The Village in the Jungle

by Leonard Woolf

'May the gods keep it away from you, aiya. But how can a man tell what evil is before him? But you are not an ignorant village man like us, and besides after the chena is reaped you will return to your house.'

Fernando was silent for a while. When he spoke again he had a curiously seductive effect upon his listeners. His low, soft voice and broken Sinhalese, the languorousness and softness which seemed to pervade him fascinated them even more than what he said.

'What can the buffalo born in the fold know of the jungle? or does the wild buffalo know how to work in the rice-fields? I was born far away across the sea on the coast. I was only a little child when they brought me to Colombo to live there in the shop which my father kept. He had no fear to leave his village and to cross the sea, nor had he any desire to go back again there. He was a rich man. Ohé! what a town is Colombo. There we lived in a great building, and all around us were houses and houses, and people and people: no jungle or snakes or wild beasts; not even a paddy-field or a cocoanut-tree. Always streets and people walking, walking backwards and forwards on the red roads (and very few even known to you by sight), and bullock-carts and carriages and rickshaws, hundreds upon hundreds. And there are houses, very high, as high as the hill at Beragama, full of white Mahatmayas and their women, always coming and going from the ships. How many times have I stood outside when a boy and watched them, always laughing and talking loud, like madmen, and dancing, men and women together. And how fair are the women, fair as the lotus-flower as the tale says; very fair and very shameless.'

'Is it true then that the women of the white Mahatmayas are shameless?' broke in Punchi Menika.

'In Colombo all say they are shameless. Very fair, very mad, and very shameless. Their eyes are like cat's eyes. The proverb says, "If the eyes of a woman are like the eyes of a cat, evil comes to the man who looks into them." The hair of the English Mahatmayas' women is very fair, the colour of the young cocoanut-flowers. Yes, they are mad. In the evening strange music is played by many men sitting high up near the roof; then every Mahatmaya takes a woman in his arms, and looking into her eyes goes round and round very quickly on the floor.'

'Aiya, aiya, is this a true tale?'

'Why should I tell you what is false? Did I not live twenty years there in Colombo? It is a great town. In the morning I went and walked on the stone road that has been built into the sea, and within is the harbour, full always of great ships bigger than villages. Always the Mahatmayas are coming and going in the great ships; from where they come and where they go no one can tell. You stand upon the stone road, and you see the great ship come in across the sea in the morning, filled with white Mahatmayas, and in the evening it carries them out again across the sea. They are all very rich, and for a thing that costs one shilling they willingly give five. Also they are never quiet, going here and there very quickly, and doing nothing. Very many are afraid of them, for suddenly they grow very angry, their faces become red, and they strike any one who is near with the closed hand.'

Fernando stopped. He had become quite excited as he recalled his life in Colombo in his youth. He had forgotten where he was. Suddenly he became aware of his surroundings, the little village so far away from everything; the ignorant, uncouth villager who listened to him; the woman behind him for whose sake he had come to the hut, and whom for the moment he had forgotten. For a while Babun did not like to disturb his silence, then he asked diffidently:

'But, aiya, if Colombo is your village, how is it that you now live in Kamburupitiya?'

Fernando laughed. 'What talk is this of villages?' he said. 'Everywhere here the question is, "Of what village is he?" And then, "He is of Beddagama or Bogama, or Beragama, or any gama."[42] And the liver in villages says, as you did but now, "How can I leave my gama?" Did I not tell you that I am of no village? My father's village is beyond the sea, and they say that the father's village is the son's. I have never seen that village; I have forgotten its name. I was born in Colombo, which is no village, but a town. Aiyo! what a town it is! How pleasant! The houses and the noise and smell of the bazaar for miles, and the dust and people everywhere! What folly to live here, like a sanyasi on the top of a bare rock! Perhaps one day I shall return to Colombo, and live in a great house, as my father did. My father was a rich man, but always gambling; no money stayed in the house. And I spent much money upon women. There was a nautch-girl from the coast; her eyes had made me mad, and she devoured me. It was always rupees, and bracelets, and anklets, and silk cloths. Then my father was very angry, for all the money had gone on the gambling and jewellery. There was no money to pay the merchants for goods for the shop, but worst of all he had no money for gambling. The girl had taunted me because I had come empty-handed, saying that she would shame me openly if I came back again with nothing. So I again asked my father for money. He drove me away, cursing me; so I went into the shop, and took goods and sold them, and taking two handfuls of silver flung them down before the girl. But when my father found what I had done, he cursed me again, and beat me, and drove me out of the house, saying, that if I returned he would give me to the police. I ran out very sad because of the girl. I was also sorry that I had given her both handfuls of silver, and had not kept one for myself. I stood at a street corner thinking that now I would die of hunger, and that it would be better to hang myself. Just then there passed a Moorman, Cassim, a man of Kalutara, a merchant, whom I had often seen in my father's shop. He laughed at me when he saw me, and said, speaking Tamil, "Now I see that the feet of the girl have danced away with the old man's wealth and the young man's life." At that the tears ran down my face, and I told him all that had happened. Then he said, "Come with me to Kalutara. You can sell there for me in my shop." So I went with him to Kalutara, and stayed there selling for him for two years. After that he sent me to sell for him in Kamburupitiya, and there I now live, and have a shop of my own.'