No colonist, tradesman, or officer from the small garrison ever invited him home, nor was he permitted to enter the Military Club. To the families of the small colonial society of Tahiti-nui, he became a leper: because he had publicly cohabitated with native women; because he had consorted with prostitutes and engaged in openly scandalous and depraved behavior, in Mataiea as well as in Punaauia (behavior wildly exaggerated by Papeete’s rumor mills); and because of the bad name he was given by the island’s priests and ministers (especially Father Damian) who, although they maintained an intense rivalry in the contest for native souls for their respective churches, were agreed in considering the drunken and degenerate painter a public menace, a disgrace to society, and a source of immoral behavior. He might commit a crime at any moment. What else could one expect of the sort of person who publicly praised cannibalism?
One day a pregnant native girl appeared at the Department of Public Works, asking for him. It was Pau’ura. Casually, as if they had last seen each other only yesterday—“Hello, Koké”—she showed him her belly, a half-smile on her face. She had her little bundle of clothes in her hand.
“Have you come to stay with me?”
Pau’ura nodded.
“Is that my child in your belly?”
The girl nodded again, quite certain, a playful gleam in her eye.
He was very happy. But complications immediately arose, inevitable in any business in which you were involved, Koké. The owner of the boardinghouse refused to let Pau’ura share Paul’s room, saying that her boardinghouse was modest but decent, and she would permit no unmarried couples under her roof, much less a white man and a native woman. The couple then made a dismal round of all the private homes in Papeete that took in guests. All refused to accept them. Paul and Pau’ura had to take refuge in Punaauia, on Pierre Levergos’s little property. The ex-soldier agreed to put them up until they could find a place to live, an offer that earned him the enmity of Father Damian and Reverend Riquelme.
Living in Punaauia and working in Papeete made Koké’s life difficult. He had to take the first public coach before the sun had risen, and he still arrived at the Department of Public Works half an hour late. To make up for his tardiness, he offered to stay half an hour after the office had closed.
As if he didn’t have enough problems already, he became consumed by a mad idea: to sue the pensions and boardinghouses of Papeete that had refused him lodging with his vahine, accusing them of having violated French law, which prohibited discrimination against its citizens on grounds of race or religion. He wasted hours, days, consulting lawyers and speaking to the public prosecutor about the amount of compensation that he and Pau’ura might request for their grievances. They all tried to dissuade him, pointing out that he would never win such a case, since the law upheld the right of the owners and managers of hotels and boardinghouses to refuse people who, in their judgment, were not respectable. And what kind of respectability could he claim, he who lived in flagrant adultery, illegitimate union, or bigamy—with a native woman, no less—had been involved in countless drunken brawls, as documented in police records, and was also accused of having fled the hospital without paying what he owed? It was out of pity that the doctors of the Vaiami Hospital hadn’t pressed charges; but if he persisted in going to court, the matter would come to light and Koké would be the one to suffer.
It wasn’t these arguments that made him give up his efforts, but a joint letter from his friends Daniel de Monfreid and good old Schuff, which reached him in the middle of 1897 like manna from heaven. It came accompanied by a remittance of fifteen hundred francs, and it announced that there would soon be another installment. Ambroise Vollard was beginning to sell his paintings and sculptures, not just to one customer, but to many. He had promises from purchasers that could be cemented at any minute. All of this seemed to herald a change in his fortunes. His two friends were pleased that collectors were at last beginning to recognize what some critics and painters were already admitting in low voices: that Paul was a great artist, that he had revolutionized contemporary aesthetics. “We don’t disregard the possibility that the same thing could happen to you that happened to Vincent,” they added. “After having systematically ignored him, now everyone is fighting over his paintings, and paying astonishing sums for them.”
On the same day he received the letter, Paul resigned from the Department of Public Works. In Punaauia, he bought a small plot of land, not far from Pierre Levergos’s little property, where, since Pierre’s house was tiny, he and his vahine slept in an open-walled shelter, next to the orchard. With the letter and the check from his friends, he convinced the Bank of Papeete to give him a loan for his new house, the plans for which he drew himself, and whose construction he closely monitored.
