A Writer's Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham

  Salologa. The schooner started from Apia about one, and toward six we arrived off Savaii. The reef was a white line of foam. We went along it, up and down, trying to find the opening, and then night came, so the skipper turned round, putting out to sea, and anchored. When the sail was furled, the boat rolled a good deal. We spent the evening playing poker. Early next morning we found the opening and entered the lagoon. It was shallow and clear so that the bottom could be seen distinctly. There was not a cloud in the sky, not a ripple on the water. The coast was heavily wooded. It was a scene of perfect tranquillity. Presently we lowered a dinghy and landed in a little cove. There was a small village. One hut, embowered by a great tree with red flowers and coconuts, and surrounded by croton bushes, was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw. When we came ashore a young woman came out of the hut and invited us in. We sat down on the mats and were given slices of pine-apple to eat. The household consisted of two very old crones, bowed and wrinkled, with short grey hair; two younger women; and a man. Then we walked along the grassy road lined with coconuts, along the shore, three miles, till we came to the house of a trader called Lawrie. He lent me a pony and trap and I drove on down the road, past villages, past little bays, past bathing pools where boys were swimming and eventually came to the house of another trader called Benn. I went into his house and asked if he could give me dinner. He was a very thin man, with a small head and grey hair; he wore spectacles and was dressed in dirty pyjamas. He had a half-caste wife and three very fair, weedy children. He was just recovering from a prolonged bout of drunkenness and hardly knew what he was saying. He was intensely nervous and could not keep still. His hands, thin and bony, kept twitching, and every now and then he cast behind him quick, nervous glances. He had been on the island for more than twenty years, an Englishman, and traded in copra, cottons and canned goods. His wife prepared a dinner for us of pigeons and vegetables and cheese, and he tried to eat with us, but couldn’t persuade himself to swallow a thing. As soon as we had finished he said: “Well, you’ve got to get on, I won’t keep you.” He was evidently eager to be rid of us. We went back to Lawrie. This was a different type of trader. He had been a blacksmith in Apia for many years and had fixed up a forge in a galvanized iron shed. He was a little man of fifty, with a dark beard. He gave me the impression of being at the same time sturdy and frail. He was very deaf and you had to shout to make him hear. He spoke in a low soft voice with an Australian accent. His wife was a large woman, strong and good-humoured, with pleasant features; her abundant hair was done with some elaboration. They had several children, two boys being at school in New Zealand, and the rest helping in the store and on the plantation. There were two bright, fair boys and two little girls. They wore nothing but shirt and breeches and went barefoot. They were obviously strong and healthy, and there was an attractive openness about them. They were Adventists, they kept Saturday as the day of rest instead of Sunday, teetotallers, and the man had never smoked. I got the impression of a hardworking, honest and united family. They were hospitable people and the tea which they set before me was plentiful, a well-cooked chicken, a good salad grown by themselves, and a couple of sweets. They neither drank tea nor coffee themselves, but gave them to their guests. They were just a little conscious of their difference from other people, but that, so far as I could tell, was the only fault you could find in them.

  We had brought them cases of various goods in the dinghy and having landed these, we got in and rowed back to the schooner. It was a pull of two or three miles and the rowers sang as they rowed. They shouted witticisms to the girls in the native huts by the shore.

  In the evening, going ashore again, with the crew this time, we went to the house of a chief. Kava was made and drunk, pine-apple passed round, and then to the sound of a banjo and a ukulele the crew began to dance. The women of the house joined them. There was a Fijian, one of the sailors, almost coal black, with a mass of fuzzy hair, who was able to twist himself into all sorts of outrageous attitudes to the shrieking delight of the onlookers. The dancing grew more and more obscene. We went back to the schooner in the deep silence of the night.

