And as you pass down a klong you get a sight of little creeks running out of it, only large enough for a sampan to enter, and you have a glimpse of green trees and houses sheltering amongst them. They are like the secluded courts and alleys that you find in London leading out of a busy thoroughfare. And just as the main street of a large town winds into a suburban road the klong narrows, the traffic dwindles, and now there is but one houseboat here and there, as it might be a general store to provide for the varied wants of the neighbours; and then the trees on the banks grow thick, coconuts and fruit trees, and you come but now and then upon a little brown house, the home of some Siamese who does not fear solitude. The plantations grow more extensive and your klong, which first was a busy street, then a respectable road through the suburbs, now becomes a leafy country lane.
XXXIV
I left Bangkok on a shabby little boat of four or five hundred tons. The dingy saloon, which served also as dining-room, had two narrow tables down its length with swivel chairs on both sides of them. The cabins were in the bowels of the ship and they were extremely dirty. Cockroaches walked about on tne floor and however placid your temperament it is difficult not to be startled when you go to the wash-basin to wash your hands and a huge cockroach stalks leisurely out.
We dropped down the river, broad and lazy and smiling, and its green banks were dotted with little huts on piles standing at the water’s edge. We crossed the bar; and the open sea, blue and still, spread before me. The look of it and the smell of it filled me with elation.
I had gone on board early in the morning and soon discovered that I was thrown amid the oddest collection of persons I had ever encountered. There were two French traders and a Belgian colonel, an Italian tenor, the American proprietor of a circus with his wife, and a retired French official with his. The circus proprietor was what is termed a good mixer, a type which according to your mood you fly from or welcome, but I happened to be feeling much pleased with life and before I had been on board an hour we had shaken for drinks, and he had shown me his animals. He was a very short fat man and his stingah-shifter, white but none too clean, outlined the noble proportions of his abdomen, but the collar was so tight that you wondered he did not choke. He had a red, cleanshaven face, a merry blue eye and short, untidy sandy hair. He wore a battered topee well on the back of his head. His name was Wilkins and he was born in Portland, Oregon. It appears that the Oriental has a passion for the circus and Mr Wilkins for twenty years had been travelling up and down the East from Port Said to Yokohama (Aden, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Penang, Bangkok, Saïgon, Huë, Hanoi, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, their names roll on the tongue savourily, crowding the imagination with sunshine and strange sounds and a multicoloured activity) with his menagerie and his merry-go-rounds. It was a strange life he led, unusual and one that, one would have thought, must offer the occasion for all sorts of curious experiences, but the odd thing about him was that he was a perfectly commonplace little man and you would have been prepared to find him running a garage or keeping a third-rate hotel in a second-rate town in California. The fact is, and I have noticed it so often that I do not know why it should always surprise me, that the extraordinariness of a man’s life does not make him extraordinary, but contrariwise if a man is extraordinary he will make extraordinariness out of a life as humdrum as that of a country curate. I wish I could feel it reasonable to tell here the story of the hermit I went to see on an island in the Torres Straits, a shipwrecked mariner who had lived there alone for thirty years, but when you are writing a book you are imprisoned by the four walls of your subject and though for the entertainment of my own digressing mind I set it down now I should be forced in the end by my sense of what is fit to go between two covers and what is not, to cut it out. Anyhow, the long and short of it is that notwithstanding this long and intimate communion with nature and his thoughts the man was as dull, insensitive and vulgar an oaf at the end of this experience as he must have been at the beginning.
The Italian singer passed us and Mr Wilkins told me that he was a Neapolitan who was on his way to Hong-Kong to rejoin his company which he had been forced to leave owing to an attack of malaria in Bangkok. He was an enormous fellow, and very fat, and when he flung himself into a chair it creaked with dismay. He took off his topee, displaying a great head of long, curly, greasy hair, and ran podgy and beringed fingers through it.
‘He ain’t very sociable,’ said Mr Wilkins. ‘He took the cigar I gave him, but he wouldn’t have a drink. I shouldn’t wonder if there wasn’t somethin’ rather queer about him. Nasty lookin’ guy, ain’t he?’
Then a little fat woman in white came on deck holding by the hand a Wa-Wa monkey. It walked solemnly by her side.
‘This is Mrs Wilkins,’ said the circus proprietor, ‘and our youngest son. Draw up a chair, Mrs Wilkins, and meet this gentleman. I don’t know his name, but he’s already paid for two drinks for me and if he can’t shake any better than he has yet he’ll pay for one for you too.’
Mrs Wilkins sat down with an abstracted, serious look, and with her eyes on the blue sea suggested that she did not see why she shouldn’t have a lemonade.
‘My, it’s hot,’ she murmured, fanning herself with the topee which she took off.
‘Mrs Wilkins feels the heat,’ said her husband. ‘She’s had twenty years of it now.’
‘Twenty-two and a half,’ said Mrs Wilkins, still looking at the sea.
‘And she’s never got used to it yet.’
‘Nor never shall and you know it,’ said Mrs Wilkins.
