Ed Lacy - South Pacific Affair
As Numaga disappeared on the horizon I tried to find the reason, but couldn't think of one that made sense. Eddie and I didn't have a bad life, nor a wonderfully good one; rather it was a painless way of passing time.
Still, living with Ruita would be just as carefree, and in many delightful ways even more so. Yet, while I was sure I could take life as a small-time trader, I was afraid to stick myself on some isolated island, even with a Ruita. Or was the real reason the fact that I was frightened of a second failure in marriage? Or was it that marrying Ruita would mean I'd stay in the islands forever? I kept telling myself I wanted to remain here for the rest of my days, but did I really?
Eddie leaned over the wheel and yawned, said, “Sure can't figure you and Ruita. A gal with everything—looks...”
“Why don't you shut up!”
He shrugged and we were on a silent kick for the rest of the day and most of the following morning.
Two days later when we were within sight of Tahiti, or rather the jagged outline of Moorea, Eddie opened the hold and, screwing up his tan face at the stench, removed a fifty-pound bag of copra. “This bag we hide—for drinking and movie money.”
“We haven't got much of a cargo as it is,” I began.
“Even if we brought in a full load of shell we'd still owe the Chinaman. He'll advance us trade goods against the next cargo, like he always does.”
“That's why we're always in debt.”
Eddie closed the hatch and held the bag at arm's length. “Ray, a lousy five or ten bucks ain't going to make us rich or poor, but it will mean a girl and I'm sure in need of one.”
“What was wrong with your, uh, dream girl back in Numaga?”
“That dream. She was kind of sloppy and it took me time to work up to it. Just when things were set this popaa came along, in the dream, spoiled everything. Guess I forgot to tell you that.”
Approaching Tahiti is one of the most beautiful sights in the world, although Papeete itself has some of the ratty atmosphere of a cheap carnival, a pitch show. With Moorea behind us, I got the motor going soon as we saw the beacon on Point Venus. We went through the pass and stopped at the tiny island of Motuiti opposite the Papeeta waterfront. In the old days the famous Queen Pomare used the island as a pleasure resort but now it's a quarantine and customs station.
There was a new officer on duty. I gave him our papers, our permit de sejour, and everything was in order. He took one look at Eddie's face, gasped, “Lion Face—you are a leper!”
Eddie ran into this one in every new port. His flattened nose, puffed lips, the ridge of scar tissue over his eyes, not to forget his wrinkled right “tin” ear, did give him a “Lion Face,” and you have the disease real bad when your face reaches that stage. Eddie explained about punches, not bugs, changing his face, but the quarantine office hadn't the slightest idea what a pug was and refused to let us go. Happily, as Eddie was getting angry, one of the old hands came in and okayed our papers.
As the sun was setting, trimming Moorea's rugged peaks with fire, I started the motor and we backed the Hooker into the quay and made her fast. The nearest ship to us was a very big schooner, the Shanghai, supposedly owned by a senile Tahitian who lived in a rum bottle and was a front for a Swede named Buck and a sharp Chinese supercargo named Tom Teng. Buck was in his late fifties, a wide powerful man with an odd face—the upper half seemed to run directly down to the tip of his big nose and gave him a kind of Andy Gump appearance. He and Teng were big traders, operators who ran booze and hired their own divers for mother-of-pearl shell.
The short tropical twilight is when most islanders take their last bath of the day. We had a swim and finished the last of the crabs tied to the rigging. Eddie cursed the quarantine man, because now was it too late to sell the bag of copra. We washed the deck down and I said I was going ashore anyway, just to walk among people. Eddie said, “Not me. Nothing worse than walking by the bars and girls without a franc in your pockets, like a hungry dog. I'd rather—”
There was some shouting aboard the Shanghai, followed by drunken laughter, and then a splash as somebody either dove off the high schooner or was thrown off.
In the dim light we could see a person swimming toward our boat and a moment later a hand grasped the rope ladder and a girl pulled herself aboard, flopped on the deck like a caught fish. She was buck naked, slim, with a rather plain and pretty face. She pressed the water out of her long black hair as she sat up. She was both drunk and angry. Looking toward the schooner, she shouted curses in French, then stood up and grinned at us.
