Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  “Nothing. Hedy stayed around till the traveler’s checks were used up. Then she married this rich Austrian refugee. He runs the new curio shop.”

  Frau Henslick directed Teuru along the quay to a bright new store. Inside, a nervous Austrian tended shop, hovering like a frightened hummingbird above trays of exquisite jewelry. “Is Hedy here?” Teuru asked.

  The Austrian fluttered to the back of the shop and with obvious uxoriousness called for his wife. In a moment she appeared, gloriously pregnant. She posed for a moment beside her birdlike mate and then said, “M’sieur Kraushoffer—you must never call him Herr Kraushoffer. He wants no more of that. He’s a real sculptor, not like that dirty Englishman.” She pointed out the delicate filigree work M’sieur did. “It sells very well.”

  In proof she led barefooted Teuru onto the sidewalk and pointed to a spanking new Renault. “Ours,” she said simply. She made Teuru climb in, and they took turns blowing the horn. Then she kissed her friend and whispered, “M’sieur Kraushoffer has a rich friend. Tonight put on your best dress and eat with us.”

  The dinner was excellent, and Hedy was quite the grandest lady Teuru had ever seen. She commanded the servants what they must do, served the wine with a dazzling smile and continually referred to how clever her husband was. The other guest was a moody Bavarian, Herr Brandt. He was, he announced, considering a business in Tahiti. He used many words that Teuru did not understand and wound up by trying to rip off all her clothes. She was not averse to love making, for Maggi had long ago instructed that this was natural for a girl after she was fifteen and that men seemed to enjoy it greatly. But Teuru compared rough, cold Herr Brandt with kind, gentle Earl Weebles and as a logical conclusion she smashed the German across the nose and ran back to the hotel.

  In the morning Hedy appeared. She was furious, said that Teuru had insulted her husband’s friend and that she must never come back to the shop again. Never. Tears followed with Hedy admitting that Herr Brandt had tried to do the same with her once, and that she had struck him too. She gave Teuru a wristwatch and said, “Take it up to Johnny. We broke up in a terrible row, and I stole most of his things. But I’m not mad at him any more.” She fluffed out her pretty dress, said good-bye and walked down the quay, calling “Bon jour” to all the other respectable married women of the town.

  It was some time before Teuru found occasion to deliver the stolen watch, but when she did she was dismayed at what she found. In a dark room, surrounded by filthy confusion, red-headed Johnny Roe lay sprawled on a bed he had not left for four days. He had not shaved. He had not washed. He had not eaten. He was a horrible cartoon of a man, so that even the stray island girls now let him alone at night.

  “Mr. Roe!” Teuru called gently. In a month-old stupor he rolled his head slightly and stared at her.

  “Who’s there?” he mumbled.

  “I’ve brought your watch back You must get up.” She threw him a pair of shorts and insisted that he crawl into them, but when she tried to lead him along the hallway to the bathroom he collapsed. Teuru called for Frau Henslick, who hurried to the top of the stairs. When she saw it was Roe again she became raucous.

  “I’ll never touch that drunken swine again. I’ve hauled him back to his room for the last time.” She stood over the crumpled body—the most recent in a distinguished line of men who had tried to drink themselves to death in the Montparnasse—and reviled the American while Teuru ran along the quay searching for someone to help her lift the inert form. Finally she got Johnny spread-eagled on the sheets. Then she washed and shaved him, holding his face tightly when the dull razor grabbed. He was bleeding when she finished, but he was beginning to look like a human being.

  It was three days before he could walk to a meal. In that time Teuru had actually to chew small portions of meat and place them between his lips. She had also to buy him the gin he whimpered for, giving him a little less each day until she had weaned him back to strength.

  Frau Henslick was outraged. She said that Johnny Roe should be tossed into the bay. “Shark’s meat! That’s what he is!” She said that as soon as he could move she was going to have him tossed in jail. And as for that room! Out he must go!

  Teuru solved this by moving him down to her room, and it was there, in a grubby back hallway of the Montparnasse, that she finally learned how truly sweet it was to be in love. It was as Maggi had said, “Quiet bits of heaven.” For Johnny Roe had come so close to wrecking himself that he could appreciate what Teuru had done for him.

