Japanese may be officially regarded as “European,” but the ruling meant nothing to the man on the street. Each waiter or box-office clerk, was forced to make his own decision, to serve or not to serve.
Early in their stay, before they had become so sensitive that they refused to go out by themselves at all, Nick, Mickey, and Moto were out seeing the town and decided to stop at a pub for some beer. They entered a “European” bar, but the bartender, albeit courteously, referred them to another place just around the corner.
“That’s where you boys belong,” he told them. “This is the European bar.”
Rather than argue their status, they went around the corner as directed. Here, too, the proprietor, an Indian, was most polite and helpful. “Just what are you men?”
“We’re Japanese.”
“I see. Well, I’ll tell you—you go just around the corner—”
At this point Mickey leaned forward and said confidentially, “We don’t want European beer. We want non-European beer. We don’t like Europeans!”
“You don’t!” the proprietor exclaimed, in pleased amazement. “Gentlemen, the drinks are on the house!”
Not only the barkeeper, but every patron in the establishment insisted on setting them up, until the three M’s had consumed all they could hold. They came back to the boat considerably cheered, so much so that Nick volunteered the story, which we would otherwise certainly never have heard.
The tension between “European” and “non-European” is by no means the only conflict in this unhappy country. There is a deep and ever-widening schism between the whites themselves, between those of British background and those descended from the early Boers. The latter speak Afrikaans, are fantastically conservative, and are doing everything they can to break all ties with the English. The few we met seemed to us to have a pathological sensitivity to criticism. On one occasion, in the course of a very enjoyable afternoon’s ride through the countryside, I saw a sign painted in Afrikaans beside the road: SKOOL. Beneath it was the same word in the second official language: SCHOOL. I made a joking reference to the first spelling, something like, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”—only to be blasted by an outburst from the lady in the party, who apparently came from an Afrikaner family. Her tirade included charges that foreigners always acted superior, were always looking for things to criticize, and didn’t do any better in their own country! There was much truth in what she said, so I made a shame-faced apology and took the lesson to heart. She, too, apologized, but her last remark was almost desperate in its intensity: “You just can’t understand the situation here!”