Part 7 (1/2)
”I teach you my language,” she said to me, and slowly, with twinkling eyes, she p.r.o.nounced certain words which I repeated. We had often taught French to our boys at our little school in California in that way,--the Ma.r.s.eillaise, for instance,--and the method was not strange to me. She used the song method, too, an old English song that was just then the rage in Samoa. The English words run somewhat like this:
And you will take my hand As you did when you took my name; But it's only a beautiful picture, In a beautiful golden frame.
I'm sure I have them all muddled, but let me hum this tune to myself and immediately Fulaanu, the hold, Fiji, Samoa, and all the scents and sounds of savagedom come instantly to my mind. For everywhere I went they were singing this song, through their noses but with all the sentimental ardor of the young flapper; as at a summer resort in America when a new song hit has been made, the sound of it is heard from delivery boy to housemaid and as many different renderings of it as individual temperament demands.
There was Setu, too,--tall, straight, with that easy grace known only among people free of clothes. Setu spoke English very well, and was as companionable a chap as one could pick up in many a mile. But Setu's heart was not his own; he stood guardian over a treasure he had found in San Francisco. Not an American girl, no, sir! These savage boys did not play the devil in our land as our savages do in theirs. But Setu was the personification of chivalry, and, what was more, he was in love. To look at him and then at her was to despair of human instinct of natural selection. How an Apollo of his excellence should have been unable to find a more handsome objet d'amour, I cannot imagine. She was short, well rounded, with a head as square as Fulaanu's was oblong, and a nose as snubby as Fulaanu's was romanesque. She was evidently committed, body and soul, to Setu for she was as devoid of charm for the others as Fulaanu was full of it. And so all day long, Setu and his sweetheart hugged each other in a corner, as oblivious of the presence of a s.h.i.+p-load of people as though they had been ensconced in a hut of their own. They were evidently taking advantage of proximity to civilization, for such immodest behavior is not frequent in the tropics. Civilization had taught the savages some things at least. Whenever Setu was free from love-making, he would spare a moment to me, and on those rare occasions he stirred my spirit with promises of guidance in his native island that threatened to exhaust my funds.
The romantic a.s.sociations we have with the South Seas were in this group reversed, for to these primitive people the greatest romance imaginable came with their journey to America. There young people from different islands met and fell in love with one another; there, under the benign influence of American spooning, one couple was married, and there their first baby was born,--an American subject, brought back to Pago Pago (American Samoa) to resume his citizens.h.i.+p. There they learned true modesty, which comprised stockings and heavy boys' shoes; the art of playing solitaire, in which one fat, matronly-looking woman indulged all day as though she had been brought along as chaperon and felt herself considerably out of it; and even en route for home they were learning the art of striking by calculation and without pa.s.sion or frenzy.
I was sitting on the hatch with Fulaanu, who was strumming away on her ukulele, when a ring was formed in the middle of the hold and a young white man began boxing with a Samoan. The white boxer was obviously an amateur, bearing himself with all the unpleasant mannerisms of his profession,--a haughty, pugnacious, overbearing self-conceit. He had every advantage in training over his antagonist, whom he peppered vigorously. He kept it up when it was evident that the young Samoan was going under. One last blow and the fellow doubled over, bleeding from nose and mouth. It took ten minutes to bring him round. In the meanwhile, the victor of the unfair bout strutted around as though he had accomplished something remarkable.
It was interesting to see the effect this had on the ”primitive”
Samoans. There was consternation among them; a hush came over the hold.
The vibration of the steamer and the splas.h.i.+ng of the water against its iron side alone broke the stillness. The Samoan girls, though they did not grow hysterical, were most decidedly displeased, turning in disgust from the sight of blood. Yet according to our notions they are primitive, and the fact is that a few generations ago they were savages.
But they were not long in distress. The spell of the equatorial sun was upon them, and they soon relaxed. There upon mats, as in their own huts, lay rows of fat, large, voluptuous men and women; nor was there even a rope to separate the s.e.xes as in an up-to-date j.a.panese bath. They seemed to sleep all day, in s.h.i.+fts governed by impulse only. A woman would rise and move about a while, then go back to lounge again.
Enormous, broad-shouldered and black mustached men would snore gently, rise and inspect life, and decide that slumber was better for one's soul. But Fulaanu lounged with her ukulele, surrounded by amorous sailors who gazed longingly into her eyes.
One night we arranged for a meeting of the ”cla.s.ses.” We promised the Samoans a good collection if they would come and dance for us on deck.
We invited the first-cla.s.s folk to come, too. They stood as far to one side of us as was consonant with first-cla.s.s dignity represented by an extra few pounds sterling in the price of the ticket. But for a moment we forgot that there were cla.s.s and race in the world.
It was not one of those interminable revelries one reads about, that begin with twilight and end with twilight. On the contrary, it was a little squall of entertainment, one that breaks out of a clear sky and leaves the sky just as clear in a trice. There was no occasion for self-expression here. They had been asked to dance for our entertainment, not for theirs. There we stood, ready to applaud; there they were, ready to be applauded, to receive the collection promised. It was another little thing they had picked up in our world, from our civilization,--the commercialization of art. Our artists, scribes, and entertainers have been considerably raised above prost.i.tution of their talents by a certain commercialization, by the translation of their worth in dollars and cents; and we need a little more of it to free art from bondage to patronage. But in the tropics, where the dance and jollity are no private matters, there is something sterile in commercialization. No doubt to the natives there is little difference between a woman giving herself for gain and a man dancing for the money there is in it without the whole group becoming part of the performance: the dancer feels that his purchaser, his public, is cold and unresponsive. And so it seemed to me at this dance. They finished, they expected their money, they got it and departed, and there seemed something immoral to me in the exploitation of their emotions.
