into the depths of the forest; laid him in a pit, with his head to
the west, toward the ocean; hurriedly, but trying not to make noise,
cast earth and leaves over him; and hurried away to perform their
cleansing ablutions. The little old man was done with his running;
the brass badge was taken off the thin arm that had grown gray and
wrinkled,--and, admiring it, distending his thin nostrils, the youth
put it upon his own, that was rounded and warm. At first he only
followed the experienced rickshaw-men, trying to catch the destinations
of their passengers, memorizing English words and the names of the
streets; then he began carrying passengers independently, began
earning money himself; he was preparing for a family, for a love of
his own,--the desire for which is a desire for sons, just as the
desire for sons is a desire for property, and desire for property--a
desire for well-being. But one day, having come home, he came upon
other horrible tidings: his bride had vanished,--she had gone to Slave
Island, to purchase something, and had not returned. The bride’s
father, who knew Colombo well, having frequently gone there, searched
for her for three days, and he must have found out something, because
he returned reassured. He sighed and cast down his eyes, expressing his
submission to fate; but he was a great hypocrite, a sly old man, like
all those who have property, who trade in the city. He was corpulent,
with breasts like a woman’s; he had hoary hair, carefully combed, and
ornamented with an expensive comb of tortoise shell; he walked about
bare-footed, but under a sun-shade; he girt his hips with a piece
of gaudy material, of good quality; his blouse was of _piqué_. It
was impossible to get the truth out of him; furthermore, all women,
all maidens, are frail, even as all rivers are full of turnings and
windings; and the young rickshaw-man understood this. After sitting at
home for two days in a daze, without touching food, only chewing betel,
he finally came to himself and again ran off into Colombo. He seemed to
have forgotten entirely about his bride. He ran with the rickshaw, he
covetously hoarded money,--and it was impossible to understand which he
was more in love with: his running, or those circles of silver which
he gathered for it. One Russian seaman had had a photograph taken of
himself and the rickshaw-man, and had presented him with one of these
pictures. For a long time after that the young rickshaw-man joyously
marvelled at his image: he was standing between his shafts, his face
turned toward the imaginary spectators, and everyone could recognize
him immediately,--even the badge on his arm had come out. With all good
fortune, apparently even with happiness, he had laboured thus for about
half a year.
And one morning he was sitting with other rickshaw-men underneath a
many-trunked banyan tree that stood upon that lengthy street which
extends from Slave Island to Victoria Park. The hot sun had just
appeared from behind the trees, from the direction of Maradana. But
the banyan tree had grown high, and there was no longer any shade
about its roots, strewn over with parched leaves. The little carriages
grew hot from the heat, their thin shafts lay upon the dark-red,
heated earth, that smelt both of naphtha and of freshly-ground
coffee. With this odour were blended the pungent sweet odours of the
surrounding, ever-blossoming gardens, the odours of camphor, of musk,
and of that which the rickshaw men were eating,--and they were eating
bananas,--small, warm, tenderly roseate, in aureate skins; they were
eating those orange fruits, with a tang of turpentine, the meat of
which has the appearance of the flesh of children. They were chattering
as they sat on the ground, their knees raised in sharp angles up to
their chins, with their arms on top of the knees, and with their
feminine heads on top of their arms. Suddenly, in the distance, near
the white enclosing walls of a bungalow, dappled by the light and
shade, appeared a man clad in white. He was walking in the middle of
the street with that determined and firm step with which only Europeans
walk. And, jumping up as quick as lightning from the ground, the entire
flock of these naked, long-legged men dashed toward him, racing to
get ahead of one another. They darted upon him from all sides, and he
yelled threateningly, swinging out with his cane. Timid and sensitive,
they checked themselves at full speed, gathering around him. He glanced
at them,--and number seven, with his pitch-black, horse-like hair,
appeared to him stronger than the others. And so his choice fell upon
number seven.
