Profiles from China Part 6

Hong Kong

On the Canton River Boat

Up and down, up and down, paces the sentry.

He is dressed in a uniform of khaki and his socks are green. Over his shoulder is slung a rifle, and from his belt hang a pistol and cartridge pouch.

He is, I think, Malay and Chinese mixed.

Behind him the rocky islands, hazed in blue, the yellow sun-drenched water, the tropic sh.o.r.e, pa.s.s as a background in a dream.

He only is sweltering reality.

Yet he is here to guard against a nightmare, an anachronism, something that I cannot grasp.

He is guarding me from pirates.

Piracy! The very name is fantastic in my ears, colored like a toucan in the zoo.

And yet the ordinance is clear: "Four armed guards, strong metal grills behind the bridge, the engine-room enclosed--in case of piracy."

The socks of the sentry are green.

Up and down, up and down he paces, between the bridge and the first of the life-boats.

In my deck chair I grow restless.

Am I then so far removed from life, so wrapped in cotton wool, so deep-sunk in the soft lap of civilization, that I cannot feel the cold splash of truth?

It is a disquieting thought--for certainly piracy seems as fantastic as ever.

The socks of the sentry annoy me. They are _too_ green for so hot a day.

And his shoes squeak.

I should feel much cooler if he wouldn't pace so.

Piracy!

Somewhere on the River

The Altar of Heaven

Beneath the leaning, rain-washed sky this great white circle--beautiful!

In three white terraces the circle lies, piled one on one toward Heaven. And on each terrace the white bal.u.s.trade climbs in aspiring marble, etched in cloud.

And Heaven is very near.

For this is wors.h.i.+p native as the air, wide as the wind, and poignant as the rain, Pure aspiration, the eternal dream.

Beneath the leaning sky this great white circle!

Peking

The Chair Ride

The coolies lift and strain; My chair creaks rhythmically.

It is not yet morning and the live darkness pushes about us, a greedy darkness that has swallowed even the stars.

In all the world there is left only my chair, with the tiny horn lantern before it.

There are also, it is true, the undersides of trees in the lantern-light and the stony path that flows past ceaselessly.

But these things flit and change.

Only I and the chair and the darkness are permanent.

We have been moving so since time was in the womb.

The seat of my chair is of wicker.

It is not unlike an invalid chair, and I, in it, am swaddled like an invalid, wrapped in layer on layer of coddling wool.

But there are no wheels to my chair. I ride on the steady feet of four queued coolies.

The tramp of their lifted shoes is the rhythm of being, throbbing in me as my own heart throbs.

Save for their feet the bearers are silent. They move softly through the live darkness. But now and again I am s.h.i.+fted skilfully from one shoulder to the other.

The breath of the coolies is short.

They strain, and in spite of the cold I know they are sweating.

It is wicked of course!

My five dollars ought not to buy life.

But it is all they understand; And even I am not precisely comfortable.

The darkness is thinning a little.

On either side loom featureless black hills, their summits sharp and ragged.

The Great Wall is somewhere hereabouts.

My chair creaks rhythmically.

In another year it will be day.

Ching-lung-chiao

The Sikh Policeman: A British Subject

Of what, I wonder, are you thinking?

It is something beyond my world I know, something that I cannot guess.

Yet I wonder.

Of nothing Chinese can you be thinking, for you hate them with an automatic hatred--the hatred of the well-fed for the starved, of the warlike for the weak.

When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with the drawing back of your silken beard, your black, black beard, from your white teeth.

With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short gutturals.

You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be of them you are thinking.

Yet neither do you speak the tongue of the master whom you serve.

No more do you know of us the "Masters" than you know of them the "dogs."

We are above you, they below.

And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect and splendid, lithe and male. Your scarlet turban frames your neat black head, And you are thinking.

Or are you?

Perhaps we only are stung with thought.

I wonder.

Shanghai