The Further Side of Silence/The Inner Apartment
THE INNER APARTMENT
IF YOU go up the Pahang River for a hundred and eighty miles, you come to a spot where the stream divides itself into two main branches, and where the name "Pahang" dies an ignominious death in a small ditch which debouches at their point of junction. The river on your left is the Jělai, and that on your right is the Těmběling. If you go up the latter, you presently come to big flights of rapids, a few gambir plantations, and a great many of the very best ruffians in the Malay Peninsula, most of whom, a quarter of a century ago, were rather particular friends of my own. If, on the other hand, you follow the Jelai up its course, past Kuâla Lĭpis, where the river of that name falls into it on its right bank, and on and on and on, you come at fast to the wild Sâkai country where, in my time, the Malayan language was still unknown, and where the horizon of the aboriginal tribes was formed by the impenetrable jungle shutting down on the far side of a slender stream, and was further narrowed by the limitations of intellects that were unable to conceive an arithmetical idea higher than the numeral three. Before you run your nose into these uncleanly places, however, you pass through a district spattered with Malay habitations; and if you turn off up the Tĕlang River, you find a little open country and some prosperous looking villages.
One day in July, 1893, a feast in honour of a wedding was being celebrated in a village situated in this valley. The scene was typical. The head and skin of a water buffalo—a black one, of course, for Malays will not eat the meat of one of the mottled, pink brutes, which are the alternative breed—and the fly-infested pools of blood which marked the spot where it had been slaughtered and where its carcase had been dismembered, were prominent features in the foreground, lying displayed in a highly unappetizing manner in a little open space at the side of one of the houses. In one part of the village two men were posturing in one of the more or less aimless sword dances which are so dear to all Malays, in which the performers move will incredible slowness, ward off the imaginary blows struck at them by hypothetical adversaries, and approach one another only at infrequent intervals and then with the most meagre results. A ring of spectators squatted on the grass around them, subjecting their movements to the keenest criticism, and taking an apparently inexhaustible interest in their unexciting display. Drums and gongs, meanwhile, beat a rhythmical time, that makes the heaviest heels itch to move more quickly; and now and again the crowd of onlookers whooped and yelled in shrill, far-sounding chorus. This choric shout—the sôrak, as the Malays call it—is raised by them when engaged either in sport or in battle; and partly from association, partly by reason of the shrill lilt of it, I, for one, can never hear it without a thrill. The Malays are very sensitive to its infection of sympathetic excitement, and the sound of it speedily awakes in them a sort of frenzy of enthusiasm.
All the men present were dressed in many-coloured silks and tartans, and were armed with daggers, as befits warriors; but if you chanced to possess an eye for such details, you would have noticed that garments and weapons alike were worn in a fashion calculated to excite the ridicule of a down-country Malay. The distinction between the town and country mouse is as marked in the Malay Peninsula as elsewhere, and it is rarely that the man from the ûlu—the upper reaches—can master all the intricacies of language, habit, and custom which lend their cachet of superiority to the men of the more polite districts.
In a bâlai—a large building raised on piles, and protected by a high-pitched thatch roof, but furnished with low half walls only, an erection specially constructed for the purposes of the feast—a number of priests and pilgrims and persons of pious reputation were seated, gravely intoning the Kurân, but pausing to chew betel quids and to gossip scandalously at frequent intervals. Prominent among them were many white-capped lĕbai—that class of fictitious religious mendicants whose members are usually among the most well-to-do men of the village. but who accept as their right, and without shame. the charitable doles of the faithful in exchange for the prayers which they are ready on all occasions to recite. The wag of the district was also present among them, for he is an inevitable feature of most Malayan gatherings, and is generally one of the local holy men. It is not always easy to understand how he acquired his reputation for humour, but once gained it has stood steady as a rock. His mere presence is held to be provocative of laughter, and as often as he opens his mouth the obsequious guffaw goes up, no matter what the words that issue from his lips. Most of his hearers, on the present occasion, had listened to his threadbare old jests any time these twenty years past, but the applause which greeted them, as each in turn was trotted out, was none the less hearty or genuine on that account. Among Malays novelty and surprise are not held to be essential elements of humour. They will ask for the same story, or laboriously angle for the same witticism, time after time; prefer that it should be told in the same way, and expressed as nearly as possible in the same words at each repetition; and They will invariably laugh with equal zest and in precisely the same place, in spite of the hoary antiquity of the thing, after the manner of a child. Similarly, it is this tolerance of, nay, delight in, reiteration that impels a Malayan râja, when civilized, to decorate his sitting-room walis with half a dozen replicas of the same unattractive photograph.
