by Alec Waugh
For beauty and pathos there is little comparable with those last minutes of leave-taking. When the great liners sail from Sydney the passengers fling paper streamers to the waving crowds upon the wharf; but in Papeete there is no such attempt to prolong to the last instant the sundering tie. For those that were your friends upon the island have hung upon your neck the white wreath of the tiare and the stiff yellow petal of the pandanus, so that your nostrils may for all time retain the sweet perfume of Tahiti; and over your shoulders they have hung long strings of shells, so that you will retain for ever the soft murmur of the breakers on the reef, and it is not till you have forgotten those that you will forget Tahiti.
No ship has looked more like a garden than did the Louqsor in the January of 1927. There were many old friends to wave farewell from its crowded decks, some who were saying good-bye for ever, if anyone can ever be said to say good-bye for ever, since for all time the memory of that green island will linger green. There were others who were going to France on leave for a few months. The Governor of the Island was returning to Paris for promotion. There were a number of officials; three or four naval officers; and on the lower decks a large group of sailors from the Casiope returning to Marseilles. It was a gay sight. A squad of soldiers had lined up to salute the Governor, a band was playing, the sailors were singing farewell to their five days’ sweethearts.
Ave, Ave, te vahini upipi
E patia tona, e pareo repo.
A few yards from Ray Girling, Colette, frail and dainty, was smiling wistfully at him from beneath the shadow of her parasol. As he saw her he turned away from the crowd with whom he was gossiping—Pepire, Tania, and the rest—and came across to her.
She received him with a smile.
“Do you remember saying four months ago that you’d be heartbroken when the time came for you to leave?”
“I remember.”
“And are you?”
He hesitated, for as he looked down into the flower-like face he knew the measure of his loss, knew what he had missed, what there had been for finding; knew also how impossible it would have been to find it, since certain things precluded other things, since that which he had been looking for bore no relation to the practical ordering of life. When he answered, though it was in terms of Tahiti that he spoke, it was of himself and her that he was speaking.
“As long as I live I shall remember,” he said, and his voice was faltering. “And there’ll be a great many times, I know, when I shall regret bitterly that I ever came away. But I shall know, too, that it would have been madness for me to have stayed. I came at the wrong time. If I’d come as a boy of twenty, before I’d begun European life, I could have stayed. Or I might have stayed if I’d come as a middle-aged man, a man of fifty, who’d lived through all that. But I came at the half-way stage. I’ve taken root over there. I’ve identified myself with too many things. I’ve got to work to the end of them.”
She nodded her head slowly. “I understand,” she said. “I think I always did understand.” Then, after a pause and with eyes that narrowed, and in a voice that trembled:
“Tahiti waits.”
But from the deck a bell was ringing. The friends of the passengers were crowding down the ladder; from the taffrail those who were leaving were slowly waving their farewells; the band was playing, the squad of soldiers were presenting arms, the sailors on the lower deck were singing. Slowly, yard by yard, the Louqsor drew out into the lagoon, the crowd was drifting from the quay, the tables in the Mariposa Café were filling up, officials were bicycling back to their offices, there was a lazy loitering along the waterside under the gold and scarlet of the flamboyants. A canoe was being launched, some children were bathing in front of Johnnie’s. Papeete was returning to its routine. Some friends had come. Some friends had gone. A new day had started.
With a full heart Ray Girling leant over the taffrail. Was he happy or was he sad? He did not know. The strong winds of the Pacific were on his cheeks. He thought of London and his friends; of a life of action; the thrill of business; the stir of ideas and interest. Oh, yes, he would be glad enough to get back to it. But though his blood was beating quicker at the thought, the wreaths of pandanus and tiare were about his neck, and the sweet, rich scents were in his nostrils; and before his eyes, in the soft shadow of a parasol, was a flower-like face, with eyes that narrowed; and in his ears was the sound of a voice that trembled: “Tahiti waits.”
III
La Martinique
It was while I was on my way to Panama, on my second visit to the South Seas, that I first saw Martinique. Out of a blue sky the sun shone brightly on to a wide square flanked with mango trees, on to yellow houses, on to crowded cafés. And here I thought, maybe, is another and a less far Tahiti. An island in the tropics, under French rule, as far north of the line as was Tahiti south of it. I shall come back here one day, I told myself.
