I Shall never forget my first sight of Tahiti.
For months I had been planning to go there. For weeks I had been dreaming of going there. But on the eve of my arrival I craved for one thing only: a magic carpet that would carry me to London. I had been travelling for seven months and I was very tired: tired of new places and new settings. My ears were confused with strange accents and my eyes with changing landscapes. To begin with there had been the Mediterranean. Naples, Athens, Constantinople. A few hours in each. A hurried rushing to the sights: then the parched seaboard of the Levant. Smyrna with its broken streets, and hidden among its ruins the oasis now and then of a shaded square where you can drink thick black coffee beside fat Syrians who puff lazily at immense glass-bowled pipes. Smyrna and Jaffa and Beyrouth. An island or two. The climbing streets of Rhodes, the barren ramparts of Famagusta. Then Egypt and the mud houses. And the tall sails drifting down the Nile. Then Suez and the torment of the Red Sea when the heat is so intense that perversely you long to be burnt more and at lunch eat the hottest of hot pickles neat, till the inside of your mouth is raw: a torment that lapses suddenly into the cool of the Indian Ocean.
There had been Ceylon. The Temple of the Tooth at Kandy, with its scarlet and yellow Buddhas so garish and yet so oddly moving, as though there had passed into those pensive features something of the brooding faith of the hands that chiselled them; and the lake at Kandy after dusk, when the fireflies are thick about the trees; and the streets of Kandy on the night of the Perihera, when gilt-shod elephants lumber in the wake of guttering torches.
And afterwards there had been Siam. Bangkok with its innumerable bright-tiled temples and the sluggish waterways that no hand has mapped; those dark mysterious canals, their edges crowded with huddled shacks, their surface ruffled by the cool, slow-moving barges in which whole families are born, grow up, see love and life and die. Siam and the jungles of the north through which I trekked day after day slithering through muddied paddy-fields, climbing the narrow bullock tracks that cross the mountains. There had been Malaya, green and steaming when the light lies level on the rice-fields; and Penang where I had lingered, held by the ease and friendliness of that friendly island, cancelling passage after passage till finally I had had no alternative but to cancel the visit I had planned to Borneo.
‘I’ll spend a month in Sydney,’ I had thought. ‘Then I’ll push on to the Pacific.’ But I had been away five months before I left Singapore, and each place that I had been to had meant the forming of new contacts and relationships, the adapting of myself to new conditions. And as the Marella swung into Sydney Harbour and I saw lined up on Circular Quay a smiling-faced crowd of relatives and friends, that sudden sensation of nostalgia which is familiar to most travellers overcame me. England was at the other side of the world. I was lonely and among strangers. That very afternoon I was enquiring at the Messageries about the next sailing for Noumea. And as a month later the Louqsor rolled its way eastwards through the New Hebrides, I lay back in my hammock chair upon the deck, a novel fallen forward upon my knees, dreaming not of the green island to which each day the flag on the map drew close, but of the London that was waiting a couple of months away.
And then I saw Tahiti.
But how at this late day is one to describe the haunting appeal of that island which so many pens, so many brushes have depicted? The South Seas are terribly vieux jeu. They have been so written about and painted. Long before you get to them you know precisely what you are to find. There have been Maugham and Loti and Stevenson and Brooke. There is no need now to travel ten thousand miles to know how the grass runs down to the lagoon and the green and scarlet tent of the flamboyants shadows the road along the harbour; nor how the jagged peaks of the Diadem tower above the lazy township of Papeete; and beyond the reef, across ten miles of water, the miracle that is Moorea changes hour by hour its aureole of lights. And there has been Gauguin; so that when you drive out into the districts past Papara through that long sequence of haphazard gardens where the bougainvillaea and the hibiscus drift lazily over the wooden bungalows, and you see laid out along their mats on the veranda the dark-skinned brooding women of Taravao, their black hair falling down to their knees over the white and red of the pareo that is about their hips, you cry with a gasp of recognition, ‘But this is Gauguin. Before ever I came I knew all this.’ Everything about the islands is vieux jeu. And yet all the same they get you.
For that is the miracle of Tahiti, as it is the miracle of love—for though you have had every symptom of love catalogued and described, love when it comes has the effect on you of something that has never happened in the world before—that the first sight of those jagged mountains should even now touch in Stevenson’s phrase ‘a virginity of sense’.
As the ship swung slowly through the gap in the reef I could see the children bathing in the harbour. There was a canoe drifting lazily in the lagoon. The quay was crowded with half the population of Papeete. They were laughing and chattering and they waved their hands. As the ship was moored against the wharf and the gangway was let down, a score or so of girls in bright print dresses, with wreaths of flowers about their necks, some quarter-white, some full Tahitian, scrambled up the narrow stairway to welcome their old friends among the crew. The deck that had been for a fortnight the bleak barrack of an asylum became suddenly a summered garden. The spirit of Polynesia was about it, the spirit of unreflecting happiness that makes the girls wear flowers behind their ears, and the young people smile at you as you pass them by, and the children run into the roadway to shake your hand.
That evening I walked slowly and alone along the water-front. The air was heavy with the scent of jasmine. A car drove by; a rackety old Ford packed full on every seat, so that the half-dozen or so men and women in it were sitting anyhow on each other’s laps, their arms flung about each other’s shoulders. In their hair was the starred white of the tiare. One of them was strumming on a banjo; their voices were raised, their rich soft voices, in a Hawaiian tune. Here, indeed, seemed the Eden of heart’s longing. Here was happiness as I had never seen it and friendliness as I had never seen it. Here was a fellowship that was uncalculating and love that was unpossessive, that was a giving, not a bargaining. I wondered how I should ever find the heart to leave.
Which is how most of us feel on our first evening in Tahiti, and yet, one by one, we wave farewell to the green island in the sure knowledge that in all human probability we have said good-bye to it for ever.
One of the advantages of being over sixty is that one can talk without embarrassment about the peccadilloes of one’s youth. But when I first wrote about Tahiti, I was too young and too near to actual events, to set down a faithful record of my stay there. Instead I wove out of my experiences and impressions the story of a young Englishman, whom I called Simmonds, a man of my own age and background who had decided to spend nine months in travel before taking up the partnership that his father’s death had left open for him in a motor business. His story was in large part mine.
