Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  It is now toward four on Christmas morning and taxis begin wandering back to town. Then comes perhaps the most silent and inspiring moment in the South Pacific, for you drift into the quiet port where the majestic schooners ride peacefully and you see the sleeping forms! Under each verandah monumental bodies lie sleeping on the pavement, their heads on doorsteps, their massive hips pressed against the warm concrete. Perhaps they arrived on a late schooner. Or they are waiting for the market to open. Or they had a room but it was too stuffy. They are asleep, close to their earth, like majestic statues laid down to rest.

  You watch in the darkness and realize with a shock that you have seen all this before! But where? Then you remember! Gauguin! He saw these massive forms, this somber beauty, the mysteriousness of this race. There is no single way to prepare yourself for Polynesia comparable to memorizing Gauguin. In Tahiti today, on this hot Christmas, you will see every color he used, every model he studied. The significant fact about Gauguin, who died in terror, hating life, is that in Polynesia he painted with infinite love. His brooding spirit crept into every canvas; his compassion rests with every painting.

  You leave his sleeping people and walk along the noiseless alleys to the market, a sprawling concrete area protected by iron fence, and there you see the real Christmas gifts of Père Noel: the food, the flowers and the fish. You see long rows of tuna glistening in the pale light, whole sides of beef, legs of mutton, dressed pigs. Within the barred fence not a figure moves, but you see stacks of fruit, baskets of vegetables. The towers of food are so beautiful—golden, yellow, green, purple—that you wish they might never be disturbed.

  Then slowly daylight begins to touch the upper peaks of Moorea and the sleeping sidewalk figures shake themselves and wander to the market. By five o’clock the watchmen allow stall keepers to slip inside. Then a pleading, pointing hullabaloo begins: “Save that bonita for me!” “Those bread-fruit are mine.” And at five-thirty the gates swing open. In rush the housewives of Tahiti.

  The scene is magnificent, something Verdi would have staged had he composed an opera about Papeete. There is a wild dash, a haggling in four languages, a fine battle for the day’s food. You plunge into the maelstrom and are swept along to where the flowers are: frangipani, hibiscus, croton, bougainvillea, bird-of-paradise, and everywhere the bunches of tiara tahiti, a gardenia-like flower with an irresistible odor.

  The full riot lasts an hour and then a worse begins! The buses arrive! They back up to the gates, gaudily painted and with long benches providing seats for thirty. At seven o’clock eighty-one people are crammed inside. Outside hangs every conceivable kind of island produce, including an entire side of beef flapping in the dust. The top is a miniature market with bicycles, a baby carriage, three beds, two live pigs and a dozen vegetable gardens. The truck starts feebly. It rumbles along for two blocks and stops in front of a restaurant, out of which come eleven men who somehow climb aboard dragging three pigs whose squeals would wring the heart of Nero. The music of Papeete is the piercing scream of pigs, and never did such good food make such terrible protest about becoming so.

  As you watch this riotous end of Christmas night there comes a final catch at your heart, for there in the bright sunlight is the Bora Bora girl! Her sailor is almost asleep on her shoulder. She is carrying her shoes in her left hand, munching a mango in her right. Her red dress with the big yellow pattern is pulled awry, but her big expressive face, wreathed in wilted flowers, is gleaming. She is very happy.

  What kind of people live in Tahiti? Four kinds: Tahitians, Chinese, Frenchmen and other Europeans, mostly English and American. (There is no American consul for hundreds of Americans, but there is a Belgian and a Norwegian, for one national each!) It will be interesting to meet some of these people, for they prove that diverse races can live together in harmony.

  For a real Tahitian family consider the Bambridges. “Notable,” says a prominent member, “because we are probably the only natives not descended from a queen of some kind!” Old Thomas Bambridge was a fire-eating English missionary with a gift for carpentry and an eye for native girls. He had twenty-two children, of whom John Bambridge stayed in Tahiti. John married a handsome native girl, one of whose sons went to the United States, where he became well known as a musician. When his first wife died John came upon the English pirate Tapscott, a hell-raising renegade who had abducted a wife from the cannibal islands. The old freebooter had a beautiful daughter whom John married. They lived on into the twentieth century, rich and respected, famous for being the first Tahitians to own an automobile, a Model-T.

