Hot Countries

by Alec Waugh

  §

  It is about forty miles from Papeete to Tautira, and every afternoon Gustave’s truck, a vast van of a Buick, lined with seats, makes the rocking three hours’ journey there along the uneven island road. It is an uncomfortable, but by no means unpleasant journey. As the car jolted on past Paiea towards Papiieri a feeling of assuagement descended on the turmoil of Girling’s spirit. He had been wise, he felt, to make this journey. Things were moving too fast for him in Papeete. He had need of the rest and quiet of the districts. He was carrying a letter of introduction to the chief, who would find room for him somewhere in his bungalow, and there would be long lazy mornings reading on the verandah, bathing in the lagoon, with tranquil evenings in the cool of the grass-grown pathways.

  It was very warm inside the truck. Every seat was occupied, and since all the gossip had been exchanged and it was too hot for the effort of conversation, one of the drivers had taken out his accordion and was playing softly. Already they had left behind them the more formal districts; Papara and Paiea and Mataiea. They had passed the narrow isthmus of Taravao; the scenery was growing wilder. There had been little attempt made here to keep the gardens tended. Bungalows had been set down apparently at hazard, among the tangle of fruit and flowers; the women who were stretched out on mats on the verandahs no longer wore the European costume. It was over the white and red of the pareo that their black hair fell. In some such Tahiti as this it was that Loti loved. But it was vaguely that Girling was conscious of the landscape. His eyelids had grown heavy; tired by bright colours. His head began to nod.

  He woke with a start and to the sound of laughter. “I make nice pillow?” a voice was asking him. And blinking he realised that his head had sunk sideways on to the shoulders of the girl who was beside him. She was tall and handsome, a typical Tahitian, with fine eyes and hair, and a laughing mouth.

  “I’m so sorry,” he began.

  She only laughed, called out something in Tahitian to the driver, and taking Girling by the wrist, drew him back towards her.

  “Bye-bye, baby,” she said.

  But Girling was now wide awake: vividly conscious of the girl beside him. Her coloured cotton dress was bare above the elbow, and through the thin silk of his coat he could feel the full, firm texture of her skin. She was strong and healthy with the glow and strength of native blood. Beneath her wide-brimmed, flower-wreathed straw hat she was laughing merrily, and as he leant a little more heavily against her arm she giggled and again called out in Tahitian to the driver. There was a ripple of laughter through the truck. Girling, flushing uncomfortably, drew away; but the girl smiled friendlily and drew him back.

  “No, no,” she said, “you tired, you sleep.”

  There was no sleep, though, now for him. But lest the excuse for nearness would be taken from him, he half closed his eyes and leant sideways against the soft, strong shoulder, conscious with a mingling half of excitement, half of fear that each minute was bringing them nearer to Tautira, that he and this girl would be close neighbours. It was not till they were within two hundred yards of the chief’s house that she jerked her knee sideways against his.

  “Wake up now,” she cried. “My house here.”

  She stretched out her hand to him and as he took it, her fingers, closing over his, pressed lightly for a moment. Her fine bright eyes were glowing, her full, wide mouth was parted in a smile. He hesitated, wondering whether to let the incident close. He decided to. They were in the same village, after all. They were bound to be seeing each other again. As the car rolled on along the road he leant out of the window to look back at her. She, too, had turned and, standing in the garden before her bungalow, waved her hand at him.

  §

  If all Tahiti is a garden then is Tautira Tahiti’s garden. There still lingers something of the Polynesia that was before traders had corrupted and missionaries destroyed the faith of that gentle people. There is no white man living in Tautira. The roads are overgrown with grass. There are no fences and no boundary lines. Hens and pigs wander about the gardens and paths and houses as they choose. They will find their way home at evening. There is no one who could be troubled to steal. And since the meat market of Papeete is many miles away, the natives still live upon the produce of their hands: the fish they catch and spear and bread-fruit that they bake.