Now, having returned, I am wondering whether it would be possible for two islands to be more different. Their very structure is unlike. They are both mountainous, but whereas the interior of Tahiti is an unpathed, impenetrable jungle, every inch of Martinique is mapped. Nor is West Indian scenery strictly tropical. In Martinique the coconut and the banana are not cultivated systematically. The island’s prosperity depends on rum and sugar. And as you drive to Vauclin you have a feeling, looking down from the high mountain roads across fields, green and low-lying, to hidden villages, that you might be in Kent were the countryside less hilly. The aspect of the villages is different. Whereas Tautira is like a garden, with its grass-covered paths, its clean, airy bungalows, its flower-hung verandahs, it is impossible to linger without a feeling of distaste in the dusty, ill-smelling villages of Carbet and Case Pilote, with their dirty, airless cabins, their atmosphere of negligence and squalor. In Tahiti the fishing is done for the most part at night, by the light of torches, on the reef, with spears. In Martinique it is done by day with weighted nets. In Martinique most of the land is owned by a few families. In Tahiti nothing is much harder to discover than the actual proprietor or any piece of ground. Proprietorships have been divided and redivided, and it is no uncommon thing for a newcomer who imagines that he has completed the purchase of a piece of land to find himself surrounded by a number of claimants, all of whom possess legal right to the ground that their relative has sold him. Scarcely anybody in Tahiti who derives his income from Tahiti has any money. In Martinique there are a number of exceedingly wealthy families. On the other hand, whereas the Tahitian is described as a born millionaire, since he has only to walk up a valley to pick the fruits and spear the fish he needs, the native in Martinique, where every tree and plant exists for the profit of its proprietor, lives in a condition of extreme poverty. The Tahitian woman lives for pleasure. She does hardly any work. By day she lives languidly on her verandah, and by night, with flowers in her hair, she sings and dances and makes love. The woman of Martinique is a beast of burden. When the liner draws up against the quay at Fort de France you will see a crowd of grubby midgets grouped round a bank of coal. When the signal is given they will scurry like ants, with baskets upon their heads, between the ship’s tender and the bunk of coal. The midgets, every one of them, are women. They receive five sous for every basket they carry. When there is no ship in port they carry fish and vegetables from the country into town. There is a continual stream of them along every road: dark, erect, hurrying figures bearing, under the heavy sun, huge burdens upon their heads. In Tahiti there exists a small, formal, exclusive French society, composed of a few officials and Colonial families, who hold occasional receptions, to which those who commit imprudences are not received. I imagine, at least, that it exists. But the average visitor is unaware of its existence. It is uninfluential. In Martinique, too, there is such a society composed of a few Creole families. It is very formal and very exclusive. Its Sunday déjeuner lasts, I am told, till four o’clock. It is also extremely powerful and holds all the power, all the land and most of the money in the island. Tahi
ti is a pleasure ground; Martinique is a business centre. The atmosphere of Tahiti is feminine; of Martinique masculine. In Fort de France everyone is busy doing something: selling cars, buying rum, shipping sugar. Whereas social life in Papeete is complicated by the ramifications of amorous intrigue, in Fort de France it is complicated by the ramifications of politics and commerce. “Life here is a strain,” a young dealer said to me. “One has to be diplomatic all the time. One has business relations of some sort with everybody.” In Papeete it is “affairs” in the English sense; in Fort de France in the French sense. No one who has not lived in a small community, each member of whom draws his livelihood from the resources of that country, can realise the interdependence of all activities, the extent to which wheels revolve within one another. Everyone has some half-dozen irons in everybody else’s grate. In Tahiti the only people who are in a position to spend money are the tourists who stay over between two boats and the English and Americans who have come to spend a few months on the island every year. In Tahiti there is accommodation for the tourist. In Moorea there is a good hotel. There are bungalows to be let by the month within four kilometres of Papeete. In the country there are several places where you can spend a few days in tolerable comfort. In Martinique there are no tourists. Between January and March some dozen English and American liners stop at St. Pierre. Their passengers drive across the island to Fort de France, where they rejoin their ship. That is all. There is no accommodation for the tourist. In Fort de France there is no hotel where one would spend willingly more than a few hours. In the country there is no hotel at all. As far as I could discover there was not in the whole island a single foreign person who lived there out of choice. Finally, the native population of Tahiti is freeborn; that of Martinique has its roots in slavery. You have only to walk through a native village to realise the difference that that makes. In Fort de France, which is cosmopolitans you do not notice it. But in the country, where day after day you Will not see one white face, you grow more and more conscious of a hostile atmosphere; you feel it in the glances of the men and women who pass you in the road. When you go into their villages they make you feel that they resent your presence there. You are glad to be past their houses. They will reply to your “Good mornings” and “Good evenings,” but they do not smile at you. Often they will make remarks to and after you. They are made in the harsh Creole patois. You do not understand what they say. You suspect that they are insulting you. They are a harsh and sombre people. They do not understand happiness. You will hear them at cock fighting, and at cinemas, shrieking with laughter and excitement, but their faces, whenever they are in repose, are sullen. Their very laughter is strained. They seem to recall still the slavery into which their grandparents were sold. It is only eighty years since slavery was abolished. There are many alive still who have heard from their parents’ lips the story of those days: the long journey from Africa, “crowded, terrified and cowed, into the pestilent atmosphere of a dark cabin, stagnating between the decks of a Guinea ship, debarred the free use of their limbs, oppressed with chains, harassed with sea sickness and the incessant motions of the vessel, sometimes stinted in provisions and poisoned with corrupted water”: afterwards on the plantations there were the chains and lashes. And it is all only eighty years ago. These people have still the mentality of slaves, with only the Australian aborigines below them in the scale of human development. They harbour in their dull brains the heritage of rancour. They are exiles. Under the rich sunlight and the green shadows their blood craves for Africa. They are suspicious with the unceasing animosity of the undeveloped. They cannot believe that they are free. In their own country they were the sport and plunder of their warlike neighbours. It was the easy prey that the pirate hunted. They cannot believe that the white strangers who stole them from their dark cabins have not some further trick to play on them. They cannot understand equality. They will never allow you to feel that you are anywhere but in a land of enemies. In vain will you search through the Antilles for the welcoming friendliness of Polynesia.
