134- Funeral Fires

You, finding life, Rolodell, dreaming again of exotic places, wishing you were somewhere else. We offer you escape. Escape with us now to Melea, where a young doctor and a beautiful girl are faced with a horrors of plague and the bloody holocaust of a native revolt, as Charles Israel tells it in funeral fires.

They were burning the dead. The column of flames sucked up against the night sky of the river town, leaned against it, held, and from far away the dirge, the melee's mourning their dead, then drifting down to the landing where I stood, somehow the word, always the word in Malay, in Chinese, in English.

Plague. Plague had come to La Pore. Plague. That's why I was here. All the way from Delhi had come. My plague, Saramani. The police left Tennant who met me at the Rickety Little Wharf had been there for five days already.

It was very young. And he didn't like his job. Ready, awful show this. Don't you think so, sir? And it's going to get worse. You've brought serum, sir. That should do the trick. It should.

But it's not that easy. Every time a native season needily takes up for their hills, thinks it's something they kill them quicker. No, not these native, sir. There was a plague epidemic here about 15 years ago.

Serum wiped it out. The natives call it foreign devil medicine, but they respect it. That's good. I'll save us some time. Oh, there'll be a boy here in a minute for your luggage. Sure. I'm glad you've finally arrived, sir.

It's good to have a doctor here. I told me there was a doctor here. A doctor grinds. It says doctor on his side, sir. Fine. Need his help. I wouldn't count on it, sir. Why not?