ON RETURNING FROM KO, I found Maloko waiting patiently. She had heard about my affair with Little Sea, but she took my unfaithfulness philosophically, as though it were no more than one should expect from a man.
I was wondering just what I should do about Maloko, when I was saved from my embarrassing position by Ura, chief of police and sometime deacon of the church, who came with his three assistant policemen, Ears (Taringa), Husks (Puru) and Everything (Katoa), to tell me that Maloko was a married woman and that I was breaking the law of the island as well as of the Lord by keeping her.
Ears, the Leeward policeman, Husks, the one from Central Village, and Everything, the guardian from Windward Village, stood behind little five-foot Ura, nodding their heads gravely.
Ura smiled foxily, decorating his speech with apostrophes of the most flattering nature, for he seemed concerned lest he should anger me and equally concerned lest I refuse to give up Maloko.
‘I would not bother you,’ he explained, ‘about so unimportant a thing as a woman; but the difficulty is that her husband came to me yesterday and demanded that I find her. I did not tell him where she was. I merely said that she must have been strolling through the villages the past few months and had forgotten to go home. That was a clever speech of mine, for, excepting yourself, of course, I am the cleverest man on Puka-Puka…. Ah, a stick of tobacco! Thank you, Ropati-Cowboy, thank you! My three humble policemen also thank you.’ At this he flourished his stumpy arm towards his henchmen, forgetting, however, to share the tobacco with them.
Then, with a mealy-mouthed leer, he concluded: ‘And now, Ropati-Cowboy, if you will permit, I and my policemen will take Maloko back to her husband and nobody will be the wiser.’
I was amused by the shamelessness, the obsequiousness, and the barefaced lying of the little cop, and I was more than pleased to think that I should so easily get rid of Maloko.
At that moment she herself appeared, hurling scathing invectives at each of the policemen in turn. With a majestic wave of his hand and a soapy grimace at me, Everything stepped forward, seized Maloko, and dragged her out of the store, while she bawled like a schoolgirl.
I felt genuinely sorry for my late mistress. Picking up a pareu, a tin of beef and several other things, I ran after the police force and thrust them into Maloko’s arms. She dried her tears at once like a child when it receives the stick of candy it has been crying for. She smiled sweetly, tucked the valuables under her arm, gave me a flirtatious glance, stuck out her tongue at the chief of police, and peacefully followed Everything to her expectant husband.
I do not wish to give a false impression concerning the morals of the Puka-Pukans. Adultery is practically unknown on the island. Before the young people marry they are given what amounts to unlimited freedom to find temporary mates. I believe that they become sated with sex when young, leaving them with no desire for amorous adventures in middle life. The system works well here, but would not do, of course, in a country where malignant diseases are common. Maloko was an exception. She had been forced into marriage when very young – about twelve, I believe – by parents who had the more civilised notion of morals. She soon left her husband and went on a sex spree, for hers was no love match, and she had been cheated of her period of the usual sexual abandonment to which every young Puka-Pukan looks forward as a natural right. From that time on she had lived intermittently with her husband.
Maloko and I are good friends to this day. She has grown fat, and is as cheerful and carefree as ever, and has a large progeny by a new spouse.
*
At night there are shadows in the coconut groves of Puka-Puka – lacelike shadows of fronds, shadows of stiff-limbed pandanus trees, of ground bush and of the fleecy trade-wind clouds skimming low overhead. And there are the shadows of the young unmarried, wide awake now and slipping from tree to tree on their way to the love fests on the sea side of the islet.
One night not long after Maloko was persuaded to return to her husband, I crossed the causeway to Leeward Village and followed the outer beach where stretches of coral sand glimmer faintly under the light of stars and moon.
Presently I came to a spot where the young unmarried were gathered. A plaintive heathen strain sounded from a copse of bush; farther on someone was drumming a weird rhythm on a coconut shell while a girl and a boy danced before him. I could hear laughing cries from out on the reef and see shadowy figures here and there.
I cannot speak of all that I saw: it is enough to say that there were no spying chaperons, spoilsports or moralising parents to hinder the wild youth in their adventures or to prevent them from understanding one another as God must have meant them to. If there is any place on earth where men and women live naturally, surely it is on Puka-Puka.
