The Man Who Loved Children

by Christina Stead

  He sat down, naked except for the linen cloth, sanguine, broad, muscular, and hairless, and after fanning himself for a few minutes and leaning his head on his hand, sighed and pulled the little portable typewriter towards him. His busy small click did not make any appreciable difference in the noises of the night.

  “Singapore,” he wrote, “and twelve o’clock of a night decocted in Hades.”

  DEAR LOOLOO-DIRL,

  Lai Wan Hoe brought my budget of mail home to me tonight and so I have all your un-news.

  Well, I don’t mean the Georgetown Record and the story about the shaits [snakes] waking up—that is news. Anything to do with old Mother Nature, the mother of us all, is news; and I know you kids know it. So that’s one good thing.

  Now here is something for you, Loobeck, fir you always did love blood and thunder and here it is. I went into a Buddhist temple just outside Singapore and though I was an infidel they were glad to see me because I paid the right amount for propitiation at the entrance to the temple, also took some of their holy water. It was a wondrous temple and in it, besides a lot of heathen gods engaged in horrid activities, truly human activities and truly godlike too, if it is true that we humans are so poor as to be copies of the gods—for example, cheating, fighting, and making the most awful grimaces when not pleased. There was one appalling wall painting showing the sufferings of the damned and the resources of hell, and it was no slouch, I can tell you. It was certainly done by a male painter (but there aren’t any others here in this land of domesticated woman-animals), and to placate a male god. There were two women who wouldn’t do what their husbands told them. They were tied down on a bench and two demons (men-demons of course) were hacking their heads off. In fact, one is off already and is hanging up on the wall and the other is nearly off. It is just a Buddhist Bluebeard tale. And the expressions on the heads! I saw one poor Chinese woman looking and she had turned very pale—pale ivory, but not natural ivory—so I guess her husband, who was with her and had perhaps brought her just there, for his own reasons, will have no trouble with her for a while.

  Then there is a man who wouldn’t contribute to the gods; what a rascal! He is very neatly tied up inside a frame of wood, in an erect position and two demons with the most horrible grins on their faces are sawing him down from the top of his head to his toes. They are sawing him across so that his back is being separated from his front. Judging by the man’s expression, he doesn’t like it, but the demons do, judging from their expressions. They have just got down as far as his stomach. A great jagged crosscut saw with teeth about two inches long and wide.

  There is a man being thrown into a great fire off a high place, a man who looks very worried, being boiled in a pan. As only a bit of him can be boiled at a time, the attendant demons are getting much pleasure out of turning him round and over so that all parts will get a fair, democratic boiling. Then one is being boiled in a deep pot of boiling oil—I don’t know what for—but the Buddhists seem to take an interest in cooking. The one in the deep pot is a woman, perhaps she is in a deep one for more decency. As she squirms about and tries to get out of the pot the demons laugh at her and push her back again. It is a case of the clam who wouldn’t be chowder. Then, in the same chowder department is a woman being held upside down in a very deep pot, almost a bottle—of boiling oil. She is held firmly by two demons, one to a leg. There is also more activity in the same department. A man is being sawn across the middle this time and right next door, in the hook-and-eye division, a man is having his stomach pulled out with great hooks and some (petty offenders, I suppose) are having their tongues yanked out, red-hot irons pushed into their eyes, which are sizzling, and there are others, quite venial, with hands and ears being lopped off with large and apparently specialized lopping knives. But these folks are specialized in knives, as you will see when I get home, with my collection of swords and scimitars and the like. So much art into such wicked weapons! And perhaps, says I, we should suspect all art capable of being applied to such a use. Think of that, Looloo-dirl, when you are reading your Styles of Ornament and all those funny, dopey things you read, godfather knows why!

  Well, back to the joyful scene, for I know you: I bet you are enjoying it in your solemn, poker-face way. There is a particularly joyful little act—for the demons, I mean. Three men are chained to a tall metal funnel (there must be modernism), and a great fire is raging inside and being kept up by a demon stoker. The victims are being frizzled and grilled against the heated funnel, and turned round at the right time, so that they will be the right shade all round.