  By the pirate’s daughter Bambridge had nine children who were to make the name historic. George became mayor of Papeete and served for nine years. He built an important store, made a fortune in copra and was acknowledged head of the clan.

  Richard was the terror of the family and was sent to New Zealand to study farming procedures which would help Tahiti. He stayed eighteen years and returned with the announcement that he was fed up with farming. Thomas had somewhat the same experience with mechanics in America. A family sleuth was sent to track him down. “They met by accident on the streets of Los Angeles but Thomas said to hell with Tahiti.” He didn’t return till many years later. In the meantime brother Lionel became the business genius, organizing several corporations and many sidelines, from plumbing to dressmaking.

  Then William astonished the family by becoming a movie star! He played in many Hollywood productions, including Tabu and Mutiny on the Bounty. A relative says, “He usually played the native chief but he was also very good as village constable.” At one period of film shortage the local movie played Mutiny two or three times a week. “We all kept going to see Roustabout Willie say to Captain Bligh, ‘No, thanks. No rum. It makes me dizzy.’ ” He returned home rich and is still a famous figure about town.

  Tony Bambridge, the youngest son, was impressed with Willie’s career and decided to string along. He now owns an impressive chain of island theaters (13), is an importer, runs a hardware business, holds immense areas of land and serves as business head of the family. He has thirty-two nieces and nephews, several dozen in the next generation. He works on the principle, “Give them what they like,” and has several pictures which he runs over and over. The choicest is Aloma of the South Seas, “the purest corn ever grown, and in Technicolor.” It is so completely ridiculous that it packs them in, howling with delight at the blunders. Another sure-fire hit is South of Tahiti, which has a big scene with a tiger. Says a critic, “The house goes wild when that beast appears, because on most islands south of here there aren’t even any mice.”

  The Bambridges exemplify much of Tahitian life. Closely knit, generous, pushovers for John Barleycorn, they have a gay life. Combining all bloods, they travel anywhere at the drop of a hat, feel at home across the world, are happiest in the islands. After they struck it rich they began to wonder about those English Bambridges from whom the old missionary had sprung, so they got in touch with a family-tracing outfit in London, and sure enough the original family was located. George Bambridge wrote a careful letter extolling the Tahitian branch’s respectability. Back came a heartening letter which ended, “We assume that your family still represents full-blooded English stock.” George wrote an effusive reply explaining about the pirate Tapscott, the cannibal’s daughter, the many Tahitian beauties and the strain of American Indian. He never heard from the English line again.

  The Chinese counterpart of the Bambridges is remarkable fifty-year-old Ah You, who looks about thirty-five. The father of thirteen children, this prosperous storekeeper is also leader of the Chinese community. As president of the Association Philanthropique Chinoise it is his job to collect money to keep local Chinese from becoming indigent. (Only 13 accept support). He is also a member of the school board and active in politics.

  Ah You remains a citizen of China, as do all but ninety of his countrymen. After the war two boatloads of longtime residents were repatriated, it being the goal of most Chi
nese overseas to die in the homeland. (Local whites mourn: “Those damned Chinks took a million and a half dollars home with them, all picked up from American troops.”) But many have come back to Tahiti “because they found China wasn’t even fit for dying in.”

  Ah You and his countrymen constitute no problem in Tahiti. They intermarry with Tahitian and whites, behave themselves and do all the island baking and clothes manufacturing. They also run the laundries at prices which should make them millionaires the first year. (Clean a suit: $4.00. Do an ordinary 76¢ wash: $3.92.)

  Ah You’s thirteen children will all receive the best education their franc-sharp father can provide. The three oldest boys attended California universities, the first going on to Columbia for his master’s. The oldest daughter studied dress-making with Maggie Rouff in Paris and is now the island’s fashionable couturière. (Her first dozen dresses were flops: “Tahiti women don’t need the padding required by the French.”)

  His other children attend Catholic school—the family attends no church, is strictly Confucianist—for which he pays 80¢ per month per pupil. He hopes his money holds out long enough to send them all to college. The boys insist upon America; the girls want Paris. In the meantime they troop off each week for private tutoring lessons in English at the home of Mrs. Smallens.

