ISLANDS

I have a penchant for islands, and nearly any island will do. Particularly those with Maugham-type characters like Capt. Andy Thomsom, a retired copra boat skipper who was living the good life in the Cook Islands when we met a dozen years ago. Capt. Andy was from Brooklyn, and he wasn’t particularly pleased with the recent arrival of tourists on Rarotonga. Swilling a glass of Red Hackle, the local Scotch, he told me: “I wish there weren’t no such animal.”

Capt. Andy sat slumped in a chair on the porch of his thatched shack; he was reminiscing. “This was the perfect island when I came here--the nearest thing to paradise I ever saw.” But that was years earlier, and even the Cook Islands couldn’t hold out forever. So when did Capt. Andy notice the change? He smiled, and one gold tooth flashed in the afternoon sunlight. “When I came home one day and saw that my wife had taken off her pareu and was wearin’ panties!”

Although he grumbled about the jets and the tourists, Capt. Andy seemed about as content as a man could hope to be. Once a week he bicycled into town for another bottle of Red Hackle; he had five sons, two daughters, a wife he adored and a lagoon full of fish. And just before I left the island, one of the new hotels had agreed to supply Capt. Andy with a lifetime of Red Hackle. That made him quite happy, so he smiled again and his gold teeth flashed once more. Yes, he was about as content as a man could be who’d traveled all that way from Brooklyn to marry an island girl and skipper a copra boat in a world where the trades almost never stop blowing.

I feel a touch of melancholy when I recall the other times spent with another legendary figure, Henry Rittmeister, whom I met on Raiatea, one of Tahiti’s neighbor islands. “Ritt” was searching for fire walkers to perform at the Hotel Bora Bora, and over a beer at the old Hinano Hotel he told me how he came to be in French Polynesia.

A German, he’d worked his way to Tahiti in 1938 with the intention of becoming a French citizen, but his timing was off. Soon after his arrival, Germany invaded France, and Rittmeister, still a German citizen, became Tahiti’s only prisoner of war. Just like that, he was locked up. Well, it wasn’t so bad, Ritt recalled. He was treated well, and whenever his guard slipped off to Papeete to get drunk--and that was frequently--he would implore Ritt: “Please, now Ritt . . . don’t run away.” Ritt never did. Besides, this was an island, so where would he run to? And anyway, he liked his captors and they liked him.

Little is taken seriously in Tahiti--even war. Of course, there was no fighting--not on Tahiti, anyway--so Ritt remained and married a stunning girl from the Astral Islands; the last I heard, they were living on Moorea beside a lagoon. Each morning, I’m told, Ritt slips out the door of his bungalow and dives into the water--a big blond man with eyes the color of the lagoon itself. Rittmeister is a man with a huge soul, and perhaps his search for a meaning to life will be realized one day as he lives out his time in the South Seas.

The island where we originally met, Raiatea, is simply stunning. The Faaroa River flows, sweet and pure, from mountains ringed by clouds. It was in one of its verdant valleys that the Maoris of New Zealand once lived. Grass huts hang over river banks, and wild pigs root through the jungle and buro trees spread their shade. Mountains rise like monuments, incredibly green, with coconut palms cas- cading down their slopes. On Raiatea, there is no reason to hurry. Where would one go? To town on market day, per- haps. Or possibly to Tahaa, the little island that shares the lagoon with Raiatea. Each day blends into another until it makes little difference whether it is Monday or Saturday, and after a while, not even the month or year matter very much.

Although Raiatea is the largest of French Polynesia’s leeward islands, it has but one post office, one hospital, a couple of hotels and a few cars, but beaucoup motorbikes. Young men still climb Mt. Emahanie, gathering a flower that grows nowhere else; afterward, they take the delicate blooms to their favorite vahine.

