All the Tea in China

by Kyril Bonfiglioli

  “Great King,” I said in a dignified voice, “you whose power is felt from sea to sea, you who have long lost count of the children squirted from your wonderfully symmetrical loins, last night I had a thought. During the time that a woman would have two courses of the moon I have eaten your salt and drunk your beer. I have learned to love you and your subjects: the ways of your mighty nation have taught me much. Each day I have asked both hands and both feet” – this meant twenty – “of questions about your ways of life, of feeding, of religion, of marriage. You have taught me much, answering these many questions of mine. The thought that came to me last night was this: in all that time you have never asked me once about my land, my people’s customs. Are these of no matter to you?”

  There fell a silence which seemed almost to be of embarrassment. At last the chief gestured to the second elder, who spoke.

  “You are wrong, man with the face of a setting sun: our bellies are sour with longing to know these things. But amongst our people, if you must know the truth, it is thought a filth and shame for a man to ask questions after he has grown his first pubic hair.”

  My face, I could feel, grew more than ever like a setting sun. No one spoke; they all gazed politely at the little fire of M’Gawa (bull-dung) smouldering in the centre of their circle. I scanned their faces, which were solemn – no hint of a smile. I pulled myself together.

  “Why then,” I asked indignantly, “did not you, whose bellies burst with wisdom, tell me of this thing at the outset?”

  “You did not ask,” he replied blandly.

  This ended my excursion into the science of anthropology.

  To restore my dignity I regaled them with many an account of Europe and its wonders; our customs and laws, our buildings, our new iron ships which were propelled with the smoke of boiling water, our wars and the blessings of gunpowder. They listened raptly, their mouths open in full politeness. When I drew to a close they clapped their cupped hands against the inside of their thighs, making a noise greater than a London opera audience. One or two of the younger ones allowed themselves to fall off their stools. This was the highest compliment, I knew, which could be paid to a truly gifted liar. Such a man was much prized by that tribe for few savages had mastered the art of lying. Now, as I write, they are surely more civilised in such matters, for their land will be full of traders and missionaries.

  Foolishly, I allowed myself to become vexed, for I had spoken nothing but the truth: we Jews only lie in a ritual way when conducting business with our equals. I stalked back to the hut and unlocked the chest of arms. My battery was but a pair of percussion pistols, a heavy rifle, a light flint-lock fowling-piece and my beautiful revolving-pistol. I decided upon the heavy rifle – an old East Indian Company “tiger-gun” with two barrels. I loaded and primed it carefully, re-set the flints, wiped the frizzen dry and marched back to the circle of elders, who were still rocking back and forth, repeating phrases I had used, much as people leaving Gatti’s Music-hall bandy the inane jests of the latest Lion Comique.

  They fell silent, eyeing the strange object cradled in my arms.

  “If I have lied to the bull-elephant,” I said in an important voice, “then I could not kill the fat goat tethered outside my giddah without rising from this stool.”

  “But there is no fat goat outside your giddah, O red-faced teller of stupendous lies!”

  I waited, staring without expression at the bull-dung fire.

  “Tether a fat goat outside the giddah of the teller of tales,” said the chief at last.

  This done, I drew back the hammer and levelled the rifle at the goat’s head: it was an easy shot, perhaps twenty-five paces. There was a great roar and a cloud of smoke; I rocked back on my stool with the recoil. When the smoke cleared, the goat’s head was a mere vestige of its former self and those around the circle who had run away were creeping back to their places. The chief, to his great credit, had not budged. I handed him the piece, explaining its use in simple terms, reserving only the intelligence of how to load it.

