by Paul Theroux
He knew England through her literature, but he suggests that the literature had not prepared him for this horror (perhaps revealing a gap in his reading, an inexperience of the English novel). He read Shakespeare, "and this is the amazing thing—there is no human type so different from the Shakespearean hero as the contemporary Englishman". Kazantzakis repeated that he was from Greece, a hot indolent place, and though Greece's links with England have always been unique and strong, he thought of himself as an "Oriental":
I sometimes think that we of the Oriental, tormented, pain-steeped ports, where the air has been permeated with desires for thousands of years, are like crafty old men going to the innocent, barbarous, ephebic North, our eyes forever seeking, greedy, yet slightly tired and derisive, as though knowing everything. The races of the Orient are old ladies, heavy and primordial.
It is almost an English assessment of a particular kind of foreigner. And Greece is not far away. East Africa and Singapore are farther, but for a person like myself who has lived happily in these former English territories, England is not a strange place; it holds no terrors and few disappointments; a visit is like a return. Then, one must conclude that the English were more than successful in carrying their country abroad, for the England they carried was understandable to me, an outsider. If I had a surprise on arriving in England it was the unexpected confirmation of the accuracy of the literature and a convincing justification of reminiscences I heard in tropical bars. I had doubted certain things. I found descriptions of English sunlight and spring flowers hard to believe; I tended to think that a man's memory of a particular rural landscape exaggerated its color and emptiness, and could not help but feel that behind every English hill was an English factory belching smoke, and that the English people I knew overseas were escaping to a suitable climate, or else castaways from that rainy island who had chosen to live in a fantasy of Englishness that was permitted in a cut-price colony. And if the memory was not falsified, and the literature was accurate, why should the Englishman travel so far? Why not go home? The answer is in the small East African settlement, the club, the church, the school, moved intact from the mother country and offering protection. It is also something very different from this, a factor Mr Kazantzakis doesn't mention: the Englishman's appreciation of foreignness—he produced a whole library of the literature of expatriation. That appreciation is like another distinctly English trait, the pleasure in coping with adversity—hostility in awful climates—as real in the fenced-off compound in the tropics as in Britain during the winter power cuts when the householder's mood was curiously triumphant.
The English sense of order, the result of an habitual reflex rather than a systematic decree, gives the impression of a tremendous solidity and balance. It was carried abroad and it reassured those who could enter into it. English attitudes traveled without changing much, and to a large extent this accounts for some of the Englishman's isolation. The English overseas are accused of living a rather narrow existence, but the point is that they associate themselves deeply with a locality: in this sense all Englishmen are villagers. It shows in the special phrases they use when they are away, among "natives" or "locals."
"We've lived here for donkey's years, but we've never been invited to one of their houses," says the Englishman, adding, "though we had them around to tea."
"They're very secretive and awfully suspicious," says his wife.
"They seem very friendly, but they're not interested in us. They lack curiosity."
"They keep to themselves."
"An odd lot. I can't say I understand them."
You might think they are talking about Kikuyus or Malays, but they aren't. They are Londoners who moved to Dorset eight years ago and they are talking about ordinary folk in the village. I knew the locals: I was neutral—just passing through, stopping for five months. The locals had strong opinions on outsiders who had settled in that part of Dorset.
"They come down here and all the prices go up," one old man said. He might have been a Kenyan, speaking of settlers. There were other objections: the outsiders didn't bother to understand the village life, they kept to themselves, acted superior, and anyway were mostly retired people and not much use.
Expatriates and natives: the colonial pattern repeated in England. There was a scheme afoot to drill for oil on a beautiful hill near a picturesque village. The expatriates started a campaign against it; the natives said very little. I raised the subject in a pub one night with some natives of the area, asking them where they stood on the oil-drilling issue.
"That bugger—", one said, mentioning the name of a well-known man who has lived there for some years and was leading the campaign. "I'd like to talk to him."
"What would you say to him?" I asked.
