BY THE ABSINTHE ROUTE
The French islands of the South Pacific perform satisfactorily
the regulation duty of all the other of that republic's tropical
colonies--that of furnishing a retreat for a governor, secretary, judge
and three or four other high officials during such time as they may
require to accumulate fortunes sufficient to permit them to return
to Paris and ease for a good portion, if not all the rest, of their
lives; also for a small army of minor officials who have no chance to
accumulate enough to take them to Paris. These latter young gentlemen
work--or rather sit at desks--six hours a day, drink absinthe six
hours, and dream absinthe dreams the remainder of the twenty-four.
Besides a regiment of soldiers and a gunboat or two, it takes something
over half a thousand officials to administer the affairs of dreamy
Tahiti. Departments which in India, Java or even the Philippines would
be handled by two or three men, with enough time over for morning
horseback rides and tennis or cricket in the evenings, are here in
the hands of a substantial mob. There are about a half dozen cases of
petty larceny, and the same number of battery, a year, but the bench is
occupied by close to half a score of august judges. The annual value
of the shipping of all the 150--more or less--French islands in the
Southeastern Pacific--the Marquesas, Paumotos and Societies--is not
equal to a season's output of a single large Hawaiian sugar mill, yet
the financial and commercial officials are numbered in three figures.
What do they all do? Probably no one really knows; but come into the
gentlest of contacts with the government, even as a passing tourist,
and you will begin to get an inkling. You are not likely soon to forget
those two days in which you cooled your heels in fourteen different
corners of Pomare's old palace in endeavouring to make your honour
white in the matter of that box of Havanas you forgot to declare when
you landed. That cost you forty francs in all, didn't it? And then
there was that day and a half that you and the Consul spent in trying
to find out to whom you should apologize because your boatmen tied
up for ten minutes to the butt of an old cannon that was sacred to
the mooring lines of that majestic gunboat, _Zelee_. You conferred
with twenty-one underlings and eight overlings--most of them through
interpreters--before you found that it was the Capitaine de Gendarmes
you must tell you were sorry. And then there was that mess you got
into the time you inadvertently strolled down the path to a leper's
gardenia-wreathed doorway and asked for a drink of coconut water. You
were perfectly willing to go and take a formaldehyde shower-bath, but
was it really necessary to be marched about by a squad of gendarmes
to eight different departments in order to have that auspicious event
officially recorded?
Yes, while Tahiti continues to harbour law-breaking visitors like
yourself there is going to be ample work for all of those five hundred
officials. But at your worst, you are only going to be able to claim
their attention during six hours of the day, leaving them eighteen hours
for their own affairs. What is it occupies them in their "lighter hours"?
Men are more readily judged at play than at work. You have seen them
at work; now let us watch them at play. The Cercle Colonial, it is said,
will show us what we want to see.
The Cercle is a low, rambling structure of aching white, cooled by
green trees, green blinds and green drinks. You have seen in the great
republic's tropical outposts these little clubs which have not been
shaded by green trees; one or two may even be recalled which have not
had the green blinds; but a Cercle Colonial--or Militaire--without the
green drinks--never.
"Where flaps the tri-colour, there flows the absinthe."
You are not certain who first enunciated this great truth, nor where
you first heard it; sufficient that it has become a law as inflexible
as that of gravity. Haul down the one, and the other will cease to
flow. Stop the flow of the other, and the one will cease to flap.
Certain French patriots who are strangers to the French tropics
may indignantly question the truth of the latter statement; these
you may respectfully request to cite you a single instance where
those respective symbols of their republic are flapping and flowing
independently.
Certain of the best paid Tahitian officials straggle home to France
every other year or so by Suez or America, others send intermittent
letters to their loved ones by the irregular post; but when all is said
and done the only really well established line of communication between
the island paradise and Paris is the "absinthe route."
"I'd envy these poor devils their nocturnal trips from 'hell to home,'"
one of the foreign consuls in Papeete is quoted as saying, "if it
wasn't for the fact that they are always doomed to sail with return
tickets. Coming out of any old kind of a dream is more or less of a
shock; but coming out of the Mussulman paradise of an absinthe dream
is staggering. Just about one a month of these young chaps decides
that twelve hours is too long to wait for the inauguration of another
dream, and in the pale of the dawn launches himself off on the journey
for which no return ticket can be foisted onto him. The suicide rate in
Noumea, the prison colony, is higher than here, and, I am told, Saigon,
Martinique, Guadeloupe and Cayenne are worse still. Funny thing, too,
they all do it at the same time--sunrise--probably because it's the
hour when the dream shapes begin to grow thin and intangible, and
day, with its galling grind of realities, looms blankly in pitiless
imminence."
