Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

“But the ritual of the rum began, and in the crush about the cask the judges awarded Titihuti the Orchid of the Bird, the reward of the First Dancer. She stood in the light of the now dying torches, and when the foreigner would embrace her and lead her away she turned her laughing eyes toward him and called out so that many heard:

“‘You are without ornament, O Haoe. Cover your face as do Marquesan lovers, or get you back to your island!’

“Then she hurried away to receive the praise and to taste the glory of her achievement among her own family.”

The Taua took his long knife and with repeated blows hacked off the upper half of a cocoanut to make ready another drink. I had a very vivid idea of the situation he had described. That handsome young man of Europe, belike of wealth, seeking to surrender to his vagrant fancies in this contrasting environment, and finding that among these savages he had position only as his rum bought it with the men, and was without it at all among the women. One could fancy him all afire after that dance of abandon, ready on the instant to yield to the deepest of all instincts, and surprised, astounded, almost unbelieving at his repulse. He might have learned that such repulse was not even in the manner of the Marquesans, but solely the whim of Titihuti, the beginning of that career of whimsical passion and insouciance which carried her fame from island to island and fetched other proud whites from afar to know her favor. He himself had come a long way to be the unwitting victim of the most prankish girl and woman who ever danced a tribe to death and destruction, but who withal was worth more than she who launched the thousand ships to batter Ilium’s towers.

“And did he cover his face?” I demanded, hurrying to follow the windings of fate.

“E!” said the sorcerer. “He gained the friendship of chiefs. He let his ship sail away with but a paper with words to his tribe, and he stayed on. He hunted, he swam, and he drank, but he could not touch his nose to the nose of Titihuti, for his nose was naked. Weeks passed, but not his passion. He hovered about her as the great moth seeks the fireflies, but ever she was busied with her pomades and her massage, the ena unguent and the baths, the omi omi and the combing of her red-gold tresses. She had set him aflame, but had no alleviation for him.

“And then when the moon was at its height she danced again, this time alone, as the undisputed vehine haka of Fatuhiva. The foreigner sat and gazed, and when Titihuti glided to where he was and, planting her feet a metero away, addressed herself to him, he shook with longing. She was perfumed with the jasmine, and about her breasts were rings of those pink orchids of the mountains. The foreigner felt the warmth of her presence as she posed in the attitudes of love. He bounded to his feet and, clasping her for the second time to him, he shouted that he would be tattooed, he would be a man among men in the Marquesas.

“There was no delay; I myself tattooed him. As always the custom, I took him into the mountains and built the patiki, the house for the rite. That is as it should be, for tattooing is of our gods and of our religion before the whites destroyed it. I was and am the master of our arts. I did not sketch out my design upon his skin with burned bamboo, as do some, but struck home the ama ink directly. My needles were the bones of one whom I had slain, an enemy of the Oi tribe. I myself gathered the candlenuts and, burning them to powder, mixed that with water and made my color. My mallet, or hama, was the shin of another whom I had eaten.”

Such a man as Leonardo, who painted “Mona Lisa” and designed a hundred other beautiful things, or Cellini of the book and a vast creation of intricate marvels, would have understood the exactness of that art of tattooing in the Marquesas. Suppose “Mona Lisa” herself, an expanse of her fair back, and not mere linen, bore her picture. What infinite pains! Not more than took the taua in such a task. In his mind his plan, he dipped his needle in the ama soot, and, placing the point upon a pore of the flesh, he lightly tapped the other extremity of the bone with his hama of shin and impressed the sepia into the living skin, for each point of flesh making a stroke.

Followed fever after several hours of frightful anguish. The dentist is the ministrant of caresses, his the loved hand of pleasure, compared with the suffering caused to the quivering body by the blows of those needles. A séance of tattooing followed, and several days of sickness. He had not the strength of the natives in the pain, and often he cried out, but yet he signed that the tattooing should go on.