Sam Zebba setting out on his trip to Tahiti 1952.

“The Pacific is inconstant and uncertain like the soul of man,” wrote Somerset Maugham.

The year was 1952. It was nearly two weeks that we had seen no land. In silence we glided over the huge planet, hardly recognizing it as our earth. The first few days were foggy and overcast, but on the fourth day the sun came out and painted the water deep blue, thrusting here and there through the glossy surface of the ocean, bottomless shafts of clear transparent light. Day after day we could watch the shadows at noon grow shorter, until they turned about and pointed northward. We were well into the Southern hemisphere, but beyond that we knew no more. All around the water was one big mass of solid desert. It was quiet, and the ocean could not have a name more fitting.

The S.S. Waihemo (“Bitter Water” in Maori), under Captain White, had sailed from Los Angeles harbor one August afternoon on its regular Pacific run. It was a pitiful departure. No more than a handful of bystanders waved the ship farewell as the rusty freighter, loaded to the brim, began to gain distance from the dock. Lumber from Canada was piled high on the open decks. I stumbled over sacks of raw onions destined for Fiji, and caught my ankles between gas cylinders for the Cook Islands. Everywhere, we were likely to lean up against wet paint. Nor was it that quiet on board. All day long the stubborn whine of electric hammers removing rust from the plates like a dentist boring into a patient’s tooth, sent cold shivers up my spine. And towards evening when the work was done and the promise of a magnificent sunset was near, a shipment of breeding hens for New Caledonia exhausted themselves in loud rebellion.

I placed a deck chair comfortably in the breeze and started to get acquainted with the Pacific. Quickly I discovered an amazing wealth of history, literature and art. Herman Melville, Jack London and Somerset Maugham had traveled extensively through the islands, and their works written there rank among their best. Robert Louis Stevenson made his home in Samoa at the age of 32 and lived there until his death, alas only eight years later. The lush images of Paul Gaugin’s Tahitian women were embedded in the West’s collective consciousness. Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the late patriarchs of South Seas literature (Mutiny on the Bounty), went to Tahiti after World War 1 and never returned. Frederic O’Brien caused a mass movement of escapists to the islands. Beatrice Grimshaw captured the beauty of the Pacific. William Stone caught the innocence of Polynesia. Robert Dean Frisbie married a Polynesian girl and had five children with her, one of whom, a daughter, became a writer. Tom Neal spent a good part of his life alone on a small atoll, and lived to write about it. And since WW2, James Michener emerged as the modern exponent of the South Pacific.

There were five other passengers besides me on board, and seven times a day we descended to the tiny saloon for meals, where early morning tea, breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, tea, and evening supper were served. Captain White, a stout, graying Australian and the only man on board wearing a uniform, presided. Eager to engage in conversation, he was a bit of a philosopher. “As you grow older,” he once told us, “you like to be occupied. Long weekends lose their thrill. Idleness is a quality of youth.”

Two of the passengers were young men from Utah on their way to a Mormon mission. One was a skinny farmhand, barely 20 years old, the other a former barber, a bit older. Much of the time they kept to themselves, studying their future duties. Neither had acquired special training for their new task. All they knew was that their mission would last two years, that they had to support themselves during their service, and that one did not refuse the church when invited to serve. Perhaps this lay approach and the disciples’ youthfulness, characteristic among the Mormon missionaries, could explain their great popularity in Polynesia. The Mormons could boast of the most active church in the islands, and their white modern temple in Papeete was “the only place in Oceania with a pipe organ and nine toilets”.

Another passenger was Papa Michel, an aging, ill-tempered fellow, displaying two disfigured fingers when he spoke. Born on the islands - his father an American Navy captain, his mother a native Marquesan - Michel’s home was nominally in Tahiti, where he lived “Christ, on the bum”. A restless man, he often escaped to sea. He was a sailor long before the Panama Canal opened (1914), and he fought in Haiti in the US occupation of 1915. During WW1 he saw action in the Navy, for which he was decorated twice, and in WW2, while in the Merchant Marine, he fought in the Philippines. Michel was married to a Marquesan woman and they had a grown daughter. “Those natives,” he said unexpectedly, “Christ, I can’t stand them.” But neither did Michel settle anywhere else. Every time the sea became too big, he returned home. This time he was coming home for good, too old even for operating the small ferry in Morocco, his last job. “If only we could arrive in Papeete one day later,” he smiled bitterly. “Do you think I really want to go there?"

