Noa Noa | Page 4

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 the wilderness with its perspective
of great forests.
By noonday we had accomplished our forty-five kilometers, and had
arrived at the district of Mataïea.
I made a search through the district and succeeded in finding a suitable
enough hut, which the owner rented to me. He was building a new one
near by where he intended to dwell.
On the next evening when we returned to Papeete, Titi asked me
whether I wished her to accompany me.
"Later, in a few days, when I have become settled," I said.
Titi had a terrible reputation at Papeete of having successively brought
a number of lovers to their grave. But it was not this which made me
put her aside. It was her half-white blood. In spite of traces of
profoundly native and truly Maori characteristics, the many contacts
had caused her to lose many of her distinctive racial "differences." I felt
that she could not teach me any of the things I wished to know, that she
had nothing to give of that special happiness which I sought.
I told myself, that in the country I would find that which I was seeking;
it would only be necessary to choose.
*

* *
On one side was the sea; on the other, the mountain, a deeply fissured
mountain; an enormous cleft closed by a huge mango leaning against
the rocks.
Between the mountain and the sea stood my hut, made of the wood of
bourao tree. Close to the hut in which I dwelled was another, the faré
amu (hut for eating).
It is morning.
On the sea close to the strand I see a pirogue, and in the pirogue a
half-naked woman. On the shore is a man, also undressed. Beside the
man is a diseased cocoanut-tree with shriveled leaves. It resembles a
huge parrot with golden tails hanging down, and holding in his claws a
huge cluster of cocoanuts. With a harmonious gesture the man raises a
heavy ax in his two hands. It leaves above a blue impression against the
silvery sky, and below a rosy incision in the dead tree, where for an
inflammatory moment the ardor stored up day by day throughout
centuries will come to life again.
On the purple soil long serpentine leaves of a metallic yellow make me
think of a mysterious sacred writing of the ancient Orient. They
distinctly form the sacred word of Oceanian origin, ATUA (God), the
Taäta or Takata or Tathagata, who ruled throughout all the Indies.
And there came to my mind like a mystic counsel, in harmony with my
beautiful solitude and my beautiful poverty the words of the sage:
In the eyes of Tathagata, the magnificence and splendor of kings and
their ministers are no more than spittle and dust;
In his eyes purity and impurity are like the dance of the six nagas;
In his eyes the seeking for the sight of the Buddha is like unto flowers.
In the pirogue the woman was putting some nets in order.

The blue line of the sea was frequently broken by the green of the
wave-crests falling on the breakwater of coral.
It is evening.
I have gone to smoke a cigarette on the sands at the edge of the sea.
The sun, rapidly sinking on the horizon, is already half concealed
behind the island of Morea which lay to my right. The conflict of light
made the mountains stand out sharply and strangely in black against the
violet glow of the sky. They were like ancient battlemented castles.
Is it any wonder that before this natural architecture visions of feudal
magnificence pursue me? The summit, over there, has the form of a
gigantic helmet-crest. The billows around it, which sound like the noise
of an immense crowd, will never reach it. Amid the splendor of the
ruins the crest stands alone, a protector or witness, a neighbor of the
heavens. I felt a secret look plunge from the head up there into waters
which had once engulfed the sinful race of the living, and in the vast
fissure which might have been the mouth I felt the hovering of a smile
of irony or pity over the waters where the past sleeps...
Night falls quickly. Morea sleeps.
*
* *
Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.
In this silence I hear nothing except the beating of my heart.