Just One Night In

Bora Bora

By Charles Brown, Jr.

THE westering sun was pouring a flood of silvery light on the cumulus clouds along the horizon when Heliotrope, with Temarii and me on her roof, tacked through Bora Bora Passage and into the lagoon. The little world of Bora Bora lay all about my wife and me—it belonged to us!

After 51 years, I was returning for a stopover of a night and a day. The 10-tons Maupi t i a n cockleshell, which we had boarded that morning at Raiatea, was carry ing Temarii and me on the second stage of our belated honeymoon to Maupiti, the most northwesterly populated island of the Society Archipelago.

On Maupiti, we should reverse time, like an engine, and live back wards. We should live under con ditions as they were before the first two English missionaries arrived in the “Christ Ship” with God’s command to the heathen of Marua —as the island was then known —to destroy their idols and sacrifice no more humans to the False God. I should write -in my notebooks, while Temarii translated them, the ancient myths, stories, and legends of the island, as they were told to me by Outside Heaven, the native pastor, , whose forbears had been Maruan kings.

Bora Bora was an alluring prospect. With its warmth and colour, its mountainsides falling precipitously to within a few hundred feet of the opalescent water, its luxuriant painted vegetation filmost everywhere, its beaches shining in the sunset glow, the island seemed as unreal as a dream.

Aeons ago, the western wall of the vast bowl of Bora Bora was blown away. The forbidding nudity of the upper reaches of this amphi theatre still bore the scars and burns of primeval convulsion. As Heliotrope bore us across, the lake like waters, Temarii and I had the sensation of sailing between the broken teeth of a crater which was rinsing its mouth with a salt lagoon.

Below Mount Taimanu straggled Viatape village, the island’s capital.

Scattered among the coconut-palms, breadfruit-trees, and strange vege tation were the native, bird-cage houses of bamboo and pandanus leaves, intermixed with European dwellings, whose red roofs peeked out from the foliage. The smoke of supper fires was rising from the houses.

When we came abreast of Vaitape anchorage, we were dismayed to see

that our little world of Bora Bora had been pre-empted by outlanders.

Sitting in midstream, like a mariner in white, was a trim, cocky, business like man-o’-war, the smart rig at its proper set and the cannon bristling in the sundown. On the stern was its name: Dunedin. The warrior was paying a courtesy visit to the Island of Gaiety; nay, to Paradise.

A FIVE-MINUTE walk would bring Temarii and me to Madame Bouchan’s hotel. On the village green, we found the Bora Borans and their popaa (white visitors)—all very jovial as they ex changed courtesies. The sailors were young, and looked natty in their suits of tropical white.

Many of them had been taken in tow by as pretty and sensuous chocolate Calypsos as ever ate lotus fruit with sailors. They were strolling, arms around waists, with their new tau heres —sweethearts.

The sparkling-eyed tau heres were dressed in their finery, with white waxenlike tiare Tahiti flowers and gardenias in their lovely dark hair, and necklaces of jasmine, tiare Tahiti, and frangipanni to intoxicate the senses with heady perfumes.

Bora Bora! Island of strange, romantic charm! South Sea maidens to storm sailors’ hearts in showers of blossoms!

“lorana orua te Atua! Good even ing and God keep you!” the gentle brown people greeted Temarii and me with winning smiles. The women kissed us on the cheeks.

A shrivelled, white-haired woman of the colour of brown sugar and molasses, in a black Ahu Vahine Tahiti, the Mother Hubbard gown, stroked my back with her little hand, after the Tahitian way, and cooed like a woodland dove when I was introduced as Temarii’s American husband!

The men shook our hands, asked about our health, and inquired if Prince Hinoi, the fat spendthrift who might have been king of Tahiti, was keeping up his calis thenics to reduce his girth.

Madame bouchan, a small, brisk woman, took us to a guest-chamber where the paint and curtain glared at each other across a double bed, which insisted that no roomier bed could be had on Bora Bora. Madame was quite flustered by the Dunedin’s arrival that afternoon.

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“The Bishop of Polynesia is on board!” she exclaimed, her jet black eyes swelling. “His Reverence has come all the way from Suva, where, they say, a whale’s tooth is a king’s ransom, and where the Fijian’s bristled heads look like scrubbing brushes turned upside down. To-morrow morning, his Reverence will preach in our new church —a bout sin and eternal damnation. And at sunset, he’ll sail for Tahiti to warn her to change her sinful ways, lest she suffers the punishment of Gomorrah.” A thrill shook her as her voluble mouth shut.

“What a foolish man the good Bishop is!” I smiled broadly at Madame, and sat on the bed to test the spring. “I could have told his Reverence, without his leaving his comfortable diocese, that there really is no sin in Paradise. As for damning eternally the chocolate tau heres who trade their favours, I should have reminded him that Eve was the first trader: She traded Eden for an apple. And I could have told him that he would be wasting his breath by trying to blow out one of the flames on the candle that Tahiti is burning at both ends.”

Whereupon, Temarii, an exemplary churchgoer, gave me a look that put a check-rein on my flippant tongue.

The Bishop had not come ashore; he was assisting the captain of the Dunedin to entertain Monsieur La Porte at dinner.

In ordinary times, Monsieur La Porte was the convivial French schoolmaster of Vaitape. But the present time was not ordinary. The week before, he had been appointed the ruler of Bora Bora until the gendarme, who governed the island for France, could return from Tahiti, where he had taken his wife to have her baby.

