into the reserves, a further mobilisation of subjects of the French
Empire was taking place in certain little known, outlying dominions of
the "Empire." I should have said Republic or even Democracy. The
result, however, is all the same. In certain outlying portions of the
mighty Empire or Republic or Democracy, as you will, further
mobilisation of French subjects was taking place, although in these
outlying dominions the forces were not mobilised but volunteered.
That is to say, the headsman or chief of a certain village, lying
somewhere between the Equator and ten degrees North latitude, was
requested by those in authority to furnish so many volunteers. The
word being thus passed round, volunteers presented themselves,
voluntarily. Among them was Ouk. Ouk knew, having been so informed by
the headsman of his village, that failure to respond to this
opportunity meant a voluntary sojourn in the jungle. Ouk hated the
jungle. All his life he had lived in terror of it, of the evil forces
of the jungle, strangling and venomous, therefore he did not wish to
take refuge amongst them, for he knew them well. Of the two
alternatives, the risks of civilization seemed preferable.
Civilization was an unknown quantity, whereas the jungle was familiar
to himself and his ancestors, and the fear transmitted by his
ancestors was firmly emplanted in his mind. Therefore he had no
special desire to sojourn amongst the mighty forces of the forest,
which he knew to be overwhelming. At that time, he did not know that
the forces of civilization were equally sinister, equally
overwhelming. All his belated brain knew, was that if he failed to
answer the call of those in authority, he must take refuge in the
forests. Which was sure death. It was sure death to wander
defenceless, unarmed, in the twilight gloom of noon day, enveloped by
dense overgrowth, avoiding venomous serpents and vile stinging insects
by day, and crouching by night from man-eating tigers. It presented
therefore, no pleasant alternative--no free wandering amidst
beautiful, tropical trees and vines heavy with luscious fruits--there
would be no drinking from running streams in pleasant, sunlit
clearings. Ouk knew the jungle, and as the alternative was
civilization, he chose civilization which he did not yet know.
Therefore he freely offered himself one evening, coming from his
native village attired in a gay sarong, a peaked hat, and nothing
more. He entered a camp, where he found himself in company with other
volunteers, pressed into the service of civilization by the same
pressure that had so appealed to himself. There were several hundred
of them in this camp, all learning the ways of Europe, and learning
with difficulty and pain. The most painful thing, perhaps, were the
coarse leather shoes they were obliged to wear. Ouk's feet had been
accustomed to being bare--clad, on extreme occasions, with pliant
straw sandals. He garbed them now, according to instructions, in hard,
coarse leather shoes, furnished by those in authority, which they told
him would do much to protect his sensitive feet against the cold of a
French winter. Ouk had no ideas as to the rigours of a French winter,
but the heavy shoes were exceedingly painful. In exchange for his gay
sarong, they gave him a thick, ill fitting suit of khaki flannel, in
which he smothered, but this, they likewise explained to him, would do
much to protect him from the inclemency of French weather. Thus wound
up and bound up, and suffering mightily in the garb of European
civilization, Ouk gave himself up to learn how to protect it. The
alternative to this decision, being as we have said, an alternative
that he could not bring himself to face.
Three months of training being accomplished, Ouk and his companions
were by that time fitted to go forth for the protection of great
ideals. They were the humble defenders of these ideals, and from time
to time the newspapers spoke in glowing terms, of their sentimental,
clamorous wish to defend them. Even in these remote, unknown regions,
somewhere between the Equator and ten degrees North latitude,
volunteers were pressing forward to uphold the high traditions of
their masters. Ouk and his companions knew nothing of these sonorous,
ringing phrases in the papers. They knew only of the alternative, the
jungle. Time came and the day came when they were all ushered forth
from their training camp, packed into a big junk, and released into
the stormy tossings of the harbour, there to await the arrival of the
French Mail, that was to convey them to Europe. The sun beat down hot
upon them, in their unaccustomed shoes and khaki, the harbour waves
tossed violently, and the French Mail was late. Eventually it arrived,
however, and they all scrambled aboard, passing along a narrow
gangplank from which four of them slipped and were drowned in the sea.
