Liz and Nellie

by Shonna Slayton

  Twenty times the proper value is demanded, and poignant outcries of bitter astonishment greet the unbelievably meager offer of the Sahib, who should be as father and as mother to the merchant, but who proffers him only an insult. The rag is tied up in wounded amazement half a dozen times before a compromise suggests itself.

  Innocent joy dawns on the vender's countenance – chance shall settle it. Will the Sahib toss to decide whether he shall give for this beautiful cat's-eye two pounds or five?

  The original sum asked having been twenty, the Sahib sees signs of relenting and consents to try the turn of the coin. The toss is fairly conducted, and whether he wins or loses, the importunate merchant appears content, as in any case he makes a profit.

  A snake-charmer is squatting in the dust before the hotel, performing feats of juggling: playfully depositing an egg in one ear, and in a moment picking it, with a sweet smile of surprise, out of the other.

  Tossing into the air a coconut, which obviously he has no present use for, as it remains up there out of sight for a time while he goes on with his other tricks, until we are suddenly aware of its lying beside him, and cannot recall whether it was there from the first or not.

  Rubbing his egg between open, outstretched palms until they meet and the egg is rubbed away to nothing at all, and restoring it to existence by rotary movements of his palms in the opposite direction.

  Simple feats that are surprising, because he is quite naked save for a turban and a loin-cloth, and has no aids to his art but the brown cotton bag in which he carries his few properties, and a small flat basket where a cobra is coiled. But his hands are marvelously deft and supple – the hands of an old race, slim, pliant, well modeled, and exquisitely dexterous.

  He takes off the cover of the snake basket, the reptile within lying sullenly sluggish until a rap over the head induces him to lift himself angrily, puff out his throat, and make ready to strike. But his master is playing a low, monotonous tune on a tiny bamboo flute, with his eyes fastened upon the snake's eyes, and swaying his nude body slowly from side to side.

  The serpent stirs restlessly, and flickers his wicked, thin red tongue; but the sleepy tune drones on and on, and the brown body moves to and fro – to and fro. Presently the serpent begins to wave softly, following the movements of the man's body and with his eyes fixed on the man's eyes, and so in time sinks slowly in a languid heap of relaxed folds.

  The music grows fainter, fainter, dies away to a breath – a whisper – ceases. The man hangs the helpless inert serpent – drunk with the insistent low whine of the flute – about his bare neck and breast, and comes forward to beg a rupee for his pains.

  We – the Lady from Boston, her son, the Ceylon tea-planter, and I – hire a guide and carriage and go for a drive. Through the town, past the tall clock tower whose flashing light showed our path last night; past the banks and the haunts of the money-changers – “shroffs” clad in crisp white buttoned with gold, and with great circles of thin gold wire in their ears and black-and-gold head-dresses on their smooth-shaven crowns. Past the beautiful sickle-shaped beach of Galle Face, and then inland along the shadowy dank roads under the heavy green vault of the multitudinous palms – coconut palms (forty millions of these, the guide says), Palmyra palms, from which the heady palm-wine is made; Kitul palms that yield sugar and sago; talipot palms, upon whose papyrus-like leaves were inscribed the sacred writings – Mahawanso – five hundred years before Christ, and preserved twenty-two centuries at Wihares; and the areca palm, that gives the nuts the natives chew with their betel leaves, turning their smiles a shocking blood-red.

  We pass banyan trees with roots like huge pythons coiling through the grass, and down-dropped stems from the far-spreading branches, making dim, leafy cloisters. Breadfruit trees, monster ferns, pools full of lotus plants, and orchids growing almost as freely as weeds.

  The guide, a gentlemanly person in a skirt, has the usual mane of rippling hair bound in a sleek knot at the nape. My curiosity gets the better of me again. “Will you undo your hair?” I move my hand in a circular motion to emphasize what I mean.

  He grins at my request and untwists the knot. His hair falls far below his waist in silky black waves. After we all ooh and ah, he restores it in a moment by a quick turn of the wrist to its former neat compactness.

  I pull out a hairpin and give it to him.

  He turns it over, examining it. “What is it?”

