Mystic Isles of the South Seas Part 23

One must be at the market before five o'clock to see it all. Sunday is the choicest day of all the week, because Sunday is a day of feasting, and the marche then has a more than gala air. The English missionaries had once made even cooking a fish on Sunday a crime, severely punished; but the French priests changed all that, and the French Sabbath, the New York Sabbath, was en regle.

All the east is purple and red, gorgeous, flaring, when I awake. There are no windows in my connecting rooms in the Annexe. The sun rises through their wallless front, and sets through their opening to the balcony. What more liberal dispensation of nature? I am under the shower in two minutes, long enough to go down the curved staircase, with its admirable rosewood bal.u.s.trade, and through the rear veranda to the room in which the large cement basin serves for bath and laundry and to lend a minute to the Christchurch Kid, the prize-fighter, to inform me that he is to open a school of the manly art, with diplomas for finished scholars and rewards for excellence. The recitals are to be public, a fee charged, and all ambitious pupils are to be guaranteed open examination in pairs and a just decision. The Kid and Cowan are to be hors de combat.

A daughter of a French governor of the Low Archipelago is in the basin, the door ajar, and the spray blinding her to my presence. She is seventeen, cafe au lait--beaucoup de lait, kohl-eyed, meter-tressed, and slim-bodied. She sings the himene of the battle of the limes and coal and potatoes, with a new stanza concerning the return of the Noa-Noa, and the vengeance of the Tahitian braves upon the pigs of Peretania, Britain.

"Ia or a na! Bonjour, Goo' night!" she says impartially, and modestly slips her pareu about her.

"Ia ora na oe!" I reply. "All goes well?"

"By cripe' yais; dam' goo'!" she answers, and goes humming on her way to her shanty in the yard. She is the maid of my chamber, gentle, willing, but never to be found for service. She learns English from the Kid, the rubber-legged boot-black, and other gentleman adventurers and tars of America and Europe, and she pours out bad words--I cannot mention them--in innocent faith in their propriety. In French or Tahitian she speaks correctly.

Outside the bath I hear the vehicles hurrying to market, and dressing quickly in white drill, and wearing on my Paumotu hat a brilliant scarlet pugaree, once the badge of subjugation to the Mohammedan conquerors of India, I join the procession.

Bon dieu! what a morning! The reds and purples are dying in the orient, and the hills are swathed in the half-white light of day. The lagoon is now a glistening pearly gray. Moorea, the isle of the fairy folk, is jagged and rough, as if a new throe of earth had torn its heights and made new steeps and obelisks. Moorea is never the same. Every hour of the day and every smile and frown of the sun creates valleys and spires, and alters the outlines of this most capricious of islets.

Past the bust of Bougainville, past the offices of Emile Levy, the pearler whom, to Levy's intense anger, Jack London slew in "The House of Mapuhi"; past the naval depot, the American consulate with the red, white, and blue flung in the breeze; the Commissariat de Police, the pool of Psyche, and all the rows of schooners that line the quays, with their milken sails drying on their masts, and I am by the stores of the merchants. The dawn is slipping through the curtain of night, but lamps are still burning. The traffic has roused the sleepers, and they are dressing. They have brought, tied in pareus, their Sunday clothes. Women are changing gowns, and men struggle with s.h.i.+rts and trousers, awkward inflictions upon their ordinarily free bodies.

All the night people who have journeyed from Papara, from Papenoo, or nearer districts slumber upon the sidewalks. This sleeping about anywhere is characteristic of the Tahitian. On the quays, in the doorways of the large and small stores, in carriages, and on the decks of the vessels, men and women and children lie or crouch, sleeping peacefully, with their possessions near them.

In the fare tamaaraa, the coffee-houses of the Tinitos, the Chinese, the venders of provender and the marketers alike are slipping their taofe tau, their four-sous' worth of coffee, with a tiny pewter mug of canned milk, sugar, and a half-loaf of French bread with b.u.t.ter.

