Noa Noa Read online

  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 nearby 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 the 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 impunity 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.

  But the rays of the moon play through the bamboo reeds, standing equidistant from each other before my hut, and reach even to my bed. And these regular intervals of light suggest a musical instrument to me—the reed-pipe of the ancients, which was familiar to the Maori, and is called vivo by them. The moon and the bamboo reeds made it assume an exaggerated form—an instrument that remained silent throughout the day, but that at night by grace of the moon calls forth in the memory of the dreamer well-loved melodies. Under this music I fell asleep.

  Between me and the sky there was nothing except the high frail roof of pandanus leaves, where the lizards have their nests.

  I am far, far away from the prisons that European houses are.

  A Maori hut does not separate man from life, from space, from the infinite . . . .

  In the meantime I felt myself very lonely here.

  The inhabitants of the district and I mutually watched each other, and the distance between us remained the same.

  By the second day I had exhausted my provisions. What to do? I had imagined that with money I would be able to find all that was necessary for life. I was deceived. Once beyond the threshold of the city, we must turn to Nature in order to live. She is rich, she is generous, she refuses to no one who will ask his share of her treasures of which she has inexhaustible reserves in the trees, in the mountains, in the sea. But one must know how to climb the tall trees, how to go into the mountains, in order to return weighed down with heavy booty. One must know how to catch fish, and how to dive to tear loose the shellfish so firmly attached to stones at the bottom of the sea. One must know how, one must be able to do things.

  Here was I, a civilized man, distinctly inferior in these things to the savages. I envied them. I looked at their happy, peaceful life round about me, making no further effort than was essential for their daily needs, without the least care about money. To whom were they to sell, when the gifts of Nature were within the reach of every one?

  There I was sitting with empty stomach on the threshold of my hut, sadly considering my state, and thinking of the unforeseen, perhaps insurmountable, obstacles which Nature has created for her protection and placed between herself and him who comes from a civilized world, when I saw a native gesticulating and calling out something to me. The expressive gestures interpreted the words, and I understood that my neighbor was inviting me to dinner. With a shake of the head I declined. Then I reentered my hut, ashamed, I believe equally because charity had been offered me, and because I had refused it.

  A few minutes later a little girl without saying anything left some cooked vegetables in front of my door, and also fruit wrapped neatly in green freshly picked leaves. I was hungry, and likewise without a word I accepted the gift.

  A little later, the man passed in front of my hut, and, smiling, but without stopping, said in a questioning tone,

  “Païa?”

  I divined, “Are you contented?”

  This was the beginning of a reciprocal understanding between the savages and myself.

  “Savages!” This word came involuntarily to my lips when I looked at these black beings with their cannibal-like teeth. However, I already had a glimpse of their genuine, their strange grace . . . I remembered the little brown head with the placid eyes cast to the ground, which from under the clusters of large giromon leaves watched me one morning without my knowing it, and fled when my glance met hers . . . .

  As they were to me, so was I to them, an object for observation, a cause of astonishment—one to whom everything was new, one who was ignorant of everything. For I knew neither their language, nor their customs, not even the simplest, most necessary manipulations. As each one of them was a savage to me, so was I a savage to each one of them.

  And which of us two was wrong?

  I tried to work, making all kinds of notes and sketches.

  But the landscape with its violent, pure colors dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain; I was seeking, seeking . . . .

  In the meantime, it was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a bl
ue. Golden figures in the brooks and on the seashore enchanted me. Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?

  Oh! the old European traditions! The timidities of expression of degenerate races!

  In order to familiarize myself with the distinctive characteristics of the Tahitian face, I had wished for a long time to make a portrait of one of my neighbors, a young woman of pure Tahitian extraction.

  Sketches of all sorts, dictated by the pen itself or by my imagination; mad tendencies. But it is not illustration. Why illustrate? Don’t you have photography? You say this isn’t a serious pursuit? You’re wrong. There is nothing more serious; the rest is only a matter of executing one’s ideas. The instrument doesn’t enter in until later on.—Author’s notes.

  Agreeable company without affectation. They aren’t black women, they are Polynesians. The author is concerned to make this known—it’s a matter of informing the critics.

  One day she finally became emboldened enough to enter my hut, and to look at photographs of paintings which I had hung on one of the walls of my room. She regarded the Olympia for a long time and with special interest.

  “What do you think of her?” I asked. I had learned a few Tahitian words during the two months since I had last spoken French.

  My neighbor replied, “She is very beautiful!”

  I smiled at this remark, and was touched by it. Had she then a sense of the beautiful? But what reply would the professors of the Academy of Fine Arts have made to this remark?

  Then suddenly after a perceptible silence such as precedes the thinking out of a conclusion, she added,

  “Is it your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  I did not hesitate at this lie. I—the tané of the beautiful Olympia!

  While she was curiously examining certain religious compositions of the Italian primitives, I hastened, without her noticing it, to sketch her portrait.

  She saw it, and with a pout cried out abruptly, “Aïta (no)!” and fled.

  An hour later she returned, dressed in a beautiful robe with the tiaré behind the ear. Was it coquetry? Was it the pleasure of consenting of her own free will after having refused? Or was it simply the universal attraction of the forbidden fruit which one denies one’s self? Or more probably still, was it merely a caprice without any other motive, a pure caprice of the kind to which the Maoris are so given?

  Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever. I was aware that on my skill as painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model, that it would be like an implied, urgent, irresistible invitation.

  She was not at all handsome according to our aesthetic rules.

  She was beautiful.

  All her traits combined in a Raphaelesque harmony by the meeting of curves. Her mouth had been modeled by a sculptor who knew how to put into a single mobile line a mingling of all joy and all suffering.

  I worked in haste and passionately, for I knew that the consent had not yet been definitely gained. I trembled to read certain things in these large eyes—fear and the desire for the unknown, the melancholy of bitter experience which lies at the root of all pleasure, the involuntary and sovereign feeling of being mistress of herself. Such creatures seem to submit to us when they give themselves to us; yet it is only to themselves that they submit. In them resides a force which has in it something superhuman—or perhaps something divinely animal.

  Now, I work more freely, better.

  But my solitude still disturbs me.

  Indeed, I saw in the district young women and young girls, tranquil of eye, pure Tahitians, some of whom would perhaps gladly have shared my life. However, I did not dare approach them. They actually made me timid with their sure look, their dignity of bearing, and their pride of gait.

  All, indeed, wish to be “taken,” literally, brutally taken (Maü, to seize), without a single word. All have the secret desire for violence, because this act of authority on the part of the male leaves to the woman-will its full share of irresponsibility. For in this way she has not given her consent for the beginning of a permanent love. It is possible that there is a deeper meaning in this violence which at first sight seems so revolting. It is possible also that it has a savage sort of charm. I pondered the matter, indeed, but I did not dare.

  Then, too, some were said to be ill, ill with that malady which Europeans confer upon savages, doubtless as the first degree of their initiation into civilized life . . . .

  And when the older among them said to me, pointing to one of them, “Maü téra (take that one),” I had neither the necessary audacity nor confidence.

  I let Titi know that I would be pleased to take her again.

  She came at once.

  The experiment succeeded badly. By the boredom which I felt in the company of this woman so used to the banal luxury of officials, I was able to measure the real progress which had already been made toward the beautiful life of the savages.

  After a few weeks Titi and I separated forever.

  Again I was alone.

  My neighbors have become my friends. I dress like them, and partake of the same food as they. When I am not working, I share their life of indolence and joy, 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 naivete, 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? Everyone in the world has the right to shelter. There is lacking neither wood, nor 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? 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.