“Dying? Nobody told me; nobody tells me anything.”
“Quick. Where does he live?”
“In the new married quarters. Round by the water-works.”
“Take us there. Quick. There’s no time to lose.”
“Dying? Nobody ever told me.” Crabbe reversed his car on to a shallow dune at the road’s side, set his direction once more away from home. “He’s a Muslim, isn’t he?”
“He was. Hurry up. We may be too late.”
Crabbe had never met Mahalingam and he suddenly felt ashamed of the fact. He knew where he lived, for he addressed a monthly pay cheque to him. He did not even know what disease he was suffering from. That was bad. Bad headmastership. He sped down the main road, the Jaguar purring after him, turned right by a decayed coconut plantation, turned left by the water-works, at length came to a block of bright new buildings. Where Mahalingam lived, or was dying, was evident from a ghoulish knot of people standing outside an open door, waiting.
“I had better go in alone,” said Father Laforgue. He whispered too, aware that, despite the wide hot blue air and the noise of children, he carried with him the Eucharist, core and focus of a silence of worshippers. He went in, Malays stepping back awkwardly, half resentfully, half fearful of magic they did not know. The white padre was going to kill Mahalingam, but that, it seemed, was what Mahalingam wanted. The wife, sullen-eyed, followed Father Laforgue into the house.
“There’s going to be a hell of a row about this,” said Hardman, seated at his wheel. “I hope nobody’s going to talk too much. The authorities will come down on poor old Georges like a ton of bricks.”
“I’d no idea he was dying.” Crabbe was almost apologising to Hardman. Suddenly he changed his tone to the truculent, remembering other business. “What have you been saying to Jaganathan?”
“Saying? What do you mean? Who is Jaganathan?”
“You know damn well who Jaganathan is. You’ve been talking to him, haven’t you? About me.”
“Jaganathan? Is that your Tamil friend? Teacher at the school?”
“Oh, come off it. You know who he is. You’ve been telling him about my supposed Communist sympathies, haven’t you? There’s no point in denying it. What I want to know is, why? What in God’s name have you got against me?”
“Let’s get this straight, Victor. Who’s been telling you all this?”
“Jaganathan himself. He said there was somebody else present when you told him. What exactly have you been saying to him?”
“But, honestly, Victor, I just can’t think of a time when I ever spoke to the man. I don’t think I’ve even met him.” Hardman’s white face was screwed up in what looked like honest bewilderment.
“What have you got against me? That’s all I want to know. What harm have I ever done you?”
“But I don’t see when I could have met him. I’m genuinely trying to think back. …”
“Not after that business with Ah Wing? You won’t have to do much thinking back. I put it to you, as you lawyers say, that, for some reason best known to yourself, you got in touch with Jaganathan and informed him that I was sending food supplies to the Communists. Isn’t that it?”
“Good God, man.” Hardman looked shocked. “Do you honestly think I’d do that?”
“Well, what put the idea into his head? He’s even gone to the trouble of getting old copies of the university magazine from Singapore. He’s going to circulate some of the articles I wrote. He’s going to raise a very unpleasant kind of hell. And it’s you who started him off.”
“Oh, God,” said Hardman. “What a stupid thing. I remember now, I did meet him. I talked to him for about five minutes at the Istana. It was the Sultan’s birthday. I said there was no harm in intellectual Communism. I said that, in our day, most young men were theoretical Communists. I must have instanced you as an example. I probably said that even you had been an intellectual Communist.”
“Well, you’ve let me in for a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“But he can’t do anything. I mean, you wrote those articles ages ago, when people thought very differently …”
“I wish to God you’d keep your big mouth shut in future. Don’t you see, people here aren’t going to think in terms of phases. As far as they’re concerned, what I believed when I was twenty I still believe. Time stands still in the East. They’ve got a lovely stick to beat another white oppressor with now. I suppose that’s what you want. You told me yourself you’re no longer a white man.”
“Look here, Victor, have a bit of sense. Nobody can do anything. The people in Government would just laugh. So would the police, for that matter.”
