The old Kekela had been a patriarch in Israel. Not alone had he lessened cannibalism and the rigidity of the tapu in the “great, cannibal isle of Hiva-Oa,” but he had instructed them in foreign ways. He had acquired lands, and now this family was the richest in the Marquesas. Only the Catholic mission owned more acres. They were proud, and convinced that they were anointed of the Lord, though Jimmy, being young, had no interest at all in religion. If Kekela the first had not been a missionary he would have been a chief or a capitalist. Hannah showed me the photographs of the kings and queen of Hawaii since Kamehameha IV with their signatures and affectionate words for Kekela. Now they were disintegrating, and another generation would find them as undone as the Marquesans. The contempt of government, trader, and casual white for all religion had affected them, who for two generations had been Christian aristocrats and leaders among a mass of commoners and admiring followers. The ten commandments were as dead as the tapus, and the church had become here what it is in America, a social and entertainment focus for people bored by life. The German philosopher has said that the apparent problem of all religions was to combat a certain weariness produced by various causes which are epidemic. Christianity for civilized people may be “a great storehouse of ingenuous sedatives, with which deep depression, leaden languor, and sullen sadness of the physiologically depressed might be relieved,” but for the Marquesans it had been a narcotic, perhaps easing them into the grave dug by the new dispensation brought by civilized outsiders. The gentle Jesus had been betrayed by the culture that had developed in his name, but which had no relation to his teaching or example. These good-willed Kekelas were as feeble to arrest the decay of soul and body of their charges as was the excellent Pastor Vernier or the self-sacrificing Father David. In the dance at the governor’s the flocks, at least, had an expression, corrupted as it was, of their desire for pleasure and forgetfulness of the stupid present.
CHAPTER XXI
Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian artist—a rebel against the society that rejected him while he lived, and now cherishes his paintings.
ABOVE the village of Atuona was the hill of Calvary, as the French named the Catholic cemetery. Often in the late afternoon I went there to watch the sun go down behind the peak of Temetiu, and to muse over what might come into my mind. My first visit had been with Charles Le Moine, the school teacher of Vaitahu, and the only painter living in the Marquesas. We had gone to search for the grave of Paul Gauguin, the famous French-Peruvian artist, and had found no trace of it.
“That woman who swore to keep it right has buried another lover since,” said Le Moine, cynically.
A small man, with a long French nose, a red, pointed beard and mustache, twinkling blue eyes, and dressed in faded denim, Le Moine, though many years in these archipelagos, was out of the Latin Quarter. Two front teeth missing, he had a childish air; one thought his whiskers might be a boy’s joke. He was a blageur about life, but he was very serious about painting, and utterly without thought of else.
“I work at anything the Government will give me to earn leisure and a bare living so as to paint here,” he said.
Alas! Le Moine was not a great artist. His pictures were so-so. Doubtless the example and fame of Gauguin inspired him to achieve. We had often talked of him.
“When he died,” said Le Moine, “I was here, and I attended the night services in the church over his remains. The chief gendarme or agent special, like Bauda now, took charge of his house and effects. You may imagine the care he took when I tell you that Gauguin was under sentence to prison for reviling the gendarme and the law. He auctioned off everything with a jest, and made fun of the dead man and his work. He said to us: ‘Gauguin is dead. He leaves many debts, and nothing here to pay for them, but a few paintings without value. He was a decadent painter.’ Gauguin would have expected that. I had only a few sous, but was able to buy what I needed most, his brushes and palette. Peyral got ‘Niagara Falls,’ as the gendarme shouted its name. It was Gauguin’s last picture; a Brittany village in winter, snow everywhere, a few houses and trees, and the dusk in blue and red and violet tones. He made that, mon ami, when he was dying. It was his reaching back to his old painting ground in his last thoughts. I think Peyral sold it to Polonsky, the Tahitian banker, who was here looking to buy anything of Gauguin. Lutz got his cane, carved by Gauguin, and the other things went for a trifle, including the house, which was torn down for the lumber, because nobody here wanted a studio. I admired Gauguin, but he had nothing to do with me because I was white and of the Government. He was absorbed with the Marquesans, and to them he was all kindness and generosity. He was the simplest educated white man in his needs I have ever known, and I myself, as you know, have few demands. Gauguin wanted drink, paint and canvas. He always kept a bottle of absinthe in a little pool by his house.”