Читать книгу An Englishwoman in the Philippines - Mrs. Campbell Dauncey - Страница 10

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Iloilo, December 17, 1904.

We are settling down very comfortably into our charming house, which we like more and more, and are continually congratulating ourselves on our luck in having found such a nice home.

There is nothing special to tell you about since I last wrote, so I will try to give you some idea of my housekeeping, of which I think I have not yet told you anything beyond just mentioning how many servants we have.

I find that the cook—he with the important manner and the big teeth—has been an under-cook in an American hotel, or what he is pleased to call an American hotel, by which I take it he means one of the saloons or eating-houses in the town. So far, however, he has proved himself a very good cook indeed, which is even more necessary here than anywhere else, for food in the Philippines has but little variety, and is not nourishing at its best. Every morning I give this person a peso and a half, with which he goes off to the market and buys whatever takes his fancy, or, more probably, what is to be had, which generally takes the form of an incredibly small and thin fowl—alive; one or two little fish; some green peppers or egg-plants, and always a few very small, half-ripe tomatoes. With these and with help from the store-room, he concocts a very good lunch and dinner, and, doubtless, makes a good thing out of it, but most cooks charge 2 dollars for the same menu, and he really provides for us very well. I supply tea, salt, butter, lard, tinned fruits, potatoes, macaroni—in fact all the dry provisions usually kept in a store-room, I don’t know what is the technical name for them.

The store-room (dispensa, they call it), where these treasures are hoarded up, is a very nice little dark cabin, with shelves all round, which I made the boys clean out and wipe everywhere with petroleum, an excellent precaution against the numberless and extraordinary animals with which one has to share the house. I got tall glass jars for protection against cockroaches, and tins to keep mice off, and wire-netting for rats, and naphthaline to astonish the scorpions and spiders; and last, but by no means least, a good strong padlock for human beings! When the tins and bottles were all arranged, they looked very home-like.

We get up at half-past five or six, and I give one of the boys 20[2] cents, with which he goes out and buys bread for the day at the shop of some Chinaman down the street. It is necessary to get small daily supplies of everything, for food will not keep. Some people have told me fearful anecdotes about the horrors perpetrated by the Chinamen in the making of their bread, and these faddists have theirs made at home, but the Chinese bread tastes quite good, and is much more light and digestible than that made by the house-cooks. As our cook has cooked for Americans, he knows how to make the hot cakes which are the great feature of American breakfasts, but we won’t have them, for they are deadly anywhere, especially in the tropics.

After our seven o’clock breakfast, which consists very largely of eggs, and after C—— has gone to the office, I open the door of the dispensa and serve out the day’s supplies; but this routine was not brought about without a struggle, for at first the cook persisted in coming to me intermittently all day long to ask for things. At least, he invented wants, but I had an idea his only object was the key of the dispensa, as these Filipinos have a full measure of the cunning of the brown-faced person all the world over. However, I disappointed him about that, always leaving whatever I was doing to go and open the door and get out what he wanted, at the same time remarking, as best I could, that if he did not ask for things at the proper time he must do without them. Then once or twice I carried the threat into effect, and when he heard what C—— had to say about the dinner, that cured him. Everyone tells me doleful tales about the way the muchacho or boy robs them, so I thought it would be better to start from the first by giving as few opportunities as possible for trouble of this sort.

In the morning the servants’ food is also given out, each one getting an allowance of rice (for which purpose we lay in a large sackful), and this they boil and eat with some tiny fish which they buy for themselves with a few extra cents I give them. I believe it is unheard-of extravagance to give the extra money; and I never measure out the rice, but let them take it, for, after all, it is all the poor souls live on. All over the Philippines the natives of all classes live almost entirely on rice, which formerly used to be grown in all the islands, but rinderpest destroyed many of the carabaos (buffaloes), which worked the soil, and high wages and heavy taxes have wrought even greater havoc, so that now the supply nearly all comes from China. You see, high wages are offered in the towns, and what with that and the unsuitable education they receive, the country-people all flock into the towns, and the country places are empty. It is on the coast, in the towns, that rice is so much eaten, for inland the staple food is camote (sweet potato); so the country-people think rice a luxury, and the town’s-people eat camote as a treat.

When I wrote last, I don’t think the staff was completed by the washerwoman, was it? A person with a huge, almost black, pan face came and stood in the picture of blue sky and green palm-branches framed in the doorway, dressed in a skirt formed of a tight fold of red cloth and a muslin bodice with huge sleeves (the native costume), holding a big black umbrella in one hand, and muttering in an undertone, while she kept one dull, rolling eye on Tuyay, who was disposed to growl and sniff.

We were at breakfast at the time, and as we ate we conversed patiently with her till we found that this person wanted to be taken on as a lavandera at 20 pesos a month, which is about twenty-six guineas a year. This offer we refused with imprecations, and we added that we would not give more than 10.

She melted away, murmuring, from the front door, and presently reappeared at the back door (both opening upon the hall, but at different ends), and murmured afresh. I must tell you, by-the-bye, that, following a very general custom here, we use one end of the hall as dining-room, though there is a room which has been used for that purpose, but it looks on the alley between this house and the next, and is not so cool as the hall.

After more conversation, we decided to engage this pan-faced individual at 12 pesos a month as a stop-gap, till we should be able to find some more intelligent woman, and there and then I gave her a bagful of soiled linen, and off she went.

