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Who
is Steve?
by
Mort Rosenblum
As a foreign
correspondent, my job involves the usual upheavals, small
wars and workaday mayhem. Every so often, however, the mail
includes a pleasant surprise which takes me away from that
boring routine; a letter from Harold Stephens, filled with
some real excitement. You can spot Steve's letters from across
the room: The address is written in urgent printed characters,
with the no-nonsense, slightly askew strokes of a man who
has struck gold and is racing to catch the last burro to Eureka.
The envelope seems to twitch and quiver from all the energy
within.
I remember
one which reached me in Singapore, full of the usual chatty
news: "chased by crocodiles . . .," "capsized
off Tioman Island . . .," "pirates nearly got us
near the Celebes. . . ." At the end, when he added, "Wish
you were here," and I thought: me, too. If it was merely
a matter of voracious reptiles, shipwrecks or killers afloat,
I'd bet on Steve, hands down.
What always struck me was the tone of the letters. Always
humble, courtly, full of derring-do but absent of bravado.
But this is only to be expected. Adventure is Harold Stephens'
natural state. To boast of his exploits would be like bragging
about breathing
A product
of long nights with Conrad on a Western Pennsylvania farm,
he grew up with a code of honor and a sense of ingenuous wonder.
He is burly and broad-shouldered-in "Mutiny on the Bounty"
he doubled for Brando when action got intense-but his buckles
don't swash. Handsome, with eyes that, in fact, twinkle, he
is no ladykiller. His code, in that regard, is more Sir Walter
than Flynn.
Steve can give you Lord Jim by heart: "He saw himself
saving people from sinking ships . . . cutting away masts
in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line, or as
a lonely castaway, barefoot and half-naked, walking on uncovered
reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation."
He can tell you about everyone of Maugham's rubber planters
and district officers.
He is
always after something that eludes normal men. If someone
tells him a prehistoric, enigmatic Big Kneecap is running
loose in the Burmese backcountry, he'll be off before the
informant finishes his sentence. If he hears of an ancient
Greek olive oil convoy lost in the Mariana Trench, he'll head
out with snorkel and swim fins. Unlike quixotic amateurs,
Steve most likely will bring back the kneecap and olive pits.
One day
Steve announced to friends that he would build a vessel to
take him on his odysseys to forgotten archipelagos and against
currents that others avoided as a bad idea. It would be made
of cement. Of course, we thought. Months later, we were spending
our weekends slapping concrete across a transom.
Steve's
Third Sea must have done a million miles, its low-slung pirate-brown
schooner hull crashing the reefs in every lost corner of the
Southern Hemisphere. He racked up adventures even he hadn't
dreamed of, from the nastiest straits of the Philippines to
Cook's favorite waters across the Pacific.
One day,
in another of these letters, the news was bad. The Third Sea
was blown onto the rocks off Hawaii in a hurricane. Even Lord
Jim couldn't have saved her; it must have been a hell of a
blow. If there was ever the time for a little self-pity, this
was it. Not a trace of it. Steve had lost a love of his life,
but he had others.
Once I
tried to write a book about Steve. But who would believe it?
Anyway, he writes his own books, and they're good ones. But
my notes spill out of a large crate. Steve lied about his
age to join the Marines so he could fight in the Pacific.
He exaggerated his language skills so he could be a translator
in China. Imprisoned by the Chinese communists, he escaped
and swam out to a passing junk. He rode a motorcycle across
Australia, a jeep across Russia and-was it a pogostick across
the Arctic?
Occasionally,
word slipped out about his affairs of the heart. A gentleman,
he does not talk much of these matters. Only later, for instance,
his family back home discovered why he returned from Tahiti
with a cast on his arm. A Tahitian woman, distraught at his
leaving, drove him off a cliff.
Once Steve
had a respectable job in naval intelligence and was married
to a woman of Philadelphia high society. The marriage ended.
That was when he went to Tahiti. One ranking government officer
tried to talk sense into him. He invited Steve home to a family
dinner and sat him down to watch a television series called,
"Adventures in Paradise," to explain the ridiculous
Hollywood romanticizing of a dull reality. Soon afterward,
Steve was in the cast of the series. And in paradise.
Part of
the time, he now lives among the redwoods in Northern California,
in what ought to be a tame environment. But this is Harold
Stephens. When I telephoned him just before delivering these
lines to his publishers, he and his wife, Michelle, an island
girl herself, reported an earthquake that very morning, and
the rains were causing havoc. The Eel River was overflowing
its banks and flood waters raged all around, carrying off
power lines and outing the roads. Normal people had evacuated.
But even
more than he amasses adventures, he collects characters. He
is drawn to people who distinguish themselves from the chairs
they sit in. And anyone in that category is drawn to him.
With a writer's skills and a friend's warmth, Steve describes
the remarkable lives of those who populate his world.
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