The City of Elephants which is governed by the Great God of Idleness, who lives on the Top of a Hill. The History of Three Great Discoveries and the Naughty Children of Iquique
I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house
??Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, ‘O Soul, make merry and carouse1,
??Dear soul, for all is well.’
SO much for making definite programmes of travel beforehand. In my first letter I told you that I would go from Rangoon to Penang direct. Now we are lying off Moulmein in a new steamer which does not seem to run anywhere in particular. Why she should go to Moulmein is a mystery; but as every soul on the ship is a loafer like myself, no one is discontented. Imagine a shipload of people to whom time is no object, who have no desires beyond three meals a day and no emotions save those raised by the casual cockroach2.
Moulmein is situated3 up the mouth of a river which ought to flow through South America, and all manner of dissolute native craft appear to make the place their home. Ugly cargo-steamers that the initiated4 call ‘Geordie tramps’ grunt5 and bellow6 at the beautiful hills all round, and the pot-bellied British India liners wallow down the reaches. Visitors are rare in Moulmein — so rare that few but cargo-boats think it worth their while to come off from the shore.
Strictly7 in confidence I will tell you that Moulmein is not a city of this earth at all. Sindbad the Sailor visited it, if you recollect8, on that memorable9 voyage when he discovered the burial-ground of the elephants.
As the steamer came up the river we were aware of first one elephant and then another hard at work in timber-yards that faced the shore. A few narrow-minded folk with binoculars10 said that there were mahouts upon their backs, but this was never clearly proven. I prefer to believe in what I saw — a sleepy town, just one house thick, scattered11 along a lovely stream and inhabited by slow, solemn elephants, building stockades12 for their own diversion. There was a strong scent13 of freshly sawn teak in the air — we could not see any elephants sawing — and occasionally the warm stillness was broken by the crash of the log. When the elephants had got an appetite for luncheon14 they loafed off in couples to their club, and did not take the trouble to give us greeting and the latest mail papers; at which we were much disappointed, but took heart when we saw upon a hill a large white pagoda15 surrounded by scores of little pagodas16. ‘This,’ we said with one voice, ‘is the place to make an excursion to,’ and then shuddered17 at our own profanity, for above all things we did not wish to behave like mere18 vulgar tourists.
The ticca-gharries at Moulmein are three sizes smaller than those of Rangoon, for the ponies19 are no bigger than decent sheep. Their drovers trot20 them uphill and down, and as the gharri is extremely narrow and the roads are anything but good, the exercise is refreshing21. Here again all the drivers are Madrassis.
I should better remember what that pagoda was like had I not fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with a Burmese girl at the foot of the first flight of steps. Only the fact of the steamer starting next noon prevented me from staying at Moulmein forever and owning a pair of elephants. These are so common that they wander about the streets, and, I make no doubt, could be obtained for a piece of sugar-cane.
Leaving this far too lovely maiden22, I went up the steps only a few yards, and, turning me round, looked upon a view of water, island, broad river, fair grazing ground, and belted wood that made me rejoice that I was alive. The hillside below me and above me was ablaze23 with pagodas — from a gorgeous golden and vermilion beauty to a delicate grey stone one just completed in honour of an eminent24 priest lately deceased at Mandalay. Far above my head there was a faint tinkle25, as of golden bells, and a talking of the breezes in the tops of the toddy-palms. Wherefore I climbed higher and higher up the steps till I reached a place of great peace, dotted with Burmese images, spotlessly clean. Here women now and again paid reverence26. They bowed their heads and their lips moved, because they were praying. I had an umbrella — a black one — in my hand, deck-shoes upon my feet, and a helmet upon my head. I did not pray — I swore at myself for being a Globetrotter, and wished that I had enough Burmese to explain to these ladies that I was sorry and would have taken off my hat but for the sun. A Globetrotter is a brute27. I had the grace to blush as I tramped round the pagoda. That will be remembered to me for righteousness. But I stared horribly — at a gold and red side-temple with a beautifully gilt28 image of Buddha29 in it — at the grim figures in the niches30 at the base of the main pagoda — at the little palms that grew out of the cracks in the tiled paving of the court — at the big palms above, and at the low-hung bronze bells that stood at each corner for the women to smite31 with staghorns. Upon one bell rang this amazing triplet in English — evidently the composition of the caster, who completed his work — and now, let us hope, has reached Nibban — thirty-five years ago:—
He who destroyed this Bell
They must be in the great Hel
And unable to coming out.
