The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  “Yes, there is muscle there,” said Syed Omar, “enough muscle for that hairless bastard.”

  “Some Tamils went upstairs to the control tower,” said Crabbe. “I don’t know this Maniam, but I’m quite sure I heard Arumugam’s voice. He must be on duty up there.” Syed Omar’s brandy came and he sucked at it impatiently. After the sucking came tilting and pouring. He put the glass down.

  “I’m going up there,” he said.

  “Oh, look here, Omar,” said Crabbe. “Don’t start anything, not today. The pilgrims are coming back, you know. It’s not my job to start telling you all about peace on earth and what-not, but I do think you might let it rest. You can’t do any good.”

  “To him it is not good I intend to do.”

  “Forget it. Have another drink.”

  “No. While I am hot, while I am angry I will go.” He resisted the friendly restraining hand of Crabbe, which clutched the article on Thanksgiving Day stuffings, and went. Crabbe watched the swim-suited film star on his back disappear in the crowd. He heard Syed Omar’s voice, arguing with the Chinese official at the Customs barrier. He heard the voice climbing the stair to the control tower. Then he heard the approaching plane. The Malays heard it too and some went out to the airfield fence and the car park, straining their eyes to the west, where Mecca lay, whence, logically, the aircraft must appear. But its noise soon began to fill the south.

  It landed in the outfield and slowly, clumsily approached, on fat, flat tyres. And now the Malays began to unleash their excitement. They wanted to get at the pilgrims, to touch them, to receive a blessing. The fence was too high to climb, so they moved—excited but orderly—towards the open sliding door which led to the control tower, the Customs barrier, the aircraft itself. They had already seen a Malay go through that doorway.

  A Chinese, thin, nervous, in whites and a peaked cap, barred their way, saying: “Tidak di-benar masok. You cannot come in here.” They pressed on. The Chinese said: “Please go back. It is not allowed.” He tried to slide the door shut. His voice held no authority, he was nervous of kampong Malays; some had already got through, the door could not be closed. And now Crabbe left the bar, nervous himself because the plane had brought back from Singapore what he believed to be a precious burden. Crabbe tried to cut his way through the crowd, which yielded softly, courteously enough. Taller than any member of that crowd, he could see quite clearly the Chinese official do a foolish thing: he feebly pushed at the foremost man: with pork-defiled paws he laid hands on a Muslim. The glory of Mecca already shone on these simple folk. They could see, the foremost of them, the loose Arab robes, the Bedouin head-dresses, the turbans of the pilgrims who were already coming from the aircraft, hands ready to greet and bless though clutching cooking-pans and parcels. The kampong people would have no infidel between them and the glory. The official went to the wall, in a posture of crucifixion. His fellow leaped the documentation counter to help, shouting: “Back! Back!” He was entangled in Malays, and one fisherman thrust him aside like a curtain. The bar-boy ran out for a policeman. Now Crabbe was among them, shouting too. Him they would not harm, Englishmen being, though infidel, yet the race of past District Officers, judges, doctors, men perhaps, in their time, more helpful than otherwise, powerful but mild. Yet the more eager of the kampong people were already approaching the pilgrims with loud religious greetings, the rest of the crowd was following, and, ahead of the pilgrims, was the Chinese boy with the brief-case whom Crabbe had come to meet. They would tear him out of the way, they would knock him down and trample on him and perhaps his brief-case would be kicked away, lost, stolen. Crabbe ran, panting with middle age, and pulled the Chinese boy from the pilgrims and those who greeted them and embraced them, dragging him to a safe nook at the foot of the control tower stairs. The boy was frightened, saying: “What is this? What is happening?” But Crabbe had no breath.

