“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
Don’t fancy for a moment that the cry of the Indian lizard is the half-audible murmur of the cricket or the tree toad. It sounds much more like the squawking of an ungreased bullock-cart:—
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
To attempt to drive them off was worse than useless. The walls and ceiling, being of thatch, offered more hiding places for creeping things than a hay stack. When I fired a shoe at the nearest, a shower of branches and rubbish rattled to the floor; and, after a moment of silence, the song began again, louder than before. Either the creatures were clever dodgers or invulnerable, and there was always the danger that a swiftly-thrown missile might bring down half the thatch partition:—
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
“She-kak! she-kak! she-kak!”
Wherever there are dwellings in British-India, there are croaking lizards. I have listened to their shriek from Tuticorin to Delhi; I have seen them darting across the carpeted floor in the bungalows of commissioner sahibs; I have awakened many a time to find one dragging his clammy way across my face. But nowhere are they more numerous nor more brazen-voiced than in the jungles of the Malay Peninsula. There came a day when we were glad that they had not been exterminated—but of that later.
Early the next morning we fell into a passable roadway that led us every half-hour through a grinning village, between which were many isolated huts. We stopped at all of them for water. The natives showed us marked kindness, often awaiting us, chettie in hand, or running out into the highway at our shout of “yee sheedela?” This Burmese word for water (yee) gave James a great deal of innocent amusement. Ever and anon he paused before a hut, to drawl, in the voice of a court crier:—“Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! We’re thirsty as Hottentots!” Householders young and old understood. At least they fetched us water in abundance.
The fourth day afoot brought two misfortunes. The rainy season, long delayed, burst upon us in pent-up fury not an hour after we hadspent our last copper for breakfast. Where dinner would come from we could not surmise, but “on the road” one does not waste his energies in worry. Something would “turn up.” It is in wandering aimlessly about the streets of a great city in the midst of plenty that the penniless outcast feels the inexorable hand of fate at his throat—not on the open road among the fields and flowers and waving palm trees.
The first shower came almost without warning; one sullen roar of thunder, the heavens opened, and the water poured. Thereafter they were frequent. At times some hut gave us shelter; more often we could only plod on in the blinding torrent that, in the twinkle of an eye, drenched us to the skin. The storms were rarely of five minutes’ duration. With the last dull growl of thunder, the sun burst out more calorific than before, sopping up the pools in the highway as with a gigantic sponge, and drying our dripping garments before we had time to grumble at the wetting. Amid the extravagant beauties of the tropical landscape the vagaries of the season were so quickly forgotten that the next downpour took us as completely by surprise as though it had been the first of the season.
During the morning we met a funeral procession en route for the place of cremation. Wailing and mourning there were none. Why should death bring grief to the survivors when the deceased has merely lost one of his innumerable lives? There came first of all dozens of girls dressed as for a yearly festival. About their necks were garlands of flowers; in their jet-black hair, red and white blossoms. Each carried a flat basket, heaped high with offerings that made us envious of him who had been gathered to his fathers. Here one bore bananas of brightest yellow; another, golden mangoes; a third, great, plump pineapples. The girls held the baskets high above their heads, swaying their bodies from side to side and tripping lightly back and forth across the road as they advanced, the long cortège executing such a snake-dance as one sees on a college gridiron after a great contest. The chant that rose and fell in time with their movements sounded less a dirge than a pean of victory; now and again a singer broke out in merry laughter. The coffin was a wooden box, gayly decked with flowers and trinkets, and three of the eight men who bore it on their shoulders were puffing at long native cigars. Behind them more men, led by two saffron-clad priests, pattered through the dust, chattering like school girls, yet adding their discordant voices now and then to the cadenced chorus of the females.
The sun was blazing directly overhead, leaving our pudgy shadows to be trampled under foot, when we heard behind us a faint wail of “sahib! sahib.” Far down the green-framed roadway trotted a beclouted brown man, waving his arms above his head. We were already fifteen miles distant from the dak bungalow; small wonder if we were surprised to find our pursuer none other than that chowkee dar who had skinned our chicken so deftly the night before. A misgiving fell upon us. No doubt the fellow had found out that we were no railway officials after all, and had come to demand the bungalow fee of two rupees. We stepped into the shade and awaited anxiously the brown-skinned nemesis.