I respect a man who is not able to spell Hell properly. It shows that he has been brought up in an amiable32 creed33. You who come to Moulmein treat this bell with respect, and refrain from playing with it, for that hurts the feelings of the worshippers.
In the base of the pagoda were four rooms, lined as to three sides with colossal34 plaster figures, before each of whom burned one solitary35 dip whose rays fought with the flood of evening sunshine that came through the windows, and the room was filled with a pale yellow light — unearthly to stand in. Occasionally a woman crept in to one of these rooms to pray, but nearly all the company stayed in the courtyard; but those that faced the figures prayed more zealously36 than the others, so I judged that their troubles were the greater. Of the actual cult37 I knew less than nothing; for the neatly38 bound English books that we read make no mention of pointing red-tipped straws at a golden image, or of the banging of bells after the custom of worshippers in a Hindu temple. It must be a genial39 one, however. To begin with, it is quiet and carried on among the fairest possible surroundings that ever landscape offered.
In this particular case, the massive white pagoda shot into the blue from the west of a walled hill that commanded four separate and desirable views as you looked either at the steamer in the river below, the polished silver reaches to the left, the woods to the right, or the roofs of Moulmein to the landward. Between each pause of the rustling40 of dresses and the low-toned talk of the women fell, from far above, the tinkle of innumerable metal leaves which were stirred by the breeze as they hung from the ’htee of the pagoda. A golden image winked41 in the sun; the painted ones stared straight in front of them over the heads of the worshippers, and somewhere below a mallet42 and a plane were lazily helping43 to build yet another pagoda in honour of the Lord of the Earth.
Sitting in meditation44 while the Professor went round with a sacrilegious camera, to the vast terror of the Burmese youth, I made two notable discoveries and nearly went to sleep over them. The first was that the Lord of the Earth is Idleness — thick slab45 idleness with a little religion stirred in to keep it sweet, and the second was that the shape of the pagoda came originally from a bulging46 toddy-palm trunk. There was one between me and the far-off sky-line, and it exactly duplicated the outlines of a small grey stone building.
Yet a third discovery, and a much more important one, came to me later on. A dirty little imp47 of a boy ran by clothed more or less in a beautifully worked silk putso, the like of which I had in vain attempted to secure at Rangoon. A bystander told me that such an article would cost one hundred and ten rupees — exactly ten rupees in excess of the price demanded at Rangoon, when I had been discourteous48 to a pretty Burmese girl with diamonds in her ears, and had treated her as though she were a Delhi boxwallah.
‘Professor,’ said I, when the camera spidered round the corner, ‘there is something wrong with this people. They won’t work, they aren’t all dacoits, and their babies run about with hundred-rupee putsoes on them, while their parents speak the truth. How in the world do they get a living?’
‘They exist beautifully,’ said the Professor; ‘and I only brought half a dozen plates with me. I shall come again in the morning with some more. Did you ever dream of a place like this?’
‘No,’ said I. ‘It’s perfect, and for the life of me I can’t quite see where the precise charm lies.’
‘In its Beastly Laziness,’ said the Professor, as he packed the camera, and we went away, regretfully, haunted by the voices of many wind-blown bells.
Not ten minutes from the pagoda we saw a real British bandstand, a shanty49 labelled ‘Municipal Office,’ a collection of P.W.D. bungalows50 that in vain strove to blast the landscape, and a Madras band. I had never seen Madrassi troops before. They seem to dress just like Tommies, and have an air of much culture and refinement51. It is said that they read English books and know all about their rights and privileges. For further details apply to the Pegu Club, second table from the top on the right-hand side as you enter.
In an evil hour I attempted to revive the drooping52 trade of Moulmein, and to this end bound a native of the place to come on board the steamer next morn with a collection of Burmese silks. It was only a five minutes’ pull, and he could have sat in the stern all the while. Morning came, but not the man. Not a boat of watermelons, pink fleshy watermelons, neared the ship. We might have been in quarantine. As we slipped down the river on our way to Penang, I saw the elephants playing with the teak logs as solemnly and as mysteriously as ever. They were the chief inhabitants, and, for aught I know, the rulers of the place. Their lethargy had corrupted53 the town, and when the Professor wished to photograph them, I believe they went away in scorn.