  Ah You and his family typify the Chinese in Tahiti: hardworking, well-heeled, law-abiding, prolific, education-hungry. They all feel that the coming of Communism to China will not affect them, in which they are probably wrong, for in the South Pacific no matter how important men like Ah You become, the ultimate power in each community is the Chinese consul. Soon there will be a Communist consul in Papeete.

  As for the white men in Tahiti, none is more colorful than handsome gray-haired, fortyish Lew Hirshon, whose business ventures have been the talk of Tahiti for the past fifteen years. The son of a well-to-do New York family, he was drifting about the world after college and stumbled into Papeete. So far he has stayed nineteen years. Early in his visit he met a fabulous Greek woman who taught him theosophy “and the purposeful goodness of daily living.” He has put her principles into action and has spent his money freely to help Tahiti, and himself. He owns the most famous island schooner, Hiro, named after a great Maori navigator in the age of fable. He also runs a laundry, the ice plant, part of the main hotel, a copra plantation, a prosperous pig farm, a flock of sheep and numerous smaller enterprises. He’s had the good luck to make spectacular flops of several ventures (tuna canned on the spot, wine from pineapples) so that people do not have to think of him as a superman. “Lew’s just a guy who is trying.”

  He keeps well informed (Saturday Evening Post, Time, Atlantic, New Yorker) and will argue passionately about anything. Known as a “quick burn” he is specially infuriated by two questions often asked by tourists: “What’s the matter with So-and-so? Why would a decent chap like that waste his life in a dump like Tahiti?” (Lew: “Maybe because he damn well likes it here.”) “How many natives are there in Tahiti?” (Lew: “We’re all natives. There’s about 30,000 of us.”)

  To appreciate the wonder of island life, you must attend one of Lew’s maa tahiti, a Sunday feast in the old style. You sit in a large dining room that overlooks the Diadem, a circle of jagged spires that form a crown, but after a fleeting glance you forget the scenery. On banana leaves—when ironed they lie flat like linen—a mammoth feast has been spread. Large crocks of coconut milk will form the basic ingredient, for into its rich sweetness will be tossed raw fish, taro, breadfruit, baked bananas, lobster, shrimp, chopped onions and mussels. The smell is wonderful and you dip your hands in, for no spoons are allowed at a maa.

  The trick is to eat everything with the maximum amount of intake so that your host can hear that you enjoy the feast, but you can’t do so well because James Norman Hall, across from you, is in good form, while Bouzou, the great guitarist, can be heard in the next county. At your side slim Bill Stone, gifted writer of children’s books and perhaps the sharpest mind in the island, shows you how to handle the roast pig when it comes by on a giant platter. There’s a German count, a French banker, people of all bloods, all accomplishments. Conversation is in four languages, the most common single word being fiu, Tahitian for anything unpleasant: “I’m fiu on that dame.” “I’d have some more pig but it would make me fiu.”

  But above all the chatter one voice is dominant, a very low, musical contralto belonging to Lew’s breathtaking French-Tahitian wife Elianne. In a green-and-white pareu she is the perfect hostess, alternately listening to her husband or rocking the place with irrepressible tales about Paris and New York. She’s the leading singer on the island, and her records—you’d swear it was Ezio Pinza—are famous in the Pacific. Elianne passes the four wines, after which Bouzou plays on his guitar and the guests watch island girls do the hula, and when you go home with the ring of good talk in your ears, the taste of rich wine on your lips, you swear never again to ask why good old So-and-so stayed in Tahiti. You know!

  There are other white men who do not live so well as Lew Hirshon. One Frenchman spends less than a dollar a year, lives with the chickens under a native porch. An American makes it on $270 a year—one can of tinned meat a day, coffee on week-ends—but the days of free and easy beachcombing are past. It takes money now.

  Consider the case of two good-looking young Americans from Los Angeles. Homer Morgan and Hank Clarke were two G.I.’s looking for something to do after the war. They stumbled upon an advertisement for shark fishermen willing to invest some money in a venture which was bound to clean up millions in Tahiti. The bait caught them but never the shark, and they wound up with a boat and a shack on the beach “facing the damnedest view of Moorea you ever saw.”