The fourth passenger on board was Sam Kumler, a gentleman of leisure – of sorts. Sam had fallen into a small inheritance in his youth. Too meager to support him in the USA, it enabled him to survive in places like Mexico, Guatemala and Tahiti, where he spent most of his life. He was a bit of a miser, and conspicuously void of inspiration. “I wouldn’t give fifty bucks to learn Tahitian. They’d treat me like a native if I spoke their language,” he explained. “I’ve never gone shark fishing,” he would say, or “I’ve never been to Europe.” “I’ve never read anything of importance,” he once told me, “and I don’t miss it one iota.” During the war years he remained in Tahiti. “You wouldn’t think I’d get myself mixed up in anything like that.”

When the war ended he wanted to return to the States, but it was impossible to obtain passage. One time a ship docked in Papeete and the steward fell ill. Sam took the vacancy and worked his way home – as a waiter. He did of late, however, have a disquieting dilemma. While his money was locked in a trust fund, he felt the time was ripe to dig into his capital. “If only I could know when I’d kick the bucket, I’d work it out so beautifully – I’d spend my last buck the day I die.”

The fifth passenger was Homer Morgan, a handsome, energetic young man. The son of an affluent Los Angeles family, he had enjoyed a fine upbringing - Beverly Hills High School, a brief period of army service in Europe towards the end of the war, and the University of Southern California. He owned a sailboat, drove a convertible, and dated pretty girls in Hollywood. However, the playboy life he led after graduating did not satisfy him. Searching for adventure, he and a friend followed up an advertisement calling for a partnership in a shark-fishing enterprise off Tahiti. They made an investment, but ended up with a shack on the beach and a lagoon full of fish. “I’d be darned if I was going to write home for dough,” said Homer. Australia was next on the agenda. Homer’s friend went ahead, and Homer was to follow on the monthly steamer. But by the time the steamer arrived he had fallen in love with a beautiful Chinese-Polynesian girl. He was married in the big wooden house of his bride’s huge and prominent family in Papeete, and he made Tahiti his home. Tutoring in English and initiating an English language program on Radio Tahiti (15 minutes a week), he was now returning from one of his periodic trips to the mainland. In the next half century, Homer would become a prosperous tourist entrepreneur, a part-time writer (A Dinosaur in Paradise), and one of Tahiti’s most celebrated US expatriates.

As for me, the sixth passenger aboard, I was going to Tahiti on a film job. Freshly graduated from UCLA in film-making, it was time for me to gain experience in the field. This was not easy, the film companies being somewhat mistrustful of the first crop of graduates in this new academic discipline, and indeed our training was mostly in the documentary realm, not in dramatic films. One day a call came from Abe Mayer, a respected talent agent at MCA, Hollywood’s largest artist agency. Rather than representing individual artists, MCA was famous for putting “packages” together (like a book, a director, an actor and a studio). Abe was a gentle, kindly man I had met several times before.

“Say, how would you like to go to Tahiti? -- yes, TA-hiti – documentary, right up your alley – local party, wealthy Frenchman, lived there all his life – he wants to make movies – he needs someone to teach him – yes, he’s got equipment - no, no, you are going to direct, run the operation for a while – yeah, I’m flying down there myself -don’t worry, we’ll work it out – you’d like to kick it around? – you could drop by? - yes, an hour is fine.” A peculiar proposition, not really what MCA was normally about, but Abe had a point: documentary was my alley. He didn’t need to twist my arm.

