Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

by Rudyard Kipling

  We had risen seven or eight degrees of heat in a quarter of an hour’s drop. When we reached the flat ground near Santos and the respectable loco who took us there; the shut mountains behind us showed no sign by, or through, what miracles we had descended.

  VII

  A WORLD APART

  A People with their own God

  How the Founders’ Strain Survives

  A World by Itself

  Brazil’s Mystery and Wonders in review

  introduction

  notes on the text

  Two Races

  I SEEK not what his soul desires.

  He dreads not what my spirit fears.

  Our Heavens have shown us separate fires.

  Our dooms have dealt us differing years.

  Our daysprings and our timeless dead

  Ordained for us and still control

  Lives sundered at the fountain-head,

  And distant, now, as Pole from Pole.

  Yet, dwelling thus, these worlds apart,

  When we encounter each is free

  To bare that larger, liberal heart

  Our kin and neighbours seldom see.

  (Custom and code compared in jest —

  Weakness delivered without shame —

  And certain common sins confessed

  Which all men know, and none dare blame.)

  E’en so it is, and well content

  It should be so a moment’s space,

  Each finds the other excellent,

  And — runs to follow his own race!

  A World by Itself

  It happened to me to be taken in a mute electric launch among islands and waterways, fringed with purple and gold turbanned forest trees, and a whole undergrowth of striving vegetation. Here and there thickets of guavas, run wild, appeared beside the royal bamboos; and breadths of lost pasture tilted steeply from the woods to the winding waters. The islands closed behind us till all sense of direction was lost, or ushered us into miniature lakes within this lake. Once we stole up a dead-end, hung with lianas, where a little waterfall, in palest green light, babbled to itself as it dropped, slow-descending scallops of silver down an emerald rock-face. Yet the fairy islands were but tops of little hills, and the waterways valleys of land, which twenty years before had been sunk up to make a lake to feed some hydro-electric works for Rio.

  At this point a blunt, wary head broke water without sound and a nightmare rat, four foot long, ran up a bank. They said he was a capybara — a worthless rodent who harboured the carapata which gives trouble to cattle. This gentleman turned out to be a cow-tick about the size of a pea, and I had met his brethren before among cattle in Asia — the very same cattle, hump and all, as grazed round the countryside here. So, what with him once again, and the Sacred Cow where one didn’t expect her, and the capybara-heads that were copied from alligator-heads, and hot spice breaths out of the woods, the day was a confusion of overlapping wonders. It ended in an Assam planter’s bungalow; minute jewelled birds flashing round the trumpet-flowers till the bats came on, and every night-blossom gave its soul to the globed stars.

  There were iced, sliced mangoes for breakfast, and thereafter a joyous family of young folk played like trouts in the big bathing-pool, and scarcely troubled comment when the corpse of a vicious little snake was swept down a gutter. “All right! He’s dead,” said Fourteen in a pair of shorts, and returned to diving after plates. One comes into pleasant lives like these the world over, where young folk ride and swim by nature; and the elders talk in the deep moon-slashed verandahs. But how is one to translate this adequately? Or what follows?

  There was a gathering, in a big city, of the local survivors of a South American contingent, which came over to the War. They were joyous and sincere, but each must have carried his own bitterness or nostalgia beneath all the light and laughter. “Joking apart, what life was it for them?” And the answer, with local insets and allusions, was: “It’s a good life. It is a good life. Of course we grouse at it, but on the whole it’s as good a life as you can want. There’s no need to be sick, and there’s no need for separations if the money runs to it. But it’s full of temptations, you know, whether one has money or not.” With which one must be content. Another gathering elsewhere was made up of some of the English men, women, and children at ease after the day’s work in a beautiful Club. Here one seemed to come a little closer to hints and half-confidences of life. But convention — more’s the pity — forbids cross-examining people as they pass, and asking them: “How do you truly live? What do you think about things here — business, marketing, servants, children’s ailments, education, and everything else?” So the river of faces flows placidly enough, and one can only guess at what underlies the ripples and dimples.

  The Brazilian and his Possessions

  The Brazilians I met were interested in and entirely abreast of outside concerns, but these did not make their vital world. Their God — they jested — was a Brazilian. He gave them all they wanted and more at a pinch. For instance, once when their coffee-crop exceeded bounds, He sent a frost at the right moment, which cut it down a quarter and comfortably steadied the markets. And the vast inland countries were full of everything that anyone wanted, all waiting to be used in due time. During the War, when they were driven in upon themselves for metals, fibres, and such, they would show a sample to an Indian and ask him: “Where does one find more of this?” Then he would lead them there. But, possessing these things, they gave one to understand, does not imply their immediate development by concessionaires. Brazil was a huge country, a half or third of which was still untapped. It would attend to itself in time. After a while, one fancied that, somewhere at the back of the scenes, there was the land-owning breed’s dislike of the mere buyer and seller of commodities, which suggested an aristocratic foundation to the national fabric.

