Tramp Royale (36 page)

"Huh?"

"I brought my traveler's cheques. Let's cash a few. I want to do some shopping today."

"I thought I told you-"

"I know what you told me, but I don't intend to be cheated out of sixty per cent of the value of my money. Ridiculous! The whole thing is a swindle."

I shut up. My objections were purely pragmatic anyway; my opinions matched hers. I have no moral scruples about dealing in a black money market. (Rationed foods and such in wartime are an entirely different matter.) Wherever there is an attempt to control currency there will be found a black market in money, as the control laws are not merely an attempt by the government to get something for nothing at the expense of its own citizens and their customers, they are also an attempt to defy natural law, to lift by the bootstraps.
Fiat
cannot determine the value of a country's money; only free exchange can do that.

I admit that fiscal theory is much more complicated than my sweeping generalizations, but the last sentence above expresses an easily observed fact to which there are no exceptions in history. But I do not mind going along with the gag and treating the process as a form of concealed taxation if the controls are moderate, as they are in general in the Commonwealth. But where the scheme approaches confiscation, as it did in Indonesia, my reluctance to deal in a free market is based only on a fear of getting caught.

But Ticky is never afraid of getting caught. When the time comes, she will no doubt tell Saint Peter that his bookkeeping is all wet and that she intends to make some drastic changes in the way the joint is run.

On the previous day some of the passengers had managed to sneak contraband money ashore; our driver had, without hesitation, told them where to find a black exchange. Ticky had listened to this and had asked him, "But will they deal with you when they don't know who you are?"

The driver let go the wheel and made an imploring gesture with both hands so oriental in its histrionic emotionalism that I was forced to suppress a laugh. "Madame-they will
beseech
you!"

"Oh." Ticky threw me a dirty look and shut up. On that day we had nothing with us but a few high-priced, official-rate rupiahs and she wanted to buy some sarongs.

So on the next day we drove to the black market. "I didn't tell you," Ticky said happily, "because I knew you would get cold feet."

"You won't like the jails here. Insects . . . cockroaches. Centipedes and tarantulas and scorpions. Things crawling over you and fluttering in your face in the dark-and I won't be there to protect you."

She looked uncertain, for I had flicked her on her one weak spot. Java has an exceptionally intense density of population of the true dominant races of this globe; in that hot and humid climate insects abound in a fashion almost unbelievable to inhabitants of colder, drier places, and Ticky cannot stand creepy-crawlies of any sort. They change her from an Amazon to a frightened little girl. She can't abide anything with six legs-except trios, and not all of those.

I have explained to her that most insects do not bite, sting, nor carry disease, and that even bees, wasps, and hornets are polite to people who are polite to them and do not startle them. But she remains unconvinced; insects panic her. Except butterflies, of course, which she does not class as insects at all, but as self-propelled flowers.

I could see that the remote possibility of spending even a few minutes in a calaboose that was sure to be heavily infested with her mortal enemies was worrying her. "Fleas . . ." I added. "Lice-"

But she shrugged and squared her shoulders. "You're just trying to frighten me. I won't have any trouble."

Nor did she. And they did beseech her. When our car stopped in the little side street where the money changers hang out we were immediately surrounded by a crowd, each member of which swore by Allah that he gave the highest rates.

Ticky opened her purse and got out her book of traveler's cheques. "How many rupiahs for twenty U.S. dollars?" she said briskly.

They all stopped cold. One of them said hesitantly, "No cheques, please, Madame. Cash dollars."

"These are the same as cash dollars. They were purchased for U.S. dollars in the United States of America. Didn't you ever see traveler's cheques before?"

"Certainly, Madame, we know all about traveler's cheques . . . which is why we don't want them. They are very hard to handle. But for your dollars, please, I give you very good rate."

"But I don't have any dollars. Not a single one."

"Madame is sure?"

I thought she would take offense at the implication-which she would have back home. But she took it for the purely professional gambit that it was and answered, "Quite sure. We changed our last cash dollar in Singapore. Now does anyone, anyone at all, want to buy American traveler's cheques, good for their face value in American dollars? Speak up, or I'm leaving."