  “In America, the women use these to hold our hairstyles in place. You may have it.”

  “Thank you, Mem Sahib.” He has never seen a hairpin, and the gift of one of mine childishly delights and amuses him. He thrusts it in and out of his hair and finally fastens it upon a string of queer charms and fetishes worn in his bosom.

  From time to time along the road we come upon old women sitting upon the earth with little stores of nuts, lime, and betel leaves spread before them for the refreshment of the wayfarer. We stop at one, and our guide gets out of the carriage.

  He wraps for me a bit of areca nut with a paste of wet lime in a leaf of the betel pepper and bids me chew it.

  I am hesitant, but the son from Boston raises his eyebrows in challenge. “Try it. You’ll always regret it if you don’t. Aren’t you curious as to why they like it so much?”

  “Not really. Sometimes I am able to bridle my curiosity.” But not this time. I take a small bite.

  Instantly my mouth is full of a liquid red as blood, and tongue and lips are shriveled with a sharp aromatic astringent resembling cloves. I hasten to spit it out, but my lips are hot and acrid from the brief experiment. I check my gown to make sure it has not been stained.

  Robert takes my leftovers, and he tries a small bite. He tries not to spit it out, but in the end he does.

  I point at his bright red-stained mouth and laugh. “You look like a native now!”

  He grins, making the effect worse.

  The entire population of Ceylon is wedded to the betel habit, save the servants of Europeans who object to the unpleasant vampire red of the stained mouth and corroded teeth. It harms no more than tobacco, I’m told, and the natives prefer it even to food.

  “Mem Sahib,” says the guide, touching his brow with his fingers, and giving me one of those smiling glances – “you are my father and my mother. Will you that we go to the cinnamon gardens?” On the way, he feeds upon ripe mangoes that have a reddish custard-like pulp, sweetly musky in flavor.

  It is a wonder I trust to eat anything he offers me now, but I do.

  From among the cinnamon bushes growing without order in the white sand, and breathing faint odors in the steaming heat, starts out a lean, naked lad begging for alms. He is not to be shaken off, following in a leaping dance with flying hair and a white-toothed smile, clapping his elbows against his ribs with a noise like castanets, and rattling his bones together loudly and merrily as though a skeleton pranced after us through the dust, so that we are fain to end the exhibition of his unique powers with a few coins.

  In the museum that stands in the cinnamon gardens we find Eden's serpents – the reverse side of this painted island paradise. The dull, venomous cobra in his spotted cowl; clammy, strangling folds of long pythons; twenty-foot sharks with horrid semi-circular hedges of teeth – the wolves of these pearl-sown seas – and endless stinging, biting, poisoning creatures.

  Here are also the uncouthly hideous masks of the old devil dancers, great gold ornaments, splendid robes, and the ingeniously murderous weapons of this mild-mannered race, who count in their history twenty-six kings done treacherously to death.

  In other rooms are the stuffed skins of beautiful birds, huge mammals, and collections of rich-colored butterflies and moths.

  A LONG ROAD among palms. Palm-thatched huts, with idle brown folk, half naked, dreaming in the heat. A door in a ruinous wall – shaven-headed priests in yellow robes – then a dim temple, with tall gods whose heads reach stiffly up to the roof.

  Penetrating jasmine odors from altars heaped with
stemless pink blossoms, and the Lord Buddha reclining on his elbow, drowsing in the hot semi-darkness among the stifling scents. He is forty feet long, painted a coarse vivid crimson and yellow, but his flat wooden face is fixed in the same passive, low-lidded calm that we saw upon it when he sat on his lotus among the Japanese roses, or listened in his tiny mountain shrine at Penang to loud voices of the waters.

  A Nirvana peace, undisturbed by passions or pity, dreaming eternal dreams in the hot, perfumed gloom. About the walls are painted in archaic frescoes the pains and toils of his fifty incarnations of Buddhahood, through which he attained at last to this immortal peace. Vishnu and Siva are the tall gods that stand by the doorway, for to these he gives room and shares with them his altar flowers.

