White Lotus

by John Hersey

  Soon Kathy Blaw and I learned that the linguist had at least not lied about our own good fortune, for he himself opened the hatch near us and called us and the two Baptists above, and he led us to a huge open iron grate within the palisade on the deck. We revived at once. The motion was less than it had seemed below, the air on deck was keenly fresh, a dazzling light played on the white superstructure, and the sea was blue as the silken rug on which the powers of the Syndicate had sat in Palm Springs. Away to our left, backlighted by an early sun, was a silhouette of hills; we seemed to be creeping along the edge of the earth.

  Our work was to prepare a large wood fire and to cook, in huge metal kettles, a paste of horsebeans and salt chipped beef—not a mere dish for a woman’s household, such as we were used to fixing, but mess for more than a thousand.

  The linguist was pleased to chat with us. I was constantly aware of my nakedness; I was ashamed before him. He was called by the yellows something that sounded like Shaw Funny-One, and we called him Shaw. (He explained to us later that his title was Hsiao Fan-I Yüan, or “Small Interpreter.” But why “small”? He was six feet tall and must have weighed two hundred pounds.) Kathy Blaw asked him if we were in fact to be eaten, and he laughed raucously at her. But we did not trust Shaw, for he was after all the yellow man’s contented donkey.

  Shaw told us, among other things, that we had been shipped from a deserted beach near Santa Barbara because the yellows did not like to penetrate the principal harbors with slave ships for fear of arousing the Californians; that we were aboard a shallow-draft former mackerel fisherman and ship cannery belonging to a Tientsin merchant; and that the ship was not yet full of slaves, and that Big Number One was taking the vessel down the shore to buy yet more to join us.

  Then what would he do?

  Then he would take us “across,” Shaw said, making an arching motion with his hand that seemed to encompass more than I could ever guess at.

  Men with yellow faces, some with sparse goat beards like Big Number One’s, passed by from time to time and stared at my scarcely nubile breasts and my hungry belly.

  When the sun was high, the wooden cover of the companionway to the men’s compartment, forward from ours, was lifted, and two hundred wan and fearful naked creatures erupted from below, fettered in pairs. Each was given a ration of mash in his bare hands. The men had little taste for our rank and pulpy dab-a-dab. They were given water. Among them all Mayor Jencks alone guffawed and roistered in what seemed to me a most inappropriate way. Gabe, who was chained to a Seventh-Day Adventist, looked me squarely in the eyes as he passed the kettles with a glance that was deep, questioning, and profoundly sad. It was safest to look in the eyes; I was afraid of being caught glimpsing at a man’s startlingly unnested sex, or of finding him scanning my poor bareness. When the men had been fed, they were sent to their hold again, and the women and children were brought up. They ate even less than the men, and they were returned below.

  While we were cleaning our kettles the ship turned and went toward the land, in response to a signal of flags on a high pole that Shaw pointed out to us, a summons, he said, to trade for slaves near Ventura. The vessel approached a beach. The wind had died, the sea was calmer now; there were none of the burnings that we had seen at the Santa Barbara roadstead. A launch came out on the bay to meet the ship, a rope ladder was lowered, and some fine tall white men came aboard, and over the palisades we could see a ceremony at the rail; Big Number One offered millet liquor, a swallow of which made all the white men cough and redden.

  We were taken below and did not see what followed. Some time later three terror-stricken women, High Episcopalians, rich before their capture, were brought down to us, and they lay near Kathy Blaw and me and wept and chattered.

  The ship went along the coast this way for many days, taking on here two, here three, here a handful of frightened creatures.

