Читать книгу The Venture Book - Elinor Mordaunt - Страница 8

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Colon is ugly and attractive and amazing. It is, indeed, more like an insect than a town. A long, low, scurrying, super-insect. A Robat among insects.

The coaling station is a creature apart: an immense, quickly running black spider with legs and arms which are beyond counting. In sober fact, the whole place is hideous; and yet it is so efficient, so powerful, with all its apparatus at once so slender and so strong, that it has that sort of beauty appertaining to anything altogether right for its purpose. In the glow of the setting sun it is, indeed, wonderful, with its immensely high, fine cranes, its network of aerial railways; no longer like an insect, but rather a piece of fantastic music, scrawled large, with many small blots, wild erasures, across the pure, clean gold of the sky. And above it all, this evening, three aeroplanes dip and circle, while solitary frigate-birds dip and circle with precisely the same motion, and so much nearer that they appear to be of the same size.

p. 43The compound which holds the offices of all the great shipping-lines visiting Colon is very attractive, with its large white buildings, deep-arched verandas, gardens, and palm-trees. But once out of this, real life begins with an endlessly long street, which is Panama Republic and “wet” on one side, United States Canal Zone and “dry” on the other; not that it matters much, for it is only, as the charwomen say in London, a matter of “just slipping across the road.”

And yet there is a difference, an amazing difference, in what one hears, what one sees, and, above all, in what one feels—the very atmosphere.

As night falls the American town of Cristobal is dull and dark, and most uncommonly furtive; while Colon is glaring and noisy and picturesque, openly disreputable, cheerful, drunken, amorous.

Here on the “wet” side of the road are children laughing and screaming, spilling over the sidewalk in such masses that one is driven into the gutter. Here are green parrots and scarlet and yellow macaws at every window, in every doorway; rubbishy Indian shops with rubbishy souvenirs and silks, far dearer than in England, and Panama hats and stuffed crocodiles. One wonders who on earth can be found to buy a stuffed crocodile. In the doorway of one little shop a small antelope p. 44and a monkey are tied to one string, like the pig and the pullet at St. Pierre. There is an endless succession of drinking shops, and shops where liquor may be bought and carried across the road to the snugly closed shops and houses out of which men peer, with heads which look as though a barber, intending to shave them, had started upon the backs of their heads in mistake for their faces.

I really intended only to stay and dine at the Hotel Washington, but the editor of the Star and Herald, a paper printed in Spanish and English, with whom I dined, kept me enchanted, by his descriptions of the proud Spanish families who live but just back from the Canal Zone, until it was too late to return to the boat for the night. These families live exactly as they have lived for centuries past, coming into town at long intervals, by a series of trails cut through the primitive forest or pampas, with an endless procession of pack-and saddle-mules.

I am writing now at seven in the morning, feeling all the better for a good sleep in a real bed, in a cool, airy room high up on the third floor, with the leaves of the cocoa-palms swishing and rustling like rain outside the window.

The wind is sweeping straight off the Atlantic and right through the hotel, with its every door p. 45and window wide open. And, to my mind, one of the joys in reaching the real tropics is to be able to sit in a strong draft and feel the air racing through one’s thin muslin garments. And what a wind it is, too! One sits and thinks: “How cool! How delicious! How can any one complain of the heat here?” And yet with the least exertion, so little as stooping to pick up one’s scattered papers, one is dripping. I am so languid as to be thankful that I have no luggage to bother about; concerned as to whether it will be possible for me to gather energy to call for my bill, mount one of the funny little zone carriages, with its orange-and-white striped umbrella, and make my way back to the boat.

The Panama Canal does not run from east to west as one expects it to, but due south from Limon Bay on the Atlantic side to the widest part of Gatun Lake, where it twists sharply to the east. It is not, indeed, a canal at all, but a bridge of water eighty-seven feet in height.

It has six locks: three at the entrance to Gatun Lake, one at Pedro Miguel, which lowers Pacific-bound ships to the level of Lake Miraflores, and two between Miraflores and sea-level. Each lock is double, so that ships going in opposite directions may pass one another. All the machinery of the p. 46canal is run by electricity, while the Gatun dam and spillways serve to keep the water in the lake level, allowing for dry seasons and evaporation. The dam itself is one and a half miles long at its crest.

