The Navidad Incident

by Natsuki Ikezawa

  “Half a year after faring back to Ponape, López died. A rheum afflicted in Japan inflamed his lungs and finally consumed him, as no remedies were to be had on his island. Soon enough, he was in a spiritual way.”

  “Do those who die unsatisfied become ghosts?” asks Matías. It’s something he’s been meaning to ask for ages.

  “I know not myself. Some become ghosts and some become birds.”

  What Matías really wants to know is what it’ll be like to die—for him personally— but can’t bring himself to say the words.

  “Why do certain ships take different courses?” Lee Bo continues. “Since his death, the Ponapean oft visits Japan, much as I call upon you here. In due course, López met a minor official at the Ministry of Welfare and talks with him not infrequently. This befriended clerk then goes home and writes missives about what he’s learnt at work, informing people in Micronesia of things they ought to know. One of his addressees being His Excellency Matías Guili.”

  “But what about Japan’s national interests? His bureaucratic station? His job?”

  “He seems unconcerned, no contradiction does he see. An able deckhand who shall ne’er, I daresay, climb higher than midshipman, he may yet play a part in some greater charting of policy for the region. He takes secret delight in all things South Pacific, a fond pastime if you will. He enjoys his talks with López and e’en relishes the challenge of a double identity, thus keeps writing letters incognito.”

  Not that any of those letters will be reaching President Guili anymore, thinks Matías. That’s Jim Jameson’s job now.

  “You’ve met the man,” says Lee Bo, much to Matías’s surprise.

  “I have?”

  “Aye, he directed the veterans delegation to Navidad. That last letter was posted from here. At the welcoming ceremony at the airfield, the Japanese who interpreted for Jameson, Matsumoto, who went missing with the others on the motor carriage, who reappear’d just yesterday, was it? He’s your Friend of the Islands.”

  09

  Matías doesn’t remember a thing about his mother’s death, but the entire sea voyage afterwards is as clear as day. The two of them had been living in Baltasár City. This was more than a decade into the Japanese colonial era, and Japanese settlers and businesses were on the rise. Among the many immigrants to these “Tearful Islands,” as the Japanese called Navidad, was the katsuobushi maker Chujiro Miyakura, the man Matías arbitrarily claims as his father, who only stayed a couple of years, then left before the boy’s birth. Matías’s mother was helping out at a Japanese-run barber shop, though why exactly she left Melchor or what she was doing working there or who got her pregnant under what circumstances, no one ever told him.

  When Matías was three and a half, his mother died of tuberculosis, which had spread unchecked through the islands. She’d been coughing horribly for months, not going to work half the time, until finally she was too weak to get out of bed. A fortnight later she was dead. Even so, Matías can’t really picture her lying there in any detail. Did he actually see the body or did adults from the neighborhood merely tell him about it? Who found her? Who arranged what kind of funeral? How did he get by in the days that followed? His memory is a complete blank.

  He doesn’t remember his aunt coming from Melchor to fetch him either; it could have been three days or three months after her death. All he retains are random flashes, hazy images in no appreciable order. Why do some memories linger and others fade into nothingness?

  The next thing he remembers after living in that tiny room near the barber shop is boarding a ship in the harbor. Matías has always liked transportation, which is partly why he put so much effort into developing the island bus system when he became president and why he was so unreasonably intent on setting up Air Navidad. His first sea trip from Gaspar to Melchor—his first ride in any vehicle—left a vivid impression. The ship looked impossibly big and grand to his infant eyes, though in fact it was just an old Japanese Inland Sea tramp steamer. But this was in the days when there was only one three-story building in the whole of Baltasár City, so that coal-burning clunker probably rated as one of the most advanced contraptions around.