But there was no cause for alarm. Amid his chattering the night before, the babu custodian had forgotten his first duty—to register us. When his error came to light, we were gone; and he had sent the cook to get our names. That was all; and for that the Hindu had run the entire fifteen miles. When we had scribbled our names on the limp, wet rag of paper he carried in his hand, he turned aside from the road and threw himself face down in the edge of the forest.
The beauties of the landscape impressed themselves less and less upon us with every mile thereafter. Not that our surroundings had lost anything of their charm, the scenery was rather more striking; but the dinner hour had passed and our bellies had begun to pinch us. The Burmese, we had been told, were charitable to a fault. But what use to “batter” back doors, when we knew barely a dozen words of the native tongue? Here and there a bunch of bananas hung at the top of its stocky tree, but the fruit was hopelessly green; cocoanuts there were in abundance, but they supplied drink rather than food. Still hunger grew apace. The only alternative to starving left us was to exploit the shopkeepers,—to eat our fill and run away.
We chose a well-stocked booth in a teeming village, and, advancing with a millionaire swagger, sat down on the bamboo floor and called for food. The merchant and his family were enjoying a plenteous repast. The wife grinned cheerily upon us for the honor we had done her among all her neighbors, and brought us a bowl of rice and a strange vegetable currie. While we ate, the unsuspecting victims squatted around us, shrieking in our ears as though they would force us to understand by endless repetitions and lusty bellowing. When we addressed them in English, they cried “nămelay-voo,” and took deeper breath. When we spoke in Hindustanee, they grinned sympathetically and again bellowed “nămelay-voo.” How often Ihad heard those words since our departure from Rangoon! At first, I had fancied the speaker was attempting to converse in French. It was easy to imagine that he was trying to say “what is your name?” But he was not, for when I answered in the language of Voltaire, the refrain came back louder than before:—“Nămelay-voo?”
We did not eat our fill at the first shop. To have done so would have been to leave the keeper a pauper. When our hunger had been somewhat allayed, we rose to our feet.
“I’m sorry to work this phony game on you, old girl,” said James, “but I know you couldn’t cash a check—”
“Nămelay-voo?” cried the personage thus disrespectfully addressed, and the family smile broadened and spread to the family ears. We caught up the knapsack and walked rapidly away; for well we knew the agonized screams that would greet our perfidy and the menacing mob that would gather at our heels. Four steps we had taken, and still no outcry. We hurried on, not daring to look back. Suddenly a roar of laughter sounded behind us. I glanced over my shoulder. Not a man pursued us. The family still squatted on the bamboo floor of the booth, doubled up and shaking with mirth.
We levied on the shopkeepers whenever hunger assailed us thereafter, though never eating more than two or three cents’ worth at any one stall. Never a merchant showed anger at our rascality. So excellent a joke did our ruse seem to the natives that laughter rang out behind us at every sortie. Nay, many a shopkeeper called us back and forced upon us handfuls of the best fruit in his meager little stock, guffawing the while until the tears ran down his cheeks, and calling his neighbors about him to tell them the jest, that they might laugh with him. And they did. More than once we left an entire village shaking its sides at the trick which the two witty sahibs had played upon it.
When night came on we appropriated lodgings in the same high-handed fashion, stretching out on the veranda of the most pretentious shop in a long, straggling village. Unfortunately, the wretch who kept it was no true Burman. A dozen times he came out to growl at us, and to answer our questions with an angry “nămelay-voo.” Darkness fell swiftly. It was the hour of closing. The merchant began to drag out boards from under his shanty and to stand them up endwise across the open front of the shop, fitting them into grooves at top and bottom. When only a narrow opening was left, he turned upon us with a snarl and motioned to us to be off. We paid no heed,for so fierce an evening storm had begun that the shop lamp lighted up an unbroken sheet of water at the edge of the veranda. The shopkeeper blustered and howled to make his voice heard above the rumble of the torrent, waving his arms wildly above his head. We stretched our aching legs and let him rage on. He fell silent at last and squatted disconsolately in the opening. He could have put up the last board and left us outside, but that would have been to disobey the ancient Buddhist law of hospitality.
