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Based on an old Javanese travel poster
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Based on an old Javanese travel poster
Collier's, 13 May 1933, with "Far from Java"
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
JAN KROMHOUT was trying to tempt the appetite of a large, frilled lizard by an offering of blue flies. The lizard, a member of the family Pygopodida, whose habitat is the Malay and northern Australia, steadfastly refused the dainties.
"He is a queer fellow," said the big Dutch naturalist. "I call him Gandhi because if he does not get his own way he starts to fast. Ja, he is a funny fellow."
"Will he keep to his fasting tricks when he is in a zoological garden?" I asked.
"Nee, he will forget," answered Kromhout. "Lizards and snakes do not fret much in captivity. A zoo is a nice place for them. They are well-fed and secure. It is for the big cats alone that I have sympathy—the tigers and the leopards. And whenever I see a black panther in captivity I cry."
I watched a blue fly that crawled along the nose of Gandhi and waited for Jan Kromhout to inform me why a caged black panther produced tears.
"The black panther has the intelligence of an elephant, the viciousness of a cobra, and the swiftness of the lightning," said Kromhout. "The Shans say that the devil was the father of the first black panther. The devil trod on the panther's tail with his hoof, and the panther got mad. He scratched the devil's face and got thrown from hell into the world. That is what they say. He is the very seed of wickedness, is that animal, and he is brainy. And proud, so very proud. The black panther thinks he is as much above an ordinary leopard as a Dutchman is above a coolie.
"I will tell you a story about a black panther and a young girl named Morea. She was a very beautiful girl, and one day a hunter gave her a cub panther that was only three weeks old. I saw that animal on the day she got him. He was in her arms. A little black bundle of deviltry with two yellow eyes that looked at everyone with hate. And now and then he would pull back his top lip and swear, panther fashion.
"MOREA asked me to give him a name. 'A nice name, Jan
Kromhout,' she said. 'Something sweet because he is so
lovely.'
"Women have a sympathy with devils. A great sympathy. If you offered any young girl a choice between a nice white lamb and a baby panther she would pick the panther. I know. We Dutch have a proverb: Eene vrouw wil bedrogen worden—a woman likes to be deceived.
"'A pretty name,' said the girl, and I looked at the eyes of that panther and I thought of the story that, the Shans tell about the father of all panthers. 'Call him Mynheer Lucifer,' I said. 'It is a name that suits his eyes of sulphur.'
"At first she did not like that name for the cub but in a little while it pleased her, and that panther became Mynheer Lucifer. I saw him and the girl every day. The mother of Morea was dead, her father was a drunken Dutchman who swigged schnapps from morning till night, so the girl and the panther played together in a big garden of their house, which was on the road from Ambarawa to Toentang. I was catching specimens of the leaf-tailed gecko, the Ptychozoon homalocephalon of the Malay, and I passed that garden many times each month.
"THAT girl, Morea, was about sixteen years of age when Mynheer
Lucifer came to live with her. She was tall, with long legs that
were beautiful, and a back that was strong and flexible like a
steel blade. And she walked as Balkis might have walked.
Ja, proud, and stepping on air. Sometime, way back, a wild
man from the forests had contributed a little twig to the family
tree of Morea, and it showed in her grace. Showed a lot.
"Often when I went by that garden I would stop and look in through the palings at the girl and the panther. She did not know that I was looking, but that cat knew. He knew everything that happened around there. When I stopped at the fence he would just give one look in my direction with his yellow eyes and he would say something bad in his own lingo. I think she told him that I had named him Mynheer Lucifer, and he did not like me because of that.
"Now I will tell you something funny. As I watched the brute and the girl I began to think that a lot of her movements were like his movements. It was strange. There was about her walk that curious cloaked activity of the big cats. It was hidden but you knew it was there. Ja, ja! You knew it was there like you know that a dagger is in a sheath.
"Listen: One day I passed that garden and I saw that black panther giving her a lesson. He was showing her how to spring suddenly in the air when no one expected him to spring. It was like a dancing master with a pupil. There was a white flower of the klang tree that hung high in the air, and Mynheer Lucifer was showing the girl how to stalk that flower without letting the flower know that he wanted it!
"THAT black devil gave me a thrill. He would walk lazily
forward, looking at everything except that flower, and then,
swish! he would fly upward like a flame and snap at it. It was
the sleepy approach that made the lightning-like spring
wonderful. It was startling, that quick leap.
