All Quiet At 10 P.M.
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
A Merciful Law in Tahiti
AT Papeete, and on all Tahiti as well, there is a sort of curfew regulation which requires, at 10 p.m., all unseemly noises shall cease.
The palaces of pleasure along the waterfront, radio machines in private houses, and sounds of revelry by night are extinguished promptly at the ap pointed hour, and silence and peace de scend upon the island until the rumble of market waggons and the chime whistles of motor trucks bringing passengers and provisions from the districts, herald the new day.
Our island has not always been so
happily protected.
In the days when the accordion was the national instrument of music, it was the custom of a band of natives to plant themselves on some spot and sing ribald ute until far into the night. The singers would sometimes pause; but the wielder of the accordion would never by any chance interrupt the endless repetition of the monotonous ute melody. The dwellers in neighbouring houses passed the night in wide-eyed blasphemy.
However, nothing was ever done about it, because the average person on Tahiti is endowed with tolerance and surpassing patience. Besides, the ute singers never chose the same place on two successive nights.
But when the gramophone arrived and was installed in every household, some thing had to be done, if anyone in the island was to get any sleep. After hours of “Springtime in the Rockies” from the neighbour on the left, “The Merry Widow
Waltz” from the house on the right, and an exasperating Tahitian tune called “Papio” from the dwelling across the roadway—all blaring in simultaneous dis cord—it was necessary that the suffering listener should have some certain hope of respite. And so this merciful regu lation was put into force.
Since then the only sounds after the evening 10 o’clock are the roar of the surf as it crashes eternally on the far away barrier reef; the faint barking of watch-dogs that marks the passage of some wayfarer along a distant highway: and the murmtir in the palm groves of the cool night breeze from the moun tains. The ugly noises of civilisation have ceased. —A.C.R.