Noa Noa | Page 3

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. Vaïtüa was
a brave drinker.
She rolls a Tahitian 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 tiaré 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