Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [57]
One such traveler was an Antonio Careri, a Venetian autodidact and physician who claimed he was following in the footsteps of his uncle, Gemelli Careri, who had experienced many marvels in the jungles around Count Attila’s Suchikhana.
“Seems there was this woman, you see,” the Italian began, “washed up on an island. No human beings around, only this lovesick buck baboon …”
The men started laughing; they knew the joke or many like it.
“So the weeks go by, and she yields, and the months go by and she has a half-monster child, and then years go by and a second comes along, hideous as the first.…
“Then one day, a ship passes. The baboon and the pups are in the cave where he keeps them. She signals and they save her. Seems the baboon wakes up from his toddy drinking and looks out just as the lady is being rowed out to the ship. So what do you think he does?”
“I know what I’d do,” said Dr. Ruxton.
“What about you, Mr. Legge? What would you do?” asked Cephus Prynne.
“If I were a baboon?” He didn’t like the question, the pointedness of Prynne’s interrogation. The Chief Factor’s verbal amusements all held implicit threats, or testings.
“I should have no choice, Mr. Prynne. A baboon cannot speak, cannot swim, cannot fire a cannon.”
“Perhaps throw a coconut out to sea?” Mr. Prynne laughed.
“Or resign himself to loss,” said Gabriel. “Raise his pups with hate in their hearts.”
The Italian picked up his story. “In rage and grief, it is written, the baboon carried the unnatural issue to the beach and sacrificed them in her sight. So horrified were the sailors at the vision that they threw the woman overboard, lest her corruption damn the ship’s body.”
It was for Dr. Ruxton to provide the moral. “And so again she is washed up on the beach. The baboon forgives her. They go back to the cave. Such is it ever with those who step over the border.”
“In a kingdom west of here,” the Italian visitor began again, “a great baboon much attracted to a serving girl began courting her at night. So persistent was he that finally her father yielded his permission, thinking he would soon tire of her, or she of him. But passion did so infect the beast he could not navigate soberly in the dark. Every morning, upon awakening, the girl’s father found his tiny hut a shambles of carnality, and the girl helpless to forbid it.”
“Aye,” agreed Samuel Higginbottham, who had heard many tales of baboon bibis, and was glad to have his suspicions about local women once again confirmed.
“A Portugee happened to pass through the village one day, and spotted the wench bathing in the river. Much attracted to her, he lingered nearby until after dark, thinking to seize the maiden for himself—only to see this great lurching beast burst through the window with a loud crash of pots and breaking tables.
“The young man was much offended by the girl’s poor taste in lovers and so demanded of her father the meaning of such outrage. But you know the Zentoo mind—”
“Slaves of the basest passion—”
“Pariahs, excrement, devil’s spawn—”
“Doubtless, good sirs. But I refer only to their cowardice when confronted by their clearest duty. The father holds out his hands and says, ‘What can I do? This creature has taken my daughter’s honor and makes all this noise when he does not find her at home.’
“ ‘Why don’t you kill him?’ the Portugee demanded.”
“Indeed, as any man would do,” Cephus Prynne opined. It was generally agreed that therein lay the difference between European, even Portuguese, and Asiatic sensibility. The Asiatic, without a concept of manhood, lacked all notion of patriotism, loyalty, honesty, decency and honor. No honor is taken where none exists. God would not permit the theft of what He intended be preserved.
The group had now warmed to a congenial topic. The Asiatic mind and its failings.
Antonio Careri was not to finish his story that night. How might he have ended his “Portugee-Bests-the-Baboon” yarn? I have read endless variations of these racist anecdotes. The white man, being more manly, easily disposes of the dark-skinned, subhuman