by John Masters
‘A bottle and a half!’ Richard cried. ‘But … you might kill yourself!’
‘Plenty Navajo do … whisky, tequila … freeze in the street. No room in the jail for all Navajos, and in winter … plenty cold.’
‘Can’t you get a beer or a drink at home?’
Susan cut in, ‘No liquor is allowed on any Indian reservation, Richard. They asked for that law themselves.’
Chee said, ‘Right, madam … so no bars. Nearest bars in Gallup, Flagstaff, Cortez … white man make plenty money out of drunken Indians there … But it take me two days to walk to Gallup. So, when I get there … once a month … drink for whole month, eh?’
Richard gazed around, at the barren landscape, the slow-moving flock of sheep in the distance … no electric light, no running water, very little cultivation … and apparently the only escape in faraway bars, and oblivion.
He said, ‘Are there any doctors, here? Nurses?’
Chee said, ‘One doctor, Fort Defiance … Indian Service.’
‘And how big is the reservation?’
Chee shrugged, ‘Big … two hundred miles each way.’
‘Forty thousand square miles!’ Richard gasped.
‘Two hundred and fifty thousand Navajo, thirty thousand Hopi live here.’
‘It’s … disgraceful!’ Richard cried. ‘How is it possible, how can the Government allow it? Babies must die of all sorts of curable and really quite minor diseases … women in childbirth … men from small cuts that must go septic … gangrene … accidents.’
Chee said, ‘Yes.’
After a long time, as the Buick passed on over the dusty road, climbing gradually to pine-covered hills, Benally groped in his pocket and pulled out a pale blue ribbon, the blue studded with white stars, a medal clasp dependent from it. He hung the whole round his neck.
‘What’s that?’ Richard asked.
‘The Congressional Medal of Honour,’ Susan said. ‘Did you win that, Mr Benally? John didn’t tell us.’
Chee smiled again, ‘Yes, I win it … Isseaudun, some name like that … I wear it when I go Fort Defiance. Then the clerk in Agent’s office feel bad … so he lend me some money for Gallup … I come back with medal on, he don’t ask for money back … Fort Defiance,’ he said, pointing – ‘Sanostee, fifty miles, that way. We go tomorrow. Road bad, but this car go. I show you how Navajo people live … and die. Everyone near starving in Sanostee – bad snow, bad rain, bad crop, sheep dying … people dying, flu. Only one cure.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Whisky.’
They were walking down Iberville Street, in the New Orleans dusk, the gas lamps bright. Sounds of a trumpet playing ragtime rang out loud and demanding from behind drawn curtains on an upper floor, the curtains back-lit by a reddish glow. Women in dresses cut so low as to reveal the whole outward swell of their breasts, including the nipples, hung over second-floor wrought iron balconies. ‘You want to hear some real good music, doctor,’ one cried, in a hoarse sensuous voice, smiling down at Richard. ‘C’mon up. And you’ll be able to see me without those glasses … all of me.’
Richard and Susan hurried on, heads bent. A saxophone from another tall house joined the trumpet. Half a dozen Negro youths stomped down the street, clapping hands and dancing with a powerful tribal rhythm, shouting in a syncopated beat, and the shouts were not words, but more like exclamations of ecstasy or uncontrollable excitement. Behind the steamy plate-glass windows at street level, men in white aprons were shucking oysters over great barrels of ice. There were women in the street doorways now, beckoning, flaunting their over-ripe bodies, painted faces, painted lips, dyed hair …
‘It’s … like what I’ve heard about Port Said,’ Richard said hoarsely. ‘Or Rio de Janeiro … some Latin or Arab country. Not a white one …’
‘We aren’t,’ Susan said.
‘Look,’ Richard pointed. ‘The Negroes have to get in the back of the buses … there are signs everywhere, even in the WCs – Coloured, White … yet some of these street women are black, or mulatto. That was a Negro with the trumpet, who pulled back the curtains and looked out while he was playing, and I saw white men behind him. Everything’s mixed up … Do they have many riots here?’
Susan said, ‘You don’t feel safe? No, they don’t, as far as I know. There’s a time when everyone goes mad – Mardi Gras – but it doesn’t get out of hand.’
