The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  Nabby Adams said, “Good evening, sir,” in refined, confident R.S.M. tones.

  “Hallo, Nabby. What are you going to have?”

  “Thank you, sir. A small beer, sir.”

  “And, Nabby, sorry to talk shop, but you mustn’t go up to Melawas without an escort. That’s the rule, you know. You’ll get shot up. Another incident today.”

  “To save petrol, sir. Them scout-cars use a lot of petrol, sir.” But the real reason couldn’t be given. You can’t keep stopping at little kedais with a bloody escort watching every mouthful you drink and blabbing about it when they get back.

  “If you use police transport, Nabby, you’ve got to have an escort. Cheers.”

  Hart and the other bloke, Rivers, came to the bar from their colloquy in the far corner.

  “Hallo, Nigel.”

  “How’s it going, Doug?”

  “Wotcher, Nigel.”

  Nabby Adams felt uncomfortable. He wanted to be out of here. He couldn’t stand Hart, and Rivers, the ex-army type planter up the Tahi Panas road, got on his bloody nerves. But he had accepted a Tiger, and the others had accepted drinks too, and Nabby Adams saw, in horror, the prospect of having to stand a round himself. And there was Ah Hun, grinning at everybody, having shown his bloody face, off again, and the opium-eater leering at everybody from the back of the bar.

  “Trouble again at Kelapa Estate,” said Gurney.

  “Oh God, Kelapa again?” Rivers clutched the right wing of his rank moustache as though it were a talisman.

  “Withers shot his way out. They got that Tamil bloke though. Cut his guts out and then sang ‘The Red Flag’ in Chinese.” Gurney sipped his pink gin.

  “That’s an unlucky estate,” said Hart, nursing a fat bare knee. “There was Roebuck and then Fotheringay and that young assistant, what’s-his-name. They’ll get Withers.”

  “It’s bound to be our turn again, any day now,” said Rivers nervously. A tic throbbed under his left eye. “Roll on that bloody boat. Three weeks to go. No, two weeks and five days.”

  “There’s a big battle-cry going on up there,” said Gurney. “‘Death to Withers’. What hurts the C.T.’s is that they gave him a chance to pay protection money, but he wouldn’t do it.”

  “Couldn’t do it, I should think,” said Hart. “Debts all over the place.” Nabby Adams listened sympathetically.

  Nabby Adams said, by way of making conversation, “Withers and Rivers sounds a bit alike. It might be ‘Death to Rivers’.”

  Rivers writhed and showed big teeth under the pelmet of the moustache. “If you think that’s funny, old man …”

  “No,” said Nabby Adams. “I mean, serious, the two names …”

  “All right, all right,” said Gurney softly. “Let’s have another drink.”

  “My turn,” said Hart. “Here, boy.”

  “Joking on one side,” said Nabby Adams, “the two names …”

  They heard a shrill whistle from the servants’ yard. Rivers’ hand went fast to his holster. They all listened. The whistle, shriller, was repeated.

  “Who the hell’s that?” said Gurney.

  Rivers said, “They’re getting out of hand. Bloody Club servants. I’ll tan his black hide. I’ll put a bullet through him. I’ll castrate him. I’ll pull out his toe-nails with pincers. Insubordinate bastards. Hey!” he shouted. “Stop that bloody row!”

  A softer, more plaintive, whistle could now be heard.

  “Do you hear?” raged Rivers. “Diam, you sod, bloody well diam!”

  “You mustn’t shout at these people,” said Gurney. “They take it as a sign of weakness. Go round and tell him.”

  “I’ll go,” said Nabby Adams with energy. “I’ll tell him, sir.”

  “Never mind,” said Hart. “They’re shutting him up.” Nabby Adams could hear importunate Hokkien and Alladad Khan pleading the rights of man in Punjabi.

  “I’ll be glad to get away,” brooded Rivers. “Coolies all day long, cretins, bloody morons, and not even here in the Club can you be free of them. I’ll be glad if I never see another black skin as long as I live. They give me the shudders. Discipline, that’s what they need. When I was in the Army I could handle them all right. Ten days’ pay stopped. Round the square with full pack at the double. Try it here on the estates and you get a knife in your back.” He scratched his shoulder-blades petulantly. Prickly heat.