Like me and like so many others when he saw the peaks of the Diadem towering about the lazy township of Papeete, he ordered his trunk up out of the hold. New Zealand and Samoa could wait. He had four months more to spend. He could spend them here.
That evening from his hotel balcony, he watched the sun set behind Moorea. Beside him was Demster, a fellow tourist of a month’s standing whom all the afternoon, he had been cross-examining with eager curiosity.
‘I wonder what you’ll make of it,’ the older man was saying.
‘I suppose it’ll end in your taking a house in the country some-where; that’ll mean an island marriage. It’s the only way, I’m told, of getting a girl to cook for you. No one bothers about money here.
And a girl would consider herself insulted if a bachelor asked her to work for him without living with him. They’re simple folk. Frocks and motor-rides and love. That’s their whole life. I don’t suppose that if you took a house you’d be allowed to remain long in it alone.’
‘That’s what they tell me,’ Simmonds said.
The velvet of the night was soft and scented; down the lamp-lit avenue under the tent of the flamboyants, arm in arm the flower haired girls were strolling. The air was fragrant with a sense of love, sensual and tender love, such as the acuter and bitter passions of the north are alien to.
‘I expect,’ he said, ‘I shall leave life to decide that for me.’
That evening as the two men were walking along the water-front a voice hailed them, and two young women who had been riding towards them jumped off their bicycles.
‘What, still here and still alone, and on a Tahitian evening?’
It was the elder who spoke, an American, gay-eyed and mischievous, married for ten years to a French official; much wooed by the younger Frenchmen and by none of them, rumour had it, with success, she was held to be the most attractive woman in Papeete. But it was the younger that Simmonds noticed. Never had he seen anyone to whom the trite simile of flower-like could be more appropriate. She was small and slight, with pale yellowish hair and cornflower-blue eyes. Her body in its pale green sheath of muslin seemed in truth to sway like a stem beneath the weight of the blossom that was her face.
Introductions followed.
‘Mr. Simmonds arrived this morning,’ Demster said. ‘He fell in love with Tahiti so much that he’s decided to stay on.’
The American raised her eyebrows meaningly.
‘In love, why, sure, but with an island!’
They laughed together.
‘I can’t think how I shall find the heart to leave,’ said Simmonds.
‘That’s what you all say at the beginning,’ said the younger woman.
‘And do they all go away?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Some stay, of course; most go. To most people Papeete is a port of call. They’re the tourists who stop for a month or two, and the officials who’ve come for three or four years, sometimes for half a lifetime. And the naval officers who are stationed on and off for a couple of years. Then there are a few Americans who spend their summers here. But in the end they go, nearly all of them. If you live here, you have rather a sad feeling of being—oh, how shall I put it?—like a station through which trains are passing. People come into your life and go out of it. It’s like living in an hotel rather than in a home.’
‘But you’re happy here?’
She pouted.
‘It grows monotonous, you know.’
‘To me it seems like the Garden of Eden.’
Again the cornflower-blue eyes smiled softly.
‘I wonder if you’ll be saying that in four months’ time. You know what they say about Tahiti? That a year’s too little a time to stay here and a month too long. They may be right. But when I was a child I always used to wonder whether Adam and Eve were really sorry to be cast out of Eden. I always wondered what they found to do there; didn’t you, sometimes?’
She spoke half whimsically, half wistfully, in a voice that was lightly cadenced and with that particular purity of accent that is to be found only in those to whom English has come as a ‘taught language’, a purity that seemed in its peculiar way symbolic of her charm.
‘Perhaps,’ Simmonds answered her. ‘But I’m very sure that I shall be heart-broken when the time comes for me to go.’
The American interrupted him.
‘Perhaps it won’t be you who’ll be heart-broken.’
Again there was a general laugh.
‘At any rate,’ she concluded, ‘I hope you won’t get too domesticated to come and see us sometimes.’
The invitation was made friendlily and genuinely enough, but it was of her companion that he was thinking as he accepted it, and it was about Colette that he sought information of Demster the moment they were alone.
‘Who is that girl?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t met her before, I gather?’
Demster shook his head.
‘I know all about her, though. It’s rather a sad story. Her father was a Canadian who came over here to direct a store; her mother was a young French girl who fell in love with him and married him. Four years later, when the time came for the man to return to Montreal, he calmly informed her that he had a wife in America; that if she wished to have him arrested as a bigamist she could; but that if she did, his income and means of supporting her would cease; that the best thing would be for her to say nothing and to accept the allowance he would continue to send her, provided she made no attempt to leave the island. For Colette’s sake she decided to accept. But everyone knows, of course, as everyone knows everything in Papeete. It’s a sad story.’
Simmonds nodded. He could understand now the wistful expression of those pale cornflower-blue eyes; he could understand why she had spoken wistfully of the station through which trains hurried, and he could imagine with what weight even in this free-est of free countries the knowledge of her parentage must press on her. ‘She must always feel,’ he thought, ‘apart from others. Never able to mix wholeheartedly among them.’ Yet in spite of it all her nature had not soured. ‘I hope,’ he thought, ‘that that isn’t the last I’m going to see of her.’
Four times a week there is a cinema performance in Papeete, and on those evenings the streets and cafés of the town are empty. Two weeks later to Simmonds standing on the steps of the long tin building during the ten minutes’ interval, it seemed that there were clustered in the street below, round the naphtha-lighted stalls where the little Chinese proprietors were making busy trade with ices and coconuts and water melons, every single person with whom he had been brought in contact during his stay in the hotel.
There was Tania, one of the last direct descendants of the old royal family of the Pomaris, her black hair dressed high upon her head, a rose silk Spanish shawl about her shoulders, chattering to the half-dozen or so girls, with whom he would idle most afternoons away over ice-creams in the Mariposa Café. There was the Australian trader with whom he would discuss the relative merits of Woodfull and Macartney. A couple of French officials he had met at the Cercle Coloniale and others whom he knew by sight, the girls from the post office, the assistants from the three big stores, the skipper of the Saint Antoine; all that numerous crowd that he had watched from the balcony of his hotel, strolling lazily along the harbourside. He had learnt to recognize most of the people in the town by sight during that three weeks’ stay.
