The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  “You think that the Emergency Regulations should be repealed, sir?”

  “I …” Crabbe looked into the impassive eyes, set tight and slant, as in a perpetual mask of mockery. “I will ask you what you think.”

  “They cannot be repealed, sir. The Communists are torturing and killing the innocent. They are holding back all our schemes for social and economic progress. They are evil, sir. They must be destroyed.”

  “Would you yourself be willing to destroy them, given the chance?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are Chinese. Think. If your father or brother or sister were hiding in this jungle torturing and killing, as you say, the innocent, would you be willing to help destroy your own kith and kin?”

  “My own …?”

  “Kith and kin. Your own flesh and blood.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “You would kill, for instance, your sister?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Thank you. That’s all I want to know.”

  Shiu Hung got up, puzzled. “I can go now, sir?”

  “Yes, you can go now.”

  Had he really got anything out of the boy? Adolescents will reel off shibboleths they have heard or read, they will be brutal and callous enough in speech. In any case, even if Shiu Hung were running a Communist study-group, did it matter very much? Doctrinaire blather, a pubescent rash. Could they do anything that mattered? Crabbe suddenly saw himself as a witch-hunting little senator, looking for burglars under the bed, listening at keyholes, tapping wires. Was it perhaps not better that boys should stay up late reading Marx, rather than ingesting the film-myths or breathing heavily over the comic-strips? Crabbe felt vaguely ashamed of himself but still disturbed.

  He came to. Ibrahim had entered the room, flaunting red curls, simpering, with faintly swaying hips, at Alladad Khan. Alladad Khan looked embarrassed.

  “Makan malam ini, mem?”

  “No dinner,” said Fenella. “We’re going out.”

  Nabby Adams made another little joke. “Ada baik?” he said to Ibrahim.

  “Ada baik, tuan.”

  “Motor-bike or pedal-bike?” said Nabby Adams. The bottles on the sideboard had put him in a good humour. Ibrahim went out on oiled haunches, simpering finally from the doorway at Alladad Khan. Nabby Adams said, “You get a lot of them like that. When I was in India there was what I thought was a woman in the next washhouse. I was stripped off, see, Mrs. Crabbe, having a swill-down. Needed it, because I was smelling a bit. Well, it seemed to me she had her hair all down her back, so I thought, well, if she’s come in here she knows what to expect. Well, I went in there, Mrs. Crabbe, and she turned round and I got the shock of my life, because she had a beard. It was a man really, a Sikh, you see, Mrs. Crabbe, and they’re not allowed to have the scissors or the razor touch their body. Well, I said I was sorry and begged his pardon, but he was all for it, if you see what I mean, Mrs. Crabbe. Oh,” he added, “perhaps I shouldn’t have started to tell that story.”

  When Nabby Adams had finished half a bottle of gin, neat, and Alladad Khan had, absorbed in the wonder of it all, taken three glasses of sherry, it was time for them to go. Alladad Khan drove carefully along streets festive with banners saying “LONG LIVE THE SULTAN”. Inche Sidek, the local Health Inspector, had been round the shops all day selling these banners at exorbitant prices, threatening every towkay with closure on the grounds of inadequate sanitation if he did not buy. Crowds of walkers and cyclists infested the road to the Istana. As the car entered the Istana grounds policemen saluted Nabby Adams. He waved a languid paw at them, lolling in deep cushions.

  “You see,” he said. “They let us through without a murmur.” Other motorists were nosing and inching and sidling into the crammed parking-place outside the gates. “It’s useful to have a police officer with you sometimes,” he said, remembering the gin he had drunk and the beer he would drink, all at Crabbe’s expense.

  The grounds were gay with tree-slung fairy-lights, with fire and smoke of food-sellers, noise of show-booths, of ronggeng music, Chinese opera, Indian drums, brown and yellow faces above best clothes, glistening eyes wide in the shine of the Sultan’s treat. The car parked under the stars, the four walked down the main drive, Nabby Adams huge, a minaret to the upturned eyes of the open-mouthed children. They stopped by the wayang kulit.