  Next day we set out for Apolima. We had arranged for a whale-boat to take us across the reef, and this, with its crew, we towed behind us in a rolling heavy sea. Several women, evidently prepared to make a picnic of it, came with the rowers. Apolima is a small island, almost circular, between Savaii and Manono. When we came to the reef we got into the whale-boat and rowed towards the shore. The opening of the reef is not more than twelve feet broad and on each side are great jagged rocks. The chief steered. We got to the opening and when a big wave came he shouted to the men, they pulled with all their might, their great muscles straining, and we were carried over into the lagoon. It was small and shallow.

  The island is an extinct volcano, and when we got inside the lagoon, which covers the floor of the crater, it looked like the inside of a Stilton cheese all eaten away except the rind and one bit of this (the opening to the sea) gone too. There was a village at the edge of the lagoon, almost the only flat part of the island, and from there the land, covered with coconuts, bananas and breadfruit, rose rapidly. We climbed up to the edge of the crater and looked out to sea; below us two turtles were sunning themselves on the beach. When we came down the chief asked us into his house for kava. By this time the wind was blowing hard and the whale-boat men looked doubtfully at the grey and stormy sea; they weren’t sure whether it would be possible to get out against the waves that dashed furiously through the opening. But we got into the boat, and the chief, a fine-looking old man with white hair, came to help us. The women who had landed with us took their places at the oars. We pushed through the shallow water to the opening and watched the waves. After waiting a little they made the attempt, but the boat got jammed against the rock, and it looked as though the next wave must inevitably swamp us. I took off my shoes in case I had to swim. The old chief jumped out and pushed the boat off. Then, with a tremendous effort, the rowers, shouting their heads off, rowing like mad, the sea beating over the boat and soaking us to the skin, we got out. The chief swam out to us, and it was a fine sight to see the old man fighting against the great waves. He was hauled in and sat there panting. The schooner was far out and showed no signs of seeing us. We rowed towards her slowly, for an hour, and at last she bore down on us. She was rolling heavily, so that it was not easy to get on board. I jumped into the rigging as she swayed towards the boat, and the Chinese cook seized my wrist and helped me on.

  Kava. It is made by a girl and she is supposed to be a virgin. A young man or another girl pounds the root on a stone, then gives it to her; she pours a little water in a bowl and puts in the powdered root, then mixes it with her hands. Then she draws a bundle of coconut fibre through the mixture to act as a sieve, squeezes it out, and hands it to the young man who shakes it out on the air. This is done several times till all the root is melted. Then more water is added and the kava is ready. The virgin utters the prescribed words and the rest of the company clap their hands. The young man hands her a coconut bowl which she fills; the headman mentions a name and the bowl is taken to the most distinguished guest. He pours a little on the ground, says “health to the company”, drinks what he wants and then throws the rest away. He hands back the bowl and the next guest in order of age or honour is served.

  The Lagoon. It is crossed by a bridge made of coconut trees laid end to end and supported by a forked branch driven into the bottom. There is a native hut here and there on the bank, surrounded by bananas, and all along coconut trees. You walk through the bush for a quarter of a mile and come to a shallow river surrounded by trees, where the natives bathe. The water is sweet except at high tide, when it is brackish from the lagoon into which it empties itself, very cold by contrast with the temperature, and clear. A lovely spot.

  Wms. An Irishman. When he was a boy of fifteen he took on the paternity of a child got from some girl by the son of the local clergyman. This young man, after promisin
g to pay for the child’s keep, did not do so, and Wms had to pay half a crown a week till the child was fourteen. Twenty years later, on going back to Ireland, he sought the man out, then married and the father of children, and fought him till he made him ask his pardon.

  For some time he was in New Zealand. One day he was shooting with a friend, a bank clerk, who had no gun licence: suddenly they saw a policeman, the clerk was in dismay, thinking he would be arrested, so Wms told him to keep on calmly and himself started running. The policeman pursued and they ran back to Auckland. Once there Wms stopped, the policeman came up, asked for his licence, which Wms immediately produced. The policeman asked him why he had run away, whereupon he answered: “Well, you’re an Irishman same as I am, if you promise to hold your tongue about it I’ll tell you; the other fellow hadn’t a licence.” The policeman burst out laughing and said: “You’re a sport, come and have a drink.”

