The Man Who Loved Children

by Christina Stead

  Sam was head and shoulders above most of the people. Not so Naden, his clerk, the Indian. Here and there a giant Sikh policeman, with bearded face and turban on his uncut hair, dominated the throng of torn, patched, ragged, turbaned, and capped heads. Many of these heads had no business whatever, but had so lounged and mournfully, vacantly gazed from morning to night, for many months, unemployed and disorganized, hopeless and without any shelter save those of a few charities, sleeping in filth and eating garbage. The employed were scarcely better off; the smallest frontages, back rooms, passageways, holes in the wall, served for shops, businesses, and schools; and a good many businessmen kept their merchandise in their cap, pocket, lap, in the sole of their shoe or the palm of their hand. Some used the pavement, with ready-cooked food spread out before them; there were public scribes and pavement shoemakers. It was a raving, wild, thirsting, vain, money-loving, patriotic city, its own pride, the gateway of the East to the West, and the West to the East, the key of the Golden Chersonese.

  “And all of these,” shouted Sam, “squashed flat as pancakes under the well-oiled, deep-wrinkled, naked-naveled bellies of yellow Greed: running on the futile messages of Greed and his two secretaries of the Treasury, British Government and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce!”

  “I beg pardon, sah,” shouted Naden.

  “Mammon,” shouted Sam, “Mammon, Naden, Greed, Briton and the Yellow Peril on top of the heap!”

  “Yessah.”

  “That’s a bit of irony,” yelled Sam, putting his hand between his mouth and his secretary’s ear: “he can’t make himself heard to sell his noisemakers.”

  Naden looked swiftly at the merchant, “Those are trash, tuan: I should not buy them.”

  “I told you not to call me ‘tuan,’ Naden.”

  “Yessah.” Naden smiled and bowed slightly, “You see, I can’t help myself, and I assure you, sah, it is the regular thing. My wife, sah, would be very, very much ashamed if she did not hear that: she would be afraid I should lose my job.”

  Sam laughed, “You have a very young wife, you must teach her differently. Tell her there is no difference between you and me, or you and the moneylenders, or you and the men of money.”

  Naden, not hearing very well, bowed slightly again, “Yessah! Only two streets more, please,” he pointed. “You will not mind if my friends are there,” he asked in the tone of one repeating a question.

  “Your friends are my friends, only they probably like you better,” said Sam.

  The thick, moist Singapore night closed round them. In many parts it seemed to Sam that he alone could be seen amongst those dark myriads, thick as migrant birds twittering and jostling on a cornice, struggling for a foothold in this notch of the universe. Here and there the gleams of eyes and teeth could be seen, lemon faces, hadji caps, laundered coats, pale garments. As they turned out of the thoroughfare, they jostled some stretcher-bearers who were jog-trotting along with a corpse announced by bells. Merchants of live birds and lizards, merchants of fishballs and sweetmeats they left behind them, as well as the ordinary foot passengers, and a little surge of trouble that was merely a native policeman arresting someone suspected of murder.

  “Good heavens, Naden,” exclaimed Sam indignantly, “how can they tell one dark face from another in this light?”

  “Ofttimes they can’t,” said Naden, “but they arrest someone. Someone they know. It is fair enough. It is certain he has already committed a murder. They would all murder if they got a chance.”

  “They’re your people!” cried Sam.

  “No, tuan, they are not,” said Naden, “we have passed through a lot of scum. I am a government servant, however humble.”

  But Sam misunderstood the ambitious fellow entirely and considered him abject. “If that is the justice of Government,” said Sam, “would you not be better without it?”

  “No, tuan.”

  “Do you believe in masters’ justice, imperialist justice?”

  “You have great experience, sah: you have seen more than me.

  “No, Naden, do not overrate me. I am nobody. If I seem strange to you, it is because I am not a socialist, as Colonel Willets, my boss, was once (though now, you may be sure, he is for millionaires and not the millions), nor a Laborite, nor a Democrat, nor any party man, but I look forward to the Union of Democratic Republics of the World, the United States of Mankind. Look at this poor old world as we see it today—you may look at home, Abishegenaden, for all Europe, Asia; and the Pacific World is no better nor wiser; the men of money, the bankers, the evil ones have been coming together and torturing this poor old world for a long time now, Naden. We must get rid of them, by wisdom, by spreading the light amongst these dark, dark masses. You are dark, Naden, but you are light: you are an educated man. You, too, though you are poor, must think you are rich, because you have millions—behind you! Millions of poor men who would be your brothers.”

  “You are a very good man,” said Naden. They had now turned into the quiet streets of dwelling houses, with trees, and an occasional car, where the better-paid government servants and junior clerks lived. It was a brilliant, black tropical night, swimming with powerful scents landwards and with vapors skywards. There was still a restlessness of birds in all the trees, and insects flew round the lamps.

