The Further Side of Silence/The Experiences of Râja Haji Hamid
THE EXPERIENCES OF RÂJA HAJI HAMID
THESE things were told to me by Râja Haji Hamid as he and I lay smoking on our sleeping-mats during the cool still hours before the dawn. He was a member of the Royal Family of Sĕlângor, and he still enjoyed throughout the length and breadth of the Peninsula the immense reputation for valour, invulnerability, successful homicides, and other manly qualities and achievements which had made him famous ere ever the white men came. He had accompanied me to the east coast as chief of my followers—an excellent band of ruffians who (to use the phrase at that time current among them) were helping me to serve as "the bait at the tip of the fish-hook" at the court of the Sultan of an independent Malay state. He had been induced to accept this post partly out of friendship for me, but mainly because he was thus enabled to turn his back for a space upon the deplorably monotonous and insipid conditions to which British rule had reduced his own country, and because, in the lawless land wherein I was then acting as political agent, he saw a prospect of renewing some of the stirring experiences of his youth.
Râja Haji and I had passed the evening in the Sultan's bâlai, or hall of state, watching the Chinese bankers raking in their gains, while the Malays of all classes gambled and cursed their luck with the noisy slapping of thighs and many references to Allah and to his Prophet—according to whose teaching gaming is an unclean thing. The sight of the play and of the fierce passions which it aroused had awakened many memories in Râja Haji, filling him with desires that made him restless; and though he had refrained from joining in the unholy sport, it was evident that the turban around his head—which his increasing years and his manifold iniquities had driven him to Mecca to seek—was that night irksome to him, since it forbade public indulgence in such forbidden pleasures.
Now as we lay talking, ere sleep came to us, he fell to talking of the old days in Selangor before the coming of the white men.
"Ya, Allah, Tûan," he exclaimed. "I loved those ancient times exceedingly, when all men were shy of Si-Hamid, and none dared face his kris, the 'Chinese Axe.' I never felt the grip of poverty in those days, for my supplies were ever at the tip of my dagger, and very few were found reckless enough to withhold aught that I desired or coveted.
"Did I ever tell you, Tûan, the tale of how the gamblers of Klang yielded up the money of their banks to me without resistance or the spinning of a single dice-box? No? Ah, that was a pleasant tale and a deed which was famous throughout Sělângor, and gave me a very great name.
"It was in this wise. I was in sorry case, for the boats had ceased to ply on the river through fear of me, and my followers were so few that I could not rush a town or even loot a Chinese kong-si house. As for the village people, they were as poor as I, and save for their womenfolk (whom, when I desired them, they had the good sense to surrender to me with docility) I never harassed them.
"Now, upon a certain day, my wives and my people came to me asking for rice, or for money with which to purchase it; but I had naught to give them, only one little dollar remaining to me. It is an accursed thing when the little ones are in want of food, and my liver grew hot within me at the thought. None of the womenfolk dared say a word when they saw that mine eyes waxed red; but the little children wept aloud, and I heard them and was sad. Moreover, I, too, was hungry, for my belly was empty. Wherefore, looking upon my solitary dollar, I called to me one of my men, and bade him go to the Chinese store and buy for me a bottle of the white men's perfume.
"Now when my wife—the mother of my son—heard this order, she cried out in anger: Are you mad, Father of Che' Bûjang, that you throw away your last dollar on perfumes for your lights of love, while Che' Bûjang and his brethren cry for rice?"
"But I slapped her on the mouth and said, 'Be still!' for it is not well for a man to suffer a woman to question the doings of men.
"That evening, when the night had fallen, I put on my fighting-jacket, upon which were inscribed many texts from the Holy Book, my short drawers, such as the Bûgis folk weave; and I bound my kris, the 'Chinese Axe' about my waist, and took in my hand my so famous sword, 'the Rising Sun." Three or four of my young men followed at my heels, and I did not forget to take with me the bottle of the white man's perfume.
"I went straight to the great Klang gaming-house, which at that hour was filled with gamblers; and when I reached the door, I halted for the space of an eye flick, and spilled the scent over my right hand and arm as far as the elbow. Then I rushed in among the gamblers, suddenly and without warning, stepping like a fencer in the war dance, and crying 'Amok! Amok!' till the coins danced upon the gaming-tables. All the gamblers stayed their hands from the staking, and some seized the hilts of their daggers. Then I cried aloud three times, 'I am Si-Hamid, the Tiger Unbound!'—for by that name did men then call me. 'Get you to your dwellings, and that speedily, and leave your money where it is or I will slay you!"
"Many were terrified, a few laughed, some hesitated, some even scowled at me in naughty fashion, clutching their coins; but none did as I bade them.
"'Pigs and dogs,' I cried. 'Are your ears deaf that you obey me not, or are you sated with living and desire that your shrouds should be made ready? Do instantly my bidding, or I will kill you all, as a kite swoops upon little chickens. What powers do you possess and what are your stratagems that you fancy you can prevail against me? For it is I, Si-Hamid—I, who am invulnerable—I whom the very fire burns, but cannot devour!'
"With that, I thrust my right hand into the flame of a Chinese gaming-lamp, and being saturated with the white man's perfume, it blazed up bravely, even to my elbow, doing me no hurt, while I waved it flaming above my head.
"Verily the white men are very clever, who so cunningly devise the medicine of these perfumes.
