The Incident at Naha

by M. J. Bosse

  “His mother worked for white folks,” Henry drawled mockingly, “on Park Avenue, and every night she’d come home and tell her boy about the other world. That was an advantage. His field of vision didn’t end at 110th Street. My old lady worked in a Harlem laundry. My old man, like Virgil’s old man, was mostly in prison.”

  “He never talks of the past.”

  “That’s because he’s always going forward. That’s why everybody let him alone: he had something to do with himself. My older brother, Virgil’s age, was sniffing glue at ten, had a record at twelve. He was one tough kid, but he never leaned on Virgil. None of them did around our street. When my brother got his thing together and joined the Panthers, he would meet Virgil with all those books and they would talk like brothers, and it didn’t matter who was the scholar and who the revolutionary.”

  “Have you heard from your brother?” I asked, trying to be Midwesternly polite. That was a mistake, Henry’s eyes opened wide in surprise for a moment. Then he grinned meanly, saying, “Think I’m going to tell you, white lady?”

  “I know you dislike me,” I said.

  “So you treat Brother Virgil right, it doesn’t matter what I like.”

  We drank our coffee in silence. Finally Henry asked me were we still playing detective. I didn’t actually know what to say, so I said, “A little.”

  “Waste of Virgil’s time,” Henry said. “Don Stuart never did anything for him.”

  “Except save his life.”

  “Don Stuart was typical Mister Charlie. He’d sell his own grandmother.”

  “We knew he was selfish, but somehow it didn’t matter.”

  “What do you know about what matters?” Henry gave me a withering glance of scorn. “One thing wrong with Brother Virgil—he’s easily taken in.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “He’s taken in by Whitey’s promises of good faith. But someday he’ll get it together.”

  “He’s already together. He’s like—” I searched for an appropriate image, and without thinking I said, incredibly, “a knight on a white charger.”

  Henry blinked a couple of times, an incredulous look coming over his face. Then he laughed so loudly that people turned to stare at us. “Well, I’ve heard it all now,” he said calming down. “Lady, that’s something else again. You just made my day. Brother Virgil—knight on a white charger. How symbolic.” He laughed again and still laughing right at me said, “Thank you, ma’am, thank you.” He spun a quarter onto the table and rose to his feet, still chuckling. “Yes ma’am, thank you for that vision—Brother Virgil, knight on a white charger!”

  I watched him stride away, head high above the milling crowd of students. I fought not to cry. Being Virgil’s girl was not easy. Right now the most difficult thing would be not to tell him I hated his best friend. I counted on the patience I was learning from him.

  *

  And by God, I did keep my mouth shut while he sat with the manuscript and read with his characteristic intensity. When he had finished, Virgil sat back and puffed on his favorite pipe, a leather-brown Meerschaum. “Perhaps this is what Don meant by making it big,” he said after a while. “He saw in this the chance to edit an important historical document.”

  “That’s making it big?” I said.

  “Listen,” he said. And he explained the scholar’s concept of making it big. As an example, he told me about the letters of James Boswell, the biographer of the eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson. As if he were talking of discovering a gold mine, Virgil told me how some of Boswell’s letters were found many years after his death, in a French butcher shop, and then more letters in a Scottish castle in a croquet box and an unused stable. From these accidental discoveries a group of twentieth-century scholars had made their reputations. Old manuscripts, he said, have intrinsic value, which of course is enhanced when they contained something of special importance. “Don alludes to the special importance of this manuscript in his Preface. A secret meeting with the Russians—there’s the key.”

  “What about the racial incident at Naha?” I asked.

  “Possibly that too.”

  “What does he mean, though, racial incident?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “He says at Naha, but in this section the fleet’s at Naha and nothing happens, except Old Matt bluffs the Okinawan Regent into letting the Americans use the harbor.”

  “He must mean another stop at Naha. Altogether there were three. One prior to the first visit to Japan. One after the first visit to Japan. And one prior to the second visit to Japan. The film we took from the Poker, remember, described events after the fleet had left Naha for the second visit to Japan.”

  “I’m glad you have it straight.”

