I heard two natives at my elbow talking in English:
“This sight is to me astounding!” shrieked a high-caste youth to his older companion. “I have never before known that Europeans can do such workings.”
“Why, indeed yes!” cried his companion. “In his home the sahib does just so strong work as our coolies; but he is play cricket and tennis he is doing even stronger. He is not rich always and sitting in shade.”
“But do the white man not losing his caste when he is working like coolies?” demanded the youth. “Why is this man work at such? Is he perhaps prisoner, that he disgraces himself lower than the keeper of the arrack-shop?”
“Truly, my friend, I not understand,” admitted the older man a bit sadly; “but I am reading that in sahib’s country he is make the workings of coolie and yet is not coolie.”
There were others besides the natives who stood in the crowd watching the “white coolies.” Here and there I caught sight of a European scowling darkly at me. I wondered what I had done to displease them.
When night fell all was in readiness for the show. The circle of seats was built; the tents were stretched; rings, ropes, and lights were ready for use. Half a thousand chairs had been placed for Europeans. We had worked so hard under the blazing sun that we agreed we would not dare to do so more than once a year, not even for “more than two chips.” The boss gave a last snarl, called a ’rickshaw, and drove off to his hotel. We went to a shop across the way, ate our curry and rice, and returned to stretch out on the grass near an entrance.
That night, at the circus, we found greater amusement in watching the people on the circle of benches than in watching the ring. First we acted as ushers. The crowds that swarmed in upon us belonged to every caste on the island. In seating them we had to settle important questions that never trouble circus men of the Western world. It was difficult to determine where to put them. A company of priests wearing cheesecloth robes began to scream at us because we seated them where there was no room for their betel-nut boxes. Light-colored islanders began to shout angrily when we tried to seat them near darker natives. Merchants refused to sit in the same section with shop-keepers. Shop-keepers cried out in rage when we made the mistake of placing them near clerks. Clerks cried out hoarsely when we seated them among laborers. Skilled workers screamed in frenzy whenever we tried to make room among them for common coolies.
The lowest class native, called the sudra, who wears nothing but a scant cloth about as big as a pocket handkerchief, is the most despised of all. When I ushered in one of these, row after row of natives raised an uproar against him as he passed. He shrank timidly behind me as we journeyed through the tent, looking for a seat. Most of the natives refused to sit as circus seats are meant to be sat on, but squatted on their heels, hugging their scrawny knees. We had much trouble trying to keep tricky ’rickshaw runners from crawling in among the chairs when we weren’t looking. And through it all certain native youths, in order to show that they understood English, kept bothering us by asking unnecessary and unanswerable questions.
Toward the last, when the Europeans came in, quiet and proud in manner, the natives began to behave themselves a little better. And when the bicyclers appeared for the first act, they forgot that the despised sudra sat under the same tent with them. The mixed crowd settled down into a motionless sea of strained, astonished faces. When “The Wonderful Cycle Whiz” was over, we hurried to pull down the bicycle track and carry the heavy pieces outside the tent. While we lowered a trapeze with one hand, we placed and held the hurdles with the other. We had to make tables and chairs for a “Hand Balancing Act” appear as if by magic. Breathlessly we led the trick ponies on, cleared the ring for the performing elephant, set it up again for the “Astounding Bareback Rider,” and cleared it again for the “Hungarian Horses.”