The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  “I hear it in my head.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you’d be good enough to leave some of your manuscripts with us.”

  “I’ve not very much,” said Robert Loo. “I destroyed a lot of my early work. There was a symphony and a string quartet. They were immature, so I destroyed them.”

  “What have you, then?”

  “This.” Robert Loo took from his case the score of a brief work. “This,” he said, “is a Legend for Piano and Orchestra.”

  “Legend, eh?”

  “I call it that. I don’t know why.” Robert Loo smiled nervously.

  “Well, leave it with us, and we’ll call you back in a couple of days.”

  Robert Loo was duly called back and treated kindly. “You know all the tricks,” they said. “It’s very competent. You’ve obviously heard a lot of the better class of film music.”

  “I never go to the films,” said Robert Loo.

  “Well, it’s a very neat pastiche of the sort of Rachmaninoff film-piano-concerto stuff you used to hear a lot of just after the war.”

  “Pastiche?” Robert Loo did not know the word.

  “Yes. It’s funny that you haven’t absorbed much of the local musical idioms. Very rich possibilities there. Look what Bartok did, for instance.”

  “I want to write music from the heart,” said Robert Loo.

  “Yes? Well, very commendable, I suppose, in its way. Thank you, Mr. Loo. It was very kind of you to give us the opportunity to look at your music.” And Robert Loo was kindly dismissed.

  Mr. Roget, one of these two gentlemen, wrote a friendly note to Temple Haynes, who was at the time running a course in the Phonetics of Anglo-American in Kuala Hantu.

  Dear Temple,

  Joe and I had a look at the music of this Chinese boy that the Englishman told you about before he died. Frankly, I don’t think there’s much we can do. He’s got past the stage of elementary harmony and counterpoint and so on: in fact, he’s technically very competent. But it’s not technique we’re after. We can soon give them the technique. What we want is the indigenous stuff—folk-song and dance, six-tone scales and the rest of it. Our assignment is to study indigenous music and find out some of the real native artists. This Chinese boy has sort of rejected the native stuff (for instance, there’s not a trace of the Chinese pentatonic in his work) and turns out very competent imitations of imitations—second-rate cinematic romantic stuff, complete with big Rachmaninoff tunes on the violins and chords banging out on the solo piano. We’ve heard it all before. We can do it far better ourselves. In fact, we didn’t come out these thousands of miles to see a distorted image of ourselves in a mirror. So there it is. Hope the course is going well. Joe and I hope soon to do a bit of travelling round the remoter villages, complete with recording apparatus, of course. A Malay here is proving helpful—Syed Omar, who says he’s descended from Mohammed—and he’s going to take us around. For a consideration, of course, but what the hell!

  Be seeing you,

  Harry.

  There was a dance in the Officers’ Mess. Rosemary sat in her underwear under the fan of the living-room, her bright red dress ready waiting over a chair, wondering whether she ought to go. Tom would be coming round to fetch her in an hour’s time (she needed a full hour for her make-up), but, perhaps for the first time in her life, she was in the position of wondering whether she would be doing the right thing in accepting a pleasure. On the floor lay four of her cats ill, definitely ill, and of the other cats some were restless, some listless. She had tried to give the sick cats milk, but they could not keep it down. She had been wiping the floor all day. The amah was frightened and would not come near them. The cats’ noses were hot. Tigger, the great malevolent striped creature that normally spent so much time brooding evil and acting evil, lay on his side, his coat matted, his breathing shallow. Rosemary had phoned the Veterinary Department, asking for someone to come, but nobody had come. “Transport,” they had said. “No transport. Land-Rover broken down.”

  “Well, get a taxi, borrow a car, anything. It’s urgent.”

  “Better you bring cats here.”

  “I can’t, I can’t. There are too many of them. They’re too ill. Please, please come.”

  “I try.”

  But nobody had come. Rosemary wondered what to do. Tigger feebly tried to crawl to a corner, there to retch on an empty stomach. Rosemary knew how precarious was the life of any domestic animal in this country, any human animal, for that matter: death came so easily, hardly announced, without apparent cause, often greeted with smiles. It was a fall of rain or of coconuts, part of the pattern. Here there were no myths of struggle between life and death, perhaps because there were no spring and winter myths. But Rosemary, having absorbed so much of the North, wrung her hands and cried and blamed herself. She became superstitious, she half remembered old prayers; she said:

  “I know I’ve done wrong, I know I’ve sinned, but I’ve never done any harm to anyone. Please, God, let them get well. I won’t drink again, I won’t go to dances. I’ll be good, honestly I will. I’ll never sleep with anyone again, I promise. Please, please let them get well.”

