Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham

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When the doors of the Asile de Nuit were closed to them,
Strickland and Captain Nichols sought the hospitality of Tough Bill.
This was the master of a sailors' boarding-house, a huge
mulatto with a heavy fist, who gave the stranded mariner
food and shelter till he found him a berth. They lived with
him a month, sleeping with a dozen others, Swedes, negroes,
Brazilians, on the floor of the two bare rooms in his house
which he assigned to his charges; and every day they went with
him to the Place Victor Gelu, whither came ships' captains in
search of a man. He was married to an American woman, obese
and slatternly, fallen to this pass by Heaven knows what
process of degradation, and every day the boarders took it in
turns to help her with the housework. Captain Nichols looked
upon it as a smart piece of work on Strickland's part that he
had got out of this by painting a portrait of Tough Bill.
Tough Bill not only paid for the canvas, colours, and brushes,
but gave Strickland a pound of smuggled tobacco into the
bargain. For all I know, this picture may still adorn the
parlour of the tumbledown little house somewhere near the
Quai de la Joliette, and I suppose it could now be sold for
fifteen hundred pounds. Strickland's idea was to ship on some
vessel bound for Australia or New Zealand, and from there make his
way to Samoa or Tahiti. I do not know how he had come upon
the notion of going to the South Seas, though I remember that
his imagination had long been haunted by an island, all green
and sunny, encircled by a sea more blue than is found in
Northern latitudes. I suppose that he clung to Captain
Nichols because he was acquainted with those parts, and it was
Captain Nichols who persuaded him that he would be more
comfortable in Tahiti.

"You see, Tahiti's French," he explained to me. "And the
French aren't so damned technical."

I thought I saw his point.

Strickland had no papers, but that was not a matter to
disconcert Tough Bill when he saw a profit (he took the first
month's wages of the sailor for whom he found a berth), and he
provided Strickland with those of an English stoker who had
providentially died on his hands. But both Captain Nichols
and Strickland were bound East, and it chanced that the only
opportunities for signing on were with ships sailing West.
Twice Strickland refused a berth on tramps sailing for the
United States, and once on a collier going to Newcastle.
Tough Bill had no patience with an obstinacy which could only
result in loss to himself, and on the last occasion he flung
both Strickland and Captain Nichols out of his house without
more ado. They found themselves once more adrift.

Tough Bill's fare was seldom extravagant, and you rose from
his table almost as hungry as you sat down, but for some days
they had good reason to regret it. They learned what hunger was.
The Cuillere de Soupe and the Asile de Nuit were both
closed to them, and their only sustenance was the wedge of
bread which the Bouchee de Pain provided. They slept where
they could, sometimes in an empty truck on a siding near the
station, sometimes in a cart behind a warehouse; but it was
bitterly cold, and after an hour or two of uneasy dozing they
would tramp the streets again. What they felt the lack of
most bitterly was tobacco, and Captain Nichols, for his part,
could not do without it; he took to hunting the "Can o' Beer,"
for cigarette-ends and the butt-end of cigars which the
promenaders of the night before had thrown away.

"I've tasted worse smoking mixtures in a pipe," he added,
with a philosophic shrug of his shoulders, as he took a couple
of cigars from the case I offered him, putting one in his mouth
and the other in his pocket.

Now and then they made a bit of money. Sometimes a mail
steamer would come in, and Captain Nichols, having scraped
acquaintance with the timekeeper, would succeed in getting the
pair of them a job as stevedores. When it was an English boat,
they would dodge into the forecastle and get a hearty
breakfast from the crew. They took the risk of running
against one of the ship's officers and being hustled down the
gangway with the toe of a boot to speed their going.

"There's no harm in a kick in the hindquarters when your
belly's full," said Captain Nichols, "and personally I never
take it in bad part. An officer's got to think about discipline."

I had a lively picture of Captain Nichols flying headlong down
a narrow gangway before the uplifted foot of an angry mate,
and, like a true Englishman, rejoicing in the spirit of the
Mercantile Marine.

There were often odd jobs to be got about the fish-market.
Once they each of them earned a franc by loading trucks with
innumerable boxes of oranges that had been dumped down on the quay.
One day they had a stroke of luck: one of the boarding-masters
got a contract to paint a tramp that had come in
from Madagascar round the Cape of Good Hope, and they spent
several days on a plank hanging over the side, covering the
rusty hull with paint. It was a situation that must have
appealed to Strickland's sardonic humour. I asked Captain
Nichols how he bore himself during these hardships.

