Ghosts of the Stump

Diamonds were priced to the advantage of the dealers on 47th Street in the early 90s. 50% profit was normal for most stones. My boss Manny gave his sales staff 5% of the gross and I had the luck to hook a middle-aged woman looking to buy a 5-carat F-color diamond for her aged mother in Florida. The transaction was concluded within a week. The price was over $50,000. Manny made the woman cry by charging $100 for shipping.

"Her tears were fake." Manny was a firm believer in Cato's old adage that the strongest acid in the world is a woman's tears. He had been married twice and I had fallen in love with enough women to agree with his assessment of her weeping. We never saw her again. Richie Boy thought that we were hard-hearted. Maybe he was right, but my commission was $2500. My savings account held over $6000. An add in the NY Times Travel Section offered around-the-world ticket for $1500.

"I'm going on vacation," I told Manny the next day.

"For how long?" It was January. Snow covered the sidewalks of New York.

"Six months." I planned on writing a novel about pornography. The Lonely Planet Guide suggested a budget of $10/day. My stipend allowed $1000/month. I was going to live like a prince and not be cold.

"Don't plan on having your job when you come up." Manny had worked 6 days a week since the time he was 15.

"I'm not." I was hoping to get lost on the other side of the world. Everyone was curious about my trajectory around the world. Most of my friends had been to Los Angeles. My parents had vacationed in Honolulu. Only my Uncle Dave had been to Biak. A large island north of Irian Jaya. The back end of the world.

"I fought in the battle of the Sump." He had been on a naval warship in WW2. "We bombed the hell out of the jungle. I lived on a destroyer for six months off Biak. I bet it hasn't changed since I was there. Let me know if the Dutch hotel is still open. Buy yourself a beer on me if it is."

Uncle Dave cuffed me $20. I read about the Battle of the Sump at the NY Library. It was the first tank vs. tank battle in the Pacific Theater. The defeated Japanese forces hid in a gigantic cave. The marines poured gasoline on them. only few hundred survived the conflagration spreading through the cavern. I would drink a beer for them too. I told my travel agent at Pan Express to book a stop on the island.

Two weeks later a Garuda 747 landed on the lengthy tarmac of Mokmer Airfield. The Indonesian Tourist Board hoped to develop Biak as a tourist destination. The passengers were greeted by a trio of near-naked black guitarists playing BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON. The musicians were near-naked because of the gourd capping their penis. A string of amulets directed the shell skyward. The hundreds of weary passengers reboarded the trans-Pacific. They were bound for Bali. I watched the 747 lift from the runway. Silence descended on the airfield like a long-borrowed cloak. The customs officials processed two missionaries and me. Dusk was roiling from the east with a rapidity contradicting the miasma of the languid evening.

Across the street from the terminal was a low wooden building with the name HOTEL IRIAN JAYA. It was Uncle Dave's hotel. The hotel wore the mantel of neglect with understated pride. The tropics were hard on buildings and even harder on people. Booking a room was facilitated by the absence of other travelers. The bellhop was wearing a vest and a gourd. His skin was the color of an old piano. Anthropologists called the inhabitants of Biak Melanesians.

"Have you ever heard of Africa?" I asked slowly.

"Africa." His eyes revealed a maze of miscomprehension. I tipped him a dollar. He said, "Terami kasih banyak."

'Thank you alot.'

A dollar could buy two beers and the gratitude of a poor working stiff. I put away my bags and opened the door to the veranda. Indonesian music was playing in the bar. The sun was setting on a mirror of slate gray sea. Joseph Conrad might have sat in this room. I sniffed at the air. So had my Uncle Dave. I went to the front desk and asked if I could make a phone call.

"Sorry." The Indonesian manager explained that the phone only worked for the island.

I was cut off from the world and decided to celebrate my isolation with a beer. The bar was at the end of a bamboo hallway. It was weakly lit by 40-watt bulbs.

Someone was smoking a clove cigarette. It wasn't a hippie. It wasn't an Indonesian or Biakian either. A white man with a beer-barrel chest was sitting with a diminutive oriental female. He looked like an overweight Popeye. He immediately noticed my staring. There was no one else in the bar.

"You get off the plane?" His accent was Panhandle Texas.

"Yeah, my uncle fought on Biak. He gave me $20 to drink beer at this hotel." I pulled out Dave's 'double sawbuck' and walked over to the table.

"Then you've come to the right place." He introduced himself as Larry Smith. We shared the last name, but he was a diver hired by a Singapore concern to open a diving school on Biak. "The sea here is virgin. The reef drops into chasms. Fish everywhere and even better old Jap ships sunk during the war. Wrecks, reefs, and cheap beer. I have a good boat, but it has a shit engine. Waiting for someone to fly in a new one from Surabaya."

Every word was magic. Larry learned his diving skills on the oil rigs of the Gulf. His right hand was missing two fingers from an accident off Mexico. None of his stories sounded like lies because he was too much the truth. His girlfriend came from Jakarta. They were staying at a less expensive hotel in town. My room was less than $10. His was $3. At midnight we finished the last beers in the hotel. So was Uncle Dave's $20

"I'm going diving tomorrow." He stood like he had spent too many years off dry land. His girlfriend helped balance him for land. Her 40 kilos acting a crutch to his girth.

"Where?'

"Out there?" He pointed to the flat sea. It had yet to lose the glow of day. "You want to come along. I'll show you the island too."

"Sure." No touts had approached us with plans for a day tour. "See you in the morning."

"Late. We don't get up early." They wobbled from the bar and I returned to my room. My one luxury was a world-band radio. I tuned to the BBC and fell asleep to a report about the first McDonald's opening in Moscow. I hadn't eaten a Big Mac in 10 years.