Since Pau’ura’s return, his improvement was noticeable. He began eating again, his color returned, and above all, he recovered his spirits. Once again he was heard laughing and being sociable with his neighbors. It wasn’t just the presence of his vahine that cheered him; it was also the prospect of being the father of a Tahitian. That would mean he finally belonged to this land, and would be evidence that the Arioi accepted him at last.
In a few months, the new dwelling was habitable. It was smaller than the old one but more solid, with walls and a roof that would withstand the wind and rain. He hadn’t resumed painting, but Pierre Levergos no longer believed that he would keep his promise of never taking up his brushes again. Art and painting were frequent topics of conversation. The ex-soldier listened, pretending greater interest than he felt, as Paul criticized painters he had never heard of, and defended incomprehensible ideas. How was it possible for there to be a “revolution” in painting, in any sense of the word? The ex-soldier sat stunned when Paul, at his most inspired moments, claimed that Europe’s—and France’s—tragedy had begun when painting and sculpture stopped being part of people’s lives as they had been until the Middle Ages, and in every ancient civilization: Egyptian, Greek, Babylonian, Scythian, Inca, Aztec, and here, too, among the ancient Maori. Life was still lived the old way in the Marquesas, where he and Pau’ura and the child would move soon.
The unspeakable illness cut short Koké’s recuperation, returning suddenly in the month of March with more fury than ever. The sores on his legs opened again, oozing pus. This time, the salve of arsenic failed to ease the burning. At the same time, the pain in his ankle grew worse. The druggist in Papeete refused to continue selling him laudanum without a doctor’s prescription. With his head hanging, utterly humiliated, he had to let himself be taken to the Vaiami Hospital. They refused to admit him until he paid what he still owed from the time he escaped out the window. He also had to leave a deposit as guarantee that this time he would pay his bill.
He spent eight days in the hospital. Dr. Lagrange agreed to prescribe laudanum for him again, but warned Paul not to continue abusing the narcotic, which was largely responsible for his loss of memory and the episodes of disorientation of which he was now complaining—not knowing who he was, where he was, or where he was going. Then, approaching the matter in a very roundabout way so as not to hurt his feelings, the doctor ventured to suggest that given the state of his health it might be better for him to return to France, his native land, where he could spend his last years—years which would be very painful, he had to understand—among people he knew, people of his own language, blood, and race. Paul’s response was to raise his voice.
“My language, my blood, and my race are those of Tahiti-nui, doctor. I’ll never set foot in France again, a country to which I owe only failure and heartache.”
There were still sores on his legs when he left the clinic, and the pain in his ankle hadn’t subsided. But laudanum dulled the itching and burning, and blunted his despair. It was quite an experience to be detached bit by bit from his surroundings, to sink into a state of pure sensation, imagery, and spiraling fantasy, freed from the pain and revulsion he felt at knowing he was rotting alive, that the wounds on his l
egs, their stench not masked by the ointment-coated bandages, were bringing to the surface all the sins, filth, shameful deeds, cruelties, and mistakes of a lifetime. A lifetime that apparently was nearing its end, Paul. Would you die before you reached the Marquesas?
On April 19, 1898, Koké and Pau’ura’s son was born, a good-sized, healthy boy who by mutual agreement they called Émile.
11
AREQUIPA
MARSEILLE, JULY 1844
There are cities one hates instinctively, thought Flora the moment she stepped down from the coupé that had brought her from Avignon with a priest and a salesman as her traveling companions. She eyed the buildings of Marseille with displeasure. Why did you hate a city you hadn’t even seen yet, Florita? Later, she would say it was because it was prosperous: a little Babylon of greedy adventurers and immigrants, overpopulated by the well-to-do. Excessive commerce and wealth had produced in its inhabitants a mercantile spirit and fierce individualism that afflicted even the poor and downtrodden, among whom she detected no inclination toward solidarity but rather a stony indifference to the ideas of workers’ unity and universal fraternity that she had come to instill in them. Cursed city, whose people thought only of lucre! Money was society’s poison; it corrupted everything and made human beings greedy and rapacious beasts.