  He was quite ravished with the gift. The old woman of our giddah was shrieking loudly and rhythmically, for she had been but a foot away from the goat I had slain. This was vexing after a while. The elders, too, were vexed, because the lokali drums were talking from the village ten miles down-river. The king sent for the old woman, who squatted deferentially before him as though about to urinate: the paucity of her clothing made this an unpleasing sight to behold. The king playfully poked the muzzles of the rifle at her nose: she sniffed them, looked down the barrels. The chief pulled the trigger. The heavy ball, scarcely slowed, smashed into the fire with a pyrotechnic effect and screamed over the heads of the elders opposite. The old lady’s brains spread themselves most copiously upon those present: this caused much merriment, as you can imagine. I was about to protest on humane grounds but the chief’s happy face quite disarmed me. A moment’s reflection taught me that goats were edible wealth while old women were more than plentiful, also raucous and of little use after they had lost their teeth and only esculent to crocodiles.

  The king – or chief – then turned the gun affably in the direction of the fourth youngest elder, who owned one of the most desirable women in the village, and pulled the trigger. There was a shower of sparks from the frizzen but no explosion, of course, for both barrels were now expended. Again, everyone fell into a paroxysm of merriment except the fourth youngest elder, and the chief. The latter scowled at me. I explained that the weapon had to be filled with more magic after each discharge and that this could only be done at the full moon (we were in the first quarter) or on the departure of an honoured and well-feasted guest. The chief muttered like a sulky child, snapping the locks of the rifle petulantly. I was explaining to him that this would wear out the flints when all fell silent, for the distant lokali had stopped speaking and our own hollowed tree-trunk boomed out a response. “Vroom, da-da, vroom da-da, vroom da-da,” it roared, over and over again. This was not a message, I knew that much; it meant only “I hear you.” Presently an old man crawled into the circle and licked the chief’s feet with every sign of apparent relish. He was older than many of the elders but his position as lokali-talker made him a mere intellectual, a Postmaster-General if you will, or, better, an Oxford don to whom a Prime Minister may listen but must not deign to speak. The chief listened benignly to his mutterings.

  Extending his other foot to the pleasing lavage of the old person’s tongue, he told me that the savages down-river had two pieces of news: first, they had heard two great trees snap although there was no hint of thunder; second, at the mouth of the river, a great canoe was lying, longer than a village and with trees growing from it and monstrous pieces of cloth upon the trees.

  We collogued. The chief then dismissed the lokali man with a benevolent kick, telling him to talk with the drums up and down the river, saying that he, the progenitor of all elephants, had broken the two trees with his thumb and forefinger out of impatience because the monthly tributes of goats and virgins had not arrived. The second message was to be drummed down-river from village to village: he, whose walls were built of the skulls of those who had displeased him during the last score of scores of years; he who possessed nightly each of his one hundred wives – none thinner than a hippopotamus – bade all the people of the river to guard and cherish his beloved children – to be known by their fiery faces – who would be travelling down-river next day to the great canoe which he, whose very excrement was treasured by all the world, had commanded to appear in the estuary.

  This seemed to me a comprehensive laissez-passer but the chief, flushed with the possession of his rifle, wished to make assurance doubly sure. He snapped his fingers and an ancient, dirty person, wearing a necklace of nameless things, crept forward. The chief handed me his own ebony wand and bade me go thrash the god. I followed the dirty old person a few hundred yards into the forest; we entered a stockade inside which there stood an idol crudely shaped from the stump of a tree, sheathed with
gold and stuck all over with nails. I belaboured it with the staff until a grunt from the witch-doctor told me that I might exercise compassion. Something else then took place within the stockade which was nasty and which I shall not relate in case your daughters might one day see this narrative.

  Blanche had five petticoats left and two pair of drawers. I coaxed one of each from her and that evening used them to purchase a quantity of dance-masks, straw-and-shell skirts, gaily-plaited penis-sheaths and other gew-gaws. I opened my chest of porcelains and took out some of the packing-stuff, replacing it, chiefly on the surface of the chests, with this smelly anthropological trash. Then we went to bed, where I explained to a sulky Blanche that the loss of her drawers was of little importance to a woman with an ardent young husband. I brought her round to my way of thinking at last, for she was not unreasonable.

