The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  “The house is tied to the College,” said Crabbe. “It is the headmaster’s house. Moreover, the Englishman has but a small family or else no family at all. Or even,” he added, “no wife. Don’t worry about me. In the West we’re shrivelling up. We’re dried fruit. And we’re used to far less luxury than you think.”

  “Have a fucking beer,” said Abdul Kadir. His owlish eyes showed sudden shock. “I mean, have a beer, Mr. Crabbe.”

  Two Malay workmen entered, dish-towels fastened, turban-wise, about their heads. They ordered orange crush.

  “Still here,” said one. “The white sods are still here.”

  “And those turbaned prawns with shit in their heads. But it won’t be long now.”

  “No, it won’t be long.”

  “And that Malay woman is going to have a baby. She is bunting.”

  “Hamil is a politer word.”

  “Why use a polite word? It is the child of that white sod who has gone.”

  “He has gone for ever.”

  “What does the bloody postman know? His bundles of letters from England. And the telegrams from England. He is hiding, hiding from everybody, from women in England as well as here.”

  “They say he was burned.”

  “That was before, in the second world perang.”

  “His flying ship fell in a cold country. Else why should the Malay woman cry? What will happen to a man once will happen again.”

  “Good riddance to the sod.”

  Crabbe remembered his final story to the Malays on the veranda. The story of the man from the far country who tried to help, the man who developed miraculous powers, killing the pirates and the bandits and diseases and teaching the final marvel of the word. And as he developed wings and an unconquerable fist and the gift of invulnerability he ceased to be a man from a far country, he joined the heroes of the Malay Valhalla, he became the property of the open-mouthed tough brown men, cross-legged on the veranda, he became one of them. And Crabbe’s final pantun as his goods were loaded on to the truck:

  Kalau tuan mudek ka-hulu,

  Charikan saya bunga kemoja.

  Kalau tuan mati dahulu,

  Nantikan saya di-pintu shurga.

  “Translate it for me, Kadir. Translate it for all the world.”

  “If you go up the river,” translated Kadir, the glaze of drink in his eyes, “pluck me, pluck me … For fuck’s sake, I’ve forgotten the word.”

  “Frangipani.”

  “Frangipani. But if you die first, wait for me …”

  “At the door of heaven.”

  “At the door of heaven. For fuck’s sake, man, what are you crying for? Have another fucking beer.”

  “Your language, Kadir.”

  “You have very lucky face, Mr. Crabbe,” said Mohinder Singh. “You have face of a very lucky gentleman. If you will sit down here for a moment, for two dollars only I will foretell lucky future.”

  Beds in the East

  Allah is great, no doubt, and Juxtaposition his prophet. (Amours de Voyage)

  Good, too, Logic, of course; in itself, but not in fine weather. (The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich)

  ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

  The anonymous state and named characters of this story are completely fictitious

  1

  EITHER SIDE OF the bed was the wrong side. True, it was possible to get out of it by inching slowly forward on one’s fat brown rump to the foot, but that, for some reason, often woke both of them. It was better, far better, to risk waking only one. But, this lie-abed dawn of the Sabbath, which one?

  Syed Omar lay for an instant debating, caught in an agony of indecision which was no grim pleasure. In common with the rest of the country, he had not absorbed all that much from the West. He could speak English, drive a car, distinguish blindfold between brands of brandy, run an office, smell out injustice a mile off, but no white official had ever spoken to him of those philosophies fashionable in post-war Europe. It was all too late now to complete the course; his elected rulers had not heard Toynbee warn of the danger of sipping, rather than draining, the West. And now the jungle, after its short doze, was ready to march coastward again.

  On one side lay Maimunah, his wife; on the other lay Zainab, also his wife. He lay walled in by brown female flesh. And that was wrong, most irregular, uncleanly, contrary to the strict Islamic custom. But the house had only one bedroom and in that bedroom there was no inch of space for what was not purely functional. The Malay language was more exact than the English in calling it a sleep-room. And in his house Syed Omar did little more than sleep.