"I'd tell him to pack his bags and go back where he came from."
So one understands the linguistic variations in England, the dialect that thickens among the natives when an expatriate enters a pub. No one recognizes him; the publican chats with him; the talk around the fireplace is of a broken fence or a road accident. The expatriate is discussed only after he leaves the room: Where does he live? What does he do? The natives know the answers, and later when he buys a round of drinks they will warn him about the weather ("We'll pay for these warm days !"). It is a form of village gratitude, the effort at small-talk. But in England a village is a state of mind. "Are you new in the village?" a friend of mine was asked by a newsagent. This was in Notting Hill.
"In our own day the peasants have almost disappeared from England ... The few peasants left are silenced and terror-stricken." If Kazantzakis meant countrymen, rustics and workers on the land—or if he gave them more precise occupations (thatchers, crofters, shepherds)—he might have looked closer and seen them. Sheep-shearing is still an annual springtime event in much of rural England, even if it is not so festive as in Act IV of The Winter's Tale. Kazantzakis steered clear of farms and small villages, though he appears to have been a house guest at the manor of some titled people in what is now the Green Belt. For the most part he stuck to large cities and traveled on the main thoroughfares that connect them. He was enthralled by London and saw much of its charm in the fact that it is a "work of chance". The industrial cities of the midlands and north nearly undid him, and the four cities I mentioned previously he called "the four great circles of hell". Though he was careful in describing each city, he depended on apocryphal stories for his condensed English history, and one wonders how precise his eye was for racial characteristics. In the London streets he saw "centuries, clearly reincarnated in the highly diverse passers-by ... Viking giants ... daydreaming Celts ... Norman gentlemen ... ancient Iberians, restless and rapacious", as well as "kindhearted Saxons with their athletic flesh, their short bull-like necks, and the everlasting pipe wedged between their broken teeth". He saw no other races. His attitude is like a kind of commitment.
The English were candid with him, but the candor Kazantzakis reports seems as UnEnglish as the rhythms of their speech—though the strange and pompous effects are undoubtedly a result of the speech having been turned into Greek and back again into English. One young man told him, "I've never been interested in analyzing the various bloods flowing through my veins ... It's enough to have them flowing regularly and strongly. In case they ever vie among themselves, no one should learn of it." And another cried at him, "Can you understand me, you descendant of Themistocles?"
Only once did he have a conversational setback. He was at the country house attempting to talk to "two bony girls".
"Have you read Demosthenes?" I asked them with provincial naïveté just to see their reaction.
They both burst out laughing.
There was a gulf between us and I felt an unexpected bitterness, as though I had been left behind and the young people had passed me by. I felt ashamed of having read Demosthenes once upon a time.
A number of people told him (and he showed signs of agreeing) that the English are devoid of imagination. They meant it as
praise and quoted Cecil Rhodes saying, "The world belongs to the English because they have no imagination." Kazantzakis found the English tough, prosaic, self-absorbed, polite, gentle, full of confidence and praising what is most homely. He met an old pensioner who discussed Shakespeare with him. The pensioner said that Shakespeare gave "a humane and characteristically English ending ... to his demonic life" when he "bought houses and land, and became the pillar and pride of the little town where he was born..."
It is an unusual judgement. Kazantzakis did not dispute it. He indulged in a whimsical sally, comparing the dead Shakespeare's unwritten tragedies to the unhatched eggs you find in the entrails of a chicken you've just killed. "The pensioner shrugged his shoulders, and out of politeness refrained from making a reply. These Orientals! he mUst have been thinking to himself."
