A Debtor of Moy Ling
Puarei's house stood halfway down the village street at Rutiaro,
facing a broad indentation from the lagoon. The Catholic church
adjoined it on one side, the Protestant church on the other.
Neither of them was an imposing structure, but they towered above
the small frame dwelling of the chief with an air of protection, of
jealous watchfulness. On sunny days they shaded his roof in turn;
and, when it rained, poured over it streams of water, through lead
pipes projecting from their own ampler roofs--a purely utilitarian
function, since the drainage from the three buildings furnished the
fresh-water supply of the settlement. If the showers were light the
overflow from the largess of the rival churches, plashing on the
sheets of corrugated iron, filled the house with a monotonous murmur,
like the drowsy argument of two soft-voiced missionaries; but during
a heavy downpour the senses were stunned by the incessant thunder, as
though one were inclosed in an immense drum, beaten with nonsectarian
vigor by all the Salvation Armies in the world.
It was during such a deluge, one day in early spring, that I lay on
the guest bed in Puarei's one-room house, watching Poura, his wife,
who had washed my linen with her own hands and was then ironing it.
It was not, strictly speaking, linen. The articles were three--a
sleeveless gauze singlet, a cotton handkerchief, and a faded khaki
shirt. A pair of khaki trousers, a pair of canvas tennis shoes, and
a pandanus hat completed my wardrobe. Since I needed the whole of it
when going abroad about the island, it was necessary to go to bed on
washing day, and to wait there until the laundering was finished,
and such repairs made as constant wear had caused and further wear
demanded. How to replenish it and to meet other simple urgent needs
gave me cause for some concern, and I was going over the problem
as I lay on Puarei's guest bed. It was toward the end of my second
week at Rutiaro, and already I was beginning to look decidedly
shabby. My shoes were rotted out with sea water, and both shirt and
trousers, which were far from new at the time of my arrival, gave
evidence of early dissolution. Poura had washed, sewed on buttons,
drawn seams together, but the garments were chronically ailing, as
hopeless of effective repair as an old man far gone in senile decay.
Poura was becoming discouraged about them, and I knew that she must
be wondering why I didn't buy some fresh ones. I had a very good
reason for not doing so--I had no money. I had been left at Rutiaro
without so much as a twenty-five-centime piece, and the Banque de
l'Indo-Chine was six hundred miles away.
It would not occur to either Puarei or his wife that I was in
need of funds. Theirs was one of the more primitive atolls of the
Low Archipelago, where all white men are regarded as mysteriously
affluent. If, instead of being marooned at Rutiaro through Tino's
fit of temper, I had been discovered a mile outside the reef, making
toward the land clad only in a pair of swimming trunks, upon reaching
it my rescuers would have expected me, as a matter of course, to take
a bulky parcel of thousand-franc notes from beneath that garment. I
had, in fact, made a secret inventory of my wealth after the sudden
departure of the _Caleb Winship_, hoping there might be a forgotten
bank note in one of my trousers pockets. What I found was a cotton
handkerchief, a picture post card of the Woolworth Building, and a
small musical instrument called an _ocharina_, or, more commonly,
a sweet-potato whistle. The handkerchief I needed; the post card
seemed of no practical use as a means of barter; and, while I might
have given up the _ocharina_, it had but a slight monetary value, and
Moy Ling, the Chinese storekeeper of the village, was not interested
in it. I didn't offer it to him outright. Instead, I played on it,
in front of his shop, "The March of the Black Watch," which I could
render with some skill. Thereafter every youngster on the island
coveted the instrument, but Moy Ling made no offers and the prospect
of a wardrobe was as far away as ever.
His supply of European clothing was limited, but ample to supply
my wants. He found for me three undershirts, size forty-four, two
gingham outer shirts of less ample proportions, a pair of dungaree
overalls, and a pair of rope-sole shoes. I asked him to put these
articles aside and went off to reflect upon ways and means of opening
a credit account with the canny Chinaman. There was one possible
method open to me; I might adopt the _pareu_ as a costume. I could
buy three of them for the price of one undershirt, and I believed
that Moy Ling would trust me to that extent. Nearly all of the
natives wore _pareus_. They had put aside their trousers and shirts
and gingham dresses now that I was no longer a stranger to them, and
were much more comfortable in their simple, knee-length garments,
those of the men reaching from the waist, those of the women twisted
tightly under the arms. Simple and convenient though it was, I felt
that it would be absurd for me to assume that style of dress, since
I was not accustomed to it. Furthermore, I remembered the ridiculous
appearance of Americans and Europeans I had seen at Tahiti--queer
people from all sorts of queer places, who come and go through the
capital of French Oceania. They rushed into _pareus_ the moment of
their arrival at Papeete, and before a week had passed were more
primitive in a sophisticated way than the Tahitians themselves.
