You are rather morbid, aren’t you, Wan Hoe? I hope to have a long and happy life.”
“Do you think that is possible nowadays?” asked the secretary.
Sam looked at him but said nothing. He had gathered from some vague hints that this native-born Singapore Chinese was a revolutionary, belonged to the Kuomintang frowned upon equally by the British and the rich Chinese. He could not be sent back to China, however, as immigrants could. Sam knew that Wan Hoe was on the verge of disgrace. However, he made it a rule not to inquire into a man’s political actions, especially into his dangers; and he got up quickly to go out and see his colleague. He had first to strip off his soaking clothes, bathe, and get fresh ones. One of his coats put away damp, by accident, was hanging in the closet spotted with mildew. The smell of mildew could not be got out of the closet.
Sam had a quarrel with Colonel Willard Willets at the Raffles, but it ended as all their quarrels had to date in a sort of querulous capitulation on the part of the old man. He said Sam had engaged a seat in an automobile with him to visit a village of pygmies. Pygmies usually wander about in search of their food, but these pygmies, about forty in number, had been in this spot for a number of years. In the meantime, Sam had been taken up by the Governor and his wife, and it was arranged by them that he was to go with a visiting British scientist on the same expedition, but in a private car for which he would not pay. Now Colonel Willets thought Sam had let him down again and that he would have the whole expense of the trip himself.
Sam, who could ill afford it, however, said he would pay his share of the trip, but he would go with the English visitor as arranged: this was an anthropologist from Cambridge, and Sam cherished the opportunity of meeting him. While the Colonel was somewhat mollified at hearing that Sam would pay, Sam had got under his skin by refusing to ride with him.
But Sam had no sooner got back to the house than Colonel Willets was on the wire again, and began pulling his ears like an office boy, “And besides I don’t like the catalogue of the Photographic Exhibition,” he screamed.
“That’s not my business,” said Sam, “ring them up yourself.”
“But you’re in it, your name,” said Willets. “Here it says: ‘Anak Melayu, Menangkabau punya—Samuel K. Pollit—Smithsonian Expedition! You are not the leader of the Smithsonian Expedition: I am. What do you mean by that?”
Sam flushed, “You refused them any photographs: you wanted to keep them for your own book. They applied to me, and I gave them some. It’s a very successful photograph. I gave it on my own account. I didn’t tell them to put in the Smithsonian, and it doesn’t say I’m the chief.”
“I won’t have it,” said Willets’ little screaming voice made moist by tears of wrath. “Tell them to take it out. You won’t get away with it: you’re always the same, taking glory to yourself. They’ll hear about it. Don’t think I’ll keep quiet about it. No sooner do you get with the British, than you start with their airs. Damn you all.” He raved on, in that thin, hissing trickle of a tenor that Sam’s ears could barely stand. Sam put down the telephone. He plunged his hands in his pockets and took two or three impetuous steps, to work off his rage. He felt his head begin to swell and ache again, and the thick fumes of sweat rose—he must take a bath at once. Then—a lemon drink and then dinner, and then he would be drenched again.
While he was drying himself he noticed that his hands had grown to be just like his dead mother’s, the same long fingers, square tips, and veins. He thought of her with love again. Until he had married Louie’s mother, Rachel, he had known no woman, because of the promise to his mother, dying.
He went into his room to dress; and, dressing in fresh linen, felt with pleasure a cool, wet wind blow; relief was rain and the eternal wet blanket of the night air, but it was a relief. He let it blow away his thoughts of the distant past. He did not think of it very often now, for he did not want to be sentimental; but sometimes, the last few weeks, these thoughts rushed in on him and fastened in his flesh, devoured him, as an invisible but rapacious creature. He had once prayed (to himself, the powers of darkness, to the unknown) to see Rachel’s ghost; he had tried to see her. Now he felt as if the ghost of his own mastered desires, potency that had sunk into the earth, had grown up, a genie that was surrounding him, seizing him, thrusting him out of his honest path into the flame-leafed tropic jungle of desire. He thought of Rachel, and then suddenly his tender thoughts transformed themselves into the love of woman: he stood appalled, for a minute, feeling his heart beating fast, mad with the love of woman.
