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YES, THERE IS A BALI
Balinese Maiden

One morning, after visiting Le Mayeur the night before, a tall young woman appeared at Theo’s house on the beach. She was very pretty, a young girl unconscious of her beauty. She carried a rather heavy canvas bag upon her head which she quickly took down and placed at her feet, and stood there at the entrance, her eyes lowered. She was painfully shy; she whispered her name-Meg. Theo could only stare at her wondering who she was. Why did she come? Her smooth, brown body, clothed only in a sarong, was broad shouldered and narrow hipped. Her breasts were small but firm, those of a girl just reaching puberty. Her face had the dignity of a painting, very much like a painting by the Mexican Covarrubias. Theo wondered if she might not be the same girl. She had large eyes, like in the painting, and full lips. Her black hair was brushed back, except for a single wild lock that fell over one brow, and her pierced earlobes were lodged with gold plugs. She was no more than seventeen, a child. She spoke to Theo in Balinese, and Theo had learned enough of the language to understand what she had said-but could he be wrong. He asked that she repeat what she had said. She came, she said, to be his model, and she would live with him. She boldly announced he wouldn’t have to pay for a horse and carriage each day. She had all her belongings with her. She edged the bag slightly forward with her foot.

Theo bid her to enter. He asked who sent her. She replied that Ni Pollok had. She looked around the house, and seeing the bedroom with Theo’s bed along the wall, she entered, unrolled her sleeping mat and spread it on the floor next to the bed. Meg, with all her worldly possession in a single bag, unceremoniously moved in.

Meg proved to be a fine model and Theo was pleased with her. She would pose for him for hours on end, assuming any position that he desired. She was uncomplaining and sat on an uncomfortable bamboo stool, brushing with her fingers her long hair that fell to her waist, partly covering her naked body. The third day she was there, sitting on the stool in front of Theo, she asked if he found her unappealing.

“Why do you say that?” Theo asked.

“You prefer to sleep alone in your bed,” she said.

“But you are so young,” Theo said.

She rose up to the full height, tossed her long hair over her shoulders, and came to him. “Tell me if I am too young,” she whispered.

Theo was, at first, baffled with the attitude of the Balinese towards sex, that they have neither modesty nor immodesty. He commented in his journal: “They are not romantic when it comes to sex, and this might disturb most Europeans but it is something I must get used to.” Europeans want to possess, but not the Balinese. Being in love and having sex, Theo learned, that the two, love and sex, are poles apart in Balinese thinking. He pondered the question; can a European man ever determine that a Balinese woman loves him? He learned that the Balinese treat sex as any other part of the ordinary business of life; it has no more emotional importance as eating does. But this was the Balinese dichotomy These simple people can be jealous, which he had already leaned in the short time he was in Bali. This was where caution was needed. But the learning did not come easy.

Theo was finding the Balinese a carefree, happy people, and this he liked. They laughed easily and found humor in the most trifle of things. Theo couldn’t help making comparisons-the Balinese with the Polynesians. The natives of Tahiti and the Marquesas were forever searching for something-as unhappy, discontented people do-and they found fault in everyone and everything. The Balinese, in contrast, had what they wanted from life. In Tahiti a girl, bored with life as most of them were, could stare at a coconut all day long. On Bali she would pick up a coconut and start carving it. Theo concluded that the Balinese form a kind of group happiness, not separable by the individual. They enjoy the company of others. The principles they adhere to are not always applicable to other societies, nor understood, and certainly not to European society.

Theo wondered what made the Balinese the way they were. A perplexing question. Little by little he came to the conclusion it was their leisure and the very way they spent their free time that counted. Nature is in their favor. They are blessed with a pleasing climate so there is not the need to worry about the fundamental necessities of life, like keeping warm. There was the land itself, fertile and rich. The lands provide their needs. The people were freed from the ills of western civilization, and this gave them leisure and time to develop their arts-music, dancing, sculptures, painting and even the art of daily living. They had time for love.

A painter, a dancer, a sculptor, each day they worked in the field, and at day’s end they came back to their village without the inherent difference, or feeling, of superiority among one another. Each man was equal to his neighbor, differing only in individual talents and abilities. With leisure to create and without the lack of anxiety, they lived as free souls. This was the very reason that Theo felt he could not return to Basel.

In Bali Theo found a culture untainted by modern life but nonetheless vibrant, with nothing museum-like about it. The island was home to one and a half million people, all who lived together in unrivalled social and cultural unity. He had the feeling they were at one with their world; outward changes, such as the advent of the Dutch conquerors, seemed to have had but a superficial effect on them. After all, they had experienced similar conquests at earlier times in their history, as when the Javanese invaded the island in the 15th century. In Balinese society, literature, music, painting and sculpture, besides being advertisements of religious rituals, had a place in everyday life. Not all was explainable. Doors, for example, were hung with small pieces of white cloth covered with drawings of protective deities that were made by any talented neighbor and consecrated by a priest. The partitions facing the entrances into the compounds were sometimes adorned with rather naughty relief to keep away demons, who were thought of as being prudish. Great statues of priests stood guard at crossroads for demons can only move in a straight line and thus when they came to these statues they had no option but to turn back. The scenes painted at the bottom of cremation towers were also intended to deter demons. There was much that Theo had to learn but he was a willing student.

Theo became enraptured by the music and dance of Bali the first time he heard a gamelan and the first time he witnessed dancers at a temple. He sat up all night long in many temple courtyards watching a Legong or Kris dance. He studied the dancers’ graceful movements and the next day put them into oil paint on his canvases.

The Balinese, Theo discovered, were fond of their traditional dances, which mostly had religious significance and these depicted some of the famous mythological epics found in Hindu stories. Every village had its own gamelan orchestra and dance teams, and Theo wandered from one village to the other. At one village or another there was certain to be dances at a religious festival, a marriage or some other ceremony.

The gamelan intrigued Theo as much as the dance. Gamelan music became bewitching to him. He tried to distinguish the various types of orchestras that accompany the dances, but, after learning there are about two hundred kinds, he settled for a few favorites. As for the dances, he enjoyed them all, barong, Legong, kechak. He watched young girls, as young as four years old, learn the craft from their mothers. Their dance was more than arms and finger movements. It was many levels of articulation, the face, eyes, hands, arms, hips, and feet, all coordinated to reflect layers of percussive sounds. It was magnificent to watch, mesmerizing in many ways and all encompassed the true spirit of the Balinese.

Theo’s education took time, and time he had. He was the happiest he had ever been in his life.

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YES, THERE IS A BALI
Getting Used to It

Two weeks after he settled in, a native approached him with a request to please paint mice on this white cloth-the cloth being intended for a small cremation tower. He couldn’t imagine what it was all about, but he would learn shortly.

The beach in front of his house was a traditional location for ceremonies of this sort. Arrangements were planned for a ritual cremation of mice. These creatures, Theo learned, were part of the retinue of the goddess of death and thus considered sacred. When mice became too numerous and started eating the rice, the peasants had no compunction about killing them, provided they cremated the remains. The day the cremation took place even the government offices were closed. The ceremony ended with the performance of plays with masked actors and general merriment. Theo was discovering life as he never imagined possible.

Facing the sea, Theo would sit with his easel before him, delighted there was so much to paint. He didn’t need to search. Subject matter passed before his very eyes: a woman loaded with empty coconut shells in a basket upon her head, while in contrast a junk with its sails set made its way to an island opposite him. He began working on a large canvas which he called Segara Rims-The Golden Sea. “It sounds like a melody,” he wrote in his journal about the painting. “The colors! If you live long by the seaside here, you see colors as a picture.”

Theo was sitting at his easel one morning when a young boy brought a message written on rice paper. It was from Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres, the Belgian painter. Theo had longed to meet the painter. Le Mayeur had taken his Balinese wife, a dancer, to Singapore to perform Balinese dances to entice customers to buy his paintings. Le Mayeur was now inviting Theo to dinner. This will be interesting, Theo thought. The message said the boy would return and escort him to his house an hour before sunset. Theo nodded his approval to the boy who hastily vanished down the beach.

Theo could hardly concentrate on his painting for the rest of the day. He knew for a fact that Le Mayeur was an aristocrat. Theo wondered might he be a snob, or worse yet, a man who had taken up painting as a mere hobby, a dilettante in the arts, as some wealthy people often do? You always hear about someone important, maybe a head of state and they have retired. They have taken up painting, something they always wanted to do. Theo always found it disgusting to hear such things. He wondered about this when the boy returned and he followed him down the beach to La Mayeur’s house. It was a fifteen-minute walk. He found the painter sitting on a chair in front of the house when he and the boy approached.