  A Lump of Flesh

  On the third morning the chains were removed from all the “Santa Barbara men”—slaves, that is, who had been embarked from the beach near that town; and on successive days new acquisitions, “Venturas,” “Huenemes,” “Santa Monicas,” and so on, were also released. Shaw, who had grown confidential with Kathy Blaw and me, for he had a huge appetite and we gave him extra food from the slaves’ kettles, told us that Big Number One believed that when slaves had made three days’ voyage they would no longer attempt to escape by throwing themselves in the sea. He added that Big Number One was angry, because the Syndicate’s traders along the coast, knowing that he had a part-slaved ship and was anxious to be fully packed and away, were driving hard bargains and fobbing off less than prime men and women on him—some with teeth missing, others thin and probably old. One of the yellow sailors was sick of a fever. Big Number One felt that the Syndicate was spitefully delaying him. We would be well advised, Shaw said, to tell our companions to act docile, fawning, and cheerful.

  So, pretending to be our friend, this hungry frog was trying to use us for his master’s purposes.

  Yet he allowed Kathy Blaw and me and the two Baptists great liberties; for one thing, on sufferance of Big Number One, he let us sleep on deck. We soon saw why. The very first night, not twenty feet from me, he shamelessly imposed himself on one of the Baptist women, who—how demoralized some of us were by the mere word “slave”!—submitted to him without protest, even with some enthusiasm, I thought. But Kathy Blaw next morning told him with spittle at the corners of her mouth that she would claw his eyes out if he put his hands on her or on me. He shook with pleasant laughter.

  One day we were given some cubes of pickled pork to cook. It happened that on the chow line a woman purchased in Laguna, named Mrs. Taussig, a fervent practitioner of the Jewish faith, rejected her ration. Big Number One was standing nearby, and on seeing Mrs. Taussig’s refusal he gave orders through Shaw that she must eat. Shaw bellowed in a portentous voice that slaves were not to try to escape by starving themselves. Mrs. Taussig steadfastly declined the food. The yellow man became enraged and ordered her flogged by a sailor, and when this quiet woman had been broken by pain she opened her mouth to Big Number One’s sallow hand holding a lump of gelatinous fatty stuff, and in tears she gulped it down.

  A seething silent fury spread among the women, not all of whom, I am sure, had been entirely clear in their minds, before their capture, as to just what they felt about Mrs. Taussig’s coreligionists. They were unanimous now. Indeed, when they had gone below we cooks could hear through the barred hatches much weeping and moaning in the stifling fish-haunted hold.

  Two days later Mrs. Taussig erupted with a rash, a revolting psora of her humiliation, sin, shame, and terror, and we had a feeling that this sickness of her defilement might prove mortal, that she was indeed probably doomed. There was no rabbi aboard, and no simple human hope.

  A Hand Is Raised

  We lay in the mouth of a river, near Del Mar, along with a dozen other yellow men’s ships, taking on from barges and lighters many sacks of dried beans, potatoes, rice, cabbages, and cracked corn of a sort that had surely been processed as poultry feed—food for us!—in such large supplies that Kathy Blaw and I believed we were soon to be taken “across,” as Shaw had expressed it with that hawk flight of his hand. The sun reached its zenith. The men were brought up for air and food.

  At the kettles Gabe, who knew, I guess, that we cooks slept on deck, suddenly leaned forward and rapidly whispered that I should stay awake that night and, in the deep of the moonless darkness, I should closely watch the guard at the wooden hatch cover of the companionway to the men’s hold, and if he dozed I should silently unhasp and lift off the wooden lid. Gabe took his food and moved away.

  In those brief moments Gabe’s eyes had flashed with the familiar arrogance I had so often seen in them when he had sat in the saddle of the clay-pit dozer.

  I did not know why he wanted me to do what he asked, except that I realized the men had somehow learn
ed about Mrs. Taussig; I did not know, either, whether I would have the strength to carry through his command without my locket of the Guevavi martyr.

  In late afternoon, unable to keep my fearful secret, I whispered it to Kathy Blaw. Her face remained as blank as one of her own clay potlids: one could not see a single sign of the turbulent reactions she must have had to my words.

  Night fell. Shaw chatted with us. The sounds of the small river-mouth town dwindled and died in the dark. I feigned exhaustion and lay down on a mat of burlap sacks on the steel deck, and Kathy Blaw soon settled near me. Shaw moved to the Baptists. Outside the palisade we could hear the four yellow sailors who were on guard on the deck talking and laughing from time to time; one was supposed to be stationed at each of the hatches, and two walked fore and aft along the decks. At last Shaw moved off by himself and lay down on a folding canvas cot that he set up nights near the stove.

