The Navidad Incident (41 page)

Late at night in his private quarters, Matías tires of staring at the same old walls and lights a candle, then stares at the flame and waits for Lee Bo to come. Unless he performs this little ritual, the Palauan prince who died two centuries before in England will not appear. Like all ghosts, Lee Bo knows the dead should not interfere much in the affairs of the living. Their role is simply to look on, to enjoy the petty ripples that engulf the living, a pleasure not unlike watching a movie or reading a novel. Occasionally one of them might reveal himself to a favored character and talk about this and that, but he mustn't spoil the drama or discuss those parts of the pageant that the living cannot see. Never commenting on tomorrow's share prices nor on winning horses (not that Navidad has either a stock market or a race track), what counsel they might give is always from a step or two back. No, they come only when called, often not showing their faces even then. Whether the ghost is elsewhere or simply otherwise occupied, there's just no telling.

Matías hasn't seen Lee Bo since the fateful day Améliana strode into his office and delivered the Elders' pronouncement. He's had to work up to it; he didn't want to risk even more confusion. Matías is never quite sure what to make of the ghost and his passing comments; a trusted confidant, but such a reluctant augur of things. No spiritual adviser, he's more like a much older friend—Lee Bo was born in the 1760s, Matías in 1928—one who has made his fortune and long since retired.

Still, with all the pain and uncertainty that has befallen him, Matías has regrets and anxieties he needs to get off his chest. Some moments he's on the verge of erupting in anger, at others he yearns for a strong shoulder to lean on. Never given a proper opportunity to exonerate himself—that's what's so unfair. Though the more he considers it, what possible defense could he have offered? The Council of Elders didn't even deem his testimony worth hearing. Maybe rightly so. Who is he to doubt the wisdom of the Elders?

He's had too much to think about, thought all he can and then some. Now he's calmed down enough to want to hear what the ghost has to say. The time has come.

A youthful face wavers within the candle flame, and by the time Matías looks up Lee Bo is sitting across from him the same as ever: poised, contented and all-knowing, though in no hurry to speak. Still, the fact that the spirit chooses to appear at all must mean he still feels favorably toward Matías. Or is it just mutual curiosity, a performer-and-viewer thing? Whatever the case, Matías is always grateful for Lee Bo's visits, regarding his mere presence as a stroke of good fortune.

“Rough seas you've been sailing,” observes Lee Bo.

“You can say that again. Unfortunately I'm the one who made a mess of things, but still it all came down so suddenly.”

“Améliana cut your rigging, did she?”

“If that's what you want to call it. Suddenly she was just here and the whole room was full of those damn butterflies. She was even holding a bunch of
bua
flowers.”

“Aye, frangipani.”

“Nice to look at in a garden. Lovely smell. But in the hand of a caller, the flower of rejection,” says Matías almost under his breath, as if searching for the words from a distance. “I tell you, the instant I saw them, something in me died. Seeing her come with those flowers that morning was the worst thing I could've imagined. She wasn't just plain mad at me for what I did after the Yuuka Yuumai. No, that pose, that expression on her face, I knew she was acting on behalf of something bigger, either the Yoi'i Yuuka or the Council of Elders.”

“Twin straits,” intones Lee Bo.

“Well, it wasn't the Yoi'i Yuuka. Wasn't any spiritual transgression, but a secular crime. Améliana merely held out that bunch of
flowers and repeated, ‘We withdraw all respect for you.' My heart just stopped, the blood drained out of me. For some time I'd had a feeling something was up, but I had no idea it could be this bad. I sank in my chair, couldn't even move. I thought I was going to pass out. How could the Elders do that to me?”

“Ah, the living can scarce see e'en one pace ahead,” sighs the apparition.

“And you dead can?” snaps Matías, almost by reflex, then realizes the absurdity of his outburst. “No, we living can't see a thing.”

The two of them fall silent, as if waiting for something to say. There are moments no words can bridge.

“It all started with that torii gate,” mutters Matías.