"Never knew him say a cross word," answered the Captain.
"He'd be a bit surly sometimes, but when we hadn't had a bite
since morning, and we hadn't even got the price of a lie down
at the Chink's, he'd be as lively as a cricket."

I was not surprised at this. Strickland was just the man to
rise superior to circumstances, when they were such as to
occasion despondency in most; but whether this was due to
equanimity of soul or to contradictoriness it would be
difficult to say.

The Chink's Head was a name the beach-combers gave to a
wretched inn off the Rue Bouterie, kept by a one-eyed Chinaman,
where for six sous you could sleep in a cot and for
three on the floor. Here they made friends with others in as
desperate condition as themselves, and when they were
penniless and the night was bitter cold, they were glad to
borrow from anyone who had earned a stray franc during the day
the price of a roof over their heads. They were not niggardly,
these tramps, and he who had money did not hesitate
to share it among the rest. They belonged to all the
countries in the world, but this was no bar to good-fellowship;
for they felt themselves freemen of a country whose
frontiers include them all, the great country of Cockaine.

"But I guess Strickland was an ugly customer when he was roused,"
said Captain Nichols, reflectively. "One day we ran
into Tough Bill in the Place, and he asked Charlie for the
papers he'd given him."

"`You'd better come and take them if you want them,' says Charlie.

"He was a powerful fellow, Tough Bill, but he didn't quite
like the look of Charlie, so he began cursing him. He called
him pretty near every name he could lay hands on, and when
Tough Bill began cursing it was worth listening to him.
Well, Charlie stuck it for a bit, then he stepped forward and he
just said: `Get out, you bloody swine.' It wasn't so much
what he said, but the way he said it. Tough Bill never spoke
another word; you could see him go yellow, and he walked away
as if he'd remembered he had a date."

Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, did not use exactly
the words I have given, but since this book is meant for
family reading I have thought it better, at the expense of
truth, to put into his mouth expressions familiar to the
domestic circle.

Now, Tough Bill was not the man to put up with humiliation at
the hands of a common sailor. His power depended on his prestige,
and first one, then another, of the sailors who lived in
his house told them that he had sworn to do Strickland in.

One night Captain Nichols and Strickland were sitting in one
of the bars of the Rue Bouterie. The Rue Bouterie is a narrow
street of one-storeyed houses, each house consisting of but
one room; they are like the booths in a crowded fair or the
cages of animals in a circus. At every door you see a woman.
Some lean lazily against the side-posts, humming to themselves
or calling to the passer-by in a raucous voice, and some
listlessly read. They are French. Italian, Spanish,
Japanese, coloured; some are fat and some are thin; and under
the thick paint on their faces, the heavy smears on their
eyebrows, and the scarlet of their lips, you see the lines of
age and the scars of dissipation. Some wear black shifts and
flesh-coloured stockings; some with curly hair, dyed yellow,
are dressed like little girls in short muslin frocks.
Through the open door you see a red-tiled floor, a large wooden bed,
and on a deal table a ewer and a basin. A motley crowd
saunters along the streets -- Lascars off a P. and O., blond
Northmen from a Swedish barque, Japanese from a man-of-war,
English sailors, Spaniards, pleasant-looking fellows from a
French cruiser, negroes off an American tramp. By day it is
merely sordid, but at night, lit only by the lamps in the
little huts, the street has a sinister beauty. The hideous
lust that pervades the air is oppressive and horrible, and yet
there is something mysterious in the sight which haunts and
troubles you. You feel I know not what primitive force which
repels and yet fascinates you. Here all the decencies of
civilisation are swept away, and you feel that men are face to
face with a sombre reality. There is an atmosphere that is at
once intense and tragic.

