In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays (Original Harvest Book; Hb333) (19 page)

The native art makes one wish for a three-day tour of the island with taxi driver J. Bizien, who has driven a truck for twenty years, supplying the outer villages with foodstuffs, and who knows all the tribes and the tribal chiefs.

The fruit and flower arrangements in the hotel remind one of the Japanese. In every room there is an embroidered tapestry by Aloi Pilioko, the Polynesian artist now celebrated for his painting, sketches, needlework, in the primitive style of an Oceanic Picasso. There are also murals by Michoutouchkine, the well-known painter and collector of Oceanic art.

Two women stand out as symbols of the many aspects of New Caledonia. One is Dr. Catala-Stucki (her husband insists that she use her maiden name with his), the handsome, sturdy, dynamic wife of Dr. Catala and his collaborator in the creation of the aquarium. She is an oceanographer, a scientist, and a deep-sea diver. She took part in the most dangerous diving expeditions for corals and fish. Now in her sixties, she still dives every day for the particular marine food necessary for the aquarium fish. She radiates a passion for her work, for their mutual achievement, accomplished out of personal devotion and energy. Much has been written about this remarkable couple, but the most accurate and memorable descriptions of Dr. Catala-Stucki’s work are found in her husband’s own book,
Carnaval sous la mer,
for he has a gift for description and a sense of humor about marine life which is that of an artist and poet as well as scientist.

The other woman is Janine Tabuteau, the wife of the director of tourism in Noumea. She symbolizes the mixture of races, which prefigures the future of a world now able to uproot itself, roam, and bring the essence and quality of many cultures into one person. Janine is French, Indonesian, Chinese, and Russian. She did not at first appreciate the exotic beauty this created, the conflicts which gave depth to her character. At seventeen, when she went to Paris, she asked to have her luxuriant, long, black hair cut ‘like everyone else’s," but the hairdresser refused. Everyone urged her to accept her distinctive appearance, her mixture of reticence and modern dynamism. She has learned to be a cook of exquisite Chinese dishes, to accept her unique beauty, to manage a company of building materials, to consider architecture and decoration as extensions of this company. It is strange to see her behind an executive desk, with her soft Indonesian voice, her French organizational power. In the evening, she goes home, dons an Indonesian skirt, and cooks an amazing dinner for friends. I feel somehow that she indicates the future, the possibility of remaining an exotic woman, not like everyone else, and yet taking an active part in the modern business world.

Over the coral reefs, half an hour from Noumea, lies the Isle of Pines, a volcanic island eroded by the sea. The sea between the two islands is dotted with atolls, isolated ringor crescent-shaped reefs enclosing lagoons. The hotel, Relais de Kanumera, with its appealing native architecture, is built right on a lagoon. Separate bungalows are scattered among the overwhelming umbrella-shaped buni trees. From the hotel one sees a tiny volcanic island, overgrown with lush vegetation, shaped like a basket, while the sea undermines its base. The native children dive from it. At night it looks like a ship; at other times the vegetation makes it look like a hairbrush.

The remarkable hotel chef cooks in an open house, and his barbeque is a giant pit outside. It is strange, so far from Paris, to find the classic French cuisine, but the chef adds tropical creations of his own, like baked papaya filled with custard.

The Isle of Pines has flora not seen anywhere else in the world. It, too, was invaded by the sandalwood traders, the whalers, the missionaries. The French Catholic missionaries stayed on, and now on Sunday the entire population of the tiny island appears at the church. Here, watching the women, I can see how varied the short mumus are, all flowers, leaves, fruit, in primary colors. Some wear bands over their hair similar to the American Indians. Next to the church, standing alone, is a gigantic Cook pine, unbelievably tall and straight, as impressive as a cathedral.

When it was discovered that the political prisoners could disappear into the vast forests of New Caledonia, they were sent-to the tiny Isle of Pines instead. The prison is now hidden from the road by almost impenetrable acacia trees and is surrounded by a high wall of stones, now breaking down. The prison itself, gloomy and forbidding, is half in ruins. The roofs are gone, but not the heavy chains bolted to the walls, nor the three layers of iron bars on the windows. The men who were sent here had been the Communards, rebelling against poor wages, the hard life of the workers. In 1870 they held Paris for three days and then were either shot or imprisoned.

In the bus, touring the island with us, is an old Frenchman. His paternal grandfather was one of the Communards but had escaped to Brittany and made a new life. But another relative had not, and when we stand by the monument erected by the prisoners to their dead brothers, the old Frenchman reads the names carved on the single stone and is moved by his family name. Among the prisoners who died on the island were women, children, and those who sought to escape by building a boat, which foundered on the coral reefs. Later, walking on the beach, famous for the whitest sand in all the world, I see the edge of a sunken boat showing through the sand and think of the prisoners who tried to escape.

For a while after leaving the prison, I am under the haunting pain of such a place, all the more oppressive when the sky, which shows through the small, barred windows, is tropical, the smell of the lagoon so near, the flour-white sands so soft to walk on, and flowers, ferns, and tropical bushes abundant and replete with sun.