A half-hour had passed when he sprang up suddenly with a grunt of satisfaction and stepped into his dwelling. When he came out he carried a lantern and wore a black, waterproof sheet that hid all but a narrow strip of his face and his bare feet. Bellowing in our ears, he began a pantomime that we understood to be an offer to lead us to some other shelter.
“Let’s risk it,” said James. “This is no downy couch, and he’s probably going to take us to a Buddhist monastery. If he tries any tricks we’ll stick to him and come back.”
We stepped into the deluge and followed the native along the highway in the direction we had come. The storm increased. It was not a mere matter of getting wet. There was not a dry thread on us when we had taken four steps. But the torrent, falling on our bowed backs, weighed us down like a mighty burden, a sensation one may experience under an especially strong shower bath.
Mile after mile the native trotted on; it seemed at least ten, certainly it was three. The mud, oozing into our dilapidated shoes during the day, had blistered our feet to the ankles; our legs creaked with every step. The Australian fell behind. I stumbled over a knoll and sprawled into a river of mud that spattered even into my eyes. A bellow brought the Burman to a halt. I splashed forward and grasped him by a wrist.
“Hold him!” howled James from the rear. “The bloody ass will take us clear back to Pegu. There’s a house down there. Let’s try it.”
We skated down the slippery slope, dragging the shopkeeper after us, and stumbled across the veranda into a low, rambling hovel of a single room. At one end squatted a half-dozen low-caste men and as many slatternly, half-naked females. In a corner was spread an array of food stuffs; in another, several dirty, brown brats were curled up on a heap of rush mats and foul rags. James sprang through the squatting group and fell upon the wares.
“Only grains and vegetables,” he wailed. “Not a damn thing a civilized man’s dog could eat unless it was cooked. It’s no supper for us, all right. What say we turn in?”
He dived towards the other corner and tumbled the sleeping children together. The natives stared stupidly, offering no sign of protest at this maltreatment of their offspring. The Australian threw himself down beside the slumberers.
“Holy dingoes!” he gasped, bounding again to his feet, “What a smell!”
We had indeed fallen upon squalor unusual in the land of Burma.
Our guide, waiving the rights of higher caste, squatted with the others. Then he began to chatter, and, that accomplishment being universal among his countrymen, he was soon joined by all the group; the old men first, in rasping undertones, then the younger males, in deeper voice, and last, the females, in cracked treble.
We sat down dejectedly on two Standard Oil cans. For an hour the natives jabbered on, gaping at us, chewing their betel-nut cuds like ruminating animals. Green-eyed lizards in wall and ceiling set up their nerve-racking “she-kak! she-kak!” The mud dried in thick layers on our faces.
Suddenly James bounded into the midst of the group and grasped the shopkeeper by the folds of his loose gown.
“We want something to eat!” he bellowed. “If there’s any chow in this shack show it up. If there isn’t, cut out this tongue rattle, you missing link, and let us sleep!” and he shook the passive Burman so savagely that the cigarette hanging from his nether lip flew among the sleeping children.
The shopkeeper, showing neither surprise nor anger, regained his equilibrium, picked up his lantern, and marched with dignified tread out into the night. Apparently he had abandoned us in spite of the law of hospitality.
But he was a true disciple of Gautama, for he sauntered in, a few moments later, in company with five men in high-caste costumes.
“Any of you chaps speak English?” I cried.
The newcomers gave no sign of having understood. One, more showily dressed than his companions, sat down on a heap of rattan. The others grouped themselves about him, and a new conference began. The rain ceased. The lizards shrieked sardonically. James fell into a doze, humped together on his oil can.
Suddenly I caught, above the chatter, the word “babu.”
“Look here,” I interrupted, “If there’s a babu here he speaks English. Who is he?”
The only reply was a sudden silence that did not last long.
“Babu,” cried the shopkeeper, some moments later. This time there could be no doubt that he had addressed the silent Beau Brummel on the rattan heap.