I had no desire to join the ranks of the amateur cannibals, even
though there was some excuse for it at Rutiaro; and I knew that the
Paumotuans would have more respect for me if I dressed after the
manner of my own race.
But how obtain clothing without money--without divulging to anyone
that I had no money? The question dinned through my brain with
annoying persistence, like the thunder of falling water on Puarei's
iron roof. Would it, after all, be best to confide in the chief? I
could tell him of my bank account at Papeete, and he knew, of course,
that the _Caleb Winship_ had left me without a word of warning,
taking my sea chest with her. I was tempted to make a confession of
my predicament, but pride or a kind of childish vanity prevented me.
"No, by Jove!" I said. "I'll be hanged if I do! Puarei, his
wife--all the rest of them--expect me to live up to their traditional
conceptions of white men. I am supposed to be mysteriously affluent,
and I owe it to them to preserve that myth in all its romantic
glamour."
I had no feeling of guilt in making this decision; rather, a sense of
virtue, like that of an indulgent father upon assuring his children
that there is a Santa Claus. I decided to be not only mysteriously,
but incredibly, affluent. Therefore, when the rain had passed I put
on my mended garments and went to Moy Ling's shop.
I found him splitting coconuts in front of his copra shed, and
beckoned to him in a careless way. He came forward, smiling
pleasantly as usual, but there was a shrewd glitter in his eyes
which said, quite as plainly as words, "Honorable sir, I bow before
you, but I expect an adequate monetary return for the service." I
was not intimidated, however, and when he brought forth the articles
I had selected earlier I waved them aside--all of them excepting
the rope-sole shoes, the only male footgear of any kind on the
island. I explained that I had not before seen the bolt of white
drill--the most expensive cloth in his shop--and that I wanted enough
of it to make four suits. I saw at once that I had risen in his
estimation about 75 per cent, and, thus encouraged, I went on buying
lavishly--white-cotton cloth for underwear and shirts; some pencils
and his entire supply of notebooks for my voluminous observations on
the life and character of the Paumotuans; a Night-King flash lamp;
a dozen silk handkerchiefs of Chinese manufacture; a dozen pairs
of earrings and four lockets and chains; ten kilos of flour and
two of coffee; three bottles of perfume in fancy boxes; four large
bolts of ribbon--enough to reach from one end of the village to the
other; side and back combs for women, superbly ornamented with bits
of colored glass; a bolt of mosquito netting; a monkey wrench; two
Beacon lanterns; a pandanus mat; and one bow tie already made up, the
kind sold at home in "gents' furnishings" shops.
At the beginning I had no thought of going in so recklessly. But
as I went from article to article the conviction grew upon me that
the deeper I plunged the greater the impression I should make upon
Moy Ling, and it was essential that I should convince him that
my mythical wealth was real. He became more and more deferential
as my heap of purchases increased in size. I made no inquiry as
to the price of anything, believing that to be in keeping with
the mysteriously affluent tradition. At my back I heard a hum
of excited conversation. The shop was filled with people. I felt
the crush behind me, but took no notice of it and went on with my
passionless orgy of spending: two bolts of women's dress goods;
four pocketknives; a can of green paint and another of white--but
details are tiresome. It is enough to say that I bought lavishly,
and selected odds and ends of things because Moy's shop contained
nothing else. He had a large supply of food, but in other respects
his stock was low, and when I had finished, some of his shelves were
almost bare. On one there remained only a box of chewing gum. An
inscription printed on the side of it read: "Chew on, MacDuff! You
can't chew out the original mint-leaf flavor" of somebody's pepsin
gum--words to that effect. That product of American epicureanism
is to be found, strangely enough, at nearly every Chinaman's store
in the Low Archipelago. I bought twenty packages of it, since there
were no other confections to be had, and distributed them among the
children. The youthful MacDuffs chewed on for some thirty seconds and
then swallowed, believing, in their unenlightened way, that gum is a
sort of food. I had read of monkeys dying in zoos because of the same
practice; but, in so far as I know, there were no ill effects from it
at Rutiaro, either then or later.