  A swarm closes about us as we emerge, crying for alms, and not to be ignored or beaten off. They have roused themselves from their lethargy in the simmering gloom of the palm-shaded huts, and throng clamorous and insistent for the charity the Lord Buddha has enjoined, impeding our footsteps and clinging to the carriage.

  Old women hold out the little soft hands of the dimpled naked babies they carry on their hip. They themselves are hideous, repulsive hags – mere wrinkled, disgusting rags of humanity, with red-stained, toothless mouths; and this at forty years.

  The young women are plump and pretty, with a discontented knot in their brows, and hopeless, peevish mouths – femininity being a perplexing and bitter burden in the East. Small brown imps, naked as Adam, save for a heavy silver necklace hung about their fat, little stomachs, cling to our knees and use their fine eyes with a coquette's conscious power, smilingly seducing the coin out of our pockets.

  Mrs. Kelly is powerless against them. Despite the protests of her son, she gives each a coin and we make our escape.

  35

  In Which Nellie Bly Receives A Nautical Education And Has A Fun New Year’s Eve

  SHORTLY AFTER MY return to Hong Kong, I sailed for Japan on the Oceanic, the same ship that would take me on to San Francisco. A number of friends, who had contributed so much towards my pleasure and comfort during my stay in British China, came to the ship to say farewell, and most regretfully did I take leave of them.

  Captain Smith took us into his cabin, where we all touched glasses and wished one another success, happiness and the other good things of this earth. The last moment having come, the final goodbye being said, we parted, and I was started on my way to the land of the Mikado.

  The monkey had been transferred for me from the Oriental. Meeting the stewardess, I asked if she knew about the creature, to which she replied dryly:

  “We have met.”

  She showed me her arm bandaged from the wrist to the shoulder.

  “What did you do?” I asked in consternation.

  “I did nothing but scream; the monkey did the rest!” She marched away.

  We spent New Year’s Eve between Hong Kong and Yokohama. The day had been so warm that we wore no wraps. In the forepart of the evening, the passengers sat together in Social Hall talking, telling stories and laughing at them.

  I learned that the Oceanic had quite a history. When it was designed and launched twenty years ago by Mr. Harland of Belfast, it startled the shipping world.

  “He was the first to introduce improvements for the comfort of passengers,” explained a well-seasoned travel who appeared thrilled to have gathered an audience to lecture. “Improvements such as placing the saloon amid ships, away from the engine noise, and especially the racing of the screw in rough weather.”

  “I suppose that is only logical,” I replied, letting him know I was not that impressed.

  “Oh, but before that time, ships were gloomy affairs, constructed with barely a thought of the happiness of passengers. Mr. Harland, in the Oceanic, was the first to provide a promenade deck and to give the saloon and staterooms a light and cheerful appearance.” He paused for a drink.

  “In fact, the Oceanic was such a new departure that it aroused the jealousy of other ship companies. They condemned the ship as unseaworthy!” The gentleman shook his head and chuckled. “The outcry against the ship was so great that sailors and firemen were given extra wages to induce them to make the first trip.”

  We all laughed, though perhaps a bit nervously as we were right now fully trusting in her seaworthiness.

  “Instead of being the great failure, the Oceanic proved a great success. No expense was spared to make this ship comfortable for the passengers. You must admit, the catering rivals that of a first-class hotel. Passengers are accorded every liberty, and the officers do their utmost to make their guests feel at home.”

  We all agreed. We had been treated very well, indeed.

  “She became the greyhound of the Atlantic, afterwards being transferred to the Pacific in 1875. In the Orient the Oceanic is the favorite ship, and people wait for months so as to travel on her. They know she makes her voyages with speed and regularity and comfort.”

  He tapped his foot as if to slap congratulations on the ship. “She seems to grow younger with years.”

  As the man spoke, I examined the subject of our interest. I had to admit she had retained a look of positive newness.

  “Why, just last November, she made the fastest trip on record between Yokohama and San Francisco.”

  I felt a ringing in my ears as the man rushed on. Last November was when that other reporter made the reverse trip: San Francisco to Yokohama. And all the while I was blissfully unaware, meandering from ship to train to ship, following the schedules like every other work-a-day passenger, and she was truly racing. Not racing against time, but taking my own idea and trying to best me. I was about to get up to walk along said promenade deck to cool my temper when the Captain strode in with a diversion – an organette.

