We heard her whistle long before she came into sight. Then we saw her smoke, black as ink above the jungle, and at last she appeared, labouring round the long slow bend about half a mile downstream and obviously trying to keep out of the main force of the current. Her deck was stacked with freight. She lay low in the water and skulked as close to the bank as the channel would let her, at times being half hidden under the outspreading branches. Her paddle wheels thrashed at the water with a mighty clanking noise.
In order to make the angle into the quay she had to swing out into the river. It was the moment everyone had been waiting for. This was excitement at Chaungwa in the rainy season.
As she moved away from the bank and began to cut across the current, we saw that a section of the boxing that protected the nearside paddle had been carried away, perhaps struck by a tree trunk travelling low in the water. Tall columns of water spouted from the paddle as the river struck at it. Rising they turned a pale shade of green in the dull sunlight, which was a curious optical effect.
As is always the case in this sort of accident, the damage had occurred on the exposed side of the Ina—upstream.
A native lookout, soaked and statuesque, stood on a packing case in the bow. Men with bamboo fenders were lined up and down the weather beam in case the river pushed the vessel askew against the quay. The captain himself had taken the helm: white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, belted white trousers, pipe gripped at the horizontal, his stripey red IFC cap almost touching the roof of the wheelhouse. We heard him ting-ting to the engine room.
One of Nicholson's foremen was standing next to me. "He needs to get her a good bit upstream before he can afford to turn. Go on, man, more smoke, more smoke . . . don't let her fall away . . . Now! There you go, laddie, helm hard over."
Water has a pleasant, mature disposition when being drunk or when it's considered in theory, as the necessary agent for all forms of life. But on the hoof its hostility is spectacular. For perhaps as long as two minutes, as the Ina turned across the current, it seemed that she'd lost steerage and was going to be swept broadside onto the reefs boiling at the head of Ayub Island. Ponderously, shuddering, throwing up curtains of spray, she got the better of it. The tilt of her deck decreased. The crew went round retying the loose lashings. We let out our breath and smiled at each other.
The boat entered quieter water. The captain relit his pipe and rang down to brake the paddles. The plumes and spindrift subsided. A crewman in a sopping dhoti went to join the lookout in the bow where they stood together on the packing case, gracefully swinging the coils of their light mooring ropes.
I was watching these lissome, muscular figures so I didn't see it the first time. But I heard the intake of breath around me.
"Good God Almighty," said Goetz.
I looked at him and then the steamer. Its passengers had gathered below the wheelhouse and were shouting to their friends on shore. The paddles were revolving only slowly, enough to make headway and no more.
Nicholson's foreman gave his stevedores harsh, urgent instructions. "Stand by to fend her off. You, run to the surgery and get Fothergill sahib. Quick now. Chop chop."
"Good God," Goetz said again. "Did you see it that time? The poor wretch."
Round the paddle feathered, so leisurely, so casually, and now I saw what was upsetting him: the naked corpse of Hpung spreadeagled upon the paddle's dripping shelf. He was held in place by the spikes left bare when the boxing had been torn away. By a fluke that bookmakers would have priced as impossible, the paddle had scooped up his body and dropped it against these spikes, which we could see had driven through him in three places and so pinioned him.
"I'm going to be sick," Goetz said, surprisingly.
I said, "He was already dead. No one swam down and nailed him to the paddle."
Hpung's head was flopping around. The paddle descended, the head rolled over, and I now saw that he'd had his throat cut open from one ear to the other. Everything was visible. His windpipe had been severed. The stubs of it, which were corrugated like coupling hoses, had been cleansed and blanched by the river. Whether its force had stripped him naked as well, I couldn't say. Anyway, there he was, our headman, bolted to the paddle for all to see.
The foreman was going to knock up a bamboo platform out into the water to retrieve the body. It was the quickest way. "Something tribal, do you think?"
"Money," I replied. "We paid him off three days ago. It can't be easy to hide a decent sum in the amount of clothing these people wear."
At that moment Fothergill, the doctor, arrived with two native policemen.