  His aunt from Melchor tidied up the room where he and his mother had been living, packed what little there was to take, and led her nephew by the hand to the port. This, too, was a first-time-ever adventure for the boy. At first sight, he thought the ship was some kind of building at the water’s edge: oddly shaped, painted black and white, smelling of oil, entered by crossing a footbridge onto a burning hot metal deck spread with woven palm frond mats. Already a crowd of people was huddled there, and his aunt had to elbow her way in to secure a space for them and their few bags. Squeezing down among all the families and crates, Matías could feel the slight vibrations from the hull under his behind. His aunt told him he could take a look around the ship, but the boy was too timid to move.

  They boarded before noon, but the ship didn’t get under way until that evening. The vibrations got stronger and a whistle screeched overhead, then suddenly everyone was moving about and waving as black smoke belched from a big fat upright pipe and the ship jerked into motion. That’s when he finally understood what the “building on water” was all about: it was taking them somewhere else. Wow! This was great! Suddenly the rumbling under his behind felt nice, the wind that sometimes blew smoke toward them smelled nice too. As they passed through a break in the coral reef out to the open sea, the “building” began to rock and pitch, making him so giddy his aunt had a hard time keeping him quiet.

  He fell asleep under the stars that danced in the vast, dark heavens to the rhythm of the waves. As he lay there, belly full of taro and bananas from his aunt’s basket, with the ship humming secret, soothing music to his spine, how much did he even really understand about his mother being dead? He was happy, his head against his aunt’s warm body, not knowing he was missing his mother’s warmth.

  The following morning was bright and hot, but later that day they ran into a squall. With no roof over their heads, everyone on deck was drenched; luckily no one had anything with them that rain might spoil. By the third day, however, the sea was so rough they all were at the rails throwing up. How he hated the ship then for playing nasty tricks on them, but he knew they had no choice but to ride out the storm until they got where they were going. He felt miserably sick and retched his stomach dry, ate nothing more and tried to sleep.

  The next morning, the sea was calm. He was woken by his aunt to see a beautiful sun burning through the haze ahead, where in the glow off to the left the smooth-shouldered silhouette of an island lay low on the horizon. Bird cries greeted the new day from across the water as they approached, calling welcome to the boy’s ears.

  “That’s where we’re going,” whispered his aunt. “That’s Melchor.” To his eager yet sleepy eyes, it seemed to promise lots of fun. A new home, it made him feel all fuzzy inside. Maybe his mother dying wasn’t so bad after all. But no, even a three-year-old couldn’t think such thoughts without a tinge of doubt clouding his expectations.

  All this was sixty years ago. Now, on the tatami mats of his private quarters at the Presidential Villa, Matías slowly comes to his senses. Wallowing in the past won’t do shit for him in his present straits. The Melchor he’d traveled to on a boat a generation older than the one that carried Améliana there is the very same island where the Council of Elders have just condemned him. They recognized him as a native son of the island, but no longer a man to respect. He isn’t worthy of the office of president; they’d proclaimed it to the whole country.

  Just possibly, though, Melchor might still take him in like sixty years before. Why not go and see, he thinks, and immediately calls Jim Jameson to have him arrange a flight. Not out in front of the airport terminal, he hastens to add, have the plane wait at the end of the runway. So an hour later, for the first time in days, he’s sitting in the Nissan President c
hauffeured by Heinrich.

  The car heads straight through town to the airport. He sinks deep into the back seat so he doesn’t have to see the faces of any pedestrians and they can’t see him. As if it’s any secret that the Nissan limousine—the only one in Navidad—has the disgraced President inside. As if he expected to be invisible or had some other vehicle at his disposal. Immediately the word spreads that the Old Man is going somewhere, and the public imagination starts to seethe. Matías still has a few privileges, he can still fly to Melchor in the Islander—the Council of Elders didn’t take that away from him. He’s under no legal constraints. No one throws stones at him in the Elders’ name. But it’s just as painful to know that the good citizens of Navidad will no longer have anything to do with him. He’s not only been stripped of power, he’s been made a nonentity.

