I don’t know how I missed the main channel, got lost in one of the numerous smaller rivers that empty into the Ogowe. At all events, late one afternoon, I found myself in a narrow, trickly stream, with my paddle touching ground every second stroke, and the banks to right and left like frowning, sardonic walls. It wasn’t a river any more—but just a watery sort of jungle trail, hardly discernible, wiped by the poisonous breath of the tropics into a dim, smelly mire which frothed and bubbled and sucked and seemed to reach out for those who dared tread its foul solitude.
I pushed on, through an entangled, exuberant commingling of leaves and lasciviously scented, fantastic flowers that vaulted above me like an arch, cutting my way through the mangrove that opened before my canoe, with a dull, gurgling sob, then closed behind me, with a vicious, popping gulp, as if the jungle had stepped away to let me through, leisurely, contemptuously, invincibly, to bar my way should I attempt to return!
On—and then, I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know if night came, or if the creepers closed above me, shutting off the light of the sun, or if, momentarily, I became blind. I only remember that although, like an automaton, my hand kept on wielding the paddle, everything turned black around me…and the next thing I remember is that I shivered all over as if in an ague, that cold sweat was running down my face, that I groped for the quinine—could not find it…
Too, I remember, a sudden glimpse of jungle natives—dwarfs, you know, the useless African tatters of a pre-Adamite breed. I saw two or three of them in the blackish-green gloom of the trees, flitting past, gliding, indistinct. They blended into the jungle, like brown splotches of moss on the brown, furry tree-trunks, and they gave no sign of life except a rolling flash of eyeballs—white, staring with that aspect of concentrated attention so typical of savages.
I recollect, vaguely, shouting at them, for help, I suppose, my voice seeming to come across illimitable distances.
Too, I recollect how they ran away, the jungle folding about them like a cloak. Then I felt a dull jar as I fell on my hands and knees in the bottom of the canoe and rolled over.
* * * *
I came to, I don’t know how many hours later. I was cold and wet and shivery, and then I noticed that rain was coming down like a cataract. And at once I knew that I was dying. Dying! Sure. Straight through my delirium, I realized it. Realized, too, that only one thing would help me to cheat death: a sound roof over my head, sound flooring under my feet, sound walls about—a house, in other words. A real, honest-to-God white man’s house where I could take off my clothes and keep dry and warm, and give the quinine and the Warburg’s a chance to work.
A house! In that part of Africa! Might as well have wished for the moon!
And then, suddenly, I saw it—yes, a house!
It was not a hallucination, an optical illusion, a mirage, my delirious mind playing follow-the—leader with my eyes—and my prayers. It was real. Solid stone and wood and corrugated iron and a chimney and windows and doors all complete, like a bit of suburbia dropped in the jungle. I saw it through the steaming, lashing rain, on a little knoll due north, perhaps a quarter of a mile away from the river.
I jumped out of the canoe, landed, with clutching hands, in the mangrove, pulled myself up, ran as fast as I could, stumbling, tripping, falling, plunging. I hardly felt the thorns that scratched my face and hands and tore my clothes into ribbons.
I struggled on, with the one thought in my mind: the house—warmth—life!
How had the house got there?
Weeks later, I found out. Doctor Morrison told me, sitting by my bedside in the hospital.
It seemed that some imaginative chap of a West Coast trader had come up to London on his yearly spree. He must have been as eloquent as an Arab, for he met some City bigwigs that were reeking with money, and persuaded them that the French Congo hinterland was God’s own paradise, and just waiting to give them fifty percent on their investment, if they were willing to come through handsome. They were, and they did. They supplied a working capital big enough to make a Hebrew angel weep with envy. “Gaboon, Limited,” they called the new company, with laconic pride, and for some reason—the usual, you know, social stuff, Mayfair and Belgravia flirting with Lombard and Threadneedle streets—they appointed some fool of a younger son as general manager, the sort of gink whose horizon is limited by Hyde Park Corner and Oxford Circus, and who knows all about the luxuries of life, which to him are synonymous with the necessities. Well, he went out to the coast, up the river, took a look at the scenery, and decided that the first thing to do would be to build a suitable residence for his festive self. He did so, and I guess the imaginative West Coast trader who was responsible for the whole thing must have helped him. Naturally—think of the commissions he must have pocketed from the Coast people: commissions for stone and wood and glass and bricks and cement and whatnot.