  “See what the Chinaman will give us for the watch,” he suggested. She became adept in haggling over prices with the pawnbrokers and she hoarded both her salary and the loans on his jewelry. Like a French housewife she husbanded their wealth and spent it on things that would be food for Johnny. It was very good to watch him come alive.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “I’d always heard about these islands. After the war I wanted to see them.”

  “Were you in the war?”

  “Like everyone else.”

  “Why is it so many white men want to come to Tahiti?”

  “You’ve got to have somewhere you want to go,” he replied.

  “What did you want to find?”

  “You, I guess.”

  “We’re out of money,” she replied, changing the subject.

  “I’ll have to get a job—somewhere.”

  “What can you do?” she asked.

  “Best thing I ever did was fly a plane.”

  “Maybe I can figure out something,” she said.

  And that was how Teuru, Povenaaa’s daughter, finally arrived one day in Raiatea with an honest-to-God American. As the Hiro docked Maggi and Povenaaa waited ecstatically. They studied the clean-shaven, good-looking young man and Maggi cried in Polynesian, “I knew you could do it!”

  It was a much different story, however, when the four of them faced the rancid butter of Le Croix du Sud. Povenaaa got right to the point. “I better hurry over to Bora Bora, because there’s only one jeep left.”

  “You buying a jeep?” Johnny inquired.

  Povenaaa winked broadly and patted Johnny on the arm. “It’s good to see you here, son. How long you intend to stay?”

  “As long as Kim Sing … that’s his name, isn’t it?”

  “You know our leading merchant?” Povenaaa asked expansively.

  “Not exactly. I hope to work for him, though.”

  “Work?” Maggi gulped.

  “Did you say work?” Povenaaa gaped.

  “Yes. Teuru told me …”

  Now Povenaaa became all diplomacy. “Do you mean,” he probed, “that you have to work?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean … you’re broke?”

  “That’s right. If it hadn’t been for Teuru …”

  This was more than man could bear. Povenaaa became choleric and then spluttered, “Pigs! Dogs! Chickens!” What this meant he did not stop to explain. In majestic outrage he stamped from the hotel and did not show his face in the bar for three days. As for Maggi, she sank back in her chair and studied Teuru. Three times she started to ask questions but each time she shuddered and ended by ordering herself more beer.

  By this time Kim Sing had opened his vanilla sheds and the rich smell permeated the bar, so Teuru said, “You’ll get used to that smell. We’ll go now.”

  She led Johnny across the road and presented him to the merchant. “An American?” Kim replied. “I couldn’t pay an American decent wages.”

  “Any wages would be decent,” Johnny confessed.

  So each sunny morning Johnny Roe hauled out into the hot sunlight huge tarpaulins bearing the harvested beans, now five to seven inches long, laden with essence which the heat would tease into condition, so that in time the patiently tended beans became pliable and wonderfully odorous. At night he hauled the tarps in out of the dew, and when the beans were cured, he arranged them upright on big tables.

  Then Teuru went to work. Sitting wi
th her eyes at the level of the bean tops, she bundled the licorice-colored beans into the quarter-kilo packages which were shipped to Paris. Forming her left hand in a circle, she would cull from the large assortment a few choice beans to make the outside of the bundle attractive. For the middle she saved the scrubs, being attentive to select each bean so that when the longer outside ones were pulled into position all beans would appear to be of the same length. Kim Sing said that Teuru’s deft bundling earned him an extra 20 per cent.

  These were happy days for Teuru. She watched Johnny thriving under the new regime and saw that he was growing brown and strong. It was fun, too, to have him working with her and she enjoyed watching him spend the money she allowed him at the bar. He drank only beer himself, but he was a great favorite with the young men of Raiatea, standing them whiskey and gin, beating them at darts. Sometimes Teuru told herself that she had been luckier than most girls, and the more she grew to love Johnny the more clearly she remembered frightened Victor and triumphant Earl Weebles. One night she told Maggi, “I’ve been lucky.”

  Maggi leaned back to count up the score. “By and large you have been,” she agreed.

