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Updated: June 20, 2025
This paste she wrapped in purua leaves and set to bake in a native oven of rocks that stood near the pit. Apporo smoked cigarettes while it baked, perhaps to measure the time. Marquesans mark off the minutes by cigarettes, saying, "I will do so-and-so in three cigarettes," or, "It is two cigarettes from my house to his."
I kept Broken Bronck to luncheon, and gave him what few household furnishings I had not promised to Exploding Eggs or to Apporo, who with the promise of the Golden Bed about to be realized for I announced my going camped upon it, hardly believing that at last she was to own the coveted marvel.
Taking a fistful of the mass, Apporo placed it in another pahake, and kneaded it for a long time with her fingers, using oil from crushed cocoanuts as a lubricant. And at last, proudly smiling, she set before me a dish of popoi kaoi, the very best popoi that can possibly be made. It is a dish to set before a sorcerer. I would as lief eat bill-poster's paste a year old.
Apporo, overcome by the rum and the dance, was lying among the rose-bushes. Many others were flung on the sward, and more rose again to the dance, singing and shouting and demanding more rum. The girls came forward to be kissed, as was the custom, and Madame Bapp drove them away with sharp words. Soon the hullabaloo became too great for the dignity of the governor.
My tawny feminine friends resented keenly white women's airs of superiority, and many were the cold glances cast by Malicious Gossip, Apporo, and Flower at the stiffly gowned Madame Bapp, who sat on the veranda drinking absinthe. They scorned her, because she beat her husband if he but looked at one of them, though he owned a store and desired their custom. Poor Madame Bapp!
"He has three popoi pits," they said, as we would speak of a man who owned a superb jewel or a Velasquez. The grated breadfruit in the holes was called ma, and bore the same relation to popoi as dough bears to bread. When the ma was sufficiently soured Apporo opened the pit each morning and took out enough for the day's provision, replacing the stones on the banana leaves afterward.
These left the lawn and advanced to the veranda, where so contagious had become the enthusiasm that the governor was doing the hurahura opposite Bauda, and Ah Yu danced with Apporo, while Song, the prisoner, and Flag, the gendarme, madly emulated the star performers. Kekela, who led the rout, was a figure at which to marvel.
When the cigarettes were consumed, or when her housewifely instinct told Apporo that the dish was properly cooked, back it went into the trough again, and was mashed with the keatukipopoi, the Phallic pounder of stone known to all primitive peoples. A pahake, or wooden bowl about eighteen inches in diameter, received it next, and the last step of the process followed.
Behind it officiously walked Exploding Eggs, puffed up with importance, regarded on all sides with respect as Tueni Oki Kiki, Keeper of the Golden Bed, but jostled for position by Apporo, envied of women. Behind them up the rough road hastened the rest of the village, eager to see the installation of the marvel in its new quarters, and I followed the barbaric procession leisurely.
We found Great Fern, my landlord, with Apporo, Broken Plate with the Vagabond, and they had several canoes full of fish. They were delighted at my return, and rubbed noses with me over the gunwales. Getting ashore at the stone steps of Taka-Uka was a task worthy of such boatsmen, in the darkness, the sea beating madly against the cliffs.
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