All the Tea in China

by Kyril Bonfiglioli

  He did not come back.

  There was no in-spanning of oxen next morning; instead, the trek-leader, with young Cloete and four other men, rode out at first light in the direction from which I had returned. They rode in again at noon. I ran towards them, asking whether they had found any sign of the smouse. They did not look at me, much less answer. I began to understand. The trek in-spanned and made a short stage before evening. No one spoke to me that evening. I begged Blanche to gather news but she had few friends among the women, for she was young and beautiful and wore clothes which did not wholly conceal her breasts. It was not until the noontide halt of the next day that she was able to bring me information gleaned from a Kaffir woman in Cloete’s service.

  “They found Mr Oppenheimer, Karli. He was alive, but he died as they took him down from the cross.”

  “The cross? What cross?”

  “The cross he was nailed to, Karli. He had been crucified.”

  I was speechless with dismay for quite a minute. Then I exploded with grief and rage.

  “Those vile, accursed savages!” I cried.

  “Yes, Karli, the savages, of course,” she said quietly. “But they found the mule, too.” There was nothing I could say: for the first time I was tasting the bitter indignation of a wicked man charged with a wickedness which he has not committed.

  “Karli, the killing is not so important; they believe that God will avenge that. It is the blasphemy of crucifying a Jew.”

  “But their Christ was a Jew!” I bellowed.

  “Hush, Karli, they are listening.” I could have bitten off my tongue.

  The ensuing days do not bear speaking of, for I simply ceased to exist as far as the Boers were concerned. Blanche placidly drew our allowance of water and share of game without apparent embarrassment, for she had been more or less ostracised from the beginning of the trek, but I am a warm and companionable man: this rôle of Ishmael bit deeply into my soul.

  Let it suffice to say that there came a day when the leader of our trek pointed to a river we had just forded and told me that it would lead us to the West Coast at a place where ships were said to call. He did not know how far the coast was. He would give us one Hottentot. Our baggage was my crates of precious porcelains, my chest of arms, my hamper of clothes, my tin shirt-box of delicate foods and medicine, two bundles of Blanche’s clothes and necessaries – and Blanche herself, of course. I protested. The trek-leader – there are reasons why I cannot give his name, even if I wished to – told me that willing bearers would spring up out of the ground as soon as the trek had passed.

  Blanche stood silent, as dignified as I, beside our heap of goods with the Hottentot squatting beside it. The horrible thing was when they left the smouse’s wagon with all his goods beside the road as they trudged away on their impossible journey. I shouted, then screamed after them until Blanche was hanging on my arms, begging me to calm myself. Young Cloete, who was a compassionate young man and quite liked me, rode back to ask what the matter was.

  I could only mumble stupidly. He stared down at me from his fine horse with veiled contempt. I wiped away the sweat which threatened to fill my eyes and he looked at the gesture with interest. He asked me a certain question; then I sent Blanche away and repeated the gesture in a precise and formal way. This made things different. It did not, of course, make it possible to condone a crime, but it made things different. He said that there were enough men in the trek who would understand and that the smouse’s wagon, beasts and goods could be distributed to those who most needed them. He would make all square. I thanked him. As he rode away, driving the beasts and the wagon, he bade me farewell and used the word “brother”.

  Our Hottentot absconded in the night of course but, sure enough, bearers sprang out of the ground, apparently, in the morning. I made some sort of a bargain with them and off we trudged, following this nurseling river to the distant sea.

  The trek had in some sort hardened us to hardship but this next journey was more than hardship. After the first few hours of the first morning, every step was misery, every fold and crevice of our bodies an inflamed torment. By the third day I was vividly recalling those anatomical diagrams which depict each thread of muscle and tendon in the human body, neatly picked out in blue and red: there was no morsel of me which I could not have identified on such a diagram and expatiated on the agony it could cause. Blanche, too, I daresay, was in some discomfort but women are born to suffer, this is well known. Indeed, she did not complain.

  Again, just as at sea or on trek, the days followed each other with a remorseless sameness, only diversified by different nastinesses. The torments were the same in kind but different in degree, while dangers and difficulties and diseases came fresh and fresh each day, so that we arose each morning dully wondering what our next tribulation was to be. If we achieved the noontide rest before some disaster struck we wondered, just as dully, what the afternoon march held in store for us, because no day could pass without some frightfulness. After the first few days our gang of bearers became sulky, then demanded money as an earnest of our solvency. I was foolish enough to pay them a little on account: they vanished in the night, not stealing anything of importance. The next day, sure enough, others of another tribe drifted out of the bush, offering their services. When they absconded, two or three days later, stealing a little more, others replaced them. Each gang demanded less pay but, on leaving, stole more. Luckily, they stole trash and items of Blanche’s clothing; they had no judgment in matters of fine porcelain, thank God, and as to my chest of arms and box of foods and medicines, Blanche and I slept with our heads upon them.

  We forced our way west and a little north as best we could: fatigue and illness had bereft us of the sense which would have told a clear-minded person to lie down and die.