She was just the same size as her husband and just as fat, and she had a round red face like his and the same sandy, untidy hair. I wondered if they had married because they were so exactly alike, or if in the course of years they had acquired this astonishing resemblance. She did not turn her head but continued to look absently at the sea.
‘Have you shown him the animals?’ she asked.
‘You bet your life I have.’
‘What did he think of Percy?’
‘Thought him fine.’
I could not but feel that I was being unduly left out of a conversation of which I was at all events partly the subject, so I asked:
‘Who’s Percy?’
‘Percy’s our eldest son. There’s a flyin’-fish, Elmer. He’s the oran-utan. Did he eat his food well this morning?’
‘Fine. He’s the biggest oran-utan in captivity. I wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for him.’
‘And what relation is the elephant?’ I asked.
Mrs Wilkins did not look at me, but with her blue eyes still gazed indifferently at the sea.
‘He’s no relation,’ she answered. ‘Only a friend.’
The boy brought lemonade for Mrs Wilkins, a whisky and soda for her husband and a gin and tonic for me. We shook dice and I signed the chit.
‘It must come expensive if he always loses when he shakes,’ Mrs Wilkins murmured to the coastline.
‘I guess Egbert would like a sip of your lemonade, my dear,’ said Mr Wilkins.
Mrs Wilkins slightly turned her head and looked at the monkey sitting on her lap.
‘Would you like a sip of mother’s lemonade, Egbert?’
The monkey gave a little squeak and putting her arm round him she handed him a straw. The monkey sucked up a little lemonade and having drunk enough sank back against Mrs Wilkins’ ample bosom.
‘Mrs Wilkins thinks the world of Egbert,’ said her husband. ‘You can’t wonder at it, he’s her youngest.’
Mrs Wilkins took another straw and thoughtfully drank her lemonade.
‘Egbert’s all right,’ she remarked. ‘There’s nothin’ wrong with Egbert.’
Just then the French official who had been sitting down got up and began walking up and down. He had been accompanied on board by the French minister at Bangkok, one or two secretaries and a prince of the Royal Family. There had been a great deal of bowing and shaking of hands and as the boat slipped away from the quay muc
h waving of hats and handkerchiefs. He was evidently a person of consequence. I had heard the captain address him as Monsieur le Gouverneur.
‘That’s the big noise on this boat,’ said Mr Wilkins. ‘He was governor of one of the French colonies and now he’s makin’ a tour of the world. He came to see my circus at Bangkok. I guess I’ll ask him what he’ll have. What shall I call him, my dear?’
Mrs Wilkins slowly turned her head and looked at the Frenchman, with the rosette of the legion of honour in his button hole, pacing up and down.
‘Don’t call him anything,’ she said. ‘Show him a hoop and he’ll jump right through it.’
I could not but laugh. Monsieur le Gouverneur was a little man, well below the average height, and smally made, with a very ugly little face and thick, almost negroid features; and he had a bushy grey head, bushy grey eyebrows and a bushy grey moustache. He did look a little like a poodle and he had the poodle’s soft, intelligent and shining eyes. Next time he passed us Mr Wilkins called out:
‘Monsoo. Qu’est ce que vous prenez?’ I cannot reproduce the eccentricities of his accent. ‘Une petite vene de poito.’ He turned to me. ‘Foreigners, they all drink porto. You’re always safe with that.’
‘Not the Dutch,’ said Mrs Wilkins, with a look at the sea. ‘They won’t touch nothin’ but Schnaps.’
The distinguished Frenchman stopped and looked at Mr Wilkins with some bewilderment. Whereupon Mr Wilkins tapped his breast and said:
‘Moa, proprietarre Cirque. Vous avez visite.’
Then, for a reason that escaped me, Mr Wilkins made his arms into a hoop and outlined the gestures that represented a poodle jumping through it. Then he pointed at the Wa-Wa that Mrs Wilkins was still holding on her lap.
‘La petit fils de mon femme,’ he said.
Light broke upon the governor and he burst into a peculiarly musical and infectious laugh. Mr Wilkins began laughing too.
‘Oui, oui,’ he cried. ‘Moa, circus proprietor. Une petite verre de porto. Oui. Oui. N’est ce pas?’
‘Mr Wilkins talks French like a Frenchman,’ Mrs Wilkins informed the passing sea.
‘Mais très volontiers,’ said the governor, still smiling. I drew him up a chair and he sat down with a bow to Mrs Wilkins.
‘Tell poodle-face his name’s Egbert,’ she said, looking at the sea.
I called the boy and we ordered a round of drinks.
‘You sign the chit, Elmer,’ she said. ‘It’s not a bit of good Mr What’s-his-name shakin’ if he can’t shake nothin’ better than a pair of treys.’
‘Vous comprenez le français, madame?’ asked the governor politely.
‘He wants to know if you speak French, my dear.’
‘Where does he think I was raised? Naples?’
Then the governor, with exuberant gesticulations, burst into a torrent of English so fantastic that it required all my knowledge of French to understand what he was talking about.
