Chapter XXVI
Farewell to Tautira—My good-bye feast—Back at the Tiare—A talk with Lovaina—The Cercle Bougainville—Death of David—My visit to the cemetery—Off for the Marquesas.
The smell of the burning wood of the Umuti was hardly out of my nostrils before my day of leaving Tautira came. I had long wanted to visit the Marquesas Islands, and the first communication I had from Papeete in nearly three months was from the owners of the schooner Fetia Taiao, notifying me that that vessel, commanded by Captain William Pincher, would sail for the archipelago in a few days, “crew and weather willing.” I was eager for the adventure, to voyage to the valley of Typee, where Herman Melville had lived with Fayaway and Kori-Kori, where Captain Porter had erected the American flag a century before, and where cannibalism and tattooing had reached their most artistic development. But to sever the tie with Tautira was saddening. Mataiea and the tribe of Tetuanui had won my affections, but at Tautira I had become a Tahitian. I had lived in every way as if bred in the island, and had fallen so in love with the people and the mode of life, the peace and simplicity of the place, that only the already formed resolution to visit all the seas about stirred me to depart.
The village united to say good-by to me at a feast which was spread in the greenwood of the Greek god along the shore of the lagoon. T’yonni and Choti, the student and the painter, were foremost in the preparations of the amuraa ma, and many houses supplied the extensive, soft mats which were put on the sward for the table, while the ladies laid the cloth of banana leaves down their center, and adorned it with flowers.
Ori-a-Ori sat at the head and I beside him. His venerable countenance bore a smile of delight in being in such jovial company, and he answered the quips and drank the toasts as if a youth. I was leaving early in the afternoon, and the banquet was begun before midday. We had hardly reached the dessert when the accordions burst into the allegro airs of the adapted songs of America and Europe. Between them speeches of friendship were addressed to me by the chief and others, and I sorrowfully replied. Choti gave the key-note to our mutual regrets at my leaving by quoting the letter in Tahitian written by Ori-a-Ori to Rui at Honolulu long ago:
I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I was filled with tears; my wife, Rui Telime, also, and all of my household. When you embarked I felt a great sorrow. It is for this that I went up on the road, and you looked from that ship, and I looked at you on the ship with great grief until you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sails. When the ship started I ran along the beach to see you still; and when you were on the open sea I cried out to you, “Farewell, Louis”; and when I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice crying, “Rui, farewell.” Afterwards I watched the ship as long as I could until the night fell; and when it was dark I said to myself, “If I had wings I should fly to the ship to meet you, and to sleep amongst you, so that I might be able to come back to shore and to tell to Rui Telime, ‘I have slept upon the ship of Teriitera.’ ” After that we passed that night in the impatience of grief. Towards eight o’clock I seemed to hear your voice, “Teriitera—Rui—here is the hour for putter and tiro (cheese and syrup).” I did not sleep that night, thinking continually of you, my very dear friend, until the morning; being then still awake, I went to see Tapina Tutu on her bed, and alas, she was not there. Afterwards I looked into your rooms; they did not please me as they used to do. I did not hear your voice saying, “Hail, Rui”; I thought then that you had gone, and that you had left me. Rising up, I went to the beach to see your ship, and I could not see it. I wept, then, until the night, telling myself continually, “Teriitera returns into his own country and leaves his dear Rui in grief, so that I suffer for him, and weep for him.” I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my dear Teriitera makes the only riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see again. It must be that your body and my body shall eat together at one table: there is what would make my heart content. But now we are separated. May God be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you may be well and we also, according to the words of Paul.
The chief listened throughout the message with his eyes empty of us, conjuring a vision of the Rui who so far back had won his heart; and when Choti had concluded, Ori-a-Ori lifted his glass, and said, “Rui e Maru!” coupling me in his affection with the dim figure of his sweet guest of the late eighties.
The last toast was to my return.
“You have eaten the fei in Tahiti nei, and you will come back,” they chanted.
Raiere drove me in his cart to Taravao, where I had arranged for an automobile to meet me. At Mataiea I was clasped to the bosom of Haamoura, and spent a few minutes with the Chevalier Tetuanui. They could not understand us cold-blooded whites, who go long distances from loved ones. My contemplated journey to the Marquesas Islands was to them a foolish and dangerous labor for no good reason.