  “This is a kind of a shadow-play,” explained Nabby Adams unnecessarily. Into the lighted screen swam little heroic figures, fluttering like moths, moustached Indian warriors with swords stiffly upheld, playing-card kings, toy gods, striking a kitten’s impotent tiger-terror. The unmoving lips of great cardboard princesses were fed with the showman’s rapid epic Malay. All the time the little drums beat and the tiny bells tinkled in water-drops. The crowd gaped, absorbed, all save those at the back; they, sea to Nabby Adams’s pharos, gazed in awe at the queer quartet: the golden-haired woman, the white schoolmaster, the brown swaying Indian, the yellowstone rock of Nabby Adams. Perhaps this, too, had been provided by the Sultan?

  Like the high, lighted Chinese shows, flanked by huge monolithic picture-writing slogans, where the jugglers juggled with flaming torches and the thin women caterwauled to a single saxophone and thudding drum. Like the Malay play with its stock characters: the comic money-lenders and the father ruined by his prodigal son; the stock descent from decent middle-class house to attap hut, the squeezed-out drop of philosophy: Tida’ apa. Like the songs in Hindustani with endless, breathless phrases; like the ronggeng platform where the girls danced without a pause, the grinning young Malay men awaiting their turns to advance and retreat with swaying hips and arms held out as for a tentative embrace.

  “I can do that,” said Nabby Adams. Stern eyes, powered by gin, were on the delicate girls in their best bajus and sarongs, going backwards to the platform’s edge, forward again towards the band, moving arms held out to the partners whom they must not touch, who must not touch them. Nabby Adams looked at the waiting queue of slim-waisted, liquid-brown, smiling youth. “When that queue’s gone down a bit,” he said, “I’ll have a go at that.”

  They sought an open-air table by the nearest beer-tent. Around them were the flares and fires of the sateh sellers, the stalls piled with peanuts and coconut slices, rambutans, coloured sweets, bananas, warmish yellowish soft drinks. Crabbe bought sateh for all: tiny knobs and wedges of fire-hot meat on wooden skewers, to be dipped in a lukewarm sauce of fire and eaten with slivers of sweet potato and cucumber. The beer came, and with it a saucer of ice, quick to change back to warm water under the sweating night.

  “It won’t do him any good to drink beer after all that sherry,” said Nabby Adams. “Still, if he thinks he can do it he can try. He’ll spew his art up, Mrs. Crabbe,” he said seriously, clinically. “You wait and see.” He entered a long tunnel of rumbling Urdu. Emetic art, thought Fenella. James Joyce? Henry Miller? She was learning a lot from this huge crumpled man. Alladad Khan, not at all crumpled, ironed and starched in white shirt and black trousers, sat close to her. How pink the nails seemed on his brown hand.

  To their table came Inche Sidek, fat and wheezy, bubbling rapid approximate English in ever-rising intonation. “My God,” he piped high. “My God, it has been a lot of work, seeing that there is enough lavatories to go round, and that there is properly trenches digged for the dirty water to run away down. My God, I tell you. Lady,” he said, “lady, you will drink a little with me. I will send round a bottle of brandy from my table.”

  Nabby Adams said, “They only sell beer.”

  “My God,” said Inche Sidek. “Getting into my car I find that there is three bottles of brandy in the back seat. I do not ask questions. There is three bottles. Three star. It is a present, so I do not ask questions.”

  “Haram,” said Crabbe.

  “My God,” said Inche Sidek. “Who is to know if drinking brandy is haram? I tell you, the Prophet forbid what would intoxicate. Even water will intoxicate. Me nothing will intoxicate, so for me it is not
haram.”

  From the Malay wayang came ‘Rukun Islam’, sung chirpily by a hoarse female voice. Crabbe thought with a pang of Rahimah, his betrayal over the scratchy record in the Paradise Cabaret. How was she getting on?

  To their table came, grinning through a nodding full beard, a big Sikh. He sat down without invitation, pulling up a chair between Crabbe and Fenella.

  “Hari Singh,” said Alladad Khan. Hari Singh shook hands with the lady, the gentleman. Nabby Adams said, “Bloody fool, he is,” quietly, to himself. Hari Singh began to speak grumbling bad monotonous English. Alladad Khan listened jealously.

  “Yes,” said Crabbe, uncomprehending.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Fenella. Hari Singh pulled his chair closer to her, speaking to her eyes.

  “He says it would do his heart good to buy us some beer,” said Nabby Adams. “I wouldn’t want to spoil his pleasure.”

