Ahuia came to me with the air of a certified cruise conductor; he was wearing his full-dress jumper with the H, and had lilies in his hair. Would the Taubada care to see the natives dance tonight? I wanted to know if it would be any good. Ahuia puffed his chest and shrugged away the commonness of all bush natives. Oh, pretty fair, he admitted, but the girls around here didn’t do a lot of things they did in the East. We passed between aristocratic trunks of betel-nut palms. With each step the drum-pulse was louder, that jungle beat which can stir the same animal-soul that bares its sensuality before the repetitious chant of a camp-meeting revivalist. A slow cadence, tum teetee, tum teetee, tum teetee tum, speeding up to a rapid tum tee-tum tee-tum tee-tum. Light shone above oily shoulders, things moved and tossed like shaggy pillows that had been dyed with every color in the rainbow. Musicians were slapping hour-glass drums.
Then with a gasp I realized what those moving pillow-things were. Headdresses.... Headdresses made of bird of paradise plumes, hundreds of the lovely things flowing and flaming in every bushy ball of hair. Parrot feathers—blue, fire-green and crimson—accentuated the unearthly hues; and cassowary feathers, built up into high crowns like glittering sheaves of wheat....
Men and women danced in two close lines, facing one another. Mouths were red with betel-nut, eyes were fixed, intoxicated. Golden skin flashed through stripes of gaudy paint adorning their hips; golden breasts bubbled through showers of bright shells. Yet this was no blatant exhibition. Each man faced his woman, and if he touched her it was according to the rote and rule of tradition; their passions are never on public show. Bright skins and delicate bodies revealed the Polynesian strain which gives the Motuan his urge to laugh and sin with every change of the moon. Melanesian women drudge at home and let their men wear all the feathers. But the Polynesian wife is nobody’s squaw.
Slim-waisted, straight, demi-nude, more handsome than grotesque in their paint, each man had his girl opposite him. Her arms and ankles were bangled with polychrome shells that tinkled with every suggestive movement. It was sensuality expressed in grace and rhythm. Under the least of grass skirts women’s buttocks wove with sly languor as couples moved in a curious shuffling gait—her hips quivering in retreat, his in attack: the sex struggle, the male forever in pursuit, the female always in flight, yet drawing him on by every allurement within her power.
A voice said, “It’s what Yankees call a Marathon dance. The people of Tsiria are competing with the people of Pinapuka. It’ll last until they drop—into each other’s arms, a lot of ’em.” I looked around to see Ron Orr, my inspector, who had been beating along the coast. “Watch that couple,” he said. A man and girl vanished under the shadowy palms. “They’ll be back after a while, maybe. During the Marathons here it’s the fashion for a man to take the one he picks. But only during this set period. If they forget and break the rule it’s just too bad. Sometimes a married man loses his head and takes his ‘mary’ away for a week end that lasts a month. Then there’s more trouble for the District Officer.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Well, Connelly’s going up in the hills tomorrow after a bunch of murderers,” Ron said. “That’s the sort of trouble.”
There were no priests hovering about to give the pagan spectacle a disapproving eye. Protestant missionaries, Wesleyans or Church of England, might have broken up the performance, clothed the ladies in Mother Hubbards and sent them home to brood in sanctity—and secrete their vices. The people of Tsiria, possibly, were not among the Sacred Heart’s 8,000 converts; and if not, the Church of Rome, with its balanced system of discipline and tolerance, would bide its time before gathering them in. The people would still dance, maybe with a churchly curb on their orgiac moments—but they would still dance.
Night wore on, drums grew wilder. Everybody was chewing the betel-nut that natives can go drunk on. My good boy Ahuia was chewing, and his eyes were like live coals as he slavered red and gazed hungrily at the dancers. I smacked him on the arm and brought him to his senses. We were starting for the mountains tomorrow, and I didn’t want Ahuia to go native on me.
******