“What a greedy boy you are. Just like Herbert. Come on then, let’s empty things on to plates.” She led him into the kitchen.
Sawing at bread she cut her finger. That was to be expected also. “Oh, look, blood! Dripping over everything. Oh dear, dear, I can’t stand the sight of it.” She danced prettily up and down, enticing him to say: “Poor little finger. Let me kiss the blood off.”
“Run some water over it,” said Crabbe.
“Oh, well, if it drips into the beetroot it won’t show, will it? And nobody will know, will they? Except you and me.” Crabbe felt curiously uneasy, as if the harmless canned provisions were the raw materials of necromancy. He remembered Dahaga’s sinister reputation for magic, but then shook the silly fancy away. After all, it was her blood, not his.
When they got back to the lounge, carrying two tray-loads of plates, they found Talbot in the middle of one of his own poems. He was intoning harshly and without nuances from a heavily corrected manuscript:
“…Cracks open the leaden corncrake sky with crass, angelic
Wails as round as comfruit, sharp as crowfoot, claw-foot,
Rash, brash, loutish gouts of lime or vinegar strokes
Till the crinkled fish start from their lace of bone. …”
Fenella sat with her head lowered, embarrassed. So adolescent. And yet the theme was not the lustful itch of adolescence. The subject was food, sheer food. It was a picture of Talbot at breakfast or a chipped-potato supper. Or probably all meals coalesced with him in an orgy of thick bread-and-marge and an array of sauce-bottles. The poem rang with the bells that called Pavlov’s dogs to salivation. Fenella was sensitive to the harmonics of words. She was a poet herself.
Talbot looked up brightly at the loaded trays. “A bit peckish,” he said. “I had lunch early.” Then he speared a sausage and spooned out mixed pickles.
“Now,” said Crabbe, “tell me all about it.”
“Yes.” Talbot caught a trio of sardines and bathed them in pickle-sauce. “Yes. You mean about Haji Ali College?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was named after Haji Ali.”
“One of the great men of the State?”
“Yes. I see you know all about it.”
“No.”
Talbot squirled a couple of anchovies in. “A hero chiefly because he once cheated a Chinese shopkeeper. By God, that takes some doing. But also he was a poor boy who made good. He graduated from sneak-thief, axe-man and occasional pirate to haji.” The word haji seemed to induce appetite in Talbot. He took in a dessertspoonful of mustard pickle and continued through saffron lips: “He reformed and determined that his last theft should enable him to make the pilgrimage. By God, he did it. He went to Mecca and came back with a turban. Then he became town magician and I gather he was pretty good. He cured the Sultan of …”
“Darling, not while our guests are eating.”
“Anyway, when he died there was universal mourning. Drums going all night, black kids sacrificed to obscure Hindu gods. Then they started building this school. At first the idea was to call it after the Abang, but Haji Ali’s ghost appeared to the workmen and things began to go wrong. You know the sort of thing—scaffolding rotting at the roots and the bricks condemned as pure jelly.” Bewildered, Talbot looked around and finally lit on a jar of Brand’s Chicken Essence. He poured some into tomato juice, added salt, and drank with a sigh. “Got to watch vitamins. Bulk isn’t enough. That’s where the Malays make a mistake. Rice, rice and more rice.”
“But look at their waist-lines, dear.”
“Anyway, to continue. The whole damn structure fell down, a month off opening day. A workman said that Haji Ali had appeared to him in a dream and sworn at him in Arabic. The workman said that he had had a vision—the school appeared as a vast fish curry at a huge feast of workmen. Then Haji Ali arrived, amid cheers, and he poured a sort of thin chutney over the whole thing. But the whole thing went up in smoke, leaving a big ruin of white rice. And the voice of the Lord was heard in a kind of stereophonic sound, saying: ‘Woe to the children of the scripture, for their aspirations shall become as garlic on the wind.’ And so they thought it better to re-name the College, and everything went right, and there’s been no trouble since.”
“Tell me about it,” said Crabbe.
“Well.” Talbot cut a slice of tinned cheese. “You’ve got about a thousand pupils and a staff of Malays, Indians, Chinese and Eurasians. They’re all going to hate your guts, especially the Senior Master. He’s a Tamil called Jaganathan, and he was definitely promised the headship when Foss went home. Of course, it was only an electioneering promise, and that sort of promise doesn’t mean a thing, but these poor devils had never had an election before, and they genuinely believed all that stuff about cutting the white man’s throat. Poor old Jaganathan drummed up a lot of votes for the man who made the promise about the headship, so you can understand how he’s going to feel about you.”
