Travels Page 6

  During the late afternoon of the third day I had to leave. Unless one has special permission from the government to remain longer, one’s stay in a resthouse is strictly limited to three nights, which is presumably ample time for whatever private business one may wish to conduct.

  I engaged a bullock-cart with the body of an old-fashioned buggy, drawn by a small beige-colored zebu, and with the driver, who had never heard the English words “yes” and “no,” started along the back roads through the forest for Kaduwela. There were a good many small villages on the way, and we had to stop at one so that the luggage, which was constantly slipping and falling out into the dust, could be rearranged and tied more securely. The driver brought a great length of thick but feeble rope for the purpose, and we went ahead. The incredible jolting became unbearable after a while; I had pains everywhere from my knees to my neck. The rope, of course, kept breaking, and the valises continued to slip and fall out. The charm of the landscape however had induced in me such a complete euphoria that nothing mattered. I only wanted it to stay light as long as possible so I could go on being aware of my surroundings. The forest was not constant; it opened again and again onto wide stretches of green paddy fields where herons waded. Each time we plunged again into the woods it was darker, until finally I could no longer distinguish areca palms from bamboo. People walking along the road were carrying torches, made of palm leaves bound tightly together that burned with a fierce red flame, they held them high above their heads, and the sparks dropped behind them all along the way. In one village, cinnamon bark had been piled against the houses. The odor enveloped the whole countryside. Now every ten minutes or so the driver stopped, got down, and put a new wax taper into one or the other of the two little lamps at the sides of the buggy. It was very late when we got to Kaduwela.

  Here the resthouse is on the river, the Kelani Ganga, which flows by at the base of the rocks, just a few feet below the verandah. At night in the quiet I can sometimes hear a slight gurgle out there, but I am never sure whether it is a fish or merely the current. Occasionally a whole string of bamboo barges floats swiftly by without a sound; if one did not see the moving red spots, the braziers where the members of the crew are cooking their food, one would not know it was there.

  HIKKADUWA

  IN CEYLON the Christmas-tree light is a favorite decoration. They use thousands of them at once, string them across the fronts of the houses and shops, through the trees, and up and down the dago-bas of the temples. If there is a religious procession, whatever is carried through the streets is covered with colored electric bulbs. During Perahera in Kandy as many as eighty elephants parade at night, wearing strings of lights which take the place of the emeralds, rubies and diamonds that cover the beasts in the daytime processions. Last week while I was in Kandy the Moslems had a festival, and they carried a pagoda-like tower, every square inch of whose area was ablaze with tiny colored lights. It looked rather like a colossal, glittering wedding cake. I followed it up and down Trincomalee Street and Ward Street, and then I went to bed. Until then I had not realized that there was a mosque across the garden from my room (they seem to have dispensed with muezzins here – at least, one never hears them), but that evening there was magnificent music coming from a courtyard behind the mosque. It went on all night, like a soft wind in the trees. I listened until nearly three, and then it carried me off into sleep.

  Last night there was a pirith ceremony at a house across the road. The family that lived next door to the one holding the ceremony had offered their verandah for the installation of a generator, for there had to be electric light and a great deal of it. So, the clanking of the motor all but covered the chanting of the men. In one corner of the main room they had built a small cubicle. Its walls were of translucent paper, cut into designs along the edges of the partitions, so that each section looked like the frame of a fancy valentine. There were lights everywhere, but the greatest amount of light came from inside the cubicle. Earlier in the evening I had noticed two men winding or unwinding a white silk thread between them; now there was a decanter full of an unidentified liquid on the table, and the thread connected its neck with a part of the ceiling that was invisible from where I stood. The table was surrounded by men sitting pressed close to one another, chanting. One of the onlookers who stood with me in the road said that the chanting was being done in Pali, not in Singhalese. As if it were necessary to excuse the use of such an ancient language, he added that Catholic services were conducted in Latin, not in English, and I said I understood.

  I asked what the white silk thread meant and was told that it was a decoration; but since everything in the ceremony had been arranged with show-window precision, and since the thread, shooting upward at its crazy angle toward the ceiling, was clearly not an adornment to anything, I was not inclined to accept that version of its function. The men shouted in a desperate fashion, so that they were obliged to lean against the table for support. All night long they kept it up. When I awoke at quarter to five they were still at it, but the sound now had a different contour; one could say that in a way it had subsided, being now a succession of short wails with a tessitura never exceeding a major third, a sequence that repeated itself exactly, again and again, with no variation. I was told today that the pirith chant is allowed four distinct tones and no more, since the addition of a fifth would put it into the category of music, which is strictly forbidden. Perhaps the celebrants are too much preoccupied with observing the letter of the law. In any case, within the allowed gamut they hit every quarter-tone they could find. The dogs of the resthouse objected now and then with howls and yapping, until the guard silenced them with a shout.