Nobody answered. On the face of the spokesman was a mixture of doubt, cupidity, and very real apprehension. He withdrew a few yards from us and the rest followed; they went into a huddle. Although the money changers were all in competition he seemed to hold some sort of leadership by prestige. The committee meeting went on for some time, then he came back to us. "Very well, Madame, as a favor to you. Will you come this way, please?" His gestures indicated that he wanted us to come inside a restaurant, out of the public eye.

Ticky held back. "What's your rate?"

"Eighteen rupiahs to the dollar."

"What! That's ridiculous. They are paying at least twenty-five rupiahs for a dollar anywhere."

"For your dollars, Madame, I will pay twenty-six rupiahs. But these are cheques."

"They are the same as dollars."

"To you perhaps, Madame, but not to me. I must pay again to get them changed. Even twenty-seven rupiahs for dollars."

"I really don't have any cash dollars. None. But I'll save these cheques and spend them in Australia before I'll let them go for any silly price like that. What is the best you will pay?"

"Aaaeeh . . . nineteen, Madame. I make no profit."

Ticky looked stubborn and so did he, they managed to look alike. I was getting fretful at the delay and a bit nervous; I interrupted with, "See here, give us twenty and get it over with."

He did not answer but produced a fountain pen and started counting out rupiahs. We left almost at once with my pockets all bulging with rupiahs-dirty, sweat-stained, ragged, and worn, and (I was afraid) possibly counterfeit. Our driver was not outside, nor the car; I looked up and down the street, then saw him waving to us at the intersection. He had moved the car around the corner to another street.

He waited while we walked toward him. Just as we reached the corner an open touring car filled with soldiers, each with a Tommy gun and wearing U.S. helmets, swung around the corner and cruised slowly down the street. They glanced at us, but said nothing. I looked back. The street was empty except for a dog and one child; the swarm of money changers were nowhere in sight. "Get in the car," the driver said. "Let's go."

When we were a few blocks away our driver-guide asked, "What rate did he give you?"

I told him and added, "Was that a fair rate?"

"It's all right. He cheated you only a little-traveler's cheques are no good; they can be followed. How much did you change?"

I hesitated, then decided that if he was asking because he intended to collect a commission later, there was no reason for me to make it difficult, so I told him. He dropped the subject and asked, "You want to go to bazaars now?"

"Yes," said Ticky.

"No," I said firmly. "Let's try to get to Bogor before lunch." It being a Moslem country he did as the male said. Ticky did not debate the matter, as she was almost as eager to see botanical gardens as she was to shop. She seemed quite happy; if the close encounter with the soldier-police had been noticed by her, it had not dampened her. Presently I noticed that she was whistling a tune; I identified it as "Working for the Yahnkee Dollar."

I said morosely, "You know what you are, don't you? A dollar imperialist . . . a jackal of Wall Street. Probably a warmonger as well."

She gave me a sunny smile. "I'm going to buy the
prettiest
things!"

The drive from Djakarta to Bogor is shown as out in the country by the map, but the houses stand almost solidly along the roadside the whole way, with more houses glimpsed behind the others as you speed past. Once in a while there would be a break and the rubber plantations or the rice paddies would come right up to the road. This is a place with climate but almost no seasons; the rice is cultivated through the year, crop after crop. Java is normally a rice-exporting country, and is becoming so again, now that the dislocations of war have been somewhat smoothed out. We could see water buffaloes, the tractor of the East, patiently pulling plows through the water-covered mud, followed by a driver himself knee deep in it. I asked our guide what the wage rates were for farmhands?

I had a little trouble making myself understood, although he spoke excellent, almost-accentless English. I explained again, then added, "Or do they all own the land they work?"

"Oh, no." He considered it, then added, "But they don't get
paid
anything; they get a place to live in and their food. That's all they expect."

