No Hurry to Get Home

A Memoir

Emily Hahn

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781497619470
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Biografías de ciencias sociales

A fascinating memoir by a free-spirited New Yorker writer, whose wanderlust led her from the Belgian Congo to Shanghai and beyond. Originally published in 1970, under the title Times and Places, this book is a collection of twenty-three of her articles from the New Yorker, published between 1937 and 1970. Well reviewed upon first publication, the book was re-published under the current title in 2000 with a foreword by Sheila McGrath, a longtime colleague of hers at the New Yorker, and an introduction by Ken Cuthbertson, author of Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves and Adventures of Emily Hahn. One of the pieces in the book starts with the line, "Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can't claim that as a reason why I went to China." Hahn was seized by a wanderlust that led her to explore nearly every corner of the world. She traveled solo to the Belgian Congo at the age of twenty-five. She was the concubine of a Chinese poet in Shanghai in the 1930s—where she did indeed become an opium addict for two years. For many years, she spent part of every year in New York City and part of her time living with her husband, Charles Boxer, in England. Through the course of these twenty-three distinct pieces, Emily Hahn gives us a glimpse of the tremendous range of her interests, the many places in the world she visited, and her extraordinary perception of the things, large and small, that are important in a life.

STEWART

It would be exaggeration if I said that Stewart Cass, as I shall here call him, was responsible for my going to the Belgian Congo. I am sure I'd have got there somehow in any case, but certainly he speeded things up by listening to me as he did the evening we met at a party. I became garrulous when I learned that Stewart not only knew the Congo well but actually lived there. This, I felt, was a most fortunate encounter. Ever since my sophomore year in college, six years earlier, I had thought about the Congo and longed to see it. Africa was an unusual hobby for a young woman in the late nineteen-twenties, and, as I had learned by painful experience, most men didn't understand my ambition to go there. But Stewart listened, and he answered questions just as if I were in my right mind, though it couldn't have been easy to cope with all I asked him. I wanted to know the sort of thing I couldn't find in books and the steel engravings that illustrated them, such as whether or not the forest was full of color, how one managed to avoid crocodiles when bathing, and if it was always necessary to hack one's way through the underbrush. Patiently and politely, Stewart set me right on these matters and on others, until, by the end of the evening, I had a definite picture of the Congo in my mind. I saw the country clearly—a region where the sky was hidden by a high, leafy roof, where tree trunks were smooth as organ pipes, and, in the absence of sunlight, all was brown and black until you tipped back your head and looked up. There, where the trees had succeeded in climbing out of the shade, they burst into rich green foliage, much, I imagined, as the Tannhauser pilgrims burst into song.

Stewart talked a good deal, too, about the Africans, whom he seemed to know as well as I knew the neighbors next door in my New York apartment house. This was not surprising, for he was an anthropologist. I had learned earlier, from the general conversation, that he had long been collecting material in the Congo, preparing for a dissertation on one of the tribes there. Indeed, a friend of his, the man who had brought him, seemed to think that Stewart was taking an excessive amount of time on the job, for while we were talking he called out boisterously, "You ever going to finish that thing, Stew? Personally, I think it's all an excuse to lead the life of Riley down there. Doesn't he look like the Great White Father, with that beard?" he asked the company at large. "It would be a shame to have to shave that off."

Stewart laughed good-humoredly, stroking his beard, and as soon as the spotlight was off him I moved in again with more questions. On practical matters, as well as natural ones, he was a valuable adviser. He was informed about shipping lines, the names of towns along the Congo River, and the worth of the Belgian franc in American money. He had been to the region I was especially determined to see—Lake Kivu—and he described it for me. I forgot no word of what he said that evening, because all of it was important to me, but the most striking aspect of our encounter was his placid acceptance of my intention to visit the Congo. Stewart, I found, was from Boston, whose women evidently did unexpected things—riding alone through the Andes, walking across the continent, teaching in China—without incurring the opprobrium or even attracting the attention of other Bostonians. I thought that clearly I must revise my ideas of New England; Boston was a better place than I had supposed.

Of course, I saw Stewart soon again. If he hadn't followed up the acquaintance himself, I would have gone against my mother's strict rule ("No young lady ever calls a man. He wouldn't respect her if she did") and telephoned him, but he saved me from that ultimate degradation, and we went out together several times. We went to the Bronx Zoo and looked at African animals. We visited the Museum of Natural History. Once, he took me to the apartment where he lived with friends, to introduce me to a young female chimpanzee he had brought home. When he was about to leave for Belgium, we had dinner and talked for hours over the coffee. I told him how my ideas about Boston had changed, and he said, "If I were you, I'd suspend judgment on that. Boston's not so bad, but it's not perfect. As a matter of fact—" Here he bit off whatever he was going to say. I couldn't make out what his expression was, because of the beard. Beards take a bit of knowing. Later, I was able to read Stewart's face in spite of his, but I was new to the game that night. He started again: "I prefer living where I do, in the Congo. Boston's all right for a visit—I enjoy seeing my family, of course. At least, I used to."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I think I'll tell you about it," said Stewart. "If you're really coming out to Africa, and I guess you are, you'll have to know about it anyway." I flushed with pleasure, because he had said, "and I guess you are."

