Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

Photo by International Newsreel
Beach dancers at Tahiti

“Talking about all that, we came to where we could see the Hanga Piko landing, and our company schooner anchored a little offshore. The captain and some of the crew were engaged in bringing supplies ashore, and it was not until we rode into the ground of Queen Korato’s palace, our home, that we saw there were white strangers arrived. Imagine the situation! When we called to Taaroa and Tokouo to get a man to care for the horses, out came a beautiful English girl in a white frock, and apologized for having entered the house in our absence. Her father joined her, and we soon knew him, Professor Scotten Dorey, for the greatest authority on Polynesian languages, myths, and migrations. There he was, by the favor of the Tahiti owners, come to stay indefinitely and to study the Rapa Nui language. His daughter was his scribe, she said, and saved his eyes as much as possible by copying his notes. We were up against it, as O’Brien would say. Our conveniences were scant,—the queen had not been much for linen or dishes,—and you know how we fellows live even in such nearer places like Takaroa.

After the bath in the pool

“Then there was the matter of Taaroa and Tokouo; borrowed wives, recognized as the custom was. Willis took one look at Miss Dorey, and went white as when he first saw the sweep of Easter Island. He was as sensitive as a child about certain things. There we had been all alone, I used to doing what I damn please, anyhow, and he without any old bavarde to chatter, or even to see. I won’t say, too, that we hadn’t had some drinking bouts, nights when we had scared away even the cockroaches and the ear-boring beetles with our songs, and the love dances of Taaroa and Tokouo. For me, I’m a gentleman, and I was a student under Nietzsche at Basel, but I hate being interfered with. I’ve lived too long in the South Seas. But for the American, a young chap just out of college, it was like being seen in some rottenness by a member of his family. You fellows may laugh, but that’s the way he felt. He used to talk about a younger sister to me on our voyage up.

“We assured the daughter and father we would care for them. There was room enough, four or five chambers in the place, and we could improvise beds for them, rough as they might be, but the daily living, the meals and the evenings, confronted us hatefully. I would mind nothing but the being so close to probably very particular people, the lack of freedom of undress, and the pretense about Tokouo, but Willis was in a funk. He wanted to go to live with Timi Linder, but I knew that he could not endure that. Linder was island-born and almost a native, insects were nothing to him, and he made no pretense of regular meals like a white. Besides he was boss, and wanted to live his own life. I told Willis plainly he had to make the best of it for a few months. He finally said he would break off his intimacy with Taaroa, and I said that that was his lookout.

“So we took the Doreys into our ménage. We gave them two rooms together, and Willis and I doubled up. Taaroa and Tokouo had their mats in the fourth, and the fifth was the living- and dining-room. The cook-house was detached. We improvised a big table for the professor on which he could spread his dictionaries and comparative lists of South Seas languages, and there day after day he delved into the Te Pito te Henua mystery. Chief Ure Vaeiko and Pakomeo were interpreters of the tablets and reciters of legends, but, as the professor had not yet mastered the Rapa Nui tongue, a go-between in English was needed. For a few days Timi Linder volunteered for this job, but soon it was the American who was called upon. He had made good use of his year or so and knew the dialect well. It is only a dialect of the Malayo-Polynesian language, and the professor himself in three months knew more of it than any of us because he spoke six or seven other branches of it from New Zealand Maori to Tahitian.

“The schooner, after a month of unloading supplies and taking on wool and cattle, sailed for Tahiti, and Timi Linder went with her, as he had been three years away from his relations. This left me in charge, and as the principal settlement was at Vaihu, the former mission, I was ordered by Linder to move there, and Willis to stay at Hanga Piko. You can see easily how fate was shaping things for the American. I took Tokouo with me, and, the year’s lease of Taaroa expiring, she was demanded back by her husband. An elderly Tahitian couple replaced them as helpers in the palace. As I was five miles away, with a poor road, and had to keep the accounts of births and deaths of people and animals, look after the warehouse, and be a kind of chief and doctor, I saw less and less of the Doreys, and not much more of Willis. He had to run his gang, attend to the cattle, the water-holes, and sheep that got in distress in the craters or caves. Of course, now and then he came over to see me, or I to see him and the English people,—I’m Welsh myself, three quarters,—and I met him often in the scrub.

“Everything seemed going along all right after a few months. The Doreys came in the seventh month of the Rapa Nui year, Koro, which corresponds to our January, Timi Linder left in Tuaharo, February, and Taaroa returned to her husband the last of that month. The month is divided in half, beginning with the new moon and the full moon. On the first of the full moon in Vaitu-nui, May, we had a party to visit the ahu of Hananakou. The professor, his daughter, and Willis joined me at Vaihu as it was on the trail, and in company with several islanders we started. It so happened that Taaroa was at my house to visit Tokouo, and when Willis rode into the inclosure she was the first person he saw.

“‘Kohomai!’ he said, which is the usual greeting. It is like ‘Good day’ or ‘How do you do,’ but it actually means ‘Come to me!’ You answer, ‘Koe!’ which is ‘Thou!’ A dozen times a day you might meet and say this, pleasantly or automatically, but I heard Taaroa reply with astonishing bitterness, ‘Koe kovau aita paihenga!’ ‘Thou! I am not a dog!’ She turned her back on him as Miss Dorey followed in, and I saw on his face a look of puzzlement and fear. I was struck for the first time by the contrasting beauty of the two girls, Taaroa the finest type of Polynesian, as fine as the best Marquesan, and the white girl the real tea-tea, the blond English, the pink-white flesh, the violet eyes and rich brown hair. I tell you I’d like to have been lover to them both. Taaroa looked intently at Miss Dorey, who spoke to her negligently though kindly, and the incident was over. Anyhow, for the time being.