Le Mayeur rose slowly and greeted Theo warmly. He was not a young man; his face was wrinkled and very tanned. His gaunt high cheekbones gave away his age. Theo knew him to be twenty years his senior. As for his tan, Theo remembered being told Le Mayeur liked to paint in the open, shirtless, under a tropical sun. “I like to sit here in the evening for the view,” he said in French.

He then said a few words of greeting in German. Theo responded in French and that became their lingua franca.

“Come, we must go inside,” Le Mayeur said and Theo followed along a path that lead through a densely covered arbor thick with lilies and jonquils and an assortment of other flowers, all that rendered the air heavy laden with a pleasing, fragrant odor. They came to an outdoor sitting room, furnished with bamboo chairs, and wrapped in soft green light. Beyond them was a thatched cottage. La Mayeur bid Theo to be seated, clapped his hands, and a lithe young girl, perhaps in her early teens and bare breasted, entered the room. La Mayeur spoke to her in beautiful, well-articulated Balinese and she with a slight bow disappeared much like a shadow vanishes. “We will have arrack,” Le Mayeur said.

“Arrack,” Theo replied.

“So you know Tahiti I hear,” Le Mayeur said as they waited for the servant to return. Theo was a bit surprised how word got around the island. Without waiting for a reply, he continued. “I too followed in the footsteps of Gauguin, by sailing off to Tahiti and French Polynesia to become a painter. The places were already in decline and it sorely disappointed me.” The servant brought the drinks, two tall bamboo containers, and Le Mayeur continued to tell how he arrived in Bali. His talk was scripted, something he had said many times over, and he said it as if this was what Theo wanted to hear. Theo listened in politeness, giving a nod occasionally. After Tahiti, Le Mayeur told how he had searched for several years for a quiet and peaceful place to paint. He traveled across India, which greatly fascinated him, and through much of Southeast Asia. He was one of the first painters to capture Angkor Wat on canvas. Then he heard about the charms of Bali; he arrived on the island in 1932, four years before Theo had arrived.

Theo listened quietly and, as though transfixed by the drink and the aroma of scented flower, he hardly took notice of a figure that had materialized from out of nowhere in the doorway, a figure more fantasy than real. At first Theo wondered if his eyes were deceiving him, or had his host set some sort of trance upon him. But when the figure moved Theo knew she was real, a half na• ked goddess in the dim light of the sitting room. “This is my wife Ni Pollok,” his host said proudly and with kindness.

Theo was indeed spell bound by her beauty. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, maybe younger, and Le Mayer had mentioned earlier that he was born in 1880. He was more than fifty years old.

Dinner was announced. Ni Pollok led the way followed by her husband and then Theo. They passed from one room to another through gold, carved doors. Le Mayeur’s paintings were everywhere, framed and hanging on all the walls. His subject matter was not so much of Bali as it was of western concepts of dream life in the tropics. Slender, light-skin maidens lounged about in flower sprinkled meadows under Japanese parasols against tender yellow and green lights. The paintings were, to Theo’s thinking, presented in an unreal world of freely imposed figures in make-believe settings. These settings were fake but obviously the women were real, or made to appear real, and this is what buyers were looking for.

Theo kept his silence.

Theo and his host sat on high-back western-style chairs and dined on a lace-covered tablecloth. Ni Pollok sat on a low bench slightly behind her man as he told how they had met. Sometimes he translated to Ni Pollok in her own language and it brought her to laugh, at which she coquettishly covered her face with her hands. Le Mayeur made no bones about it, more than anything else, it was the women that he liked to paint. Theo admired him for his honesty. Le Mayeur, having met Ni Pollok and another dancer, Ni Ketut Reneng, at a Legong dance in Denpasar, he invited the two women to come to Sanur as his models.

They accepted and the routine was for Le Mayeur to collect them both every morning in a horse drawn carriage. The streets were quiet and the half hour that it took to reach the beach at Sanur was marked by the clip clop of their horse. Le Mayeur amused the girls by singing opera. “He has a very good voice, “Ni Pollok chimed in, speaking in French.

And so, during the early morning at Le Mayeur’s studio the two girls held poses while the artist painted them. In the afternoon when the sun became unbearably hot, under a canopy he would teach them to write, drawing letters in the sand for them to copy.

It was the beautiful Ni Pollok who Le Mayeur fell in love with and eventually married. Their wedding celebration was in Balinese style and they say half the island attended.

“You live alone?” Le Mayeur asked, cautiously, and when Theo remarked that he was looking for the right woman, Le Mayeur smiled. “I am glad to hear that.”

Theo returned often to visit Le Mayeur and his beautiful wife, and that was usually in the afternoon in the• downpour of heat when not even a leaf nor a palm frond rustled, when neither man painted. Despite Le Mayeur being commercial with his paintings, paintings that tourists bought, Theo nevertheless liked him more for what he stood for than for what he splashed on canvass. Theo learned that Le Mayeur was, admittedly, an eccentric member of the royal family of Belgium. Theo was also aware that the name Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres had meaning in Belgium and tourists just off round-the-world cruise ships made it a point, the highlight of their journey, to visit him, and to be served drinks and snacks by his gracious topless wife and her pretty servants. And those who dined at night with Le Mayeur returned home with tales about the huge Balinese feasts they had, the fine gamelan music they listened to and the subtle dance performances they saw. They in turn were given the opportunity to buy Le Mayeur’s paintings. “Painting is a business,” Le Mayeur once said to Theo, and Theo learned from him.

One story that amused Theo was what happened when Le Mayeur was visited by one Mr. Smit, a Controleur and senior official in Denpasar. It was said, Mr. Smit did not like foreigners, or even his own countrymen. Mr. Smit visited Le Mayeur one day to check his permit to live in the Dutch East Indies. He found the artist in his front yard, dressed in a sarong with no shirt, painting a Balinese girl who, like him, wore a sarong with no top. Mr. Smit examined the permit and left.

A few days later he notified Le Meyeur that he objected to a European wearing native dress-and also to a European painting what he termed ‘nude women’. Le Meyeur soon after received a letter from the head of the colonial government warning him for his so called “immoral behavior” at his dinner parties. If these dinners continued, the letter stated, he would be deported. Le Mayeur wrote to his cousin the King of Belgium, who in turned wrote to Queen Wilhelmina of Holland, who in turn wrote to the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies, who in turn told the puritanical governor of Bali to shut up. He did, certainly. Le Mayeur’s parties continued, and he didn’t stop painting on the beach. Theo concluded that La Mayeur was a good friend to have. He did visit him often.

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YES, THERE IS A BALI
Finally Got There

The Babi-Express cargo vessel that carried Theo from Singapore to the port of Singaraja on the north coast of Bali could not have arrived any sooner to suit him. Another ten miles and he feared he might have jumped overboard-it was that awful. He disembarked smelling like a swine.

Theo was hardly ashore, standing on the beach observing his surroundings, when Babi-Express began taking aboard its cargo of live pigs. This got Theo thinking. How was he going to get from Bali to Tahiti? Traffic moved from Bali to the west toward Singapore and not eastward across the Pacific. He would probably have to travel across the East Indies to Timor, make his way to Darwin in Northern Australia, cross the continent to Sydney and pick up a ship there. The French line Messageries Maritimes had regular service to the islands from Sydney. His decision would have to wait. Theo now had a month or perhaps two months to enjoy himself so let it be. Bali was waiting.

But all did not seem to be going well. Chaos reigned in Singaraja. An hour before he arrived aboard Babi-Express, a liner from Amsterdam, carrying both tourists and Dutch military personal to their new posts, had dropped anchor in the harbor. The local agent for the Dutch Koninklijk Lines was still greeting passengers as they disembarked. The port itself was a dismal place with the town of Singaraja located on a bluff high above. Arriving passengers had to scramble up the hill or else hire the services of a palanquin, a sedan type chair carried by four porters.

Theo wondered if Bali was as remote as everyone claimed it to be. Tourism had taken root as far back as 1920 when the Royal Dutch Steamship Company added the island to its itinerary. By 1930 there were about a hundred visitors a year; a decade later when Theo arrived, the figure was around 250. It was all there in a brochure one of the passengers had handed him. The tourist spots were farther to the south of Singaraja. To get there, visitors had to traverse the island by motorcar to reach the capital city of Denpasar where they would spend a night or two at the luxurious Bali Hotel that had opened in 1927.

To avoid being carried by a palanquin, Theo, to the jeers of the handlers, scrambled up the bank on his own, carrying his bags, easel and paints, slipping and sliding with every step. He was sweating and hot when he reached the top, and he was glad that he made the decision to leave his oils with Hans back in Singapore.

