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I deferred my pleasure a few minutes as the place under the shower was occupied by an entrancing pair, Evoa, the consort of Afa, and her four-months-old infant, Poia. Evoa was sixteen years old, tall, like most Tahitians, finely figured, slender, and with the superb carriage that is the despair of the corseted women who visit Tahiti. Her features were regular, but not soft.
Poia was like a flower, and I had never heard her cry, this good nature being accounted for perhaps by an absence of pins, as she was usually naked. She had two teeth barely peeping from below. Evoa spoke only Tahitian, which is the same tongue as that spoken in Bora-Bora, and she was totally without education. Afa had found her, and brought her to his cabin in the garden.
They were short; merely a few puffs. Afa, the tane of the lovely Evoa of the Annexe, brought to the luncheon Annabelle Lee, the buxom wife of Lovaina's negro chauffeur. She was a quadroon, a belle of dark Kentucky, with more than a touch of the tar-brush in her skin and hair, and her gaudy clothes and friendly manner had won the Tahitians completely.
The night is te po or te rui, and the moment before the sun rises marumaru ao. A hundred other words and phrases differentiate the conditions of sky and air. I learned them from Afa and Evoa and others. The moon is te marama, and the full moon vaevae.
Evoa was always barefooted, but Afa, on steamer days and when going to the cinematograph, appeared in immaculate white and with canvas shoes. Otherwise he wore only a fold of cloth about the loins, the real garment of the Tahitian, and the right one for that climate. Again on my balcony, I saw the sun had passed the crown of the Diadem and was slanting hotly toward Papeete.
I move to the Annexe Description of building The baroness and her baby Evoa and poia The corals of the lagoon The Chinese shrine The Tahitian sky. Lovaina suggested, since I liked to be about the lagoon, that I move to the Annexe, a rooming-house she owned and conducted as an adjunct to the Tiare. I moved there, and regretted that I had stayed so long in the animal-yard.
Evoa was dressing her for the market in a red muslin slip, a knitted shawl of white edged with blue, and, shades of Fahrenheit! a cap with pink ribbons, and socks of orange. Evoa herself would wear a simple tunic, which was most of the time pulled down over the shoulder to give Poia ingress to her white breast.
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