My vis-a-vis at s.h.i.+n Bung Lung's is Prince Hinoe, the heir to the broken throne, a very large, smiling brown gentleman, who sits with the French secretary of the governor, the two, alack! patting the shoulders, pinching the cheeks, and fondling the long, ebon plaits of the bevy of beauties who are up thus early to flirt and make merry. Tahiti is the most joyous land upon the globe. Who takes life seriously here is a fool or a liver-ridden penitent. The shop is full of peals of laughter and stolen kisses. Those sons of Belial who taught the daughter of the governor of the Dangerous Isles her unspeakable vocabulary are here. They have been to the Paris, the premier saloon of Papeete, for their morning's morning, an absinthe, or a hair of the dog that bit them yester eve.

What jokes they have! Stories of what happened last night in the tap-room of the cinematograph, how David opened a dozen bottles of Roederer, and there was no ice, so all alike, barefooted and silk-stockinged, drank the wine of Champagne warm, and out of beer gla.s.ses; of Captain Minne's statement that he would kill a scion of Tahitian royalty (not Hinoe) if he did not marry his daughter before the captain returned from the Paumotus; and of Count Polonsky's calling down the black procureur, the attorney-general, right in the same tap-room, and telling him he was a "n.i.g.g.e.r," although they had been friends before.

Tahitian and French and English, but very little of the latter, echoes through the coffee-room. Even I make a feeble struggle to speak the native tongue, and arouse storms of giggles.

The market-place faces the Mairie, the city hall, and its center is a fountain beloved of youth. There sit or loll the maidens of Papeete at night, and t.i.tter as pa.s.s the sighing lads. There wait the automobiles to carry the pleasure bent to Kelly's grove at Fa'a, where the maxixe and the tango rage, the hula-dancers quiver and quaver, and wa.s.sail has no bounds.

When the whites are at dinner, the natives meet in the market-place, which is the agora, as the place du gouvernment is the forum of the dance and music of these ocean Greeks.

But at this hour it is wreathed with women, scores squat upon their mats on the pave, their goods spread before the eyes of the purchasers.

The sellers of the materials for hats are many. The bamboo fiber, yellowish white, is the choicest, but there are other colors and stuffs. The women venders smoke cigarettes and are always laughing. Old crones, withered and feeble, shake their thin sides at their own and others' jokes.

Already the buyers are coming fast, householders and cooks and bachelors and beaux, tourists and native beauties.

A score of groups are smoking and chatting, flirting and running over their lists. Carriages and carts are tied everywhere, country folk who have come to sell or to buy, or both, and automobiles, too, are ranged beside the Mairie.

Matrons and daughters, many nationals, are a.s.sembling. The wife of a new consul, a charming blonde, just from New Jersey, has her basket on her arm. She is a bride, and must make the consul's two thousand dollars a year go far. A priest in a black gown and a young Mormon elder from Utah regard each other coldly. A hundred Chinese cafe-keepers, stewards, and merchants are endeavoring to pierce the exteriors of the foods and estimate their true value. The market is not open yet. It awaits the sound of the gong, rung by the police about half past five. Four or five of these officials are about, all natives in gaudy uniforms, their bicycles at the curb, smoking, and exchanging greetings with friends.

The question of deepest interest to the marketers is the fish. The tables for these are railed off, and, peering through the barriers, the onlookers comment upon the kinds and guess at the prices.

The market-house is a shed over concrete floors, clean, sanitary, and occupied but an hour or two a day. There are three main divisions of the market, meat, fish, and green things. Meat in Tahiti is better uneaten and unsung. It comes on the hoof from New Zealand. Now, if you are an epicure, you may rent a cold-storage chamber in the glacerie, and keep your steaks and roasts until tender.

Fish is the chief item to the Tahitian. Give him only fish, and he may murmur at his fate; but deny him fish, and he will hie him to the reef and snare it for himself. All night the torches of the fishermen gleam on the foaming reef, and often I paddle out near the breakers and hear the chants and cries of the men as they thrust their harpoons or draw their nets. So it is the women who sell the fish, while the weary husbands and fathers lie wrapped in dreams of a miraculous draught.