I believe that I am right in these details, but anything may be, in truth, just the opposite of what I have said. My mind has a way of suddenly spinning round on its own pivot over facts, and the only fact of which I am always altogether certain is the way in which anything new impresses itself upon me. After all, any more definite, scientific, or practical knowledge of the canal can so easily be come by at any public library.

To me it seems that the Panama Canal is something alive, uncanny, and quite suddenly created: the outcome of a whim of some demigod having nothing whatever to do with the pale, set-looking men whom one sees—appearing so small, inadequate, and fumbling, with an air of somehow being left behind and very badly scared—about the margin of it. More than anything else I have ever known, the silence of it all impresses me: the perfectly noiseless, relentless motion of every atom of machinery, with its air of stealing a march upon humanity.

p. 47The entrance to the canal is flat, desolate, terribly depressing. The air is like the taste of flat soda-water upon one’s lips. One’s limbs drag; one’s lungs feel as though they had been ironed out with a hottish iron and a damp handkerchief; one’s skin is moist and sticky to the touch; and there is an odd smell in the air, the smell of a close tailor’s shop.

To my mind there is nothing in the world so desolate as mangrove swamps, and I wonder how many men they have, in truth, driven to despair, madness, suicide: the gloom and damp mists and the fever-specters of them; the grotesque and sinister figures of the roots at low water. Here, now, on each side of us, are mangroves and ragged acacias. Upon the low, half-hearted hills of the landward horizon are gray wooden and concrete houses, two or three twisted palm-trees; eternal hieroglyphics of cranes, electric cables, and standards scrawled across the sky.

It all looks like the very end, the last shunting station of the hopes of man. Instead of this it is the beginning of something so wonderful, so altogether and confidently presumptuous that one goes through it in a state of panic. Not on one’s own account, but because of what one feels might happen to the world if things like this went on; p. 48the chance of its slipping entirely out of gear.

At the top of the first lock of the three which will raise us into Gatun Lake, is a large mail-steamer which looks as though posed upon a wall, while small squat engines of blue and yellow, shaped like tanks and worked by electricity, dumb and dreadfully concentrated, run up the slope to this height and disappear over what might very well be the end of the world. As the mail-steamer drops from sight, six of these beetle-like creatures take us in tow. Two run on in front with ropes from each side of the bow; two, with more ropes amidships, keep us off from the walls which rise high above us; and two more hold us back. Despite all precautions there are accidents. One little engine still lies derelict, having been plunged into the water by a ship which rushed away too impetuously under her own steam as she left this lock, making for the Atlantic; breaking through the chain fenders which in general allow no ship that is not moving at its staid and proper pace, to “bullock” through them.

We pass into the lock through an immense gateway from which steel gates have rolled silently back into the sides of the canal; the gates close, and an amazing process begins.

In reality, of course, the water rushing in from p. 49culverts rises, taking us with it. But that is not in the least what it seems like. Rather, the walls of the lock, the top of which has been on a level with the crow’s-nest, appear to sink very slowly down and down, drawn under the water by some force which leaves us high on a level with the top of it, paralyzed with wonder. The whole effect is so keen and piercing that one is perfectly prepared to see the causeway, the little engines, the slack-looking men who seem so entirely, blindly indifferent, ultimately disappear beneath the waters; while we and our ship, all the impedimenta and furniture and stores and machinery and funnels and fuel, all the people, crew and passengers, with all their petty strivings, engrossments, generosities, and jealousies, their families and boxes and chairs—the whole caboodle are shot up heavenward, amazing Peter; along with that god upon earth who sits at the top of the center lock,—before him a flat working model of every wall and gate, every scrap of machinery,—and, himself alone, throws out the switches, controlling every operation, every movement of the waters, and of the ships upon the face of the waters.

It seems as though a lifetime had passed in this amazing process, while the barometer in the captain’s cabin sinks beneath one’s eyes, with a p. 50heavier weight of air. And yet, from the moment the great steel gates close behind us, to the moment the second pair above opens to admit us, is no more than thirty minutes in all. Not the least surprising part of the whole affair is the fact that no one appears to be doing anything whatever, apart from the pilot, who walks up and down the topmost bridge, barking out an occasional order.

