Travels

by Paul Bowles

  “Well, how much would it be to send it by sea mail?” (I thought we could then calculate the surcharge for air mail, but I had misjudged my man.)

  “Yes,” he replied evenly. “That is a good method, too.”

  I decided to keep the letter and post it in the nearby town of Nagercoil another day. In a little while I would have several to add to it, and I counted on being able to send them all together when I went. Before I left the post office I hazarded the remark that the weather was extremely hot. In that airless attic at noon it was a wild understatement. But it did not please the postmaster at all. Deliberately he removed his glasses and pointed the stems at me.

  “Here we have the perfect climate,” he told me. “Neither too cold nor too cool.”

  “That is true,” I said. “Thank you.”

  In the past few years there have been visible quantitative changes in Indian life, all in the one direction of Europeanization. This is in the smaller towns; the cities of course have long since been westernized. The temples which before were lighted by bare electric bulbs and coconut-oil lamps now have fluorescent tubes glimmering in their ceilings. Crimson, green and amber floodlights are used to illumine bathing tanks, deities, the gateways of temples. The public-address system is the bane of the ear these days, even in the temples. And it is impossible to attend a concert or a dance recital without discovering several loudspeakers whose noise completely destroys the quality of the music. A mile before you arrive at the cinema of a small town you can hear the raucous blaring of the amplifier they have set up at its entrance.

  The well-suited author, correcting proofs – this was probably in Ceylon or southern India, judging by the cloth behind him, in the 1950s

  This year in South India there are fewer men with bare torsos, dhotis and sandals; more shirts, trousers and shoes. There is at the same time a slow shutting-down of services which to the Western tourist make all the difference between pleasure and discomfort in traveling, such as the restaurants in the stations (there being no dining cars on the trains) and the showers in the first-class compartments. A few years ago they worked; now they have been sealed off. You can choke on the dust and soot of your compartment, or drown in your own sweat now, for all the railway cares.

  At one point I was held for forty-eight hours in a concentration camp run by the Ceylon government on Indian soil. (The euphemism for this one was “screening camp.”) I was told that I was under suspicion of being an international spy. My astonishment and indignation were regarded as almost convincing in their sincerity, thus proof of my guilt.

  “But who am I supposed to be spying for?” I asked piteously.

  The director shrugged. “Spying for international,” he said.

  More than the insects or the howling of pariah dogs outside the rolls of barbed wire, what bothered me was the fact that in the center of the camp, which at that time housed some twenty thousand people, there was a loudspeaker in a high tower which during every moment of the day roared forth Indian film music. Fortunately it was silenced at ten o’clock each evening. I got out of the hell-hole only by making such violent trouble that I was dragged before the camp doctor, who decided that I was dangerously unbalanced. The idea in letting me go was that I would be detained further along, and the responsibility would fall on other shoulders. “They will hold him at Talaimannar,” I heard the doctor say. “The poor fellow is quite mad.”

  Here and there, in places like the bar of the Hotel Metropole at Mysore, or at the North Coorg Club of Mercara, one may still come across vestiges of the old colonial life: ghosts in the form of incredibly sunburned Englishmen in jodhpurs and boots discussing their hunting luck and prowess. But these visions are exceedingly rare in a land that wants to forget their existence.

  The younger generation in India is intent on forgetting a good many things, including some that it might do better to remember. There would seem to be no good reason for getting rid of their country’s most ancient heritage, the religion of Hinduism, or of its most recent acquisition, the tradition of independence. This latter, at least insofar as the illiterate masses are concerned, is inseparable not only from the religious state of mind which made political victory possible, but also from the legend which, growing up around the figure of Gandhi, has elevated him in their minds to the status of a god.

  The young, politically minded intellectuals find this not at all to their liking; in their articles and addresses they have returned again and again to the attack against Gandhi as a “betrayer” of the Indian people. That they are motivated by hatred is obvious. But what do they hate?

  For one thing, subconsciously they cannot accept their own inability to go on having religious beliefs. Then, belonging to the group without faith, they are thereby forced to hate the past, particularly the atavisms which are made apparent by the workings of the human mind with its irrationality, its subjective involvement in exterior phenomena. The floods of poisonous words they pour forth are directed primarily at the adolescents; this is an age group which is often likely to find demagoguery more attractive than common sense.

  There are at least a few of these enlightened adolescents in every town; the ones here in Cape Comorin were horrified when by a stratagem I led them to the home of a man of their own village who claims that his brother is under a spell. (They had not imagined, they told me later, that an American would believe such nonsense.) According to the man Subramaniam, his brother was a painter who had been made art director of a major film studio in Madras. To substantiate his story he brought out a sheaf of very professional sketches for film sets.

  “Then my brother had angry words with a jealous man in the studio,” said Subramaniam, “and the man put a charm on him. His mind is gone. But at the end of the year it will return.” The brother presently appeared in the courtyard; he was a vacant-eyed man with a beard, and he had a voluminous turkish towel draped over his head and shoulders. He walked past us and disappeared through a doorway.