"Five times I watched that brute jump without touching the flower, then he sat down on his tail and looked at the girl. Looked at her as much as to say: 'Now see what you can do.'
"That girl was barelegged. She had a tight kabaya of thin cotton around her bosom and a crimson sarong wound around her hips. And the grass did not bend under her feet when she walked. It was not walking, it was swimming. Swimming through the air!
"I watched with a funny little feeling that was not altogether nice. That panther knew too much. A lot too much. I did not admire him sitting there like a drill sergeant watching a recruit.
"The girl walked slowly forward just like Mynheer Lucifer showed her. She did not look at the flower, but when she was directly beneath it she sprang! Ooop! I nearly cried out with surprise. She went up as if an invisible hand had come down from the sky and clutched her kabaya! Straight up till the tips of her long fingers touched the petals of the flower! Touched them! Then she dropped softly to the ground and looked at the panther.
"That animal seemed pleased. He pulled the skin back from his teeth and grinned. He stroked his mustache with his paw just as if he was saying: 'Not bad at all. Try again.'
"Morea walked back to the starting point, and the yellow eyes of the cat were on her as she came forward for the second jump. Swimming through the air. Not looking at that flower. Stalking it, but pretending she did not know that it was hanging high above her.
"Up she went for the second time! Up like an arrow. Those long fingers of hers shooting for the flower, and the crimson sarong pulled tight by the spring, made her look like a tongue of flame!
"She got it! Ja! Her fingers tore it from the bough. She dropped back to the ground with it and carried it to that panther. Carried it as if it was something that was alive! And that brute took it and worried it, holding it between his paws. It made me a little cold. He would snap at the petals of the flower and then look at her, as much as to say: 'We did this between us. Two good hunters, eh?' That's what he was saying in his own way. I liked it so little that I went away....
"NOW, there was a boy at Grabak-Merbaboe who liked that girl.
His name was Piet, and his father was a rich planter. Piet was a
fine young fellow. He was six feet tall and weighed nearly two
hundred pounds. Just muscle and bone. He was a year older than
the girl.
"One day, about a month after I saw that girl leap at the flower, I met this boy Piet galloping to the station at Ambarawa. He looked as if he was crazy, and I asked him what was wrong. You would never guess. One of those scouts who buy animals for the big zoological gardens had got a hurry-up order for a male black panther. One had died in a zoo, and the female panther was pining away because it had no mate.
"That scout had no panther on hand, but he thought of Mynheer Lucifer. He was cunning, that scout. He came in the night to the drunken father of Morea and he made him an offer. A good offer. That Dutchman thought of all the schnapps that he could buy with the money and he said Ja pretty damn' quick. He was a little tired of Mynheer Lucifer anyway. When the Dutchman was drunk he would sometimes fall over that panther, and the panther would show his teeth and swear like the devil. The panther did not know what schnapps does to the legs of a man. He thought the Dutchman kicked him in temper.
"The animal scout understood his business. He had brought a crate, and he pushed the open end of this crate against the door of a shed at the back of the house in which Mynheer Lucifer slept. Then he jabbed that panther with an iron bar and opened the door of the shed.
"Mynheer Lucifer had never been prodded with an iron bar. Not once. He rushed out to find who was so cheeky, and before he could sneeze he was locked in that crate and rocking down the road in a bull wagon. He was the most surprised animal in the whole of Java. He used all the panther swear words that he could think of, and then said some of them over again, but it was no use. Not a bit.
"MOREA sent a note to that boy Piet, and that was the reason
Piet was galloping to Ambarawa. 'If I catch that fellow,' said
Piet to me, 'I will kill him! Morea is crying her heart out!'
"Piet did not catch that scout. When he got to Semarang he found that the fellow had jumped a boat of the Koninklijke Packetvaart, and with Mynheer Lucifer was rocking up and down on the Java Sea. He was a very mad boy, was that Piet. I am sure he would have killed that scout if he had caught him. He had big hands that could choke a man quick. And he loved Morea. Loved her very much.
"That girl did not forget the panther. Not at all. He was in her mind a lot. That animal had a personality, you bet. He was a fellow that you would remember for a long time. There are many animals like that. Sometimes, not often, I have met a snake or a lizard that is a little queer. This lizard, Gandhi, is that way. He knows a lot.