“I know, I know. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to have trouble here. God knows it’s hard enough to do this job, without strikes and broken windows and slashed tyres and, probably, axes. Don’t you see what you’ve done, you bloody idiot? You’ve just about ruined my career.”
“Oh, come, that’s going a bit far …”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me out of the way. You don’t want me here laughing at the bloody mess you’ve made of your own career. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want faces out of the past …”
“Look here, you’re talking sheer damned nonsense. …”
Father Laforgue came to the door, stern, rebuking them with an upheld finger. They became aware also that the Malays, mild, interested, concerned, were watching, their mouths open.
“This is just a little undignified, isn’t it?” said Hardman. “Rowing when there’s a death going on in there. If you want to talk to me please come to my office. I don’t like brawling in the streets.”
“Oh, go to …” Crabbe shut his mouth on the obscenity, got into his car, started it viciously, and drove off, thinking: ‘Three quarrels in twelve hours. It isn’t right, it isn’t like me; the tropics are getting me down; but I didn’t start it all. What gets into other people?’ Hardman, colour in his cheeks, lit a cigarette, trembled doing it, waited, watching the Abelard corner clumsily. When Father Laforgue came out he looked pleased.
“I think it is quite possible he will recover. Extreme Unction often restores health. I often saw it in China. It is like a medicine.”
“Yes.” Hardman put the car into gear, drove away slowly.
“I think these people will be quiet about it. The wife was impressed, in spite of herself. They were quite amazed when he cheered up so visibly.”
“Really?”
“One could make many converts here. I am sure of that. But Islam is so repressive. There is no freedom of conscience. It is very like Calvinism.”
“I suppose it is.”
“Drop me outside the town. I can pick up a trishaw. We must not be seen together. We do not want any trouble.”
“No.”
“What is the matter with you, Rupert? You are not saying very much.” Father Laforgue chuckled. “I think I understand. I think you have had an embarrassing experience.”
“Oh?”
“It is not easy to throw things over, just like that. You still believe, you see. It was like meeting a woman you think you no longer love. But your heart beats fast, just the same. And your mouth becomes very dry. I know nothing of such experiences, but I can well imagine what it is like. I am happier than you are, much happier. You can drop me here.”
Father Laforgue stood by the roadside, vainly waiting for a trishaw to cruise by. But it was the Sabbath, and most men were going to the mosque. Hardman drove home, hearing several times on his way the thin wail of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.
13
THE THINNEST OF shavings of silver, the new moon was sighted. Cannons sounded, the fasting month began. In the hot daytime sleep wrapped the town, servants and workmen drooped. Everywhere the air was loud with hawking and spitting, for even to swallow saliva was an infraction of the law. Only at nightfall came animation, as the fast was broken with brittle cakes and deep draughts of water. Then came the rice and th
e burning sauces, drum-beats, old men gathering to read the Koran. In the middle of the night the lights came on again, the last meal swallowed against time, and then, in pitch dark, the booming of the cannon, the first spitting of the long, dry stomach-rumbling day.
Now came the end of Hardman’s long honeymoon. The silk girls bringing sherbet had gone, the beds i’ the East were no longer soft. The khaki police scoured the town in the name of the Prophet and found easy prey in Hardman. On the third day of the fast he absently lit a cigarette on Jalan Laksamana, was apprehended by two bony constables and carried off to the Chief Kathi.
“You can no longer claim the privilege of the white man. You are to us no longer a white man but a son of Islam. It is breaking the fast, contrary to the law, to smoke a cigarette. It is, moreover, foolishness to do so in public. Fined ten dollars.”
“But smoking isn’t the same as eating. I mean, the smoke goes into the lungs, not the stomach.”
“Nothing must pass your lips during the hours of fasting.” The Kathi was a gentle old man but hard as a rock. “Fined ten dollars.”
