Foreigners Are Funny Folk

Short Story:

By Judy Tudor

WHEN I entered the store I had to look twice before I saw the trader.

He was sitting on a canvas chair in one corner, his knees supporting his elbows and his hands supporting his head. A portable typewriter stood on its edge on the floor nearby, its keys a-jangle. The black leather lid was several feet away.

“Charlie,” I yelled, “what’s wrong?”

Charlie raised his head and gingerly touched a lump the size of an egg just above his left eyebrow. “This. Svenson threw the damned thing at me.” He kicked the typewriter viciously. “Gotta do something about it.” Still holding his head, he got up and lumbered off to rummage through a cupboard.

After a while we located some iodine and, to a running commentary of pro fanity, I delicately painted Charlie’s bump a deep orange-brown.

Charlie poured himself a glass of whisky and lit his pipe before he eased his large bulk back into the canvas chair.

“Very violent, Swedes, when they get roused,” he reflected.

“But what roused him? I know Svenson. He’s a quiet old cuss.”

“Not so quiet, as I say, when roused.

Though I suppose it was my own fault.”

He took a gulp at the spirits and a pull at the pipe. “You know that old Svenson was shipwrecked on the New Britain coast way back in the German days?

All the rest of the schooner’s crew were lost. He was only a lad at the time, and, being stranded there like, and no chance of rescue that he could see, he took up with the natives. Must have liked his blonde hair; anyhow they didn’t knock him off, as they had a habit of doing in those days.

“Apparently they had never taught Svenson to read or write back in Sweden, and because it was no use to him here, he soon forgot how to speak Swedish, too.

He learned to speak a Pidgin English of sorts and that’s all he speaks to this day. And he still can’t write.

“About a month ago I bought that typewriter from a chap who blew in from Kavieng. Leastways, he owed me £lO and I said I’d take the typewriter instead, always having had a fancy for one of the things. I’d had it about a week and was getting on fine with the typing when Svenson looked in. He’d never seen one in action before.

“ ‘lt’s a machine-belong-write,’ I told him. His blue eyes bugged out and he wanted to know how it worked. I rolled a piece of paper into it and sat down and banged the keys: ‘This fella machine-belong-write ’e number one too much,’ I said as I tapped it out. Then I rolled the paper out and showed it to Svenson. He was amazed. ‘You talk along machine—you work this fella (he banged the keys) and he write all the same? Eh?’

“ ‘That’s right,’ I said.

“ ‘How much?’ said Svenson.

“Well, I didn’t want to sell it, but fin ally he offered me £l5 for it and a man’s got to live, so I let him have it. He wrapped it up carefully and took it off, still yelling his thanks. I thought he was in for a bit of trouble, but that wasn’t my affair. Besides, he - wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

“He had always had bother with his orders and so forth, because he couldn’t write. He had either to go get his stores himself or make one of his boys memorise them —and you know how good boys are at that. Well, it seems that he thought that now he had this wonderful

machine-belong-write all his difficulties were over and all he had to do was to sit down and bang the keys and talk to it and it turned out perfect messages.

“He got the machine to his plantation and tried it out and was highly satis fied with it because, of course, he couldn’t read what he had written.' Then came order-day, and he sat down to list his month’s stores for the Big Firm in Rabaul.

“He put a piece of paper in, and then said something like this: “ ‘Two case tinned meat.’ Then he’d bang away at the keyboard.

“‘One ton rice.’ More banging; and so on, until he had filled up a page. Then he put it in an envelope, gave it to his boss-boy, and sent him off by launch to Rabaul.

“The boss-boy got to Rabaul all right, and gave the letter to the manager of the store, but it didn’t mean a thing to the manager. There were just long lines of ws£g&jhl)!, etc., and nothing that looked like tons of rice or cases of meat.

“The manager and the boy had a long conversation. The boy insisted that he had come to get the ‘cargo belong Master Yen and that it was all written down on the ‘pass.’ But finally he was per

suaded to go back and tell Svenson that the manager couldn’t read it and didn’t know what to send.

“The boy got back to Svenson’s plan tation about dusk the next day. When he found that there were no stores, Svenson was ropable and when he learned that it was because the manager had failed to understand his letter he simply saw red. Next morning he set out for Rabaul himself and when he got there bowled straight into the manager’s office. ‘Why you no send cargo?’ he de manded. ‘You no savvy pass? You no savvy machine-belong-write?’

“They got to grips before they straightened it all out and by that time Svenson was well and truly disillusioned.

When he got over that he began to get mad again. He was still mad when he got here.

“I tried to explain but he wouldn’t lis ten. Just kept yelling out the whole story of the manager and the letter and waving his arms and bouncing the type writer un and down on the counter, so’s I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

“Finally he yelled ‘Yumning Yimminy!’ and I saw the whole works come sailing towards me. I woke up over there in the corner just before you came in.”

Charlie drained the last of his whisky.

“Yeah, violent, those Swedes. Not like us. You don’t know how to take them— foreigners!”