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But for me the best part came when Noé finished removing the dishes and took the pressure lamp back to the kitchen. Then Latouche and I sat in the shadowy darkness of the dining house and played records on the old Victrola her father had brought her from Australia. She loved American music. I had to laugh. I used to sit there in the dark and think of wives of colonels and majors back home telling their bridge clubs, "John gets so lonesome on the islands. The children and I sent him some records last week." And there they were, in Latouche's white dining house.

There were also some Javanese records. I loved those crazy melodies, especially when Latouche accompanied the wailing music in a singsong voice. When she grew tired, she would kiss me softly in the ear and whisper, "This next one for Mister Bus Adams, special." Then she would play Yvonne Printemps' French recording of "Au clair de la June." She said it was an old record. The machine was not good, and the needle scratched. But the music sounded fine there at the edge of the jungle. You know how it goes. Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. The girl's name is spelled Printemps, but you say it Prantom. You don't sound the final ps, and she can really sing.

The last record was for Latouche. Then I kissed her, and she closed her eyes, and I could feel her shivering, but not from love. By the way, have you ever heard Hildegarde sing "The last time I saw Paris"? Not much of a song, but brother, when you hear it in a bamboo room, with Latouche Barzan twisting nervously in your arms...

"Bus?" she whispered. "Paris? What it like?"

I would try to tell her. I made up a lot, for she was mad to know about Paris. All I remembered was wide beautiful streets and narrow crooked ones. I recalled something about the opera there, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Mostly I had to think of movies I had seen. Once I got started on the Rue Claude Bernard, where I used to live near a cheese market. I embroidered that street until even the cheese merchant wouldn't have known it. But it was worth it, for when the music stopped and my voice with it, Latouche would kiss me wildly and cry, "Oh, Bus! I wish you not married. I wish my husban' he dead. You and I we get married..."

"Latouche!" I whispered. "For God's sake, don't talk like that."

"Why not? I wish my husban' he dead up there in the hills. Then everything all right. I marry some nice American."

"Stop it!"

"Whatsamatter, Bus? You no wish your wife she dead sometime?"

"It's not funny, Latouche!" I protested. My forehead was wet.

"I not say it funny," she mused, quietly buttoning her dress. "I talk very serious. When you kissing me? When you taking my dress off? I s'pose you never wish your wife dead?"

I felt funny inside. You know how it is. You're out in the islands. You have a wife, but you don't have a wife. Sometimes the idea flashes through your head... Without your thinking it, understand. And you draw back in horror. "What in hell am I saying? What kind of a man am I, anyway?" And all the time a girl like Latouche is in your arms, her black hair about your face, the smell of frangipani everywhere. And when she hammers that question at you, as if she were the horrible little voice... Man, you take a deep breath and you don't answer.

I didn't blame Latouche for wanting her husband dead. Achille Barzan was a pretty poor sort, the son of French peasants who had been deported to Noumea years before for some crime, no one remembered what. They had chopped their plantation from the jungle. Alone they planted coconut trees and nursed cacao bushes into trees. They lived like less than pigs for eight long years, getting no returns, going deeper into debt. Then, just as the plantation started to make money, their son married Latouche De Becque, bastard daughter of a renegade Frenchman who lived with one colored girl after another. Their only comfort was that Latouche had brought a dowry. Her father stole it from some planter up north. And the girl was good-looking.

"Too good-looking!" old Madame Barzan observed.