One day before we reached our destination we saw land. We were at the Western end of a collection of coral islands, the Tuamotus, extending over a thousand miles of ocean. “There is no other group of islands so remote from any continent,” wrote Nordhoff and Hall. Scattered clusters of dark blue coconut palms appeared on the horizon. Presently we were passing between two atolls, Makatea and Tikeahu, both visible in the distance on either side. The sight was strange and unfamiliar. Graceful palms here and there, white surf mildly battering against the reefs but, paradoxically, no land. I felt like a thirsty desert traveler who sees an oasis and finds a mirage. That night we passed a ship in the distance, a copra schooner from Papeete. The two ships exchanged greetings, sounding their horns. It was good to know we were no longer alone in the world. The next morning we arrived in Tahiti.

It was dark when we awoke. The ship was still, the hum of its engines gone. Idly, the Waihemo waited for the morning. A sweet tropical scent came to the cabin with each gust of wind from the land. There, in front, lay the jewel of the Pacific, majestic and awe-inspiring, a weird mountainous mass clad in misty, wet green. And behind us in the distance, like a dark painting, Tahiti’s counterpart – the dim outline of Morea, rugged and forbidding.

When day broke the pilot arrived accompanied by an official boarding party. Polite but excitable Frenchmen, dressed in colonial uniforms, checked each passenger’s papers. The ship then entered the lagoon of Papeete through the natural pass, a break in the endless reef encircling the island. Not a hundred feet away, on the reef’s edge, stood a young fisherman. His figure, strong and undaunted by the ship’s entrance, remained a dark silhouette against the emptiness around him. He stood there, perplexed, as though saying, “When will you white men learn not to disturb my fish?”

Less than half an hour later we were docked at Papeete, the heart of Tahiti and capital of French Oceania. The arrival of a ship always caused great excitement on the island, and ours was no exception. The pier was packed with people, brown bodies simply clad, happy faces, and flowers everywhere. When the islanders came aboard to welcome the new arrivals, Abe Mayer was among them. He had arrived earlier on a small seaplane from Hawaii, and the effects of an extended vacation were manifest on him. He placed a large hei of tiare blossoms on my neck, kissed me traditionally on both cheeks, and whispered confidentially, “the deal is on.”

Gaston Guilbert, the man I had come to see, was the owner of the Oceanic Garage, situated on the main street near the port. A wooden structure in ill repair, it was cluttered with used crates and junk, the dusty walls decorated with faded prints of new model cars. Gaston, lean and light of build, with dark hair and eyes set deep in his skull, was handsome in appearance. But his eyes were restless, and there was a tense nervousness in his manner. His handshake was ugly – wet and cold, and of his bitten fingernails there was hardly a remnant. Our introduction, in Abe’s cheery ministration, was brief. Gaston hastily arranged for Tu the taxi driver to take me to Chez Rivnac, an aging bungalow pension along the lagoon, not far from Gaston’s own residence. As we drove along the shaded asphalt road encircling the island, I wondered about the edgy nature of the man I had just met, starkly inconsistent with the serene environment we were passing.

No dwelling could have characterized the South Seas more than the simple hut allotted to me. Built of yellow bamboo with a palm-thatched roof, the front portion rested in the green shade of coconut palms, while the back, supported on poles, extended out over the beach. There were flowers in the hut: Tiare, white and sweet, like the ones I wore around my shoulders, Frangipani, large and strongly perfumed, and Aute, red and wild-looking. The door had no lock and remained open. Through the hanging palm-leaf shutters I could see the reef, within swimming distance, where the surf sprouted up in fountains of spume. Towards sunset Venus touched the glassy surface of the lagoon and left a thin white line approaching and almost touching me.

The first evening was memorable. Gaston threw a luau for the new arrivals. Among the guests were Abe, myself, Gaston’s old acquaintance Sam Kumler, and Captain White as the guest of honor. A troupe of musicians entered with guitars, maracas, and an unceasing enthusiasm for Tahitian music. They were led by a well-fed young vocalist who earned her living as Gaston’s laundry girl. The table, set with fruits and flowers, was a work of art, and the meal delicious. Gaston was distant and quiet. As I soon learnt, he lived alone, and had little yearning for human company.