  Only Povenaaa held out. Each time he saw Johnny he was humiliated anew. Pushing his forlorn mare along the roads, the cruelly betrayed man would dream of that last jeep in Bora Bora. Then he would hammer the mare and imagine it was Johnny Roe.

  But when Povenaaa did finally accept Johnny it was completely, said he was the finest American he had ever known. The two men got roaring tight and stopped every stranger on the road to tell them the news. Teuru was going to have a baby!

  Yes, Teuru was pregnant. Maggi, of course, had been the first to detect the happy secret and she commissioned Major to dash through the streets informing everyone. When Povenaaa heard, he left the mule right in the vanilla fields and came storming into the shed and informed Kim Sing, “We’re going to the bar and get drunk.” Then he had a better idea. He whispered to Johnny, “We’ll stick the Chinaman for the drinks.” Unctuously he said to Kim, “It wouldn’t be a celebration without you.” So the merchant paid for the bottles and Povenaaa giggled at having made the Chinaman a fool. But Kim Sing had plans of his own and when they were discovered they almost drove Johnny Roe crazy.

  It happened one morning when Johnny came to work and found Maggi, Kim Sing, Povenaaa and three other men rolling dice. Teuru stood nearby, watching the game with interest, advising Maggi, “You better try harder! You need three more sixes!”

  “What’s the game?” Johnny asked.

  “Dice,” Teuru said.

  “I can see that. What’s it about?”

  Teuru blushed and looked away, so Johnny asked Povenaaa. “Don’t bother me now,” the excited man cried. Suddenly there were shouts of triumph and Maggi swore the Chinaman had cheated, but Kim Sing grinned happily and picked up the dice.

  “The damned Chinaman gets the baby,” Povenaaa spat.

  “Gets what?” Johnny asked.

  “The baby.”

  “Whose baby?”

  “Teuru’s.”

  “I didn’t know Teuru had a baby.”

  “She doesn’t … yet.”

  “You mean … my baby?” Johnny fell back with mouth gaping. Then he yelled, “Hey! What’s this about my baby?”

  “He won it,” Maggi said disconsolately.

  Grabbing Teuru the American cried, “What are they talking about?”

  “When it’s born,” Teuru said. “All the people in Raiatea would like to have it. So we rolled dice.”

  “But it’s your own baby!” he stormed.

  “Sure,” she said. “But I can’t keep it. I’m not married.”

  “Your own flesh and blood!”

  “What’s he mean?” Teuru asked Maggi.

  Johnny Roe looked beseechingly at the fat woman and asked, “Would you give away your own baby? Would you give away Major?”

  The crowd in the vanilla shed burst into laughter and Johnny demanded to know the joke. “It’s Major!” Povenaaa roared, punching Johnny in the ribs. “Major’s not her baby. She’s Hedy’s.”

  “You mean that Hedy.…”

  “Of course,” Maggi explained. “Hedy had to go to Tahiti for a good time before settling down. So she gave me Major.”

  Johnny Roe had heard enough. He stormed off and bought two bottles of gin, and when Teuru found him he had returned to his Montparnasse days except that now he blubbered, “Our baby! You raffled off our baby with a pair of dice!”

  He kept this up for a whole day and Teuru became afraid that it was the start of another epic binge, so she broke the gin bottles and said, “All girls give away their first babies. How else could they get married?”

  Johnny sat upright, suddenly sobered. “What do you mean, married?”

  “What man in Raiatea would want a girl who couldn’t have babies?”

  “You mean … the men don’t care?”

  “Very much! Since people find I’m to have a baby several men who never noticed me before have asked when you were going away.”

  “What happens then?” Johnny asked suspiciously.

  “Then I get married.”

  Johnny fell back on his pillow and moaned, “It’s indecent. By God, it’s indecent.”

  So Teuru consulted Maggi who said, “I’ll talk to him.” She puffed into the bedroom and asked, “What are you moaning about?”

  “This whole affair. It’s indecent.”

  “What’s wrong about it? Tell me, why did you come out here?”

  “I was a drunken Papeete wreck, so Teuru brought me here.”

