At last, in a narrow alley-way, the bullock fell asleep before a miserable hut. The driver screeched, and a scared-looking coolie tumbled out of the shanty. Then he, Marten, and the driver began to talk excitedly in the language of southern India. For a time the coolie refused to sell us food, because if he touched anything that we touched he would become something lower than a coolie in his next life. But when we offered him the princely sum of three annas each he agreed to risk losing caste to get us something to eat. So we climbed down off the cart and squatted on his creaking veranda.
The bullock crawled on. The coolie ran screaming into the hut, and came out again with three banana-leaves, a wife, and many naked children, each of whom carried a cocoanut-shell filled with water or curries. They put these on the floor of the veranda. The native spread the leaves before us, and his wife dumped a small peck of hot rice into the center of each of them. When the meal was over we arose to go; but the native shrieked with terror, and insisted that we carry the leaves and shells away with us, as no member of his family dared touch them.
“Haywood” snaps me as I am getting a shave in Trichinopoly.
Our dinner had been generous enough, but it did not seem to satisfy our hunger. Within an hour I caught myself eyeing the food spread out in the open shops on all sides. There were coils of rope-like pastry fried in oil, lumps, balls, cakes of sweetmeats, brittle bread-sheets, pans of dark red chillies, potatoes cut into small cubes and covered with a green curry sauce.
I dropped behind my companions, and aroused a shop-keeper who was sound asleep among his pots and pans. For months, while traveling through countries where I could not speak the language, I had been in the habit of picking out my own food; but no sooner had I laid a hand on a sweetmeat than the merchant sprang into the air with a wild scream that brought my fellow countrymen running back upon me.
“What’s that fellow bawling about, Marten?” demanded Haywood.
“Oh, Franck’s gone and polluted his pan of sweets.”
“But I touched only the one I picked up,” I explained, “and I’m going to eat that.”
“These fellows won’t see it that way,” replied Marten. “If you put a finger on one piece, the whole dish is polluted. He’s sending for a low-caste man now to carry the panful away and dump it. Nobody’ll buy anything while it stays here.”