Golden Earth

by Norman Lewis

  Mergui emerged from behind a foreshore of shining slime, from which the ribs of ancient wrecks protruded. A few grey, Dutch-shaped roofs thrust up through the mud, with a strip of mist lying along them. There was a gilded pagoda, with causeways up its artificial mound, making it look like a Mayan truncated pyramid. King Island broke off from the mainland, and slipped past on our right, with landslides of swarthy earth showing through the webbing of green. The trees growing on it were so tall that their doubtlessly stout trunks were like long spindly wireless masts. We passed, in midstream, an antique oil tanker, completely coated with rust, called The Golden Dragon.

  * * *

  If you had been set on retirement from the world in the traditional South Seas manner of the ‘nineties, you need have gone no further than Mergui. Or at least, so it seemed at first sight. It was immediately clear that this place had been purged of the vulgar agitations common to most ports. The jetty had fallen into the harbour and no one had bothered to recover it. Ships anchored a hundred yards off shore, and sampans – when there were any about – unloaded passengers. They were dumped on a sloping wasteland of slime-covered boulders, up which they scrambled and slithered to reach the quayside. Semi-wrecks lay about the harbour with vitals bursting through their rotting planks. The wharves – mostly empty – were pleasantly styled go-downs. A civil-supplies building – a place of most eerie dilapidation – had convolvulus and flowering bean plants crawling over its façade, and through the paneless upper windows you could see bats hanging from the rafters. On the quayside a large iron tank bore the notice ‘to drink’, and a honey and white fishing eagle balanced on its edge, peering wistfully into the inner depths. The junks anchored along the front had small platforms built into their sterns where their guardian spirits could conveniently perch. Well-dressed young men came up and said ‘Where are you going?’ then walked on, without awaiting an answer.

  What, too, could have been more romantic than the traditional products of this island – esculent birds’ nests and pearls? True there was also a bit of rubber and some tin; but not enough of either to bring about any rise in the commercial temperature of the place. But, alas, one outstanding characteristic of Mergui eclipsed all others, and would certainly have broken the resolve of the most tenacious escapist. This was the smell. In Eastern travels one becomes so familiar with the smell of open drains that in the end it loses its power to offend. A selective mechanism comes into action. One can sniff appreciatively at the fragrances of drying tobacco leaves, aromatic resins and incenses while ignoring that of excrement. In Mergui such a discrimination was not possible. The whole of an otherwise charming promenade down by the sea befouled with a carpet of fish, spread out to decay sufficiently to be regarded as edible in the form of gnapi. ‘Most malodorous’, as the old Portuguese Father put it, with understatement. ‘The common people use a variety … which neither dogs nor cats will touch. This obviates the necessity of putting a watch over it. This class stinks so badly that people unaccustomed to such a bad smell have to hold their noses when they pass the place where it lies.’ Father Manrique’s observation was exact. The packs of ill-starred pariahs which infest Mergui’s streets, hunting continually for the wherewithal to keep life in their hideous bodies, salute the gnapi beds continually in the usual canine way, but make no attempt to eat it.

  Mergui’s dog population might prove a further deterrent to the would-be South Seas recluse. There are more dogs than humans; they are a slinking, evil breed, cursed with every conceivable affliction. Their suppurating wounds, their goitres, their tumours are hideously evident on their hairless bodies. Bitches suffering from some ghastly elephantiasis go trailing morbidly swollen paps in the dust. Many were earless, partially blind and had paralysed or dislocated limbs. There had been couplings with horrid pathological results it was impossible not to see. One dog’s hindquarters were completely out of action. It could only drag itself along by its front legs and whenever it stopped, being unable to sit down, it turned round several times and then collapsed. When the final twilight of decrepitude is reached, a ring of dogs forms and closing in upon the snapping, snarling victim, they devour it. In Upper Burma the only service the Japanese did the people was to eat most of the pariah dogs; which the Burmese will in no circumstances bring himself to kill. Perhaps even the Japanese stomach was turned by the dogs of Mergui.