"Piet and that girl had a bit of a tiff and, while they were sulking with each other, the girl and her father took a trip to Semarang. They stayed at the Hotel des Indes on the Bodjong Road, and while they were in the hotel there was a little carnival. Someone heard that Morea could dance, and they asked her to do something on the lawn of the hotel.
"She did the stalking dance that I had seen her do with Mynheer Lucifer. Ja, that was what she did. She came out of the bushes at one side of the lawn, moving swift and sneaky like a panther on the prowl. She was tense, all her muscles drawn, her face thrust forward, her nostrils straining the little puffs of air that came along the avenue of tamarind trees.
"The people who were watching her sat up and stared. You bet they did. Something came out from her that made their jaws open and their eyes grow big. The way in which she moved touched something primitive in their make-up, something that had been asleep for hundreds of years. For thousands of years! Somewhere in the brain of each that had memories of days when the mammoth was abroad.
"They gaped at her like fools, and when they were all tied up with the funny emotions that she brought to them, she sprang! High in the air like she did when I watched her playing with Mynheer Lucifer. Sprang at a flower eight feet above her head. A flower that she had not glanced at till she shot from the ground. Not looked at once.
"SHE got that flower, clutched it in her strong, brown hands,
then she slipped back into the bushes, leaving the people free to
come out of the trance that she had put them into. She could do
that stalking trick fine. Ja, ja! I have seen her.
"At the hotel was a theatrical man who was looking for attractions for a big theater in Berlin. He wanted things that were new, because those Berlin people are always hungry for new things. When he got his breath back he went and spoke to Morea and her father. He wrote a contract on a sheet of paper and her father signed it. That old Dutchman was to get five thousand guilders paid to him next morning at the office of the Javasche Bank in the Heerenstraat. That was an advance on the salary that was to be paid to Morea.
"The girl did not care. She had quarreled with Piet, and she was tired of Java for the moment. Next day she went with the theater man to Singapore and took a Messageries Maritime steamer for Europe.
"Did you ever hear of her when she danced in Berlin? Nee? She appeared at a place called the Alhambra. I know that is so because she sent back pictures of herself that were printed in the papers. And she sent back a photograph of the theater with her name in electric lights. I saw it when that drunken father of hers carried it around to show people. The electric lights made words. German words. 'Morea the Wild Girl in Her Panther Dance.' That's what the lights said. I laughed. I had watched her learn that panther dance.
"ALL Berlin came to see that girl. They got chills down their
backs when they watched her. She would creep out of the wings of
the theater just like Mynheer Lucifer had taught her to creep.
Barelegged, and with just a pelt of a leopard around her. And she
would sniff the air for danger, her muscles rippling and her eyes
fixed. And no one would speak or cough or sneeze, because there
would come out of her something that glazed their brains. That
something that you feel in the jungle when some beast has made a
kill. The something that gets in through the pores of your
skin.
"And then she would jump! Ooop! High at a red flower hung many feet from the stage. And her jump would knock grunts from the stomachs of the fat men and little screams from the lips of the women. Before she leaped she had twisted their nerves up like I twist a spring, and the leap in the air unloosed them. Unloosed them good and plenty.
"She was dancing at the theater for eight weeks when a man came around to the back of the stage and spoke to her. 'Fraulein,' he said, after he had complimented her on her dancing, 'I was very anxious to speak to you.'
"'Why?' asked Morea.
"'I wanted to tell you something,' said the man. 'At the Zoological Gardens there is a black panther who walks like you walk, and who leaps in the air just like you leap. He cannot leap so high because the roof of his cage is low.'
"Morea had rushed at that man and grabbed him by the lapel of his coat. 'Quick! Quick!' she cried. 'Take me to him! At once! At once!'
"'That is impossible!' said the man. 'It is midnight and the gardens are closed!'
"'I have money!' cried Morea. 'I will pay the keepers! I must see him! I must! I must! I know him!'
"The man laughed and took her out to his automobile. He did not think she could get into the gardens but he thought it nice to have a drive with her. He liked girls. Liked them a lot.
"Together they drove out to the Zoological Gardens. The place was all locked up, but that did not matter to the girl. They banged the bell till the head keeper came to see what was the riot, and when the girl told him what she wanted he got mad with her. 'Come tomorrow,' he said. 'That black panther is asleep now and he would be angry if I woke him up to talk to you.'