  They say Tahiti is twice as much fun as anyone ever told them, but they add, “You can’t live on less than $140 a month.” They figure their budget this way: $75 for lodging and food; $35 for having fun; $15 for emergencies (more fun); $10 for taxi fares (still more fun); $5 for odds and ends. A dance date at Quinn’s with four drinks for yourself and girl comes to $4.00. If you can collect a gang—always simple in Tahiti—and hire a truck you can do Quinn’s and the Lido for about $6.75. Their principal trouble is that they keep falling in love with girls who live a $3.00 taxi fare out in the country. “We thought of taking them home by bus, but when we got there we found 64 people in 19 seats.”

  One of these days they’ll return to the States and take jobs, “which could prove catastrophic.” They have several negative comments on the beachcombing life in Tahiti: Not much cultural life. No intellectual stimulus. No decent library. Restaurant food is disgraceful. (An average Texas 45¢ lunch: $1.40.) But I noticed that Saturday after Saturday they turned up at Quinn’s with the most dazzling beauties on the island. When I reminded them of this they said, “Well that does compensate for the poor library!”

  Tahiti has always attracted interesting people. My favorite is James Morrison, one of the Bounty mutineers whom terrible Captain Bligh described as follows in his list of criminals to be apprehended and hung: “Boatswain’s Mate, aged 28 years, 5 feet 8 inches high, sallow complexion, long black hair, slender make, has lost the upper joint of his forefinger of the right hand, tattooed with a star under his left breast and a garter round his left leg with the motto, Honi soit qui mal y pense.”

  Morrison had a high old time on Tahiti, liked it so much he refused to accompany Christian to Pitcairn. He was captured by the Pandora, lived chained in the horrible Pandora’s Box, survived the loss of that ship on the Barrier Reef of Australia, being the last man to have his shackles removed as the hell ship went down. (Several of the mutineers were not released and perished with the ship.) He stood naked for two days in the broiling sun, having been forbidden by his captors to stand in the shade, and lost much of his skin. In despair, he dug a grave in the sand and lay buried to his neck until a new ship was ready.

  He stood trial in England and heard his defamers swear that during the mutiny: “James Morri
son was looking over the taffrail and called out in a jeering manner, ‘If my friends inquire after me, tell them I am somewhere in the South Pacific.’ ” His manner and courage were such, however, that the court acquitted him, whereupon he rejoined the Navy and served with honor as a gunner!

  Captain David Porter was another worthy. In charge of American ships of war, he grew tired of chasing British vessels across the Pacific in 1813, so he varied his duties by setting up the colony of Madison in the Marquesas, which he formally annexed to America. War becoming again pressing, he abandoned the colony, which was promptly murdered.

  Dorence Atwater, of Connecticut, won in Tahiti the distinction of the longest tombstone inscription on record. It happened in this way. At the earliest possible age he enlisted in the Union Army, was promptly captured and tossed into notorious Andersonville Prison, where at risk of his life he compiled a secret list of all Union soldiers who died. Back in civilian life, he tried to peddle the information to families of the bereaved and ran afoul of the law. After much wrangling he was rewarded for his bravery by the consulship at Papeete, where he sired an impressive family. His immense tombstone narrates, frontside, the salient facts of his life, backside the entire history of Andersonville, in fine print. It is a symbol of the abiding affection in which Tahitian families hold the old daredevils who came among them.

  But Tahiti would never have become world famous if only hell-raisers had loved the islands. To this remote haven have wandered men of great genius, and it is their work which has broadcast the mysterious charm of Polynesia.

  The French sent Paul Gauguin and Pierre Loti, who is now commemorated by a florid statue at the pool he made famous in his lush story of Tahiti. The statue is something of a disappointment to the local French. A fiery young novelist arrived some years ago with the cry, “It’s a disgrace! In a French colony! No statue of the immortal Loti!” He took up a subscription, went back to Paris and had the statue made. When it was erected the local patriots received a shock: It didn’t look at all like Loti. It looked exactly like the young novelist!