Last days in Atuona; My Darling Hope's letter from her son.
Exploding Eggs was building my fire of cocoanut-husks as usual in
the morning to cook my coffee and eggs, when a whistle split the
sultry air. Far from the bay it came, shrill and demanding; my call
to civilization.
Long expected, the first liner was in the Isles of the Cannibals.
France had begun to make good her promise to expand her trade in
Oceania, and the isolation of the dying Marquesans and empty valleys
was ended. The steamship _Saint François_, from Bordeaux by way of
Tahiti, had come to visit this group and pick up cargo for Papeite
and French ports.
Strange was the sight of her in Taha-Uka Bay where never her like
had been, but stranger still, two aboard her, the only two not French,
were known to me. Here thousands of miles from where I had seen them,
unconnected in any way with each other, were a pair of human beings
I had known, one in China, and the other in the United States, both
American citizens, and sent by fate to replace me as objects of
interest to the natives.
They came up from the beach together, one a small black man, the
other tall and golden brown, led by Malicious Gossip to see the
American who lived in these far-away islands. The black lingered to
talk at a distance, but the golden-brown one advanced.
His figure was the bulky one of the trained athlete, stocky and
tremendously powerful, his hide that of an extreme blond burned by
months of a tropic sun upon salt water. His hair was an aureole,
yellow as a sunflower, a bush of it on a bullet-head. And, incredible
almost--as if made of putty by a joker--his nose stuck out like the
first joint of a thumb, the oddest nose ever on a man. His little
eyes were blue and bright. Barefooted, bare-headed, in the
sleeveless shirt and short trousers of a life-guard, with an
embroidered V on the front of the upper garment, he was radiantly
healthy and happy, a civilized being returned to nature's ways.
Though he did not recognize me, I knew him instantly for a trainer
and beach-patrol of Southern California, a diver for planted shells
at Catalina Island, whom I had first seen plunging from the rafters
of a swimming-tank, and I remembered that he had flattened his nose
by striking the bottom, and that a skilful surgeon had saved him its
remnant.
He had with him a bundle in a towel, and setting it down on my
_paepae_, introduced himself nonchalantly as Broken Bronck,
"Late manager of the stable of native fighters of the Count de
M---- of the island of Tahaa, near Tahiti."
"I'm here to stay," he said carelessly. "I have a few francs, and I
hear they're pretty hospitable in the Markeesies. I came on the deck
of the _Saint François_, and I've brung my things ashore."
He undid the towel, and there rolled out another bathing-suit and a
set of boxing gloves. These were his sole possessions, he said.
"I hear they're nutty on prizefighting like in Tahiti, and I'll
teach 'em boxing," he explained.
The Marquesan ladies who speedily assembled could not take their
eyes from him. They asked me a score of questions about him, and
were not surprised that I knew him, or even that I called the negro
by name when he sauntered up. We must all be from the same valley,
or at least from the same island, they thought, for were we not all
Americans?
I kept Broken Bronck to luncheon, and gave him what few household
furnishings I had not promised to Exploding Eggs or to Apporo, who
with the promise of the Golden Bed about to be realized--for I
announced my going--camped upon it, hardly believing that at last
she was to own the coveted marvel. Some keepsakes I gave to
Malicious Gossip, Mouth of God, Many Daughters, Water, Titihuti, and
others, and drank a last shell of _namu_ with these friends.
News of my packing reached far and wide. I had not estimated so
optimistically the esteem in which they held me, these companions of
many months, but they trooped from the farthest hills to say farewell.
Good-byes even to the sons and daughters of cannibals are sorrowful.
I had come to think much of these simple, savage neighbors. Some of
them I shall never forget.
Mauitetai, a middle-aged woman with a kindly face, was long on my
_paepae_. Her name would be in English My Darling Hope, and it
well fitted her mood, for she was all aglow with wonder and joy at
receiving a letter from her son, who three years before had gone
upon a ship and disappeared from her ken. The letter had come upon
the _Saint François_, and it brought My Darling Hope into intimate
relations with me, for I uncovered to her that her wandering boy had
become a resident of my own country, and revealed some of the
mysteries of our polity.
The letter was in Marquesan, which I translate into English, seeking
to keep the flavor of the original, though poorly succeeding:
"I write to you, me, Pahorai Calizte, and put on this paper
greetings to you, my mother, Mauitetai, who are in Atuona.