He suddenly knew himself—he had seen at least half a dozen women since he came to Malay that he wanted to kiss, embrace and even that he could conceive becoming more intimate with.
“What is this,” he asked himself, with dismay, “middle age?”
But to become obscenely middle-aged in one’s thirty-eighth year, he instantly realized, is not common.
“Therefore,” he reasoned with himself, “it is love coming to claim me: I have been so long without love, hated at home, living in terror of my children’s lives: it is pure, tender, normal love.”
He began to think of other things, his daughter Louie, who would soon be a woman and who would be able to create new life, to have her own children.
“Poor, motherless girl,” he sighed.
Certainly Louie would grow up to be like her own sweet, womanly mother, a blessing to some man. Thus he dismissed Louie and went to dinner thinking of the divinely good, charming expression which made him want to kiss Lady Modore. He was such a good fellow, although he knew nothing about women. One evening, for instance, after dinner, he thought it appropriate to lecture her about superfluous hair. Hair under the arms, for example, he said, should never be removed, for nature had put it there, and evidently it had some use. She had suddenly said, “You have too many children, Mr. Pollit.”
“I could never have too many,” he cried earnestly and began to tell her how he would like to have a Malay wife, a beauty like he had seen with her baby this day, a Chinese wife, and an Indian wife—”there are so many little lovely dears—” even a strange pygmy wife with her immense bust, belly, and buttocks-he laughed, “and the most beautiful women in the world, for example, are the Cingalese. …”
“You wouldn’t go native, suddenly?” she teased him.
“I would indeed,” he said seriously and began again to outline his ideas, return to nature, phalanstery, peace, industry, love, law-abiding.
“Darling, call the boy.”
Sam, of course, took only ginger ale. He would leave in a few days for a trip to Kuala Lumpur again, a place he loved despite his sufferings there, from heat and humidity. During the rest of the evening, he told her about his native land, its democracy, its liberty, its possibility of rebirth from generation to generation: a Thomas Jefferson, whom he was always quoting, had said, it seemed,
“There should be a revolution every twenty years.”
She said coldly, “How uncomfortable! I think if I were an American I would live in the British West Indies.”
Wonderful how these women could seem so disdainful!
He said playfully, “Why don’t you come and visit our wonderful country? Washington is a paradise. It is all flashing walls and long avenues of trees such as would keep off the sun of Seville (only I don’t want to drag in the dogs of Seville), and the people there are really interested in international affairs.”
“What are the women in Washington like, tell me?”
“Oh, that’s what I like about it; it is full of high-minded public women.”
She looked astounded, “Really! Oh, I see what you mean,” she laughed.
“And does your wife like the people there?” she asked with curiosity, having found out before that his wife was a Baltimore heiress.
He looked grave. “No, I am sorry to say. But let us not talk about that. In our early days she went with me to the eugenics meetings, but that period soon ended.”
She gave him an inq
uisitive sidelong glance and returned to her stengah. She was glad he was going to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow. He was presentable and even handsome. He knew how to ingratiate himself, quite unconsciously, with only the best people; but how serious! Never a blink of humor and always relating how he had had a serious talk with a priest or a minister or a missionary, and how he had told the press that they were venal, and how he had addressed this and that body of high-minded public women. Dull; but for the moment, one of their class, and so to be borne.
When he returned from the meeting there were waiting for him at the house letters delivered from the office by Lai Wan Hoe on his way home. Lai had come out of his way. There was a budget—for a wonder, everyone had written—and even a letter from his wife which read:
Tohoga Place,
Georgetown, D.C.
March 15, 1937
TO SAMUEL POLLIT:
I acknolledge receipt of five one-hundred dollar bills for household expenses.
