Tales of the South Pacific (33 page)

But when the trucks reached the Tonk village they became involved in a minor traffic jam. During the interval of waiting old Bloody Mary came down the road with a bundle of grass skirts. From the first truck one of the Marines started teasing her.

"Fo' Dolla', Fo' Dolla'!" he shouted. The black-toothed woman ignored him. The man was disappointed. Bloody Mary stared into one truck after another. She was looking for someone. "Fo' Dolla'!" the men cried. "You lose something?" Mary waddled to the next truck. Her eyes brightened. There sat her friend, Lt. Cable.

" 'Allo, lieutenant!" she cried. Cable did not look at her. She addressed the men in his truck. "Goddam fool lieutenant alla time come see my Liat. Bring her things. Lieutenant one bullshit goddam fool!" She raised her right arm and threw a small object forcefully to the ground. Liat's watch, bought for more than a hundred dollars, crashed into the dust. It flew apart. A wheel rolled crazily down the road, hit a truck tire, and stopped.

"That was a watch!" a Marine gasped. "A good watch!" The men looked at their lieutenant.

"Goddam fool Lieutenant Joe!" the old Tonk screamed. "Come alla time my girl Liat. Make..." Bloody Mary raised her hands high in the air to form the indecent gesture. A dried head which she was carrying by the hair banged against her elbow.

From another truck an enlisted man shouted, "How much for that head, Mary?" The Tonk turned slowly and walked along the dusty road to her questioner.

"You like?" she asked, waving the head before the man.

"Yeah. How much?"

"Fifty dolla'," the Tonk shouted.

"'At's too much, Mary!" the Marine cried. "Give you thirty." Bloody Mary spat and leered at the man. "So-and-so you, major!" she cried.

PASSION

DR. PAUL BENOWAY of LARU-8 finally recovered from the exposure he suffered during the days and nights he spent on the raft. When he returned to his quarters he tried to write a long letter to his wife. He wanted to tell her about the hours of waiting on the raft, the half-muttered prayers, the mingled thrill and despair of seeing the blood-red sun rise anew each morning.

"On the fourth day, when I saw the sun again," he wrote, "I felt like an Aztec's human sacrifice who waits at the end of the fiftieth year to see whether or not the sun will rise. Like him, I knew that when the sun rises again the world is saved and there is still hope. But like the Aztec I also knew that with the rising of the flaming beacon my individual torture would begin."

Benoway stopped and looked at the words. They sounded phoney. They were not his words. He had never spoken like that to his wife in all of his married life, not even during courtship days. He tore up the offending paragraph.

"Certain men," he mused, "are not able to speak or write that way." And a persistent fear gained utterance, one that had haunted him for several years. "Am I lacking in passion? Is my love on a lower level that that of..." The words would not come. In embarrassment he fumbled, even in his own mind. Then, half blushing, he finished the sentence. "... lower level than that of the great lovers?"

Reluctantly, Dr. Benoway concluded that he had never known the great passion that seemed to pulsate through the literature and drama of modern America. He had met Nancy, his wife, twelve years before. She was beautiful and engaged to marry his older brother, Robert. But Paul, who had merely finished interneship, courted his brother's girl and married her. Sometimes at night Paul writhed because Robert had seemed so hurt and yet had done nothing to prevent the theft.

It would certainly seem that a man who had stolen his brother's girl, and before he had a practice, too, must have known something of passion. But that was not the case. Nancy was simply a lovely and desirable girl who had retained those attributes into womanhood. But the breathless, flaming love that was supposed to precede and follow events like abducting your brother's fiancee was no part of Paul Benoway.

He was reluctant to admit that there was any deficiency in either himself or his wife. He was not given to introspection, but the fears that arose now, when he was trying vainly to write out a passionate avowal of his love, well, those fears made even Paul Benoway consider his sex life. Coldly, he concluded that he was normal. That was all. He halfway apologized to himself for having brought the subject up.

"I don't know what it is," he said to himself. He was in his Dallas hut looking out over the Pacific. It was early evening. He turned out his light. No use trying to work any more tonight. He'd finish the letter tomorrow. Anyway, it was almost done and, if necessary, could be mailed just as it was. He had at least explained that he was safe and with no lasting injuries.