  There are quite a lot impaled on spears put close together, and there is a man being flattened between two stone slabs; his blood and innards are oozing through in a very natural fashion. There are many other inventions—all in natural colors and blood, blood everywhere. This is all for Chinese Buddhists: I don’t know whether they are tougher than other people and like this, or whether they are weaker than other people and have to have more awful warnings.

  The whole thing is quite a nice little business and the priests being successful businessmen look no different from the chetties and the big fat Chinese butchers and bankers, perhaps better-humored because of the pictures they have on their walls. At the entrance to their little place of business, there are big figures of the Chinese Buddha and his pink-white marble wives and all sorts of demon gods, some of them crushing little demons under their feet, just like the advertisement for backache pills. There must be at least fifty little gods of different sorts: you can choose your god, as your pills, in the druggist’s—it is rather a good, comforting idea, for surely the gods go in for competition and try to do a little better than the next god.

  There is a sacred snake in a cage that attracted me. You can worship it too, if you are scared enough. Of course I went and hissed at him, but he took no notice; he knew he had no power over the rational, I suppose.

  There is much burning of joss sticks and firing-off of crackers; that is the great way of worshiping because you get something for your money. I gave the priest one Straits dollar which he put in a bowl as an offering to the Lord Buddha, though I wondered how the high and mighty, suave and grand Lord Buddha should want one Straits dollar. Then the priest gave me a packet of crackers which I let off in front of the Lord Buddha, and the great god looked down on me and seemed to grin at me through the curls of smoke. It seems that now the demons of the sea and forest will let me pass—all on account of the packet of crackers, and the silver dollar. So tell my little foolish dark-eyed Smudge-Sedgewing that the tigers can’t get me now, for the great Lord Buddha is watching me.

  Am tired-tired with the heat and my head. Will write later. Meanwhile keep-up your Georgetown Record, Looloo, and work at your schoolwork. I expect great things of you later on, even if you do seem a little dopey now.

  Your loving father,

  SAMUEL POLLIT

  P.S. I am not sending these notes from the ordinary tourist’s love of the sensational: but because one might say truly that these are the—horrors of superstition, from which, Looloo, may you ever stay free!

  DAD

  P.P.S. Ask your cousin Leslie to put off getting hitched till I get back so I can join the jubilaum. I’ll bring her some peachblow Chinese silk if they let me.

  DAD

  Sam went back to bed and slept soundly, and it was not till the next evening that, borrowing Wan Hoe’s typewriter at the office, he wrote to Gillian Roebuck.

  The Holy Lion City.

  15th April, 1937

  DEAR MISS ROEBUCK,

  (Because I may only call you My Little Gillian before a host of witnesses, because you are a young lady now):

  I am very, very glad you got away at last to such a wonderful place. Yes, it is wonderful to have something to love, something that will last a lifetime, or many lifetimes, and if it’s nature and man in nature, that is the best thing of all.

  It isn’t such fun seeing things here. You have an ever-present and all-pervading
conscious and subconscious sensation that it—is—HOT. You see a lovely vista of palms and wonderful trees: it is too hot to walk down to them. You see a wonderful mountain clear in air, floating in crystal and it is too hot to even attempt to go even a hundred yards towards it on foot; I’m not thinking of the dense jungle which you would have to cut your way through. You see the glorious foreshores, with their four tiers of trees, the fifty feet, the hundred, the hundred and fifty, and the two hundred, all shades of green, all fronds and foliages laced together; and it is too hot to take a boat to go there. (There is such a lovely stretch behind Singapore in the Strait.) Then you see a lovely sheet of water; but it is too hot to so much as go down to it. You are invited to tea by a lovely lady, and it is too hot to go. You try to keep your temper with a foolish, vain gnat of a human being, and it is too hot to do so. Because it is TOO HOT everywhere. The heat wilts you like a soft leaf, just like the pumpkin leaf goes in our place on a very hot day at Tohoga, You put on nice clean clothes and they wilt when you touch them and they are full of perspiration before you finish dressing. You sweat at breakfast, you sweat at tiffin, and you sweat at eight o’clock dinner.