  “Consequently, Don must be referring to one of the other visits to Naha, not the first one.”

  “And we don’t have the film for those. Unless—did you see the professor today about the remaining pipes?”

  “I did.” Virgil had gone to the professor’s office that afternoon. Professor Maynard had only two of the pipes.

  “What were they?”

  “An ordinary Bulldog and an Oom-Paul.”

  “Ah, like Ginny Vaccaro,” I cooed, making curvy motions.

  Virgil ignored me, explaining that neither of Maynard’s pipes had contained film. The professor had cleaned both of them and found nothing.

  “He wasn’t jiving?” I asked.

  “I told him the whole story. Our attempt to run down the microfilm amused him. Moreover, he seemed to sympathize with our motives. I believed him when he said his pipes hadn’t contained film.”

  I counted on my fingers. “Your two. The gardener’s one. Paco’s one. One overboard. Sweet little Ginny’s one. And this professor’s two.”

  “Which accounts for eight. And Professor Maynard gave two away. That’s ten.”

  “Where are the final two?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “But David said the professor had taken the last six pipes.”

  “David was wrong. Maynard took only four.”

  “So two are missing.” I slumped down on the couch, feeling depressed. “Then we’re sunk,” I said.

  “Not necessarily. We’ll see the two people who have Professor Maynard’s pipes.”

  “Why? There would still be two missing.”

  “Let’s go as far as we can.”

  “If you say so. But I’ve been thinking. What has all this Perry stuff to do with Vietnam?”

  “Maybe nothing, but we don’t know yet.”

  “Dong Nai and Perry—a hundred years apart. I don’t get it.”

  “So—”

  “So don’t tell me. I know. We go after the pipes this professor gave away.”

  That evening when we got into bed, Virgil fell asleep almost immediately. We were getting like old married folks; but that was all right as long as I could reach out in the darkness and touch his arm with my hand, his leg with my foot. We were sharing something, even though his friend Henry obviously thought I was a white whore; a white charger—to borrow my own phrase—only good enough for Brother Virgil to ride secretly in blackest night. But what the hell. Next day, with perseverance, which to my amazement I was acquiring, I would finish Part Two. That was what Virgil called the second piece of microfilm. I had already got the fleet into tense contact with Japanese officials in Tokyo Bay.

  Lying there in the hot New York night, I couldn’t sleep. My head was whirling with images of this slow unfolding of an event that had taken place over one hundred years ago among people about whom I knew almost nothing and in a part of the world that I had never seen. Yet I was beginning to care about our Bostonian, even though he was capable of, like, ultimate squareness.

  Our Bostonian hadn’t explained why he had ever come on the expedition, so I was developing the theory that he had signed on to forget a tragic love affair. Okay, so it was corny, but there are times when I dig the romantic. I had this picture of him as t
all, thin, square-shouldered, with long black unruly hair and a crooked smile. A sensitive Anthony Perkins type, but more masculine. I saw him in Technicolor, looking at Mount Fuji through the ship’s rigging, wind blowing his hair, his eyes squinting in the dazzle of the snowy cone of the great mountain. Maybe more of a young Gregory Peck, actually.

  I lay there, wide-eyed, and recalled entries that described his fever from some Oriental disease. I had this image of him delirious and sweating in a hammock belowdecks in semidarkness. His limbs shake from the fever. The ship rolls and pitches, and the days pass. Slowly he begins to recover. And all that sort of thing.

  And as I began to grow sleepy, the names of the ships passed through my mind and all the seaman’s jargon: steam frigates, sloops-of-war, gun sizes, tonnages. I lay there with eyes beginning to close and heard the names intoned on a sound track above wind and waves: the Macedonian, the Vandalia, the Plymouth, the Saratoga, the Mississippi, the Susquehanna, the Powhatan, the Lexington, the Southampton, the Supply, the Macedonian, the Vandalia, the Plymouth, the Saratoga . . . and somewhere along the way I fell asleep.

  *

  Next morning before setting out for the library, I called my parents, just to touch base. “Hello, Mother,” I said. “You’ll never believe this, but Virgil is solving a murder.”

