Rystafel in the The Banda Islands

    The Brumsens introduced us to our first rystafel, or rice table, which is an experience no traveler to the East Indies can easily escape.  It is as much a "sight" as the Boroboedoer in central Java.  You first heap an enormous plate with rice for a foundation and accept a few shrimps which you place on the plate's rim.  Next, watching your hostess, you mix the shrimp with some of the rice and swallow with a zest of appetite deferred and stimulated by several doses of Dutch gin, taken conversationally and neat.  An ordinary appetite would never carry you through a rystafel.  Some anchovies arrive at your left elbow, which taste even better, and then some red peppers, cut into strips.  Your beer glass has been filled in the meantime, and you take time out for a swallow to quench the fire of the peppers. Then you return to your plate only to find a platter of fish balls under your nose.  You must take a little of everything, and that means you must keep on eating diligently enough to keep room on your overflowing platter for it.  As the mixture gets hotter, particularly after a dab of chutney is added, you find yourself in a fine state of activity, what with the increasing necessity of more beer, attempting secretively to mop your brow, and telling your hostess what you think of Banda.

    When at length your spirit is at the point of breaking, the serving boys call a truce.  You sit back and heave a sigh which begins in relief but ends in an inner groan: you realize you have only just been breaking even up to now, and your plate is still covered.  But your palate is nearly anesthetic by now and you feel as though you have been eating for as long as you can remember.  You continue doggedly to go through the motions - swallow, mop, and gulp, "Yes, indeed, it is!" mop, swallow - until as with the tiger in the limerick, everything is inside.  Unlike him, the only expression on your face is not a smile but a silly torpid leer.  I went back to the Pilgrim alone that afternoon, probably on my hands and knees, and letting myself down gently by the binnacle, went sound asleep on the deck."  [pp. 242-243]

© Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; reproduced by permission of the publisher.