I succeeded very well in impressing Puarei. He was astonished at
the number of my purchases; and Poura said, "Au-e!" shooed out the
mint-breathed porters who carried them to the house, and sat down in
the doorway, her enormous body completely blocking the entrance. On
the veranda the conversation crackled and sparkled with conjecture. I
could hear above the others the voice of Paki, wife of the constable,
enumerating the things I had bought. It sounded odd in Paumotuan--a
high-pitched recitative of strange words, most of them adapted
from the English since all of the articles were unknown to the
natives before the coming of the traders--_faraoa_ (flour), _ripine_
(ribbon), _peni_ (pencil or pen), _taofe_ (coffee), etc.
I myself was wondering what use I could make of some of my wealth.
The flour I would give to Puarei, and his ten-ton cutter was badly
in need of paint. Poura would be glad to have the dress goods for
herself and her girls, for the Rutiaroans put aside their _pareus_
on Sunday and dressed in European costume. I could also give her
the mosquito netting as a drapery for the guest bed. I had, in fact,
bought it with that end in mind, for on windless nights, particularly
after a rain, the mosquitoes were a fearful nuisance. Puarei's
household was used to them, but I tossed and tumbled, and at last
would have to paddle out on the lagoon and stay there till morning.
The coffee, likewise, was for my own use, Puarei believing that the
drinking of either tea or coffee was forbidden by his variety of the
Christian religion. Tobacco, too, was a product of evil, and the use
of it made broad the way to hell. It is impossible to believe that
any missionary would wander so far to preach such theology. What had
happened, very likely, was that one of the more austere churchmen
who visit Rutiaro at rare intervals had condemned those white man's
comforts as injurious to health. He must have been severe in his
denunciation, for Puarei had got the idea that abstinence from the
enjoyment of them was exacted in a sort of amendment to the Ten
Commandments. I did my best to corrupt him, for breakfast at his
house was to me a cheerless meal. His faith was not to be shaken,
however, although he admitted that coffee drinking might not damn me,
since I had been taught to believe that it would not.
I was thinking with pleasure of his tolerance and of the comforting
beverage I should have the following morning when I remembered
that mine was green Tahiti coffee which must be taken to Moy Ling
for roasting. His shop was deserted. I could see it at the end of
the sunlit street, steaming with moisture after the rain. The open
doorway was a square of black shadow. It lightened with a misty
glimmer as I watched, and suddenly Moy flashed into view. He ran
quickly down the steps, halted irresolutely, and stood for a moment,
shading his eyes with his hand, looking in the direction of Puarei's
house. Then he turned, mounted the steps again, and vanished slowly
in the gloom. I was uneasy, knowing what he was thinking; but an
island less than three miles long, with an average width of four
hundred yards, offers a poor refuge for a faint-hearted debtor. And
so, having stowed my other purchases under the guest bed, I took the
bag of coffee and returned to Moy's store, hoping that I might quiet
his fears by increasing my obligation to him.
When one is without them, clothing, coffee, tobacco, and other such
necessities assume a place of exaggerated importance, which is the
reason why the memories of the earlier part of my stay at Rutiaro
are tinged with the thought of them. But I had not come to the Low
Islands to spend all of my time and energy in the mere fight for
a comfortable existence. I could have done that quite as well at
home, with greater results in the development of a more or less
Crusoe-like resourcefulness. At Rutiaro the life was strange and new
to me, and I found the days too short for observing it and the nights
for reflecting upon it. My first interest, of course, was Puarei's
household--the chief, his wife, two sons, and three daughters all
housed in that one-room frame building. The room was commodious,
however, about twenty-five feet by fifteen, and on the lagoon side
there was a broad veranda where Poura and her daughters did much
of their work and passed their hours of leisure. Behind the house
was a large cistern, built of blocks of cemented coral, and a small
outkitchen made of the odds and ends of packing cases and roofed with
thatch.
