The Navidad Incident

by Natsuki Ikezawa

  “I see,” says Lee Bo, too softly to tell whether he’s agreeing with Matías or merely prompting further discourse.

  “If that plane hadn’t crashed before the election, if I’d had Kurokawa’s five million in hand, Tamang would’ve lost and not needed to die. Some opposition party! Legislator misfits and fellow American alumni, nothing but a bunch of whiners.”

  “ ‘If,’ you say. One cannot change history on a whim. Had I not died in England, who’s to say that Palau might not today be a cultural colossus the rival of London or Paris? ’Tis naught but idle speculation.”

  “Okay, so the plane crashed. Some old wartime jinx maybe, but that stupid pilot downed it with all its precious cargo right there.”

  “Dull-witted, perhaps, tho not unskilled. ’Twas no fault of the pilot, that pyre. Indeed, had you founded your own flying folly, he would have made an able captain. His talk of two great birds, painted in green and yellow stripes like that soldiers’ carriage … such grand dreams he regaled you with.”

  “So you knew?”

  “Indeed, I knew of your tribulations in amassing funds, the airship enterprise being just one of your ambitions. I may well have known ere you yourself.”

  “Sure, I always wanted to start up Air Navidad. Decades-old Boeing planes would do just fine. Secondhand hulks from Aloha Air or Garuda. Hell, I’d have even taken old Air Nauru planes. Just three of them, that’s all I needed. At eight million dollars each, that’s twenty-four million. Throw in all the other equipment, say thirty million. If I invested fifty-one percent, I’d have a fine company, which I could just as easily hand over to the country. My money or the state’s, what’s the difference? The state coffers don’t earn interest, that’s the only reason I saved up under my name. In a Swiss bank, one of those famous secret accounts, but that still doesn’t make it my own private savings. I’d hand it all over to Jim Jameson tomorrow. Never planned to spend the money myself anyway.”

  “Tho why an aerial enterprise?”

  “You of all people, my bonny Prince from Palau, should know that. For the last few centuries, these islands, this region has seen plenty of foreigners pass through, but no locals leaving. You were the single exception. Unfortunately, you died for it.”

  “Aye, perished I did.”

  “Our history’s nothing but stories of others bringing things here that sealed our fate. People here never got to choose—only you and me. Don’t tell me you don’t see us in the same boat. We’re allies. Isn’t that why you chose me to haunt?”

  “Aye, a kindred spirit.”

  “A fellow islander who made it abroad. Lucky I didn’t die away from home, so I could bring back my bounty alive. I imported instant noodles and became president. And all the while I kept thinking, we islanders have got to cross the ocean on our own. We have to take control of our own destiny. We should be the ones to decide who goes where to study what, who we invite here to the islands, how many tourists we let in for how long. A country this size, where we stand in relation to other countries ought to be at the very heart of our political ideology. Domestic affairs we can leave to the Council of Elders. Yet nobody here knows a thing about the outside world. I’m the only one who knew enough to build a framework for future relations with the major powers. That was my job and that’s what I was doing. And that’s why I had that know-nothing Tamang snuffed out!”

  “Indeed,” says Lee Bo, trying to calm him down.

  Matías looks upset that he’s come out with the forbidden topic of assassination. Peeved and moody, he continues talking. “Of course, an airline’s just a symbol. Whether on our own planes or Philippine Air or Continental Air Micronesia or JAL, we’d still get where we’re going. But symbols are everything in politics. Petty officials can manage things as they stand because it’s all practical matters, but a politician has to present a vision of the future, which calls for showmanship and myths. We need to go abroad of our own doing, see what there is to see and bring back what we ourselves want. And for that we need three secondhand 727s. Cut-rate rigs, Boeing’s best sellers of the century, Third World specials that’ll still have plenty of spare parts thirty years from now. In the beginning we’d have to hire foreigners like that cracker who flies the Islander, but eventually we’ve got to see our Navidadian boys grow up to be pilots. Navidadian girls for stewardesses too.”

