CHAPTER VIII
I SAY IT IN PIDGIN
At last the time came when my vanity was tickled to the verge of hysteria; I had actually learned pidgin English. To the native English is pidgin, and if you do not speak it with classic exactitude he simply fails to understand you. Once I had thought that I could pick it up in a week or two, it sounded so like laundry Chinese. Studying it, I learned how iron-bound its rules of idiom and grammar actually are. Twice, before I had mastered the lingo, I had tried it on native audiences and had been, as the actors say, laughed off the stage. But I was tired of having my lectures hashed by casual interpreters; I knew that I must talk straight to the people in the trade language which was common over the larger part of Melanesia. It took a year of hard grinding to learn it. Superior natives, kindly missionaries and District Officers were my tutors.
I must be fair to the reader and show him a few of the simpler twists in the language, and interpret a few peculiarities. Otherwise, the forthcoming sample of what became my standard pidgin hookworm lecture might be difficult to understand.
The verb “go,” for instance. The future is “by-and-by me go,” and the past is “me go finish.” “Finish” is trickily used to express finality. When a boy is “dead finish” he is dead. When you bury a body you “plant ’im finish.” (When a houseboy says he is “killed” it merely means that his mistress has taken a stick to him.)
“Him” is masculine, feminine or neuter, generally pronounced “im,” but sometimes “um.” “Im” may be joined to a verb, as in “lookim,” or separated as in “look im,” (“look at him”).
“Fellow” or “feller” is another tricky one. “Feller” precedes almost every noun—“One feller house,” and so on. “Me go three feller Sunday” means “I was gone three weeks.”
A man is usually a “boy,” a woman a “mary.” But often, linguistically, a man’s a “man,” for a’ that. The personal pronoun is always masculine: “Dis feller mary he go.” Repetition gives a verb an increasing value. When you say, “He go, go, go, go, GO,” that’s a long, tired journey. Then for effect you add, “long way too much.” “Too much” means “very.” Example: “Him good feller too much”—quite a compliment.
“Senake” is “snake” or “worm,” and in hookworm lectures you refer to hatched larvae as “pickaninny senake.” “Gelass” is “glass,” and refers to a microscope, telescope or anything else with a lens in it.
The frequent use of “belong” (or “belonga”) is confusing, and “along” is worse. Loosely speaking, “belong” is possessive. “Knifie belong me” is “my knife” and about the only way to translate “Dis fellow knifie belong dis fellow mary belong house belong Keop” would be “The knife of the native woman who lives in the Captain’s house”—a pretty clumsy way of making your point. “Along” generally expresses movement or approach: “Ship stop along place.” On some remote islands, God is expressed by “Big Feller Walk along Top.”
“Blut” is blood (German), and is combined with “sabe” (Spanish) in “You altogether fellow, you sabe string belong blut?” when you want to know if everybody understands the nature of the blood stream. “Altogether fellow” expresses “everybody.”
“Kaikai” is “eat.” Your heart is a “pump,” your lungs “wind,” and when you show a hookworm picture in your lecture the “illustration” is a “ficshure.”
Their use of “behind” doesn’t express much until you are informed that it may mean either “afterward” or “pretty soon.” “Behind me show you dis feller” equals “After I have shown you this.”
To the uninitiated, pure pidgin does not make the slightest sense. German priests have learned it—and naïvely used its Chaucerian obscenities—without knowing a word of English.
In giving you just a flash of my first public success with the language, I assure you that I have anglicized it down to a point where the pidgin-wise native would have a hard time making head or tail out of it. But head or tail would be lost to the reader if I gave the unedited version.
******
When I returned to the native hospital at Rabaul and told Colonel Honman that I was prepared to lecture in pidgin, he gnashed pleasantly and said, “Try it on them.” Honman was behind me in everything now.
A packed audience was gathered that night to hear my attempt at a new and dreadful language. I mopped cold sweat from my bald spot. Jerope had hung the hookworm chart to a post; it was like nailing your flag to the mast—fight or sink, no turning back. Assistants had passed around our two property bottles, pickled hookworms and ascarides. The natives always admired the bottled ascarides most; they were larger and looked more dangerous. The pause settled my stomach. My natural brazenness returned and I bawled for order.
“You altogether boy, you listen good. Me come talk along one big feller sick....”
I felt the listening silence. They were taking in every word.
“Altogether boy he got um plenty senake he stop along inside bell’ belong boy, he kaikai bell’, blut he come, he kaikai blut. Blut belong boy him kaikai belong senake.
