‘Nerves,’ he answered. ‘Something resident in the nerves. I married again to quieten my nerves. I think it was a mistake now, but it was a natural one. Perhaps that’s where the sense of guilt is really coming from. It’s not been fair to her. The remembered dead wife and the palpable living wife must, to some extent, be identified. Or, at least, those well-worn tracks of the brain identify them. Then one is seeing her with the wrong eyes, judging, weighing, comparing. The dead woman was brought to life, and it was not fair, it was unnatural, to give life to the dead. The dead are fractured, atomised, dust in the sunlight, dregs in the beer. Yet the fact of love remains, and to love the dead is, in the nature of things, impossible. One must love the living, the living fractured and atomised into individual bodies and minds that can never be close, never important. For if one were to mean more than the others, then we should be back again, identifying and, with sudden shocks, contrasting, and bringing the dead back to life. The dead are dead.
‘And so spread and atomise that love. But how about her, sleeping there in the big dark bedroom, what does she deserve? It was all a mistake, it should never have happened. She deserves whole wells of pity, tasting and looking like love.’
Victor Crabbe put on clean starched white slacks and a cool, fresh-smelling, white shirt, open at the neck. He did this quietly in their bedroom, having opened one of the shutters to let in some light. The precaution of quiet was unnecessary, a mere habit. She slept a drugged sleep. If anything could wake her, it would be the row of the dormitories, the clatter of the boys to the dining-room, the exhortations of the prefects, the ringing of bicycle-bells and the crunching feet on the gravel of the drive below. She would not wake till midday. He picked up his dispatch-case, mildewed under the buckles, from the desk-chair in the lounge, and walked to the door which led from the flat to the world of boys. The swing-doors which opened on to his dining-room creaked, and Ibrahim said softly, “Tuan.”
“Ibrahim?” (People had said, “I don’t know why the hell you keep that boy on. You’ll be getting yourself talked about. He was down outside the cinema the other night, wearing women’s clothes. It’s a good job you’re married, you know. He was thrown out of the Officers’ Mess for waggling his bottom and upsetting the men. He may be a good cook, and all that, but still … You’ve got to be careful.”)
Ibrahim squirmed and simpered. “Minta belanja, tuan.”
“But it’s only three days to the end of the month. What do you do with the money?”
“Tuan?”
“How much do you want?”
“Lima ringgit, tuan.”
“Buy some hair-clips with it,” said Crabbe in English, handing over a five-dollar note. “Mem says you’re pinching hers.”
“Tuan?”
“Never mind.”
“Terima kaseh, tuan,” smirked Ibrahim, tucking the note in the waist of his sarong.
“Sama sama.” Victor Crabbe opened the flimsy door that separated him from the boys of Light House, and walked slowly—for fear of slipping on worn treads—down the wide seedy staircase that had once been so imposing. At the bottom the duty prefect waited, Narayanasamy, rich black face vivid above the white shirt and slacks. The entrance-hall was full of boys leaving for the Main School, a counterpoint of colour united by the pedal-note of the snowy uniform.
“Sir, we are trying to work because we are having to take the examination in a very brief time from now, but the younger boys are not realising the importance of our labours and they are creating veritable pandemoniums while we are immersed in our studies. To us who are their lawful and appointed superiors they are giving overmuch insolence, nor are they sufficiently overawed by our frequent threatenings. I would be taking it, sir, as inestimable favour if you would deliver harsh words and verbal punishing to them all, sir, especially the Malay boys, who are severely lacking in due respectfulness and incorrigible to discipline also.”
“Very well,” said Victor Crabbe, “to-night at dinner.” Once a week he dined with the boys. Pursued by respectful salutations he strode down the cracked stone steps, flight after flight, to reach the road leading to the Main School. He alone of the Europeans in Kuala Hantu did not possess a car. By the time he reached the War Memorial damp had soaked through the breasts of his shirt.
The citizens of Kuala Hantu watched him go by. Workless Malays in worn white trousers squatted on the low wall of the public fountain and discussed him.
“He walks to the School. He has no car. Yet he is rich.”
“He saves money to be richer still. He will go back to England with full pockets and do no more work.”
“That is wise enough. He is no banana-eating child.”
