A Writer's Notebook (44 page)

Johnny. At first glance no one would suspect that he had native blood in him. He is twenty-five. He is a rather stout young man, with black crinkly hair beginning to recede and a clean-shaven fleshy face. He is excitable and gesticulates a great deal. He speaks very quickly, his voice continually breaking into falsetto, English and French, fluently but not very correctly and with a curious accent, and his natural tongue is Tahitian. When he strips to bathe and puts on a pareo the native appears at once, and then only his colour betrays his white blood. At heart he is a native. He loves the native food and the native ways. He is proud of his native blood and has none of the false shame of the half-caste.

Johnny's house. It is about five miles from Papeete, perched on a little hill overlooking the sea on three sides, with Murea straight ahead. The shore is crowded thick with coconuts, and behind are the mysterious hills. The house is the most ramshackle affair imaginable. There is a large lower room, something like a barn, raised from the ground and reached by steps; the frame walls are broken away here and there; and at the back are a couple of small sheds. One of them serves as a kitchen; fire is made in a hole in the ground and the cooking is done on it. Above are two attics. There is a table in each one and a mattress on the floor and nothing else. The barn is the living-room. The furniture consists of a deal table covered with a green oilcloth, a couple of deck-chairs and two or three very old and battered bentwood chairs. It is decorated with
coconut leaves, split at the top and nailed to the walls or woven round the supporting beams. Half a dozen Japanese lanterns hang from the ceiling, and a bunch of yellow hibiscus gives a note of bright colour.

The Chiefess. She lives in a two-storeyed frame house about thirty-five miles from Papeete. She is the widow of a chief who received the Legion of Honour for his services in the troubles at the time the French protectorate was changed into occupation; and on the walls of the parlour, filled with cheap French furniture, are the documents relating to this, signed photographs of various political celebrities, and the usual photographs of dusky marriage groups. The bedrooms are crowded with enormous beds. She is a large stout old woman, with grey hair, and one eye shut, which yet now and then opens and fixes you with a mysterious stare. She wears spectacles, a shabby black Mother Hubbard, and sits most comfortably on the floor smoking native cigarettes.

She told me there were pictures by Gauguin in a house not far from hers, and when I said I would like to see them called for a boy to show me the way. We drove along the road for a couple of miles and then, turning off it, went down a swampy grass path till we came to a very shabby frame house, grey and dilapidated. There was no furniture in it beyond a few mats, and the veranda was swarming with dirty children. A young man was lying on the veranda smoking cigarettes and a young woman was seated idly. The master of the house, a flat-nosed, smiling dark native came and talked to us. He asked us to go in, and the first thing I saw was the Gauguin painted on the door. It appears that Gauguin was ill for some time in that house and was looked after by the parents of the present owner, then a boy of ten. He was pleased with the way they treated him and when he grew better desired to leave some recollection of himself. In one of the two rooms of which the bungalow consisted there were three doors, the upper part of
which was of glass divided into panels, and on each of them he painted a picture. The children had picked away two of them; on one hardly anything was left but a faint head in one corner, while on the other could still be seen the traces of a woman's torso thrown backwards in an attitude of passionate grace. The third was in tolerable preservation, but it was plain that in a very few years it would be in the same state as the other two. The man took no interest in the pictures as such, but merely as remembrances of the dead guest, and when I pointed out to him that he could still keep the other two he was not unwilling to sell the third. “But,” he said, “I shall have to buy a new door.” “How much will it cost?” I asked. “A hundred francs.” “All right,” I said, “I'll give you two hundred.”

I thought I had better take the picture before he changed his mind, so we got the tools from the car in which I had come, unscrewed the hinges and carried the door away. When we arrived back at the chiefess's we sawed off the lower part of it in order to make it more portable, and so took it back to Papeete.

I went to Murea in a little open boat crowded with natives and Chinese. The skipper was a fair, red-faced native with blue eyes, tall and stout; he spoke a little English and perhaps his father was an English sailor. As soon as we got out of the reef it was clear that we were in for a bad passage. The sea was high and, sweeping over the boat, drenched us all. She rolled and pitched and tossed. Great squalls came suddenly and blinding sheets of rain. The waves seemed mountainous. It was an exciting (and to me alarming) experience to plunge through them. Through it all one old native woman sat on the deck, smoking the big native cigarettes one after the other. A Chinese boy was constantly and horribly sick. It was a relief to see Murea grow nearer, to discern the coconuts, and finally to enter the lagoon. The rain swept down in torrents. We were all soaked to the skin. We got into a whale-boat that
came out from the shore and had to wade to land. Then followed a four-mile walk along a muddy road, through streams, the rain beating down continually, till we reached the house at which we were to stay. We took off our clothes and got into pareos.

It was a small frame house, consisting of a veranda and two rooms, in each of which was an enormous bed. Behind was a kitchen. It belonged to a New Zealander, then away, who lived there with a native woman. There was a little garden in front, filled with tiare, hibiscus and oleander. At the side rushed a stream, and a small pool in this served as a bathroom. The water was fresh and sparkling.

By the steps of the veranda was a large tin bowl of water with a small tin basin, so that one could wash one's feet before entering the house.

Murea. The native houses are oblong, covered with a rough thatch of great leaves, and made of thin bamboos placed close together which let in light and air. There are no windows, but generally two or three doors. Many of them have an iron bed and in almost all you see a sewing machine.

The meeting-house is built on the same plan, but is very large, and everyone sits on the floor. I went to a choir practice, led by a blind girl, in which hour after hour they sang long hymns. The voices were loud and raucous near-by, but when you listened from a distance, sitting in the soft night, the effect was beautiful.

Fish spearing. I walked along the road for a bit and then, guided by the sound of voices and laughter, struck through a swamp of reeds taller than a man, wading here and there through muddy water up to the waist, and presently came to a small rushing stream. Here were about a dozen men and women, clad only in pareos, with long spears, and on the
ground beside them heaps of great silver fish, each one gory from the spear wound which had killed it. I waited for a time and then someone uttered a word of warning, everyone sprang to attention with poised spear, and all at once a shoal rushed down the stream towards the sea. There was an excitement and a shouting, a clashing of spears, a plunge into the water, and then the catch, a dozen big fish, was taken out and flung on the ground. The fish quivered and leapt and beat the earth with their tails.

Within the Reef. The water has all sorts of colours, from the deepest blue to pale emerald green. The reef is wide and the coral many-tinted. You can walk on the reef, and it is strange to see the great breakers so near at hand and the tumultuous sea, while inside, the water is as calm as a pond. All sorts of strange animals lurk among the coral, brightly coloured fish, sea snails,
bêches de mer
, urchins and wriggling things faintly pink.