When the Going Was Good

by Evelyn Waugh

  ‘Yetto,’ I said that evening, ‘I think that tomorrow Jagger had better ride my horse. I can easily walk the next few stages.’

  ‘Dat’s all right, Chief,’ said Yetto. ‘Him not come on.’

  ‘Not come on?’

  ‘Him plenty sick. Him stay in his hammock, back where us had breakfast.’

  ‘But will he be all right?’

  ‘Oh yes, Chief, him’ll be all right. Him sick, dat’s all.’

  Later that evening half a dozen vaqueiros arrived with a drove of fifty cattle. I gave them quinine for Jagger and instructions to look after him, but I never heard whether or no he reached the savannah.

  During the first week’s ride, when I had been with Mr Bain, continually entertained by the fresh spate of his reminiscences, I had had practically no conversation with the boys. Now in the evenings, and particularly after wet days when I issued a ration of rum, I found them very sound company, particularly Yetto.

  Like most people in the colony Yetto had done a variety of jobs in his time. He had formed one of the police guard of honour when the Prince of Wales visited Georgetown and the Prince had shaken hands with him. He had once set out on an ill-fated expedition to Cuba – a story which was introduced by: ‘Chief, did you ever know a black man from Grenada named Adams?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Him stole twenty dollars off of me.’

  Adams had taken charge of the joint funds and absconded in Trinidad.

  Yetto had been married but had not liked it. He had seen the Georgetown riots. But the high summit of his experience had been a lucky strike as a ‘pork knocker’. He had come back to Georgetown with $800 and had spent it in six weeks.

  ‘Why, Chief, me took an automobile and drove round and round de town with three girls and me give them gold bangles and went to all de best rum shops and hotels. But me didn’t drink no rum, no Chief, nor beer either. It was gin and whisky all de time. Me didn’t get no sleep for days, driving round all night with the girls.’

  ‘But tell me, Yetto, did you get any better girls for all this money you were spending?’

  ‘No, Chief, just de same girls but me like to see dem happy. Dey was fine girls but you could get dem for a dollar a night. But me give dem gold bangles and gin and whisky and a drive round and round in an automobile. All de girls plenty fond of Yetto when he had de money. … But me was young den. Now me learned wisdom.’

  ‘What would you do if you had the money now?’

  There was a pause and I expected Yetto to tell me that he would buy a farm or a shop and settle down from the arduous and unsettled life he was now living. ‘Well, Chief, me tell you dis. Me would spend all de money on myself. Me would buy fine clothes and rings. Den de girls would go wid me for de hope of what me was going to give dem. And in de end me would give dem nothing.’ And he opened his vast mouth and roared with laughter, his gold teeth flashing in the firelight.

  But his pleasures had not been wholly philistine. During that rapturous six weeks an Italian opera singer had given a concert in Georgetown (… shadow and spangle of cheap tragedy … the ageing prima donna, Grand Dukes and English Milords behind her, pitifully touring, in the company of her seedy and devoted manager, yearly to more remote and less lucrative audiences to the final, tartarean abyss of a Georgetown concert hall …).

  ‘De cheapest ticket was two dollars but me went with my girl. Dere was all white people dere and de way her sung was wonderful, wid a different coloured dress for each song and dey was in all de languages, French and English and Italian and German and Spanish. Dat lady knew everything. Her made us cry.’

  The last time that Yetto had come up the trail had been in the company of a government vet. And his wife and the presence of the lady gave the occasion a peculiar lustre in Yetto’s eyes. It had been altogether a very magnificent expedition with collapsible camp tables, picnic baskets and a cocktail shaker. They had travelled ten miles a day on foot with a troop of porters. Every place where they had halted was sanctified in Yetto’s eyes. ‘Dis is where Mrs McDougal shot an accouri’ … ‘Dis is where Mrs McDougal was so weary dat Mr McDougal had to take off her boots’ … ‘Dis is where Mrs McDougal had a bath’ … Yetto had not missed a detail of her habits or idiosyncrasies. ‘Mrs McDougal had a great fancy for me. Her took my snapshot. Her said, “Now I must take Yetto,” and her did. Doctor McDougal promised to send me a print. Tomorrow me show you de very tree where Mrs McDougal took my snapshot. When we get to Takama her say, “I don’t know what we should have done without Yetto.” Dere’s nothing me wouldn’t do for Mrs McDougal.’