Gaston’s home – it could easily be called a mansion – was an assortment of bungalows, laid out in orderly fashion in his well-kept residential plantation between the asphalt road encircling the island and the beach. Only two of the buildings, however, served for living. One was the spacious main house, in which the airy living room and Gaston’s own quarters were located, and the other a house for guests. The living room featured a bar resembling a ship’s interior. Several paintings of Tahiti by resident European artists hung on the few walls, and through the large openings lush tropical verdure shot up. Hundreds of brown baby lizards clung to the cream-colored ceiling, baking motionless upside down in the heat. A nasty old toucan, displaying colorful but clipped feathers, walked freely about the house. It had been brought years ago from Mexico by Gaston’s friend Sam Kumler, doubtless one of the few gifts Sam ever gave and Gaston ever received. Near the bar was a dining set where Gaston had his lonely meals. A heavy ship’s bell, heard well across the lagoon, sounded before a meal was served to summon Gaston to table.

From the main house a narrow concrete path, shaded by a thatch, led to a hut which served as kitchen. In it reigned an ancient, wrinkled Chinese cook, high-voiced and deaf. Aki was his name, and no one knew how old he was or from whence he came. On the whole island he had no friends or family. Gaston decided that the old man wouldn’t know what to do with a day off, and therefore never gave him one. It was Aki who rang the bell when dinner was ready, and it was he who served it. Aki was both fearful and strangely defiant of his master. When Gaston suddenly shrieked Aki’s name, the startled old man would crouch and tremble. But Aki pronounced the kitchen taboo, and even Gaston lacked the daring to enter it. If Gaston was but a minute late to table, Aki would attack the bell with all the might of his slight body until Gaston obediently took his seat and waited for the old man to halt his wrath.

The rest of the bungalows on the estate were used as playthings for Gaston’s odd preoccupation with film-making. There was a tiny projection room, a small hut converted to a recording studio and several storage huts with assorted equipment. Gaston was particularly proud to point to an elderly Tahitian whose job it was, “when not in production”, to wash Gaston’s cars. The man was Matahi, renowned for his famous portrayal in his youth of the unfortunate lover in F.W. Murnau’s and Robert Flaherty’s silent South Sea classic Tabu (Paramount Pictures, 1931). “A collector, that’s what he is,” said Sam Kumler. “Like my mother, she collects china. Gaston collects motion picture paraphernalia.”

In the discussions about the proposed project we were to do, Abe tried to steer Gaston toward a modest, realistic goal - a straightforward documentary capturing the unique allure and beauty of the islands. Gaston had his mind set on an epic production which he named “Motu Ino” after a small islet he had once visited. He would not hear of any film project other than that. But he also argued that there was no girl pretty enough for the part, and that he was about to wait for a certain 12-year-old from the other side of the island to grow up and become his star. “Is there a script, or a story?” I inquired. “I don’t need a script,” Gaston replied, “I know it. I know everything in it. I don’t need to write it.” Dumbfounded as we were, the next day Gaston surprised us even more. “Of course there is a script,” he said calmly. “I wrote it for five years. It’s finished. It’s mimeographed. But I am not showing it to anyone.” He walked over to his desk, fingered through a stack of folders, picked one and waved it in the air. “Here, look how thick!” Carefully he put the volume into a drawer, kicked the drawer shut with his knee, and walked out triumphantly into the plantation. I noticed, however, that the drawer had not snapped shut when Gaston rammed it. The book he had just waved was no script. It was an old spare-parts catalogue.

In disbelief, Abe buried his crimson face in his hands. Although he had come to Tahiti primarily for an island holiday, this outcome was an insult to his professional competence. For me it was, alas, much worse. I had come for nothing. The next ship out of Tahiti was almost a month away - a freighter to New York, of all places, via the Panama Canal. Short of choices, I booked my passage and proceeded to wait out my forced internment in paradise.