  The Islander is waiting on the runway as arranged. The engines are silent. The American pilot lies sprawled on the grass nearby, looking up at the sky, presumably unaware of the fate that has befallen his employer. At the sound of the approaching limousine, he sits up. Matías gets out of the car, and the pilot hurries over to his plane. He has on a white short-sleeved shirt with epaulets and gold-embroidered wings on his chest, but no cap. Instead of black uniform trousers, he’s wearing jeans and rubber flip-flop sandals—he’s that kind of guy. Can he really work the pedals in those things?

  “Take me to Melchor,” shouts Matías into the wind.

  “Anywhere you like, just as long as she’s got fuel,” the man answers loud and clear. “Safe and sure—that’s the company motto.” A motto for a one-plane company that doesn’t even exist. Air Navidad has a thing or two to live down before it ever gets off the ground.

  “You call yourself safe?” Matías asks pointedly. “You already crashed once.”

  “I did at that,” admits the pilot with a grin. “Totaled the plane. But me? Not a scratch. Never kill me. I’m immortal, that’s what I am.”

  Sure, you survived, thinks Matías. What about the fifty million yen that went up in smoke? If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have to cower in my limo in fear of my angry countrymen, ordinarily the friendliest people on the planet. If you’d died and the fifty million survived, Tamang wouldn’t have won that election. He’d still be heading up the opposition party, haranguing me with empty rhetoric. Just enough to bolster his ego. Would’ve been better for him and better for me. But no, those Japanese ghosts or the Yuuka or gods and ancestors prevented it. Somehow they raised the airfield, so the plane smashed its landing gear and skidded on its fuselage into a palm grove, tearing off a wing and catching fire in the process. The pilot barely managed to escape with his own life; there was no time to rescue the duralumin trunk with all the money (nor had he been informed about its precious contents) before the whole thing blew up. If the plane had rammed straight into a palm tree instead of ripping open a fuel tank under the right wing, the pilot’s skull would have been crushed and the money spared. That would have changed everything. Fifty million would have been more than enough to put a damper on Tamang’s popularity. It would have given Matías a sure third term.

  Leaving these thoughts unsaid, Matías opens the right-hand door and climbs into the third seat back, just like when he flew to the Yuuka Yuumai festival. The pilot gets in and starts the engine, but doesn’t talk either. He probably thinks the President will be changing into shorts and an aloha shirt like before.

  The pilot is right: not long after takeoff, Matías unbuttons his suit and tie, leaves them on the seat along with his starched shirt, socks, and shoes, and dons more colorful plain clothes.

  When they land on Melchor, Matías gets out and informs the pilot, “I may be returning today, or I may be sending you back alone. I’ll be in touch by late afternoon. So, sorry, but could you stay put till then?” And with no further ado, President Matías Guili of the Republic of Navidad shuffles off across a grassy knoll in the guise of a crusty old local (his true island self, perhaps) and disappears into the bushes.

  Reaching a dirt road, Matías notices something hard in his shirt pocket: it’s Katsumata’s sunglasses. He forgot to return them and now he’ll probably never have the chance. He puts them on, adding a welcome margin of shade to the parched ground. A short stroll ahead brings him to the paved main road, which curves to the left toward the town. Beyond the gleaming lagoon, under a big blue sky, he can make out the whitecaps breaking on the coral reef. From the plane there were scattered patches of cloud, but from here on the ground he sees hardly a wisp; only a few faint streaks of white far off on the horizon, but no boats out by the reef, not a soul in sight.

  The sugar cane is getting high all along the left-hand side of the road, though there’s still some time to go before harvest. To the right, the scrub parts now and again to offer glimpses of the sea. Birds are singing somewhere. What a glorious day! Who wouldn’t enjoy a stroll here on a day like this? The gentle breeze cools all who pass, regardless of their name or station; the sun pours down on everyone equally.

  A pickup truck approaches from the direction of town. He hesitates for a moment, but then realizing he’s just a nobody walking along a road, he waves hello. The man in the driver’s seat waves back; there’s no one riding on the flatbed. If he were wearing a suit and tie and no sunglasses, the fitting image of the head honcho who used to decide everything around here, would the man have waved?

