KOYALA'S PRAYER
It was a blistering hot day in Bulungan. The heavens were molten
incandescence. The muddy river that bisected the town wallowed through
its estuary, a steaming tea-kettle. The black muck-fields baked and
flaked under the torrid heat. The glassy surface of the bay, lying
within the protecting crook of a curling tail of coral reef, quivered
under the impact of the sun's rays like some sentient thing.
In the village that nestled where fresh and salt water met, the streets
were deserted, almost lifeless. Gaunt pariah dogs, driven by the
acid-sharp pangs of a never-satiated hunger, sniffed among the shadows
of the bamboo and palmleaf huts, their backs arched and their tails
slinking between their legs. Too weak to grab their share of the spoil
in the hurly-burly, they scavenged in these hours of universal inanity.
The doors of the huts were tightly closed--barricaded against the heat.
The merchant in his dingy shop, the fisherman in his house on stilts,
and the fashioner of metals in his thatched cottage in the outskirts
slept under their mats. Apoplexy was the swift and sure fate of those
who dared the awful torridity.
Dawn had foretold the heat. The sun shot above the purple and orange
waters of the bay like a conflagration. The miasmal vapors that
clustered thickly about the flats by night gathered their linen and fled
like the hunted. They were scurrying upstream when Bogoru, the
fisherman, walked out on his sampan landing. He looked at the unruffled
surface of the bay, and then looked upward quickly at the lane of tall
kenari trees between the stockade and government buildings on an
elevation a short distance back of the town. The spindly tops of the
trees pointed heavenward with the rigidity of church spires.
"There will be no chaetodon sold at the _visschersmarkt_ (fishmart)
to-day," he observed. "Kismet!"
With a patient shrug of his shoulders he went back to his hut and made
sure there was a plentiful supply of sirih and cooling limes on hand.
In the fruit-market Tagotu, the fruiterer, set out a tempting display of
mangosteen, durian, dookoo, and rambootan, pineapples, and pomegranates,
jars of agar-agar, bowls of rice, freshly cooked, and pitchers of milk.
The square was damp from the heavy night dew when he set out the first
basket, it was dry as a fresh-baked brick when he put out the last. The
heavy dust began to flood inward. Tagotu noticed with dismay how thin
the crowd was that straggled about the market-place. Chepang, his
neighbor, came out of his stall and observed:
"The monsoon has failed again. Bunungan will stay in his huts to-day."
"It is the will of Allah," Tagotu replied patiently. Putting aside his
offerings, he lowered the shades of his shop and composed himself for a
siesta.
On the hill above the town, where the rude fort and the government
buildings gravely faced the sea, the heat also made itself felt. The
green blinds of the milk-white residency building, that was patterned as
closely as tropical conditions would permit after the quaint
architecture of rural Overysel, were tightly closed. The little cluster
of residences around it, the _controlleur's_ house and the homes of
Marinus Blauwpot and Wang Fu, the leading merchants of the place, were
similarly barricaded. For "Amsterdam," the fashionable residential
suburb of Bulungan village, was fighting the same enemy as "Rotterdam,"
the town below, an enemy more terrible than Dyak blow-pipes and Dyak
poisoned arrows, the Bornean sun.
Like Bogoru, the fisherman, and Tagotu, the fruit-vender, Cho Seng,
Mynheer Muller's valet and cook, had seen the threat the sunrise
brought. The sun's copper disc was dyeing the purple and blue waters of
the bay with vermilion and magentas when he pad-padded out on the
veranda of the _controlleur's_ house. He was clad in the meticulously
neat brown jeans that he wore at all times and occasions except funeral
festivals, and in wicker sandals. With a single sweep of his eyes he
took in the kenari-tree-lined land that ran to the gate of the stockade
where a sleepy sentinel, hunched against a pert brass cannon, nodded his
head drowsily. The road was tenantless. He shot another glance down the
winding pathway that led by the houses of Marinus Blauwpot and Wang Fu
to the town below. That also was unoccupied. Stepping off the veranda,
he crossed over to an unshaded spot directly in front of the house and
looked intently seaward to where a junk lay at anchor. The brown jeans
against the milk-white paint of the house threw his figure in sharp
relief.