And he had done most of the things that one does do in Tahiti during one’s first fortnight there. He had driven out round the island, through Mataiea, past the short wooden pier on which during the last spring of the world’s peace a doomed poet wrote lines for Mamua. He had spanned the narrow isthmus of Taravao; he had lunched at Keane’s off a sweet shrimp curry; he had bathed on the dark sands at Arue, and in the cool waters of the Papeno River. He had chartered a glass-bottomed boat and, sailing out towards the reef, had watched the fish swimming in and out of the many-coloured coral. And day after day the sun had shone out of a blue sky ceaselessly and night after night moonshine and starlight had brooded over the scented darkness, and Simmonds was beginning to feel a little bored.
Maybe that girl had been right, he thought, about a year being too little a time and a month too long.
And gazing a little despondently at the thronged roadway, he wondered how he should employ the fourteen or so weeks that must pass before the sailing of the Louqsor, the French cargo boat, by which he had planned to return to Europe.
‘Well,’ a voice was asking at his elbow, ‘and is it still the Eden that you expected?’
The question was so appropriate to his mood that he could not resist laughing as he turned to meet the smiling flower-like features of Colette Garonne.
‘At that precise moment,’ he said, ‘I was just wondering whether you weren’t right about Adam and Eve finding it a little dull in Eden.’
‘You too, then, and so soon.’
‘I was just feeling …’ But she was so divinely pretty, even under the harsh glare of the electric lights, that he could not retain his temper of despondency. ‘I was just feeling,’ he said instead, ‘what an enormous pity it was that we couldn’t go on to supper and a cabaret after this, as we would if we were in London.’
‘So you’ve come all this way to regret London.’
‘To regret that there’s nothing to do after eleven; for there isn’t, is there?’
‘Not in the way of cabarets.’
‘In any way, then?’
She pouted.
‘The Bright Young People drive out in cars.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere. To bathe, or out to Keane’s, or just to sing. That’s the island idea of cabaret.’
‘In that case …’ He hesitated. Often as he had sat before going to bed on the hotel veranda he had envied the crowded cars that had driven singing through the night below him. It had seemed so carefree and lighthearted with a lightheartedness with which he was not in tune. But he had felt always shy of suggesting such an expedition to any of his friends. On this occasion, however, the impelling influence of cerulean eyes emboldened him. ‘Why don’t we have a cabaret this evening?’
It was her turn to hesitate. ‘Well,’ she said, pausing doubtfully.
He could tell what was passing in her mind. Though he had seen her often enough, smiling greetings at her, they had not talked together since the night when Demster had introduced them. And she was uncertain, he could guess that, as to the types of companion that he would be selecting for her. He made no effort, however, to persuade her. He had the intuition to realize that at such moments it is the wiser plan not to urge the reluctant to say ‘Yes’, but to make it difficult for them to say ‘No’. Less than a yard away Tania was chattering noisily in the centre of a crowd of friends, and stretching out his hand, Simmonds touched her on the arm.
‘We were thinking of driving out somewhere after the show. What’s your idea of it?’
‘Sweetheart, that it would be heavenly.’
Tania glanced round her slowly.
‘There’s you, and I, and Colette, and Marie; and we’d better have Paul to amuse Tepia.’
In a minute or two it had been arranged.
‘Then we’ll meet outside Oscar’s the moment the show’s over.’
It was one of those nights that are not to be found elsewhere than in Tahiti. It was October and the night was calm. From the mountains a breeze was blowing, swaying gently the white-flowered shrubs along the road, ruffling the languid palms. Westwards over the Pacific, a long street of silver to the jagged outline of Moorea, was a waxing moon; clouds moved lazily between the stars. The air was mild, sweet-scented with the tiare, a sweetness that lay soft upon their cheeks as the car swayed and shook and rattled eastwards. The hood of the car was up, for in Tahiti there is always a possibility of rain: and for the islanders the landscape is too familiar to be attractive in itself. It is for the sensation of speed that motoring is so highly valued an entertainment. And as the car swayed over the uneven road, they laughed and sang, beating their hands in time with the accordion.
For an hour and a half they drove on, singing under the stars.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked at length. ‘Isn’t it time we were thinking about a bathe?’
‘Not yet, sweetheart,’ laughed Tania. ‘Let’s see if Keane’s up still.’
‘At this hour?’
‘One never knows.’
For there are no such things as regular hours in the islands. One is up certainly with the sun, and usually by nine o’clock in the evening one is thinking about bed; but there is always a possibility that friends will come: that a car will stop outside your bungalow: that a voice will cry, ‘What about driving to Papeno?’ And you will forget that you are sleepy, a rum punch will be prepared, and there will be a banjo and an accordion, there will be singing and Hula-Hulas, and hours later you will remember that a car is in the road outside, that you were planning to bathe in the Papeno River; laughing and chattering, you will stumble out of the bungalow, pack yourselves anyhow into a pre-war Ford and, still laughing and singing, you will drive away into the night, to wrap pareos around you and splash till you are a-weary in a cool, fresh mountain stream. It is an island saying that no night has ended till the dawn has broken, and at Keane’s there is always a chance of finding merriment long after the streets are silent in Papeete. And sure enough, ‘Look, what did I say?’ Tania was crying a few moments later. Through the thick tangle of trees a light was glimmering; there was the sound of a gramophone and clapping hands.
There were some dozen people on the veranda when they arrived; a planter from Taravao had stopped on his way back from Papeete for a rum-punch; there had been a new record to try on the gramophone, some boys on their return from fishing had seen lights and had heard singing, one of Keane’s daughters had taken down her banjo and a grand-daughter of Keane’s had danced Hula-Hulas, while beakers of rum-punch had been filled and emptied; twenty minutes had become five hours and no one had thought of bed. It was after midnight, though, and probably, without the arrival of any fresh incentive, in another half-hour the party would have broken up. As it was, a cry of eager welcome was sent up as Simmonds’ car drove up, and another half-dozen glasses were bustled out, another beaker of rum-punch brewed, and Tania, seated cross-legged upon the floor, her banjo across her knees, was singing that softest and sweetest of Polynesian songs,
Ave, Ave, te vahini upipi
E patia tona, a pareo repo
that haunting air that will linger for ever in the ears of those that hear it; that across the miles and across the years will wake an irresistible nostalgia for the long star-drenched nights of Polynesia, for the soft breezes, and the bending palm trees, the white bloom of the hibiscus, and the murmur of the Pacific rollers on the reef; for the sights and sounds and scents, for the flower-haired, dark-skinned people of Polynesia. And as Tania sang and the girls danced, and the men beat their hands in time, the magic and beauty of the night filled overbrimrriingly, as thriftlessly poured wine a beaker, the Western mind and spirit of the young English tourist.
