Chapter 52 Chapter 52

I think the next three years were the happiest of Strickland's life.Aita's house is located about eight kilometers away from the ring road in Tahiti Island. To get there, you have to walk a winding path. The path is surrounded by lush tropical trees, which block out the sky and the sun.The house is a one-story house made of logs without any painting. It has two rooms and a small pergola outside the house, which is used as a kitchen.There is no furniture in the room, there is a mat on the floor as a bed, and a rocking chair is placed on the terrace.Immediately around the house there were banana trees, and the huge banana leaves were mottled and broken, like a distressed empress in tattered clothes.Behind the house there is also a pear tree, full of avocados, and a coconut tree, which gives the land a source of financing.Aita's father had planted a circle of crotons around the land before his death. They were luxuriant, colorful and full of vitality, enclosing the land like a ball of flame.A mango tree grows in front of the house, and there are two sister trees on the edge of the open space in front of the house, with flame-colored red flowers, which compete with the golden coconuts on the coconut tree.

Strickland lived on the produce of the land, and seldom visited Papeete again.Not far from where he lives, there is a small stream in which he often bathes.Occasionally a school of fish would come from upstream, and the natives would gather around the stream with spears and yell, piercing the terrified fish, which would have been hastening to swim out to sea.Sometimes Strickland also went to the reef, and he often came back with a basket of small and colorful fish.Aita would fry the small fish in coconut oil, or serve it with a large lobster.Sometimes, she cooks up a delicious meal of crabs, big land crabs that scurry around under your feet.There are many wild orange trees growing on the mountain. From time to time, Aita will go up the mountain with two or three women from the village, pick a lot of green, sweet and juicy wild fruits, and return home full of rewards.Then, when the coconuts were ripe, and it was time to pick, her cousins, or cousins ​​(like all the locals, Ata had a whole bunch of relatives) would climb up the tree and take the big, Throw down the overripe coconut.They split the coconuts and put them in the sun to dry.Then, they took the copra out and put it in a bag.The women then transport the sacks of copra to a trader who lives in a village near the lagoon, who will exchange the women for rice, soap and canned meat, and even a small sum of money.Sometimes, if there is a banquet in the neighboring village, a pig will be slaughtered.Then people would go to the village, and they would eat so much that they were going to throw up, and then they would dance and sing hymns.

But Strickland lived in a house far from the village.Tahitians are lazy people, they like to travel and gossip, but they don't like to walk, so there may be weeks when both Strickland and Ata are alone.He paints, reads, and when it gets dark in the evening, the two of them sit together on the terrace, smoking a cigarette and admiring the night view.Later, when Aita was pregnant with a child, an old woman came to help her deliver the baby, and the old lady stayed behind after Aita delivered the child.Soon the old woman's granddaughter came to stay with her, and then a young man came - no one knew where he came from or who he was related to - but he settled in without a care down and live with them.