It turned out to be one of the happiest and most enlightening episodes of my life. There was much to learn on the island. It was taboo, for example, to wake someone when asleep. If urgent, as is wont to be in our age, the acceptable way was to hold a flower gently near the person’s nose. Life on the island was unbelievably uncomplicated. Food was abundant, want was unknown. The lagoon teemed with fish, and coconuts, when ripe, fell from the sky. It was undoubtedly this Garden of Eden quality that had fired Western imagination ever since Captain Wallis, on the H.M.S. Duff, threw anchor in Tahiti in 1767.

Once, while photographing an elderly fisherman at his work, someone asked me if I knew who the man was. “No,” I said, “he just looks right.” “He is the son of Paul Gaugin,” was the comeback. I was baffled. Should I have felt pity for an abandoned, uneducated wastrel, or esteem for a man clearly at peace with himself?

Quinn’s Bar in downtown Papeete opened its doors to the public at 9 am. During the mornings business was slow; a keen owner might have remained closed until later in the day. But Quinn’s was more than a bar. It was a refuge for the troubled, a sanctuary for the unfortunate. The heart and soul of Quinn’s sociability was Nabuco the waitress. Middle-aged and hoarse, there was wisdom in her eyes and authority in her voice. People in distress came to her to seek advice, and she knew how to set things right. For local color and a bit of drama there was no better place to find it than at Quinn’s. This morning Tita was there, Teave’s wife from across the island. ”Today he will come,” said Nabuco, “he can’t go on fishing forever.” “Even if he walked in now, I wouldn’t go home,” said Tita, “that’s final.” Oh yes you would, thought Nabuco, but said, “Have a beer, Tita, he’s not here yet anyway.” Teave knew where to look for his wife, and upon arriving in Papeete on the morning bus, walked straight to Quinn’s. He strode over to Tita and stood beside her. “Let’s go home,” he said quietly. “I’m not coming,” she answered. “A little later, then,” said Teave gently and sat down at the other end of the bar. “Nabuco,” he shouted in anger, “One beer.”    

Two people with whom I became friendly in Papeete were John and Mary Caldwell, who sailed into the bay one afternoon on their little ketch, the Tropic Seas, after many months at sea. They had come from Los Angeles and were on their way to Australia. Astonishingly, with them aboard were their two children, aged five and two, and as if this were not enough, Mary was in her eighth month of pregnancy. With due respect to their courage, there was a feeling, even among the small group of yachtsmen moored along the bay who had accomplished the incredible feat of crossing the Pacific, that having such young children aboard was a bit too reckless. Mary Caldwell answered this reproach. They had lost one baby to a virus infection in America, and the smaller boy had a dangerous immune deficiency. “If this is our fate among doctors in the civilized world, I am not afraid to have my children on the boat,” she said, “There is no Virus X at sea.” While in Tahiti, Mary gave birth to a healthy baby, and John eventually wrote a book about their passage, Family at Sea (Little Brown, New York, 1956), and became even more successful with Desperate Voyage (Sheridan House, New York, 1991).  

One of the most splendid young men I met in Papeete was light-footed, industrious Ben Bambridge. A paramedic at the Pacific Tropical Diseases Project, he drove around the island in a white jeep, visiting households, taking blood samples, collecting larvae, and enforcing mosquito control measures. Tahiti had a high rate of infection from filariasis, a mosquito-borne worm which attacks the lymphatic system, ultimately leading to elephantiasis, and Ben was the frontrunner of this health campaign. He spoke fluent English though he had never left the island. I spent a lovely Sunday at Ben’s country house, built of stone and covered in tropical foliage. Ben’s wife prepared raw fish in coconut milk, Tahiti’s specialty, and with their three boys we climbed the dense mountainside to their hidden waterfall. Ben’s family history was remarkable. His grandfather was the son of an English missionary, Thomas Bambridge, who had married a Tahitian girl. Ben’s grandmother was the daughter of an English pirate, Tapscott, who had abducted a wife from the Cannibal Islands. Ben’s father had married a Tahitian who had Spanish ancestry. And Ben’s own wife was half Chinese. Ben told me of an American he had met who had prompted him to search into his ancestry. “I wrote it all down for him. He said he would get it published, but I never heard from him again. His name was Michener. He said he was a writer.” Upon my return to civilization, I quickly found that Michener had kept his word, in Return to Paradise (Mass Market Paperback, New York, 1950).