  “That was in Africa, wasn’t it?” said Gurney. “A bit different, you know.”

  “They’re all the same,” said Rivers. “Niggers. Black bastards.”

  Nabby Adams looked at the arrogant white nose, the scornful nostrils whence the moustache flowed, a cornucopia of hair. He longed to have just one little crack at it. But he kept his temper, drank the beer that Hart had bought for him, and wondered if he could slip round the back without Gurney getting suspicious. For the lavatory was at the other end of the Club. That bloody Ah Hun was walking round the yard: he could hear him scolding his wives; he could almost hear the crackle of bunches of ten-dollar notes in his pockets. And that damned fool Alladad Khan would start again in a minute. ‘Wait,’ thought Nabby Adams, ‘I’ll say good-night, walk out, and then slip round the back.’

  Nabby Adams drained his glass and said with a froth-flecked mouth, “Must be going now, sir.”

  “I’ll give you a lift, Nabby,” said Gurney.

  Oh God, why did these things always happen? “That’s very kind, sir. I’m not going back to the mess. Thought I’d have a stroll round.”

  “Oh well, one for the road then.”

  “Push the boat out, Adams,” said Hart. “Stengah for me.”

  Nabby Adams saw, in delirium, a vision of Bombay set in a sea of blood. He called the waiter with a single savage bark.

  “You’ll have to hurry up with that car,” said Gurney to Rivers. “When do you go?”

  “Two weeks five days.”

  “How much are you asking for it?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “You won’t get it.”

  There was a discussion about the merits of Rivers’s car. Nabby Adams indicated, in urgent pantomime, that Hong or Wong or whatever his bloody name was should take another bottle to Alladad Khan and tell him to keep his trap shut. The opium-eater opened the bottle with insolent loudness and clomped out with it, singing. Thank God, the others hadn’t noticed.

  “There’s a chance for you, Nabby,” said Gurney. “A ’52 Abelard. One thousand eight hundred.”

  “That’s my lowest,” said Rivers. “I’m losing money as it is.”

  “You could take it up to Melawas without an escort,” said Gurney, a glint in his eye. “Save petrol for the firm.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Nabby Adams.

  Strangely enough, Nabby Adams did think about it. His mind’s dark waters were ringed with jumping plans. Soon Gurney went. Soon two officers of the Malay Regiment came in, morbidly eupeptic. One was Major Latiff bin Haji Mahmud, the other Captain Frank Harley. They spoke a facetious mixture of Malay and English which made Nabby Adams shudder.

  “Selamat evening.”

  “Good malam.”

  “Apa news?”

  “What khabar?”

  Rivers called to the waiter, “Siap meja.”

  “Tuan?”

  “Get the billiard-table ready. Kita main snooker.”

  There was a foursome. The billiard-table was screened off from the bar, but the click of the balls and the boyish jeers and shouts made Nabby Adams shake with nerves. And that bloody fool Rivers had left his gun on the bar. ‘Serve him right if I pinch it and flog it to Ah Hun.’ Nabby Adams took a sly glance at the debit total in Rivers’ bar-book and found, to his grim satisfaction, that Rivers owed the Club $1,347.55. He turned over the pages of Hart’s book with a great yellow hand. $942.70. So. There was he, Nabby Adams, owing a mere five hundred odd, and that bastard had reported him. One law for the rich. Right. He would buy that car of Rivers. Or rather Crabbe should buy it. Right.

/>   Nabby Adams tiptoed out of the Club, making the boards creak. Nobody noticed him. Right. Among the potted plants and the hanging coconut-shells full of withering flowers he breathed in the blue Malayan night. The palms swayed in front of the Town Board offices. A swaying Tamil workman tottered from the toddy-shop. A loud radio sang in Hindustani from the Police Barracks. Nabby Adams picked his way through dustbins and bicycle-tyres to the servants’ yard behind the Club and found Alladad Khan sitting with an empty glass at a huge dirty table. Doll-like children with straight fringes squabbled around him, and a shapeless young Chinese woman in pyjamas ironed shirts with some vigour.

  Nabby Adams spoke in his clean, grammatical Urdu.

  “Where is the Chinese man who is in charge of this Club? I wish to borrow money off him.”

  “He has gone out, sahib.”

