The Ragged Edge of the World by Eugene Linden Page B

couple who had a small guesthouse called Chez Aimé. The accommodations would have met with approval from the most austere Amish. Our room (no bathroom, of course) was sparsely furnished and lit by a single bare lightbulb, which went off with the generator at 11 p.m. After a few days, though, we felt ourselves falling under a spell. A beguiling order slowly emerged from what initially looked like a mere haphazard tropical garden in the front yard. Aimé began showing up with fish that he would catch before he went off to work in a copra plantation. He grew and ground his own coffee. We were inundated with fresh fruit—papayas, mangos, bananas and pineapples. He took us snorkeling. He eschewed swim fins, claiming (in French) that his feet could propel him perfectly well.
    He and his wife lived what could be called a mixed subsistence economy. But what a subsistence! Apart from the aforementioned fruits, he grew manioc, breadfruit, vanilla and coconut. He kept hens and a sow. His tools were old and outdated, but they all worked. I left thinking that if World War III broke out, Aimé might not notice.
    Back in Tahiti, we had a comical encounter with one of those charming scoundrels who prowl the backwaters of the world. I met Emil Yost through Madelaine, who found herself the object of a Gallic full-court press (including several rum punches) while I was off on an errand. When I returned to the bar at the Tahiti Village, Emil turned his charm on me, treating me to a monologue in broken English. “Yes, I have vineyard in California—Brookside, you have heard? . . . My house is next to Bob Hope. . . . We play golf, just off Hollywood Boulevard. . . . But I think I sell vineyard and move to Miami. . . . I try to buy this hotel [the Tahiti Village]. . . . I have four million in Swiss account, three millions in New York, yes! . . . and certificates of General Motors. . . . I say to my son, ‘Why work when we have money?’ But he want to travel. . . . Donald Nixon, a good friend, but bad businessman . . .”
    We arranged to play tennis the following day, but he didn’t show. Then I got a call from him. “I’ll meet you at the bar at 9:30. . . . I will explain.” Emil arrived with an official-looking man in uniform, and begged off. “I am sorry, I have appointment at 10:00, I forgot, yes?! But maybe I not go to Bora Bora and we meet later.”
    That was the last I saw of Emil. Later, talking with another expatriate, Nick Rutgers, I discovered that Nick had run into Emil at the gendarmerie later that morning, and that Emil had been carrying a briefcase. He told Nick that he had an appointment, but Nick knew that he had just been convicted for passing bad checks, and suspected that he was at the police station to begin his sentence.
    I did live out one small fantasy. During the 1976 trip, Madelaine and I visited Western Samoa before I went on by myself to New Guinea. Traveling around the green, green island of Upolu, I remembered a story Jeff Stookey had told me about snorkeling through an underwater passage that linked two caves, each of which opened to the ocean. You could swim in the mouth of one cave, take a deep breath and swim underwater until you saw the light hitting the surface of the water at the back of the other cave. Although the caves were linked at the back, their mouths on the ocean were several hundred feet apart. On a whim I asked one of the locals if he had heard of these caves, and somewhat to my disappointment (because I knew that if I went to the cave, I was going to have to try to make the swim) he had. He gave me directions. Madelaine was very dubious about the whole idea.
    After I donned my snorkel and fins, I swam into the entrance of the cave, where I saw a teenage Polynesian. I asked him where the passage was, and he pointed toward the back. I asked him how long you had to swim before you saw light, and he was pretty vague. He was more definitive when I asked