She was about seventeen and for sheer physical beauty the most perfectly shaped girl I'd ever seen. She belched slightly, shivered with the night air, her pointed breasts dancing. She giggled, showing stubby teeth, then walked gracefully and casually down the cabin steps, telling us in Tahitian, “I am cold. After a good drink and some clothes, you can be my friends.”
She disappeared into the cabin and Eddie stared at me with open mouth, then asked, “Still going ashore?”
“You crazy?” Absentmindedly I searched my pockets for a coin, then took Eddie's knife from his belt and tossed it in the air.
He said, “Trade-mark up!” as I got out my lighter and we knelt to look at the knife.
The plain side was showing and I ran for the cabin.
Chapter II
I was passing Les Dames de Saint Joseph de Cluny, the Catholic girl's school in Papeete, and a number of the youngsters in neat smocks were out walking. Some of them smiled politely at me. I clicked my heels and slipped them a smart bow which caused the sister in charge to grin and the kids to giggle.
It was the start of a bright cool day and I was feeling very fine; for the moment I wasn't worrying about a thing, not even thinking of Ruita. Last night had been the South Seas of the phony books, the stuff Barry and I had bulled about in Chicago bars—you're on your own little ship and a beautiful girl comes to spend the night with you; a few good hours and it's all over and on to the next one. Wam-bam and thank you, Ma'am.
Her name was Heru and she had arrived in Papeete some five months ago from a far-away atoll, down near Easter Island. As I walked along I thought about her and why she was here. The atoll people are not only well supplied by nature with about everything they need, but each family averages some fifteen hundred dollars a year from shell and copra, working at it when ever they feel in the mood. But most of the atoll people leave their heaven as soon as they can—that's always puzzled me. The men ship over the world as sailors, while the girls rush to Papeete to whore, either as amateurs or as pros. In fact (I am told) many of them actually can be found hustling in Paris, which is certainly a long way to travel to walk a shabby street.
Heru was a girl of great appetites and very good at all of them. She was crocked when she came aboard, finished our last bottle of rum during the night, and was still able to walk a straight line between my bunk and Eddie's. They soon knocked me out of this sheet marathon and I managed to get some sleep. When I left the Hooker Eddie and the girl were snoring on deck, both nude and cold with the early morning dampness. I threw a blanket over them, made some coffee, and took off.
I walked along the Quai du Commerce where the largest shops are run by the French and where one can buy almost anything in the world, from a Geiger counter to rubber falsies. I turned down a side street into a regular Chinatown—Chinese women walking in long slit gowns, and dozens of stores all with Chinese characters on the windows. The Chinese are the merchants of the islands and in Papeete they have their own club, a very imposing building and every bit as snobbish as the Circle Bougainville or the Tahiti Yacht Club, where the business men and tourists flock for an aperitif before going home to dejeuner, or stop for a petit dejeuner on their way to the office or shop.
Mr. Olin, our agent, ran a general store and glorified hock shop, and also went in for money lending. His main store and office was a two-story ramshackle wooden frame building which seemed on the verge of collapse. But he had a modern brick warehouse on the waterfront, a fleet of three new Ford trucks, and probably could raise a million dollars any time he had to. One of his clerks told me he was busy at the moment so I sat down on some wooden crates of canned milk, got a cigarette working as the clerk handed me a San Francisco paper which was exactly forty-three day old. The worn newspaper gave me a strong whiff of the tension and Stateside rat-race—I was damn glad to be reading it in the shop of a Chinese merchant in Papeete. The messy news and headlines seemed unreal, another world away from me, except for some business about testing more atomic bombs in the Pacific. Would be part of the “march of civilization” for a radioactive cloud to drift over Tahiti and...
The Chinese clerk said Mr. Olin would see me now. I walked up the trembling steps to his office. Mr. Olin was a fat, short man wearing slacks ready to burst, and an outrageous bright green sport shirt. His face was as round and flat as a large pebble, with a tuft of short dark silky hair crowning it. He always had a good smile and his eyes seemed amused. Off-hand you'd think Mr. Olin a very mild joker; he was shrewd, sharp, and tough.
