And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

  But the stiff current of the river decided for me. I was too weak to paddle against it broadside to land on one bank or the other. I let myself be carried into the bay-like bend … and found myself at Long Iram. A good stone house stood plainly in sight, proving that I had escaped from the Dyak country, and was at last in the presence of Dutch law and order.

  Canoes full of brown Malays looked wonderingly at me. They saw a lone woman in a Dyak canoe who had come drifting down from anywhere. Some chattered at me, pointing towards the stone house on the shore. But I needed no suggestion. I let the current pull me as near to the bank as I could, and brought my dugout up to a little pier. Without even trying to draw it up or take it from the water, I left it behind me and saw it slowly float away and wash downstream, while I staggered up the little hill to the European-built house.

  Well, it was a haven. It was a sanctuary. It was, actually, the seat of the most remote Dutch outpost in Borneo.

  Captain van B., a fine hearty old soldier of the Dutch Foreign Legion, probably had the surprise of his life when he was called to the door by his pop-eyed little Malay servant, and found a bedraggled, blonde female standing dripping before him.

  He exclaimed in Dutch, and I replied in rather breathless English, and he was yet more confused. He had a very limited English vocabulary, but he brought me inside the house and used practically all of it on me within the next five minutes.

  I told him the whole story and the real truth of it. I repeated it so often that he actually understood it and was decidedly shocked. I also had the distinct impression that he was worried, for he sent the little servant out in a hurry and it was not long before a colonial policeman in khaki came in.

  Then Captain van B. sent me to bed – which was precisely what I needed – I did not learn for three days what his worry was about. In fact, I remember almost nothing of those three days, although I am told that I was awake part of the time and that I took nourishment, and it was several weeks before the details of my escapade in evading Koetai’s jealous tribesmen became clear in my mind.

  I was pretty well exhausted, and it was apparently that which caused all the worry. Captain van B. wanted to pack me off in his own steam launch before anything could happen. As it was, I remained some time at Long Iram, trying to recover enough strength to make travel possible. When finally I did get away (under a four-man guard in the fastest boat on the Mahakan River, if you please) there was a wholesome relief in the captain’s eyes, and I think I can truly say that I have seldom felt myself so unwelcome.

  Although far more docile than the neighboring states, and much more than their kin on the British coast of Borneo, there had always been a certain restlessness on the part of the natives of Koetai. It had long been feared that only a spark was needed to unleash them from their King’s dominion and to plunge them into real trouble.

  And here I had gone and done it.

  You can believe me, then, when I say that Captain van B. was happy to see the last of me, and there was a real tenderness in his manner as he saw me go on board for my trip down the river. Prince Joe came steaming down in the big yacht, quite as worried as the captain, but he learned that none of the natives had pursued me that far. And Captain van B. used some very persuasive method to prevent that young man from hotly pursuing me to make me his princess and future queen. What it was I do not know, but anyway it worked.

  One or two more things about Borneo, before I leave, which I did very immediately. The food, for instance, is interesting. The rijstafel, especially, which you can get in Paris or Amsterdam or other European places that purport to have Javanese restaurants has little in common with the real dish. In Java, and in Borneo, too, the fruits are the real delicacies. There is the famous “hairy fruit” or rambutan whose outside is covered with thick red fibry hairs and contains a delicious seed that looks like a little white piece of garlic. There is the nassi-tini, another dish native to both islands which makes you think of our riced chicken, but is infinitely better. And one of the best foods in the whole world … and I have eaten of many different cuisines … is a thing called mata-sapi which is really a fried egg dish that is impossible to describe except by using too many superlatives.

  My description of the Dyaks has been rather thin.

  I ought to have told you that they are distinguishable from any other of the East Indian races chiefly because they are consistently shaven or even plucked. Hair is considered by them as a shame, and they pluck the eyebrows and lashes of their children at an early age, with the result that all the Dyaks have a peculiar, vacant look about them.