  A young Buddhist who had been standing outside the house while I was there offered to explain a few details about the ceremony to me. “You see the women?” he said. They were sitting in the outer part of the room, conversing quietly. “They are not allowed inside.” The chanting begins, he said (in this case it was at nine in the evening), with all the men shouting together. Then as they tire, only the two strongest continue, while the others gather their forces. At daybreak once again everyone joins in, after six hours or so of alternating shifts. Purpose of ceremony: to keep evil in abeyance. The young man did not hold the custom in very high esteem and suggested that I visit a monastery four miles away on an island where the bhikkus behaved in a really correct manner. Even Buddhism is riddled with primitive practices. Practically speaking, the pirith is merely a quiet variation of devil-dancing.

  COLOMBO

  THE PETTAH is the only part of the city where the visitor can get even a faint idea of what life in Colombo might have been like before the twentieth century’s gangrene set in. It is at the end of a long and unrewarding walk across the railroad tracks and down endless unshaded streets, and no one in Ceylon seems to be able to understand how I can like it. It is customary to assume an expression of slight disgust when one pronounces the word Pettah.

  The narrow streets are jammed with zebu-drawn drays which naked coolies (no one ever says “laborers”) are loading and unloading. Scavenging crows scream and chuckle in the gutters. The shops specialize in unexpected merchandise: some sell nothing but fireworks, or religious chromolithographs depicting incidents in the lives of Hindu gods, or sarongs, or incense. With no arcades and no trees the heat is more intense; by noon you feel that at some point you have inadvertently died and are merely reliving the scene in your head. A rickshaw or taxi never passes through, and you must go on and on until you come out somewhere. Layers of dried betel spit coat the walls and sidewalks; it looks somewhat like dried blood, but it is a little too red. The pervading odor is that of any Chinese grocery store: above all, dried fish, but with strong suggestions of spices and incense. And there are, indeed, a few Chinese here in Pettah, although most of them appear to be dentists. I remember that one is named Thin Sin Fa and that he advertises himself as a Genuine Chinese dentist. The mark of their profession is painted over the doorway: a huge red oval enclosing two
rows of gleaming white squares. If there is a breeze, pillars of dust sweep majestically through the streets, adding an extra patina of grit to the sweat that covers your skin. In one alley is a poor Hindu temple with a small gopuram above the entrance. The hundreds of sculpted figures are not of stone, but of brilliantly painted plaster; banners and pennants hang haphazardly from crisscrossed strings. In another street there is a hideous red brick mosque. The faithful must wear trousers to enter.

  There are Hindus and Moslems in every corner of Ceylon, but neither of these orthodoxies seems fitting for the place. Hinduism is too fanciful and chaotic, Islam too puritanical and austere. Buddhism, with its gentle agnosticism and luxuriant sadness, is so right in Ceylon that you feel it could have been born here, could have grown up out of the soil like the forests. Soon, doubtless, it will no longer be a way of life, having become, along with the rest of the world’s religions, a sociopolitical badge. But for the moment it is still here, still powerful. And in any case, après nous le déluge!

  No More Djinns

  The American Mercury, June 1951

  RAIN, which ordinarily gladdens the hearts of everyone but the tourists, has recently fallen in such quantities all over this part of the continent that even the natives wonder if it will ever dry off again. Lower roads have been blocked again and again by inundations. The muddy streams have swept down from the mountains with violence, destroying the villages along their banks. The professional prayer-makers have had to brush up a bit on their incantations, since people are now paying them to perform the unusual service of praying for the rain to stop.

  As for the mental climate here, the absurd story which follows is a faithful reporting of a conversation I had here a while ago with two native policemen. It was night and they were off duty, strolling on the beach. These were enlightened young men, very slick and glib, taking all of Western civilization, from penicillin to television, in their stride. Soon they were squatting in the sand telling humorous stories, as these people are likely to do, about their own less enlightened countrymen. Finally one of them said: “I’ll tell you a very funny story about us, when we first went on to the force. We went on together. That was two years ago, when we didn’t know anything. We had to patrol the beach every night. We didn’t like that much. You know, all alone, the two of us, on the beach at night, way out beyond the Balneario.”

  I didn’t know, inasmuch as I had often walked by myself much further than that; the idea of danger had never occurred to me.

  “And sure enough,” he continued, “one night we see a light moving on the beach. We sneak up quietly and yell: ‘Stop!’ And all of a sudden a big white figure began moving up and down in the air and going: ‘Ayayayay!’ So what would you think if you didn’t know any better? You’d think it was a djinn, and you’d get out fast. But then every night when we got near that part of the beach, we’d see this djinn jumping up and down and making an awful noise. So finally we thought we’d better tell the captain about it; he’s a tough old man, and very smart, too. But when we told him about it he got very angry. ‘So you saw a djinn, did you? Hah!’ he said. ‘Anybody but two nitwits like you would know there hasn’t been a djinn around Tangier for at least ten years’.”

  At this point I laughed, thinking that was the point and the end of the story. But they both remained completely serious.