Theo was disappointed at the first sight of Singaraja. It was a village, not a town by any standards, and it was a town in a sad state of despair, with the main street lined with [lean-to’s and shacks. It was not that poverty and slum areas offended him, for he had certainly seen his share in his travels, rather it was that he expected something else. He had pictured Bali to be different.

A dozen touring cars had gathered at the edge of the village to take passengers to Denpasar where they would check in. Theo, who the tour guides thought to be a passenger from the cruise ship, was ushered into the lead touring car. He didn’t object and took a seat far in the rear of the car. His bags and easel were hoisted to the top of the car and strapped down. Once he was seated he felt sorry of the others in the car when they began complaining. They sniffed the air wondering where the horrible smell was coming from. Some put the blame on the farmers’ fields outside the widow; others said it must be from the cargo piled on the roofs of the cars. They all made guesses but only Theo knew where the smell came from. He tried to sink lower and lower into his seat but it did little good. The smell of swine persisted.

The cars took off all together, rumbling and bouncing over the deeply rutted road. Theo was grateful that the rough ride distracted from the smell. After twenty minutes when the cars began the climb into the mountains the mood changed. The scenery was breathtaking. They passed through village after village, each one appearing behind a wall enclosure-walls of grey-brown dried mud topped with thatch or else red tiled roofs. Villages had elaborately carved temple gates of bright vermilion brickwork, much of it carved in stone. The construction of the temples with their multi-tiered roofs was striking. And all along the route men carried bamboo poles across their shoulders with heavy sheaves of rice stalks suspended on each end while sturdy women ambled along, hips swaying, their back rigid, balancing towering piles of pottery and food stuff on their heads. All wore sarongs of brown or plaid cloth, except for the small children who ran naked. Above the waist, women like men were uncovered and the young women’s breasts stood out round and firm. Theo began sketching in his mind. Occasionally the car stopped abruptly to avoid hitting a rounded belly pig, not for fear of hurting the pig but doing harm to the vehicle. Huge water buffalos, some pale pink and some grey, wallowed in roadside streams or lumbered about with children fast asleep on their generous backs.

At the Bali Hotel the caravans of cars came to a halt and here the tired, dust-covered passengers disembarked, sighing with relief that they had arrived. Theo scrambled to get his bags and easel before porters carried them into the hotel. Once he had his belongings he set out to find lodging. He found accommodation, which he noted in his journal the next day: ”A rather primitive Chinese hotel. Through the windows of my room, as I lay awake, I heard faint strains of music. The sounds fascinated me. I left the hotel and began to follow them in the moonlight. I came to an open courtyard. I looked upon an animated scene, dancing girls, half in a trance, made small, flower-decorated offerings to their gods. A chorus of male voices chanted in the background. Young women began to sway to the soft tunes of the temple orchestra. After hours of gazing and growing weary from the scent of burning incense, I found my way back to the hotel just as dawn was breaking. This is Bali. Beautiful Bali.” The intoxication that Theo felt that night would never leave him. It only seemed to intensify.

Theo rented a bicycle from a Japanese camera shop and set out to explore Sanur. He took a swim in the ocean and liked what he saw, the vast open, empty beaches, the tranquility, the loneliness. This was what he was looking for but first he had to check out Ubud, the art center that he heard so much about. To reach Ubud, being in the low hills, he took a lorry bus rather than travel by bicycle. He wished he hadn’t; there was little he could see cramped in the back of a lorry on hard wood seats.

There were no tourist hotels in Ubud. Travelers stayed in the bungalows that Prince Gede Agung Sukawati had built for the circle of artists he patronized. Others who came camped in the temple grounds. Theo was aware that Walter Spies lived in Ubud but he was not ready to meet him. He wandered about the town, had lunch in a teahouse and took the bus back to Denpasar and rode his bicycle back to Sanur. Theo found his trip to Ubud interesting but he preferred to live by the sea.

He was fortunate. The Chinese owner of the hotel where he was staying had a cottage at Sanur and when Theo showed interest he called for a horse and carriage and took Theo there. The cottage was little more than a hut with plaited bamboo walls and a thatched roof There was a pallet for a bed with a mosquito net above the bed suspended from the ceiling. The house was centered in a cluster of trees and tropical growth. The important thing for Theo was that it had a view of the sea. He saw its potential, a fine place to paint. He might need more than a few weeks on the island, he reasoned so he took it for a month. The owner agreed, one month, longer if he wished. Theo moved in instantly and set up his easel.

Theo was happy with the house. A thought amused him, being Swiss and now living by the sea. He wondered if Helga would love the sea, but he quickly dismissed the thought. Switzerland was far behind him now. Another place; another time.

Theo liked especially the evenings when he felt that the whole romance of Bali presented itself in its full glory. In the late day the sea took on a magnificent golden tinge. Coconut palms that stood in front of his house framed a perfect scene, a scene that came alive, like a moving film. In the hills behind him the landscape with its violent, pure colors dazzled and blinded him.

Something, it seemed, was always happening at Sanur. A young boy brought him a monkey on a chain and presented it as a gift. The next day an old man from the village brought a cockatoo. There were fresh coconuts, and stocks of bananas and ripe papaya on his doorstep when he awoke in the morning. Who brought the gifts he never knew; no one ever mentioned them. Theo took up his easel and began to paint with eager energy he never knew he had. He did not seek to imitate nature that he saw all about him but instead to employ the elements available to him to create a new world, similar to Gauguin but different. His aim now was to give expression to the feeling of mystery which came upon him, a total stranger, as he stood face to face with the wonders of reality of a strange Balinese world. At last, he now had a goal. It was settled. Tahiti could wait, at least for a few months. He had found what he wanted. He had no need to invent compositions. They were all around him, in the temples and in the daily lives of the Balinese.

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RETURN TO THE TROPICS

Back in Singapore Theo took up Hans Burckhardt’s invitation to stay at his spacious home, and in return he painted landscape murals for his host. He did enjoy his time there. “Singapore was a tumultuous city, a veritable microcosm of Asia,” he wrote in his journal. ”Among the most vivid memories I have of my visit is the noise. Radios were not very widespread in 1935 and so the inhabitants made their own music. The combined effect of all these sounds streaming out from the open verandahs was very intriguing. Sometimes, I even joined in the cacophony myself by singing out loud with renditions of Honegger’s “King David”.

While Theo was in Singapore, a wealthy Chinese merchant commissioned him to paint his daughter’s portrait, The portrait reached public attention, and from this came Theo’s big break. The Swiss consul had recommended Theo to paint the portrait of Sir Song Ong Siang which was to hang in the City Hall. Sir Song had the distinction of being the first Chinese gentleman in Singapore to receive a knighthood from Her Majesty the Queen of England. The commission would pay him four thousand Singapore dollars.

Theo began work on the assignment by making a drawing of his client’s Attila-like face, which stimulated a pretentious article in the Straits Times in April 1935. After the article appeared, Sir Song was not altogether pleased with the drawing. He showed Theo a reproduction of the famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington on horseback, together with a photograph of himself as a young man.

“Just copy this painting on a fairly large scale, with my face instead of his,” he said. Theo couldn’t restrain himself and burst out laughing. That was goodbye to the 4,000 Singapore dollars, but that wasn’t the only commission to go south. It happened again when a respectable manager of a Swiss company in Singapore invited a number of friends and Theo to dinner. The manager indicated to Theo that commissions were certain to come from the get-together.

“I confidently expected commissions to materialize after the meal,” Theo wrote in his journal. “We finished eating and drinks were served. Then my host admiringly showed us what he called ‘a genuine work of art.’ The painting in question was a landscape of bygone times by a bygone artist. It was so bad I couldn’t help let slip a very graphic but somewhat uncouth expletive in Basel dialect. That was that. Singapore’s high society washed its hands of me – all, that is, except my old friend Hans Burckhardt who said, “Meierli-bisch a Siech!”

Theo now laid out his plan to return to Tahiti, but first he wanted to visit Bali in the Dutch East Indies. There were no liners from Singapore to the island. The only ship that Theo could find was a cargo vessel called Babi-Express, a boat used to carry pigs, called babi, from Bali to Singapore. A few days later Theo was on his way to Bali. Having discharged its cargo in Singapore the boat was empty but in a very smelly state.

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HOME AGAIN IN SWITZERLAND

Theo returned home to Basel with mixed emotions. He was pleased that he was able to repay his debt with the paintings he had promised. And he found, as he wrote in his journal, that the city’s cultural life was beginning to blossom. There were concerts by world-famous artists and the city authorities had provided a liberal budget for the visual arts. Frescoes, mosaics and sculptures were ordered to fill every available space in the city. Art had become part and parcel of the social order.