  The elaborate rituals of greeting and parting among ordinary folk pointed the same way. Life being large, and the hours easy-winged, they expatiate in ceremonial. On the other hand, widespread national courtesy is generally due to some cogent reason. I asked if that reason existed here. Oh yes. Naturally. Their people resented above all things rudeness, lack of consideration, and injury to their “face.” It annoyed them. Sometimes it made them see red. Then there would be trouble. Therefore, mutual accomodation from highest to humblest was the rule.

  Carnival in Rio

  I had proof of this later at Carnival time, when the city of Rio went stark crazy. They dressed themselves in every sort of fancy-kit; they crowded into motors; they bought unlimited paper serpentines, which, properly thrown, unroll five fathoms at a flick; and for three days and three nights did nothing except circulate and congregate and bombard their neighbours with these papers and squirts of direful scent. (I made good practice against five angels in orange and black; a car-load of small boys not very disguised as young devils; and a lone, coroneted divinity in turquoise and silver.) The pavements were blocked with foot-folk all bearing serpentines, and wearing their fancy in clothes. City organisations and guilds assembled and poured out of their quarters, in charge of huge floats and figures, which were guarded by amateur cavalry; and companies of negro men and women fenced themselves inside a rope which all held, formed barbaric cohorts and platoons of red, green and yellow, and so advanced, shaking earth and air with the stamp and boom of immemorial tunes as they Charlestoned through the crowds. It was Africa — essential and unabated. The forty-foot floats that cruised high above the raging sea dealt raw-handedly with matters that the Press might have been too shy to discuss — such as a certain State railway, which is said to be casual in its traffic. Hence it was represented by twin locomotives butting like rams. To all appearance, the populace was utterly in charge of everything, and one bored one’s way, a yard at a time, into it, while it shouted whatever came into its well-informed head, and plastered everybodywith confetti. The serpentines hung like wreckage after flood on the branches of trees in the avenues; lay in rolls and fringes on the s
treets like seaweed on a beach; and were tangled and heaped over the bows of the cars till these resembled hay-carts of the operatic stage. But at no time, and in no place, was there anything approaching disorder, nor any smell of liquor. At two o’clock of the last night I saw a forty-foot avenue masked from kerb to kerb with serpentines and confetti. At five that same morning they were utterly gone — with the costumes and the revellers. There wasn’t even a headache hanging over in the clean air! Talking of this, people told me that drink was not a Brazilian failing, nor, as the state of the streets after Carnival proved, did men normally throw litter about. For one thing, they were racially neat-handed, as those are who deal in strong sunlight with wood, fibres, cane and rattan; and their fight against fever in the past had most practically taught them tidiness. Unpleasant things happen to the householder to-day if his cisterns and rubbish-heaps attract mosquitos in the city, and hard-handed Municipal chiefs see that he pays up. And that is the reason why it is so hard to find a bad smell in Rio.

  A Song at Twilight

  Intellectually, the younger writers seem to orient themselves on France, and in the renewed discovery of, and delight in, their own land, which is moving many of them to-day, words are used with Gallic rigour and precision.

  I had had the privilege of hearing an oration at their Academy in literary Portuguese, which carried the dignity, cadence and clarity of age-old culture, as the tones of a musical glass carry the twin mysteries of fire and water. Later on, I listened to a popular ditty, sung at a gathering of friends by a girl with a mandoline. (“I think it comes from the North — from the Dry Country, where they sing to their cattle at night.”) A warm rain was falling outside, heavy-scented from the gardens of Petropolis, and its half-tones exquisitely balanced the spirit of the old house, the shining ancient furniture, the priceless smooth silver, and, in some magic way, the ease and poise of the company. The girl’s pale face was thrown up by reflected light; and three or four young men behind her strummed in and out of the tune with their mandolines as required. Every soul in the company knew the burden; and its dead-simple, heart-breaking wail did not need to be translated to a stranger. It was followed by a rattling, tearing negro melody — no relation whatever to “coon-stuff” — evidently quite as well-known. (It came out of lordly, untouched Bahia, where, I fancy, the old heart of the land beats strongly). One could hear the West Coast drums thudding behind the strings, while one watched the feet tapping the floor and the faces lit by the associations of the jingling words. (Most likely their ayahs had sung it to them when they were babies.) For just those few instants one felt nearer Brazil than one had ever been before. I put this notion to a freind, and added: “But you are not an easy people to arrive at.”

  “Isn’t that because you always think of us as Spanish? We are not. We are Portuguese by origin — out of a Portugal that is dead. What a Portugal it must have beenl But it has left its mark on us.”