Kazantzakis took the English at their own assessment. In a nation of sweet-eaters he met only wine bibbers. Where is the rebel, the complainer, the shy egotist, the crank, the conspirator, the hobbyist? Kazantzakis' single encounter in this direction was with a Scottish Hindu who told him a very long story about Vivekenanda, and he maintained that England's contribution to humanity (with the Magna Carta and Shakespeare) is the Gentleman. He means more than a polite person—he means someone comparable to the Italian cortegiano, the Spanish hidalgo, the French honnête homme. They are, all of them, vanished breeds; but this is not to undervalue the English character. Kazantzakis reacted strongly to England, and his opinions—always somewhat idealized—reflect a great deal of English influence. What is clear in his dated, but valuable book, is that one must look in out-of-the-way places, both on land and in literature, for clues to the English character, and not all the places or books will be English in the usual sense of the word. Kazantzakis' England, the home of empire, where gentlemen read Shakespeare, was to change. But there was another England. The Greek, a classicist, didn't notice it.
Malaysia
[1973]
There is a sultan in Malaysia whose nickname is "Buffles" and who in his old age divides his time between watching polo and designing his own uniforms. His uniforms are very grand and resemble the outfit of a Shriner or thirty-second degree Mason, but he was wearing a silk sports shirt the day I met him on the polo ground. The interview began badly, because his first question, on hearing I was a writer, was, "Then you must know Beverley Nichols!" When I laughed, the sultan said, "Somerset Maugham came to my coronation. And next week Lord Somebody's coming—who is it?"
"Lewisham, Your Highness," said an Englishwoman on his left.
"Lewisham's coming—yes, Lewisham. Do you know him? No?" The sultan adjusted his sunglasses. "I just got a letter from him."
The conversation turned quite easily to big game hunting. "A very rich American once told me that he had shot grizzly bears in Russia and elephants in Africa and tigers in India. He said that bear-meat is the best, but the second best is horsemeat. He said that. Yes!"
We discussed the merits of horsemeat.
The sultan said, "My father said horsemeat was good to eat. Yes, indeed. But it's very heating." The sultan placed his hands on his shirt and found his paunch and tugged it. "You can't eat too much of it. It's too heating."
"Have you ever eaten horsemeat, Your Highness?"
"No, never. But the syces eat it all the time."
The match began with great vigor. The opposing team galloped up to the sultan's goal with their sticks flailing.
The sultan said, "Was that a goal?"
"No, Your Highness," said the woman, "but very nearly."
"Very nearly, yes! I saw that," said the sultan.
"Missed by a foot, Your Highness."
"Missed by a foot, yes!"
After that chukka, I asked the sultan what the Malay name of the opposing team meant in English.
The sultan shook his head. "I have no idea. I'll have to ask Zayid. It's Malay, you see. I don't speak it terribly well."
But there are Malay words everyone knows. There is gong, and sarong, and mata-hari, which are charming; and there is amok, which is terrifying. And though the customary greeting in Malaysia is Salaam aleikum ("Peace be to you!"), the Malays are capable of working themselves into a perfect frenzy. In a few short weeks of 1969, two thousand Chinese were killed in riots following a disputed election. On the other hand, there is a non-Muslim tribe in the southern Malaysian jungle which is completely pacifist: they have never fought or quarrelled with anyone and violence is unknown to them. They fit in quite well. In a country where the ruler barely speaks the language it is no surprise to find a primitive tribe of semi-naked pacifists. However, it was not that long ago that the now-retired headhunters of East Malaysia ate their last missionary.
Traveling through Malaysia I used to wonder who the real natives were. The Europeans I met called the Chinese natives; the Chinese referred to the Malays as natives, and the Malay phrase for the little jungle dwellers (who make a graceful living selling orchids and parrots by the roadside) is orang asli— "natives". There is a community of Portuguese in Malacca which claims to have been there for five hundred years, and one is almost convinced. Malacca's pedigree is very old: there is an ancient Portuguese cathedral and fort, and Dutch civic buildings, and—notice the national priorities—an English club. In the Malacca antique shops you can buy furniture carved by "Straits Chinese" (whose food is probably the best in the country) 150 years ago and more.