It was now that Hardman began to feel himself cut off completely from his own kind. He might before have deplored the fact that Islam left so little to the individual conscience, but his objections had been academic, because the teeth of Islam had not yet touched him. Now he was made to feel like a schoolboy chewing toffee in class. He saw the other Europeans eating publicly during the daytime, swallowing beer in kedais, come roistering out of the Club. The adolescent drinking-parties at lunch-time now seemed strangely adult. Even around the club the police hovered: he was such easy prey, desirable prey too, because he was still a white man. He was getting the worst of both worlds.
Cut off from Crabbe, he was also cut off from Georges Laforgue. That safe meeting place was denied him now. And in his home tempers grew ever more ragged with thirst and hunger. But he dreaded the breaking of the fast too, for Normah’s advances became ritualistic and regular. Because all fleshly enjoyments were banished during the day, it became almost a religious duty for her to drag him to bed shortly after the evening gun was shot off. He became thinner, paler, more nervous, and was obsessed by a kind of claustrophobia, often waking at night in a frightful dream of smothering.
And there was no release. He could no longer look at himself from the outside, for there was no one to talk to now. He was genuinely drifting away from the West, and the fancy dress of Islam began to feel like his ordinary clothes. Suffocated, one day he drove twenty miles to a Government Rest House that stood by a ferry on the banks of the Sungai Dahaga. There he ordered beer from the adenoidal Chinese manager and drank the afternoon away, greedily swilling bottle after bottle, feeling gradually his adulthood return. For some reason he began to scribble pensées in his pocket diary:
“The Arabian Nights is essentially a book for boys.”
“The Koran is obviously the work of an illiterate.”
“Proclaiming the oneness of God is like proclaiming the wetness of water.”
“I shall go mad.”
He was not paying his way. His practice was not flourishing. He was a kept man. He drove back singing Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’, entering the town as the gun was fired. He had a feeling that the police would stop him to smell his breath, that probably already the authorities had learnt of his afternoon’s debauch, but to hell with the lot of them. He was civilised, adult. He was a barrister, a scholar, a cosmopolitan. He had drunk wine in Italy, eaten octopus by the Middle Sea, seen castles in Germany, talked with poets in Soho. He enclosed these people here, he was bigger than they.
As he approached the house he remembered that it was not his but his wife’s. He felt fear stir through the thick beery euphoria. He dared not go home. Impulsively he drove to the Club—was he not entitled to? The fasting day was over; he was breaking no law—and soaked whisky with a sweat-shirted, hairy-kneed gang of planters in for the day.
At eleven o’clock one planter said: “Come back to dinner.”
“Dinner? Now?”
“A few drinks first. Then dinner. Never have dinner before midnight.” He swayed happily on his bar-stool.
“Love to,” said Hardman. He steadied himself against the billiard-table.
“Stay the night if you like. Plenty of beds. Everybody come and spend the night.”
“Yes,” said Hardman. “Spend the night. Called away on a case. Forgot to inform the wife. Yes.” He felt safe. The protecting flag fluttered above, proud in the hostile air. Sanctuary. He was with his own kind.
It is unwise ever to feel safe. Bombs have been hurled into Residencies. ’Che Normah had every right to enter the Club of which her husband was a full member.
She would not let him drive back. The car, her car, could stay the night outside the Club. She had kept her trishaw waiting. They were pedalled slowly back, wedged together, and ’Che Normah said little, for she could afford self-control. In the house the army attacked, knives flew at him, a transfixed Saint Sebastian. A thousand voices seemed to fill the hundred-watt-lit room. It was superb, it was the glory of God in a tropical storm, it was mountains and jungles, fire and avalanches. She was Cassandra, Medea, harpies and furies. Red-hot Malay flowed like steel from a furnace. Hardman was pinned by her eyes, buoyed up by her cosmic energy, a scrap of paper in a maelstrom of hot air.
Then he broke. He screeched an Arabic word. In his whisky-confused mind it seemed an exorciser’s charm, but it was a term that had lodged, like a fragment of food in a tooth, from the grind of his legal reading. It was the Islamic formula of divorce.
“Talak!”
She stopped, amazed, shocked, incredulous, as if hearing a child utter a dirty word.
“Talak!”
