The Navidad Incident (7 page)

The day after the Japanese veterans delegation's arrival, a dozen islanders are sitting on the palm log benches out in front of the Cooperative Market—“News Central” for the citizens of Baltasár City. Market-goers all love to come here to trade opinions for gossip, then watch the stories multiply. Men and women alike, ages fifteen to eighty-five, whatever their social standing or political views, all become top-notch critics the minute they take their place on the benches—the long-established seat of collective judgment on this island (and the greatest threat to President Matías Guili, though he doesn't know it yet). A bit of advice for anyone—spy or otherwise—who wants to know what's going on in Navidad: instead of reading a week of the
Navidad Daily
, instead of listening to the monotony of Radio Baltasár for a whole day, you'd do better to spend thirty minutes sitting here in the plaza and just listen.

“Last night, a house in Xulong done burned down,” says an old man to a muscular fellow in his thirties sitting next to him.

“Yeah, I know. Right after everyone finished supper. House started burning from outside, fire climbed the wall and over the roof. Family was just sayin' how awful hot it was for evenin',” says the younger man loud enough for all to hear, his delivery neat and precise.

“Well ain't
you
the know-it-all,” says a fat woman in her fifties sitting on the opposite side, shucking a basketful of beans.

“Well if you must know, I was
there
, visiting relations not five houses away. Right after the fire started, I see this flickerin' light outside, then somebody's callin' for water to douse the house. Didn't do much good, but kept it from spreading. Lucky there wasn't no wind.”

“And the family what's house got burned?” asks the big mama.

“Staying with neighbors. They was startled all right, but don't seem too altogether grieved. The kids're havin' a great time. They been wantin' to put up a new house anyhow, had most of their stuff stored with relations. Place was practically empty, so it went up just like that. Burned the leaves off the ma'a tree next to the house too. Might make more fruit come out.”

“So why'd it catch fire?” a lanky fellow wonders out loud, swaying on his haunches.

“Somebody had'a set the fire. Right before the flames spread all over, they saw a boy runnin' off. Anyway, a house don't burn from the outside, not by itself it don't.”

“The thing 'bout the ma'a tree is true. There's that old saying: ‘Once burned black, twice bears back.' Ma'a's a dumb tree, gets scared people gonna use it for firewood if it don't got fruit. That's why in the old days they used to light fires under barren ma'a trees,” mutters an old woman listening in. “People nowadays just don't know.”

“They ever rile anybody, that family? Do anything to hold against 'em?” the old man asks on behalf of everyone. The marketplace naturally divides between those who ask and those who answer.

“Got me there. All I hear is, they's good people, nice and friendly,” reports the village voice.

“S'posed to be fun torchin' houses,” sniggers a kid one seat over from the old man.

“Not for normal people it ain't. Wouldn't put it past
you
, though” says the big mama.

“Don't look at me. You'd hafta be brung up twisted. Or from somewhere else.”

“There was this fireman in Manila liked to set fires. Kinda makes sense,” interjects the lanky fellow, letting everyone know he spent some time in the Philippines.

“Maybe they got the wrong house? Who lives next door?” asks the old man.

“Just regular folk. Mind you, regular folk can sneak their hands where they don' belong. Maybe eye the other guy's woman, put a little hex on the neighbors, but otherwise …”

“No political hokum? Nobody in Tamang's camp?” the old man presses on.

“Come to think of it, three doors down's that family Bonhomme Tamang's niece married into, but who'd set a fire for that? An' even if, they shouldn'a got the wrong house.”

“Shouldn't and wouldn't, 'cept that's Island Security for you, heh heh,” the old man chortles, which starts everyone laughing.

“Yah, but okay, why now?” blusters the old ma'a woman, stopping everyone short.

“Yeah, and what about that flag burnin' at the airport?” asks the kid.

“Strange, mighty strange, but it don't got the Tamang touch. Most of them Tamangos are modernizers, do things American-style. Wouldn't even know how to use no magic. You even hear they been up to much lately? Sure ain't called to reopen the assembly, so why burn flags?” says the old man.

