The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  “Drunk on toddy every night.”

  “I reckon we ought to do a bit more and then lay off.”

  “All right. Till that monkey’s finished throwing those nuts down from that tree over there. And then lay off.”

  They watched for a moment a berok, or coconut monkey, hurling down nuts to its master. The master gave it sharp orders, telling it only to pick the young soft-fleshed nuts. With an ill grace it obeyed. Languidly the two workmen pounded the road with their heavy tools, whatever they were called, the loose ends of their head-cloths agitated by the faint breeze.

  The white man in the car sped on towards the town. Rupert Hardman was very much a white man, and all too aware of it. His skin was deficient in pigment, but only in moments of extreme depression, when pale eyes stared back bitterly from the mirror, did he call himself an albino. He was not quite that, there was just a rather unusual deficiency in pigmentation. A day on the beach and his thin body grew angry and peeled in its rage. His face grew tatters of curling white-tipped scarf-skin. His body, in spite of himself, sheered away from the sun as a cat, stiff with distended claws, sheers away from bathwater.

  Perhaps it was only right that, nature having done one thing, war should finish things off. Rupert Hardman fingered with his left hand the skin around his nose and mouth. It was an old habit, ten years old. He had crashed towards the end of the war and his face had been ravaged by fire. The white man had been burnt alive. He still remembered the smell of the Sunday roast, he the joint, the cockpit the oven. Walking down the English suburban street, after eleven o’clock mass, with doors open to the warm family dinner smell, had always brought it back, and he had regularly escaped to the pub, just open at twelve, to drink cold beer. They said the doctors had done a marvellous job. The nurses cooed, perhaps a bit too much. When he plunged into the mirror he had not been displeased. Could you call it Rupert Hardman? That didn’t seem to matter. It was an acceptable face, especially under the peaked officer’s cap which hid the pale hair. And then leave.

  In the village pub, the silly girl had greeted him and said:

  “Ow, what’s happened to you? You look like you’ve torn your fice and sewn it up yourself. Ever so funny.”

  But Crabbe hadn’t looked as if he’d noticed. Crabbe had never noticed very much, though, the world of sensory phenomena meaning less to Crabbe than the world of idea and speculation. So it had been at the University, when Hardman, in his first year, had gone to hear Crabbe talk to the Communist Group, Crabbe the well-known and brilliant, for whom everyone prophesied a First. Crabbe had had no interest in the coming revolution, no love for the proletariat, only an abstract passion for the dialectical process, which he applied skilfully to everything. But Crabbe, as Hardman remembered, had been interested in a girl: a dark girl, small, usually dressed in a jumper and a tweed skirt, animated, talented, a student of music. Surely Crabbe had intended to marry this girl? Surely, now he came to think of it, Crabbe did marry this girl, during the war? Yet this woman whom he had met today, introduced as Mrs. Crabbe, was tall and fair and vaguely patrician. Not, thought Hardman, really Crabbe’s type at all. This chance meeting stirred up the whole past in Hardman’s mind as he drove expertly on to the town. The palm trees and the brown bodies and the China Sea became, despite the years of familiarity, suddenly strange, genuinely exotic, and he saw himself from the outside, driving a car in a Malay State to a Malay town, having spent the night in another Malay town where he had conducted the defence in a Malayan court, his home Malaya, his income—such as it was—derived from Malayan clients, wondering how the hell all this had happened, what he was doing here anyway, and thinking, with a sudden start of sweat that had nothing to do with the heat, that he was really imprisoned here, couldn’t raise a passage to England, and if he returned there what was he to do anyway?

  Yet Crabbe had brought back a whiff of nostalgia. Old oak in cool musty chambers, periodicals that were press-wet, not five weeks late, the queue for the ballet, a live orchestra, draught beer, ice on the roads and not just in the ice-box. Europe. “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” That was Tennyson. It would have done that bearded gin-guzzling shag-smoking laureate of the antimacassars a lot of good to come out here and …

  Cycles along Jalan Laksamana, main street of Kenching, and there the Cathay Cinema advertising an Indonesian film called Hati Ibu—‘A Mother’s Heart’. A huge brown weeping face and, in the background of the poster, the rising generation in jeans and Hawaiian shirts, off for a spree, forgetting the old ways, unmoved by a mother’s tears. In the next-door kiosk a sulky ripe Malay girl offered lottery tickets for sale. Sweat shone on the lean shoulders of a turbaned fisherman, his silver-gleaming catch hanging from a pole. There was loud leisurely chaffering in the market over rambutans, aubergines, red and green peppers, Chinese oranges, white cabbages, dried fish-strips and red-raw buffalo-meat. The smells rose into the high blue coastal air. Hardman turned left and made for the Grand Hotel, and the reek of the river greeted him.

