Chapter XXI: Letter XIX: A Baile—a New Cook and American Methods

ILOILO, _March 20, 1905_.

I am sure you will be glad to hear that I feel much better for my Manila trip, and able to go for our evening walks again, which we still enjoy very much, though the season is getting rather hot for moving about with much comfort.

While I was away, there was an outburst of Carnival gaiety, and C—— went to a ball at the Spanish Club, which seems to have been a very good one. It was fancy dress, many of the costumes were beautiful, and there was a big supper laid out at little tables in the open air, with decorations and paper lanterns. They danced till five in the morning, when the more enduring and merry spirits drove round the town in open carriages; so they seem to have had a very gay time, and I was rather sorry I had missed it, as a fancy dress ball in Iloilo must be a rare and precious experience.

So Lent has begun, but apparently it is not going to be made too strict, for last night we were bidden to an amateur theatrical performance at the Santa Cecilia (the Filipino) Club, which was a very festive affair. The big room of the Santa Cecilia, which is upstairs, like the Spanish one, but with a stage at one end, was very gay with festoons of pink and white muslin, and chains made of little hoops covered with tinsel paper. Nearly the whole audience consisted of Filipino women, in skirts of screaming reds, blues, greens, and yellows, set off by bewildering _camisas_, their black glossy hair adorned with many combs, and everywhere whiffs of penetrating cheap scent.

The hall is so large that the two or three hundred people present did not nearly fill it, though little groups of men hung about the side that opened, with spaces between columns, on to the staircase and outer hall.

We sat for a long time past the normal hour for beginning, staring at the drop-scene, which displayed a large picture of Saint Cecilia playing on a piano, and looking up to heaven; and had plenty of time to take in the paintings all round the room of Magellan, Rizal, Washington, and other heroes, which were stuck high up in frames, or frescoed on each side of the stage, while the band gave us waltzes, Sousa, and “Hiawatha.” This latter tune seems to have become a sort of Filipino National Anthem, for no entertainment of any sort can come off without it, and even a _banda de musica_, playing in the street in the evening, won’t go away, even after they had received money, before they have gone through “Hiawatha.” I don’t think I ever described to you a launch party we went one evening, on the occasion of a _despedida_ (farewell), to a departing American official? We were a large party, English and Americans mixed, and filled up the bows of a fair-sized launch, while abaft the engines a Filipino string band clung on and played as best they could as the launch rolled about in a choppy little sea off Guimaras. As we left the _Muelle_ (the quay) these musicians struck up “Hiawatha,” and when they had got through it they began again, and again, and again—and I have no doubt they would have played that air contentedly the whole way out and back, and probably fully intended to do so, if they had not been implored to stop. It is not a bad tune, though, and went remarkably well with the clicking of the launch’s machinery and the motion of the waves.

But, to get back to this theatrical performance—though I don’t think there is much to say about it, for it was a very ordinary amateur show, and except that the skins of the performers were naturally darkened and not artificially white, and the language they spoke was Spanish, it was indistinguishable from the same sort of thing at a charity bazaar at home. Not musical, like the performance I told you about at the theatre, but a playlet of a strangely exotic type that must have been rather unintelligible to most of the brown brothers and sisters, for it was a sort of French farce about a man and his wife living in a flat below another couple, with the usual complications that apparently inevitably result from such a dangerous experiment in Paris. One man acted well, and was now and then really funny; but the humour was _not_ the most refined fooling I have ever heard, as you may judge when I tell you that the chief source of jokes was that one of the husbands was represented as insinuating himself into the other household by pretending to be a doctor, and there was no bowdlerising of his interviews with his lady patients. The few things he left unsaid were reserved for another character, who came in as a house-agent with the most extraordinary fund of questions imaginable. But the entertainment hit the popular taste, evidently, for the more broad the remarks, with no attempt at wit, the more the “little brown sisters” laughed, in true Oriental manner.

I got very bored and tired, but did not like to go out till the first playlet was finished, for fear of hurting our hosts’ feelings. We afterwards heard from a friend that when the second piece was over, the floor was cleared for a _baile_, which was kept up till quite the early hours of the morning. In the middle of this dance, however, “a strange thing happened,” as a certain number of the hosts suddenly appeared with little plates to collect money for the expenses of the production. This manœuvre, as our friend expressed it to us, “knocked many of the guests completely out of time,” for the average person does not take much money to a dance. Some wrote little _vales_; but our friend was rather sharp, for when a girl held out a plate to him, he bowed very politely and took it from her, saying, “Pray let me help you,” and so became a collector instead of a contributor.

We went a new walk through the town a few evenings ago, on a lovely night, when the grey streets were all black and white in the moonlight, but the shadows quite luminous and the sky a real blue, dark and velvety. We strolled down one or two streets and through a group of native huts by the shore; but that part of the shore is some way from here, as, you see, we were walking across the spit of land formed by the estuary and the open sea.