  On other beds lay his children, the palpable record of his past virility, the breathing memoranda of his present responsibility. As the light came up, brown chubby limbs, careless in sleep, were defined, and innocent mouths open, as in the ecstasy of hearing music. All round the room brown blossomed in many shades—coffee of varying strengths, varying temperings of tinned milk, from the watery brew of Sin Chai’s shop to the robust infusion of Ooi Boo Eng: many kinds of brown, flat and unsumptuous in the hard light, dredged from the unrecorded pasts of his own and his wives’ families, and eighteen or so different sizes, denoting the harvests of eighteen or more years. Syed Hassan, the eldest, his sleeping mouth pouting as into a microphone, his delinquent hair tousled; Sharifah Khairun, only four, her sarong kicked off, her perm glossy on the pillow. All the boys Syeds, all the girls Sharifahs, proud little trumpets before their individual names, proclaiming them to be of the line of the Prophet.

  Syed Omar, their father, felt again the prostatic twinges which he must now accept, at dawn or false dawn, as appropriate to his forty-seven years. True, he had been drinking the night before (and now the night before began to shape itself in his mind and he began to palpitate) but that made no difference. Every morning was the same. He swung his legs over the sleeping form of Maimunah. She breathed gently to the ceiling. But, as always with one or the other, his levering hand jabbed her thigh and she woke.

  It was her custom to wake, when roused accidentally thus, in shock, as though the thieves, murderers, ravishers had at last arrived. Zainab’s way was to resume, almost in mid-sentence, the monologue of the evening before. He had not done this, he had not done that, what was to happen to her children (her children)? Syed Omar preferred, on slight reflection, the more dramatic aubade.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “Eh? Eh? What?”

  “Sleep.” Incisive, firm, so that a ripple passed over the sleepers. Syed Omar surveyed them all, splay-foot and stubby, tying his sarong at the waist, surveyed them like a general surveying the carnage. “Sleep,” he said more soothingly, like Titania or a mass-hypnotist, but it was too late. A small child (its name did not come automatically to mind) looked up at him from clear morning eyes, and Hassan called from his unconscious, in a loud adolescent voice:

  “Dig that cat.”

  Syed Omar stared, wondering what this could mean, frightened, as hearing the voice of prophecy. But he padded through the wrack of stirring bodies and reached the bathroom, which was under water. It was the women of the house who were most inconvenienced, he reflected, by its being situated on an old paddy-field. He could stand, as he did now, on the top step, on the shore of the flood, and perform this first morning act with no trouble. As long as the wet season lasted, his wives would suffer from an excess of water in the wrong places, and in the dry they would suffer from no water at all. Still, the more elemental their sufferings the better: they could thus be distracted from those more sophisticated grievances which transcended season. But their grievances were nothing to his.

  As he stood, long, on the step, Syed Omar reviewed the previous night. There had been a farewell dinner for Maniam. Cold curry and warm rice, toasts and speeches. Many speeches. The Chief Police Officer and the Officer Superintending Police Circle and the Officer Commanding Police District and the Officer in Charge of the Special Branch and various other officials had stood up and spoken, some in Malay, some in English, s
ome in both, about the good work Maniam had done. He had come for a brief time only as relief Chief Clerk, they said, but they were all sorry to see him return to Pahang, they were appreciative of the great work of reorganisation he had done, they revered him as a man and loved him as a friend. With men like him sitting organising in offices, a free Malaya had nothing to fear. Mr. Godsave, the last white man of the Police Department, said that he himself would soon, with many other of his fellow-countrymen, be leaving this land he had learned to love so well (hear, hear) and, in the rigours of an English winter, often look back nostalgically at happy days spent in the East. He might say that, not only in Malaya, but also in India, he had learned to respect the ability of the Jaffna Tamils, of which race Mr. Maniam was an undoubted ornament. (Here Mr. Maniam had shone, ornamentally, smugly.) Mr. Godsave said that the Jaffna Tamils had been brought up in a tradition of service to the State which might well be taken as a model by the other races. He concluded by saying that it was a great loss to the State Police Department that Mr. Maniam should be going, but that his work would long be remembered and be an inspiration to those who had had the good fortune to work with him.