“That is twice,” she said. “It has to be three times.” She looked at him, fascinated, as though he were cutting his cheek with a razor-blade.
“Talak!”
“That is three times,” she said. “That is divorce.” Then, calm, as though well-satisfied, she sat down and took a cigarette. She said, in English, “You are silly boy.” Then she followed up in good clear slow Malay, “You must not say that. It is very dangerous.” Hardman danced up and down, sweating violently, incoherent, croaking obscenities, ending with a refrain like the end of an Upanishad.
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!”
“You must never, never say that again. You must not try to divorce me. One man tried it before. It is very, very dangerous for you to say that.” She looked at him, her eyes softened, almost indulgently. “You see, it would be the end of you.” She had not even seemed to hear the flow of execration. She held the Arabic word like a weapon wrested from a naughty child, a weapon more deadly than the child knows. One is too shocked to think that a child can get such a weapon to be cross with the child; one even feels a paradoxical respect for the child, seeing that a child can be dangerous. The word was magical enough; it had quietened the devils. But Normah’s cigarette-smoking calm, her softer, more thoughtful eyes, her slow words were deadlier than any devils. Hardman’s foodless day, his full stomach of beer and whisky began to send queasy messages. The sweat was all over his body.
“Have you eaten?” said Normah. He shook his head. “There is cold curry.” He shook his head again. “You must eat. You will be ill.”
“Don’t want to eat.” He was spent. He sat on the floor, his forehead against the cool wall, eyes closed, but aware that she was appraising him as though he were a choice exhibit at the slave-market.
“Come to bed, then.”
“Don’t want to come to bed.”
“Ruperet,” she said, honey in her mouth, as she undressed him with cool brown fingers, “you are not to say things like that again. It can be very bad for you if you say things like that. I will forget that you said it and you will forget that you said it. We will say no more about it. We shall be very, very happy together and love each other. Now you will come to bed.”
He was led off, white nakedness, tottering, thin with bird’s
bones, the cosmopolitan, the scholar, the man who enclosed these people. He passed out quickly. The beds i’ the East are soft.
14
“IT’S JUST POURING out of me,” said Anne Talbot. “They talk about love in the tropics. It’s just adding heat to heat.” She lay back exhausted on the hard single bed. “A temperate zone. Winter. Frost on the window. And when you get into the bed first you shiver. That’s for me.”
“It is hot tonight,” said Crabbe. He wiped himself all over with a bed-sheet. “A pity there’s no fan.”
“No fan, no bath, no civilised lavatory. Hawking and spitting on the stairs. Whatever made you choose this place?”
“Secrecy. Nobody cares here. Nobody knows.” Outside in the narrow street, British troops, repressed after their jungle stints, roared with drink, spilling long-saved dollars. Later they would fight, pass out, or pant in venery. From below, in the hotel bar, the noise of the juke-box filtered up. Crabbe looked out, rubbing sweat from his back. “We couldn’t very well stay at any of the reputable places. Malaya’s only a parish.”
“Nine o’clock,” said Anne Talbot, peering at her watch on the table, flopping again on to the soaked pillow. “You choose the absurdest times. Too early for sleep, too late to get dressed again.”
“I choose?” He sat beside her.
“You’re developing a paunch. Just like Herbert, but not quite as big. But, then, you’re younger. And you smell.” She turned over on to her face. Her voice came muffled. “You smell of man.”
“That’s the tropics again. We all smell in the tropics. And Herbert, you’ll remember, smells of more than himself. Onions and cheese and cocoa.”
“Oh, shut up about Herbert.”
The small room looked squalid, clothes strewn about, two empty glasses, a plate on which ants crawled. From next door a portable radio oscillated, swelled up in a burst of Hindustani, modulated to a chatter of Chinese. The hundred-watt bulb, naked, beat down warm on their nakedness.
“The Muddy Estuary,” said Crabbe. “Or, as Jean Cocteau called it, Kouala L’impure. Listen to that.” Howls and a smash of glass came from the street below. “Come on, we’ll go out. We’ll have a drink somewhere.”
The Malayan Trilogy Page 33
