The Pacific Triangle Part 13

Fate must have chuckled. She is fond of practical jokes. The next time she tried one on me, I was in Cairns. Having entered Australia on the ground floor, Melbourne, I suppose Cairns might be said to be the fifth-story window. I left the s.h.i.+p the moment she was made fast, keyed up with expectation of seeing the tropics again. Ash.o.r.e, the spirit hovering about tropical villages took me in hand. No better guide can be found on earth. With a voice subdued, it urged me to pa.s.s quickly through the town, which was still asleep except for the saloons and their keepers. The spirit leading me complained of that other spirit which leads and captures most men in the tropics. My spirit, happy to have a patron, offered me luxurious scenes, melodious sounds, and mellow colors,--happy in receiving a grateful stranger. While pressing through the little village, I noticed the mission type of architecture of the post-office; the concrete columns guarding the entrance of the newspaper office; the arched balconies of a hotel; the delicate, dainty cottages raised on wooden piles, the verdure hiding defects, and the main building lost in a ma.s.sive growth of yellow flowers overgrowing roof and all. A small opening for entrance and a pugnacious corner were the only indications of its nature as a residence. Then there were a "School of Arts" and a double-winged girls' school. The whole town was pretty and in concord with the scenes about.

But I was not held. I pressed on toward the hills, to the open road.

_Allons!_ But alas! I betrayed myself by doubting the "spirit of the tropics" which was guiding me. I resorted to a tiny mortal for information, and in that way angered the spirit, which instantly deserted me. Not content with whisperings, I had sought definition, asked for distance,--Where? Whence? How? And I lost!

He was a little man, with worn shoes from the holes of which peeped stockingless feet. In the early morning he had slipped on shoes which would not deprive him of the dew. He had covered his little legs with a dark pair of dirty trousers, his body with a soiled white coat, and his mind with misunderstood scripture. His bulging eyes betrayed his inward confusion.

Upon inquiring, he informed me that the road led to the hospital and would take me fifteen minutes to negotiate. Then he wanted to know if I came off the _Eastern_. "Any missionaries on board?" he asked. "I don't know," I answered. "I suppose that is something you don't trouble much about." I agreed. "Ah, that's just it. Don't you know the Bible says, 'Be prepared to meet thy Maker?' How do you know but what any moment you may be called?" "Well, if I am, I have lived well enough to have no fear." "Yes, that is just it. You live in carnal sin. You have no doubt looked upon some woman with l.u.s.tful eyes this very morning. I sin, too, every moment." Heaven knows I had not been tempted. I hadn't seen any woman to look at, and nothing was further from my mind just then. And so it was,--sin, a.s.sumption and condemnation. I talked with him a few minutes, a.s.serted my fearlessness, the consciousness of a reasonably good life. But nothing would do. The poison of fear with which he contrived to wound me I now had to fight off. I had come out all joy and happiness in the new day, the loveliness of life. If wors.h.i.+p was not on my lips it was in my heart, and he had tarnished it. He brought thoughts of sin and death to my mind, which, at that moment, if at any time in my life, was free from selfishness and from unworthy desires.

I cut across to the sea,--not even an open avenue being fresh enough for me now. It was as though I had suddenly inhaled two lungfuls of poison gas and struggled for pure air. I turned back to the boat, not caring to go too far lest she leave port. A tropical shower poured its warm water over me as though the spirit of the tropics felt sorry, and forgave me.

I returned to the s.h.i.+p, and quarter of an hour later we were moving out into the open sea again.

4

The next and last time that I landed on Australian soil was at Thursday Island, one of the smallest of the Prince of Wales group, north of Cape York Peninsula, in the Torres Strait. German New Guinea (now a British mandatory) lies not far away. There is not much of a village and most of the buildings are made of corrugated iron. But there was not at that time that stuffy, damp odor which pervades Suva; nor, in fact, was there much of that mugginess that is Fiji. Yet it is only eleven degrees from the equator, whereas Fiji is thirteen. The street is only a country road, and dozens of goats and kids pasture upon it. The few stores (closed on Sunday) were not overstocked. There are two large churches.

One was built from the wreckage of a s.h.i.+p that had some romantic story about it which I cannot recall. There was also another inst.i.tution, the purpose of which I could not discern. It was musty, dirty, dilapidated, with shaky chairs and shelves of worm-eaten books. I suppose it was a library. Hotels there were galore, and though bars were supposed to be closed on Sunday, a small party of pa.s.sengers succeeded in striking a "spring."