  Although we followed the course of the river we did not often set eyes on its waters because of the vegetation. It was clear that we were in river country though, because each dusk great insects called Moustiques – not at all like the friendly, playful midges of England – came out of their lairs and pierced us with red-hot, poisoned fangs, so that Blanche and I, looking at each other’s lumpish face of a morning, would have laughed had we had the strength to do so. I dare say that a true-born Englishman would have found such strength. I do not care. These insects were of a size and voracity which cannot be exaggerated: I am convinced that, had they mastered the rudiments of communal discipline, any six of them could have carried me off to devour at leisure, piecemeal or even wholemeal.

  As the ground grew wetter and we sploshed through the ambash reeds for much of the day, the leeches came. They were revolting, also enfeebling: we must have lost a pint of blood to them each day.

  There came a day after God knows how many days when Blanche and I, emaciated and rotten with disease, staggered into a village on the banks of a distributary river, accompanied only by three porters. All that remained to us were a box of clothes and medicines, my chest of arms and several thousands of pounds value in carefully-packed Ming and Kang H’Si porcelains. We cared nothing for the political or religious beliefs of the savages there; our need to rest wiped away all such thoughts. Blanche collapsed and began to snore charmingly. The porters, encouraged by my little hippopotamus-hide karbash, laid down their burdens with great care, next to Blanche. I too lay down then, against the chests, snoring, I fancy, before my head touched the earth.

  A gentle, courteous kick up the arse awakened me when the sun was low. I rubbed my eyes and looked about me. A dozen of elderly black men surrounded me. Their expressions were hard to read for their faces were fancifully etched with cicatrices; these were unpleasing to my untutored eye. I rubbed my eyes and yawned; this must have been a courtesy of sorts because they all smiled at me. I wished that they had not, for each smile revealed a row of teeth filed to needle-points. I stirred Blanche gently with the toe of my boot and enjoined silence upon her when she opened her eyes. Raising myself to a dignified squatting posture, I stared them all out
of countenance then, selecting my words with care, I said:

  “Hrrumph!”

  This caused agitation in their circle; they jabbered at each other as though discussing protocol.

  “M’Gawa!” the eldest said at last. Thinking this to be a greeting I civilly replied “M’Gawa!” I was wrong. The old man – the chief, evidently – clapped his hand loudly onto his belly and some twenty young warriors, hitherto unnoticed by me, stepped into the circle, rubbing their thumbs against the edges of their spears with a rasping noise which I could not believe was friendly. I was in a debilitated state but the desire for survival filled me. I stood up, fixing the chief with my eye and a pointing forefinger, and ranted out some twelve or twenty lines of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Dutch translation. He cowered. I turned to Blanche, snapping my fingers. “Absolute alcohol!” I snapped. “Surgical rubbing-spirit! In the medicine chest; quickly!” While she rummaged I cowed the simple sons of nature with a few more selections from the Swan of Avon, at the same time indicating by signs that they should bring water, lest worse befall them.

  When the calabash of water was drained I slipped into it a little of the absolute alcohol and set it alight. This created a great amazement but when I dipped my fingers in the flaming liquid and flourished them they either ran for their lives or prostrated themselves on their bellies, according to taste.

  From that moment we were treated as guests and demi-gods. A hut or giddah was allotted to us, also an old woman to attend to our needs. We were feasted regally that night on delicious tender pork or perhaps veal, stewed in a peppery sauce. I confess that I gorged myself, out of politeness and against my will, for I have always been a sparing and delicate eater. Appetite was enhanced by the dancing in firelight of some two dozen nubile – palpably nubile – maidens of the tribe: their swinging, sweat-glistening breasts and rotating bellies made a most agreeable sight, although Blanche, inexplicably, found the performance vulgar and unartistic. I have often noticed that women’s minds are closed to some of the finer things which life offers us.

  After eating, and then drinking many a calabash of toddy fermented from the tender heart-leaves of a certain palm-tree, I remembered my Englishness with a guilty start and enquired whether my bearers had been housed and fed. I had to do this by sign-language, naturally, and it was a little while before I could make our hosts understand. At last they signified assent by smiling, nodding and rubbing their hands upon their distended bellies. I was well content, my duty done. As I accepted yet another calabash of palm-toddy, Blanche suddenly rose and ran frantically from our circle around the fire. I was vexed at this breach of manners but no one else seemed to care and it was not until an hour later, when I joined her in the giddah, that I understood that her intuitive grasp of sign-language was better than mine. I assured her that what we had been eating was young goat, but she could not be appeased: she had eaten goat. Goat is not nearly so tender and tasty.

  Chapter Nineteen

  During our two-month sojourn in the village we convalesced well and replaced much of the flesh which hardship had stripped from our bones. The savages, in their primitive kindness, seemed concerned to make us fat, they were forever pressing food on us. Blanche had developed a morbid dislike for meat but she fared pretty well on cassava (which is tapioca), sweet potatoes and plantains baked or cooked in red palm-oil or pounded up with karta (which is pea-nuts) into a delicious purée. She passed her time, when not sleeping, in repairing what was left of her wardrobe.

