The little skiff was set down in the water, and Lanny climbed in. They anticipated no danger, but it was proper for him to go first on chance that danger might be met. Holding one of the precious duffel-bags in his arms he was paddled to a rocky point where he could step ashore dryshod. While the skiff went back to the junk, he dived quickly into the bag, and discovered to his relief that the elderly Chinese angel had provided headnets and gloves against the mosquitoes which are the curse of the tropics. In fact, the angel had put in a score of little conveniences which were plentiful in Hongkong but unobtainable in the interior—matches, a flashlight with spare batteries, an aluminum kettle for boiling water; also iodine and quinine. Mr. Foo could afford to be generous, alas, for he had to reckon that whatever he did not give to his allies would soon belong to his enemies.
First came Laurel, for the doctor, determined altruist, would always be last: the youngest, the strongest, and not married, she would insist. Lanny took his wife in his arms and kissed her shamelessly; then he stood off for the first good look at her since she had entered her seventh month. It really wasn’t fair to expect him to keep from laughing, and finally she gave way and joined him. She was blushing scarlet, but had to admit that it was an ingenious way of hiding money. The Chinese had been in this war for four years, and prior to that they had been in wars for at least four thousand; so they had had to learn devices. “For ways that are dark and for tricks that are vain the heathen Chinee is peculiar!”
Althea came in due course; and they said the last farewell to their gallant preserver. “Good fishing!” said Althea, groping in Cantonese, and they shook hands all round once more. They would have stood to wave while the man paddled away—but for the facts that he had to turn his back, and that the mosquitoes were after them. As soon as Althea had put on her net and gloves, she produced her tiny Book of Common Prayer, without which she never traveled. She had asked a favor, and now that it had been granted she would not forget to say thanks. Standing on safe and solid shore she read aloud from the 107th Psalm:
Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness: and declare the wonders that he doeth for the children of men!
That they would offer unto him the sacrifice of thanksgiving: and tell out his works with gladness!
They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great waters:
These men see the works of the Lord: and his wonders in the deep.
For at his word the stormy wind ariseth: which lifteth up the waves thereof.
They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble.
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wits’ end.
So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble: he delivereth them out of their distress.
For he maketh the storm to cease: so that the waves thereof are still.
Then are they glad, because they are at rest: and so he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.
III
There were small fishing craft drawn up on the shores of this cove, and rice cultivation began almost at the water’s edge. That was one of the first things they were to learn about subtropical China; never would you find a single square inch on which food might be grown that did not have food growing. No poor peasant ever saw a flower—unless it was being grown for a rich man’s market. Another thing you learned was that labor in the fields began at the first trace of daylight; it continued until it was no longer possible to distinguish a rice stalk from a weed. Already the peasants were at work, using heavy-handled hoes; their clothing was a pair of ragged blue-jeans, a pair of straw sandals, and a straw hat with an immense wide brim against the heat which the sun would pour upon them as soon as it appeared over the horizon.
Another peculiarity the strangers observed at once: these toilers had no interest in anything except their toil. Not one stopped to stare, to say nothing of exchanging a greeting. You might have thought that foreigners were landing in this cove every few minutes, and that the peasants were bored with them. But Althea said they had no curiosity, they could not afford such a luxury. Either their fields were small, subdivided again and again as families grew, or else the field belonged to a landlord who claimed the greater part of the crop. Get to work and stay!
Rice is grown in swamps, whether natural or artificial. If it is a natural swamp, floods come, and the crop is ruined, and the mud house is washed away, and the bodies of peasants are found hanging from tree limbs. When the ground is higher, the water must be brought to it by irrigation ditches or by the labor of arms, legs, and backs. One of the first sights the travelers saw was men with yokes across their shoulders from which dangled two heavy buckets made of wood or bamboo staves; they filled these at the stream and carried them up to the higher level to sprinkle the young plants. Presently the travelers came to a treadmill which carried a continuous stream of buckets down to the water and then up to a trough, where they emptied themselves and went down for another load. A patient bullock walked this treadmill, and he, too, began with the dawn. There were families too poor to own a bullock, and for these the wife and daughters did the walking. They, too, had no curiosity.
A road in South China, they discovered, is a narrow causeway between rice fields. It is paved with flagstones, and there is only one row, three or four feet wide. This is symbolical of a peculiar fact which the visitor realizes only gradually; he misses something, and at last he realizes what it is. There are wheelbarrows but no carts of any sort; everything is carried on the backs of bullocks or human beings, mostly the latter. Only in the towns does one find vehicles.
The sun came up, a ball of blazing fire, and then they were glad that Mr. Foo had included in his Christmas package three light parasols made of bamboo and paper, such as everybody carries in this region. The better grade are waterproof and serve against rain as well as sunlight. The path led along a stream which flowed into the sea, and they assumed that there would be a village at the path’s end. They met a peasant wheelbarrowing a load of straw, and Althea attempted to ask him in Cantonese; but, alas, he spoke the Swatow dialect. Farther in the interior it would be the Hakka dialect, and they would have to find an official or other educated person before they could talk.
