Those conservatists had replied emphatically that Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, were created by God, which agreed thoroughly with the Tahitian legends, and after that T’yonni’s generosity was ranked higher than his knowledge. He laughed over the stories as we sat at breakfast with my coachman in the kitchen. T’yonni said that the deacon of the Protestant church expressed a belief that the Paumotuans or even the French might have followed the Darwinian course of descent, but that Tahitians could not swallow a doctrine that linked them in relationship with Uritaata. The Tongans, Polynesians like themselves, had a tradition that God made the Tongan first, then the pig, and lastly the white man.
“He quoted the Tongan with compassion for me,” said T’yonni. “And now about a place where you can live. Choti, a painter, whose pictures you see around here, lives with the school-teacher up the road, and he might find you a place. He’s an American, as I am, and I suppose you, too.”
I raised my glass to our native land, and finding that the boy of Taravao had eaten his fill of fei and fish, I said ariana to T’yonni, and drove to Choti’s. The painter was on the veranda of a cottage, finishing the late breakfast. He received me with enthusiasm. Tall, very spare, and his skin pale despite his wearing only a pareu and never a hat, Choti’s black eyes shone under long, black hair, and over a Montmartre whisker that covered his boyish face from his chiseled nose.
“Hello!” he said. “Come and have déjeuner?”
The manner of both T’yonni and Choti, while hospitable, and their glances at my bags, showed a probable wonderment of my intentions.
Was I an average tourist or loafer come to put an unknown quantity in their smoothly working problem of a pleasant life in this Eden? The artist must have looked me over for indications of familiarity with brush and palette.
I replied to Choti that I had breakfasted with T’yonni, and he smiled at my knowledge of his friend’s Tautira name.
“How about getting an apartment or a suite of rooms?” I inquired.
Choti sucked the last particle of poi from his forefinger, dipped it into a shell of water, shook hands, and against my pleadings, accompanied me to the house of Ori-a-Ori, the chief of the district. The chief, an excessively tall man, quite six and a half feet and big all over, but not fat, like many natives, was very dark and slightly grizzled. He had a singular solemnity of address, a benignity and detachment which were the externals of a thoughtful, simple, generous nature, no longer interested deeply in trifles. His house was toward the farther end of the main street, and set upon a spacious lawn a hundred feet from the street, which, by the same token, was also a lawn, for there was no sign of the unadorned earth. So little wheeled traffic was there that bare feet walked on a matting of grass and plants as soft as seaweed on the beach. The street was bordered with cocoanuts and pandanus, and the chief’s dwelling had about it breadfruit, papayas, and cocoanuts. The grounds were divided from neighbors’ parks by hedges of tiare Tahiti, gardenias, roses, and red and white oleanders. I drew in their perfume as Ori-a-Ori said, “Ia ora na!” and took and held my hand a moment, while his grave eyes studied my face in all kindliness.
Choti put him the question of my habitation, and he instantly offered me either a room in his own house or a small, native building on the opposite side of the road and nearer the beach. We walked over, and found it unoccupied. It was a bird-cage, all one room, with a thatch of pandanus and a floor of dried grass covered with mats. The walls were of split bamboo, like reeds, and the sun and air penetrated it through and through; but hanging mats were arranged, one as a door, and others to keep out the rain. It was exactly suited for sleeping and lounging purposes, and the chief said that I could cook in a convenient hut. I brought in my belongings, which included bedding, and in half an hour was enough at home to dismiss the coachman and his equipage, and to lie down, as was my wont during the heat of the day. I put my bed in the doorway, and before I fell into my first sleep at Tautira, filled my eyes with the blue of the shimmering lagoon and the hoary line of the reef. I sank into dreams, with the slumbrous roar upon the coral barrier like the thunder of a sea god’s rolling drum.