  Matías comes to a side road that branches off to the right into the trees, a shortcut to somewhere, puddles glinting in the sunlight. Why not see where it goes? Anyway, rubber sandals feel better on dirt than hot asphalt. The detour leads into the shade, where the ground is almost chilly compared to the main road. He has to watch his step to avoid the occasional cartwheel track ankle-deep in water. It’s so quiet. Off in the woods he can see one lone house. Compared to here, Baltasár is a bustling metropolis. Though from here on, he can do without all the cars and people.

  How about a life in exile, though? He has plenty of money to live out his days comfortably in a developed country. Even if he returns the bulk of it, he should still have enough left to live off the interest. He could move to the Philippines with Angelina. Or to Japan, for that matter. The Philippines are too close; the Japan idea is better, though not in Tokyo—some out-of-the-way town in view of Mt. Fuji. But no, Angelina would never go along with that. Okay, then, how about living alone? Buy a little house, read books and gaze at the sea, write his memoirs. He might even get Itsuko to do the housekeeping for him, the same as now. Live a simple life and reassess all the things he did for Navidad. He could write a handbook of helpful hints for his successors. Or a critique of regional relations in the Pacific. Or sign on as a consultant to a number of foreign powers. There are posts for peace-minded people like him at the UN.

  What’s realistically possible for him at his age? Say he left here and went north, what would he do all winter long? Would he be happy? Itsuko might well refuse to go back to Japan. Angelina probably wouldn’t want to return to the Philippines either. Should he even consider living all by himself out in the cold? Could he survive abroad nowadays? Whatever it was like when he was young, can this South Seas darky face grow old in that climate of constant low-key racism? Can he take it? No, the prospect of living in exile makes him shudder. Let the Elders curse: leaving the land of Yuuka Yuumai would not be a smart move for any native son this late in life.

  The path descends a gentle slope through the woods into a coconut plantation. The wind rustles the fronds high overhead, their shadows flickering over the white sand. It makes him dizzy, but happy. The smell of the sea is refreshing.

  He thinks about his benefactors. So many people have helped and sheltered him over the years. Probably the first was his aunt. Of her own free will, she dropped everything and came rushing to Baltasár City to rescue her orphaned bastard nephew sight unseen and bring him back to Melchor, begged to get him into a home already crowded with distant relative
s’ children, checked in on him from time to time, and generally tried to see that he was raised properly. He has only sketchy recollections of his aunt, but without her where would he be? Then there was Ryuzoji—or rather, Ryuzoji and Japan. Sure, he must have had an early gift for languages among other things, but in a society like Navidad where merit alone counts for nothing, the chances are his talents would have been passed over. No, he owes his success to having brought back modern ideas from Japan, no two ways about it. And in Japan, Tsuneko helped him with favors he can only regard as acts of unreasonable kindness. She accepted him for what he was—a bush boy from some tiny backwater where they probably didn’t even bathe, who’d go back to his island never to be heard from again—accepted him and loved him all the same. Then, back in Navidad, it was María Guili: at first with her husband, by hiring the young returnee, then later when widowed, by accepting him as her protector and provider. From Matías’s point of view, she was goodness personified, a mother hen. Never uttered a critical word, only encouragement whenever he ran up against island attitudes. Few know how much it was her efforts that made him the top businessman in the islands, though Angelina also taught him a thing or two. True, in the case of Angelina, it was he who provided her with a life-changing opportunity, which turned out well for both of them. His nights with her, talking and touching, the consolation they brought, can’t be overestimated. And let’s not forget the great Cornelius, who promoted a businessman into a politician, who handpicked him as his comrade-in-arms during the struggle for independence, then essentially gave him the country gift-wrapped …

  Matías emerges from the coconut grove onto the shore, an expanse of white sand flecked with buff and pink. The beach is quite broad here, describing a clean arc, a scene he seems to recall but cannot place. His head is overflowing with thoughts about the past. It’s time he sorted through his memories.