  The Islanders are all betel-chewers, and the Dyaks especially. It is a horrible habit, not from the moral viewpoint, for I am not interested in morals, but because all the Dyak women I saw were terribly disfigured by betel. Their lips were swollen and distended and their mouths and teeth stained a dirty brown-red, like dried blood. Some of the girls would otherwise have been very pretty. As a race, they were lithe and well made.

  My Prince was fortunate. The “Wise One,” his ruling father, had brought him up in the image of the Europeans he had seen on his long-ago trip, and he had neither been plucked nor taught to chew the betel. Otherwise, you can imagine I should never have been interested to the point of having such an absurd adventure.

  The Dyaks might be worth writing a book about, if one were learned. They have no real religious cult, a rare thing among savages of any kind. I mean that they have no shrines, no idols, nothing to worship, although they are surrounded by the Malays who are invariably Mohammedan. But they have a conception of metaphysics. They have two souls, according to their own belief. One is called Luva, and makes the body move and function, while the other is called Bruva and does the thinking and yearning and the more abstract things.

  The great motive force is the fear of growing weak, the takvet-pared. They are a race of athletes, and their lives are consecrated to strength and prowess. A champion of anything – fishing, running, wrestling, jumping, hunting with the blowpipe – becomes a hero in his local kampong, or settlement. He is idolized, and is almost a god, until the next champion arrives.

  And they are moral. Moral in the purest sense of the word. It is stated by the people of Borneo that they never lie. Perhaps it is because they are too childlike. Top-spinning is a pastime in Borneo that carries on long after childhood. They make huge tops of their own which will spin for over half an hour and will hum a rich, flute-like note so loud that it can be heard for a mile.

  Then there is the more civilized part of the Indies which also has curious customs. There are curiosities, for instance, at Batavia, where I eventually arrived, and where the Resident treated me like a naughty girl and his wife wept on my neck. One of the curiosities is called a “Dutch wife.” It may or may not be a sad reflection on the good Dutch women, but it certainly shares your bed. The “Dutch wife” is met with in hotels. You find one in every bed. It is a heavy, round bolster-like affair which lies in the bed with you, and its purpose is to keep you cool.

  Last, but not least, let me mention that all the East Indies have one bad habit in common. It is the earthquake habit, and it is decidedly unpleasant.

  Riding across Java in a train you can see the craters of I do not know how many volcanoes, and at night they are picturesque and eerie. But those sudden upheavals under the soil of Java are no fun. I did not experience a serious earthquake, but I have been thrown to the ground by a tremor, picked myself up, and been thrown down again by another. This happened to me right in the streets of the new city of Batavia, and I felt very embarrassed. Others were in the same plight, although I saw nobody come so near to having a horse fall on him as I did.

  Snake charmers and jugglers in Bombay in India, c. early 1900s.

  ✥

  Now I put all these things behind me. They are only temporary and partial. It was the East I sought, the East I felt, the East I wanted to absorb and breathe and know. And all this China, this Japan, this Malay Coast, this Java and Born
eo, were only introductory.

  Of course I knew nothing of this. I believed, each time I entered upon a new scene and plunged into a new civilization among a new people, that I had found this mighty East that had been drawing me. But once there, once mixing among these temporary things, I became conscious of a lack of permanence, of a compromise. It was not articulate, it was not clear, but I knew it and felt it.

  The loadstone was still drawing me on after I left the Dutch Indies. My small but persistent common sense called on me in its small voice and told me to return to America and accept the compromise that the rich, solid, old Californian life, safe and sure, was offering me.

  But one seldom listens to that whisper of common sense.

  So, escaping from Borneo, flying away from Java, running from badly handled and ill-conceived adventures, I was drawn towards the source, the spring from whence came all that mystery that I had left my commonplace existence to find. And on the day when the Parramatta, a little 5,000-ton steamer of an Oriental line, was warped into the dock at Bombay, I knew that the quest had ended.

