My name is Edmund Jonah. I have two scripts but this one, “Vaihiva!” is doing much better in contests and seems to be ready to show. I was born in Calcutta, India from parents of Iraqi/Jewish heritage. My family left Baghdad in the early 1900s to run away from Arab Pogroms and to take advantage of the better business conditions prevailing in India. I had the best of British education leaving with a Cambridge School Leaving Certificate in eight subjects. Later, in Israel, I passed my A-Levels from the London University, doing just as well in English Literature and Religious Studies. My interests have always been in the Arts
In Israel I acted in and directed several plays, two of which were selected to represent Israel in Dundalk, Eire, in two International Competitions. I have a book published, as well as about 35-40 short stories, poems and articles in magazines and anthologies, mainly in Canada, but also in the U.K., USA, India, Israel, New Zealand and on the net.
I love words and the English language. I read the book, “The Dark River” by Charles Nordhoff and James Normal Hall as a teenager, and was so fascinated by this story set in Polynesia, it made me want to live on the islands. Alas, I never made it and, now that I am approaching my 89th year, I doubt if I will ever make it.
The screenplay is based on this book, which is now in Public Domain. The screenplay begins with the story of two women, close friends, Mauri, a Polynesian of high rank and birth and, Nina a well-bred British girl, who give birth on the same day, when storms rage around Tahiti. The Polynesian has a stillborn child, while the British girl gives birth to a baby girl and dies. Nina and Scottish husband, who has died from gas inhalation during the First World War, have one other child, a six year old boy, George. The child is sent to one of a trio a friends In England, a general in the British army, who is a widower with a son, Alan, of 7 years. The Polynesian Mauri decides to bring up the baby as her own daughter, calling her Naia. That creates the drama following.
Eighteen years later, the General’s son, Alan, a respected scientist and mathematician, accompanied by George, who plans to follow in his foster father’s footsteps and join the army, arrives on the Island and immediately seeks out the British Consul, Tyson, at his home, which is also the Consulate. He too is one of the trio of friends of the General and Alan McLeod, Nina’s dead husband. They served together in the army during the First World War. George is there to watch over his foster brother who has failing eyesight due to a bout of Scarlett Fever as a baby. They are very close and George feels responsible for Alan’s wellbeing. George also wants to see the graves of his parents and ‘sister’ who are buried in Vaihiva, where Mauri and Naia live.
George loves the hustle and bustle of city life, while Alan prefers the beauty of the Tahitian country side. After George meets Mauri, who keep Naia away from him, and he sees the graves of his parents , Mauri takes him to the pier and wishes him goodbye. He returns to the house of Fara, a friend of Tyson, the Consul, confused and unable to understand her attitude. He tells Alan, who awaits him at Fara’s house, that she seemed genuinely glad to see him at their first meeting, then seemed to want him away. George decides to return to the hustle and bustle of Papeete; Alan decides to stay with Fara.
In a borrowed canoe, Alan makes for Vaihiva, but detours to an islet visible beyond Vaihiva bay. He meets Naia, who mistakes him for George at first. Then she invites him to come to lunch with her and her grandfather, Raitua. Mauri, her ‘mother,’ is away in Moorea where she has lands and has to settle some business there. One week becomes two, two weeks become three and during their adventures, when he is enthralled with the scenery and the girl, they fall in love. He realises it would unfair to uproot the girl from all she knows and loves and so, breaks away from her, returning to Papeete to take the next steamer out of there.
Tyson rushes into the Bougainville Club, very upset, to tell George that Alan is back and doesn’t want to leave the island because of a girl he wants to marry. Both George and Tyson agree it would not be right, neither for Alan nor the girl. George confronts Alan and explains to him the reasons why he should not marry a girl who is not of his class, who would be out of place and miserable in England and for whom he would be giving up a brilliant career. None of this matters to him. This girl finds food in the wild, can make a fire with dried sticks; has herbal medicines at her command for they are everywhere in the flora of the islands. She has knowledge that he hasn’t even tapped. She humbles him.
Tyson, Mauri, George, Naia, and Alan’s father, the General do not want this marriage but, with the help of grandfather, Raitua, they get married in the old man’s birth island. The lovers are carried off on a cutter in another storm to a distant island off the sea routes. For three years they are believed dead. Alan almost dies of dengue fever on the island from which Naia saves him with knowledge of plant medicine. They have a child Tua who is two years and six months old when they are saved.
His father comes out to take him back to his studies in England, where he is wanted in Cambridge, not for his eyes - he is now blind - but for his brains. But the father refuses to permit his wife and child, Tua, to come along. They must stay with Naia’s mother, the child’s grandmother. Alan refuses to desert his family and makes up his mind to remain in Tahiti.
Naia wants very much to try a native remedy for his eyes. Alan tells her the French oculist, now retired in Tahiti, is adamant nothing will bring his eyesight back. She is equally adamant that she has to set her mind at rest that the medicine won’t work. Alan doesn’t know the flowers necessary for the cure grow only on high cliffs. Raitua finds Naia fallen to her death. Alan, unable to accept a life without Naia, swims out to sea and drowns himself.
In a powerful scene, Mauri discloses that Tua is the child of the white girl, Nina McLeod, so that Alan’s father will set aside his racist ideology and take Tua home and educate his grandson in England, as his son wished.
The General, George with Tua leave the island on their way back to England. The film ends with the lonely blast of the ship’s hooter