“I will say nothing directly to your wife. I will merely hint at the singular appropriateness of your punishment.”
“I beg you to be quiet about it. See, I have food here in my locker. There are bananas and chocolate and a small jar of chicken essence. You are welcome to share these things with me.”
“I shall have many gifts coming to me from my friends. I do not need your bribes. I am satisfied, however, that justice has been done, and I will say no more about this very distasteful matter.”
Preetam and two small children came, two children of indeterminate sex, one wearing a topknot, the other dribbling in baby Punjabi. Preetam was a little fierce woman in silk trousers and a sari. There were loud and passionate greetings. Hari Singh was given fruit and cakes and a roll of magazines and newspapers. Some of the magazines were Chinese, a language which Hari Singh could not read, but they were full of photographs of cabaret girls and football stars. For Alladad Khan there were no visitors. He lay indifferently smoking, listening to the voluble family life of Hari Singh. The dribbling child came over to inspect Alladad Khan, leaving a deposit of melted chocolate on the bed-cover. Alladad Khan spoke very quiet English to it and the child went back to its father.
“Here,” said Hari Singh in loud generosity, “is a newspaper for you to read. It is in English but, doubtless, that will present no difficulties to one who has many English friends and has studied assiduously a certain book which he has not yet returned to me.”
“It shall be returned. Though why one so eloquent with his feet should consider a book of English words important I cannot understand.”
Hari Singh laughed loud and false. “He refers to my skill at football,” he explained to his wife.
Alladad Khan tried to read the Timah Gazette, but he could make out the meanings of very few words. Still, he pretended, for the benefit of Hari Singh, to be absorbed in a long article which was illustrated with the photograph of a large fish. His lips silently spelt imaginary words, and his frowning eyes read swiftly across and down. But, turning the page, he quickly became genuinely absorbed in a brief news item. There was a photograph of two happy people, one of whom he recognised immediately. Who could mistake the identity of that owner of large teeth, long nose and severe moustache? It was Abdul Khan. Yes, the news item confirmed it: Abdul Khan. … Abdul Khan … Officer Commanding Police District … Miss Margaret Tan … Singapore. Alladad Khan could read little else with understanding, but the photograph made all clear. The happy slit-eyes of the middle-aged-looking Chinese woman, her loving proximity to the person of Alladad Khan’s brother-in-law. So. He had married at last, so much was evident, and out of his clan. He, Alladad Khan, must do the right thing, must declare the solidarity of that proud house, but Abdul Khan was above such matters of honour, except vicariously, except when it was a question of getting his sister off his hands. Alladad Khan waited patiently till Preetam should make signs of departure. The hospital was a long way from Kuala Hantu, buses were infrequent, perhaps she would stay shrilling around with her chocolate-defiled brats till the rattle of the tiffin-trays. Thankfully, however, he heard her say soon that she had to go. The trade-van of Mohamed Zain, vendor of women’s medicines in Kuala Hantu, had come that morning early to Timah, and the driver had promised to stop for her on his way back. Now he, Alladad Khan, could expend a little forgiveness on Hari Singh and permit him to show off his English in a translation of this news item into Punjabi.
The valedictions were as voluble—all the bed-heat and lip-smacking of a marriage dug deep as a den—and nauseatingly exhibitionist as the salutations had been. Preetam was insistent that her husband take his chicken essence and keep up his strength, that he instruct the doctors and nurses to watch out for gangrene, that he demand to be weighed at frequent intervals. The children were kissed and crushed in podgy arms; then the wavings of hands and the heartfelt wishes that she should keep her courage up without him and he without her. Then the ward became quiet again.
Alladad Khan said, “Would you care to translate this for me? There are certain words I cannot clearly make out. My eyes are watering because of the immense pain in my arm.”
Hari Singh said, “Courage, brother. Pain comes to all of us at some time or other. No man can escape. Some flying into danger in full awareness, as, for instance, myself; others adventitiously. Let me see what it is you want me to explain to you.” Hari Singh put on large reading glasses and then translated slowly. Alladad Khan lay back, listening. So. A hole-in-the-corner marriage in a registry office in Singapore. No guests. A Chinese Christian, daughter of a man rich in rubber. Allah, he had done well, the swine. Whereas he, Alladad Khan …
“But I knew of this,” said Hari Singh. “I learn these things because I have many influential and well-informed friends. I could have told you before had you cared to ask me of news of your brother-in-law, but you so rarely betray interest in his doings. There is a man who has got on, who has a great future before him. He was good enough to ask me to join some friends of his at a bachelor party he held a week or so before the wedding. I was unable to attend, having family commitments and not being a drinking man. But I understand from one of those present, a Chinese Inspector, that the whisky flowed and that your brother-in-law outdid any there in his ability to imbibe and contain. He is surely a man who will get on.”
