Free The Painted Cage by Meira Chand Page B

out.
    Dorothy Easely patted Amy’s hand. ‘We’ll meet soon. I’ll show you the Bluff.’ Then, with a jerk that threw them back in their seats, the Redmores were trundled off towards Main Street,
    Once on the go the rikisha runners were friskier than colts, swinging, cutting, switching suddenly round corners until Amy hung on and prayed. It unnerved her to see the shoulders of a man straining between shafts like an animal. The metal wheels of the rikisha bounced. People were missed by a hair’s breadth as Amy’s runner raced with Reggie’s. The whole town seemed on the move in the same lacquered prams, like a great scuttling army of black beetles. Foreign men, be whiskered and frock-coated ,fashionable women smart enough for Paris or London, Chinese compradores in brocade coats and greasy pigtails, Japanese peasants and businessmen, demure women in kimonos appeared unaware of their part in the comical living theatre. Amy laughed. The place seemed mad, utterly mad; a town of black beetles racing and chasing about in pandemonium. And on their backs rode straight-faced, haughty Europeans, expressions unmoved above it all. She looked back and saw Reggie jolted along, his large frame out of all proportion with the bow-legged manikin and the carriage.
    They entered the Native Town and instead of foreign faces and foreign-style buildings, picturesque poverty surrounded them. The streets were narrow and odoriferous, the wooden houses rickety, heavily shuttered or flung open, baring their insides to the town. Whole walls rolled back to expose the intimacy of daily life or close out all air and light. Shops were open-fronted spaces without doors or glass cases, piled with merchandise, draped with bunting and large signs in Japanese writing. They criss-crossed bridge after bridge over canals crammed with junks and fishing smacks, launches and sampans. A smell of drains and excrement corroded the place; carts, people and rikishas clogged each street. The runners shouted and shoved their way dangerously through.
    Soon they emerged again into the Settlement, to orderly streets and occidental faces. Buildings were stately stone, shops boasted porticoes and glass windows. They were impressed by pavements, gutters and gas lamps, the post office, the police station and consulates. Main Street was full of foreign shops and looked like an English high street. The European names and European assistants, the well-known provisions and supplies had made a pilgrimage across the world to delude exhausted minds. After Sungei Ujong, such delusion was heaven to Amy. If it was only possible to extract from the scene the unending surge of Japanese faces, she might almost at last be home. There were many chemists in Main Street of familiar propriety, all far from the lore of pickled snakes. Behindthe windows of Brett’s, Schedel’s, North & Rae’s and the Normal Dispensary she saw the comforting arrangement of perfumes and pomade, iron tonics and hair washes, brands she had used at home. There again was the fortifying essence of chicken and beef she had been tenderly spooned as a child. J. Curnow & Co. Family Grocers welcomed her with Huntley & Palmer’s biscuits, with condensed milk, cocoa and chocolate, with wine, liqueurs and marmalade. At Kelly & Walsh there were books and more books, and the arrogance of Lane Crawford, 59 Main Street, General Importers, Tailors and Outfitters, Universal Providers and Department Store announced in discreet good letters, ‘Experienced London Cutter Within’. It was wonderful, all wonderful.
    Soon they were back on the Bund, which took its name from those alien words the British digested in India. All it meant, said Reggie, was something built along the sea, an embankment or a causeway. And a Bluff, he explained – for Amy laughed at the hill above the Settlement – was no more than any headland with a broad, perpendicular face. But no such levity could divest Amy of the feeling that Yokohama was a fantasy,