Tramp Royale

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The Geyser Hotel is almost next door to the Maori village of Whakarewarewa, which sits right in a geyser basin with houses built on the crusts deposited by thermal action. We paid a guide fee and joined a party of four Englishmen who were being shown around by an old Maori woman. The houses in this village are of the same style as almost every other house in New Zealand; they are not Maori architecture. So far as I could find out no Maori lives as his ancestors lived; there seems to be nothing in New Zealand parallel to the pueblo cities and the Navajo hogans of our southwest. But nearby the occupied houses, the Maori have built a replica ancient Maori village for the benefit of tourists; the tour includes the modern village, the thermal activities, and a lecture on Maori culture illustrated by the replica empty village.

  The modern village sits where it does because the Maori use the natural steam and hot water for cooking, for washing, and for all domestic purposes. Iron pipes run here and there above ground, carrying water and steam from natural source to houses, and there are boxes and Dutch-oven contrivances placed over steam holes and used as stoves. The heat is great enough for boiling or simmering, not great enough for broiling or frying. Laundering is done outside in natural basins and the children, at least, bathe outdoors. I had the impression that this method of living was continued primarily as a tourist exhibit even though the houses really are inhabited, but it is no more the normal way for Maori to live than it is for the whites. The overwhelming majority of Maori have no more opportunity to use natural steam than have the residents of Auckland. Nevertheless it was very interesting.

  We left the village and were conducted around the rest of the geyser basin and over to the replica village. We had had the bad luck to draw a guide who was intensely racist; she was bent on proving that Maori were equal to white men in most ways and better in all others. While we could sympathize with her chip-on-the-shoulder attitude intellectually, it was nevertheless tediously annoying. I am not going to give this woman's name as she has had much too much publicity already, being conceded to be the leading guide there and the one always chosen to conduct V.I.P.s-you have probably seen her picture in American magazines several times.

  When we joined her party she was busy baiting the four Englishmen, making invidious comparisons between Maori and English, criticizing the government of England, and so forth. The Englishmen endured it in dignified silence. When she found out that we were Americans she shifted her attention to us, but limited herself at first to boasting about how much the village had done for American service men during the War (which may well have been true) and how thoroughly impressed "Eleanor" was with what she had seen there.

  A few minutes later I accidentally brought her wrath down on us. She had asked us if we had seen Yellowstone Park; we admitted that we had. She answered, "I'll show you things you don't have at Yellowstone." Shortly thereafter, during the geyser basin tour, she stopped and pointed around us. "Note," she said, "how the greenery, the trees and bushes, come right down to the edge of the geyser basin. There's nothing like that in Yellowstone."

  This was a wonderful place for me to have kept my mouth shut in the interests of international amity. But I answered, "Excuse me, but somebody has misled you. The trees and greenery in Yellowstone come to the edge of the thermal basins just as they do here."

  "What?" She stopped and glared at me. "But I know they don't! I've seen pictures."

  I realized almost at once how she could have gotten honestly mixed up from pictures. There are several geyser basins in Yellowstone so many acres in extent that one may take any number of pictures without having trees and shrubs in the background; nevertheless similar conditions produce similar results and where the burned-out thermal area stops the trees and shrubs begin at once.

  The basin she was showing us was not on that vast scale; it could have been lost in one corner of the Norris Geyser Basin, for example. Consequently trees and shrubs were never far away. In the enormously bigger basins of Yellowstone the nearest greenery might be several hundred yards away, but the basic arrangement was precisely the same-in the smaller thermal areas of Yellowstone the spatial relationships were just like those around us.

  There was no reason for us to quarrel. I did not design Yellowstone and she did not design the Whakarewarewa thermal area. So I tried to straighten the matter out. She was still boiling, shouting that every other American who had ever been there had told her that she was right and anyhow the pictures proved I was wrong. I said, "I think it is just a mix-up, a misunderstanding. You see-"

  "You can't argue with photographs! I'll show them to you!"

  The Englishmen were beginning to look at us oddly and I was growing embarrassed. "Let me explain how it is at Yellowstone. You see-"

  "I've no time to listen to explanations now. Come on, we're late!" She turned and stomped up the path.

  I shut up, realizing that she did not want explanations. The superiority of "her" thermal area was a matter of dogma; it was emotionally, though illogically, related to the superiority of the Maori race. Several times during the next hour she turned to me and said, in several different ways, that it was very funny that I was the only American who had not agreed and so forth; she did not quite call me a liar but she made it clear that I must know that I was not telling the truth. But every effort to explain she brushed off; she had no time to listen to heresy.

  Her attitude was not typically Maori but it was typically New Zealand. The New Zealanders know, beyond any argument, that they have the best thermal displays in the world. I certainly agree that the New Zealand displays are wonderful and beautiful. But let me quote the Encylopaedia Britannica, which states that the geysers of Yellowstone render those "-of New Zealand almost insignificant in comparison" (X, 319, 1954). This truth is self evident to anyone who has seen both-but few New Zealanders have; indeed, their government forbids them to travel to our country save under very special circumstances.