"A poor lot," you say. Perhaps. But before judging let us watch them
for awhile at the Cercle Colonial. It is there that they are to be seen
embarking, and in transit on, and returning by, "the absinthe route."
It is four o'clock of a May afternoon in Papeete, and the stream of
the Southeast Trade, clogged and obstructed by the suffocating puffs
of humid air that have rolled in since morning from the oily sea
which stretches in unheaving indolence to the equator, has ceased to
flow. The glaring coral streets throw back the blazing sunlight like
rivers of molten tin; the distended blossoms of hau and hibiscus fall
heavily in the puddly air, to break and scatter like glass on striking
the ground. Everything of the earth glows, everything of the air gasps
in the swimming waves of the clinging heat.
The shaded walls of the Cercle Colonial hold still a modicum of last
night's coolness, and the closely-drawn green blinds of the lounging
room check the onrush of the calid flood from without. The man with
the gold lace on his ripped-open collar, sitting on the corner toward
the silent billiard room, is an officer from the barracks; he with the
tanned face and the imperial in the opposite corner is the commander of
the gunboat in the harbour; the youth with the opera bouffé moustache
and the eyes of a roué at the table by the palm is the disgraced son
of a rich Marseilles merchant, whose quarterly remittances are payable
only in Papeete. They all know each other, but by an unspoken mutual
understanding have separated as widely as possible. Men do not drink
for sociability on a day like this, for he who lives in the tropics
realizes what the inhabitant of cooler latitudes knows but hazily, that
the mental consciousness of human propinquity, even without the effort
of conversation, raises temperature.
The government offices across the way have just brought their short
day of perfunctory work to a close, and such of the officials as have
membership in the Cercle Colonial come hurrying--the first unlistless
movement they have made since morning--up the blossom-strewn walk.
They slip through the green spring doors like thieves in jealous efforts
to shut out the furnace-like blast which pursues them into the tepid
interior, and a low growl of disapproval from all sides greets the man
who is so thoughtless as to enter leisurely. Each goes to a separate
table, and when there are no unoccupied tables left the newcomer drags
his chair to a window ledge or up to the encircling wall-shelf at the
top of the wainscoting.
The waiters work noiselessly and expeditiously. There are no orders
taken. Each man is noted by the watchful _garçon_, and to him is
instantly brought a large glass of cracked ice and a green bottle.
After that, except for occasional replenishings of the ice, he needs no
attention.
Before long a change comes over the spirit of the place, a
revivification like that which comes to a field of drought-parched
wild flowers at the first touch of long-awaited raindrops. Watch it
working in that yellow-skinned youth by the darkened window. Plainly a
"transfer" from the prison colony at Noumea, he, with the dregs of the
pernicious New Caledonian fever still clogging his blood. By the ink
on his forefinger you put him down as in some kind of a departmental
billet. He slipped through the door but a moment ago and the _garçon_
had his glass of ice and bottle ready on the window ledge almost before
he was seated. He spilled the absinthe over the sides of the glass in
his eagerness to fill it, and in spite of the cracked ice it still
must have been far from the delectable frappé of the conoisseur when
he gulped it down. A second pouring of the warm liqueur took up the
remaining ice and he has called for more.
But now note him as he waits for his glass to be replenished. Has a
spirit hand passed across his brow and smoothed out those lines of
weariness and ill-health? Perhaps not, but they are gone nevertheless,
and a tinge of colour is creeping into the sallow cheeks. Now he gathers
his relaxed muscles and pulls his slender frame together. The thin
shoulders are thrown back, the sunken chest expanded, and with open
mouth and distended nostrils, like a man who comes from a hot, stuffy
hall out into the cool air of the open street, he takes several deep,
quick breaths.
You, who know the futility of drinking anything alcoholic or narcotic
in endeavouring to keep cool and have, therefore, only sipped your
glass of lime juice and soda, can swear that the air of the place, far
from growing fresher, is getting closer and hotter every moment. But
don't waste your time trying to convince the young man by the window
to that effect. It's cooler air to him--yes, and to every one else in
the room but yourself with your foolish lime juice and soda. See them
sitting up and inhaling it all around you.