  In the morning, before we set off, the chief came to our giddah and reminded me that it was now meet to restore the magic to his rifle. With many an incantation I poured quite four ounces of powder into each barrel, then a leather wad, two inches of stiff clay, two lead balls, then more clay. He asked for a further supply of powder but I assured him, truthfully, that the weapon as now loaded would last him the rest of his life. I gave him a little paper of priming-powder and adjured him not to discharge the piece until the moon was full. By then I would be on the high seas, you understand. I had never liked the old woman he had shot, but justice must be done, must it not, and savages must be taught not to play with inventions they have not invented for themselves. Nevertheless, I am glad that I was not present when the chief pulled the triggers, for I am a compassionate man and he had been kind to me in his own way.

  Indeed, his kindness was not yet exhausted: as our little procession wound down to the river bank, where two capable dug-out canoes awaited us and our goods, a strange and hideous ululation smote our ears. It was somewhat like an Italian tenor practising his scales and gargling with unpleasant medicine at the same time. This sound was intermingled with the merry laughter of little children. Clearly, some farewell entertainment had been arranged for us, for the chief urged us onward with many a nod and smile and hospitable gesture. When the river bank came into view I must confess I was vexed at the mise-en-scène: the fourth youngest elder – he who owned the most desirable wife in the village, you recall – had been tied wrist and ankle and seated upon the point of a five-foot stake planted in the ground. He was not meeting his end with anything of the stoic complacency which is supposed to characterise the Noble Savage; indeed, the hordes of little children were diverting themselves with clever imitations of his antics, encouraged by their admiring mothers.

  I applauded politely, for this was clearly expected of me, but I cannot pretend that I found the spectacle at all droll. With the most perfunctory farewells I hurried our party into the canoes. Blanche, I recall, was sick over the side as soon as we were under way: she had probably eaten her breakfast too quickly.

  I remember little of our journey down the great river, for, at our first noon-tide pause for food, Blanche and I were persuaded to eat some fresh-water mussels, which grievously afflicted our bowels for the whole of the three days. I recall only the all-pervading, sickly smell as of dead marigolds, the eternity of mangroves and the prodigious number of kingfishers of every size and colour which flashed across our bows like streamers of fire. Yes, and a frightful afternoon when we scorched on a naked sand-bank while a monstrous bull-hippopotamus raved and roared in the shallows, daring us to come into the water and fight with him. My hands shook too much with fever to risk a shot at him, for, had I not hit him lethally with the first shot, he would surely have rampaged ashore and gnashed and trampled us all to death. The canoe-paddlers explained, with many a lewd gesture, that he was in rut.

  The last stage of our canoe-journey was through a thick and stinking forest of enormous reeds, following channels which were tortuous and, to me, invisible. I urged the paddlers on with promises of rum, for I was near-frantic at the thought that the ship might sail before we reached the anchorage. When at last we burst out of the reeds onto the open water of the estuary our eyes were blinded by the glare of sky and sea but soon we could descry, at about a mile’s distance, the beautiful, blessed ship: a barquentine and with her sails still furled. I shed some feeble tears of relief.

  The canoe-men would take us no further than a tumble-down trading post near the shore – and indeed, I would have been reluctant to risk my life and porcelain and Blanche on the sea in those clumsy little crafts. The agent at the trading-post looked as though he might once have been European but he was rotten with fever and stupefied with drink and could by no means be awakened. I rousted out a fat Parsee clerk who sold me rum for the paddlers and then dashed my spirits to the ground by saying that there was only one surf-boat and that it was alongside the ship, loading the last of the cargo. The ship, he added, would then set sail immediately. Indeed, he could now see the boat returning. I snatched the old brass spy-glass from his hands and saw that he was speaking the truth; a boat was heading for the shore in a leisurely fashion and there was unmistakable activity on the ship’s yards.

  “How long for the boat to reach us here?” I snapped.

  He shrugged his shoulders as only a Parsee can.

  “Half an hour?”

  He spread his hands out as though feeling for rain-drops.

  It was clear that by no means could we reach the ship before she sailed.

  “When will the next ship call?”

  “Next season.”