But Theo felt for all that, the painter was still an outsider. “This is not what I am looking for,” he wrote in his journal “It wasn’t that I was anti-establishment. A Ballios I was born and a Ballios I remain. But the life I found in Basel struck me as being fake. I could not become part of it; my whole fabric revolted against it. I longed to find a place where the painter played a natural part in the life of the people.”

The place that Theo longed for was the South Seas. There he had found happiness and contentment, and there he could paint what he wanted to paint and where he wanted to paint without being questioned. It was the freedom he enjoyed and cherished so much. He had to return. But what about the ones he was leaving behind?

Theo wondered how Helga would take his leaving for the second time. He didn’t have to wonder long. He learned she had met the son of another baker, and with the prodding of her father they married. He admitted it was wrong for him to say that he did not feel jilted for he did but beneath it all he was happy for her, and happy for himself. He knew deep down he could never take her to Tahiti with him. He couldn’t take anyone anymore. He had to do what he had to do alone.

Thus, Theo planned his return. With the success of his first trip he was not criticized and thought to be crazy as he had been before. But what would be painful was leaving his mother, father and sister. His father still had hopes that his son would come back to the fold. The problem was alleviated somewhat when his sister began to take an interest in the office machine business. But the news of Theo leaving again was not taken lightly. The mental suffering, the anguish that he had to endure, was his awareness that this was not going to be a short trip. He was returning to the South Seas to make it his home, to remain the rest of his life. To remain in Basel was to lose himself as an artist. It was most likely he might never return, never to see his mother and father again. His only salvation was the hope that they would understand. And for that, only time would tell.

Theo was not that solvent and money, as always, was the problem. But he wouldn’t let that deter him. Wealth to him was not money; he felt he was wealthy. Happy as a lark, once decisions were made and plans settled, he began to round up subscriptions for a new paintings club. “Not that I needed all that much. Sea fares were still cheap in those days in the fall of 1934,” he wrote in his journal. And so for 350 francs he bought a passage on the Hakezaki Maru to Singapore.

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STOPOVER IN SINGAPORE

In Hong Kong, Theo booked a passage to Marseille on the Japanese steamship Hakezaki Maru with a three-day stopover in Singapore, two days in Ceylon and another two days in Cairo. He was anxiously looking forward to meeting up with Lucas when he arrived in Singapore. He had a hundred tales he wanted to tell his friend, about the Sing Song girls and warlords and so much more. He didn’t know where he would begin. Maybe he would tell him first how the natives of the New Hebrides burned his canvases, or how Dr. Wong tricked him into venturing into warlord controlled China. But those tales that Theo wanted to tell Lucas would never happen. Instead of Theo finding Lucas waiting for him, he found a cable from him. Lucas would not be meeting him in Singapore. He was staying longer in Sydney, and the news was that he was engaged. He would meet Theo in Basel later with his new bride. Lucas had met his match. He had gotten engaged to one of the flamboyant daughters of his host in Sydney. He was getting married.

Theo was terribly disappointed, still he decided to make the best of Singapore with the short time he had. He wasn’t one to lose time or harbor over regrets. “I found that I looked upon this island colony with different eyes after all my experiences,” he wrote in his journal. He was expecting to find an Asian city much like Hong Kong, but found something totally different. The architecture struck him most strangely. Here was Art Deco architecture in the tropics, something he never expected. It wasn’t exactly what he had in mind to paint but there was the other side of Singapore that caught his attention. It was the riverfront and the shop houses in the old town, shop houses with sagging lintels and with vines hanging down from rooftops.

But first he had to find Hans Burckhardt, a Basel merchant who was established for many years as an importer-exporter in the colony. When he did find him, the merchant invited Theo to stay with him, and seeing Theo’s enthusiasm for Oriental art suggested that Theo remain behind and wait at least until the next ship departed for Europe. There was a liner departing a month later, but Theo felt he had to return, settle his affairs at home and then return to the Far East. ‘TI-1eo had made up his mind. He was not going to remain in Basel, or any place in Europe. He would return to the tropics as soon as he could. The decision didn’t come suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, but quite the opposite. It came ever so slowly, gradually, almost without his knowing. He found himself no longer wanting to live in Europe. After a time he felt he was destined to remain forever in the tropics. He wanted to paint in the tropics and nowhere else. He began to make plans. He would return to Singapore, yes, spend some time, and then he would make his way to Bali before sailing on to Tahiti. Tahiti was where he longed to be.

Theo also admitted in his journal that the rigors of traveling were wearing him out both mentally and physically. On top of this, he had contracted a severe bout of amoebic dysentery in China and he felt only the doctors in Switzerland could help him. It was time to go back. He assured Hans Burckhardt he would return.

Before he left Singapore, there were a few things he wanted to do, and that was to meet Chinese artists. He remembered how Max Beckman had learned from the Chinese and gained inspiration for his serious paintings by preparing his raw canvases in different tones and shades. He applied very casually his brush strokes so that they appeared to be purely accidental in their application. When Theo’s approach to painting became less formalistic, he adopted this method of undercoating the canvas himself, like the Chinese did. After reading translations of Chinese writers on Chinese art he found this was nothing new. The Chinese masters used the same techniques back in the eleventh century.

Theo did manage to have brief meetings with a few Singapore artists-Lim Cheng, Cueing, Soo Ping and Chen Chon Sweet, all watercolorists. Chen Chon Sweet had been recognized as one of the key pioneer artists in Singapore. But Singapore was not known to foster the arts and Theo was surprised that a well-known and successful artist as Lim Cheng was, who had just returned from a three-week vacation in China, had to go back to work in his shop to make ends meet.

Theo did not find modern Singapore to his liking. Although he found it interesting, he did not care for the Art Deco architecture. He discovered the art was based on mathematical geometric shapes, which he concluded any draftsman could master. But Theo did find delight in old Singapore, especially the waterfront and river areas. The godowns facing the river, built side by side along Boat Quay, were enough to fill any artist’s pallet. Theo sketched as rapidly as he could. Here was the pulse beat of the city. Buildings of cracked plaster and sagging lintels, with rooted ivy plants growing right into the fabric of the walls, filled Theo’s sketch pad. He marveled at what he saw. Here was the waterfront, not much more than a hundred years old, and the buildings were in decay.

The congested Singapore River, however, had all the real drama. Hundreds of bum boats with their painted eyes fought for space along the river. Goods carried on the backs of barefooted coolies-bales of rubber, crates of tin, bags of rice and coffee, and what have you-made their way up narrow, single-planked gangways to waiting bum boats and lighters to be further transported to freighters and cargo vessels anchored out in the roads. And out in the roads, too, were salt-carrying junks down from Siam, all rafted together, awaiting the artist’s brush. There wasn’t enough time for Theo to capture all that he wanted to.

That was the waterfront, old Singapore, with all its color and fascination, but there was another side, a bulging Singapore that was, to Theo, not so flattering. The island colony was Great Britain’s first line of Eastern defense. The port was an unbecoming military bastion. The short time that he was there, three days in fact, five guns were mounted in Sentosa, that small wooded island separating Singapore from the open sea. The British were concerned about the Japanese invading from the sea and prepared for such an assault.

When Theo departed Singapore he carried some fifty canvases aboard Hakezaki Maru. The ship moored in Ceylon for three days and here Theo got an enchanting perspective of Hindu and Buddhist temples. “An honest tropical setting,” he wrote in his journal. He was determined more than ever now, after witnessing Hindu architecture, that he would return to tropical Asia, and especially to Bali with her strong Hindu influence. The seeds were well planted in Theo’s heart.

His next port-of-call was Cairo and here again he felt deeply rewarded. He noted in his journal: “with my encounter with the monumental beauty of ancient Egyptian art.” Six weeks after departing from Singapore, wobbly-kneed and worn out, he arrived back in Basel on a cold February morning. He had done it; he made it around the world, as both a vagabond and a painter. How happy he was deep down in his heart.

Theo wrote in his journal: “The customs authorities took a long time examining my paintings, some of which were painted on old coffee sacks, eventually deciding to tax them as carnival decorations and charging me fifty francs for the privilege of importing them.”

Theo paid up and was back at his home in Basel.

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FOOT LOOSE IN CHINA
Despondent, War-Torn Country Side

The Chinese countryside was a land of deprivation. Not a living plant or bush existed. Theo made notes in his journal: “The Chinese can boast of 5,000 years of culture but it isn’t evident in their mud villages.” He couldn’t help making comparisons between the Chinese and the primitive Kanakas of the New Hebrides. What did civilization bring to the Chinese peasant, certainly not food? The Kanakas had at least grubs and worms they could eat but the Chinese had nothing, nothing but a flat, dull, insipid countryside. “Nothing extraordinary in any way,” he wrote.

