We were told that if we followed the track through the forest for three
more days we should reach the River Golok, by Nipong. Then, supposing
we could find a prahu and men, another day’s journey would bring us
down stream to Rantau Panjang. There we should see so unlikely an
object as a railway station, on a branch of the Malay States Railways.
With further luck we should catch one of the rare trains, and so reach
Tumpat at our ease.
There was no hurry. I did not wish to catch a train again before I was
compelled. Just then there were no days of the week. We had morning and
night, and sun or rain. At night, the rain drumming on the leaves was
always on the same leaves, and it was the same rain. We were nowhere,
and I suspected that the real calendar might dispute with my diary over
three missing days. What had we done with them? But three days mislaid
in that forest might look like three dead leaves. Wherever we camped
the place looked like the spot where we halted the evening before.
Nothing had changed. The cicadas struck up the same song at the moment
when day became exalted, that moment before its light went out. Those
still trees suggested our exemption from what concerned an outer world;
we were held by the very spell which kept the jungle from progress.
But one afternoon our canoe shot out of the solitude. While watching
glide past us what I thought was the same forest, I saw a woman on
the bank glance up in surprise from her water-pot as our shadow went
by her. A little later there was an incredible modern bridge of iron
across the river ahead of us. It was as surprising as coconut palms
would be at Charing Cross. We landed, and found bottled beer could be
had by asking for it. To the Chinese shopkeeper those English labels
were as familiar as his own symbols. I thought, for a moment, that a
London excursionist could be at home in that remote Malay village in
five minutes.
By the light of morning this surprising homeliness appeared the less
secure. It was no more than a little cheerful bravado. The railway
bridge, the big Sikh policemen with their rifles, and the array of
bottles of European drinks on the shelves of the Chinaman’s store,
were not triumphantly significant. The wilderness was not far away.
It almost reached the bridge. It stood, patient and dark, waiting
just across the padi marshes, with the blue untraversed hills of the
interior above it. The sun was that of the dry monsoon. Sauntering
leisurely across the iron railway bridge were figures which could have
been assembling for the rehearsal of a strange drama, for the costumes
of those women coming from Siam into Kelantan to market would make
the ballet of a musical comedy look tawdry and unreal. They followed
the railway track to the station buildings, where they sat by their
wares, which mostly were fruits, scarlet and emerald chillies, yellow
lansats, mangosteens the colour and size of new cricket-balls, and
crimson rambutans. The natives were as quiet and passive as images.
Only their eyes moved; and when a girl whose father was a Chinaman and
her mother a Siamese villager looks at you, then you understand that
the art of coquetry has been nothing but a Western phrase. The quiet
folk of the country, whose life showed ardent only in the audacious
colours of their dress, which betrayed their silence and langour; the
strange houses under a weight of sun, and the palms and bamboos jetting
from the ground like fountains, made that railway track, neat and
direct as Western logic, as queer as such logic often appears in the
East. The station clock bore the name of a famous London maker. But
perhaps it gave only the London hour, and the palms knew better. This
also was bravado. The track, so much like commercial orderliness and
promptitude, was empty in both directions. Its ballast and sleepers
were as arid, hot, and hopeless, as a trail in the desert. A buzzard
was floating overhead. Two Chinamen were quarrelling outside the
waiting-room.
The unbelievable train came as a sudden shadow and an uproar.
Confidence was restored. The order and progress of a Western notion
cut straight into the East, and at almost the appointed minute. And
presently the cluster of huts and the groups of people by the station
began to recede. More progress was being made.
I found myself beside an Englishman in an otherwise empty carriage.
He was a stout young man in a despondent suit of Shantung silk. His
white sun hat was beside him. He held a handkerchief in his hand, which
frequently he passed across his moist face, blowing as he did it. He
was reclining his heavy body on one elbow, but his eyes were alert and
cheerful. “Morning,” he said loudly. “Didn’t expect to see anyone at
that station.”
He was communicative. He was not like the Malays, who will travel
with you all day and use only a few words when necessary, reserving
their quiet gossip for the evening. I soon knew that he was not like
the East, which, however, he understood very well. He thought trade
was reviving. He himself was not doing so badly. Only leave alone the
people who knew what to do, and no nonsense, and believe him ... and so
on. These natives liked being governed and ordered about. They’d never
do anything unless they were made to. Lazy swine. Look at him! Fat! Yet
he got through enough work, hot as it was.
What was more, there was gold in that country. Only wanted developing.
A little organisation, sir. The Malays didn’t know. The Siamese didn’t
know. Nor care. The people who knew would have to see that it was done.
He hoped to make enough in another five years to get home for good.
Then, a little place in the country, and a seat on the local bench, and
he would be happy.
The buffaloes stared at us as we went along, as motionless as figures
in metal. My fellow passenger was telling me that he had been given a
rotten O. B. E. for what he did during the war, but it ought to have
been a K. B. E. He reckoned he had earned it. As he told me this I was
looking at a Malay child, holding a big deer by a cord. They stared
at us intently without moving, and might have been trying to catch
a word or two about the O. B. E. as we went slowly past those huts.
I heard more then about the rewards for industrious men who would
attend strictly to their business in that land, and of what fellows he
knew, knew quite well, had been given for their war services. “Though,
dammit, sir, they had made enough without that.”
[Illustration:
_The buffaloes stared at us as we went along, as
motionless as figures in metal._
]
We ran into our last station. I looked from my carriage window on the
strangest figure of a Malay I had seen. He was an old man, but as
stout as my English fellow-traveller. He wore a yellow sarong, and
yellow is the royal colour. But his tunic was the old scarlet affair,
with yellow facings, of an English infantryman. Instead of the hat of
a Mohammedan, he wore a white regimental helmet. He had a blue sash.
On his breast were displayed a number of ornate decorations, brass
regimental badges, and medals won by other people in the past for the
most diverse things--for swimming at Plymouth and running at Stamford
Bridge. And central on his breast, hanging by a cord, was a conspicuous
red reflector from the rear lamp of a bicycle.
My English friend knew him well. He greeted the Malay cheerfully, and
bestowed on him another decoration, a silverplated monogram he had
found. The old man was so delighted that he regarded my contribution
of a dollar with no joy whatever. He continued his conversation with my
friend, in Malay, while he crumpled my currency note in his hand.
The Englishman turned to me, as we left the ancient, and chuckled. “See
his battle honours and decorations, and all that? Quite mad, you know.
Used to be a rajah till we turned him out, and thinks he’s one still.
Just as well to humour the poor old thing.”