Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

Dear Mr. O. Brien,

In case that you having nothing else to do, I shall be glad to see you at Tahauku to-night. Do not bother please about dressing, the roads are too bad. If it suits you, I invite you to stay here over night.

With kindest regards,

Yours

Wilhelm Lutz

Certainly I had nothing else to do, except to explain to Exploding Eggs that I would not need his services to gather cocoanut husks for my dinner fire, and at five o’clock to start for Tahauku. Lutz’s kindly sentence about not dressing was to me a joke, for I had to cross both the Atuona and the Tahauku rivers, and a storm, the day before, had made the trails—there were no roads—merely muddy indications of the direction. The Atuona stream I was able to wade with my trousers rolled and canvas shoes in my hands, and when I reached the Tahauku River, I found it waist-deep, and the footing uncertain. A Chinese was gathering the coarse grass by the river’s bank for Lutz’s horse. It is a rare man who does not make a slave of his inferior who by conquest or necessity is forced to do his will. A man’s a man for a’ that only when fighting equality or mass strength makes him so. I myself, who abhor inequality, proved a sinner there. Averse to getting my clothes wet, I tried to make the Chinese understand my wish that he take me on his back across the stream. Stupidity or a dislike to play horse caused him to assume a vacant look, the Oriental blankness which is maddening to Occidentals. I took him by the shoulder, mounted him, and drove him through the hundred feet of rushing water. On the other side, I thanked him, but his slit eyes gleamed balefully as he turned away.

The sky was racked with clouds, and they hung on the mountain like smoky draperies. The evening air was humid and depressing. Tahauku was a lonely, beautiful place, typical of the Marquesas, isolated, gloomy, but splendid. There were no craft in the bay except two small cutters moored near the foot of the stone stairs. A group of wooden buildings in an extensive clearing lined the road that led along the cliffs, and about it were thousands and thousands of palms, the finest cocoanut-grove that I had ever seen in the South Seas or Asia or India. They were planted regularly, not crowded, but with space for roots and for air. They had been set out two generations ago by the grandfather of the stark daughter of Peyral, the Irish cavalry officer, who was buried among them. Then a thousand Marquesans had led there the life of their ancestors; a score remained.

In the commodious house erected by the latter, Lutz lived in a determined though inadequate effort to preserve his German birthright. In the sitting-room in which he welcomed me stiffly, though courteously, were the hangings and cheap ornaments of a Prussian lower middle-class family, tidies, mottos, and books, including a large brass-bound Bible and the kaiser’s portrait in colors. A bitters was drunk before the meal. Lutz sat at the head of a longish table, and his two white employees, a Hamburg apprentice just out, and Jensen, a Dane, joined us. The talk was in English, and it was curious, in this far-away island ruled by the French for seventy years, to find my tongue, as in almost every corner of the world, the powerful solvent of our mixed thoughts. Lutz talked about America, through which he had come from Germany on his way to Tahiti and the Marquesas. He praised our strength in trade, and derided the French and English, predicting that the Germans would divide the South Seas commerce with us, to the exclusion of others.

I liked Lutz, and, after the Hamburg apprentice and the Dane had gone to play chess, he and I passed some hours in chatting about music, books, and history. He had the solid foundation of the German schools below the universities, and he had read constantly his German reviews. Stolid, ambitious, swift to take a business advantage, he lived in this aloofness from the things he liked, in order to save enough to raise his social status on his return to his fatherland. Just before he showed me to my room for the night, he said:

“My old woman is going back to Tahiti. She is tired of it here after so many years. When Captain Pincher comes in with the Morning Star, I’m sending her back with him. She’s getting lonesome for her kin. You know how those Tahitians are.”