The sense of their grave and oppressive existence grew heavily upon Theo. He was trudging along, moving ahead but he knew not to where. He felt he was no different than the poorest of the poor peasants they met on the road; they too were marching off but to nowhere. Mankind was not moving ahead but backwards.

Then, what they hoped wouldn’t happen, did happen. Armed Chinese blocked the route ahead of them. They were bandits. They were ruffians, clad in a hodgepodge of clothing from peasants’ sheepskin vests to discarded military uniforms. Though they respected the doctor’s flag, they demanded medicine from the doctor. Seeing the opportunity, and with an idea in mind. Theo took out his sketchpad and began sketching the leader of the group. Upon seeing Theo, he turned away from the doctor and marched up to Theo. He stopped short, smiled and then laughed aloud, a big coughing laugh when he saw the caricature Theo was drawing. When it was completed Theo tore the sheet away from the sketchpad and handed it to him. But Theo did not wait for neither praise nor comments. He immediately began sketching other bandits, and he gave them their portraits. Pleased with the sketches, the bandits let them pass without further harassment, and with all the doctor’s medicine intact.

With the next bandits they met they were not so fortunate. The new gang of ruffians wanted money, which the doctor duly gave them. He anticipated this would happen and had Chinese currency in neat little red packets ready to hand out. But still not satisfied, the bandits took the doctor’s horse. Figuring there would be further ambushes, the doctor asked for written acknowledgement they had already been robbed. This was most unusual but nevertheless, with a bit more cajoling, the leader signed a paper the doctor scribbled out. Theo remarked in his journal “this was his first experience of banditry in Asia. What would be next?”

Now that the doctor had no horse, he walked side by side with Theo, and as he did, he talked on incessantly about the greatness of the Chinese culture; Theo made no attempt to stop him. Theo simply wondered how he had the capacity for such blindness, not to take notice that there was no hope for these unfortunate people with their thousands of years of culture. Their only salvation would be a strong leader, and who might that be. Dr. Wong considered General Chiang to be no more than a warlord himself Sun Yatsen might have unified the country, but he was dead. Dr. Wong named others, strings of others; some he favored, others he wrote off as scoundrels.

Theo heard but he did not listen. He was more interested in the faces of the Chinese that he saw. To Theo their faces told their whole story, and every time he had the chance he sketched them. Sometimes he made sketches as he walked, remembering a face they had just passed. As for the countryside, he sketched outlines, mountains, hills, valleys, clouds, and then wrote down the colors he would later use when turning the sketch into an oil painting. It was a technique he used over and over.

Theo did find the naked hills worthy of dramatic compositions. When they stopped during a rest break and he took out his paints, the Chinese gathered to look at what he was painting. It was obvious by the transparent looks on their faces that they were bewildered. Why paint a picture of a forlorn hillside? Nature to the peasant was something that simply existed and didn’t need an interpretation. Theo found this not so unusual for he had similar experiences when he painted landscapes in Polynesia. Why paint a landscape, the natives often asked him? It’s always there, so why do you have to paint it? But it wasn’t always with primitive minds, he recalled. Back in Basel in the old section of town he came upon an old and warped door with peeling red paint and a sagging lintel that fascinated him. He rushed home, collected his paints and easel and went back to paint the door. Some old folks stopped and laughed at him. “Don’t you have something better to paint?” As results would have it, one of the art shops in town took the painting and displayed it in the front window. Soon when people passed down the street in the old town and saw the door, they stopped to admire it. But it’s not very likely that people would think much the same of a painting of the bleak and barren hills of China,” Theo thought, blowing his warm breath into his cupped cold hands.

The countryside became monotonous, unchanging, bleak and barren and void of even a dried twig. The Chinese had left nothing standing. The villages were no better than the devastated countryside. Every village, even the smallest, had the scars of warfare with roofs of the houses blown away. Exposed rafters and beams, like skeletons in a house of horrors, lent a macabre air to the whole experience. The watershed in the fields with aqueducts that took centuries to build were in ruin. Tracks from vehicles crisscrossed the fields, having destroyed the continuity, the very symmetry, of what had once been order and purpose. How the peasants survived the devastation was a mystery to Theo. How could humans possibly survive in such total ruin? They have nothing, nothing.

“The little food they did manage to keep,” Dr. Wong explained, “they had to hide from the warlords.”

Traveling was extremely difficult with the road conditions the way they were. To add to the misery, now that it was winter, the tufts of mud along the ruts were frozen and made walking terribly cumbersome. Theo found it much easier to walk at the rear of the caravan for then much of the surface was flattened out from those who preceded him.

Theo was baffled by these wearisome warlords who ruled China at their own whim. “Do they not have compassion for the people, their own people?” Theo asked the good doctor.

“We had one good man, a general who came close to becoming the Emperor of China,” the doctor explained one evening when they were camped. “His name was Yuan Shikai, but he died a few years ago in 1928, and his death, everyone thought, brought the end to the warlord era, but then new minor warlords have started popping up and this is what we have to contend with today.”

He told how hope had turned to General Chiang Kai-shek who emerged as the leader of the National Revolutionary Army. But many of the more powerful warlords who were not defeated opted to fight against the new national government.

Theo realized they were traveling in a country in the midst of turmoil, a country ruled by bands of thieving warlords. He could see no hope for the Chinese peasant. None whatsoever. At night, curled up in a blanket and nearly freezing, he thought of fresh baked bread and the wonderful aroma that came from the bakery across the street where he lived. He thought about the buxom girl who had brought warm bread to him, rolled up in her apron. He thought how pleasant it would be to be curled up next to her now. Wasn’t that his true life, next to his own people, not like this?

They were two weeks on the road when they came to a village which, unlike all others they encountered, was ghostly still. No kids came running to observe them; no faces peered at them from behind half-opened doors. It was so strange for the village was not abandoned; there were signs of life. Smoke rose from the chimneys of several houses. Something was awry. Dr. Wong fell to the rear and joined Theo at his side as though seeking his comfort and protection. He joined Theo just in time, for just as they entered the village, armed men with rifles and bandoleers of ammunition slug over their shoulders, appeared. Those without rifles flashed mean-looking knives above their heads.

“Warlords,” Dr. Wong muttered. There was little they could do. They continued walking straight ahead. The mob of armed, unsmiling bandits stepped aside to let them pass, with Dr. Wong and Theo following up the rear.

They had gone only a few yards when an officer with medals pinned to his worn quilted coat, stood defiant in the center of the street, leaning heavily on a cane. The sight of him and his henchmen was enough to send chills down anyone’s spine. But then a curious thing happened. Theo became aware that Dr. Wong had suddenly relaxed. When he looked over at the doctor he saw a smile come to his face. Then he broke from ranks and marched directly to the head of the line. A dozen yards from the officer he extended his hand. The soldier saluted and then grabbed Dr. Wong’s hand. The officer then motioned for the marchers to break file and set up camp.

Once they had set up camp, with warming fires in the confines of an enclosed courtyard, Dr. Wong came and explained that the officer was the person he had come to see.

“He sent for me, to attend to his wife who is ailing,” Dr. Wong said. Upon hearing this, the thought angered Theo, that he was not told of the purpose of the expedition. Dr. Wong had used him as a decoy. The doctor continued, speaking in a tone of almost reverence for the officer: “He’s a general, Feng Yu-hsiang, a Christian General. He was the son of an officer in the Qing Imperial Army and had spent his youth immersed in military life. He joined the Army when he was just fourteen, as a deputy soldier. By the age of sixteen, he had proved himself and became a regular soldier. But like many young officers, he was involved in revolutionary activity and was nearly executed for treason. In time he rose to become a powerful general in Chiang Kai-shek’s army, until he criticized Chiang’s failure to resist Japanese aggression. He was stripped of his rank and power and then he joined the Chahar People’s Anti-Japanese Army. He quickly became commander-in-chief with a strength claimed by him to be over 100,000 men.”

Theo never saw the general again after that first appearance, and he felt relieved that he hadn’t, not with Chiang Kai-shek still holding the reins of power over much of China. He knew he was treading on dangerous ground. For him to be captured by Chiang’s solders would mean certain death.

It was the last time Theo saw Dr. Wong, maybe the last time anyone saw him. He vanished into the hills with the general. Theo assumed he attended to the general’s wife. After a few days, Dr. Wong sent word to Theo that he was to return to Canton with the servants. Theo never did learn the fate of his doctor friend. Later on, when Theo was in Singapore, news was that Chiang had put down the Fujian Rebellion. The rebels called themselves The People’s Revolutionary Government of the Republic of China. “Had the doctor been involved in any way?” he asked himself He would never know.