  Clamour before them, fright and anger and joy, and now clamour above and behind them. Syed Omar was being kicked down the stairs by Dr. Sundralingam, and Arumugam’s voice was piping loud. One sees so much violence on the screen, in the papers, reads about it, accepts it as part of the pattern, but one is always shocked anew by the aspects which records can’t catch: the smell of sweat, the blood moving on the face, the hoarse breathlessness, the cracked voices speaking strange words. Sundralingam was nearly shirtless, Syed Omar’s hair spiky, one of his sandals missing. But the Hollywood actress still posed in smiling languor, and the Thanksgiving Day article was intact. Syed Omar lay, his hands over his head, like a camel-boy in a sandstorm. The pilgrims passed him, some smiling gravely at what they considered to be an extravagant posture of veneration. Sundralingam and Arumugam were back up the stairs, perhaps to tend Maniam’s wounds, Arumugam squeaking, Sundralingam panting and rumbling.

  The crowd was clearing. The police had arrived, Malay police, standing shyly, doing nothing. The Chinese officials were drinking brandy in the office, quacking clipped indignation. The incident—if it was an incident—was over. “But this won’t do,” said Crabbe, “this won’t do at all.” Syed Omar, groaning, sat up. His forehead was bruised and his lip swollen. He felt his teeth methodically, one after the other, with a vibrato movement of finger and thumb.

  “It won’t do, will it?” said Crabbe. Syed Omar made a throaty animal noise. “Come and have some more brandy.”

  The place was fast emptying of Malays: the pilgrims had arrived, it would soon be time for mosque. At the bar were a few passengers and also Emir Jalil, asthmatic but benign, and Rosemary Michael, pouting and unhappy. Crabbe, his arm on the Chinese boy’s elbow, gave greeting. Syed Omar followed, twisting an eye-tooth like a violin-peg.

  “Was fight,” said Jalil. “We miss big fight.” Rosemary pouted. “She not very happy. She think he send ring, but he not send ring. He not send anything.”

  “Oh, shut up, Jalil. Shut up, shut up.” Rosemary began to cry quietly into her gin. Jalil chuckled silently.

  “How unhappy we all are,” said Crabbe. But the Chinese boy seemed neither unhappy nor happy. He waited, courteous, his brief-case under his arm.

  “The pig,” said Rosemary in gargoyle anger, “the bloody pig. He wants to hurt me, that’s all.” She cried. “Look at it,” she cried, “and I thought it was going to be the ring.” She cried bitterly. Syed Omar handled his back in a rheumatism pose, groaning. Crabbe examined the object, rising jauntily from bunched brown paper. It was a ghastly metal model of Blackpool Tower, its silver paint chipped. The note said: “Thinking of you here, Rosemary. Having lovely time at college. The men will not leave me alone! Janet.”

  “Janet da Silva,” said Crabbe. “That’s nice of her.”

  “And two dollars Customs charge,” wailed Rosemary. Suddenly she stopped wailing and looked at Crabbe in a kind of horror. “Oh,” she said. “I mustn’t stay here. People will talk. Take me home, Victor. It’s all right for you to take me home. Joe said so.” She cried again at the name. “And I thought I was engaged. It would have been all right if I was engaged.”

  “You stay here,” said Crabbe soothingly. “You have a nice drink with Jalil and Omar. They’ll look after you. Robert and I have things to talk about.”

  “Take me home, Victor!”

  Some of the passengers began to look at Crabbe with curiosity and envy. Crabbe said: “No. You stay here. Jalil will take you home. Come on, Robert, we’d better be going.”

  Jalil watched them go out together. He said: “He not like women any more. He like only boys.”

  “Oh, shut up, Jalil.”

  “He like Chinese boys. Me, women I like.”

  2

  THE VIOLINS CARRIED their sawing figuration up to the last chord, while the viola hinted at a sort of parody of the main theme and the ’cello plunged right down to its dark bottom string. Then the tape wound to the end, broke free and swished round and round. Crabbe switched the machine off. The silence contained an image of the quartet as a whole, clear and yet as though seen from a distance, s
o that the shape was more apparent than the details. The first movement had seemed to suggest a programme, each instrument presenting in turn a national style—a gurgling Indian cantilena on the ’cello, a kampong tune on the viola, a pentatonic song on the second violin and some pure Western atonality on the first. And then a scherzo working all these out stridently, ending with no resolution. A slow movement suggesting a sort of tropical afternoon atmosphere. A brief finale, ironic variations on a somewhat vapid ‘brotherhood of man’ motif. It was a young work, boyish in many ways, but it held together, it was coherent, and it showed remarkable technical competence. Its composer had never heard a live quartet, knew the masterpieces only from broadcasts and gramophone records, and some of the orchestral works he studied—Mahler, Berg, Schoenberg—he had never heard at all. And yet the score of the symphony Crabbe held on his knee—neat spidery dots and lines and curves, showing a kinship to Chinese calligraphy—seemed confident in its handling of orchestral forces on a perhaps too large scale, its use of unorthodox combinations—xylophone, harps, piccolo and three trumpets, for example—and its precise signals of dynamics and expression.