  Again I shed tears but this time they were tears of bitter chagrin. Robinson Caruso himself could have felt no more desolate a castaway than I.

  “Ve could fire signal-gun,” said the Parsee nonchalantly, “but gunpowder is werry costly and every ounce is accountabled.”

  A few minutes later I had bought half a pound of the costliest gunpowder in the world and the little brass gun by the flag-post was banging out three shots. I watched the ship agonisedly until I was sure that activity had ceased: some irritated officer had uttered the blessed cry, “Avast all that!”

  The surf-boat was manned by the most curious people: whilst they were in their boat you would have thought them giants, for their chests were like barrels and their arms like thighs, but ashore they presented an extraordinary appearance on little, spindly bowlegs. They were of a tribe called Kroo-men, who are to be found all up and down the West Coast wherever there are boats to be worked. They sped us to the bar of the estuary; there was a flurry of spray and a corkscrewing motion then all of a sudden we were on the beautiful sea itself and pulling through the swell to the barquentine.

  We were not welcome on the barquentine.

  The captain was an uncouth fellow from Lancashire or perhaps Yorkshire and spoke a kind of patois English which was strange to me, but his meaning was clear: on no account was he permitted, or able, to take passengers. I pled, but to no avail.

  “Gunpowder is werry costly,” I murmured under my breath – and gave him a shameful number of guineas, which made him recall that a Captain had discretion in these matters when saving lives was concerned. In a twinkling a whip was rove to a yard, my goods and Blanche were hove aboard and the anchor was weighed. The breeze was from the south-west, so it still bore the heavy scent of Africa, but I snuffed it with rapture.

  The scent of the ship herself was not so rapturous to snuff, for much of our cargo was palm-oil, which stinks. She had come out laden with trashy Preston cotton-goods, Batley shoddy-cloth and some bales of old uniforms from the Napoleonic wars. (These last had made the ship – otherwise cleanly – to be infested with fleas at which Blanche complained bitterly until I explained to her that it was a privilege to give board and lodging to a flea whose ancestor might well have bitten the Duke of Wellington himself. Like all women, she was something of a snob, an attitude now fashionable since Queen Victoria herself took it up at the instigation of the man Albert.)

  I signed the ship’s papers as Professor Mortdeca
i, occupation anthropologist. The captain was concerned about our lack of papers until I reminded him of the voracity of the termites on that Coast.

  Chapter Twenty

  Neither Blanche nor I was in a condition to remark on the food until we were north of the Cap Verde Isles. When at last we were able to dine regularly with the Captain we did not regret the wasted days, for he kept a poor table. I recall the diet with hateful clarity: one day there would be Lancashire hot-pot, which is a thick, muddy mess of the worst bones from the neck of a starveling sheep, seethed with potatoes and onions to disguise, one supposes, their loathsome appearance. This horror would alternate with Irish stew, which is the same as Lancashire hot-pot but contains much more water, and Lob Scouse – a Liverpool dish of stewed vegetables and crushed ship’s biscuit, enriched with gobbets of fat meat. Each Friday there would be Blind Scouse, which is the same but without the gobbets, for the Captain, inexplicably, was a Roman Catholic. On Saturdays there was fat salt pork boiled with pickled cabbage and on Sundays there was, at an unconscionable hour, the weekly feast: a roast of beef from some elderly cow who was more to be congratulated on her longevity than her succulence, served with roast potatoes bobbing about in a sea of warm grease and segments of a firm, yellowish custard called Yorkshire batter. The Captain and his cloddish officers ate ravenously of this harmful ordure and seemed puzzled that Blanche and I preferred to staunch our stomachs with stale bread, rancid butter and what I suppose I must call cheese, for that was what they called it. My respect for those who build the British Empire grew at each meal: “ ’tis from scenes like this that Britain’s greatness springs,” as Lord Byron has said. Dyspepsia is the spur. With such a dinner inside him, it would be a strange man indeed who could not face the charge of Fuzzy-Wuzzy undauntedly; a strange missionary who could not preach the fiercest Old Testament passages with burning eloquence.