  Virgil, working at the desk on the final chapter of his dissertation, looked up quizzically at my remark. I winked at him. “That’s what I said, Mother.” And he frowned at me.

  “Judith,” Mother said.

  “But he really is; he’s solving a murder.”

  “Don’t joke with me,” my mother replied. “Come home awhile. Your father wants you home, even if it’s only for a few days.”

  “You don’t believe Virgil’s solving a murder? All right. Would you believe he’s just been made chief of the Sioux?”

  From the desk, Virgil shook his head disapprovingly.

  “Judy, we’re worried about you.” It was my father’s voice, pinched and anxious. “Your sister says you haven’t called her in months.”

  “Tell Laura to mind her own business. She’s good at that anyway. She’s a real loan shark.”

  “What, Judy?”

  “Nothing, Daddy.”

  “What are you really doing? Where are you? Who’s with you?” It was my mother again; she had probably wrenched the phone from my father’s hand.

  “Don’t you see I love Virgil and I’m happy?” I cried. “I’m not a dope fiend or a nymphomaniac. I’m happy!”

  The call soon ended on the usual note of frustration for everybody. I sat down and drank coffee. Virgil didn’t say anything for a while; he was busy with file cards, literally hundreds of them, all sorted and stacked alongside the typewriter. Abruptly, as if he had been thinking about it a long time, Virgil turned and said to me, “Extremely adolescent.”

  “I know.”

  “Next time tell the truth. All right?”

  “All right.”

  I sat awhile and watched him slowly return to the heavily measured rhythm of his work. Then I got up, walked over behind his chair, and leaned against him, my arms crossed around his neck. “Forgive me? My family’s still a hangup.”

  Virgil reached up and gripped my hands in a wordless reassurance. Then I fed the turtles, got ready, and went to the library. By early afternoon I had completed Part Two—which was interesting and everything, but hardly a new revelation. There was one thing, though, that I figured would especially intrigue Virgil. The entry described a Japanese visit on board the Mississippi.

  They could locate New York and Washington on a globe, even knew the whereabouts of a few prairie towns. They had heard of our victories in Mexico and mentioned Generals Zachary Taylor and Santa Anna. They asked about railroads, tunnels, the isthmus of Panama, and knew the designation “Paixhan” for a French naval gun. 120 of them on board. They were entertained by the Ethiopian band of the Powhatan and a minstrel show. When the sable gentlemen made their appearance, a murmur of astonishment arose among our simple guests. Woolly heads, standing shirt collars of ample dimensions, and black faces, contrasting with black and yellow striped coats, ruffled shirts, and the usual pants of a darky band were truly new sights to them. “Yah-yah-Sambo, how you be?” said Bones to Tambourine, as the one rattled and the other knocked his instrument in their faces. I thought the Commissioners would have died with their suppressed laughter (for they never laugh out as we do). Then I realized that the Commissioners did not understand. A program printed at considerable effort announced that the minstrels would first appear “as Colored Gemmen of the North” and then as “Niggas of the South.” What made our officers laugh was not at all understood by the Japanese. I took secret delight in this misunderstanding. The Japanese believed that we were actually honoring our Negro sailors. They believed the minstrel show was a respectful, if joyous, festival. I did not disabuse them of their error when I translated the program from English into Dutch.

  You sly dog, Bostonian, I thought. There was a little of the jive cat in him, in spite of his smugness and religious jargon. I liked him for it. So did Virgil when I got back with the material. Virgil also reasoned that our Bostonian had just possibly been an early Abolitionist, although only incipiently so, reflecting the cultural ideas abroad at the time on the Northeastern Seaboard. That is Virgil. He is capable of detaching himself from his own racial thing and studying it from all sides, the way a geologist studies a rock.

  After reading the remaining pages of Part Two, Virgil got ready to set out for interviews with the men to whom Professor Maynard had given pipes. I was raring to go myself, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I noticed that Virgil seemed preoccupied.

  As we left the apartment, I said to him, “Isn’t your work going well?”

  “Very well.”

  “Then what’s up?”

  He told me that Edgar Gear had called. Smith had been to see him again. This time Smith had questioned him at great length about us and the package.