Cho Seng waited until a figure showed itself on the deck of the junk.
Then he shaded his eye with his arm. The Chinaman on the deck of the
junk must have observed the figure of his fellow countryman on the hill,
for he also shaded his eyes with his arm.
Cho Seng looked quickly to the right--to the left. There was no one
stirring. The sentinel at the gate drowsed against the carriage of the
saucy brass cannon. Shading his eyes once more with a quick gesture, Cho
Seng walked ten paces ahead. Then he walked back five paces. Making a
sharp angle he walked five paces to one side. Then he turned abruptly
and faced the jungle.
The watcher on the junk gave no sign that he had seen this curious
performance. But as Cho Seng scuttled back into the house, he
disappeared into the bowels of the ugly hulk.
An hour passed before Cho Seng reappeared on the veranda. He cast only
a casual glance at the junk and saw that it was being provisioned. After
listening for a moment to the rhythmic snoring that came from the
chamber above--Mynheer Muller's apartment--he turned the corner of the
house and set off at a leisurely pace toward the tangle of mangroves,
banyan, bamboo cane, and ferns that lay a quarter of a mile inland on
the same elevation on which the settlement and stockade stood.
There was nothing in his walk to indicate that he had a definite
objective. He strolled along in apparent aimlessness, as though taking a
morning's constitutional. Overhead hundreds of birds created a terrific
din; green and blue-billed gapers shrilled noisily; lories piped their
matin lays, and the hoarse cawing of the trogons mingled discordantly
with the mellow notes of the mild cuckoos. A myriad insect life buzzed
and hummed around him, and scurried across his pathway. Pale white
flowers of the night that lined the wall shrank modestly into their
green cloisters before the bold eye of day. But Cho Seng passed them by
unseeing, and unhearing. Nature had no existence for him except as it
ministered unto his physical needs. Only once did he turn aside--a
quick, panicky jump--and that was when a little spotted snake glided in
front of him and disappeared into the underbrush.
When he was well within the shadows of the mangroves, Cho Seng suddenly
brightened and began to look about him keenly. Following a faintly
defined path, he walked along in a circuitous route until he came to a
clearing under the shade of a huge banyan tree whose aerial roots rose
over his head. After peering furtively about and seeing no one he
uttered a hoarse, guttural call, the call the great bird of paradise
utters to welcome the sunrise--"Wowk, wowk, wowk."
There was an immediate answer--the shrill note of the argus pheasant. It
sounded from the right, near by, on the other side of a thick tangle of
cane and creeper growth. Cho Seng paused in apparent disquietude at the
border of the thicket, but as he hesitated, the call was repeated more
urgently. Wrenching the cane apart, he stepped carefully into the
underbrush.
His progress through it was slow. At each step he bent low to make
certain where his foot fell. He had a mortal fear of snakes--his
nightmares were ghastly dreams of a loathsome death from a serpent's
bite.
There was a low ripple of laughter--girlish laughter. Cho Seng
straightened quickly. To his right was another clearing, and in that
clearing there was a woman, a young woman just coming into the bloom of
a glorious beauty. She was seated on a gnarled aerial root. One leg was
negligently thrown over the other, a slender, shapely arm reached
gracefully upward to grasp a spur from another root, a coil of silky
black hair, black as tropic night, lay over her gleaming shoulder. Her
sarong, spotlessly white, hung loosely about her wondrous form and was
caught with a cluster of rubies above her breasts. A sandal-covered
foot, dainty, delicately tapering, its whiteness tanned with a faint
tint of harvest brown, was thrust from the folds of the gown. At her
side, in a silken scabbard, hung a light, skilfully wrought kris. The
handle was studded with gems.