Villages were everywhere, Althea assured them, and it never did any good to ask distances, because the Chinese were so amiably polite; they would always tell you what they thought you wanted to hear, so they would say that the place was “near.” The travelers needed no map in this land; it was enough to know that they must continue about a hundred miles in a northerly direction, so as to get safely away from the district held by the Japs, and then they would head to the northwest a couple of hundred miles and hit the Siang-kiang, a river near which the home of Althea’s parents was situated.
IV
They came to a village; and there for the first time they met people who looked at them with curiosity and tried to answer questions. The head of the village, a very old man who put on a soiled white robe for the occasion, was able to speak a few words of Mandarin. He found nothing strange that an American gentleman should be traveling with two pregnant wives; Althea told him that Mr. Budd was an immensely wealthy American, a friend of President Roosevelt, and had come to make plans for helping China against the Japanese. She was making up this mild fib and it troubled her conscience. The old man beamed, and bowed his head to the level of his waist; he escorted them to a teahouse where they could sit in the shade—it was made of bamboo frame and hanging reed mats.
Here Althea began a ritual which was important in China, and which she as a physician took in charge. In that crowded land all “night soil” is saved and used as fertilizer, so everything must be assumed to be infected; all food has to be thoroughly cooked and all water boiled. Arriving anywhere, Althea’s first duty was to go to the kitchen and fill her aluminum kettle with water and set it on a fire to boil for ten minutes. She would keep it until it had cooled, and the
n pour it into the leather water bottles provided for their journey.
In the teahouse a meal of chicken cooked with walnuts and rice was prepared. Lanny and Laurel had amused themselves in Hongkong with chopsticks; now they had to learn seriously, and not shock the thousands of people who would be watching them all the way across the land. “Face” is all-important, and the dignity of the great American republic must be maintained. To be seen shoveling rice into your mouth with a spoon or a fork would have been like being seen in the Ritzy-Waldorf of New York putting pie into your mouth with a knife. It wouldn’t help you to tell the people in the Ritzy-Waldorf that you came from, a land where all pie is eaten that way; this would make matters worse, for it would be telling the diners that all your people were as ill bred as yourself.
By the time the meal was finished the next stage of their journey had been arranged. Outside the tearoom stood three small donkeys; they had no saddles, only cloth on their middles, but there would be no danger, for they had never moved faster than a slow walk since the day they were born, and a man would walk ahead of each leading him with a rope. Apparently it had not occurred to anyone that one man might lead three donkeys in a string, both going and coming; but men were far more plentiful than donkeys, and perhaps no man was willing to trust his own out of sight.
There was the question of money, and the village elder told them what to pay. Lanny had some “Hongkong notes,” and these were still good in the neighborhood. In the old days travelers had had to carry loads of “twenty-cent pieces” and “cash.” These coins were supposed to be of copper, but they had been debased, and now, in wartime, they had disappeared entirely. Paper money was so plentiful that a dollar note, a “mex,” was the smallest that would buy anything. Gold, of course, was almost beyond price, and the job of changing a sovereign was to be undertaken with many precautions.
The procession set out: three tourists seated with dignity, holding their baggage in place with one hand and their parasols with the other. It would have looked odd in America, but here most distinguished; nobody asked why a special envoy from President Roosevelt should bring two gravid wives with him. The sun blazed, and perspiration streamed from the bare backs of the guides, and from the foreheads and armpits of the riders; also from the donkeys—so before long there was a new odor added to that of ancient fish. If the travelers got tired of clamping donkey bodies with their knees they could get off and walk alongside, but they must still hold their duffelbags in place. No use ever to be impatient in the Orient; just tell yourself that you hadn’t died in Hongkong and that every step was away from the Japs.
This wasn’t to be a long trip, they were assured, and at the next village, somewhat larger, they would be able to get palanquins. The road followed the bank of the small stream, and in course of the journey they learned all about rice culture, for the paddies were at various stages. Also there was sugar cane, and another tall plant which Althea said was hemp; soil, sun, and water, and you could grow anything. Beautiful golden oranges hung from trees, and these they were free to buy and eat; but no thin-skinned fruit, for even your own hands were infected with the dust of China, and it did no good to wash them with the water of China.
The next village was larger, which meant that it was more crowded; the houses were packed together, in order to leave more land for cultivation. They had been told the name of the official to ask for and they asked, and again were received with honor. The name of President Roosevelt proved to be even more potent than that of Madame Sun. The drivers were paid off, not without much discussion; another meal was served and more water boiled, and there were three palanquins waiting. A palanquin in this region was not a straight chair as in Hongkong; it was a sort of litter in which you reclined, with only your head propped up. It was old and ragged, but had a blessed sunshade overhead, so you did not have to hold the parasol. Two men carried the palanquin on their shoulders, and walked at a steady pace; when you got used to the motion you could doze if you wished.