He was short and strong, in gold spectacles, with black eyebrows grown
together over the bridge of his nose, with a short black moustache,
with an olive complexion; the sun of the tropics and liver trouble
had already left their sallow trace upon his face. His helmet was
gray; his eyes, in some strange way, as though they beheld nothing,
looked out of the coal-black darkness of his eyebrows and lashes,
from behind the shining lenses. He sat down like one accustomed to
rickshaws,--immediately finding in the little carriage that spot which
makes it the easiest for the rickshaw-men to run, and glancing at the
little watch in a leathern socket strapped around his wrist,--it was
tattooed, and the hand was powerful and stubby,--called out “York
Street!” His expressionless voice was firm and calm, but his eyes had
a strange look. And the rickshaw-man snatched up the shafts and flew
off at a considerably greater speed than was called for, every moment
clicking the bell that was fastened at the end of the shaft, and
shuffling in and out among pedestrians, tilted _arba_ carts, and other
rickshaws that were running back and forth.
It was the end of March,--the most sultry period. Not even three hours
had passed since the rising of the sun,--yet it already seemed as if
noon were near, so hot and bright was it everywhere, and so thronged
in the neighbourhood of the stores at the farther end of the street.
The earth, the gardens, all that tall, spreading vegetation which was
growing green and blossoming over the bungalows, over their chalky
roofs, and over the old black stores,--all these had cloyed the air
with warmth and fragrance, whereas the rain-trees had curled up tightly
their little cup-like leaves. The rows of shops,--or, rather, of
sheds,--roofed with black tiles, their walls hung about with enormous
bunches of bananas, with dried fish, with sun-cured shark-meat, were
filled with buyers and sellers,--both alike resembling dark-skinned
bath-attendants. The rickshaw-man, bending forward, his long legs
twinkling, was running rapidly, and as yet there was not a single drop
of sweat upon his back, glistening with cocoanut oil, nor upon his
rounded shoulders, between which the slender trunk of his girlish neck
gracefully supported his pitch-black head, upon which the blazing sun
beat down. At the very end of the street, he came to a sudden stop.
Turning his head just the least trifle, he rapidly said something in
his own tongue. The Englishman, his passenger, caught sight of the
tips of his curved eyelashes, caught the word “betel,” and raised his
eyebrows. How? Such a young, strong fellow was already wanting betel,
after having run only some two hundred steps? Without answering, he
struck the rickshaw-man over his shoulder blades with his cane. But the
latter, timorous like all Senegalese but at times also insistent, only
shrugged his shoulders and flew like an arrow diagonally across the
street, toward the shops.
“Betel,” repeated he, turning wrathful eyes upon the Englishman, and
baring his teeth in a dog-like snarl. But the Englishman had already
forgotten about him. And a minute later the rickshaw-man jumped out
of a shop, holding upon his narrow palm a leaf of the pepper tree,
smearing it over with lime and wrapping within it a bit of the _areca_
fruit, resembling a bit of flint. Kill not, steal not, commit no
fornication, lie not, nor become intoxicated with aught, the Exalted
One hath commanded. Yes,--but what did the rickshaw-man know of Him?
Vaguely echoed within him that which had been vaguely accepted by the
countless hearts of his forefathers. In the rainy season of the year he
had gone with his father to the sacred tabernacles; and there, among
the women and the beggars, he had listened to the priests reading in
an ancient tongue forgotten of all, and understanding nothing, only
chiming in in the common joyous acclamation whenever the name of the
Exalted One was uttered. More than once it had happened that his father
had prayed in his presence upon the threshold of the idol temple; he
would bow down before the recumbent statue of wood, muttering its
commandments, lifting his joined palms to his forehead, and then would
lay upon the altar for offerings the smallest and most worn of his
hard-earned coins. But he muttered his prayers with indifference,--for
he was merely afraid of the pictures upon the walls of the idol-temple,
the depictions of the torment of sinners; he bowed down before other
gods as well,--before horrible Hindu statues; in them, too, did he
believe, just as he believed in the power of demons, serpents, stars,
darkness....
