Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey

by John Masters

  'Again?' the pilot cried eagerly.

  'I'd love it,' I said, 'but I have a train to catch.'

  When I returned to the cabin the passengers almost applauded. Chileans like spice in their lives. And they knew that the pilot and co-pilot were Chileans, and therefore without fault or technical blemish.

  After a day's business in Santiago I headed for the Chilean lake country to have a rest and write up my notes. My taxi driver to the Alameda station was a girl-fancier, who began to extol the beauty and passion of Chilean women as soon as we drew away from the hotel. 'Look at that one!' he cried over his shoulder, the taxi veering — 'See how she walks!... And that, ay, what breasts' — the brakes squealed — 'There, a madonna!... But not that one, no virgin that one, eh?' He worked himself up to such a pitch about the nation's beauties that several times I thought he was going to stop the taxi, jump out, and enjoy one on the spot, insisting that I join him so that I could carry the good word back to the U.S.A. He had the right idea, at that, as I have never seen a higher average of beauty than in Chile. One particular young woman who walked by while we were stopped at a light was perhaps the loveliest human being I have ever seen. She was about 5 feet 8 inches, with ash-blonde hair, deep violet eyes, a velvet skin and a proud but supple carriage, and she fairly radiated an innocent sexuality. The taxi driver should have been quick-frozen and stuffed for exhibition at that moment, for his expression of combined animal lust and religious awe was the very epitome of man's feeling for woman.

  It was a cool, cloudy afternoon, the sun low, black smoke drifting across the railroad yards. After a brief wait an old tall-funnelled steam locomotive emerged from a hole in the ground almost at my feet, pulling a string of dirty old-fashioned wooden carriages; but their windows were clean, and when I got in, I found they were comfortable, too. After the necessary backing and filling we chugged off for the south. (When Chileans talk about the south, sur, of their country, they mean the middle: the real south, where I had been, is called austral.)

  Our engine laid a trail of black smoke through a haze of dust, for dust rose from the horse carts and trucks on the road beside us, and from our own passage down the dusty right of way. We ran between blue-grey mountains to the left and lower hills, silhouetted against the setting sun, to the right. We passed from sun-hazed eucalyptus groves into twilit villages, grass shacks, tin roofs, children playing in the dust. I talked with a young lawyer about the austral, about Argentina, about Chilean women. He purred with pleasure at my appreciation of them. The mixture of races caused their beauty, he said — German, Spanish, British, Yugo-Slav, and of course Indian. 'The Germans work hard here,' he said, then told half a dozen funny stories against them, not as Nazi types (which is not their reputation in Chile at all) but as dense, simple-minded people, the butts of everyone else's wit. Many Chileans seemed to have a similarly dichotomous outlook on their Indians, the Araucanos. They were proud that the Araucanos are the only Indians on the whole American continent never defeated by the white man. (Incidentally, the Incas couldn't conquer the Araucanos, either.) They told stories of their courage and endurance; of how the Indian Lautaro was a body servant to the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, then became a leader against the Spaniards and killed de Valdivia, only to be himself later betrayed and killed. They named their warships after Indians, but still treated them as a people apart, dirty, lazy and thriftless.

  Next morning the white Chilean peasants, the rotos, that I saw out of the train window were beginning to look more as they 'ought' to, with wide black hats, huge spurs, ponchos plain and ponchitos coloured. The inn at Villarrica, my destination, was situated where the Tolten River flows out of Lake Villarrica on its short course to the Pacific. Across the lake towered the volcano I had been peering down into two days before. I found that the main business of the hotel was fishing; and though I had not thought of fishing when I made the reservation, I hired gear, a boat and a boatman and after lunch set off down the Tolten. It is a wide river, mostly about 100 feet across, that goes down to the ocean in alternate calm pools and shallow rapids. For long stretches the banks are cliffs, and with the bamboo growing everywhere I felt I was back in North Burma. Passing under one rock wall I was astonished to see a line pass my nose. I looked up and saw a roto sitting on the edge of the cliff a full ninety feet above, dangling his hook in the river — a very vertiginous pastime.