  On the third day from Kurupukari we crossed a dry creek and came into a little savannah named after the creek, Surana, where there was an Indian village. These were sophisticated Macushis who were in constant contact with the ranches and the traffic of the trail.

  About a dozen or fifteen huts could be seen at Surana. A polite English-speaking young man came out to meet me and showed me an empty mud and thatched hut where I could spend the night, and the water hole, half a mile distant, where I could wash. Later some of the women brought me a present of bananas. It was a hospitable place. Many of them assembled to stare and talk to the boys.

  ‘Dey all love Yetto,’ said Yetto.

  Next day we reached Anai on the edge of the savannah. It was exhilarating to see open country again after the cramped weeks in the forest.

  ‘Dat house is so healthy,’ said Yetto, ‘dat yo shiver all night.’

  There were other occupants on the evening of my arrival; a surly Syrian, with a flabby white face, grotesque in riding clothes.

  ‘Dat a very cruel man. Him tie up de Indians all night and beat dem until Mr Bain stop him.’

  Yetto’s predictions about the healthiness of the place proved quite accurate. It was deadly cold after the soft, close nights of the forest.

  Next day a painful ride, the first of many that were to follow. The heat was intense, glaring up off the earth so that my face was skinned under the shade of a broad-brimmed hat. Exhaustion was infectious; I felt it seeping up from the stumbling horse, seeping down into him from me. Constant urging was necessary to keep him at a trot. When he fell into a walk the dead hardness of the saddle was intolerable. Above all there was thirst. Later I had many longer and hotter days without water, but this was the first of them and I was fresh from the deep shade and purling creeks of the forest. The trail, clear enough in places, would sometimes dwindle and peter out among patches of dried sedge; then it was necessary to cast round in widening circles until I picked it up again after a loss of time and strength. Often it would split and divide into two equally prominent branches. In this way I must have covered nearly double the real distance, when, at about five in the afternoon, I arrived at my destination.

  This was the ranch of a man named Christie. I knew nothing about him except what I had been told the previous evening; that he was very old and ‘very religious’. His religion, I was warned, took the form that he did not participate in the open hospitality of the savannah. He allowed – he could scarcely have prevented it – passers-by to hobble their horses in his corral and sleep under his shelter, but that was the full extent of his goodwill.

  Visibility is poor on the savannah by reason of the ‘sand-paper’ trees. These low shrubs, six or ten feet in height, are scattered loosely all over the country at intervals of twenty yards or so; sometimes they are thicker and from a distance give the impression of a copse, but when approached always resolve into isolated units; they throw almost no shade; their leaves are very rough on one side and it is from this peculiarity that they get their name; their wood is brittle and useless for any practical purpose. Their only good quality, that I was able to discover, was the element of surprise that they gave to travelling. In some countries one sees the day’s objective from the start; it is there in front of one, hour after hour, mile after mile, just as remote, apparently, at noon as it had been at dawn; one’s eyes dazzle with constant staring. The ‘san
d-paper’ trees often hid a house from view – particularly the low, dun houses of the district – until one was practically inside it. Then there would be a sudden, exultant, a scarcely credulous, inward leap of delight as one realized, at the worst and almost desperate hour of the day, that one’s distress was over. Horse and I were both unsteady with fatigue when an Indian home came into view quite near us. Then another, with some women squatting in front. They ran in and hid at my approach but I rode up to the door and shouted into the darkness, making the motions of drinking. After some giggling and nudging one of them brought me out a calabash of cold water. Then I said ‘Christie’ and they repeated ‘Christie’ and giggled more. Finally one of them came out and pointed. Another twenty minutes brought me to the ranch. It was a handful of huts, thrown out haphazard on the ground like the waste stuff of a picnic party. There was no one about. I dismounted and walked round. The central and largest house was only half built but there was another near it with dilapidated thatch, open at all sides, which was distinguishable from the others by a plank floor, raised a couple of feet from the earth. Here, reclining in a hammock and sipping cold water from the spout of a white enamelled teapot, was Mr Christie.