We look for sandalwood trees but find none on the island. Sandalwood was highly prized by China for its religious ceremonies. To extract the oil, the early traders tore the hearts out of the trees, ravaged them, and then moved on.

Snorkeling reveals a whole other world of fantastic beauty: red, black and blue starfish; mushroom-shaped corals; brain corals covered with sprays of flowerlike purple tips; mother-of-pearl “flowers” shaped like shells but transparent and floating on a stem as if made of silk; a ruby-red fish; the Moorish idol fish with a long, curved dorsal fin larger than its body, more like a sail or a bird’s wing; black fish, each with two white spots; a velvet-black fish with white stripes, named the zebra fish; one with a jet-black tail and brown front edged with brilliant orange; others with turquoise collars. The colors are phosphorescent, transparent, jewellike. The fish hide among the corals and in the many caves made by the action of the sea on volcanic rock.

Above the surface ride the beautiful, painted pirogues, carved out of trees, with outriggers and sails. The Melanesian natives have strong bodies and the same strong feet of Gauguin’s Polynesians of Tahiti.

The island is dotted with caves and grottoes. They are formed inside the volcanic depths and are filled with the familiar stalactites and stalagmites. At the very end of the Kouaouate Grotto there is an opening through which the sunlight falls like the aura over the heads of saints in Biblical pictures; and with this cascade of light are banyan roots falling like ladders down twenty feet, throwing great white tentacles for fifty feet along the floor of the cave, seeking water. Here on a ledge, exposed to the dim light from above, the natives once placed the skulls of their dead. It was their belief that only the skull should be preserved. Formerly, all the caves were burial grounds.

It is difficult to forget the prisoners who built the roads we travel. But those who were pardoned and returned to France, did they remember the lagoons, the dazzling white sand, the tangled acacias, the miles of ferns, the floating islands on the Bay of Gold, the smell of sandalwood, the tranquil pirogues carrying coconuts? And the grottoes like the caves of our dreams?

From the diary of Anaïs Nin.

I was travelling on Air France to New York via Paris when the plane ran into a flock of sea gulls and we had to stop at Athens. At first we sat around and waited for information, looking out now and then at the airplane. Vague news filtered out. Some passengers became anxious, fearing they would miss their connections. Air France treated us to dinner and wine. But after that there was a shortage of seats, so I sat on the floor like a gypsy, together with a charming hippie couple with whom I had made friends during the trip. He was a musician and she was a painter. They were hitchhiking through Europe with backpacks. She was slender and frail-looking, and I was not surprised when he complained that her knapsack was full of vitamins. As we sat talking about books, films, music, a very old lady approached us. She looked like my Spanish grandmother. Dressed completely in black, old but not bent, with a face that seemed carved of wood through which the wrinkles appeared more like veins of the wood. She handed me a letter she carried around her neck in a Turkish cloth bag. It was written in exquisite French. It was a request from her daughter to help her Turkish mother in every way possible. The
daughter was receiving her doctorate in medicine at the Sorbonne and could not come to fetch her mother for the ceremony, so she had entrusted her to the care of Air France. I read the letter and translated it for my hippie friends. Although we could not talk to the old woman, it was evident that a strong, warm sympathy existed among the four of us. She wanted to sit with us. We made room for her, and she gave me her old wrinkled hand to hold. She was anxious. She did not know what had happened. She realized she would be late for her rendezvous in Paris. We looked for a Turkish passenger who would translate and explain the delay. There was none, but we found an Air France hostess who spoke a little Turkish. We thought the old lady would choose to stay with the hostess, but once the message was conveyed to her, she returned to sit with us. She adopted us. Hours passed. We were told that the plane could not be repaired, that the airline offered us a few hours of sleep in a hotel not too far away, and to be ready for an early flight on another plane. So the four of us were placed in a taxi, which caused my Turkish grandmother such anxiety that she would not let go of my hand; but her anxiety would always recede when she looked at the delicate features and soft eyes of the young woman painter, at the smile and gentleness of the musician’s face, at my reassuring words in French, which she did not understand. At the hotel, she would not go into her bedroom alone, so I left our connecting doors open and explained I was right there next to her. She studied this for a while and then finally consented to lie in her bed. A few hours later, we were called and taken to our plane. Because I was changing planes in Paris, I could not take her to the home of her daughter. I had to find someone who would. Questioning the passengers, I found a woman who promised to take her in a taxi to the address in the letter. She held on to my hand until the last minute. Then she kissed me ceremoniously, kissed my hippie friends, and went on her way. Having been in her fishermen’s village, I could imagine the little stone house she came from, her fisherman husband, her daughter sent to Paris to study medicine and now achieving the high status of doctor. Did she arrive in time for a ceremony which had to be translated to her? I know she arrived safely. Guarded by universal grandchildren, Turkish grandmothers always travel safely.

A
NAÏS
N
IN
(1903–1977) was born in Paris and aspired at an early age to be a writer. An influential artist and thinker, she was the author of several novels, short stories, critical studies, a collection of essays, two volumes of erotica, and nine published volumes of her Diary.