Return to Paradise

  When I reached the Honiara pub that evening Larcom had not yet arrived, and Dennison greeted me with a warm cheerio. “Heard you went jungle probing!” he cried, joining me.

  “Yes,” I said. “And what’s this about an American Jew?”

  The question was explosive. Dennison surprised me by putting down his beer and shouting, “Men! He’s heard about Fietelbaum!”

  Immediately half a dozen men clustered about my table and began asking questions: Did I know Fietelbaum in the States? Did Fietelbaum ever actually tell President Truman to go to hell?

  “What’s this all about?” I asked.

  So Dennison leaned on the arm of a chair and in an Oxford accent told me of a strange man who had come to Guadalcanal, and as he spoke I gained the very clear impression that everyone in the bar had acquired an unprecedented respect for the millionaire suit maker, Mannie Fietelbaum.

  Said Dennison, “He appeared one day on a plane from Kwajalein. His first remark was, ‘Money is no objection.’ He had an ugly head of red hair which he kept combing with his fingers. He was very fat and he sweated incessantly. He had come to us on a terrible mission, for he was convinced that where the American Government had failed, where we here on Guadalcanal had failed, he could succeed. Somewhere in the jungle he could find the body of his son.”

  “In the war?”

  “A pilot. It fell to me to tell him that the British Government had searched the valleys in vain, but Fietelbaum said, ‘Money is no objection’ and organized a safari. It was pathetic.”

  Now night had fallen over the island and there was a tinkle of glass as the Malaita boy tended bar. Dennison said, “What made the story doubly grotesque was that the boy had been killed in 1942. One of the first. In a jungle like ours there would be no possible remains.”

  There was an uneasy pause, then a new voice, an Australian’s, said, “Maybe you know about Fietelbaum’s boy. We understand he was famous in your football.”

  “Fietelbaum? Never heard of him.”

  “That wasn’t the boy’s name. He changed his to Foot.”

  “You mean Lew Foot? Of Columbia?”

  “Yes. Lew Foot.”

  “One of the best. Great passer. What we call a triple-threat man.”

  “I know,” Dennison said. “The best of our lads went first, too.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “About the old man?”

  “It was heartbreaking,” Dennison said. “He had a scrawled map sent him by some young blighter from the squadron. Searches had been made, of course.”

  The Australian added, “So in 1950—that’s eight years later—Fietelbaum arrives. I told him how the jungle devours all things and asked him what he hoped to recover. He snapped, ‘My son.’ ”

  “Did he find the boy?” I asked.

  “No. He probed every part of the island. We would not see him for many days. Then he would mysteriously appear in this bar and would drink immense quantities of beer. It would stream out of his pores and he would wipe his hair with his hand and say, ‘What a man needs with good beer is some pastrami.’ ”

  “What was that about President Truman?”

  “Oh, yes!” Dennison explained. “Blighter pestered the American Government something frightful, I hear. Mind you, he had a right to. But when they finally had to terminate the correspondence he announced to all his friends, ‘I’m going out there and find my boy. When I do I’ll march in and tell President Truman to go to hell!’ ”

  “But he never found the kid?” I asked.

  The crowd about my table grew quiet and I sensed that someone was standing behind me. I looked up and it was Larcom. Unobtrusively the government clerks withdrew and the gaunt man sat down with me.

  “What have they been tellin’ you?” he asked. And the way in which he spoke, the scorn—and envious fear—he poured into the word they disclosed an entire island tragedy: the irreconcilable planter versus encroaching government.

  “They were telling me about Fietelbaum,” I said.

  “He has nothing to do with the book.”

  “How did you happen to meet him in the jungle?”

  The sweat of anger began to break out on Larcom’s thin face, and you felt it didn’t belong there. “God damn it!” he cried. Immediately he lowered his voice and said impatiently, “I was walking through the jungle.”

  “Why?” I pressed.

  Larcom squirmed. “Because I wanted to meet him.”