I wandered off by myself. Slowly the great leveler, night, crept into the heart of things, and they seemed glad. Orientals and natives from New Guinea lounged about their little corrugated iron houses, obedient to law and impulse for rest. j.a.panese kept off nakedness with loose kimonos. One of them lay stretched upon the mats before the open door, reading. Others squatted on the highway. Tiny j.a.panese women walked stiffly on their wooden _geta_ as they do in j.a.pan. Tiny babies wandered about alone like wobbling pups. Upon the sea-abandoned beach groups of New Guinea natives gathered to search for crabs or other sea-food. A cow waded into the water to cool herself. And the sail-boats, beached with the receding tides, lunged landward.

Peace and evening. Nay, more. There is not only indolent forgetfulness here; there is more than mere ease in the tropics: there is affluence in ease. A something enters the bone and sinew of moving creatures which awakens and yet satisfies all the dearest desires. And nothing remains when night comes on but lamplight and wandering white shadows.

Late that night I returned to the s.h.i.+p. Deep, familiar sounds revived my memory of Fiji, on the other line of my triangle. A chorus of New Guinea voices,--rich, deep, harmonious, and rhythmic--rose from a little boat beside us. In it were a half-dozen natives, squatting round a lantern, reading and singing hymns in their own tongue. Such mingled sadness with gladness,--one does not know where one begins and the other ends. s.h.i.+ny black bodies crouching and chanting. Hymns never seemed more sincere, more earnest.

They were waiting there for midnight to come, when Sunday ends for them, and toil begins. The s.h.i.+p must be loaded. Then voices will rattle with words and curses. All night long they labored with good things for other men. When I came out in the morning they breakfasted on boiled yams and turtle, a mixture that looked like dough. Instead of using their fingers, they employed sharp pointed sticks, doubtless in imitation of j.a.panese chop-sticks. Progress!

Shortly afterward we struck across the Arafua Sea, and saw Australia no more.

CHAPTER IX

OUR PEG IN ASIA

1

Venturing round the Pacific is like reincarnation. One lives as an Hawaiian for a spell, enters a state of non-existence and turns up as a Fijian; then another period of selflessness, and so on from one isle to another. From such a period of transmigration I woke one morning to the sight of Zamboanga, and knew myself for a moment as a dual personality,--a Filipino and an American in one. All day long we hugged the coast of the islands of the group--Mindanao, Negros, Panay, Mindoro, Luzon--the cool blue surface of the choppy sea between us and reality.

After so many days' journey along the coast of Australia, through sea after sea, it seemed unreasonable to require a turn of the sun in which to outstrip a few Oriental islands. Then we swung to the right. Ahead of us, we were told, lay Manila, but even the short run to that city seemed interminable. At last the unknown became the known. A red trolley-car emerged from behind the Manila Hotel. Life became real again.

Our s.h.i.+p had hardly more than buoyed when a fleet of lighters surrounded her,--flat, blunt, ordinary skiffs; long, narrow, peculiar ones. The former I thought represented American efficiency; the latter, Filipino whimsicality. The Filipino craft were decorated in black, with flourishes and letters in red and white. Over their holds low hoods of matting formed an arch upon which swarmed the native owners. How business-like, yet withal attractive. And business became the order of the night.

From beneath the matted hoods of the lighters flickered glimmers of faint firelight. Life there was alert, though quiet. It hid in the shadows of night; confined in the holds, dim candles and lanterns quivered: peace reigned before performance. A quiet harbor; moon and stars and mast-lights above; a cool, refres.h.i.+ng breeze. That was my first night in Manila Harbor.

Morning. Not really having stretched my legs in nearly three weeks, since sailing from Sydney, Australia, I naturally felt in high spirits upon landing. The mists which hung over Manila quickened my pace, for I knew that before I could see much of that ancient town they would be gone, dissipated by the intense heat of the tropical sun. I was eager to put on my seven-leagued boots to see all that I had selected years before as the things I wanted to stride the seas to see. But I soon discovered that I was only a clumsy iron-weighted deep-sea diver. All round the Pacific I had traveled alone. I wanted no mate but freedom.

But the three weeks _en route_ from the Antipodes, on board a small liner whose major pa.s.senger list was made up of monosyllabic Oriental names drove me, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, into the companions.h.i.+p of the septuagenarian English captain.