  That seems reasonable, too. The Brazilian has been established here four hundred years and more, beneath skies that play the deuce with book-bindings, watches, and road-beds. Yet his national fibre from end to end seems to have kept one character. It was laid down by a collection of as outrageous sea-thieves as ever sailed from Bristol or Plymouth in the same age. They allied themselves unhesitatingly with any strain they met inland, or, later, bought from the opposite coast. They feared nothing except their own Church, and that sparingly; and they set up stolid duplicates of the architecture of their native country in the face of the desperate forests and rivers into, and up which, they vanished. For great whiles they lived outside the minds of mankind and the knowledge of change, waging their own wars against whomsoever the Trade Winds fetched to their coasts; while Death fought all intruders impartially. Their first Emperor was convoyed to them by an obscure organisation called the British Navy, in the days when Napoleon was making too many Rings in Europe. Their last — not so many years since — went to Europe on holiday, leaving behind him a female relative with full Powers of Attorney. She, moved by noblest motives, freed at a stroke of the pen, a few hundred thousand slaves, who were in process of being freed by quota. These rebelled, and, after some discussion, Brazil parted from her Emperor with expressions of high esteem on both sides, and adopted a Democratic Constitution. Mercifully, slow and bad communications over immense distances, and a soothing climate, prevented this from doing too much harm. The antecedents of the national life had settled the Colour question, so that men could draw easily on the better and provide against the worst in the White, Red, and Black strands which knit the thread of their fate. The God of Brazil had further arranged that the Banana should take the place of the Dole, and that two garments should be ample for most men most of the year round. With the edge of all food, clothing, and housing problems thus blunted, and the size and strength of his heaven and earth enforcing on the richest inhabitant a certain simplicity of soul, Politics, in the baser sense of the word, became rather a risky, but high-class sport.

  The Brazilian will tell you that his country is full of “graft”. He knows nothing of the deep-seated spiritual corruption of some sorts of “social service”. He grows — as men do when they talk to utter strangers — rather proud of his national enormities, and gives them full-dress names. That is a pity, because the Latin runs as naturally to grandiose terms as the Anglo-Saxon to those of belittlement. What an Englishman or citizen of the U.S. would call “trouble” or “fuss” is here a Revolution, and covers equally the performances of a bandit of Indian extraction who knocks about the interior stealing cattle till he is shot, or the upheaval of regiments whose officers consider that their merits have been overlooked. This is a large country, in which revolutions can revolve unhampered. The people who engineer them are professionals, accepting special risks and judged by special codes. The material damage is a fleabite compared with what follows “direct action” in other lands. The worst that arrives is theft of public funds by a known individual — followed by his flight to Europe. Such matters are uncamouflaged by talk about lofty motives, or political exigencies, because this is a direct-minded people and has heard it all before. (That, too, is why Latins so seldom appear in police courts as victims of the confidence-trick.) Moreover, larger schemes and undertakings for the development of Brazil are coming on, and with them a feeling that “graft” is getting beneath the dignity of things — and men.

  The Uses of Gambling

  Unless it be the French, I have never met a race quicker to see their own weaknesses or to turn them to advantage. Here is an instance: They will gamble continuously and from their youth — just like the English. But their Governments give them a straight chance, daily, at the Federal or State lotteries. Side by side with the legitimate gamble is an illegal fascinating play called “The Beasts”, in which the numbers from 0 to 90 are split into groups of four, each group being presided over by an Animal God — Lion, Cock, Dog, and so on. If the beast you have staked on controls two or more of the final figures of the State’s winning lottery number for the day, you are paid in proportion. Prices are fitted to the shallowest purse; but though, as has been said, the Banana takes the place of the Dole, it is not current coin. Therefore, to play The Beasts, a man must follow some occupation which fetches real money. Thus the system provides daily incentive towards honest toil as well as those dreams of unearned wealth which salt life. But rich and poor alike enjoy social luxuries on the most ample scale. They have just finished a triple-track racecourse in one of the suburbs of Rio, which holds all the beauty, colour, and design that can be worked into one landscape. Forested hills run down to it; fantastic mountain-tops watch it; and ocean-going liners glide along one side of it; so that wherever the eye turns there are fresh marvels. The Argentine, which thinks that it knows something about racing, is filled with envy just now; and revenges itself by whispering that Brazil hasn’t any really good horses.

  The Brazilian takes his play, as he takes life, in his stride, and his quick speech and gestures do not reac
h back to his mind. He has studied samples of every nationality established under his skies these many, many years. He has been used to the English trader for generations, and there are many English-stock families, who long ago attached themselves to the national fortunes — bi-lingual folks with two sides to their heads, who act as unofficial interpreters and ambassadors at a financial or commercial pinch. The old experienced mercantile firms also send out the type of Englishman most likely to be acceptable. For the Brazilian has not yet reached the impersonality of ideal “business”. If he likes you as an individual, he will do more than anything for you. If he doesn’t, he will do less than nothing. If he knows little about you, but perceives that you have manner and a few trifles of that sort, he will wait and see. And he has heaps of leisure.

  Nevertheless, in the course of a hundred years or so of trade, the English community seems to have picked up a reputation in Brazil for honesty and punctuality; and had Moscow permitted England to get to work after the War, business between the countries might now be more prosperous. When one comes across little scattered English communities trying to overtake the consequences of the General Strike, in the teeth of rending competition and derision, one realises how superbly engineered that strike was, and how — despite our comic Press — very far from humorous.