Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [61]
The long room with its deep veranda faced south, and from it one could see four lovely things: the channel where the great ships lay; the volcanoes of Vanicoro; the vast Pacific; and an old Tonk's flower garden.
Nellie thought she had never before seen so florid a garden. There were flowers of all kinds, azaleas, single and double hibiscus, hydrangeas, pale yellow roses, and types she did not know. About the garden were flamboyants and bougainvilleas, red flaming bushes. And everywhere there were capriciously placed frangipani trees. De Becque pulled half a dozen branches for his guests and showed them how native men wear the four-leafed, white and yellow flowers in their hair. The nurses smelled the flowers their host gave them, and were delighted. The frangipani was the odor of jungle. It was sweet, distant, and permeating. In addition it had a slightly aphrodisiac quality, a fact which natives learned long ago.
De Becque's dinner put to shame any the doctors had ever offered him. It started with soup, grilled fresh-water shrimp, lobster and rice, and endive salad. Next came in succession three courses: filet of porterhouse, lamb chop, and a delicious concoction of rice, onions, string beans, and black meat of wild chicken. Then De Becque served the "millionaire's salad" consisting of tender shoot of coconut palm sliced wafer-thin and pressed in olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Cup custard with rum, small cakes, coffee, and a choice of six liqueurs ended the meal. And all this was on the edge of the jungle, 550 miles from Guadalcanal!
To say that the hospital staff was astounded would be an underestimate of their reactions. "Where did you get lobster?" a doctor inquired. "We catch them here by various means. Out in the deep water."
"How about the wild chicken?"
"Those black men you saw by the gate when you came in. They shoot them with arrows or with.22's. They are wonderful shots, I think."
"I think so, too," the doctor replied. "But where do you get such big shrimp?"
"Far up the island rivers. You see, my friends, we don't eat this way every day. That's obvious. Not more than once every two weeks. You see for lobster I must tell the men five days in advance. For shrimp a week. For wild chicken, two days."
"How did you train the natives to serve so well?" Dinah asked. "They actually seemed to enjoy it."
"I am patient with them," the Frenchman answered. "They make their mistakes on me, and when they serve you they are prepared to do a good job. Isn't it that way at the hospital?"
"Tell me, M. De Becque," an inquisitive doctor asked, "how long did it take you to organize and build this plantation?"
"Twenty-six years," De Becque said. "I came here as a young man."
"You chop it out of the jungle yourself?"
"With some natives and a family of Javanese workers."
"The yellow people I saw outside. They're not Javanese, are they?"
"No," De Becque replied. "They're Tonkinese. Very fine workers. We bring them over from Tonkin China."
"Twenty-six years!" an older doctor said. "Wonder what I'll have to show for my life at the end of twenty-six years?"
"You were willing to throw all this away in the event that Pétain won?" Dinah inquired. The Frenchman smiled at her.
"I thought this was the war to prove that Pétain could never win," he said graciously. "You Americans worry about De Gaulle and De Gaullists, and yet every one of you acts as if he were a De Gaullist. Your speeches and your actions don't coincide."
After dinner the guests sat in the screened-in veranda. A doctor had brought along two mosquito bombs to keep the pests away. Their