“It’s hardly my fault, is it? People shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep. Besides, this Jaganathan doesn’t sound too bright.”
“He’s not, but that doesn’t matter. He’s been in the college for fifteen years, he’s got a lot of contacts, and he’s well in with the local magic boys. You’ve heard about those?”
“A little. Do you mean he’s going to stick pins in my image?”
“He might.” Comfortably Talbot looked round the fast-emptying plates and finally settled on a huge red round of beetroot. He put this whole into his mouth. As he talked it lolled for a second or two like an extra tongue. Mrs. Talbot smiled grimly at Crabbe, and Crabbe began to feel warmer towards her. “Anyway, he’s not a graduate. Of course, nobody sees that that’s important. They all think that our skin is our only piece of parchment. We carry our whiteness like a diploma. I say, that’s not bad. I can use that.”
“And the house?” asked Fenella.
“It’s a good house. The situation may seem rather peculiar, because it looks as though it’s set in the middle of a kampong. But that was because of Foss. He used to encourage the Malays to come and sit on his veranda and he’d tell them stories about the great world beyond the seas. Foss was a bit touched. A bachelor, you know. Never drank, never went to the Club. He had a vision of himself as a kind of saviour of the down-trodden brown man. He gave money away right and left, and it wasn’t long before the local Malays began to carry their houses and dump them down near his, so that he became the centre of a whole new kampong. You’ve seen them do that, have you? The whole damn village carrying a house on their shoulders, yelling like mad. They do it a lot round here. Portable kampongs.”
“Perhaps now that we’ve come they’ll carry them away again,” said Crabbe.
“Well, that’s up to you, old boy. You’ll see them coming round tonight, ready for a bed-time story. I shouldn’t give them the brush-off if I were you. They’re a touchy lot and they carry axes.”
“Look,” said Fenella, “when’s the next plane back?”
“But old Foss wasn’t so Malay-struck that he didn’t provide himself with one of the best Chinese cooks in the State. I’ve had some marvellous meals there. I tried to entice him away, but he wouldn’t come. Says he’s too old to start chopping and changing now. So he goes with the house.”
“Do you mean to say that we have a first-class cook laid on?” said Crabbe.
“You’re lucky, old man. Ah Wing is the goods. He’s a bit cracked, of course, laughing away to himself all the time, and he’s a bit deaf, so that it’s no good giving him any orders. Just let him carry on in his own way, and you’ll be more than satisfied.”
“Well,” said Crabbe. He sat back, dazed. “I can hardly wait.”
“I’m going home,” said Fenella. “I’m definitely going home. As soon as you can book me a passage.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Talbot, happy and replete. “You’re going to love it here. You just wait and see.”
“Just wait and see,” said Mrs. Talb
ot with some bitterness. “It’s a white woman’s paradise.”
“Well, if you’ll forgive me,” said Talbot, “I’ve got to be on my way. You know the tradition. Chinese New Year they like you to drop in and have the odd bite with them and a glass of whisky. I’ve got several calls to make. Do come and see us again when you’re settled in. I must read you some more of my verse, Mrs. Bishop.”
“Crabbe,” said Fenella.
“I beg your pardon?” Talbot looked vaguely insulted.
“Can you take us to the house?” said Crabbe. “Our car’s still on its way. Besides, we just don’t know our way around.” He glanced at Mrs. Talbot. “Topographically, I mean.”
“Delighted,” said Talbot. He went ahead, his plenilunar buttocks tight in the very short shorts. “This your luggage?”
“Thank you so much,” said Crabbe, smiling with his mouth at Mrs. Talbot who lay languid in her armchair, “for your hospitality.”
“Delighted,” she said. “Any time. I like being hospitable.”