You have seen the stolid Britisher thaw out and wax sociable after
his first or second brandy-and-soda, and perhaps you expect something
of the kind is going to happen here. But no--the brandy-and-soda and
the absinthe routes start from the same place, but their directions
are diametrically opposite. The brandy-and-soda addictee expands
externally, the absinthe drinker expands internally; the one drink
strikes out, the other strikes in. The Britisher cannot forget himself
until he has had a couple of brandy-and-sodas; with two glasses of
absinthe the Frenchman only commences to realize himself. Don't look
for any flow of the soul to accompany the flow of the bowl, then; these
exiles are only going the absinthe route; they are off for home.
Turn your attention again to the youth by the darkened window. A
fresh glass of cracked ice is before him and he is pouring himself
another drink. Ah! there is your real absinthe artist now. See with
how steady a hand he pours that unvarying thread of a trickle; not
faster than that must it go, not slower. See him turn the glass to the
light to mark the progress of the green stain in the white body of the
cracked ice. As it touches the bottom the pouring stops, the glass is
twirled once or twice and then lifted to the lips and drained. Just as
much water as a thread-sized trickle of warm absinthe will melt from
the ice in finding its way to the bottom of the glass and back to the
rim; offer it to him any other way, after those first mad gulps, and he
would probably refuse it. Thus absinthe à la Cercle Colonial de
Papeete.
At five or half past, an army officer looks at his watch, stretches
himself, yawns, pours a final hasty glass and picks his reluctant way
to the door and out into the still, stifling air. Two officers of the
gunboat follow suit, and from then on till seven o'clock dinner-time,
by occasional twos and threes, but for the most part singly, a half,
perhaps, of the strange company--at the call of family, military or
social duties--takes its departure. The residue--unmarried officers,
departmental officials and a few unclassified--is made up of the
regular voyageurs; you will find them still in their places when you
look in again after dinner.
As you saunter down to the hotel in the gathering twilight, you note
that the hot, humid air-body of the afternoon is cut here and there
with strata of coolness which, descending from above, are creating
numerous erratic little whirlwinds that dodge hither and thither
at every turn. In the west hangs the remains of an ugly
copper-and-sulphur sunset, in the north is an unbroken line of
olive-and-coal-dust clouds, and, even in your inexperience, you
hardly need to note the 29.70 reading on the hotel _lanai_ barometer
to tell you that there is going to be wind before midnight. The air is
vibrant with the thrill of "something coming," and from the waterfront,
where they have known what to expect since morning, rises the rattle of
winches, the growl of hurried orders and the mellow, rhythmic chanting
of natives swaying on anchor chains and mooring lines as the trading
schooners are "snugged up" in their berths along the sea-wall.
Nine o'clock at the Cercle Colonial. The jalousies have been opened
during your absence and are now being closed again, this time to keep
out the scurrying vanguards of the rising wind. The air is cooler now,
and you give the waiter the recipe for an American gin fizz, to receive
something in return which refuses to fizz and is built, apparently, on
a bayrum base. You solace yourself with the thought that you didn't
come for a drink, anyway, and turn your attention to your friends of
the afternoon, the voyageurs by the absinthe route. Most of them seem
to have "arrived" by this time, and if they are aware at all of the
relief of the cooling atmosphere, it is only to tell themselves that
it is good to breathe again the air of la belle France after those
accursed tropics. Each sits solitary, as when you left two hours ago,
but where they were then separated by a few scant yards at the most,
they are now scattered from Paris to the Riviera, from Chamonix to
Trouville.
But it is plain that it is Paris with the most of them. The youth with
the yellow face is still in his chair by the window, but his eyes are
now fixed admiringly on a coloured lithograph of a ballet
dancer--an _Illustracion_ supplement--in its black frame upon the
wall. Maybe he's doing the Louvre, you think, and looking at the
pictures. But no--look at his eyes. That picture is flesh and blood for
him. She's the headliner at the _Folies Bergere_, and she's coming
down to drink with him as soon as the crowd stops those accursed
encores and lets her leave the stage. And don't those eyes tell you
how well worth waiting for he knows she is?
That dapper young chap with the "spike" moustache and the lieutenant's
epaulettes who sits so straight in his chair, where is he? The Champs
Elysées, without a doubt. Riding? No, walking. Don't you see the
swagger of his shoulders; and that twitching movement of the fingers
is the twirling of his cane? Didn't you see him stiffen up and twist
his moustaches as he looked your way just now? No, he didn't care a
rap about impressing the Yankee visitor to Tahiti; you were a carriage
or a motor car with the latest opera favourite in it pulled up against
the curb.