“Place belonga me him stop long way too much. You ketchum one feller steamer, you go one feller Sunday, now you come up along Sydney. Now you ketchum one feller steamer, big more (larger), now you go, go, go three feller Sunday, now you come up along place belong me....”
In the native mind I had visualized the distance I had traveled from New York to New Guinea. And now for a word picture of John D. Rockefeller, Senior:—
“Master belonga me him make im altogether kerosene, him make im altogether benzine. Now he old feller. He got im plenty too much belong money. Money belong him allesame dirt. Now he old feller, close up him he die finish. He look about. Him he tink, ‘Me like make im one feller something, he good feller belong altogether boy he buy im kerosene belonga me.’ Now Gubment (Government) he talk along master belonga me. Master belonga me him he talk, ‘You, you go killim altogether senake belong bell’ belong boy belong island.’”
(I passed around the bottle of pickled hookworms.)
“Now, you boy, lookim good along dis feller bottle. Dis small feller senake he bad feller too much.... He got im tooth belongim. He kaikai bell’ belong altogether boy. Blut he come he kaikai blut....”
(Turning chart to enlargement of male and female hookworms.)
“You look along dis feller ficshure. Two feller senake. You look; one feller he man-senake, one feller him he mary-senake. Dis feller mary, him he bad feller too much. Him he stop along inside bell’; him he kaikai blut; him he makim too much small feller egg. Boy he makim something along ground. Egg he come out. Dis egg he small feller too much....”
Open eyes and open mouths confronted me. And now to describe a microscope in pidgin English:—
“He no allesame glass belong Keop (Captain) belong steamer—he nother kind. Glass belong Keop, he make one feller something he stop too far, more big; glass belonga me, he make one feller something too small, more big. Behind (pretty soon) you sabe lookim along dis feller glass....”
(Attentive eyes followed the microscope, and I told of the dropping of the egg, the birth of the larva and its destiny....)
“Now boy he make im something along ground, egg he come out. Rain he come down. Egg, him he stop. Now sun he cookim. Now small feller pickaninny (larva), close up he broke-im dis feller egg. Him, he walkabout along ground, quick feller too much. You no sabe lookim—he small feller too much. Eye belonga you no good. Now boy he come. Him he putim foot belongim along ground. Now pickaninny senake him come inside foot belong boy, quick feller too much. Boy he scratchim, but he no can catchim dis feller senake. Now he go along string belong blut. Now he go, he go, he go, he go go go go, now he come up along pump belong blut; now he come to wind; him he come up along troat; boy he kaikai him....”
(Pointing to internal organs outlined on the chart.)
“Now he come along bell’ belong you, now he big feller little bit; now he gettim tooth belong im; now he sabe kaikai bell’ belong boy; he sabe kaikai blut. Suppose you gottim plenty good kaikai—dis feller kaikai no belong you; him belong senake. You eatim, senake he catchim first time....
“Senake him kaikai blut belong boy, now boy he no strong; he weak feller too much; him he no like walkabout; him he no like work; him he like sleep all time. Bell’ belong him no good, skin belong him no good, leg belong him allesame stick, him rotten altogether because senake he kaikai bell’ belongim.... Blut belongim water; quick time boy he die finish; now he go along ground.
“Now master belonga me he gottim one good feller medicine. You drinkim one time, behind (afterward) you takim one salts medicine; senake he die finish, he come outside. Now, kaikai belong boy, he no belong senake. Now quick time skin belong boy good, now he sabe walkabout, him he strong feller too much....”
When at last I had finished I heard the frightened sigh that fluttered through my audience. A heavy load seemed to fall from my shoulders. I had said it in pidgin, I had made them understand!
******
This was the hookworm lecture which, with some improvements, I gave hundreds of times throughout Melanesia, wherever pidgin was spoken; in New Guinea, in the Solomon Islands, in the New Hebrides. Yes, and I took it to New York in 1922, and demonstrated it to the Rockefeller Foundation. When I was asked to address a body of extremely dignified scientific men, Dr. George Vincent encouraged me to repeat my hookworm lecture, for its fame seemed to have arrived before I did. “Give it to them straight,” Dr. Heiser suggested when I took the platform. If my performance added nothing to science, it was at least a comedy success. It panicked ’em, as the actors say. When I came to the part that described Mr. Rockefeller as “Master belonga me him make im altogether kerosene.... Now he old feller.... Money belong him allesame dirt,” solemn scientists who hadn’t smiled for years had to be held up to keep them from falling into the aisles.