  For my part I ate heartily of whatever was put before me: monkey, for instance, is very good once one has recovered from the first sight of the little creature roasted. My pastime became that of learning the tribe’s simple tongue – they had a vocabulary of less than one thousand words but the placement of some of these words was hard to master – and I fell into the habit of meeting the elders of the tribe each day and questioning them about their rites and customs, funereal, marital, festive and so forth. Their habits of thought and language were strange; for instance their adjective for “eatable”, I recall, was the same as their noun for “member of another tribe” while, if one added the word for “crocodile”, the compound word meant “elderly lady”.

  The notion grew in my head that perhaps I might one day write a book, displaying the manners of these simple children of God to civilised men as an example to wonder at. (The science of this is now called Anthropology: those of you who are too idle to enter our business House, or incapable of being supple to your benign grandfather, might well go to a University and master this simple science. You could perhaps earn fame thereby, for the world is foolish – but not, I think, fortune, for the world is not wholly foolish.)

  One night, tossing feverishly in our bed, which was rendered almost intolerable by the heat of Blanche’s perfervid bottom, I occupied myself by making a mental summary of the strange, cruel but infinitely civil behaviour of this tight-knit society of savages whose obliged guests we were. Of a sudden, I had a stroke of insight: there was one piece missing in the almost-logical puzzle of their system of life! One question, which I would pose the very next morning, would decide forever whether they were near-apes performing a meaningless, ritual dance or truly human beings observing a sensible code of behaviour no more different, in essence, from that of us Jews than our code is from that of Christians.

  So exhilarated was I at my cleverness that I felt the need to communicate with someone, however hot and moist the night. I slid down into the sagging centre of the bed, so that Blanche’s incomparable bottom – hotter and moister than the night – fitted into the concavity of my belly. We were like spoons in a canteen of cutlery – such as we give to old porters who are past their work but not eligible for a pension. My loins stirred. She was deeply asleep but you will learn one day that there are few women, however deep their sleeps, who do not awaken at feeling that particular stirring. She wriggled languidly and muttered something through sleep-sticky lips. I reached around her body and imprisoned a breast: the light muslin of her shift, sweat-soaked, clung to it like a second skin. The nipple – she was gifted as to the nipples, gifted – sprang up so that her pretence at sleep was no longer plausible. She adapted her posture a little and soon I was expressing my pleasure, silently, vehemently. She, too, expressed pleasure, not silently.

  I went out on to the platform in front of the hut and kicked the old woman awake, demanding a bucket of water to be thrown over me. She looked at my person closely when pouring the water and tittered impudently, so I made her fetch another bucket.

  When I went back into the giddah, Blanche seemed again asleep but was now on her back in a posture so abandoned that I felt constrained to pleasure her again, this time more thoroughly. Then, I must confess, I fell into a deep sleep, for, although I was young and vigorous, the night was hot and the climate enervating, you understand.

  I was up betimes the next morning, adroitly avoiding Blanche’s questing hand. I was full of my great and visionary question, the key which would unlock the secret of the tribe’s whole way of thought. So soon as I had eaten I lurked by the matting of my door until all the old men of the village had taken their places under the mango-tree. Then I sauntered towards the circle and stood a little way off, gazing at the heavens and scratching myself at the groin. This was courteous, you see; whereas to scratch an armpit would be a shameful act in that village.

  After a certain, civil interval I addressed them in the formal fashion which I had learned, speaking slowly because although I had mastered their tongue I knew that my Jewish accent made it difficult for them to understand me.

  “Oh, great bulls!” I said to the withered old men. “Oh you with horns of buffaloes and testicles like ripe mangoes! Oh you whose ears still ring with the shrieks of the countless virgins you have deflowered! You whose wives are so fat with your plenty that they cannot stand upon their feet! You who permit the sun to rise and, at your pleasure, bid him hide his face! How sweet would be the inside of my belly if you could but see me!”<
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  The eldest of the elders fumbled vainly in the tobacco-gourd which hung about his neck. I absently dropped four inches of black pigtail-twist on the ground and continued to gaze at the heavens. A pot-bellied child with a great umbilical hernia scampered up and took the tobacco to the chief, who looked at it curiously, then absently cut off a generous half and passed it to the next elder. When the youngest elder had glumly received the shaving which remained for him another silence fell, broken only by the sounds of groin-scratching and the picking of noses.

  At last the second-eldest elder – for this was beneath the dignity of the chief – said “We see you, man with the red face, cousin to the son-in-law of a chief; you who service your woman a hundred times in the heat of the night. There is a stool for you here, why do you stand?”

  I sat.

  A few more civilities were exchanged, interspersed with as many silences. At last the chief looked at me. I cleared my throat, assembled my knowledge of the tongue.

  “Father of penises,” I began diffidently, “you know that I love you so much that my bowels loosen each time I dare to look at your beauteous face.” He opened his mouth; this meant that I was to continue.

  “A great thought came to me in the night,” I said.

  A courteous titter was heard.

  “Twice this great thought came to you in the night, the old woman tells me,” said the chief. The tittering became a guffaw. I remained composed.

  “Oh Chief,” I said, “I do not speak of pushing babies into women’s bellies, I speak of things in a man’s mind. Hear me.”

  The chief raised his hand and all laughter stopped.