AFTER SOLITARY YEARS on a remote island one arrives at a curious state of mind. One becomes lost at times in a world of one’s own, blind to passing events, deaf to the monotonous clamour of children, unconscious of heat, cold, wind, sunlight or shadow. One lives in a ‘mind world’, so to speak, which is quite indescribable to normal persons, because the images which exist there and the events which happen there are not evoked by words, either spoken or thought. Strange as it may seem, one thinks without words.
I had often tried to picture imaginary events without uttering, mentally, so much as a syllable, but for long I found it impossible, and many people, I know, believe that it must always be impossible. They hold that without words as mediums it is quite impossible to think at all. I do not agree with them. I have learned, through constant practice, how to do this, how to detach myself from the world where words are necessary to evoke images, and to enter a kingdom of my own. But I had best not attempt to describe this kingdom lest the reader think me quite mad, which I hope I am not.
Sleeping open-eyed is a different matter, although the faculty for doing so is, perhaps, allied to that for thinking without words, as animals think – if they may be said to think. I can do that too, now; it is one of those curious accomplishments one is bound to acquire at such a place as Puka-Puka. All the natives have it. They sink into trances with perfect ease, sitting bolt upright, their eyes open, completely unconscious of the world about them.
I recall vividly the night when I was first able to do so. I was sitting on my front balcony, chewing the husks of a sweet variety of coconut called mangaro. Little Sea had eaten her fill and had leaned back to fall into the untroubled sleep of the young savage. I fell to thinking, for some strange reason, of her cousin Desire, who was again living with her mother, having left us about three months before because Little Sea thought I was becoming too greatly interested in her.
Abraham, George’s father, was sitting in front of an adjacent house, the light of a fire throwing his figure into clear relief against the wattled wall at his back. He sat cross-legged, his arms hanging limply at his sides, the backs of his hands resting on the ground. He was staring vacantly straight in front of him, and I knew that he was in one of the trances so common to Puka-Pukans. I called out his name, but he stared on, as completely unconscious of his surroundings as though he had been in the deepest sleep. I have often asked the natives what they think of at such times, and they invariably reply: ‘Of nothing.’ They say it is just like a dreamless sleep, only when they are really asleep they are more easily wakened.
I turned my eyes from Abraham and leaned back in my steamer chair. Then I heard someone passing below; I rose, looked over the veranda railing, and saw little Desire in a red and white pareu and a wreath of gardenias on her pretty head. She was strolling … where, I wondered … to the love fests?
A surge of passion rose in me. Desire was in the first bloom of womanhood, slim, graceful, with a seductive, tantalising mouth, the lips just full enough to be warmly passionate. Leaning over the railing, I called to her.
She stopped to glance up with an alluring smile, her head up-tilted, the moonlight falling softly on her smooth shoulders.
What could be more beautiful than olive skin in the moonlight? Before I realised what I was doing I had slipped down and had her in my arms.
It must have been after midnight when I returned to the veranda. Little Sea was still asleep, her head pillowed on her arm. I felt a twinge of remorse, which was more than most South Sea traders would have felt under like circumstances.
‘Why in the world,’ I thought, ‘should I be making love to Desire when I have such a really lovable wife? I’ll do it no more, that’s certain!’
The words sounded very brave, but somehow they failed to quench the fire within me. I sat down again in my steamer chair, determined to banish the thoughts of Desire from my mind, and after a considerable effort I succeeded. Hazy thoughts and hazy visions drifted across consciousness, becoming less and less distinct until I became oblivious of my surroundings, of my identity, of existence itself.
Of a sudden I awoke. Little Sea was shaking me by the shoulder.
‘Ropati!’ she said, ‘you are as bad as old Abraham: you fall asleep with your eyes open!’
I was sitting precisely as I had been when I went into the trance, and my eyes were, in truth, wide open. I felt as completely refreshed as though I had had a sound night’s sleep, and it was then only about three in the morning. But the villages were more widely awake at that hour than they would be at dawn. Fires glimmered through the groves; fishermen were coming in from their lobster-spearing along the reef, and a sing-song, or himené, was going at full tilt in Leeward Village.
As I rose to enter the house I saw old Abraham still sitting open-eyed by his doorway like a Puka-Pukan Buddha. His old wife was broiling a lobster directly in front of him, the nightlife of Puka-Puka was going blithely forward and he was no more aware of it than I had been a few moments before. I called down to ask the old lady how long he had been sitting there and she replied, ‘All night.’ A moment later she shook him vigorously, both hands on his shoulders. The old man was sufficiently roused at length, and moved up to the fire to join his family in their three-o’clock-in-the-morning supper.
Little Sea found out immediately, of course, that I had been carrying-on with Desire. The next morning when she brought me my coffee she set down the cup with a little toss of her head.
‘Hmph!’ she said. ‘I was right, after all. Well, I’m glad that you picked my cousin instead of some strange woman.’