The two old hajis who sat near the door of the coffee-shop spoke together.
“The horn-bill pairs with his own kind, and so does the sparrow. The white men will say it is not seemly for him to walk to work like a labourer.”
“His heart is not swollen. Enter a goat’s pen bleating, enter a buffalo’s stall bellowing. He believes so. He would be like the ordinary people.”
“That I will believe when cats have horns.”
A wizened hanger-on, hoping to cadge some early-morning coffee, volunteered, “Water in his grasp does not drip.”
The more charitable haji said, “A black fowl flies by night, it is true. But do not measure another’s coat on your own body.”
A Chinese shopkeeper’s wife, surrounded by quarrelling children, said to her husband in plangent Hokkien:
“All time he walk.
On his face sweat.
Red-haired dogs rich,
Pay what we ask.
Yet day by day
He go on foot.
Car he has not.”
Her white-powdered moon-face pondered the small mystery for a short time only. Then in a passion of plucked strings and little cracked bells she let fly at a weeping child, pushed by his fellows into a sugar-bin.
The Indian letter-writers, awaiting clients, fresh paper and carbons rolled into their machines, greeted Victor Crabbe with smiles and waved hands. With them once or twice, in the Coronation and the Jubilee and Fun Hwa’s, he had drunk beer and discussed the decay of the times.
Victor Crabbe passed by the pathetic little Paradise Cabaret and swallowed a small lump of guilt that rose in his throat. Here, in search of a drink and an hour’s solitude, he had met Rahimah, the sole dance-hostess, who poured beer, changed the records, and shuffled with the customers round the floor. Small, light-brown, shorthaired, wearing a European frock, she was amiable, complaisant, very feminine. She was a divorcee, thrown out by her husband on some thin pretext backed by the grim male force of Islamic law. She had one child, a small boy called Mat. Two unlaborious professions only were open to Malay divorcees, and in practice the higher embraced the lower. A dance-hostess earned little enough in such places as this, and the descent from polygamous wedlock to prostitution seemed a mere stumble. Victor Crabbe liked to believe that she had sold nothing to him, that the ten-dollar notes he hid in her warm uneager hand were gratuitous, a help—“Buy something for Mat.” He felt, in her small room, that he was somehow piercing to the heart of the country, of the East itself. Also he was placating that unquiet ghost. But he must not grow too fond of Rahimah. Love must be fractured, pulverised, as that loved body had finally been. Fenella believed that he went off to the School debates, meetings of the Historical Society. He must drop the liaison soon. But there would have to be others.
An aged Sikh, high on his cart of dung, king of two placid oxen, was coiling hanks of grey hair into place, stuffing them beneath his rakish turban. His face, all beard, smiled at Victor Crabbe. Crabbe waved, wiped sweat off his forehead. Little boys, on their way to the Chinese School, looked up at him in that intense wonder which characterises the faces of the Chinese young. Victor Crabbe turned the corner by the Police Barracks. If only the School buildings were not so dispersed, like Oxford Colleges. He must really carry a change of shirt in his dispatch-ca
se. He observed small cats with twisted tails stalking hens from the dry monsoon-drains. His feet trod a litter of palm-tree pods, like segments of blackened bicycle tyre. He was nearing the Main School now.
Corporal Alladad Khan, unaware as yet of the urgent telephone summons that was animating the Transport Office, shaved at leisure, seeing Victor Crabbe walk, too briskly for the climate, to his work. He saw nothing unnatural in this walking. He, Alladad Khan, spent his life now among motor vehicles and sometimes yearned for the old village days in the Punjab. He liked to feel the solid ground under his feet, or, better still, the warm moving flanks of a horse between his knees. Motor vehicles plagued his dreams, spare parts and indents for spare parts pricked him like mosquitoes. That a man should prefer to have nothing to do with motor engines seemed reasonable and even laudable. But …
Corporal Alladad Khan swept his cut-throat razor across his throat and cut his throat slightly. He swore in English. All the English he knew was: names of cars and car-parts; army terms, including words of command; brands of beer and cigarettes; swear-words. He had been long in the Army in India—he had joined as a boy of thirteen, stating his age wrong. Now, at thirty, he saw another ten years before he could leave the Malayan Police with a pension and return to the Punjab. But …
“Bloody liar!” he said to the razor. “Fock off!” It was behaving badly this morning. He did not really like even the simplest machine. Even a razor had a nasty malicious little soul, squat, grinning at him from the blue shine of metal. “Silly bastard!” He could swear aloud because his wife, who knew some English, was away in Kuala Lumpur, staying with an uncle and an aunt, making lavish and leisurely preparations to have a baby, their first. Alladad Khan did not want any children. He was not a very orthodox Muslim. He had ideas which shocked his wife. He had once said that the thought of eating a pork sausage did not horrify him. He liked beer, though he could not afford much of it. He could afford even less of it now that Adams Sahib insisted on taking him around. He had seen kissing in English and American films and had once suggested to his wife that they try this erotic novelty. She had been horrified, accusing him of perversion and the blackest sensual depravity. She had even threatened to report him to her brother.
