Noa Noa | Page 2

which flared up suddenly and set aflame all the life round about. Perhaps, it is thus that the island itself once rose from the ocean, and that the plants upon it burst into flower under the first ray of the sun...
All the Tahitians dressed in black, and for two days they sang dirges of grief and laments for the dead. It seemed to me that I was listening to the Sonata Path??tique.
Then came the day of the funeral.
At ten in the morning they left the palace. The troops and the authorities were in white helmet and black dress-coat, the natives in their mourning costume. All the districts marched in order, and the leader of each one bore a French flag.
At Aru?? they halted. There an indescribable monument rises--a formless mass of coral stones bound together by cement. It forms a painful contrast with the natural decorative beauty of vegetation and atmosphere.
Lacascade pronounced a discourse of conventional pattern, which an interpreter translated for the benefit of the Frenchmen present. Then the Protestant clergyman delivered a sermon to which Tati, the brother of the queen, responded. That was all. They left; the functionaries crowded into the carriages. It reminded one somewhat of a "return from the races."
In the confusion on the way the indifference of the French set the key, and the people, since a number of days so grave, recovered their gayety. The vahinas again took the arms of their tan??s, chattered actively, and undulated their hips, the while their strong bare feet stirred up heavily the dust of the road.
Close to the river Fat??, there was a general scattering. Concealed among the stones the women crouched here and there in the water with their skirts raised to waist, cooling their haunches and legs tired from the march and the heat. Thus cleansed with the bosom erect and with the two shells covering the breasts rising in points under the muslin of the corsage, they again took up the way to Papeete. They had the grace and elasticity of healthy young animals. A mingled perfume, half animal, half vegetable emanated from them; the perfume of their blood and of the gardenias--tiar??--which all wore in their hair.
"T??in?? merahi noa noa (now very fragrant)," they said.
*
* *
... The princess entered my chamber where I lay, half-ill on the bed, dressed only in a par??o. 1 What a dress in which to receive a woman of rank!
"Ia orana (I greet thee), Gauguin," she said. "Thou art ill, I have come to look after thee."
"And what is your name?"
"Va?��t??a."
Va?��t??a was a real princess, if such still exist in this country, where the Europeans have reduced everything to their own level. In fact, however, she had come as a simple ordinary mortal in a black dress, with bare feet, and a fragrant flower behind the ear. She was in mourning for King Pomare, whose niece she was. Her father, Tamatoa, in spite of the inevitable contacts with officers and functionaries, in spite of the receptions at the house of the admiral, had never desired to be anything other than a royal Maori. He was a gigantic brawler in moments of wrath, and on evenings of feasting a famous carouser. He was dead. Va?��t??a, according to report, was very like him.
With the insolence of a European only recently landed on the island in his white helmet, I looked with a skeptical smile on the lips at this fallen princess. But I wanted to be polite.
"It is very kind of you to have come, Va?��t??a. Shall we drink an absinthe together?"
I pointed with the finger to a bottle, which I had just bought, standing on the ground in a corner of the room.
Showing neither displeasure nor eagerness she went to the place indicated, and bent down to pick up the bottle. In this movement her slight, transparent dress stretched taut over her loins--loins to bear a world. Oh, surely, she was a princess! Her ancestors? Giants proud and brave. Her strong, proud, wild head was firmly planted on her wide shoulders. At first I saw in her only the jaws of a cannibal, the teeth ready to rend, the lurking look of a cruel and cunning animal, and found her, in spite of her beautiful and noble forehead, very ugly.
I hoped it wouldn't occur to her to sit down on my bed! So feeble a piece of furniture would never support both of us...
It is exactly what she did.
The bed creaked, but it held out.
In drinking we exchanged a few words. The conversation, however, did not want to become animated. It finally lagged entirely, and silence reigned.
I observed the princess secretly, and she looked at me out of a corner of the eye. Time passed, and the bottle gradually emptied. Va?��t??a was a brave drinker.
She rolls a Tahitian