Part 21 (1/2)
Joyce is seized with a brilliant idea. ”Mother,” she cries, ”those toys we bought in the bazaar! Mayn't I give them to the children?”
Taking leave for granted she flies into her cabin and returns with two gaily painted wooden animals whose legs move on strings; there is a yellow tiger with a red mouth, and a purple monkey. Joyce stands as high as she can on the rail and makes the tiger jump its legs up and down. A yell of delight from the children on the sh.o.r.e shows that she is understood. They plunge into the water like porpoises, and after a minute Joyce drops the tiger straight down. It is a good distance to swim, some fifty yards, perhaps, and the little black heads bob up and down frantically as the youngsters make desperate attempts to get through the water.
Good! Go it! Two little boys about equal size are well ahead of the others and rapidly nearing the prize. It is just a toss-up which gets it; they grab simultaneously, but their fingers close on empty water.
The tiger has disappeared, sucked down by something into the depths! Has it been eaten by a fish?
No, there it is, having risen to the surface again some yards distant, grasped by a thin little arm. The owner of the arm emerges the next instant, shaking back her long black hair. It is a small girl, who actually dived under the boys and s.n.a.t.c.hed the prize away! She deserves it, and holding it on high lies on her back and kicks her way back to land with her legs. She is a magnificent swimmer. They all follow her and crowd around her on the sh.o.r.e while she dangles the treasure in the sun, but no one attempts to take it from her.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BURMESE BOYS.]
At the moment everyone has forgotten that there may be more forthcoming, and when Joyce holds up the purple monkey only one tiny podgy fellow sees it, and slipping silently into the water exerts himself tremendously to get well out before the others discover him. He swims slowly, for he is very small, and when he is half-way across the others are after him like a pack of hounds; but he gets the monkey, and turns his bright eager face up to us radiant with delight. One of the elder boys carries his treasure back for him, and by the way the little fellow yields it up readily it is quite evident that he is not in the least afraid of its being taken from him. His faith is justified, for he gets it back directly he lands, and then the children dance round the two lucky ones, singing and making such a noise that a troop of anxious parents hurry down to find out what is the matter. Those toys will be treasures for many a long day.
The steamer screeches and we are off once more. Soon we see a great sugar-loaf hill in the distance, also a perfect forest of paG.o.das of all shapes and sizes along the river bank. This is Pagahn, a celebrated place, now deserted and melancholy. Imagine a strip of ground eight miles long and two broad, covered by hundreds of paG.o.das; it is said there are nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, but no one could count them, for half of them are mere heaps of stones, so possibly there may be one more to make a round number! Pagahn was once a capital city, and the then Burman king pulled down some of the paG.o.das to build up the defences of his walls when he heard that a Chinese king was coming to attack him; but of course he got the worst of it after such an impious act, as anyone would guess, and since then the place has been deserted.
Some of the largest paG.o.das have been restored, which is rather a wonder in Burma as restoration does not make for ”merit.” You can see the snow-white outlines rising gracefully in the middle of the rough line of uneven buildings. Unluckily, instead of stopping here we go across the river and anchor at Yenangyaung, where there is a very strong smell of something. ”I know,” Joyce declares, wrinkling up her smooth little nose. ”It's lamp oil.”
She is right, it is petroleum; there are here wells of it, from which it bursts up with great force sometimes, like a geyser.
If we had been on a tourist steamer we should have visited Pagahn, but then we should have missed seeing much human life.
An evening later the captain comes up to say that there is a pwe, or play, going on in the village near which we have anch.o.r.ed for the night, and wouldn't we like to go to see it? This is a grand chance, because Burmese pwes are very funny things indeed. The people have them at every chance,--births, weddings, deaths, and festivals, none are ever complete without a play!
We dine early, and, accompanied by the captain, set out afterwards, all four of us, for the village. The moon is getting up but is not bright yet, and we can see the trees standing up against a deep blue night sky, with the big bright stars winking at us through the palm fronds. The village street is deserted, and long before we reach the end of it where the pwe is going on we hear an exciting clash of cymbals and bang of drums which sets you and Joyce dancing.