  At each set of rapids the boatman would row back and forth across the river while my line streamed into the first of the rough water. At the fourth rapids, I got a bite. After ten minutes of low comedy, in which I nearly fell into the river, and did manage to tip several gallons of water into the boat, I landed a 1 lb. rainbow; then in quick succession two more, one of nearly 2 lb., who fought very hard and well. The boatman cooed congratulations and praise, and I wondered what were the going tip-rates for flattery and rainbow.

  We floated on down the lovely river. I saw many wild duck, the sun went down into shimmering rapids ahead, twilight crept out of the misty earth, almost together I saw a cormorant and an owl. At last, in full darkness we reached the stage, eleven miles from the hotel. Here a truck would come and carry us and the boat back to Villarrica. Other fishermen, who had come down ahead of us, had been using dry fly only, so had caught brown trout, some considerably bigger than mine. I believe the record brown on the Token was over 30 lb. I learned that the fishermen, who had struck me as unusually dark-complexioned, were of Syrian descent, and all engaged in the carpet business.

  The hotel truck did not come and, after talking around a big fire for an hour, we all picked up our gear, staked down the boats, and trudged a mile to the main road. Soon an empty truck stopped for us and we all piled in, fishermen, fishermen's wives, Indian guides, boatmen, rotos, trout, fishing rods, nets, creels, flasks full of pisco, and me. As cars passed us from behind their lights made a marvellous frieze of all those various heads, hats, and ponchoed shoulders across the back of the truck.

  A storm that night blew down telephone and telegraph wires all over the country. The next day, April 10, dawned dull and raining, with showery intervals. The fishermen wrapped themselves in ponchos, and sou-westers and went off, their mutinous ladies staying behind. I wrote up my notes, and decided on the form and content of my article for Life International. I made up my mind I would come back to Chile one day, with Barbara. Then Herr Fritsch, the proprietor of the hotel, came in with a garbled message for me relayed from the travel agency in Santiago. They had a cable for me from William Strangways of New York, and they'd read it to me when they could.

  Strangways? Strangways? I'd met one in India somewhere — but New York? I hung around in the lounge with the four Syrian ladies while Fritsch tried to get back to Santiago. Near one o'clock, after a couple of false alarms, he made it. The cable informed me that the motion picture rights to Bhowani Junction had been sold to M.G.M. for $150,000.

  So Strangways must be a misprint for Helen Strauss and the William Morris Agency, I thought. Then the meaning of the cable hit me. It was absolute nonsense! Just before leaving Santiago the first time I had had a letter from Helen saying she thought there might be some movie interest in the book, at about $25,000: she asked for my instructions. I had cabled back telling her to use her best judgment, which was certainly more informed and experienced than mine.

  Well, she'd sold the movie rights. I wondered where the mistake was in the figures. If they could read Strang-ways for Strauss, God alone knew what they could do with the figures. Perhaps Helen had got $50,000, perhaps $15,000. Quite enough to celebrate, any way. I ordered champagne, magnums of it, and invited the four ladies to join me. When they understood why, they accepted eagerly.

  We drank champagne before lunch, through lunch, and after lunch, then had a few brandies. Then I packed and left quickly, for the ladies were rolling round under the tables like the drunken does in our orchard and I didn't want to be present when their husbands returned.

  Next morning the train whispered towards Santiago
through a heavy ground mist as the light spread. Gradually the proud Andes rose, snow-capped, to the east. At one in the afternoon we reached the capital and at half past one I saw a confirmation of Helen's cable. The correct figure was $155,000. I had achieved at least one part of that multiple object I had set myself when I first came to America. And then, I thought, I am a writer. So much to do, so little time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Keith had said the reviews of Bhowani Junction were on the whole good. They were also perceptive, which reflected much credit on the reviewers, considering the remoteness of the theme from their experience. But one or two followed the pattern of Lewis Gannett in the New YorkHerald Tribune. At the end of a longish praising-with-faint-damns sort of review he wrote: (Masters) has indeed something of Kipling's... belief in the white man's burden, the coloured man's problems and the overriding virtue of loyalty.