  * * *

  The main street was Moulmein all over again. English had retained its prestige as the advertising medium. The Oriental Gents Smartman Tailors were there. You could buy an Ideal Leisure-time hat, or observe a cobbler at work under a tiger-flanked ‘Shoe to repair invisible’. The pharmaceutical trade was shared by Messrs. May and Baker, and Maclean, and the anonymous house responsible for that familiar Burmese specific composed of newly-hatched crocodiles in a black unguent. Misguided effort had gone into the manufacture of quaint miniatures, bullock-carts and peacocks, from the mother-of-pearl obtained from the giant conches which litter local beaches.

  There was one product of Mergui, famous in the old days, which I could not locate. ‘There is a village called Mirgim,’ said Caesar Fredericke, ‘in whose harbour every yeere there lade some ships with Verzina … which is an excellent wine … whose liquor they distill, and so make an excellent drinke cleare as christall, good to the mouth, and better to the stomake, and it hath an excellent gentle virtue, that if one were rotten with the french pockes, drinking good store of this, he shall be whole againe, and I have seene it proved, because that when I was in Cochin, there was a friend of mine, whose nose beganne to drop away with that disease, and he was counselled of the doctors of phisicke, that he should go to Tanasary at the time of the new wines, and that he should drinke of the nyper wine, night and day … This man went thither, and did so, and I have seene him after with good colour and sound.’

  * * *

  In those days Mergui was a port of Siam, as it was a hundred years later when it was the scene of the activities of the English pirate Samuel White, who got himself appointed harbour-master by the Siamese government. White was a latter-day De Brito, but a man of lesser calibre since whilst De Brito set out to turn Lower Burma into a Portuguese possession, all White hoped to do was to fill his pockets as quickly as possible and get back to England. The difference between common piracy and empire-building is a matter of scale and success. If White could have held on to Mergui and facilitated its ultimate annexation to the British crown he would have been an empire-builder but, as it was, his enterprise failed; although, by robbing all who fell into his clutches he put by enough to enable himself to set up as a squire when he finally reached home.

  The massacre by the Siamese that put an end to White’s dictatorship at Mergui resulted in the declaration of war upon Siam by the East India Company. This was a period when the interests of a commercial faction could be openly identified with those of the nation, and a declaration of war upon a friendly foreign power need be no more than a matter of resolution taken at a board meeting of directors. Fortunately for both nations, the company had another war on its hands at the time – with Aurungzeb – and could not spare men or ships to avenge the White debacle. The thing was allowed to fizzle out.

  * * *

  As the Menam would be continuing its voyage from Mergui down to Penang and Singapore, I had arranged to fly back from Mergui. In Rangoon the importance had been stressed of organising the return trip so as to avoid staying a night in Mergui. Outside Rangoon, hotels as Europeans understand them do not exist. Before the war, most towns had ‘Dak’ bungalows, or Circuit Houses for the accommodation of officials on tour. Although equipped with monastic simplicity, they were kept clean by a caretaker, and the traveller’s servant could cook him the kind of food he was used to. In this way the white man was able to maintain himself in hygienic isolation. Now, for one reason or another, the bungalows were not available; they had been bombed, had fallen derelict, or had been taken over by the military, or they were located outside the town in situations once desirable,
but now undefended from dacoits.

  At all events there were no lodgings to be had in Mergui, apart from Chinese dosshouses, at the thought of which even the Burmese shook their heads. In case an unexpected breakdown in arrangements compelled me to spend a night or more in Mergui, I was recommended to present myself at a Buddhist monastery, where I could always be sure of a well-swept corner, a clean mat, and a simple meal.