"The girl opened her handbag and held it out to the keeper. 'Take what you want!' she cried. 'I have got to see him tonight!' The keeper would not take any money, but he was curious, so he opened the gate and let her and the man into the garden.
"MYNHEER LUCIFER heard the footsteps of Morea when she was a
hundred yards from his cage. Heard it and cried out to her. She
ran, and when she got to his cage he had his head thrust up
against the bars and he started to tell her what a rotten life he
was leading in that garden in Berlin.
"Quite a lot had that panther to say. He told her he did not like Berlin, he did not like the German language, nor the fat men and their fat women who came and stared at him and thought him funny. And he told her that he did not like the wife that they had given him. Not much. And when that female panther came out to see who Mynheer Lucifer was talking to he ran at her and bit her and made her run back into her sleeping box. Then he licked the hands of Morea and asked her again to get him out of that place.
'That girl cried like a baby. She told the panther that she was dancing at the Alhambra, doing the stalking dance that he had taught her, and when she thought he showed interest in that bit of news she jumped to her feet and right there in the moonlight she did that dance for him. And Mynheer Lucifer stopped whining and sat up on his tail, watching her with his big, yellow eyes. And he seemed pleased with the way she danced. Much pleased. He was a wise fellow, was that panther. Ja, he was very wise.
"I told you that the man who took Morea out to the Zoological Garden liked women? He hunted for them like I hunt for lizards. On the way back to the hotel he told that girl that he would fix up about the buying of Mynheer Lucifer. He said he had a pull with the heads of that garden and he would arrange everything.
"Next day Morea went out to the gardens with five pounds of nice, juicy steak for that panther. As she watched him eat it, she was homesick just as much as Mynheer Lucifer. She wished she were back again in the shadow of the old Dutch fort at Ambarawa talking to that boy Piet. She cried, and the panther whined because he knew she was sad like himself.
"That man who was to arrange for the buying of Mynheer Lucifer was in no hurry. He was cunning. In the business of stalking what he wanted he was better than any panther in the world. He thought it would take him quite a while to stalk that girl. Weeks and weeks. 'This matter is a little exchange,' he said to himself. 'That damned black cat will stay in his cubicle till the girl is mine.'
"So he was pretty evasive. He had excuses by the million. Nice, fat excuses. The people did not wish to sell Mynheer Lucifer, so he said. He would have to use diplomacy. A lot of diplomacy. He must tell her of the cunning he was using. The splendid cunning. He must tell it in private. He knew places that were quiet where they could talk without anyone hearing them.
"Oh, he was a clever fellow. He took Morea to little cafes where they had nice cool golden wine in those long-necked bottles, and he was stalking her all the time. Talking of Mynheer Lucifer but stalking the girl. Creeping closer and closer to her. Ja, he was clever.
"Then, one evening, there came to the girl a terrible fear of that man. He frightened her. He was putting little nets around her that she could not escape from. And on that evening she sat down and sent a cablegram to Piet. Just a simple cablegram. It said: 'Come quick. I am in danger.'
"That boy Piet came quick. It cost him a lot of money, but he loved Morea.
"I told you how big he was? Ja. Well, when he reached the hotel where that girl was staying the clever gentleman had just called to talk with her about getting Mynheer Lucifer out of the Zoological Gardens. That fellow knew a lot about women, but he didn't know men. He started an argument with Piet, and that was foolish. Piet took him by the back of the collar, lifted him over the stair railing and dropped him down to the next floor. That was all. The fellow was knocked unconscious.
"That same day Morea took Piet out to see Mynheer Lucifer. And the panther was glad to see Piet because he knew that he had two friends in Berlin. And the three of them talked. The girl told the panther that Piet had a plan— that he would get a signal some dark night when the keepers were sleeping, and when that signal came he was to hop. Hop quick....
"THAT panther was too quick when the moment came. He did not
understand. He was supposed to step from his cage into a crate
that was ready for him, but he had had enough of prisons. He
knocked the crate aside, and the fellows that were working with
Piet just saw a streak of something blacker than the night as he
fled. It was funny. Not a sound came back to tell them which way
he had gone.
