THE KIYI PROPOSITION--SADLER CONCLUDED.
It happened in the year '84 that I took in sailing orders at Hong-Kong
to go round to Rangoon for a cargo of teak wood. It's a hard wood
that's used in shipbuilding. That was a new port to me, and it wasn't a
port-of-call at all till the English took it. You go some thirty miles
up the Rangoon River, which is one of the mouths of the Irrawaddy, which
is the main river of Burmah; and the first you see of the town is
the Shway Dagohn Pagoda, the gilded cone above the trees. Rangoon had
already a good deal that was European about it, hotels and shops, stone
blocks of buildings, the custom house, offices of the Indian Empire,
and houses of English residents. The gilded pagoda looks over everything
from a hill. The crowds in the streets are Eastern, Chinamen, Malays,
and Bengalees, and mainly the Burman of the Irrawaddy. I was anchored
over against the timber yards. I says to myself:
“Rangoon! Pagoda! Why, Green Dragons and Kid Sadler!” I wondered if he
was there to be asked, “How's business? How's the dyspeptic soul?” and
whether he had an office maybe near the custom house, and exported gold
leaf and bronze images of Buddha. I started to find the temple of Green
Dragons, and followed a broad street, leading to the right, for nearly a
mile. Then it grew wooded on each side. Gateways with carved stone posts
and plaster griffins, took the place of shops, and behind them you could
see the slanting roofs of the monasteries, and their towers, strung to
the top with rows of little roofs. A stream of people moved drowsy in
the road, monks in yellow robes with their right shoulders bare, women
with embroidered skirts, men with similar skirts, men with tattooed
legs, and men in straw hats with dangling brims. There were covered
carts looking like sun-bonnets on wheels and pulled by humped-necked
oxen. There were little skylarking children, and Chinamen, and
black-bearded Hindoos.
Then I saw a stone stairway going up the side of the hill. I went on,
staring ahead at the cone that shone in the air, and getting bewildered
to see so near by the quantity of dancing statues on the roofs of the
temples that crowded the hill, and those acres of tangled-up carving. So
I came to the foot of the stairs.
Close to the right was a gateway in a white wall, and on each side was
a green lacquer dragon, that had enamelled goggle eyes and a size that
called for respect. The gateway led under a row of roofs held up by
shiny pillars. Over the wall you could see a gilded cone pagoda with a
bell on top.
It looked pretty inside of the gate, with flowers and trees and little
white and gold buildings. A yellow-robed man sat under a roof near the
gate with some children squatted around. He wasn't Sadler. He didn't
look as if an inquiry for Sadler would start anything going in his mind.
There was a faint tinkle of bells, and the far-off mutter of a gong.
Anyway there were green dragons. I went in, thinking of the years gone,
of Fu Shan, who used to sit, sucking his porcelain pipe on Sadler's
porch, and looking down on the creek where the boys were rowing with
his countrymen, and looking down on Saleratus that was a pretty unkempt
community, and saying, “Vely good joss house, gleen dlagon joss house by
Langoon;” and then of Sadler saying: “Stuck-up little cast-eyed ghost!
Speak up, Asia, if you've got any medicine for me.”
Farther on another man in a blue robe sat under a tree, with his feet
stuck out in front. By the black clay pipe he was smoking, and by his
hair that was red enough to keep a man surprised as not harmonious with
his robin's-egg blue robe, the same was Irish.
He whooped joyful to see me, and said I'd find Sadler over “beyont the
boss pagody.”
“Tommy boy,” he says anxious, “ye won't be shtirrin' oop the Kid. He
ain't been into anything rampageous, nor the women, nor the drink,
nor clawin' to do nothin', since we coom, and me gettin' fat with the
pacefulness of it. Lave him aisy for the love of God!”
In the cone pagoda there were people praying on the floor, and it was
ringed with little bronze Buddhas and big wooden Buddhas, standing,
sitting, and lying, that all smiled, three hundred identical smiles.
Then I came out beyond to a small temple on a mound, a sort of pointed
roof on a circle of lacquer pillars. A yellow-robed man sat on the
floor, with right shoulder bare, leaning against a pillar. A woman stood
in front of him, talking fast. Three children were playing on the
grass. You could look over the wall, and see the shuffling crowd in the
streets, and those going up and down the stairway to the Shway Dagohn.
The yellow robe was smoking a pipe. Moreover he was Sadler.
The woman stared at me and scuttled away, and I says, “How's business?
How's the dyspeptic soul?”