“And the bulletins posted about. Followed in due course by the motor carriage vanishing. Then your meeting a young woman at Angelina's.”

“Were they all part of one scheme?”

“One scheme? The world is not so discrete as you might believe. Shew me an individual! The living, the dead, the thoughts and desires and longings of so many, layer upon layer, o'er time they all act as one.”

“I don't get it.”

“Oh no? If 'twere not so, how should the Yuuka Yuumai
draw in so many people? You yourself made full use of the principle—how else could you have fared so far as a politician in this land? And fared quite well, did you not?”

“You think so? The people were just
them
, the people, to me. I alone was an individual with free will—or so I thought.. Though maybe I was nothing more than the forces I tied together. I can't hold it against Améliana for what she did. She was bound up with other forces themselves.”

“One cannot hide things from gods and ancestors.”

“So there's no place for me to run?”

“In the ultimate sense, no. There is, tho, the path of not running.”

“But not still as president.”

It's the first time Matías has spoken out loud in days. He's needed Lee Bo here to bring himself to speak. He's the sole friend Matías can really trust.

“No way can I lose the Elders' respect and people's support and still act as president. Everybody would just laugh at the sight of me. Island Security's gone and disbanded, old ladies have beaten up Katsumata. Suzuki's gone straight back to Japan with his Brun Reef Oil Depot plan. No government clerk will give me the time of day. They've even torn down all my official portraits all over the country and burned them. Why, there's not a single petitioner out in front of the villa.”

“All this you know?” asks Lee Bo.

“Well, partly educated guesswork. I haven't lost my powers of deduction.”

Another silence. Both of them stare at the candle on the table.

“Where did I go wrong? At what point did I fail? With which decision?”

“All questions arising from your own personal perspective. Seen from Navidad as a whole, you were merely the helmsman of the hour, whether it was you needed Navidad or Navidad you. Precious little does it matter now, such stuff is politics.”

“I shouldn't have had Tamang offed, is that it? No man should dispose of his political enemies? Was I supposed to just sit by quietly and watch that idiot play havoc with everything I made? Just let him confiscate all the funds I raised? It wasn't just the money, dammit. After all that effort to squeeze investors in Japan and who-knows-where, to just go and shit on so many possibilities, it was criminal!”

“You call him—”

“That's right, a criminal. Tamang was on a rampage. I even went and met with him before it was too late. Oh, I tried to explain—why I was taking a percentage off the top of every ODA package, how I'd put those funds to use over the next twenty years—but did he listen? The fool had no notion of politics today, not a clue about economics. A country this size, government's just a fancy decoration. He couldn't get something so obvious through that thick skull of his: money calls the shots in industrialized countries, bureaucrats in socialist countries, and the army in developing countries. Good thing Navidad's so small we can only choose one of these. It's all we can do just to have our day in the shade of someone else's big umbrella and not find ourselves underfoot. Getting by while getting out of the way, pandering to pretexts of world peace, creating channels for their money to flow this way—it all takes capital. But try to tell him, the idiot wouldn't hear a word of it. He probably thought I was stashing away millions to retire in luxury. Hey, if I wanted a harem of a hundred young Filipinas, I could have that right now. I tell you, the man had zero political imagination. Couldn't see what was going on around him, in this country, in this part of the Pacific, how the world was going to look in the next few years. No idea. Never should have become president. No, dying was the only choice for him.”

“I see,” says Lee Bo, too softly to tell whether he's agreeing with Matías or merely prompting further discourse.

“If that plane hadn't crashed before the election, if I'd had Kurokawa's five million in hand, Tamang would've lost and not needed to die. Some opposition party! Legislator misfits and fellow American alumni, nothing but a bunch of whiners.”

“ ‘If,' you say. One cannot change history on a whim. Had I not died in England, who's to say that Palau might not today be a cultural colossus the rival of London or Paris? 'Tis naught but idle speculation.”

“Okay, so the plane crashed. Some old wartime jinx maybe, but that stupid pilot downed it with all its precious cargo right there.”