If I were down upon the lower deck, which I now regard as a sort of dog-shelf, I could see next to nothing, the whole advance being hidden by the fo’c’sle. But from my proud position upon the bridge I see the whole play opening before me; while as we are raised to the highest level of the last Atlantic lock, Gatun Lake (made from the deepening and widening of the old bed of the Chagres River; eighty-seven feet above sea-level, twenty miles long, and covering an area of one hundred and sixty square miles) is unfolded like a picture laid flat upon a table, while the clean, fresh air blowing across it fills one’s lungs so that one feels almost like a real person again.

Close to the entrance into the lake is a large village, housing some of the three thousand white men and five thousand colored people employed by the Canal Zone Company. We see a series of p. 51tennis-courts at one side, and at the other golf-links with men in white clothes wandering rather limply across them. The whole village seems less significant than a bee’s nest hung upon the bough of a tree at the entrance to an unexplored forest; for I cannot get over the idea that, as a whole, humanity has had nothing whatever to do with all this.

It is a misty day, and I think that the shoreless lake seems all the lovelier for this, as we rise to it and see it dotted with innumerable islands, which are in reality the tops of one-time hills; every island a tight bouquet of intensely green palms, hung with vivid green creepers.

Toward the end of the afternoon the sun comes out, not brilliantly, but in a flattened golden sheen, while the air is so damp that it seems as though everything were covered with a fine-meshed gray gauze, cut by the close-pressed wedges of wild duck, which are forever crossing and recrossing it with the sun upon their backs.

At the end of the lake the little islands thicken and gather to mountains upon each side of us; until we slide in between the high cliffs which men are still cutting away—standing as casually as any suburban householder hosing his garden of an evening after business hours—with a pressure p. 52of water so intense that the walls of the cliffs fall, flatly and almost silently, unbroken like slices of cut cake.

In between these cliffs we pass to the Gaillard Cut, six miles in length, among mountains which tower peak upon peak, almost perpendicularly upon each side of us. Of all the wonders of the canal, in the main constructive, this vast and utilitarian work of destruction which formed the Gaillard Cut—the one “man-made” cañon in the world—is the greatest. For here is no quiet canal, wending its way through flat meadows, but that bridge of water still continued at the same height as Gatun Lake, cutting in among the mountains of the Great Divide. Of all the heartbreaking difficulties which the Americans encountered in their task, there can have been none like those encountered here. The land-slips or slides which in a few moments destroyed the work of months or even years, and others even more devastating which continued with dreadful certainty at the rate of two or two and a half feet a day, for months upon months on end, must have dragged the very heart out of the idealists who had evolved from their dreams this wonder of the world, breaking into the will of the desert with that strength which is indeed the child of dreams, overthrowing mountains and gorges, rivers and jungles; p. 53vanquishing, even, that dreaded Cucaracha Slide which, having turned the French aside from their path, broke out afresh with savage vehemence the moment that the Americans laid their hands upon its territory, shooting across the entire canal prism.

Here, now, as though in radiant triumph, the scenery—like a woman of the Sabines scarred and torn, and mantled only in her own hair—is wild and wonderful beyond all words. For where the garments of forest trees and creepers are slashed away from them, the scarred cliffs show pink and purple, lovely in the last level rays of the evening sun; streaked with great masses of greenery, toppling trees and trailing creepers which the fall of soil has dragged away with it. In one place a huge perpendicular cliff of absolutely clear vermilion, topped with green, rises against the clear greenish sky in front of us.

By the time we reach the single lock of Pedro Miguel the whole scene is aflame with the setting sun, like the brief but gaudy transit of some Oriental magnate, crossing the street with all the panoply of one who sets out to war.

As we enter the first of the two remaining locks a train running between Colon and Panama comes p. 54out from among the mountains and stops at a little station upon our right.

All through the day, so long that it has seemed altogether unconnected with time,—for I have not even gone down to the meals which in general punctuate it,—the whole scene has been like the gigantic setting for some Titanic drama. Now the play itself comes upon us, pathetic because it is so small, infinitely touching as is every aspect of man in the desert; ridiculously inadequate for the setting—and yet, within it, holding the material for a hundred little plays in little theaters.