"_Kaoha nui tuu kui_, Mauitetai, mother of me. Great love to you.
"I have found in Philadelphia work for me; good work.
"I have found a woman for me. She is Jeanette, an artist, a maker of
tattooings on cloth. I am very happy. I have found a house to live in.
I am happy I have this woman. She is rich. I am poor. It is for that
I write to you, to make it known to you that she is rich, and I am
poor. By this paper you will know that I have pledged my word to
this woman. I found her and I won her by my work and by my strength
and my endeavor.
"She is _moi kanahau_; as beautiful as the flowers of the _hutu_ in
my own beloved valley of Atuona. She is not of America. She is of
Chile. She has paid many piasters for the coming here. She has paid
forty piasters. She has been at home in Las Palmas, in the islands
of small golden birds.
"I will write you more in this paper. I seek your permission to
marry Jeanette. She asks it, as I do. Send me your word by the
government that carries words on paper.
"It is three years since I have known of you. That is long.
"Give me that word I ask for this woman. I cannot go to marry in
Atuona. That is what my heart wants, but it is far and the money is
great. The woman would pay and would come with me. I say no. I am
proud. I have shame. I am a Marquesan.
"I live with that woman now. I am not married. It is forbidden. The
American _mutoi_ (policeman) may take hold of me. Five months I am
with this woman of mine. The _mutoi_ has a war-club that is hard as
stone.
"Give me quickly the paper to marry her. I await your word.
"My word is done. I am at Philadelphia, New York Hotel. A.P.A. Dieu.
Coot pae, mama."
Mauitetai had read the letter many times. It was wonderful to hear
from her son after three years and pleasant to know he had found a
woman. She must be a _haoe_, a white woman. Were the women of that
island, Chile, white?
I said that they ran the color scale, from blond to brown, from
European to Indian, but that this Jeanette who was a tattooer, a
maker of pictures on canvas, no doubt an artist of merit, must be
pale as a moonbeam. Those red peppers that were hot on the tongue
came from Chile, I said, and there were heaps of gold there in the
mountains.
My Darling Hope would know what kind of a valley was Philadelphia.
It was the Valley of Brotherly Love. It was a very big valley, with
two streams, and a bay. No, it was not near Tahiti. It was a
breadfruit season away from Atuona, at the very least.
What could a hotel be? The New York hotel in which her poor son lived?
I did not know that hotel, I told her, but a hotel was a house in
which many persons paid to live, and some hotels had more rooms than
there were houses in all the Marquesas.
What! In one house, under one roof? By my tribe, it was true.
Did I know this woman? I was from that island and I had been in that
valley. I must have seen her.
I replied that I knew a Jeanette who answered the description
beautiful, but that she was not from Chile.
Now, My Darling Hope knit her brow. Why would the _mutoi_ take hold
of her son, as he feared?
I soothed her anxiety. The _mutoi_ walked up and down in front of
the hotel, but he would not bother her son as long as her son could
get a few piasters now and then to hand to him. The woman was rich,
and would not miss a trifling sum, five or ten piasters a month for
the _mutoi_.
But why was it forbidden for her son to live with Jeanette, being
not married to her?
That was our law, but it was seldom enforced. The _mutois_ were fat
men who carried war-clubs and struck the poor with them, but her son
was _tapu_ because of Jeanette's money.
She was at ease now, she said. Her son could not marry without her
permission. No Marquesan had ever done so. She would send the word
by the next schooner, or I might take it with me to my own island
and hand it to her son. He could then marry.
I had done her a great kindness, but one thing more. Neither she nor
Titihuti nor Water could make out what Pahorai Calizte meant by
"Coot Pae, Mama." "A.P.A. Dieu." was his commendation of her to God,
but _Coot Pae_ was not Marquesan, neither was it French. She
pronounced the words in the Marquesan way, and I knew at once.
_Coot pae_ is pronounced Coot Pye, and Coot Pye was Pahorai
Calizte's way of imitating the American for _Apae Kaoha_. "Good-by,
mama," was his quite Philadelphia closing of his letter to his mother.
I addressed an envelop to her son with The Iron Fingers That Make
Words, and gave it to My Darling Hope. A tear came in her eye. She
rubbed my bare back affectionately and caressed my nose with hers as
she smelled me solemnly. Then she went up the valley to enlighten
the hill people.