View of the World Page 6

  After that the novillada of Sanlúcar went much like any other bullfight. The stylish young novillero who had arrived in the Hispano-Suiza killed his bulls, who were big, brave and stupid, in an exemplary fashion. This performance looked as good as one put on by any of the great stars of Madrid or Barcelona, and it was pretty clear that the old Hispano would soon be changed for a Cadillac. The bulls did their best for the man, allowing themselves to be deluded by cape flourishes and slow and deliberate passes of supreme elegance, and the novillero tempted fortune only once, receiving the bull over-audaciously on his knees and being vigorously tossed as it swung round on him for the second half of the pass. Miraculously all he suffered was an embarrassing two-foot rent in his trousers, and was obliged to retire, screened by capes from the public, to the passageway, for this to be sewn up, probably with the very cotton the old lady in black had remembered to bring. The crowd did not hold this against the bull, and it was accorded a rousing cheer, when five minutes later it was removed from the ring.

  With this the fight ended, to the satisfaction of all but the critic of La Voz. The two novilleros were carried back to their hotel on the shoulders of their supporters, followed by a running crowd of several hundred enthusiasts. Just before the hotel was reached they unfortunately collided with another crowd running in the other direction who were honouring the winner of the bicycle race; but the bicycle racing being an alien importation with a small following in this undisturbed corner of Spain, the bullring crowd soon pushed the others into the side streets, smothered their opposition, and fought on to reach their objective. When I passed the bullring half an hour later the old Hispano-Suiza was still there. The enthusiasts had pushed it about twenty yards and it had broken their spirit; a man with a peaked cap and withered arm stood by it waiting to collect a peseta from whoever came to drive it away. Otherwise the place was deserted, and the circling storks had come down low in the colourless evening sky.

  5

  Rangoon Express

  PUNCTUALLY at 6.15 a.m., to the solemn ringing of hand-bells, the train steamed out of Mandalay station and headed for the south. Its title, the Rangoon Express, was hardly more than a rhetorical flourish, since among the trains of the world it is probably unique in never reaching its destination. It pushes on, carrying out minor repairs to the track as necessary, unless finally halted by the dynamiting of a bridge. Usually it covers in this way a distance of about 150 miles to reach Yamethin, before turning back. Thereafter follows a sixty-mile stretch along which rarely fewer than three major bridges are down at any given time, not to mention the absence of eleven miles of permanent way.

  Here at Yamethin, then, passengers bound for Rangoon are normally dumped and left to their own ingenuity and fortitude to find their way across the sixty-mile gap to the railhead, at Pyinmana, of the southern section of the line. The last train but one had even ventured past Yamethin, only to be heavily mortared before coming to a final halt at Tatkon; but our immediate predecessor had not done nearly as well, suffering derailment, three days before, at Yeni – about ninety miles south of Mandalay.

  Against this background of catastrophe, the Rangoon Express seemed invested with a certain sombre majesty, as it rattled out into the hostile immensity of the plain. Burma was littered with the vestiges of things past: the ten thousand pagodas of vanished kingdoms, and the debris of modern times; smashed stone houses with straw huts built within their walls, and shattered rolling-stock, some already overgrown and some still smelling of charred wood, as we clattered slowly past. In this area, the main towns were held by Government troops, but the country districts were fought over by various insurgent groups – White Flag Communists of the Party line, and their Red Flag deviationist rivals; the PVOs under their condottieri, the Karen Nationalists, and many dacoits. All these battle vigorously with one another, and enter into bewildering series of temporary alliances to fight the Government troops. The result is chaos.

  Our train was made up of converted cattle-trucks. Benches which could be slept on at night had been fixed up along the length of each compartment. Passengers were recommended to pull the chain in case of emergency, and in the lavatory a notice invited them to depress the handle. But there was no chain and no handle. The electric light came on by twisting two wires together. Protected by the religious scruples of the passengers, giant cockroaches mooched about the floor and clouds of mosquitoes issued from the dark places under the benches. According to the hour, either one side or the other of the compartment was scorching hot from the impact of the sun’s rays on the outside. This gave passengers sitting on the cooler side the opportunity to demonstrate their good breeding and acquire merit, by insisting on changing places with their fellow travellers sitting opposite.