"Nancy is a lovely girl," he mused in the darkness. The waves beat upon the coral in endless symphony. "She's as fine a wife as a man could have. She's beautiful. She loves her children. She's an adornment. And she's not too slow-witted, either! No brainstorm, of course..." He banged himself on the knee. "Damn it all," he muttered. "What right have I to analyze my own wife? If this wretched war..."

That was it! If this wretched, rotten war had not intervened, millions of people like Paul Benoway could have masked or muffled their uncertainties. They could have postponed admitting to themselves that their loves were bankrupt.

"But my love is not bankrupt!" Paul cried aloud to himself. "It's... that..." He rose from his chair. "How did I ever get into this mood in the first place? What the hell has passion to do with life on this rock?"

His revery was interrupted by a knock at the door of his hut. "May I come in?" a cheery voice inquired.

Paul peered into the darkness toward the insomniac ocean. "Oh! Come in!" he called. It was Lt. Harbison.

"Thanks, Paul. Lovely night out, isn't it?"

"Yes, a true tropical night. Those palms against the moon make it look like a calendar, don't they?" Harbison was wearing a pilot's flight jacket, a pilot's baseball cap, and an expensive pair of moccasins. He was still very brown from exposure on the life raft.

"I was hoping you hadn't gone to the movies," he said. "Have a request to make of you."

"What can I do for you, Bill?" the doctor asked. He liked to help Harbison out. Everybody liked to work with Harbison.

"Well, Paul, it's this way," the lithe young man said, draping himself into a chair, tapping against the wall with his well oiled moccasin. "I have been approached by the chief censor with a damned tough problem." He tossed a letter on Benoway's table. It had not yet been sealed, nor had it been stamped with the censor's stamp. It was a thick envelope.

"What have I to do with it?" Dr. Benoway asked.

"It's not ordinary censorship, Paul," Harbison replied, somewhat ill at ease. "It's a much tougher problem than that. And," he said in the low confiding voice that made even enlisted men want to work for him twice as hard, "you're about the only fellow who can help us. The only officer."

"That's flattering, I'm sure, Bill. State the case," and the doctor assumed a clinical attitude which he would never lose as long as he lived. He was the consulting physician again.

"There's no case to state, Paul," his visitor said. "It's all right there," and Harbison pointed to the letter. "Want me to read it?"

"Yes, I do. But I'd rather you'd read it when I'm gone. If you don't mind?" And Bill rose to his feet, coughed in a little embarrassment, and smiled. "Just read it and tell me if we ought to take any action against the boy." Harbison bowed himself out. His cheery voice sounded from the path leading down to the shore: "I'll walk down here and be back in about an hour. Form your own opinion."

Dr. Benoway picked up the envelope. Another was lying beneath it. He ran to the door of his Dallas. "Bill!" he called. "You've left two letters here!"

He heard running footsteps in the darkness. Harbison hurried back into the hut and looked at the second letter. "Of course," he laughed in his clear tones. "That's my own. Brought it over for you to initial and stamp. I'd like to make the early boat with it and get it on the plane." He smiled at the doctor.

"I'll have it for you when you get back," Paul assured his friend. Harbison left once more and Benoway started to read the letter.

The envelope was dirty and addressed in a rough hand. The letter was apparently from Timothy Hewitt, a motor mech third class. He was attached to the doctor's own unit. Funny, he'd never heard of Hewitt. Must be a new man.

The letter appeared to be addressed to Hewitt's wife, or it could be to his mother. "Mrs. Timothy Hewitt, 3127 Boulware Boulevard, El Paso, Texas." It was, like almost all the mail Dr. Benoway ever saw, an airmail letter. V-mail hadn't caught on very well in the South Pacific, and you could say that again.

