Singapore Dream and Other Adventures Read online

  The coolie who carries your suitcase for you in Singapore comes from Hankou. The small shopkeeper from whom you buy a bathing suit in Penang or Kuala Lumpur is at home in Peking. The Malay salesman who sells you suspenders and boots in Sumatra has done the hajj, the pilgrim’s journey to Mecca, which means a trip of roughly twenty days each way, three times what it takes to make the trip from Europe to America and back.

  If one of our peasants personally sells his potatoes or apples in the nearby big town and has to travel three hours by train to do it, for us that is a big thing. Poor, half-wild natives on a Malayan island travel with their load of rattan or their small amount of wool for four, six, or ten days downhill through the primeval forest to get to their nearest port town and need twice as long to get back. Individual Indian merchants from northern India make long, rugged, strenuous, and dangerous trips every few years through Tibet to China, or to Lake Baikal, or even as far as Moscow. In Pelaiang near Jambi in southern Sumatra, we had a Chinese cook whose family lived near Shanghai and whom he regularly visited! The Chinese wholesalers in the Straits, in Java, and so on, nearly all still have property in China, often also wives and children, and often travel back and forth between the two places, over a distance comparable to that between Naples and Moscow. There are also Indian and Arabic merchants who have branches in Colombo or Bombay and as far away as Peking and for whom a sea voyage of three weeks is a small, oft-repeated business trip.

  Add to that all the many pilgrim journeys! People from Siam and Burma go on pilgrimages to Ceylon. The faithful from Java and Sumatra go on the pilgrimage to Mecca, and the pious from extreme southern India go on pilgrimage to Benares. Compared to those journeys, the pilgrimage of one of our poor farmers from the Lake Constance region to Lourdes is a mere trifle.

  The last Asian travelers of this kind I saw were two Mohammedans from Java. They boarded our ship in Singapore and traveled as representatives of a Mohammedan company to Suez. From there they were to go to Tripoli, gather reliable information on the war there, and report back home concerning the best ways to morally and financially support their brothers in the faith in their war efforts.

  PART TWO

  POETRY

  and

  SHORT FICTION

  OFF THE COAST OF AFRICA

  Having a home is good,

  Sweet is sleep under the home roof

  By the children, the garden, the dog. But oh,

  Hardly back from the last journey

  The far-away tempts you yet again.

  Homesickness is better,

  To be alone under the stars with your longing.

  Rest and ease you can only own

  When the heart beats easy.

  But the wanderer bears the brunt of travel.

  His expectations are always disappointed.

  Yet the wanderer’s troubles are easier

  Than peace at home.

  Only the wise man finds happiness

  Amid home’s joys and cares.

  I would rather seek without ever finding

  Than be tucked and warm and tied to nearness,

  For in the country of happiness while on this earth,

  I can never be an owner, only a guest.

  EVENING ON THE RED SEA

  Out of the burning wastes

  Skuds a poisonous wind.

  The sea waits, dark, almost motionless.

  A hundred rushing gulls are our guides through this yawning hell.

  Lightning shoots on the sky’s rim—without power—

  Unknown rain’s goodness in this cursed land.

  But over there, bright and cheerful,

  A peaceful cloud floats alone.

  God put it there for us—

  We shall not suffer uncomforted

  In this world alone.

  Never will I forget this endless desert,

  This cruel hell,

  The hottest place on earth.

  But that smiling cloud floating there

  Is the sign I need, for heavy weather I know soon

  Is coming to menace my life’s noon.

  ARRIVAL IN CEYLON

  Tall palms on the beach,

  Shining sea, naked oarsmen in the boat,

  Ancient sacred country

  Eternally ablaze in the fire of the young sun,

  Blue mountains lost in mist and dream,

  Dazzling peaks scarcely visible for the sun.

  The glaring beach receives me,

  Strange trees stare rigidly into space,

  Multicolored houses reel in the sun’s heat,

  Human noise dins from the shimmering street.

  Gratefully my gaze takes in the crowd—

  After endless ocean, what a sweet change!

  My heart clenches with joy,

  It beats with love, drunk on the bliss of travel.

  NIGHT IN THE CABIN

  The sea clangs on the wall,

  In the little round window the night goes blue

  And exhales hot desert breath.

  I wake for the tenth time,

  Lie still in the airless inferno,

  And never fall asleep.

  Like a primal heart

  The engine throbs on and on, hot and moaning,

  Senselessly strains in blind pain without salvation

  Through ever new distances.

  For one whose heart is not clear and fast

  And bright like a crystal

  Such a place is no nest.