  “A spirit doctor is treating him . . .” The modern young men shifted their feet miserably; it was unbearable that an American should be witnessing such shameful revelations, and that they should be coming from one in their midst.

  But these youths who found it so necessary to ridicule poor Subramaniam failed to understand why I laughed when, the conversation changing to the subject of cows, I watched their collective expression swiftly change to one of respect bordering on beatitude. For cow worship is one facet of popular Hinduism which has not yet been totally superseded by twentieth-century faithlessness. True, it has taken on new forms of ritual. Mass cow worship is often practiced now in vast modern concrete stadiums, with prizes being distributed to the owners of the finest bovine specimens, but the religious aspect of the celebration is still evident. The cows are decorated with garlands of jewelry, fed bananas and sugar cane by people who have waited in line for hours to be granted that rare privilege; and when the satiated animals can eat no more they simply lie down or wander about, while hundreds of young girls perform sacred dances in their honor.

  In India, where the cow wishes to go she goes. She may be lying in the temple, where she may decide to get up to go and lie instead in the middle of the street. If she is annoyed by the proximity of the traffic streaming past her, she may lumber to her feet again and continue down the street to the railway station, where, should she feel like reclining in front of the ticket window, no one will disturb her. On the highways she seems to know that the drivers of trucks and buses will spot her a mile away and slow down almost to a stop before they get to her, and that therefore she need not move out from under the shade of the particular banyan tree she has chosen for her rest. Her superior position in the world is agreed upon by common consent.

  The most satisfying exposition I have seen of the average Hindu’s feeling about this exalted beast is a little essay composed by a candidate for a post in one of the public services, entitled simply “The Cow.” The fact that it was submitted in order to show the aspirant’s m
astery of the English language, while touching, is of secondary importance.

  The Cow

  The cow is one wonderful animal, also he is quadruped and because he is female he gives milk – but he will do so only when he has got child. He is same like God, sacred to Hindu and useful to man. But he has got four legs together. Two are foreward and two are afterwards.

  His whole body can be utilized for use. More so the milk. What it cannot do? Various ghee, butter, cream, curds, whey, kova and the condensed milk and so forth. Also, he is useful to cobbler, watermans and mankind generally.

  His motion is slow only. That is because he is of amplitudinous species, and also his other motion is much useful to trees, plants as well as making fires. This is done by making flat cakes in hand and drying in the sun.

  He is the only animal that extricates his feedings after eating. Then afterwards he eats by his teeth which are situated in the inside of his mouth. He is incessantly grazing in the meadows.

  His only attacking and defending weapons are his horns, especially when he has got child. This is done by bowing his head whereby he causes the weapons to be parallel to ground of earth and instantly proceeds with great velocity forwards.

  He has got tail also, but not like other similar animals. It has hairs on the end of the other side. This is done to frighten away the flies which alight on his whole body and chastises him unceasingly, whereupon he gives hit with it.

  The palms of his feet are so soft unto the touch so that the grasses he eats would not get crushed. At night he reposes by going down on the ground and then he shuts his eyes like his relative the horse which does not do so. This is the cow.

  The moths and night insects flutter about my single oil lamp. Occasionally, at the top of its chimney, one of them goes up in a swift, bright flame. On the concrete floor in a fairly well-defined ring around the bottom of my chair are the drops of sweat that have rolled off my body during the past two hours. The doors into both the bedroom and the bathroom are shut; I work each night in the dressing room between them, because fewer insects are attracted here. But the air is nearly unbreathable with the stale smoke of cigarettes and bathi sticks burned to discourage the entry of winged creatures. Today’s paper announced an outbreak of bubonic plague in Bellary. I keep thinking about it, and I wonder if the almost certain eventual victory over such diseases will prove to have been worth its price: the extinction of the beliefs and rituals which gave a satisfactory meaning to the period of consciousness that goes between birth and death. I doubt it. Security is a false god; begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost.

  The Passport

  Journal, included in Cherie Nutting’s ‘Yesterday’s Perfume: An Intimate Portrait of Paul Bowles’

  AHMED AND I were invited one afternoon by the brother of Justin Daranayafala, who was the curator of the Dehiwala zoo. I had expressed a great desire to see the tiger cubs. He brought them out. Of course they were beautiful, a little larger and heavier than full grown cats, and with enormous paws, already capable of doing damage with their claws, which they kept politely sheathed. Indeed, their behavior was impeccable throughout the meeting. It was hard to believe that one was holding and caressing a real Bengal tiger. Presently our host announced that he was willing to sell the couple, and for a reasonable price: $800 for the two, brother and sister. I was tempted, but quickly realized that travelling with tigers, even in their infancy, would present insurmountable problems. And when they grew up, what would one do with them? It would be worse than what Sir Michael Puff was faced with, when he purchased a young elephant and took it home to Wales. An elephant can be managed if it has a wise mahout with it always, but two adult tigers would present problems.

  Perhaps the pleasure of holding and stroking these two innocuous babes helped to diminish Ahmed’s instinctive sense of dread. Clearly he knew tigers were dangerous beasts, but when we got to Mysore and had the Maharaja’s tiger fields to ourselves, he seemed to forget what he knew, and let what he felt direct his actions. He remembered the handfuls of soft fur, and since this had been his only tactile contact, the tiger became a friendly animal. At all events, he came perilously close to losing his life as a result.

