A Trader's Tale

In a Polynesian Hospital

By “Tukapa Koko”

I ONCE, by grace of a bad tin of trade beef, spent a holiday—not in Hono lulu, but on another island almost as important, as a patient in the Ad ministration Hospital, whiling the hours away. Listening to the music of badly played guitars, and hearing ukuleles— made out of half-coconuts—emit foul noises in the native part of the estab lishment, a few yards away.

My “Au revoir”, two months later, was not a weepful one! But, during that time, I certainly saw life.

The native nurses were quite attractive girls, and it was just too bad to be hors de combat in such promising surroundings, for I was European Patient No. I—the only one, as a matter of fact—and got a lot of attention.

The solemn law of “no visitors” that began my hosnital career was later rescinded, and I began to hold levees.

The Matron, an acidulated little spinster lady 40 years’young, commented adversely on my associating with the near neigh bors of the burnished sun—forgetting, apparently, that their ills were her raison d’etre, and belike her salary-ticket. We had a few duels, as is customary when a strong-minded male, temporarily indis posed, comes under an unaccustomed and pernicious petticoat rule of the wrong sort.

Teupu was the comedienne of the hos pital. A prisoner for some misdemeanor or other, she was filling in time as a maid at the Aesculapian institution, and it was in that capacity that she came to minister to me.

Teupu was great fun. She was a Mangaian, and therefore a fellow countryman; and we, conversing in the vernacular of our home island, were the cause of much amusement to the popu lace—for, on the “head” island, the dialect of Mangaia is like unto broad Scotch heard on a London street. It is likely to attract attention, and at times even brickbats. Teupu was clever in her imitations of doctors and matron. She feared not detection, for hers was an advantageous position; she could not get the sack till her sentence expired. With the result that I, through Teupu, enjoyed a sort of vicarious freedom of speech, that else were highly reprehensible.

For this, I loved the handmaid passing well.

One lamplit evening, after the doctor had made his rounds and the matron had ceased from troubling her subor dinates, we made high revel in my room.

Two of the nurses, who had come to have their palms read (a minor specialty of mine), Teupu, bedight in goodly blue silk instead of the old gingham gown of her daily servitude—and “last, but not least in love, Trebonius” —in other words, the Patient, my humble self.

There was a tray of thermometers, which were en route from the typhoid department (there was an epidemic of it at the time) to the steriliser.

Teupu, grabbing one, unaware of its deadly potentialities, shoved the glass rod into her month and began to play “patient”.

We, the onlookers, had no time to pre vent her. Polynesian women, nurses at that, do not faint; but the medical ladies stared aghast, bereft of speech and motion, the palm-reading of their original intention entirely forgotten.

I took charge. Sternly ordering Teupu to have her mouth washed out with a germicide, I delayed the necromancy till the deed was done. In five minutes, Teupu, grimacing over a mouthful of Condy’s, re-entered, and the levee was resumed. The palm-reading was a suc

cess; but it did not strike the girl friends that my powers had not run to prophecy of Teupu’s future health, for the germs of typhoid die hard.

A NOTHER of my visitors was Rakau — i\ his native nickname. Tall, languid Old Etonian, novelist and astute bean-mathematician, he was a constant visitor for purposes of intellectual polish ing-up. It was mutual: our countenances were sharpened equally, both sides. In fact, I wouldn’t be. surprised if Rakau learned a thing or two!

Our discussions of Russian literature, rare and hard-to-get books by Weininger and Freud, and similar works, put the matron’s little pointed nose badly out of joint. She plainly disapproved of Rakau, though he had the manners of Lord Chesterfield and the dignity of an arch bishop. We were interested in the Occult.

The matron overheard our feasts of reason with pious horror, for she was a very devout exponent of Orthodoxy.

By the same token, my room, I found, was reputed to be haunted. And, indeed, there was foundation for the idea.

The man who planned that hospital must have been a genius; he located the dread “theatre” right alongside the rooms intended for white patients. I realised, full oft, that it was so, for another of his omissions was a sound proof wall between —Ugh! let’s not talk of that.

Rakau kindly informed me that the room I was occupying was famed for the fact that all its occupants, previous to me, had been carried out. It was en lightening; but I had no ambitions for the honour of a Mission funeral — reverence a specialty.

In the end, I went to a New Zealand health-hotel, and was there re-souled and healed.

Rakau, politely devastating, Cytherean knight of the pen, went into trade. But I am looking forward to his next book — “The Thermometer Murder”!