  He is a gross, sensual man, and he loves to tell you about the women he’s lived with. He’s had ten children by Samoan women; one, a girl of fifteen, he keeps at school in New Zealand, but the rest he’s handed over to the Mormon mission with a sum of money. He came out to the islands when he was twenty-six as a planter. He was one of the few white men settled in Savaii at the time of the German occupation and had already a certain influence with the natives. He loves them as much as it is in his selfish nature to love anybody. The Germans made him Amtmann, a position he occupied for sixteen years. On one occasion, having to call on Solf, the German minister for foreign affairs, Solf said to him: “Being governor of a German colony I suppose you speak German fluently.” “No,” he answered, “I only know one word, prosit, and I haven’t heard that since my arrival in Berlin.” The minister laughed heartily and sent for a bottle of beer.

  R. He is a thin, weedy youth, with the look of a clerk in a London stockbroker’s office, and he has decayed teeth, crowned with gold, and a small peevish mouth. He is vulgar, illiterate and h-less. He has been on the islands for some years and is tattooed like a native. I wonder why he exposed himself to the torture of the operation. Perhaps the beauty of the place, the charm of those friendly people stirred his vulgar soul to what he thought was a romantic gesture. Perhaps he merely thought it made him more attractive to the women he slept with.

  Savaii. After the rain, when the sun is shining and you walk through the bush, it is like a hot-house, seething, humid, sultry, breathless, and you have a feeling that everything about you, trees, shrubs, climbing plants, is growing with an impetuous violence.

  I travelled back to Apia in the Marstal. It is a cutter about thirty feet long and belongs to a kanaka. A ten-hour trip. It was loaded with sacks of copra and smelt rankly of coconut. There was no cabin, and I lay on deck over the engine, with a rug over me, and rested my head on the knobbly copra sacks. The crew consisted of the skipper at the tiller, a handsome, swarthy fellow, with somewhat the look of a later Roman emperor, inclined to corpulence, but with a fine strong face; another kanaka, stretched at full length and covered with sacking, who slept; and a Chinese, who sat looking idly at the moon and smoked cigarettes.

  The moon shone brightly, dimming the stars, and the sea was very calm except for that long, uncanny swell of the Pacific. When we entered the harbour at Apia, its coconuts dark against the sky, with the dim whiteness of the Cathedral, lights here and there on boats, it was like entering an enchantment of stillness and silence, I looked for words to describe it, but could find none. Two stray lines came into my mind, and I couldn’t imagine what they were doing there: “Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross.”

  Suva. The bay is fine and spacious, surrounded by grey hills that stretch away mysteriously into a blue distance. You feel that in that farther country, thickly wooded, there is a strange and secret life. It suggests something aboriginal and darkly cruel. The town stretches along the borders of the harbour. Here are many frame buildings, more shops than at Apia, but there is still the air of the trading station which the place must once have been. The natives walk about in lava-lavas and singlets or shirts, tall strapping men for the most part, as dark as Negroes, with their curly hair, often bleached with lime, cut into a curious shape. There are numbers of Hindus, walking softly, dressed in white; and the women wear nose-rings, gold chains round their necks and bangles on their arms. When you go out into the country you pass crowded villages of Hindus and everywhere you see them working in the fields. They wear nothing but a loin-cloth and their bodies are frighteningly thin. The country is subtropical, palm trees grow poorly, but there are great groves of mangoes; it has not the blitheness of Samoa, it is more sombre and the green is heavy and dark. The air is hot and oppressive, heavy too, and the rain beats down incessantly.

  The Grand Pacific Hotel. It is a large, two-storeyed building, faced with stucco and surrounded by a veranda. It is cool and empty. It has a large hall, with comfortable chairs in it, and electric fans constantly turning. The servants are Hindus, silent and vaguely hostile, who go about with bare feet, in clean white suits and turbans. The food is very bad, but the rooms are pleasant, fresh and cool. Few people stay there; the agent of the company with his family, a few people waiting for ships, and some officials from the other islands brought to Suva on business or holiday.

