“The coral waxes, the palm grows, but man departs.”
--Tahitian proverb.
Ah Cho did not understand French. He sat in the crowded court room, very
weary and bored, listening to the unceasing, explosive French that now
one official and now another uttered. It was just so much gabble to Ah
Cho, and he marvelled at the stupidity of the Frenchmen who took so long
to find out the murderer of Chung Ga, and who did not find him at all.
The five hundred coolies on the plantation knew that Ah San had done the
killing, and here was Ah San not even arrested. It was true that all
the coolies had agreed secretly not to testify against one another; but
then, it was so simple, the Frenchmen should have been able to discover
that Ah San was the man. They were very stupid, these Frenchmen.
Ah Cho had done nothing of which to be afraid. He had had no hand in
the killing. It was true he had been present at it, and Schemmer, the
overseer on the plantation, had rushed into the barracks immediately
afterward and caught him there, along with four or five others; but what
of that? Chung Ga had been stabbed only twice. It stood to reason that
five or six men could not inflict two stab wounds. At the most, if a man
had struck but once, only two men could have done it.
So it was that Ah Cho reasoned, when he, along with his four companions,
had lied and blocked and obfuscated in their statements to the court
concerning what had taken place. They had heard the sounds of the
killing, and, like Schemmer, they had run to the spot. They had got
there before Schemmer--that was all. True, Schemmer had testified that,
attracted by the sound of quarrelling as he chanced to pass by, he had
stood for at least five minutes outside; that then, when he entered, he
found the prisoners already inside; and that they had not entered just
before, because he had been standing by the one door to the barracks.
But what of that? Ah Cho and his four fellow-prisoners had testified
that Schemmer was mistaken. In the end they would be let go. They were
all confident of that. Five men could not have their heads cut off for
two stab wounds. Besides, no foreign devil had seen the killing. But
these Frenchmen were so stupid. In China, as Ah Cho well knew, the
magistrate would order all of them to the torture and learn the truth.
The truth was very easy to learn under torture. But these Frenchmen did
not torture--bigger fools they! Therefore they would never find out who
killed Chung Ga.
But Ah Cho did not understand everything. The English Company that owned
the plantation had imported into Tahiti, at great expense, the five
hundred coolies. The stockholders were clamouring for dividends, and
the Company had not yet paid any; wherefore the Company did not want its
costly contract labourers to start the practice of killing one another.
Also, there were the French, eager and willing to impose upon the
Chinagos the virtues and excellences of French law. There was nothing
like setting an example once in a while; and, besides, of what use was
New Caledonia except to send men to live out their days in misery and
pain in payment of the penalty for being frail and human?
Ah Cho did not understand all this. He sat in the court room and waited
for the baffled judgment that would set him and his comrades free to go
back to the plantation and work out the terms of their contracts. This
judgment would soon be rendered. Proceedings were drawing to a close. He
could see that. There was no more testifying, no more gabble of tongues.
The French devils were tired, too, and evidently waiting for the
judgment. And as he waited he remembered back in his life to the time
when he had signed the contract and set sail in the ship for Tahiti.
Times had been hard in his sea-coast village, and when he indentured
himself to labour for five years in the South Seas at fifty cents
Mexican a day, he had thought himself fortunate. There were men in his
village who toiled a whole year for ten dollars Mexican, and there were
women who made nets all the year round for five dollars, while in the
houses of shopkeepers there were maidservants who received four dollars
for a year of service. And here he was to receive fifty cents a day; for
one day, only one day, he was to receive that princely sum! What if the
work were hard? At the end of the five years he would return home--that
was in the contract--and he would never have to work again. He would
be a rich man for life, with a house of his own, a wife, and children
growing up to venerate him. Yes, and back of the house he would have a
small garden, a place of meditation and repose, with goldfish in a tiny
lakelet, and wind bells tinkling in the several trees, and there would
be a high wall all around so that his meditation and repose should be
undisturbed.
Well, he had worked out three of those five years. He was already a
wealthy man (in his own country) through his earnings, and only two
years more intervened between the cotton plantation on Tahiti and the
meditation and repose that awaited him. But just now he was losing money
because of the unfortunate accident of being present at the killing of
Chung Ga. He had lain three weeks in prison, and for each day of those
three weeks he had lost fifty cents. But now judgment would soon be
given, and he would go back to work.