  He wondered what it would feel like to be a Muslim, even in name only, and what sort of a life he could have with her. He seemed to be letting Europe down. Was it for this that the Crusades had been fought and Aquinas had tamed the Aristotelian beast into a Summa? But money was more important than faith. At least, now it was. Faith could come later.

  In the hotel Auntie’s husky whisky-bloom bass boomed down the telephone. She stood, as though speaking down the telephone in a play, on a kind of dais before an audience of Asian tea-drinkers. She had a vast flattened bosom and red hanging jowls and, as she spoke, her fat shook.

  “I have my way to pay too. I have my creditors to meet. If you cannot afford to drink then you should not drink. Besides, it is forbidden by your religion to drink. That makes it all the more worse that you should run up debts. I know, I know. At the end of last month you promise me too. And now it is the end of another month. I have it here.” She intoned to the tea-drinkers: “Che Abdul Kadir bin Mohamed Salleh. Haji Ali College. One hundred and fifty-five dollars.” The tea-drinkers listened, the slightest pain of sympathy in their eyes. One or two men took down the name on cigarette packets. Blackmailers? Agents of the Supreme Council of Islam?

  “Tomorrow,” said Auntie. “Tomorrow at the latest. There are men up the road with little axes. They are only too glad to earn two, three dollars. To them to strike a man with an axe, it is nothing. It is to them an honest living.” Calmly she put down the receiver. Her turtle-lidded eyes caught Rupert Hardman escaping up the stairs.

  “Mr. Hardman.”

  “Oh, hello, Auntie.” Rupert Hardman turned at the stair-head, a great nervous boyish smile on his thin face.

  Auntie’s heart melted, as it always did. Her huge body seemed to sag at the joints, as with incipient fever. “I will come up,” she said, “just for a moment.”

  She mounted the stairs, pausing at each step, pausing at each phrase. “All the time money trouble. That is the big disease of Malaya. Not TB. Not malaria. And you are as bad.” The banister groaned. “As the rest.”

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Auntie. Just wait, that’s all.”

  “I wait. I go on waiting. I think I wait too long.”

  Rupert Hardman entered his little room and switched on the bedside fan. The blades whirred comfortingly and coolly and the upper structure of the fan moved sedately from side to side, shedding coolness with royal bounty, now here, now there, crassly impartial. Hardman lay on the bed and looked up at the new blue distemper of the ceiling.

  “You do not take off your shoes,” said Auntie, entering. “You put dirt on the bed. That makes a lot of laundry.”

  “You always tickle my feet.”

  “There were perhaps men who were glad to have their feet tickled by me.” Auntie lowered her bulk on to the single chair.

  “When was that, Auntie, and where was that? When you danced the czardas with Admiral Horthy? When Petrograd was a snowy furry fairyland?”

  �
��And what is to become of me here, sixty already, and nothing saved up, and the bills coming in and nobody paying their bills?”

  “Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London? Or nothing so exotic. Say, after schnapps and rijstafel in some Djakarta joint. I want to sleep. I’ve had a tiring two days. And I’ve eaten nothing.”

  “How can you eat when you pay no bills? Credit does not last for ever.”

  “Auntie,” said Hardman, “I shall pay my bill.” He suddenly felt hopeless and excited. “In full. And then it is quite certain that I shall go somewhere where they are not always asking for money. Somewhere where they will give me money.”

  “There.” She came over and sat at the foot of the bed. “You get worried. I do not forget what Redshaw and Tubb did for me in Singapore. They are a very good firm. It is such a pity you got out of them. You would now be sitting pretty.”

  “They were a lot of blasted rogues. Sharp practice. I don’t want to talk about them.”