  You can say, if you choose, that India is British. I yield the point. But India’s soul will never concede anything to the Anglo-Saxon system nor to the Nordic philosophy. You can send your missionaries, your lawgivers, your officers; you can build your Yacht Clubs at Bombay where even the highest caste Brahmans cannot enter; you can scorn and dominate (by military) and try to rule some 300,000,000 people, but you can never dominate a country whose composite mind thinks in millenniums, whose ideals have nothing in common with yours, whose age-old civilization goes on believing in the reunion of the Individual with the Supreme Soul.

  India. Here I am. A country whose individual life covers over 4,000 years, and whose living breath had been blowing upon me across broad seas, whose fingers had been beckoning me.

  The Parramatta passed the lighthouse at Colaba Point into the strange double city on two bays. I can hardly recall the picture – I was so impatient to take this vast country into my arms and inhale its amber-flavored breath. I had a vague, haze-dimmed recollection of Hindus, Gujerati, Mahratta, Sikh, Parsee and hundreds of other racial faces and costumes, carts drawn by sleepy oxen, teams, buggies, tramways, victorias, palanquins and good old English coaches, whirling and mingling like a colorful human cocktail. I had not a friend nor an acquaintance in the entire peninsula, excepting Mr. Thos. Cook and his Sons, and to them I trusted myself until I should be able to formulate some plans.

  It was just as well, I discovered.

  For India, even with the British touch about her cities, presents a problem of knowing which no other Eastern country can offer by comparison. I do not yet know why.

  Picture me in a rich, up-to-date, European hotel. Picture me, trying to free myself of this fear which made me cling to the things I knew and understood, and to throw myself instead into those other things I had come to find.

  It was not easy. I needed help. And I found help in an unusual way, a way which was to give me another curious experience and … I was about to say “get me into trouble.” But that we will see later.

  The “help” appeared on the day that I visited the American Consulate in Bombay. He was being carried on a litter, or perhaps I should say on an enormous square canopied divan upon which he sat in state and gorgeousness, while a dozen or so soldiers in magnificent costumes bore him stolidly along.

  I was in the act of descending the steps of the Consulate. I stopped halfway down to gaze in bewilderment and admiration at the splendor of what I saw … the train of a Hindu Rajah in full regalia. You have seen it in the cinema … made in Hollywood, doubtless, but seldom is it given to a Westerner to witness a procession of one of these potentates and their retinue silhouetted against a background of their own native sky.

  Anyway, there I stood gaping. And the Rajah saw me, lifted his head a little, drew the cigarette away from his lips, and winked. I said it. He winked.

  Well, I suppose if you were to have spent half your life in Northern Canada among the Eskimos, knew their language and habits intimately, and then were to see one standing on a church step, staring bewildered at you in Hohokus, New Jersey … well, you might be tempted to wink, too.

  That is what affected this Rajah. He winked and he smiled, and it was utterly impossible for me not to smile in return. His train passed on, a multicolored crowd following them, the Rajah erect upon his silken cushions, his legs crossed under him, smoking with dignity. It was just a moment. Just a scene from the motion pictures. He was, I supposed, passing on … out of my life.

  But as I wandered, rather in a trance, down towards my hotel, I was conscious suddenly of some one walking rapidly behind me. Then I felt a slight touch on my shoulder, and a soft, low male voice said:

  “If the Memsahib would pause …”

  I paused. I looked into the eyes of a turbaned bearded soldier of melodramatic appearance. He towered over me, in his white, loose garments, his hand resting upon the handle of a silver-mounted carved dagger, and then he bowed low before me.

  “If the Memsahib will accept the compliments of my Master, the Rajah of Shikapur, I, Poonga, am instructed to say that his house and his race will be honored above the stars.”