Ah Cho was twenty-two years old. He was happy and good-natured, and it
was easy for him to smile. While his body was slim in the Asiatic way,
his face was rotund. It was round, like the moon, and it irradiated a
gentle complacence and a sweet kindliness of spirit that was unusual
among his countrymen. Nor did his looks belie him. He never caused
trouble, never took part in wrangling. He did not gamble. His soul was
not harsh enough for the soul that must belong to a gambler. He was
content with little things and simple pleasures. The hush and quiet in
the cool of the day after the blazing toil in the cotton field was
to him an infinite satisfaction. He could sit for hours gazing at a
solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries and riddles
of being. A blue heron on a tiny crescent of sandy beach, a silvery
splatter of flying fish, or a sunset of pearl and rose across the
lagoon, could entrance him to all forgetfulness of the procession of
wearisome days and of the heavy lash of Schemmer.
Schemmer, Karl Schemmer, was a brute, a brutish brute. But he earned
his salary. He got the last particle of strength out of the five hundred
slaves; for slaves they were until their term of years was up. Schemmer
worked hard to extract the strength from those five hundred sweating
bodies and to transmute it into bales of fluffy cotton ready for export.
His dominant, iron-clad, primeval brutishness was what enabled him to
effect the transmutation. Also, he was assisted by a thick leather belt,
three inches wide and a yard in length, with which he always rode and
which, on occasion, could come down on the naked back of a stooping
coolie with a report like a pistol-shot. These reports were frequent
when Schemmer rode down the furrowed field.
Once, at the beginning of the first year of contract labour, he had
killed a coolie with a single blow of his fist. He had not exactly
crushed the man's head like an egg-shell, but the blow had been
sufficient to addle what was inside, and, after being sick for a week,
the man had died. But the Chinese had not complained to the French
devils that ruled over Tahiti. It was their own look out. Schemmer was
their problem. They must avoid his wrath as they avoided the venom
of the centipedes that lurked in the grass or crept into the sleeping
quarters on rainy nights. The Chinagos--such they were called by
the indolent, brown-skinned island folk--saw to it that they did not
displease Schemmer too greatly. This was equivalent to rendering up to
him a full measure of efficient toil. That blow of Schemmer's fist had
been worth thousands of dollars to the Company, and no trouble ever came
of it to Schemmer.
The French, with no instinct for colonization, futile in their childish
playgame of developing the resources of the island, were only too glad
to see the English Company succeed. What matter of Schemmer and his
redoubtable fist? The Chinago that died? Well, he was only a Chinago.
Besides, he died of sunstroke, as the doctor's certificate attested.
True, in all the history of Tahiti no one had ever died of sunstroke.
But it was that, precisely that, which made the death of this Chinago
unique. The doctor said as much in his report. He was very candid.
Dividends must be paid, or else one more failure would be added to the
long history of failure in Tahiti.
There was no understanding these white devils. Ah Cho pondered their
inscrutableness as he sat in the court room waiting the judgment. There
was no telling what went on at the back of their minds. He had seen a
few of the white devils. They were all alike--the officers and sailors
on the ship, the French officials, the several white men on the
plantation, including Schemmer. Their minds all moved in mysterious ways
there was no getting at. They grew angry without apparent cause, and
their anger was always dangerous. They were like wild beasts at such
times. They worried about little things, and on occasion could out-toil
even a Chinago. They were not temperate as Chinagos were temperate; they
were gluttons, eating prodigiously and drinking more prodigiously. A
Chinago never knew when an act would please them or arouse a storm of
wrath. A Chinago could never tell. What pleased one time, the very next
time might provoke an outburst of anger. There was a curtain behind the
eyes of the white devils that screened the backs of their minds from the
Chinago's gaze. And then, on top of it all, was that terrible efficiency
of the white devils, that ability to do things, to make things go, to
work results, to bend to their wills all creeping, crawling things,
and the powers of the very elements themselves. Yes, the white men were
strange and wonderful, and they were devils. Look at Schemmer.
Ah Cho wondered why the judgment was so long in forming. Not a man on
trial had laid hand on Chung Ga. Ah San alone had killed him. Ah San
had done it, bending Chung Ga's head back with one hand by a grip of his
queue, and with the other hand, from behind, reaching over and driving
the knife into his body. Twice had he driven it in. There in the court
room, with closed eyes, Ah Cho saw the killing acted over again--the
squabble, the vile words bandied back and forth, the filth and insult
flung upon venerable ancestors, the curses laid upon unbegotten
generations, the leap of Ah San, the grip on the queue of Chung Ga, the
knife that sank twice into his flesh, the bursting open of the door, the
irruption of Schemmer, the dash for the door, the escape of Ah San, the
flying belt of Schemmer that drove the rest into the corner, and the
firing of the revolver as a signal that brought help to Schemmer. Ah
Cho shivered as he lived it over. One blow of the belt had bruised his
cheek, taking off some of the skin. Schemmer had pointed to the bruises
when, on the witness-stand, he had identified Ah Cho. It was only just
now that the marks had become no longer visible. That had been a blow.
Half an inch nearer the centre and it would have taken out his eye. Then
Ah Cho forgot the whole happening in a vision he caught of the garden
of meditation and repose that would be his when he returned to his own
land.
