Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [92]
"Jay-gee! One bar. Silver."
"No! No! Marine! See the little round ball. Marine!"
"Basil is right. Marine. First lieutenant!"
"Jerome is right. Marine. Jerome is right!" The Melanesian boys still refused to look at First Lt. Joe Cable, but every one of them saw that he was armed, that he was sunburnt, that he wore the Guadalcanal patch, that he was not an aviator, and that he didn't quite know what to do. All of the boys liked him on sight, and were prepared to talk with him or trade with him, or show him the trail to the cliffs. But he made no move of friendship, so they scowled all that day along the fringes of the crowd and pushed one another. In the afternoon there was one fairly rough fight.
Of course, Lt. Cable saw the boys. He even wondered what kinds of games they played. But he soon forgot his interest, passing as it was. For this was the first time in his life he had seen so many women... in fact, any women... walking about with no clothes on above their hips. He was not a prurient fellow, but the natural interests of any young man demand that he know as much about women as he properly can; and since there is not enough time in one man's life to learn all there is to know, one had better study when the opportunity presents. So, purposing each moment to call after Benny, he stood there in the boat bewildered by the scene on the small pier. Above him stood not less than thirty native girls ranging in age from twelve to twenty. They bore melons and pineapples and bananas and mangoes and split coconuts and yams and breadfruit and everything else that grows in such prodigal quantities in the South Pacific.
Cable was truly enraptured. The frieze of women looked like models awaiting the immortalizing brush of Gauguin. Unaware of their forbidding ugliness by American middle class standards, they were equally unaware of their surpassing beauty by the artist's immortal standards.
Cable, being neither exclusively an artist nor an American, had no consistent thoughts as he looked up to the dark faces with their gleaming teeth. Their breasts disturbed him mightily, and when one girl clutched anew at a melon, throwing her gingham sarong awry, he both blushed and found himself unable... or unwilling... to look away. Like the jungle, like the fruits of the jungle, adolescent girls seemed to abound in unbelievable profusion.
"You like? You like? You like?" they called in musical cadences.
He did like. He liked very much, and before he could stop himself he had bought the stern of the boat full of fruit. When he went to sort out some lengths of red cloth to pay the girls, who were now scrambling over the boat itself, he happened to smell his hands. They were redolent with the gorgeous scent of true tropical pineapples ripened on the ground. Unaware of any change in himself, he discovered that he felt very happy. And from the hills of Vanicoro the watchers looked at the boat and then at one another! It could not be believed that for a few pineapples, for some papayas, and such little papayas, one could get cloth!
It was at this moment that Bloody Mary rescued her lieutenant from more fruit, more breasts, and more thighs. "Psssst!" she exploded at the girls. "You go! You go! Bimeby you come. Bimeby you come. Bring chickens." With masterful gestures and determination she pushed the native girls away, motioned to the men in the outriggers to leave, discouraged the naked boys so that they dropped from the sides of the boat. It was only proper that as a Tonkinese she should exercise her endowed rights over the inferior Melanesians. Like a true grande dame she cleared the way for the greater nobility, a white lieutenant, to step ashore.
But as he did so, as he walked down the