  Then Syed Omar, uncalled, unexpected, had stood and said, in English:

  “Much time has been spent tonight in praising Maniam. I do not stand up to praise Maniam. I stand up to say the truth about Maniam. I know his race and I know him. I know his methods and I know the methods of his race. I would say this. If Maniam wants to get on, let him get on. But let him not get on by grinding the faces of others into the dust. If he wants to climb, let him climb, but let him not climb over me. I know that he has been telling others that I am not good in my job. I know that he has been making a list of the days I have taken off. And I also know that his sister-in-law was brought specially from Kuala Lumpur so that she could meet the C.P.O. and waggle her bottom at him and show him her teeth and show how fast she could take down shorthand and how well she could type. I know I cannot take down shorthand fast, but I have never pretended to be able to take down shorthand fast. But my heart is pure and I am a man of integrity. I have always tried to do my work well. Now there comes a man to lie about me and try to have me kicked out. This is the man you have praised. I warn you, especially you Malays, that you have enemies in your midst, and this Maniam is one of them. The Jaffna Tamils will try to grind you in the dirt and snatch the rice from the mouths of your wives and children. They have no love for Malaya but only for themselves. They are a lot of bastards. Thank you.”

  Syed Omar completed his morning’s libation, thoughtful, surveying the rest of that lively evening. There had been no fight. There had been many restraining arms which Maniam, for his part, had not needed, for he kept saying, over and over: “I forgive him. He is still my brother. It is proper to forgive those who revile us,” somewhat like an unmuscular Christian. But Syed Omar had said: “I swear in the name of God that there are clerks and peons who will bear witness that I have, myself, restrained them from doing physical harm to Maniam. But Maniam has not gone yet. There is still time. His plane does not leave till twelve tomorrow.” Friends had carried Syed Omar off to a coffee-shop, and there beer and adrenalin had flowed till midnight.

  War, thought Syed Omar, adjusting his sarong. War, he thought, with an unholy thrill. The Malays against the world. But, entering the bare living-room he was chidden by a poster on the wall. It was a portrait of the Chief Minister, smiling benevolently and extending loving silkclad arms. Beneath, in ornamental Arabic script, was the single legend Keamanan: Peace.

  The children were rising, tuning up for the day. The wives had started a whining canon about the price of dried fish, arranging the while each other’s hair. Hassan was already at the radio, squeezing out a remote early-rising station. At the single table, over which presided a grave portrait of the Sultan, little Hashim was doing his homework. It was Geography, and, in a labour of neatness, the child wove the words of an essay.

  “What is this?” asked his father, not unkindly. Hashim was his favourite, the hope of the family, the only child who wore glasses:

  “Ceylon, Father.”

  “Ceylon? Ceylon? Who gave you Ceylon?”

  “Mr. Parameswaran, Father.”

  Syed Omar breathed over the child’s thin shoulders, reading: “Jaffna is the most important part of Ceylon. The Jaffna Tamils come from there. They are hard-working people and very clever. In Malaya are many Jaffna Tamils. They are in many government things. They help to run Malaya properly.”

  Syed Omar, enraged, clutched and crumpled the essay, uttering a stricken cry. Hashim, astonished, looked on and then began to wail. Syed Omar blindly clawed the child’s atlas and crunched Ceylon and Jaffna with it, and all the encircling ocean. Soon the wives came and Hassan gave an adolescent guffaw.

  Syed Omar cried: “It is for you I do this, for you! But no appreciation, no thought! I am nobody in this house, nobody! I am going out!”

  He began to descend the house stairs to the flooded path, but found he was unshod and half-naked. He returned sheepishly and sulked in a corner. Hassan, having forgotten to switch off his grin, grinned at the radio dial and then produced from the set a sudden brassy blast which opened Syed Omar’s sweat-ducts. He panted in the corner, his eyes misty.

  Maimunah said: “Cannot afford to tear up books with the wage you bring in. A disgrace.” Zainab comforted the snivelling Hashim: “There, there. Bad, bad Father.”

  Syed Omar said, sarcastically: “Enough of this nonsense. My breakfast, if you please. In four hours’ time I must be at the airport.”