‘I don’t understand why not,’ Richard said. ‘There are a lot of things I don’t understand.’
‘And not only about New Orleans?’
Richard said, ‘Yes … Look let’s go in here and have some oysters.’
Five minutes later they were sitting at a table in a small oyster house, two dozen oysters on the half shell before them. Richard took an oyster, tilted the shell, and swallowed. ‘All right,’ he said after a while. ‘Not as good as a fresh Whitstable or Colchester, but … one can eat pretty well here, in New Orleans. A bit of a change from the rest of the country, except San Francisco … no decent bacon, no decent puddings, the beef always overdone, salads instead of good hot vegetables.’
Susan looked at him over the rim of her wine glass, smiling – ‘And tomorrow we leave for Atlanta. More segregation, more signs – White, Coloured. And the food will all be Southern Fried, in deep fat.’ Richard shuddered and murmured, ‘Don’t!’ She continued, ‘How do you feel now about bringing the family over here to live?’
Richard said nothing, ate two oysters, took off his glasses, polished them, put them back on, and looked at his wife: at last – ‘I don’t know how you, as an American, were able to accept us – the British – as thoroughly as you have. We are apt to think of Americans as Englishmen who boast a lot and speak English very badly. But … this is a foreign country, and Americans are foreigners, just as much so as Frenchmen or Egyptians.’
Susan said, ‘Women are adaptable. They have to be. And we were both a lot younger. I wouldn’t mind coming back to live … after all, it was my home … but I didn’t think you realised what was involved. I didn’t think you would be happy, once you understood that we have as many problems, and as serious ones, as you do … only in different areas. You don’t have a Negro problem, because you don’t have any Negroes. Same with the Indians. Our real trouble is that we’ve set ourselves certain goals, as a nation, and we’re not living up to them … one nation indivisible, with justice for all. We say it, but we don’t live it. You know that now. We’ve always known it, and under the bustle and bluster there’s a guilty conscience. It’ll change, but not without tears … and years.’
‘We’d better go home,’ Richard said. ‘Heaven knows how I shall manage to survive with the unions … with a Socialist government likely in a few years … with wages going up all the time, costs too … Well, we’ve faced worse things before, and we’ll have to face these, too, as best we can … Let’s have some more oysters. You know what they’re supposed to do. I feel like testing it out tonight.’
She blushed, smiling, and put her hand to his.
Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, April 15, 1919
INDEMNITY MODIFICATION
From our Special Correspondent, Paris, Monday. A statement has reached me to the effect that the arrangement concluded on Saturday about the payment of a war indemnity by Germany has been modified. According to what I was told, Germany would have to undertake to pay all war damages and destructions by fifty annual sums, the total exceeding by far the provisional 150 milliards (£6,000,000,000) already mentioned. At the same time the first instalment of 25,000,000,000 francs would have to be disbursed within the next eighteen months.
Cate thought, that’s all very well, but how in fact do the Germans pay? Before the election the politicians were all shouting for blood. Now they were beginning to hedge, but their electioneering speeches hung round their necks, like dead albatrosses. Suppose coal from the Saar, which was being seized, was sent to Britain to pay part of the indemnity … what would happen to British coal, and British coal miners?
The same applied if German steel was seized, German ships and shipping taken to carry British and other world trade. Yet … yet, he felt as strongly as anyone that the Germans must be made to pay, somehow, for all the misery they had brought upon the world. But how?
He turned to another page.
SERIOUS RIOTS IN INDIA
EUROPEANS KILLED
Mr Montagu, Secretary for India, replying in the House of Commons yesterday to Colonel Wedgwood (C.L. Newcastle-under-Lyme), said he regretted to have to state that there had been further riots at Lahore and slight rioting at Allahabad, where the city telegraph office had been burned, and at Amritsar where the telegraph office and other buildings had been destroyed. There had been some loss of life, including Europeans …
Relying to a further question, Mr Montagu said he did not think it would be safe, in the present condition of the world, to attribute these riots to any one cause.