When I met Rittmeister, he was staying at the ramshackle Hotel Hinano, which is named after a beer and appears to be nearly as old as the island itself. Locals were playing billiards in the lobby, and others were drinking beer. It was a hot afternoon, and I stopped to chat with Ahtchoung Chong, the bartender. Fishnet hung from the ceiling and a pinball machine was squeezed into a corner next to a jukebox, a relic left over from the Glenn Miller era, or perhaps long before that. Chong said that on Saturday nights he sells nearly enough Hinano to fill the lagoon. He waved his arms. “Whole family busy. Saturday night everybody come to town.”

I was reminded of Quinn’s, the old bar on Tahiti. It’s gone, a victim of “progress,” but for legions of visitors, Quinn’s was Tahiti. It was the watering hole of dope heads and derelicts, French sailors, French Legionnaires, runaway husbands and shiploads and jet-loads of travelers who came to see where the action was. Beer bottles were heaved by its habitues: Susie No Pants, Vili Vala and dozens of other colorful characters. Without question, Quinn’s was the dirtiest, stinkiest, most shameful and beloved bar in all of French Polynesia. Paint peeling off the ceiling fell into the customers’ drinks. Nothing was ever repaired. Whatever broke was tossed out--or ignored altogether.

Quinn’s roared night and day. It was a bamboo jungle, a habit, a drug, a curse, with the most wicked reputation in French Polynesia. Fights broke out regularly. Women battled women--biting, clawing, scratching, cursing. The band played on while tourists crouched at ringside tables or watched from the relative safety of booths in the background. It wasn’t merely the fighting or the marathon drinking that gave Quinn’s its reputation. There was the communal rest- room, a boy-girl facility that was separated from the bar by a flimsy piece of cloth. More than one unsuspecting vahine ran out screaming after having had the wits scared out of her by some big, happy-go-lucky Tahitian who stumbled in, flashing a broad grin.

Quinn’s regulars would fill the pages of an X-rated novel. The place didn’t have a thread of a conscience. It was a grimy, crowded waterfront joint, permeated by the odors of stale beer and disinfectant, too much cigarette smoke and too little fresh air. And so what did the French do? They tore down Quinn’s to make room for an ugly five-story office building. Damn!

After that, several of Quinn’s regulars moved in disgust over to Moorea, the island where Rittmeister lives, just across the Sea of the Moon from Tahiti. Even on a cloudy day, Moorea is visible from the waterfront at Papeete. Moorea is where I met Albert Hering, an old Swiss guy who wears soiled T-shirts and a pareu. He was on the terrace of his home, which faces the sacred peak, Tamaru Tofa, and he was sipping coffee from a cereal bowl. Although he’s in his 70s, his enthusiasm for life belies his age. He calls his retreat Chez Albert, and it is the best buy in French Polynesia, a scattering of humble bungalows whose windows frame the most beautiful bay on earth. M. Hering charges only a few bucks a day for the units, but he is an eccentric; he refuses to answer letters. One must simply take a chance and hope that a reservation is waiting upon arrival. Even then, M. Hering discourages guests from remaining for longer than one month. That’s as much time as he’s willing to share his beloved island with strangers. A renegade, he ran off to Tahiti as a young man, was hypnotized by its beauty and never bothered to leave.

A gleam came into the old man’s eyes. “Why should I go away when my heart is here?”

He points to Tamaru Tofa and his garden with the bananas and breadfruit trees, and you can tell by his expression that he envies not a single soul on earth.

Should I choose an island for myself, it very well could be Huahine. One hundred miles south of Tahiti, Huahine is a lifetime removed from the pace of Papeete. Until several years ago, it was left to slumber. Trading schooners called infrequently, and the airplane still hadn’t arrived. Yolande Inglebrecht recalls washing her clothes in the river that pours from the mountains near her parents’ home. As a child, she fished and helped tend chickens and pigs, and later she attended school in Papeete, sailing on a copra boat between her island and Tahiti. To her knowledge, there has never been a crime on Huahine--never a murder or a robbery. It was only recently that a gendarme was sent to the island, but only to quell an occasional family argument.

