Noa Noa | Page 2

made me think of the Triangle of the Trinity. In her
eyes there sometimes burned something like a vague presentiment of
passions 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 Pathétique.
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 Aruë 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 tanés, chattered actively,
and undulated their hips, the while their strong bare feet stirred up
heavily the dust of the road.
Close to the river Fatü, 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--tiaré--which all wore in their hair.

"Téiné 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 paréo. 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?"
"Vaïtüa."
Vaïtüa 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. Vaïtüa, 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, Vaïtüa. 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