The least interesting town in Malaysia is the capital, Kuala Lumpur, which a French traveler called—with good reason—"Kuala L'impure", but it is a convenient stopping-off place, and from there you can easily travel by train or road to the Cameron Highlands. Here, the air is as cool as an autumn day in England; below you, in Tapah and beyond, people are gasping in the heat and swatting mosquitoes, but you are thousands of feet up, in a temperate climate, where strawberries grow and beds need blankets and rooms log fires. There are country walks in the highlands, but you walk with a memory of danger: one day an American tycoon took a stroll after lunch and was never seen again. From the Cameron Highlands, the island of Penang is not far, and after driving the hundred hairpin bends to Tapah the train is a reward. First Class on Malaysian Railways includes a wood-paneled compartment which you have to yourself, with a comfortable bed, and at Butterworth you're woken by a man in a sarong with breakfast—tea, a biscuit and a banana.
After the 1969 riots, American soldiers from Vietnam stopped coming to Penang for "Rest and Recreation Leave", and a local newspaper reported: "A survey shows that nine leading hotels, as well as 300 trishaw drivers and 200 'social escorts' will be affected." But Penang is rising again, and new hotels and holiday bungalows are being built on its Neapolitan-looking coastline. The food in Penang is superb, but eating habits tend to be unusual: the Chinese eat chicken feet and fish-lips, but are nauseated by cheddar cheese; the Malays eat practically anything except pork (though during Ramadhan, the Muslim fasting season, they can be fined by the so-called "Religious Police" for eating in daylight hours), and in Indian restaurants one is given a scrubbed palm leaf as ceremoniously as if it was a warmed plate—it serves the same function.
The vegetation all over Malaysia is unearthly. Orchids grow wild, and because they do, carnations—duller, but much rarer—are especially coveted. Some trees (like the Angsana) grow three or four feet a year; there are "Chewing Gum Trees" and on the slopes of Mount Kinabalu, pitcher plants the size of spittoons, which feed on insects; and importuning fig trees (Ficus elasticus), which attach themselves to other more docile trees and strangle the life out of them. My favourite Malaysian tree is called "The Midnight Horror" (Oroxylum indicum). Its leaves are so huge they look like branches, and its flowers—also quite large—begin to open at about ten pm and give off a stench which by midnight is unexampled. Though this tree is used by the Malays for making medicine, no Malay would admit to an affection for it. I admired it from a distance, but bats are devoted to it. They find the odor of The Midnight Horror irresistible; they hang by the claws
on their wings to the corollas and poke their noses into the flower's throat. The Midnight Horror might have been designed by Algernon Blackwood or H. P. Lovecraft: it is one of half a dozen trees in the world that is actually pollinated by bats.
The best things to do in Malaysia are the simplest: taking a £1 boat ride to an island off the east coast; getting an hilarious massage in Kota Kinabalu or an inexpensive feast of chili crabs in a fishing village on scaffolding and stilts in Kukup; buying a carved bargain in Malacca; swimming at Batu Feringhi in Penang; spending a day at Trengganu watching thousands of sea-turtles hatch their eggs on the beach, or really, just observing snobberies at a polo match with an agreeable sultan.
Memories of Old Afghanistan
[1974]
Afghanistan is a nuisance. Formerly, it was cheap and barbarous, and people went there to buy lumps of hashish—they would spend weeks in the filthy hotels of Herat and Kabul, staying high. But there was a military coup in 1973, and the king (who was sunning himself in Italy) was deposed. Now Afghanistan is expensive and barbarous. Even the hippies have begun to find it intolerable. The food smells of cholera, travel there is always uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous, and the Afghans are lazy, idle and violent. I had not been there long before I regretted having changed my plans to take the southern route. True, there was a war on in Baluchistan, but Baluchistan was smaller. I was determined to deal with Afghanistan swiftly, putting that discomfort into parentheses. I had a train to catch in the Khyber Pass, at Landi-Kotal, for Peshawar in Pakistan. There is only one train a week there, a local called the "132-Down." It makes one stop; it leaves on Sunday.