by Gavin Young
Gauguin, glowering in his Maison de Jouir at Atuona, saw all this at close range. Between appalling rows with the local gendarme and the bishop, he made dismal jottings in his journal:
Marquesan art has disappeared, thanks to the missionaries. The missionaries have considered that sculpture and decoration were fetishism and offensive to the God of the Christians.
That is the whole story, and the unhappy people have yielded.
From its very cradle, the new generation sings the canticles in incomprehensible French, recites the catechism, and after that…. Nothing … as you can understand.
If a young girl, having picked some flowers, artistically makes a pretty wreath and puts it on her head, his reverence flies into a rage! Soon the Marquesan will be incapable of climbing a coconut-tree, incapable of going up the mountain after the wild bananas that are so nourishing to him. The child who is kept at school, deprived of physical exercise, his body always clad (for the sake of decency), becomes delicate and incapable of enduring a night in the mountains. They are all beginning to wear shoes and their feet, which are tender now, cannot run over the rough paths and cross the torrents on stones. Thus we are witnessing the spectacle of the extinction of the race, a large part of which is tubercular, with barren loins and ovaries destroyed by mercury….
Gauguin, of course, could do more than write. The vanished people of the Marquesas Islands – indeed, all vanished Polynesians – have their most moving memorial in Paul Gauguin’s paintings. In Nevermore, and Where Do We come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, a bewildered awareness of impending extinction speaks to us in anguish from impassive Tahitian faces.
*
Yes: Tolu, Manino, Fili and Emma were lucky. Back in Papeete I lay on my hotel bed and in my mind’s eye saw Fili and Amosa in the halo of sunlight at their hidden bathing place, the stream in the forest. Then I sadly copied out from Gauguin’s Oviri an old Polynesian invocation he had loved:
You, gentle breezes of the South and East, playing and caressing each other above my head – hurry! Run together to that other island: you will see there someone who has abandoned me seated in the shade of his favourite tree. Tell him that you have seen me in tears.
I would be leaving the Pacific in a few days, sadly and without quite believing it. In the Tahitian Sun Press (‘Your weekly guide to sun and fun in Tahiti’) I read:
A crippled Australian anti-nuclear protest yacht is en route to Hawaii after a costly decision to try and visit the French nuclear bomb testing site in French Polynesia.
That decision cost Bill Ethell, the skipper of the 54-foot Pacific Peacemaker, a broken mizzen mast, a 20,000 French Pacific franc court fine (about 180 US dollars) and a suspended three-month prison sentence….
The decision also earned the Pacific Peacemaker a place in Tahiti’s history as the first protest yacht in 10 years to have a confrontation with a French naval vessel off Mururoa, the Tuamotan atoll (about 500 miles from Papeete) where France conducts nuclear bomb tests – unofficially, 41 atmospheric tests between 1966 and 1974 and more than 50 underground tests since 1974.
The confrontation, like the one in 1972 involving the Canadian protest yacht Greenpeace II, resulted in charges of a French Navy ship intentionally ramming a protest yacht, damaging the yacht….
Ratu Mara, the stately, Oxford-educated Prime Minister of Fiji, had wanted nuclear contamination of any kind expunged from the South Pacific. The New Zealand sailor’s T-shirt, so surprising in the main street of Honiara, had said: ‘Nuclear hem save killim iumi evriwan.’ Was nuclear power to become the Pacific’s final Fatal Impact? Perhaps it would fulfil the prophecy in the Tahitian saying:
The palm-tree shall grow,
The coral shall spread,
But man shall cease.
Twenty-nine
The African Star had faded from my hopes. Her owners or agents in Sydney had cabled that they did not at all care for the idea of an unknown traveller hitching a lift on one of their ships to Valparaiso or anywhere else. I sat glumly in Raphael Tixier’s office in Papeete with Jim Hostetler, wondering how to avoid taking a Lan Chile flight to Santiago.
‘Jim, there wouldn’t be anything like a cruise ship passing through here, would there?’ It was a long shot; there aren’t that many cruise ships in the world and I had turned my nose up at them in the past. But now anything was worth trying.
‘No, nothing now. Not at this season – but wait, I’ll look anyway.’ He riffled through the shipping pages of Dépêche de Tahiti. After a minute he cried, ‘Hey! There’s the Alexander Pushkin. Arriving in two days. Going to Callao.’