I wondered at Puarei's preference for a board box covered with
corrugated iron, to the seemly houses of the other Rutiaroans. He
thought it a palace, and, being a chief, the richest man of the
atoll, it was in keeping with the later Paumotuan tradition that
he should have a white man's kind of dwelling. Unsightly though
it was without, the economy of furnishing gave the interior an air
of pleasant spaciousness, like that of the island itself with its
scarcity of plant life and of trees other than the coconut. There
was no European furniture with the exception of a sewing machine and
the guest bed, an old-fashioned, slatted affair which looked strange
in that environment. On it was a mattress of _kspok_ and two immense
pillows filled with the same material. The linen was immaculate,
and the outer coverlet decorated with hibiscus flowers worked in
silk. I had no hesitation in accepting the bed, for it would not
have held Puarei and his wife. The slats would have given away at
once under their weight, and Poura assured me that the children
preferred sleeping on their mats on the veranda. The rest of the
furnishings were like those of the other houses--two or three chests
for clothing; pandanus mats for the floor; paddles, fishing spears,
and water glasses stacked in a corner or lying across the rafters.
An open cabinet of native manufacture held the toilet articles of the
women--a hand mirror, a few combs, and a bottle of unscented coconut
oil, the one cosmetic of the Low Islands, which was used by all
members of the family. There were also several articles of jewelry
such as the traders sell, some fishing hooks of pearl shell, and, on
a lower shelf, a Tahitian Bible. The walls were hung with branches of
curiously formed coral, hat wreaths and necklaces of shell wrought in
beautiful and intricate designs. There were no pictures other than
the open windows looking out on the lagoon in one direction, and in
the other, across the level, shaded floor of the island toward the
sea.
We spent but little time indoors. All of the cooking was done in
the open, and we had our food there, sitting cross-legged around a
cloth of green fronds. The trees around us furnished the dishes. I
had not used my tin spoon and the two-pronged fork since the evening
of my arrival, and learned to suck the _miti_ sauce from my fingers
with as loud a zest as any of them. Usually we had two meals a day
at Rutiaro, but there was no regularity about the time of serving
them. We ate when we were hungry and food was to be had, sometimes
in the middle of the afternoon, and as late as ten in the evening.
That is one reason why I remember so well the feasts prepared by
Poura and her daughters, and served by them, for they never sat down
to their own food until we had finished. Feasts of a simple kind,
but, by Jove! how good everything tasted after a day of fishing and
swimming in the lagoon or out at sea. I didn't tire of coconuts as
quickly as I had feared I should; and the fish were prepared in a
variety of ways--boiled, roasted over hot stones, grilled on the
coals, or we ate them raw with a savor of _miti_ sauce. Puarei's dog,
one of the best fishers of the island, was the only member of the
family discriminating in his requirements. He often came up while we
were at dinner, with a live fish in his mouth, which he would lay at
Poura's feet, looking at her appealingly until she cooked it for him.
Sometimes, to tease him, she threw it away, but he would bring it
back, and, no matter how hungry he might be, refuse to eat it raw.
The sea furnished occasional variety of diet in the way of turtles
and devilfish; and I contributed rice, tinned meat, and other
preserved food which I bought of Moy Ling whenever I imagined his
confidence in me was beginning to falter. That was a risky procedure,
only to be undertaken on the days when I was so filled with animal
spirits that I more than half believed in my wealth, in my power to
draw money or anything else I wanted out of the clear, dry air of
Rutiaro.
One thing I had wanted from the first, above all others--a house.
The idea of imposing indefinitely upon Puarei's hospitality was
distasteful, and no boats were expected within five or six months. I
had not, in years, lived for so long a period at any one place. Here
was an opportunity I had often dreamed of for having a home of my
own. I should have to ask the chief for it, and at first thought the
request seemed a large one. Then, too, how could I say to him with
any show of logic: "Puarei, I am not willing to bother you longer by
occupying the guest bed in your house. Therefore, will you please
give me a house to myself?" He might think I had peculiar ideas of
delicacy. But further reflection convinced me that, while I could
not ask him for a pair of trousers--not even for so trifling a thing
as a shirt button, since he would have to purchase it at Moy Ling's
store--I might legitimately suggest the gift of a house. It would
cost only the labor of making it, and that was not great. At Rutiaro
houses were built in less time than was needed to sail across the
lagoon and back. The inhabitants might reasonably have adopted the
early Chinese method of roasting pig by putting the carcasses in
their dwellings and setting fire to the thatch. It would have been
a sensible procedure, employed at times when the old thatch needed
renewal. Nothing permanent would have been destroyed except the
framework of poles, and that could be replaced as easily as firewood
could be cut for a Maori oven.
The upshot of the matter was that I was given not only a house, but
an island of my own to set it on--I who had lived much of my life
up four or five flights of stairs, in furnished rooms looking out on
chimney pots and brick courts filled with odors and family washings.