Having thrust the betel into his mouth, the rickshaw-man, fitfully
volatile in his emotions, turned amiably smiling eyes upon the
Englishman, seized the shafts, and, starting off with a thrust of
his left foot, began running again. The sun was blinding; it gleamed
on the gold and the lenses of the spectacles whenever the Englishman
raised his head. The sun was scorching his hands and knees; the earth
was breathing heavily,--one could even see that the air was aquiver
above it, as above a brazier,--but he sat immovably, without touching
the hood of the little carriage. Two roads led into the city,--or, as
the residents called it, into the Fort: one, on the right, passed by
the Malay pagoda, over the dam between the lagoons; the other, to the
left, led toward the ocean. The Englishman wanted to go by the latter.
But the rickshaw-man turned around as he ran, showing his bloodied
lips, and pretended that he did not understand what was wanted from
him. And the Englishman again yielded,--he was absent-mindedly looking
about him. The green lagoon, sparkling, warm, filled with turtles and
rotting vegetation, bordered in the distance by a cocoanut grove, lay
on the right. Upon the dam people were walking, riding, running to the
clanging of bells. Rickshaw-men in fezes, white jackets, and short
white pantaloons were now occasionally met with. The Europeans sitting
in the little carriages were pale after the exhausting night; they held
their white shoes high, putting one knee over the other. A two-wheeled
cart, with a gray humped bullock harnessed to it, rolled by....
Beneath its top, in the light, warm shadow, was sitting a Parsee,--a
yellow-faced old man who looked like an eunuch, in a gown and a conical
velvet skull cap, the latter worked with gold. A giant Afghan, in wide
trowsers to his knees, in soft boots with upturned toes, in a white
_casaque_ and an enormous pink turban, was immovably standing, bent
over the lagoon, gazing at the turtles, at the warm water. Long covered
_arba_ carts stretched on endlessly, dragged along by oxen. Under
their narrow arched tops of straw were piled up bales of goods, and,
at times, there would be a whole cluster of the brown bodies of young
labourers. Shrivelled old men, parched by the heat, their feet reddened
from the red dust, looking like the mummies of old women, paced beside
the wheels. There were stone-cutters pacing along, and stalwart black
Tomilas.... “_The Pagoda_,” said the Englishman, referring to a certain
tea-house, when they had come beneath those patriarchal trees that grow
at the entrance into the Fort, beneath the unencompassable canopies of
their verdure, shot with the sun that penetrated through it.
They stopped near the entrance of an old Dutch building, with arcades
on its ground floor. The Englishman glanced at his watch and went off
to drink tea and to smoke a cigar. As for the rickshaw-man, he made
half a turn about the broad, shady street, over the reddishly-lilac
pavement, strewn over with the yellow and scarlet blossom of the
_ketmias_, and dropping the shafts at the roots of a tree, without
checking his impetus, sank down. He raised up his knees and put his
elbows upon them, avidly breathing in the steaming, sweetly odorous
warmth of noonday, and aimlessly letting his eyes follow the Senegalese
and Europeans passing by. Taking a rag from some recess of his apron,
he wiped with it his lips, made bloody by the betel, wiped his face,
the convexities on his thin chest, and, folding it into a bandage, tied
it around his head,--this did not at all look well, giving him the
appearance of a sick man; but then, many rickshaw-men do it. He sat,
and, perhaps, he may have been pondering.... “Our bodies, O Master,
are different,--but then, we all have but one heart,” Ananda had said
to the Exalted One, and, therefore, one can imagine what must be the
thoughts or emotions of a youth who had grown up in the paradisaical
forests near Colombo and who had already tasted the most potent of
poisons,--love for woman; who had already plunged into life,--life,
fleetly flying after joys or fleeing from sorrows. Mara had already
wounded him,--but then, Mara also healeth wounds. Mara snatches out
of the hands of man that which man had seized upon,--but then, Mara
also inflames a man to seize anew that which had been taken away, or to
seize something else that is like that which had been taken away....