In our walk we came to a walled-in graveyard, with an open grille in the great doorway, through which one could see a little chapel and green trees, looking very dark green in the moonlight. On the opposite side, across the rough, sandy road, was a high, broken wall of concrete, with a big iron gate, and apparently nothing but the sea beyond it. We wondered what the gate could lead to, and thought there must be some garden on the shore; but when we went up the one or two crumbling steps, we found ourselves at once on the beach, and at our feet a quantity of ruined graves, some half-opened, some newly-covered, all jumbled up in the moonlight, and strewn with rank grass, sand, and pebbles. It seemed so weird and uncanny, the great, strong wall shutting in nothing; and the tall gates leading to nothing; and we afterwards learnt that this was the Chinese graveyard, which is always being destroyed by storms, and the wall had suffered in the bombardment. I don’t suppose the Chinese use it much, as they always get their bodies sent back to China if they can, in huge, gaily-painted coffins, for burial in their native soil.

I forget if I told you about the trouble we have been having with our cook—the voluble person I described to you when he was new and interesting. Now I know that type of Filipino so well! As time went on the cook’s easy flow of talk became less interesting, especially as it took the place of cooking, and I got tired of always telling him to do his best, for he was one of those half-clever people who always do things just not as well as they could do them. Whenever I reproved him, too, I found a stranger in the kitchen next day, who told me that he had been sent to take the place of my cook, who was ill “with his leg.”

Always his leg. Though no human ingenuity could find out what he was supposed to have the matter with his leg. I was inclined to think it was a “sulk leg,” but C—— observed darkly that he had heard before of fellows getting “drink legs.” On these occasions the cook’s wife was generally to be found—a pleasant-faced little woman, in a bright, clean dress, and wearing long, gold earrings—squatting on her heels, outside the hall-door, smoking a huge cigar. The moment I appeared she always repeated the information about the leg, with apologies, and vanished.

When the cook had recovered from his indisposition, he would take up his place in the kitchen, affable and fluent as ever, and no remarks would be made by anybody, for I put up with him as long as I could on account of his generally being sober—a rare and precious virtue. At last, however, when I was ill he surpassed himself in crime, sending in uneatable food to poor neglected C——, and giving me the same soup and rissoles every day, twice a day, for a fortnight, till I could not even bear the smell of them.

When C—— remonstrated, the cook instantly became impudent, and as impudence is where C—— draws the forbearing line with Filipinos, he gave the cook one good kick that sent him sprawling out on to the Azotea. C—— observed that if the cook summoned him for assault, he would half kill him next time, but our friend did not resort to Law. He gathered himself up and went off, and was no more seen again, though he sent the usual stop-gap to do his work next day. However, we had no intention of letting him farm our kitchen, so we asked the stop-gap, who was an excellent cook, if he would like to stay on permanently, and he said he would, and there he is “to this very day,” as they say in books.

The change has made a great difference in my housekeeping, both socially and materially. By socially I mean that I now have a quiet, silent, intelligent man to deal with instead of a chattering, cunning monkey; and by materially, that this man caters for us infinitely better for a _peso_, including firewood, than the other gem did for a _peso_ and a half a day. He is willing to learn—real learning, not jabbering “_mi sabe, mi sabe_,” and then sending in the things all wrong—so I have got out my English cookery-book and explained many of our ways of preparing various foods, which he has grasped with intelligence and admirable results.

We are in great tribulation about ice, as a deadlock has occurred by which we are without any in this hot season—a most serious and horrible discomfort. From the beginning we, like everyone else, got our daily ten pounds of ice from the Government factory—the military supply—which came round every morning in the cart driven by the Stage Cowboy whom I think I described to you. When this cart pulled up and the handsome driver sang out “Hielo” (Ice!), servants flew out from all the houses and presented a ticket, each man secured his nice cold lump and rushed upstairs again to put it in the ice-chest.

But a month or more ago an American with a “pull” (political influence) got the municipal contract to supply this town with ice, to be worked in connection with the electric lighting of the streets, also placed in his control, on which the Government withdrew their supply so as not to interfere with private enterprise.

So far, so good. But the “’cute” financier had got an old electric plant, which works so badly that the arc-lights are extinguished and the streets are pitch dark at night. The ice has given out altogether. The financier, still being paid out of the rates, has gone off to Manila, and there is no redress anywhere, for he has a relative high up in office, is received everywhere, and—in fact he has a “pull.”

The Government won’t renew their supply of ice except to the Americans and the clubs. A few other people who have influence have managed to get a lump now and then, but for the greater part we struggle on, at 90° in the shade, with tepid water to drink, food decaying before the evening, and butter—even tinned train-oil butter—a thing of the past.

Such a state of affairs is not so astounding out here, however, as it may sound to you, for though you may have heard of the corruption of American political life, it does not strike one with such force when read in papers as when it comes home to you in daily life like this.

Even out here there seems to be no sense of that _noblesse oblige_, which alone can keep the ruling race upright before the eyes of the “little brown brother,” for one cannot take up a Manila paper without seeing the case of some Provincial Treasurer, or someone tried for official swindling.

Each town or district is controlled by a _Presidente_, a Filipino, something like a mayor, who, in his turn, is under the guidance of an American, called a Provincial Treasurer. Far from being an example of integrity, the Provincial Treasurer is very often anything but proof against the temptations that beset him financially. It is not hearsay; there are the actual police reports in the papers. And if those found out and brought to justice are so many, one can only speculate in amazement upon the numbers who escape, or are sheltered by influence or a “pull.”

It does seem such a pity that a great and noble nation should not be better represented in the eyes of another—and, when all is said and done—an inferior race.