  “Fine flagships you fancy, eh?”

  “Yeah, especially 727s and Islanders. But there are any number of ways to go.”

  “Tho I daresay, you tangled your own spinnakers when you met those two, Ketch and Joel, or else when you soiled your hands with the hostelry money. But perhaps I do you wrong. Yours was no error of judgment, only a lapse of luck.”

  “That airfield, that five million up in smoke. Was it really Jap ghosts that did it?”

  “ ’Twould seem so,” allows Lee Bo. “Your island gods do not allude to it.”

  “Outside powers, then?”

  “Such as may be construed.”

  “Then it couldn’t be helped.”

  Matías looks relieved to know at least the island spirits haven’t deserted him.

  “Might we talk of something else?” asks Lee Bo hesitantly.

  “Why sure,” says Matías, realizing he’s been monopolizing the conversation. Lee Bo is so easy to talk to, the words just flow. Now it’s his turn to listen to the ghost.

  “In Palau, not twenty years ago, there was an old crone who lived in a tiny village on Babelthuap Island. She raised chickens and pigs, and tended her field most ably for her age. One day, a Yankee traveler came to the village driving a hired carriage on his way to the tip of the island where a quaint old abai lodge with colourfully painted walls was to be found. Either he was all in a dither searching for the abai or he’d quaffed a peg ere leaving his lodgings, but he was in a goodly hurry when, passing the old lady’s house, suddenly a chicken ran out into the road.”

  “Common enough story. Chickens don’t know about cars. Go on.”

  “Aye, uncivilised fowl they are. The carriage hit the chicken and sent it to its Maker. The Yankee quickly halted his carriage, alighted and gathered up the dead bird. He was distraught, for without thinking he had killed a bird of no little value to poor country folk. Out of his own cultural waters, what could he say? A sensitive lot, it would seem, these foreigners.”

  “A few of them.”

  “I bow to your greater knowledge. In any case, this one did not simply run off. He took it upon himself to go, dead hen in hand, and apologise to its owner.”

  “Which caused a big fuss.”

  “Naturally. The old lady made such a to-do you would have thought the bird was her own beloved grandchild. As tho she were to bury it in the family grave instead of plucking it for the pot. So the Yankee pulled out his purse.”

  “The decent thing.”

  “Well, at the sight of the green bills, the old lady’s eyes changed colour too. She proceeded to tell the Yankee about her bird: how clever, how beautiful, how noble it was, the pride of the village, practically a god in feathered form, but never did she name a price.”

  “Smart move.”

  “In countries rich and poor factors in a transaction pit themselves at opposite extremes o’er what they deem fair recompense. No mere percentage, but often figures apart. The old crone was determined to make him name the first price.”

  “Wasn’t there a market value?”

  “In which market? Of course, chickens have value in the village market, but not in dollars. ’Tis all barter: one chicken for a bunch of bananas and some taro, or so many reef fish or a day’s work.”

  “Like Navidad in the old days.”

  “The search for the abai now all but forgotten, the Yankee finally proposed a figure. A simple sum, which she multiplied by ten, and led him on, allowing the dupe to bargain her down to four t
imes his original offer, whereupon the old lady accepted with a show of great displeasure.”

  “Complete victory.”

  “Tho wait, there’s more to tell. As the old woman made to go inside, the Yankee stopped her and held out the dead bird.”

  “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Being of no mind to keep it or take it to his lodgings to have it cooked, he gave the fowl back. What else could he do?”

  “Must have surprised the old woman, though.”

  “That it did. She had no idea white folk could be so gullible. Once more she put on a woebegone air and accepted the feathery corpse as if to go bury it.”

  “And that evening, she and the neighbors had roast chicken, eh?”

  “Laughing one and all at the fool and his money, praising the stubborn old lady. She, meanwhile, had learnt a good lesson.”