Having had his tea, the Englishman wandered through the street,
entering shops, gazing at the show-cases displaying precious stones,
elephants and Buddhas made of ebony wood, all sorts of bright coloured
stuffs, the golden skins of panthers, spotted with black,--while the
rickshaw-man, meditating of something, or, perhaps, merely sentient,
was exchanging bright glances with the other rickshaw-men and followed
the Englishman, dragging his little carriage after him. Exactly at
noon the Englishman gave him a rupee to buy himself some food, while
he himself went into the office of a big European steamship line. The
rickshaw-man bought some cigarettes, started smoking, inhaling deeply,
watching his cigarette, as women do,--and smoked five of them, one
after the other. In a delectable daze he sat in the fretted shade,
opposite the three-story building where the office was, and suddenly,
having raised his eyes, saw that his passenger, and also five other
Europeans, had appeared on the balcony under the white awning. They
were all looking through binoculars at the harbour,--and now, beyond
the roofs of the wharf, appeared two tall, slender masts, slightly
inclined backward. The people on the balcony started waving their
handkerchiefs, while from beyond the roofs, morosely, mightily and
majestically, a whistle began to roar, echoed all over the roadstead
and in the city,--the steamer from far-away Europe that the passenger
of rickshaw number seven had been awaiting had arrived. With English
punctuality did it enter after twenty days’ sail to Colombo,--and that
which the rickshaw-man, still filled with hopes and desires, did not
at all expect--that dinner, so fatal for him, to be held in the house
near the lagoon, at the steamship agent’s home,--was decided upon.
But until dinner, until evening, there still remained much time. And
again this man in spectacles who saw nothing came out into the street.
He said good-bye to the two men who had come out with him and who had
gone in the direction of the white statue of Victoria, toward the
covered wharf; and again the rickshaw-man started ambling through the
street,--this time toward the hotel, where at this time many tourists
and rich residents were eating and drinking in a semi-dark hall,
whose sultry stuffiness was stirred and mixed with the odours of the
food by blades turning near the ceiling. And again, like a dog, the
rickshaw-man squatted down upon the pavement, upon the petals of the
_ketmias_. The fretted shade of trees whose light-green tips were
interlaced spread over the street, and in this shade went past him
the womanish Senegalese, thrusting upon the Europeans coloured postal
cards, tortoise-shell combs, precious stones,--one native was even
dragging after him by a cord a little beast in a coat of long quills,
trying to sell it,--and these half-savages, these rickshaw-men, kept
up their ceaseless racing through this rich European thoroughfare....
In the distance, in the centre of an open square, a woman of heroic
size, in marble,--proud, double-chinned, in crown and royal mantle,
seated on her throne upon a high pedestal of marble,--was blazing
in her whiteness. And those who had just arrived from Europe were
trooping from that direction. Black and dove-coloured servants jumped
out upon the entrance to the hotel; bowing, they snatched the canes
and small baggage from the hands of the arrivals, who were also met
by the bows, restrained and graceful, of a man resplendent with the
parting of his pomatumed hair, with his eyes, his teeth, his cuffs, his
starched linen, his _piqué_ dinner jacket, his _piqué_ trousers, and
his white footgear. “Men are forever going to feasts, to excursions,
to diversions,” saith the Exalted One, Who had at one time visited
this paradisaical corner of the first men who had come to know desire.
“The sight, sounds, taste, and odours of things intoxicate them,” He
had said; “desire entwines them, even as a creeping plant, green,
beautiful, and death-bearing, entwines the tree Shala.” Traces of
fatigue, of exhaustion from heat, from the rocking of the boat at sea
and from maladies, were upon the ashen faces of those going to the
hotel. They all had the appearance of being half-dead, they spoke
without moving their lips; but they all walked on, looking about
them, and one after the other disappeared within the darkness of the
vestibule, in order to go to their rooms, to wash up and refresh
themselves. And then, having intoxicated themselves with food, drink,
cigars and coffee, until their faces flushed crimson, they would roll
away in rickshaws to the shore of the ocean, into the Cinnamon Gardens,
to the Hindu temples and the Buddhistic sanctuaries. Everyone of
them--everyone!--had within his soul that which compels a man to live
and to desire the sweet deception of life! And was not this deception
doubly sweet to the rickshaw-man, born in the land of the first people?