“Business good,” he says. “Dyspeptic's took a pill. Sit down, Tommy.
Glad to see you.” Those were his remarks, and it didn't look as if the
East had swallowed him, except that he was remarkable calm, and his head
was shaved, and his clothes didn't seem proper on a white man.
Then bit by bit, he unloaded his mind, which appeared full of little
things, like a junk shop. He says: “See that woman that left?” he says.
“She has four children, all girls, and she's mad over it. Around here,
when a woman's going to have a child, she generally puts in a bid at the
temple for a boy. Queer, ain't it! Well, that one has had four girls.
Every time she comes around afterwards and lays down the law. Sometimes
she brings her man, and they both lay down the law. Well, it's lively!
That one on the left,” he says, pointing to the children, “that's Nan,
proper name Ananda. She's one of their four. She's got the nerve of a
horsefly! The chunky one in the middle, his name's Sokai, but I call him
Soaker for short. His folks work in the rice fields. The littlest one's
Kishatriya, which I call him Kiyi on account of his solemnness. Seemed
to me it ought to cheer things up, to call him Kiyi. His folks died of
cholera. He keeps meditatin' all the time.
“Business,” he says. “Oh! Fu Shan--Lum Shan. Why. Yes! Saleratus!” He
seemed to have trouble getting his mind to those long-past things. I
says, “Fu Shan introduced you to his brother, didn't he?”
“Why, Fu Shan gave me a letter. You remember that? Well, as I recollect,
it turned out this way. Lum Shan, he just says, 'All light,' and lit
out. All there was to it. He left me kind of surprised. I thought,
'There must be some poison around here,' but there wasn't. But it don't
suit him. Then I looked up the title to the temple. Old Lo Tsin had got
it recorded in the English courts in '53, when they annexed the town,
and the title appeared to be good. I investigated some more. There were
twenty yellow monks teaching school here. There's forty now. I got 'em
in. But they appeared to think Lum Shan, or me, was a sort financial
manager, that managed affairs mysterious. They said, 'Why should the
holy be troubled? All things are one.' I thought they were pretty near
right there, but I didn't see any advantage in it. I thought it was an
all-round discouragin' statement. It was the oneness of things that was
tiresome. I strolled around and thought it over. Then I says: 'Lend
me one of them robes.' 'But,' says they, 'it is the garment of the
phongyee. You are not a holy one.' 'Think not?' I says. 'Right again.
Any kind of a blanket will do.'
“They gave me a blue cotton sheet, and recommended I go and sit three
or four weeks in the pagoda, and consider that 'All things are one.'
I says, 'All right,' I squatted every day before them bronze or wooden
individuals, and remarked to each one some fifty times a day, 'All
things are one,' till it seemed to me every one of 'em was thinking that
identical thing too, and every one of 'em had the same identical and
balmy smile over it. 'Take it on the whole,' I says, 'that's a singular
coincidence, ain't it?' After three or four weeks I says, 'All things
are one,' and felt about it the same way as they looked. There was no
getting away from the amiableness of 'em. Then I says: 'How's this? Is
monotony a benefit? Is enterprise a mistake? Is the Caucasian followin'
up a blind trail? What's up?' I says.
“Then I went out and strolled around. A lot of yellow monks live over
the west wall, and pass the time, meditatin' on selected subjects and
teachin' school. Monks, now, are the mildest lot of old ladies out. The
institution furnishes two meals a day, and they all go into the city
mornings with begging bowls to give people a chance to acquire merit
by charity. Then they come back and give away what they've collected to
poverty that's collected at the gate. That way they acquire merit for
themselves. Economical, ain't it? Then I saw how old Lo Tsin felt. He
admired the economy of it anyway. I guess he admired it all around.
He stood pat by his own temple, and then got himself buried there. The
thing give him a soft spot on the head.
“Now, they think I'm a sort of an abbot, and folks come in from
everywhere to show me a cut finger and discuss their sinfulness, and
if Nan's mother ain't mad because the temple keeps puttin' her off with
girls, then Kiyi's got the fever and chills, or somethin' else is
goin' on. Always something to worry about. But a man can go over to
the Pagoda, and tell 'em 'All things are one,' and get three hundred
identical opinions to agree with. Cheers you up remarkable. Look at
Kiyi! Ain't he great?”
Sadler went on in this way unloading his mind of odds and ends. Down
on the slope below Nan was thumping Soaker on the back to make him mind
her. She wore a striped cloth and a string of beads for her clothes.
