“Germani to Fany 3 feathers.”
This was a charge made by Atupu against a Dane for three cocktails. He took his meals at Mme. Klopfer’s restaurant. Her first name is Fanny, and Atupu thinks all men not English, French, or Americans, are Germans; so she identified the Dane as the German who went to Fanny’s for his meals.
Lovaina said to me:
“I hear you look one house that maybe you rent. You don’t get wise if you rent from that French woman. I don’t say nothing about her, but you know her tongue? So sharp jus’ like knife. All time she have trouble. Can’t rent her house so sharp. Some artist he rent; she take box, peep over see what he do jus’ because he have some girl. Nobody talk her down. No, I take back. Jus’ one French woman who know to swear turribil. This swear woman she call her turribil name and say, ‘Everybody don’t know you was convict in Noumea for killing one man for money.’ That turribil talk, and she jus’ fell down. Good for her, I think.”
Lovaina seldom rode in her automobile, which she kept primarily for renting to guests for country tours. She had had for years a carriage, a surrey, drawn by one horse, which had grown old and rickety with the vehicle. The driver was a mute, Vava, his name meaning dumb in Tahitian, and the English and Americans called him the Dummy. He was attached to Lovaina as a child to his mother—a wayward, jealous, cloudy-minded child, who almost daily broke into fits of anger over incidents misunderstood by his groping mentality, and because of his incommunicable feelings. The hotel was in a fearsome uproar when Vava fell into a tantrum, women patrons afraid of his possible actions and men threatening to club him into a mild frame of mind. I doubt if any one there could have subdued him physically, for he was a thick-bodied man in his thirties, with a stamina and a strength incredibly developed. I had seen him once lift over a fence a barrel of flour, two hundred pounds in weight, and without full effort. His skin was very dark, his facial expression one of ire and frustration, but of conscious superiority to all about him. He had had no aids to overcome his natal infirmity of deafness and consequent dumbness, none of the educational assistance modern science lends these unfortunates, no finger alphabet, or even another inarticulate for sympathy. He was like the mutes of history, of courts and romances, condemned to suffer in silence the humor and contempt of all about him, though he felt himself better than they in body and in the understanding of things, which he could not make them know. This repression made him often like a wild beast, though mostly he was half-clown and half-infant in his conduct. He had a gift of mimicry incomparably finer than any professional’s I knew of. This, with his gestures, stood him instead of speech. A certain haughty English woman whose elaborate hats in an island where women were hatless, or wore simple, native weaves, were noted atrocities, and whose chin was almost nil, kept the carriage and me waiting for breakfast while she primped in her lodging. The Dummy uttered one of his abortive sounds, much like that of an angry puma, contorted his face, and put his hand above his head, so that I had a very vivid suggestion of the lady, her sloping chin and her hat, at which all Papeete laughed. Vava’s gesticulations and grimaces were unerring cartoons without paper or ink. If one could have seen him draw one-self, one’s pride would have tumbled. He saw the most ridiculous aspect of one. His indication of Lovaina’s figure made one shriek, and the governor would have sentenced him for lese-majesty had he seen himself taken off. The sounds he made in which he greeted any one he liked, or in anger, were terrible, dismaying. They; must have been those made by our ancestors, the first primates, when they began the struggle toward intelligent language. Vava’s sounds were as the muttering of an ape, deep in his throat, or, when he was roused, high and shrill, like the cry of a rabbit when the hound seizes it. He could make Lovaina know anything he wanted to, and she could direct him to do anything she wished. In that house of mirth, brightness, and laughter, he was as a cunning and, at times, hateful jester, feared by the Tahitians, and, indeed, to whites a shadowy skeleton at the feast, a thing of indescribable possibilities. I knew him, he liked me, and I drew from him by motions and expressions some measure of his feelings and sufferings. But I, too, occasionally, shuddered at the animal cries and frightful grimaces wrung from him in beating down his soul bent on murder.
Lovaina was a spendthrift, giving money liberally to relatives, lending it to improvident borrowers, and dispensing it with open hands when she had it, though always herself in debt. Yet she liked to make money, and to have her hotel filled with tourists who patronized her little bar or drank at meals other wines than the excellent Bordeaux, white or red, which was free with food. Most she loved the appearance of prosperity, the crowding of casual voyagers on steamer-days, the visit of war-ships, the sound of music in her parlor, the rustling of dancers, and the laughter and excitement when the maids were busied carrying champagne and cheaper drinks to the verandas.
I saw her at her best when El Presidente Sarmiento, an Argentine training-ship, came to port with a hundred cadets. A madness then possessed the girls of Tahiti.
Forsaking their old loves or those of the moment, they threw themselves into the arms of the visitors, determined on conquest. The quays where the launches of the Sarmiento landed their passengers, and the streets about the saloons, restaurants, and theaters, were thronged with the fairest and gayest girls of the island. They poured in from the country to share in the lovemaking. The cafés were filled with dancing and singing crowds, the volatile Argentineans matching the Tahitians in abandon and ardor.
Accordions, violins, guitars, and mandolins were played everywhere. The scores of public automobiles were engaged by joyous parties who sallied to the rural resorts, each Juan with his vahine. Mostly unable to exchange a word, they were kissing and embracing in their seats. The ship had been there a year before, and many of the men were hunting former sweethearts. They found that very difficult, as they had not accurate descriptions.
“A beauty named Atupu,” or “A black-eyed girl?” They had no aid among the girls they interrogated.