  The blood rushed in my ears. I could sense Kathy Blaw’s tightness; she was like a cat poised to jump.

  Shaw began to wheeze. The Baptists seemed to be asleep. I crept to the palisades and at a crouch watched the pacing guards through chinks in the fencing.

  Half the night (Gay Moya! How that glimpse of your drawn face in the white Caddy disillusioned me!), which seemed like half my life, slipped away; the card of stars wheeled around. My joints ached; my head burned. The ship creaked and clanked at anchor.

  The guard of the men’s hatch sat at last on a great coil of hawser near the mast. The guard of the women’s hatch, which was forward, was lost in blackness under an overhang of the bridge. I could hear the cloth-muffled steps of the other two. My man lay down his head. I waited.

  Then I felt Kathy Blaw’s presence beside me; she had evidently been watching from another part of the palisade. She touched my shoulder.

  I waited for the pacing guards’ footsteps to go far forward, then I crept out of the palisades and, sneaking along by the wooden wall, I moved aft to the vicinity of the men’s hatch. Suddenly I remembered the clublike metal rods in the collar around the base of the mast, where net lines from the derrick booms were made fast, and on feet as silent as moth wings I slipped to within six feet of my sleeping guard, and with great patience I extracted one of the unused belaying pins.

  Then, having waited again for the sentries to be walking toward the far end of the deck, I darted to the hatch, silently undid the latch, lay the bronze rod softly down, and as I began to put my strength under the edge of the lid, I felt its weight diminish as of its own accord—for Kathy Blaw was there, lifting with me. We raised the lid. It gave off one tiny snapping sound that was like a thunderclap.

  I was barely aware of a form emerging from the hole in the deck. I picked up the metal club and reached it out till it touched the form. I felt a hand, in which there was a rapid tremor, cover mine, then it slipped the heavy rod from my grip.

  Three more darknesses-in-darkness emerged and swiftly moved away.

  Kathy Blaw and I stood holding the hatch lid off the deck, not knowing what was happening or what to do next. Then we heard thuds and grunts, a brief scuffle—and the pacing of cloth-shod feet stopped.

  I could feel Kathy Blaw lowering the lid to put it on the deck, and I let my end down, too. I thought of the heavy iron spoons with long wooden handles that we used to stir our huge grumes of beans and potatoes, and I ran for one, but as I went the guard on the ropes by the mast, evidently having been roused by the sounds of struggle we had heard, cried out to his companions. At almost the same time we heard glass breaking, and a moment later the guard of the women’s hatch shrieked.

  There were shouts. A flood of electric light came from the mastheads. The frightful crash of a gun sounded.

  I stood in the gateway of the palisades holding one of the iron spoons, realizing it was all over. I heard moaning.

  The two sentries were sprawled on the deck, their skulls crushed. The guard of the women’s hatch had been killed with a fire axe from a glass case under the bridge companionway. Gabe, a big young man from one of the other Arizona villages, whom I had heard called Jiggs, and—I was amazed—Mort Blain were hemmed in a circle of sailors, their hands already bound behind their backs. A fourth white form, which I made out to be the corpse of a youth we had shipped at Santa Monica, lay in blood on the deck, a victim of the gun. I myself was being held by Shaw, and a crewman had one of Kathy Blaw’s arms twisted behind her back. The two Baptist ladies cowered behind the stove.

  I saw Gabe’s face in the cold down-pouring light from the mastheads. The insolent look of that noonday command was drained away to nothing: his purse utterly empty.

  An Exhibition

  In daylight the men were chained again in pairs. We cooks were bound in thongs in the palisades.

  Big Number One sent away a messenger in a gig to the other ships in the river, and one by one their captains came to our vessel. There was a long palaver on the deck; the captains went away.