  “I mean why did you come to Tahiti?”

  “Well, in California I was even a worse wreck.”

  “Why?”

  “The war, I guess.”

  “We had a war, too.”

  “Mine was different.”

  “Oh, no. Eighty men from Raiatea volunteered and went into the desert with the Foreign Legion. We lost many men from Raiatea.”

  “They have a statue in Canada which says something about the ones who didn’t come back being the lucky ones.”

  “Don’t ever believe it! Is that what you thought, Johnny?”

  “Something like that. I got all mixed up.”

  Maggi started to laugh. “I’ll never understand white men.”

  “How do you mean?” Johnny asked.

  “Like you,” she said, puffing heavily. “You get sick at heart about something, so you come out here to cure the disease, and when you’re cured you despise us for how we manage it. That seems ridiculous to me.”

  “It’s even more ridiculous, how a girl’s own father—how Povenaaa can send Teuru to Papeete.”

  Maggi exploded with laughter, “Povenaaa? Did you say Povenaaa?” She held her fat sides and shook her head hilariously. “Didn’t anybody tell you? Povenaaa could have no children. That poor skinny man. We felt sorry for him in Raiatea so somebody gave him a baby to bring up.”

  “Who did?”

  “I did.”

  Johnny Roe was stopped dead cold. They were pitching curves at him now and he was stopped cold. He started to laugh and finally kissed fat Maggi on the cheek. Seeing her chance, she grabbed him by the hair and kissed him back.

  “You’re a smart woman,” he cried. “You’re about the smartest woman I’ve ever known.”

  “I been around,” she joked, talking like an American movie.

  Johnny finally sat on the bed and asked, “How come you gave up Teuru?”

  “I heard the rich Americans were coming to Papeete … about the time of Zane Grey. I wanted to see things before I married.”

  “Did you marry?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He was killed in the war. In the desert.”

  That was that. Johnny had no more to say, but as she left, Maggi added, “When you get back home … Well, if you should ever make any money, send Povenaaa a jeep.”

  But Povenaaa did no
t have to wait upon such a miracle, for a more astonishing one took place right on Raiatea. One morning, about seven, a yacht put into the straits and an expensive launch, manned by men in white, hurried ashore. An elderly gentlemen with white moustaches asked many questions at Le Croix du Sud and ended by going to Kim Sing’s vanilla shed. He stood in the doorway for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the shadows. Then he saw what he was seeking.

  “Hello, Johnny,” he said.

  The young American turned, clean, bronzed, solid-looking: “Hello, Mr. Winchester.”

  “I told your father I’d look you up.”

  “How is Dad?”

  “Fine, fine. I think he’d like to have you back.”

  That night on the polished yacht Povenaaa and Maggi ate off silver plates, but Teuru was not there. “I’m too fat,” she told Johnny, insisting that he go. After brandy Mr. Winchester said he thought it was about time for Johnny Roehampton to be heading home. Johnny blushed nervously and agreed it was about time.

  “He’s been here long enough,” Maggi said expansively.

  “Too long,” Povenaaa observed.

  Johnny had much to do before shoving off. He thanked Kim Sing for the job. He gave presents to each of the gang at the bar. He bought Maggi a shawl and even promised to send Povenaaa a jeep.

  But Povenaaa had been disappointed many times in his life and he was not to be taken in by any more tricks, so while Johnny was packing he rowed out to the yacht and consulted Mrs. Winchester. “I don’t ask much,” he said. “I’m reasonable, but I’ve had dreadful bad luck with Teuru.”

  “Who’s Teuru?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “No, she’s pregnant.”

  Mrs. Winchester gulped. “You mean … she isn’t … married?”

  “Certainly not!” Povenaaa snapped. “It’s my bad luck with her men I’m speaking of.”

  “What do you mean, her men?”

  “I don’t think she has good sense,” Povenaaa explained. “First she brings home a Frenchman. He lives with us eight months and I don’t get a sou. Then she brings home an Englishman. Not a sou. Now it’s Johnny Roe. Still no money.”

  Mrs. Winchester grew pale. “You mean … you would take money … for your daughter?”