Meanwhile the womenfolk had come from far and near to help in the preparation of the feast, and the men of the family having previously done the heavy work of carrying the water, hewing the firewood, jointing the meat, and grinding the curry stuff, the female population was busily engaged in the back premises of the house cooking as only Malay women can cook, keeping up all the time a constant shrill babbling, varied by an occasional scream of direction from some experienced hag. The younger and prettier girls had carried their work to the doorways, pretending that more light was necessary than could be found in the dark interior of the house, and seated there with a mighty affectation of modesty, they were engaging at long range in a spirited interchange of "eyeplay"—as the Malays call it—with the youngsters of the village. Much havoc, no doubt, was thus wrought in susceptible male hearts, but most of the sufferers knew that maidens and matrons alike would be prepared, as occasion offered, to heal with a limitless generosity the wounds they so wantonly inflicted. That is one of the things that make life so blithe a business for the average young Malay. He is always in love with some woman or another, and knows that its consummation is merely a question of opportunity in the provision of which he shows equal energy and ingenuity.
The bride, of course, having been dressed in smart new silks of delicious tints, and loaded with gold ornaments, borrowed for the occasion from their possessors from many miles around, was left in solitude, seated on the gêta—or raised sleeping platform—in the dimly lighted inner apartment. there to await the ordeal known to Malay cruelty as sanding. The ceremony that bears this name is one at which the bride and bridegroom are brought together for the first time. They are officially supposed never to have seen one another before, though few self-respecting Malays allow their fiancées to be finally selected for them until they have had more than one good look at them. To effect this, a Malay, accompanied usually by one or two trusty friends, crceps one evening under the raised floor of the lady's house, and peeps at her through the bamboo laths or through the chinks of the wattled walls. At the sanding, however, stealth is no longer necessary. The bride and bridegroom are led forth by their respective relatives, and are placed side by side upon the dais prepared for the purpose, where they remain seated for hours, while the assembled male guests eat a hearty meal, and thereafter chant interminable verses from the Kurân. During the whole of this lime they must sit motionless, no matter how painfully their cramped legs may ache and throb, and their eyes must be downcast and fixed upon their hands which, scarlet with henna, lic motionless one on each knee. Malays who have endured the sanding assure me that the experience is trying in the extreme, and that the publicity of it is highly embarrassing, the more so since it is a point of honour for the man to try to catch an occasional glimpse of his bride out of the corner of his eyes, without turning his head a hair's breadth, and without being detected by the onlookers in the appalling solecism of moving so much as an eyelash.
The bridegroom is conducted to the house of his fiancée there to sit in state, by a band of his male relations and friends, some of whom sing shrill verses from the Kurân, while others rush madly ahead, charging, retreating, capering, dancing, yelling, and hooting, brandishing naked weapons, and engaging in a highly realistic sham-fight with the bride's relatives and their friends, who rush out of her compound to meet them, fling themselves into the heart of the excited mob, and do not suffer themselves to be routed until they have made a fine show of resistance.
Traditional customs, such as this, are among the most illuminating of archeological relics. They are perpetuated to-day for old sake's sake, laughingly, as a concession to the conventions, by people who never stay to question their origin, or to spare a thought to the forgotten social conditions or religious observances to the nature of which they testify. Yet each one of them is a fragmentary survival that whispers, to those who care to listen, of strange and ancient things. Thus the right claimed in England to kiss any girl who at Christmas is caught beneath the mistletoe, is the innocent shadow thrown across the present by the wild, indiscriminate orgies which were wont to be held under the oak trees in Druidical Britain, in celebration of the winter solstice. The practice of "blooding" a boy who, for the first time, is in at the death of a fox, points to the fact that of old, in merry England, the anointing of the young and untried warriors with the blood of the slain was a part of the established military ritual. Similarly, the Malayan custom which compels a youth, who has killed his first man, to lick the blood from his kris blade, or it may be even to swallow a tiny piece of flesh cut from the neighbourhood of his victim's heart, indicates that cannibalism was once an approved feature of war as waged by the Malays. In the same way, the sham fight which, among these people, marks the arrival of a bridegroom, bears witness to a time when marriage by capture was at once a stern reality, and the only honourable way in which a bride might be won. The antagonism of the male members of a family to the man who desires to possess himself of their daughter or sister is a strong, natural instinct, and it is easy to understand that, long after forcible abduction had ceased to be a reality, self-respect demanded that some show of resistance should be offered before the detested intruder was suffered to lead his wife away. In some of the wilder and more remote parts of the Malay Peninsula the aboriginal Sâkai still place a girl on an ant-hill, and ring her about by a mob of her male relations, who do not allow her suitor to approach her until his head has been broken in several places. Who can doubt that the adoption of a similar practice in England would find much favour with many schoolboy brothers, if it could be made a customary feature of their sisters' marriage ceremonies?