  I believe that the Maharaja had consulted Hagenbeck in designing the topography of his zoo. The tigers had a large tract of land at their disposal, and there was no wall to enclose them. The outside was protected from the inside by a deep dry moat, into which the animals were careful not to fall. There was a low white building which served as a bridge across the ditch. It had metal rings up the side, and Ahmed was quick to climb to the top. It was a flat roof with no railing. Three tigers became aware of his presence and came rushing down the hill. I assume it was from that roof that the attendant tossed their food down to them, for they were in a state of great excitement. They leapt and roared again and again, and their huge claws scraped the wall. When Ahmed saw how close they came to his feet as he stood at the edge he seemed to have dropped into a state of hypnosis, and might have fallen either backward or forward. I began to shout, “Don’t move!” This may have brought him back to reality, as he began to move away from the edge. The roaring and leaping went on, even after he climbed down to the ground. Later he was not eager to discuss the incident.

  Worlds of Tangier

  Holiday, March 1958

  IN THE SUMMER of 1931, Gertrude Stein invited me to stay a fortnight in her house at Bilignin, in southern France, where she always spent the warm months of the year. At the beginning of the second week she asked me where I intended to go when I left. Not having seen much of the world, I replied that I thought Villefranche would be a good place. She was gently contemptuous. “Anybody can go to the Riviera,” she declared. “You ought to go somewhere better than that. Why don’t you go to Tangier?” I was hesitant, and explained that living there might cost more than my budget allowed me. “Nonsense,” she said. “It’s cheap. It’s just the place for you.”

  A week later I was aboard a little ship called the Iméréthie 11 bound for various North African ports, and ever since I have been grateful to Gertrude Stein for her intelligent suggestion. Beginning with the first day and continuing through all the years I have spent in Tangier, I have loved the white city that sits astride its hills, looking out across the Strait of Gibraltar to the mountains of Andalusia.

  In those days Tangier was an attractive, quiet town with about 60,000 inhabitants. The Medina looked ancient, its passageways were full of people in bright outlandish costumes, and each street leading to the outskirts was bordered by walls of cane, prickly pear and high-growing geranium. Today, where this thick vegetation grew, are the cracking façades of new apartment houses; the Moslems have discarded their frogged Oriental jackets and enormous trousers of turquoise, orange, pistachio or shocking pink, to don Levis, and second-hand raincoats imported by the bale from America; the population has augmented at least threefold, and I’m afraid the city would never strike a casual visitor as either quiet or attractive. There must be few places in the world which have altered visually to such an extent in the past quarter of a century.

  A town, like a person, almost ceases to have a face once you know it intimately, and visual modifications are skin-deep; the character is determined largely by its inhabitants, and a good deal of time is required to change their attitudes and behavior. Tangier can still be a fascinating place for the outsider who has the time and inclination to get acquainted with its people. The foreigner who lives here on a long-term basis will still find most of the elements which endeared the place to him in the old days, because he knows where to look for them. Tangier is still a small town in the sense that you literally cannot walk along a principal street without meeting a dozen of your friends with whom you must stop and chat. What starts out to be a ten-minute stroll will normally take an hour or more.

  You will run into a Polish refugee who arrived ten years ago without a penny, borrowed enough to become a peanut vendor, and today runs a prosperous delicatessen and liquor stor
e; an American construction worker who came to Morocco to help build the United States air bases, and has since become a freelance journalist; a Moslem who spent years in a Spanish jail for voicing his opinions on Generalissimo Franco, and now is a clerk in the municipal administration offices; a tailor from Rome who has not amassed the fortune he had counted on and wants to go home; an English masseuse who was passing through Tangier twenty years ago on a holiday trip and somehow has never left; a Belgian architect who also runs the principal bookshop; a Moslem who taught in the University of Prague for seventeen years and now gives private Arabic lessons; a Swiss businessman who likes the climate and has started a restaurant and bar for his own amusement; an Indian prince who does accounting for an American firm; the Portuguese seamstress who makes your shirts; and in addition you will be hailed by a good many Spaniards, most of whom were born in Tangier and have never lived anywhere else. The Moslems account for roughly 70 percent of the population; they still sit in their tiny cafés, drinking tea and coffee, playing cards, checkers and dominoes, shouting above the din of Egyptian music on the radio. Nothing has really changed here either.

  Although the people who love Tangier sometimes feel as though there were a conspiracy afoot to make it the most hideous place on earth, actually such a project would prove extremely difficult. With the exception of a few corners of the Medina, where the old Moorish architecture has not yet been improved upon, there is nothing left to spoil. And even when the veil has been removed from the face of the last woman to wear one, so she can do her shopping sporting a rayon-satin evening gown four sizes too large for her, and the final old house with a fortress-like façade and one great studded door is demolished to make room for a six-family concrete dwelling with fluorescent lighting in every room, the town will still look very much the same.