Ed Lacy - South Pacific Affair

The short tropical twilight is when most islanders take their last bath of the day. We had a swim and finished the last of the crabs tied to the rigging. Eddie cursed the quarantine man, because now was it too late to sell the bag of copra. We washed the deck down and I said I was going ashore anyway, just to walk among people. Eddie said, “Not me. Nothing worse than walking by the bars and girls without a franc in your pockets, like a hungry dog. I'd rather—”

There was some shouting aboard the Shanghai, followed by drunken laughter, and then a splash as somebody either dove off the high schooner or was thrown off.

In the dim light we could see a person swimming toward our boat and a moment later a hand grasped the rope ladder and a girl pulled herself aboard, flopped on the deck like a caught fish. She was buck naked, slim, with a rather plain and pretty face. She pressed the water out of her long black hair as she sat up. She was both drunk and angry. Looking toward the schooner, she shouted curses in French, then stood up and grinned at us.

She was about seventeen and for sheer physical beauty the most perfectly shaped girl I'd ever seen. She belched slightly, shivered with the night air, her pointed breasts dancing. She giggled, showing stubby teeth, then walked gracefully and casually down the cabin steps, telling us in Tahitian, “I am cold. After a good drink and some clothes, you can be my friends.”

She disappeared into the cabin and Eddie stared at me with open mouth, then asked, “Still going ashore?”

“You crazy?” Absentmindedly I searched my pockets for a coin, then took Eddie's knife from his belt and tossed it in the air.

He said, “Trade-mark up!” as I got out my lighter and we knelt to look at the knife.

The plain side was showing and I ran for the cabin.

Chapter II

I was passing Les Dames de Saint Joseph de Cluny, the Catholic girl's school in Papeete, and a number of the youngsters in neat smocks were out walking. Some of them smiled politely at me. I clicked my heels and slipped them a smart bow which caused the sister in charge to grin and the kids to giggle.

It was the start of a bright cool day and I was feeling very fine; for the moment I wasn't worrying about a thing, not even thinking of Ruita. Last night had been the South Seas of the phony books, the stuff Barry and I had bulled about in Chicago bars—you're on your own little ship and a beautiful girl comes to spend the night with you; a few good hours and it's all over and on to the next one. Wam-bam and thank you, Ma'am.

Her name was Heru and she had arrived in Papeete some five months ago from a far-away atoll, down near Easter Island. As I walked along I thought about her and why she was here. The atoll people are not only well supplied by nature with about everything they need, but each family averages some fifteen hundred dollars a year from shell and copra, working at it when ever they feel in the mood. But most of the atoll people leave their heaven as soon as they can—that's always puzzled me. The men ship over the world as sailors, while the girls rush to Papeete to whore, either as amateurs or as pros. In fact (I am told) many of them actually can be found hustling in Paris, which is certainly a long way to travel to walk a shabby street.

Heru was a girl of great appetites and very good at all of them. She was crocked when she came aboard, finished our last bottle of rum during the night, and was still able to walk a straight line between my bunk and Eddie's. They soon knocked me out of this sheet marathon and I managed to get some sleep. When I left the Hooker Eddie and the girl were snoring on deck, both nude and cold with the early morning dampness. I threw a blanket over them, made some coffee, and took off.

I walked along the Quai du Commerce where the largest shops are run by the French and where one can buy almost anything in the world, from a Geiger counter to rubber falsies. I turned down a side street into a regular Chinatown—Chinese women walking in long slit gowns, and dozens of stores all with Chinese characters on the windows. The Chinese are the merchants of the islands and in Papeete they have their own club, a very imposing building and every bit as snobbish as the Circle Bougainville or the Tahiti Yacht Club, where the business men and tourists flock for an aperitif before going home to dejeuner, or stop for a petit dejeuner on their way to the office or shop.

Mr. Olin, our agent, ran a general store and glorified hock shop, and also went in for money lending. His main store and office was a two-story ramshackle wooden frame building which seemed on the verge of collapse. But he had a modern brick warehouse on the waterfront, a fleet of three new Ford trucks, and probably could raise a million dollars any time he had to. One of his clerks told me he was busy at the moment so I sat down on some wooden crates of canned milk, got a cigarette working as the clerk handed me a San Francisco paper which was exactly forty-three day old. The worn newspaper gave me a strong whiff of the tension and Stateside rat-race—I was damn glad to be reading it in the shop of a Chinese merchant in Papeete. The messy news and headlines seemed unreal, another world away from me, except for some business about testing more atomic bombs in the Pacific. Would be part of the “march of civilization” for a radioactive cloud to drift over Tahiti and...

The Chinese clerk said Mr. Olin would see me now. I walked up the trembling steps to his office. Mr. Olin was a fat, short man wearing slacks ready to burst, and an outrageous bright green sport shirt. His face was as round and flat as a large pebble, with a tuft of short dark silky hair crowning it. He always had a good smile and his eyes seemed amused. Off-hand you'd think Mr. Olin a very mild joker; he was shrewd, sharp, and tough.

His office was plainly furnished—a rusty file cabinet, a table with some dusty samples of trade goods on it, and a single strong light bulb hung from the ceiling. He gave me his big smile as he stood up from behind his large polished desk and we shook hands. If the rest of him was flabby, his hand was hard. He said in English, “Ah, my cockroach trader. You have a fine trip, Mr. Jundson?”

The cockroach title was his private joke and of course had to do with the fact our cutter was a bug compared to the big trading schooners.

“Nothing to shout about,” I said, sitting in a bamboo chair. “Around a ton of copra plus a few small bags of shell.”

“One should be grateful for even the smallest of fortune's smiles. Will you join me in wine and cakes?”

I nodded. Mr. Olin pressed a button and a young man immediately brought in a tray of sugar cookies and a silver bottle of cool rice wine. This was what I liked about Olin; he treated us as politely as if we were important traders.

I drank a lot of wine, finished the cakes and we made small talk about business. Then Mr. Olin brought out his account book and announced that until he got the exact weight and condition of our cargo, we were still some eleven thousand Tahitian francs in debt, which is roughly about three hundred thirty dollars.

Debts never seem to worry either party in the islands and Mr. Olin made out a credit slip for sixty dollars worth of trade goods at his warehouse. This was decent of him; he didn't have to advance us a sou. As I stood up I asked, “Would it be possible to add about a thousand francs in cash?”

Olin shook his head. “Sorry, no money. You would only drink it up. You need but wind and water for your boat and there is more than enough of that. However, should you wish some money as a lien against your fine boat, I should be pleased...”

“No, thanks. Without the boat I'd really be a bum. Do you have a cargo for us?”