But four out of five hundred was a small matter, quite insignificant.
When the French Mail arrived at Saigon, Ouk was able to replenish his
supply of betel nut and sirra leaves, buying them from coolies in
bobbing sampans, which sampans had been allowed to tie themselves to
the other side of the steamer. At Singapore also he bought himself
more betel nut and sirra leaves, but after leaving Singapore he was
unable to replenish his stock, and consequently suffered. Every one
with him, in that great company of volunteers, also suffered. It was
an unexpected deprivation. The ship ploughed along, however, the
officers taking small notice of Ouk and his kind--indeed, they only
referred to Ouk by number, for no one of those in authority could
possibly remember the outlandish names of these heathen. Nor did their
names greatly matter.
Time passed, the long voyage was over, and Ouk landed at Marseilles.
In course of time he found himself placed in a small town in one of
the provinces, the very town from which Maubert had been released to
go to the Front. Thus it happened that there were as many men in that
town as had been taken away from it, only the colour and the race of
the men had changed. The nationality of all of them, however, was the
same--they were all subjects of the mighty French Empire or Democracy,
and in France race prejudice is practically nil. Therefore Ouk, who
worked in a munition factory, found himself regarded with curiosity
and with interest, though not with prejudice. Thus it happened that
Madame Maubert found herself gazing at Ouk one evening, from behind
the safe security of her zinc covered bar. Curiosity and interest were
in her soul, but no particular sense of racial superiority. Ouk and
some companions, speaking together in heathen jargon, were seated
comfortably at one of the little yellow tables of the café, learning
to drink wine in place of the betel nut of which they had been
deprived. All through the day they worked in one of the big factories,
but in the evenings they were free, and able to mix with civilization
and become acquainted with it. And they became acquainted with it in
the bar of Madame Maubert, who served them with yellow wine, and who
watched, from her safe place behind the zinc covered counter, the
effect of yellow wine upon yellow bodies which presumably contained
yellow souls--if any.
All this made its impression upon Ouk. All this enforced labour and
civilization and unaccustomed wine. So it happened that one evening
Ouk remained alone in the bar after his companions had gone, and he
came close up to the zinc covered counter behind which was seated
Madame Maubert, and he regarded her steadily. She too, regarded him
steadily, and beheld in his slim, upright figure something which
attracted her. And Ouk beheld in Madame Maubert something which
attracted him. Seated upon her high stool on the other side of the
counter, she towered above him, but he felt no awe of her, no sense of
her superiority. True, she looked somewhat older than the girls in his
village, but on the other hand, she had a pink and white skin, and Ouk
had not yet come in contact with a pink and white skin. Nor had Madame
Maubert ever seen, close to, the shining, beautiful skin of a young
Oriental. After all, were they not both subjects of the same great
nation, were they not both living and sacrificing themselves for the
preservation of the same ideals? Madame Maubert had given up her man.
Ouk had given up--heaven knows what--the jungle! Anyway, such being
the effect of yellow wine upon Ouk, and such being the effect of Ouk
on Madame Maubert, they both leaned their elbows upon opposite sides
of the zinc counter that evening and looked at each other. For a whole
year Madame Maubert's husband had been away from her, and for nearly a
whole year Ouk had been away from the women of his kind, and suddenly
they realised, gazing at each other from opposite sides of the zinc
covered bar, that Civilization claimed them. Each had a duty to
perform towards its furtherance and enhancement.
IV
Let us now go back to Maubert, standing for long months within his
straw covered hut, or standing in the roadway in front of it,
demanding passports. Every day, for many months past, he remembered
his misspent permission and cursed the way he had passed it. Passed it
in so futile a manner. Things might have been so different. His
companions often chaffed him about it, chaffed him rudely. For he had
never seen fit to tell them that he had not gone down to his home in
the provinces, as they thought he had, but had been ensnared by some
woman in Paris who had pulled him away from a passing tram on the rue
de la Gaiétè. One day the _vaguemestre_ brought him a letter. He was
very dizzy when he read it. Everything swam round. Rage and relief
combated together in his limited brain. Rage and relief--rage and
relief! He could take his letter to the authorities and demand his
release--or----
For now he had five children, had Maubert. No one would question it.