The site was a small _motu_ lying at the entrance to the lagoon, four
miles from the village island. It had a name which meant, "The place
where the souls were eaten." Once, a man, his wife, and two children
went there to fish on the reef near the pass. All of them were taken
ill of some mysterious disease, and died on the same day. As their
souls left their bodies they were seized and eaten by some vindictive
human spirits in the form of sea birds. The legend was evidently a
very ancient one, and the events which it described had happened so
long ago that fear of the place had largely vanished. Nevertheless,
the chief tried to persuade me to choose another site; and Poura,
when she learned that I wanted to live on the Soul-Eaters' Island,
was deeply concerned. Neither of them could understand why I should
want to live away from the village island. I wince, even now, when
I think of the appalling tactlessness of that request; but the fact
is that the Paumotuans themselves, by their example, had got me into
the vicious habit of truth-telling in such matters. There is no word
in their language for tact. They believe that a man has adequate,
although sometimes hidden, reasons for doing what he wants to do, and
they understand that it explains seemingly uncourtly behavior.
I had accepted, almost unconsciously, their own point of view, so
that it didn't occur to me to invent any polite falsehoods. But my
knowledge of Paumotuan was more limited than Paurei's knowledge of
French, and how was I to explain my desire for so lonely a place
as the Soul-Eaters' Island? The Paumotuans, from their scarcity of
numbers, the isolation of their fragments of land, the dangers of the
sea around them, are drawn together naturally, inevitably. How make
clear to them the unnatural gregariousness of life in great cities?
Suddenly I thought of my picture post card of the Woolworth Building.
I told them that in America many people, thousands of them, were
cooped together in houses of that sort. I had been compelled to spend
several years in one and had got such a horror of the life that I had
come all the way to the Cloud of Islands, searching for a place where
I might be occasionally alone.
While the post card was passing from hand to hand, Huirai, the
constable, loyal friend in every emergency, gave color to my
explanation by describing--for the thousand and first time, I
suppose--his adventures in San Francisco. Dusk deepened, the last
ghostly light faded from the clouds along the northern horizon, and
still he talked on; and the idlers on the chief's veranda listened
with as keen interest as though they had never heard the story
before. Poura, who was at work on my new wardrobe, lit a lamp and
placed it on the floor beside her, shading it from her eyes with a
piece of matting. The light ran smoothly over her brown hands, and
the mountain of shadow behind her blotted out the forms of the trees.
Now and then she put down her work and gazed intently in Huirai's
direction. His voice rose and fell, thrilled with excitement, died
away to a deep whisper of awe as he told of the wonders he had seen,
the street cars, the lofty buildings, the elevators which rose to an
immense height as swiftly as a coconut would fall, the trains, the
motors, the ships, the pictures which were alive. He imitated sounds
with amazing fidelity, and his gestures, vaguely seen in the gloom,
were vividly pictorial of the marvels he had met with in his travels.
The story ended abruptly and Huirai sat down, conscious of the effect
he had produced. No one spoke for a long while. Then the chief, who
was sitting beside me, broke the silence with that strange Polynesian
exclamation of wonder too great for words, "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!" uttered
with distinct, rapid precision, like the staccato of machine-gun
fire. He laid his hand on my knee affectionately, with an air of
possessorship; and at the contact a feeling of pride rose in me, as
though I were the planner of the cities, the magician whose brain
had given birth to the marvels Huirai had described. But conceit of
that kind may be measurably reduced by a moment of reflection, and I
remembered that the extent of my contribution to my native land was
that I had left it. Small cause for vanity there. However, I had no
mind for another tussle with my conscience. I had been the indirect
cause of eloquence in Huirai and of enjoyment in his auditors.
That was enough for one evening on the credit side. On the other
side, to Puarei, to Poura, to his children, and to all the kindly,
hospitable people of Rutiaro I was under an obligation which I could
never hope to cancel. But they didn't expect me to cancel it. I was
not even under the necessity of showing appreciation. Just as there
is no word in their language for "tact," there is none approaching
our word "gratitude" in meaning. To a man in my position, owner of
Soul-Eaters' Island, and of a house to be built there the following
day, that was something to be grateful for.
The Chinese language is richer, I believe, in terms implying
obligation. I was reminded, less pleasantly, of another account on
the debit side, by the flare of a match which lit up for a moment the
pensive, cadaverous face of Moy Ling.
[Illustration]