  “To always drive a hard bargain?”

  “Nay, that when a foreigner meets a fowl, money falls from the heavens.”

  “Hmm,” mutters Matías, detecting a note of mockery in Lee Bo’s morality tale. This can only lead in an undesirable direction.

  “Thereafter, in any idle moment, the old lady would wait in the shadows for a motor carriage to pass. And lo, they did, three or four times of a week. How difficult could it be to time a bird’s release with the approach of the tyres? Then to slip back inside the house and wait with a long face for the Yank or Jap to come knocking? Ah, the sad stories, the tears, the better to drive up the price …”

  “…and salt the roast chicken that evening.”

  “With each success, she would invite the whole village, and receive bananas and taro in return. Three birds with one stone, as it were. But …” Lee Bo pauses for effect. Matías leans forward to hear him out. “Then she began to consider the poor defenseless victims and tried to teach the birds to fly.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Oh, nothing. Mere palaver.”

  “You mean I’m the old woman and the people are my chickens, is that it?”

  “Not in so many words. But all things being relative, shew me the man so singularly good, the policy so perfectly right. Where is the wholly wicked man or bad policy? Nay, you’ve been a fine chicken lady,” chides Lee Bo. “Crafty and forthright in equal measure, you’ve done well by your life. You knew the limits of your greed. Selfish but confident, the requisites of a politician. None dare question that. Nay, ’twas the Brun Reef ruse rais’d the bar too high. Not for the common people, nor e’en the Elders, there were unseen others who remonstrated. The murder of Tamang sufficed to convince the Elders, but ’twas really Brun Reef that did it.”

  “That was big money. If it came off, I could’ve started up Air Navidad. It would have provided the capital base for developing the country, enough for industry to kick in. At least I thought so. A way for this country to take an active role among the major powers.”

  “A big, fat pig for ev’ryone to roast and eat.”

  “A necessary sacrifice.”

  “The pig would not think so. And the ancestors are on the side of the pig,” he gently observes.

  “It was them who sent Améliana?”

  Lee Bo doesn’t respond and Matías doesn’t press the issue. In the ensuing silence, the candle flickers and drips, consuming their attention yet never getting any shorter.

  “One thing I’d like to know,” Matías finally asks.

  “That being?”

  “What am I supposed to do now? What’s the right next move? Not that you ever say much about anything important. You give me more minute particulars than anyone could possibly want to know about the past, present, and future, but since when have you ever given me any real advice? Maybe I should know better than to ask. Still, there is one detail you might oblige me with.”

  Lee Bo gives a sly smile, as if he already knows what Matías is going to ask. He raises no objection, meaning he won’t give him any practical tips.

  “Several times since I became president, I received anonymous letters from someone in Japan. Know anything about that?” Matías asks straight out.

  “Your ‘Friend of the Islands’?”

  “That’s right. Every time I had dealings with Japan, those letters leaked inside information. Saved my neck more than once, though I have no idea who was writing me or why. I doubt any civilian could get access to so many classified government files, so was it an official or a politician? Who among them would know so much about Navidad—or care? Like there was a Navidad spy burrowing in the Japanese nerve center, but there’s never any talk of payoffs. Maybe just twice a year, some crucial clue-in arriving by ordinary mail.”

  “Witness the letter about Brun Reef and the secret plan for a Japanese cantonment there. Sage counsel, yet you did not accept.”

  “Right or wrong, that was my political judgment. Let’s drop it, I can think that one over for the rest of my days. What I want to know about is the mole. Is he someone close to Kurokawa? Or a bureaucrat somewhere in Foreign Affairs? Why would anyone up there be so interested in this country? Or have access to so much information? It’s not like some South Pacific department flunky just photocopied whatever papers passed across his desk. That data was purposefully collected. Risky business. Who’d risk his neck on such a stunt? Not once, but repeatedly?”

  “A man from Ponape.”

  “A Ponape islander in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs?”