  Well, I might, or I might not; but there was no way Gannett could learn what I believed by reading a novel written in the multiple first person of created characters. He was, in fact, transferring to me sentiments expressed by some of my characters. This is as ignorant as the Government of India complaining (which they did) because a character said he'd just as soon see Gandhi dead as not. A government cannot be expected to know the difference between a writer and his characters, but a book critic can, even in New York.

  Then Gannett, quoting again from the book, wrote:

  There was a young lady called Starkie Who had an affair with a darkie The result of her sins Was an eightsome of twins Two black, two white, and four khaki. Apparently the colonel and Victoria both believed in the folklore genetics behind that vulgar verse. Evidently Mr Masters does, too.

  Oh?

  Gannett ended with the usual lazy assumption of the American Establishment Liberal that because I was an ex-imperialist I condescended to Indians. I made no reply or public comment on these and other biased remarks, for I still held to my old army credo: Never explain, never complain. A year or two later a good Indian novelist, Khushwant Singh, answered for me and for my work when he wrote: Both Kipling and Masters understand India. Only Masters understands Indians.

  Life accepted my article on Cape Horn with enthusiasm, paid me, then marked the piece 'File and Forget', and stored it in a steel safe in the basement of the Time-Life building, where I presume it still moulders. I was not pleased, for I do not like being paid for talking to myself. Cal Whipple told me that one way and another the magazine bought about ten times what it used. Nothing came of my work for Korda, for his films ran into bad luck and the Prudential Insurance Company, out of which he had wheedled $20,000,000 was forcing him to curtail his productions.

  I finished an article for Holiday magazine, and decided that my next book would be a volume of autobiography. In fact, I thought with grim anticipation, it would be the book the eleven publishers had rejected in 1948. There seemed little doubt now that Viking would publish Brutal and Licentious. What I had to do was first, as a minor pleasure, make sure that it did well enough to make all those eleven publishers wince; and secondly, as my will and duty, make sure that it was good enough to stand with Bhowani Junction. I got the typescript out of its drawer, and sent it to Helen Taylor for a thorough review and critique.

  Martin, having discovered what Daddy did for a living, thought he'd try it, too. I told him he could use my typewriter whenever I was not, and that he must not worry about spelling. He showed talent, in nothing more than his way of getting into a story without fol-de-rol or fal-de-lay. Thus, a five-page story called ARMY began as follows:

  One day in a pleasent army camp,

  we were e-v evrything was still,

  there was a very moldy colonel„,

  and he was old to. suddenly the koreans came,

  bang boom a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a

  boom! banggang boom a-a-a-a-a-a-a-bam boom

  whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  bam bang boom aaaaaaaaaaaoooowwwwwwwwwwww

  Barbara and I agreed that we must do something meaningful about using our sudden wealth, for when Lady Luck embraces a man, he who responds by taking out more insurance won't see her again. Barbara had no doubt what we should do — learn more of this America to which we had committed our lives and our children, and which had so amply repaid our faith. I agreed with her, and we planned a trans-continental camping trip, the children to spend a month on a ranch in Wyoming, while Barbara and I walked in the Tetons and went to the Pacific and back.

  While preparations for this odyssey continued, I fired the penultimate shots in my battle with the Immigration service. I had filed my first papers for citizenship in December of the previous year. In January I found that considerable trouble getting visas, etc., attended my status as an Indian, and I asked Immigration if there was a way in which the processes of attaining citizenship, which seemed to be endless, could be speeded up. The answer was a simple No. Then, having had more trouble in South America (I couldn't get a visa for Peru at all), and seeing the certainty of more travel ahead, I wrote apologetically to Mr Rifkind, and asked him the same question. As before, he spoke a word on the telephone and an abject Immigration bureaucrat revealed what they had felt it their business to conceal: if I applied for naturalization in the Southern District of New York, rather than in the Supreme Court of Rockland County, my case would be much speeded. I did so, and on June 17 appeared at the Immigration bureau, with two witnesses, for the Bureau to acknowledge that I had filed my petition and that they had received it. There remained only the final hearing, so-called, which would actually be a swearing-in. I gave the Bureau Helen Strauss's address, and told her where letters and cables could reach me.

