“Is the French republic to permit here in its colony the whites who enjoy its hospitality to shame the nation before the Tahitians by their nakedness? That sacrée bête wore a pareu in town because the law compelled him to, but, monsieur, on the road, in his aerial resort, he and all his disciples were as naked as—”
“I have seen artistes at the music-halls of Paris,” I finished.
“Exactement,” he spluttered. “Are we to let Tahiti rival Paris?”
Ivan Stroganoff I met two or three times a month. He stayed in his chicken-coop except when the opportunities came for gaining a few francs, at steamer-time, and when sheer boredom drove him to Papeete for converse. With his dislike for the natives and his disdainful attitude toward the French, he had to seek other nationals in town, for there were none at Fa’a except a Chinese storekeeper. Stroganoff at eighty was as keen for interesting things as a young man, but his philosophy was fatal to his enjoyment. He saw the flaw in the diamond the sunbeam made of the drop of water on the leaf. He had lived too long and was too wise in disappointments. He was generous in his poverty, for he brought me a tin of guava-jelly he had made and a box of dried bananas. These had had their skins removed, and were black and not desirable-looking, but they were delicious and rare. In turn, not wishing to exaggerate the difference between our means, I gave him a box of cigars I had brought from America. I visited him at Fa’a, and found his coop had been a poultry shelter, and was humble, indeed; but I had slept a hundred nights in many countries in worse. He had a box for a table for eating and writing, and a rude cot. A few dishes and implements, and a roost of books and reviews in Russian, English, French, German, and other languages, completed his equipment.
He had several times reiterated his earnest wish to leave Tahiti, and his longing rested heavily on my heart. Upon lying down at night I had felt my own illiberality in not making it possible for him to realize his desire. A hundred dollars would send him there, with enough left over for a fortnight’s keep. But my apology for not buying him a ticket was the real fear of his unhappiness. What could a friendless man of eighty do to exist in the United States other than become the inmate of a poorhouse? The best he could hope for would be to be taken in by the Little Sisters of the Poor, who house a few old men. They were, doubtless, kind, but probably insistent on neatness and religiosity.
The cold, the brutal policemen and guards, the venial justice, the crystallized charity in the name of a statistical Christ, arrested my hand. I had known it all at first hand, asking no favor. I believed that he would be worse off than in his chicken-coop. He could wear anything or nearly nothing in Tahiti, and his old Prince Albert comforted him; but he would have to conform to dress rules in a stricter civilization. Nature was a loving mother here and a shrewish hag there, at least toward the poor. And yet I was uneasy at my own argument.
For a month or two he had led the talk between us and any others in the parc to new discoveries in medicine. From his Fa’a seclusion he followed these very closely through European publications, for which his slender funds went. He had a curiously opposed nature, quoting with enthusiasm the idealistic philosophers, and descending into such abject materialism as haunting the bishop’s palace for the cigar-stubs.
He would say that the purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily existence and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it.
“This divine release from the common ways of men can be found only through art,” Stroganoff would apostrophize. “The final and only true solution of life is to be found in the life of the saint. True morality passes through virtue, which is rooted in sympathy into asceticism. Renunciation only offers a complete release from the evils and terrors of existence.”
Kelly was on the bench one day when the Russian uttered this rule of the cenobite school. They were good friends, but differed. They agreed that the world was sick and needed a radical medicine. Kelly was for a complete cure by ending private business through the workers seizing it when the time was ripe, which he believed would be soon. Stroganoff was for an empery of wise men, of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who would kick out the statesmen and politicians, and manage things by enlightened pragmatism. For the individual man who sought happiness his formula was as above—retirement to an aery.