A Writer's Notebook (67 page)

P. He is a great big burly fat Irishman with a double chin. He has the red face, curly hair and blue eyes of his nationality, and speaks with a brogue. He has been thirty-five years in the state, having come out first as an ordinary policeman. He is now head of the police. He has recently married again, a handsome Belfast girl of the barmaid type, younger than his own daughter. He rolls about in a jolly good-humoured way. He took us over the gaol. Here we saw the prisoners, the long-sentence men with irons on their legs, engaged on various tasks. Some were preparing rice for the cooking, and others were carpentering. In two little cells we saw a couple of men who were condemned to death, and they sat cross-legged on their beds clothed in nothing but a prison sarong, which is a strip of dingy white cotton, made by the prisoners, with a prison mark on it. They were doing nothing. They stared into vacancy. We were told that during the last three days before their execution they are given five dollars a day which they can spend on any food, drink or smoke they choose. On the morning of the execution they are taken across the courtyard where they have a bath, then are put in a room where they have breakfast, and are then taken up a small flight of narrow stairs to the execution chamber. A white cap is put over their heads. They are turned with their faces to the wall. The rope attached to an iron ring in the ceiling is placed round their necks and the bolt of the trap on which they are standing is drawn. We were shown this by a little vulgar Cockney, with broken and discoloured teeth, who is married to a Japanese
wife. I asked him if he did not find an execution very horrible, but he laughed and said it didn't interfere with his night's sleep. He told me that one man who was to be hanged next day, when he was asked if there was anything he wanted, said, “Yes, I want a woman.” The head of the police chuckled. “Damned sporting of him,” he said. “Of course I wouldn't have minded, but it wouldn't have done, you know. I'd have had the whole community down on me like a ton o' bricks.”

It was curious to see the prisoners having their bath, which they have twice a day. They come in batches to a large tank, each provided with his pail, and at the word of command sluice themselves four times, rub themselves down, and then again at the word of command sluice themselves four times more. Then they hurriedly put on dry sarongs and make way for the next batch.

The areca trees outlined against the night were slim and elegant. They had the gaunt beauty of a syllogism.

L. K. He is known as Powder-puff Percy. He has been at Balliol and is much better educated and more widely read than the planters and the Government officials with whom he must spend his life. He started as a cadet and has now become a schoolmaster. He is a very good bridge-player and an excellent dancer. They complain of him that he is conceited, and he has aroused a furious antagonism in the community. He wears his clothes with a certain dash and he is a good and amusing talker in the Oxford manner. He is slangy in a smart way and at the same time cultured. He has a vocabulary of his own. He is good-looking with something of an intellectual face, and he might be a young don or a professional dancer at a night club.

C. was a donnish, studious man, precise, respectable and dull. His wife was frivolous and flirtatious. He was able and occupied a prominent position in Singapore. Near them lived a woman with her beefy, hearty husband. She was prudish, and as respectable and dull as C. They were both middle-aged. One day to the amazement of everyone in the colony they eloped. The abandoned partners instituted divorce proceedings and eventually married again. C. was deprived of his job and lives in England, in penury, with the woman he ran away with. The only flaw in the satisfaction of Singapore is that the pair are reported to be immensely happy.

As I walked along I thought of a broad road which I see sometimes in a dream, a road winding over the hills just as this one did that I was on; it leads to a city which, I know not why, I am eager to reach. Men and women are hurrying along the road, and often I have awakened to find myself up and half across my room in my desire to be of their number. The city is plain to see, standing on the top of a hill, surrounded by battlemented walls, and the road, broad and white, can be seen winding up to its great gates. The air is fresh and sweet and the sky is blue. They press on, men, women and children, not talking with each other, for they are intent on their purpose, and their faces shine with expectancy. They look neither to the right nor to the left. They hurry and their eyes are eager and bright. I do not know what they await. I only know that they are impelled by some urgent hope. The city reminds one a little of those cities of El Greco which stand on the brow of a rocky hill, cities of the soul, seen tremulously in a flash of lightning that tears across the darkness of the night. But those are cities of narrow, tortuous streets, and the dark clouds encompass them round about. In the city which I see in my sleep the sun shines and the streets are broad and straight. I know vaguely what the men are in those cities of mystics, the manner of them and the peace they offer to the
tortured heart; but what kind of men they are in this city of mine and why it is that all those others on the road so passionately seek it, I do not know. I only know that it imports me urgently to go there, and that when at last I slip through its gates, happiness awaits me.

Lines.

The Boarding House at Nicosia. The food is the typical English food that you would get in a private hotel in Bayswater. Soup, fish, roast and a sweet, which is either a trifle or a cabinet pudding; and on Sundays a savoury of stuffed eggs. There are two bathrooms fitted with a geyser, which heats the water with wood. The rooms are furnished with little iron beds and cheap furniture painted white. There are on the floor strips of rug that look like horse-blanket. The drawing-room has large chintz-covered chairs and tables covered with Maltese drawn-work. The light is bright and inconveniently placed for reading. Here in the evening the guests collect and play hearts for infinitesimal sums. There is a lot of noise and chaff. The proprietor is a small fat Greek, who speaks not very good English, and he is assisted in the dining-room by a scrubby Greek boy with fine eyes and a gold tooth.

The guests. A military man, an ex-Dragoon, very gentlemanly and good form. He is tuberculous and spends his time in
pensions
on the Riviera or wandering about the Near East. He is tall and thin with sharp features and thinnish hair plastered down on his head. An elderly, fat lady with white hair, extremely gay and flirtatious. She is what is called a man's woman, and exchanges chaff across the dining-room with the other guests. She laughs a great deal and is very skittish. A business man from Egypt with his stout wife. He has a red face and greyish hair done like a private soldier's; he might have started in the ranks. An elderly man with gold-rimmed spectacles who is slowly going round Europe studying social welfare. He writes articles for minor papers and is getting material for a book on the social conditions of the working classes. He talks of nothing else. He has a large fund of old stories which he is constantly trying to tell, and which the other people are always preventing him from telling.
There are two slim ladies in delicate health who live much in their bedrooms. The other women think it odd that they should have cocktails brought them before each meal. A small stout old man with a pointed white beard and spectacles, who has spent forty-two years in Japan. His business was shaken by the earthquake and ceased to pay, so it was dissolved. He came back to England to settle with his daughter and bought a house in Harrow, proposing to live with her and her husband for the rest of his life. He had seen practically nothing of her since she was six months old when she was sent back to Europe then, and when he came to settle down with her he found that they were complete strangers. Friction arose, and so, leaving her the house, he came out to the Near East. He regrets Japan and would like to go back, but feels he cannot afford any longer to live there as he had been used to. He goes to the club here, reads the papers and plays billiards. In the evening at the hotel he plays patience or listens to the conversation. He very seldom joins in, apparently feeling a little out of it, but he chuckles at the chaff that passes to and fro. He is just waiting for death. With all of them chaff is the staple conversation. The price of the
pension
is ten shillings a day.