HENRIETTA POLLIT
Then there were big envelopes with letters from all the little ones, covered by a long letter from his eldest, Louie. Sam hungrily seized on this letter. In her painful handwriting, Louie had written,
Our Place.
Georgetown, D.C.
15th March 1937
DEAR FATHER,
I am enclosing the children’s letters and also my Georgetown Record, which I hope you will like. Everyone is all right. The children miss you. Mother is not very well. It has been cold, but tonight is a night of high moonshine over all the knolls and trees that I can forget the cold, at least. However, the little ones feel it and no doubt would like some of your Malayan heat. I hope your headaches are better. Tom said today, “Where is my little brother?” I said, “Which little brother?” and he answered, “My little brother Evie.” Of course, we laughed and said, “Evie is your little sister; Saul and Sam are your little brothers.” Just then Evie called him to get his face washed for lunch and he shouted, “All right, little sister.” Isn’t that pretty? But there was a sequel. This afternoon Tomkins said, “Saul and Sam and Ernie are my little brothers, aren’t they?” I said, “Yes, Limpopo, they are.” He said gravely, “I have other little brothers.” I said, “What little brothers?” thinking he meant the boys across the street. Then he said very quickly, “Hutzler Brothers,” and suddenly held his stomach with both hands and rolled all round on his legs the way he does, you know, screaming with laughter. Oh, they are full of tricks, and they are not naughty, even though it is some job getting them all clean for school, etc.
I have some homework to do, English composition, “get goyn lazybone.”
LOOLOO
Sam read this three times and put it to one side while he read the others.
Ernie’s said:
DEAR SAM-THE-BOLD,
I hope I am not disrespectfull. I hope you have many boys, syces, and secretaries to wait on you all the time, like you said in your last letter. We went down last Saturday and saw the new Treasury building under construction. Also I like going down along the Reflecting Pool, and I found out how it mirrors. We are all going to see the expieriments in the Academy of Sciences, I mean with the teacher, Mr. Blake. I have homework to do. I swan I best be getting on: giddy-ap, Napolyun, it looks like rain.
Lovingly,
Your stupid son,
ERNEST-PAYNIM-PIGSNEY-PRINCEPS
Next in proper order of age came Evelyn’s in large, clear, round writing like her Mother’s:
Home.
16.3.37
DEAD DAD,
I hope you are well, Everyone is well except Mother. I am glad you are staying with a nice lady. I am glad you are going soon to Kuala. Will there be tigers in that part of the jungle? I am afraid a tiger will get you. I hope you have someone to shot the tiger. Can you shoot? I am well.
Your loving dauhter EVIE
(kisses) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
“Dead Dad,” he muttered and then shouted it with laughter. Then miserably he said, “Dead Dad, it’s almost telepathic: I bet little Smudge knows how her poor Dad really feels.”
The twins had two sheets of paper pinned together and written in straggling, broken-backed letters:
From Saul (said the first).
Homealome.
Tha sixteenth.
DEAR DAD,
I hope you are well. We are well. Mother is not well. She has a cold. Samulam and me have good games. The shaits are waking up and are hungry. We gave them some meat. I found a young spug. It died. This is all now.
Your loving son,
SAWBONES
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From Sam (said the second).
Homealome.
Tha siteenth.
DEAR DAD,
I hop you are well. We are well. Mother is not well. She is sick. Sawbones found a little sparrow that could not fly. Looloo put it in the stove. But it died. We are tired because the Hams and the Eggs played this afternoon and the Hams one.
Your loving son,
SAMOLUS
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The letter of Tom, the four-year-old, Sam looked at without interest. It was written in a surprisingly clear, round hand—his mother’s, just a little shaky, to show where the infant hand had stumbled under her fist.
Home.
16th March
DEAR DAD,
I hope you are well. I am well. We are all well. It is cold. We have a fire. I am sorry you are so hot. When will you be home. The snakes are awake.