"Good-morning, Cho Seng," the woman greeted demurely.
Cho Seng, making no reply, snapped the cane aside and leaped through.
Koyala laughed again, her voice tinkling like silver bells. The
Chinaman's laborious progress through the cane had amused her. She knew
why he stepped so carefully.
"Good-morning, Cho Seng," Koyala repeated. Her mocking dark brown eyes
tried to meet his, but Cho Seng looked studiedly at the ground, in the
affected humility of Oriental races.
"Cho Seng here," he announced. "What for um you wantee me?" He spoke
huskily; a physician would instantly have suspected he was tubercular.
Koyala's eyes twinkled. A woman, she knew she was beautiful. Wherever
she went, among whites or Malays, Chinese, or Papuans, she was admired.
But from this stolid, unfathomable, menial Chinaman she had never been
able to evoke the one tribute that every pretty woman, no manner how
good, demands from man--a glance of admiration.
"Cho Seng," she pouted, "you have not even looked at me. Am I so ugly
that you cannot bear to see me?"
"What for um you wantee me?" Cho Seng reiterated. His neck was crooked
humbly so that his eyes did not rise above the hem of her sarong, and
his hands were tucked inside the wide sleeves of his jacket. His voice
was as meek and mild and inoffensive as his manner.
Koyala laughed mischievously.
"I asked you a question, Cho Seng," she pointed out.
The Chinaman salaamed again, even lower than before. His face was
imperturbable as he repeated in the same mild, disarming accents:
"What for um you wantee me?"
Koyala made a moue.
"That isn't what I asked you, Cho Seng," she exclaimed petulantly.
The Chinaman did not move a muscle. Silent, calm as a deep-sea bottom,
his glance fixed unwaveringly on a little spot of black earth near
Koyala's foot, he awaited her reply.
Leveque's daughter shrugged her shoulders in hopeless resignation. Ever
since she had known him she had tried to surprise him into expressing
some emotion. Admiration, fear, grief, vanity, cupidity--on all these
chords she had played without producing response. His imperturbability
roused her curiosity, his indifference to her beauty piqued her, and,
womanlike, she exerted herself to rouse his interest that she might
punish him. So far she had been unsuccessful, but that only gave keener
zest to the game. Koyala was half Dyak, she had in her veins the blood
of the little brown brother who follows his enemy for months, sometimes
years, until he brings home another dripping head to set on his
lodge-pole. Patience was therefore her birthright.
"Very well, Cho Seng, if you think I am ugly--" She paused and arched an
eyebrow to see the effect of her words. Cho Seng's face was as rigid as
though carved out of rock. When she saw he did not intend to dispute
her, Koyala flushed and concluded sharply:
"--then we will talk of other things. What has happened at the residency
during the past week?"
Cho Seng shot a furtive glance upward. "What for um?" he asked
cautiously.
"Oh, everything." Koyala spoke with pretended indifference. "Tell me,
does your _baas_, the _mynheer_, ever mention me?"
"Mynheer Muller belly much mad, belly much drink _jenever_ (gin), belly
much say 'damn-damn, Cho Seng,'" the Chinaman grunted.
Koyala's laughter rang out merrily in delicious peals that started the
rain-birds and the gapers to vain emulation. Cho Seng hissed a warning
and cast apprehensive glances about the jungle, but Koyala, mocking the
birds, provoked a hubbub of furious scolding overhead and laughed again.
"There's nobody near to hear us," she asserted lightly.
"Mebbe him in bush," Cho Seng warned.
"Not when the southeast monsoon ceases to blow," Koyala negatived.
"Mynheer Muller loves his bed too well when our Bornean sun scorches us
like to-day. But tell me what your master has been doing?"
She snuggled into a more comfortable position on the root. Cho Seng
folded his hands over his stomach.