  “Time for music!” he called out as he and the doctor set down the beautiful wooden box and another filled with paper music scrolls. The lecturer was quickly abandoned as we crowded around the table to hear the music.

  The Captain had already loaded Fisher’s Hornpipe and started cranking the music before we had finished gathering. When that was over, he chose another from his goodly collection of polkas and folk songs. When the Captain’s arm got tired of the crank, the doctor would take over grinding out the music while the Captain changed out the paper rolls.

  During the changing of the scrolls, our lecturer filled the space with an explanation of how the air is cranked through wooden reeds to sound the notes cut into the paper. Every one of us could probably build our own; he was so thorough in the telling.

  Later in the evening we went to the dining hall where the purser had punch and champagne and oysters for us, a rare treat which he had prepared in America just for this occasion.

  What children we all become on board a ship. After oysters we were up to all sorts of childish tricks.

  “I have a game,” announced the doctor as we sat around the table. “I’m going to give each of you a word to say.” He then went in rotation around the table, telling us to say sounds like: Ish! Ash! Osh!

  “Now, does everyone remember their word?”

  We did.

  “On the count of three, everyone shout your word and we’ll see if we can’t frighten the other tables. Don’t be bashful or it won’t work.”

  As he counted with upheld fingers, he encouraged us to take a deep breath. At three fingers we all shouted! Ish! Ash! Osh!

  What came from our table was one great big sneeze – the most gigantic and absurd sneeze I ever heard in my life. We laughed at the shocked expressions of the other tables. They did not find our antics equally amusing, but they tolerated us.

  Afterwards a jolly man from Yokohama, whose wife was equally jolly and lively-spirited, taught us a song consisting of one line to a melody quite simple and catching.

  “Sweetly sings the donkey when he goes to grass/ Sweetly sings the donkey when he goes to grass/ Ec-ho! Ec-ho! Ec-ho!”

  When eight bells rang, we rose and sang “Auld Lang Syne” with glas
ses in hand, and on the last echo of the good old song, toasted the death of the old year and the birth of the new. We shook hands around, each wishing the other a happy New Year. The year 1889 was ended, and 1890 with its pleasures and pains began.

  Shortly after, the women passengers retired. I went to sleep, lulled by the sounds of familiar Negro melodies sung by the men in the smoking-room beneath my cabin.

  36

  A New Year In Which Elizabeth Bisland Gets A Letter From Home And Has Her Heart Stolen Away

  IT IS THE last night of the old year, and the dining hall at the hotel has been converted into a ballroom. The men, all in white, with colorful sashes about their middle, are circling languidly with pretty English girls in their arms. A high, warm wind whirls through the veranda and flutters the draperies of the lookers-on.

  The woman from Texas, in a fearful and wonderful costume, that casts a slight but comprehensive glance at the modes of three centuries and muddles them all. She is tossing her powdered head and flirting shrilly with the soft-voiced governor with the Caesar face.

  A ruddy old soldier with gray hair is moodily mounting guard over his three lank-elbowed partnerless daughters, whose plump and pleasing mamma is frolicking jovially about, clasped to the bosom of all Ceylon's military ornaments.

  Tonight Wordsworth's grandson looks like a Punch magazine cartoon designed to order by the artist George du Maurier, one where the proud don’t know how ridiculous they look to those around them. He is waltzing, lazily graceful, with one of the smartly-gowned blond girls. Despite his vain manner, I still wish to make his acquaintance, only that I could say I met Wordsworth’s grandson! But I will never approach him on my own, to appear as one of those doting girls. What does that say about my vanity?

  I don’t stay for long with the merry-makers, but retire to my room. Though I have made many friends here, I am tired and prefer a good night’s sleep to dancing all the night. I say goodnight to my attendant, still stationed outside my door. He seems never to go away, for at whatever hour I need him he is there. Even at night he does not desert his post, unrolling a rug and sleeping where he sat all day.