There are three great aquariums in the world, at Honolulu, Naples, and New York. There is no other such fish-market as this of Papeete, for Hawaii's has become Asiaticized, and the kanaka is almost nil in the angling art there. But those same fish that I gazed at in amazement in the tanks of the museums are spread out here on tables for my buying.

Impossible fish they are, pale blue; brilliant yellow; black as charcoal; sloe, with orange stripes; scarlet, spotted, and barred in rainbow tints. The parrot-fish are especially splendid in spangling radiancy, their tails and a spine in their mouths giving them their name.

The impression made upon one's first visit to the Papeete market is overwhelming, the plenitude of nature rejoicing one's heart, and the care of the Great Consciousness for beauty and color, and even for the ludicrous, the merely funny, causing curious groping sensations of wonder at the varied plan of creation.

s.e.xual selection and suitability to survive are responsible. Those vivid colors, those symmetrical markings, and laughable forms are all part of the going on of the world, the adaptation to environment, and the desire for love and admiration in the male and female.

These things from the deep seem hardly fish. They are bits of the sunset, fragments of a mosaic, Futuristic pictures; anything but our sodden, gray, or wateryhued fish of temperate climes. Some are as green as the hills of Erin, others as blue as the sky, as crimson as blood, as yellow as the flag of China. They are cut by nature in many patterns, round, or sectional, like a piece of pie, triangular, almost square; some with a back fin that floats out a foot or two behind.

They are grotesque, alarming, apparently the design of a joker. But tread not on the domain of the scientist, for he will prove to you that each separate queerness is only a trick of nature to fit its owner to the necessities of his habitat. The parrot-fish are screamingly fantastic. There are not even in the warm California or Florida waters the duplicates of these rainbow fish. The Garibaldi perch and the electric fish excite interest at Santa Catalina, but here are a hundred marvels, and if I wish I can see them all as they swim in and out of the coral caverns within the lagoon.

Porcupine fish are a delicacy, squid are esteemed, and even the devilfish is on the tables, hideous, repellent, slimy, horned, and tentacled; not mighty enough to crush out the life of the fisher, as was the horrific creature in Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea,"

whom his hero fought, yet menacing even when dead. It is a frightful figure in its aspect of hatred and ugliness, but good to eat. See that fat Tahitian thrust his finger into the sides of the octopus to plumb its cooking qualities. It is quickly sold.

There are crabs and crawfish, eels and shrimps, prawns and varos, all hung up on strings. There are oysters and maoao, alive and dripping. The maoao is the turbo, a gastropod, a mysterious inhabitant of a twisted sh.e.l.l, who shuts the door to his home with a brightly-colored operculum, for all the world like half of a cuff-b.u.t.ton. One eats him raw or cooked or dried. But he is not so odd as the varo one of the most delicious and expensive of Tahitian foods. These sea centipedes, as the English call them in Tahiti, are a species of ibacus, and are from six to twelve inches long, and two wide. They have legs or feelers all along their sides, like a pocket comb, a hideous head, and tail, and a generally repulsive appearance. If one did not know they were excellent eating, and most harmless in their habits, one would be tempted to run or take to a tree at sight of them. Their sh.e.l.l is a translucent yellow, with black markings. The female has a red stripe down her back, and red eggs beneath her. She is richer in flavor, and more deadly than the male to one who has a natural diathesis to poisoning by varos. Many whites cannot eat them. Some lose appet.i.te at their looks, their likeness to a gigantic thousand-leg. Others find that the varo rests uneasy within them, as though each claw or tooth of the comb grasped a vital part of their anatomy. I think varos excellent when wrapped in hotu leaves, and grilled as a lobster. I take the beastie in my fingers and suck out the meat. Amateurs must keep their eyes shut during this operation.