  The chief, a large, strong-hewn figure, clad only in a paco, although he had not received a white visitor for several months, received Girling with no excitement or surprise, with a simple, unaffected welcome.

  It would be quite easy, he said, to prepare a room for him; and there would be some dinner ready in about an hour. He would not, he feared, be able to join him at it, for he had to supervise the evening’s haul of fish. But they would have a long talk next day at lunch-time. He had served in the French army during the War, winning the Médaille Militaire; they would doubtless have experiences to exchange. And with extreme courtesy he had left him.

  It was cool and quiet in the house. But for all that the air was soft and the sunset a glow of lavender behind the palms, there was no peace for the spirit of Ray Girling. He was restless and ill-at-ease; his mind was busy with thoughts of the tall, bright-eyed girl, and after dinner, as he walked out along the beach, the memory of that firm, soft shoulder was very actual to him.

  Should he be seeing her, he wondered; the chief had explained to him where the nets were being hauled ashore. As likely as not the greater part of the village would be assembled there. But probably she would have some other man with her. He had been a fool not to have spoken to her on the truck. Then had been his chance and he had let it slip. That is, if he had wished to be availed of it. And did he? He did not know. There were so many rival influences at work. He knew the speed of coconut wireless, how quick gossip was to spread. Days before he had left Tautira Colette would have heard of his adventure. He could not return to her after it. It would mean the end for ever of any thought of staying permanently on the island. For he knew that between himself and a girl such as the one he had sat next in the truck there could be no permanent relationship. There could be no question of love between them, on his side, anyhow. Very speedily he would have exhausted the slender resources of her interest. Nor, indeed, would she herself expect anything but a Tahitian idyll. Tahitians were used to the coming and going upon ships. She would weep when he went away, but though there is tear-shedding there is no grief upon the Islands. She would console herself soon enough. If he were to yield to the enchantment of time and place he would have in the yielding answered that problem which had perplexed him. But did he want to? He did not know. Against the heady hour’s magic was set the fear of loss: the loss of Colette, and also insidiously but painfully the loss of health. What did he know, after all, about this girl? And in that moment of indecision, in the forces that went to the framing of that indecision, he appreciated to the full in what manner and in what measure the coming of the white man had destroyed the simple beauty he had found. Even here one had to be cautious, to weigh the consequences of one’s acts. And as he strolled beneath the palm trees to where he could see dark groups of clustered figures, he pictured that vanished beauty; pictured on such an island on such a night, some proud pirate schooner drawing towards the beach; pictured the dark-skinned people running down to welcome them, the innocence and friendliness of that hospitality; pictured the singing and the dancing, the large group breaking away gradually into couples, the slow linked strolling beneath the palms, the kissing and the laughter; the returning to the clean, fresh bungalows; the loving while loving pleased. And that was finished. Gone, irrecapturable, never to be found again upon this earth; never, never, never.

  Still undecided, he walked on to take his place among the crowd gathered upon the beach.

  It was a homely scene; the long row of men hauling at the nets, shouting and encouraging each other, and the women seated upon the sand, clapping their hands with pleasure as the fish were poured, a leaping, throbbing mass, into the large, flat-bottomed boa
ts. Girling had not been standing there long before a hand had been laid upon his arm and a laughing voice was asking him: “Well, you not sleepy now?”

  She had seemed attractive enough to him on the truck, but now hatless, with her dark hair flung wide about her shoulders, there was added a compelling softness to her power. And as he looked into her eyes, bright and shining through the dusk, her lips parted in a smile over the shining whiteness of her teeth, he felt that already the problem and his perplexity had been taken from him: that life had found his answer.