  “Another thing. What advantage do you expect to gain from the loud noises you were continually making while I was in there drinking? Surely you realised that the other sahibs in there displayed a considerable measure of anger. Moreover, the O.S.P.C. nearly came out to you. That would undoubtedly have spelt disaster for both of us, but more especially for you.”

  “I was tortured with thirst, sahib.”

  “Well, next time you’re thirsty you can pay for your bloody own,” said Nabby Adams in violent English. “Do you think I’m made of bloody beer?”

  “Sahib?”

  “Listen.” Nabby Adams returned to Urdu. “We are going to injure a car. We then shall buy it. Then we shall sell it. We shall buy it cheap and sell it dear, as is the way of merchants.”

  “I have no money to buy a car. Nor, I think, have you.”

  “That is no matter. First we must get the car away from here. It is at the front of the Club. It is an Abelard. Then we shall do what things are meet to be done.”

  Nabby Adams and Alladad Khan walked quietly through the dark to the parking area of the Club. The polished Abelard shone ghostly, a vision of the future, in the faint street-lamp. From within the Club came ball-clicks and happy cries. Alladad Khan evinced little enthusiasm for Nabby Adams’s plan.

  “It is a simple matter of making the engine seem hard to start and to knock violently also. Wait here.”

  Nabby Adams entered the Club again. There were only a few colours left on the table.

  “Dalam the hole.”

  “Into the lobang.”

  The neat Malay major, cat-graceful, sleek with toothed charm, sank the blue.

  Nabby Adams said to Rivers, “Can I just try it out?”

  “Are you going to buy it?”

  “I think I can raise the money.”

  Rivers fumbled in his pocket, found the ignition-key and threw it over. It was fixed by a ring to a tiny model of a bulldog. Nabby Adams caught it in huge fielding paws.

  “Look after it. Don’t be too long.”

  Outside the Club Nabby Adams said to Alladad Khan, “First you shall drive to the Paradise Cabaret.”

  “Why?”

  “To sell the car to Mr. Crabbe.”

  “You promised you would introduce me to the memsahib.”

  “One thing at a time. There is no call for impatience.”

  “How can we sell the car when we have not yet bought it?”

  “I will take charge of all that aspect of the matter.”

  They drove slowly along Jalan Mansor. Music and light blared from coffee-shops. Trishaw-drivers swerved and sidled with their human burdens. Young Malay bloods cycled many abreast, heedless of Alladad Khan’s warning honk.

  “The horn is good,” he said.

  Crisp, exquisite, the Chinese girls toddled in sororities, their cheongsams split to their thin thighs. A half-naked Tamil carried the corpse of a fish. Chettiars in dhotis waved money-loving arms, talking excitedly with frank smiles. Wrinkled Chinese patriarchs raked their throats for residuary phlegm. A Sikh fortune-teller jabbed repeatedly at a client’s palm. Sellers of sateh—pieces of tripe and liver on a skewer—breathed in the fumes of their fires. Soft-drink sellers brooded over blue and green and yellow bottles. In the barber-shops the many customers lay back like the sheeted dead. Over all presided the fetid, exciting reek of durian, for this was the season of durians. Nabby Adams had once been to a durian party. It was like, he thought, eating a sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory. Alladad Khan drove slowly.

  “The brakes are good,” he said. Calmly he watched the uninjured child crawl back to play in the monsoon-drain. They passed the Queen’s Cinema where a huge hoarding announced a Tamil film—squiggles and curlicues three feet high, a fat female face contorted with fear. They passed, with regret, the beer-garden of Kong Huat. Soon they came to the Paradise Cabaret—dim lights and a hoarse record, the manager in evening dress of shorts and singlet and cigar standing, dim-descried, at the curtained door.

  “Achcha,” said Nabby Adams. “We will go in here.”

  “We have no money.”

  “Achcha. Crabbe will pay.”

  Crabbe will pay. Crabbe sat in the shadows at a little table with Rahimah. They were sharing a tepid bottle of Anchor beer. Rahimah’s charming small face, lost in shadow, Rahimah’s charming small body, lost to-night in loose silk pyjamas, Rahimah herself, still, restrained, not yet resigned. Crabbe spoke his slow Malay over a record which, to samba rhythm, recounted in a skirl of grace-notes the principles of religion—“Rukun Islam.”