  So, towards the end of June, 1954, we set off in bright sunshine for the west. We quickly developed and perfected habits which we have always since used in travelling in America. I set the alarm for 4 a.m., when I got up and lit the Coleman stove for coffee. Then, while Barbara helped get the children up and dressed, I took down and rolled the tents. They packed the bedding, and I gave everyone a hot drink and some Danish pastry (bought the day before). It was rare that we were not on the road by 4.30. Soon first light tinged the eastern dark behind us. The fading headlights showed rabbits on the verges, and deer in the forest, but no intrusions of man.

  The roads were empty. We drove through small towns that might have been abandoned movie sets, so perfect of their kind and so still were they. We whispered down the endless aisles of the Great North Woods at a steady seventy, the children asleep in the back, and Barbara and I spelling each other every hour and a half. By breakfast we had done nearly 200 miles; by lunch, always taken in a small-town restaurant or diner, another 200; there we bought the supplies for supper and the next day's breakfast, and tried to be in camp (or a motel, for the sake of a bath, every few days) by 3 p.m., for at that hour one always found space in camp-sites and motels. Our afternoons were leisurely — a swim, a nap, a walk, a seeing of curiosities; and the evenings a leisurely cooking of steak or hot-dogs, putting the children to bed, a companionable drink by the light of the pressure lamp, a short stroll through the moonlit forest, and to bed in our double sleeping bag on the inflated air mattress.

  After a couple of attempts at finding our own campsites, we settled for the state and national parks. The solitude we sought always had drawbacks — dubious water, no benches or table, no sanitation, and even the privacy unreliable, whereas at that time of year the parks were not full; also, we did want to meet American people as well as see American scenery. This last was particularly important for the children.

  So faithful blue RK 1403 carried the explorers from the Empire State (New York's nickname) towards the sunset: the Delaware River and Pennsylvania Dutch sausages; Ohio, the shore of Lake Erie; the lower peninsula of Michigan... so far nothing unusual, the scenery no different from Europe. I was getting impatient for the West. In 1938 I had driven alone — also, by chance, in a Dodge — from Los Angeles to Poughkeepsie, via New Orlea
ns. The West had impressed on my very spirit a sense of space, of sweeping wind and far water. I urgently wanted to share this with my wife and children, but it wasn't here yet. Still, we had the North Woods, and a feeling of endlessness, of virgin-forests-where-the-foot-of-man-has-never-trod (though someone told me that there isn't a stand of virgin timber east of Montana).

  We crossed the Mackinac Strait, seven miles, in a ferry steamer, and camped on the north side. There was a little smoke house a mile up the road that sold excellent smoked whitefish; and half an hour after dawn the next day we were presented with an eclipse of the sun, the path of totality passing through us for a few minutes. On west... triumphant borders of the orange and scarlet Indian paintbnish along the road, and a heralding clarity in the sky; the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, glimpses of Lake Superior cold and without horizon on our right hand; the wonder of the children at a coppery torrent in Wisconsin; a majestic all-night thunderstorm outside Moorhead, Minnesota. Thcy took turns to come in front and huddle over the heater blowers that morning, for it had poured rain while we were loading. The trunk of the car, the ill-rolled tents and soggy bedding stuffed into it, looked like a swamp full of dead men. The same rain had flooded Bismarck and Mandan and under one railroad bridge the water was over our hub caps.

  But suddenly the throb of the engine echoed farther and lighter, for the sky had flung back to an unimaginable distance. We had crossed the Missouri, we were there. The West! This was the West which Bud Guthrie made so magically real in his book and in the title he had given it: The Big Sky.