‘That’ll do!’ I may have yelled it – I was on my feet, I know that. ‘Who’s the agent?’
‘C.G.M. Let’s go.’ We left the office and drove to the other side of town – crossing en route the Place Du Petit Thouars.
M. Hubert, the helpful French manager of the Compagnie Générale Maritime (I was getting a very favourable impression of most shipping agents on this second ship-hop) said, ‘Yes, Alexander Pushkin, Soviet round-the-world cruise ship. A big one. Chartered out to a few hundred geriatric Germans. West Germans.’
‘Never mind. West, east, north or south, I’ll kiss them all if I’m allowed on board.’
‘I’ll certainly ask, at least….’
Later that day came a message that the ship was full, but if I could see the Russian purser when she arrived at Papeete he might arrange something. No passengers would be joining her after Papeete. Nobody could: the ship did not stop anywhere in the four thousand five hundred miles between here and Callao, the port of Lima in Peru.
Two days later I was fidgeting nervously about the wharf of Papeete under the black metal wall of the Alexander Pushkin’s side, waiting while Jim Hostetler went on board to find the purser. Three long rows of portholes scared down like unblinking, hostile eyes. Around me, well-dressed greying men and women with carefully permed hair doddered or pushed about, addressing each other in quavering or boisterous German. Jim returned eventually, saying, ‘Come on and meet the purser. It’s all right. They’ll take you. The other passengers are going to be surprised to see you, but what do you care?’ He seemed almost as pleased as I was that we’d succeeded. I owed a lot to Raphael Tixier and Jim Hostetler – they had arranged the voyage to the Marquesas and now this. I hoped I would meet them again in a place where I could repay them.
In a saloon the size of an average ballroom, a blond uniformed Russian with a baby face and glasses smiled and said, ‘Your name is Gavin. I am the chief purser. My name is Alexander. Sacha.’
I said, ‘Will you really take me to Callao?’
‘Oh, yes. Of course, I shall need some money for your fare.’
Gladly I gave him eight hundred dollars out of my dwindling store of travellers’ cheques for the eleven days’ board and lodging. A lot of money, but four thousand five hundred miles is a long way and the air fare could hardly be much less. Jim went with us to inspect the cabin I was to be given. It was a good one on the promenade deck: large, clean, functional. The bed was narrow but, more important, there was a good reading light over it. The window was large and rectangular, more than a mere porthole. A sign by the telephone said I could call four stewardesses: Anna, Olga, Natasha and Tatanja. ‘All at once?’ Jim asked.
When we returned to the wharf, it was crowded. Not only the German passengers were milling about; half Papeete seemed to be there: men and women strolling in the sun with their children or their dogs, couples in cars, boys and girls on scooters. Above them all towered the Alexander Pushkin’s single great funnel, white with a wide red band carrying a yellow hammer and sickle.
‘Well, I’ll leave you,’ said Jim. ‘I hope you’ve had a good time. Gauguin is nothing but a syphilitic layabout to me. Who needs him?’ He laughed. ‘Enjoy Cape Horn. If Mrs Thatcher lets you get there.’
He was gone and I was sad. But exultant, too. In my pocket I could feel my ticket to South America.
*
; 1705 hours. A last-minute swirl of Germans poured from a big smart tourist coach, cutting it fine. Men and women strung round with cameras and binoculars walked stiffly towards the gangway. One or two of the women had white Tahitian flowers in their hair, and some of the men wore flowery Hawaiian-style shirts. A well-preserved and affluent group had chartered this big ship.
A voice from somewhere near my elbow inquired, ‘You haven’t got a pencil, old boy, have you?’ Was it a German being funny? I looked down in surprise. A small man smiled hopefully up at me. He had flat white hair brushed straight back and an open, humorous face; a monocle hung from a ribbon round his neck. He looked like a nice combination of Lord Carrington, the then British Foreign Secretary, and Mr Magoo, the animated cartoon character. The stature was Mr Magoo’s; the voice was Lord Carrington’s.
‘Here you are,’ I said, handing him the ballpoint in my outside pocket. He looked startled, then made a note on a list on a clipboard and handed it back.
‘I say, old boy – you sound English.’
‘I am. And I hope you’re on this ship because I’m coming with you.’