He was telling me, I soon realized, the story of his life, saying that he had first gone to the Congo as a member of a university expedition, intending to remain there for one scholastic year, the term agreed upon for the party. All the young men had anthropologized to their hearts' content in the Ituri Forest, and the year drew to a close. On what was supposed to be the last day, Stewart decided to go out on one more hunting trip. His guide was leading him along an elephant track that was promisingly fresh when suddenly they came upon the elephant himself, feeding in a banana grove. The animal spotted them just as they spotted him, and came at them. The guide made his escape, but Stewart tripped on a root and fell sprawling. "The last thing I remember is the way the elephant looked, standing over me," he said. "Then he gored me, and everything's gone from my mind, because I fainted. Fortunately, he was a big fellow, and his tusks were so wide apart that one of them missed me altogether, though the other hooked me in the side. He didn't take time to trample me and finish the job—the guide made a racket and distracted him."

After the goring, Stewart hadn't been able to travel. A doctor from a mission hospital said it would be six weeks at least before he could get up. The doctor had found a woman in the village where the expedition had been camping who, he said, would do as a nurse. The other boys had to go home; examinations were in the offing.

"Abanzima took wonderful care of me," said Stewart. "She got me back on my feet before the doctor expected it. If I don't owe my life to her, exactly, I do owe my health. In short," he went on, with one of the little rushes of speech that by now I knew were characteristic, "I got very fond of the girl. And that was when the trouble started. Our crazy ideas—the crazy ideas we have in this country! If Abanzima had been white, we'd have got married. She could have come home with me. She'd have been here right now, staying with my family."

He paused for such a long time, stirring his coffee and staring into it, that I urged him on. "And as it is?"

"As it is, I'm not saying I'm beaten," said Stewart. "I may marry her yet, but even so I certainly won't be able to bring her home. I realize that now, though I didn't when I was in the Ituri. I used to think that if I gave my father and mother enough time to get used to the idea— But it wouldn't have worked. I've found that out by trying to talk it over sensibly with them. I used to think they were reasonable people, but on this subject at least they aren't." He frowned. "My mother has always been a well-balanced woman, but do you know what she did after she'd heard about Abanzima? She fired the colored maid. Yes, she did, and, what's more, she said she would never have another Negro servant in the house."

We were both silent for a while. I couldn't have spoken even if I had tried to. In my eyes, Stewart was a classic figure of tragedy.

He went on. "What I'm trying to do now is arrange things so that I can spend the rest of my life in the Congo. It's not simply a matter of deciding to do it. The Belgians are the bosses, and they're apt to be suspicious of anyone hanging around without reasonable cause—or what they consider reasonable."

I nodded wisely. "They wouldn't approve of your staying on Abanzima's account."

"Oh, they don't mind my living with her," said Stewart. "They wouldn't understand my wanting to stay just for her, that's it. Most of the white men there, if their wives aren't with them, have black mistresses—they call them menageres." He said this casually, and I attempted to look as if I, too, was taking it casually, though in fact I was badly shocked. True love like Stewart's for his Abanzima was one thing; a menagere was quite another. But he was talking now about his practical plans. The Belgian government needed men to stay in the Congo as medical officers. Men were so badly wanted that the government didn't insist on fully qualified doctors for these posts but, through the Red Cross, gave a short course designed to turn out people trained to some extent who could maintain census posts in the forest and administer a certain amount of medical care. The course was given near Brussels, and Stewart had already signed up for it. If all went well, he would be back with Abanzima in three months, a Red Cross medical officer in good standing.

"But the lectures and lessons will be in French, won't they?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," said Stewart carelessly. He'd have to work that much harder, that was all. This part of his plan impressed me more than all the rest of it, which is saying a good deal. And often in the following days, after I'd said goodbye and good luck to Stewart, I thought of his story, I saw Abanzima in my imagination—a combination Undine and Madame Butterfly, wild and graceful, and prey to fears that I could hardly understand as she wondered if her alien lover would ever return. As a result of these reveries, the Congo became more than ever alluring to me.

Stewart and I kept in touch. About once a week, a letter came from Brussels saying that he was managing well in spite of the language problem. Then, a few months later, I went to England, and Stewart suggested that I go over to Belgium and visit his household. He occupied a suburban apartment, in company with his chimpanzee, Chimpo. I accepted the invitation, and as I got aboard the cross-Channel steamer I reflected that it was really, in a way, the beginning of my own trip to Africa. My breath came short at the thought.