Even with air service, Huahine remains remote. One can travel miles without seeing another soul. Once a week, the inter-island schooner chugs into port at Fare to take on watermelon, breadfruit, limes, fresh fish and other provisions destined for Papeete. As towns go, Fare is small--only a couple of blocks long, with a population of about 450. Grocer Kiau Lai Wong sells onion soup, mushrooms and canned chestnuts that he imports from Paris. But wily old Wong doesn’t stop with groceries; he also sells bicycles, electric fans, garden hoses and windsurfing gear.

The 12-room Hotel Huahine features beds, tapa curtains and little else, other than an exceptionally good dining room. From its terrace, one can catch the action--the dock with its mountain of watermelon, the myna birds in the garden and the street people passing along the waterfront.

Whenever I think of the South Seas, I recall Mary Pritchard’s Rainmaker Inn at Pago Pago in American Samoa. It wasn’t much of a hotel, but it possessed character. The bedsprings squeaked, and the rain pounded the roof like a rivet gun. Whenever the 15 rooms were full, Mary created others by installing dressing screens in the hallways. That’s where I slept, amusing myself by studying the lizards as they crawled across the ceiling on insect patrol. At Mary Pritchard’s, guests mixed their own drinks. When it was time to settle up, Mary told them to figure out their own bills.

“Just don’t cheat me,” she’d warn.

And so far as I know, no one ever did.

Further, I suspect that Mary’s was the setting for “Rain,” Somerset Maugham’s tale of lust and violence. Samoans swear that Sadie Thompson was real. They say that she strolled off a ship one day--hips swiveling, carrying her wind-up Victrola--and that she boarded the same ship several months later, hips still in motion after having corrupted the missionary in Maugham’s classic short story. After that, she sailed away to Western Samoa; at least, that is the story that the Samoans tell.

Western Samoa is the home of Aggie Grey, who’s a legend in the South Seas. I recall when chickens ran through the rooms at Aggie Grey’s hotel, and there was usually a lizard running across a wall. Aggie’s was unsophisticated but colorful and genuinely friendly. The hotel has grown. Instead of 10 rooms, I counted more than 100 the last time I visited Western Samoa. Stalks of ripe bananas hung outside the doors, and colored lights shone from palms like the bulbs on a Christmas tree. Rain pounded the roof, and the heavens exploded with thunder, but it was snug indoors. Everyone feels at home at Aggie’s. It was Aggie who took such good care of our Marines during World War II. When the Marines landed, she became the Hamburger Queen of the South Seas, feeding the Marines and comforting them. At the same time, her bankroll grew fat, and Aggie began adding rooms. She also gave birth to seven children, although both of her husbands had died when I knew her. She was remarkable, with a marvelous lust for life that belied her 80-odd years. The last time we met at her place, she wore a muumuu, shell beads and a huge smile.

“Another beer?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

Of all the characters I’ve met on islands, none was more abrasive--yet more genuinely concerned with his guests’ well-being--than Al Seitz, proprietor of the Grand Hotel Oloffson in Haiti. An enigma, the burly Seitz was as much a part of Haiti as the palm and mango trees that spread their shade in front of the hotel. Seitz, who was born in New York, was a huge, cigar-chomping brute of a man who described his garish gingerbread palace as a hotel of “international repute.” Well, Al exaggerated. That wasn’t a particularly accurate description, because the last time I saw the Grand Hotel Oloffson, it was a decaying conglomeration of 28 rooms--no two alike--and its lounge was crowded with sagging sofas, wicker chairs, seedy throw rugs . . . and an abundance of charm. It’s a joke, a preposterous joke, with towers and cupolas that lean in all directions. The hotel has variously been described as the Greenwich Village of the tropics, Disneyland with mosquitoes and Tobacco Road with papaya and palms. Still, it continues to attract a variety of celebrities: Anne Bancroft, Ali MacGraw, Sen. Barry Goldwater and author Graham Greene. And there was Truman Capote. Like Capote, Al Seitz is gone, although his spirit remains a part of Haiti, which, without argument, is the most interesting island, culturally, in the entire Caribbean.

