My Tahiti by Robert Dean Frisbie — Read

We entered the cinema garlanded in many wreaths, Tuahu, Terii, and I smoking Rosette cigarettes in bamboo holders, Tomi munching peanuts, his fingers greasy with frying-pan bread and figure-of-eight doughnuts, and bristling with strings of mapé nuts, bamboos of poé and such things. Mama-Reretu trailed behind, smiling just a trifle severely, as was seemly for a woman of her years, but having the time of her life nevertheless.

Monsieur Poroi in person took our tickets at the door. The world-champion interpreter, a French-Tahitian of fifty, was a character of importance and popularity throughout the islands. I believe that he knew every soul in Tahiti by name, as well as numerous details concerning their lives, public and private. This knowledge gave him great advantage as a cinema interpreter. He had the appearance of a true showman. Though he wore no fancy vest, gold watch chain, or silk hat, still his genial expression, his ample girth, and his general bearing were precisely those of a high-grade spieler for a side show. He talked grandiloquently, used comprehensive gestures, and knew the value of the dramatic pause. When speaking of a sensational scene in one of his films, he would stop at just the right instant, roll his eyes, and hold out his hand for silence, as though we should listen for the roar of William Cowboy's guns or the scream of the trapped heroine. Then, after exactly the right interval, he would galvanize his listeners with a terse, stirring sentence, as: "Like lightning he whirled round, and, just as the heroine fell fainting to the floor, shot the villain through the heart!" Then he would relax, his mouth would fall open, his eyes sink back into their sockets, and he would make a clucking noise with his tongue on the roof of his mouth!