  The Blue. He came out straight from Oxford, where he got his football blue, and he has been here five years. He is now a magistrate on one of the islands and is the only white man on it. When he has a vacation he comes to Suva and drinks steadily. He drinks all day long and by noon is drunk. He is a man of under thirty, little, well made, with the appearance still of an athlete, and he has an agreeable face and a breezy, rather charming manner. His hair is cut short and is pleasantly untidy. He has blue eyes and attractive, irregular features. You surmise a charming, good-natured fellow, with not an atom of harm in him. He is still a schoolboy.

  The Schoolmaster. An Irishman who has been to the front, where he was badly wounded; and on his recovery the Government sent him to Fiji. He had read of it in his boyhood and the place had always had a romantic fascination for him. When the offer came he accepted it eagerly, and now he is bored, lonely and disillusioned. His school is about seven miles from Suva, but he drives in whenever he can; during the holidays he lives at the Grand Pacific, and he drinks, whisky and soda, all the time. He is not more than twenty-eight, short, with laughing blue eyes and a flashing smile.

  The Insurance Agent. A tall elderly man, with white hair very thin but carefully brushed; he is neatly dressed and holds himself squarely and well notwithstanding an increasing obesity. He went out to Australia thirty years ago in a theatrical company, married a woman with money, and since then has followed many occupations; he has been a planter, and in the Government service, and a trader. Now he is under a cloud. He went to Apia on behalf of the insurance company he was representing and pocketed the premiums. The company made them good for its own reputation’s sake, and he escaped a prosecution only because it desired to avoid scandal. He spends most of his time in the bar of the Grand Pacific and is able to drink steadily without showing signs of it. From his training as an actor he has something of the grand manner and it is amusing when you remember how narrowly he escaped a long imprisonment.

  Rewa. The river is wide, with flat banks, along which are native villages and banana plantations. Beyond are the grey, misty mountains. There are great broad reaches which I know not why are vaguely mysterious and threatening. Now and then you see a native paddling along in a dug-out. There are sugar refineries at Rewa and a bedraggled hotel, a bungalow kept by a fat Englishman and his fat wife. They have precisely the look of the proprietors of a riverside hotel on the Thames, and the woman spends most of her day in a hammock on the veranda reading novels.

  The Priest. He was a little old Frenchman of seventy, very active; and he wore a short shabby cassock, black top boots and a grey topee. He was all shrivelled up, with a wrinkled clean-shaven face, long, straight grey hair and red-
rimmed, watery eyes. There was something extraordinarily grotesque in his appearance. He talked a great deal, in fluent English, but with a strong accent. His hands were knotted and gnarled, with broken nails. He was a schoolmaster; he had taught for seventeen years in France, for seventeen in Australia, and now for seventeen more in Fiji. He knew many languages. He was probably an Alsatian. He talked of his nephews, most of them priests, all fighting in the French Army, and was proud of the decorations they had received. He was proud of his school in Fiji and his pupils, almost all of them natives, and carried on a correspondence still with his old pupils in Australia. It was strange in that funny little hotel to hear him talk of Shakespeare and Milton to the two men with whom he found himself sitting at table. They listened, uncomprehending, with open mouths. He was enthusiastic for all things Fijian and was a mine of information for everything about the natives. Notwithstanding his years he gave you the impression of an indefatigable energy.

  Two men are living together in Fiji, loathing the sight of one another, not speaking and yet bound together by their work. Every evening the two men get stupid and sodden with drink. One night there drops in an old priest, a Frenchman, who has been on the island for years; and they give him dinner and the night’s lodging. He talks to them of Shakespeare and Wordsworth. They listen to him amazed. They ask him what made him come out to these parts. He tells them that he was sensual and pleasure-loving and almost regretted having become a priest; he felt himself made for a normal life, and because he loved so well all its good things he cut himself off from them. Now he is old and everything is over. They ask him if he thinks it was worth it. They see in him dimly a nobility of life which had never dawned on them. Their eyes meet and one holds out his hand to the other.