  You don’t want to go anywhere; you don’t want to see anything; you don’t want to know anybody. You just have one paramount thought, again conscious and subconscious, “Let’s strip Jack naked!” You refuse invitations to afternoon tea because politeness prevents you from taking your clothes off in your host’s house; and your tea’s no sooner in than it’s out quicker than in, through your skin. You can’t go out to tiffin or dinner unless you sit under a punkah and then you get a chill in your back. You go for a walk in the evening to study the many interesting types of humans and their funny ways—for they live, boil, stew quite cheerfully in their infernal temperature—and you sweat and sweat and sweat and all you study is THE HEAT.

  And your clothes reek and everything goes moldy in one day—hats fuzzy, boots furry, bag leprous, spectacle cases blanched, books diseased, coats blotched. Your bed reeks with the sweat of ages (an age is a week here), and the pillow at about midnight is just a sponge.

  And just think, my little Gillian (yes, I will say it and call up a host of invisible witnesses as I have none visible), all that would be unnecessary if we wore shorts or a sarong like sensible people do and didn’t try to be gents: you don’t mind sweat pouring out of you when you’ve no clothes on; and the great Chinese rich men go about happily in their automobiles naked to the waist with great shining free bellies, ready to catch any breeze that kindly blows to our relief.

  And now, Miss Roebuck and Miss Gillian, good-by to both of you; and I’ll be seeing my dear naturalists soon in dear old Washington, our new Jerusalem, the one sane, great city, built on a definite plan for a definite purpose and not by the worst cases in a madhouse. (And with the naturalists, my little naturalist!)

  Yours sincerely,

  SAMUEL C. POLLIT

  When they got back at last and the work was about done, Sam set to work to get his notes in order and present his section of the report. He was at first too ill and too overworked to notice that Lai Wan Hoe, his senior clerk, was more harassed than usual; and when he did notice it, he thought that it was because of the pile of work to be got through in a short time. Colonel Willets had decided to close the mission at once, being sick and tired of the Malayan heat, habits, and company. Sam had a pile of notes without end but would have been unable to get up his report without the lifetime knowledge of his Chinese secretary.

  “I’ll get you an assistant,” said Sam, though he was cutting expenses as much as possible himself in order to take as much money home as possible to clean up accounts at home and pay for the new baby that was coming. Sam himself had urged Willets as subtly as he could to get through the work and sail for home, for he wanted above all to be there when the baby came. He also felt himself on the verge of a physical breakdown. Wan Hoe merely asked for a holiday of one day, “Only one day, sir, please!”

  Sam sighed, “All right. Wan Hoe, though I can’t really spare you.”

  But Wan Hoe took two days and on the day following, Sam found a note that had been left mysteriously on his desk;

  DEAR SIR,

  Please find it in your kind heart to forgive me. I had to run away. I am in trouble. Do not be angry with me. I could not help it. You were right about the moneylenders; but I was unable to take your advice. When we came back from Port Swettenham I found everything had come out into the open; and for several days I have been trying to avoid this shameful expedient. A disgraced man in hiding.

  It was in Wan Hoe’s fluent handwriting but not signed. The same day the police called to apprehend Wan Hoe who was wanted for immense sums owed to moneylenders and for a relatively small sum embezzled through someone in the treasurer’s office. Sam, who usually hid nothing and who regarded the police as his friends, good, stout fellows with a difficult job, acted on impulse, gave terse replies, and concealed the note. The loss of Wan Hoe struck him down. There were thousands of notes scattered about the office in good order which Wan Hoe had read, but not Sam: it would be torture for Sam, with his headaches and bloodshot eyes, to try to get through them here. He was obliged to go to Colonel Willets and say that his section of the report would be turned in later, either on board ship or in Washington. This default pleased the Colonel greatly.