As if Marseille wanted to give her reasons to justify her dislike of it, everything went wrong from the moment she set foot on Marseillais soil. The Hôtel Montmorency was horrid and full of fleas, reminding her of her arrival in Peru in September 1833, at the port of Islay, where on her first night—at the home of Don Justo, the postmaster—she was bitten so much she thought she would die. The next day she escaped to an inn in the center of Marseille, run by a Spanish family; they gave her a big, plain room and didn’t object to her receiving groups of workers there. The poet-bricklayer Charles Poncy, composer of the Workers’ Union anthem, whom Flora had counted on to be her guide in her meetings with the workers of Marseille, had gone to Algiers, leaving a little note behind: his nerves were frayed and his body weary; he needed rest. What could one expect of poets, even if they were workers, too? They were simply monsters of egotism, blind and deaf to the fortunes of their fellows, narcissists mesmerized by the sufferings they invented only in order to immortalize them in verse. Perhaps, Andalusa, for the Workers’ Union of the future, you should consider outlawing not just money but poets, as Plato did in his Republic.
To crown it all, beginning the first day in Marseille her ailments, especially her stomach troubles, returned. As soon as she ate anything, bloating and cramps made her double over in pain. Resolved not to acknowledge defeat, she carried on with her visits and meetings, taking in nothing but clear broth or gruel, which her aching belly managed to digest.
On her second day in Marseille, after a meeting with a group of shoemakers, bakers, and tailors organized by two Fourierist hairdressers whom she had written from Paris on the recommendation of Victor Considérant, she witnessed a scene at the docks that made her blood boil. From the wharf, she was watching a recently docked ship unload. This allowed her to see with her own eyes the workings of the white-slave system that she had just been told about at the hairdressers’ meeting. “The longshoremen won’t come to see you, madame,” they had told her. “They treat the poor worse than anyone.” The dockworkers had a license that gave them the sole right to work in the holds of the ships, loading or unloading goods and helping passengers with their baggage. Many preferred to subcontract their jobs to the Genoese, Turks, or Greeks who crowded at the head of the wharf, waving and shouting, begging to be called. The dockworkers received a franc and a half for each trip, which was a good wage, and they gave the subcontracted laborers fifty centimes, so that without lifting a finger they pocketed a franc of commission. What drove Flora mad was noticing one of the longshoremen pass an enormous valise—almost a chest—to a Genoese woman, tall and strong, but heavily pregnant. Hunched over with the load on her shoulder, the woman grunted as she crept toward the passenger’s carriage, her face flushed and dripping with sweat at the effort. The longshoreman handed her twenty-five centimes. And when she, in broken French, began to demand the other twenty-five, he threatened and swore at her.
Flora strode up to him as he was returning to the ship with a group of companions.
“Do you know what you are, you wretch?” she asked, beside herself. “A traitor and a coward. Aren’t you ashamed to treat that poor woman the same way you and your brethren are treated by those who exploit you?”
The man stared at her uncomprehendingly, doubtless wondering whether she was mad. At last, amid the others’ laughter and jeering, he asked her, with a show of offense, “Who are you? And what right do you have to meddle with me?”
“My name is Flora Tristán,” she said angrily. “Remember it well. Flora Tristán. I’ve devoted my life to fighting the ill-treatment of the poor. Not even the bourgeoisie are as despicable as workers who exploit other workers.”
The man’s eyes—he was big, with a sloping belly, bow legs, and eyebrows that met in the middle—kindled in indignation.
“Try whoring—you’ll have better luck at it,” he exclaimed, moving away and making a rude gesture at the gawkers on the wharf.