“Dull-witted, perhaps, tho not unskilled. 'Twas no fault of the pilot, that pyre. Indeed, had you founded your own flying folly, he would have made an able captain. His talk of two great birds, painted in green and yellow stripes like that soldiers' carriage … such grand dreams he regaled you with.”

“So you knew?”

“Indeed, I knew of your tribulations in amassing funds, the airship enterprise being just one of your ambitions. I may well have known ere you yourself.”

“Sure, I always wanted to start up Air Navidad. Decades-old Boeing planes would do just fine. Secondhand hulks from Aloha Air or Garuda. Hell, I'd have even taken old Air Nauru planes. Just three of them, that's all I needed. At eight million dollars each, that's twenty-four million. Throw in all the other equipment, say thirty million. If I invested fifty-one percent, I'd have a fine company, which I could just as easily hand over to the country. My money or the state's, what's the difference? The state coffers don't earn interest, that's the only reason I saved up under my name. In a Swiss bank, one of those famous secret accounts, but that still doesn't make it my own private savings. I'd hand it all over to Jim Jameson tomorrow. Never planned to spend the money myself anyway.”

“Tho why an aerial enterprise?”

“You of all people, my bonny Prince from Palau, should know that. For the last few centuries, these islands, this region has seen plenty of foreigners pass through, but no locals leaving. You were the single exception. Unfortunately, you died for it.”

“Aye, perished I did.”

“Our history's nothing but stories of others bringing things here that sealed our fate. People here never got to choose—only you and me. Don't tell me you don't see us in the same boat. We're allies. Isn't that why you chose me to haunt?”

“Aye, a kindred spirit.”

“A fellow islander who made it abroad. Lucky I didn't die away from home, so I could bring back my bounty alive. I imported instant noodles and became president. And all the while I kept thinking, we islanders have got to cross the ocean on our own. We have to take control of our own destiny. We should be the ones to decide who goes where to study what, who we invite here to the islands, how many tourists we let in for how long. A country this size, where we stand in relation to other countries ought to be at the very heart of our political ideology. Domestic affairs we can leave to the Council of Elders. Yet nobody here knows a thing about the outside world. I'm the only one who knew enough to build a framework for future relations with the major powers. That was my job and that's what I was doing. And
that's
why I had that know-nothing Tamang snuffed out!”

“Indeed,” says Lee Bo, trying to calm him down.

Matías looks upset that he's come out with the forbidden topic of assassination. Peeved and moody, he continues talking. “Of course, an airline's just a symbol. Whether on our own planes or Philippine Air or Continental Air Micronesia or JAL, we'd still get where we're going. But symbols are everything in politics. Petty officials can manage things as they stand because it's all practical matters, but a politician has to present a vision of the future, which calls for showmanship and myths. We need to go abroad of our own doing, see what there is to see and bring back what we ourselves want. And for that we need three secondhand 727s. Cut-rate rigs, Boeing's best sellers of the century, Third World specials that'll still have plenty of spare parts thirty years from now. In the beginning we'd have to hire foreigners like that cracker who flies the Islander, but eventually we've got to see our Navidadian boys grow up to be pilots. Navidadian girls for stewardesses too.”

“Fine flagships you fancy, eh?”

“Yeah, especially 727s and Islanders. But there are any number of ways to go.”

“Tho I daresay, you tangled your own spinnakers when you met those two, Ketch and Joel, or else when you soiled your hands with the hostelry money. But perhaps I do you wrong. Yours was no error of judgment, only a lapse of luck.”

“That airfield, that five million up in smoke. Was it really Jap ghosts that did it?”

“ 'Twould seem so,” allows Lee Bo. “Your island gods do not allude to it.”

“Outside powers, then?”

“Such as may be construed.”

“Then it couldn't be helped.”

Matías looks relieved to know at least the island spirits haven't deserted him.

“Might we talk of something else?” asks Lee Bo hesitantly.

“Why sure,” says Matías, realizing he's been monopolizing the conversation. Lee Bo is so easy to talk to, the words just flow. Now it's his turn to listen to the ghost.