In his hand lay the letter of his wife. Five children. The fifth just
born. That meant release from the service of his country. She said she
was sorry. That she had done it for him. He would understand. But
Maubert did not understand. He remembered his misspent permission, and
the thought of it nauseated him. She, too. The thought of it nauseated
him. Certainly he did not understand.
On the other hand, the authorities had on their books the date of his
permission. He looked again at the letter of his wife. The dates
coincided admirably. He had but to go to his superior officer and show
him the letter of his wife, announcing the birth of their fifth child.
Then he would be free. Free from the service of his country, the
hated service, the examining of passports presented by a rushing
General, by a rushing ambulance, by some rushing motor that was
perhaps carrying a spy.
He so hated it all. But now, more than anything else, he hated his
wife. He would accept his release and go home and kill her. He
wouldn't be free any more if he did that, however. He argued it out
with himself. So he couldn't kill her. He must accept it. If he
accepted his release from the service of his country, he must accept
it on her terms. He spent a long day in the rain and the wind,
thinking it out. But he thought it out at last. He would accept her
terms, obtain his release, go home and see--and then decide.
He told his Colonel about it, and his Colonel chaffed him, and looked
over some papers, and finally set in motion the mechanism by which he
was finally set free from the service of his country. It took some
weeks before this was accomplished, but it was finally done. And when
he arrived in Paris, coming down from his post in the First Zone of
the Armies, he was painfully sober. No more wine that day for him. No
more wine, bought at the _estaminet_ before he left, or bought during
the long journey down to Paris. No more zig-zagging up the rue de la
Gaiétè. He found the Métro entrance at the exit of the Gare
Montparnasse, took the train, and arrived, shortly afterwards, at the
Gare du Nord, very sober. Very sober and angry.
And when he reached his home in the provinces, he was still sober and
still angry. Nor did he know what he should do. He did not know
whether he should kill his wife or not. If he did, he must go back to
the Front. And he hated the Front. He hated his duties, sentry duty,
in the First Zone of the Armies. He could not report to his Colonel
again, and say, "Give me back my sentry box--let me serve my
country--that fifth child is not mine!" He was in a tight place,
surely. But at his home, his mood changed, his wife was very gentle.
She said she had been wrong.
"Ouk is dead," she said. "All those poor little men who come from the
Tropics die very soon in our cold, damp weather. They cannot stand it.
The khaki flannels we give them do not warm them. There is not much
wool in them. The cold penetrates into their bones. They catch cold
and die, all of them, sooner or later. It is an extravagance,
importing them."
Therefore he was mollified. "For your sake," said his wife. Maubert
looked down at the fifth child lying in its cradle. The child that
brought him release from the service of his country--release from
sentry duty, from looking at hastily shoved out, unintelligible
passports.
"For your sake," repeated his wife, slipping her arm through his arm.
"Very well," said Maubert stiffly. All the same, he thought to
himself, the child certainly looks like a Chinese.
MISUNDERSTANDING
V
MISUNDERSTANDING
I
They say out here, that one can never understand the native mind and
its workings. So primitive are they, these quiet, gentle,
brown-skinned men and women, crouching over their compound fires in
the evening, lazily driving the lumbering buffaloes in the rice
fields, living their facile life, here on the edge of the jungle. So
primitive are they, these gentle, simple forest people.
In the towns--oh, but they are not made for the towns, they are so
strangely out of place in the towns which the foreigner has contrived
for himself on the borders of their brown, sluggish rivers, towns
which he has created by pushing backward for a little the jungle,
while he builds his pink and yellow bungalows beneath the palm trees,
and spaces them between the banana trees, along straight tracks which
he calls roads. Wide, red roads, which the natives have made under
his direction, and deep, cool bungalows, which the natives have made
under his direction. Altogether, they are his towns, the foreigners'
towns, and he has constructed them so that they may remind him of his
home, ten thousand miles across the world.