The march back was much quicker and far less troublesome. Theo’s party had papers that granted them free passage, but still Theo wondered what if the wrong warlord had seized power. He knew that some leaders of the National Revolutionary Army’s Eighth Route Army were deployed to southern China to suppress communist rebellion, but instead they negotiated peace with the rebels. In alliance with other Kuomintang forces, the 19th Route leaders broke with Chiang Kai-shek and took control of Fujian and proclaimed a new government. Theo was fortunate that he reached Canton at all, and he was a very happy man with the paintings of Chinese peasants and warlords which he had rolled up and tucked under his arm when he reached Hong Kong. He no longer entertained thought of finding a room in Hong Kong and painting. He was anxious to reach Singapore.

In Canton, Theo sent a cable to Lucas telling him he would meet him in Singapore.

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FOOT LOOSE IN CHINA
Adventure to the Hinterlands

The British colony of Hong Kong was Theo’s first taste of a Chinese city, a city of noise, chaos and a million souls reaching out blindly in every direction. He arrived in the middle of a bitter cold spell and in spite of the poor freezing to death in doorways, he liked the city, notwithstanding that it was a British colony. He liked it because it was unlike Basel or any other city in Europe that he knew. It was squalid and overcrowded but filled with wonderment at every turn. Every street was an experience. He was attracted by the fleets of junks down from China, rafted together in the harbor, and he wanted to paint them. Hong Kong was a dynamic drama of human existence and Theo thrilled at being a part of it. He reveled in walking the streets and feeling the pavement beneath his feet. He was tempted to rent a room and start painting but his desire to reach further afield, to tread upon unfamiliar ground, burned strong. He was not a man of prayer but he found himself asking God for time to see and do all the things in life that he wanted to do. Reluctantly, he had to say goodbye to Hong Kong or else lose himself to another temptation. To Theo life was a temptation and there were times he had to be circumspect. And this was one of them.

He deposited a roll of paintings and a suitcase at the Y.M.C.A., and with his easel and paint kit strapped to his back, he boarded a train to Canton. He marveled that the train, belching out black smoke that lingered in the sky in an unending ribbon, must have been a hundred years old, or if not that old, certainly one of the first steam trains to be put into service in China. He was thrilled to be on his way and he hung on the platform between the compartments like a schoolboy on holiday. “Nee how ma,” he learned his first Chinese words-“How are you?”

Theo found Canton to be a city not too much different than Hong Kong, but sadly enough, a city in turmoil. He went to see the Swiss consul, the Honorary Mr. Karl Spalinger, to register into the country as he was told to do. Theo found the consul to be friendly and hospitable, but very much alarmed that one of his country’s citizens was parading around the streets of Canton unaware of his own safety. He invited Theo to come stay with him-out of harm’s way.

The consul lived in the European settlement which was completely enclosed in barbed wire. Inside the conclave, the consul, a silk merchant by trade, enjoyed the good life in the grand style of most Europeans in the East. He lived with his wife, also Swiss, in a Chinese colonial mansion, common in the 1920s, with a balustraded verandah on the upper level, pillars of Elizabethan style at the front facade, a red tiled roof and a carriage porch, and all the rudiments that marked European opulence in Asia. Like all the other Europeans, the consul lived apart from the Chinese. Europeans were under orders that when they ventured outside their settlement, and never on foot, they were to return well before sunset. Theo was advised to follow this rule, which he broke the second night after his arrival. He spent the night in the company of Sing Song girls on the Canton River. He was aware the consul would admonish him the next day but knew he could sweet talk his way through it. What he dared not admit to the consul and his wife was that he found the Sing Song girls very amusing and his only regret was that he hadn’t taken his sketchpad with him. He did do sketches of them on rice paper that he gave in exchange for drinks, and for their services. Everyone was happy.

Canton in 1933 was not a very pleasant place to live for foreigners. It was already overshadowed by the coming war by the time Theo arrived. Many houses were braced with scaffolding as protection against air raids; concrete road blocks were set up in streets; and sand bags as high as a man could reach protected the glass fronted shops. Most unnerving were the hand grenades that exploded at odd times in the center of the city. One grenade blew up under Theo’s very nose, outside the newly inaugurated New Asia Hotel, putting an abrupt end to a wedding that was to have taken place there, and to which Theo had been invited.

Inspite of the generosity of the consul general, Theo found living in the English settlement not to his liking. He discovered that the colonials, everywhere he went, had three things in common: (1) they relished local gossip like who was bedding with whom, (2) they were braggarts about how good their servants were, those trained by them or how bad they were, if trained by someone else and (3) how much cheaper it was living in Asia compared to living back home. Theo figured there were better ways for him to spend his time rather than listening to meaningless gossip and banter.

Theo hadn’t forgotten the letter of introduction given to him from Mr. Wongue, the banker in Tahiti, to his doctor brother, Dr. Wong, in Canton. The first chance Theo had to break away from the consul he went to find Dr. Wong.

Dr. Wong lived in a middle class residential area of Canton. He lived in a gabled brick house with his clinic on the ground floor. When Theo appeared at his door he was quick to tell Theo he didn’t treat foreigners. When Theo said he was not there for medical purposes the doctor became visibly uncomfortable. It was quite unusual for a white man to come looking for him.

The doctor was a tall man, slight of build who wore pince-nez glasses which he immediately removed and began wiping on his smock when Theo replied he wasn’t there for medical reasons. Without further words, seeing that the doctor was uncomfortable, Theo handed him the letter. The doctor took it in his hands, turned it over once or twice and then put his glasses back on. He carefully opened the envelope and slowly began reading. His face changed from that of a sullen, sad man to a cherubic glow. He had to take a seat. He motioned for Theo to be seated across from him. He read the letter again.

The doctor sat there for the longest time. Then he said to Theo that he would never know how much that letter meant to him. He began asking Theo all sorts of questions, how his brother was managing, his family, his health. He ordered tea and they moved into the courtyard and more questions followed. It was obvious to Theo that the two brothers did not have much contact with each other over the years. When the doctor learned where Theo was living, and he was not happy there, he invited him to stay with him. Theo gladly accepted.

Less than a fortnight after Theo’s arrival, the doctor announced his intention of setting off on a month-long pilgrimage to Foochow. It sounded to Theo it might be perhaps a penance for his misdeeds, but he didn’t know. “You can come along if you wish, but I must say to you it will not be an easy trip.” How difficult a trip would it be, Theo asked himself. Dr. Wong didn’t appear to be a Hercules of a man.

“I am sure I can manage it,” Theo said.

The doctor didn’t explain his reason for the mission, only that it would be to the territory above Foochow. “We will travel on foot the whole way with one frugal meal a day,” the doctor said. Theo noted in his journal that it sounded “rather Spartan,” but he accepted anyway. What better way could there be to see China? He strapped his easel to his back and placed his painting kit and canvases in a sturdy leather bag that he slung over one shoulder. “Wa shir ha,” he shouted to the doctor. “Women zhou.” I am fine; let’s go. For the first time the doctor laughed when he saw Theo decked out and ready to go.

As it turned out, it wasn’t as difficult as Theo was lead to believe, at least not for the doctor. He rode on horseback supporting a yellow flag on a long pole. The flag displayed his medical ensign. A few miles from town the road gave way to a rutted trail. Heavy lorries and confiscated military vehicles negotiated the trail, but mostly traffic was oxen carts which bobbled painstakingly along. Some carts were pulled not by oxen but by humans, men and boys with ropes slug over their shoulders. It was most pitiful for Theo to watch them labor as they had to when their heavy burdensome carts got stuck in ruts. Then they groaned and slipped and fell to their knees struggling to get the carts free. At first, feeling pity for them, Theo stopped to help them but he soon realized it was a useless endeavor. He couldn’t help them all.

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PARTING COMPANY

Theo’s stay in Australia was very brief It was winter and the weather was cold and not to his liking. He had grown quite accustomed to the tropics and did not want to linger. Besides, there was a great deal of noisy commotion going on at the time. The HMS Sydney, a light cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy, had arrived in port and the entire town came down to the waterfront to see the pride of the Australian navy. Added to the confusion, the 1933 Sydney Carnival had just opened, marking the eighth celebration of the Australian National Football Carnival. The town was too noisy for Theo.

