In The Public Market At Papeete
Two Known Lepers Run Stalls, And Heaven Alone Knows Through What
Channels Arrive At That Market The Daily Supplies Of Fish, Fruit,
Meat, And Vegetables.
The only happy way to go through the South
Seas is with a careless poise, without apprehension, and with a
Christian Science-like faith in the resplendent fortune of your own
particular star.
When you see a woman, afflicted with elephantiasis
wringing out cream from cocoanut meat with her naked hands, drink
and reflect how good is the cream, forgetting the hands that pressed
it out. Also, remember that diseases such as elephantiasis and
leprosy do not seem to be caught by contact.
We watched a Raratongan woman, with swollen, distorted limbs,
prepare our cocoanut cream, and then went out to the cook-shed where
Tehei and Bihaura were cooking dinner. And then it was served to us
on a dry-goods box in the house. Our hosts waited until we were
done and then spread their table on the floor. But our table! We
were certainly in the high seat of abundance. First, there was
glorious raw fish, caught several hours before from the sea and
steeped the intervening time in lime-juice diluted with water. Then
came roast chicken. Two cocoanuts, sharply sweet, served for drink.
There were bananas that tasted like strawberries and that melted in
the mouth, and there was banana-poi that made one regret that his
Yankee forebears ever attempted puddings. Then there was boiled
yam, boiled taro, and roasted feis, which last are nothing more or
less than large mealy, juicy, red-coloured cooking bananas.
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