“C'mon, everybody's anti-Jap. But that don't make us all Tamangos,” says the kid.

“Somebody got it in for the President. Bet this is just the beginning,” says the skinny fellow ominously.

“How long's it been?” wonders the kid after a moment's silence.

“A year,” says the big mama. “One whole year for Guili to shore hisself up nice 'n safe.”

“Good thing too. Damn good thing. Politics shake, everything go to pieces. Next thing you know bombs're flying and houses burning, can't be no good,” grumbles the old man.

“Least damage anybody could do, that fire in Xulong. Makes you think like maybe Island Security got orders to send a little message to Tamang's camp, probably on account'a that Jap flag.”

“Yeah, and that torii gate thing too,” the kid chimes in again.

“Just the sort of stunt the President and Chief Katsumata might dream up. But hey, them Island Security boys'd never pull it off. They get their orders, they ain't got the guts. Like they go burn the wrong place. Bet the family even knew what was coming off, so they get out in time. Probably got money out of it too, or an Island Security barrack air-con gets installed by mistake in the new house they build. Who knows?” The man has all the answers.

“You really are Mr. Know-It-All, ain't you. Keep spreading them big ideas around, gonna get you a air-con by mistake too, eh?” sneers the big mama.

“I wish. But from what my cousin in Island Security tell me, them jokers can't keep anything straight. Still haven't heard from him 'bout this one, though. Just a gut feeling.”

“Think Guili maybe ordered the fire?” asks the lean fellow, rocking back and forth.

“Probably,” says the kid. “That's what his Island Security's for. And that's the President's politics, keeping us down. Hardly matters what we all think about Emperor Matías Guili.”

“Not emperor, Guili wants to be dictator,” explains the young man, flaunting his powers of analysis. “He's looking for an opening, but nobody couldn't care less how he rules. For him to crack down, people gotta get all hot and bothered, gotta rebel. But government's like winds up in the clouds. Blow this way, blow that way, don't matter to us. Money breeze in from overseas, it just circle around and never even touch the ground. 'Cause he can't rightly pinch our bananas or fish, now can he? A dictator need a secret police, but them boys don't know even know how to keep a secret. Good thing Guili's pro-Japan and Tamang's side's pro-America, otherwise Island Security wouldn't have no work at all. Still, things been awful quiet since Tamang died. Guili's just waiting for us to act up, throw bombs, tack up slogans, something to give him an excuse.”

“Interesting, I'll say that. Real interesting, but it ain't got no reality. You make us out like simple folk ain't never seen money, but those days're long gone. Ain't nobody here that principled. We all want our radio cassettes. We want our blue jeans. And specially, we want our rice. The best thing them Japs ever did was teaching us the taste of rice,” preaches the big mama. “Worst thing too. 'Cause you can't grow it here, you gotta buy it.”

“You said it!” seconds the old man. “I'm from the generation what first tasted rice. Same as Guili. Couldn't believe it, thought I died an' gone to heaven. Make a man go crazy, that taste. Better we shouldn'a known it at all.”

“Isn't the President's job to protect us?” argues Mr. Know-It-All. “Keep the big countries outside the reef?”

“But the rice bomb done dropped anyway. President Guili's not gonna stop no tide. Even Tamang did a better job of seawallin' Japan,” says the lanky fellow.

“Hamburgers 'stead of rice. Big diff'rence,” says the old woman, perking up at the thought of the island's one and only burger joint, though she's never actually tasted a hamburger. If only her grandson would go buy her one.

“Well, maybe not. Isn't easy being a small country,” echoes the old man feebly.

“Take away the country, we still got the people,” says Mr. Know-It-All.

“But that's just what this global-ation today don't allow,” says the lanky fellow, proud of the big words he knows. “Just like we don't like people to leave the village, big countries don't like us little islands floatin' off alone. They got to work us in somehow. Give us aid, sell us junk, send us tourists, build bases, an' we just gotta put up with it. Just the way it goes nowadays. That's why we need somebody like Guili to do the troubleshooting with the outside world.”