Catching varos is tedious and requires skill. They live in the sand of the beach under two or three feet of water. One has to find their holes by wading and peering. They are small at the top, but roomy below. One cannot see these holes through ruffled water. Once located, grapnels, or spools fitted with a dozen hooks, are lowered into them. A pair inhabits the same den. If the male is at home, he seizes the grapnel, and is raised and captured, and the female follows. But if the female emerges first, it is a sure sign that the male is absent in search of food. I have pondered as to this habit of the varo, and have tried to persuade me that the male, being a courteous shrimp,--he is a kind of mantis-shrimp,--combats the intruding hooks first in order to protect his loved one; but the grapnel is baited with fish, and though masculine pride would insist that chivalry urges varo homme to defend his domestic shrine, fishers for the tidbit say that he is after the bait, and holds to it so tightly that he sacrifices his life. Nevertheless, the lady embraces the same opportunity to rise, and their deserted tenement is soon filled by the sands.

Trapping varos calls for patience and much dexterity. The mere finding of the holes is possible only to natives trained from childhood. Six varos make a good meal, with bread and wine, and they are most enjoyable hot--also most indigestible.

"Begin their eating by sucking a cold one," once said a bon vivant to me. "Only when accustomed to them should you dare them hot and in numbers."

Flying-fish are sold, many of them delicate in taste and shapely.

One may buy favorite sauces for fish, and some of the women offered them to me. One is taiaro, made of the hard meat of the cocoanut, with pounded shrimp, and allowed to ferment slightly. It is put up in bamboo tubes, three inches in diameter, and four or five feet long, tied at the opening with a panda.n.u.s-leaf for a seal. It is delicious on raw fish. I have seen a native take his fish by the tail and devour it as one would a banana; but the Tahitians cut up the fish, and, after soaking it in lime-juice, eat it with the taiaro. It is as tasty as Blue Points and tabasco.

There are two other epicurean sauces, one made of the omotu, the soft cocoanut, which is split, the meat dug out and put in the hue, the calabash, mixed with a little salt water, lime-juice, and the juice of the rea, the saffron, and allowed to ferment. This is the mitihue, a piquant and fetid, puante sauce that seasons all Tahitian meals. The calabash is left in the sun, and when the sauce dries up, water is poured on the dry ingredients, a perpetual saucebox.

In the arrangement of vegetables our own hucksters could learn. Every piece is sc.r.a.ped and cleansed. String beans are tied together in bundles like cigars or asparagus, and lettuce of several varieties, romaine and endive, parsnips, carrots, beets, turnips, and even potatoes, sweet and white, are shown in immaculate condition. The tomatoes do not rival ours, but Tahiti being seventeen degrees below the equator, one cannot expect such tropical regions to produce temperate-zone plants to perfection. That they are provided at all is due to the Chinese, those patient, acute Cantonese and Amoyans. The Tahitian has no competence in intensive cultivation or the will to toil. Were it not for the Chinese, white residents in many countries would have to forego vegetables. It is so in Mexico and Hawaii and the Philippines, although j.a.panese in the first two compete with them.

The main food of the Tahitians is feis, as is bread to us, or rice to the Asiatic. It is not so in the Marquesas, eight hundred miles north, where breadfruit is the staff, nor in Hawaii, where fermented taro (poi) is the chief reliance of the kanaka. The feis, gigantic bananas of coa.r.s.e fiber, which must be cooked, are about a foot in length, and three inches in diameter, and grow in immense, heavy bunches in the mountains, so that obtaining them is great labor. They are wild creatures of heights, and love the spots most difficult of access. Only barefooted men can reach them. These feis are a separate species. The market-place is filled with them, and hardly a Tahitian but buys his quota for the day. The fei-gatherers are men of giant strength, naked save for the pareu about the loins, and often their feet from climbing and holding on to rocks and roots are curiously deformed, the toes spread an inch apart, and sometimes the big toe is opposed to the others, like a thumb. There are besides many kinds of bananas here for eating raw; some are as small as a man's finger, and as sweet as honey.

The fei-hunters hang six or seven bunches on a bamboo pole and bring them thus to market. One meets these young Atlases moving along the roads, chaplets of frangipani upon their curling hair, or perhaps a single gardenia or tube-rose behind their ears, singing softly and treading steadily, smiling, and all with a burden that would stagger a white athlete.