Dr. Benoway opened the envelope and pulled out the sheets. There were six of them. They were very thin. Hewitt's writing was large and clear. "Dearest, Darling, Gorgeaous, Adorable Bingo!!!" started the letter. Dr. Benoway cleared his throat. "There's passion for you!" he muttered. But there was no ridicule in his voice, nor in his thoughts. "There is passion!" he thought. "That's just what I mean!" He resumed the reading: My own dearest, darlingest wife how I miss you and how I long that you were here right beside me in this small and dark tent what a time we would have and how I would long to kiss you as you have never been kissed before we would spend all night kissing and other things if you know what I mean and I'll bet you do (ha ha) we would wake up in the morning laughing and everthing would be fine wouldn't it my own darling, my adorable wife when I get up in the morning there is only an emptiness about my heart that never goes away all day long even when I am eating the awful chow they serve here and which they call food for a fighting man with me it is like when I first saw you in Louisville that wonderful day four years ago I can see you as plain as if you was right here and thet's just where you are forever and forever throughout all eternity right here in my arms and if I ever thought another day would dawn without you with me forever I would die right now I'm sitting in my tent as usual thinking of you I am in my shorts and as I have had a haircut today there are streaks of my hair all over my shorts which looks very funny I can tell you I know you would laugh it were here but tonight 1 am there with you my adored darling in who I see everthing good and kind that can ever be I'm right there with you and it is almost time for bed You say come on Tim lets go to bed we've got to get up in the morning and I laugh like always and say I know what you want to go to bed for and you laugh and say don't talk like that Tim and I catch you and pull you over to the davenport and start to take off your stockings and you squeal and wiggle and say turn out the lights Tim what will the neighbors think, and I finish undressing you, you turn out the lights and we are all there alone in the darkness, but I can see you very well for a little light comes in from the Abraham's kitchen and there you are...

Dr. Benoway was perspiring. Young Hewitt's letter continued with an intimate description of his wife, her attributes, her various reactions, the manner in which she participated in sexual intercourse, and his own emotions throughout the act. Dr. Benoway had never before read a letter quite like it. "The damned thing's absolutely clinical," he said to himself. He looked at the last page again. It ended in an orgy of pictures and words.

"No wonder the censors don't know what to do! I don't know what to do, myself." He carefully folded the many sheets of the letter and returned them to their envelope. He was tapping his left hand with the letter when Harbison reappeared.

"May I come in?" the lieutenant called cheerily from the darkness.

"Glad you're back," laughed the doctor, pouring them both a shot of whiskey.

"Judging from your tone, you've finished the letter," Harbison observed.

"And what a letter, too!" Benoway tossed it over to his guest.

"Don't give it to me, Paul," Harbison laughed. "You're the doctor!"

"I don't know what a letter like that means," Benoway countered, picking it up again. "I'm no psychologist."

"I realize that, Paul," Harbison replied persuasively. "But you see our problem. Is a sailor like that likely to get into trouble with other men? The old phrase, conduct prejudicial to the welfare of the Navy, or something like that? Is the boy likely to go off balance some night and wind up with a broken face and some pretty serious charges against him?"

"I can't answer that, Bill. You should know that. Any young man is likely to write a letter like that once in his life. Most girls are good enough to burn the things and never speak to the boy again. Such letters are Epi-"

"You don't understand, Paul," Harbison interrupted. "Hewitt writes two or three letters like that every week. Sometimes five in one week. Always the same!"

Dr. Benoway indulged in an unprofessional whistle. "How can he find the energy? God, what kind of man is he?"

"That's what has us worried. Every censor who has hit one of his letters immediately rushes it in to the chief censor. He says that he can tell when a new man hits one of Hewitt's letters."

"Who is this man Hewitt? Why didn't I hear of this before?"

"A new man. Came aboard while we were out sunbathing on the raft. The censors waited until I had recovered a bit before they presented me with the poser. I waited until you started seeing patients again. I don't think we'd better wait much longer on this baby. He needs some kind of treatment."

"I'd like to see the fellow, Bill," Dr. Benoway suggested.

"Right now?" Harbison asked.

"Yes! Right now! Will you break him out?" Dr. Benoway did not want to go to bed.

"Shall I bring him over here? Or to the office?"

"Make it here." In civilian life Paul Benoway treated many of his most complex cases in his own home. It gave the patient a feeling right from the start that "the doctor" was taking a personal interest in him. Nancy never objected. Sometimes in women's involved neurotic cases Paul would say, "Wouldn't it be a good idea if my wife joined us for a few minutes? You know Mrs. Benoway, don't you?" And nine times out of ten the patient would agree to this most unprofessional procedure, for everyone knew Mrs. Benoway.