  With the exception of an elderly Buddhist monk, the other occupants of my carriage were railway repairs officials. The monk had recently completed a year of the rigorous penance known as ‘tapas’, and had just been released from hospital, where he had spent six weeks recovering from the effects. Before taking the yellow robe he too had been a railwayman, and could therefore enter with vivacity into the technicalities of the others’ shop-talk. He had with him a biscuit tin commemorating the coronation of King Edward VII, on which had been screwed a plaque with the inscription in English: ‘God is Life, Light and Infinite Magnet’. From this box he extracted for our entertainment several pre-war copies of News Digest, and a collection of snapshots, some depicting railway disasters and others such objects of local veneration as the Buddha-tooth of Kandy.

  Delighted to display their inside information of the dangers to which we were exposed, the railway officials kept up a running commentary on the state of the bridges we passed over, all of which had been blown up several times. It was clear that from their familiarity with these hidden structural weaknesses a kind of affection for them had been bred. With relish they disclosed the fact that the supply of new girders had run out, so that the bridges were patched up with doubtfully repaired ones. Similar shortages now compelled them to use two bolts to secure rails to sleepers instead of the regulation four. Smilingly, they sometimes claimed to feel a bridge sway under the train’s weight. To illustrate his contention that a driver could easily overlook a small break in the line, a permanent-way inspector mentioned that his ‘petrol special’ had once successfully jumped a gap of twenty inches that no one had noticed. That reminded his friend. The other day his ‘petrol special’ had refused to start after he had been out to inspect a sabotaged bridge, and while he was cleaning the carburettor, a couple of White Flag Communists had come along and taken him to their HQ. After questioning him about the defences of the local town, they expected him to walk home seven miles through the jungle, although it was after dark. Naturally he wasn’t having any. He insisted on staying the night, and saw to it that they gave him breakfast in the morning. The inspector, who spoke a brand of Asiatic-English current among minor officials, said that they were safe enough going about their work unless accompanied by soldiers. ‘They observe us at our labours without hindrance. Sometimes a warning shot rings out and we get to hell. That, my dear colleagues, is the set-up. From running continuously I am rejuvenated. All appetites and sleeping much improved.’

  These pleasant discussions were interrupted in the early afternoon, when a small mine was exploded in front of the engine. A rail had been torn by the explosion, and after allowing the passengers time to marvel at the nearness of their escape, the train began to back towards the station through which we had just passed. Almost immediately, a second mine exploded to the rear of the train, thus immobilising us. The railwaymen seemed surprised at this unusual development. Retiring to the lavatory, the senior inspector reappeared dressed in his best silk longyi, determined, it seemed, to confront with proper dignity any emergency that might arise. The passengers accepted the situation with the infinite good humour and resignation of the Burmese. We were stranded in a dead-flat sun-wasted landscape. The paddies held a few yellow pools through which black-n
ecked storks waded with premeditation, while buffaloes emerged, as if seen at the moment of creation, from their hidden wallows. About a mile from the line an untidy village broke into the pattern of the fields. You could just make out the point of red where a flag hung from the mogul turret of a house which had once belonged to an Indian landlord. With irrepressible satisfaction the senior inspector said that he knew for certain that there were three hundred Communists in the village. Going by past experience, he did not expect that they would attack the train, but a squad might be sent to look over the passengers. When I asked whether they would be likely to take away any European they found, the old monk said that they would not dare to do so in the face of his prohibition. He added that Buddhist monks preached and collected their rice in Communist villages without interference from Party officials. This, he believed, was due to the fact that the Buddhist priesthood had never sided with oppressors. Their complete neutrality being recognised by all sides, they were also often asked both by the Government and by the various insurgent groups to act as intermediaries.