  He had a long white moustache and a white woolly head; his face was of the same sun-baked, fever-blanched colour as were most faces in the colony but of unmistakable Negro structure. It is illegal for blacks – or for that matter, whites, unless they get permission – to settle in Indian country and I learned that for the first ten years or so of his residence there had been repeated attempts by the government to evict him; after that they had let him be. I greeted him and asked where I could water my horse. He smiled in a dreamy, absent-minded manner and said, ‘I was expecting you. I was warned in a vision of your approach.’

  He climbed out of the hammock, looked about for shoes, found only one, and hobbled across to shake hands with me.

  ‘I always know the character of any visitors by the visions I have of them. Sometimes I see a pig or a jackal; often a ravaging tiger.’

  I could not resist asking, ‘And how did you see me?’

  ‘As a sweetly toned harmonium,’ said Mr Christie politely.

  He pointed out the tenuous straggle of footpath that led to the water hole. I took off saddle and bridle and led the horse down by his rope halter. He whinnied at the smell of water and we both drank immoderately; he was trembling in the legs and lathered in sweat but, I was glad to find, not galled. I sluiced him down, turned him into the corral, and left him happily rolling in the dust. Then I slung my hammock under a shelter near Mr Christie’s house and fell asleep until, two hours later, the rest of my party arrived. They had my change of clothes with them. As soon as they arrived I got out of boots and breeches, had a bath and a mug of rum. I drank a lot of rum that evening; how much I did not realize until next morning when I discovered the empty bottle. Sinclair, knowing that there was a row in the air, had picked a handful of limes on his way. He filled up the mug assiduously with rum and limes and brown sugar and cold, rather muddy water. I did not investigate the boys’ quarrel and Sinclair did not get the sack. The sweet and splendid spirit, the exhaustion of the day, its heat, thirst, hunger and the effects of the fall, the fantastic conversations of Mr Christie, translated that evening and raised it a finger’s breadth above reality.

  The lamp stood on the floor in the middle of the shelter so that all the faces were illumined as faces are not meant to be seen; from below with cheek bones casting shadows across their eyes and strong light under the brows and chin and nostrils. Everyone in the vicinity came round to watch me eat supper. Mr Christie stalked round and round the lamp telling me about God.

  He asked me whether I were a ‘believer’ and I said yes, a Catholic.

  ‘There are some good Catholics,’ conceded Mr Christie, ‘they are far from the truth but they are in the right direction. Only the other evening I was looking at the choir of the blessed singing before the throne of God and to my great surprise, I recognized the late Bishop of Guiana … but they take too much on themselves. Their ministers like to be called “father”. There is only one “Father” – the one above.’

  ‘Have you the same objection to children addressing their male parent in that way?’

  ‘It is a terrible thing to be a male parent’ – Mr Christie had a large family by an Indian mistress – ‘Verily it is written’ – and he quoted some text I cannot remember to the effect that children are a curse. ‘Why only the other day my eldest son begat a child by a woman of no cultivation. He even speaks of marrying her.’

  ‘But living as you do out here in the savannah, is lack of cultivation a very serious matter?’

  ‘It is very serious when she will not sing,’ said Mr Christie severely.

  We spoke of the uncle of some friends of mine who had worked in this district as a missionary and retired to England as the result of a complete breakdown.

  ‘That man had the devil in him,’ said Mr Christie. ‘Do you know what he did? He boiled a chicken in the place where I used to say my prayers. I have never been there since. It was defiled.’

  I told him that the priest had since recovered his health and was working on the South Coast.

  ‘No, no, I assure you that the contrary is the case. He appeared to me the other night and all the time he spoke to me his head rolled about the floor in a most horrible manner. So I knew he was still mad.’

