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The princess, like all reading Tahiti, knew it better than I, for it was the first novel in French with its scenes in that island, and for more than forty years had been talked about there. "Here at this pool," she said, with her finger on the page, "Loti surprised Rarahu one afternoon when for a red ribbon she let an old and hideous Chinese kiss her naked shoulder. Mon dieu!
I looked at her and boldly said: "I am a stranger in your island, as was Loti when he met Rarahu. Will you not yourself show me Fautaua?" She gave a shrill cry of delight, and in the frank, sweet way of the Tahitian girl replied: "We will run away to-morrow morning. Wear little, for it will be warm, and bring no food!"
The guilelessness and cunning of child and fiend were in his dumb soul. The princess suggests a walk to the falls of Fautaua, where Loti went with Rarahu We start in the morning The suburbs of Papeete The Pool of Loti The birds, trees and plants A swim in a pool Arrival at the cascade Luncheon and a siesta We climb the height The princess tells of Tahitian women The Fashoda fright.
Here Loti put his arms about his first Tahitian sweetheart, and practised that vocabulary of love he used so well in "Rarahu," "Madame Chrysantheme," and his other studies of the exotic woman. A hundred noted men, soldiers, and sailors, scientists and dilettanti, governors and writers, had walked or worked in those tumbling rooms.
We have incantations to ward off listening devils knocking on wood, throwing salt over our left shoulders, and saying "God willing." What was I to find in Tahiti? Certainly not what Loti had with Rarahu, for that was forty years ago, when the world was young at heart, and romance was a god who might be worshiped with uncensored tongue.
"You are late, my friend," the princess went on, with a note of pity in her soft voice. "My mother remembered the days Loti depicted in 'Rarahu. My grandmother knew little Tarahu of Bora-Bora of whom he wrote. Viaud was then a midshipman. We did not call him Loti, but Roti, our coined word for a rose, because he had rosy cheeks. But he could not call himself Roti in his novel, for in French, his language, that meant roasted, and one might think of boeuf
"It were better to go directly up the valley and out of the heat," she advised. "We shall have many pools to bathe in." It was at the next that I took from my pocket "Rarahu, ou le mariage de Loti," a thin, poorly printed book in pink paper covers that I had possessed since boyhood, and which I had read again on the ship coming to Tahiti.
I danced with her at a dinner given by a consul, and when I spoke to her of Loti's visit to Fautaua with Rarahu, she said in French: "Why do you not go there yourself with a Rarahu! Loti is old and an admiral, and writes now of Egypt and Turkey and places soiled by crowds of people, but Rarahu is still here and young. Shall I find you her?"
She had been to America for an operation, but despaired of ever being well, and so was melancholy and devout. I talked to her about Tahiti, that island which the young Darwin wrote, "must forever remain classical to the voyager in the South Seas," and which, since I had read "Rarahu" as a boy, had fascinated me and drawn me to it. She warned me. "Prenez-garde vous, monsieur!" she said.
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