‘There’s nothiing like it,’ he murmured. ‘Not in this world, certainly.’
‘Nor probably,’ quoted Colette, ‘in the next.’
And he remembered how a few hours earlier, in a mood of boredom, he had thought of Tahiti as a frame without a picture. He could understand now why he had felt like that. He had been looking at it from the outside. One had to surrender to Tahiti to let oneself be absorbed by it.
‘It’s no good looking at Tahiti from outside,’ he said.
Colette sighed. ‘Outside. But that’s what so many of us have to be.’
He looked down at her in surprise.
‘Outside! You!’
‘It’s not always so easy to surrender. You’ve got to surrender so much else as well.’ She paused, looked at him, questioningly, then seeing that his eyes were kind, continued: ‘For me to be absorbed in it, for me to be inside this life, it would mean living the same life as all these other girls, and, well, you know what that is. I couldn’t; it’s not that I’m a prude, but you know what my life’s been; my mother’s had a bad time. I’m all she’s got. It would break her if anything were to happen to me.’
‘If you were to marry, though.’
She laughed, ruefully. ‘Who’s to marry me? Who, at least, that I’d care to marry. There aren’t so many white men here. It’s not for marriage that the tourist comes. The English and the Americans who settle here as often as not have left wives behind them. At any rate they’ve come because they’ve tired of civilization. They’re not the type that makes a conventional marriage. And though the French may be broad-minded about liaisons, they’re very particular about marriages. As far as they’re concerned I’m damaged goods. It’s not even as though I had any money. And I must stay on here. I can’t leave my mother. I’m not complaining. Please don’t think that. I’m happy enough. But I’ve never felt, I don’t suppose I ever shall feel, as though I really belonged here.’
She spoke softly, her voice sinking to a whisper; and as he listened. pity overcame him. She was so sweet, so pretty; it was cruel that life should have been harsh to her, here of all places, in Tahiti. It was true, though, what she had said. What they had both said about belonging here. One had to surrender to Tahiti, to take it on its own terms. Otherwise for all time there would be an angel before this Eden, with the drawn sword that was the knowledge of good and evil. He had talked a few minutes since of being himself inside it, but he was a tourist like any other, with his life and interests ten thousand miles away. He had a few weeks to spend here: a few weeks in which to gather as many impressions as he could. And perhaps because he loved the place so well, something of its mystery would be laid on him. But it was not thus and to such as he that Tahiti would lay bare her secrets. You had to come empty-handed to that altar; you had to surrender utterly; you could not be of Tahiti and of Europe. You would have to cut away from that other life, those other interests. Your whole life must be bounded by Tahiti; you must take root here by the palm-fringed lagoons, and then, little by little, you would absorb that magic. The spirit of Tahiti would whisper its secrets into your ear. You must surrender or remain outside. Wistfully he looked out over the veranda.
It was so lovely, the garden with its tangled masses of fruits and flowers. The dark sand, with the faint line of white where the water rippled among the oyster beds; and the long line of coast, swerving outwards to a hidden headland, with beyond it, above the bending heads of the coconut palms, the dark shadow that was the mountains of Taravao; and over it all was the silver moonlight and the music of the breakers on the reef; and here at his feet, one with the magic of the night, were the dark-skinned, laughing people to whose ears alone the spirit of Tahiti whispered the syllables of its magic.
And as he leant back against the veranda there came to him such thoughts as have come to all of us under the moonlight on Tahitian nights. He thought of the turmoil and the conflict that was Europe: the hurry and the malice and the greed: the ceaseless battle for self-protection: the ceaseless exploitation of advantage: the long battle that wearies and hardens and embitters: that brings you ultimately to see all men as your enemies, since all men are in competition with you, since your success can only be purchased at the price of another’s failure. He thought of what his life would be for the next forty years; he contrasted it with the gentleness and sweetness and simplicity of this island life, where there is no hatred since there is no need for hatred; where there is no rivalry since life is easy, since the sun shines and the rain is soft, and feis grow wild along the valleys, and livelihood lies ready to man’s hand. Where there is no reason why you should not trust your neighbour, since in a world where there are no possessions there is nothing that he can rob you of; where you can believe in the softness of a glance, since in a world where there are no social ladders there is nothing that a woman can gain from love-making but love. Such thoughts as we all have on Tahitian nights. And thinking them, he told himself that were he to sell now his share in his father’s business there would be a sum that would purchase litde enough in Europe, where everytliing had a market price, but that would mean for him in Tahiti a bungalow on the edge of a lagoon, wide and clear and open to the moonlight, and there would be enough work to keep idleness from fretting him; and there would be a companion in the bungalow, and children—smiling, happy children, who would grow to manhood in a country where there is no need to arm yourself from childhood for the fight for livelihood.
And at his elbow there was Colette, exquisite and frail and gentle. ‘Why run for shadows when the prize is here?’ England seemed very distant, and very unsubstantial the rewards that England had for offering, and along the veranda railing his hand edged slowly to Colette’s; his little finger closed over hers; her eyes through the half-twilight smiled up at him. They said nothing; but that which is more than words, that of which words are the channels only, had passed between them. And on the next morning when he was strolling down the water-front along with the half of Papeete, to welcome the American courier, he blushed awkwardly when he heard himself hailed by the gay-toned American voice. ‘Hullo, hullo,’ she called. ‘And it’s a whole week since we said good-bye to Mr. Demster, and you’re still living virtuously at Oscar’s!’ He blushed, for Colette was at her side, and her eyes were smiling into his, and between them the thought was passing that the time was over for him to make an island marriage.