Your loving son,
TOM
The letter he opened last was from Dirty Jack’s daughter, Gillian Roebuck. Gillian had started to write Sam letters about their naturalist’s interests and, suddenly getting fed up with her home, had taken a position as governess with a senator’s family in Washington. The typed page said,
DEAR MR. POLLIT:
Sorry not to have answered before this—the explanation is that the Wellbeens have been staying in St. Augustine, Fla., and I with them of course. It was nice; the beach is wonderful and I like the strong sea air better than the inland air.
We motored to the beach every day and all over the place. You would like the place. Of course the mental atmosphere could be better: but that is partly me, I know. The weather has improved somewhat since our return: most days have been bright and sunny, but unfortunately lack any warmth yet. We came back too soon for me. I go riding once a week as before, tho found the country interesting now. As you suggested, I am taking one tree and studying it: mine is the yellow poplar, that lovely tree Liriodendron tulipifera. I suppose I chose that because it is so beautiful—or else because it is our oldest Liberty Tree. Daffodils and hyacinths are beginning to come up from the South. I know you don’t like the South because of the racial situation, but it is part of our lovely country just the same and so lovely. There were flocks of Bombycilla cedrorum and of course jays and robins by the million (that isn’t scientific) and so many throngs of birds on their way north. They take it so easily. How I should love to have a pet; I should not feel so lonely. I envy you your wonderful collection of pets at Tohoga House and of course wish I could see them; but when I feel too blue I go to the Zoo just as you recommended and you are quite right! It’s a pickmeup. I was thrilled at finding a Rana sylvatica the other day, heard the typical clucking-of-chickens call and there he was, leaf-brown to gray. Spring is here. I have rather a handful at present: one of the children is sick—but that didn’t make me lose any weight. I am still a bit on the pudgy side and am afraid it augurs ill for the future. However, hard work—as you say, clean living and high thinking—and I may slim down. Yes, I am serious about Wild Life: it gives me a wonderful feeling for nature and has expanded my interests: I really love nature now, thanks to your teaching: I mean real love. It was just something to do before. It is wonderful to realize how much there is in the world.
Yours sincerely,
GILLIAN ROEBUCK
The letter shocked him in a strange way. He had a
kind of awakening and saw how interesting was this youthful freshness turning to him from its dark old home, moldy with prejudice and tobacco smoke and this frank belief in his ideals. He believed he could be of some help to the girl who had started out on life’s journey on her own account.
Sam read them all two or three times, but presently the leaden air pressed him down, and he put out the light, crept under the mosquito nets, and lay on his pillow. In a little while it was sweat-drenched: his blood beat feverishly and his head ached, ached. Meanwhile the birds outside the window, perched on the trees, fences, and the telephone wire outside the gate, twittered and squabbled for places. Every night they took up their footing there to sleep and not an inch of wire would be left. Some even slept perching on the backs of others. Every new wire that was put up was likewise utilized by the metropolitan and therefore homeless myriads. The night was not quiet at any time. Outside in the streets, too, even in this pleasant district, there would sometimes pass one of Singapore’s giant population of waifs and hungry, strayed out from the steaming chowder of the streets, to the small European settlement.
He woke up in an hour or two, eyes burning, head throbbing, ready to weep with the continual pain and fever of the heat. If he could only have got to high ground it would have been better. He did not want to disturb anyone and went himself to get some iced water. He found the kitchen, which had a refrigerator, and opening the door, he leaned his head into the cold air for a while. It refreshed him a little, and then he came back to bed. But the reeking pillow, already drenched with sweat and steaming, and the moist sheets did not invite him. He opened his wardrobe to find a sarong that he usually wore when he was writing, a long strip of red, black, and yellow linen which he tucked in round his waist. The stench of clothes which could never be got dry and of the endemic mildew greeted him. Destroying and breeding nature reached in everywhere here, could not be banished, made man ridiculous.
The Man Who Loved Children Page 29