  All of our slaves, men, women, and children, were brought above, and we stood in stifling sun-heat in the fenced area. We saw that naked white people also crowded the decks of all the other ships.

  Our Big Number One stood on the bridge with sleek Shaw beside him. Shaw gleamed with sweat in his yellow man’s blue gown.

  In a pompous round-toned voice, which rang with the hollow potency of a powerful man’s sycophant, Shaw bellowed down to us from the bridge a translation of Big Number One’s words:

  That we and all the slaves on all the ships were now to see what happened to a white man who raised his hand against a yellow man.

  Sailors tied a rope around Mort Blain’s chest under his arms, a clanking donkey engine started up, and the heavy man arose into the air dangling from one of the derrick booms. He seemed dazed, unaware of what was happening to him. Jiggs, chained to one of the masts with Gabe, recklessly shouted to Mort Blain not to worry—that if the yellow men wanted to kill him they’d have put the rope to his neck. But just then there was a terrifying roar; four yellows with guns at rear windows of the bridgehouse had shot Mort Blain dead where he hung.

  Gabe and Jiggs were whipped and chained again to the mast, where they were kept day and night. Kathy Blaw and I were retained as cooks, but we worked bound to each other in thongs, and we were sent down to the foul-smelling hold as soon as we finished our tasks after the meals. Mort Blain’s corpse was aloft three days.

  BOOK TWO

  Hawk Flight of a Hand

  Into the Blue

  WE HEARD the thump of the anchor chain and the seaquake rumble of the engines. Our compartment was now so crowded that I could hardly turn over in my place beside Kathy Blaw. Mrs. Taussig, trapped in an envelope of raging rash, had begun to babble deliriously; her chattering all night had unnerved us. As the shelves heeled and dipped we heard intermittent hammering overhead and sounds of heavy objects being dragged on the deck.

  It was late in the day before we cooks were led above. I saw four new things: that the palisades to prevent slaves from jumping overboard had been dismantled and stacked at the center of the deck; that Mort Blain’s body no longer swung from a derrick boom; that Gabriel and Jiggs had been removed from the mast where they had been chained; and that—the realization threw me to my knees—we were out of the sight of land: all was blue except for our own straight carpet of spindrift pointing back toward our lost home.

  Kneeling, I tried to pray, but I could get nothing of any value to God onto my tongue or into my head. Prayer belonged in church—my forehead on the smooth rail of the pew in front, looking down into the dusty hymnal rack, and at the tiny shelf with jigsawed round nests for the goblets from which we took Christ’s blood that tasted suspiciously like Welch’s grape juice; and the little cube of bread, His body, dry on my tongue as I thought carelessly about Arty Coteen and the scene in the movie the night before of the Saracens’ camp at Monreale, when, after the battle, Francis Huge lay his beautiful sweat-s
treaked face on Gay Moya’s breast. This queer snapshot of memory coming into my mind in place of the prayer I needed so badly at that moment increased my fear into panic: I was naked on an unfenced deck on a limitless sea.

  At last I was able to creep to Kathy Blaw. I crouched trembling near the stove, barely able to do my work.

  When, under the sun’s late slanting, the male slaves were brought above, shackled in pairs, to eat, I saw my terrors reenacted many times over by them. Gabriel, double-chained to Jiggs, did not fall to the deck, as many others did; his eyes were dull, he seemed indifferent. Jiggs was forcedly jolly…. The screaming among the women at the sight of the edgeless blue, their running here and there in bursts like startled hares, their gibbering questions to Shaw—the signs of their terror somehow devalued mine, and I grew calmer.

  We sailed day after day on a measured following swell under a hot sky. Each morning and afternoon the slaves were aired for several hours at a time, men and women separately. All were now dejected, and the discomfort of the fish-guts sleeping compartments grew greater as our spirits skidded toward despair.

  Kathy Blaw became a second mother to me, bitter, testy, yet tender, singing off key to me in the sleepless hours I had each night, coaxing me to eat to keep up my strength, stinging me with sarcasm out of depressed stupors of staring and dreaming of home.