  There was a club-room atmosphere in the office of the airline which was reached by a rickety outside staircase, at the top of which a man lay in a hammock picking at the strings of a guitar. A highly efficient-looking radio set occupied most of one side of the room. It looked like ex-army equipment and although it had probably been installed for some technical reason, passers-by dropped in frequently to twiddle the many dials, producing, with cries of admiration, a vociferous cross-section of the radio programmes of Eastern Asia. A beautiful woman with golden safety-pins in her ears stood thumbing the pages of a Burmese ladies’ journal dealing with romance, fashions and the home, and called (in Burmese) The Bloodsucker. A further attraction was a fine, large tank of tropical fish, fitted with devices for maintaining an even temperature and aerating the water. An official, seeing my interest in this came over and described the various types of fish, and their peculiarities. There was one specimen of the most refined and fragile ugliness which, he claimed with pride, had never before been kept alive, in Mergui. That he had been able to do so he put down to the continual noise and light.

  When the matter of the plane was raised, he sighed. In the first place he had received no telegram, so no seat had been reserved. Anyway all the planes were booked for several trips ahead. He went away to confer with a colleague. There was a rattle of Burmese monosyllables in which such words as time-schedule, overbooked and Sunday-plane, continually occurred; fitful beams of comprehension that in some way contrived only to deepen the murk of future prospects. The Burmese language, as now spoken, is studded with English words which the Burmese find not easily translatable. All the sinister euphemisms like ‘liberation’ are there, and such verbs as ‘to neutralise’ are appropriated with joy. The official told me that it took six words to say Sunday-plane in Burmese, and the same number, of course, to say Thursday-plane. This also was ‘overbooked’. With knotted brow he re-checked his list. On Sunday a delegation was off to stick gold-leaf on the Shwedagon Pagoda. Thursday’s plane was monopolised by Rotarians. The Burmese people enjoyed travel. To be on the safe side he suggested that I should contact the shipping company. The Menam would be calling on its return journey in two weeks’ time. Or I could more easily get a plane from Moulmein – if only there were any way of getting to Moulmein.

  I went down to the police station to enquire for lodgings. Outside, a great crowd had collected to examine a travelling exhibit of photographs of traffic accidents. When fatal accidents happen in Burma the grim composition is left undisturbed until the police photographer arrives with his equipment, deftly composes the face – if any remains – of the victim, and sets to work. From these grisly tableaux I learned, by the way, that when a body is bisected by a train, the normal disposition of the parts can remain unaltered, top and bottom sections still tenuously united by the clothing.

  The station-sergeant was cheerful. There was no accommodation problem in Mergui. A constable was sent along to conduct me to a reeling shack, plastered with Chinese ideographs, with a notice in English which said ‘Yok Seng. Licensed under the hotel and restaurant tax act’. Yok Seng’s was on the edge of the residential quarter, and surrounding buildings were made entirely from the perforated steel used by the Americans on their airfield landing strips. This, in Mergui, being airy and dacoit-proof, is regarded as choice building material. But the quality of the material is offset by a serious disadvantage. The construction of a normal wooden Burmese house is a matter of skill and connoisseurship, called for on account of the invisible thread of fortune connecting the building with its inhabitants. The building posts, according to shape, are masculine, feminine, or neuter; and the feminine ones, which swell out at the base, are – provided that all other things are equal – fortunate and honourable. A fat Burmese manual exists, giving a great number of rules for the construction of the lucky house. It goes carefully into such questions as the number of and position of the knots in the wood, and the effect on the occupiers’ fortunes of the shape of the side pieces of the steps leading up to the veranda. Finally, the house-guardian, when it does not live in a coconut – as at Moulmein – occupies the south post of the house, which is adorned with leaves. There is no doubt that the terrible simplification introduced by the use of airstrip perforated-steel will produce new problems. There’s no luck – and no ill-luck – about the house. Its occupants must pay for their convenience by surrendering themselves to an atmosphere of ghastly spiritual neutrality.

  The ground-floor of Yok Seng’s place, which was open to the street, contained a few tables and chairs, and beneath them, on the beaten earth, pariah dogs and a stunted breed of Rhode Island Red chickens twitched and scuffled as vermin troubled their siesta.

