Pacific Interlude

by Sloan Wilson

  “Who from?” Syl asked.

  “A big navy tanker will come in as far as she can. For God’s sake, keep this stuff coming. We’ve got lines of trucks and tanks stopped with empty tanks.”

  Syl reminded himself this was another shuttle run, but at least they would still have three hours in Manila between trips.

  “Captain, what are we going to do about liberty?” Simpson asked. “The men still haven’t done anything about Willis’s seabag.”

  In all the excitement Syl had forgotten about that damned seabag and the whole ugly incident. He was relieved when the major said, “You shouldn’t send liberty parties ashore here … the city’s not secured yet.”

  “Are we liable to come under fire?”

  “No, they’re just fighting in the old walled city of Intramuros. The Japs are holed up in some of those big government buildings there, but you could run into stragglers anywhere. Officers can go ashore on business but they should carry sidearms and stay the hell away from the old part of town. And stay from the booze—they say the Japs left a lot of poisoned bottles behind. All the water’s bad, and there’s no water at all in most of the city so nothing’s clean. I’m told that a lot of the girls have some kind of Japanese crud that’s worse than the ordinary clap or even syph. The message is … if you don’t drink, eat, fuck or get shot, you’ll be okay.”

  The officers of the navy AOG, moored directly astern of the Y-18, did not take the major’s warnings seriously. They allowed a liberty party to explore the streets near the wharves. When the Lucky Eighteen men saw this they complained they were being restricted because of Willis’s seabag. No matter how much Syl and Simpson explained the situation, Cramer refused to believe it.

  “Hell, let’s find an old seabag and fill it up for him,” he said to Murphy. “We could be stuck here forever.”

  Many of the men donated their oldest clothes, none of which fit Willis, who refused this peace offering.

  “Everything in my bag was new,” he said.

  “We don’t have any new clothes that’ll fit you,” Cramer said. “For Christ’s sake, will you be satisfied if we take up a collection so you can buy your own? They must have stores here.”

  “My uniforms were special made,” Willis said. “I’ll need two hundred dollars to duplicate my outfit.”

  “Two hundred dollars!” Cramer thundered. “If we raise that, none of us would have a cent left for liberty.”

  “That’s what was stolen from me,” Willis said. “I’m not going to settle for less.”

  “The little bastard is just holding us up,” Cramer reported to Simpson.

  “God,” Syl said when he heard about it, “let’s get some common-sense—”

  “They’re standing on principle,” Simpson said. “Except the real thief …”

  Remembering the money Schuman had given him to spend on a “good cause,” Syl said, “I can give Willis two hundred out of a welfare fund—”

  “That won’t help to discipline the men,” Simpson said.

  “Tell the men I was going to spend the money on beer for them but now Willis gets it. And tell them they still can’t go on liberty yet, and that that damned seabag has nothing to do with it.”

  Cramer figured that Syl’s nose was still out of joint because he had to use his own money to replace the seabag and was still inventing excuses to deny the men liberty. Which did not tend to make Willis any more popular. That night the silence hummed when he sat down to eat his dinner with the rest of the crew. They made him a pariah. He badly wanted to give in, but damn it, how could he?

  Syl was just sitting down to his own dinner in the wardroom when Schuman suddenly appeared in the door. Having lost all his gear, he was wearing a borrowed uniform which was much too small.

  “This looks like home,” he said with a wan grin.

  Syl stood, too surprised to say more at the moment, but he hurried around the end of the table, grabbed his old friend’s hand. “Am I glad to see you … I thought for a while there—”

  “I still don’t know what hit us,” Paul said. “Can you believe that? I don’t have any idea in the world what sank my ship. It couldn’t have been an explosive shell—”

  “It could have been anything—the whole world was blowing up out there,” Buller said.

  “The minesweep put us all on a troopship,” Schuman said. “She’s not going to sail for a couple of days. I hitchhiked a ride in here on a bumboat.”