Ladies and gentlemen walked to and fro before him,--elderly, ugly, just
as buck-toothed as his black mother, sitting in the distant forest
hut; but at times young women also went past him,--pleasant to look
upon, in white raiment, in small helmets wound with light veils, and,
arousing desire within him, they looked intently upon his splendid,
upraised eyelashes, upon the rag around his pitch-black head, and upon
his blood stained mouth. But then, was she who had disappeared in the
city inferior to them? The warmth of the tropical sun had made her
grow. She seemed darker on account of her short blouse, white, with
little blue flowers, and her skirt, just as short and of the same
material, both put directly upon her naked body,--just a trifle full,
but strong and small. She had a little rounded head, a convex little
forehead, round shining eyes in which childish timidity was already
being commingled with a joyous curiosity about life, with a hidden
muliebrity, both tender and passionate; there was a coral necklace
upon her rounded neck; her little hands and feet were braceletted with
silver.... Jumping up from his place, the rickshaw-man ran into one
of the nearest by-streets, where, in an old, one-storied house under
brick tiles, with thick wooden pillars, there was a bar for the lower
classes. There he put twenty-five cents on the bar, and for that price
gulped down a whole glass of whiskey. Having mixed this fire with the
betel, he had assured himself of a beatific exaltation almost until the
very evening, until the time when the forests near Colombo, filling
with black, sultry darkness, would begin to resound mysteriously with
murmurings and moanings of countless cicadas and tree toads, and the
thickets of bamboo would be aquiver with myriads of fiery sparks.
The Englishman, too, was intoxicated, as he walked out of the hotel
with a cigar,--his eyes were drowsy, his face, heightened in colour,
seemed to have become fuller. Glancing at his watch from time to time
and thinking of something, apparently not knowing how to kill time, he
stood a while near the hotel in indecision. Then he ordered himself
carried first to the post office, where he dropped three postal cards
into the box, and from the post office to Gordon’s Garden, which he
did not even enter,--he simply glanced in at the gates at the monument
and the pathways; and from the garden he went at random: to Black
Town, to the market place in Black Town, to the Kellani River.... And
then he was whirled on and on, hither and thither, by the intoxicated
rickshaw-man, who was bathed in sweat from head to foot, aroused both
by whiskey and by betel, and by the hope of receiving a whole heap of
pennies, and by certain other dreams that stir the body and soul and
that never forsake a man. At the most oppressive hour of the afternoon
heat and glare, when, after having sat on a bench under a tree for
two minutes one leaves upon it a dark ring of perspiration, he, to
please the Englishman, who did not know what to do until dinner, ran
all over Black Town,--ancient, populous, redolent of spicy odours;
and many naked coloured bodies and many bright stuffs girt about hips
did the sleepy Englishman see; many Parsees, Hindus, yellow faced
Malayans; malodorous Chinese shops, brick-tiled and bamboo-covered
roofs, temples, minarets and idol-temples; sailors from Europe on shore
leave, as well as Buddhistic monks,--shaven, thin, with insane eyes,
clad in canary-coloured toga-like garments, with the right shoulder
bared, and carrying fans made out of the foliage of the sacred palm.
Rapidly, rapidly, did the rickshaw-man and his passenger dash through
this teeming density and dirt of the ancient East, as though they
were escaping from some one. Up to the very river Kellani did they
run,--the narrow, turbid, and deep Kellani, made too warm by the sun,
half-covered with impenetrable green overgrowths that bent low from
its banks; the river beloved of crocodiles, who retreat farther and
farther into the depths of the virgin forests before the barges with
straw-thatched arched covers; barges laden with bales of tea, with
rice, cinnamon, precious stones still in the rough,--barges floating
with especial deliberation in the golden deep glitter of the sun before
evening.... Then the Englishman gave orders to return to the Fort,
by now deserted, with all its offices, agencies and banks closed; he
was shaved in a barber shop and grew unpleasantly younger; he bought
cigars, dropped into an apothecary’s.... The rickshaw-man, grown
thinner, all bathed in sweat, was by now gazing upon him inimically,
with the eyes of a dog that feels attacks of madness coming on....
At six o’clock, having run past the lighthouse at the end of Queen’s
Street, having run through the quiet and clean military streets, he ran
out upon the shore of the ocean, that struck his eyes with its freedom,
with its glaucously aureate sheen from the low-lying sun, and started
running over Gull Face Place toward Slave Island.