Didn’t he indeed, Cate thought. Gandhi’s movement to end British rule by passive resistance, which they had all been hearing about for some time now, had obviously turned violent. Quentin was out there, now, so they might learn more about it from him; but whether his station of Hassanpore, was anywhere near Allahabad, Lahore, or Amritsar, he had no idea. In some ways, the war communiqués from all over the world had been one long, ghastly geography lesson. Now it looked as if the British were going to get another one, this time to teach them more about the sub-continent they ruled – and, he admitted, knew next to nothing about.
Chapter 22
Hedlington, Kent: April, 1919
Richard Rowland, two days back from America, looked up from a piece of paper in his hand – ‘Nineteen per cent absent today. What is it at HAC?’
John Merritt said, ‘About fifteen. All flu, I suppose.’
‘Some damned shirkers among them, too, I’ll bet,’ Richard said. ‘I’m going to demand doctors’ certificates from every one of them when they come back, or they’ll get docked all pay.’
‘A lot of them don’t go to doctors,’ John said. ‘They don’t think the doctor can do anything. And they can’t afford it.’ He spoke seriously, and the expression in his face was of its now habitual grimness, mouth in a straight line, eyes level under straight brows.
Richard said, ‘I’m going to get some sort of proof, or’ – he made a cutting motion with his hand – ‘out! There are five men ready to take every job that becomes vacant. Next week I’m going to cut pay, in accordance with the productivity study Overfeld and I made before I went to America. Overfeld’s had time to check it out thoroughly in practice, and it works.’
John said, ‘We’ll have trouble, Richard. The union has amassed enough funds to hit us with another strike. And this time, it could last much longer.’
‘Let them do it,’ Richard said. ‘We’ll just hire new men … You and Stella are coming to dinner tomorrow night, aren’t you? Good. Well, we’ll tell you all about our trip then, but I want to tell you about your Indian friend now … We were on the Navajo reservation three days – two at Fort Defiance and one with his people at Sanostee. Benally was drunk all the time … either just recovering, actually drinking, or in an unconscious stupor. One of his brothers was the same. He wants to marry but none of the other families will let him have one of their daughters. He’s in a bad way.’ He paused, and took off the thick spectacles that had earned him the nickname, from boyhood, of Giglamps; and said, ‘If you ask me, John, the whole Navajo tribe is in a bad way. All the Red Indians we saw are. I don’t know much about American history, or exactly why the Indians have to be kept on these reservations – but they seem to be mostly desert. A lot of Indians starve whenever there’s a bad crop, or anything goes wrong with the grazing for their sheep. The Indian Service people we met at Fort Defiance were treating them like children, or savages – enemy savages. They’re in despair. Particularly the young men who went to the war. They’ve seen the rest of the world, and they’ve fought for their country, and then they come home to … that.’
John said heavily, ‘I know. It’s as bad … or worse … for our Negroes and Mexicans.’
‘Perhaps,’ Richard said. ‘But somehow that didn’t bother me half as much. But the Indians … damn it, it’s their country! They need help, but heaven knows where it’s going to come from. Not from Washington, obviously … Only from the bottle, Benally says.’
The door opened, bringing in Miss Harcourt and a rumble of noise from the plant across the hall and beyond the wall. John got up – ‘I’d better get back to HAC. Frank Stratton’s taking over again as works foreman today. He was demobbed in January, but he took a long holiday – actually he went to a motor car racing track outside Paris and worked on his motor cycle for two months … then Guy had him taught to fly, but now he’s back.’
‘He’s separated from his wife, isn’t he?’
John nodded – ‘Yes. They’re both miserable.’
John thrashed and turned in bed in increasing pain. His back hurt, with acute stabbing sensations that were beginning to spread into his loins. He felt dry and hot, his head throbbing and aching, his eyes sore and scratchy. From downstairs he heard the clock in the hall strike two … two o’clock in the morning. Stella slept beside him, calm, unmoving … she’d had her injection just before bedtime. God knew what her dreams were, but whatever they were, she was unaware of him or his pain.
