They warned us

They warned us back in the days of Peace Corps training. They warned us that we shouldn't be surprised if we were issued invitations with only two hours' warning to do almost anything, including attending ceremonies where we would be the featured attraction. We should have a song or spare lecture in our back pockets or be ready to dance or perform or do some other amazing thing on short notice. So it was with utter relief that I discovered I was assigned to teach in a big research university that happens to be one of China's top 100--i.e, a Project 211 university--because my colleagues would all be much too busy to be bothered with the painfully amateurish theatrics of someone from Missouri.

If it had been otherwise, if I had been sent to teach in a more rural area of western China, I  might have been the greatest novelty of all time (gigantic woman with strange hair) and begged to sing at every school function and give lectures on the fly. So, not only was I spared the trauma that any nearly pathologically shy person feels when confronting a podium, but also all of those innocent residents of western China were spared hearing my rendition of the national anthem or some traditional English folk song or Christmas carol. This is not false modesty--I'm not that Chinese yet. Miss Smith, the music teacher at Anderson Elementary School preferred that none of us Davises sing  out loud at school assemblies. Mr. Schramm, the choir director at Trenton First Methodist made Sally Lutz sit next to me because she could drown me out when I was in fifth grade. And, if memory serves me right, my New Zealand host sister Eleanor and I were kicked out of a bath house in Rotorura for blubbering our national anthems under water some years ago. (A few. . .) And when it comes to speeches, I never successfully learned to spit words out. As fourth of six very verbal children, I never really learned how to wedge may way into lively dinner table debates. You might wonder how on earth I survived a teaching career and the answer is by not lecturing. Dancing? I'm no better. Yoga, yes--running, yes--hiking at high altitudes, yes. But dancing no. Contra dancing is about as forgiving a dance community as you can find in the US, and I've been known to lose my partner and end up down the line in the wrong set.

So, as you can imagine, it was with some dismay that I heard that the School of Foreign Languages really is going to have an event in a week or so and the foreign teachers usually perform. There are no fewer than six hundred majors, and I've heard rumors that a thousand people typically pack the house the night of such performances. Not only am I a bad singer, my sense is that China is full of wonderful singers. I wonder if learning to speak a tonal language at a young age makes the ear more discriminating, more carefully attuned to getting the notes right. So the standards, the expectations are high.

I'm still not one hundred percent that I'll have to perform, but, an idea popped into my head as I was crossing a dimly lit bridge on the way home from campus the other night. What if I donned a shaggy white mustache, some shaggy white eyebrows, made my hair wild, and borrowed some baggy men's clothes from some of the male foreign teachers--and pretended to be one of most beloved Missourian's, Mark Twain? Or what if I went a step wilder, and went on the stage barefoot and assumed the role of Huck? A colleague in Missouri, Tom Quirk, happens to be a Twain scholar and suggested the following passages. . .neither of which any woman donned in men's clothing has read  recently in Beibei. If you've read enough, read no more--but if you'd like some of Huck's delightful musings from chapter twenty of HF, read on--or, if you want to see how Twain fashions an "Encounter with an Interview," read on some more. . .

    TWO or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by, they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there -- sometimes a mile and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up -- nearly always in the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off; then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres -- perfectly still -- just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line -- that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away -- trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks -- rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and

sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!

   A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor nothing to see -- just solid lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the axe flash and come down -- you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk! -- it had took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing -- heard them plain; but we couldn't see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits; but I says:

   "No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'"

   Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and talked about all kinds of things -- we was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us -- the new clothes Buck's folks made for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on clothes, nohow.

   Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark -- which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two -- on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

   Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

   After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three hours the shores was black -- no more sparks in the cabin windows. These sparks was our clock -- the first one that showed again meant morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.

An Encounter with an Interviewer

     The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added, --

     "Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you."

     "Come to what?"

     "Interview you."

     "Ah! I see. Yes, -- yes. Um! Yes, -- yes."

     I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit under a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been looking six or seven minutes, I found I was obliged to refer to the young man. I said, --

     "How do you spell it?"