Alladad Khan was silent. His resentment began slowly to modulate first into relief, then into elation. At last he had a powerful weapon to wield against his wife. There would be no more talk of the virtues of Abdul Khan, no more threats about transfers to Abdul Khan’s district, no more deprecations of God’s wrath at his, Alladad Khan’s, harmless transgressions and impieties. He, Alladad Khan, could now pose as the injured, the man who had sacrificed wealth for the good of the clan, the man who had been true to the traditions of his fathers. He, Alladad Khan, had not gone whoring after women who worshipped a filthy and uncircumcised God, because of a lust for the things of Mammon. And what if he, Alladad Khan, did drink a little and seek to broaden his mind through intercourse with the cultivated? He deserved something occasionally to soothe the wounds inflicted by the behaviour of one whom he had, previously, been taught to regard as the ideal Khan, the Khan in the mind of God. He, Alladad Khan, had been let down. His saint had been revealed as one of the shameful shoddy ikons that the Prophet himself had denounced and cursed at Mecca itself. He, Alladad Khan, had been very ill done to. Shot at by Communists in the pursuit of his duty, the duty that was the means of providing curry and chapattis to sleek her coy body, to convert to milk for her milky brat. Allah, there was no question of it now. He, Alladad Khan, would be master in his own barrack quarters.
He lay back smiling, dreaming of the new life, the life which was to start almost at once, as soon, in fact, as she came to visit him. He tasted, in imagination, her tears of shame and chagrin. He heard the cracked voice of penitence. He heard his own voice, the voice of her master, saying with lordly disdain or kindly condescension:
“I shall be out all night. I may be out all to-morrow night. If I should return drunk you will prepare for me that potent Western medicine called a Prairie Oyster. You will have it waiting for me.”
Or:
“If you cannot learn to behave properly you will be packed off to stay with your relatives in Kuala Lumpur until you have considered sufficiently of the demeanour appropriate to wifely status.”
Or:
“Yes, you have little entertainment, God knows. I propose to invite your brother and sister-in-law to a party in these our quarters. You will please to buy a bottle of whisky for this occasion, for your brother is inordinately fond of that beverage.”
Or:
“Divorce may be uncommon in the Punjab, but we are living at present in Malaya, whose streets are infested with the mendicant wraiths of wives who did not please their husbands. I assure you, I shall not think twice about it when I grow tired of you. Then perhaps I may follow the high example of your brother and instal a rich Chinese woman
in my bed.”
Or:
But that would do for the present. A happy time stretched ahead for Alladad Khan. He would now sleep for a while and let Hari Singh rumble on to himself about the rights of Sikhs and the short-sightedness of Promotion Boards.
14
“AND IF YOU did say you knew anything about it at all you’d be a bloody liar,” said Flaherty with a kind of epileptic vigour. “See the world, man. Get out into the highways and byways. The East,” he waved and twisted his arms ceilingwards in snake-dance gestures, “the bloody East. And this is no more the East than that bloody boot lying over there.” He pointed with a stiff shaking arm in a soap-box orator’s denunciatory gesture. “Now, I know the East. I was in it. Palestine Police from the end of the war till we packed up.”
Nabby Adams groaned from his narrow bed. If only he hadn’t annoyed the Crabbes by drinking a whole bottle of gin before breakfast the previous week-end he might now be lying on that hospitable planter’s chair on their veranda. As it was, he had to hear Flaherty burn away the hours of sleep in long drunken monologues. It was now nearly four in the morning, and there was nothing to drink.
“Why can’t you get to flaming bed?” said Nabby Adams.