2

On account of the keying down of my reactions to the tempo of seventy-three plus British sedateness, I wrote many things in my book of vistas that seem to me now mere aberrations. Just to indicate what the effect was I shall confess that as I approached the Walled City I conceived of myself as almost a full-fledged Don Quixote storming the citadel of ancient aggression. But my elderly Sancho Panza held me back lest the shafts of burning sunlight strike me down.

Standing before the gates of antiquity, even the most haughty of human beings moves by instinct back along the line of the ages, like a spider pulling himself up to his nest on his web. Round the black stone wall which encircles the old Spanish city, that which was once a moat is now a pleasant gra.s.s-grown lawn. The wall itself, still well preserved, has been overreached by two-story stone houses with heavy balconies which seem to mock the pretenses of their "protector." Outwardly, things look old; within change has kept things new. Mixed with surprised curiosity at two Antipodes so close together comes a feeling of contact with eternity, the present of yesterday linking itself with the antiquity which is to be.

A long, narrow street stretched across the city. Spanish buildings tinted pink and delicately ornamented, lined the sides. White stone buildings, chipped and seamed with use and age, lined the way. Broad entrances permitted glimpses of sumptuous patios, refreshed by tropical plants; low stone steps leading up to dark vault-like chambers; windows barred but without gla.s.s,--s.p.a.cious retreats built by caballeros who thought they knew the value of life. Indeed, they knew how to build against invasion of the sun and the Oriental pirate, but not against the invasion of time. Perhaps they live better as Spaniards to-day than they lived as conquerors yesterday.

Here, within the walled city, everything looks as though change were not the order of eternity. Everything is as it was, yet nothing is so.

Trolley-cars clank, motor-cars of the latest models throb quietly, pony-traps and bullock-carts stir the ancient quiet. One wonders how so much new life can find room to move about in such narrow streets with their still narrower sidewalks that permit men to pa.s.s in single file only, and angular corners and low buildings. But there they are, and there they bid fair to remain. Even the unused cathedrals, whose doors are here and there nailed shut, stand their ground. Some of them even close the street with their imposing fronts, the courage of fervent human pa.s.sion in their crumbling facades.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FILIPINO LIGHTERS DROWSING IN THE EVENING SHADOWS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DOCILE WATER BUFFALO IS USED TO WALKING IN MUD]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE CAN THROW A BRICK AND HIT SEVEN CATHEDRALS IN MANILA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COOL AND SILENT ARE THE MOSSY STREETS OF THE WALLED CITY OF MANILA]

At that early hour there was little sign of human life. Into some of the cathedrals native women crept for prayer. Here and there a confined human being pa.s.sed across the gla.s.sless windows; here and there a tourist flitted by in search of sights. And I soon realized that within the walls, intramuros, there was nothing. Across the park, across the Pasig River, there one finds life.

Yet within that ancient crust there is new life. Some old buildings have been turned into government offices, high schools, a public library fully equipped, an agricultural inst.i.tute, everything standing as in days of old, but new flowers and plants growing in those crude pots,--old surroundings with a new spirit. Something mechanical in that spirit,--typewriters clicking everywhere under native fingers; still, typewriters don't click without thoughts.

Here, then, is the conflict in growth between the ends of time, heredity struggling with environment, the fountains of youth was.h.i.+ng the bones of old ambitions. They may not become young bones, but may we not hope they will at least be clean? May not time and patience remold antiquity, absorb its bad blood and rejuvenate it? Typewriters clicking everywhere; tongues born to Filipino, then turned to Spanish, now twisting themselves with English. The trough has been brought to the horse. Will he drink? The library was full of intelligent-looking young Filipinos, the cut of their clothes as obviously American as the typewriters clicking behind doors. Both typewriters and garments indicated efficiency, but I could no more say what was the impulse in the being within those clothes than what thoughts were being fixed in permanence to the sound of an American typewriter.

The most symbolical thing of all was the aquarium built beneath one wing of the great wall round this little village. If in the hard sh.e.l.l of American possession arrangement can still be made for the freedom, natural and unconfining, of the native Filipinos, we shall not lay ourselves open to censure. The natives may not be satisfied, they may prefer the open sea; but that is up to them to achieve. As long as we keep the water fresh and the food supplies free, they can complain only of their own crustaceous natures and nothing else.