  He is pursued by longing and relentlessly pines for home.

  Unquiet love follows him everywhere

  And makes him poor;

  And all things watch him with wild demonic eyes

  For he bears the enemy in his own breast

  And can never escape him.

  JUNGLE RIVER

  For a thousand years it flows through the forest

  And sees the huts of naked brown people

  Of wood and reeds appear and pass away.

  Its brown water pours lukewarm

  Over leaf and branch and dark jungle slime

  And ferments in steep burning rays of sun.

  At night the tiger comes, and the elephant

  Noisily bathes its sweltering powers

  And trumpets its brute sensuality through the forest.

  On the bank the heavy crocodile steams in the mire and reeds

  Today as a thousand or a hundred thousand years ago.

  Reserved and slim, the wild jaguar breaks through the cane.

  Here I live quiet days in the forest

  In a reed hut, in a light dugout

  And seldom does a sound from the human world

  Awaken my sleeping memories.

  But in the evening, when the sudden night

  Falls fell, I stand by the river and listen

  And hear here and there and far and near

  Stray sounds,

  The song of human voices in the night.

  Those are fishermen and hunters

  In their light boats surprised by dusk.

  Profound childlike fear makes their hearts wilt in their breasts,

  Fear of the night and of the crocodile

  And of the ghosts of the dead

  Stirring at night over the dark stream.

  The song is strange, no word familiar,

  Yet it does not sound different from an evening song

  At home on the Rhine or Neckar,

  Of a fisherman or a maid.

  I breathe fear and breathe longing

  And the wild forest and the alien dark stream

  Are like home to me.

  For here as everywhere where people are

  Uncertain souls approach th
eir gods

  Conjuring the dread of night with a song.

  Turning home to the hut’s meager protection,

  I lie down, the forest and the night all around

  And the lucid, shrill song of cicadas,

  Till sleep take me away and till the moon

  Comfort the frightened world with its cool shimmer.

  COMFORTLESS

  No path leads back to the origin;

  There is no host of stars

  No forest, stream, or sea

  To comfort the soul and make it happy.

  There is no tree, no river, no beast

  That can reach the heart;

  To your heart comfort comes

  Only from someone like you.

  CHINESE NIGHT PARTY IN SINGAPORE

  Under the swaying lights

  Up there on the garlanded balcony

  They squat at peace in the festive night,

  Sing songs of long dead poets,

  Harken in bliss to the twanging lute

  Which makes the maidens’ eyes bigger and more beautiful.

  Through the starless night the music rings

  Like the beat of crystal dragonfly wings.

  Brown eyes laugh in unspoken joy—

  No eye without a smile!

  Down below, sleepless, its thousand bright lights like eyes,

  The shining city waits by the sea.

  ON THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO

  Every night home is near

  Before my dream-happy eyes

  As though it were still mine.

  Yet still I must wander long

  And in the fiery sun of faraway isles

  Compel my heart to peace

  By singing to it and rocking it

  Like a stubborn child.

  And always it defies me

  Will not come to peace

  For it is weak and wild

  As children are.

  AT NIGHT

  At night when the sea rocks me

  And the pale glow of stars

  Lies upon the broad waves

  Then I set myself completely free

  From all doing and loving

  And stand still and just breathe

  Alone, alone, rocked by the sea

  Lying with a thousand lights still and cold about me.

  Then in thought I see my friends

  And sink my gaze in theirs

  And ask each one, still and alone,

  Are you still mine?

  Is my pain a pain for you, and is my death a death?

  Do you feel my love, my need?

  Just an echo, just a breath?

  And calmly the sea looks on in silence

  And smiles: No.

  And nowhere is there greeting or reply.

  PELAIANG

  The night is bright with lightning

  Twitching with white light

  Flaring wild, mad, glaring

  Over the forest, the river, and my pale face.

  Leaning on the cool trunk of a bamboo

  I stand and look on, quite detached

  At the rain-whipped, pallid land

  Which longs for peace.

  And from my distant youth

  Flashing through the rain-dark gloom

  Comes a cry of joy

  That everything is not empty after all

  That everything is not yet hollow and dark

  That storms still scatter light and rain

  And beyond the vacant flow of days

  Shine secrets and wild wonders.

  Breathing deep, I listen to the thunder

  And feel the storm wet in my hair

  And for an instant am awake like a tiger

  And happy as I was in childhood days

  And since childhood days have never been.

  IN SIGHT OF COLOMBO

  The hot day flickers out in green light,

  The ship cuts the waves, still and steady.

  To go through this world so still and sure,

  Through battle and night to be so firm

  Was the goal of my journey, but I learned nothing.