I shut up and mulled over the implications of this. Java is one of the richest places in the world, possibly the very richest for its size, both in agriculture and in mineral resources. Yet it is so crowded that the ratio of people to arable land is four to the acre, whereas U.N. estimates of the proper ratio for a decent diet is four to
ten
acres. These figures are clouded by the fact that an acre in Java produces much more than does an acre of good farm land most other places. Indeed, if it were not so, Java could never have reached its present crowded condition; starvation would have prevented.

But things are badly out of whack and I wondered if it were possible for the island to feed its inhabitants no matter how efficiently its riches were managed. We passed the studio and sound stages of the Indonesia national motion picture industry about this time and I wondered again if the country could afford such luxuries? The installation looked comparable to those along Melrose Avenue in Hollywood and must have cost quite a lot of foreign exchange-then I wondered if it were not utterly necessary in the long run to build up the motion picture industry and things like it and thereby swap labor at home (which they had in plenty) for food grown abroad.

All I could really be sure of was that I did not envy President Sukarno his job.

To add to the already innumerable troubles of his possibly insuperable problems the feminists of Indonesia are now after his scalp-and all the poor man did was to take a second wife of the four permitted him by the Koran.

We sped on toward Bogor over excellent paved roads, dodging barrows and buses and foot traffic and dragons. The dragons were in honor of New Year's and each one was animated by six to a dozen Chinese school kids. The dragons could not see very well, decked out as they were, and anyhow they were very busy rearing up and snake dancing and being fierce, as proper dragon manners require. Fortunately our driver had good reflexes. We got to Bogor with only some near misses.

The charge for admission to the botanical gardens was only half a rupiah, or about two cents American. They are very old and very grand. The scientific names of the plants and trees we saw may be found on p. 975 of volume 12 of the 1954 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; I am not going to cheat by copying them down here. But the gardens have representatives in lavish numbers of all the plants to be found in the tropical rain forests ("jungles" to us Tarzan fans) of the Sunda Archipelago, the most impressive of which are the tall, graceful trees, one hundred and fifty feet or more in height, which reach up to the sky and form the roof of the jungle. As for the rest, there was everything from magnolias to mangoes spilling over hill and canyon and all beautifully kept up.

A barefoot laborer with good command of English (which he asserted that he had acquired simply by talking with tourists) spotted us and took us in charge; Ticky had her usual half-Latin, half-English shop talk while I swatted at mosquitoes and appreciated the deep shade-the sun outside the gardens had a Mad-Dogs-and-Englishmen intensity. Finally I insisted that we leave, as Ticky had not taken her anti-malaria pills. The laborer graciously permitted us to make him a small gift and we parted on a high level of international amity.

We were forced to eat lunch in Bogor or go hungry. I say "forced" because the best restaurant available was far from appetizing. Bogor is a pretty little town compared with Djakarta; it is green and nestles into the mountains. But its standards of sanitation are reminiscent of Djakarta's canal. We ate hot, cooked food and drank no water and hoped for the best. It was a Chinese restaurant and the food tasted good, but the dishes and place itself were dirty. We sat on an open porch at street level; traffic moved past six inches from my elbow, an arrangement which resulted in us being braced by beggars as we ate. Our guide recommended that we ignore them or there would simply be more of them hanging around . . . which was true but I do not have the courage to eat in the presence of a skinny, blind man who is being led around by an equally skinny little girl-and do nothing about it. While I know it is bailing the ocean with a spoon and changes the situation not at all, nevertheless when his filmed eyes stare past your plate and his nostrils quiver the only possible course is to pay and pray Allah to forgive you for being yourself and not the beggar.

So we paid and paid again, usually to blind men, and got out of there as quickly as we could, then crossed the square to the market. Bogor is far enough from the sea coast that the bazaars are intended for the local trade rather than for tourists. I don't suppose that we paid native prices, but even the asking prices were about half the best we could do at the bazaars around the Hotel des Indes back at the port. Over my objections, Ticky bought a coolie hat the size and shape of a large umbrella, the sort worn by the farmers in the rice paddies. It was a beautiful job of basket weaving but about as manageable as a mattress. Then she turned to sarongs and scarfs and blouses.