The taro looks like a war-club, several feet long, three inches thick, and with a fierce k.n.o.b. It and its tops are in demand. The breadfruit are as big as Dutch cheese, weighing four or five pounds, their green rinds tuberculated like a golf-ball. Sapadillos, tamarinds, limes, mangoes, oranges, acachous, and a dozen other native fruits are to be had. Cocoanuts and papayas are of course, favorites. There are many kinds of cocoanuts. I like best the young nut, which has the meat yet unformed or barely so, and can be eaten with a spoon, and holds about a quart of delicious wine. No matter how hot the day, this wine is always cool. One has only to pierce the top of the green rind, and tilt the hole above one's mouth. If one has alcoholic leanings, the wine of a cocoanut, an ounce of rum, two lumps of sugar, a dash of grenadine, and the mixture were paradise enow.

The papayas, which the British call mammee-apple or even mummy-apple or papaw, because of the West Indian name, mamey, are much like pumpkins in appearance. They grow on trees, quite like palms, from ten to thirty feet high, the trunk scaly like an alligator's hide, and the leaves pointed. The fruit hangs in a cl.u.s.ter at the crown of the tree, green and yellow, resembling badly shaped melons. The taste is musky sweet and not always agreeable to tyros. The seeds are black and full of pepsin. Boiled when green, the papaya reminds one of vegetable marrow; and cooked when ripe, it makes a pie stuffing not to be despised. I have often hung steaks or birds in the tree, protected by a cage from pests, or wrapped them in papaya-leaves to make them tender. The very atmosphere does this, and the pepsin extracted from the papaya by science is much used by druggists instead of animal extracts.

The market closed, the venders who have come in carts drive home, while those Tahitians who are not too old adorn themselves with flowers and seek pleasure. Young and old, they are laughing. Why? I need never ask the reason here, but look to the blue sky, the placid sea within the lagoon, the generous fruitage of nature, the palms and flowers ever present and inviting; the very sign of the gentle souls and merry hearts of these most lovable people. When I am alone with them I do not walk. I dance or skip.

Life is easy. The fei, the breadfruit, the cocoanut, the mango, and the taro are all about. No plow, no hoe, or rude labor, but for the lifting of one's hand there is food. The fish leap in the brine, and the pig fattens for the oven. Clothes are irksome. A straw hut may be built in an hour or two, and in the grove sounds the soft music of love.

Aue! nom de poisson! within a day the market became a wailing-place. There were no fish. The tables daily covered with them were empty. The happy wives and consorts who had been wont to sell the catch of the men remained in their homes, and the fishers themselves were there or idle on the streets. The districts around the island, which for decades had despatched by the daily diligence, or by special vehicle or boat, the drafts of the village nets, sent not a fin. Never in Tahiti's history except when war raged between clans, or between Tahitians and French, had there been such a fish famine.

And, name of a dog! it was due to a greve, a strike. It came upon the Papeete people like a tidal wave out of the sea, or like a cyclone that devastates a Paumotu atoll, but, entre nous, it had been brooding for months. Fish had been getting dearer and dearer for a long time, and householders had complained bitterly. They recalled the time when for a franc one could buy enough delicious fish for a family feast. They called the taata hara, the native anglers, cochons, hogs, and they discussed when they gathered in the clubs, or when ladies met at market, the weakness of the authorities in allowing the extortion. But nothing was done. The extortion continued, and the profanity increased. At the Cercle Bouganville Captain Goeltz and the other retired salts banged the tables and said to me:

"Sacre redingote! is it that the indigenes pay the governor or give him fish free? Are we French citizens to die of hunger that savages may ride in les Fords?"

They shouted for Doctor Funks, and drank d.a.m.nation to the regime that let patriots surfer to profit les canaques. But, in reality, the governor months ago had secretly begun a plan to help them.

One day the governor, his good lady being gone to visit at Raiatea, had given his cook three francs to buy fish for the dejeuner at the palace. When they came on the table, a bare bite for each of the company, the governor had called in the chef.