‘I’ve got three months left,’ he laughed. But it had ceased, he knew, to be a question of weeks and months. But of whether or not he was to make his home here in Tahiti. The magic of the island and the softness of Colette had cast the meshes of their net about him: the net that in one way or another is cast on all of us who watch from the harbour-side our ship sail off without us. Of the many thousands who have loitered in these green ways there cannot be one who has not wondered, if only for an instant, whether he would be wise to abandon the incessant struggle that lies eastward in America and Europe. Not one out of all those thousands.
Yet it is no longer true that those who come to the islands rarely leave them. Sydney and San Francisco are very close. The story of most loiterers in Papeete is the story of their attempt not to commit themselves too far, to leave open a loophole for escape. Time passes slowly in the islands, and usually before they have become too enmeshed something has happened to force on them the wisdom of delay.
For Simmonds it was the arrival on the Manganui of the liveliest thing in Australian salesmen that he had ever met. It happened shortly before ten o’clock. Like a whirlwind a short, plump, perspiring, serge-suited figure hustled its way into the Mariposa Café, tossed its felt hat across a table, and leaning back in a chair had begun to fan its face with a vast brown silk handkerchief.
‘My oath, but this is the hottest place I’ve struck! My oath, but a gin sling would be right down bonza!’
The two waitresses who were leaning against the bar gazed blankly at him.
‘My word, but you aren’t going to tell me that you’ve got no ice!’
He spoke rapidly, with a marked Australian accent, and the girls, who could only understand English when it was spoken extremely slowly, did not understand him. They looked at one another, then looked at the stranger, then looked again at one another and burst into laughter. It was time, Simmonds felt, that he came to the rescue of his compatriot.
‘Suppose,’ he suggested, ‘that I were to interpret. These girls don’t understand much beyond French.’
‘Now that would be really kind. And it would be kinder still if you were to order yourself whatever you like and join me with it. You will? Good-oh! That’s bonza. You staying here? Well, I pity you. Myself? My oath, sir, no! When that boat sails for dear old Sydney I’ll be on it. No place like Sydney in the world. Manly and Bondi and the beaches. Nothing like them. Dinky-die. New York can’t touch it. Just come from there. Been travelling in wool. Did I sell much? My oath, sir, I did not. But I’ve learnt the way to sell. Those Yanks know how to advertise. Personal touch. Always gets you there. Straight at the consumer. Me addressing you, that’s the way. The only way. Now look here,’ and lifting his eyes he began to glance round the room in search of some advertisement that would illustrate his point. “J’irai loin pour un camel,” he slowly mispronounced; ‘don’t know enough French to tell if that’s good or not. Let’s see. Ah, look now,’ and jumping to his feet he pointed to a large cardboard notice that had been hung above the bar:
ASK OSCAR
He KNOWS.
‘That’s it,’ he exclaimed. ‘Couldn’t be better. No long sentences. Nothing about our being anxious to give any information that tourists may require. Nothing impersonal or official. Nothing to terrify anyone. Just the impression of a friendly fellow who’ll give you a friendly hand. The very impression you want to give. My oath it is!’
He began to enlarge his theme. He began to discuss American publicity, international trade and the different conditions in America and Australia; and Simmonds, as he sat there listening, found himself more interested than he had been for weeks. He had been so long away from business. And when you got down to brass tacks was there a thing in the world half as thrilling? It was a game, the most exciting, and the highest prized. Your wits against the other man’s.
And as he sat there listening, he felt an itch to be back in that eager competitive society. He had always found that he did his best thinking when he was listening. Something said suggested a train of thought, and as the Australian’s conversation rattled on an idea came suddenly to him for the launching of the new model his firm had been designing for the autumn. The exact note of publicity to get. He saw it; he knew it. Get a good artist to illustrate it, and for a few months anyhow they’d have everyone upon the market beat. His blood began to pound hotly through his veins.
And then, suddenly, he remembered: that there was going to be no return to London; there was going to be a selling of shares and the building of a bungalow: a succession of quiet days spent quietly; and an immense depression came on him, such a depression as one feels on waking from a pleasant dream: a depression that was followed by such a sensation of relief as one feels on waking from a nightmare. ‘It wasn’t true. None of it had happened yet.’
While the Australian chattered on, Simmonds leant forward across the table, his head upon his hands. What did he want, to go or to stay? To go or stay? For he realized that he must make a choice, that it must be either England or Tahiti: that the one was precluded by the other. And was it really, he asked himself, that he was weary of the strife of London, that the secret of Polynesia was worth the surrender of all that until now he had held to make life worth living? Was it anything more than a mood, the bewitching effect of moonlight and still water and a pretty girl that was luring him to this Pacific Eden?
‘I must think,’ he thought. ‘I mustn’t decide hurriedly. Whatever happens, I must give myself time to think.’
Even as he decided that, he saw on the other side of the street beside the schooners the trim figure of Colette. She was carrying a parasol: her head was bared, he saw all the daintiness of that shingled hair, and he caught his breath at the thought of saying ‘Good-bye’ to so much charm and gentleness. ‘I’m not in love with her,’ he thought. ‘But in two days if I were to see more of her I should be. And if I were to fall in love with her, it would be in a way, I believe, that I’m never likely to again. I shall be saying good-bye to a good deal if I catch the Louqsor!
That catching of his breath, however, had warned him that it must not be in Papeete that his decision must be come to. If he were to stay on at Oscar’s with the certainty of seeing Colette again in a day or two he knew only too well that he would commit himself irremediably.
‘Whatever happens,’ he said,‘I must get away for a week and think.’
It is about forty miles from Papeete to Tautira, and every afternoon Oscar’s truck, a vast van of a Buick, lined with seats, made the rocking three hours’ journey there along the uneven island road. It is an uncomfortable, but by no means unpleasant journey. As the car jolted on past Paiea towards Papiieri a feeling of assuagement descended on the turmoil of Simmonds’s heart. He had need of the rest and quiet of the districts. He was carrying a letter of introduction to the chief, who would find room for him somewhere in his bungalow, and there would be long lazy mornings reading on the veranda, bathing in the lagoon, with tranquil evenings in the cool of the grass-grown pathways.