It is not necessary to try to fancy the natives in these foreign
towns. They mean nothing to him, and are far distant from his
tendencies and desires. His own villages are different--thatched huts,
erected on bamboo piles, roofed with palm leaves. They cluster close
together along the winding brown rivers, on the edge of the jungle.
Mounted very high on their stilts of bamboo, crowding each other very
close together, compound touching compound for the sake of
companionship and safety. Safety from the wild beasts of the forests,
those that cry by night, and howl and prowl and kill; safety from the
serpents, whose sting is death, shelter, protection, from all the
dark, lurking dangers of the jungle--the evil, mighty forests, at
whose edge, between it and the winding yellow rivers, they build
themselves their homes. Yes, but life is very easy here, just the
same. A little stirring of the rich earth in the clearings, and food
springs forth. A little paddling up the stream or down, in a pirogue
or a sampan, a net strung across the sluggish waters, and there is
food again. A little wading in shallow, sunlit pools, a swift strike
with a trident, and a fish is caught. And fruit hangs heavy from the
trees. Life is very easy in these countries. And with the coming of
the sudden sunset of the Tropics, the evening fires are lighted in the
compounds and there is gathering together, with song and laughter,
rest and ease. So as life is very facile in the jungle, love of money
is unknown. Why money--what can it mean? Why toil for something which
one has no use for, cannot spend? Just enough, perhaps, to bargain
with the white man for some simple need--to buy a water buffalo,
maybe, for ploughing in the rice fields. No more than that--it's not
needed. And the very little coins, the very, very little coins, two
dozen of them making up the white man's penny, just enough of these
left over to stick upon the lips of Buddha, at the corners, with a
little gum. Thus a prayer to Buddha, and the offering of a little
coin, stuck with resin to the god's lips, as an offering. That is
all. Life is very simple, living in one's skin.
I have said all this so that you might understand. Only, remember, no
one understands, quite, the workings of the savage mind. And these of
whom I write are gentle savages, and their way of life is simple,
primitive and crude. Only, upon contact with the white man, some of
this has been obliged to wear off a little. They have had to become
adaptive, to assume a little polish, as it were. But at heart, after
these many years of contact, they are still simple. They are mindless,
gentle, squatting bare backed in the shade, chewing, spitting, betel
nut. Chewing as the ox chews, thinking as the ox thinks. Gentle brown
men and women, touching the edge of the most refined civilization of
the western world.
The tale jerks here--why shouldn't it? The Lieutenant told me this bit
of it himself--he lives in the foreigners' town, and keeps order
there. There was a revolt last year. But that is too dignified a word,
it assumes too much, it assumes something that there never was. For
revolt signifies organisation, and there wasn't any. It signifies a
general understanding, and there wasn't any. It signifies great
numbers involved, and there were no great numbers. How could there
have been any of these things, said the Lieutenant, among a scattered
people, scattered through the jungle, on the edges of the warm, mighty
forests, at the headwaters of the great winding rivers which penetrate
inland for a thousand miles. No, it was in no sense a revolt, which is
too strong a word. They had no organisation, they could not
communicate with each other, had they wished. Distances were great,
and they could not read or write. They had never been molested--never
schooled. It was better so. Education is no good to a squatter in the
shade. No, it was rather an uprising of a handful of them in the town
of the white man, the town of red earth streets, with pink and yellow
bungalows, cool and sheltered under spreading palms. The town where
many foreigners lived, who walked about listlessly in their white
linen clothes, ghastly pale, with dark rings beneath their eyes, who
stifled in the heat and thought of Home, ten thousand miles away. It
all happened suddenly, no one knows how or why. But one morning, just
after the sun rose in his red, burning splendour, there crept into the
town a few hundred men. They came in by this red street, with the
statue of the Bishop at the top--the bronze statue of the Bishop who
had lived and worked and died here years ago. They came by the red
street leading past the bazaar, the model market, fashioned, with
improvements, like the one at home. They came by the red street
leading past the Botanical Garden, the gardens where at the close of
scorching days the women of the white man, ghastly white, used to
drive before sunset, to breathe a little after the stifling day. They
came along the quais, where the white man's ships found harbour.
