Photo by Brown Bros.
Scene on beach a few miles west of Papeete
He gave to all, including Peyral and me, the only white attendants, a little loaf of bread he had blessed; faraoa benetitio in Marquesan, or flour benedicto. Ah Suey took communion, and after mass hurried to me. The reputed murderer of Wagner, the American, was prideful because he was the baker of the faraoa benetitio.
“How you likee that bleadee?” he asked me. “My bake him bleadee, pliest make him holee. Bimeby me ketchee heaven,” he said in all seriousness.
Titihuti, my neighbor, joined me to walk to our homes, and, knowing her to miss no masses on Sundays, I asked her why she had not received the sacrament. She said she had never partaken of it, that she had yet to make her first communion of the Lord’s supper.
“But, Titihuti,” I remonstrated, “you know that you are in danger of hell-fire. You believe in the Catholic doctrine, you say, and despite that you disregard its strict order.”
Titihuti I realized was a heathen, still full of animist superstitions, and I was not unprepared to hear her answer:
“If I took the host into my mouth I would die. The manakao would seize me. I will wait until I am about to die, and then Père David will give me the viaticum, and I will go straight to aki.”
The manakao is a demon, and aki is paradise. Titihuti was intending to take the chance that kings and others took in the early days of Christianity, when, being taught that baptism wiped out all sins, they kept an alert clergyman always near them to sprinkle them and speed them to heaven, and meanwhile they sinned as they pleased.
By noon the entire village was chanting and dancing. The unusual removal of the restriction against beverages made Easter a pagan rout. The natives became uninhibited, if not natural, for a few hours. Several times the governor had had groups at his palace to give exhibitions of their aboriginal dances, but this feast-day he extended a general invitation to a levee. Fifty or sixty men or women enjoyed the utmost hospitality. The young ruler was bent on seeing their fullest expression of mirth, without any restraint of sobriety. The noise of their songs echoed to the mission, where the nuns prayed that some brand might be spared from the holocaust. Swaggering chiefs and beauteous damsels abandoned themselves to the spirit of the day. The dances were without order. Whenever a man or woman felt the urge they sprang to their feet and began the tapiriata. Under the palms, upon the verandas, in the salle à manger, in every corner of the palace and its grounds, the people, astonished at such unwonted freedom and such lavish bounty, showed their appreciation in movements of their bodies and legs. The fairest girls surrounded the host, and with sinuous circlings and a thousand blandishments entertained and thanked him. The chants by the elders were of his greatness. The young sang of passion.
From the hill near the cemetery where Guillitoue, the anarchist, dwelt, sounded the drums. I was the especial guest there in the afternoon, and those who were not too deep in the pool of pleasure at the palace climbed the mountain. The orator had built a shelter of bamboo and cocoanut leaves, graceful and clean, and upon its carpet of leaves we sat. Guillitoue in a loin-cloth and black frock-coat moved about among the three score with a dame-jeanne in each hand, and poured rum or wine at request. Occasionally he broke into a wild hula, grotesque as he whirled about with the wickered bottles at arms-length. From other valleys whites and natives had come to the koina. Thirty horses were tied to the cemetery railing. Amiable gaiety and ludicrous baboonery passed the afternoon.