Monsieur La Porte was a great gastronome. He would be in no hurry to eat the captain’s sumptu ous meal. Therefore, the captain, with the Bishop and a number of officers, would not come ashore until the time for the himine, to be given in their honour by the Vaitape Choral Singers.

HAVING been comfortably fed by Madame Bouchan, Temarii and I strolled in the early starlight to maitaitai —see the sights.

We passed the gendarmerie, its red roof projecting like a visor over the front verandah to keep the sun from its face. We gaped with astonishment at the massive new Protestant church, not dream ing that it would be destroyed in hurricane of January 1, 1926.

The wind was blowing through the stems of the coconut-trees as if they were organ pipes, and in the branches of the ocean-suggest ing ironwood-trees sounded the

melancholy moan of billows. The lagoon wavelets were sweeping to shore with the foam on them furled like sails.

Beyond the gendarmerie, as we were retracing our steps, a little chocolate-drop, in a gay blue wrapper tied with a pink ribbon, ran from a garden of tiare Tahiti flowers with a precious gift for the vahine popaa (white woman); a silver necklace of virgin-white love blossoms. Temarii thanked the child with a kiss.

AT 8.30, the Dunedin’s launch chugged up to Vaitape wharf to discharge its occupants. The officers were in tropic white, whilst the Bishop of Polynesia, solemn, erect and rigid, wore ministerial garb.

Monsieur La Porte, wearing the cheerful grin of one who has met with unexpected fortune, was puffing an aromatic cigar. He was sending up more smoke-rings for the crowd on the wharf to admire than I thought was necessary. I expected his moustache to blaze at any instant. Three cigars showed in the breast pocket of his white drill coat.

As he was leaving the wharf, I heard him say in French to the native chief of Vaitape: “The Bishop looks like a dry, humourless Britisher; but I found him a jolly chap. Tells a good story with a neat moral. And the cap

tain smokes the choicest cigars.

They make perfect smoke-rings, as you see. I don’t know when I last enjoyed my dinner so much. Come around in the morning, and I’ll tell you all that was on the menu. I had a taste of everything.”

“Eiha!” exclaimed the chief, in

prolonged accents, his eyes sticking out like a land crab’s. “Vous aviez la chance!’

THE himine concert took place or the greensward. The guests oi honour sat near the flam boyant-tree, whilst the sailors squatted on the green with theu

tau heres. Madame Bouchan had set out chairs for Temarii and me.

The Vaitape Choral Singers grouped themselves on their beautiful pandanus mats. Behind them was the brown audience.

The concert ground was lighted by a moon shining in tropical splendour. Above the murmur of voices, infinite like time, sounded Master Organist played on the coral the choiring of the ocean, as the keys of the. outer reef. A backdrop for the scene, Mount Taimanu over hung it, the two peaks thrust into the star-powdered heavens.

The first himine notes turned all faces toward the singers. The hymn was taken up by other voices. The male singers mingled their deep, resonant basses with the altos and light sopranos of the women, com bining and harmonising the sound, like an organ’s. One woman had a peculiar, wild sort of note, break ing occasionally into a falsetto. It had great charm.

The Bishop was entranced by the Tahitian metrical versions of the beloved hymns of praise. At his request, several were resung. As he listened, his face softened.

The last amene notes fallen into silence, the concert ended. With the Bishop, the captain thanked the chief of Vaitape and the singers for a truly enjoyable evening, and in vited the Bora Borans to visit the Dunedin the next afternoon, Sun day.

The sailors were loath to part from their chocolate tau heres. They strolled with them in the moon light, arms around waists.

And Temarii and I strolled, arms around waists. My little true-blue eyed tau here was wearing her silver floral necklace. In front of my left ear was the frangipanni-blossom she put there, to tell the little world of Bora Bora that I had a vahine ; nay, a tau here.

THE giant banana-leaves were crystalled with moonlight, and the coconut-palms and the breadfruit-trees were frosted glass and silver. The lagoon reflected the moonbeams as if there were another moon in its depths, and the flowers were yielding all their treasure to the night. The far-off humming of the sea on the reef was like the echo of some faraway memory.

The moon was slipping down the slope of the west when we turned back on the beach road to go to our bed. Near the new church, we dis covered a short, stocky man walk ing under the trees before a palm thatched, bamboo-walled house.

Bareheaded, clothed in white, his hands behind his back, he paced to and fro, a lighted cigar in his mouth.

His poise and self-assurance be longed to a man whose achieve ments had brought him far in life.

At the garden gate, he paused

and took the cigar from his mouth, lost in the inmost thoughts of his soul. He did not see us.

After some minutes, he put the cigar back beneath his teeth and re lighted it. And Temarii and I saw his face in the flare of the match, and lo! the face was that of Mon sieur La Porte —the schoolmaster who had been made the temporary ruler of a French island in the South Seas!

A close reasoner, I could follow the train of thought upon which he had entered. I knew that he was re-living in his reverie the events of this night and that he would re vive them in memory as long as life lasted. For this night had been the gala night of his rule!

t During the 10th Session of the Cook Islands Legislative Council in.

October, 1956, Maori members pro posed that the school leaving age be raised to 16 while still re taining the enrolment age of 5 years. A compromise was reached, where children must commence their schooling at 6 years of age and. continue until their sixteenth birth day. The amended remit was passed, and became law on January 10. t Two senior Scouts, Surendra Pahlad and Michael Ben, of the First Columban Boy Scouts Group, Fiji, have qualified as Queen’s Scouts. Their badges and certificates will be presented at the Fiji Jubilee Scout Rally at Ratu Kadavulevu School, which begins next week.