  At that moment, in profound crapula, the élite of the Jaffna Tamils of the town were already drinking coffee, black and bitter. After the Police party had come the party in Vythilingam’s house. Vythilingam was the State Veterinary Officer and with him Maniam had been staying. Maniam was a nephew of Vythilingam, or perhaps an uncle or a cousin: relationship was not clearly defined, but relationship existed. Indeed, relationship existed between all the Jaffna Tamils who sat in their striped sarongs this Friday morning and day of Maniam’s departure, silent and aching. Jaffna is a small community. The party that had just ended had been, in some measure, Hellenic, a black shining parody of the Symposium at which Socrates had spoken of the virtues of intellectual love and Alcibiades had come in tight, slobbering his admiration for the snub-nosed master. Alcibiades was Arumugam, the Air Control Officer, whose manly beauty was marred by a high squeaking voice with curious gargling undertones. Socrates was Sundralingam, the doctor. He, with flashing glasses, had spoken at length of the nugatory value of the heterosexual relationship: women were there solely to produce more Jaffna Tamils, the romantic poets had written nonsense, to place woman on a pedestal was a Western perversion. Arumugam had kept saying: “How right you are,” his eunuch’s voice somehow giving a sour-grapes quality to the agreement. But it was all really sour grapes. All close to, or in, the thirties, they had not yet found wives. Women there were in the town, but not women of the right sort. They wanted women of good caste and of the right colour, worthy of professional men. Kularatnam, the State Inspector of Motor Vehicles, had not come to the party. He was in disgrace, for it was known he was carrying on with a plump and well-favoured Malay princess who kept a bookshop.

  Vythilingam knew that he too would soon be in disgrace. As his guests sucked at their coffee, he said tentatively: “Could anyone …” The word would not come out. He had not so much a slight stutter as a slight hesitation. He raised his mild face to the ceiling, as though the better to exhibit the glottal spasm. “Anyone …” If it was food he was going to suggest, they all thought not. “Not just yet,” said Sockalingam, the dentist. “Anyone …” Their language was English, the language of professional men. “…eat some fried eggs with onions?”

  After so much effort, “No” would seem an ungracious answer. They grunted and Vythilingam called his Siamese servant. Vythilingam glanced mildly round at the company, their faces creasing with pain as the sharp light from the window
caught their hangovers. “We’ll all feel …” Maniam shook his head with a sad smile. “…better …” But behind the mildness what tigers, what jungles. The speech hesitation was a symptom of the most complicated tensions. The hands that performed their veterinary duties with such tenderness and skill could cheerfully throttle necks. Vythilingam knew how to hate. First, he hated the British. He had smarted from what he called British injustice ever since he could remember. He had seen ill-qualified tow-haired officials promoted over his head. In Kuala Lumpur once a British soldier had called him a nigger. A former white State Veterinary Officer had once said to him: “Of course, you’ve only got a colonial degree …” Another white man had once tried to take him into a white man’s club, and the Chinese steward, lackey of the British, had ejected him. The white man had shrugged his shoulders, said: “Sorry, old boy,” and then walked in on his own. But before that, before he was born even, his father, a clerk in Ceylon, had actually been struck on the face by an Englishman. Or, at least, that was a tradition in the family. Out of this hatred of the British stemmed hatred for his mother, for she had, after his father’s death, married an Englishman, a tea-planter settled in Ceylon. And that was why he was going to spite his mother by marrying a woman she had not even met, let alone chosen. And yet in his choice of a wife there was something masochistic. Rosemary’s reputation was known; he would, by obscure logic, become retrospectively a cuckold. Her caste, as her name, the name of a Christian, proclaimed, was of the lowest, and that hurt, and yet that would hurt his mother more, and yet perhaps it would not, because what had she done but marry a Christian? But it should not hurt him really, nor should the knowledge of her looseness, for he was a Communist and race and religion and caste did not matter, morality was a bourgeois device of oppression. And yet he kept his Communism quiet, because he was a Government officer. But if he was a Communist he should be in the jungle now, stinging the effete capitalist régime with odd bullets. But he did not really like the Chinese. And he was not really fighting the oppressive British, whatever he did, for they were leaving Malaya anyhow. And again, he was only really happy when injecting penicillin into ailing cows, or putting thermometers into the anuses of sick cats, and he would literally not hurt a fly, which all reeked of Hinduism, and his mother, though she had married a Christian, was still a devout Hindu.