Explore "My Tahiti" by Robert Dean Frisbie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In sleepy Vaiiti village there was an old man named Toto whose house stood in the shade of a great hibiscus tree near the river. He was very old and very lonely, for his wife was dead and his children had long since married and gone elsewhere to live. Throughout the week Toto was rarely to be seen away from his house. He would sit, hour after hour, leaning against the hibiscus tree, lost in reverie, heedless of the passage of time or the shouts of children sailing their boats of breadfruit leaves over the rippling water. But early of a Sunday evening he would put on a black pareu and a coat of white drill which Oura-woman had washed and ironed for him, and walk slowly along the grass-grown village street, chanting in a high quavering voice: "E himené tatou i teié po!" (We will sing to-night!)
Then he would blow a clear call on the conch shell he carried slung over his shoulder by a cord of sinnet.