They say you must cry when you leave Tahiti. Life started early that morning. The whole town seemed to be at the waterfront. On board, busy customs officials shouted, and porters perspired under heavy trunks. Along the dock old women selling heis ran out of stock and pooled their skills to hastily make new ones. Islanders came aboard to say farewell, and I too received visitors - beyond my expectations. Tu, the taxi driver, came aboard and put a hei on my shoulders. A kiosk woman from whom I had once bought shell necklaces also brought a hei. Homer Morgan, John Caldwell, and Ben Bambridge, came with heis and stayed until the ship sailed. The two Mormon lads came by. “We’ll soon be off to one of the Tuamotus,” they said. “There’s no church there as yet, but we hope to start one.” Soon stewards with bored faces walked along the decks ringing their bells, to which visitors paid scant attention. Abe Mayer came up with heis. “See you at the office,” he said encouragingly. He was due to take the seaplane to Honolulu in a few days. Sam Kumler came to shake hands too, although he brought no hei with him. Gaston Guilbert was not to be seen. He was known to avoid coming to departures.

Finally the ship started to move, so slowly it was hardly noticeable. Spontaneously the people on shore broke out in a farewell song, Mauru Uru. This was the moment when many reached for their handkerchiefs, for it marked the very instant when the present turns into the past before your eyes. Passengers began to throw their heis overboard in the direction of their loved ones. A pretty Tahitian girl in the crowd, wearing a white skirt, waved to someone near me. She was the quiet young chambermaid at Chez Rivnac. I looked round to see whom she was seeing off, but no one responded to her signals. When I looked back at her, she laughed and pointed at me. I was astonished. “Thank you,” I yelled out, and then, quite touched, “What is your name?” We were nearly too far. Maybe she understood, for she answered something, perhaps “Mo-e.” “Moe!” I called out, but she heard me no more.

The ship’s retreat was painfully slow. For a long time people on shore stood waving, but long after most had dispersed, Moe was still there. She bade me farewell in true Polynesian fashion, slowly waving her arms up and sideways. Willingly I waved back. No one felt the finality of departure as profoundly as the island women. It was like in the old days when the men left in their outrigger canoes to brave the endless ocean, and the

women knew in their heart who of the men would return and who would be lost at sea.

By now I could no longer see Moe’s arms, and soon the white spot, her skirt, was also lost to sight. Tahiti had been kind and tolerant and gentle. I was grateful for having been there, and I knew I would probably not see this paradise again. I felt the tears rise in me. I was crying.

We were now beyond the reef. The sea was choppy. I threw my last hei overboard. 

*Trouble in Tahiti is the name of a one-act opera, libretto and music, by Leonard Bernstein, 1950.

     

Image (left) Sam Zebba’s hut at Chez Rivac  (right) A girl called Rosa

 

 

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June Henderson
2015-01-18
A slight correction to Ben's story. Thomas Bambridge arrived in Tahiti after serving a sentence in Australia for stealing linen (he was a Princes Stuff Weaver) in London. He was transported in 1818 on the "Lord Sidmouth" and went to Tonga on completion of his sentence with two Wesleyan Missionaries (perhaps this is where the confusion takes place). I imagine he was trying to work his way back to England when he fell in love with his wife, Marea and began a Bambridge dynasty which now spreads throughout the world. I am a Gt Gt Gt Grandaughter of Thomas Bambridge living in Australia.

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About the author

Sam Zebba

Born in 1924, Dr. Sam Zebba immigrated to Palestine from Latvia with his parents when he was 9. He served in the Haganah and in the British Army during WW2. A literary scholar and occasional writ...
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