Next day at lunch she suddenly reappeared, perfectly cow-like and stolid, leaning up against the door-post and murmuring so that C—— simply got wild with her, and would have thrown everything on the table at her head, I believe, if I had not been there.

As the cook is the only one of the servants who speaks above a whisper, he was sent for, and he told us that pan-face wanted soap, starch, and charcoal. All the washing is done in cold water at some well, it appears, and they only want a little charcoal to put in the iron. So C—— wrote an order, a vale they call it, upon Hoskyn’s for soap, a box-iron, starch, and charcoal, and away went the new lavandera.

But we had not seen the last of her, for the next day she came again, at breakfast this time, and murmured again, clutching the bulgy gamp and leaning against the door-post. This time the cook told us she wanted tin tubs, and C—— gave a sort of roar as he asked her when the devil she was going to begin the washing, but she only looked more hopelessly stupid, and her face became more like a gorilla’s. At last she got her vale for tubs, and off she went—but about mid-day she reappeared, on the balcony, outside the front door, with the tubs, huge tin baths, sitting beside her.

C—— managed to control himself sufficiently to ask her if there was anything the matter with the tubs, and she was understood to say no, but she only wanted to show us she had got tubs; and she melted away.

Next afternoon I was told the lavandera had arrived, so I went out to tell her the señor would soon be in and ready to listen to her, though I really had some doubt about the latter statement, but I found her undoing a huge bundle of washing—all finished and ready! And such beautiful work, C——‘s white linen suits done to perfection, my frocks and blouses like new—I never saw clothes look more fresh and lovely. It was a pleasant surprise.

So pan-face remains, but all the same we are quite prepared to find this standard not kept up for long, and if any remonstrance has to be made, we know we shall have that blank look and that murmuring to face again.

The boys are shaping very well, and if they go on as they are doing, no one could wish for better servants. I did not bewilder them more than I could help at first, but sprang a routine on them by degrees in a mixture of pantomime, Italian and a word or two of Spanish, that seems to answer the purpose very well. Two things C—— insisted on from the first: one, that the servants should wear native costume and bare feet in the house; and the other, that they must address us as señor and señora, none of which little marks of etiquette are insisted on in American households, but we think, and I believe rightly, that they are of the greatest importance in dealing with Orientals. C—— said if they didn’t like these rules they could go, but apparently they did like them, and they have stayed.

We asked some friends to dinner a few nights ago, and just before they arrived C—— went into the hall and found an unknown young man, in a very smart, white, buttoned-up, linen European suit with starched collar, and white canvas shoes, standing on a chair in the middle of the hall, doing something to one of the lamps. When the man turned round, we saw, to our amazement, that he was Domingo—our second boy!

When he saw C——‘s expression, the servant was quite frightened, not having any idea what crime he could be committing or have committed, but he very soon understood that if he did not take off those shoes and that coat he would be fired out of the house. I don’t think the poor creature meant any harm, in fact he was supposed to be got up in his best to do honour to our guests, but he fled at once to the Azotea, and has never been seen again except in the Filipino dress, which is a loose shirt rather like a Chinaman’s coat, only fastening up the middle, and with bare feet.

Yesterday the cook appeared, carrying four huge, tall orchid plants, with very green leaves and pale mauve flowers, such lovely things, which he suggested would look well in the sala, and I quite agreed, so we began to negotiate for them. The countryman who had brought the flowers was ushered to the back door, and there was understood to murmur that he wanted 2 pesos (four shillings) for the four plants, but the cook, who said this was muy caro, got him down to a peso and 20 cents; only, the people here use many terms applicable to the old coinage, such as real, peseta, and so on, which make it so extremely puzzling to discover what the price of things really is, that I found it difficult to make out what to give; but the cook fished out a peso and 20 cents out of a pile of money I put on the table, and the man picked the two coins up and went off quite content. In my ignorance, I thought it rather a shame to insist on so low a price for such lovely plants—and orchids, too! However, I have since found out that these plants grow wild in great profusion in the woods over in the Island of Guimaras, and that what I had paid was like giving a man at home two shillings for a bunch of primroses. In spite of this, I decline to consider myself swindled, or to be dissatisfied with my bargain.

When the orchids had been bought, I asked the cook where he proposed to find pots to put them in, and he smiled in a very superior fashion, and said they only wanted some earth and a piece of sacking to live in, and they could be kept alive by certain airings and drinks of water; and when I said, “Who is going to do all this?”

“Domingo, señora,” he said in a great hurry. “Domingo is the only one who really understands plants”—and he grinned and nodded his head with marvellous rapidity.

I rather fancied the placid Domingo would be told he knew about plants and have to attend to them, after the fashion of one or two other “jobs” I had noticed, but I thought it best not to interfere, as Domingo is twice the size of the cook, and ought to be able to look after himself. Later on I saw the two of them fixing the tall plants, with roots neatly tied up in sacking bags, to the walls of the sala, or rather, Domingo very adroitly tying and nailing up, while the cook stood by to talk twenty to the dozen, and came afterwards to me for approval.

We had a very amusing scene of this description at the very beginning, when we fixed up the mosquito nets, on which occasion all hands, myself included (with needle and cotton) did something tangible, while the cook devoted the time to talking and jabbering and hopping about, uncannily like a monkey.

The orchids are really lovely, and make the sala look charming with their masses of little blooms of mauve and yellow against the white walls, and in time I must try to get some small trees in tall Chinese stands of blue and green earthenware, which adorn the houses here in profusion, and suit the white paint and brown floors admirably.