  “And so. Because they get me off they are a lot of blasted rogues. So.” Auntie rang the bell on the wall by the bed.

  “It’s not that. I’m not concerned with morals. Not as a lawyer. If you wanted to run what you did run it’s your own affair. I suppose it’s as honest as anything else.”

  “What I did run?” Auntie let out a pint of indignant air. “It was legitimate business. I only say you were a fool to get out of a firm like that. To be a lawyer on your own, that needs money. You have to have an office. How can you afford an office when you cannot pay my bills even?”

  “I shall pay my bills. I shall get an office. And very soon. God help me.”

  “These two days then, you have been getting money?”

  “Yesterday,” said Rupert Hardman, incisively, forensically, “I had a case down south in the State of Kelantan, in the chief town of Kota Bharu. There, Auntie, I met nice people and stayed in a nice hotel kept by a very nice Russian lady, a lady who said I need not hurry about paying my bill, because she knew of my great ability and said that my credit was good. The case I had was a case of rape. It was a small Chinese shopkeeper who had taken advantage of one of his Malay assistants. I tell you this to prove to you that I have briefs. That means fees. But I cannot force my clients to pay any quicker than they wish to pay. One must be leisurely in these matters. One must give the impression that one can wait for ever for the fees.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Auntie, soothingly. There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” she called. “I mean, masok.”

  Rupert Hardman laughed, his good humour somewhat restored. The Chinese Number One boy came in. “Whisky,” said Auntie.

  “And a raw beef sandwich,” added Hardman. “Masok,” he laughed. At the door the boy hesitated. “No, no, no,” said Hardman, “I didn’t mean you.” The boy went out. “I meant this case of rape. The prosecution went on about had he done this and had he done that, and had there been any attempt to, shall we say, force his attentions on her, and had he perhaps been importunate in demanding her favours, and had there finally, let me see, this is most embarrassing, had he, shall we say, succeeded, if one may use the term, in effecting, let us say, any degree of penetration. The interpreter listened very patiently and then he just asked the girl, ‘Sudah masok?’ and she replied, quick as a flash, ‘Sudah.’

  “Masok!” shrieked Auntie, all trembling jelly. The boy was standing patiently with the drinks. “Sudah masok,” he said patiently.

  “Yes, yes, yes.” Auntie coughed gargantuanly. “Now you can go out.”

  “Raw beef sandwiches,” said Rupert Hardman, “with a raw onion.”

  Auntie turned to Hardman, came closer, put a huge mottled paw on his thin ankle. “It is not that I mind about the money. Your money, to me it means nothing. I am always grateful to Redshaw and Tubb.”

  “But I’m no longer with Redshaw and Tubb.”

  “Yes,” said Auntie vaguely. “I see that. But there are so many ways in which you can help me. You are a young man of education. You are friendly with many Europeans.”

  “That’s not going to count much from now on. Expatriates are going to have their throats cut.”

  “Ach.” Auntie frowned hugely. “That is all nonsense. The Europeans will never go.”

  “They said that in Indonesia. Look at it now.” Rupert Hardman poured water from the thermos jug into his whisky. “Where the hell are my sandwiches?” He petulantly drank the sharp cool potion.

  “For example, you know women. Nice women. Women who are well-dressed and of education.”

  “Yes, Auntie?” Hardman looked up at her, smiling sweetly, gently.

  “And gentlemen, of course. We want nice people to come here. There are nice business men who come from Bangkok, they want to meet nice people. Nice English people.”

  “Yes, Auntie.”

  “This could be a nice place. People drinking cocktails and laughing and talking very gay. Refined dinner-parties. And dancing to the radiogram.”

  “And nice refined seduction afterwards?”

  Auntie boiled with large sudden anger. “Ach. You have only dirty thoughts in your mind. About me you have always had such thoughts.”

  “No, Auntie,” said Hardman, sweetly, seriously. “I really and truly haven’t.”

  Auntie smiled roguishly, hideously, and tweaked Hardman’s ankle. “You are a bad boy,” she said.

  The boy came in with the sandwiches. Hardman devoured them wholemeal, munching with the swollen cheeks of a child. Auntie said, “You eat only sandwiches. Tonight you must eat a hot meal, with a spoon. There is chicken curry. With gula Melaka to follow.”