"Morning him sleep," he related laconically. "Him eat. Him speakee
_orang kaya_, Wobanguli, drink _jenever_. Him speakee Kapitein Van
Slyck, drink _jenever_. Him sleep some more. Bimeby when sun so-so--"
Cho Seng indicated the position of the sun in late afternoon--"him go
speakee Mynheer Blauwpot, eat some more. Bimeby come home, sleep. Plenty
say 'damn-damn, Cho Seng.'"
"Does he ever mention me?" Koyala asked. Her eyes twinkled coquettishly.
"Plenty say nothing," Cho Seng replied.
Koyala's face fell. "He doesn't speak of me at all?"
Cho Seng shot a sidelong glance at her.
"Him no speakee Koyala, him plenty drink _jenever_, plenty say
'damn-damn, Cho Seng.'" He looked up stealthily to see the effect of his
words.
Koyala crushed a fern underfoot with a vicious dab of her sandaled toes.
Something like the ghost of a grin crossed the Chinaman's face, but it
was too well hidden for Koyala to see it.
"How about Kapitein Van Slyck? Has he missed me?" Koyala asked. "It is a
week since I have been at the residency. He must have noticed it."
"Kapitein Van Slyck him no speakee Koyala," the Chinaman declared.
Koyala looked at him sternly. "I cannot believe that, Cho Seng," she
said. "The captain must surely have noticed that I have not been in
Amsterdam. You are not telling me an untruth, are you, Cho Seng?"
The Chinaman was meekness incarnate as he reiterated:
"Him no speakee Koyala."
Displeasure gathered on Koyala's face like a storm-cloud. She leaped
suddenly from the aerial root and drew herself upright. At the same
moment she seemed to undergo a curious transformation. The light,
coquettish mood passed away like dabs of sunlight under a fitful April
sky, an imperious light gleamed in her eyes and her voice rang with
authority as she said:
"Cho Seng, you are the eyes and the ears of Ah Sing in Bulungan--"
The Chinaman interrupted her with a sibilant hiss. His mask of humility
fell from him and he darted keen and angry glances about the cane.
"When Koyala Bintang Burung speaks it is your place to listen, Cho
Seng," Koyala asserted sternly. Her voice rang with authority. Under her
steady glance the Chinaman's furtive eyes bushed themselves in his
customary pose of irreproachable meekness.
"You are the eyes and ears of Ah Sing in Bulungan," Koyala reaffirmed,
speaking deliberately and with emphasis. "You know that there is a
covenant between your master, your master in Batavia, and the council of
the _orang kayas_ of the sea Dyaks of Bulungan, whereby the children of
the sea sail in the proas of Ah Sing when the _Hanu Token_ come to
Koyala on the night winds and tell her to bid them go."
The Chinaman glanced anxiously about the jungle, fearful that a swaying
cluster of cane might reveal the presence of an eavesdropper.
"S-ss-st," he hissed.
Koyala's voice hardened. "Tell your master this," she said. "The spirits
of the highlands speak no more through the mouth of the Bintang Burung
till the eyes and ears of Ah Sing become her eyes and ears, too."
There was a significant pause. Cho Seng's face shifted and he looked at
her slantwise to see how seriously he should take the declaration. What
he saw undoubtedly impressed him with the need of promptly placating
her, for he announced:
"Cho Seng tellee Mynheer Muller Koyala go hide in bush--big _baas_ in
Batavia say muchee damn-damn, give muchee gold for Koyala."
The displeasure in Koyala's flushed face mounted to anger.
"No, you cannot take credit for that, Cho Seng," she exclaimed sharply.
"Word came to Mynheer Muller from the governor direct that a price of
many guilders was put on my head."
Her chin tilted scornfully. "Did you think Koyala was so blind that she
did not see the gun-boat in Bulungan harbor a week ago to-day?"
Cho Seng met her heat with Oriental calm.
"Bang-bang boat, him come six-seven day ago," he declared. "Cho Seng,
him speakee Mynheer Muller Koyala go hide in bush eight-nine day."
