Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [110]
Like a surge of unconsolable emotion, Cable leaped from the boat, ran to the lovely girl, and enveloped her in his arms. Her own heart was beating as wildly as his, and by the time she lay upon the sand beneath one of the trees, naked in the shimmering moonlight, Cable's torrential passion could restrain itself no longer. He clasped the delicate Tonkinese to him and surrendered all doubts that had made him miserable that week. She was his, she was his, and that single fact outweighed all lesser questions.
Before, in the hut, the love these two had felt for one another had been constrained by the confines of the close walls and by the natural fear that someone would burst in upon them. Now, on the edge of the jungle and the sea, secure in their mutually shared passions, they surrendered themselves throughout that night to the reassurances of immortality that men and women can give to one another.
In their slight talk Cable reported his meeting with Liat's mother. When he came to the part in which he said that he could not marry Liat, the girl did not protest, for indeed, in her heart, she had known from the first that this tall Marine could not marry her if he would. And now, under the jungle tree, with the speckled moonlight falling upon their intermingled brown bodies, Liat was not too concerned about the future.
With that rare indifference bred of thousands of years of life in the Orient, the little girl said quietly, "I knew it could never be. My mother dreamed that something great would happen to me. It has. But not what she dreamed. You love me. You will go away somewhere. I will marry somebody else."
"Oh, Liat, Liat!"
"Oh, yes! I shall. My family is almost rich among the Tonkinese." She stopped speaking and then added, "But I wish that you and I could have a baby. A baby that was yours, too. Then, if you went away..."
The little Tonkinese girl grew silent. Perhaps she knew that all over the world women were saying that. For it was war, and the thought and speech were identical in Russia, in New Mexico, in Yokohama, in Dresden, and in Bali-ha'i.
Cable, relaxed, wondered what would happen to a son of his if Liat did become pregnant. It was a happy thought, and he laughed aloud. "What is it, Joe?" she asked, pronouncing the J like a Zh.
"I was thinking," he said, "that it would be heaven to have children with you. To live somewhere together. Somewhere like Bali-ha'i." Then soberer thought overtook him. He shivered slightly, and Liat pulled herself closer to him. When she asked what was the matter, he replied, "It is almost four o'clock, and I must meet the boat."
They dressed, and Liat helped him to pull the boat into the water. Holding the craft with one foot, he clasped Liat to him again as if he could never let her go. "How did you know I was coming?" he asked.
"I look every night," she said. "I know you cannot stay away." He kissed her passionately and almost roughly shoved her back away from the boat. Then he rowed out slowly to where Atabrine Benny was already flashing a light.
Three more times Cable made that midnight trip. He was now living in a delirium which carried into waking hours the phantasms that assailed him when he slept and sweated at noonday. He and Liat were experiencing a passion that few couples on this earth are privileged to share. Could it have been indefinitely prolonged, it is probable that their love for one another would have sustained them, regardless of their color, throughout an entire lifetime. This is not certain, however, for Cable and Liat knew of the impossibilities that surrounded them.
Cable, for example, heard from Atabrine Benny that each night when the boat set out for