  “Look at my poor Lai Wan Hoe in shackles because he owes money to a Sikh moneylender,” mourned Sam. “That is terrible, Naden. I am afraid some harm will come to my wonderful Wan

  Hoe, all because of extravagance, and the awful power of money, like a great hairy foul spider with a million eyes, as this night, sucking the blood of us poor humans. Yes, it sucks the life from the rich too, but they can stand it.” He laughed heartily into Naden’s eyes.

  Naden laughed, but could not help remarking, “He is a ne’er-do-well, I fear, sah, speaking privately, sah.”

  “And that wedding feast, Naden,” Sam caught him up warmly, “in the open tumult, with its gay little bridegroom sitting on his father’s shoulders, and the admiring relations, the cheerful drinks—little as I approve of them!—the cakes and candies, Naden; that was a fine sight, a human sight, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes it was, sah!”

  “It was for that that Wan Hoe got himself indebted, friend: because his brother is away in China, and he must marry his brothers and sisters and keep his old father and bury his mother. It was for pure goodness of heart and kindness and duty that he got himself indebted; perhaps they will throw him into prison-all for being profuse with the milk of human kindness. Is that bad?”

  “One is obliged to consider ways and means,” said Naden, unshaken. “Who goes to the moneylender, indebts his grandchildren.”

  Naden had been melting and glinting through his glasses, smiling, and now bowed Sam to a little house behind a lush garden. There were lights in the house which glowed through glassless windows. In that climate windows would collect mildew.

  “This way,” said Naden, bursting with pride and joy; and with great dignity, he stepped into the square sitting room, where a number of people were sitting and standing, and he said,

  “Here is Special Field Commissioner Samuel Pollit, my most honored chief.”

  Sam swam up to the surface of the river of moisture that was drowning, suffocating him, and looking at all these happy or inquisitive dark faces, flashed smiles at them, talked to them all, felt the great urge of love of man rise up in his throat. What a gift he had been given, he thought, to love and understand so many races of man!—and why? His secret was simple. They were all alike: they all longed for love and understanding.

  In a bed near the window hole was the timorous black girl, Naden’s young wife, whose new firstborn was a son. The sick woman tried to rise, out of respect and fright, but Sam waved her back to the pillow and bent over the bed, shook the tiny hand of the baby, and kissed its head; and then put into its hand the little necklace of silver shells he had got at a friendly curio dealer’s that day. The mother nearly fainted with emotion. The
n Sam, smiling graciously once more, withdrew. He could not speak one word of any of their languages, and he had to go home, change, address a Y.M.C.A. meeting, and then go to an evening at a friend’s house. He suffered without respite from the tropical heat, and his principles prevented him from ever taking the solace or strength of alcoholic drinks. The room of the weatherboard house smelled of mildew and sweat; snakes coiled under the floor, bats lived in the attic, and swallows squeaked in the air or in the eaves, all this without mentioning the thousand kinds of insects, all new and unpleasant, even for a naturalist, to live with.

  As he stepped into the street, Sam wiped his neck with his handkerchief already wringing wet, “You have a sweet wife and child, Naden.”

  “No, indeed, sah, I am ashamed: they are not worthy of your kind visit. You are so kind, sah.”

  Naden, naturally severe, became wet-eyed and soft with emotion. Sam told Naden how lucky he was, again. He himself, Sam, had had the pleasure of being a father, five times already, and imagine the joy when he found that at one birth he had twins! He could never have it enough. Each time, he explained to Naden, he felt an immense pride, a belief in a limitless future, in an unfolding universe, a hope for the proliferating human race in that shadow of dust, and infinitesimal corner of dimensionless space, even so.

  “We were monkeys, we were men: what will be men in the time to come, Naden?”

  “Gods perhaps, tuan. Who knows?”

  “You are right: men like gods. A great white writer wrote a book about that once. But you see, you have the same idea. Ideas unite us, Naden. I am so tired, Naden. I wish I was at home with a new little baby to cheer me up. Soon I will have a seventh child. I myself am a seventh child. You know, Naden, though, I wish I had a black baby too. A tan one, a Chinese one—every kind of baby. I am sorry that the kind of father I can be is limited.” He laughed in a tired way and ran his finger round inside the collar. “Men have thought of schemes for fathering many children,” he continued faintly, still laboring to bring the ideas of the west to the cultured Indian, “for preserving man’s seed in tubes and fertilizing selected mothers.”

  “And there would be a marriage ceremony?” inquired Naden politely.

  Sam smiled, “I don’t think so! But that is a detail. But now we are very backward. A man who knows he is a good father of good stock may still only have one wife.”

  “It is a pity, sah?” inquired Naden politely.

  “I am not so sure it is a good thing,” said Sam, shaking his head, but very dubious about his own idea, “either for man or woman, especially for women. Many fine women would make good mothers—” he shook his head.

  Naden nodded but he said merely, “Will you work late tonight, sah, when you get back?”