  “Nay, nothing like that. Your pimpernel was one Daniel López, many years dead. Or rather his shadow … ’Tis a long story.”

  “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “During the Great War, many a Pacific native was press’d into Imperial Army service and deployed on the front lines, López being one such conscript. Were he alive today, he would be five years your senior. His ankle was shattered by a volley in New Guinea, but he received scant attention before being pack’d home to Ponape. Lacking a doctor’s care, he was crippled for life. Unable to work, he proved a burthen upon his family. The lean years right after the war must have worn heavily upon him, tho eventually he married, opened a small general store and e’en fathered a child.”

  “Common enough story,” repeats Matías, as with the chicken lady fable.

  “Aye, a most common plaint in the Imperial Japanese Domestic South Seas, tho ’twas not the end of the tale for López. Hearing that the newly form’d democratic government of Japan was duly compensating its war-wounded with welfare purses, he wonder’d: had he not been ordered to go to war by the Japanese government and maim’d in the line of duty? Were not his injuries as grave as any inflicted on a Japanese soldier? Why did he not merit like payment? The injustice of it! He was told upon conscription that he was a citizen of the realm, that his willing service made him a full imperial subject. Should not his pain be address’d as that of an imperial subject? The lack of compensation was insuff’rable to him.”

  “Hard knocks,” mutters Matías, not that he was unaware of this side of Japan—or of all big countries, for that matter. It’s precisely hardships like these that show up the arbitrary arrogance of colonial power to the small and downtrodden.

  “The hard truth will out indeed. Yet López did not believe so. Consequently, he wrote a letter of enquiry contriving to suggest there must have been a serious mistake: surely his papers had been mislaid? And lo, he received a response, tho not the tidings he hoped for. Nay, the official writ declared that the new administration could not assume all responsibilities for the previous government—without a word about disbursements to Japanese veterans not applying to Domestic South Seas conscripts. ’Twas an unabashedly short set letter, a common instrument of dismissal, one of thousands posted by the Ministry of Welfare to settle like requests from the former colonies.”

  “Tell me about it. Plenty of our boys sent angry demands to Japan to
o, especially in Cornelius’s time, but nothing ever came of them. Even in my day, I made a show of trying on behalf of my long-suffering countrymen, but I knew better than to push.”

  “López refused to credit the letter. It made no sense; this was wrong. Other lads would have cried themselves to sleep at this point, yet López believed in justice. Something of a moralist he was. He may have return’d home gimp, but what of the many who died? López did the impossible and made passage to Japan.”

  “To lodge an appeal?”

  “Aye, in person. Given to snap decisions, it would seem. Eventually he found his way to the ministry, where he was offered much the same explanation as in the letter. Like you, López spoke good Japanese, but talking obtained no progress. Entertaining no illusions now, he promptly fix’d his aim upon another mark. Quick on the trigger, that one … still is.”

  “You’ve talked with him recently?”

  “Aye, good mates we are,” confides Lee Bo. “López did not hurry back to his island, but stayed on in Tokyo to launch a one-man campaign. He penned a placard in Japanese decrying his unfair treatment and paraded in front of the Ministry from dawn to dusk.”

  “Full of fight, I’ll say that for him.”

  “Hardly—he limp’d, dragging his right foot. He verged on despair inside. Tho when a friendly newspaperman wrote a sympathetic article—alas, no change of heart did it buy at the Ministry—a few contributions trickled in from local readers. López was able to go on protesting for several fortnights, e’en tho the Japanese Consul in Ponape spread malicious rumours about him. In the end, his money and mind spent, López decided to go home.”

  Matías clears his throat. Had his own age and circumstances been only slightly different, he’d have been another López. Used by Japan instead of the other way around. Would he have had the guts to go to Japan and protest? But then again, had he allowed Japan to build a secret base at Brun Reef, could he still really claim to have the upper hand? He risked crippling the whole of Navidad himself.