Later, when a white resident agent came to the island, he tried to put a stop to the lovemaking on the outer beach. I immediately pleaded with him for ‘flaming youth’, pointing out the fact that it is not in the nature of the Polynesian to control himself in such matters. I also tried to convince him that if he prohibited free love among the young people, they would either turn to perverse practices or break the law, either of which would be worse than the present state of affairs. I urged that the Puka-Puka love fests are of great antiquity and cause no harm whatever on an island where there are no diseases to be transmitted and where unmarried mothers lose no social standing.
But the resident agent was new to the islands and a believer in a London-missionary-society code of ethics for primitive Polynesians. However, in the end he gave in; there was nothing else for him to do.
I am convinced that the freedom of the young people of Puka-Puka between the ages of fourteen and eighteen is the direct cause of their fidelity after they have selected permanent mates. They have unlimited opportunity to become intimately acquainted with each other, thus lessening the possibility of post-connubial disillusionment.
Until within a few years of my arrival on Puka-Puka it had been the custom for boys and girls to don their first grass skirt or pandanus loin-cloth upon joining the love fests. Marriage, as well as other sexual relations, was prohibited to males under eighteen and females under fifteen. The punishment for disobedience was months of hard labour digging out taro-beds, a punishment sufficiently severe to create a deep respect for the law. If an outraged father caught his fourteen-year-old daughter demurely donning a grass skirt, he would tear it from her and cuff her ears soundly; likewise, if a seventeen-year-old buck arrayed himself in a sennit belt, he was dealt with as the circumstances demanded, for to allow him to dress would be a tacit admission that he was old enough to join the lovemaking classes on the outer beach.
But upon reaching the legal age, clothing was given them: a valance-like piece of matting for the men, bound around their waists with the belt of sennit already described, and a bushy frond skirt for the girls. They were then permitted to ‘sin’ before marriage. All of this was a wise procedure, for it kept the young people from sexual indulgence until they had reached maturity, and so they grew to be a strong race. Their nakedness did not excite salacious thoughts, for it is well known to all those who have lived among savages, excepting only the missionaries, who refuse to be enlightened, that nakedness tends to allay sexual passion, while clothing aggravates it by exciting the imagination.
Nowadays the missionaries, in a strangely myopic and blundering fashion, have unwittingly reduced the age limit for girls to twelve years, and for boys to thirteen, for they insist on their being clothed at these ages. It would be impossible to convince them that by so doing they are promoting lechery instead of preventing it, for they accept no traditions but their borrowed Hebrew ones. This is nevertheless the case, for the simple-minded Puka-Pukans, who for ages have looked upon the wearing of clothing as an admission to sexual rights, consider that the authorisation of trousers and skirts for their children at the same time authorises them to wander to the sea side of the islet on moonlight nights.
Clothes! Clothes! Clothes! The missionaries are obsessed by the thought of clothes, sincere, good-hearted folk though many of them are. Longer skirts, longer sleeves, higher necks for the women’s dresses! ‘Cover up the sinful body!’ is the text of most of their sermons. A South Sea trader should not complain, I suppose, for the more clothing, the more copra; nevertheless, the whole business grates on me, and I would rather do less trading and see my neighbours return to more healthful habits of life.
The sun had just set behind the trees of Yato Point and the cloud-reflected light lay softly on the schoolhouse across the road, when one of the wild youth of Leeward Village poked his head in the doorway and beckoned me to come outside. His name was Rori (Sea Cucumber), but when I addressed him by this name he shook his head and said, ‘My name is not Rori. You must have someone else in mind. I am called Mr Chair.’
Then with many mysterious nods and grimaces he grasped my arm and urged me to come with him. My curiosity was soon aroused and I followed him briskly.
When we came to Husks’s house he stopped and, assuming a lackadaisical attitude, stared vacantly down the road, apparently not aware that Husks’s three fair daughters were gazing at us curiously. With an offhand, fribbling air he made a sign with his hand in such a way that an onlooker would have thought nothing of it, but it had deep significance for the three maidens.
