The Village in the Jungle

by Leonard Woolf

'I would give you one-twentieth of the crop, after the fifth had been paid to the cultivators,' Fernando went on. 'Would you do it for that?'

'Yes, aiya, I will do it for that, gladly.'

'Very well, that's settled. You are my gambaraya now.'

Fernando sighed and stretched himself. 'What a place this jungle is!' he said. 'It is not fit for a sensible man to live in. Of course these other villagers, if they went anywhere else, what could they do, the cattle? They do not know the east from the west, as the tale says. If they get into a bazaar they are frightened, and run about like a scared bull. But you, Babun, you are young and strong; you are a knowing man. Why do you starve here when you could eat rice and grow fat elsewhere?'

'So my sister and her man said, aiya! They wanted me to go away and marry in another village—over there; rain falls and rice grows there. But it is a great evil to live in a strange place and among strangers.'

Fernando laughed. 'An evil you call it! But how many have got wealth and fortune by going to strange places! Have you not heard of Maha Potana? Many years ago it was all trees and jungle like this, and no one lived there. Then they built the great tank in the jungle, and people went there from all the villages of the west—poor men living in villages like this. Now it is a town, and all are rich there, and eating rice.'

'Yes, aiya, we know that. The tank was built in my father's time. And the Korala Mahatmaya and the Ratemahatmaya came to the village and spoke as you speak now. And they said that land would be given to all that went there, and water from the tank for the cultivation of rice. It was in a year, I remember my father telling me, when rain had not fallen—like the last crop with us—and there was want in the village, and many died of fever. They urged my father to go, for he was a good man: they knew that. And my father said to them—so he told me—"How can I go to this strange place? Can I take the woman and the child with me? I have no house there, and no money to buy in the bazaar. Among strangers and in strange places evil comes. Here my father lived, and his father before him, in this house; and they cleared the chenas as I do, and from time to time when rain fell sowed rice below the tank. What folly for me to leave my home and field and the chena to meet evil in strange places." My father said this to the headman, and all the other men of the village also refused to go, except one man—Appu they called him; he went with his wife, and was given land under Maha Potana. And nothing was heard of Appu for many months; and his brother, who still lived here, at last went to Maha Potana to inquire about him. And when he came there the people told him that Appu was dead of the fever, and that his wife had gone away, and no one knew where she had gone.'

'But people die of fever in Beddagama.'

'Yes, aiya, of course many people die of fever here too. But they die among their relations, and friends, and people who are known to them; in houses where their fathers lived before them. Surely it is a more bitter thing to die in a strange place. I am a poor man and ignorant, and I cannot explain it to you better. There is always trouble and evil in strange places; when a man goes even upon a journey or pilgrimage to Kamburupitiya or Maha Potana or Beragama, always, aiya, he is troubled and afraid—in the bazaars and boutiques and on the roads people unknown to him—and everywhere he is thinking of his village, and his house, and the tank, and the jungle paths which he knows there, and people living in the village, all of whom he knows. That is why a man will not leave his village, even when the crops fail and there is no food; no, not even when the headmen come—and they come now every year—and say, "There is good land to be given in such a place, there is work upon such a road, or in such a village, why starve here?" I have heard people say that far away in the west there are large towns, Colombo and Kalutara and Galle, where every one has food and money always; but, aiya, not even to those towns do you see a man going who has been born and lived all his life in a village.'

'Am I not now among strangers? What evil will befall me?'