Hunger growled in my stomach like a rabid tiger in the morning. The shuttered windows were defeated by the equatorial sun. I washed my face in the sink and stumbled down the hallway to the dining area. I was the only guest for the breakfast buffet of eggs bacon toast coffee rice and fruit served by a gourd-adorned waiter. I didn't have the courage to ask why they didn't bother to cover their balls. Michael Rockefeller had been eaten by my server's brethren on the Asmat coast.

Food was not the answer. I drank water and ate a slice of toast. My waiter was grateful for his tip. $1. His smile revealed sharp teeth. The guide books assured travels no Biakians had eaten human flesh for over 50 years. The waiter's fangs looked flossed, but I exited from the hotel with a shiver.

The gunmetal sea was flat as a young girl's chest. The palm-fringed beach was littered with broken boats and bare bone pig carcasses. Large fish splashed at the corpses. I put my foot in the water. I hadn't come halfway across the world to be squeamish and stripped off my shirt. Within seconds my hangover was history.

Most Americans aspired to the cathedrals of Europe for their travels. I had lived in Paris for 6 years. A single night in Biak had exorcised questions about why I ever bothered the Occident. Biak's market was flush with exotic fruits and multi-colored birds. This was Conrad's Orient. LORD JIM. Jack London's TALES OF THE SOUTH SEAS. MCHALE'S NAVY. Larry's hotel would have been condemned by a bribed housing official in Appalachia. His girlfriend was washing a tattered shirt the size of a tent.

"Rarry." She called without lifting her head.

"Hey, man." Larry exited from the room naked. His girlfriend threw him a sarong with horror. He wrapped the shredded fabric around his waist. "Go figure. All the men around here wear nothing but a gourd. That's all right. But I go buck and she has a cow."

"You mistah." She didn't look his way. His penis was erect without any help from a gourd.

"Yeah, I mistah Rarry. The Indonesians still show a little respect for the white race. Guess the Dutch knew how to whip 'em good. Me, I believe in the carrot and not the stick, but the Dutch are a tough people. Have to be to grow a tulip. Give me a few minutes and we'll start our tour."

I tried to start up a conversation with his girlfriend. She spoke no English. Larry seemed stuck on American as his language. He didn't say good-bye to her, but said to me, "A good woman. Hard to find anything good human this far from anywhere."

An Indonesian was waiting by a Toyota Landcruiser. The rental cost was $20/day with fuel. There weren't too many roads on Biak and we weren't going far. First stop was the caves. They weren't too far from the airport.

"This is where the Japs were trapped by the Marines. Maybe 4000. Maybe more. The Marines asked them to surrender. The Japs said no. They were burned alive. Every week a few survivors fly in from Japan to honor their dead." Larry threw a rock into the pit. The smell was of deep earth. "I've never gone down there. You want to go?"

I shook my head. The smell of burnt flesh was still alive on the rocky walls. 500 dead for an Emperor who spoke like a crane. They deserved their rest. Larry drove back to town. We stopped at the fish tanks swarming with rare species for export to the West. He showed off his boat. It had no engines.

"Fucking chinks in Singapore promised engines last month but out this end of the world time is the only luxury not for sale." He shouted to a Biakian puttering with a Zodiac inflatable. "You ever free dive?"

"I have good lungs." I could hold my breath underwater a good two minutes.

"Where you free dive last?"

"Isla Mujeres Mexico." I had swam through a cave 100 meters long. It was 20 meters deep. I hadn't tried the hole until I was ready and said to Larry, "I'm good for 10 meters."

"What I have to show you won't take us that deep." He ordered the mechanic to fill the gas tanks and a minute later Larry and I were skating atop a reflection of the sky. Islands floated on the horizon like ships dedicated to never sinking. Their distance promised that their beaches were preserved in a time warp dating back to Uncle Dave's time and beyond into the dust of time. Larry slowed the engine and handed me a diving mask. "This is the place."

"Aren't you coming?" We were a good three miles from Biak. I strapped the mask over my head.

"It's better to see what is under us alone." He handed me a large rock.

"What's this?" I was good. Not very good. Only good.

"Th rock will take you down fast. Stay as long as you can. You'll never see something like this ever again. Few people will unless I get that engine from Surabaya."

I held the stone in my arms. It weighted over ten pounds. Larry nodded with a heavy head. I looked at the sky. The clouds said nothing about the sea. I dropped into the water on my back and plummeted into its depth for several long seconds until I spotted the long shape of a destroyer on its side. The markings were Japanese. Fish flowed through the battle wounds like smoke through a chimney. They numbered in the millions. Other ships lay in ruined shadows. This was defeat. The end of Japan. Uncle Dave must have seen the shattered ships aflame. Sailors like soldiers never tell the truth of horror. No one would believe them. My lungs were burning like those of a drowning man and I rose to the surface half-expecting to not find the Zodiac.

"Pretty damn impressive." Larry pulled me from the sea. His eyes scanned the horizon from something dangerous. He had not mentioned sharks.

"Jap." I huffed air into my depleted lungs.

"And there's more. I found a sea cave stacked with artillery shells. 20 meters down. Who the fuck would do something like that?"

"Japs." I was brought up to think of them as fanatical. So was Larry and Uncle Dave.

"Yeah, and now all they want to do is build a golf course here."

"And dive a little?"

"I can only hope for the best. What you think about beer?"

"Like it's a good idea."

Larry drove the Zodiac back to Biak without any detours. We drank the first bottle to Uncle Dave. The rest were to the dead. They all tasted cold.