What a different lot they were one night when I visited the little house they rented in Suva while waiting for the _Atua_ to arrive from New Zealand and take them on to Samoa. There it was song and dance out of sheer ecstasy: life was so full. They were again in their home atmosphere, and their voices only helped swell the volume of song which issued forth everywhere about,--an electrification of humanity all along the line, in village after village.
They hung about the pier before sailing for Samoa till after midnight, singing sentimental songs and hobn.o.bbing with the Fijians. The Fijian constable joined them with a flute, and the lot of them tried to drown out the voices of the natives loading and unloading cargo. Not until notice was given that the s.h.i.+p was about to get under steam did they think of going aboard. They looked as though ready for rest, but by no means dissipated, by no means weary. The spell of song was still upon them.
When we woke next morning, we were tied up to a pier at the foot of the hills of Levuka. But I have already dwelt upon the features of this former capital, and am only concerned with it here as it was reflected in the eyes of the Samoans. Levuka to me was one thing; to them it was quite another. The moldy little stores afforded them more interest than the village to the left, or the s.h.i.+pyards to the right which were to my Western notions commendable.
I followed in the wake of these gliding natives as we left the steamer.
They looked neither to the right nor to the left, but wended their ways, like cattle in the pasture, straight toward the shops. Into one and out the other they went, bargaining, pricing, buying little trinkets and simple cloths, chatting with the Fijians as though friends of old.
Setu's sweetheart and the pretty mother of the young American citizen, who was left in the care of the fat ”chaperon,” set off by themselves through the one and only street of Levuka. It was obvious that they were quite aware of whither they were going,--so direct was their journey. My curiosity was roused and I wandered along with them. They said never a word to me, nor objected to my presence. We turned to the left, off into a side street that began to insinuate its way along the bed of a stream lined with wooden huts and shacks. Some of these were fairly well constructed, with verandas, like the houses of a miniature American town, garlanded in flowers. Just above the village, where the stream began to emerge from behind a rocky little gorge, the two women turned in at a gate to a private cottage. A bridge led across the stream to the little house, the veranda of which extended slightly over the stream. Beneath, in a corner formed by a projecting boulder, lay a quiet little pool of water--clear, cool, fresh and deep.
Without asking permission from the owners, the women began slowly, cautiously to wade into the pool. Seeing that I had no thought of going, they put modesty aside, slipped the loose garments down to their waists and immersed themselves up to their necks. One of them was tattooed from below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her hips; the other's b.r.e.a.s.t.s alone bore these designs. They dipped and rose, splashed and spluttered, but there was none of that intimacy with their own flesh which is the essence of cleanliness and pa.s.sion in our world. There was no soap, no scrubbing.
It was something objective, almost, a contact with nature like looking at a landscape or listening to a storm.
Presently some of the inmates of the cottage, evidently well-to-do Fijians, came out to greet them. I could not tell whether they were friends or not, but the women were invited in,--and I turned into town through back roads and alleys that were just like the back roads and alleys anywhere in the world.
That afternoon we steamed out again for Apia, Samoa. The sea was disturbed somewhat and gave us various sensations; but the vile odors that threatened my nautical pride never changed.
Most of the Samoans were under the weather. They did not look cheerful, and all song was gone out of them. Setu and his sweetheart were here even more inseparable than on the _Niagara_. She was not very well and stretched out on the bench on the edge of which he took his seat. In her squeamish condition she could hardly be expected to pay much attention to proprieties she had acquired in less than a year's residence in America. Her sprawly bare feet on several occasions made too bold an exit from beneath the loose Mother-Hubbard gown she wore, and each time Setu would draw the skirt farther over them, affectionately pressing them with his hand. This one instance, exceptional as it was, made me notice more consciously the absence of that public intimacy which is the bane of the prude with us. Not all the charm of the tropics which is so real to me can take the place of the cleanliness of the West, the tenderness of clean men and women in public, to be observed even on our crowded subways, the loveliness of white skin tinged with pink and scented with the essence of flowers.
I did not see them again before we arrived at Samoa the next day; the sea was too choppy. But in the afternoon Setu came out with a pillow held aloft over his head, and declared he would take a nap. There was childish glee in his face at the prospect, and he stretched out on the hard deck in perfect ease. And long after I ceased to figure in his fancies, the beaming, sparkling eyes and merry grin seemed to light up the soul within him.
Toward sundown we pa.s.sed the first island of the group,--Savaii, the largest. It lay at our left, Mua Peak emitting a sluggish smoke from reaches beyond the depth of the waters which had nearly submerged it, and as the sea made furious charges into blow-holes or half-submerged caverns, the earth spit back the invading waters with an easy contempt.
At our right lay the island of Manono, much smaller, and nearer our course. Shy Samoan villages hid in little ravines, almost afraid to show their faces.
Shortly after eight o'clock we neared the island of Upolu. The troupe of Samoans came out on deck with the eagerness in their eyes that marks such arrivals at every port of the world. The lights of the village of Apia p.r.i.c.ked the delicate evening haze. One strong, steady lamp, like a planet, shone from above the others. Setu called to me eagerly, his right hand pointing toward it.