CHAPTER XXVIII
But for the durian, the spell of Ternate might not have been broken. I should have lost count of days and nights. I might have imagined that I had been cast upon a place beyond time and storms and was living on another plane. There is much to be said for the lotus. It is a benign gift. What happens when we neglect it is seen in the anxious and haggard aspect of morally superior communities. But the durian is different. I did not know that, however, when I mentioned it to my companion, the padre, as a famous Malay fruit I had not experienced. Nor did his answer forewarn me. He became alert and eager at once. He confessed he was greedy when he saw a durian. He said grandly that it was the king of fruits. Other men, I remembered, have been as extravagant over the durian. What is it Russel Wallace told us? “Its consistence and flavor are indescribable. A rich butter-like custard highly flavored with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it come wafts of flavor that call to mind cream-cheese, onion sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities ... rich ... glutinous ... perfect ... a new sensation, worth a voyage
to the East to experience.”
What a fruit! The padre assured me most earnestly that he would get me a durian. I must eat one, and my soul would be made gracious. However, he must have forgotten it. No durian came. Then late one afternoon I returned from an attempt upon the mountain, and was light-hearted after losing myself in a forest above the clouds which refused to let me pass. I had seen crimson lories flying in solitude like pigeons. A great bird-winged butterfly, one of the gold-and-emerald ornithoptera which till that day had never been more than a colored flash in the distance, that afternoon paused overhead, planed down to a flower which was near my face, and pulsed its vivid body so near that I could see the quivering of its antennæ. We may call mind the aim of life, if that flatters us, but the tense life which vibrated that superb creature evidently was obeying a command which we have never heard. No sooner had it gone than a swallow-tail even larger, a very folio butterfly in black, crimson, and primrose, alighted on the same white trumpet, weighted down the pendulous and swinging flower, and danced to its movements. Overhead an eagle was poised, surveying the mountain seaward. He knew I was watching him. His bright eye kept meeting mine severely. The sea was even more remote below us than some of the clouds. I got back to the veranda of the rest-house, tired but pleased, and was going to my door, but stopped.... What was that? I forgot the crimson lories. My memory had gone straight back to an old German dugout with its decaying horrors. I thought I must have been mistaken, but advanced cautiously. Nothing could be there, I told myself, that was like the trenches of the Flers line. Confidence returned; the suggestion had gone. Then the ghost passed me again, invisible, dreadful, and I clutched the table, looking round. At first I could determine nothing, but presently on a wall bracket I saw resting a green and spinous object as large as a football, and tiptoed to smell it.
It was!
The padre appeared, but was not dismayed. Instead, he called a native with a knife to open the durian. The man performed this on the green porcupine most expertly from one end, disclosing soft and creamy contents. I tried to forget the smell, took a portion, and, as they used to say in France, went over the top in daylight. But I knew at once this was my last durian. Facing the foe, I fell. That indelicate odor, and the flavor of a sherry custard into which garlic had been slipped, overshadowed Ternate for some hours afterward. The smell shamelessly wandered about, and the taste of the garlic remained after the sherry was forgotten. Only sleep interposed to stop my bewilderment over what Russel Wallace could have meant by it.
And in the morning there was something else to think about. With the Assistant Resident, a young Dutchman who talked like a boy from an English public school because that indeed was what he was, I was to attempt the crater of the volcano. It was two hours before dawn. Sirius was blazing over Gilolo. We wished to be well up the slope before the sun was there. But our two Malay porters had another opinion about the need for an early start, and Sirius was paling into a sky of rose and madder before we got away. Our men, father and son, were not so interested in that mountain as the other two in the party. The father was the guide, and carried a parang, a bright Malay weapon of such weight and balance that it is good for either agriculture or homicide. Not one of our party knew the mountain above the upper forest, and only the guide and myself had been as far as the forest; for Ternate, even official Ternate, though its interest in its crater is acute, yet is satisfied with a distant prospect from the beach. This oceanic volcano is 5,200 feet high at present, and in the sun which is usual to the island the summit may be said to look out of sight. Why go? One need not.
But if one goes, the beginning is made in elation. The gardens of spices and the cocoanut groves are traversed with ease. The gardens are cool and scented. The ascent is gradual. You feel that such a journey could be continued forever and that any material refreshment would profane it. But suddenly and brusquely the slope is not gradual. It is quite otherwise. For a few minutes, while a fierce light beats upon you—no more nutmeg trees—and the ground is rough which rises within a foot or so of the nose, you suppose that this interlude is only a playful gesture by the mountain. It wishes to test your devotion. In this it succeeds. When you pause, the thumping of the heart is like the pulse of the silence. The perspiration drips from the fingers. You are surprised and a little dashed. Every mirthful thought has deserted and gone home. When the uplands are surveyed to see if they are any nearer, sweat runs into the eyes. And they are not any nearer. The slope is immediate, continuous, tractless, and tropical, and the summit has vanished behind that overhanging forest which has yet to be reached. This playful little gesture of the mountain seems to be its normal attitude, and requires some thought.
So our party discovered, this morning. With what enterprise the Dutchman strode ahead, energetically kicking pebbles backward at me! He was as frolicsome as a goat. He leaped from root to root where they were tangled in the shady path like cables. I followed meekly, wondering how long I should last. I hoped his ebullience would be cooled presently. The sun came up; but we were still deep in the plantations. My companion appeared to have decided that the British should see what a little nation could do; and it had clearly dawned on me that, though my flag may have braved the battle and the breeze for a respectworthy period, I should disgrace it in a race to the crater against Holland.
While I was still valiantly holding out, determined to go on or drop dead on the track, I saw my friend stop, take off his helmet, and gaze into it reflectively. He did not move when I reached him. That was a good chance to show him the attractive character of the sugar canes growing beside us, their plumes surmounting staffs which were of chocolate circled regularly with thin bangles of gold. If one stood in a certain way, I assured him, the chocolate had a purplish bloom. But my friend wiped his face and gazed at me with an expression of abject pathos.