  He was holding something out to me. It looked like a tiny packet of silk, and my curiosity overwhelmed any hesitancy I might have had, although I was still unable to reply. I mumbled something of no consequence and allowed the soldier to place this packet in my hands. I stood there staring at it. My swarthy giant spoke again:

  “If the Memsahib will permit … Poonga will return to his Master with a reply favorable to the question.”

  All this was in beautifully pronounced English. I was brought out of my trance. I found the fastening cord of the little silk affair, and when I had removed the covering, a crisp piece of pasteboard about two inches wide and rolled into a cylinder was revealed. There was also something hard and heavy rattling inside the tube.

  I unrolled it. There fell into my hand a pearl, an absolutely perfect pearl not less than half an inch in diameter, and as lustrous as nacre. The white pasteboard turned out to be a very European visiting-card, across which was written, in pinched characters:

  “Please forgive the stupid unconventionality of this, but a new face on the Consulate steps is such a delight and especially when its owner wears a pearl clasp whose beauty and value can be seen at a distance of thirty feet. I am receiving a few persons this evening at my hotel, and it would be a pleasure if you could be among them. My man Poonga will bring you in a litter. Something in your face made me feel that you would not think me a barbarian. Shikapur.”

  Now here was a case! My pearl clasp which I had all but forgotten had started something. I had purchased it for a considerable sum in Java … a raw, unpolished pearl, and I had had it mounted to please my own imagination. It turned out to be a beauty, and it seemed now to be acquiring a legend.

  Poonga stood erect and obviously waiting for me to say something. Does one accept the invitations of Hindu Rajahs from some unknown territory in the British city of Bombay? I don’t know. But I did it.

  “Please thank your master,” I said to the soldier, “and tell him that I accept with pleasure. My hotel is the V——”

  Poonga bowed again, and vanished. One thing struck me as odd. No mention of the enclosed pearl had been made in the Rajah’s note.

  Nine o’clock.

  A porter announced, “Some one to see you, Madam.” He sounded as though he were not quite proud of the “Some One,” as though he felt a little superior to any one who would have that kind of a “some one” coming to call. I descended, and there was Poonga, dressed in a resplendent silken costume, sword in place and turban new and clean and white, shining above his silken glory like a full moon. Nor was he alone, for behind him a battery of five or six servants waited in a manner nearly military.

  He saluted with his back-breaking bow, and gestured me to the door where stood the same magnificent litter upon which I h
ad seen his Master.

  Now it is one thing to sit upon such a dais in the Hindu costume, but quite another for an American woman in her evening gown and wrap to assume the cross-legged position which such a device demands. I found myself embarrassed. However, I managed to adjust myself to the situation without too much loss of dignity.

  I was lifted and carried in state, the curtains or canopies were dropped and I was as secluded as though I were purdah with my veil and headwrap, like the most discreet of Brahman young women.

  I scarcely saw where we were going, although I did peek out of the curtains discreetly once, only to be cautioned by Poonga.

  “It is not advisable,” he whispered, appearing from somewhere beside the litter. “The Memsahib should not reveal to those who do not know and who may not understand that she – not being of my race – is traveling in the chair of my Master.”

  I understood. I returned to the mystery of the interior.

  Then we arrived. It turned out to be not a “hotel,” in the usual sense, but a “hotel particulier,” in the French meaning of the word, that is to say a private house of really splendid order. I was completely unnerved at the moment of entering that palace, but I did notice that it was of a luxury and magnificence quite commensurate with the glory of an Indian prince.

  I was led into a vast hall and then through a corridor of marble, and finally came into a tremendous room where many persons stood or sat or walked about. In English an attendant announced my name. There were other English and Europeans present.

  And then, my Rajah detached himself from a group of talkers and came forward to greet me.

  His greeting was charming, and his presentation to the celebrities, British, German, French and Hindu, was noble, but suddenly his face darkened as he stared at me, and with very little ceremony he left me standing almost alone.

  I was puzzled.

  A somewhat painted but well-preserved Englishwoman of certain age who had noticed the sudden change, came over to me.