In the bar in which Strickland and Nichols sat a mechanical
piano was loudly grinding out dance music. Round the room
people were sitting at table, here half a dozen sailors
uproariously drunk, there a group of soldiers; and in the
middle, crowded together, couples were dancing. Bearded
sailors with brown faces and large horny hands clasped their
partners in a tight embrace. The women wore nothing but a shift.
Now and then two sailors would get up and dance together.
The noise was deafening. People were singing, shouting,
laughing; and when a man gave a long kiss to the
girl sitting on his knees, cat-calls from the English sailors
increased the din. The air was heavy with the dust beaten up
by the heavy boots of the men, and gray with smoke. It was
very hot. Behind the bar was seated a woman nursing her baby.
The waiter, an undersized youth with a flat, spotty face,
hurried to and fro carrying a tray laden with glasses of beer.

In a little while Tough Bill, accompanied by two huge negroes,
came in, and it was easy to see that he was already three
parts drunk. He was looking for trouble. He lurched against
a table at which three soldiers were sitting and knocked over
a glass of beer. There was an angry altercation, and the
owner of the bar stepped forward and ordered Tough Bill to go.
He was a hefty fellow, in the habit of standing no nonsense
from his customers, and Tough Bill hesitated. The landlord
was not a man he cared to tackle, for the police were on his side,
and with an oath he turned on his heel. Suddenly he
caught sight of Strickland. He rolled up to him. He did not speak.
He gathered the spittle in his mouth and spat full in
Strickland's face. Strickland seized his glass and flung it
at him. The dancers stopped suddenly still. There was an
instant of complete silence, but when Tough Bill threw himself
on Strickland the lust of battle seized them all, and in a
moment there was a confused scrimmage. Tables were
overturned, glasses crashed to the ground. There was a
hellish row. The women scattered to the door and behind the bar.
Passers-by surged in from the street. You heard curses
in every tongue the sound of blows, cries; and in the middle
of the room a dozen men were fighting with all their might.
On a sudden the police rushed in, and everyone who could made
for the door. When the bar was more or less cleared, Tough
Bill was lying insensible on the floor with a great gash in
his head. Captain Nichols dragged Strickland, bleeding from a
wound in his arm, his clothes in rags, into the street.
His own face was covered with blood from a blow on the nose.

"I guess you'd better get out of Marseilles before Tough Bill
comes out of hospital," he said to Strickland, when they had
got back to the Chink's Head and were cleaning themselves.

"This beats cock-fighting," said Strickland.

I could see his sardonic smile.

Captain Nichols was anxious. He knew Tough Bill's vindictiveness.
Strickland had downed the mulatto twice, and the mulatto,
sober, was a man to be reckoned with. He would bide
his time stealthily. He would be in no hurry, but one
night Strickland would get a knife-thrust in his back, and in
a day or two the corpse of a nameless beach-comber would be
fished out of the dirty water of the harbour. Nichols went
next evening to Tough Bill's house and made enquiries. He was
in hospital still, but his wife, who had been to see him, said
he was swearing hard to kill Strickland when they let him out.

A week passed.

"That's what I always say," reflected Captain Nichols,
"when you hurt a man, hurt him bad. It gives you a bit of
time to look about and think what you'll do next."

Then Strickland had a bit of luck. A ship bound for Australia
had sent to the Sailors' Home for a stoker in place of one who
had thrown himself overboard off Gibraltar in an attack of
delirium tremens.

"You double down to the harbour, my lad," said the Captain to
Strickland, "and sign on. You've got your papers."

Strickland set off at once, and that was the last Captain
Nichols saw of him. The ship was only in port for six hours,
and in the evening Captain Nichols watched the vanishing smoke
from her funnels as she ploughed East through the wintry sea.

I have narrated all this as best I could, because I like the
contrast of these episodes with the life that I had seen
Strickland live in Ashley Gardens when he was occupied with
stocks and shares; but I am aware that Captain Nichols was an
outrageous liar, and I dare say there is not a word of truth
in anything he told me. I should not be surprised to learn
that he had never seen Strickland in his life, and owed his
knowledge of Marseilles to the pages of a magazine.