  And in fact there was no sign of life from the village. Time passed slowly and the monk entertained the company, discoursing with priestly erudition on such topics as the history of the great King Mindon’s previous incarnation as a female demon. A deputy inspector of waggons, who was also a photographic enthusiast, described a camera he had seen with which subjects, when photographed in normal attire, came out in the nude. The misfortunes of the Government were discussed with much speculation as to their cause, and there was some support for a rumour, widespread in Burma, that this was ascribable to the incompetence of the astrologer who had calculated the propitious hour and day for the declaration of Independence.

  With much foresight, spare rails were carried on the train, and some hours later a ‘petrol special’ arrived with a breakdown gang. It also brought vendors of samusa (mincemeat and onion patties in puff pastry), fried chicken, and Vim-tonic – a non-alcoholic beverage in great local demand. Piously, the Buddhist monk restricted himself to rice, baked in the hollow of a yard-long cane of bamboo, subsequently sucking a couple of mepacrine tablets, under the impression that they contained vitamins valuable to his weakened state.

  Quite soon the damaged rail ahead had been replaced, and we were on our way again, reaching, soon after nightfall, the town of Yamethin. Yamethin is known as the hottest town in Burma. It was waterless, but you could buy a slab of ice-cream on a stick, and the Chinese proprietor of the tea-shop made no charge for plain tea if you bought a cake. With traditional magnificence a burgher of the town had chosen to celebrate some windfall by offering his fellow-citizens a free theatrical show, which was being performed in the station yard. It was a well-loved piece dealing with a profligate queen of old, who had remarkably chosen to cuckold the king with a legless dwarf. The show was to last all night, and at one moment, between the squealing and the banging of the orchestra, there could be heard the thump of bombs falling in a nearby village.

  It was only here and now that the real problem of the day arose. Since we were to sleep in the train, who was to occupy the upper berths, now fixed invitingly in position? Whoever did so would thus be compelled to show disrespect to those sleeping beneath them; a situation intolerably aggravated in this case by the presence of the venerable monk who was in no state to climb to the higher position. Of such things were composed, for a Burman, the true hardships of travel in troublous lines. The perils and discomforts attendant upon the collapse of law and order were of no ultimate consequence. What was really important was the unswerving correctness of one’s deportment in facing them.

  6

  Ibiza

  I SPENT five consecutive summers in Spain, migrating farther south every year before the tourist invasion from the northern countries, which by 1954 had provoked the building of thirty-two hotels in my favourite Costa Brava village, with its native population of about one thousand.

  In 1955 I crossed the hundred miles of sea separating Ibiza, the smallest and southernmost of the Balearic Islands, from the mainland, and took a house for the season in the coastal village of Santa Eulalia, about fifteen miles from the island’s capital, also called Ibiza. By a stroke of luck of the kind that turns up occasionally in the lotteries in which life involves us, this was the house I had always been vainly looking for, a stark and splendidly isolated villa, on the verge of ruin, with an encroaching sea among the rocks under its windows. I paid instantly, and without question, the extortionate price of 3000 pesetas (about £23) demanded for a season’s tenancy – I never dared admit to my Spanish friends to paying more than half the sum – and settled down to my annual courtship of the brilliant and infallible Spanish summer.

  The Casa Ses Estaques (House of the Mooring-posts) happened also to be the port of Santa Eulalia – or at least, its garden was. Its original owner had been allowed to build in this superb position among the pines on a headland commanding all the breezes, only by providing in the rear of the premises, as a quid pro quo, several small well-built shacks in which the fishermen stored their tackle. This house turned its back on the basic amenities. The water supply came from an underground deposito, normally replenished from rainwater collected on the roof, but now dry, and the alternative to the clogged and ruined installation in the lavatory was a broken marble throne among the rocks overhanging the sea.

  In spite of this it offered many advantages from my point of view, not the least of these being a unique vantage-point for the study of the ways of Ibizan fishermen. These were a sober and softly-spoken breed – quite unlike the boisterous hearties of the Catalan coast – who expected the stranger to make the first move when it came to opening diplomatic relations, and only occasionally indulged in an accumulated craving for violence and noise by ritually exploding one of a store of oil drums they had recovered from the sea.

