Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [109]
Mary dropped her pretense of pleasantness at this, insulted by the slight and infuriated that her plans might go awry. "Why not?" she demanded.
"I can't marry her," Cable repeated sullenly.
"You don't love her?" Mary asked, using a word that had no exact counterpart in Tonkinese, where men and women marry for almost any reason except love. It was a western extravagance whose meaning had once been explained to her by Benoit, the planter who wanted to marry Liat.
"I love her, Mary," Cable explained. "But I can't marry her."
"Why not?" the hard woman demanded. "Why not? You go over to Bali-ha'i. You make..." Here Mary demonstrated a filthy gesture commonly used in the Orient. Cable winced and looked away.
"Yes!" the infuriated woman screamed. "All the time you go there and make..."
"Mary! Please!" Cable cried, speaking once more in English. He looked furtively about him. "At least," he thought to himself, "few enlisted men know French, thank heavens!"
"You afraid? I not afraid!" She put her hand to the side of her face, making a megaphone, and shouted: "So-and-so lieutenant go to Bali-ha'i! Make..."
At this insult Cable could not contain himself. He swung his right hand sharply and slapped Bloody Mary across the face. The effect was startling. The woman perceived that the young man was deeply moved. She had been beaten before by men who were disturbed and unsure of themselves. It was a human thing to do... for a man. She understood. Spitting once more into the dust, she tenderly grasped Cable's arm.
"Why you not marry Liat?" she asked in a low voice of great dignity.
Cable, astonished by what he had done and, like Mary, surprised at the depth of his love for Liat, looked dumbly at the old woman and replied, "I can't. I can't take her home with me."
"Look, lieutenant!" she cried with sudden inspiration. "I have much money. I have three thousand dollars, maybe. In Hanoi my brother, he is rich. Why you not take this money? Live here with Liat? Maybe live in China. Other white men do." She spoke in a persuasive, pleading tone.
"Mary!" he cried in an agony of pain. "I can't. I can't!" Forcing himself free of her grasp, he hurried to his jeep and started it with a roar. Mary pulled herself to her feet and ran over to the side of the car.
"You come back, bimeby?"
He didn't. He stayed away all that day and the next. On the third day, he was awakened from his afternoon nap by Atabrine Benny. "It's none of my business," the fat fellow observed in a confidential whisper, "but I know a boat that's going over to Bali-ha'i tonight. A couple of guys are going fishing. They cleared it with the patrol craft. They could drop you off." He paused archly. "That is, if you wished to go..." His voice trailed off in fine southern insinuation.
Cable was perplexed for a moment. If he did this thing, he would be involved with other men, and soon his secret would be shared throughout the island, and on other islands, too. It would be like the secret of the naval officer at Luana Pori who crept into the bed of a lovely De Gaullist when her Pétainist husband beat it to the hills. Everyone knew it, now.
But Cable's caution was soon drowned in his ardor. "Are you going, too?" he asked. "Good! Then I'll be there. What time?" Arrangements were hurriedly made and Benny, ill at ease in officers' country, slipped away. That night a small craft set out when harbor lights were dimmed. Before midnight it was approaching Bali-ha'i. At quarter past midnight Cable asked if he might use a lantern for a moment. There was some quiet discussion, and one of the men produced a strong flashlight. Slowly, for the space of three minutes or more, Cable waved the light back and forth. Then, climbing into the small yellow rubber boat which the men let down over the side, he started to row for the cliffs.
"Be careful," Atabrine Benny called to him. "We'll be back for