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THE man who told me this story said that it was the oldest story in the world, and that it happened a hundred thousand years ago. But somehow, I disbelieve him. He was very drunk and his eyes were a trifle too bright and his hair was quite remarkably disheveled, so it is possible that he was somewhat mixed in his statistics.
He came over to my table in the Jardin de Paris, which is a place in the city of Rangoon some thousands of miles from the real Paris, and as many leagues removed from anything Parisian. For one thing, the stench of the Guleh-Wat is all too near, and it is a mingled odor of incense and stale lotus and nipa blossoms and very, very unwashed human beings who come there to worship. And then, too, one may look out over the river and see the sandbars, with an occasional vulture perched there, critically inspecting some especially unattractive thing that has floated down with the current. And of course there are snub-nosed British tramps, and very natty and not quite clean Japanese cargo-boats, and pot-bellied Chinese junks, and the river craft of Siam, who deserve an adjective all to themselves. The Jardin de Paris is, moreover, some two continents removed from and a hundred years behind anything French, and it is two shillings rickshaw fare from the British legation.
He came over to my table and begged me not to finish the drink I had before me, because the grenadine made it red. He told me that one could have green drinks, made with absinthe, or white ones made with gin and limes, or purple ones and yellow champagne, but that I should not drink red drinks because they were like rubies and in consequence abominable beyond the imagination of men. They had been cursed for a hundred thousand years, he said, ever since the raja of Barowak laughed. And therefore, if I would have a waiter take my red drink away, not spilling any of it, being especially careful not to spill any of it, he would buy me thousands of green or white or purple drinks, and he would sit down beside me and tell me the oldest story in the world.
And naturally, I listened.
To get to Kosar in the old days (so the man with the disheveled hair told me) one went by Bitab and Pulat through the Molanasian Pass, which led to the country of the Sakai where it was necessary to travel very care-