He had found the Malay term ‘Tida’ apa’ useful when she spoke like that. ‘Tida’ apa’ meant so much more than ‘It doesn’t matter’ or ‘Who cares?’. There was something indefinable and satisfying about it, implying that the universe would carry on, the sun shine, the durians fall whatever she, or anybody else, said or did. Her brother. That was the whole trouble. Her brother, Abdul Khan, was an Officer Commanding a Police District, a big man, unmarried, who had been trained at an English Police College and thought a lot of himself. Her parents, their parents, were dead. It was up to the brother to arrange a marriage for her, and naturally she had to marry a Khan. No matter what he did, no matter what his position in life, so long as he was not a servant (which, naturally, a Khan could not be), she had to have a Khan. Well, she had a Khan, him, Alladad Khan. Shutting his razor with a clack he wished her well of him, Alladad Khan. Alladad Khan laughed grimly into his mirror before he washed the shaving-soap off his face and trimmed his moustache with nail-scissors. He had been a good husband, faithful, careful with money, loving, moderately passionate; what more could she want? Ha! It was not a question of what she wanted but of what he, Alladad Khan, wanted.
In the small living-room he buttoned his shirt, looking sardonically at their wedding photograph. When that photograph was taken he had known her precisely two hours and ten minutes. He had seen her picture before, and she had observed him through a hole in a curtain, but they had never spoken together, held hands or done that terrible erotic thing which was a commonplace of the English and American films. The long gruelling courtship was about to commence. There he was, with a background of photographer’s potted palms, awkward in his best suit and a songkok, while she rested an arm confidently on his knee and showed her long strong nose and cannibal teeth to the Chinese photographer. Allah, she had known all about courtship.
But there was the memsahib, Mrs. Crabbe, very much in his thoughts now. He had never met her, but he had seen her often, sweating in the heat as she walked to the Club or to the shops. He, Crabbe the teacher, might not wish to have a car, but it was not right that his wife should have to walk in the sun, her golden hair darkened at the forehead by sweat, her delicate white face dripping with sweat, the back of her frock stained and defiled by sweat. He had often to stifle the mad desire to run down to her as she walked by the Transport Office, offering her the Land Rover, or the A70, or the old Ford, or whatever vehicle sweltered in the yard, together with a police driver who would, for once, behave properly and not hawk or belch or lower the driver’s window yet further to spit out of it. But shyness held him back. He did not speak English; he did not know whether she spoke Malay. Besides, there was the question of propriety, of morality. Who was he to rush up on clumsy booted feet, stopping before her with a frightful heel-click and a stiff salute to say, “Memsahib, I observe you walking in the heat. You will be struck by the sun. Allow me to provide you with transport to wherever you wish to go,” or words to that effect? It was impossible. But he must meet her, at least see her closely, to examine her blue eyes and appraise her slim form and hear her English voice. Blue-eyed women he believed there were in Kashmir, but here was the mythical Englishry of fair hair as well. He had to meet her. That was where Police-Lieutenant Adams would have to help him. That would be a small return for many small loans whose repayment he did not press. An Englishwoman who walked; that was a barrier down before he started, a barrier of slammed elegant blue or red or green doors, the calmness of one who waits, smugly, to be driven to where she will.