  When Sam took his walks at night, he kept seeing Wan Hoe, it seemed to him. Whenever he saw the police taking up a man, he was afraid it was he. He saw many a Chinese with Wan Hoe’s pleasant, sensual face and even spoke to one, but in error. Where was he hiding? Was he rotting in some shameful cell, without help? Sam tossed far into the night, thinking of Wan Hoe and discreetly made inquiries about him in the daytime, but nothing came to his ears. He was questioned by several seniors about Wan Hoe’s behavior and political ideas and also was politely interviewed by the chief of police, but he replied that he knew Wan Hoe was a Chinese patriot, nothing more; he assumed every man was for his country as he, Pollit, was for his. Wan Hoe was the best secretary that ever lived since the world began. And when they suggested that Wan Hoe had gone off on the spree, Sam’s hackles rose; it was a personal insult.

  Just as Sam was packing up the last of his folios and manuscripts, he received anonymously a small, scented, and carved chest, seven inches by five by four, containing six teacups not much larger than eggcups. Each cup was of six segments of carved chocolate wood and was lined with pure Straits silver, so soft that it was easily dented with the fingernail. The box opened out as a cabinet, and the cups stood on two shelves. The following day he received an invitation to take an assistant professorship of ichthyology at Hangkow University. He then understood that both these things came from Wan Hoe’s brother, a professor in Hangkow and also a Chinese patriot, and that Wan Hoe was safe. Sam was as joyful as if the message had come from heaven on silver wings. But he wrote back to the University a characteristic letter in his fat civil-service phrases:

  DEAR SIRS,

  I am deeply honored and gratified by your letter of the 20th ultimo and your very kind offer. I wish to assure you that nothing would please me better than to be able to accept it and that it is with very deep regret indeed that I find myself obliged to send you a refusal. If I were able to proceed to the post, I should be gratifying a lifelong wish of mine to study at close quarters a people I have much admired, whose philosophy I find so much more exalted than our own in many ways. I would willingly be one more of the too few links between your people and our own and try to advance in my minor way the Pan-Pacific Comity of Nations. Your great country liberated, Malaya enlightened, the United States more Pacific-minded and a great Empire more deeply aware of its responsibilities in the Pacific—this is what I have worked for all my life and this is what I still hope to see in my lifetime.

  What feasible excuse can I offer? One that you will, I trust, understand. I am the father of six small children, whom I love deeply and whose health I am afraid would suffer in these latitudes. If they
were older I could move them here, but at present I could not dare to do so. Nor do I want them brought up in a distant land, much as I hope they will be citizens of the world, for I wish them to be American patriots in exactly the same degree as your own fervent, admirable patriotic young men of the new China. This is my only reason for refusing your kind offer.

  Believe me to be,

  Sirs, Respectfully yours,

  SAMUEL C. POLLIT

  After sending off this letter, Sam had little more to do but to pack his things, get the curios he had had his eye on for months and have them shipped, soothe old man Willets and fight with him every day, help him with his packing, say farewell to Bargong, his “gunner” from the launch, Naden, his Indian secretary, Teo Mah Seong, a self-taught naturalist, Teochiew Chinese, in whose workshop he had spent many hours, and get to the boat at the last minute.

  “God damn it, I thought you had decided to stay behind with those darkies,” said Willets. “I’ve been sending messages to you for an hour. Lady Modore was here, did you see her? Well, she only drove down to give me a message for a friend. She didn’t ask after you, Pollit.”

  “And I didn’t ask after her,” Sam said, nettled. “It took me a long time to say good-by to all my friends and leave my presents for them, and get my presents from them.” He grinned wickedly at Colonel Willets who replied, “You’d better put the presents in your report!”

  Sam turned away to take a lingering look at Singapore, hoping never to forget this eleven-o’clock view, the hills with Government House beyond the city, the long bund, the crowded native craft and the steamers and warships sharing the famous crescent. Beyond were brilliant green islets and jetties with water in every direction, the long, low shoulders sloping towards the town and huts on piers standing in the water. The ship was gorgeous as ships can be in the tropics, with decks, walls, and every object radiating heat and light, the women in colored dresses of semi-transparent stuff or white tropical weaves, handkerchiefs on their heads and waists, and everyone bustling and gay, glad to be going, excited by the Singapore stop.