Noa Noa | Page 7

across which sometimes pass sudden moments of
gravity.
In the evening they unite in groups at the foot of the tufted bushes
which overtop the disheveled heads of the cocoanut-trees, or men and
women, old men and children intermingle. Some are from Tahiti,
others from the Tongas, and still others from the Marquesas. The dull
tones of their bodies form a lovely harmony with the velvet of the
foliage. From their coppery breasts trembling melodies arise, and are
faintly thrown back from the wrinkled trunks of the cocoanut-trees.
They are the Tahitian songs, the iménés.
A woman begins. Her voice rises like the flight of a bird, and from the
first note reaches even to the highest of the scale; then by strong
modulations it lowers again and remounts and finally soars, the while
the voices of the other women about her, so to speak, take flight in their
turn, and faithfully follow and accompany her. Finally all the men in a
single guttural and barbarous cry close the song in a tonic chord.
Sometimes in order to sing or converse they assemble in a sort of
communal hut. They always begin with a prayer. An old man first
recites it conscientiously, and then all those present take it up like a
refrain. Then they sing, or tell humorous stories. The theme of these
recitals is very tenuous, almost unseizable. It is the details, broidered
into the woof and made subtle by their very naïveté, which amuse
them.
More rarely, they discourse on serious questions or put forth wise
proposals.
One evening I heard, not without surprise, the following:

"In our village," an old man said, "we see here and there houses which
have fallen to ruin and shattered walls and rotting, half-open roofs
through which the water penetrates when by chance it rains. Why?
Every one in the world has the right to shelter. There is lacking neither
of wood, nor of leaves wherewith to build the roofs. I propose that we
work in common and build spacious and solid huts in place of those
which have become uninhabitable. Let us all give a hand to it in turn."
All those present without exception applauded him.--He had said well!
And the motion of the old man was unanimously adopted.
"This is a prudent and good people," I said myself on my return home
that evening.
But the next day when I went to obtain information about the beginning
of the work determined upon the evening before, I perceived that no
one was any longer giving it a thought. The daily life had again taken
its usual course, and the huts which the wise counselor had designated
remained in their former ruined state.
To my questions they replied with evasive smiles.
Yet the contraction of the brows drew significant lines on these vast
dreaming foreheads.
I withdrew with my thoughts full of confusion, and yet with the feeling
that I had received an important lesson from my savages. Certainly they
did right in applauding the proposal of the old man; perhaps they were
equally justified in not carrying out the adopted resolution.
Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts
of nature.
"To-morrow?"
"Perhaps!"
And whatever may happen the sun will rise to-morrow as it rose to-day,

beneficent and serene.
Is it heedlessness, frivolity, or variableness?
[paragraph continues] Or is it--who knows--the very deepest of
philosophy? Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need
for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow...
Life each day became better.
I understand the Maori tongue well enough by now, and it will not be
long before I speak it without difficulty.
My neighbors--three of them quite close by, and many more at varying
distances from each other--look upon me as one of them.
Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become
hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no
longer suffers from the sun.
Civilization is falling from me little by little.
I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my
neighbor--rather, to love him.
All the joys--animal and human--of a free life are mine. I have escaped
everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into
the truth, into nature. Having the certitude of a succession of days like
this present one, equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me. I
develop normally and no longer occupy myself with useless vanities.
I have won a friend.
He came to me of his own accord, and I feel sure here that in his
coming to me there was no element of self-interest.
He is one of my neighbors, a very simple and handsome young fellow.
My colored pictures and carvings in wood