Flying Blind

The sky remained gray but little breeze accompanied this persistent threat of rain. The temperature was mild —probably seventy-five degrees—but mugginess undermined it: I was sticky in my black jacket and clerical garb, lightweight though it was.

As I walked along, travel bag in hand, at the side of the white-uniformed chief of police—who was about as talkative as the stone dogs outside the Oriental Gardens restaurant on West Randolph Street—I was getting discreet but amazed glances from almost everybody.

“They don’t see many foreigners around here,” I said.

“No.” He kept his eyes straight ahead as we marched along, didn’t even look at me when we spoke.

“But you said you have priests.”

“Two. For Chamorro, the missions. Spanish priests. Darker skin than you.”

The morning was still young, and clusters of giggling children, knapsacks on their backs, were heading for school, and an occasional straggling fisherman trudged toward the pier. Handcart peddlers wound their way among the bicycles and pedestrians, hawking in their language, making it sound as if torture were being performed on them, while postmen and policemen on their rounds pinged the bells on their bicycles to clear a path.

Of course, nobody dinged a bell at the chief of police, who was diminutive of stature but towering in bearing; in fact, everybody was clearing a path for us, as we left a trail of intimidation and astonishment in our wake, the chief and the foreigner.

“You have a nice town here,” I said.

“We have factory, hospital, post office, newspaper, radio station, electric light.”

“It’s a modern place, all right.”

On the other hand, they didn’t seem to have indoor plumbing. The side streets were unpaved and dusty, and lined with an assembly of bedraggled stores and ramshackle private homes with tin roofs; outhouses were easily glimpsed, even if they did lack our traditional half-moon.

We were four blocks from the waterfront when the street opened onto the town square, built around a rather grand, official-looking white wooden two-story building, colonial-style with pillars and double doors. The place was like an ice cream salesmen convention: everybody going in and out wore white suits or white shorts and white shoes with white Panama hats or white pith helmets or white military caps.

“Court of Justice,” Chief Suzuki said, quietly proud. “My office here.”

But we didn’t go in; the chief had paused at a black sedan parked out front. He barked at a cop in white shorts, caught on his way into the courthouse; the cop bowed, on the run, went inside and shortly thereafter another servile young copper in white shorts, white cap, and black gunbelt came trotting out and saluted the chief. The chief gave him some instructions, the young copper said, “Hai,” and opened the rear sedan door for me.

I took my cue, and the chief got in after me, with the young copper going around the front to play chauffeur.

“Would it be impolite of me to ask where we’re going?” I inquired, as we pulled out between bicycles. The backseat was roomy; it wasn’t a limo, but this Jap buggy with its cushiony black interior was comfortable, even though it rode like a lumber wagon—they’d have to go some to catch up with American automaking.

“Forgive my rudeness,” Chief Suzuki said. “I escort you to meet shichokan.”

“Oh. Local official of some kind?”

“Yes. What you call ‘governor.’” He pondered that for a moment. “Not governor of Nan’yo chokan; he is not chokunin. He is governor of shicho.”

“You mean, he’s the governor of Saipan?”

“Not Saipan only. Governor of all Mariana Islands.”

“Oh…but not of Micronesia.”

“Yes.” He seemed pleased that his intelligence and communications skills were overcoming the limitations of the slow-witted child in his care. “I instructed Lieutenant Tomura to call ahead. The shichokan…” He chose his words carefully. “…anticipation our arrival.”

Then he leaned back, happy with himself over that memorable sentence.

“Does the, uh…shichokan speak English?”

“Yes. Not as well as mine. But he does speak.”

We passed a pleasant park with a bandshell, yet another confounding familiarity in this foreign place; somehow it was oddly reassuring when we glided by a pagodalike shrine on a tastefully landscaped plot.

“Buddhist?” I asked.

The faintest frown passed over the chief’s stone visage. “Shinto.”

“I see. You mind if I roll the window down?”

“Please,” he said.

It was warm in the car, and the only breeze available was the one stirred up by our movement. The chief rolled his window down, just a little, a nice politeness on his part.

“Do you mind my asking what the population of Garapan is?”

The chief said, “Fifteen thousand people. Few thousand islanders.”

Glad he broke it down for me.