  Crabbe looked at Robert Loo—Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Loo—and felt irritated that he showed no sign of either pride or humility, no excitement, not even a craftsman’s dissatisfaction. He merely examined closely one of the parts of his quartet, saying: “The second violin played A natural instead of A flat. That was my fault. I made a mistake in copying it out.”

  Crabbe asked yet again: “What did they say about it?”

  “As I told you, not very much. Mr. Crispin said that the violin writing was awkward in places, Mr. Sharpe said that one piece of treble stopping on the viola was impossible, Mr. Bodmin said he enjoyed the ’cello part.”

  “And what about Schwarz?”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Schwarz asked to be remembered to you. He said it was a pity that Mrs. Crabbe married, because she had a promising musical career. And he said he was sorry she died.”

  Just like that. Musicians could be inhuman, musicians were mere functions, themselves instruments played by music. But, after all, he was only eighteen with an eighteen-year-old’s callousness; after all, English was only his second language and he was deaf to its harmonics. But Crabbe saw Robert Loo now as a rather dreary boy, not very intelligent, emotionally less mature than he should be, strapped to a talent which had, quite arbitrarily, chosen him, driving him to teach himself to read music at fourteen, pore over Stainer, Prout, Higgs, Forsyth at sixteen, at eighteen produce two works which, Crabbe thought, were probably works of genius. Crabbe felt sure that he did not really like Robert Loo. He was hurt at the lack of gratitude (surely it could not be shyness when one saw the large confidence of the symphony?) for the trouble Crabbe had taken and the money he had spent—air fares to Singapore and back, pocket money, hotel expenses, the letters to Schwarz and to the people in Radio Malaya who had arranged the recording. Robert Loo took all this calmly, as he would take everything else Crabbe gave. And the things given would have to include a scholarship to England—wangled God knows how—and a performance of the symphony.

  “What did Schwarz say about the symphony?”

  “Very crude, he said. But he only seemed to be interested in the string parts. But he copied some of the themes out in a manuscript book. He said he would show them to his friends in England.”

  “Did he indeed? That means we can look forward to a tasteful little piece called Oriental Sketchbook or Souvenir de Singapore or something equally corny. Schwarz always did like other people’s themes.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, we don’t seem to have got very far. I know we’ve got a recording of the quartet—that’s something—but I thought Schwarz might have been willing to do more. He’s got all the contacts. I haven’t any. But minor musicians are never very generous, I suppose. Music’s a corrupting art.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “You don’t have to. Just carry on composing, that’s your line. Keep out of the world of action. I’ll try the British Council and the Information Department and—oh, there are lots of things I can do. We’ll get that symphony performed. We’ll get you to Europe.”

  No thanks. Robert Loo said only: “I don’t think my father will let me go to Europe. There is the business, you see, and I am the eldest son. He wants me to take a course in accountancy.”

  “I’ll have to speak to your father again. Doesn’t he realise that you’re the first real composer that Malaya’s produced?” Crabbe took a cigarette from the box on the gin-table. “But I don’t suppose it can mean very much to him. A lot of people think that music’s just there, like bananas, and anyway it’s not a thing you can write down on paper.”

  “He did not want me to go to Singapore. He said it was the wrong time, because it was the end of the month and it’s then that we send out the bills. Now they will be late. But I told him that you insisted because the Schwarz Quartet would only be there for two days and it was a good idea for me to see Mr. Schwarz.”

  “And so your father blames me?”

