Takiero reluctantly left off her playing and placed herself in a receptive mood. Why, I asked, had she given her child to Nui-Vahine? Her reply was, because Nui-Vahine had asked for it. "But, see here, Takiero," I said, "I should think that you and Hunga would want to keep your own baby. It is none of my business, of course. I ask you only because I would like to get some information on this feeding-parent custom. Can't you feed it yourself? Is that the reason you gave it away?"
I blundered atrociously in asking that question. Without meaning to, I touched her pride as a woman, as a mother. Takiero looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then she tore open her dress and gave me absolute proof—not that I wanted it—of her ability to nurse her own or any other child. Following this, she went over to where Nui-Vahine was sitting, snatched the baby from her arms, and almost smothered it against her body. She fondled it, kissed it, covered it with her magnificent hair. I had never before seen such a display of savage and tender maternal passion.
By that time Nui-Vahine had recovered from her astonishment and came to the defense of her own. Her month of motherhood gave her claims to the child, apparently, and she tried to enforce them physically. Takiero stood her ground, her black eyes flaming and, holding the baby in one arm, pushed Nui-Vahine away with the other. I expected to see hair flying, but, luckily, both women found their tongues at the same moment. They were like—they were, in fact—two superb cats, spitting at each other. The torrent of words did not flow smoothly. It came in hot, short bursts, like salvos of machine-gun fire, and, curiously enough, it was almost pure Paumotuan, not the hybrid Paumotuan-Tahitian commonly used in their temperate speech. It bristled with snarling ng's, with flintlike k's from which fire could be struck in passionate argument. Other women took sides in the quarrel. Had I poked an inquisitive pencil into a wasps' nest the effect could hardly have been more disconcerting. Hunga was awakened by the angry voices and looked on with sleepy perplexity. Nui-Tane grinned reassuringly, as much as to say: "Don't be upset. You know what women are." Finally, Puarei, the chief, who had been an impassive spectator, bellowed out a command for silence. The tumult subsided at once, and the fury of the women with it. Five minutes later everything was as it had been before. Hunga was sleeping and Nui-Tane polishing a pearl-shell fish hook; Nui-Vahine had the baby and Takiero the ocharina. Neither of them showed the least resentment, either toward me or toward each other. In intensity and briefness the gust of passion which swept through the little church was precisely like the squalls of wind and rain which darken the seas of the Low Archipelago in the midst of the hurricane season, which burst almost from a clear sky and then as suddenly melt into pure sunlight again.
When I left the village to return to Soul-Eaters' island Takiero was still playing the old border ballad on my ocharina. It had once been my favorite air for that instrument. I first heard it in northern France on a blustering winter evening when a brigade of English regiments was marching, under heavy shell fire, into one of the greatest battles of the war, to the music of pipes and drums. Humming the air now, although I still feel a tightening of the nerves, a quickening of the pulses, it is not because of the old set of associations. They have been buried forever beneath a newer set. The village at Rutiaro comes into view, and I see Takiero, clutching a baby against her naked breast, standing in the midst of a crowd of turbulent women.
Should there be some other Polynesian scholar who wishes to pursue farther an inquiry into a curious practice of child adoption I would advise extreme caution at an atoll far on the southeasterly fringe of the Low Archipelago.
The place may easily be identified; for he will find there a young woman of barbaric beauty who will be playing "Conquer the North" on an ocharina.
Chapter IX tailpiece
CHAPTER X
Costly Hospitality