Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [102]
"Hello!" he said in dry, agonized voice. Blood was in his head. His breath, from climbing and anticipation, was harsh. His hands were nervous, but as he stood there tall in the doorway, he was, to Liat, the finest man she had ever seen.
"Hello!" she replied. This time she did not wait beside the wall. She advanced to meet him in the middle of the small room. She was still kissing him when his wild hands had finished undressing her, and, later she kissed him while he slept on the earthen floor.
About eleven Liat suggested that they walk along a jungle trail to the cliffs. Cable agreed and they set off, barefooted Tonk in the lead, tall Marine swinging a branch he had torn from a small tree. When they reached the cliffs of Bali-ha'i they were about three hundred feet above the pounding surf below. There were two or three delectable places where the cliff was overhanging. There, with no safeguard of any kind, one could look far below his feet to coral piles upon which the surging water boiled and spouted. Liat stood at these places and looked straight down. Her eyes showed no excitement, but her heart pounded faster beneath her white smock. Cable could not force himself to stand near the edge, so Liat described the scene to him in French.
Then, for a while, they sat near the cliff and talked. Strange, but all the things Cable could not write to Bryn Mawr flooded out in half-French, half-English sentences. Liat followed his thoughts with ease, and soon she was telling him of Tonkin China. She lived eighty miles from Hanoi near the Chinese border. Her parents came to the islands when she was nine. They had been here eight years. They had re-enlisted, because life was better here, and a pretty girl could learn French, could learn to read and write, might even... marry... a planter.
"Who told you that?" Cable asked, terribly jealous.
"My mother."
"But it's not true!"
"But it is true," the girl replied in lilting French, in much the same way that Sister Marie Clement spoke. "Two white men in Efate have Tonkinese wives. And a trader wants to marry me, too. Jacques Benoit, who has a plantation, asked my mother." Artlessly... or perhaps with great artfulness... Liat told of Benoit's wooing. "But now he's going with a nurse. A white nurse! That's because I'm not on the island. Maybe he will marry her!"
Cable hushed her silly chatter with kisses and asked her to lead him to the hospital. "Why?" she cried.
"For dinner," he explained.
"But dinner! It is down there. In my hut. It's all ready!" she insisted with some show of fury. "It's waiting. I made it myself."
"When could you have made dinner?" Cable asked. "When did you have time?"
"Early this morning," she replied, simply. "I saw you coming. I watch here every morning for the boat. I knew you would come back."
Cable followed her small, brown arm as it pointed over the sea toward his island. Clouds covered it, as always, and to him the ocean looked barren and forbidding; but to Liat it was a glorious thing, a carpet way that would bring Cable back to her again and again.
"I can't eat with you," Cable explained. "I promised Sister Marie Clement."
"Sister Clement!" the beautiful girl cried. "No! Not with Sister Clement. With French girls. You wait! All the French people will be there. With their daughters, too! You wait!"
"I don't believe it, Liat!" Cable protested.
"Of course, it's true. You shall see," and she began to cry. The tears Were real. They were tears of deep sorrow and perplexity. She clutched his arm. "If I were a French girl, it would be all right, wouldn't it?"
"Liat! Don't say such things!"
"But what will happen? Look! You won't even have dinner with me! And I can't go with you."
"Why not?" Cable asked, snapping his fingers. "Why not? I'll take you with me! Come, we'll go together. You shall be my guest. I am proud of you! I am!"
"But I have no shoes!" Liat sobbed. She was very happy, but she had no shoes.
"You shall go barefoot then!