Singapore Dream and Other Adventures Page 12

  All these little experiences gradually coalesced into a kind of glass wall that separated the missionary from his surroundings and cast him into an ever more painful solitude. He devoted himself all the more strenuously, even desperately, to his language studies and made good progress. This fed his passionate hope that the door to understanding this strange people might someday open. Now ever more frequently he dared to address local people on the street. He went without a translator to the tailor, to the grocer, to the shoemaker. At times he succeeded at getting in conversations with simple folk. He would chat with an artisan about his work, or with a mother, warmly praising her infant. In the words and glances of these heathen folk, and especially in their kind, childlike, happy laughter, their soul spoke to him so clearly and fraternally that at times all barriers fell away and the feeling of foreignness vanished.

  Finally he came to the conclusion that the local children and simple people were almost always accessible to him, and that in fact all the problems, all the untrustworthiness and corruption of the city folk, were derived from contact with the European sailors and businesspeople. From that time on, he found himself taking excursions farther and farther into the interior of the country, often on horseback. He brought along small copper coins in his pocket and also often pieces of sugar for the children, and when, far inland in the hilly landscape, he tied his horse to a palm outside a farmer’s mud hut and ventured underneath the roof of reeds, gave his greeting, and asked for a drink of water or coconut milk, almost always an innocent, friendly interaction and a bit of chitchat ensued, during which the men, women, and children often broke out gaily laughing over his linguistic inadequacies—something that did not bother him in the least.

  As yet, on such occasions he had made no effort to tell people about the dear Lord. Not only did it seem to him that there was no hurry, but also it was quite a tricky and almost impossible undertaking, since he was unable to find any Indian words for the commonest expressions of biblical belief. In addition, he felt that he had no right to put himself forward as a teacher to these people and ask them to make significant changes in their lives before he had a good understanding of them and was capable to some extent of being with them and talking to them on an equal footing.

  This caused him to extend his studies further. He tried to learn about the life, work, and livelihood of the native people. He had them show him trees and fruits, domestic animals and implements, and tell him their names. Little by little he learned the secrets of wet and dry rice cultivation, the production of bast and wool. He observed house construction and pottery making as well as basket work and cloth weaving, which he knew something about from home. He watched muddy rice paddies being plowed by pink-red water buffalo. He learned about the work of domesticated elephants and saw tame monkeys fetch ripe coconuts out of tall trees for their masters.

  Once, on one of his excursions in a peaceful valley among high green hills, he was overtaken by a heavy rainstorm from which he sought shelter in the nearest hut. He found the members of a small family gathered in the small room between the mud-clad bamboo walls. They greeted the foreigner with shy astonishment. The mother of the family had dyed her gray hair fiery red with henna and displayed, with her friendly welcoming smile, a mouthful of equally red teeth, the result of her lifelong passion for betel nuts. Her husband was a big fellow with serious eyes and long, still-dark hair. He rose from the floor and assumed a royally erect posture to exchange words of greeting with the guest. He then offered him a freshly opened coconut, from which the Englishman took a swallow of sweet juice. A small boy, who had fled behind the stone hearth at the stranger’s entrance, flashed him a look of fearful curiosity from beneath his forest of shining black hair. On his dark breast glowed a brass amulet, which was his only ornament as well as his only clothing. A big bunch of bananas had been hung over the door to ripen. The whole hut, whose only light came through the open doorway, conveyed no feeling of poverty but rather one of utter simplicity and a lovely, pure order.

  At the sight of this domestic contentment, a peaceful homey feeling arose out of the distant depths of childhood memory and gently touched the traveler, a peaceful homey feeling he had never felt a trace of in Mr. Bradley’s bungalow. As it came over him now, it seemed to the missionary that the refuge he had found here was not only that of a wanderer caught in the rain but also that of a man lost in life’s dark troubles who was now once more coming to feel the meaningfulness and joy of a right and natural, fulfilling way of life. The fierce, loud rain pounded down on the reed roof of the hut and formed a sheet like a glass wall outside the doorway.

  The elders chatted in a happy and uninhibited manner with their unusual guest, and when they finally politely asked him the inevitable question—what then was his goal and purpose in this country—he became embarrassed and began to talk about other things. Once again, as so often before, it seemed to the modest Aghion tremendously cheeky and pretentious that he had been sent here as the emissary of a distant people with the intention of taking away the god and faith of this people and requiring them to replace it with another. He had always thought that this diffidence would fade away when he reached greater mastery of the Hindu language, but today it became clear without a doubt that this had been a self-deception, and that the better he understood the brown people, the less he felt within himself the right or the desire to interfere in their life as their master.

  The rain subsided. Water, shot through with rich red earth, ran down the hilly road. Sunrays found their way between the shining wet trunks of the palms and were reflected with dazzling brilliance from the glistening giant leaves of the pisang trees. The missionary thanked his hosts and was about to leave when a shadow fell across the floor and the little room went dim. Quickly he turned around and saw a figure coming through the door noiselessly on bare feet. It was a young woman or a girl, who was startled at the unexpected sight of him and fled behind the stone hearth with the boy.