  “If you do not observe all these tenets,

  And pray to Allah day and night as well,

  Then you may find it much too late for penance,

  And a house will await you in Hell.”

  The record changed. Crabbe went on, weakly, with his one tune.

  “Maalum-lah, there are difficulties. People talk. Perhaps I am thrown out of my work.”

  “We could go from here and live together. We could go to Penang. You could play the piano and I could be a dance-hostess there. We could earn perhaps three hundred dollars a month together.”

  “But there is the matter of my wife.”

  “You could enter Islam. Four wives are allowed. But two surely would be enough.”

  “But that would not do. I dare not lose my present post. That would be the end of me.”

  “You wish to be rid of me, like Rahman my husband.”

  “But the difficulties are very great. And I cannot give you money any more. I am becoming a poor man.”

  She said nothing. Crabbe gloomily drank beer. The record of ‘Seven Lonely Nights’ stuck and squawked psittacinely. “Seven lo seven lo seven lo.” Rahimah went to change it. She came back and held his big white hand in her two small brown ones.

  “The money does not matter. You will not leave me. If people talk that is their affair. Tida’ apa.”

  Crabbe heard heavy footsteps and, raising his head, saw with something like relief a huge man approaching him, followed by a moustached Indian in white shirt and black trousers. They came to the table.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting you, Mr. Crabbe.” It was a deep voice, apt for much morning coughing. The lines of the huge yellow-brown face came into the lamplight.

  “Good evening, memsahib.” Alladad Khan bowed, proud of his English.

  “Don’t be a bloody fool,” said Nabby Adams savagely. “Beg your pardon, Mr. Crabbe. He’s three parts pissed, that’s his trouble. Can’t see straight. Do you mind if I join you for a minute?” He sat down on a tiny chair, like father at a dolls’ tea-party. Alladad Khan sat down too. He saw, with embarrassment, that Mr. Crabbe had, hidden in the shadows, a woman not his wife. He felt bitter towards Crabbe, who could thus deceive, thus betray, when he had a golden-haired, blue-eyed goddess awaiting him at home in trust and love.

  “Dua botol lagi, Rahimah,” said Crabbe. Rahimah went obediently to fetch more beer.

  “Not out of the fridge,” said Nabby Adams. “Tell her that.”

  “Everything’s warm here,” said Crabbe.

  “You remember you saying about wanting a car?” said Nabby
Adams. “I’ve got a car outside for you, dirt-cheap. An Abelard, ’52 model. Only two thousand.”

  “Miles?”

  “Dollars.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “The planter with the tash, the one who’s going home. Withers.”

  “Rivers?”

  “That’s right. Withers is the one who’s going to die.”

  “What are you doing with it if it belongs to Rivers?”

  “Well, you see.” Nabby Adams leaned closer, showing confidential huge horse-teeth, brown, black, broken. “He wanted two-five, you see, and I wouldn’t say as how it’s not worth it. But you see, me and him”—he jerked a shoulder towards Alladad Khan, calm, moustache-smoothing—“buggered the works up a bit and I told him this was wrong and that was wrong, so he said two thousand. Licensed and insured till the end of the year.”

  “You buggered the works up? For me?”

  “For both of us,” said Nabby Adams. ‘I’ll do a deal with you. Lend me that car, say, two days a month, and I’ll look after it for you. Service it and see to the oil. Petrol I can’t manage. Too risky. But everything else.”

  Rahimah came back with the beer. Nabby Adams said, “Good health, Mr. Crabbe. Good health, Miss er.” Alladad Khan said, “Shukria, sahib,” and drank thirstily.

  “What do you want it twice a month for?” asked Crabbe.

  “So I can go up to Melawas without an escort. As it might be yourself, I like the odd bottle, but you can’t stop off with them escorts gawping at you when you go into a kedai. Same as yourself, I don’t like too many knowing my business.”

  “Yes,” said Crabbe. “Let’s try the car out.”

  “No hurry,” said Nabby Adams. “When we’ve had another bottle.”

  “Shukria, sahib,” said Alladad Khan.

  Nabby Adams turned on him in passionate Urdu. “Nobody, to my knowledge, suggested that you should sit here all night drinking at other people’s expense. You have had more than enough for one evening. You are already intoxicated.” He turned to Crabbe. “Getting above himself. And drinking’s forbidden by his religion, too.”