Presently Mr Wilkins took him down to look at his animals and a little later we assembled in the stuffy saloon for luncheon. The governor’s wife appeared and was put on the captain’s right. The governor explained to her who we all were and she gave us a gracious bow. She was a large woman, tall and of a robust build, of fifty-five perhaps, and she was dressed somewhat severely in black silk. On her head she wore a huge round topee. Her features were so large and regular, her form so statuesque, that you were reminded of the massive females who take part in processions. She would have admirably suited the role of Columbia or Britannia in a patriotic demonstration. She towered over her diminutive husband like a skyscraper over a shack. He talked incessantly, with vivacity and wit, and when he said anything amusing her heavy features relaxed into a large, fond smile.
‘Que tu es bête, mon ami,’ she said. She turned to the captain. ‘You must not pay any attention to him. He is always like that.’
We had indeed a very amusing meal and when it was over we separated to our various cabins to sleep away the heat of the afternoon. On such a small boat having once made the acquaintance of my fellow passengers, it would have been impossible, even had I wished it, not to pass with them every moment of the day that I was not in my cabin. The only person who held himself aloof was the Italian tenor. He spoke to no one, but sat by himself as far forward as he could get, twanging a guitar in an undertone so that you had to strain your ears to catch the notes. We remained in sight of land and the sea was like a pail of milk. Talking of one thing and another we watched the day decline, we dined, and then we sat out again on deck under the stars. The two traders played piquet in the hot saloon, but the Belgian colonel joined our little group. He was shy and fat and opened his mouth only to utter a civility. Soon, influenced perhaps by the night and encouraged by the darkness that gave him, up there in the bows, the sensation of being alone with the sea, the Italian tenor, accompanying himself on his guitar, began to sing, first in a low tone, and then a little louder, till presently, his music captivating him, he sang with all his might. He had the real Italian voice, all macaroni, olive oil and sunshine, and he sang the Neapolitan songs that I had heard in my youth in the Piazza San Ferdinando, and fragments from La Bohême, and Traviata and Rigoletto. He sang with emotion and false emphasis and his tremolo reminded you of every third-rate Italian tenor you had ever heard, but there in the openness of that lovely night his exaggerations only made you smile and you could not but feel in your heart a lazy sensual pleasure. He sang for an hour, perhaps, and we all fell silent; then he was still, but he did not move and we saw his huge bulk dimly outlined against the luminous sky.
I saw that the little French governor had been holding the hand of his large wife and the sight was absurd and touching.
‘Do you know that this is the anniversary of the day on which I first saw my wife,’ he said, suddenly breaking the silence which had certainly weighed on him, for I had never met a more loquacious creature. ‘It is also the anniversary of the day on which she promised to be my wife. And, which will surprise you, they were one and the same.’
‘Voyons, mon ami,’ said the lady, ‘you are not going to bore our friends with that old story. You are really quite insupportable.’
But she spoke with a smile on her large, firm face, and in a tone that suggested that she was quite willing to hear it again.
‘But it will interest them, mon petit chou.’ It was in this way that he always addressed his wife and it was funny to hear this imposing and even majestic lady thus addressed by her small husband. ‘Will it not, monsieur?’ he asked me. ‘It is a romance and who does not like romance, especially on such a night as this?’
I assured the governor that we were all anxious to hear and the Belgian colonel took the opportunity once more to be polite.
‘You see, ours was a marriage of convenience pure and simple.’
‘C’est vrai,’ said the lady. ‘It would be stupid to deny it. But sometimes love comes after marriage and not before, and then it is better. It lasts longer.’
I could not but notice that the governor gave her hand an affectionate little squeeze.
‘You see, I had been in the navy, and when I retired I was forty-nine. I was strong and active and I was very anxious to find an occupation. I looked about: I pulled all the strings I could. Fortunately I had a cousin who had some political importance. It is one of the advantages of democratic government that if you have sufficient influence merit, which otherwise might pass unnoticed, generally receives its due reward.’
‘You are modesty itself, mon pauvre ami,’ said she.
‘And presently I was sent for by the Minister to the Colonies and offered the post of governor in a certain colony. It was a very distant spot that they wished to send me to and a lonely one, but I had spent my life wandering from port to port, and that was not a matter that troubled me. I accepted with joy. The minister told me that I must be ready to start in a month. I told him that would be easy for an old bachelor who had nothing much in the world but a few clothes and
a few books.’
‘“Comment, mon lieutenant,” he cried, “You are a bachelor?”
‘“Certainly,” I answered. “And I have every intention of remaining one.”
‘“In that case I am afraid I must withdraw my offer. For this position it is essential that you should be married.”
‘It is too long a story to tell you, but the gist of it was that owing to the scandal my predecessor, a bachelor, had caused by having native girls to live in the Residency and the consequent complaints of the white people, planters and the wives of functionaries, it had been decided that the next governor must be a model of respectability. I expostulated. I argued. I recapitulated my services to the country and the services my cousin could render at the next elections.