  They sat side by side together on the bottom of an upturned boat: very close so that her shoulder touched him: so that it seemed natural for him to pass his arm about her waist, for his fingers to stroke gently the firm, soft flesh of her upper arm. Afterwards, when the nets had been hauled in and the division of the fish arranged, they strolled arm in arm along the beach. From the centre of the village there came a sound of singing. In front of a Chinese store Gustave’s truck had been arranged as a form of orchestral stand, the drivers had brought out their banjos, and on the wooden verandah of the store a number of young natives were dancing. They would sing and shout and clap their hands, then a couple would slither out into the centre and standing opposite each other would begin to dance. They would never dance more than a few steps, however. In less than a minute they had burst into a paroxysm of laughter, would cover their faces with their hands and run round to the back of the circling crowd.

  “Come,” said the girl, and taking Girling by the hand, she led him up into the truck. It was a low seat and they were in the shadow; then the moment they were seated, without affectation, she turned her face to his, expressing in a kiss, as such sentiments were meant to be expressed, the peace and happiness of a Tahitian evening. And the moon rose high above the palm trees, lighting grotesquely the jagged peaks of the hills across the bay. The breeze from the lagoon blew quietly. Through the sound of the singing voices he could hear the undertone of the Pacific on the reef. Slowly, wooingly, the sights and scents and sounds that have for centuries in this fringe of Eden stripped the doubter of all thoughts of consequences, lulled Girling’s doubts to rest. For a long while they sat there in the shadow of the car, her chin resting against his shoulder, his fingers caressing gently the soft surface of her cheek and arm.

  “Tired?” she asked, at length.

  He nodded. “A little.”

  “Then we go. You come with me?”

  The question was put without any artifice or coquetry, as though it were only natural that thus should such an evening end.

  His heart was thudding fiercely as they walked, quickly now, and in silence, down the path between low hedges towards her home. When they reached the verandah she lifted her finger to her lips. “Sh!” she said. “Wait.”

  There was a rustle, and a sound of whispers; the turning of a handle, the noise of something soft being pulled along the floor, then a whispered “Come,” and a hand held out to him.

  It was very dark. From the verandah beyond came the sound of movement. As he stepped into the room his toe caught on something, so that but for her hand he would have fallen. He stumbled forward on to the broad, deep mattress. For a moment he felt an acute revulsion of feeling. But two arms, cool and bare, had been flung about his neck, dark masses of hair scented faintly with coconut were beneath his cheek; against his mouth, soft and tender were her lips. His arm tightened about the firm, full shoulders, the tenderness of his kisses deepened, grew deep and fierce.

  §

  That people is happy which has no history. There are no details to a Tahitian idyll.

  There was a bungalow, half-way towards Ventura. It was small enough, two rooms and a verandah, with little furniture; a table, a few chairs, a long, low mattress-bed, but there was a stream running just below it from the mountains; cool and sweet. Here at any hour of the day you could bathe at will. And there was green grass running down towards the sand; from the verandah you looked outwards towards Moorea, over the roof were twined and intertwined the purple of the bougain-villea, and the red and white and orange of the hibiscus, across the door was the gold and scarlet of the flamboyant, and when you have these things, you do not need furniture or pictures or large houses.

  During the three months that he lived there Ray Girling went but rarely into Papeete, and during them he came as near as perhaps any sojourner can to understanding the spirit of Tahiti. It was a lazy life he led. When he was not bathing, he would lie out reading on the verandah; he ate little but what came from within a mile of his own house. Bread and butter came certainly from the town, but that was all. Once or twice a week he and Pepire would go up the valleys to collect enough lemons and bread-fruit and bananas to last for days. And her brother and cousin would always be coming from Papeete or Tautira, so that it was rare for Girling to wake in the morning without finding some visitors stretched out asleep on the verandah. They were profitable guests, however, for in the evening they would sail towards the reef and spear fish by torchlight or else they would go shrimping up the valleys, and afterwards, while Pepire would prepare the food, they would sit round with their banjos, singing.