Theo and Lucas wasted no time and headed straight to the Swiss consul to contact Mr. Eric Bloch, and present him with the letter of introduction the Ethnological Museum in Berne had given them. Scanning the letter, the consul suddenly burst out laughing, and he then handed it over to Theo to read. “Dear-Friend,” it said, “this will introduce Theo Meier, a painter friend, who, filled with enthusiasm, decided to follow in the steps of Gauguin to the South Sea. By the time he arrives in Sydney he is bound to be stone-broke.”

Lucas laughed too, along with the consul, but Theo didn’t think it was funny at all. He didn’t mind the mention that it was likely that he would be broke, but what he didn’t like was the reference to his following in the steps of Gauguin. There it goes again, he thought. He again was being tagged as a follower of Gauguin. He resented it. “I am only treading where Gauguin had gone,” Theo snapped at the two men. ”As for Gauguin’s style of painting, I follow no one but my own.” The opening of a good bottle of schnapps by the consul ended Theo’s anger.

Theo did not care for Sydney, although he did like the pubs where beer was hosed out to fill empty glasses. Sydney, founded by convicts shipped out from England, had served as a penal colony, and Theo wondered if it was still a city of convicts. He did realize, with his heavy German accent, that everyone treated him with suspicion, that he might be German, and Germany was not in everyone’s favor in Australia at the time. Hitler had been appointed chancellor of Germany. Theo wondered now what would become of the impressionist painters he knew in Germany, those who hadn’t fled. It was written in the books that once Hider became Chancellor he would quickly establish his vision of an autocratic, single party dictatorship. There would be no place for artists who disagreed with totalitarianism.

Theo made a note in his journal that there was little in Sydney that inspired him to take up his paint and brushes. Sydney was not unlike most Europeans cities and he felt he didn’t have to travel half way around the world to find the very thing he was escaping from. He was looking for something else than old Europe. He gave thought to heading into the Outback, to paint the primitive people there, the aborigines but, he reasoned, they were not far distant from their cousins, the Melanesians of the New Hebrides. And like the aborigines he saw in Sydney, had they too completely lost their culture and identity? No, it was time that he moved on to new horizons. China and the tropical islands of Dutch East Indies were waiting.

Theo and Lucas had planned their agenda long before they came to Sydney. Their travel plans included the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and China. There was not enough time for them to do all that they wanted to do and, besides, their funds were rapidly diminishing. On top of this, the Idiot’s Club back in Basel was waiting for their paintings and 1heo was far behind schedule. And for Lucas, his mother wanted her son back. Since she controlled his purse strings, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

One place that Theo had his heart set on seeing was the island of Bali in the Dutch East Indies. Here even the farmers and fishermen were painters and the music these people created was the music of the gods. Theo had heard so much about Bali he longed to visit the place. He also heard about a German artist and musician who lived there among the people. And there were the women of Bali that touched Theo the deepest. They went around naked, or half naked. There on Bali the artists did not need to beg the women to take off their clothes, as they had to do with the women of Tahiti and Polynesia. Here was the artist’s dream.

Theo and Lucas decided they would have to split up. They agreed to toss a coin to see who would go where. Lucas won the Dutch East Indies and Theo the Philippines and China. They would meet in Singapore in three months-time, swap notes on their experiences and return home to Europe by freighter. Theo, disappointed as he was, would have to wait to see Bali on his next trip. .

Theo booked passage on the Kamo Maru, a small Japanese tramp steamship, bound for Hong Kong. Kamo Maru was hardly first class, or even second class, and more like steerage, but Theo didn’t mind at all. In fact, he found it exciting. When Lucas saw the vessel he screamed in horror. “You are not going to sail in that tub,” he ranted. But Theo assured him he was. He had booked his passage.

Theo bid the consul farewell at his house, and at the dock side he said good-bye to Lucas. Lucas was in good spirits. He had met up with some old friends, was introduced to new ones and planned to remain a while longer in Sydney. Theo was sad at heart to part from his old friend, wondering if they would ever meet again, but he was excited about the unknown that lay ahead, Adventure was calling him. He set sail on the Kamo Maru.

Theo learned on this voyage the true meaning of the word tramp steamer. There were no fixed schedules and no published ports-of-call. The captain in his frayed white uniform pointed the bow towards Hong Kong and trusted in luck that they would make it there. The poor old vessel did hammer and pound and after the first day out Theo began to wonder about Lady Luck. But to the captain and his crew there seemed to be no need for concern. The officers aboard seemed more concerned with the ports they visited than with cargo they collected. In fact, Theo came to realize the cargo didn’t seem to be important at all; it didn’t take a government snoop to reach the conclusion that the photographs they were taking had a purpose other than showing them off to the family back home. Theo thought it strange at first that every time they came to port, the captain insisted Theo come on deck and stand near the bridge. Theo was their decoy. Theo laughed at the thought, that he was a spy for the Japanese. Nevertheless, he took note that the Japanese didn’t let a tower, a godown, nor a fuel tank in any port pass their scrutiny.

When the Kamo Maru arrived in Zamboanga in the southern Philippines, Theo was beyond himself. He came near to jumping ship. He had no complaints about the voyage. It wasn’t that. It was Zamboanga that caught his fancy. Here was a Conradesque port you read about only in adventure books. Here was old Spain, with it walled fortresses and tiled plazas blending with the Oriental life of the Filipinos. Sailing craft from the Sulu Sea, Macassar schooners from the Celebes, tramp steamers from ports in China, private yachts, American and Philippine Men-of-War and every sort of ship flying the colors from every nation in the world, or what seemed like every nation, were all anchored in the roads pulling at their anchors. And gliding among them were fast, double rigger skiffs propelled by noisy outboard engines and slow moving sampans being sculled along. Here was the pulse beat of Asia where coffee-eyed women in lace trimmed skirts and cotton blouses that were about to pop their buttons sat in open-air cafes with smiles on their faces and guitars on their laps. A bottle of rum here was cheaper than a cup of coffee in Basel. Theo could have stayed here forever, and he knew it, but the Idiot’s Club in Basel was waiting for the paintings he had promised. When the Kamo Maru departed for Hong Kong, and Theo was aboard, he prided himself for his diligence. He had to tear himself away from Zamboanga. But he did vow, he would be back.

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LIFE AMONG CANNIBALS
Up-Close-and-Personal

The island trader landed Theo and his belongings at Village Tavio and took off. Theo’s initiation to the island and the people was not gradual. It was as sudden as a bolt of lightning and his sudden appearance came as a shock to the natives. Who was this white man who came from nowhere. They looked at him skeptically and with uncertainty. Theo knew not to hesitate, not to act bewildered. He remembered being told that every village has a center where there is certain to be a nakamal or clubhouse which served as a meeting point for men and a place where they drink kava. Sure enough Tavio had a nakamal. The village was not large and Theo found the nakamal with ease. Looking about he sat on the ground directly in front of the clubhouse. He began unwrapping his easel and paints. The islanders were completely puzzled now. Theo deliberately took his time and slowly set up his easel, He then took a canvas, one in which he had sketched a landscape, and placed it on the easel. Now everyone scrambled to see what it was but Theo didn’t linger long. He took out his palette and squeezed a dab of black and a touch of zinc white in the center. He took out a brush, felt the bristles with the fingers and then held the brush up to the sky and studied it for a minute, while all heads turned to the sky to see what he was looking at. An old man with a terribly wrinkled face had found a place to sit on the ground to the right of Theo. Theo immediately began to sketch him. Satisfied with the outline he then mixed reds and greens on the pallet and before long a painting began to take shape. The islanders looked on in amazement. They had never seen anything like it, the man with the magic brush. Theo soon won his place among the villagers. He was some sort of novelty. Now they all wanted to be painted. He painted until darkness fell and he could no longer see the canvas.

When darkness fell upon them, the men spread out mats upon the ground. A special mat was prepared for Theo and the headman joined him at his side. While this was going on firewood was stacked in a pile in the center of the yard ready to be lit. Then musicians appeared and Theo, who had always been fascinated with primitive music, took notice quickly. They brought out drums of various shapes and sizes, some which they beat like tom-toms with the palms of their open hands. Upon other drums they pounded out rhythms, if they could be called that, with sticks. There were men who made strange sounds on split gongs. Of all the instruments that fascinated Theo the most were idiophones made from bamboo and shaped like fans. These produced the weirdest sounds.

The headman ordered that the fire be lit, and soon the assembly was sparked by flickering, dancing shadows that mystified the surroundings even more.

Theo who should have been frightened sitting among these savages, perhaps cannibals, but he was beyond reproach. It was all too bewildering to him and he sat immobile, transfixed by his surroundings. To the right and to the left of him sat the men, naked men with painted bodies, some with deep self-inflicted scars, and with their penis gourds sticking upwards. They were the guardians, the warriors of the tribe.

