The natives had learned to drink American soda and beer, but there was for those who could take it the native kava, made from the fibers of the kava, fermented with some fo plants that give it a licorice flavor. I didn't care for it, but Mike seemed to think it was pretty good.
After the food, we went up to the headman and asked if we could film the boys diving.
“Sure,” said the headman, “but we dive for moonstones.”
“No sponge or pearl diving?” Mike asked.
“No money in those any more. But moonstones, pretty fair. I want to save up and go to America.”
“We're going home ourselves,” Mike said.
“Good deal. You see South Pacific?”
We admitted we hadn't. The headman seemed shocked. “How come?”
“Never got around to it,” I said.
“Too bad. One thing I want to do, see that South Pacific.”
“But you live in the South Pacific … why worry about a show that isn't very real?” Mike asked.
“Here,” the headman said, “the woman they get fat, here is always taxes and trouble and the boys wrecking the jeeps and the banana trees dying. In play, all the woman are beautiful, they sing much better than our girls, and the music has more beat. Do you get me?”
“I get you, Jackson.” Mike said, “But it's all made up.”
“The people on the stage are real, no?”
“They are, yes.” I said. “We'll film the divers in the morning and hope the clouds look good.”
We went back to Ali's, where we had rented his second best room. Mike took off his shoes and drank some old army beer.
“How do you like these cookies? They have everything, and they want to see a show about a place you could never find on a map.”
“They're romantic, Mike, like you.”
“Is that a dirty word?”
“It's a state of mind, Mike, in which everything is twice life size and everybody is pretty beautiful.”
“Is that bad, chum?”
I pulled the insect net tight around as I got into bed. “You walk around star-eyed and then somebody hits you over the head with the biggest club in the world and you wake up counting your illusions on the floor. I've resigned from the romantics. The headman had better, or they'll take back his Buick.”
Mike looked at me and shook his head, “I think the quicker we get you home, the better. You'll be attacking love next, and this I ain't going to stand.”
“Take a nap Mike, beer catches up with you in the tropics.”
“Yeah … you know, this ain't at all like the movies we used to make.”
“Nothing is ever like the movies, Mike.”
I heard a snore. Mike was sleeping on his back, his mouth open, some empty beer cans around him.
It rained that night, several hundred times. It would come down on the tin roof making thunder and fury, then it would stop and a dripping effect would take over for some time. Then it would get hot under the tin roof, and the insects would try to find the lamp to light it and play games, and then the rain would start again. It was that way until morning. Mike slept through it all and woke up with the sunlight bathing his battered features.
We went out to the diving grounds and found a lot of handsome men with big, brown bodies going off small boats into fifty feet of water. The water was very clear, and we could take pictures right to the bottom. Little fish fed bigger fish, and the coral growths on the bottom looked like a pretty garden in a New England village. We took a lot of footage of the moonstone divers and went up to have lunch with the headman.
His daughter was wearing Paris slacks and reading a novel by Evelyn Waugh. It turned out she had gone to college in California and hoped papa would make enough money someday so she could live in Pasadena and ride in the horse shows. She was a very bright girl and couldn't do the native dances or sing the native songs. I could see Mike felt very let down about this because he always expected life to be just like the movies he used to direct.
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