Then he swung his right hand in a circle with all five fingers outspread; next his left hand with only three fingers showing. Then he clapped his hands and raised them to his shoulders in a motion which, to the initiated, might indicate the act of throwing water over the body in bathing. Finally he swung his right hand up and down as one would do in beating a tom-tom, and with that he again grasped my arm and we walked on.
When we had gone some little distance he explained that these were the signals of his secret society. His pantomime meant, ‘Five girls and three girls meet five boys and three boys at the freshwater bathing tank when the curfew tom-tom sounds.’
‘They count them up on their fingers,’ Mr Chair went on. ‘Five and three are eight. So eight of them will come, one for each of us.’
‘Us!’ I said. ‘Am I to be one of the party?’
‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘we have decided to take you into our society. You must meet us at the government tank when the curfew sounds. Your new name will be Mr Cigarette.’
When Husks sounded the curfew – a ceremony that had no significance whatever on Puka-Puka except that it was following out the Revd Mr Johns’s orders – I laid down my book, tied a coloured handkerchief around my neck, and went to the bathing tank. There, lurking in the shadows of adjacent trees, were seven youths from Leeward Village and eight maidens from Central Village. In honour of myself, the new member of the society, they were dressed in all their finery, but on future occasions they would wear their more attractive grass skirts and pareus.
Mr Chair stepped forward to introduce me – to the men first. There was Mr Thread, a tall slim youth wearing his father’s No. 11 shoes. We rubbed noses. Then came Mr Guitar, Mr Horse, Mr Undershirt, Mr Bull, and Mr Coconut. I was presented to each of them as the new member from Cowboyland, Mr Cigarette by name.
I realised that in this ceremony our real names were taboo. It was a taboo similar to that of the Samoan bonito fishermen, who, when after this kingly fish, will never call an eye an eye but must give it some other name. Similarly, the parts of the body, the canoe and fishing gear – the very act of paddling – have special names in this language of courtesy.
I was then introduced to the young ladies. They were all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and, like most Polynesian girls, were very pretty. But what an evanescent beauty! Eight years hence many of them would be middle-aged if not old women. ‘Sweet little sisterhood,’ I thought. ‘Let them taste of the honey of love while they may, for their flowers will soon fade.’
I was first presented to Miss Laughter and was delighted to rub noses with her. Then came Miss Ribbon, Miss Bird, Miss Chemise, Miss Handkerchief, Miss Perfume, and Miss Redfish.
‘And this, Mr Cigarette,’ said Mr Chair, ‘is your gift-woman [yana-wawine] for tonight. She is called Miss Button.’
I took Miss Button by the arm, delighted to see that she was more simply dressed than the others, in a red and white pareu and a wreath of gardenias. We followed the other members of the society, reaching the outer beach just as the yellow moon, three-quarters full, rose above the sea. And now, I think, the time has come to bring to a close my story of Mr Chair’s secret society.
There is a world of interesting lore concerning these love fests, and, of course, I consented to join them only for scientific reasons, so that I might study more intimately ancient Puka-Puka customs. But in all seriousness I can say that in many respects they partake of the nature of religious ceremonies. Could anthropologists study these rituals – in a strictly platonic manner – much would be found in them dating undoubtedly from times immemorial, and perhaps light would be shed on other mysteries of Polynesian origin. Although I have speculated on these matters, I will not record my erudite conclusions, for these memoirs are in too light a vein to admit of anthropological conclusions reached through frequenting Puka-Pukan saturnalias.
A vision I had already had of Aphrodite unveiled made me wonder how much longer it would be before Little Sea was initiated into one of these outer-beach societies. I did not relish the thought of her doing so before becoming mine. Although I thoroughly sanctioned the love fests for young Puka-Pukans, a white man of necessity labours under the heritage of his blood: jealousy is bred into him through countless generations of men for whom chastity was a social necessity. With the natives it is but a momentary passion and not a very violent one at that. After thinking matters over I decided to keep Little Sea from joining the others by making her my mistress and, perhaps, eventually my wife.