Abbe Lane

            On Monday morning I finished posting “Tears of Saké”, my translation of “Made in China” by Serge Gainsbourg on Facebook. I then tried to find an audio file for his song “Ghetto Blaster” as sung by his wife Bambou but nothing complete has been posted. I started looking for a download that I can pay for but so far I couldn’t find that either. Maybe the partial is enough to figure out the rest. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 86.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since March 4. 

            I continued to research ideas from the novel Pearl. Marianne’s father developed type 2 diabetes as a result of his wife’s disappearance. Apparently that’s a real thing and diabetes can be induced by stress. 

            I weighed 87 kilos before lunch. That’s the most it’s been at midday since March 3. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I wore my spring gloves and one less scarf. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 17:30 and that’s the highest my evening weight has been in exactly a month. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:15. 

            I continued research on Pearl. According to Diabetes.org.uk stress alone can’t bring about diabetes but it can severely aggravate it. 

            I downloaded an essay that explores whether or not the poem "Pearl" is a consolatio. The consolatio is a type of ceremonial oratory, typically used rhetorically to comfort mourners at funerals. All consolatio works draw from a relatively narrow range of arguments aimed at offering solace, to allay the distress caused by the death of a loved one. The conventional opening of a consolatio was "All must die". The most typical arguments characterizing the consolatio genre were: "All must die… the youngest too must die”. But "Pearl" doesn’t begin that way. 

            I sliced the hunk of pea meal bacon into four and grilled them in the oven. I opened a can of mushroom gravy, added the drippings from the bacon I cooked on Sunday, dropped in a bit of Worcestershire sauce, and a touch of Vegemite and it turned out pretty good. I made wedge fries to have with the gravy and one of the bacon slices and watched episode 13 of Amos Burke: Secret Agent. 

            As usual, Burke gets his mission from The Man, the head of MX3 on a plane. This time The Man flies Burke over the coast of Sri Lanka where on one of the islands the entire rice crop is being burned to destroy a deadly fungus. The introduction of the fungus on the island came with a note to the US government drawing it to their attention. The strain was developed by a scientist named Tashua Amil. Burke is sent to Colombo where her lab is located to investigate. Burke is booked in the Lord’s suite of one of the finest hotels in Colombo. Burke takes an apple from a fruit basket and steps out on the balcony. It is then that his room explodes. Somehow Burke knows that the bomb had been in the fruit basket. The concierge of the hotel says he didn’t order a fruit basket. 

            Burke goes to Tashua’s lab. She says she developed the fungus in an attempt to kill all of the other fungi that threaten rice crops but it backfired. If the fungus reaches the mainland it could bring about famine for half the world’s population. She says the fungus was stolen from a safe in her lab. 

            At the hotel pool Burke bumps into a woman who gives him the beginning of the recognition signal for his fellow agents: She says, “The rain in Spain”; he says, “Falls mainly on the tourists”; she responds, “from De Moines” and he finishes with “and Pensa Cola”. He comments that the signals get sillier every day. They have a drink and she introduces herself as Betty Hamilton. She tells him that the super fungus is in the hands of Prince Dana Ransputa. He’s given Washington an ultimatum. If a certain pair of prisoners serving life sentences for treason are not released in seven days, he will release the fungus on the mainland. 

            Burke goes to an artefact shop and gives the password. Rosana leads him to T. Mena in the back. Mena gives him explosive buttons for his jacket. He tells Burke that his new cover is to be a guest of Prince Dana and that he is there to acquire sapphires. Dana’s family lost a tremendous portion of its wealth in the Indian partition and he is determined to win back what was lost, plus a considerable amount more. If the US submits to his demands he will sell the two valuable spies to the highest bidder. Mena gives Burke a dart gun with paralyzing darts. 

            Burke arrives at the prince’s estate. A servant points him in the direction of his room without taking him there. He looks at the top of a stairs and sees Tashua. Burke enters a small room and an automatic door closes on him. It’s an elevator that descends to a chamber where two turbaned men guard a door. Burke steps out and the elevator closes. Suddenly the two guards attack. Burke holds his own for a while but they eventually overwhelm him and one is about to slice him with a death stroke when Dana arrives and tells them to halt. Dana escorts Burke to his room and then meets with a short, skinny, bespectacled man in a wide brimmed straw hat. This man has been following Burke ever since he arrived in Sri Lanka. They discuss Burke and an Englishman who will be arriving soon. Dana says he’ll tell him which one to kill after dinner. 

            We see Dana and Tashua together. She tells him her two greatest mistakes were falling in love with him and telling him about the fungus. She accuses him of stealing the fungus from her lab. He says he didn’t steal it but someone took it for him. She protests but he tells her to do exactly as he wants and she kisses him. 

            Burke meets Dana’s wife the princess. She says Burke’s fight with the guards was no accident. Dana wanted to test him. 

            Burke meets the Englishman Morris Glenden when he arrives. At dinner Burke discovers Betty in brown face and posing as a servant. Dana uses Betty to demonstrate his knife throwing ability as he splits a pear on her head. After dinner Burke talks with the princess who tells him her marriage was arranged when she was four and she didn’t meet Dana until she was sixteen. She has grown to hate him over the years. They hear Glenden scream and he is found dead where Burke had the fight with the guards. 

            Burke goes to Tashua’s room to ask for her help. She says the fungus is in the family vault past the guards that he fought earlier. Burke takes out one of the guards with the dart gun. He finds Mena dead in the vault. Dana confronts him with a gun and two guards tie Burke to a chair. Dana leaves Burke to be tortured by Jacobus, the little man in the hat. But then Jacobus is shot with Burke’s dart gun by the princess. Burke uses his explosive buttons to open the vault. He finds the vacuum canister containing the fungus and then fills it with a combustible liquid. The fungus is destroyed. Burke fights with the guards again. He knocks one out and blinds another with a flash bomb disguised as a sapphire. Dana and Tashua are watching from above when Tashua pushes Dana over the railing. As Dana and the blinded guard fight Burke, the guard accidentally kills Dana.

            I think pretty much every Sri Lankan in this story was portrayed by a white person in brown face. 

            Tashua was played by Abbe Lane, who was performing on the radio at the age of 4. At 6 she did her first film, Toyland Casino. In her mid-teens she lied her age and became a dancer on Broadway. At the age of 16 she was discovered by Xavier Cugat and became the lead singer for his band. Four years alter she married Cugat and they were together for 12 years. She sang on several Cugat records as well as a popular album by Tito Puente. She did a few movies in Hollywood but didn’t feel appreciated by US producers and so she went to Italy where she became a movie star. She co-starred in I Girovaghi, Parola di Ladro, Totto Vittorio et la Dottoressa, Julius Caesar Against the Pirates, and Maracaibo. When she returned to the States her Hollywood film career was over but she made several TV appearances both as an actor and a singer. She wrote a semi-autobiographical novel entitled But Where Is Love? One of her quotes is, “Jane Mansfield may turn boys into men, but I take them from there.”