Apparently these lean and stringy yellow men never tired, but they wouldn’t go more than a certain distance from home; they were afraid of the unknown, perhaps of robbers, perhaps of evil spirits; you had to pay them off and get a fresh outfit. Coolies, and their fathers before them, had been beasts of burden for millennia; but now, under the influence of the revolution, they were waking up. They hated the British but liked Americans; now they had learned to hate another sort of yellow people. Lanny had the fortune to draw one who liked to talk, and who pointed out sights on the way. He seemed unable to understand that the traveler couldn’t understand the Swatow dialect, and Lanny didn’t try to explain.
V
The sun was going down, and another village lay ahead of them. In it was an inn, they had been told; also, not far away there was an American mission. Althea had been able to glean the fact that it was conducted by the Seventh Day Adventists, and this was an unorthodox sect, most exasperating to a respectable Episcopalian. When after a lifetime of effort you had succeeded in teaching a few heathen that Sunday was the Lord’s day, and on it thou shalt do no manner of work, how preposterous to have some white people turn up, calling themselves Christians and telling the heathen that the Lord’s day was Saturday and that the time to quit work was at sundown on Friday!
Even so, they would have liked to visit that mission, where they could be sure of finding clean bed and board; but there was another objection, the presence of two pregnant ladies with only one man. They could not take off those belts and let the coolies or the domestics see them in their virginal state; to do so would be to start a story which would spread by the teahouse grapevine all over China. It would reveal the fact that they carried treasure, and thus would be an invitation to all the bandits of the land—and there were hordes of them! No, for better for worse they had committed themselves to the mores of the country—and also to its bed and board.
Even Althea hadn’t realized how primitive an inn could be in this remote region. They had assumed that there would at least be bedrooms, shared only with fleas, lice, and bedbugs; but now they discovered that there was one common shelter, in which wayfarers were privileged to sleep for the payment of a few cash. A bed consisted of boards spread on two trestles, and a pillow was a wooden block if you had nothing else. The Chinese are a gregarious people, and the more there are of them crowded into a room, a street, a village, the safer they feel; their love of company includes pigs and chickens, and even safe friendly creatures like donkeys and bullocks. They are not used to white tourists joining them on equal terms; however, if such apparitions appear, they will smile and bow, and then start chattering with immense volubility. Their children will stand and stare, perfectly motionless, perfectly silent, for as long as no one calls them away.
The bones of these refugees already ached from hard boards, but there was no alternative; they were tired, and they sat down. The doctor set about her boiling water ritual; investigating the prospects in the kitchen, she came back and reported that they could have a stew made of duck and rice cooked with strong spices, provided they were willing to wait for the duck to be caught and killed. They signed the death warrant, and meanwhile quenched their thirst with tepid water from their bottles.
Among the treasures in their duffelbags was a can of insect powder and a little squirtgun, and with that they sprayed the wooden shelf on which they were to sleep; also they sprayed up their sleeves and trouser legs, inside their shirts, and everywhere else they could reach with propriety. The operation was watched with absorbed interest by the local population, and Althea said that they would probably take it for some religious rite. “Like the burning of incense!” remarked Lanny.
Althea had warned them that they must not be seen to use any medicaments, and, no matter what happened, they must never give any hint that she was a doctor. The word would be spread by their coolies, and all the sick of every village would be brought to them; they would have to use up all their slender stock and there would be no way to replace it. Said sh
e: “The people take it for granted that any American medicine will cure all diseases, and they will take affront if we refuse to help them.”
VI
The capture and execution of the duck was achieved, and they made a very good meal. This was Christmas Day, and Hongkong had surrendered, though they did not find it out until later. They counted themselves lucky to be alive, and enjoyed a well-earned Christmas dinner, watched by people who raised fowls but probably did not taste the meat thereof more than once or twice in a year. The adult population did not stand and stare, but glanced furtively, and it was evident that they were talking eagerly about what they saw. Althea said they would be talking about it for a long time to come. Laurel replied: “It is true of us, also; certainly of me.” Her sharp eyes were taking in everything, and Lanny guessed that there would someday be stories about Kwangtung Province in American magazines. She would ask her woman companion about the meaning of this and that. They could talk freely, in the certainty that nobody among the spectators would understand a word. Laurel could even say “I adore you” to Lanny—this while Althea was boiling the water and arguing over the price of duck and rice with spices.
The headman of this village came to pay them a courtesy call. He was a short but dignified figure wearing a black mustache in the old drooping style. He spoke a little Mandarin, and said he was the tax collector of the district; they didn’t know what his politics might be—there were many parts of the country ruled by semi-independent war lords. So the travelers used President Roosevelt instead of Sun Chingling. The official said that President Roosevelt was a great man and when was he going to send help to China? Everybody would ask that, all the way to wherever they went.