  The House of the Mooring-posts had been built in the ’thirties to foster, it was said, the adventures of a gallant bachelor from the mainland, and it was full of the grandiose vestiges of a thwarted ambition. There were ten rooms, all fitted with basins and taps through which water had never run. Wires, undoubtedly intended to connect the lamps in elaborate chandeliers, curled miserably from the centre of every ceiling, although the only illumination provided was by four oil lamps of the kind carried by the Foolish Virgins in children’s illustrated Bibles. Of the original furniture, stated by the fishermen to have been sumptuous, only a colossal gilt mirror remained, which must have been placed in position before the roof went on, since it would have been impossible for it to pass through the door. For the rest, there were ten simple beds, all broken in the middle, a table which could only have served for a dwarfs’ tea party, or for reclining orientals, because it was impossible for normal human beings to get their legs under it, and a country auctioneer’s collection of wickerwork chairs, which sprayed the beautiful, polished-stone floor with the fine white powder of their decay whenever they were sat in. The only pictures left on the walls were seven framed engravings of early steamships, and three damp-stained lithographs of the predicaments of Don Juan. When the windows were first opened – they opened inwards – a number of nestlings which had been hatched in the space between the glass and the exterior shutters flew in and perched on the pictures. The garden was thickly coated with pine needles, and in certain lights it glistened as if gem-strewn with the fragments of the gin bottles which the fishermen claimed the last tenant – a Turkish princess – had hurled from the flat rooftop at imaginary enemies. The princess, they said, had never thought much of the place, and friction had arisen between her and them as a result of their practice of drying their nets on the front doorsteps and stringing fish up to be sun-cured between convenient pine-trunks in the garden.

  The Turkish princess’s tenancy, which had preceded mine, with an interval of six months, had provided an episode certainly destined for incorporation in the permanent folklore of the island. About nine months before I arrived the princess had gone off on a jaunt to M
adrid, leaving her beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter in the charge of a trusted maid. The daughter had promptly fallen in love with a young fisherman, and in keeping with the traditions of the house, which had been architecturally designed with this kind of adventure in mind, she had succeeded in receiving him in her room at night, without the maid’s knowledge. Returning from Madrid to learn the worst, the mother had placed her daughter in a convent in Majorca, and given up the house. But in the course of time the girl suddenly turned up again in Santa Eulalia and went to live with the young fisherman’s parents. The civil guard were called up to intervene, but in Spain a romance is never abandoned as hopeless on the mere grounds of an extreme disparity in the social position of the parties involved, and eventually, notwithstanding her mother’s wrath, the marriage took place. The couple are now in the process of living happily ever after – their first child has already arrived – on a fisherman’s average income of twenty-five pesetas (or about four shillings) a day.

  One of the pleasures of Ses Estaques was the contemplation of archaic modes of fishing, which were always graceful and unhurried, and not very productive. Soon after dawn every day a boat would be visible from the terrace of the house, gliding very slowly over the inert water, with an old man rowing, who stood up facing the bow. This was one of the six Pedros of the port, known as ‘he of the octopuses’. At intervals he would lay down his oars, pick up a pole with a barbed iron tip, jab down into the water, and snatch out an octopus. He appeared never to miss. Pedro, a gaunt, marine version of Don Quixote, had dedicated his whole life to the pursuit of octopuses, which he sold to the other fishermen to be cut up for bait. He had developed this somewhat narrow specialisation to a degree where every man who fished with a hook depended upon him, and he could see an octopus lurking where another would have seen nothing but rocks and seaweed through the wash and flicker of surface reflections. Pedro, whose daily activities were circumscribed by the light-shunning habits of his prey, also gave a spookish flavour to the early hours of the night – particularly when there was no moon – by moving afreet-like about the black-silhouetted rocks with a torch with which he examined the pools and shallows.