It was very warm inside the truck. Every seat was occupied, and since all the gossip had been exchanged and it: was too hot for the effort of conversation, one of the drivers had taken out his accordion and was playing softly. Already they had left behind them the more formal districts; Papara and Paia and Mataiea. They had passed the narrow isthmus of Taravao; the scenery was growing wilder. There had been little attempt made here to keep the gardens tended. Bungalows had been set down apparently at hazard, among the tangle of fruit and flowers; the women who were stretched out on mats on the verandas no longer wore the European costume. It was over the white and red of the pareo that their black hair fell. In some such Tahiti as this it was that Loti loved. But it was vaguely that Simmonds was conscious of the landscape. His eyelids had grown heavy; tired by bright colours. His head began to nod.
He woke with a start and to the sound of laughter.‘I make nice pillow?’ a voice was asking him. And blinking, he realized that his head had sunk sideways on the shoulders of the girl who was beside him. She was tall and handsome, a typical Tahitian, with fine eyes and hair, and a laughing mouth.
She only laughed, called out something in Tahitian to the driver, and taking Simmonds by the wrist, drew him back towards her.
‘Bye-bye, baby,’ she said.
But he was now wide awake: vividly conscious of the girl beside him. Her coloured cotton dress was bare above the elbow, and through the thin silk of his coat he could feel the full, firm texture of her skin. She was strong and healthy with the glow and strength of native blood. Beneath her wide-brimmed, flower-wreathed straw hat she was laughing merrily, and as he leant a little more heavily against her arm she giggled and again called out in Tahitian to the driver. There was a ripple of laughter through the truck. He flushed uncomfortably, drawing away; but the girl smiled friendlily and pulled him back.
‘No, no, you tired, you sleep.’
There was no sleep, though, now for him. But lest the excuse for nearness would be taken from him, he half closed his eyes and leant sideways against the soft, strong shoulder, conscious with a mingling, half of excitement, half of fear, that each minute was bringing them nearer to Tautira, that he and this girl would be close neighbours. It was not till they were within two hundred yards of the chief’s house that she jerked her knee sideways against his.
‘Wake up now,’ she cried. ‘My house here.’
She stretched out her hand to him and as he took it, her fingers closing over his, pressed lightly for a moment. Her fine bright eyes were glowing, her full, wide mouth was parted in a smile. He hesitated, wondering whether to let the incident close. He decided to. They were in the same village, after all. They were bound to be seeing each other again. As the car rolled on along the road he leant out of the window to look back at her. She, too, had turned and, standing in the garden before her bungalow, waved her hand at him.
If all Tahiti is a garden then is Tautira Tahiti’s garden. The roads are overgrown with grass. There are no fences and no boundary lines. Hens and pigs wander about the gardens and paths and houses as they choose. They will find their way home at evening. There is no one who could be troubled to steal. And since the meat market of Papeete is many miles away, the natives still live upon the produce of their hands: the fish they catch and spear and the bread-fruit that they bake.
The chief, a large, strong-hewn figure, clad only in a pareo, although he had not received a white visitor for several months, received Simmonds with no excitement or surprise, with a simple unaffected welcome.
It would be quite easy, he said, to prepare a room for him; and there would be some dinner ready in about an hour. He would not, he feared, be able to join him at it, for he had to supervise the evening’s haul of fish. But they would have a long talk next day at lunch-time. He had served in the French Army during the war, winning the Médaille Militaire; they would doubtless have experiences to exchange. And with extreme courtesy he had left him.
It was cool and quiet in the house. But for all that the air was soft and the sunset a glow of lavender behind the palms, there was no peace for the spirit of Simmonds. He was restless and ill-at-ease; his mind was busy with thoughts of the tall, bright-eyed girl, and after dinner, as he walked out along the beach, the memory of that firm, soft shoulder was very actual to him.
Should he be seeing her, he wondered; the chief had explained to him where the nets were being hauled ashore. As likely as not the greater part of the village would be assembled there. But probably she would have some other man with her. He had been a fool not to have spoken to her on the truck. That had been his chance and he had let it slip. That is, if he had wished to be availed of it. And did he? He did not know. There were so many rival influences at work. He knew the speed of coconut wireless, how quickly gossip spread. Days before he had left Tautira Colette would have heard of his adventure. He could not return to her after it. It would mean the end for ever of any thought of staying permanently on the island. For he knew that between himself and a girl such as the one he had sat next in the truck there could be no permanent relationship. There could be no question of love between them, on his side, anyhow. Very speedily he would have exhausted the slender resources of her interest. Nor, indeed, would she herself expect anything but a Tahitian idyll. Tahitians were used to the coming and going upon ships. She would weep when he went away, but though there is tear-shedding there is no grief upon the islands. She would console herself soon enough. If he were to yield to the enchantment of time and place he would have in the yielding answered that problem which had perplexed him. But did he want to? He did not know. Against the heady hour’s magic was set the fear of loss: the loss of Colette, and also insidiously but painfully the loss of health. What did he know, after all, about this girl? And in that moment of indecision, in the forces that went to the framing of that indecision, he appreciated to the full in what manner and in what measure the corning of the white man had destroyed the simple beauty he had found. Even here one had to be cautious, to weigh the consequences of one’s acts. And as he strolled beneath the palm trees to where he could see dark groups of clustered figures, he pictured that vanished beauty; pictured on such an island on such a night, some proud pirate schooner drawing towards the beach; pictured the dark-skinned people running down to welcome them, the innocence and friendliness of that hospitality; pictured the singing and the dancing, the large group breaking away gradually into couples, the slow linked strolling beneath the palms, the kissing and the laughter; the returning to the clean, fresh bungalows; the loving while loving pleased. And that was finished. Gone, irrecapturable, never to be found again upon this earth; never, never.
Still undecided, he walked on to take his place among the crowd gathered upon the beach.
It was a homely scene; the long row of men hauling at the nets, shouting and encouraging each other, and the women seated upon the sand, clapping their hands with pleasure as the fish were poured, a leaping, throbbing mass, into the large, flat-bottomed boats. He had not been standing there long before a hand had been laid upon his arms and a laughing voice was asking him: ‘Well, you not sleepy now?’