  And he was happy; happier than he had ever been. Had he not known that he was leaving in three months he would have probably looked forward with apprehension to the time when Pepire would have begun to weary him. As it was, he could accept without fear of consequences the day’s good things. As Europe understands love he did not love her. He cared for her in the same way that he might have cared for some animal. And indeed, as she strode bare-footed about the house and garden she reminded him in many ways of a cumbersome Newfoundland puppy. Her behaviour when she had transgressed authority was extraordinarily like that of a dog that has filched the cutlets. On one occasion she went into Papeete with a hundred-franc note to buy some twenty-five francs’ worth of stores. When Girling came in from his bathe, he found her standing with her hands behind her back, gazing shamefacedly at the pile of groceries on the table beside which she had laid a ten-franc note.

  “Well, what’s that?” he asked.

  “The change,” she told him.

  “But how much did all that cost?”

  “Twenty-seven francs.”

  “And ten makes thirty-seven, and fifteen for the truck, that’s fifty-two. What’s happened to the other forty-eight?”

  She made no reply, but sheepishly and reluctantly she drew her hands from behind her back and produced the four metres of coloured prints with which she proposed to make a frock.

  She was always surprising him in delightful ways. There was the occasion when he returned from Papeete with a rather pleasant Indian shawl. She surveyed it with rapture, but before she had thanked him she asked the price. And whenever any visitor came the first thing she would do would be to run and fetch the shawl and display it proudly with the words: “Look. He gave me. Five hundred francs!”

  “I wonder,” thought Girling, “whether the only difference between an English and a native girl is that what an English girl thinks a Tahitian says, and what an English girl says a Tahitian does?”

  It was only on occasions that he would wonder that. In the deeper things he realised how profound was the difference between Brown and White. Had they been English lovers, loving under the shadow of separation, their love-making would have been greedy, fierce and passionate. But passion is a thing that the Islanders do not know, The Tahitians are not passionate. They are sensual and they are tender, but they are not passionate. Passion, though it may not be tragic, is at least potential tragedy, and tragedy is the twin child of sophistication. For Pepire, kisses were something simple and joyous and sincere. And yet during the long nights when she lay beside him Girling would wonder whether he would ever know in life anything sweeter than this love, so uncomplicated and direct. Intenser moments certainly awaited him, but sweeter …? He did not know.

  Once only during those weeks did he see Colette. A brief, pathetic little meeting. He had gone into the library at Papeete to chan
ge a book, and as he stood before the shelves, turning the pages of a novel, she came into the shop. It would have been impossible for them not to see each other.

  “What ages since we met!” she said, and she, as well as he, was blushing.

  “I don’t come in often now,” he said. “I’m living in the country.”

  “I know.”

  In those two syllables were conveyed all that his living in the districts meant.

  “You’re still going by the Louqsor?”

  And in that question was implied that other question. How seriously was he taking his new establishment?

  “Oh, yes, in another three weeks now.”

  “Then I’ll see you then if not before.”

  With a bright smile she turned away, that, and no more than that.

  And so the days went by.

  Wistfully for him now and then.

  For the closer that Ray Girling grew to the Tahitian life, the wider, he realised, was the chasm between him and it. He would never find the key to Tahiti’s magic. And soon there would be no mystery left to find. A few years and Tahiti would be a second Honolulu. She was self-condemned. Somehow she had not had the strength to withstand the invader. And, looking back, it seemed to him symbolic that it should have been by the spirit of Tahiti that his determination to settle in Tahiti had been foiled. For it was the spirit of Tahiti expressed momentarily in Pepire that had entrapped him into the weakness that had made a permanent settlement there impossible. The fatal gift of beauty. It was by her own loveliness, her own sweetness, her own gentleness, that Tahiti had been betrayed. And yet it was back to the sweetness that it had destroyed, that ultimately the course of progress must return.

  §

  The monthly arrival of the American courier is the big event in the island life.

  But, for all that, it is only on the departure of those rarer visitants, the Louqsor and the Antinous, that you get the spirit of an island leave-taking. For Tahiti is a French possession, and it is from the taffrail of the Messageries Maritimes boats that the French, who are the real Tahitians, who by long sojourning have identified themselves with the island life, wave their farewells to the nestling waterside,