We are now running down to Penang with the thermometer 87° in the cabins, and anything you please on deck. We have exhausted54 all our literature, drunk two hundred lemon squashes, played forty different games of cards (Patience mostly), organised a lottery55 on the run (had it been a thousand rupees instead of ten I should not have won it), and slept seventeen hours out of the twenty-four. It is perfectly56 impossible to write, but you may be morally the better for the story of the Bad People of Iquique which, ‘as you have not before heard, I will now proceed to relate.’ It has just been told me by a German orchid-hunter, fresh from nearly losing his head in the Lushai hills, who has been over most of the world.
Iquique is somewhere in South America — at the back of or beyond Brazil — and once upon a time there came to it a tribe of Aborigines from out of the woods, so innocent that they wore nothing at all — absolutely nothing at all. They had a grievance57, but no garments, and the former they came to lay before His Excellency, the Governor of Iquique. But the news of their coming and their exceeding nakedness had gone before them, and good Spanish ladies of the town agreed that the heathen should first of all be clothed. So they organised a sewing-bee, and the result, which was mainly aprons58, was served out to the Bad People with hints as to its use. Nothing could have been better. They appeared in their aprons before the Governor and all the ladies of Iquique, ranged on the steps of the cathedral, only to find that the Governor could not grant their demands. And do you know what these children of nature did? In the twinkling of an eye they had off those aprons, slung59 them round their necks, and were dancing naked as the dawn before the scandalised ladies of Iquique, who fled with their fans before their eyes into the sanctuary60 of the cathedral. And when the steps were deserted61 the Bad People withdrew, shouting and leaping, their aprons still round their necks, for good cloth is valuable property. They encamped near the town, knowing their own power. ’Twas impossible to send the military against them, and equally impossible that the Senoritas should be exposed to the chance of being shocked whenever they went abroad. No one knew at what hour the Bad People would sweep through the streets. Their demands were therefore granted and Iquique had rest. Nuda est veritas et prevalebit.
‘But,’ said I, ‘what is there so awful in a naked Indian — or two hundred naked Indians for that matter?’
‘My friend,’ said the German, ‘dey vas Indians of Sout’ America. I dell you dey do not demselves shtrip vell.’
I put my hand on my mouth and went away.
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1
carouse
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| v.狂欢；痛饮；n.狂饮的宴会 | |
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cockroach
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| n.蟑螂 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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bellow
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| v.吼叫，怒吼；大声发出，大声喝道 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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binoculars
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| n.双筒望远镜 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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stockades
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| n.（防御用的）栅栏，围桩( stockade的名词复数 ) | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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14
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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pagoda
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| n.宝塔（尤指印度和远东的多层宝塔），（印度教或佛教的）塔式庙宇 | |
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pagodas
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| 塔，宝塔( pagoda的名词复数 ) | |
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17
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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19
ponies
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| 矮种马，小型马( pony的名词复数 )； ￡25 25 英镑 | |
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trot
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| n.疾走，慢跑；n.老太婆；现成译本；(复数）trots:腹泻（与the 连用）；v.小跑，快步走，赶紧 | |
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21
refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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23
ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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tinkle
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| vi.叮当作响；n.叮当声 | |
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26
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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27
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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29
Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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niches
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| 壁龛( niche的名词复数 )； 合适的位置[工作等]； （产品的）商机； 生态位（一个生物所占据的生境的最小单位） | |
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31
smite
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| v.重击；彻底击败；n.打；尝试；一点儿 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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34
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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35
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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zealously
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| adv.热心地；热情地；积极地；狂热地 | |
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37
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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38
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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40
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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41
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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42
mallet
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| n.槌棒 | |
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43
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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44
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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45
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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46
bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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imp
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| n.顽童 | |
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48
discourteous
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| adj.不恭的，不敬的 | |
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49
shanty
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| n.小屋，棚屋；船工号子 | |
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bungalows
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| n.平房( bungalow的名词复数 )；单层小屋，多于一层的小屋 | |
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51
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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52
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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53
corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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54
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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55
lottery
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| n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事 | |
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56
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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57
grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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58
aprons
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| 围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份） | |
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59
slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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60
sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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