Chapter XLVIII

It is here that I purposed to end my book. My first idea was
to begin it with the account of Strickland's last years in
Tahiti and with his horrible death, and then to go back and
relate what I knew of his beginnings. This I meant to do,
not from wilfulness, but because I wished to leave Strickland
setting out with I know not what fancies in his lonely soul
for the unknown islands which fired his imagination. I liked
the picture of him starting at the age of forty-seven,
when most men have already settled comfortably in a groove,
for a new world. I saw him, the sea gray under the mistral and
foam-flecked, watching the vanishing coast of France, which he
was destined never to see again; and I thought there was
something gallant in his bearing and dauntless in his soul.
I wished so to end on a note of hope. It seemed to emphasise
the unconquerable spirit of man. But I could not manage it.
Somehow I could not get into my story, and after trying once
or twice I had to give it up; I started from the beginning in
the usual way, and made up my mind I could only tell what I
knew of Strickland's life in the order in which I learnt the facts.

Those that I have now are fragmentary. I am in the position
of a biologist who from a single bone must reconstruct not
only the appearance of an extinct animal, but its habits.
Strickland made no particular impression on the people who
came in contact with him in Tahiti. To them he was no more
than a beach-comber in constant need of money, remarkable only
for the peculiarity that he painted pictures which seemed to
them absurd; and it was not till he had been dead for some
years and agents came from the dealers in Paris and Berlin to
look for any pictures which might still remain on the island,
that they had any idea that among them had dwelt a man of consequence.
They remembered then that they could have bought for
a song canvases which now were worth large sums, and they
could not forgive themselves for the opportunity which had
escaped them. There was a Jewish trader called Cohen, who had
come by one of Strickland's pictures in a singular way.
He was a little old Frenchman, with soft kind eyes and a pleasant
smile, half trader and half seaman, who owned a cutter in
which he wandered boldly among the Paumotus and the Marquesas,
taking out trade goods and bringing back copra, shell, and pearls.
I went to see him because I was told he had a large black
pearl which he was willing to sell cheaply, and when I
discovered that it was beyond my means I began to talk to him
about Strickland. He had known him well.

"You see, I was interested in him because he was a painter,"
he told me. "We don't get many painters in the islands, and I
was sorry for him because he was such a bad one. I gave him
his first job. I had a plantation on the peninsula, and I
wanted a white overseer. You never get any work out of the
natives unless you have a white man over them. I said to him:
`You'll have plenty of time for painting, and you can earn a
bit of money.' I knew he was starving, but I offered him good wages."

"I can't imagine that he was a very satisfactory overseer,"
I said, smiling.

"I made allowances. I have always had a sympathy for artists.
It is in our blood, you know. But he only remained a few
months. When he had enough money to buy paints and canvases
he left me. The place had got hold of him by then, and he
wanted to get away into the bush. But I continued to see him
now and then. He would turn up in Papeete every few months
and stay a little while; he'd get money out of someone or
other and then disappear again. It was on one of these visits
that he came to me and asked for the loan of two hundred
francs. He looked as if he hadn't had a meal for a week, and
I hadn't the heart to refuse him. Of course, I never expected
to see my money again. Well, a year later he came to see me
once more, and he brought a picture with him. He did not
mention the money he owed me, but he said: `Here is a picture
of your plantation that I've painted for you.' I looked at it.
I did not know what to say, but of course I thanked him, and
when he had gone away I showed it to my wife."

"What was it like?" I asked.

"Do not ask me. I could not make head or tail of it. I never
saw such a thing in my life. `What shall we do with it?'
I said to my wife. `We can never hang it up,' she said.
`People would laugh at us.' So she took it into an attic and
put it away with all sorts of rubbish, for my wife can never
throw anything away. It is her mania. Then, imagine to
yourself, just before the war my brother wrote to me from
Paris, and said: `Do you know anything about an English
painter who lived in Tahiti? It appears that he was a genius,
and his pictures fetch large prices. See if you can lay your
hands on anything and send it to me. There's money to be
made.' So I said to my wife. `What about that picture that
Strickland gave me?' Is it possible that it is still in the
attic?' `Without doubt,' she answered, ` for you know that I
never throw anything away. It is my mania.' We went up to the
attic, and there, among I know not what rubbish that had been
gathered during the thirty years we have inhabited that house,
was the picture. I looked at it again, and I said:
`Who would have thought that the overseer of my plantation on
the peninsula, to whom I lent two hundred francs, had genius?
Do you see anything in the picture?' `No,' she said, `it does not
resemble the plantation and I have never seen cocoa-nuts with
blue leaves; but they are mad in Paris, and it may be that
your brother will be able to sell it for the two hundred
francs you lent Strickland.' Well, we packed it up and we sent
it to my brother. And at last I received a letter from him.
What do you think he said? `I received your picture,' he said,
`and I confess I thought it was a joke that you had played on me.
I would not have given the cost of postage for the picture.
I was half afraid to show it to the gentleman who
had spoken to me about it. Imagine my surprise when he said
it was a masterpiece, and offered me thirty thousand francs.
I dare say he would have paid more, but frankly I was so taken
aback that I lost my head; I accepted the offer before I was
able to collect myself.'"

