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Updated: June 7, 2025
Taata Mata, the name of a charming Tahitian woman I knew, signifies "Man's Eye," her own large eyes, perhaps, explaining the name, and Mauu, the name borne by a Tahitian man of good family in Papeete, "Moist." In all Polynesia one found picture names for people, as among the American Indians, and as among all nations, though with Europeans the meanings are forgotten.
His fusuma were opened, and Mata could see how his face blanched to yellow wax, how the lips writhed until they were caught back by strong, cruel teeth, and how the thin hands wavered. Notwithstanding this inward torture, he persisted. At first the lines of his brush were feeble. His work looked like that of a child.
Sketch after sketch he made, some to tear at once into strips, others to fling carelessly aside to any corner where they might chance to fall, others, again, to be stored cunningly upon some remote shelf to which old Kano and Uchida and Mata could not reach, but whence he, Tatsu, the Dragon Painter, should, in a few days more, withdraw them and show them to his bride.
"There 's your jewel of a painter," old Mata, indoors, would say. "Look at him, master, a noble figure, indeed, standing on one leg like a love-sick stork!" And Kano, helpless before his own misery and the old dame's acrid triumph, would keep silence, only muttering invocations to the gods for self-control. Often the young wife pretended a sudden desire for her own artistic work.
We passed the Castles of San Fernando and La Catalina to the villas and the gardens planted with thin trees that outlie the north; and we entered the capital by a neat bridge thrown over the Barranco de la Mata, where a wall from the upper castle once kept out the doughty aborigines.
I'm as hungry as a famished coyote." "Carrai! the coyotes of these parts won't be hungry for some time. Vaya!" "Who knows whether they've killed `El Cojo'?" "`Catch a fox, kill a fox. No. He's found some hole to creep through, I warrant him. "`El que mata un ladron Tiene cien anos de perdon."
Surely a demon of sleep has bewitched us." She had entered the girl's room, and now, while speaking, crossed the narrow space to fling wide, first the shoji, and then the outer amado. Umè moved lazily. Her lacquered pillow, with its bright cushion, rocked as she stirred. "No demon has found me, Mata San," she murmured, smiling.
The sewing was, of course, done at home. Mata would have trusted this sacred rite to no domination but her own. She worked incessantly, planning, cutting, scolding, hurrying off to the shopping district for some forgotten item, conferring with Ando Uchida about the details of Tatsu's outfit, then returning, flushed with success and importance, to new home triumphs. Umè sewed steadily all day.
The presence of Umè in the chamber seemed to fade a little, but, for some reason inexplicable to himself, this brought now no poignant grief. He did not tell the wonderful thing to Mata or old Kano, but hid the still unfinished picture where no one but himself could see it. So February passed, and March.
Mata's eyes gleamed sharp and bright as the needle. "Because he is as mad as the wild man, and all for pictures! They would strip their own skins off if that made better parchment. Miss Umè has been influenced by them, and now is to be sacrificed. Alas! the evil day!" and Mata wiped away some genuine tears on the hem of a night-robe she had finished.
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