Chapter 49 forty nine

I was staying at the Flower Hotel, and the hostess of the hotel, Mrs. Johnson, told me a sad story--how she missed a great opportunity.After Strickland's death some of his belongings were auctioned in the Papeete market.She made the trip herself because one of the items at the auction was an American-style kerosene stove she needed.She bought the stove for twenty-seven francs. "There are a dozen or so pictures," she said to me, "but none of them are framed, and nobody wants them. A few sell for ten francs, but most of them only sell for five or six francs a piece. Imagine if I Buy them and be rich now."

But Tiare Johnson was never going to get rich under any circumstances; she couldn't save any money.She is the daughter of a white captain who settled in Tahiti and a native woman.She was fifty years old when I met her, but she looked older than her years.She was large, strong, and fat; and her appearance would have been very dignified were it not for a benevolent face that could only express an expression of kindness and kindness.Her arms are like two thick legs of lamb, her breasts are like two big cabbages, and her fat face is full of fat, giving people a naked and ugly feeling.Beneath the face were chins (I can't say how many chins she had) that drooped all the way to her fat breasts.Usually she wears a loose pink blouse and a big straw hat, but when she let her hair down (which she always does because she is so proud of her hair), you will I saw that she had long, dark, curly hair; besides, her eyes were very young and sparkling.Her laugh was the most contagious I've ever heard; it started out as a low chuckle in the throat and grew louder until the whole of her fat body was trembling and quivering stand up.She likes three things best--jokes, wine and nice men.It was an honor to have met her.

She is the best chef on the island and has a deep love for good food.You can see her sitting in a low chair in the kitchen at any time from morning till night, surrounded by a Chinese cook and two or three local maids; Trick, take time to taste the mouth-watering delicacy she designed and cooked.If there is a tribute to a friend, she cooks herself.Hospitality was in her nature; as long as there was food to eat at the Flower Hotel, no one on the island would need to go hungry.She never evicted tenants for not paying their bills.Once, a person living in her hotel was in a bad situation, and she even provided him with board and lodging for several months without receiving a cent.In the end, the Chinese who ran the laundry stopped doing laundry for the man because he couldn't afford the money, so she mixed the tenant's clothes with her own and sent them to the laundry.She said she could not see the poor man in his dirty shirt, and besides, since he was a man, and a man must smoke, she gave the man a franc a day just to buy cigarettes for him.She was as obliging and kind to this man as she was to those customers who paid their bills once a week.

Age and weight had made her incapable of romance herself; but she was greatly interested in the affairs of young people.She believed that the sensual side of things was human nature, both men and women, and she always gave precepts and examples from her own rich experience. "My father found out I had a lover when I was not fifteen years old," she said. "He was the third officer on the Tropical Bird. A handsome young man." She sighed.It is said that a woman never forgets her first lover; but perhaps she does not always remember her first lover. "My father was a sensible man."

"What happened to him?" I asked. "He nearly beat me to death, and then he married me to Captain Johnson. I don't care. Captain Johnson is old, of course, but he's handsome, too." Tiare - This is a fragrant white flower, her father named her.People here said that if you smelled the scent of this flower, no matter how far you traveled, you would eventually be attracted back to Tahiti--Tiare remembered Strickland very well. "He comes here sometimes, and I used to see him walking up and down Papeete. I felt sorry for him, he was so thin, and his pockets were always empty. As soon as I heard he was in town, I sent A waiter went and got him, and came to eat with me. I got him a job once or twice, but he couldn't do anything for long. After a while, he wanted to go back to the wild woods again, so Early one morning, he was gone."

Strickland arrived in Tahiti about six months after leaving Marseilles.He was working on a sailboat sailing from Oakland to San Francisco and got a berth.When he arrived in Tahiti, all he took with him was a box of oil paints, an easel and a dozen canvases.He had a few pounds in his pocket, which he had earned from working in Sydney.He rented a small house with an aborigine outside the city.I figured that when he got to Tahiti it was like coming home.Tiare told me that Strickland once said to her something like this: "I was scrubbing the deck when suddenly a man said to me: 'Look, isn't that?' I looked up and saw the outline of the island. I knew right away that this was what I had been looking for my whole life. Then our ship crossed As I get closer, I feel like I remember this place. Sometimes when I walk around here, I see things that seem familiar. I could swear I've been here before."

"Sometimes that's the way the place attracts people," Tiare said. "I've heard of people who come ashore while their ships are loading, and stay for a few hours, but don't come back from there." I will not leave this place. I also heard that some people came here and planned to work for a company for a year. They cursed this place, and when they left, they swore that they would hang themselves and never come back. But Half a year later, you see them on this land again; and they'll tell you they couldn't live anywhere else."