Jan Slauerhoff - The Forbidden Kingdom

From her robe she produced a bundle of parchment sheets and placed it in front of Camões. He seemed to recognize them, stroked them as if they were the skin of someone he had loved. She embraced him cautiously, felt no response and left. Now he sat writing for as long as light shone in through the chink. He lived in what he wrote and as soon as he was no longer in it and sat in the dark, he ceased to exist.

A few days later Campos put him aboard a ship, the oldest and most decrepit in the fleet.

I COLLAPSED BY A STONE, somewhere in the interior, and woke up in a dirty Chinese hotel in Macao. I only realized I was there when I went out into the street. So I had escaped the Loch Catherine disaster, perhaps as the sole survivor. I would probably never discover how. I remembered dream events as distant adventures.

I walked around a bit, down the alleys and along the waterfront, where only junks were moored; I peered across towards the mainland and drank a glass of beer in a liquor shop. Bars, dives and other establishments to which seamen on shore resort did not exist here. I had heard that there are many sights in Macao from the olden days: churches, monuments and suchlike, a cave where a poet lived and wrote a great poem to the voyages of Vasco da Gama. But whoever visits somewhere like that? I stayed and sat in the semi-darkness of the shop and enquired when there was a boat to Hong Kong, because I realized I wasn’t going to find a ship here. Not until the next day. So I had to wait here till then.

There’s nothing else to do in Macao. Opium is smoked in closed houses with thick stone walls, while in others, open day and night, fan-tan is played, for cash, by poor coolies; there are probably brothels too. One occasionally meets a Portuguese. Most of them are fat and ponderous and do nothing. I once saw a procession approaching. I thought they were feeble and handicapped inmates from an institution. When they got closer I saw they were wearing uniforms and were the soldiers who were supposed to protect the colony.

I couldn’t help smiling contemptuously, and for a moment I felt I was an Englishman after all, but the smile died on my lips. I spent the whole evening wandering through the streets; perhaps I was getting tired, but by the end I was really concerned about the fate of this colony.

Still later in the evening I wandered a little along the waterfront, where during the day there’s a nice view. In the dark I began to brood on why on earth I was here and what it all meant. It would probably pass once I was back on board. I stumbled over a sleeping coolie and tottered on a few steps. The man had half stood up and was staring after me. I walked on and tried not to think.

I returned to the hotel and planned to stay in the room until the Hong Kong boat left, however oppressive. But before night had fallen I was back in the street. It was so hot and the kitchen blasted out a disgusting smell, and the squealing of the coolies and the women was becoming shriller. An attempt to have a bath failed, even though I kept my shoes on so as not to slip. Everything I touched was so greasy and dirty that half from revulsion and half because it was so slippery I let go of it again, like everything I tried to tackle in this damned country. However, I mustn’t blame China, since wouldn’t it be exactly the same on shore in Europe? Yet there was a difference: here it slid away and the wretchedness was yellow and monotone; in Europe everything intruded on me and was black and leering.

These thoughts and others made me realize I was well on the way to going mad again. I hurriedly got dressed again, and now it was as if I was encased not by a month’s old layer of dust, as was actually the case, but by an old skin that I could never peel off. I stood outside in the alley next to the boarding house and suddenly ran away, resolved after all to play fan-tan on my last night. As I ran down the alley, I almost broke my legs on the shafts of a rickshaw waiting there and rolled right into it. It was almost dark by now, and there were not many people in the street, as there usually are in all towns in the Orient. There was also little light in the houses, since they were too poor to afford a tallow candle. I wanted to get out of this district fast and drove my coolie on without telling him where he was to take me.

Somewhere, in the centre of a Chinese city, I forget which, is the entrance to the underworld. There is a hole in the street on the river side. One simply goes down the steps and one is in the underworld, just as in London one descends in order to take the Underground. Thirty steps down, and you’re there.

And wouldn’t the coolie stop at a gaping hole like that, knowing that I simply can’t stand it in the inhabited world? Or at sea, and so couldn’t find refuge anywhere else? Rickshaw coolies have a great gift of intuition for guessing their passengers’ desires. But this one only took me to the end of the street and stopped in a narrow square, with his ugly mug half turned towards me. I could see a house with a lantern outside and opposite a filthily transparent “first-class fan-tan house”, but I wanted to go on, feeling embarrassed to have troubled the coolie for such a short distance. I was dying for a change or more fresh air and blurted out: “More far, Praia!” Could he understand me? He hoisted himself up again from the half-squatting position he had assumed, while he appeared to dither between two lamp posts. Those pulling vehicles have much less to do here and tire and get out of breath quicker than in other places, where they trot along for hours in the heat of the day, even uphill.

We were still on the Chinese side and still had to climb over the high, mixed central section, before he could descend on the other side. That was even more difficult, since he now had to hold back myself and the rickshaw with his puny weight and strength. Luckily the streets were soft and muddy. A couple of times I made as if to get out, but then he put his back into it for a moment, obviously frightened of losing his fare. That gave me some confidence. Finally I saw a wide strip in the moonlight at the narrow end of the street, and already felt a cool breeze.

A rickshaw emerged from a side street, and drove close behind me, until I waved my coolie to move aside so that the other vehicle could pass; I didn’t like the idea of having someone on my heels in this town where there were few if any police. I must have been feeling attached to life again, to worry about that. The other person’s vehicle drove past, carrying a woman who was leaning back languid or exhausted; the small dark face came just above the edge and a bare arm lay slim and seductive on the paintwork.

I hadn’t seen a woman at such close quarters for years. Her mouth was small and half open, her nose rather thick, as with all Portuguese women, her eyes brown and alluring, or was I mistaken? No, she smiled for a moment — mocking or friendly? How could I distinguish? In any case she had taken note of me — no wonder that I was immediately entranced and ordered the coolie to follow her. He kept close behind and so we arrived in the broad Praia. I realized at once that I had been there before, certainly when I had walked there the night before, but the surroundings no longer attracted me: I was peering intently at the carriage in front; all I could see now was black hair worn up. I was convinced she was dazzlingly beautiful.

You didn’t find anything like this in Hong Kong, and to think we were in desperately poor Macao! But it was true, the Portuguese, the real ones at least, and the few French who supposedly still lived here, were more choosy than the British colonialists. Or was she perhaps from a grand family? But in that case surely she would not be out driving alone at night?