"The gun-boat was in the harbor the morning Mynheer Muller told me,"
Koyala retorted, and stopped in sudden recollection. A tiny flash of
triumph lit the Chinaman's otherwise impassive face as he put her
unspoken thought into words:
"_Kapitein_ him bang-bang boat come see Mynheer Muller _namiddag_,"
(afternoon) he said, indicating the sun's position an hour before
sunset. "Mynheer Muller tellee Koyala _voormiddag_" (forenoon). He
pointed to the sun's morning position in the eastern sky.
"That is true," Koyala assented thoughtfully, and paused. "How did you
hear of it?"
Cho Seng tucked his hands inside his sleeves and folded them over his
paunch. His neck was bent forward and his eyes lowered humbly. Koyala
knew what the pose portended; it was the Chinaman's refuge in a silence
that neither plea nor threat could break. She rapidly recalled the
events of that week.
"There was a junk from Macassar in Bulungan harbor two weeks--no, eleven
days ago," she exclaimed. "Did that bring a message from Ah Sing?"
A startled lift of the Chinaman's chin assured her that her guess was
correct. Another thought followed swift on the heels of the first.
"The same junk is in the harbor to-day--came here just before sundown
last night," she exclaimed. "What message did it bring, Cho Seng?"
The Chinaman's face was like a mask. His lips were compressed
tightly--it was as though he defied her to wedge them open and to force
him to reveal his secret. An angry sparkle lit Koyala's eyes for a
moment, she stepped a pace toward him and her hand dropped to the hilt
of the jeweled kris, then she stopped short. A fleeting look of cunning
replaced the angry gleam; a half-smile came and vanished on her lips
almost in the same instant.
Her face lifted suddenly toward the leafy canopy. Her arms were flung
upward in a supplicating gesture. The Chinaman, watching her from
beneath his lowered brow, looked up in startled surprise. Koyala's form
became rigid, a Galatea turned back to marble. Her breath seemed to
cease, as though she was in a trance. The color left her face, left even
her lips. Strangely enough, her very paleness made the Dyak umber in her
cheeks more pronounced.
Her lips parted. A low crooning came forth. The Chinaman's knees quaked
and gave way as he heard the sound. His body bent from the waist till
his head almost touched the ground.
The crooning gradually took the form of words. It was the Malay tongue
she spoke--a language Cho Seng knew. The rhythmic beating of his head
against his knees ceased and he listened eagerly, with face half-lifted.
"_Hanu Token, Hanu Token_, spirits of the highlands, whither are you
taking me?" Koyala cried. She paused, and a deathlike silence followed.
Suddenly she began speaking again, her figure swaying like a tall lily
stalk in a spring breeze, her voice low-pitched and musically mystic
like the voice of one speaking from a far distance.
"I see the jungle, the jungle where the mother of rivers gushes out of
the great smoking mountain. I see the pit of serpents in the jungle--"
A trembling seized Cho Seng.
"The serpents are hungry, they have not been fed, they clamor for the
blood of a man. I see him whose foot is over the edge of the pit, he
slips, he falls, he tries to catch himself, but the bamboo slips out of
his clutching fingers--I see his face--it is the face of him whose
tongue speaks double, it is the face of--"
A horrible groan burst from the Chinaman. He staggered to his feet.
"_Neen, neen, neen, neen_," he cried hoarsely in an agonized negative.
"Cho Seng tellee Bintang Burung--"
A tremulous sigh escaped from Koyala's lips. Her body shook as though
swayed by the wind. Her eyes opened slowly, vacantly, as though she was
awakening from a deep sleep. She looked at Cho Seng with an absent
stare, seeming to wonder why he was there, why she was where she was.
The Chinaman, made voluble through fear, chattered:
"Him junk say big _baas gouverneur_ speakee muchee damn-damn; no gambir,
no rice, no copra, no coffee from Bulungan one-two year; sendee new
resident bimeby belly quick."
Koyala's face paled.
"Send a new resident?" she asked incredulously. "What of Mynheer
Muller?"