Laying down the law appeared to run in her family. Soaker took his
thumping in a way that I judged it was a custom between them. Little
Kiyi crept up the steps and squatted on the stone floor in front of us.
He had a big head, and arms and legs like dry reeds. He sat, solemn and
still, while Sadler was unloading his mind, and it seemed to me that
Kiyi was mysterious, same as the bronze Buddhas in the cone pagoda.
“He's got it,” says Sadler, speaking husky. “Worse'n I did.”
“Got what?” I says.
Sadler's face had grown tired, sort of heavy and worn, while he was
looking down at Kiyi. “Born with it. He got injected with the extract of
misery beforehand,” he says. “He was born wishing he wasn't. I know what
it is, but he don't know what it is, Kiyi don't. He don't know what's
the matter. First thing he saw was the cholera.”
All about the gardens there was a tinkle of bells made by the wind
blowing them, and a gong kept muttering somewhere. Kiyi rolled over on
the edge of Sadler's yellow robe, curled up, and shut his eyes, and went
to sleep. He had no clothes but a green loin cloth. His hair was done
up in a topknot. Then I looked at Sadler, and then at Kiyi, and then I
thought he was the littlest and saddest thing in Asia.
When I was about ready to sail, I took the Shway Dagohn road again, with
Stevey Todd, thinking Sadler might have messages to send. It was a windy
afternoon. The hot dust was blowing in the road. The yellow old man sat
inside the gate alone. There were no children under the trees. He came
out of his dream, and motioned to stop us, and mumbled something about
“Tha-Thana-Peing,” which was the Kid's title in that neighbourhood.
Whether it meant “His Solemn High Mightiness,” or meant “The Man That
Pays the Bills,” I didn't know. “No go, no go,” mumbles the yellow old
man.
“Ain't you keeping school to-day?” I says.
“Dead,” mumbles the yellow old man.
“Who? Not Sadler! No. Tha-Thana!”
“Kishhatriya,” he mumbles, “Kiyi,” and he fell back into his
absent-mindedness. So we went past him to the little temple behind the
gilded cone. Most of the monks were sitting around it on the grass, and
Irish, with his hair remarkable wild, among them, and against a pillar
sat Sadler, bent over Kiyi's body that was on his knees. One of the
yellow robes recited a monotonous chant. Maybe it was a funeral service,
or maybe they were going over their law and gospels for the benefit of
Sadler. He looked up, and the reciter stopped, and it was all quiet.
Sadler says:
“See here, boys, what's the use? They can't make an Oriental of me. This
ain't right, Tommy. Now, is it? No, it ain't right.” He looked old
and weighted down. He looked as old as a pyramid. “See here,” he says,
“Tommy, what's the idea of this?”
Then we backed out of that assembly. Seemed to me it was a proposition a
man might as well dodge. Only, I recollect how little Kiyi looked like a
wisp of dry hay, and Sadler uncommon large, with his fists on the stone
floor on either side, and his head hung over Kiyi, and how the yellow
men squatted and said nothing.
Maybe Sadler is studying the “Kiyi Proposition,” still, to find out
how the three hundred bronze Buddhas can give three hundred cheerful
agreements to the statement that “All things are one,” when, on the
contrary, some things have Kiyi luck and some don't. I don't know. The
rights and wrongs of this world always seemed to me pretty complicated.
There was Julius R. that was slippery and ambitious; there was Sadler
that had a worm in his soul; there was Clyde that kept one conscience
for argument, and another for the trade; there was Tommy Buckingham who
was getting older and troubled about the intentions of things. And yet
again there was folks like Kreps and Stevey Todd, say, mild and warm
people, and a bit simple, each in his way, and yet they always kept
themselves entertained somehow. “All things are one,” are they? I
couldn't see it either, no more than Sadler. For this is the Kiyi
Proposition. You says: “Here's a bad job. Who did it?” I says: “I don't
know.” You says: “Well, who pays for it?” I says: “Ain't any doubt about
that. It's Kiyi.”
It was quite a parcel of years I sailed the Pacific, ten years, or
thereabout, altogether. The time I saw Sadler behind the Green Dragons
was my last cruise there. I says to myself:
“Tommy, you ain't a 'bonny sailor boy' any more. Why don't you sail
your own ship? Haven't you got a bank in the West Indies? Why don't
you liquidate on Clyde? Why don't you quit your foolishness?” and when
Stevey Todd and I got back to San Francisco, I left Shan Brothers and
the _Good Sister_ for good, and we came east by railroad to New Orleans.