Chapter XLV

by William Somerset Maugham

　　I have said already that but for the hazard of a journey toTahiti I should doubtless never have written this book. It isthither that after many wanderings Charles Strickland came,and it is there that he painted the pictures on which his famemost securely rests. I suppose no artist achieves completelythe realisation of the dream that obsesses him, and Strickland,harassed incessantly by his struggle with technique,managed, perhaps, less than others to express the visionthat he saw with his mind's eye; but in Tahiti thecircumstances were favourable to him; he found in hissurroundings the accidents necessary for his inspiration tobecome effective, and his later pictures give at least asuggestion of what he sought. They offer the imaginationsomething new and strange. It is as though in this farcountry his spirit, that had wandered disembodied, seeking atenement, at last was able to clothe itself in flesh. To usethe hackneyed phrase, here he found himself.It would seem that my visit to this remote island shouldimmediately revive my interest in Strickland, but the work Iwas engaged in occupied my attention to the exclusion ofsomething that was irrelevant, and it was not till I had beenthere some days that I even remembered his connection with it.After all, I had not seen him for fifteen years, and it wasnine since he died. But I think my arrival at Tahiti wouldhave driven out of my head matters of much more immediateimportance to me, and even after a week I found it not easy toorder myself soberly. I remember that on my first morning Iawoke early, and when I came on to the terrace of the hotel noone was stirring. I wandered round to the kitchen, but it waslocked, and on a bench outside it a native boy was sleeping.There seemed no chance of breakfast for some time, so Isauntered down to the water-front. The Chinamen were alreadybusy in their shops. The sky had still the pallor of dawn,and there was a ghostly silence on the lagoon. Ten miles awaythe island of Murea, like some high fastness of the HolyGrail, guarded its mystery.I did not altogether believe my eyes. The days that hadpassed since I left Wellington seemed extraordinary andunusual. Wellington is trim and neat and English; it remindsyou of a seaport town on the South Coast. And for three daysafterwards the sea was stormy. Gray clouds chased one anotheracross the sky. Then the wind dropped, and the sea was calmand blue. The Pacific is more desolate than other seas; itsspaces seem more vast, and the most ordinary journey upon ithas somehow the feeling of an adventure. The air you breatheis an elixir which prepares you for the unexpected. Nor is itvouchsafed to man in the flesh to know aught that more nearlysuggests the approach to the golden realms of fancy than theapproach to Tahiti. Murea, the sister isle, comes into viewin rocky splendour, rising from the desert sea mysteriously,like the unsubstantial fabric of a magic wand. With itsjagged outline it is like a Monseratt of the Pacific, and youmay imagine that there Polynesian knights guard with strangerites mysteries unholy for men to know. The beauty of theisland is unveiled as diminishing distance shows you indistincter shape its lovely peaks, but it keeps its secret asyou sail by, and, darkly inviolable, seems to fold itselftogether in a stony, inaccessible grimness. It would notsurprise you if, as you came near seeking for an opening inthe reef, it vanished suddenly from your view, and nothing metyour gaze but the blue loneliness of the Pacific.Tahiti is a lofty green island, with deep folds of a darkergreen, in which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery intheir sombre depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams,and you feel that in those umbrageous places life fromimmemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways.Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impressionis fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness tothe enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which youmay see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughingat his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because inthe communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone.For Tahiti is smiling and friendly; it is like alovely woman graciously prodigal of her charm and beauty;and nothing can be more conciliatory than the entrance into theharbour at Papeete. The schooners moored to the quay are trimand neat, the little town along the bay is white and urbane,and the flamboyants, scarlet against the blue sky, flaunttheir colour like a cry of passion. They are sensual with anunashamed violence that leaves you breathless. And the crowdthat throngs the wharf as the steamer draws alongside is gayand debonair; it is a noisy, cheerful, gesticulating crowd.It is a sea of brown faces. You have an impression ofcoloured movement against the flaming blue of the sky.Everything is done with a great deal of bustle, the unloadingof the baggage, the examination of the customs; and everyoneseems to smile at you. It is very hot. The colour dazzles you.