  Still waiting, I turn home,

  Keen for a new day’s ups and downs,

  Interested in life’s cruelty.

  Stillness and the way of stars is not for me

  I am a wave, a tippy boat

  By every storm my heart is tossed,

  Bruised and thrown by the every breeze.

  As far and farther yet I traveled

  I found only myself, and from my journey

  Come home with wanderlust,

  Still raring for life’s pains and pleasures,

  Looking for new games and struggles.

  From all my adventures, I’ve escaped unhealed.

  I’m a child of earth, not of the stars.

  My mind is restless, the wind blows me.

  I’m rocked by sea, roused by storm.

  Consoled by light, afraid at night.

  And though a hundred times in the thick of life

  I’ve prayed for wisdom and fought for peace,

  My destiny lies with the earth,

  To be like her who gave me birth.

  ROBERT AGHION

  In the course of the eighteenth century—which like any other time can show us many faces and which is by no means exhaustively portrayed by images from chivalrous novels or by ornamental porcelain figures—in Great Britain a new kind of Christianity and Christian activity emerged, which rather quickly grew from a tiny root into a big, exotic tree, and which today is called “the evangelical mission to the heathens.” There was also a Catholic version of this, but this did not represent anything new or different, since from the very beginning the Roman Church shaped itself and behaved like a world empire, whose rights, duties, and obvious tasks included the subjugation or conversion of all peoples, and this project was at all times vigorously pursued, sometimes in the holy, loving style of the Irish monks, sometimes in the more abrupt and relentless manner of Charlemagne. But in sharp contrast to this, the various Protestant communities and churches developed as national churches, and this is where they most clearly distinguished themselves from the universal church of the Catholics. Each of them served the spiritual needs of a particular nation, race, and language. For example, Hus served the Bohemians, Luther the Germans, and Wycliffe the English.

  Now though this Protestant missionary movement that began in England actually contradicted the essence of the Protestant Church and justified itself by referring to the original apostolic writings, on the surface there was little occasion for it to have to do this. Since the glorious age of discovery when people had gone off in every direction discovering and conquering, the initial scientific interest in the character of distant islands and mountains as well as the heroism of seafarers and adventurers had everywhere given way to a new modern spirit. Now people were no longer interested in daring feats and new experiences in newly discovered exotic regions, no longer interested in strange animals and palm forests. Now instead they wanted pepper and sugar, silk and fur, rice and sago—in brief, things that were good for making money in international trade. In pursuit of these things, they were frequently rather one-sided and violent, and they forgot and violated many of the rules they had observed in Christian Europe. A great number of terrified natives were hunted down and shot like vermin, and educated Christian Europeans carried on in America, Africa, and India like foxes breaking into a henhouse. One does not have to be particularly sensitive to see that all this was quite abominable. So much crude and beastly pillaging and plundering occurred that shame and revulsion were aroused in the people back home, and this is what eventually led to an orderly and decent approach to colonization. Our mis
sionary movement was part of this new approach. It was founded on an altogether proper and worthy desire for the poor and defenseless heathen peoples of nature to receive something better and more uplifted from Europe than just gunpowder and booze.

  Think what you will concerning the nature, value, significance, and effectiveness of this mission to the heathens, it remains quite certain that like other genuine religious movements it sprang from a pure heart and will; that noble and not unimportant men founded it with true conviction and intention; and up to the present time it has had many men of such quality in its service. If they were not all heroes and wise men, there were at least some of that kind of men among them, and if certain individuals were disreputable in their behavior, still it would be unreasonable to blacken the name of the whole movement on their account.

  But enough of prefatory remarks! In the second half of the century before last, it was not rare in England for well-meaning and benevolent private persons to actively adopt this missionary idea and donate funds for its realization. However, regular companies and organizations intended for this purpose, like the ones we have today, did not exist at that time. Instead, each individual tried to promote and further this good purpose in his own way and in accordance with the means he had at hand, and the person who set out for distant countries as a missionary in those days did not, as people do these days, travel over the sea like a well-addressed piece of mail and arrive at a well-regulated and organized workstation. Rather he traveled with trust in God and without much preparation straightway into a dubious adventure.

  Sometime in the 1790s a London entrepreneur, whose brother had made a fortune in India and had died there without any children, decided to dedicate a considerable sum of money to the spreading of the Gospel in that country. A member of the mighty East India Company as well as several clerics were taken on as advisors, and they developed a plan in accordance with which, to begin with, three or four young men, properly equipped and provided with a decent amount of money, should be sent out as missionaries.