Then Monsieur Cohen said an admirable thing.

"I wish that poor Strickland had been still alive. I wonder
what he would have said when I gave him twenty-nine thousand
eight hundred francs for his picture."

Chapter XLIX

I lived at the Hotel de la Fleur, and Mrs. Johnson, the
proprietress, had a sad story to tell of lost opportunity.
After Strickland's death certain of his effects were sold by
auction in the market-place at Papeete, and she went to it
herself because there was among the truck an American stove
she wanted. She paid twenty-seven francs for it.

"There were a dozen pictures," she told me, "but they were
unframed, and nobody wanted them. Some of them sold for as
much as ten francs, but mostly they went for five or six.
Just think, if I had bought them I should be a rich woman now."

But Tiare Johnson would never under any circumstances have
been rich. She could not keep money. The daughter of a
native and an English sea-captain settled in Tahiti, when I
knew her she was a woman of fifty, who looked older, and of
enormous proportions. Tall and extremely stout, she would
have been of imposing presence if the great good-nature of her
face had not made it impossible for her to express anything
but kindliness. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her
breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and fleshy, gave
you an impression of almost indecent nakedness, and vast chin
succeeded to vast chin. I do not know how many of them there were.
They fell away voluminously into the capaciousness of her bosom.
She was dressed usually in a pink Mother Hubbard,
and she wore all day long a large straw hat. But when she let
down her hair, which she did now and then, for she was vain of
it, you saw that it was long and dark and curly; and her eyes
had remained young and vivacious. Her laughter was the most
catching I ever heard; it would begin, a low peal in her throat,
and would grow louder and louder till her whole vast
body shook. She loved three things -- a joke, a glass of
wine, and a handsome man. To have known her is a privilege.

She was the best cook on the island, and she adored good food.
From morning till night you saw her sitting on a low chair in
the kitchen, surrounded by a Chinese cook and two or three
native girls, giving her orders, chatting sociably with all
and sundry, and tasting the savoury messes she devised. When
she wished to do honour to a friend she cooked the dinner with
her own hands. Hospitality was a passion with her, and there
was no one on the island who need go without a dinner when
there was anything to eat at the Hotel de la Fleur. She never
turned her customers out of her house because they did not pay
their bills. She always hoped they would pay when they could.
There was one man there who had fallen on adversity, and to
him she had given board and lodging for several months.
When the Chinese laundryman refused to wash for him without
payment she had sent his things to be washed with hers. She could
not allow the poor fellow to go about in a dirty shirt, she said,
and since he was a man, and men must smoke, she gave him a
franc a day for cigarettes. She used him with the same
affability as those of her clients who paid their bills once a week.

Age and obesity had made her inapt for love, but she took a
keen interest in the amatory affairs of the young. She looked
upon venery as the natural occupation for men and women, and
was ever ready with precept and example from her own wide experience.

"I was not fifteen when my father found that I had a lover,"
she said. "He was third mate on the .
A good-looking boy."

She sighed a little. They say a woman always remembers her
first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always
remember him.

"My father was a sensible man."

"What did he do?" I asked.

"He thrashed me within an inch of my life, and then he made me
marry Captain Johnson. I did not mind. He was older,
of course, but he was good-looking too."

Tiare -- her father had called her by the name of the white,
scented flower which, they tell you, if you have once smelt,
will always draw you back to Tahiti in the end, however far
you may have roamed -- Tiare remembered Strickland very well.

"He used to come here sometimes, and I used to see him walking
about Papeete. I was sorry for him, he was so thin, and he
never had any money. When I heard he was in town, I used to
send a boy to find him and make him come to dinner with me.
I got him a job once or twice, but he couldn't stick to
anything. After a little while he wanted to get back to the
bush, and one morning he would be gone."

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