  Every Sunday he preached for four or five hours to the neighbouring Indians. I asked him whether his work among them was successful. ‘No, not successful, you could not call it successful. I have been here for thirty years and so far have made no converts at all. Even my own family have the devil in them.’

  He told me that he was at work on a translation of the scriptures into Macushi, ‘but I have to change and omit a great deal. There is so much I do not agree with … but I am not worried. I expect the end of the world shortly.’ Some years back he had seen a number flashed in the sky and that was the number of days remaining. I asked him how he knew that that was the meaning of the number.

  ‘What else could it be?’ he asked.

  As I sat soaking rum he told of numerous visions. How when his mistress died he had heard a voice from heaven say, ‘The old horse is dead.’

  ‘It did not mean that she was like a horse. In some ways she was very pretty. It meant no more riding for me.’

  Lately he had been privileged to see the total assembly of the elect in heaven.

  ‘Were there many of them?’

  ‘It was hard to count because you see they had no bodies but my impression is that there were very few.’

  I asked if he believed in the Trinity. ‘Believe in it? I could not live without it But the mistake the Catholics make is to call it a mystery. It is all quite simple to me.’ He told me how the Pope had had a French admiral murdered and his heart sent to Rome in a gold box; also that Freemasons stole bodies out of the cemetery and kept them in a cellar below every Lodge. You could always tell a Freemason, he said, because they had VOL branded on their buttocks. ‘It means volunteer, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I can’t think why.’

  Presently some of the onlookers in the outer circle came into the hut and squatted down round the lamp. I had some cocoa made and handed round. One of Mr Christie’s daughters had married an East Indian. The man put a naked child on my knee and attempted to interest me in a row he was having with the policeman at Anai about illicit tobacco selling. It was all a trumped-up charge, he said, the result of spite. But I was not in the mood to follow his difficulties.

  After a little I fell asleep and woke up to find the party still going on and Mr Christie still talking of visions and mystic numbers. When I next awoke they had all gone away, but I could hear Mr Christie prowling round in the darkness outside and muttering to himself.

  Next day was easy going.

  The ranch I was making for was the property of a Georgetown Chinaman named Mr Wong, who was one of Yetto’s heroes on account of hi
s reputation for high play at cards. The manager was a swarthy, genial man, with a well-trained Indian mistress. He was clever with his fingers and the eaves of the huts were hung with bridles and whips of plaited hide and ornamented saddles of his own making. There was a certain swagger in his clothes; he had a big-brimmed, leather-bound Brazilian hat, large silver buckles down the sides of his leggings and a silver-hilted knife stuck into one of them; large spurs were strapped on to his bare, horny heels.

  I asked the way to wash and was shown a path through the vegetable garden into a belt of bush. I went down and, pushing through, suddenly found a sharp precipice at my feet and a dark, swift river of some breadth. It was unexpected and dramatic after the great stretch of arid savannah all round. On the opposite side there was the same clay cliff and a fringe of bush; that was Brazil. I had not taken in – for the ranch was not marked on the map – that I was already at the frontier and that this was the Ireng. I was to see plenty of this river later on and grow to hate it.

  The river bank was infested by cabouri fly, odious insects so small that they easily penetrate any ordinary mosquito curtain; they breed in running water and attack in great numbers. You cannot feel their bite until they have finished sucking; then they leave a little black spot behind them and a circle of burning flesh.

  Insects played a prominent part in my experience throughout all this period. For the preceding week I had been discomforted by bêtes rouges, a minute red creature which brushes off the leaves of the bush on to one’s clothes and finds its way below one’s skin where it causes unendurable itching. My arms and legs were covered with these in spite of crab oil and antiseptic soap and I scratched until I was raw. It is quite accurate to say that in the weeks from leaving Kurupukari until some time after my final return to Georgetown, there was not a two-inch square on my body that was not itching at some time of the day or night.

  A Portuguese family came to call that afternoon with a guitar. They all came in and solemnly shook hands with me – about eight of them – on arrival and on departure.