Hawaii - James Michener [509]
But when he reached Tahiti, that Mecca of the South Seas, and his seaplane landed in the small bay that lies off Papeete, between the island of Moorea and the Diadem of Tahiti, making it surely the loveliest seaplane base in the world, his spirits were again excited, for these were the islands from which his people had come. This was the storied capital of the seas, and it was more beautiful than he had imagined. He felt proud to be of a blood that had started from Tahiti. He was disappointed in the legendary girls of the island, however, for few of them had teeth. Australian canned foods and a departure from the traditional fish diet had conspired to rob girls in their teens of their teeth, but, as one of the air corps majors said, "If a man goes for beautiful gums, he can have a hell of a time in Tahiti."
What interested Hoxworth most, however, was not the girls but the Chinese. The French governor pointed out that the Americans would find a secure base in Tahiti, because the Chinese were well in hand. They were allowed to own no land, were forbidden to enter many kinds of business, were severely spied on by currency control, and were in general so held down that the Americans could rest assured there would be no problems. Hoxworth started to say, "In Hawaii our island wealth is multiplied several times each year by the Chinese, who do own land and who do go into business. The only currency control we have is that all our banks would like to get hold of what the Chinese keep in their own banks." But as a visitor he kept his mouth shut and looked.
It seemed to him that Tahiti would be approximately ten times better off in all respects if the Chinese were not only allowed but encouraged to prosper. "You hear so much about Tahiti," he said in some disappointment to the general leading his party, "but compare their roads to Hawaii's."
"Shocking," the general agreed.
"Or their health services, or their stores, or their churches."
"Pretty grubby in comparison with what you fellows have done in Hawaii," the general agreed.
"Where are the Tahiti schools? Where is the university? Or the airport or the clean hospitals? You know, General, the more I see of the rest of Polynesia, the more impressed I am with Hawaii."
The general was concerned with other matters, and on the third day he announced to his team: "It's incredible, but there simply isn't any place here in Tahiti to put an airstrip. But there seems to be an island farther north where we could probably flatten out one of the reefs and find ourselves with a pretty fine landing strip."
"What island?" Hale asked.
"It's called Bora Bora," the general said, and early next morning he flew the PBY up there, and Hoxworth Hale thus became the first part-Hawaiian ever to see his ancestral island of Bora Bora from the air. He saw it on a bright sunny day, when a running sea was breaking on the outer reef, while the lagoon was a placid blue surrounding the dark island from which rose the tall mountains and the solid, brutal block of basalt in the middle. He gasped at the sheer physical delight of this fabled island, its deep-cut bays, its thundering surf, its outrigger canoes converging near the landing area, and he thought: "No wonder we still remember poems about this island," and he began to chant fragments of a passage his great-great-grandfather Abner Hale had transcribed about Bora Bora:
"Under the bright red stars hides the land,
Cut by the perfect bays, marked by the mountains,
Rimmed by the reef of flying spume,
Bora Bora of the muffled paddles!
Bora Bora of the great navigators."