Presently women appeared, they too naked, with breasts that hung down to their waists, and they carried large wooden bowls along with roots of some sort wrapped in banana leaves. They placed themselves on the ground, with the bowls between their legs. Once settled, they picked up the roots and began chewing them. Theo watched in awe, wondering what their next move would be.

When they had chewed the roots sufficiently, and saliva began to run from the sides of their mouths, they then spat out the contents into the bowls. This they continued doing, over and over, and when the bowls were half filled they stopped. Now other women appeared with gourds of water which they poured into the bowls. Theo now realized what they were doing. He heard about the drink when he was in Vila but they didn’t tell him how it was prepared. It was kava. The women were preparing kava for the men to drink. Kava and its magical power to tranquilize the body. He had been anxious to try it when he first heard about it; but he would do it only with caution. Now, with caution thrown to the wind, he didn’t have much of a choice.

Young maidens now appeared carrying half coconut shells which they hastily passed around to the men. This accomplished, the girls, taking the shells from the men, dipped them into the bowls and handed them back. The men had to drink, bottoms up, and then hold the shells upside down. Those standing around clapped their hands and cheered. Round followed round until bowls were empty.

Theo found the drink not altogether disagreeable and rather naively thought it had no effect. Wrong. His tongue became numb, and soon his lips felt like pieces of wood. His mind, however, remained dear and the drink did not disrupt his mental clarity.

The night dragged on. Theo began to feel drowsy. The headman nodded and two men helped Theo to his feet and led him to one of the huts that had been emptied for him. Mats were upon the ground and his belongings were inside the opening. A tapa doth draped over the opening served as the door. Theo was taken aback by their hospitality. Were these natives as savage as he heard they were? Could all the tales about cannibalism be fiction, made up stories, or merely rumors? He didn’t have to ponder the thought very long. As he was about to enter the hut, his eyes fell upon an open area. He stopped dead in his tracks. Heaped up in a pile on the earthen floor were bones. They were polished bones that shined, even in the dull light. At first glance the bones didn’t mean much, and then he noticed one was a human bone, a fibula. He recognized others. He couldn’t believe it. They were unmistakably human bones, dear signs of human butchery. The natives of Namuka were cannibals.

Theo lay on the mats for the longest of time, staring out through the opening. He watched figures silhouetted against the sky stroll listlessly about. Not one, it seemed, ever slept. What were they doing? Were they preparing a cooking fire? He tried to amuse himself by asking would they invite him to dinner, to dine with them or to be eaten. The voice of the wilderness beyond the village grew louder and more intense. Theo fought sleep, fearing, almost, that if he slept he might never awaken again. Finally, against his will, he fell fast asleep only to awaken with a sudden start. Someone was laying next him on the mat. It was a woman, for when he reached out to touch her he felt her breasts. They were small and firm, those of a young maiden and not like those of old women he saw earlier that day, women with their breasts that hung down to their waists.

Now he remembered. He had thought it odd when the headman had pointed to the young girls, as though asking him to make a choice. Uncertain what the headman meant, and not wanting to offend him, he could only smile. What else was he to do? Theo now realized what the headman had in mind. He sent a girl of his choice into the hut to spend the night with Theo.

An island custom. Theo did what he had to do. He couldn’t insult the headman.

When Theo awoke in the morning she was gone. He put on his clothes as quickly as he could and stepped out into the open. The whole village was waiting for him to appear. They were all smiling, even the youngest of them. He glanced about. Which one was the girl who had been with him in the night? He looked from one to the other, and each one in turn smiled back at him. He was unable to determine which one it had been.

For the next two days Theo was able to observe the villagers. They fed him baked taro roots and jungle fruit to eat. There was no meat in their diet. There were pigs, strange looking pigs with low-slung bellies that touched the ground when they walked. Through pidgin English he determined those pigs with rounded tusks were considered a symbol of wealth throughout the islands.

A woman’s worth, he discovered, was determined by the number of pigs a suitor was prepared to pay for her. A four-pig girl was quite valuable; a six-pig woman was extraordinary.

There was so much that Theo wanted to capture on canvas, something more than just paint portraits of their mutilated bodies. There were the expressions in their eyes, beady and red. Even the whites were red. Their bodies were covered with coarse skin, very much like the toughened soles of one’s feet who goes habitually barefoot. Their thighs, their flanks, their arms, all were as calloused and as tanned as animal hide. Their skin had never known creams or lotions. They mutilated their own bodies to make them, in their eyes, becoming. They lacked cleanliness. They lived on an island, surrounded by water, but they kept far away from the sea, away from evil demons of the deep. They went unwashed. They beautified their bodies with the ash from fires.

When Theo went down to the sea to wash the second day, they were aghast. They called the clothes he took off laleo-khal, “ghost-demon skin.” They believed his shirt and pants to be a magical epidermis that he could don or remove at will.

Their lack of meat as a food had some bearing on their cannibalism. Other than birds and lizards, the jungles provided no fur bearing animals, not another living creature. Nature, the Ice Age, had bypassed the Oriental jungles of Melanesia. The forests were lush in flora and growth but they lacked animal life. Man turned to eating fellow man for his protein. Theo felt at least partly secure; he heard that cannibals like dark meat over white.

The natives looked at Theo as some kind of oddity and he was free to roam about the island. He wandered from one village to another, from Manday to Burumba and back. The cultures he saw inland were still intact, but alas very primitive. What paintings the natives did make occupied a strictly functional position in their tribal rituals, adorning faces and bodies, shields, poles and skulls. Theo painted wildly and when he ran out of canvas he painted on burlap sacks that the natives used for harvesting dried copra. But all Theo’s work, all his labor, in the end proved to be folly. The natives didn’t mind having their portraits painted, but the paintings were not to be taken away. They belonged to the person painted. In their belief, a painting captured their souls making the paintings part of them. Theo, they believed, was painting them only to give them, in the end, their finished paintings. They looked upon him as a soothsayer, a kind of witch doctor. The dozens of paintings that Theo created were not his to keep. They belonged to those whom he had painted and not to him. When it came time for Theo to leave, and they saw him rolling up the canvas, they became agitated. It took only a moment for Theo to realize what was happening. They were at the brink of violence. For the first time since he arrived on the island he felt threatened. His life was suddenly in danger. Reluctantly he had to surrender his paintings to the people he had painted.

Dancing around Theo in tight circles, the half-crazed men in sweating bodies and bones in their noses lifted him to his feet, handed him his kit and easel and led him down to the ferry landing. Jeering and taunting him with wild gestures they shoved him aboard the ferry. The part-kanaka skipper knew there was no time to waste before the crowd turned violent and quickly threw the engine into reverse and backed away from the island. Theo lost no tears, not even for the loss of his paintings.

They were hardly a few dozen yards from the shore when Theo saw a huge fire spring to life in the center of the village. “Those are your paintings they are burning,” the skipper said. Then after a moment he added, “Better them than you.” Theo had to agree.

Theo sat amid ship, staring at the endless wall of heavy foliage along the shore, knowing now what the jungles hid. The launch moved all too slowly for his satisfaction; and as he looked upon the shore with its continuous sameness, it appeared they were not moving at all. The shore was moving. If he could only have saved a few paintings, hidden them away, he thought. But then he knew he was fortunate that he hadn’t tried. He laughed aloud at the thought. One can only be brave when it’s all over.

In Vila their ship to Sydney was waiting. At last, to Lucas’ delight, the two intrepid travellers were on their way, but Lucas’ delight didn’t last long. New Caledonia, the capital island of the Loyalties, was a port-of-call with a two days stopover. When Theo and Lucas went ashore, Lucas again became concerned. He knew what was going through Theo’s mind. Theo would want to stay and paint the people they saw. Nowhere could there be such a mixed population-European, Polynesians, Vietnamese, and, of course, the many Melanesians as well. There was no visible slave trade like they had witnessed in Vila but they heard that an underground black birding still existed. Workers were needed for the copra plantations in Samoa.

Theo was unhappy to find Noumea was a French Settlement with a colonial governor, very much like Papeete. James Cook was the first European on the scene when he sighted what the chart called the “Grande Terre” in 1774 and named it New Caledonia, after the Scottish highlands, which the Romans had called Caledonia. Then in the next hundred years the French settled in using the island first as a penal colony. Theo thought Amedee Lighthouse that they saw when they entered the port might make a good painting but it was on a barrier reef fifteen miles away and getting there was a problem. He gave up the idea and settled his disappointment by getting drunk in the bars along the waterfront.

After two days they sailed away. They impatiently awaited their arrival in Sydney where changes in the wind were certain.

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