She had seemed attractive enough to him on the truck, but now hatless, with her dark hair flung wide about her shoulders, there was added a compelling softness to her power. And as he looked into her eyes, bright and shining through the dusk, her lips parted in a smile over the shining whiteness of her teeth, he felt that already the problem and his perplexity had been taken from him: that life had found his answer.
They sat side by side together on the bottom of an upturned boat: very close so that her shoulder touched him: so that it seemed natural for him to pass his arm about her waist, for his fingers to stroke gently the firm, soft flesh of her upper arm. Afterwards, when the nets had been hauled in and the division of the fish arranged, they strolled arm in arm along the beach. From the centre of the village there came a sound of singing. In front of a Chinese store Oscar’s truck had been arranged as a form of orchestral stand, the drivers had brought out their banjos, and on the wooden veranda of the store a number of young natives were dancing. They would sing and shout and clap their hands, then a couple would slither out into the centre and standing opposite each other would begin to dance. They would never dance more than a few steps, however. In less than a minute they had burst into a paroxysm of laughter, would cover their faces with their hands and run round to the back of the circling crowd.
‘Come,’ said the girl, and taking him by the hand, she led him up into the truck. It was a low seat and they were in the shadow; the moment they were seated, without affectation, she turned her face to his, expressing in a kiss, as such sentiments were meant to be expressed, the peace and happiness of a Tahitian evening. And the moon rose above the palm trees, lighting grostesquely the jagged peaks of the hills across the bay. The breeze from the lagoon blew quietly. Through the sound of the singing voices he could hear the undertone of the Pacific on the reef. Slowly, wooingly, the sights and scents and sounds that have for centuries in this fringe of Eden stripped the doubter of all thoughts of consequences, lulled his doubts to rest. For a long while they sat there in the shadow of the car; her chin resting against his shoulder, his fingers caressing gently the soft surface of her cheek and arm.
‘Tired?’ she asked, at length.
He nodded. ‘A little.’
‘Then we go. You come with me?’
The question was put without any artifice or coquetry, as though it were only natural that thus should such an evening end.
His heart was thudding fiercely as they walked, quickly now, and in silence, down the path between low hedges towards her home. When they reached the veranda she lifted her finger to her lips. ‘Sh!’ she said. ‘Wait.’
There was a rustle, and a sound of whispers; the turning of a handle, the noise of something soft being pulled along the floor, then a whispered ‘Come,’ and a hand held out to him.
It was very dark. From the veranda beyond came the sound of movement. As he stepped into the room his toe caught on something, so that but for her hand he would have fallen. He stumbled forward on to the broad, deep mattress. For a moment he felt an acute revulsion of feeling. But two arms, cool and bare, had been flung about his neck, dark masses of hair scented faintly with coconut were beneath his cheek; against his mouth, soft and tender were her lips. His arm tightened about the firm, full shoulders, the tenderness of his kisses deepened, grew deep and fierce.
That people is happy which has no history. There are no details to a Tahitian idyll.
There was a bungalow, half-way towards Ventura. It was small enough, two rooms and a veranda, with little furniture; a table, a few chairs, a long, low mattress-bed, but there was a stream running just below it from the mountains; cool and sweet. Here at any hour of the day you could bathe at will. And there was green grass running down towards the sand; from the veranda you looked towards Moorea, over the roof was twined and intertwined the purple of the bougainvillaea, and the red and white and orange of the hibiscus; across the door were the gold and scarlet of the flamboyant, and when you have those things, you do not need furniture or pictures or large houses.
During the three months that he lived there, Simmonds went but rarely into Papeete, and during them he came as near as perhaps any sojourner can to understanding the spirit of Tahiti. It was a lazy life he led. When he was not bathing, he would lie out reading on the veranda; he ate little but what came from within a mile of his own house. Bread and butter came certainly from the town, but that was all. Once or twice a week he and Pepire would go up the valleys to collect enough lemons and bread-fruit and bananas to last for days. And her brother and cousin would always be coming from Papeete or Tautira, so that it was rare for him to wake in the morning without finding some visitors stretched out asleep on the veranda. They were profitable guests, however, for in the evening they would sail towards the reef and spear fish by torchlight or else they would go shrimping up the valleys, and afterwards, while Pepire would prepare the food, they would sit round with their banjos, singing.
And he was happy; happier than he had ever been. Had he not known that he was leaving in three months he would have probably looked forward with apprehension to the time when Pepire would have begun to weary him. As it was, he could accept without fear of consequences the day’s good triings. As Europe understands love he did not love her. He cared for her in the same way that he might have cared for some animal. And indeed, as she strode bare-footed about the house and garden she reminded him in many ways of a cumbersome Newfoundland puppy. Her behaviour when she had transgressed authority was extraordinarily like that of a dog that has filched the cutlets. On one occasion she went into Papeete with a hundred-franc note to buy some twenty-five francs’ worth of stores. When he came in from his bathe, he found her standing with her hands behind her back gazing shamefacedly at the pile of groceries on the table beside which she had laid a ten-franc note.
‘Well, what’s that?’ he asked.
‘The change.’
‘But how much did all that cost?’
‘Twenty-seven francs.’
‘And ten makes thirty-seven, and fifteen for the truck, that’s fifty-two. What’s happened to the other forty-eight?’
She made no reply, but sheepishly and reluctantly she drew her hands from behind her back and produced the four metres of coloured prints with which she proposed to make a frock.
She was always surprising him in delightful ways. There was the occasion when he returned from Papeete with a rather pleasant Indian shawl. She surveyed it with rapture, but before she had thanked him she asked the price. And whenever any visitor came the first thing she would do would be to run and fetch the shawl and display it proudly with the words: ‘Look. He gave me. Five hundred francs!’
‘I wonder,’ he thought, ‘whether the only difference between an English and a native girl is that what an English girl thinks a Tahitian says, and what an English girl says a Tahitian does?’