“You speak English!” I charged, pointing an accusing finger at him. “Tell them we want something to eat.”
The fellow stared stolidly. If the title belonged to him he was anxious to conceal his accomplishments.
“It’s some damn sneak,” burst out James, “come here to eavesdrop.”
Four days in the jungle had weakened the Australian’s command over his temper. Or was his speech a ruse? If so, it succeeded in its object. A flush mounted to the swarthy cheek of the native; he opened and closed his mouth several times as if he had received a heavy blow in the ribs, and spoke, slowly and distinctly:—
“I am not damn snake. I have been listening.”
“Of course!” bellowed James, “I repeat, you are a sneak.”
“Don’t!” shuddered the babu, “Don’t name me damn snake. If they know you talk me so I fall in my caste.”
“Well, why didn’t you answer when I spoke to you?” I demanded.
“I was listening to find out what you were wishing,” stammered the Burman.
“You half-baked Hindu!” shouted James. “You heard us say a dozen times we wanted something to eat.”
“But,” pleaded the babu, “this is a very jungly place and we have not proper food for Europeans.”
“Proper be blowed!” shrieked the Australian. “Who’s talking about European food? If there’s anything to eat around here trot it out. If wehaven’tgot money we can pay for it. Here’s a good suit of clothes—” he caught up the knapsack and tumbled his “swag” out on the floor.
“There’s only native food,” objected the Burman. “White men cannot—”
“What you can eat, so can we,” I cried. “Take the suit and bring us something.”
“Oh! We cannot take payment,” protested the babu.
“Jumping Hottentots!” screamed James. “Take pay or don’t, but stop your yapping and tell them we want something toeat.”
“I shall have prepared some food which Europeans can eat,” murmured the native in an oily voice. He harangued the group long and deliberately. An undressed female rose, hobbled to a corner of the room, lighted a fire of fagots, and squatted beside it. Though it was certainly midnight, we gave up all hope of expediting matters, and waited with set teeth. For a half-hour not a word was spoken. Then the female rose and strolled towards us, holding out—four slices of toast!
“If I’d known there was bread in this shack,” cried James, as we snatched the slices, “there’d have been damn little toasting.”
“I have worked for Europeans,” said the babu proudly, yet with a touch of sadness in his voice, “and I know they cannot eat the native bread, so I have it prepared as sahibs eat it.”
“We’ve been eating native bread for months,” mumbled James, “days anyway. You’re a bit crazy, I think. Got any rice?”
“There is rice and fish,” said the Burman, “but can you eat that too?”
“Just watch us,” said James.
The female brought a native supper, and we fell to.
“How wonderful!” murmured the babu, “And you are sahibs!”
When we acknowledged ourselves satisfied, two blankets were spread for us on the floor, the chattering visitors filed out into the night, and we stretched out side by side to listen a few hours to the croaking of irrepressible lizards.
The following noonday found us miles distant. It was our second day without a copper; yet the natives received us as kindly as if we had been men of means. The proximity of Moulmein, where sahib muscular effort might be turned to account, filled us with new hope and we splashed doggedly on.
Villages there were without number. Their tapering pagodas dominated the landscape. On the east stretched the rugged mountain chain, so near now that we could make out plainly the little shrines far up on the summit of each conspicuous peak. Tropical showers burst upon us at frequent intervals, wild deluges of water from which we occasionally found shelter under long-legged hovels. Even when we scrambled up the bamboo ladders into the dwellings, the squatting family showed no resentment at the intrusion; often they gave us fruit, once they forced upon us two native cigars. It was these that made James forever after a stout champion of the Burmese; for two days had passed since we had shared our last smoke.
Queer things are these Burmese cigars! They call them “saybullies,” and they smoke them in installments; for no man lives with the endurance necessary to consume a saybully at one sitting. They are a foot long, as thick as the thumb of a windjammer’s bo’s’n, rather cigarettes than cigars; for they are wrapped in a thick, leathery paper that almost defies destruction, even by fire. In the country districts they serve as almanacs. The peasant buys his cigar on market day, puffs fiercely at it on the journey home, stows it away about his person when he is satisfied, and pulls it out from time to time to smoke again. As a result, one can easily determine the day of the week by noting the length of the saybullies one encounters along the route.