In Martinique there is no accommodation for the tourist. If you are to stay there you have to become a part of the life of its inhabitants. Within two hours of our arrival Eldred Curwen and I had realised that.
“We have got,” we said, “to set about finding a bungalow in the country.”
I am told that we were lucky to find a house at all. Certainly we were lucky to find the one we did. Seven kilometres out of town, between Case Navire and Fond Lahaye, a minute’s climb from the beach, above the dust of the main road, with a superb panorama of coast line, on one side to Trois Ilets, on the other very nearly to Case Pilote, it consisted of three bedrooms, a dining-room, a wide verandah over whose concrete terrace work—the hunting ground of innumerable lizards—trailed at friendly hazard the red and yellow of a rose bush, and the deep purple of the bougain-villea. The stone stairway that ran steep and straight towards the sea was flowered by a green profusion of trees and plants; with bread-fruit, and with papaia; the great ragged branch of the banana; the stately plumes of the bamboo; with far below, latticing the blue of the Caribbean, the slender stem and rustling crest of the coconut palm. It was the kind of house one dreams of, that one never expects to find. Yet nothing could have been found with less expense of spirit.
It was the British Consulate that found it for us.
“You want a house,” they said. “That is not easy. We will do our best. If you come to-morrow afternoon we will tell you what we have been able to manage.”
It was in a mood of no great optimism that we went down there. Everyone had shaken their heads when we had told them we were looking for a house.
“Nobody will want to let his house,” we had been told. “A house is a man’s home. Where would there be for him to go? And for those who have a house both in the country and the town, well, that means that he is a rich man, that his house in the country is his luxury. There are not many luxuries available in the Colonies. He would not be anxious to deprive himself of it.”
It sounded logical enough. And when we found two men waiting for us in the Consulate, it was with the expectation of being shown some sorry shack that we followed them into the car. The sight of the house upon the hill was so complete and so delightful a surprise that we would have accepted any rent that its proprietor demanded of us. We were prudent enough, however, to conceal our elation. And three days later we were installed in the bungalow with three comic opera servants, the sum of whose monthly wages in francs can have exceeded only slightly the sum of their united ages.
Our cook, Armantine, received eighty francs. Belmont, the guardian, whose chief duty was the supervison of the water supply and the cutting of firewood, fifty francs. His wife, Florentine, who ran errands, washed plates and did the laundry, had forty francs. It does not sound generous, but it is useless to pay negroes more than they expect. American prosperity is built on a system of high wages. The higher the worker’s wages, the higher his standard of living, the higher his purchasing capacity, the greater is the general commercial activity. But the negro in the French Antilles has no ambition; he is quite content with his standard of living. He does not want it raised. If you were to pay him double wages, he would not buy himself a new suit. He would take a month’s holiday. A planter once found that however high the wages he offered to the natives, he could not induce them to work. In despair he sought an explanation of an older hand.
“My dear fellow,” he was told, “what can you expect with all those fruit trees of yours? Do you think they are going to work eight hours a day when at night they can pick enough fruit to keep them for half a week?”
In the end, at considerable cost and inconvenience, the planter cut down his fruit trees. Then the natives worked.
Our staff considered itself well rewarded with a hundred and seventy francs a month. And it not only made us comfortable but kept us constantly amused.
Armantine was the static element. She was a very adequate cook, considering the li
mited resources at her disposal. Meat could only be obtained in small quantities twice a week. Lobster was plentiful only when the moon was full. The small white fish was tasteless. There are only a certain number of ways of serving eggs. And yam and bread-fruit, the staple vegetables of the tropics, even when they are flavoured with coconut milk are uninteresting. It says much for her ingenuity that at the end of six weeks we were still able to look forward to our meals. She was also economical. I have little doubt that our larder provisioned her entire family. But no one else was allowed to take advantage of our inexperience. Resolutely, sou by sou, she contested the issue with the local groceries. I should be grateful if in London my housekeeper’s weekly books would show no more shillings than Armantine’s showed francs. She was also an admirable foil to Florentine.
Florentine was quite frankly a bottle woman. She was never sober when she might be drunk. Amply constructed, I have never seen a person so completely shapeless. Her face was like a piece of unfinished modelling. With her body swathed in voluminous draperies it was impossible to tell where the various sections of it began. When she danced, and she was fond of dancing, she shook like an indiarubber jelly. Very often after dinner when we were playing the gramophone, we would see a shadow slinking along the wall. On realising that its presence had been recognised it would quiver and giggle, turn away its head and produce a mug sheepishly from the intricacies of its raiment. We would look at one another.
“Armantine!” Eldred would call out. “Here!”
In a businesslike, practical manner Armantine hurried round from the kitchen.
“How much,” we would ask, “has Florentine drunk today?”
Armantine’s voice would rise on a crescendo of cracked laughter.