Altogether, creeping in on many roads, coming in their fours and
fives, they made about three hundred. And they were in revolt, if you
please, against the representatives of the most refined civilization
of the western world! Just three hundred, no more. Not a ripple of it,
apparently, spread backwards to the jungle, to the millions inland, in
the forests.
What happened? Oh, it was all over in an hour! The Lieutenant heard
them coming--his orderly ran in with the word--and he was out in an
instant with eight men. Eight soldiers armed with rifles. It was quite
amusing. And opposed to them, that mob, in their peaked hats, in their
loin cloths or their sarongs, bare to waist as usual. Poor fools!
Fancy--not a gun among them! They thought they were invisible! The
geomancer had told them that, and they believed him. Carried at their
head a flag, some outlandish, homemade thing, with unknown characters
upon it. Well, it was all over in a moment--those eight men armed with
guns saw to that. Short work--thirty wounded, fourteen killed. The
rest scattered, but before the day was out they had them--had them in
two hours, for a fact. All disarmed, and the Lieutenant had their
weapons. Come to see them at his bungalow, if we'd time? Interesting
lot of trophies, most unique collection. Quite unequalled. Homemade
spears, forged and hammered, stuck on bamboo poles. Homemade swords,
good blades, too, for all their crudeness. Must have taken months to
make them, fashioned slyly, on the quiet. Killing weapons, meant to
kill. Swords like the Crusaders, only cased in bamboo scabbards.
Funny lot--come to see them if we'd time. Nothing like it, a unique
collection. And the flag--red cotton flag, all blood stained, with
some device in corner, just barbaric. Poor fools! Flag pathetic?
Pathetic? Heavens, no!
Well, they stamped it out very thoroughly, at four o'clock that
afternoon. It finished at the race course, for there is always a race
course where the white man rules. Word went round, as it always goes
round in times like this, and just before sunset the whole native
population was out to see the white man's method. No one hindered them
or feared them, for apparently they had no hand in this uprising, and
moreover, were unarmed. They were full of curiosity to see what they
should see. Silently they trooped out in hundreds through the shady,
palm bordered, red streets of the town, padding barefoot past the
sheltered bungalows, past the bronze statue of the Bishop, out to the
edge of the town. All the Tropics was there, moving silently, flowing
gently, in their hundreds, to the race course. Dark skins, yellow
skins, eyes straight, eyes slanting, black hair cut short, or worn in
pigtails, or in top knots, or in chignons; bare bodies, bare legs, or
legs clothed in brilliant sarongs or in flapping pyjamas--all the
costumes of all the countries bordering the Seven Seas streamed
outward from the town, very silent. And as the sun blazed low to his
setting; all the Tropics waited to see what the white man would do.
They did it very cleverly, the white men. For they called upon the
native troops to do it for them, to see if they were loyal. There were
thirty-four prisoners all told, and they walked along with hands bound
behind them, looking very stupid. Even as they walked along, at that
moment the wife of the Lieutenant was showing their crude spears to
friends--she gave tea to her friends in the pink bungalow, and
exhibited the captured weapons, but the Lieutenant was not there--he
was at the race course, supervising.
They led them forward in groups of six, and they were faced by six
native soldiers armed with rifles. And just behind the six native
soldiers stood six soldiers of the white troops, also with rifles. And
when the word was given to fire, if the native troops had not fired
upon their brothers, the white troops would have fired upon both. It
was cleverly managed, and very well arranged. But there was no hitch.
Six times the native troops fired upon batches of naked, kneeling men,
and six times the white soldiers stood behind them with raised rifles,
in case of hesitation. Only the crack of the rifles broke the
stillness. The dense crowd of natives gathered close, standing by in
silence. Giving no sign, they watched the retribution of the white
man. The sun beat down upon them, in their wide hats, their
semi-nakedness, attired in their sombre or brilliant cotton skirts.
When it was over, they dispersed as quietly as they had gathered. The
silent crowds walked back from the race course, the pleasure ground of
the dominant race, and drifted along the red streets of the town, back
again to the holes and burrows from which they had come.
II