“That's right,” seconds the old man. “Somebody gotta do the dirt work. Even if he is a crook.”

“Hang on, don't you think we're all maybe just a little too smart for our own good? Know-nothing island folk talking like regular experts!” says Mr. Know-it-all.

“ 'Specially since we forget ever'thing soon as we leave this here market an' go right back to being good little villagers, glad to do what our President tell us. Something special 'bout this place,” says the lanky fellow, thinking of his time in the Philippines, “even if our soundin' off don't carry far. Could say it's these benches do the talking, not us.”

“Yep, the gab goes on, only the speakers change. Our behinds get smarter every day, but we don't never do nothing,” the old man sighs with resignation.

“Yah,” the old woman tags on, “but what d'ya make of them handbills all over town?”

Few would disagree that World War I marked the real beginning of the twentieth century (much as the nineteenth really began with Napoleon's defeat in 1814). By 1914, local turmoil was building toward “world” turmoil, albeit limited to European battlefields—a singular moment in time and space for people all over the planet. Only with the twentieth century is everyone implicated in one world, like it or not.

The War to End All Wars may have been confined to Europe, but surrogate skirmishes flared up in colonies all around the globe. In a corner of New Guinea known as Kaiser Wilhelmland, a British Army brigade wiped out a defenseless German reconnaissance unit comprised mostly of natives; while in Tanganyika, German East Africa, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn's tiny riverboat did battle with a German gunship. In Micronesia, the Empire of Greater Japan, having severed diplomatic relations with Germany on August 23, landed its First Naval South Seas Expeditionary Force in the Marshall Islands on October 6. This was followed on the twentieth of the month by a Second Expeditionary Force to the Carolines and Maríanas, and a third to the Navidads on the twenty-fifth. The Germans put up almost no resistance. Germany lost territories five and a half times the size of the Fatherland, and Japan gained vast spoils with no actual fighting. It was like picking up a dropped wallet.

And so the inhabitants of these islands were pocketed into the twentieth century. Considering all that followed, that fateful day was either the beginning of a new era or the end of good times. For whereas the Spanish and Germans had endeavored to edify and manage these colonies, never intending to actually live there, the Japanese wanted to emigrate. Japanese settlers came crushing in en masse, as if the islands were uninhabited. They dried
katsuobushi
bonito fillets, they planted sugar cane, they brought rice and soy sauce too. Like the dirt-poor Spaniards who shipped out to the Americas in the seventeenth century, or Irish to New England in the eighteenth, or Chinese to California in the nineteenth, early twentieth-century Japanese headed either to Manchuria or the “Domestic South Seas.”

When people move, cultures move with them. So when these “domesticators” came, it goes without saying (yikes, those words again!) the natives found themselves overtaken by Japanese culture. The new landlords built Shinto shrines on the islands, established Japanese schools. Unlike the British who never made the Queen's English mandatory for the whole Indian population—only those ambitious individuals seeking employment with the ruling class—Greater Japan required all the islanders, now second-class imperial subjects, to learn the Japanese language, pray at Japanese shrines, and ultimately—if male—be drafted into the Japanese military.

Among the waves of Japanese who flooded into Navidad at the time was a katsuobushi maker from Kochi, across Osaka Bay on the backwater island of Shikoku. A bonito fisherman in his youth, he'd lost three fingers of his right hand to a tangle of rigging, which dry-docked his career. Up to that point he'd caught fish; now he went over to the processing side and mastered the art of curing them. In 1929, hearing that a new bonito-curing plant was to be set up in the Navidads, he left behind a wife and child and made for
Namidajima
, the “Tearful Islands” as they were then called. Formerly mere ports of call for taking on food and water and bait, these Domestic South Sea islands were now producing great quantities of sugar and katsuobushi, and technical skills like his were in high demand.