“Bed? Bed? Listen who’s talking about bed. Never in his bed from one week’s end to the other, and just because he decides to honour the bloody establishment with his noble presence for once in a way he thinks he can rule the bloody roost and tell his superiors how to run their own lives. I’m telling you, I’m telling you,” said Flaherty, pointing with the blunt finger of the hell-fire preacher, “I’m telling you that the end isn’t far off, not far off at all. I’ve watched you go down the bloody drain, inch by inch of dirty water. I’ve looked after you like it might be your own mother, I’ve rescued the perishing on more occasions than one, I’ve nursed you and taught you the right road, but what thanks do I ever get? I’ve tried to educate you, you ignorant sod, telling you about the places I’ve been and them bints I’ve been with, and giving you a bit of intelligent conversation where another man would say, ‘Let him stew in his own juice, for ignorance is bliss,’ but I’ve never got as much as a word of gratitude out of your big toothless mouth. I’ve spent good money on you, I’ve covered up for you, I’ve warned you, but you remain what you always were, a big drunken sod who leads good men astray and hasn’t an ounce of decency of feeling or of gratitude for the acts of a friend in his whole blasted big body.” Flaherty glared from frowning eyes, panting.
“Did you bring any beer back, Paddy?” asked Nabby Adams.
“Beer? Beer?” Flaherty screamed and danced. “I’ll take my dying bible that if it was the Day of Judgment itself and the dead coming out of their graves and we all of us lined up for the bloody sentence and He in His awe and majesty as of a flame of fire standing in the clouds of doomsday, all you’d be thinking about would be where you could get a bottle of blasted Tiger. There’ll be beer where you’re going to at the last,” promised Flaherty, dripping with prophetic sweat. “There’ll be cases and cases and barrels and barrels of it and it’ll all be tasting of the ashes of hell in your mouth, like lava and brimstone, scalding your guts and your stomach, so that you’ll be screaming for a drop of cold water from the hands of Lazarus himself, and he in Abraham’s bosom on the throne of the righteous.”
Nabby Adams was transfixed with a pang of thirst like a Teresan sword. The sharp image of that eschatological drouth made him raise himself groaning from his bed of fire. The dog clanked under the bed, ready for any adventure, stretching herself with a dog’s groan as she appeared from behind the tattered slack of the mosquito-net. They plodded downstairs together, pursued by the oracular voice of Flaherty.
“Look at yourself, man. Pains in your back, and your teeth dropping out and your bloody big feet hardly able to touch the floor. And that scabby old mongrel clanking after you like a bloody ball and chain. It’s coming, I tell you. The end of the world’s coming for you.”
The raw light of the naked bulb showed dust and boot-mud in the empty living-room, the glacial off-white of the refrigerator’s door, dirtied by ten years of lurching drunken shoulders and succour-seeking hands that groped for the lavatory. Nabby Adams drank water from one of the bottles that stood in a chilled huddle. (Neither food nor beer waited in the grid-ironed body of the big icy cupboard.) Nabby Adams gulped, wincing as odd teeth lit up with momentary pain.
Lim Kean Swee $470
Chee Sin Hye $276
Wun Fatt Titt $128
Nabby Adams drank his fill, feeling his stomach churn and bubble, feeling the real thirst thirstily return. He plodded upstairs again, his dog after him, and found Flaherty out on the floor, burbling prayers to the Virgin, cluttering up Nabby Adams’s bedroom. Nabby Adams looked with contemptuous distaste and decided that Flaherty had better stay there. The dog thought differently. She growled and tried to bite, but Nabby Adams soothed her with:
“All right, Cough. Let the lucky bugger alone.”
Nabby Adams then considered it a good idea to have a look in Flaherty’s room. After all, if Flaherty made free with his, Nabby Adams’s, room, it was only fair that he should return the compliment. Nabby Adams did not believe that Flaherty had brought nothing back with him from the Malay Regiment Sergeants’ Mess.
Flaherty’s room was tidier than that of Nabby Adams. Hair-brushes were arranged carefully on either side of a clean comb, and a pair of recently pressed trousers lay over a chair-back. On the wall was a picture of Flaherty, made by an Arab artist on a cartographical principle. Gridlines had been ruled over a passport photograph, and then, square by enlarged square, the face had been transferred in horrid magnification on to a large sheet of cartridge paper. The artist had given Flaherty a preternaturally high colour, somehow suggesting a painted corpse, and added, from imagination, sloping shoulders and a big red tie. This portrait smiled without pleasure at Nabby Adams as he began his search. There was no beer in the wardrobe, nor under the bed, nor in four of the drawers of the dressing-table. But the fifth drawer revealed treasure. Nabby Adams looked, like hungry Gulliver eyeing Lilliputian sirloins, at a neat collection of tiny bottles containing single glassfuls of various liqueurs. There were about a dozen of these bottles, all different, some round, some square, some doubly bulbous, some fluting up from a globular bottom. Nabby Adams surveyed them all with pity. Poor devil, he thought. His litlle collection, saved up as a boy saves up fireworks against Guy Fawkes Night, to be gloated over in solitude, fingered and smoothed lovingly before bedtime. Poor bugger.
