South Pacific Affair
Ed Lacy
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Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
For those—and they are but a tiny few—who never even think of buying a return trip ticket
Chapter I
In the sharp moonlight, Ruita's skin was a creamy brown framed by the jet-black blur of hair crumpled beneath her head. Her loose cotton print blouse probably was made in Japan, and the tailored walking shorts had come all the way from the French Riviera. Her hands played with the tiny white flower in the dark hair, and she seemed to be studying the tender gully her neat breasts made pushing against the blouse.
I sprawled beside Ruita, smelling the exciting perfume of her body—trying not to remember other perfumes I'd known. My eyes were also on the jutting molds of her bosom, and I wasn't listening to her small talk about methods of increasing the mother-of-pearl mussels in the lagoon. It didn't matter I wasn't listening... she really wasn't hearing her own words any more than either of us heard the wind in the palm trees, the sea thundering and hissing over the reef before us, or the small, clean noises of the busy crabs and rats in the sand and bush.
We were there neither to talk nor to listen—you don't take mats and lay in the moonlight to chatter about mussels. She talked to cover the awkwardness as she waited for me.
I closed my eyes and wondered what the hell to do—with women I cared about I always played the fool. Why couldn't I make love to Ruita and marry her? Or love her and forget her? Probably hundreds of popaas had sprawled on this very beach during the last century with “native” girls, and I was the only clown making a problem, a “thing” out of it. All the greedy popaas—bastards to their teeth.
I tried not to think, not even to listen to the meaningless words, the soft voice with the hazy French accent, the silly words flowing down her chest and past the breasts I wanted so much to kiss.
“... and the reason pearls have vanished,” Ruita said like a school girl reciting her lesson, “is that the mussels are taken out too quickly, to get the mother-of-pearl. They have no chance to form a pearl. Mussels are sensitive, require a certain depth and delicate temperatures, a hard coral bottom to cling... Ray, are you listening to me?”
“Yes. The tender souls of giant mussels.”
“Don't make fun of me.”
“I'm not making fun of you. I'm... nothing. Nothing!”
“The best place to raise mussels is a lagoon completely ringed by a reef. In that way the embryo mussels will neither be eaten or carried out to sea, nor will there be sharks to trouble the divers or...” She began to cry softly.
“Damn it, don't cry!” I said loudly. I opened my eyes, touched her hair which was soft and silky, looked at her thin features and wondered for some stupid reason if this was the white blood in her. I had to fight to keep my hands from her face and after a long second I said, “Ruita, don't cry, please. I'm—sorry about all this.”
She raised her head and tried to dry her tears on the collar of her blouse. “Am I so undesirable I must beg you to love me?”
“Hell, you know—”
“Then I shall beg you.”
“Stop it. I want you so much this is torture.”
“For me, too.” She turned and looked at me: her dark eyes and wet face seemed to sparkle in the moonlight. “What is the trouble, Ray?”
“I don't know. That is, you know how it is with a man and a woman... sometimes,” I said, trying to weasel out of it.
Ruita laughed, shrill laughter edged with hysteria that cut the other noises of the night. “But I don't know how it is with a boy and girl! This will amuse you, Ray. When I was in school, in Sydney, I wrote a term paper on how the island people were not neurotic because they never had to suppress their desires. Now, isn't that amusing? I am certainly the only girl in the entire Tuamotu Atolls who has reached twenty years of age and has not been with a man. Do you think I will be the first islander to need the services of a... how do you call these doctors who delve into the mind? I—”
“Cut it out!” I said, angry, then ashamed of my anger— which I knew I was using as an out. “Look, what do you want me to say? All right, I'll tell you—I'm scared!”
“Scared? Oh, don't worry, I will not give you back one of your popaa diseases!”
“Take it slow, Ruita. I thought we were past the color-line bunk.”
“Why are you frightened, then?”
“I'm frightened that I'll never be able to leave you,” I said quickly, almost in a whisper. “I'm scared for myself—not sure I can take it here.”
“I have much money, we can live elsewhere or ... are you afraid to take a vahine into the popaa world?”
“Ruita, don't twist my words. I can't take the... the... outside world. Neither can you. You know how much I want you but I am scared of spoiling it, of ... I can't put it in the right words,” I added, knowing how weak it sounded.
Ruita jumped to her feet and picked up her mat. She started to cry again.
“Wait, honey, I only—”
She walked toward the palms, calling out something in Tahitian which I think meant I had humiliated her. Humiliation is something atoll people don't know much of.
I sat on the mat for a long time, telling myself I was watching the sky for a shooting star, listening to a coconut crab digging at the base of the nearest palm. Yet I was glad I hadn't made love to her—and it would have been love because that's how deeply I felt about Ruita. In fact I was a bit proud and amazed at my will power. And I also felt like a prize jerk.
After awhile I got up and picked up my mat—the tidy touch—then I threw it away, started walking along the beach toward the village on the other side. Numaga is an island, not an atoll, one end almost reaching a height of three hundred feet above sea level like a mountain. Of course it was hardly a “hill” but in the flatness of the Pacific it seemed like Everest.
My sneakers were worn and the sand got in between my toes. I walked slowly, sweating a little in the cool night breeze, and so full of desire I felt feverish. I wanted a drinking nut but kept to the beach—at night you can't see them coming and while a falling nut may be a gag in the movies, a direct hit can split your head open.
I came around a slight bend in the beach, saw the sea breaking against a high point of the reef, sending up a wide luminous spray. I stood there for a moment, aware of some kind of tree with low heavy branches at the edge of the sand, behind me. The branches touched the sand and I heard a woman giggling, got a whiff of the sickening-sweet odor of strong palm wine.
A nude fat woman, her bosom swaying like soggy punching bags, lurched toward me, giggling something in the island dialect I didn't understand. In the moonlight I could see her glassy eyes, and when she stumbled against me, the stink of wine was all about us. Her body hot and moist with sweat, and that added sharp odor. Due to Milly and her perfumes, I was almost an expert on women's odors.