  He continued, “I said to the old man: ‘Excuse me, my captain. I didn’t know.’ He said: ‘You’re going back out to the beach tomorrow night and catch the djinn, you understand?’ We were really scared then. But anyway, the next night when we went back we saw the light, and we sneaked up and yelled: ‘Stop!’ and the spirit began to go up in the air and moan the same as always. And then instead of running away we pulled out our guns and said: ‘Come here or we’ll shoot.’ And then, – “ he chuckled, “it began to cry, and it was nothing but a woman. A lousy woman! And she said: ‘Oh, please, sirs! I have to come every night to take food to my husband who is fishing up the beach.’ So we were pretty angry, and we said: ‘What’s the idea of trying to make fools of us?’ And she said: ‘I thought if I did that, nobody’d bother me. I’m all alone -’. So we said – “ here they both began to laugh loudly with the recollection, and I knew that the point of the story was about to be reached. “We said: ‘You’ll see whether anybody’ll bother you or not, you slut!’ And we knocked her down and had a fine time with her. Afterward we ate the food she had with her and sent her back home yelling her head off. So then we had to think up something to tell the captain.”

  “What did you tell him?” I asked.

  They were still laughing, “Oh, we said we shot at the djinn and it just disappeared in the air by magic, like an airplane.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “Of course he believed us,” he said reproachfully. “He knows no man on his force would lie to him. You never lie to your captain; that’s one thing you can’t do. He just said: ‘All right. Don’t come to me with any more djinn stories’.”

  I let the matter drop. But a few minutes later I said: “Is it really true there’s such a thing as a djinn, then?”

  They laughed scornfully. “With all the electric lights and automobiles there are around Tangier? Hah! Those are women’s stories to scare kids with. Listen, my friend. You have to go at least a hundred kilometers up into the mountains before you’ll find a djinn, and even then you might not see any. This isn’t like the old days. Everything’s different now, since the war.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said.

  TANGIER GOES ON GROWING; it is the boom-town par excellence. In 1947 people seemed to feel that the peak had been reached, that real-estate prices simply couldn’t go on rising. With the hundreds of apartment-houses that were going up, some of them actually in the open country without even a finished road nearby, everyone began to foresee a crash. Bankruptcies en masse were predicted; there would never be enough people to fill all the apartments. But not at all. Roads were built across the sand dunes, through the meadows, up and down the hills, suburbs sprang up which almost immediately became part of the city itself, a great many bus lines were inaugurated and today the process goes on with more impetus than ever.

  Since the new war scare one has the impression that practically everyone with any money wants to leave whatever European country he is in and settle here in the International Zone. The great thing of course is to manage to transfer your capital here. There are no restrictions, no taxes, the climate is better than anywhere in Europe (despite this last winter’s inclemency), and the belief is rampant that America somehow would prevent anyone else from occupying the Zone in the event of war. So at the moment anything is considered a good investment; you can buy part of a ruined wall on the ramparts, dig out three rooms, install a bathroom and electricity, and be pretty sure of making money on the resale. The only trouble is that everyone is in such a hurry to buy, build, and sell that there is no time to see that anything is properly done. And so, you open the door of your bedroom and it falls over on top of you; you turn on the water and the wash-basin collapses; you sit down to dinner and the chandelier overhead crashes into the middle of the table. The walls of the buildings crack open, the elevators don’t move, the roofs leak, and one has the uneasy suspicion that in another decade many of the big new buildings of which Tangier is now so proud will no longer be standing.

  Everyone complains bitterly, but to no avail, of course. A new, well-constructed building is unthinkable here today. “That’s Tangier,” people say with a sigh, as they put pails in the middle of their living-rooms to catch the stream of rain coming through, or telephone to have a new window fitted because the other one has fallen out into the street. “It could happen only in Tangier,” they tell each other, not without a certain satisfaction at the thought of living in this unique city where everything can safely be counted on to go wrong.

  BUT ALL THIS is only Tangier. Once you have left behind the last sad apartment house, standing in solitary state among goats, cact
us, cows, and native shacks, the countryside is just as beautiful as ever.

  Morocco is the ideal country for motoring: the scenery is magnificent and varied, the roads are excellent, and there is no traffic. Gasoline prices range from seventeen cents a gallon in the Spanish Zone to about twenty-eight cents in the French, with those of the International Zone falling halfway between. (In Algeria you pay forty-eight cents a gallon, while in France it is still higher.) The few Americans who live in Morocco are constantly making trips; one would think to hear them talk that they had all set themselves the same stunt – that of knowing every town in the land. “Here’s a place I’ll bet you’ve never been ... Let’s see, what’s it called? Hey, what was the name of that place we went last October, when we made the side-trip from Béni Mellal and it took all day and we had to go back and sleep in the tents again that night? You know, where the chain was across the road, and the soldier with the wooden leg had to telephone fifty miles away to his superior to get permission to let us through? Azilal! That’s it! Azilal. I’ll bet you’ve never been to Azilal. What a place!”