  “Where do you go when she sails?” Wydanski asked.

  “San Francisco.”

  “Lucky. You just come in here to make us feel bad?” Buller said with characteristic tact.

  Schuman looked around the wardroom. “I didn’t much like my ship when I had her,” he said, “but right now I’d trade with any one of you.”

  “Trade with me,” Buller said. “My berth is yours.”

  “They’ll probably give you a new ship, maybe something a lot bigger,” Syl said.

  “No, I figure it’s all over for me,” Schuman said. “By the time I take my leave and they figure out what to do with me, it’ll be all over.”

  “I wouldn’t cry too much about it,” Wydanski said.

  “I’m not crying, but it’s hard to figure out what the hell to do now. At least you guys don’t have to worry about that …”

  Schuman got little sympathy from the other officers, but Syl thought he knew exactly how he felt. When they went to his cabin after dinner he said, “Maybe men like us have to jump right from one crazy dream or nightmare into another. Do you have any special plans for civilian life?”

  Schuman shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. Have you?”

  This was the first time Syl had told anyone about his fantasy of sailing in the wake of the old Vikings and writing their history. Schuman had actually read Samuel Eliot Morison’s book on Columbus.

  “You could do that,” he said. “Hell, it wouldn’t even take much money. All you’d need is a good thirty-five footer and the right girl. What does Sally say about it?”

  “I’d be afraid even to mention it … She wants a house in Stamford and what goes with it—”

  “I can’t see you as the king of the suburbs …”

  When Cramer announced that the tanks were empty, Schuman went along as they sailed out to a big navy tanker for another load. It was getting dark. Picking their way through the wrecks at night was not easy, and Syl found it good to have Paul beside him on the flying bridge. The ability to see well in almost complete darkness is to some degree learned through long practice, and during the long Greenland nights, Schuman had developed eyes like radar.

  When they returned to the wharf to load a new line of army tank trucks, Schuman said, “Will they let us go ashore here now? I got to try to buy a whole bunch of new gear.”

  “I was planning to go take a look around in the morning. Want to bunk here tonight?”

  “Thanks, but … I lost everything I had, including my pay records. I’m afraid I need to borrow back some of that money I won off Buller …”

  “It’s all yours,” Syl said.

  “I just need a couple of hundred. I’ll find somebody who can change Aussie cabbage.”

  Schuman insisted on sleeping curled up on the wardroom bench between trips to avoid taking Simpson’s bunk. After making three more runs for new cargo, they ate breakfast while Wydanski supervised the job of filling tank trucks.

  “I think I’ll go ashore,” Schuman said as he finished his coffee. “I don’t hear any more shooting in there.”

  “Stay away from the old part of the city,” Syl told him.

  “I hear some of the shops are already open. I don’t even have toothpaste. Want to go exploring with me, Syl?”

  “We’re going to be here about three hours. I’ll have to be back before noon. Sure …”

  It was already hot. The pistol belts of the two officers pressed against their sweating hips as they strode toward the rubble-filled streets. They had almost crossed the wharf when they
heard the clattering of boots behind them, and Buller caught up, his hot face glistening with sweat.

  “You better let me come with you,” he said. “You guys might need a bodyguard.”

  To protect them against him, Syl thought.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE THREE OF them were conscious of looking outsized as they strode through a crowd of relatively diminutive Filipinos. They had never seen a war-torn city. Syl and Schuman were shocked when they came upon a burned-out Japanese army tank that stood only a few yards away from the sandbagged gun emplacement which had stopped it. The upper half of a small soldier’s body still sprawled over the edge of its open hatch, with flies buzzing around the charred face and blackened hands. Fire did that to men on ships, Syl thought, but at least the sea was a quicker grave, made it seem a cleaner death. Clean death. A contradiction in terms …

  “They should give that guy a parking ticket,” Buller said as they strode on.

  Neither of the other two officers even looked at him.