This being murder, more senior ranks had to be summoned. The Indian mind is as intricate as the Russian's when it comes to legal twaddling. It revels in the fact that the law must be respected, the proper processes undertaken in a proper manner, and the slapdash eschewed.
A full-blown inspector arrived with his sergeant on the next boat from Pakokku. Those of our porters who were still in town were rounded up for questioning. Professional trackers called puggies were sent out to bring in those who'd already gone home. I don't think anyone actually cared: Hpung wasn't a local and no one's interests had been touched. But the procedures had to be satisfied. Goetz and I were requested to stay on as potential witnesses.
Nine
The hub of Chaungwa, and I daresay the British Empire's boldest curiosity east of Brighton, was the General Post Office. The construction of this vast, copper-domed, greenly radiant building in a Burmese town of a mere eight thousand people was said by Fothergill to have been an error by the India Office. The wrong plans had been put in the wrong envelope: it had been intended for the financial district of Bombay. "Every time I see it, I'm cheered up," said Fothergill. "I too make mistakes. Anyway, it's been built and paid for. They can't move it now." Indeed they could not, nor would the natives have allowed it for the post office was a fine dry place to have a chat and a smoke. (Only spitting was prohibited.) No one objected if a man took his goat with him while he did his business. Naked children played games in its dusty recesses. It was cool. Above all, it made the citizens of Chaungwa feel superior to the merchant capitalists of Bombay.
I went one midday to post a letter to Mother.
The overhead grass mats had just been wetted again. The boys pulling them—by twine looped around their feet—were seated dozing against the far wall. Sweat was coursing down the groove of my spine into the waistband of my shorts, which was black and soaking. The benches were alive with muttering conversations that would suddenly rise in volume as one of the parties went outside to spit. Sweepers were at work with besoms and pans. Leather sandals slapped across the floor, which was good quality teak planking. A clerk was languidly intoning the numbers of the tickets by which the order of approach to the counter was regulated.
I wasn't thinking about Hpung, about Goetz, or even about the date of arrival of the next boat, which was critical to Fothergill's diminishing supply of bottled Export. Impatience had run its course. I was exhausted by the heat and by doing nothing. Torpor was in full command. In just a few days I'd become the Oblomov of Upper Burma.
Wearily the clerk called a number.
An old man rose from the bench opposite me; toothless, a thin white beard clinging to the very point of his chin, a slight belly, lazy wrinkles at his waist.
He handed his counterpart ticket to the yawning clerk, who pointed officiously to his cheroot. Dutifully the old fellow slippered across the gritty floor to the line of wooden fire buckets besides the parcels counter. He inserted his cheroot about an inch into the sand. Straightening he said something to the clerk— "Keep an eye on it for me," I expect.
He lifted a corner of his lungi and rewrapped it. He squinted down at the ticket. Then something caught his eye on the wall. He leaned forward to make an inspection.
What was it?
I watched him. It always pays to see what strikes other people. He called the clerk over. They both leaned forward. The clerk removed his spectacl
es, cleaned them on his dhoti, replaced them, stared, drew his lips back over his teeth. They peered and consulted, heads almost touching.
Was something burrowing out of the woodwork? What other explanation could there be?
I jumped up. I ran over, shouting at them in Russian.
It came out of the timber at an unimaginable speed. I glimpsed a greenish flash against the clerk's white clothing as it whistled between the two startled men. I thought, Oh my God it'll head straight for a window, which of course had no glass, because that's what buprestid beetles do, they go instantly for where it's lightest. All the collectors' stories I'd heard at the Darwin came back to me in an instant, about the rarities that had escaped because the collector had fallen in a ditch or couldn't swim the river. "Stop it!" I shouted. "Kill it!" Already my blood was churning inside me. I'd seen the sheen of verdigris, the glow of its royal blue shoulders. It had to be a jewel. Which one? "Kill it for God's sake," I shouted as the glittering bomblet flew straight as an arrow into the glass of the oil lamp on the parcels desk. I could see it, lying half stunned on the counter, showing off its greeny-bronze undercarriage, its stout legs bicycling vaguely. Even in that condition its instinct was to get flying. Where would it make for next?