3

All Manila does not live within the walls, however,--not even a goodly portion of it,--and the exits are numerous. Pa.s.sing through the eastern gate, one comes into a park which lies between the walled city and the Pasig River. Beyond the river and on its very banks is Manila proper. As I got my first glimpse of the crowded, dirty waterway, I could not say much in reply to my companion, whose patriotic fervor found expression in criticism of American colonization. It was like looking into a neglected back yard. The Englishman did not seem to see, however, that to have done better in so short a time would have been to inflict hards.h.i.+ps on the natives which no amount of progress ever justifies.

Still, with memories of Honolulu as a basis for judgment I was not a little disappointed. How to change people without destroying their souls,--that is the problem for future social workers for world betterment to solve.

Meanwhile I had succeeded in eluding my burden of seventy-three years and opened my eyes to the life round about me. There was still a bridge to cross. It was narrow, wooden and crowded. It was only a temporary structure, built to replace the magnificent Bridge of Spain which was washed away in the great flood of September, 1914. During the few minutes it took me to saunter across it, the traffic was twice blocked.

Perhaps to show me how full the traffic was, for in that moment there lined up as many vehicles and people and of sufficient variety to ill.u.s.trate the stepping-stones in transportation progress. There were traps, motor-cars, carts drawn by carabao, or water-buffalo, bicycles, and trolley-cars. Everybody seems to ride in some fas.h.i.+on.

Yet everybody seems to walk, and in single file at that. Gauze-winged Filipino women,--tawdry, small and ill-shod, or, rather, dragging slippers along the pavement--insist on keeping to the middle of the narrow walks. Frequently they are balancing great burdens on their heads, with or without which they are not over-graceful or comely. Their stiff, transparent gauze sleeves stand away from them like airy wings.

One hasn't the heart to brush against them lest these angelic extensions be demolished, and so one keeps behind them all the way.

The men also shuffle along. They wear embroidered gauze coats which veil their s.h.i.+rts and belts and trousers. There is something in this lace-curtain-like costume that seems the acme of laziness. Neither stark nakedness nor the durability of heavy fabrics seem so prohibitive of labor as does this thin garment. No inquiry into the problem of the Philippines would seem to me complete without full consideration of the origin of this costume.

But one is swept along over the bridge, and is dropped down into Manila proper by way of a set of steps, through a short alley. The main street opens to the right and to the left. It is brought to a sudden turn one block to the left and then runs on into the farther reaches of the city; to the right it winds its way along till it encompa.s.ses the market-place and confusion. This chiseling out of streets in such abrupt fas.h.i.+on is puzzling to the person with notions of how tropical people behave. Why such timidity in the pursuance of direction and desire? The obstruction of the bridge promenade by the main street and of the main street by a side street have a tendency to shoot the seer of sights about in a fas.h.i.+on comparable to one of those games in which a ball is shot through criss-cross sections so that the players never know in what little groove it will fall or whether the number will be a lucky one or not.

I first fell into a bank, and the amount of money one can lose in exchanging Australian silver notes into American dollars is sufficient to dishearten one. The shops were too damp and insignificant to attract me much, however, so I ventured on into the outer by-ways of the city.

There the dungeon-like stores and homes and Chinese combinations had at least the virtue of ordinary Oriental manner in contrast to our own. The Chinese cupboard-like stores, that seem to hang on the outside of the buildings like Italian fruit-stands, held few attractions. There was an obvious utilitarianism about them which, strange as it may seem, is the last thing the man with no fortune to spend enjoys. Shops and museums afford the unpossessing compensation for his penury.

As I made my way ahead to a small open square, my attention was arrested by a performance the full significance of which did not at first appear to me. At the gateway of a large cigar-factory from which came strolling male and female workers, sat two individuals--two women at the women's gate, two men at the men's--and each worker was examined before leaving.

As a woman came along, the inspector pa.s.sed her hands down the side of the skirts, up the thighs, over the bosom,--then slapped her genially and off she went. Through it all, the girls a.s.sumed a most dignified manner, absolutely without self-consciousness and oblivious of the gaze of the pa.s.sers-by. What is more certain to break down a man's or a woman's self-respect than becoming indifferent to the opinion of the public as to the method of being searched? A Freudian complex formed to the point of one's believing oneself capable of theft, the next thing is to live out that unconscious thought of theft and to care nothing for the censure of the world.

When at work, these girls possessed a sort of sixth sense. The cigarettes are handed over to them at their benches to be wrapped in bundles of thirty. They never stop to count them--just place the required number in their left hands encircling them with thumb and fingers, reject an odd one if it creeps in, and tie the bundle. I counted a dozen packets, but did not find one either short or over, and the overseers are so certain of this accuracy that they never count them either.