4
’CHE NORMAH BINTE Abdul Aziz was supervising the clearing-up after the party. It was a party that had ended early; the last maudlin protestations of eternal amity, the trite philosophisings, the long visits to the back-yard jamban rebuked by the false-dawn call of the muezzin. The clearing-up was prolonged and squeamish: there was much mess revealed by the sunlight. Abdul Kadir had tried to make things go, as he always did. He had emptied most of the bottled beer, a quart of stout, a flask of Beehive Brandy, half a bottle of Wincarnis and the remains of the whisky into a kitchen pail. He had seasoned this foaming broth with red peppers and invited all to drink deep. This had been his sole contribution to the victualling of the party. Cheerful, quarrelsome, always in working shorts, his crew-cut bullet-head rendered scholarly by rimless glasses, he was never solvent. He regularly apologised for the fact, calling at friends’ houses to express regret for his inability to return past hospitality, continuing the apologies over the hastily-laid extra dinner-place, the beer that had to be sent for, forgetting the apologies over the final nightcap, when he would ask such provocative questions as: “What is religion?” “Why do we allow the white man to stay?” “Why cannot Islam develop a more progressive outlook?” It was such questions as these that slammed the cork in his host’s bottle.
His friends were, in a distracted way, ashamed of him, but the shame was of such long standing that it had transmuted itself into a kind of special affection. His penury was looked upon as a sort of holy idiocy, and he was granted such privileges as swigging a whole bottle of Benedictine at a sitting, being sick in the ash-trays, using vile English obscenities he had learned in the Navy. Much could be excused him anyway, for he was no true Malay. He was a mixture of Arab, Chinese and Dutch, with a mere formal sprinkling of Malay floating, like those red peppers, on the surface. His friends, complacently pitying this eccentric product of miscegenation, would forget the foreign bodies in their own blood. Haji Zainal Abidin would cease to be mainly Afghan; ’Che Abdullah no longer spoke the Siamese he had sucked from his mother; little Hussein forgot that his father was a Bugis. When they talked about Malay self-determination, they really meant that Islam should frighten the Chinese with visions of hell; but perhaps they did not even mean that. They themselves were too fond of the bottle to be good Muslims; they even kissed women and ate doubtful meat. They did not really know what they wanted. The middle-class of Kenching who carried Muslim names and were not too dark, not too light, were united by the most tenuous of bonds. One of these bonds was ’Che Guru Abdul Kadir, the hairy-legged goat who carried their sins on his back, who defined a vague smoky image of the true Malay (who did not exist), the true Islam (not really desirable) in terms of what these things were not. Certainly a beer or two and an occasional Friday absention from mosque did not seem so heinous when Abdul Kadir lay cursing in his vomit.
’Che Normah wrinkled her flat splay nose in disgust as the servant swabbed the doorstep. She liked a party, but she did not like a party to get out of hand. When she had been mistress of two rubber estates the parties had been more decorous: much whisky had been taken, ribald songs sung, but the white man usually knew when he had gone too far, he could usually be controlled. (’Che Normah knew a great deal about controlling white men.) Give a little alcohol, however, to men like Mat bin Hussein, Din, Ariffin, Haji Zainal Abidin, and you could always expect the worst. Here was the pretty Chinese table whose top had been greased smearily by the flat feet of Ariffin doing his little dance. There was the Persian carpet on which Din had allowed clumsily-opened beer to froth freely. Bits of broken glass lay about, ready to ambush bare feet. Even ’Che Isa, the normally lady-like colleague of the accursed Abdul Kadir, had behaved sillily, making up to married men. Only Rupert had been reasonably restrained. (’Che Normah pronounced the name in the Malay manner, metathetically: Ruperet, the final dental initiated but not exploded. She had been practising the name a lot lately.) But Rupert was a white man and could be controlled. A very white man. And to think that that fool of a haji had proposed naming him after that drunken improvident lout Kadir. Normah had put her foot down. He was to be called Abdullah. That was to be his mosque-name and his burial-name. In the house he was still to be called Ruperet.
’Che Normah was a good Malay and a good Muslim. That is to say, her family was Achinese and came from Northern Sumatra and she herself liked to wear European dress occasionally, to drink stout and pink gin and to express ignorance about the content of the Koran. The Achinese are proverbially hot-blooded and quick on the draw, but the only knives ’Che Normah carried were in her eyes and her tongue. She gave the lie to the European superstition—chiefly a missionary superstition—that the women of the East are down-trodden. Her two husbands—the first Dutch and the second English—had wilted under her blasts of unpredictable passion and her robust sexual demands. The Communist bullets that had rendered her twice a widow had merely anticipated, in a single violent instant, what attrition would more subtly have achieved.