"Block the window. Just stand in front of it, you idiots." I was tearing at my shirt. By now the jewel's legs were waving furiously. In a second it'd be off. I flung my shirt at it.
The lamp slid to the floor, shattering the glass.
"Fire!" someone yelled. Casually the ticket clerk went and picked up a fire bucket.
But this I only saw in arrears. For I'd followed my shirt and gone over the counter on my belly seconds afterwards, flooring one of the parcel clerks. I flung him out of the way. The shirt was in front of me. Panting, I knelt over it, scrutinising the floor all around in case the jewel had somehow been squirted out. The post office was in pandemonium. It reached me as a loud humming noise. In the corner of my vision were bits of people leaning over the counter, heads and teeth and moustaches and spectacles all mixed up. I could see my jewel nowhere on the floor. So it hadn't escaped. Like a miser I lifted a corner of my shirt. My heart was going like a runaway horse. It was there. Undamaged, flexing its wing cases. Incredible eyes staring at me, eyes that took up half its head. I clamped down on the shirt. I bunched it together until there was only this one bubble containing my beetle. Then I said to the ticket clerk, who was generally keeping order, "Have someone get my friend and tell him to bring the bottle."
One could say such a thing in Chaungwa knowing that the person of Goetz would be understood immediately.
Breathing deeply, I stayed crouching over my shirt until he arrived with my pillbox and killing bottle.
We dealt with my jewel. I knew instinctively that it was a first. One develops a sense about these things in the same way as does anyone who studies beautiful things. It is the manner in which the individual parts are contrived, and then the impression that is left by the whole that sets bells ringing.
Goetz was very quiet. That was another good sign.
I went to stand up but found that my legs were too weak. My head was spinning. I just squatted there on the parcels floor holding the killing bottle between my hands, smiling foolishly at Goetz. There were tears in my eyes. I wished my father were with me. Fame was within my grasp, and the wealth that he'd always yearned for. I waved Goetz away. I wanted to have this moment without him spying on my emotions.
The parcels clerk was telling me I must move. "How are we to do our work? There is a lady who is trying to give me three packages for her brother in Rangoon."
And the ticket clerk was telling me I must move or his manager would scold him.
I asked if he had a safe-deposit box. Smiling, he said they had five hundred. I said I'd buy one. He looked puzzled. "Rent it, I mean," I said. My head was floating amidst clouds of bougainvillea, my limbs were weightless. I expect I still had the same stupid grin on my face. I looked up into his nice brown worried eyes.
"But first you must remove yourself from this particular place of business," he said. He lifted the hinged counter and stood over me. He put his hand out, maybe for the money. I took it, hauled myself up.
I'd felt nothing while I was on the floor. I'd been in la-la land. My mind—imagination, subconscious, however it's termed— had been more powerful than my body. It was only when I stood up that I realised. Disbelieve me if you will.
The clerk lowered his gaze. "Oh mister, this is a public place. We must get you into seclusion."
He handed me my shirt, which I tied appropriately round my waist. I saw him put the pillbox on deposit: I pocketed the key. Then I went outside into the hot street and almost immediately bumped into Fothergill. He'd been coming to look for me. Goetz had told him I'd had a bit of luck in the post office.
I untied my shirt and showed him. "Where are the women here?" My expression and the extraordinariness of the situation—the phenomenon, medically and psychologically speaking—stopped him laughing. He showed me the alley. He could vouch for nothing: it was only what he'd heard. I ran down it. There was no door, only beads. I brushed through them.
The three girls were playing mah-jong. In their first bored glance I saw, "What is this whitey doing here?" The tiles clacked. One began complaining in a nasty whine. I untied my shirt with a flourish. This got their attention. They saw they weren't going to have to waste time arousing me. I undid my fly-buttons— popped it out and showed it to each of them in turn. I remember thinking it important that we all knew it was a fair deal: that perhaps they hadn't had a white man before.