It was only on occasions that he would wonder that. In the deeper things he realized how profound was the difference between brown and white. Had they been English lovers, loving under the shadow of separation, their love-making would have been greedy, fierce and passionate. But passion is a thing that the Islanders do not know. The Tahitians are not passionate. They are sensual and they are tender, but they are not passionate. Passion, though it may not be tragic, is at least potential tragedy, and tragedy is the twin child of sophistication. For Pepire, kisses were something simple and joyous and sincere. And yet during the long nights when she lay beside him he would wonder whether he would ever know in life anything sweeter than this love, so uncomplicated and direct. Intenser moments certainly awaited him, but sweeter …? He did not know.
Once only during those weeks did he see Colette. A brief, pathetic little meeting. He had gone into the library at Papeete to change a book, and as he stood before the shelves, turning the pages of a novel, she came into the shop. It would have been impossible for them not to see each other.
‘What ages since we met!’ she said, and she, as well as he, was blushing.
‘I don’t come in often now,’ he said. ‘I’m living in the country.’‘I know.’
In those two syllables were conveyed all that his living in the districts meant.
‘You’re still going by the Louqsor?
And in that question was implied that other question. How seriously was he taking his new establishment?
‘Oh, yes, in another three weeks now.’
’Then I’ll see you then if not before.’
With a bright smile she turned away; that, and no more than that.
And so the days went by.
Wistfully for him now and then.
For the closer that he grew to the Tahitian life, the wider, he realized, was the chasm between him and it. He would never find the key to Tahiti’s magic. And soon there would be no mystery left to find. A few years and Tahiti would be a second Honolulu. She was self-condemned. Somehow she had not had the strength to withstand the invader. And, looking back, it seemed to him symbolic that it should have been by the spirit of Tahiti that his determination to settle in Tahiti had been foiled. For it was the spirit of Tahiti expressed momentarily in Pepire that had entrapped him into the weakness that had made a permanent settlement there impossible. The fatal gift of beauty. It was by her own loveliness, her own sweetness, her own gentleness, that Tahiti had been betrayed. And yet it was back to the sweetness that it had destroyed, that ultimately the course of progress must return.
The monthly arrival of the American courier is the big event in the island life.
But, for all that, it is only on the departure of those rare visitants, the Louqsor and the Antinous, that you get the spirit of an island leave-taking. For Tahiti is a French possession, and it is from the taffrail of the Messageries Maritimes boats that the French, who are the real Tahitians, who by long sojourning have identified themselves with the island life, wave their farewells to the nestling waterside.
For beauty and pathos there is little comparable with those last minutes of leave-taking. When the greater liners sail from Sydney the passengers fling paper streamers to the waving crowds upon the wharf; but in Papeete there is no such attempt to prolong to the last instant the sundering tie. For those that were your friends upon the island have hung upon your neck the white wreath of the tiare and the stiff yellow petal of the pandanus, so that your nostrils may for all time retain the sweet perfume of Tahiti; and over your shoulders they have hung long strings of shells, so that you will retain for ever the soft murmur of the breakers on the reef, and it is not till you have forgotten those that you will forget Tahiti.
No ship has looked more like a garden than did the Louqsor in the January of 1927. There were many old friends to wave farewell from its crowded decks, some who were saying good-bye for ever, if anyone can ever be said to say good-bye for ever, since for all time the memory of that green island will linger green. There were others who were going to France on leave for a few months. The Governor of the Island was returning to Paris for promotion. There were a number of officials; three or four naval officers; and on the lower decks a large group of sailors from the Casiope returning to Marseilles. It was a gay sight. A squad of soldiers had lined up to salute the Governor, a band was playing, the sailors were singing farewell to their five-days’ sweethearts:
Ave, Ave, te vahini upipi
E patia tona, e pareo repo.
A few yards from Simmonds, Colette, frail and dainty, was smiling wistfully at him from beneath the shadow of her parasol. As he saw her he turned away from the crowd with whom he was gossiping—Pepire, Tania, and the rest—and came across to her.
She received him with a smile.
‘Do you remember saying four months ago that you’d be heart broken when the time came for you to leave?’
‘I remember.’
‘And are you?’
He hesitated, for as he looked down into the flower-like face he knew the measure of his loss, knew what he had missed, what there had been for finding; knew also how impossible it would have been to find it, since certain things precluded other things, since that which he had been looking for bore no relation to the practical ordering of life. When he answered, though it was in terms of Tahiti that he spoke, it was of himself and her that he was speaking.
‘As long as I live I shall remember,’ he said, and his voice was faltering. ‘And there’ll be a great many times, I know, when I shall regret bitterly that I ever came away. But I shall know, too, that it would have been madness for me to have stayed. I came at the wrong time. If I’d come as a boy of twenty, before I’d begun European life, I could have stayed. Or I might have stayed if I’d come as a middle-aged man, a man of fifty, who’d outgrown ambition. But I came at the half-way stage. I’ve taken root over there. I’ve identified myself with too many things. I’ve got to work to the end of them.’
She nodded her head slowly.‘I understand,’ she said.‘I think I always did understand.’ Then, after a pause and with eyes that narrowed, and in a voice that trembled:
‘Tahiti waits.’
But from the deck a bell was ringing. The friends of the passengers were crowding down the ladder; from the taffrail those who were leaving were slowly waving their farewells; the band was playing, the squad of soldiers were presenting arms, the sailors on the lower deck were singing. Slowly, yard by yard, the Louqsor drew out into the lagoon, the crowd was drifting from the quay, the tables in the Mariposa Café were filling up, officials were bicycling back to their offices, there was a lazy loitering along the waterside under the gold and scarlet of the flamboyants. A canoe was being launched, some children were bathing in front of Johnnie’s. Papeete was returning to its routine. Some friends had come. Some friends had gone. A new day had started.
With a full heart Simmonds leant over the taffrail. The strong winds of the Pacific were on his cheeks. He thought of London and his friends; of a life of action; the thrill of business; the stir of ideas and interest. Oh, yes, he would be glad enough to get back to it. But though his blood was beating quicker at the thought, the wreaths of pandanus and tiare were about his neck, and the sweet, rich scents were in his nostrils; and before his eyes, in the soft shadow of a parasol, was a flower-like face, with eyes that narrowed; and in his ears was the sound of a voice that trembled: ‘Tahiti waits.’