"Piet rushed back to the hotel and told Morea what had happened. She was near crazy with grief. Mynheer Lucifer in the gardens was safe, but Mynheer Lucifer running around Germany, where they have so many schutters, was in a little bit of danger. Those Germans love to hunt things. Ja.
"There was nothing in the papers about the escape of that black panther. Not a word. And there were no reports that he had been seen. The Zoological Garden people had said nothing to the reporters, and Mynheer Lucifer had not gone to any of the newspaper offices to say that he was loose. Not much.
"Morea could not dance. She had not the heart to dance. She cried all the day and all the night, and each morning she would read all the papers from Der Tag to Vorwärts thinking there would be some news of Mynheer Lucifer. There was not a word.
"Piet was good to her. Each day he would take her for a ride to some nice place, trying to make her forget the panther. They went to the Grunewald, the Wannsee, and the Havel Lakes. And they would stroll around and talk of Ambarawa and wish they were back home in Java. And they would have been on their way back to the Malay if that panther had acted properly on the night Piet tried to get him out of the gardens.
"FIVE days after that night Piet and Morea were walking in the
Spandauer Forest when they saw a very fat German running around
in the bushes and weeping. Piet asked what was wrong, and the
German told him. That German had one of those dog's that has a
body as long as a railway train with little legs on each end, and
that fool dog had heard a little noise in a very dark spot of
that wood. A small noise. Just a twig crackling or something like
that, but that dog was curious to know what made the noise. It is
the fault with those long dog's. They are very curious. They want
to know everything that is going on.
"This dog said 'Hoch,' and barking Deutschland über Alles he rushed into the bushes. The fool! The German heard him pushing that long body of his deeper and deeper into the bushes, then there was a yelp of great surprise and silence. A very great silence.
"'How did he yelp?' asked Piet.
"'He yelped as if he was much astonished!' cried the German. 'As if he was greatly surprised. It was a funny yelp. He must have seen something dreadful in those bushes. If he does not come back this evening I will report it to the authorities.'
"Piet and Morea could not speak as they walked away from the owner of that dachshund. It was quite plain to them. In the darkest corner of that clump of underbrush was Mynheer Lucifer. Mynheer Lucifer of Java!"
The excitement in the voice of Jan Kromhout stirred the big frilled lizard whose lack of appetite troubled the naturalist. The lizard lifted himself high on his forepaws and stared at a blue fly as if he had never seen such an insect in his life.
"He heard me talking of food," said Kromhout. "He is looking mighty hard at that fly now."
"Well, what happened?" I asked impatiently. "What happened in Spandauer Forest?"
"It was easy,' said Kromhout. "That night Piet and Morea and two men that Piet hired went to the forest. And they took a crate with them. That girl started to call out to Mynheer Lucifer, and, after a little while, Piet and the men saw two yellow eyes looking out of the bushes. Then the girl started to do that stalking dance with leaps into the air, and the panther came right out into the clearing to watch her. Little by little she got him over near the crate. He was angry because the two men that he did not know were watching him, so Piet sent them away. He did not mind Piet.
"I told you about that boy Piet. How strong he was. He could lift an ox. Mynheer Lucifer was sitting quite close to the door of that crate, and that fellow Piet grabbed him by the neck and the tail and with one quick push he had him inside! The panther was not altogether asleep. He gave Piet something to remember him by. He slashed Piet's arm from the shoulder to the wrist, but Piet did not care. That panther could have killed him, and he would not have cared. He loved that girl with a very great love. Ja, a love that made him laugh at his slashed arm.
"And he did laugh when Morea, who was weeping, tried to bind it up. 'It is nothing, little one,' he said to the girl. 'Nothing at all. Now we are on our way home! Home to Java!' And he called to the two men and they hoisted up the crate and Mynheer Lucifer started on his way back to Ambarawa. Back to the jungles and freedom."
JAN KROMHOUT was silent, his gaze upon the lizard. I waited
expectantly, but the story, as far as Kromhout was concerned, had
come to an end.
"Once on the beach at Batavia," I began, "I saw a big Dutchman with a very beautiful wife. He had a long scar running down his arm from the—"
"Look! Look!" cried Kromhout, interrupting my remark. "Look at Gandhi! He has snapped up three! Ah, he has the appetite now. Ja! You will excuse me? I must catch him some more of those blue flies while he is in a good humor."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.