Flora was shivering and had a high fever when she returned to the inn. After taking a few spoonfuls of broth, she got into bed. Though she was well covered and it was the middle of summer, she was cold. For several hours she was unable to fall asleep. Oh, Florita, this miserable body of yours couldn’t keep pace with your anxieties, your obligations, your plans, your will. Were you really so old? At forty-one a human being should be full of life. How you had deteriorated, Andalusa. Just eleven years ago, you were able to stand that terrible voyage from France to Valparaíso so well, and then the trip from Valparaíso to Islay, and finally the assault of those fleas that bit you all night. What a welcome Peru gave you!
Islay: a single street of bamboo huts, a beach of black sand, and a harbor without a pier, where passengers were brought ashore just like freight and animals, lowered on pulleys from the ship’s deck onto wooden lighters. The arrival in Islay of the French niece of powerful Don Pío Tristán caused a commotion in the little port town of one thousand. That was why you stayed in the best house in town, which belonged to postmaster Justo de Medina. It may have been the best, but it was still infested by the fleas that reigned everywhere in Islay. On the second night, upon seeing that you were bitten from head to toe and scratching ceaselessly, Don Justo’s wife divulged the formula that allowed her to sleep. Five chairs in a row, the last of which must touch the bed. Standing on the first, remove your dress and make the slave carry it—and the fleas on it—away. Take off your undergarments on the second chair, and rub the exposed parts of your body with a mixture of warm water and cologne to dislodge the fleas on your skin. And so on, removing the rest of your clothes on each new chair and rubbing the respective body parts uncovered, until you reached the fifth chair, where a nightdress soaked in cologne was waiting; for as long as it was damp, it would keep the tiny insects away. This allowed one to fall asleep. Two or three hours later, the fleas would return to the attack, emboldened, but by then you were already asleep, and with habit and a little luck, you wouldn’t feel them.
It was the first lesson you learned in your father’s homeland, Florita, the country of your uncle Pío and your vast paternal family, which you had come to explore in hopes of recovering some part of Don Mariano’s inheritance. You would spend a year in Peru, and it was there that you would discover almost fantastical opulence, learning what it was like to live in the midst of a family that gave itself airs and had no material worries.
How strong and healthy you were then, Andalusa, at the age of thirty. If you hadn’t been, you couldn’t have borne those forty hours on horseback, scaling the Andes and crossing the desert between Islay and Arequipa. From the edge of the sea to eighty-six hundred feet above sea level, along precipices and up steep mountainsides—you could see cl
ouds beneath your feet—where the horses sweated and whinnied, overcome by the effort. The cold of the peaks was succeeded by the heat of an interminable desert of scorched stones and sand dunes where death cropped up suddenly in the form of the skeletons of cattle, mules, and horses; there were no trees, not a single patch of leafy shade, not a stream or a well. It was a desert without birds or snakes or foxes, without living creatures of any species. To the torment of thirst was added a general uneasiness. There you were, all alone, surrounded by the fifteen men of the mule train who looked at you with undisguised greed—a doctor, two merchants, the guide, and eleven mule drivers. Would you make it to Arequipa? Would you survive?
You made it to Arequipa, and you survived. In your present physical condition, you would have died in that desert and been buried there like the young student whose tomb, with its rough wooden cross, was the only sign of a human presence on the lunar two-day journey from the port of Islay to the majestic volcanoes of the White City.
Because she felt so ill, she lost patience very quickly with the stupid questions she was sometimes asked at the gatherings in Marseille, when workers came to meet with her at the Spanish inn. Compared to the workers of Lyon, the workers of Marseille were cavemen, ignorant, crude, with no interest at all in social questions. They listened to her indifferently, yawning, as she explained that the Workers’ Union would promise them steady jobs, and the ability to give their children an education as good as the education the bourgeois provided for their own children. What irritated Flora most was the sullen suspicion, the sometimes open hostility, with which they listened to her inveigh against money, declaring that commerce would disappear with the revolution, and that men and women would work, as in early Christian communities, not for material gain but out of altruism, to satisfy their own needs and the needs of others. And that in this future world everyone would live simply and without slaves, whether white or black. And that no man would have mistresses or be a bigamist, or a polygamist, as so many men were in Marseille.
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