  “I shall eat out.”

  “You will not get much to eat with what you have in your pockets.”

  “There are many places where they’re only too pleased for me to run up bills.”

  The Number Two boy came in to say that the Crown Prince was on the telephone. Something about a mah jong game. Auntie said, “Ach,” and made her fat stately way to the door. “At least,” she said, turning, “you are not in debt to me for mah jong. That is more than the Crown Prince can say.”

  When she had gone Hardman took off his clothes and slept restlessly for an hour or two. He could hear clearly through his dreams the quarrelling of the Chinese couple in the next room, the crying of a child opposite, the oscillations and intermittent bursts of Hindi song from the radio down the corridor. His dreams were vague and historical. He was the Saracen spy in the entourage of Richard Cœur de Lion. He was a Spanish propagandist of the subtle doctrines of Averroes. As he was waking in the rose of the brief evening he was the muezzin announcing that there was no God but Allah. But the muezzin was outside, calling the sunset prayer from the loudspeaker opposite the Bank. He remembered he had an appointment, so he arose, showered his meagre body, and changed his trousers and shirt. He also put on a tie, remembering that he was an Englishman in the tropics. He was not in the Colonial Service, but he was still a white man. A very white man.

  Early dusk was on the town. Hardman crossed the road, dodging trishaws and homeward cycles. He sought a drinking kedai, climbing steps to reach the high covered pavement that was snug above the flood-level. The monsoon was far off, months and months of sun stretched before him, heat in which the fine logic of the law-books would blur. But he would soon, he hoped, be settled in, with a name-plate outside and the law-books gathering mould on their shelves, litigation creaking on under the heavy indifferent rains or the big brassy law-abiding sun.

  The kedai was gloomy, empty save for the man that Hardman had arranged to meet. The creased moon-faced Chinese grinned above his glass of beer at the marble table. The table bore a saucer of small bananas and a smoky glass case of pastries. The big beer-bottle was half-full and the Chinese called for another glass.

  “Have you decided about the rent?” asked Hardman.

  “Thirty-five dollars a week.”

  “That’s a bit heavy. After all, the position isn’t all that good.”

  “Law
yers make much money.”

  “This one doesn’t.”

  “And also two thousand key-money.”

  “That’s a bit thick.”

  “I should ask three thousand.”

  “It’s not strictly legal, you know, to ask anything. You should be satisfied with a month’s rent in advance.”

  “That is what is usually done. It is the custom. Custom is a kind of law.”

  “But two thousand dollars!”

  “I have many inquiries about the shop. There were two men around today. One said he was very interested and would talk about it with his wife and see me tomorrow.” Rupert Hardman sipped his beer. It tasted very bitter. He owed three months’ rent for Club chambers in Kuala Lumpur. He owed for his car. He owed various hotel bills. He had spent too much money on a girl called Enid.

  “You wish not to take the premises?”

  “No. Yes. Wait.” Hardman looked at the small quizzical eyes, Chinese eyes, eyes of an alien code of ethics, eyes he could look at but never look into. Better fifty years of Europe. “I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Early. I think I’ll be taking the premises. It’s a question of getting the money together.”

  “Cash.”

  “Hung,” said a voice like a gong. “Hardman, you bastard.” A small brown man with huge teeth and a wide-gated moustache was upon him, embracing him with loving arms and a rough cheek. It was Haji Zainal Abidin. “Hardman, the bastard,” he announced, “who threw the Koran on the floor and put his heel on it. The man with no respect for another man’s religion.”

  “That’s not true,” said Hardman. “You threw it on the floor yourself. You said the Koran was too sacred to be translated. You said an English Koran was blasphemy. You stamped on it.”

  “No respect for another man’s religion,” said Haji Zainal Abidin. “He has seen the light. I have shown him the light. But still he has a prepuce.” He laughed raucously, showing a red throat and uncountable teeth. “That is a good word,” he said. “I said that today to my boss. ‘Mr. Cheesy,’ I said, ‘the time is coming when there will be no prepuces left in our country. The prepuces,’ I said, ‘will be sent home with their owners.’ ‘And what is a prepuce?’ he said.” Haji Zainal Abidin laughed loud and harsh. “To think that I speak the white man’s tongue better than the white man.”