  “Why?”

  Nervously Larcom reached for his day’s ration of whiskey and tossed it down. “Is this questioning necessary?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Why? It has nothing to do with the story.”

  I thought if I were perfectly honest with Larcom I might find out what this was all about. “Mr. Larcom,” I said, “people who don’t write always think it’s easy if you have some magic touch. Well, have you ever seen a great painting?”

  I expected this to stump him but he promptly said, “Yes. When I was in Sydney.”

  “The artist never puts on his canvas just one pure color. He underpaints.”

  “What’s that?” Larcom asked, much interested.

  “Suppose you want blue. First you put on maybe some brown. Then some green. Some red. Perhaps a touch of white. On top of it all goes the blue. So that when you look at it, the blue sparkles. Like real nature. But all the time you were meddling around with brown and red, that’s what you were after. That blue.”

  Larcom considered this for a moment and said, “So you writer blokes collect a bunch of ideas. And all the time it’s something else you’re after.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’re you after now?”

  “A story.”

  “The one I told you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But why are you interested in the Jew?”

  “I’m not. I’m interested in you.”

  “And you think the Jew has something to do with me?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why did you go into the jungle to track down a man you’d never seen?”

  Larcom leaned back in his chair and studied the Guadalcanal night. He thought a long time, wondering which of the many veils that covered him he might with impunity remove. Then, with a gesture of supreme disgust, he waved his hands toward the government men assembled in the bar and said, “Who could talk here? Among these spies?”

  He led me along a silent road and onto the planks of the Honiara wharf, where we sat with our feet dangling over. He said, “I mind when there were a hundred ships in those waters. They’re still there, on the bottom now.”

  “I served here,” I said. “The Lunga region was like a city.”

  “We must have been here at the same time.”

  “But what about Fietelbaum?”

  “I can’t explain it. One night I came into this pier with some copra. I took my money and went into the bar. All I heard was the government officials laughing about this rich American. Right then I began to like him. Because when the government boys laugh at a man … he’s apt to be all right.”

  “That’s why you wanted to meet Fietelbaum.”

  “No. That came later.”

  “When?”

  “Toward the end of the evening one of the government men said Fietelbaum must be crazy. Trying to find the body of his son after these years. That was when I knew I must help him.”

  “Why?”

  The thin planter spoke very slowly, selecting his words with care. “If I had a son … dead for a country I did not love … I should not want him to lie … nameless … alone … forgotten …”

  “What do you mean? A country Fietelbaum did not love?”

  Now Larcom spoke with a flood of words. “How could he say he loved your country? Sometimes Americans aren’t very kind to little round men with thick hair who have to elbow their way to the top. Fietelbaum’s own son had to change his name. When other
rich boys escaped the draft, his boy had to go. When he went to Washington and pounded on Army desks, they laughed because he was a funny-looking figure. He had no reason to love America.”

  “So you went out to help him.”

  “Yes!” Larcom cried belligerently. “You happy men who’ve known all the good things, you won’t understand this. But a man can grow to hate the world he must live in.”

  “What happened when you found Fietelbaum?”

  “Simply that from then on the men in the bar”—and he made a jabbing stab in the darkness as if all his enemies were that night clustered in the Honiara bar—“they had two of us to laugh at. Fietelbaum and the outcast planter. But I was absolutely determined to find that wrecked plane.”

  “Why did you feel that doing so would somehow … vindicate you?”

  Larcom stopped abruptly and sucked in his breath. “Never thought of it that way. Now you mention it, I guess it did play a part. Revenge on all the stupid men who came out here to torment me.”

  “Torment you?” I repeated.