That tall civilian there, with the grey hair at the temples and the
dissipated but high bred face--you recognize him now as one of the
highest officials on the island, who, they told you at the hotel,
had been "reduced" to Tahiti as punishment for his peculations while
occupying an important place in Algeria--is at Maxim's. That chair
across the top of which he is gazing so intently is not as empty to him
as it looks to you. There--didn't you see his lips move? You wonder
who she is and what he is telling her.
That other civilian with the clear cut profile and the concentrated
gaze of the professional man and thinker--ah, he is the learned
Parisian doctor from whom the medical world has awaited for two
years the announcement of the discovery of a cure for the dreaded
_elephantiasis_. He had his goal and deathless renown in sight
months ago, you have been told, when, in a spell of homesickness, he
began drinking and "seeing green," and since that time, through the
demoralization of his special hospital and the loss of certain cultures
of incalculable value, has slipped back almost to where he began. That
must be a clinic for which he is drawing those intricate sketches with
his cigarette holder on the marble table top.
But what of that portly old gentleman with the benevolent smile and
the beaming eyes? That's a Colonel's uniform, is it not? How well he
looks the part! But do you think he is with the others in the cafés
chantant or on the boulevards? Look again, you world dried dog.
Didn't you note the tenderness in that smile? The old Colonel
has--or has had--a wife and children. A look like that for a concert
hall girl! Not ever. He is in the bosom of his family. May he be the
last of them all to wake from his dream.
Ah, you know that bronzed giant with the shoulders and brow of a
Viking and the eyes that pierce like rapiers of steel with their eagle
glance. He was shipped off to the "Islands," a "Ticket-of-Leavester,"
from Sydney five years ago, and since then he has gained the
reputation of being the most daring "black-birder," smuggler and
illicit pearler in the South Pacific. He's rolling in money and lives
like a prince, with "establishments" in every group between the
Marquesas and New Zealand. Last night you were inclined to scoff
when he came off to the yacht and told how he had won his "Triple
Blue" at Cambridge, played in Interregimental polo at Hurlingham
and raced his own string at Newmarket. You had heard his type of
"bounder" rattle on before, you said. But now look at him. There's
more manhood and less depravity in the devil-may-care face than
there was last night. And note the set of his shoulders, the
tenseness of his hands. Pulling an oar? No. You don't know cricket,
do you? Well, ten to one yon "Ticket-of-Leavestser" thinks he is at
Lord's, and batting to save his County. What an incongruous figure
he is amongst the rapt boulevardiers!
But listen to the noise outside! The hurricane is sweeping in from the
sea and the outer reef is roaring like an avalanche. But why no sign
of excitement from the silent dreamers? Is it because they are telling
themselves that it is only the roar of the traffic on the Parisian
pavements? Listen to those clanging bells and the frantic choruses
of yells which sound above the threshing of the trees and the grind
of the surf! Only a fire--fires are common in Montmartre--they tell
themselves, and go on with their dreams.
Now the batteries of the storm have got their ranges and the shot
begins to fly. Snap! Bang! Hear those coco trunks cracking, and right
around the club, too. Ah! this will rouse somebody.
With a heavy crash the top of a broken palm is thrown against a
shuttered window and the glass and bottle of the sallow-faced youth
smash to pieces upon the floor. That will fetch him surely. But still
no. Pouf! Broken glass is as common as diamonds at the Folies. He
beckons for the waiter to bring him more absinthe and ice and turns
again his eager eyes to his picture lady, where she is still pirouetting
through another interminable encore.
But hark again! There is a fresh tumult outside, this time a shrill
whistling and the tramp of feet on the veranda, followed by a banging
at the door. A moment more and a captain of gendarmes appears and
shouts something in excited, gesticulative French. You fail to catch
the drift of it and ask a waiter. A half dozen schooners are pounding
to pieces on the sea wall, screams the _garçon_ as he is hustled off
by a gendarme, and the police are impressing all the men they can lay
hands on for rescue work--the "law of the beach" through all the South
Pacific.
Dazed and speechless with consternation, the unlucky dreamers are
hustled to their feet by the not any too gentle officers and shoved
out into the night, where half a minute of rain and wind and driving
spindrift punch the return portions of their round-trip tickets to
Paris and leave them on the Papeete water front with an incipient
hurricane ahead of them and the rough-handed gendarmes behind.
The awakening is not always so violent as this, but there is no such
thing as a peaceful disembarkation at the end of the return trip by the
absinthe route, whoever puts up the gangway.