  After the policeman had banged his rifle a few times on a table top, a Chinese came down some stairs in the rear, wiping his hands, as he approached us, on his only garment, a bloodstained pair of white slacks. There would be no trouble in putting me up, he said amiably and in excellent English. I could sleep anywhere I liked, on the floor downstairs – the shutters were pulled down at night – and this had the advantage of privacy. Or, if I liked company, he could find space on a comfortably boarded floor upstairs, where a few of his friends – all respectable merchants – were sleeping. Downstairs, of course, I could pick my own position, relax and have the place to myself. Better still, he said, as soon as the customers were gone he would put a couple of tables together and I could sleep on those.

  It was becoming clear to me that on my projected journey through the interior of Burma – if it became reality – I should not be able to look forward to anything in the matter of lodgings much better than Yok Seng’s establishment. Indeed the time might soon come when I should remember its appointments with nostalgia. I therefore settled there and then for the two tables, clinching the deal with the proprietor over a formal cup of tea.

  Much to my delight I found that besides running his hotel Yok Seng was in the export business, and that among the products he shipped to Hong Kong were as many edible birds’ nests as he could buy, although as they were at that time out of season, he was unable to show me any. From what he told me of his own experiences of this precious merchandise, together with the information given in a printed leaflet with which he presented me, I was able to form a clearer idea than ever before of the harassed existence of my favourite bird the Collocalia francica, or grey-rumped swift.

  The Collocalia francica which breeds in caves on islands of the Mergui archipelago is famed in the Far East for the immaculacy by which all its acts are characterised. In the leaflet – it was published in 1907 and had scientific pretensions – I read that this excellent bird was believed to obtain its nutriment from the air. Its name in Siamese means ‘wind-eating bird’, and it is stated never to have been observed in the act of taking solid food of any kind. The nest, which is fixed to the most inaccessible parts of high caves, is half the size of a small saucer. It is transparent and takes, in the first place, three months to make from the fine, weblike threads of saliva secreted by the bird. Its first nests are collected as soon as complete. The bird then hastily produces a second, which is regarded as an inferior cru; and when this is taken, a third, of which it is sometimes left in possession. These are ‘white’ nests, unsullied by any foreign material. A related species of bird, of less ethereal habits, produces ‘black’ nests, containing feathers, flies and even droppings. These are not acceptable in Hong Kong, the chief birds’ nest market; but find buyers among the less exacting Chinese of the Straits Settlements. The grey-rumped swift not only does not foul its nests, but does not permit its young to do so, althoug
h perhaps in view of its reputed feeding habits, the impulse is slight. At all events nests are as spotless and saleable after incubation as before.

  It was inevitable that so remarkable a performance should have attracted the attention of those dauntless empiricists, the Chinese. In about 1750 a Chinese called Hao Yieng presented his wife, children and slaves, together with fifty cases of tobacco to the Siamese king, asking in return to be allowed to collect birds’ nests on the islands. He soon became immensely rich and was made Governor of a province. Realising the value of the monopoly, the Crown then took over. A corps of hereditary collectors was created; officers of the crown who were not allowed to change their employment, and who were permitted to carry firearms to guard the caves. Nest poachers were heavily fined. After an analysis conducted in the manner of their day a body of early Chinese scientists unanimously declared that the nest was composed of solidified sea-foam. It was a short step to regarding it as an essential ingredient of the elixir of life. Although the elixir remained elusive, a combination of birds’ nests and ginseng is still considered by the Chinese to be the nearest thing to it ever discovered, and capable in nine cases out of ten of restoring to life a patient on the point of death.

  Unfortunately, said Yok Seng, many unscrupulous practices had crept into the trade. One was the manufacture by unprincipled persons of spurious nests. Such nests were made of jellies extracted from various seaweeds, and sometimes most artfully flavoured by the addition of a trifling percentage of the real thing. And just as in the intensive agriculture of Tonkin, where human excrement is the most valuable commodity after rice itself, there are assayers able to detect fraudulent adulteration with inferior substitutes, so the merchants of Mergui employed experts to nibble judiciously at samples of nests. ‘But be sure,’ said Yok Seng, ‘that when you order bird’s nest soup in a restaurant, it is the fake you will be served.’ It took a nest-eater of many years’ experience to tell the difference between the genuine article and the succulent imitation which would fail to double your span of years.