Yes, that was the sort of house our younger son built for himself. Darn the expense! He was stubborn if nothing else. The house was built; he moved in, and three weeks later some flying horror bit him in the thumb, and he promptly kicked the bucket. About the same time our imaginative West Coast trader disappeared with what was left of the working capital of “Gaboon, Limited,” and nothing remained of that glorious African enterprise except the house, that incongruous, ludicrous, suburban house in the heart of the tropics—Westchester-in—the-Congo, eh?
I guess the natives must have considered it “bad ju-ju,” for they left it severely alone.
And it was bad ju-ju. I know.
All right. I made for it, running, stumbling, soaked to the skin. I pushed open the door, and, at once, I became conscious of a terrible, overpowering fear. Rather, it seemed as if the vague, crushing foreboding which I had sensed all the way down the river had suddenly peaked to an apex; as if the realization of that presentiment—the physical realization, mind you!—was waiting for me somewhere within the house. Waiting to leap upon me, to kill me!
But what could I do?
Outside was the rain, and the miasmic jungle stench, and fever, and certain death—while inside?
I stumbled across the threshold, and, instinctively, I pulled my revolver from my waterproofed pocket.
I remember how I yelled at the empty, spooky rooms:
“I will defend myself to the last drop of my blood!”
Quite melodramatic, eh? Incredibly, garishly so, like a good old Second Avenue five-acter where the hero is tied to the stake and the villain does a war—dance around him with brandished weapons.
I couldn’t help myself; I felt that ghastly, unknown, invisible enemy of mine the moment I was beyond the threshold. At first he was shrouded, ambiguous. But he was there. Hidden somewhere in the great, square entrance hall and peeping in upon my mind, my sanity.
Momentarily, I controlled myself with a tremendous, straining effort. I said to myself, quite soberly, that I had come here to get dry, to take off my clothes, and so I sat down on a rickety, heat—gangrened chair and began kicking off my waterlogged boots.
I got up again, in a hurry, yelling, trembling in every limb.
For he, my unknown, invisible enemy, had sat down by my side. I could feel him blow over my face, my neck, my hands, my chest, my legs, like a breath of icy wind. That’s the only way to put it. So, as I said, I got up again in a hurry, and I ran away, shrieking at the top of my lungs, peering into every corner, revolver in my right hand, finger on trigger, ready to fight, fight to death, if my enemy would only come out into the open—if only he would fight!
“Coward! Oh, you dirty, sneaking coward!” I yelled at him. “Come out here and show your face, and fight like a man!”
And I laughed, derisively, to get his goat; and then I could hear his answering laughter, coming in staccato, high-pitched bursts:
“Ho-ho-ho!”
Too, I heard him move about, somewhere right close to me, behind me, and I decided to use a stratagem. I decided to stand quite still, then to turn with utter suddenness an
d take him by surprise; to pounce upon him and kill him. Surely, I said to myself, if I turned quick enough, I would be able to see him.
So I stood there, motionless, tense, waiting, my mind rigid; my heart going like a trip-hammer; my right hand gripping my revolver; my left clenched until the knuckles stretched white.
And I did turn, suddenly, my revolver leaping out and up, a shout of triumph on my lips. But—he was not there. He had disappeared. I could hear his footsteps pattering away through one of the farther rooms, and, too, his maniacal, staccato laughter.
Oh, how I hated him, hated him! And I ran after him, through room after room, shouting:
“I’ll get you, you dirty coward, I’ll get you! Oh, I’ll get you and kill you!”
And then, in a room on the top floor, I came face to face with him! It was quite light there, with the sun rays dropping in like crackling spears, and as he came toward me, I could make out every line in his face.
