So I desisted, but looked at the durians so wistfully that the Moros put them down in price to a penny apiece, evidently thinking that monetary considerations prohibited the purchase.
In appearance the durian is green and prickly, about the size of a small melon, and even through the tough outside rind one can notice a faint nauseating odour. It is said that when one is opened in the market it takes but a few moments to clear the vicinity of Americans, while if a man be courageous enough to brave the strong smell and take a bite of the fruit, his presence will be unwelcome in polite society for some time thereafter; yet the durian is delightful to the palate, and would doubtless be oftener eaten did not one become so steeped in its anything but Sabean odour.
That first morning in Sulu, after a jolly breakfast with some of our army friends, a post officer took me into the Moro village of Tuli, just south of the walled town. There we visited many native house, climbing up steps made of circular logs, which were hard to navigate in shoes, and in every instance the natives greeted us with the utmost cordiality.
In one of the tumble-down shacks near the sea we found the Sultana, Inchy Jamela, mother of the present Sultan, who had preceded her son to Sulu on a little visit. She was a most repulsive old hag, blear-eyed and skinny with blackened teeth, from which the thin lips curled away in a chronic snarl, but she rose on her elbow from the couch where she was reclining, and shook hands in good American fashion. Then she threw us each a pillow, indicating that we, too, should lie down and take it easy, but we preferred our perpendicularity, and sat upright on the edge of her couch, this being the only article of furniture in the room.
As the old lady could not speak Spanish, she leered at us pleasantly from where she lay, occasionally muttering something in her native tongue, that might have been a tribute to our charms of mind or person, but which sounded more like an incantation. I felt she was a veritable witch, and at any moment expected to find myself changed into some animal or other under the baleful light of her eyes. If she had said, “Rumpelstilzchen, rumpelstilzchen,” or any other cabalistic thing the witches in our fairy tales used to say, I should not have been surprised; and I tried to smile as pleasantly as I knew how, for fear she would think me bad tempered, and so change my every word into frogs and toads, instead of diamonds and rubies.
After a particularly scintillating burst of silence the Sultana offered me some buyo, or betel-nut, to chew, and on my refusing it, placidly put a large hunk into her own mouth, and chewed it until the red juice stained her lips as if she were suffering from a hemorrhage.
The dais on which she lounged was as large as a small room, and was raised about three feet from the ground, it being covered with pillows and hand-woven mats of straw and bamboo. Around this thronelike couch were grouped her slaves and attendants, all armed with barongs and krises stuck into their wide sash belts, and attired in many-coloured garments that gave one the impression, both from fit and odour, of being on terms of long and close acquaintance with their wearers. The inevitable naked, brown babies staggered around the room, their little stomachs, in many instances, being swelled frightfully from a diet of too much rice and fish.
When the Sultana wanted privacy a drapery of red and white stuff, hung from the ceiling, could be let down, but otherwise she was constantly in the presence of her slaves and retainers, having the alternative of being smothered to death in privacy or bored to death in plenty of fresh air. We were told the Sultana was a power in the State and a diplomatist of no mean order, but it was hard to believe this in the royal presence, unwashed and unlovely as it was. Still, I remember seeing in a Philadelphia paper that some American living in Sulu had described the Sultana as being “an agreeable, refined, and charming Oriental diplomat.” Her personality was quoted as most attractive, “uniting a rare combination of Oriental elegance and modern grace.” She would be, it was said, in bearing and appearance, a credit to an American drawing-room. Heaven forbid! Unless the writer possibly meant that after due training she would grace the drawing-room in cap and apron, wielding a duster in lieu of her inherited rod of empire.
On the day of our visit, Her Majesty was attired in garments of decided dinginess, soiled and faded, with here and there an ill-made patch, or perhaps a fresh hole, like a gaping wound, in the cloth. But it is said that on the grand occasions when she honours the post with her presence, she is attired in a splendour before which the lilies of the field wilt with envy. Rainbow effects predominate, and much gilt and silver embroidery, the ravishing impression being further enhanced by a pair of white cotton mitts drawn over her bird-claw hands. On these occasions of state the Sultana rides into town on the back of a slave, with another slave holding a parasol over her august head, and accompanied by several outriders, or rather outwalkers, attired in few clothes of many colours.
The Sultan, too, rides pickaback when he comes to town, and as it is considered a great privilege for a Moslem to have kissed the Sultan’s hand or foot, he is often gracious enough to sit astride a slave’s shoulders in some public place, the palms of his hands and the soles of his bare feet obligingly outstretched, so that the thronging people can come by fours and do homage to his state as expeditiously as possible.