Sputtering fires glow in the steaming darkness of Port-au-Prince. And although poverty grinds at the island’s very soul, its people remain artistic, turning out magnificent paintings and woodcarvings. The government of Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier is corrupt, but tourism is the hope of the Haitians. A new road created with tourist dollars runs 40 miles from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel, a charming seaside village on Haiti’s south coast, where a modern hotel was built by Erick Denies and his American-born wife, Marlene. It is called the Jacmelienne, and it contains copies of the magnificent lamps that glow in Paris’ Place Vendome. Denies’ sister, Adeline, welcomes other visitors at Pensione Craft, the family’s ancient home with a staircase that leads to bedrooms sheltered by a metal roof. The inn is a repository of antiques--furnishings from Galleries Lafayette in Paris and priceless Haitian objects. To awaken here is to realize that one is somewhere special. Cocks crow just outside one’s window, and the smell of bread baking in an ancient oven wafts up the stairwell.

And, well, there is Grenada, the beauty of which digs deep into the soul--the American invasion now only a memory. Rain forests turn day into darkness, and waterfalls shower sheltered coves. Strolling the streets and beaches of the island are dozens of earthy characters. Given the opportunity, I’d put up again at Joe Gaylord’s resort, called Twelve Degrees North, which is a scattering of bungalows overlooking a private beach not far from the new airport that the Cubans built before being driven from Grenada. Joe’s own home features a wall-less living room that frames the sea and the white clouds that scud across the horizon.

Joe is an ex-New Yorker who finds life on this island sweet, what with a girlfriend half his age, a stock of his favorite booze and a handful of friends, mostly expatriates like himself. Imagine John Wayne in sandals and a pair of cutoff shorts and you get a pretty good picture of Joe Gaylord.

At the other end of the island, Betty Mascoll welcomes guests to her fine old plantation home, Morne Fendue. Breezes blow through open windows, funneling through rooms with superb antiques and 12-foot-high ceilings. At Morne Fendue, guests bathe in claw-foot tubs and stroll through gardens that are a jungle of bougainvillea vines, banana trees, orchids and vegetables. A room with three meals, afternoon tea and all the booze the liver can tolerate comes to about $25 a day.

And there is Harbour Island in the Bahamas and a special place that’s wedged in at the end of a dock. It is called Valentine’s Inn, and it serves the best conch fritters I ever tasted. I arrived at sunset, ordered a rum punch and joined other guests in the funky old parlor next to the bar. A bird cage filled with hibiscus towered above a couple of sofas, and a chess set was spread out across a table. Hurricane lamps lent their light, and the room was alive with a mix of characters who seemed to have strolled straight out of the pages of a Steinbeck piece. Don’t get me wrong: Valentine’s isn’t elegant. It’s just that it possesses a friendliness and warmth that sets the soul at ease. Certainly, the rooms are only ordinary, but the sense of well-being is contagious, particularly if you happen to be an island freak in search of a place with unpretentious quality. The beach is at the door; the sun is blissfully warm, and the only sound one is likely to hear at dawn is that of birds chirping in the shrubbery.

How could I rhapsodize about islands and their characters without referring to Hawaii? Particularly Kauai and Auntie Louise Marston, who is the hostess-bartender-entertainer at Tahiti Nui--Kauai’s answer to Quinn’s old place in French Polynesia. There are a couple of minor differences: Tahiti Nui doesn’t reek of disinfectant, and seldom do the customers get into a brawl. Instead, Auntie Louise encourages romance. Island boys and girls drop by to dance, and the tourists stop to capture the feeling of having discovered a little of the old Hawaii. Tahiti Nui sags a bit, but with rain pelting down on the roof and Auntie Louise vocalizing, there is no happier place on the entire island. Sometimes, parties go on till dawn. Or until Auntie Louise yawns, puts down her ukulele, snaps off the lights and tells everyone to go home.

“Auntie Louise is going to bed,” she’ll say, “. . . alone.”