  “Well, so what? All Smith can do is, like, harass.”

  “And that’s the danger.” Virgil gave me a quick glance as we headed into the subway. “Smith is stirring people up, the way you stir up a nest of hornets. He’s letting all the Alpha people in this area know about that package and what it might contain.”

  “God,” I said.

  “That’s how Martin learned about the package.”

  “Smith went to see him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Martin wasn’t in Alpha.”

  “But Martin’s a friend of mine, an ex-soldier too. Smith’s putting me in the spotlight.”

  “I can’t see why Smith would want to mess you up.”

  “He’s not concerned with me. He’s concerned with Dong Nai. Evidence is worthless until he can get it out into the open. Smith wants something to happen.”

  “Like—” I paused, shocked at the idea. “Like you being robbed or attacked or—murdered?”

  “Anything that shakes the evidence out of its hiding place.”

  “But that makes you a live decoy!”

  “To Smith and his people it’s irrelevant.” Before entering the subway turnstile, Virgil halted and looked intently at me. “I want you to move out for a while.”

  “Out of the apartment? No. No!” I did what I used to do as a little girl—stamped my foot. “No!”

  “Only for a while.”

  “No!”

  “Until the game’s played out.”

  “No,” I said breathlessly, feeling tears in my eyes. “I’m staying with you.”

  Virgil hesitated. Then he said, “We’ll see.”

  THE PEAR

  Coming out of the subway, we were nearly blinded by the summer light. The black and Latin neighborhood we found ourselves in was noisy. I noticed Virgil smiling happily. He said you had to be raised in Harlem to appreciate the sheer motion of life. And I had some idea of what he meant as we walked along the bustling streets. From an open window dri
fted the heavy sounds of Jimi Hendrix and from another the joyous rhythms of Santana. Kids leaning against parked cars were lazily snapping their fingers to the music. Mothers sat like tree trunks with squirming babies on stoops. An ice cream vender had a swirl of bright dresses around him. Young guys were clustered at the corner, inspecting an old motorcycle that one of them was gunning furiously.

  “Who are we seeing first?” I asked Virgil.

  “A retired financier.”

  I looked at Virgil.

  “Yes, I agree,” he said, laughing. “A Wall Streeter is something of an anomaly in this neighborhood. But then, Professor Maynard called this man ‘an original.’”

  Virgil stopped abruptly and gazed up at one of those old residential hotels that line upper Broadway. It had an ornate, gingerbread facade, and inside, the high-ceilinged lobby was huge, the air there cool but faintly stale as in a tomb. We went up in a huffing, puffing elevator to the tenth floor and rang the bell of a Jeremy Purdy.

  After a long time, just as we were beginning to think no one was home, the door swung wide open and there stood a tall, fat white-haired man whose broad face had the dull, grainy texture of an unswept carpet—and I should know the look of an unswept carpet. His eyes were gray, sunk back in flesh, but had a merry, almost too merry, sparkle to them. Virgil introduced himself and me as friends of Professor Maynard, and so without hesitation, Mr. Purdy ushered us into a small vestibule.

  “So young Maynard sent you,” Mr. Purdy said in a husky voice, peering down at us from six feet two or three. “He sends people to see my place, says it’s unusual, typifies my personality. He says most people don’t have places that reflect their personalities, and I agree. On that I’m firm. People lack individuality today. Young Maynard’s father was a fraternity brother of mine at college. Dead now. Come along.”

  The vestibule had been absolutely bare, lit only by a thick-shaded wall light, but when Mr. Purdy opened the door into the next room, I stopped right in my tracks and just stared. What I faced was like a weird Christmas scene. I mean, lights were everywhere you looked in the windowless room. There were all sorts of chandeliers, whirligig lights, and lamps of all various shapes and sizes placed on dozens of empty TV consoles. Dozens of TV consoles is what I mean. Like, all gutted they stood row upon row in the vast room, so many of them that there was enough space for only one person at a time to pass down the aisles between them. I say it was a vast room, but so cluttered with consoles and other objects that it might have been no bigger than a closet of mine.