  Shortly after passing the tank they were surrounded by five emaciated kids with long stringy black hair wearing army shirts to their knees. They danced about, talking, of course, in Spanish while their leader, who was a little taller and even thinner than the others, darted close and said what might have been the only English words he knew: “Fuckee, suckee? Pom-Pom my sister?”

  Syl held out a handful of his loose change.

  “I wish I had something,” Schuman said. “Do you think they could use an Australian ten-pounder?”

  “Try them,” Syl said.

  Perhaps afraid that the note was bigger than the donor intended, the tallest boy grabbed it and ran, followed by the others. They disappeared around a corner, their childish, astonishingly merry laughter echoing from the ruined walls. A man ran by, bandaged stumps instead of hands, and disappeared into a cellar.

  All the plate-glass windows of the stores they passed had been smashed, but some still offered displays of women’s dresses, cakes half-protected from the flies by sheets of wax paper, and small, scruffy tiny piles of bananas, oranges and pineapples. The sun beat down hotter than ever. In an open-air cafe outside a burned-out hotel an old woman was selling beer from a tub of water in which a few ice cubes swam.

  “That looks good,” Buller said.

  “The major said some of that stuff is poisoned,” Syl told him.

  “I doubt like hell that the Japs had time to run around opening all their beer bottles, sticking in poison and recapping them,” Buller said. “I’m for taking a chance.”

  The beer bottles had Japanese labels, but it was cold, dry and tasted good.

  “To the victor belongs the spoils,” Buller said with a grin.

  Many of the Filipino men who hurried along the blasted streets around them wore incongruously neat business suits and even carried briefcases, as though they had worried about nothing but their jobs all through the battle. They were jostled by infantrymen, both Filipino and American, who still carried rifles and hand grenades. They saw no women here except for a few old ones. A fat brown woman in a blonde wig and a purple dress looked too demented to receive more than pity when she plucked at the arms of the soldiers.

  As they walked on they were followed by a one-legged man on crutches who hopped along and brandished a Spanish doll in a black lace dress and mantilla.

  “Souvenir?” he said in a singsong voice, “souvenir for mother, wife or daughter?”

  When the three officers showed no interest in the doll he pulled a Japanese flag from his pocket and waved it at them. An American corporal stopped him to buy it.

  “I suppose I should bring some kind of gifts home with me,” Schuman said as another man with a tray of cheap filigree trinkets stopped them, waving a brass bracelet in their faces.

  “You should investigate that,” Syl said, pointing to a hand-lettered cardboard sign which said ANTIQUE JEWELRY FOR SALE UPSTAIRS. A crooked arrow pointed to a shattered wooden door in the front of a wrecked restaurant.

  Following this arrow and others they walked into a dining room in which most of the tables and chairs had been smashed, then climbed a narrow stairway to a dimly lit hall that led to a closed door and another sign marked “Knock for Jewelry.” Their heavy footsteps on the stairs had obviously been heard and the door opened a few inches before they touched it, jolting against a short brass chain. Through the narrow crack they saw a slice of a thin face, a dark eye almost covered by a shock of long black hair peering out at them. In good American English a girl’s voice sounding very frightened said, “You are American officers?”

  “Yes,” boomed Buller, the conquering hero.

  “What do you want?”

  “We’d like to look at some jewelry,” Paul said.

  “Is that all …?”

  The ironic voice rang with disbelief.

  “Yes,” Paul said.

  The eye studied them for a moment before the door was closed sharply. There was the jingle of the chain and then it opened wide. A girl of perhaps eighteen or twenty stood there as though poised for flight, but then changed her mind and backed against a wall. She wore a black short-sleeved dress, and her right arm was in a black silk sling. Her face and arms were shockingly bruised, but she was still a very pretty girl, obviously Eurasian. Her eyes glittered with fear, and defiance.

  “If you’re going to arrest me, you might as well get it over with—”

  “We just want to look at the jewelry,” Syl said. “We’re not going to arrest you. We’re from an American ship.”