The look of fear left Cho Seng's face. Involuntarily his neck bent and
his fingers sought each other inside the sleeves. There was cunning
mingled with malice in his eyes as he looked up furtively and feasted on
her manifest distress.
"Him chop-chop," he announced laconically.
"They will kill him?" Koyala cried.
The Chinaman had said his word. None knew better than he the value of
silence. He stood before her in all humbleness and calmly awaited her
next word. All the while his eyes played on her in quick, cleverly
concealed glances.
Koyala fingered the handle of the kris as she considered what the news
portended. Her face slowly hardened--there was a look in it of the
tigress brought to bay.
"Koyala bimeby mally him--Mynheer Muller, go hide in bush?" Cho Seng
ventured. The question was asked with such an air of simple innocence
and friendly interest that none could take offense.
Koyala flushed hotly. Then her nose and chin rose high with pride.
"The Bintang Burung will wed no man, Cho Seng," she declared haughtily.
"The blood of Chawatangi dies in me, but not till Bulungan is purged of
the _orang blanda_" (white race). She whipped the jeweled kris out of
its silken scabbard. "When the last white man spills his heart on the
coral shore and the wrongs done Chawatangi's daughter, my mother, have
been avenged, then Koyala will go to join the _Hanu Token_ that call
her, call her--"
She thrust the point of the kris against her breast and looked upward
toward the far-distant hills and the smoking mountain. A look of longing
came into her eyes, the light of great desire, almost it seemed as if
she would drive the blade home and join the spirits she invoked.
With a sigh she lowered the point of the kris and slipped it back into
its sheath.
"No, Cho Seng," she said, "Mynheer Muller is nothing to me. No man will
ever be anything to me. But your master has been a kind elder brother to
Koyala. And like me, he has had to endure the shame of an unhappy
birth." Her voice sank to a whisper. "For his mother, Cho Seng, as you
know, was a woman of Celebes."
She turned swiftly away that he might not see her face. After a moment
she said in a voice warm with womanly kindness and sympathy:
"Therefore you and I must take care of him, Cho Seng. He is weak, he is
untruthful, he has made a wicked bargain with your master, Ah Sing,
which the spirits of the hills tell me he shall suffer for, but he is
only what his white father made him, and the _orang blanda_ must pay!"
Her lips contracted grimly. "Ay, pay to the last drop of blood! You will
be true to him, Cho Seng?"
The Chinaman cast a furtive glance upward and found her mellow
dark-brown eyes looking at him earnestly. The eyes seemed to search his
very soul.
"_Ja, ja_," he pledged.
"Then go, tell the captain of the junk to sail quickly to Macassar and
send word by a swift messenger to Ah Sing that he must let me know the
moment a new resident is appointed. There is no wind and the sun is
high; therefore the junk will still be in the harbor. Hurry, Cho Seng!"
Without a word the Chinaman wheeled and shuffled down the woodland path
that led from the clearing toward the main highway. Koyala looked after
him fixedly.
"If his skin were white he could not be more false," she observed
bitterly. "But he is Ah Sing's slave, and Ah Sing needs me, so I need
not fear him--yet."
She followed lightly after Cho Seng until she could see the prim top of
the residency building gleaming white through the trees. Then she
stopped short. Her face darkened as the Dyak blood gathered thickly. A
look of implacable hate and passion distorted it. Her eyes sought the
distant hills:
"_Hanu Token, Hanu Token_, send a young man here to rule Bulungan," she
prayed. "Send a strong man, send a vain man, with a passion for fair
women. Let me dazzle him with my beauty, let me fill his heart with
longing, let me make his brain reel with madness, let me make his body
sick with desire. Let me make him suffer a thousand deaths before he
gasps his last breath and his dripping head is brought to thy temple in
the hills. For the wrongs done Chawatangi's daughter, _Hanu Token_, for
the wrongs done me!"
With a low sob she fled inland through the cane.