  But neither Ticky nor I ever told any New Zealander that Yellowstone was better, and I gather from what I heard that other Americans had been equally forbearing. (Even when I incensed our guide I had not been claiming that Yellowstone was "better"; I had simply attempted to correct an explicit error-nor was I successful even in that.)

  The party went on to the replica village where our guide lectured us and several other parties on the virtues and wisdom of the ancient Maori, directing most of her remarks at us. The Maori emigrated here from Tahiti about six centuries ago; every Maori of today traces his descent back to a particular canoe of that heroic migration. Maori social organization was based on blood relationships and each village was a super-family, communal inside the family village. Exogamy was not required but consanguinity closer than second cousins was "tapu" or taboo.

  The lecture was very long, the day was hot, and we were packed into the stuffy, windowless "city hall" of the replica village. Besides, the talk was compounded of boasting and of many statements which were, at least, imaginative and idealized rearrangements of history and anthropology. Ticky became faint and I happily excused ourselves and led her away.

  A lot of nonsense has been peddled both about the modern Maori and their ancestors. Most modern Maori are fine people indeed, handsome, good-natured, civilized, and acceptably well-educated; they are a real pleasure to know.

  But the notion that their ancestors were nature's noblemen is preposterous; the Maori, before the English fought them and tamed them, were the mad dog of Polynesian peoples. They were not simply barbarous, they were bloodthirsty savages, perhaps the worst this wicked planet has seen. Physical courage and family loyalty were their only virtues. They exterminated the unwarlike aboriginal inhabitants of New Zealand, then turned their attention to eating each other, a practice to which they were addicted as the present-day New Zealander is addicted to his beer. Compared with them the lowly Australian aborigine was a civilized gentleman.

  All of which has nothing to do with the Maori today; all of us have savage ancestors. It is New Zealand's boast that th
e present Maori are political and social equals. This boast has a large and admirable measure of truth; the status of the Maori in New Zealand is, in most respects, better than the status of colored people of all sorts in the United States. But it is not literally true. Maori will usually be found in menial jobs and there is much unspoken, "Gentlemen's Agreement"-type discrimination. Politically the Maori may not be a second-class citizen but he is certainly a special-class citizen, for he does not cast a white man's ballot. Instead he votes only for legislative representatives of his own race. He is allowed four out of eighty, or five per cent. But his birth rate is nearly twice as high as that of the whites and his present proportion in the population is nearer ten per cent than five. Exponential growth curves being what they are, one may wonder what the white man will do when these proportions are more nearly equal; will he ever permit the Maori to outvote him, or will he hold him to five per cent and a separate ballot?

  In the matter of schools, most of them are mixed; others are "Jim Crow" schools for Maori children.

  We attended a concert given at the City Hall of Rotorua under the direction of our guide at the Maori village. She had apparently forgotten her anger at me, or perhaps our meekness under her abuse had mollified her, for she greeted us as old friends and insisted on seating us down front. (Ticky had almost refused to attend; she wanted to claw the woman-with a cannibal feast for the victor, I gathered.) The concert consisted of Maori war dances, story dances, and songs, among them the famous "Now Is the Hour"-which is Maori. The war dances were characterized mainly by sticking tongues out as far as possible, said to be a gesture of defiance. Possibly through years of practice, a Maori can stick his tongue out much farther than a white man, sufficient to cover his chin. The arts and crafts displayed were of the usual barbaric level found all over the globe in all early cultures and almost monotonously alike wherever found-garish colors, overelaboration of detail, and highly traditional, unindividual design. It is considered the proper thing these days to gush over peasant and native art, admire the "marvellous" designs and the patient workmanship. I cannot go along with this fad; most primitive art is obviously poor art, of kindergarten quality, if judged on its own merits without sentimentality about its origin. As for the patient workmanship, to spend pains on such fiddlin' stuff indicates a person with lots of time on his hands and lacking knowledge of anything better. These are simply stages that all of our ancestors went through; we should respect them for what they are but not gush over them for what they are not.

  Maori story dances are much like other Polynesian dancing such as hula, but made more interesting to me by the addition of the poi. Poi are light-weight balls on strings, which are swung like Indian clubs with remarkable dexterity. It is a form of precision juggling worked into the choreography and is most pleasing and quite difficult. There are "short poi" with six-inch strings and "long poi" with the strings about as long as the girls' arms, and they produce varied rhythms and incidental slapping sounds. It is an art most graceful, unique with the Maori, as traditional and stylized as classic ballet and (I suspect) almost as difficult.

  During our stay at Rotorua we had signed up for one of the government tourist trips scheduled to leave at 2 p.m. from the bus station in town on Saturday afternoon. We showed up there, only to be told that the trip was canceled because nobody wanted to go that day. Nobody but us, that is. I am rather glad, now that it is over, that we were disappointed as it gave us a chance to enjoy a real New Zealand Saturday afternoon.