Across from the station, on the opposite side of the lock, there is a group of dilapidated cars and mule-carts, and the American soldiers who tumble out of the train on their way back from some race meeting or other (for it is a fête-day in the real world) make a dash to reach them before the gates open to let us through. We are sinking quickly now, going down and down instead of up and up as we did at the entrance from the Atlantic, and the men running across the narrow wall above us look like nothing more than a host of neutral-tinted ants, with their twinkling legs. Those who are alone get over p. 55in time; but there are many more with women and children who find themselves cut off and, standing along the sides of the lock, wait for us to go through.

The sun has almost set by now and sky and water and steep wooded hillside, the color of spilt wine and purple fuchsias, are reflected upon the hard white wedge-like faces of the men, very lean and standing very upright, as though nerving themselves against being overborne by the heavy brooding silence of the place, the sullen forests, the hot suggestive twilight: as though they were saying to themselves, setting their jaws over it, anxious and unsmiling, “It looks as though it might get us, but—gee-whiz!—we won’t have it!” The yellow-faced babies which so many of them hold in their arms, the children who cling to them, the half-caste wives who lean against them—full-breasted and voluptuous, as curved as their husbands are angled, waving a languid and indifferent hand to us, with passionate dark eyes raised to their husbands—have got them far more certainly than any wild.

Night has closed in before we pass the second of the Miraflores locks and drop to sea-level: a perfectly clear greenish-indigo night with a full p. 56moon overhead. As I look back over the length of the ship, the sight is extraordinarily fairylike, fantastic, and unreal.

Backed with high-peaked mountains, the causeways to the locks, shortened and broadened by perspective, show like the top of an immense Christmas cake, the tall white concrete pillars with their lights, clusters of five hundred wax bulbs under concrete shades, like candles set above them. The little engines with their bright crimson lamps add a still more fantastic note of decoration to the scene. It is an appropriate finish to the transit through an isthmus in itself fantastic beyond all words, worked to their own ends by men who, as it seems, could scarcely have realized the magnitude of their own powers.

Take it all in all, the whole effect of the Canal Zone is theatrical. The islands are not islands at all, but the tops of mountains pushing up through the water; the mountains themselves are cut to pattern, placed just so; the green of the vegetation is more than a trifle overdone, as are the exaggerated madder and vermilion of the cliffs. The machinery of the gigantic transformation scene left lying about, with the pathetic remains of the heroic failure of Lesseps, suggests the idea that it has all been brought there by p. 57trolleys, small enough because of the primal flatness; that the valleys which open between the mountains are mere wings leading to the green-room, with nothing whatever at the back of them. We have the feeling that it all must come to an end when the last of the lights go out, and the electrician, forsaking his engines, goes home to supper and bed, leaving the night watchman seated on a little camp-stool in the center of this vast stage, his elbows on his knees, his chin cupped in his hands, staring out in front of him and wondering what on earth has been the good of it all, thinking over those days when he himself took a part in the great play, wore the crown of a king, or saw himself as one with God, outdoing God, for the amusement or convenience of a gaping world.

We stop at Balboa for water and some necessary repairs to the engine; but I am too tired to go on shore, while it is far too late to drive out to Old Panama. Besides, I spent so much money at Guadeloupe and Martinique and Colon that I am beginning to get a little scared at to what will happen when I get to Tahiti, unless my agents have meanwhile sold something for me, either in America or England. Not that I should bother over-much about ways and means, for one p. 58can always get where one means to go, unless I were dead beat by a heat so enervating that I have been obliged to tie a towel round my neck while I stooped over my work. It is best to leave all one’s money worries upon the knees of the gods—the only knees I have ever altogether trusted.

The moonlit quay at Balboa is deserted, apart from a few policemen negligently swinging their “love sticks” in one hand, with the other hand stuck in a trouser-pocket, who wander on and off the ship in pursuit of their express duty of seeing that the prohibition regulations are fully carried out.

I am terribly troubled as to how I am to register and post a packet of manuscripts; still more troubled when, having entrusted it to one of these gentlemen, I hear from the captain how many brandies he has consumed. My one comfort is that a “dry” American is probably as well seasoned to liquor as any other man on earth.