Portrait of a Gentleman

Trader’S Tale:

By “Tukapa Koko”

rpHIS tale was told to me by a fellow- X trader, now deceased. He was a man of infinite jest, and I shall not see his like again.

On the seaward verandah of the store, with “the hospitables” aboard their bam boo table, his best memoirs found vent.

And he was a master, too. of mime—his little red face mirrored his narrations and, at each climax, he’d dig his chin into his collar-bone, elevate his brows, ogle his hearer roguishly, and purse-up his mouth.

We’ll call him X, and this was his tale: One summer’s day, X was approached by a fairly wealthy islander to order for him an object that was then highly novel in the Group. It was—to use nursery “clues” in concealing details as long as possible—partly made of pumice cement, nartly of galvanised iron, and partly of woorf New Zealand was the country of origin.

The artifact was, in fact, a chemical “nrivy.” Landed, and installed, it gave the native buyer great satisfaction.

Now, X was one of those Pacific traders who hold that service does not end at sale. So. a counle of weeks later, he strolled along to insnect the import, now installed in a fitting edifice; and the proud owner gave him a resume of the events of the preceding weeks.

X, examining the artifact out in its “sentry-box,” noticed, however, that a portion, to wit. the seat, was missing.

“Hey, Poti, what have you done with the seat?” he asked.

“T’e-rakau, Poss? Oh, I keep him.”

“But, dash my buttons, why?” X hated incompleteness.

“Oh, he prurry good, Poss—plenty shine t’e varnish.”

X didn’t see that that was any reason for an aesthetic reluctance to use the well-varnished, oval-apertured article as the makers had intended it to be used.

True, it did have brass hinges; but no Polynesian would be silly enough to take them, golden-new though they were, for a product of Ophir’s mines. The trader concluded that there must be some other reason.

“Don’t you find the cement cold, Poti? and . . . well. I mean, why the deuce didn’t you leave good enough alone?”

“He not good-enough; he better!” was the reply to that.

X was used to natives; and patientlv attempted to distil-out the meaning of this—for the exact quality of the “better ness” was not clear, and the simple declaration was full of ambiguities. At last, he determined to inquire directly, though such un-subtle information-seek ing was against all precedent.

“What the devil have you done with the damned thing, then?”

Poti the Civilised smiled coyly. “Why, I got t’e Prince-a-Whales in him, up on t’e front-room wall!”

Another member of the Fiji RAF con tingent has won a commission. He is Pilot-Officer Lance Bradnam.