Tall he was, and gaunt and hunger-bitten and dreadfully, dreadfully pale, with yellowish-green spots on his high cheekbones, and his peaked chin covered with a week’s growth of black stubbles, and a ragged mustache. His face was a mass of scars and bleeding scratches and cuts; and in his right hand he held a revolver—leveled straight at my heart.
I fired first, and there was an enormous crash, and—
Sure! I had fired into a mirror, a big mirror. At myself. Had not recognized myself. What with lack of razor and shaving-brush and looking-glass—and delirium—and fever—
Yes, yes. It’s the small things, the little foolish, negligible things one misses when one is away from civilization.
Pass the bottle, will you!
PRO PATRIA
Michael Crane cut through the other’s subdued buzz of bland, philosophic similes with a hairy hand, stabbing sideways through the opium-scented shadows, and words, bubbling out with the bitterness of their own utter futility:
“What are you going to do? That’s what I would like to know, old man!”
“What are you going to do?” he repeated dully, after a pause.
Even as he said it, he knew that there would be, could be, no answer except the same one which the other, Tzu Po, Amban of Outer Mongolia, who sat facing him—his fabulously obese bulk squeezed into a stilted, tulip wood and marble mosaic chair, his heavy-lidded eyes bilious with too much poppy juice, and his ludicrously small, white silk—stockinged feet twitching nervously—had given him nearly every day these last six weeks or so; ever since Professor Hans Mengel had dropped serenely and sardonically out of the nowhere, atop a shaggy Bactrian camel, and, within a day of his arrival, had struck up an incongruous friendship with the abbots and monks of the Buddhist lamasery that squatted on the hogback, porphyry hill above the flat, drab city of Urga, the capital of Outer Mongolia, with all the distressing weight of ancient thaumaturgical hypocrisy and bigotry. Be it remembered that the spiritual and theological politics of all Buddhist central Asia, from Kamchatka to the burned steppes of the Buriat Cossacks, from the arctic Siberian tundras to the borders of sneering, jealous Tibet, were being shouted by thin-lipped, copper-faced, yellow—capped lama priests behind the bastioned battlements of the old convent and that these spiritual politics were frequently running counter to the dictates and desires of Peking’s secular suzerainty, embodied—ironic thought!—by Mandarin Tzu Po.
The same old answer, day after day, accompanied by a shrugging of fat shoulders, a deep, apologetic intake of breath, and a melancholy gesture of pudgy hands so that the ruddy light of the charcoal ball in its openwork brass container danced fitfully on his long, gold-incased fingernails.
“Who am I to know?”—with the fatalistic, slightly supercilious modesty of all Asia.
“Who are you to know?” The American, fretting with impatience, picked up the mock-meek counter-question like a battle gage. “Why, man, you are the high-and-mighty governor of this stinking, disgusting neck o’ the woods! You are the honorable amban—entitled to I don’t know how many kowtows and how much graft!”
“Indeed, Mr. Crane. And you are the American consul, eh? And”—with low, gliding laughter—“you are also entrusted with the interests of your honorable allies—France, Great Britain, Italy—”
“Don’t I know it, though? But what can I do? I am as helpless as—”
“As I!” gently interrupted the Chinaman, kneading agilely the brown opium cube against the stem of his tasseled bamboo pipe.
Another pause, broken presently by the American’s chafing. “You are supposed to have some power here, and you know just as well as I that this measly German professor—”
“I know nothing!” Tzu Po fidgeted unhappily in his chair. He half closed his bilious eyes like a man in pain. “I wish to know nothing! I insist on knowing nothing!”
“Ostrich!” Crane leaned forward in his chair and emphasized his words with a didactic finger. “You know perfectly well that Mengel is playing a lot of dirty, rotten, underhand politics, that he and the Buddhist monks—”
“Professor Mengel is the leading European authority on early Buddhism. It is natural that he should take an interest in this old lamasery—”
“I know all that, Tzu Po! The chief Lama of Urga is second only to the Dalai Lama of Tibet in holiness. He is a continuous reincarnation of some damned Buddhist saint or other, and Mengel, as you say, does know a lot more about Buddhism than the priests do themselves. But, man, this is war! Not even a single-minded German professor will cross all Russia and half of Asia, these days, simply to swap theological lies with some old yellow-capped priests! I tell you—and I needn’t tell you, since you know it yourself—that that Hun is up to some deviltry!”