Haji Zainal Abidin had been too cautious in telling Hardman that both had ‘probably’ been killed by Communists. There was no doubt about those two identical ends: tappers had stood open-mouthed and impassively around while execution had been performed. But possibly Haji Zainal Abidin had had in mind a subtler and more forensic question: that of ultimate responsibility. Macbeth had used no knife on Banquo, but he had none the less killed him. The Communist terrorists, whose trade was death, had frequently been known to put, at the request of tappers, an unpopular foreman out of the way. They were at times glad enough to be hired assassins and were content with a payment of rice and a few tins of corned beef. It might or might not be significant that both Willem Pijper and John Hythe had been shot a few days before they were due for repatriation. A Muslim marriage does not need a civil contract to make it legal in a Muslim state, but in a Christian country marriage is not marriage unless there be benefit of registrar. It is just possible that both Pijper and Hythe were frivolous in their attitude to marrying ’Che Normah, that they merely wanted, in the American phrase, to ‘get shacked-up’, and the Muslim names they assumed were an amusing fancy dress. But ’Che Normah was no Cho Cho San. Allah had spoken in the Communist rifle-shots, and ’Che Normah had become doubly a wealthy widow: bonuses lay snug in the Anglo-Chinese Bank, the rubber companies had paid handsome compensation, there had been life insurance. Now, mistress of a house that was her own, she contemplated marriage once again, perhaps for the last time. She had worked out details of the marriage contract herself and, if she was to pay heavily for Rupert Hardman, she was determined on getting her money’s worth. It was promotion, this new marriage: Hardman was a professional man, not a glorified foreman. There would be invitations to the Residency on the Queen’s Birthday, dances at the Club, the prestige of going about on the arm of a man whose untannable skin could not be mistaken for that of a Eurasian. John Hythe had—only once—come back drunk from the club to announce with passion that someone had
called him a Serani. The brown face and arms of an open-air worker, the marriage to a Malay—the catty club-women had been only too ready to look for a touch of the tar-brush. He had stormed and volubly regretted his marriage and she had knifed him back with her more deadly tongue, ending by throwing a chair at him and then, excited, taking him to bed. Willem Pijper had indulged in no such cries of wounded blood: he probably had been Eurasian.
It was a good solid house, fanless but airy. As the servant cleaned up, ’Che Normah looked round its rooms with approval, not regretting the high price she had paid for it. Its view was good. From the porch she could see the Law Courts and the Bank and the Great Mosque, a piquant anthology of architectural styles: Colonial Palladian; a timid approach to Corbusier; Hollywood Alhambran. And there would be no question of her husband coming home smelling of chlorophyll tablets and pleading a long day in court. She would be able to see him going in and coming out. The office was a different matter: that was to be on Jalan Laksamana, but Jalan Laksamana was full of her spies. ’Che Normah went to the back door and looked out on her cool garden: a rain-tree and a flame-of-the-forest, gaudy Malayan flowers that officials of the Agricultural Department had, as a labour of love, classified in cold Latin, but to which liberal peasants had given grosser names, names which ’Che Normah hardly knew, for all flowers with her were subsumed in the general term bunga. For her only the life of the flesh was important. At her feet was a clump of the leaves called touch-me-not, leaves which pretended death and curled up at the approach of foot or hand. For some reason, seeing them do this, ’Che Normah smiled secretly.
’Che Normah was a handsome woman. (Another smug European fallacy is that Eastern women lose their beauty quickly.) ’Che Normah was forty-two, but her hair was lustrous under its perm, her coffee skin smooth, eyes large, chin firm. She was lavish in build, with great thighs but a slim waist, bathycolpous as any Homeric heroine. Her walk evoked images from such Malay poets as had felt the influence of the Persians: melons in the melon-season, twin moons that never waned (but, she ensured, never waxed either). She ate sparsely of rice but was fond of salads of cucumber, lady’s fingers and red peppers, a little tender meat from Singapore Cold Storage, the choicer kinds of sea-food. She ate only when she was hungry. She could dance but played no games. She knew some Dutch and spoke a high-pitched stressless English. Her Malay was the Malay of the State of Lanchap, the State where, to use the idiom, her blood had first been poured, and she spoke it fierily, with crisp glottal checks, with much bubbling reduplication. (Optionally, Malay repeats words to express plurality and intensity. The connotations of both these terms were appropriate to ’Che Normah.)
The Malayan Trilogy Page 24
