James A. Michener by Return to Paradise

Author:Return to Paradise
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780449206508
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1979-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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The Good Life

A social and economic revolution has occurred in Santo. The Tonkinese have been set free of their indentures and now have all civil privileges.

NOT LONG AGO I was sent from Efate to investigate a rather astonishing report which had reached the British half of the Condominium Government. I proceeded aboard a small schooner which fortunately was putting in at the very plantation I intended visiting.

At dawn two mornings later I caught my first glimpse of La Fécondité, the famous establishment of Jean Perouse, who was the cause of my embarrassing inspection. La Fécondité was well named, for great copra plantings ran right to the water's edge, except where a belvedere had been built over the fringes of a placid bay. There a fine pavilion stood with iron chairs and a long table, where diners could enjoy their dinner in the evening while they watched the lights along a superb reach of channel. Behind the belvedere stood an imposing house, built in the colonial style with many verandahs, and behind it clustered a half dozen small red-and-white cook houses, card rooms, dining quarters and American refrigerator units. Deeper in the jungle, beyond a small stream, were ranged forty of the dismal huts inhabited by the Tonkinese laborers, and beyond them were the famous cacao groves that had made Jean Perouse a wealthy man.

He had given us trouble before. During the war, American Military Police were constantly raiding La Fécondité, and Perouse was charged with almost every kind of offense. We discovered, however, that he maintained good relations with American commanding officers, so that as fast as the M.P.'s arrested him, the responsible officers set him free, and it was in this way that he assembled the finest collection of American heavy equipment in the Hebrides.

But it was not regarding material things that I was seeking M. Perouse. I left the schooner, climbed the steps to the belvedere and proceeded to the main house. There I was met by a ruddy faced man of fifty-five, well preserved, handsome, hearty in what one might call the British fashion. He spoke to me first in French, but, since I am only adequate in that language, promptly switched to English.

I was brief. "M. Perouse," I said. "It has been brought to our attention that you are harboring on your plantation a young woman who is—shall we say?—wanted in Australia."

He appreciated my candor and greeted me with a disarming grin. "Come in, Mr. Crompton," he said. "Would you be averse to a whiskey so early in the morning?" He was most generous and led me to a large room exquisitely furnished in bamboo, where he placed a full bottle at my elbow. Then he apologized and asked me to excuse him for a moment, since, as he explained, he always tried to listen to the morning news from Los Angeles.

The radio was dull that day. You know, the usual dreadful stuff from America. Gangsters killing people and strikers rioting. When it was

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