  Hari Singh rumbled that he would show them a trick. He took off his heavy signet-ring and span it on the table. He asked the lady to try it. The lady tried it and failed. Hari Singh laughed schoolboyishly through the nest of beard. He showed the lady again. The lady tried again and failed. Hari Singh came closer, span the ring to a blurred whizzing. Nabby Adams yawned. Alladad Khan glinted jealously.

  Suddenly Fenella was aware of a big bare foot stroking her shod one. She was surprised, and tucked her feet under her chair. Alladad Khan saw and was mad with inner rage. Bloody Sikh, he thought. He would get him, Allah, he would get him. The bloody Sikh slid his foot back into his leather sandal.

  “We ought to go in there, really,” said Nabby Adams, looking towards the great Hollywood vision of Baghdad, the vast vulgar floodlit Istana. “Gambling going on. Thousands of dollars changing hands. Them Chinese, mainly. Money no object.”

  “It’s a mug’s game,” said Crabbe.

  “That’s right,” said Nabby Adams. “When you come to think of it. Like horses. And all the horse-racing’s crooked in this country. The jockeys and the trainers is a load of old shit. I said that to them in the Club there, and they said, ‘Do you know who that is there, that’s Bert Rugby, biggest trainer in the country.’ And I said, ‘Well then, he must be part of the load of old shit.’” He sat back, unsmiling, seeing no shame in pure logic.

  Alladad Khan made a long passionate speech in Urdu. Nabby Adams listened attentively.

  “What does he say?” asked Crabbe.

  “He says we ought to get away from here,” said Nabby Adams, “and go somewhere else.”

  “My God,” said Crabbe, “he’s right.” He saw what he had half-expected to see all evening. Rahimah, holding on to the hand of a small brown boy, was approaching the table, ready to greet and be greeted. She was dressed in Malay costume, walking gravely on high-heeled shoes. Crabbe knew she would greet him lovingly with wide smile and soft words. Fenella’s face was hidden by the turban of Hari Singh, who was now reading her palm, bending low over it, squeezing it often. Now, before it was too late. …

  “I see what you mean,” said Nabby Adams. Crabbe, feigning not to see Rahimah, rushed over to the beer-tent with money for the beer they had drunk. Alladad Khan escorted Fenella quickly away, his hands and lips voluble with apologies. That he should let this happen to her. How could he blame himself enough? A fellow-Punjabi, but to-morrow hell would open for this rascal. His beard should be pulled out, that soapy smile sponged from his mouth by an avenging fist. Allah, brave punishments would be devised for this false Sikh.

  “What’s all this about?” asked Fenella. “What’s going on?”

  “He says his heart is heavy that that bloke should have behaved like that,” translated Nabby Adams. “He says he’s going to give him what for.”

  This time they entered a beer-tent, secure under canvas from importunate Sikhs, from ghosts of old romances. More beer. Alladad Khan began to feel that he looked green. Allah, he had changed like a traffic-signal this evening. But even here there was no peace for, soon, a slim Bengali from the bazaar appeared, offering whisky from a pocket-flask, eager to tell the lady of new fabrics from exotic America, just now in stock, cheap, so cheap, if the lady would come round and see to-morrow. … They were joined by one of the letter-writers, relaxing from the labours of recording others’ sorrows, whines, entreaties on a clanking second-hand Oliver. He would talk of the meaning of life with the lady.

  “Sister,” he said, “sister. There is much pain and grief in the world, but God sees it all, and God will see that the wicked will be punished. Like, for instance, my father-in-law, who has cheated me but recently of twenty-five dollars. The story is a long one, sister, but you have a sympathetic face and will advise me best of course of action to be taken to put this scheming rogue behind inhospitable bars.”

  “Oh God,” moaned Nabby Adams, “look who’s here.”

  Grinning with mad teeth, a thin brown man in a dhoti had arrived at the table. Without ceremony he made straight for the Bengali from the bazaar, abusing him in careful English.

  “And so I find you, cheat that you are, puffing yourself up in the company of the upper classes. And of the money that is rightfully mine you are without doubt not telling these ladies and gentlemen. Yet you would not be the rich man you now are had I not scraped the bottoms of my empty coffers to give help to one who seemed to be a friend. Friend!” He laughed drunkenly, scornfully, theatrically.

