Noa Noa | Page 3

cigarette and stretches out on the bed to smoke. Her feet with a mechanical gesture continually caress the wood of the foot-end. Her expression becomes gentler, it visibly softens, her eyes shine, and a regular hissing sound escapes from her lips. I imagine that I am listening to a purring cat that is meditating on some bloody sensuality.
As I am changeable, I find her now very beautiful, and when she said to me with a throbbing voice, "You are nice," a great trouble fell upon me. Truly the princess was delicious...
Doubtless in order to please me, she began to recite a fable, one of La Fontaine's, The Cricket and the Ants--a memory of her childhood days with the sisters who had taught her.
The cigarette was entirely alight.
"Do you know, Gauguin," said the princess in rising, "I do not like your La Fontaine."
"What? Our good La Fontaine?"
"Perhaps, he is good, but his morals are ugly. The ants ..." ( and her mouth expressed disgust) . "Ah, the crickets, yes. To sing, to sing, always to sing!"
And proudly without looking at me, the shining eyes fixed upon the far distance, she added,
"How beautiful our realm was when nothing was sold there! All the year through the people sang... To sing always, always to give! ..."
And she left.
I put my head back on the pillow, and for a long time I was caressed by the memory of the syllables:
"Ia orana, Gauguin."
This episode which I associate in my memory with the death of King Pomare left deeper traces than that event itself and the public ceremonies.
The inhabitants of Papeete, both native and white, soon forgot the dead king. Those who had come from the neighboring islands to take part in the royal obsequies left; again thousands of orange sails crossed the blue sea, then everything returned to the customary routine.
It was only one king less.
With him disappeared the last vestiges of ancient traditions. With him Maori history closed. It was at an end. Civilization, alas!--soldiers, trade, officialdom--triumphed.
A profound sadness took possession of me. The dream which had brought me to Tahiti was brutally disappointed by the actuality. It was the Tahiti of former times which I loved. That of the present filled me with horror.
In view of the persistent physical beauty of the race, it seemed unbelievable that all its ancient grandeur, its personal and natural customs, its beliefs, and its legends had disappeared. But how was I, all by myself, to find the traces of this past if any such traces remained? How was I to recognize them without guidance? How to relight the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?
However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the "impossible," to gain my end.
My resolve was quickly taken. I would leave Papeete, and withdraw from this European center.
I felt that in living intimately with the natives in the wilderness I would by patience gradually gain the confidence of the Maoris and come to know them.
And one morning I set out in a carriage which one of the officers had graciously put at my disposal in search of "my hut."
My vahina, Titi by name, accompanied me. She was of mixed English and Tahitian blood, and spoke some French. She had put on her very best dress for the journey. The tiar?? was behind the ear; her hat of reeds was decorated above with ribbon, straw flowers, and a garniture of orange-colored shells, and her long black hair fell loose over the shoulders. She was proud to be in a carriage, proud to be so elegant, proud to be the vahina of a man whom she believed important and rich. She was really handsome, and there was nothing ridiculous in her pride, for the majestic mien is becoming to this race. In memory of its long feudal history and its endless line of powerful chiefs it retains its superb strain of pride. I knew very well that her calculating love in the eyes of Parisians would not have had much more weight than the venial complaisance of a harlot. But the amorous passion of a Maori courtesan is something quite different from the passivity of a Parisian cocotte--something very different! There is a fire in her blood, which calls forth love as its essential nourishment.; which exhales it like a fatal perfume. These eyes and this mouth cannot lie. Whether calculating or not, it is always love that speaks from them...
The journey was soon accomplished--a few bits of inconsequential conversation, a rich, monotonous country. On the right there was always the sea, the coral-reefs and the sheets of water which sometimes scattered in spray when they came into too violent contact with the waves and the rocks. To the left was