The entrance of a small, elderly Malay driver broke his dreams. Kassim, who had never mastered the philosophy of gears, who dragged mucus into his throat horribly, even on parade, who had undertaken the impossible task of keeping two wives on a driver’s pay, Kassim spoke.
“The big man speaks by the telephone. There is the other big man from Timah here. He will inspect the transport now.”
“There is no God but Allah,” said Alladad Khan piously. He rushed out, followed by Kassim. He banged at doors, he cursed and entreated, he sent frantic messages. He dashed to the Transport Office. He smacked two Malay drivers on the cheek to recall them from lethargy, he checked tyres, he checked uniforms, he checked the alignment of the vehicles. Soon he had his men drawn up. Then he heard the approaching car, horrible as Juggernaut. He saw the car enter the park. He called, “Ten Shun!”
There they were, thank God, the whole bloody lot of them lined up, been waiting for hours. As they came to attention Nabby Adams, police-lieutenant in charge of transport for the Police Circle, was proud and happy.
3
VICTOR CRABBE STOOD before his form and knew something was wrong. He scanned the faces, row after row, in a silence churned gently by the two ceiling-fans. The serious, mature faces looked back at him—yellow, gold, sallow-brown, coffee-brown, black. Malay and Indian eyes were wide and luminous, Chinese eyes sunken in a kind of quizzical astonishment. Crabbe saw the empty desk and said:
“Where’s Hamidin?”
The boys stirred, some looking over their shoulders to where Chop Toong Cheong was rising. Assured that their form-captain would speak, they veered their heads delicately round towards Victor Crabbe, looking at him seriously, judicially.
“Toong Cheong?”
“Hamidin has been sent home, sir.”
“Home? But I saw him yesterday evening on the sports-field.”
“He was sent home last night, sir, on the midnight mail-train. He has been expelled, sir.”
Expelled! The very word is like a bell. Crabbe felt the old thrill of horror. That horror must also be in the boys’ nerves, even though English words carried so few overtones for them. England, mother, sister, honour, cad, decency, empire, expelled. The officer-voice of Henry New-bolt whispered in t
he fans.
“And why in the name of God has he been expelled?” Crabbe saw the squat brown face of Hamidin, the neat lithe body in soccer-rig. Expulsion had to be confirmed by the Mentri Besar of the boy’s own state, but confirmation was always automatic.
Toong Cheong had been brought up a Methodist. His eyes narrowed in embarrassment behind serious thick spectacles. “It is delicate matter, sir. They say he was in house-boy’s room with a woman. House-boy also was there with another woman. A prefect found them and reported to Headmaster, sir. Headmaster sent him home at once on midnight mail-train.”
“Well.” Crabbe did not know what to say. “That’s bad luck,” he offered, lamely.
“But, sir.” Toong Cheong spoke more rapidly now, and urgency and embarrassment reduced his speech to essential semantemes. “We think he was framed, sir. Prefect no friend of his. He did nothing with woman in house-boy’s room. Prefect deliberate lie to Headmaster.”
“Who was the prefect?”
“Pushpanathan, sir.”
“Ah.” Crabbe felt that he had to say something significant. He was not quite sure who Pushpanathan was. “Ah,” he said again, drawing out the vocable in a falling tone, the tone of complete comprehension.
“We wish you to tell Headmaster, sir, Hamidin wrongly expelled. Injustice, sir. He is member of our form. We must stick by him.”
Crabbe was touched. The form had welded itself into a single unity on this issue. Tamils, Bengalis, the one Sikh, the Malays, the one Eurasian, the Chinese had found a loyalty that transcended race. Then, hopelessly, Crabbe saw that this unity was only a common banding against British injustice.
“Well.” He began walking up and down, between the window and the open door. He knew he was about to embark on a speech whose indiscretions would sweep the School. “Well.” The face of a moustached Malay in the front row glowed with attention. “Please sit down, Toong Cheong.” The Chinese form-captain sat down. Crabbe turned to the blackboard, observing equations of yesterday in thick yellow chalk. Yellow chalk was a nuisance; it defiled hands and white trousers; one’s handkerchief was sickly with it; it stained, like lipstick, the mouth of the tea-cup at break.
The Malayan Trilogy Page 5