"Now, when all the people in the gambling-house saw that my hand and arm were burned with fire, but were not consumed, a great fear fell upon them, and they fled shrieking, no man staying to gather up his silver. This presently I counted and put into sacks, and my youths bore it to my house, and my fame waxed very great in Klang. Men said that henceforth Si-Hamid should be named, not the Tiger Unbound, but the Fiery Rhinoceros.[1] It was long ere the nature of my stratagem became known; and even then no man of all the many who were within the gambling-house at Klang that night had the hardihood or the imprudence to ask me for the money which I had borrowed from him and from his fellows.
"Ya, Allah, Tûan, but those days were exceedingly good days. I cannot think upon them for it makes me sad. It is true what is said in the quatrain of the men of Kědah—
"Pulau Pinang hath a new town
And Captain Light is its king.
Think not of the days that are gone
Or you will bow low your head and your tears will flow.
"Ya, Allah! Ya Tûhan-ku! Verily I cannot endure these memories."
He lay tossing about upon his mat, muttering and exclaiming; and for a space I let him be. The thought of the old, free, lawless days, when it suddenly recurs to a Malayan râja of the old school, whose claws have been cut by the British Government, is to him like a raging tooth. It goads him to a maddened restlessness, and obliterates, for the time being, all other sensations. Words, in such circumstances, are useless; and in this particular instance I was hardly in a position to offer sympathy or consolation, seeing that Râja Haji and I were at that time engaged in an attempt to do for another Malayan state, and for the râjas who had battened upon it, all that my friend regretted so bitterly that the white men had done for Sělângor and for him.
Gradually he became calmer, and presently began to chuckle comfortably to himself. Soon he spoke again.
"I remember once, when I was for the moment rich with the spoils of war, I gambled all the evening in that same gaming-house at Klang, and lost four thousand dollars. It mattered not at all on which quarter of the mat I staked, nor whether I went ko-o, li-am, or tang.[2] I pursued the red half of the die, as one chases a dog, but never once did I catch it. At length, when my four thousand dollars were finished, I arose and departed, and my liver was hot in my chest. As I came out of the gaming-house, a Chinaman whom I knew, and who loved me, followed after me and whispered in my ear: 'Hai-yah, Ungku! You have lost much to-night. It is not fitting. That wicked one was cheating you; for he hath a trick whereby he can make the red part of the die turn to whichever quarter of the mat he chooses."
"'Is this true?" I asked. And he made answer. 'It is indeed true.'
"Then I loosened the 'Chinese Axe' in its scabbard, and turned back into the gaming-house. First I seized the Chinaman by his pigtail, though he yelled and struggled, loudly proclaiming his innocence; and my followers gathered up all the money in his bank—nearly seven thousand dollars, so that it took six men to carry it. Thus I departed to my house, with the Chinaman and the money, none daring to bar my passage.
"When we had entered the house, I bade the Chinaman be seated, and I told him that I would kill him, even then, if he did not show me the trick whereby he had cheated me. This he presently did; and for a long time I sat watching him and practising, for I had a mind to learn the manner of his art, thinking that later I might profit by it. Then, just as the dawn was breaking. I led the Chinaman down to the river by the hand, for I was loath to make a mess within my house; and when I had cut his throat, and had sent his body floating downstream, I washed myself, performed my religious ablutions, prayed the morning prayer, and so betook myself to my sleeping-mat, for my eyes were heavy from long waking."
"Kasîh-an China! I am sorry for the Chinaman," I said.
"Why are you sorry for him?" asked Raja Haji. "He had cheated me, wherefore it was not fitting that he should live. Moreover, he was a Chinaman and an infidel, and the lives of such folk were not reckoned by us as being of any worth. In Kinta, before Tûan Birch came to Pêrak, they had a game called main china—the Chinaman game—each man betting upon the number of coins which a passing Chinaman carried in his pouch, and upon whether that number were odd or even. Thereafter, when the bets had been made, they would kill the Chinaman and count the coins."
"They might have done that without killing the Chinaman," I said.
"That is true," rejoined Râja Haji. "But it was a more certain way, and morcover it increased their pleasure. But, Tûan, the night is very far advanced and we are weary. Let us sleep."
Verily life in an independent Malay state thirty years ago, like adversity, made one acquainted with some strange bedfellows.
- ↑ Bâdak api, the Fiery Rhinoceros, a monster of ancient Malayan myth. It is supposed to have quitted the earth in the company of the dragon and the lion at the instance of the magician Sang Kĕlĕmbai. The latter, whose spoken word turned to stone all animate and inanimate things that he addresser, fed the earth through fear of mankind, of whose size and strength he had obtained a mistaken impression. This arose from the sight of a man's sârong hanging from the top of a tall bamboo, upon which it had been placed when the yielding stem was pulled down to within a man's reach, and by the discovery of a little, glassy-headed, toothless man asleep in a hammock, whom Sang Kĕlĕmbai mistook for a newly born infant. Before his departure, he inadvertently taught mankind how to make and use a casting-net.
- ↑ Three of the methods of staking employed in the Chinese game which the Malays call te-po. The mat is divided into four sections, and a die, one half of which is white and the other half red, is hidden in a solid brass box, which is then set spinning in the centre of the mat. The gamblers het as to the quarter of the mat toward which the red half of the die will be found to be facing when the top of the box is lifted. Ko-o is staking on a single section, and if successful three times the amount of the stake is paid. Li-am is staking on two adjoining sections of the mat, and if the red die faces toward either of them, the player receives double the amount of his stake. Tang is staking on two opposite sections of the mat, and again double the amount of the stake is paid if the red half of the die faces toward either of them.