‘What?’ He looked flabbergasted. ‘Well, I am on the ship, old boy. But you mean to say they’ve let you board her here? That’s very unusual, old boy. Very unusual. You actually have your ticket and a cabin, eh? I mean, I’m not doubting your word, but….’
I explained about my round-the-world adventure, about Jim Hostetler and C.G.M.’s M. Hubert, about my meeting with Sacha the purser.
Carrington-Magoo nodded his head, smiling. ‘Oh, you’ve met Sacha. Ah, well – by jove, old boy, you’re a lucky bugger, excuse the language. I’ve never heard of a stray passenger being taken on board a Russian chartered cruise ship before. I’m bloody delighted, old boy.’
He looked around at the Germans beginning to troop up the gangway, shepherded by smiling young Russian stewardesses, and lowered his voice. ‘To tell the truth, I’ve done many cruises with the Russian ships – I organize the shore excursions – but this lot of passengers is a pretty ghastly bunch. A few nice Dutch and Austrians, though. And the Russians are no problem at all; a good lot, actually.’
People were converging on him with questions. ‘To work. See you later. We must have a drink or two. Plenty of time for that in the next eleven days. I’m a brandy man m’self.’ His stocky little figure and white head disappeared up the gangway. I followed him as the Russian deckhands prepared to pull it up.
*
I watched from the boat deck with a feeling of unreality as Papeete began to recede, slowly at first, then faster as the quiver of the deck increased. Evening sunlight gently washed the green mountainsides and the rose-coloured fingers of Moorea across the bay. Yachts darted about, and I wondered what had happened to the wretched fugitive Tony Carter had given a beer to – the blond skeleton with the wild hope of escaping from an island outpost of the French Foreign Legion without papers. Had some yachtsman found helping him a challenge worth taking?
Slowly my thoughts turned to quite another world. Even now half of my mind was wondering how tightly Mrs Thatcher’s naval blockade was drawn round the area of Cape Horn. The last fragments of news I had heard were that a British destroyer had been sunk and an aircraft carrier seriously damaged. The Royal Navy seemed to have been a little careless.
Once the Alexander Pushkin was at sea I went to the purser’s office to find out about the times of meals and to see where I should sit for them. A beautiful girl almost collided with me on the stairs. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Diana. From New York. I haven’t seen you before. English?’
‘Yes.’
‘My husband’s English,’ she said. ‘He’s a magician. See you later.’
A blustering man with a near-Teutonic accent and a lapel badge saying ‘Cruise Director’ brayed, ‘A new passenger. I haven’t heard anything about a new passenger.’ He stared at me without pleasure.
‘Welcome,’ said a young Russian woman in cool white uniform from the purser’s desk. ‘I’m glad you are joining us.’
At dinner I was a small sensation: the Flying Dutchman. Grey heads lifted from plates full of rollmops and potato salad; baleful eyes and a rustle of tongues followed me to the table the purser’s assistant had indicated. Five Germans were seated there, irate. I didn’t blame them; they had been sitting together since the ship had left Europe a couple of months before. They had a tightly knit, well-entrenched, Siegfried line look. I managed to get through my pea soup before the sniping began.
The first trigger was pulled by a thick-set man who had probably once been handsome, but by now his cheeks had fallen in, his chin had fallen down and his nose had ripened unhealthily under the influence of beer or Rhine wine like a plum in a heatwave. ‘So. You are new here?’ The accent was heavy. ‘So surprising to see anozzer face at zis stage of our voyage. You don’t speak German? A pity.’
I think his wife fired next. ‘We are most surprised.’ A pause. ‘Welcome, of course.’ Her smile was a very poor pretence. ‘But I must tell you frankly that we are most – bemused – by you coming on board. You will go to Europe with us?’
‘Only to Callao, the next stop,’ I explained meekly. ‘Peru.’
‘And you have some permissions, of course?’
‘It would be difficult, I imagine, to come aboard a Soviet round-the-world cruise ship without permission,’ I said, keeping the annoyance out of my voice.
‘But – excuse us, please, it is so interesting to us – the cruise director knows nothing about a new passenger. We have asked him. Of course.’
‘Of course you have.’
‘It is his duty to know.’
‘Of course it is.’ I ordered half a bottle of red wine from a passing Russian steward.
Another, thinner, man with fish-grey eyes leaned towards me. ‘We haf nothing against you personally, please understand. But I zink ve all vould like to ask from vhere your permission to board vas coming.’
