by Alec Waugh
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.’
‘Who else’ll come?’
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 u
nder 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,