  Sam said briefly, “No.” After a moment he laughed generously, “If I had the money, do you know what I should do, Naden? You remember that orphan asylum I addressed the other day? I should adopt them all—well, not all. I should have a little Chinese baby, an Indian one, out of the asylum and take them home with me.”

  “And your wife, too, she likes that too, tuan?”

  “The women have to wash the diapers: they are not quite so generous as ourselves, it is not mankind, but little Sam and little Naden,” said Sam. “But if one could have many wives, wives too would get the idea of the community perhaps. That would be splendid—godlike, eh, Naden?”

  Naden laughed, “You are joking, I know, tuan.”

  “Then you do not think that I could manage all those wives?”

  “Any man can,” said Naden calmly. “Sah, if you will permit me: you take a great risk going down all those streets at night alone.”

  “I was not alone: I was with my fellow men.”

  “No, no, Tuan Pollit, you must never do that again. When I saw you last night, my throat jumped into my mouth, my heart, I mean.”

  “Man must never be afraid of man, friend.”

  Naden looked up at him soberly, “You are very full of ideals, sah: you are a good man. God protects goodness.”

  “But I keep my feet on earth, Naden.”

  Naden smiled at this. Sam, looking keenly at him, because there was no reply, saw the smile and asked, “Do you think I have feet of clay?”

  “That is the only safe thing to have, sah. But, pardon me, you really should not go down so far into the streets at night. Every one sees you. You are so very much the white man with your fine, white hair, too, sah. There are men from the west, dark, with dark hair, but you are everything that is the white man. It is not done, I assure you, sah. Pardon me a thousand times.”

  “Ah,” said Sam, “my natural love, Naden, my friend, of the study of mankind, man’s proper study, and my real longing—it is a prodigious yearning, a passion beyond all other passions in me, Naden, for the time of the One Great Nation to come, when we will all be joined, man to man, regardless of color and creed, has given me a prodigious disregard for what is not done. What is not done, man can do.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Naden.

  “And a wonderful regard for what is done, by the people.”

  Naden said nothing.

  “And particularly by your own people or peoples, Naden, whom I love, respect, and wish to understand. How otherwise can we teach them the few things we ourselves know in human progress? And we have something to learn from the ancient civilization you represent, the antique cultures of India.”

  “We are children, tuan. Thank you very much; we do not know very much; what we had we have forgotten. We are not modern.”

  “I wish you could come to my country and visit it: I should like you as my guest,” Sam sighed. “You would see my children, and you would bring your little fellow.”

  “You are good, sah: you are as a god.”

  “No, Naden: just a man looking for the right and for the happiness of others.”

  “Sah, you are as the gods.”

  “I do not believe in gods, only in good,” said Sam. “Gods demand sacrifices: good gives to all.”

  Naden smiled a little to himself, in his small, dark mustache and felt kindly towards the pale man wrapped in his dreams. He became a little more serious.

  “I believe in God. I am sure God is coming soon, and if you are here, you will see him: then you will believe. And he will see you.”

  Sam said fretfully, “You know, my friend, I would rather be at home, with my children, and hear the elms and sycamores and the cedars rustle, and hear dear little Mareta, with her thin voice, asking if she will get her wish, and keeping my record of Georgetown birds, than even be near the throne of a God. And if I had to choose between such a Him, and them, I would choose them at once. And so would you, Naden. There never was a father would sacrifice his son to God, as the wicked old story has it: there never was.”

  Naden was silent, astonished by this idea. Sam felt he might have been rude to his believing secretary, so he added, wearily, but whimsically,

  “Perhaps there is a black god and a white one.” They were now crossing the little Cavanagh Bridge and under the sky, paling before moonrise, could see the flotilla of barges tied up in the river at the left hand. Sam halted to get the thin currents of coolness which were heavily moving through tons of wet air, like trickles pushing and nosing against a leviathan and gradually persuading the sleepy bulk to move an inch or so.

  “I have not thought about the color of God,” came the Indian’s tricky, two-toned voice out of the dark.

  “Abishegenaden, you are very black!”

  “Yessah,” he said firmly.

  “Wouldn’t you like to be light-colored like me?”

  “No, tuan: I am not Heaven-born as you are.”

  “You must not say that to a poor mortal like me,” said Sam.

  Again Sam misunderstood the Indian clerk but was happy in his error, “You know the white man, the stupid white man feels superior to those of other colors. How do you feel about that?”

  “They feel, sah, that the darkest races are the ol
dest; it is not so long since the white man became powerful. He thinks what he thinks because he is young in the world, as a child, as my child will feel when he is a two-year-old and will be butting me with his head. That cannot last very long. The Kings of Egypt were dark; all the world was dark until a very little while ago. Then the white man came from some little crack in the earth. He does not know about the times before he came. That is how we feel, sah; he is an accident.”

  This surprising answer quieted Sam for a space; at length he answered (they were walking through a garden, planted with old trees, and beside high white walls),