  He ignored the question. “Fietelbaum had a scrawled map sent him by another pilot in the boy’s squadron. It showed a river and a mountain with an X where the plane went down. There was also an arrow pointing to the mountain: ‘Late sun looks like gold.’ ”

  Now I gasped. For that was where he had found the germ of his ridiculous yarn. Here he had been, involved in some story of massive grandeur—the outcast fighting in his heart against the smaller men who belonged—but he could not see that. No he had to make up some gilt-and-spit fable. But I was to discover that I would never know Larcom, for he immediately proved my speculation false. He said, “When I saw the mention of gold I knew where the boy’s body must be. You see, I’ve been planning this story of mine for years. Thirty years ago I came back to Guadalcanal in total despair. I would have destroyed myself, but one afternoon I too saw the golden mountain.”

  “Did you find the wrecked plane there?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited for him to add something, but his report of the Fietelbaum case was ended. “Now that’s out of the way,” he said briskly, “we can get on with the book.”

  “I’ve got to think it over,” I parried.

  To my surprise this satisfied him and he rowed off to his schooner, where Vata reached down with immense hands to pull him aboard.

  The bar was now closed, so I could not return there, but I was so involved in this complex of events that I had to talk with someone. So I made my way through the silent tropical darkness and up the steep hill to the plateau where the government officials live. There the cool breeze refreshed me and I saw that a light still burned on Dennison’s porch.

  “You must forgive me,” I apologized.

  “Only too glad!” Dennison cried, combing out his moustache and puttering about to find London magazines and a bottle of gin. We sat facing the glorious sweep of stars and dark ocean and distant shadowy islands.

  “All they actually found, those two,” he said with an involuntary shiver, “were some buttons and a cap brim. Still, that satisfied Fietelbaum.”

  Casually, as if to imply that I had no real interest in Larcom, I observed, “This Larcom. A queer duck.”

  “Very. Always fighting with the government. I must say I bear him no grudge. You see, I happened to be the only one who did not scorn him when he returned from Noumea.”

  “Noumea?”

  “Ah, yes! A most dismal affair. One of those things that can sour a man for life.”

  “Such as?”

  “When Larcom first arrived on Guadalcanal … about 1913 I’d say … pitched right in, you know. Very fine worker. But four years later he faced the inevitable island problem. He needed a woman.”

  “He take a native wife?”

  “No fear! Not he! A vessel put into Tulagi en route to Sydney, and since Larcom knew some young ladies there of good breeding, he went back to test his luck.”

  “Did one of the Sydney girls agree to marry him?”

  “Never got to Sydney. Boat put into Noumea. It was the hell hole of the Pacific. Convicts, prostitutes, murderers. It was a vile place, Noumea.”

  “Larcom lose his money?”

  “Much worse. He lost his heart. A convict’s woman. Married her and brought her back to Guadalcanal.”

  Then Larcom’s agony became clear. The stiff British families had refused him admittance to their homes. There had undoubtedly been scenes whose scars became evident whenever he spoke with contempt of “the government men.”

  “You guessed it,” Dennison said, bustling about for some ice. He interrupted his account by showing me a newly bound volume of the Oxford Book of English Verse. “Quite a decent job, what?” he asked.

  “How did Mrs. Larcom react?”

  “We were quite convinced that she was a French prostitute, which of course she was, and no one would speak to her. When she entered the stores—there was silence. We British can be very cruel, you know.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “Not long. This girl Renée had known a much different life. The beer halls, the wild excitement of Noumea. One day a ship put into Tulagi. An American freighter picking up copra. She ran off with one of the sailors. A foul-mouthed, swarthy man from Brooklyn.”

  “So that was the end of Mrs. Larcom!”

  “Indeed it was not! If it had been as simple as that Larcom might have recovered. After all, many men lose their wives. No, as the ship was leaving, Renée appeared on deck stark naked. She screamed horrible insults at everyone. She had dug up all the island scandals and aired them in frightful words. The sailors cheered her on, and in that way she left Guadalcanal.”

  As Dennison related this his hands began to twist and after a moment he said quietly, “She did not even spare me, although I alone had spoken to her. She knew that I was in love with the Governor’s wife. Naked, she hurled this information at the waterfront. I have always suspected that was why I did not progress in the service, as I had planned.”