  We asked the clerk at the bus station what else there might be to do in town that day? Nothing, so far as he knew. Now Rotorua is the center of their principal holiday area and it was the height of their tourist season, so I persisted: How about a cricket match? Where could we expect to find one? Ticky had never seen cricket and I thought it was time that she learned why cricket had never displaced baseball in spite of the obvious inanities of our own national sport.

  No cricket match scheduled, sorry . . . nor any place he could suggest to look for a "sand lot" game. Well, how about a movie?

  Ah yes, there was a cinema performance, starting in about fifteen minutes just down the street-but have you booked tickets?

  It had not occurred to us. He shook his head dismally; nevertheless we tried the cinema. It was not a continuous showing, but one performance only, reserved seats only . . . and every seat sold. The one-performance-only rule was, like the sixty-minute meal hours, one of their multitudinous restrictions on working hours; we observe a forty-hour week just as closely as they do, but their approach to it is entirely different.

  So we wandered the streets, trying to find something, anything, open. Rotorua is not a large place, but it is more than a wide place in the road; it has more citizens than has Annapolis, Maryland, a few dozen less than Princeton, New Jersey, and in addition has droves of vacationers staying in it. It is also the shopping center of a large farming community, and this was Saturday afternoon when any such farm community in America would be bursting at the seams.

  You could have sprayed a machine gun down its main street and never hurt a soul. We were the only people in sight.

  We strolled the silent business district, stopping occasionally to peer into locked shops. A drug store had a notice in the window stating that it was the authorized emergency chemist shop for that weekend, prescriptions filled on certified emergency from nine to ten in the morning and from six to seven in the evening. I wondered what would happen if a heart patient had to have digitalis in the middle of the day; would they let him die? A closed filling station had a similar notice, giving the address of another station at which petrol might be purchased in a certified emergency.

  At last we found a small restaurant and soda fountain open, one which we had patronized the day we arrived, so we went in, even though we were not really hungry, and ordered milk shakes and sandwiches.

  "Ah no," said the waitress.

  "No? Well, what can you serve us?"

  "Tea."

  "Tea? What else?"

  "Just tea."

  We had tea. There was no lack of food in the place; it was in sight all around us, entertaining the flies. But tea was all that might be legally sold then.

  East of the business district we found a large and beautiful park; here there were people, reveling in sports-croquet and bowls. We watched a doubles match at croquet, played for blood, the sort where you take vicious delight in knocking your opponent's ball into the next county. We were beginning to take real interest, when someone rang a dinner bell and all the players on all the courts stopped at once, racked their balls and mallets, and stopped for tea. They did not even leave the balls in position to resume play. It seemed to me a perfect example of the New Zealander's willingness to accept regimentation even in his pleasures. I began to understand why girls' marching teams were a major sport in New Zealand; close order drill suits their temperament and, besides, there isn't much else to do.

  After the break for tea, disgusted with the croquet players, we watched bowls. Bowls is not bowling; it is a game played with lopsided spheroids about the size and shape of a loaf of pumpernickel and the principles are those of pitching pennies for a line. But it is a game requiring high skill to play well, as the unbalanced bowl will not go in a straight line. However, as a spectator sport, it cannot compare with chess. It is played mainly by elderly men and I think I could learn to enjoy it in my declining years.

  Having exhausted the resources of this holiday resort and ourselves as well we went back and waited for the bus. There was just one, as the movie let out, and it would not hold all the crowd. I don't know whether it went back and picked up the few left behind or not. But our own experience earlier with an unannounced cancellation of a scheduled bus trip made it seem doubtful.

  New Zealand is a good place to hunt and fish.

  The trip from Rotorua back to Auckland was longish, five hours and a half. Ticky relieved the tedium by singing endless verses of, "In eleven more months and ten more days I'll b
e out of the calaboose," while I pretended not to know her. The bus stopped for tea at Hamilton; not wishing a mug of tea and ersatz, fly-tromped sandwiches, I inspected a magazine stand instead and bought one somewhat resembling our Harper's magazine to read on the bus.

  The lead article was "The Great American Hoax," which undertook to prove that the American standard of living was much lower than that of New Zealand. The author had figures to "prove" that most of us live in abject poverty, unable to buy necessities, much less enjoy any comforts, such as autos, radios, decent clothes, etc.

  But he did not mention that, per capita, we have more than twice as many automobiles as do New Zealanders, twice as many telephones, four times as many radios. But at the end of the article he advised us to use the legislative measures that had brought such great prosperity to New Zealand.

  New Zealanders believe this sort of drivel. They know they have the world's highest standard of living; they have been told so repeatedly. Since they are not allowed to travel to the United States without very special permission (they can get a passport but they are not allowed to buy dollars to make the trip) and since our magazines and books are forbidden entrance to their country, they are not likely to change their opinions.