The wine arrived and I poured a glass with a steady hand.
‘A matter of interest,’ the woman said in a businesslike way. ‘It concerns us all. For instance, you have paid to be here, or you are not paying? We all have paid. Round the world. Genoa to Hamburg.’
‘Yes, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I have paid. From Tahiti to Peru. I have the receipt.’ My hand moved towards my pocket.
‘No, no,’ Plum-nose said quickly. I suppose even he thought that to make me show my receipt would be forcing things too far. ‘But, even so, who – forgive us, frankly we are very curious – has given you permission to come on board?’
‘It is not the cruise director,’ the businesslike woman informed the others again. ‘We know that because Helmut asked him and he said not. He said not, quite firmly.’
‘Who, pray, can it be, ve ask ourselves?’ the thin man said to me. ‘It is such a mystery,’ he sighed. ‘Frankly….
To myself I said, enough of this. And out loud: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I see you are worried about this – mystery. I suggest you go after dinner to the captain’s cabin, knock loudly on the door and tell him that you suspect he has an interloper on his ship. In cabin 208. You could ask him to do something about it. He might, for instance, turn the ship round and steam back to Tahiti to drop me off. Only a few hours out of his way. Or perhaps he could put me in the ship’s prison. There’s bound to be one.’
Astonished faces looked at me. Was I serious? I poured more wine and gulped it down.
‘Of course,’ I reassured them, ‘I am only joking.’
‘Ach so. Joking.’
‘Actually, I have the personal permission of the captain of this vessel. That is good enough for me.’ I looked round at them. ‘I hope you can live with it, too. It’s only as far as Callao.’ I left them in the middle of their boiled veal, and a silence like a laser beam followed my back to the door.
*
‘I hope the Germans weren’t starting as they mean to continue,’ said Carrington-Magoo over our first brandy. I felt I neede
d it. He looked very debonair with his eyeglass ribbon and a bow tie.
‘Funny how they say, “Pray, would you this and that,” like Winston Churchill in a memorandum. Don’t worry, for heaven’s sake. We’ll change your table. Just remember, you have the Russian captain on your side, old boy. After all, he didn’t let you come aboard without giving it some thought.’
‘No, I’m very surprised he did let me on. What’s more, I’m very grateful to him.’
‘Frankly I’m surprised, too. But he’s a jolly good chap, is Vitaly Segal. A friend, really. I’ve known him since he was a junior officer.’ He put out his hand. ‘It’s time I introduced myself, old boy. Should have done it before, but it’s always a rush, sorting things out after sailing. The name’s Eric Hart. Commander Hart when I’m in the Devonshire Club in London – I think that’s fair, don’t you, old boy? I was a commander RNR in the war.’
We sat at a small table in the smallest of the ship’s bars. There were four or five, Hart said. He preferred this one – the Friendship Bar – because it was cosy and because he liked to watch the big, stately Russian barmaid.
‘Nice looker, isn’t she?’ he said appreciatively, drawing my attention to her. ‘She’s called Ludmilla, old boy.’ She looked as if she could bat out an aria from Boris Godunov between pouring one vodka and the next. She was splendid.
Little by little I learned about Eric Hart. I knew instinctively that he was totally reliable, and I knew after the German inquisition that I was going to be very glad he was on board.
He had been born in London – ‘Quite a long time ago, old boy. Never mind how long exactly.’ If you went by his thick white hair, his relatively unlined face, his brisk manner, you would have said he was anything between sixty-five and eighty. He had first been to sea in a tramp in 1928 and had then joined the old Orient Line as an assistant purser. Later, he went-to the Blue Star Line and was promoted to purser of the Almeda Star on the South America route. When war came he volunteered for the navy, ending up in 1950 as paymaster lieutenant-commander RNR, with good experience of Iceland and the Russian convoys. He parted company with the sea for a stretch after that – ‘Wanted to see something of the wife, old boy.’ He tried tobacco farming in Rhodesia and then distributing liquor, but neither job suited him. He had appreciative friends, though, for a few years later he was managing a big hotel in Salisbury. Even so, he returned to England and to the sea. He joined a company that chartered out ships for cruises and became an excursion organizer. Some of the ships turned out to be Russian, like the Alexander Pushkin, and I suppose because of his transparent honesty and no-nonsense amiability the Russians came to trust him.