  “Oh,” she said, her whole tense little body beginning to relax. “They are arresting many people. I was afraid …”

  “We saw your sign,” Schuman said.

  “Of course …” She forced a smile. “We never know what to expect these days …”

  “Why are they arresting people?” Buller said.

  She shrugged. “They look for people who worked with the Japs. It is not a secret. This restaurant served the Japanese. Everybody knows it.” She shrugged again, a gesture which seemed to mix despair with defiance, before adding, “So you really want to see the jewelry? I have many beautiful things, very good prices.”

  From a fold in her sling she drew out a key and turned to open a closet door. It was a drab room containing nothing but a cot and a table, but there was a kind of indestructible quality, a dignity about this battered girl, like that of a broken figurine. When she turned, holding a teak box against her narrow waist with her one good hand, the black sling that covered her right breast tightened the cotton dress over the other. Syl wondered whether she had an exceptionally graceful body or whether he had just been at sea so long that anything in skirts looked beautiful and desirable.

  “I always heard that the Filipino girls are the best looking,” Buller said. “Lady, you make me believe it, even if this restaurant served old Tojo himself.”

  Her smile was generous despite her bruised cheeks and forehead.

  “My father was American,” she said. “My mother’s father was Spanish. We are not political. We have never been political. We just ran a restaurant, a very good restaurant, and when the Japanese came, my mother could not say, ‘So sorry, but no Japs served.’ Why doesn’t anybody understand that?”

  As she talked she put the box on the table and took a small key from a string around her neck. When she tried to insert it with one hand the box moved, and Syl held it steady for her. Opening it, she took out a package of white tissue paper, put it on the table and with her free hand unwrapped it. Finally she held up a glistening amber necklace.

  “Real amber,” she said as she dangled it under the sunlight streaming through a small window. “Very old. It was my mother’s. It came from Spain more than a hundred years ago.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Schuman said. “Are you sure you want to sell it?”

  In the poor room in that wrecked building, the question sounded ridiculous, and Schuman looked embarrassed.

  “We need much money to start
the restaurant again if the authorities will let us,” she said. “Everything must go. We have many beautiful things …”

  She took a jade bracelet from the box.

  “Real jade,” she said, holding it up. Her fingernails were long and had once been manicured with clear lacquer, but two were now broken and the shiny polish remained only in spots. It was still a very delicate hand, like a piece of sculpture itself, Syl thought.

  “How much are you asking for this stuff?” Buller said.

  Her face stiffened. “I don’t want to ask too much, but this is very high quality jade,” she said. “I shouldn’t let it go for too little …”

  “It’s a lovely piece,” Schuman said. “So is the amber necklace. I think that might be just the thing for my mother.”

  “The amber is special,” she said, holding it up to the sunlight again. “Look in the middle bead, the biggest one.”

  She handed it to Schuman.

  “A fly caught in amber!” he said, squinting as he held it up to the light. “I’ve heard of that, but this is the first time I’ve seen one—”

  “It’s not really a fly,” she said. “It looks more like a flea or a cross between a flea and a spider. A teacher told me once it might be some extinct kind of bug, the last of its kind.”

  “A real survivor,” Syl said.

  Buller said, “How much for the jade bracelet?”

  She took a deep breath before saying, “A hundred dollars? American money?”

  “Too much,” Buller said. “It’s too small for any of my girls anyway, wouldn’t fit over an average-size hand.”

  “Ah, but it opens, there is a concealed catch, very clever.” With her one hand she could not open the catch. She handed it to Buller, who fumbled with his thick fingers before passing to Syl. “I can’t figure it out,” Buller said, “but even if it opens, a hundred is still too much. I can pick that kind of stuff up in New Orleans for twenty-five.”

  Syl found the catch, made of intricately worked gold. “I don’t think a hundred is too much.”

  “Hey, don’t bid against me,” Buller said.