Noa Noa | Page 9

in pain as in pleasure, and even the very idea of vice is unknown to them.
In spite of all this lessening in sexual differences, why was it that there suddenly rose in the soul of a member of an old civilization, a horrible thought? Why, in all this drunkenness of lights and perfumes with its enchantment of newness and unknown mystery?
The fever throbbed in my temples and my knees shook.
But we were at the end of the trail. In order to cross the brook my companion turned, and in this movement showed himself full-face. The androgyne had disappeared. It was an actual young man walking ahead of me. His calm eyes had the limpid clearness of waters.
Peace forthwith fell upon me again.
We made a moment's halt. I felt an infinite joy, a joy of the spirit rather than of the senses, as I plunged into the fresh water of the brook.
"To??, to?? (it is cold)," said Jotefa 1.
"Oh, no!" I replied.
This exclamation seemed to me also a fitting conclusion to the struggle which I had just fought out within myself against the corruption of an entire civilization. It was
the end in the battle of a soul that had chosen between truth and untruth. It awakened loud echoes in the forest. And I said to myself that Nature had seen me struggle, had heard me, and understood me, for now she replied with her clear voice to my cry of victory that she was willing after the ordeal to receive me as one of her children.
We took up our way again. I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.
With tranquil eyes and ever uniform pace my companion went on. He was wholly without suspicion; I alone was bearing the burden of an evil conscience.
We arrived at our destination.
The steep sides of the mountain had by degrees spread out, and behind a dense curtain of trees, there extended a sort of plateau, well-concealed. Jotefa, however, knew the place, and with astonishing sureness led me thither.
A dozen rosewood trees extended their vast branches.
We attacked the finest of these with the ax. We had t?�� sacrifice the entire tree to obtain a branch suitable for my project.
I struck out with joy. My hands became stained with blood in my wild rage, my intense joy of satiating within me, I know not what divine brutality. It was not the tree I was striking, it was not it which I sought to overcome. And yet gladly would I have heard the sound of my ax against other trunks when this one was already lying on the ground.
And here is what my ax seemed to say to me in the cadence of its sounding blows:
Strike down to the root the forest entire!
Destroy all the forest of evil,
Whose seeds were once sowed within thee by the breathings of death! p. 51
Destroy in thee all love of the self!
Destroy and tear out all evil, as in the autumn we cut with the hand the flower of the lotus.
Yes, wholly destroyed, finished, dead, is from now on the old civilization within me. I was reborn; or rather another man, purer and stronger, came to life within me.
This cruel assault was the supreme farewell to civilization, to evil. This last evidence of the depraved instincts which sleep at the bottom of all decadent souls, by very contrast exalted the healthy simplicity of the life at which I had already made a beginning into a feeling of inexpressible happiness. By the trial within my soul mastery had been won. Avidly I inhaled the splendid purity of the light. I was, indeed, a new man; from now on I was a true savage, a real Maori.
Jotefa and I returned to Mate?��ea, carefully and peacefully bearing our heavy load of rosewood--noa, noa!
The sun had not yet set when, very tired out, we arrived before my hut.
Jotefa said to me,
"Pa?��a?"
"Yes!" I replied.
And from the bottom of my heart I repeated this "yes" to myself.
I have never made a single cut with the knife into this branch of rosewood, that I did not each time more powerfully breathe in the perfume of victory and rejuvenation: noa, noa!
Through the valley of Punaru, a huge fissure which divides Tahiti into two parts, one reaches the plateau of Tamano??. From there one can see the diadem, Orofena and Arora?��, which forms the center of the island.
They had often spoken to me of it as a place of miracles, and I had contrived the plan of going and spending several days there alone.
"But what will you do during the night?"
"You will be tormented by the Tupapa??s!"
"It is not wise to disturb the spirits of the