He sat with impassive face, while the magistrate rendered the judgment.
Likewise were the faces of his four companions impassive. And they
remained impassive when the interpreter explained that the five of them
had been found guilty of the murder of Chung Ga, and that Ah Chow
should have his head cut off, Ah Cho serve twenty years in prison in New
Caledonia, Wong Li twelve years, and Ah Tong ten years. There was no use
in getting excited about it. Even Ah Chow remained expressionless as
a mummy, though it was his head that was to be cut off. The magistrate
added a few words, and the interpreter explained that Ah Chow's face
having been most severely bruised by Schemmer's strap had made his
identification so positive that, since one man must die, he might as
well be that man. Also, the fact that Ah Cho's face likewise had been
severely bruised, conclusively proving his presence at the murder and
his undoubted participation, had merited him the twenty years of penal
servitude. And down to the ten years of Ah Tong, the proportioned reason
for each sentence was explained. Let the Chinagos take the lesson to
heart, the Court said finally, for they must learn that the law would be
fulfilled in Tahiti though the heavens fell.
The five Chinagos were taken back to jail. They were not shocked
nor grieved. The sentences being unexpected was quite what they were
accustomed to in their dealings with the white devils. From them a
Chinago rarely expected more than the unexpected. The heavy punishment
for a crime they had not committed was no stranger than the countless
strange things that white devils did. In the weeks that followed, Ah Cho
often contemplated Ah Chow with mild curiosity. His head was to be cut
off by the guillotine that was being erected on the plantation. For him
there would be no declining years, no gardens of tranquillity. Ah Cho
philosophized and speculated about life and death. As for himself, he
was not perturbed. Twenty years were merely twenty years. By that much
was his garden removed from him--that was all. He was young, and the
patience of Asia was in his bones. He could wait those twenty years, and
by that time the heats of his blood would be assuaged and he would be
better fitted for that garden of calm delight. He thought of a name for
it; he would call it The Garden of the Morning Calm. He was made happy
all day by the thought, and he was inspired to devise a moral maxim on
the virtue of patience, which maxim proved a great comfort, especially
to Wong Li and Ah Tong. Ah Chow, however, did not care for the maxim.
His head was to be separated from his body in so short a time that he
had no need for patience to wait for that event. He smoked well, ate
well, slept well, and did not worry about the slow passage of time.
Cruchot was a gendarme. He had seen twenty years of service in the
colonies, from Nigeria and Senegal to the South Seas, and those
twenty years had not perceptibly brightened his dull mind. He was as
slow-witted and stupid as in his peasant days in the south of France. He
knew discipline and fear of authority, and from God down to the sergeant
of gendarmes the only difference to him was the measure of slavish
obedience which he rendered. In point of fact, the sergeant bulked
bigger in his mind than God, except on Sundays when God's mouthpieces
had their say. God was usually very remote, while the sergeant was
ordinarily very close at hand.
Cruchot it was who received the order from the Chief Justice to the
jailer commanding that functionary to deliver over to Cruchot the person
of Ah Chow. Now, it happened that the Chief Justice had given a dinner
the night before to the captain and officers of the French man-of-war.
His hand was shaking when he wrote out the order, and his eyes were
aching so dreadfully that he did not read over the order. It was only a
Chinago's life he was signing away, anyway. So he did not notice that he
had omitted the final letter in Ah Chow's name. The order read “Ah Cho,”
and, when Cruchot presented the order, the jailer turned over to him the
person of Ah Cho. Cruchot took that person beside him on the seat of a
wagon, behind two mules, and drove away.
Ah Cho was glad to be out in the sunshine. He sat beside the gendarme
and beamed. He beamed more ardently than ever when he noted the mules
headed south toward Atimaono. Undoubtedly Schemmer had sent for him to
be brought back. Schemmer wanted him to work. Very well, he would work
well. Schemmer would never have cause to complain. It was a hot day.
There had been a stoppage of the trades. The mules sweated, Cruchot
sweated, and Ah Cho sweated. But it was Ah Cho that bore the heat with
the least concern. He had toiled three years under that sun on the
plantation. He beamed and beamed with such genial good nature that even
Cruchot's heavy mind was stirred to wonderment.
“You are very funny,” he said at last.
Ah Cho nodded and beamed more ardently. Unlike the magistrate, Cruchot
spoke to him in the Kanaka tongue, and this, like all Chinagos and all
foreign devils, Ah Cho understood.
“You laugh too much,” Cruchot chided. “One's heart should be full of
tears on a day like this.”
“I am glad to get out of the jail.”
“Is that all?” The gendarme shrugged his shoulders.
“Is it not enough?” was the retort.
“Then you are not glad to have your head cut off?”