  “Say hello to the gentleman!” the father called to her, and she shyly came two steps forward, crossed her arms in front of her breast and bowed several times. Raindrops shimmered in her dark black hair. The Englishman gently and bashfully laid his hand on her head and greeted her, and as he was feeling the soft, smooth hair alive under his fingers, she lifted her face to him and smiled at him warmly with her dark, marvelously beautiful eyes. She wore a chain of rose-red corals around her neck and a heavy gold bangle on one ankle, and nothing else besides a dark orange lower robe fastened just under her breasts. Thus she stood in her beauty before the dumbfounded stranger. The slanting rays of the sun played softly in her hair and on her glowing brown shoulders, and her small pointed teeth sparkled in her youthful mouth. Robert Aghion was enchanted by the sight of her and wanted to look deep into her still, gentle eyes, but soon felt too embarrassed. The moist fragrance of her hair and the sight of her naked shoulders and breasts confused him, and he quickly dropped his eyes before her innocent gaze. He reached into his pocket and took out a small steel scissors with which he cut his nails and beard and also used in gathering plants. He gave it to the beautiful girl, well knowing that this was a quite precious gift. She took the thing shyly with joyful surprise, while her elders exhausted themselves in expressions of thanks. And as he now took his leave, she followed him out under the wide eave that shaded the front of the hut, took his left hand and kissed it. The warm, gentle touch of those flower-like lips set the man’s blood coursing. He wanted to kiss her on the mouth, but instead he took both her hands in his right hand, looked into her eyes and said, “How old are you?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “And what is your name?”

  “Naissa.”

  “Farewell, then, Naissa, and don’t forget me.”

  “Naissa will not forget her lord.”

  He left the place and found his way home, deep in thought. When long after dark he arrived and entered his room, he realized for the first t
ime that today he had not brought a single butterfly or beetle, not a leaf or a flower home from his excursion. And this home of his, the barren bachelor’s house with the servants loafing about and cold, ill-tempered Mr. Bradley, had never seemed more unhome-like and comfortless than it did this evening, as he sat by his little oil lamp at his wobbly little table and tried to read his Bible.

  That night when he finally fell asleep despite the humming of the mosquitoes and after hours of restless thinking, the missionary was visited by strange dreams.

  He was wandering in a dim palm grove, where flecks of yellow sunlight played on the red-brown ground. Parrots called from the heights, monkeys performed their daredevil feats on the immeasurably tall trees, little hummingbirds flashed by like wondrous sparkling gems, insects of every kind proclaimed their joy of life through sounds, colors, and movements. The happy missionary walked about this wondrous place filled with gratitude and delight. He called to an improbably balanced monkey, and behold, the nimble animal climbed obediently to earth and presented itself before him with the submissive gestures of a servant. Aghion understood that in this blissful realm the creatures were his to command, and at once he called the birds and butterflies around him, and they arrived in great glittering swarms. He waved and beat time with his arms, nodded his head, gave orders with looks of the eyes and clicks of the tongue, and all the magnificent creatures dutifully arranged themselves into beautiful soaring round dances and processions in the golden air, whistling and humming, and chirping and trilling in well-tuned choirs. They chased and fled from one another, played hide-and-seek, described solemn circles and mischievous spirals in the air. It was a radiant, glorious ballet and concert, a paradise regained, and the dreamer was moved by this harmonious enchanted world that obeyed him and was his own to a profound pleasure that was almost pain. For in all the happiness there was a touch of foreboding or a foreshadowing, a sense of that undeservedness and transitoriness that any pious missionary must in any case be ready to proclaim in the presence of any sensual pleasure.

  This anxious foreboding was no deception. The spellbound nature enthusiast was still indulging in the sight of monkeys dancing in figures and was still caressing an immense blue velvet butterfly that had trustingly alit on his left hand and was allowing itself to be stroked like a dove when already shadows of fear and dissolution began to flicker in the enchanted grove and to enshroud the mind of the dreamer. Individual birds suddenly screeched shrilly and fearfully, restless gusts of wind tossed the high treetops, the warm sunlight became pale and sickly, the birds flitted off in all directions, and the great, beautiful butterflies, in defenseless fright, let themselves be blown away by the wind. Raindrops clattered furiously in the tops of the trees and a faint, distant sound of thunder rolled over the sky and died slowly away.

  At this point Mr. Bradley entered the grove. The last pretty bird had flown. His form huge and dark like the ghost of a murdered king, Bradley came on. He spit scornfully at the missionary’s feet and began to accuse him in injurious, contemptuous, hateful terms of being a crook and an idler, of letting himself be paid by his London patron to convert the heathens while in fact doing nothing but wasting his time catching beetles and going on excursions. And Aghion had to contritely confess that Bradley was right and that he was guilty of all these misdeeds.

  Now that powerful, rich patron from England appeared, the provider of Aghion’s daily bread, along with several English clergymen, and these together with Bradley drove and hounded the missionary before them through bush and thorn until they came to a street with lots of people on it and then to the suburb of Bombay where the towering, grotesque Hindu temple stood. Here colorful crowds of people flowed around and about, naked coolies and proud, white-clad Brahmins. But across from the temple a Christian church had been built, and over the portal God the Father was depicted in stone, floating in clouds with his stern father’s eye and a flowing beard.