  “It is best to ignore such,” said the Bengali to Crabbe. “He will soon go away if he is ignored.”

  “I will not be ignored. The whole world shall know of moral turpitude of a false friend.”

  “I am no friend of drunkards,” said the Bengali with sneering scorn.

  “It is you who are drunken bastard too,” danced the other. “And false bastard. And liar. As your father were before you.”

  “You will not speak so of my father.”

  “And your mother also.”

  The Bengali rose. “Oh Christ,” said Nabby Adams. “Out of here quick.”

  “Banchoad!”

  The final insult. The Bengali’s launched punch sent the glasses and bottles flying. Nabby Adams led his party out hurriedly.

  “My dress!” screeched Fenella.

  “Never mind. Quick, over there, near them dancers. The police will be on the job in a minute.”

  They merged with the ronggeng-watchers.

  “Better get up on that platform,” said Nabby Adams, “and do a dance. Make out we’ve been dancing a long time.”

  “All of us?” said Crabbe.

  “You and me. He’s not up to it. Three parts pissed.”

  “But I can’t.”

  An electric-lighted dream-world. The Malays, who awaited their turns to dance, courteously let the two white men go before them. Crabbe saw the sweating faces of the band, rakish songkok over saxophone, a young haji playing the drums. In delirium he saw huge Nabby Adams, tall as a crumpled tower, stiffly backing and advancing, drawing and drawn by his pigmy partner, an invisible cat’s-cradle wound on wiggling dancing fingers. The crowd clapped and cheered.

  “Victor!” cried Fenella. “Victor! Come down!”

  But Crabbe was paralysed, staring with open mouth at Nabby Adams’s hip-wagging partner. A red bang of hair, a stylish sarong, a cheerful greeting to Crabbe—“Tabek, tuan”—skilled high-heeled shoes, an undulant bottom. It was Ibrahim.

  “Victor! Come down at once!”

  Soon, subdued, they sought their car and drove home. Nabby Adams drove. He was excessively careful, old-womanishly apprehensive—“What’s this man going to do now? Is he going to turn here or go straight on? I wish that bugger would make up his mind. Is this woman going to cross or isn’t she?”—but soon he steered the Abelard into the lighted porch of Light House. There was a pause. Then Nabby Adams said:

  “Do you mind if I come up and have a drink of water? I’m parched.”

  They went up. Nabby Adams was given a warm bottle of Tiger beer. Alladad Khan sat meditating, his head in his hands. Nabby Adams spoke l
ong rumbling Urdu to him. Alladad Khan groaned occasional answers. Fenella suddenly burst into tears and ran into the bedroom. Crabbe followed.

  “What’s the matter, dear?”

  “Oh, it’s no good, no good,” she wailed. “You try to mix with them and they take, they take …”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “…Advantage. Just because I’m the only white woman there. They think … They think …”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “…I’m a whore or something. And they start fights.” She wailed to the cobwebbed ceiling.

  “Never mind, dear.” Crabbe held her sweating, shaking body in his arms.

  “They wouldn’t do it … to the others.” She sniffed up tears. “It would be all mem, yes mem, no mem. …”

  “It doesn’t mean anything, dear.”

  “I’m going home,” said Fenella. “I can’t stand it. They’re all bad … all bad.”

  “We’ll discuss this afterwards, dear,” said Crabbe. “Now just wipe your eyes and come and say good-night to these two.”

  When Crabbe went back to his guests, his guests were no longer there. Or so it seemed. But then he heard pulsing contented snores from the veranda. On the planter’s chair Nabby Adams was stretched, overlapping greatly, asleep in crumpled shirt and slacks. He stirred, grunting, aware in his sleep of a presence, opened leathery eyelids and said a little in Urdu. Then he opened his eyes wider and said, “Just five minutes.” He closed them again, settled more comfortably to snore. It was the first of many five-minute naps, stretched by the principle of the relativity of time to dawn or near-dawn, he was to take in that house. From the lavatory loud retchings could be heard, prayers, moans, repentance. “Him,” said Nabby Adams in his sleep. “His art up.”

  Fenella came in to say good-night to her guests. She saw and heard.

  “Oh, it’s too bad,” she wailed.

  Nabby Adams groaned and requested silence in dream-Urdu.