The Chinaman sighed. “Admitting that you are right,” he replied, “there are religious reasons why I can’t interfere with the monks and abbots who have befriended him.”
“Religious reasons be hanged!” scoffed Michael Crane. “You are a Chinaman and, being a Chinaman, you are about as religious as the devil himself!”
“But these people here whom I—ah—rule”—Tzu Po smiled gently at the implied jest—“they are not Chinese. They are Mongols, Tibetans, Buriats, Turkis, and what not. They are devout Buddhists—”
“Subject races—all of them!”
“Exactly. We Chinese are like the English. We do not attempt to interfere with the home life, the home laws, the home religions of our subject peoples. And to all Buddhist central Asia the words of the yellow-capped abbot in the convent up there are—”
“Sure. Divine commands. Sort of—oh—direct from the Lord Gautama Buddha’s deceased and sanctified bones. That’s why I say it’s up to you to do something,” said Crane, “to assert yourself, to grease your big stick!”
“Big stick?”
“You know what I mean. You’ve spent years in America. Send to Peking for a company or two of roughneck soldiers. Show these stinking, sniveling, shave-tail priests who is the boss of the ranch. Call their bluff. Pop the Herr Professor into a nice, comfy jail—”
“For what reason?” inquired Tzu Po.
“Because he’s up to some deviltry—as I told you—as you know yourself—if you weren’t such a confounded Chinese Pharisee!”
“I can prove nothing against him!” Tzu Po filled his lungs with gray, acrid opium smoke. “Can you, my friend?”
“Prove? The devil! You don’t have to prove. You can arrest him on suspicion—shoot him out of the country if you want to—”
“It would be against the law.”
“Laws are rather in abeyance these days. You have some leeway in wartime.”
“China is not at war—yet. China and Germany are still at peace. No, no!” Tzu Po made a gesture of finality. “I can’t help you, my friend—except”—he winked elaborately at nothing in particular—“if you should—”
“What?” whispered Michael Crane. “If I should do—what?”
The other was not caught so easily. “If you should do—anything!” he countered. “Yes—if y
ou should do anything at all, I should be deaf and dumb and blind!”
“But what can I do? Gosh! I wish I’d never seen this darned hole in the ground! I don’t belong here!”
“Nor do I!” rejoined the other with a melancholy smile.
And then, as always at the end of their daily bickerings, the two men looked at each other, feeling singularly foolish, and impotent and friendly.
II.
The one an American, lean, angular, long of limb, pink and tan as to complexion, red-haired, gray-eyed, freckled. The other a Pekingese Chinaman, yellow, silky, urbane, smooth, fat, with bluish-black hair and sloe eyes. The one of the West, Western—the other of the East, Eastern!
Yet there was a certain similarity in the fateful pendulum of their careers; the promising beginnings—the drab, flat endings—here, in Urga, at the very back of the beyond.
Michael Crane had been a brilliant young lawyer and politician in his native city, Chicago, with the Supreme Court, the Presidency itself, shining like a Holy Grail in the autumnal distance of his full life. Ward politics came first, of course, slapping people on the back, kissing little grubby babies, gossiping with their women, and—yes!—occasionally a little, sociable nip in some saloon the other side of Dexter Hall.
Yearly his thirst had increased while, proportionately, his earlier promises of great, lasting achievement had decreased. Still, he had not lost all his hold on his favorite ward. The marshaling of that curious phenomenon called public opinion had become second nature to him. His fertile eloquence, chiefly when he was in his cups, had not suffered, nor his readiness to close a tolerant eye when one of his underlings resorted to more primitive, more abysmal methods in convincing Doubting Thomases that his party was the right party when the nation was voting for president several years earlier, he had been able to swing a block of votes into the ballot boxes of the party which came out victorious. And reward had been his.
“Mike Crane has to be taken care of,” a certain bigwig in Washington had said. “His ward was rather ticklish, but he turned the trick.”
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack Page 33