Nabby Adams ingested successively Cherry Brandy, Drambuie, Crème de Menthe, Cointreau, John Haig, Benedictine, Three Star, Sloe Gin, Kümmel, Kirsch. The terrible thirst abated somewhat, and Nabby Adams soon had leisure to feel shame. So he had come to this: stealing a child’s toys, as good as robbing a gollywog money-box, in order to slake his selfish and inordinate hunger. Leaving the bottles stacked neatly in the drawer—they still looked pretty—he returned to his own room, his dog after him. There lay Flaherty, flat out, his face contorted to a mask of deep thought. Nabby Adams found a paper packet of Capstan in Flaherty’s shirt-pocket, and, lighting himself a crushed and creased tube, lay again under the mosquito-net, taking stock of himself.
It had, perhaps, not been a very edifying life. On the booze in England, in India, in Malaya. Always owing, often drunk, sometimes incapable. Three times in hospital, three times warned solemnly to cut it out. What had he achieved? He knew nothing of anything really. A bit about motor-engines, army discipline, grave-digging, undertaking, sleeper-laying, boot-and-shoe manufacture, turf clerking, bus-conducting, Urdu grammar, organ-pumping, women, neck massage, but little else. There was this Crabbe, with a lot of books and talking about music and this ology and that ology. And there was he, Nabby Adams, whose only reading was the daily paper, who had only possessed three books in his life. One had been called The Something-or-other of the Unconscious which a bloke called Ennis had left in the guard-room and everybody had said w
as hot stuff, though it wasn’t really; one had been a Hindustani glossary of motor-engine parts; the other had been a funny book called Three Men in a Boat. There was nothing to show, nothing. Only moral debts and debts of money, only imagined miles of empties and cigarette-ends.
Nabby Adams heard the bilal calling over the dark, saying that there was no God but Allah. Another day was starting for the faithful. But for the faithless it was better that the night should prolong itself, even into the sunlight of Sunday morning. If he had been at the Crabbes’ place he would be stirring gently now in delicious sleep, fully dressed, on the planter’s chair. And then that boy of the Crabbes, or, as it was now, that amah of theirs, would bring him a cup of tea in gentle morning light. Unless, of course, Cough happened to be guarding the chair, in which case jealous growls would send the tea back. And then a couple of gins for breakfast and then the first beers of the day in a kedai. Nabby Adams looked back to a week ago as to an innocent childhood. He had been driven out of that Eden as his father had been driven out of his, because of his sinful desire to taste what was forbidden. In his, Nabby Adams’s, case, not an apple but the bottom of the solitary bottle of gin. In shame and anger he fell asleep, to lie abounden in a bond of dreams of a happy, coloured India, safe in the far past.
He awoke at first light to hear moans from the floor and growls from under the bed. Flaherty had come to, parched and sick and stiff as a board.
“Oh God, my bloody back. I’m paralysed, man, my face has gone all dead. Oh, why did you leave me here? Why didn’t you show the act of a Christian and put me to bed, as you knew was your duty? Oh, I’m going to die.” Flaherty tottered out. Nabby Adams heard a heavy weight collapsing on bed-springs, a groan or two, then silence.
He awoke again when the sun had made the air all lemon-yellow and begun to taint the damp coolness. A figure stood by the bed, stealthily drinking tea. Through glued eyelids Nabby Adams saw Jock Keir, mean as bloody dirt, stealing the cup of tea which the cook-boy had brought for Nabby Adams. Stealing it because he knew that Nabby Adams rarely touched tea, because, saving heavily, Keir refused to pay anything for messing and preferred to send out for a single day’s meal of fifty cents’ worth of curry. Nabby Adams closed his eyes again.
The Malayan Trilogy Page 17
