The Moon and Sixpence

Chapter LII
I 
SUPPOSE
the next three years were the happiest
of Strickland’s life. Ata’s house stood about
eight kilometres from the road that runs round
the island, and you went to it along a winding
pathway shaded by the luxuriant trees of the
tropics. It was a bungalow of unpainted wood,
consisting of two small rooms, and outside was
a small shed that served as a kitchen. There was
no furniture except the mats they used as beds,
and a rocking-chair, which stood on the veran-
dah. Bananas with their great ragged leaves, like
the tattered habiliments of an empress in adver-
sity, grew close up to the house. There was a tree
just behind which bore alligator pears, and all
about were the cocoa-nuts which gave the land
its revenue. Ata’s father had planted crotons
round his property, and they grew in coloured
profusion, gay and brilliant; they fenced the land
with flame. A mango grew in front of the house,
and at the edge of the clearing were two
flamboyants, twin trees, that challenged the gold
of the cocoa-nuts with their scarlet flowers.
Here Strickland lived, coming seldom to
Papeete, on the produce of the land. There was a
little stream that ran not far away, in which he
bathed, and down this on occasion would come
a shoal of fish. Then the natives would assemble
with spears, and with much shouting would
transfix the great startled things as they hurried
down to the sea. Sometimes Strickland would go
down to the reef, and come back with a basket
of small, coloured fish that Ata would fry in co-
coa-nut oil, or with a lobster; and sometimes she
would make a savoury dish of the great land-
crabs that scuttled away under your feet. Up the
mountain were wild-orange trees, and now and
then Ata would go with two or three women from
the village and return laden with the green,
sweet, luscious fruit. Then the cocoa-nuts would
be ripe for picking, and her cousins (like all the

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natives, Ata had a host of relatives) would swarm
up the trees and throw down the big ripe nuts.
They split them open and put them in the sun to
dry. Then they cut out the copra and put it into
sacks, and the women would carry it down to
the trader at the village by the lagoon, and he
would give in exchange for it rice and soap and
tinned meat and a little money. Sometimes there
would be a feast in the neighbourhood, and a
pig would be killed. Then they would go and eat
themselves sick, and dance, and sing hymns.
But the house was a long way from the village,
and the Tahitians are lazy. They love to travel
and they love to gossip, but they do not care to
walk, and for weeks at a time Strickland and Ata
lived alone. He painted and he read, and in the
evening, when it was dark, they sat together on
the verandah, smoking and looking at the night.
Then Ata had a baby, and the old woman who
came up to help her through her trouble stayed
on. Presently the granddaughter of the old
woman came to stay with her, and then a youth
appeared — no one quite knew where from or to
whom he belonged — but he settled down with
them in a happy-go-lucky way, and they all lived
together,

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The Moon and Sixpence