His office was plainly furnished—a rusty file cabinet, a table with some dusty samples of trade goods on it, and a single strong light bulb hung from the ceiling. He gave me his big smile as he stood up from behind his large polished desk and we shook hands. If the rest of him was flabby, his hand was hard. He said in English, “Ah, my cockroach trader. You have a fine trip, Mr. Jundson?”
The cockroach title was his private joke and of course had to do with the fact our cutter was a bug compared to the big trading schooners.
“Nothing to shout about,” I said, sitting in a bamboo chair. “Around a ton of copra plus a few small bags of shell.”
“One should be grateful for even the smallest of fortune's smiles. Will you join me in wine and cakes?”
I nodded. Mr. Olin pressed a button and a young man immediately brought in a tray of sugar cookies and a silver bottle of cool rice wine. This was what I liked about Olin; he treated us as politely as if we were important traders.
I drank a lot of wine, finished the cakes and we made small talk about business. Then Mr. Olin brought out his account book and announced that until he got the exact weight and condition of our cargo, we were still some eleven thousand Tahitian francs in debt, which is roughly about three hundred thirty dollars.
Debts never seem to worry either party in the islands and Mr. Olin made out a credit slip for sixty dollars worth of trade goods at his warehouse. This was decent of him; he didn't have to advance us a sou. As I stood up I asked, “Would it be possible to add about a thousand francs in cash?”
Olin shook his head. “Sorry, no money. You would only drink it up. You need but wind and water for your boat and there is more than enough of that. However, should you wish some money as a lien against your fine boat, I should be pleased...”
“No, thanks. Without the boat I'd really be a bum. Do you have a cargo for us?”
“I'm afraid not. Should anything come up I shall contact you immediately.”
We shook hands and I thanked him for the wine and cakes, said we'd probably hang around Papeete for a few weeks, hoping for a cargo.
“Mr. Judson, with a boat your size one makes a big mistake to deal in copra. Your boat is fast and strong and good for only one thing—smuggling spirits.”
“You tell me that every time. But we like trading. Who knows, maybe we'll luck up on a bag of real pearls.”
Olin smiled, showing his several gold teeth. “My dear sir, that is only done in the cinema, and not very successfully there, either.”
I left his shop and walked back to our boat, passing the market place which was a tremendous iron roof open on all sides like a copra shed, and very busy in the morning. People came in from all parts of the island to sell vegetables and fruit and gossip. I stopped at Olin's warehouse and ordered a case of tinned Australian beef, the usual aspirin, boxes of hard candies, combs and thread and safety pins.
By the time I reached the Hooker it was almost noon and Eddie was sitting on the cabin and smoking a cigar. He said Olin's truck had already picked up our cargo and did I get any cash?
I said I didn't and he laughed, told me, “See how smart it was to save a bag of copra? I shall sell it this afternoon.”
“Just be careful Olin doesn't hear of it.” Before I could ask where Heru was, she stepped out of the cabin wearing one of my old suntan shirts which only partly covered her sturdy round hips, gave her the startling look of a living barbershop calendar. She was munching on a piece of raw fish and looked as fresh and clear-eyed as if she had slept all night. She said hello, asked if I had brought any rum with me. When I said I hadn't she merely shrugged and Eddie said, “Get your upa upa taria out, Ray—if it works.”
Upa upa taria is Tahitian for phonograph and mine was an old wind-up portable. When I dug it out, the damn thing was moldy and damp from the sea air. I gave the motor a quick clean-up with oil and the machine turned slowly, completely distorting the Duke Ellington record I put on, whose grooves were well worn anyway. But Heru seemed to enjoy the queer noises and squatted beside it, playing the record over and over as she ate the raw fish.
I joined Eddie atop the cabin in the hot sun. “What's with her?”
“Seems the lads on the Shanghai owe her money. When she asked for it they tossed her over.”
“Guess we must have run up a bill with her, too. Maybe we can help her collect and square our accounts?”