He struggled out of bed and sat a moment on the edge, his head in his hands. Got to take my temperature … or throw up … both … He rushed to the bathroom, switched on the light, and hung over the toilet bowl, retching. Nothing came. After five minutes of struggling to conquer the nausea, he found the thermometer in the medicine cabinet, put it under his tongue, and looked at his watch. Three minutes … 103. He took it out, washed it in cold water, shook it down, and replaced it. He had the influenza.
He crawled back into bed and waited for the light to come. Before dawn he developed a dry cough, that possessed him in short, desperate paroxysms. Stella did not stir. He’d have to call Dr Kimball … or a doctor from Hedlington might be younger, and more up to date with the treatment for flu. They’d all had enough practice since it first hit a year ago, heaven knew.
At last she awoke, and said, ‘Good morning.’ Her voice was hoarse but otherwise she seemed all right. He mumbled, ‘Darling … I think I have flu. Call a doctor, please.’
She slipped out of bed and for a moment, as she adjusted her nightdress, he saw the many dots and spots of the needle marks inside her left arm – and she had as many on the right. She said, ‘You lie back.’
The hours passed. Dr Kimball came, harried and curt from overwork. John’s temperature hovered close to 104 and he felt that he was slipping beyond reach of human help. Not many people had died in that first wave of the epidemic, back in May and June last year; but millions had in the second wave, about the time of the armistice. This third wave seemed to be more like the first … so far. But one of the facts everyone had noticed about the epidemic was that the fatalities were mostly where one would least have expected them – among otherwise strong and healthy young adults. Such as himself.
Stella stayed with him all the time. The cook came up to receive orders and through his haze of fever and pain, John heard the note of decision in Stella’s voice as she told Mrs Hackler what to buy, what to cook, and how to cook it for the invalid … though he ate precious little that week except soups and broths. At night she sat up beside him in bed, propped by pillows; and whenever he was awake, which seemed to him to be most of the night, she was. She must have slept, but he did not know when. If she was taking her regular doses, and he thought she must have been, he did not know where or when. His cough got worse, and Dr Kimball looked grave and talked of moving him to Hedlington General Hospital; but John shook his head wearily and, through the waves of misery, he heard Stella say, ‘I can look after him better, Doctor, because I’m here all the time. Just give me the right medicines … tell me what to do if he starts coughing blood, or gets the �
��wet lung”.’
He heard the doctor’s old voice, thin and miles away now, ‘You are a wonderful woman, Stella … We should have remembered … during your troubles … what sort of a girl you were … brave as a lion.’
She had not said anything and he thought he had fainted … to return to a change in the pattern of his pain. The cough had moved down, and he was coughing up gobs of phlegm. His fever reached 105, and then suddenly he was sweating, soaking the sheets, and even the blankets, and mattress. Stella mopped his forehead with damp sponges; and three times that night changed his pyjamas and sponged down his whole body. Her intense face as she worked swam in and out of focus … lovely, the complexion as velvet smooth as it used to be … or was that only because he was too tired to exert his optic muscles, so that she swam over him against the light, a pink madonna face under a golden halo …
At last, Dr Kimball came and tapped and thumped and listened to his stethoscope and after fifteen minutes said, ‘You’re over it, John. For a time you were beginning to develop symptoms of “dripping lung”, but you fought it off, thanks to her.’ He nodded towards Stella. ‘You’re a lucky man … I won’t be back unless there’s some drastic change for the worse. But stay in bed for three days, and then start taking gentle exercise. Do not go back to work for at least ten days from now, and then make your days short … You have recovered from a very dangerous and debilitating disease … I know the way out, thanks.’
When he had gone Stella knelt slowly beside his bed and buried her head in his side. He heard her voice, muffled and distant – ‘Please, God, I want to be cured … please, John darling … but do it quickly … or it’ll be too late. Again.’
She struggled to her feet before John could say anything, and he heard her footsteps going fast downstairs. He lay back, exhausted – mentally, spiritually, and physically. She had cried for help … to him, and to God … a woman’s cry: he for God only, she for God in him … But he was too tired. The pain had gone, but not very far. It was just below the surface of his being, transmuted from acute stabs to a universal dull ache of utter weakness. He closed his eyes and, against his will, for he was trying to keep Stella in his thoughts, he fell into a deep, untroubled sleep, and did not awake for ten hours.
