Noa Noa | Page 8

aroused his curiosity; my

replies to his questions have instructed him. Not a day passes that he
does not come to watch me paint or carve...
Even after this long time I still take pleasure in remembering the true
and real emotions in this true and real nature.
In the evening when I rested from my day's work, we talked. In his
character of a wild young savage he asked many questions about
European matters, particularly about the things of love, and more than
once his questions embarrassed me.
But his replies were even more naïve than his questions.
One day T put my tools in his hands and a piece of wood; I wanted him
to try to carve. Nonplussed, he looked at me at first in silence, and then
returned the wood and tools to me, saying with entire simplicity and
sincerity, that I was not like the others, that I could do things which
other men were incapable of doing, and that I was useful to others.
I indeed believe Totefa is the first human being in the world who used
such words toward me. It was the language of a savage or of a child, for
one must be either one of these--must one not?--to imagine that an
artist might be a useful human being.
It happened once that I had need of rosewood for my carving. I wanted
a large strong trunk, and I consulted Totefa.
"We have to go into the mountains," he told me. "I know a certain spot
where there are several beautiful trees. If you wish it I will lead you.
We can then fell the tree which pleases you and together carry it here."
We set out early in the morning.
The footpaths in Tahiti are rather difficult for a European, and "to go
into the mountains" demands even of the natives a degree of effort
which they do not care to undertake unnecessarily.
Between two mountains, two high and steep walls of basalt, which it is

impossible to ascend, there yawns a fissure in which the water winds
among rocks. These blocks have been loosened from the flank of the
mountain by infiltrations in order to form a passageway for a spring.
The spring grew into a brook, which has thrust at them and jolted them,
and then moved them a little further. Later the brook when it became a
torrent took them up, rolled them over and over, and carried them even
to the sea. On each side of this brook, frequently interrupted by
cascades, there is a sort of path. It leads through a confusion of
trees--breadfruit, ironwood, pandanus, bouraos, cocoanut, hibiscus,
guava, giant-ferns. It is a mad vegetation, growing always wilder, more
entangled, denser, until, as we ascend toward the center of the island, it
has become an almost impenetrable thicket.
Both of us went naked, the white and blue paréo around the loins,
hatchet in hand. Countless times we crossed the brook for the sake of a
short-cut. My guide seemed to follow the trail by smell rather than by
sight, for the ground was covered by a splendid confusion of plants,
leaves, and flowers which wholly took possession of space.
The silence was absolute but for the plaintive wailing of the water
among the rocks. It was a monotonous wail, a plaint so soft and low
that it seemed an accompaniment of the silence.
And in this forest, this solitude, this silence were we two--he, a very
young man, and I, almost an old man from whose soul many illusions
had fallen and whose body was tired from countless efforts, upon
whom lay the long and fatal heritage of the vices of a morally and
physically corrupt society.
With the suppleness of an animal and the graceful litheness of an
androgyne he walked a few paces in advance of me. And it seemed to
me that I saw incarnated in him, palpitating and living, all the
magnificent plant-life which surrounded us. From it in him, through
him there became disengaged and emanated a powerful perfume of
beauty.
Was it really a human being walking there ahead of me? Was it the
naïve friend by whose combined simplicity and complexity I had

been so attracted? Was it not rather the Forest itself, the living Forest,
without sex--and yet alluring?
Among peoples that go naked, as among animals, the difference
between the sexes is less accentuated than in our climates. Thanks to
our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial
being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to
the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We
carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular
inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away