  The hard-pressed missionary forced himself up the stairs of the church and began to preach to the Hindu people. In a loud voice he demanded that they look across and compare, see how different the form of the true God was from their poor grimacing idols with their many arms and animal faces. With an outstretched finger he pointed to the intricate relief work of the Indian temple facade and then he pointed invitingly to the image of God on his church. But he was utterly horrified when he followed his own gesture and saw what he was pointing at. God the Father had changed and now had three heads and six arms, and instead of the expression of somewhat trite and impotent solemnity, he now had a superior, amused smile on his faces, exactly like the one often depicted by the more refined Indian makers of divine images. Desperate, the preacher looked around for Bradley and his patron and the clergymen, but they had all disappeared. He stood alone and helpless on the steps of the church, and now even God the Father had also abandoned him, for he was waving with his six arms over at the temple and smiling at the Hindu gods with divine serenity.

  Completely abandoned, discredited, and lost, Aghion stood on the steps of his church. He closed his eyes and remained standing erect. Every hope in his soul had been extinguished, and he waited in desperate stillness to be stoned by the heathens. But instead of this, after a horrible pause, he felt himself pushed aside by a strong yet gentle hand, and as he flung his eyes open, he saw the stone image of God the Father, large and venerable, striding down the steps, while at the same time, across the way, the divine images on the temple were climbing down from their niches in swarms. They were all greeted by God the Father, who then entered the Hindu temple and with friendly gestures of respect received the white-clad Brahmins. At the same time, the heathen gods with their animal snouts, ringlets, and slit-like eyes, visited the church all together in unison, found everything fine and good, and drew many worshipers after them. Thus an exchange of deities took place between the church and temple. Gong and organ sounded together in sisterly fashion, and quiet, dark Indians offered lotus blossoms on sober English-Christian altars.

  And in the midst of the festive crowds, beautiful Naissa, with her smooth, shiny black hair and her big childlike eyes, appeared. She came walking across from the temple with many other believers, climbed up the steps of the church, and came to a halt in front of the missionary. She looked him gravely and sweetly in the eye, nodded to him, and offered him a lotus blossom. But he, totally enchanted, bent down over her clear, still face, kissed her on the lips, and took her in his arms.

  Before he could see how Naissa responded to that, Aghion woke up from his dream and found himself stretched on his cot in the deep darkness, tired and frightened. A painful confusion of all his feelings and impulses was tormenting him to the point of desperation. The dream had disclosed his true self, his weakness and his despondency, his lack of belief in his vocation, his love for the brown heathen girl, his un-Christian hatred for Bradley, his guilty conscience with regard to his English patron. That was the way it was—it was all true and inalterable.

  For a while he lay in the dark, sad and close to tears. He tried to pray and was unable. He tried to conceive of Naissa as a demoness and to acknowledge his attraction to her as depraved, but he could not do that either. Finally following a half-conscious impulse, he got out of bed, still enwrapped in the shades and horrors of the dream. He started toward Bradley’s room, as much in instinctive need of the comfort of human company as with the pious intention, out of shame for his abhorrence of this man, of being candid with him about it and making a friend of him.

  Softly, he crept on thin bast soles across the dark veranda to Bradley’s bedroom. The room had a light bamboo door that covered only the lower half of the opening. The high room was faintly lit. Like many Europeans in India, Bradley kept a small oil lamp burning through the night. Cautiously, Aghion pushed the thin door inward and went in.

  A little wick smoldered in a small bowl of oil on the bedroom floor and threw faint, monstrous shadows upward onto the bare walls. A brown moth whirred
in small circles around the light. A large mosquito net was carefully drawn around the wide bed. The missionary picked up the small lamp, went over to the bed, and pulled the netting a hand’s breadth open. He was about to call the sleeper’s name when with considerable shock he saw that Bradley was not alone. He lay on his back, covered by a thin silk nightshirt. His face with chin tilted upward looked not in the least gentler or more friendly than during the day. Next to him lay a second figure, a naked woman with long black hair. She lay on her side with her sleeping face toward the missionary. He recognized her. It was the big sturdy girl who came once a week to pick up the wash.

  Without closing the curtain, Aghion rushed out and fled to his own room. He tried to go back to sleep, but he could not. The experience of the day, the strange dream, and then finally the sight of the naked sleeping woman had gotten him quite agitated. Also, his loathing of Bradley had become much stronger. He even recoiled at the thought of seeing him again at breakfast and having to speak to him. But most of all he was plagued and tormented by the question of whether or not it was now his duty to rebuke Bradley for his behavior and try to get him to reform. Aghion’s whole nature was against this, but his duty seemed to require him to overcome this spinelessness, to unabashedly confront the sinner and give him a good talking to. He lit his lamp and, harassed by swarms of buzzing mosquitoes, read the New Testament for hours, gaining neither confidence nor consolation. He almost wanted to curse India altogether or at least the curiosity and wanderlust that had led him to this dead end. Never more than tonight had the future looked so bleak to him, nor had he felt less like he had the makings of a confessor and a martyr.