To determine the ingredients that make up this Burmese concoction is not so simple a matter. Now and then, in the smoking, one comes across pebbles and fagots and a variety of foreign substances which even a manufacturer of “two-fers” would hesitate to use. But the comparison is unjust, for the saybullydoescontain tobacco, little wads of it, tucked away among the rubbish.
Men, women, and children indulge in this form of the soothing weed. As in Ceylon, the females, and often the males, wear heavy leaden washers in their ears until the aperture is stretched to the size of a rat hole. It is a wise custom. For, having no pockets, where could the Burmese matron find place for her half-smoked saybully were she denied the privilege of thrusting it through the lobe of her ear?
Dusk was falling when we overtook a fellow pedestrian; a Eurasian youth provided with an umbrella and attended by a native servant boy. When he had gasped his astonishment at meeting two bedraggled sahibs in this strange corner of the world and volunteered a detailed autobiography, I found time to put a question over which I had been pondering for some days.
“As your mother is Burmese,” I began, while we splashed on into the night, “you speak that language, of course?”
“Oh! yes,” answered the Eurasian, “even better than English.”
“Then you can tell us about this phrase we have heard so much. It’s ‘nămelay-voo.’ Sounds like bum French, but I suppose it’s Burmese?”
“Oh! yes, that is Burmese.”
“What the deuce does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” replied the youth.
“Eh! But it’s certainly a common expression. Every Burmanwe speak to shouts ‘nămelay-voo.’ What are they trying to say?”
“I don’t know,” repeated the half-breed.
“Mighty funny, if you speak Burmese, that you don’t understand that!”
“But I do understand it!” protested the youth.
“Well, what is it then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand.”
“Say, what are you giving us?” cried James. “Don’t you ever say ‘nămelay-voo’?”
“Certainly! Very often, every day, every hour!”
“Well, what do you mean when you say it?”
“I don’t understand. I don’t know.”
“Look here!” bellowed the Australian, “Don’t you go springing any stale jokes on us. We’re not in a mood for ’em.”
“Gentlemen,” gasped the half-breed, with tears in his voice, “I do not joke and I am not joking. ‘Nămelay-voo’ is a Burmese word which has for meaning ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t understand!’”
It was black night when we stumbled down through the village of Martaban to the brink of the river of the same name, a swollen stream fully two miles wide where our day’s journey must have ended, had we not fallen in with the Eurasian. His home was in Moulmein, and, summoning a sampan, he invited us to embark with him. The native boat was either light of material or water-logged, and the waves that broke over the craft threatened more than once to swamp us. Crocodiles, whispered our companion, swarmed at this point. Now and then an ominous grunt sounded close at hand, and the boatman peered anxiously about him as he strained wildly at his single oar against the current that would have carried us out to sea. Panting with his exertions, he fetched the opposite shore, beaching the craft on a slimy slope; and we splashed through a sea of mud to a roughly-paved street flanking the river.
“You see Moulmein is a city,” said the Eurasian, proudly, pointing along the row of lighted shops, with fronts all doorway, like those of Damascus. “We have even restaurants and cabs. Will you not take supper?”
We would, and he led the way to a Mohammedan eating-house in which we were served several savory messes by an unkempt Islamite, who wiped his hands, after tossing charcoal on his fire or scooping up a plate of food, on his fez, and chewed betel-nut as he worked, spitting perilously near to the open pots. The meal over, the Eurasian calleda “cab.” It was a mere box on wheels, about four feet each way, and had no seats. When we had packed ourselves inside, the driver imprisoned us by slamming the air-tight door, and we jolted away.
Fearful of calling paternal attention to his extravagance, the youth dismissed the hansom at the edge of the quarter in which he lived, and we continued on foot to his bungalow. His father was an emaciated Englishman of the rougher, half-educated type, employed in the Moulmein custom service. He greeted us somewhat coldly. When we had been duly inspected by his Burmese wife and their eighteen children, we threw ourselves down on the floor of the open veranda and, drenched and mud-caked as we were, sank into corpse-like slumber.