I found the two exiles living in Continental splendor, in big rooms that filled a whole floor of a house, fitted out with massive doors and high, shuttered windows. To be sure, these rooms were practically empty, because of Chimpo's bad effect on the landlady's furniture. Chimpo had grown bigger, and was developing a mind of her own. Stewart had kept a bed and a dresser for me in a back room, the door of which could be locked, but there was nothing else in the apartment except his trunk, a mattress on the floor, and one gigantic wardrobe with handles strong enough to hold the chimpanzee when she was chained to them, as she often was. In fact, the chain padlocked around her neck was a regular part of Chimpo, because Stewart found it the only means by which he could catch or otherwise manage her. Most of the time, it merely dragged along behind her. On occasion, she would gather it up as a lady gathers her train, carrying it as she ran away from some retribution or other, but even then it slowed her down.

The morning after I arrived, Stewart attached the other end of the chain to the wardrobe, padlocked it, and gave me the key before starting off to his class. "I used to leave her free when I went out, but I had to stop that," he said. "She learned to open the windows, and she climbed out and bothered the neighbors. You can let her off, of course, if you've simply got to; otherwise, I wouldn't advise it."

"What do you mean, if I've simply got to?" I asked.

Stewart's reply came after a slight hesitation. "Well, when my mother was here early last month, I had to leave her alone with Chimpo in the mornings, and Chimpo was chained up like this, and I guess she finally got bored. She got hold of Mother one day and didn't let go until I got back, in about five hours. Every time Mother felt Chimpo's grip relax, she'd start to move away, and Chimpo would bite her and hang on harder than ever. By the end of those five hours, Mother was pretty mad."

"I see." I moved out of the chimpanzee's reach.

"You'll probably be all right," Stewart called cheerfully, going out with his books.

Chimpo busied herself with her own affairs, as I with mine. I kept well clear while she chewed the corner of the wardrobe, then practiced high diving from the top of it to the floor—thump, thump, thump—over and over. Everything was all right until I went to fetch the newspaper on the far side of the room. I tried to slip by at a distance I considered safe, but the chimpanzee, who was lying on the floor in what appeared to be a pensive mood, suddenly whirled around on her bottom and, stretching out, reached my skirt with her foot. Before I could get out of the skirt, she had pulled me over and was holding me fast by the leg, and Mrs. Cass's experience would have been repeated if I hadn't had the padlock key in my pocket. As it was, I unlocked the chain. One good turn deserves another. Chimpo immediately released me. For the rest of the day, we were on friendly terms. I even allowed her to open the door for the grocery boy. I had hoped to surprise him, but he didn't turn a hair. He addressed Chimpo in her own language, a coughing grunt, and walked in, unconcerned, to put down the groceries.

"Ah, yes," he said when I expressed surprise, "I've done my time in the Congo." He tousled Chimpo's head on the way out.

After Brussels, being back in London seemed very dull, and I wasted much time daydreaming about leopards, palm trees, and rivers sluggish in the sun. Stewart passed his examinations, and when I next heard from him he was reunited with Abanzima and working in a village called Tange, on the Ituri River. His letters were heavy, but in tissue-paper envelopes on which the ink was often smeared by water. As the time of my departure grew nearer, he wrote every few days with last-minute requests for purchases he wanted me to make. He wanted hair clippers, for one thing, and a certain kind of tinned butter—one tin only, so that he could experiment with its staying qualities before ordering crates of it. The list grew enormously long. In return for getting these things, he sent me lots of information on ships and advice about supplies. It was through Stewart that I found a French shipping line that offered remarkably cheap third-class passage from Bordeaux to Boma, on the west coast of Africa, and I went straight off to buy my ticket. Economy was important to me. I was taking along enough money—jut enough, as it turned out—to get me there, and leaving behind the rest of what I had saved, which was to follow me in three months. In the line's office, I had a long argument with a clerk, and then with the manager. In all their years of experience, said these gentlemen, they had never heard a woman of any color propose to travel third class on their ships. When pressed, however, the manager admitted that there was no written rule against it, and he had to give in.

There were further arguments when I bought my supplies. In an elegant Bond Street shop that supplied everything in the world for big-game hunters in tropical countries. I gave my order along the lines advised by Stewart. The frock-coated salesman—himself as soft-footed as any wild thing of the forest—was startled into raising his voice. Only twelve tin chests? So few pairs of khaki shorts? What about a tent and a bathtub? He declared it sheer suicide to venture into Africa without what he considered the proper accoutrements. But I resisted. I had been advised by an expert. One didn't need a tent, I told the salesman. Quoting Stewart, I declared that a traveller in the forest simply paused in a village before night fell, and paid a few francs for the loan of one of the native houses. As for the bathtub, the Congo was full of rivers, not to mention Lake Kivu. "It's a mistake to carry a lot of stuff," I said severely. "It means more porters, and that means more food for them—a lot more expense all around. Haven't you found yourself that it's best to keep things simple on safari?"