  Dennison shook his head gravely as he recalled the ancient debacle and I asked, “Why did Larcom stay here?”

  “Habit. Why did I stay on? Habit.”

  “So he lives with his bitterness?”

  “Men do the same in Liverpool.” From the querulousness in Dennison’s voice I knew it was time to leave. By some odd shift the conversation was no longer Dennison and I probing Larcom; it had become Larcom and Dennison protecting themselves from the stranger.

  Yet when I stumped down the hill, when I saw below me the shadowy suggestion of Honiara mysteriously new, forever primitive, I felt a great twisting in my heart. Somewhere in the story of Larcom there was a core of meaning, that terribly precious jewel that all writers seek.

  So I hurried down the dark road, past the barracks, past the new post office with the bright intertwined GR, and onto the frail wharf. Before me unfolded one of the imperative sights of the world: a jungle night with stars aloft, a tropical sea with shimmering iridescence, dim islands rising in the distance, a boat with lights. In that moment I understood all the men who ever come to the tropics. I could speak with Melville and Rupert Brooke and Louis Becke. How distant the schooner seemed, how remote from time.

  “Haloo!” I cried. “Haloo there, Larcom.”

  There was no sound in reply, not even an echo. There was no motion, no new light.

  “Haloo, Larcom!”

  On shore, among the dark huts, a light showed. An immense black figure appeared beneath the bending palms.

  “You? Master? You want get ship?”

  “I’m seeking Mr. Larcom.”

  Breathtakingly, before me loomed Vata. “Master Larcom he no stop long ship. He stop long shore.” He put his hands to his mouth and gave a long, mournful cry. We listened in the darkness and could hear only the lapping of water on the sea-shelled coast of Guadalcanal. Mysteriously Vata announced, “Master he come.”

  I looked ashore and there appeared the angular form of Larco
m. I was drawn to it mightily, and as I started to run along the wharf, the tall figure at the other end ran to meet me.

  “Larcom!” I cried.

  “By God, its you!”

  As if we had needed each other we met midway along the wharf and shook hands eagerly, as if we had not been talking less than three hours ago.

  “I wanted to see you,” I blurted out.

  “Everything’s settled,” he announced joyfully. “It was remarkable. When I got back to the ship it all came crystal clear.”

  “What did?” I asked eagerly.

  “The plot for our story.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He ignored the disappointment in my voice and babbled, “I never understood about writing books until you mentioned using many colors to get the right one. My story was too drab. Now it’s fixed.”

  “How?” I asked, disgusted that I had been diverted back to the old channel.

  “I have a wonderful idea to catch the reader’s interest.”

  “What?”

  “Just this. We go back to Brooklyn.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like before. I said the young Marine was from Brooklyn. You said you couldn’t talk Brooklyn. All right. When you get back, visit Brooklyn and listen how they talk. It’s very distinctive.”

  Something warned me that I ought to stop Larcom right there, but he was quivering with volcanic emotion. “The boy’s from Brooklyn. But that’s not all. No, sir! Because you see … his mother used to live on Guadalcanal!”

  He stepped back to invite my comment. What could I say? Tentatively I asked, “How does that help the story?”

  He gripped my wrist with terrible strength. “Don’t you understand?” he half screamed. “The lad’s mother lived on this island! All the time he was growing up she used to tell him stories about it. Then he comes back and recognizes the places she had described. Look! We could even have him save his company because he knows where a certain river is. His mother told him all about it!”

  He stopped and asked in a hoarse, hopeful whisper, “Wouldn’t that make any book successful?”

  “How did his mother get from Guadalcanal to Brooklyn?”

  “I thought you’d ask that,” he said gleefully. “You see, it’s simple. She was the wife of an explorer. Like the Martin Johnsons. She was out here.” He waited. “Well? What do you think?”