At last, right in the roadway, between the thatched houses, we see a big crowd, and coming up to it find every man, woman, child, and baby belonging to the village seated on the ground or lying in front of a small platform. The platform is simply a few loose boards standing on some boxes, and when anyone walks across it the boards jump up and down.
In front are the footlights, a row of earthenware bowls filled with oil, with a lighted wick floating in each one.
The Burman who is giving the pwe and has sent us the message about it comes forward and leads us to the front courteously. He is a portly man with a dress of rich silk so stiff it would stand by itself, and a large fur cape, like those worn by coachmen in England, over his shoulders, for the evenings are sharp. In following him through the crowd we find great difficulty in avoiding stepping on arms and legs which seem to be strewn haphazard on the bare earth, the owners being partly covered up with mats or rugs. Most of the men are squatting gravely with bath-towels over their shoulders--they make convenient wraps. Men and women alike are smoking either huge green cheroots or small brown ones.
Our seats are right in front of the stage and consist of a row of soap-boxes. Joyce's mother clutches me in horror. ”I can't sit down there,” she says with a gasp; ”I shall fall over.” The captain misunderstands her and gallantly tries one himself, saying, ”It holds me, Madam.” As he is at least sixteen stone in weight this sends Joyce off into fits of irrepressible giggles, luckily drowned by the band, which is making an ear-splitting noise--”La-la-la, la-la-la!” One man bangs an instrument like those called harmonicons, with slats of metal set across it all the way up. Another is seated inside a tub, the rim of which is entirely composed of small drums; another cracks bamboo clappers together in an agonising way, while clarionets do their best, and a pipe fills in all the intervals it can find.
A girl with a very coquettish gold-embroidered jacket, which stands out behind like two pert wings in the same way as those worn by the princesses at the garden-party, is rouging her face close to us; she gets it to her liking by leaning over the footlights and gazing in a little hand-mirror, then she takes up an enormous cigar which lies smoking beside her and puffs away contentedly till her turn comes.
Two clowns are taking their part; we can't understand a word they say, but their humorous faces and comic gestures are irresistibly funny.
Suddenly Golden-Jacket puts down her cigar, springs to her feet, and gets across the shaking boards with marvellous serpentine movements in a skirt tighter even than a modern one, literally a tube wound around her legs. Then, waving her long thin hands and arms so that ripples seem to run up and down them, she sings in a thin shrill voice a long song, while one of the clowns breaks in with ”Yes, yes” and ”Come on,” meant for us and greatly appreciated by the audience. As the song wends toward its end, Golden-Jacket looks behind her more than once, and at last stops and says something out loud.
”She's telling the villain to hurry up or she won't wait for him,”
explains the captain, who understands Burmese. ”She is in a forest. You see the branch of a tree stuck between the boards there? That's the forest. She went to meet her lover, the prince, for she is a princess, of course, but the villain has done his job, and now he's going to catch her.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE PLAYHOUSE.]
The princess trills out some more lines, and the villain, who has apparently been having great difficulties with his costume at the back of the stage, in full view of the audience, steps heavily forward, making the boards bounce right up. When she sees him she shrieks and faints in his arms. He makes a long speech holding her. The clowns appear again. The heroine shakes herself free, and with great self-possession squats down once more on the edge of the stage and resumes her cigar until her turn comes again. The branch of the tree is pulled up, and in its place is put a box with a piece of pink muslin over it, while three men in long robes come in and sit down, one on the box and the other two on the boards beside him, and they all talk interminably. The band, which has only stopped impatiently while the actual speaking was going on, clashes in wildly at every possible interval and now drowns the voices altogether for a few minutes, just to remind us it is there. The men on the stage continue repeating their parts, whether it plays or not, and apparently they are so long winded that the plot does not suffer at all from the sentences which are lost in the noise.
”That's her father, the king,” explains the captain. ”He is taking counsel from his ministers how to recover his daughter and punish the villain. She's a boy, of course--they all are.”
We can hardly believe it! The slender form, the graceful movements, the long thin fingers, the wonderful management of that terrible skirt, the coquettish movements! You can hardly imagine any British boy doing it, can you?