"I?" said the salesman, suddenly thawing. "Miss, the furthest I've ever been from London is Brighton."

Tange was nearer the Congo River, on which I was to make most of the trip from Boma, than Lake Kivu was. Kivu was southeast, at the border of Ruanda-Urundi. It therefore seemed logical, if the word "logical" can be applied to my journey at all, to stop off with Stewart's household first, and so I planned it. I was seven or eight weeks getting to Tange, and ran many gantlets, from the European end, where the Bordeaux porters were rude about my tin trunks (each to carry no more than thirty pounds, the approved weight for an African bearer), through the voyage itself.

Third class was comfortable enough. As a matter of fact, there was a fourth class, too—a fact I hadn't realized when I booked, or I'd have had a shot at it. Fourth class was full of African troops and chickens; third class, except for me, was occupied by noncommissioned officers on their way to the French Congo-swarthy, undersized men from Marseille and Corsica, with deep voices and five-o'clock shadow. They were polite to me but often quarrelled with each other, and most nights were noisy after I had gone to bed. During the trip, I picked up a Midi accent and a number of idioms I hadn't been taught in high school. Bordeaux was raw, rainy, and generally depressing, and after we were at sea I was sick for a while, but when we had paused at Madeira and were making for Casablanca, summer was suddenly upon us. Every day the sea was more blue, the sun yellower. Here and there, we third-class passengers had a bit of deck space the size of a man's handkerchief, and in one of these clearings at the stern of the ship I would lean on the rail for hours, staring down at a shark that followed us faithfully the whole way.

I think I was stupefied for the first fortnight. Not until we anchored offshore at Dakar, in Senegal, did I realize where I was. A line of palm trees like green sentinels stood at attention back of the harshly bright yellow sand of the beach, and all of a sudden I knew I was there, in Africa—that I wasn't looking at a picture in an atlas, or reading Conrad. I myself was there. The women walking along the beach with babies slung on their backs, in dresses of cotton printed with huge blobs of color— they were real. Somewhere over there on the other side of the palm trees were their houses. I wondered if Abanzima wore clothes like theirs, and if any of them resembled her. Now I felt impatient of the ship, anxious to get off it and into the country. The rest of the voyage seemed very long until I disembarked at Boma.

Then came a train, a paddle-wheeler up the Congo, Stanleyville, where I stayed for several days, and a truck that took me up the last bit of road, leading to the roadless forest. There I was unloaded at a dock on the bank of the Ituri River, and found the canoe Stewart had sent for his mail and me—a long, heavy craft that even English-speaking Congolese called a pirogue. It was poled or paddled, depending on necessity, by tattooed men in loincloths. For a long day, they and I moved upriver toward Tange, and I had the strange sensation all along that I just wasn't there at all. They couldn't communicate with me nor I with them, so they took the tactful way out by pretending I was part of the mail, nothing more. When they spoke to each other, their voices were resonant. Often they burst into song, hitting the side of the pirogue with the paddles to stress a beat. Now and then we passed another boat going in the opposite direction, and then all the boatmen chatted back and forth until they were far out of sight of each other. They could make their voices carry, somehow, without raising them.

We moved on oily black water between banks where the forest crowded to the brink, trees jostling for foothold. Here and there, infrequently, a clearing moved into view—a space, open for about twenty yards, in which a path could be seen leading to the water, and in the distance a little jumble of clay-walled houses. Sometimes there were women and children playing in the water. They, too, carried on long conversations with my boatmen. Often everyone shouted with laughter, so that I longed to know the joke. We stopped for a rest at one of these places. People stood around and stared as I ate the box lunch I'd brought from the Stanleyville hotel. In such circumstances, it was hard to chew in a natural manner. Eventually, I fought back by staring at them, especially the women, asking myself if any of them were like Abanzima. I didn't think they could be. I could see no beauty in any of these females, hair twisted into rows of tiny topknots like coiled wire, some of the bodies bare above the waist. So many pairs of naked breasts abashed me, especially as few of them were up to Greek or Balinese standards.

It was dark when we reached Tange. Long before the pirogue turned in toward the bank, the boatmen called out and received a reply in that effortless conversational tone of voice that seemed able to travel any distance. As we approached, a line of little lights moved through the dark, tracing a zigzag pathway down what appeared to be a steep slope. The boat was beached, and I climbed out, moving stiffly. A familiar coughing noise warned me of what...