     "Spell what?"

     "Interview."

     "O my goodness! What do you want to spell it for?"

     "I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means."

     "Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, if you -- if you -- "

     "O, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too."

     "I n, in, t e r, ter, inter -- "

     "Then you spell it with an I?"

     "Why, certainly!"

     "O, that is what took me so long."

     "Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?"

     "Well, I -- I -- I hardly know. I had the Unabridged, and I was ciphering around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures. But it's a very old edition."

     "Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the latest e -- My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you do not look as -- as -- intelligent as I had expected you would. No harm, -- I mean no harm at all."

     "O, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who would not flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite remarkable in that way. Yes, -- yes; they always speak of it with rapture."

     "I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is the custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious."

     "Indeed! I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. What do you do it with?"

     "Ah, well, -- well, -- well, -- this is disheartening. It ought to be done with a club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking questions and the interviewed answering them. It is all the rage now. Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the salient points of your public and private history?"

     "O, with pleasure, -- with pleasure. I have a very bad memory, but I hope you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregular memory, -- singularly irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great grief to me."

     "O, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can."

     "I will. I will put my whole mind on it."

     "Thanks. Are you ready to begin?"

     "Ready."

     Q. How old are you?

     A. Nineteen, in June.

     Q. Indeed! I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were you born?

     A. In Missouri.

     Q. When did you begin to write?

     A. In 1836.

     Q. Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now?

     A. I don't know. It does seem curious somehow.

     Q. It does, indeed. Who do you consider the most remarkable man you ever met?

     A. Aaron Burr.

     Q. But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen years --

     A. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?

     Q. Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more. How did you happen to meet Burr?

     A. Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to make less noise, and --

     Q. But, good heavens! If you were at his funeral, he must have been dead; and if he was dead, how could he care whether you made a noise or not?

     A. I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way.

     Q. Still, I don't understand it at all. You say he spoke to you and that he was dead.

     A. I didn't say he was dead.

     Q. But wasn't he dead?

     A. Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't.

     Q. What do you think?

     A. O, it was none of my business! It wasn't any of my funeral.

     Q. Did you -- However, we can never get this matter straight. Let me ask about something else. What was the date of your birth?

     A. Monday, October 31, 1693.

     Q. What! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years old. How do you account for that?

     A. I don't account for it at all.

     Q. But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make yourself out to be one hundred and eighty. It is an awful discrepancy.

     A. Why, have you noticed that? (Shaking hands.) Many a time it has seemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind. How quick you notice a thing!

     Q. Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or have you, any brothers or sisters?

     A. Eh! I -- I -- I think so, -- yes, -- but I don't remember.

     Q. Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard!

     A. Why, what makes you think that?

     Q. How could I think otherwise? Why, look here! who is this a picture of on the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours?

     A. Oh! yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it, that was a brother of mine. That's William, -- Bill we called him. Poor old Bill!

     Q. Why? Is he dead, then?

     A. Ah, well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great mystery about it.

     Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then?

     A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him.

     Q. Buried him! Buried him without knowing whether he was dead or not?

     A. O no! Not that. He was dead enough.

     Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him and you knew he was dead --

     A. No! no! we only thought he was.

     Q. O, I see! He came to life again?

     A. I bet he didn't.

     Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody was buried. Now, where was the mystery?

     A. Ah, that's just it! That's it exactly. You see we were twins, -- defunct and I, -- and we got mixed in the bath-tub when we were only two weeks old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some think it was Bill, some think it was me.

     Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think?

     A. Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before. One of us had a peculiar mark, a large mole on the back of the left hand, -- that was me. That child was the one that was drowned.

     Q. Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it, after all.

     A. You don't? Well, I do. Anyway I don't see how they could ever have been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, 'sh! -- don't mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knows they have heart-breaking troubles enough without adding this.

     Q. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I am very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a good deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mind telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr was such a remarkable man?

     A. O, it was a mere trifle! Not one man in fifty would have noticed it at all. When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to start for the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he said he wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and rode with the driver.

     Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was very pleasant company, and I was sorry to see him go.