispered, "That's a mean trick."

  "Marthe's all right," Latouche replied, fluffing her hair across the pillow. "Do her good. Girls got to learn about men. Got to learn fast these days!" She laughed and started to hum "The last time I saw Paris..."

  "You better keep your eye on Marthe," I said. "The girl's in love."

  "Skipper?" she asked. "What's Paris like in winter? Snow?"

  I tried to recall. So far as I knew, it was just like any other city in the cold. I was about to say this when I remembered an opera I had seen in New York. La Bohème. A Spanish girl sang it. In the third act, I think, this Spanish girl is trying to meet a soldier in a snowstorm. I told Latouche about it, and the little guard house. She rose on one elbow. Her eyes flashed as if she actually saw Paris in the snow. When I stopped speaking she cried, "Oh, Bus!" and the wildness of her emotion made the little house creak until I was sure it could be heard in the salon.

  That night Lt. Col. Haricot returned to the plantation. I could guess what turmoil had brought him back. He s
aid to himself, "I'll go back there and look the place over. See that the guards are on duty. See that everything's on the up and up." I'm sure that's why he thought he was coming back.

  But when he entered the dining house and found a dinner party in progress, he was taken off guard. "I..." He sputtered a bit. Then he became ashamed of himself and his motives. He snapped to attention and said in low, harsh tones, "Madame Barzan! If you don't quit this, I'll close this joint up forever. And," he threatened darkly, "I'll close your two houses up there on the hill, too!"

  Like an angry cat Latouche sprang at the man and slapped his face four times. Then she kicked him in the legs. I was first at her side and pulled her away. "Never say that, Colonel Haricot!" she hissed, trembling in my arms. "They not my houses! Next time I kill you!"

  The colonel was astounded. He absolutely did not know what to think. He had never associated with women who slapped and kicked. He never met such women in Terre Haute. In his world when a house was put off bounds, it was off bounds. No right-thinking officer would trespass. But here on Luana Pori everything was different. Even officers ignored the rules of common decency.

  He turned sharply and left the dining room. At the wicket gate he stopped and gave the sentries strict orders to shoot if any officers tried to leave the plantation. Then he drove hurriedly down the road.

  "He can raise plenty of trouble," a captain said.

  "He not gonna do nothin'," Latouche replied.

  "Why are you so sure?"

  "The colonel all messed up inside," Latouche said simply. She reached over and patted Laurencin's hand. "He get himself fixed up pretty soon. He's all right."

  At that moment Colonel Haricot was pacing up and down his bare office at the base. He was trying to dictate an order arresting all military personnel at the plantation. The words wouldn't come. "Oh, go to bed!" he told his typist. "What was it, after all?" he asked himself. "I insulted a young woman and she slapped my face. I never insulted a woman before in my life. My Mother taught me better than that. That girl had a right to slap me." He began to build up a pretty impressive case for Latouche. But he knew that his authority was being flouted. And he loved authority.