The bride, as has been said, had been left in the inner apartment, there to await her call to the dais: and the preparations were in full swing—the men and women enjoying themselves each after their own fashion, the former idling while the latter worked—when suddenly a dull thud, as of some falling body, was heard within the house. The women rushed in to enquire its cause, and found the little bride lying on the floor with a ghastly gash in her throat, a small clasp-knife on the mat by her side, and all her pretty garments drenched in her own blood. They lifted her up, and strove to stanch the bleeding; and as they fought to stay the life that was ebbing from her. the drone of the priests and the beat of the drums came to their ears from the men who were making merry without. Then suddenly the news of what had occurred reached the assembled guests, and the music died away and was replaced by a babble of excited voices.
The father of the girl hurried in, thrusting his way through the curious crowds which already blocked the narrow doorways, and holding his daughter in his arms, he entreated her to tell him who had done this thing.
"It is mine own handiwork," she said.
"But wherefore, child of mine," cried her mother, "but wherefore do you desire to kill yourself?"
"I gazed upon my likeness in the mirror," the girl sobbed out, speaking painfully and with difficulty, "and looking, I beheld that I was very hideous, so that it was not fitting that I should any more live. Therefore I did it."
And until she died, about an hour later, this was the only explanation that she would give.
The matter was related to me by the great upcountry chief, the Dato' Maharâja Pěrba of Jělai, who said that he had never heard of any parallel case. I warned him solemnly not to let the thing become a precedent; for there are many ill-favoured women in his district, and if they had all followed the girl's example, the population would have suffered considerable depletion. Later, however, when I learned the real reasons which had led to the suicide, I was sorry that I had ever jested about it, for the girl's was a sad little story.
Some months earlier a Pĕkan Malay had come up the Jĕlai on a trading expedition, and had cast his eyes upon the girl. To her he was all that the people of the surrounding villages were not. He walked with a swagger, wore his weapons and his clothes. with an air that none save a Malay who has been bred in the neighbourhood of a râja's court knows how to assume, and was full of brave tales, to which the elders of the village could only listen with wonder and respect. Just as Lancelot enthralled Elaine, so did this man—a figure no less wonderful and splendid to this poor little upcountry maid—come into her life, revolutionizing her ideas and her ideals, and filling her with hopes and with desires of which hitherto she had never dreamed. Against so practised and experienced a wooer what could her simple arts avail? Snatching at a moment's happiness and reckless of the future, she gave herself to him, hoping, thereby, it may be, to hold him in silken bonds through which he might not break; but what was all her life to her was to him no more than a passing incident. One day she learned that he bad returned. downstream. The idea of following him probably never even occurred to her, for Malayan women have been robbed by circumstance of any great power of initiative; but, like others before her, she thought that the sun had fallen from heaven because her rush-light had gone out.
Her parents, who knew nothing of this intrigue, calmly set about making the arrangements for her marriage—a matter concerning which she, of course, would be the last person in the world to be consulted. She must have watched these preparations with speechless agony, knowing that the day fixed for her wedding must be that upon which her life would end; for she had resolved to die faithful to her false lover, though it was not until the very last that she summoned up sufficient courage to kill herself. That she ever brought herself to the pitch of committing suicide is very marvellous, for that act is not only opposed to all natural instincts, but is specially repugnant to the spirit of her race. The male Malay, driven to desperation, runs âmok; the Malay woman endures and submits. But this poor child of fourteen, who so early had learned the raptures and the tragedies of a great love, must have been possessed of extraordinary force of character. Secretly and in silence she resolved; fearlessly she carried her resolve into execution; and dying concealed the love affair which had wrought her undoing, and the fact of her approaching maternity. And perhaps there lurked some elements of truth in the only explanation which she gave with her dying breath. She had looked into the mirror and it had condemned her, for though she had won love, her love had abandoned her.