  “Oh, yes, to some extent.” Robert Loo returned Crabbe’s look calmly. “It makes it easier for me, you see. I don’t want too much trouble. I cannot work if people are shouting all the time. But you are in the Government and my father thinks you can give orders to people, and you don’t mind having trouble.”

  “Look here, Robert,” said Crabbe in irritation, “what the hell do you want?”

  “I want to have a quiet life and to go on writing music.”

  “Don’t you want to study? You’re clever, but you don’t know everything. How can you at your age?”

  “I can find things out in my own way. I’ve had to do that. The headmaster at school knew I was composing but he didn’t help. Nobody wanted to help. And so I can help myself.”

  “I see. The white man let you down, did he?”

  “I didn’t say that. I meant that they thought what I was doing was mad. They left me alone and let me do it. I suppose I should be grateful for that. But they didn’t want to help.”

  “Haven’t I helped?”

  “Oh, yes.” Robert Loo sounded neither convinced nor convincing. “Thank you,” he added, formally. “I’ve heard my quartet. It has been a confirmation. I knew it would sound like that.”

  “But have you no curiosity? Don’t you want to hear a live orchestra? There are fine ones in Europe, you know.”

  “Of course. I’ve heard them on records. I suppose it would be nice,” he added, again without much conviction.

  “Don’t you want to hear your own symphony?”

  “Oh, but I’ve heard it.” Robert Loo smiled patiently. “I hear it every time I look at the score.”

  Crabbe got up from the arm-chair and walked the sitting-room. He entered a belt of sun from the window, gazed out for an instant on palms and Government houses, wondered dizzily for a moment what he was doing here anyway, and poured himself gin and water.

  “So,” said Crabbe to the boy’s back—thin nape, plastered hair, white shirt soiled by travel—“you just write for yourself, is that it? You don’t think other people might want to hear it. And you’ve no particular love for your country.”

  “My country?” The boy looked around, puzzled.

  “Some day Malaya might be proud to have a majorcomposer.”

  “Oh, I see.” He giggled. “I don’t think that will happen.”

  “Music can be a big thing to a country finding itself. Music presents a sort of image of unity.”

  “I don’t see that.”

  “No, I suppose not. Your job, as I say, is just to compose. But even a composer has to have some sense of responsibility. The best composers have been patriotic.”

  “Elgar is not one of the best composers,” said Robert Loo, with a boy’s smug dogmatism. “His music makes me feel sick.”

  “But look what Sibelius has done for Finland,” said Crabbe. “And de Falla for Spain. And Bartok and
Kodály …”

  “The people of Malaya only want American jazz and ronggeng music. I am not composing for Malaya. I am composing because I want to compose. Have to compose,” he amended, and then looked embarrassed, because he had admitted to a dæmon, an obsession. He had very nearly been seen without his clothes.

  “Well, I’m going to do my best anyway,” said Crabbe. “For this.” He pointed with his cigarette at the manuscript of the symphony. “And you’re going to be made to study. I shan’t rest till I see you on that boat.” But, of course, he reflected, one never knew whether one was doing the right thing. He might go to London and, corrupted by a new ambience, produce music in the style of Rubbra or Herbert Howells. In Paris he might be emptied of what was peculiarly his own and filled with Nadia Boulanger. He needed advice, and the only person Crabbe could have trusted to give it was dead. Crabbe knew enough about music to be satisfied that Robert Loo’s voice was his own and, at the same time, Malaya’s. The waltz and the ländler were never far from Schoenberg’s music; similarly, Robert Loo had sucked in hundreds of polyglot street songs with his mother’s milk, absorbed the rhythms of many Eastern languages and reproduced them on wind and strings. It was Malayan music, but would Malaya ever hear it?

  “Tell me, Robert,” said Crabbe roughly, “have you ever been with a woman?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any strong affection for anybody or anything, apart from music?”

  The boy thought seriously for half a minute and then said: “I think I like my mother. I’m not sure about my father. I used to be very fond of my youngest sister.” He paused, evidently trying honestly to add to a catalogue whose exiguity seemed to chill the warm room. “I quite admire cats,” he said. “There is something about them,” he added, “which …” He could not find the words. “Which is quite admirable,” he ended lamely.