I was still in the grip of my discovery. It touched upon eternity. How many thousands of years had the jewel existed without any person knowing of it? Excepting this chance, for how long might that state of affairs have continued? Until time ended? Where did I fit in?
My emotions were more concentrated than ever. I was suffused with the energy that I'd drawn into myself from the sky and from the earth, from the primaeval secret of nature that I'd just penetrated. There was an uncontainable head of pressure inside me, which I had to release before it exploded and spattered me over the walls and ceiling. I was like a caveman, grimacing and trembling. To get inside a woman and ram her to hell was all that could save me. I'd smash if I didn't. The girls saw this necessity and stopped giggling. We went through into a doing room of some size. The bed was a charpoy, a plain wooden frame with woven rope, no reciprocation in it at all. Besides it was for a Burmese and I was Russian and six foot two. I told them quite plainly it wasn't up to scratch. As they seemed to be at a loss, I stripped off my shorts and grabbed one of them, whereupon the other two immediately lifted her by the buttocks and offered her parted thighs to my tool. She wove her arms round my neck. Neatly, professionally, salaciously, they bobbed her up and down and left and right, just grazing my knob. I saw it was going to be an eight-hander, which was fine by me. But I had to have an immediate spill so that I could think straight. What I'm trying to say is that the experience of having been the first person since the age of slime to have cast eyes on this dazzling, bronzey, blue-shouldered buprestid beetle had turned my mind inside out. It was as if I'd smoked a pound of bhang. Since slime—since chaos— since man discarded his last set of gills. Billions of people—like grains of sand—had died in ignorance of my jewel.
But hey, who happened along ... So let it be named after me! Let my fame resound forever!
My cock was swollen with vanity. "Doigii!" I shouted, "the beetle of Charlie Doig," and I jerked the girl down so that my gross length was inside her. Feeling this imperative, which at first made her squeak, the lady obliged me in double-quick time. Or rather the three of them together, fingers prying everywhere.
But nothing was diminished thereby. I was still roaring like a bull and my face, I knew, was as red as the sunset. Should I call it a trance, a phase of tantrism, of Buddhist other-worldliness? I was experiencing visions of beetles, the jewels in particular, interspersed with the graphi
c fucking of women—parting the hairy purse and pounding into Jerusalem. They could have entered no one else's head. Later I tried to describe to both Goetz and Fothergill what I'd been through, but they merely guffawed.
At any rate there was more to come, that much was obvious.
The girls were wetting up, starting to squabble over me. One bent over and waved her backside around. On inspecting it and finding it pocked like Reynolds's billiard table, I refused her. We settled for a combined operation and made preparations for everyone to be involved. My white and pink skin was a novelty to them, and they were still at an age to be experimental.
I don't know exactly how this next sequence came about. Of course we were making certain noises. Perhaps that's what brought the madam in. Perhaps she'd been on the premises all the time, flogging tickets to the back-room spyholes. All of Chaungwa might have been watching us—or preparing to, formed up in chattering queues.
It had been shown to me that the rope weave of the charpoy did, after all, have some elasticity, being made from one particularly blessed fibre. We were on it in a greasy mound, a knot of brown and white. I was doing one girl (a different one) with the assistance of the other two—one on my back and the other below the charpoy, fingering the girl I was doing and at the same time oiling my big Russian balls: milking them with a lightly closed fist.
I became aware of a lessening in the various rhythms of my partners. I said, "What's going on around here?" Turning my head, I found the madam bent down to my level. I was snugged right into my girl—jammed there, up to the maker's name. It was a curious sensation to find this crone had been observing me from a distance of no more than a foot.
Ten
Some months later, after our return, I heard from Norman that my beetle had been named, for the benefit of all the human sort, Cbrysochroa birmanensis var. doigii Brendell 1912. I was twenty-three years of age.
Lying full of notions in bed, I got it stuck in my mind that millions of brown people and yellow and white and black people were parading my name through their cities on placards, talking only about me and my jewel beetle and its kingly shoulders, its green mantle and Cleopatra eyes. Their small talk at mealtime was full of it. Doigii! For all posterity! And I so young!
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