  Rosemary said a ‘Hail Mary’ in English and a few words of the ‘Confiteor’ in Latin. She prayed to St. Anthony—knocking, in her ignorance, at the wrong door—and to the Little Flower. But there was no stir of life from the torpid bodies, and the restless cats mewed and sniffed at the listless cats.

  And now a car was heard approaching and now the grinding of brakes. “Oh no,” said Rosemary, crossing her arms over her nakedness, “oh no. He’s early, he’s much too early.” And then: “I’ll have to fly. I’d better go, I’ll have to go, I promised. And that Brigadier’s coming to the dance. A gala night. Oh, I’ll have to hurry. Perhaps they’ll be better when I come back. Oh, God, please make them better, and I won’t have more than two drinks. Three,” she amended. She rushed into her bedroom to make up. In the bedroom she heard a perfunctory knock and then the front door open. “You’re early, Tom,” she called. “Get yourself a drink. I shan’t be long.” And then: “Look at all my poor pussies. I’m worried to death about them.” There was no hearty English reply from the living-room, no clink of glass and bottle. “Is that you, Jalil?” she called suspiciously. “I told the amah not to let you in. There’s no point in your staying, because I’m going out. So there.” But there was no asthmatic wheeze, no invitation to a jolly time. More suspicious still, she put on a wrap and peered round the door. Someone was busy on the floor, leaning tenderly over the sick beasts.

  “Oh, Vy,” called Rosemary, coming out—un-made-up, hair anyhow—in relief. “Oh, Vy, thank God you’ve come. They heard my prayer. God heard it, St. Anthony heard it. Oh, thank God they heard it. I’ll never drink again. I’ll say fifteen decades of the Rosary. I’ll be good, I promise.”

  Vythilingam said nothing. Expert with phial and plunger, he worked busily. But once he broke silence to say: “Feline. Feline. Feline enteritis. Kampong cats had it. Disease spreads.”

  “Oh, bless you, bless you, Vy. While you’re doing that, I’ll get ready. I’ll be late. Tom will be here soon.” And she dashed back to her cream-pots and mascara and lipstick. “I knew,” she said between lipstick strokes, “that you wouldn’t—let me—down.” There was no reply. And soon there was a rat-tat-tat and the front door burst heartily open and there was a hearty greeting. “Hello, girl. Where are you, Rosie?” And then: “Oh, I beg your pardon. Didn’t see you. Oh, I suppose you’re the vet.”

  “Shan’t be a minute, Tom dear,” sang Rosemary. “Just doing my hair. Bring my dress in, there’s a dear.”

  “Not sure I can trust myself, ha-ha. You and me alone in a bedroom, eh?”

  “You are naughty, Tom.”

  But Major Anstruther, a gentleman, was soon back in the living-room, watching politely the deft hands of the shy brown man on the floor. Major Anstruther did not care much for cats: he was a dog-man himself. “Will they be all right now?” he asked po
litely.

  Vythilingam said: “Injection every day. Perhaps all right then.”

  Anstruther had not been long in Malaya. He attributed this wog’s clipped telegraphese to the shyness of one who meets socially a racial superior. He tried to put the poor man at his ease.

  “Hot for the time of the year,” he said.

  Vythilingam nodded, got up, put away his instruments. “Hot,” he agreed.

  “I have a Golden Labrador,” said Anstruther. “Back in England. You fond of dogs?”

  “Some.”

  “It amuses some of us that the Chinese call us ‘running dogs’,” said Anstruther. “They don’t seem to realise that it’s really a kind of compliment.” He laughed. “A dog’s a noble beast.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll be glad when it’s over,” said Anstruther. “This war’s been going on too long. It’s not a clean war, somehow. You can’t get at the devils. That jungle’s a nightmare.”

  “Nightmare.”

  “Here we are, Tom. You finished, Vy? I’m so, so grateful. I’m so glad you’re back. We all wondered what had happened to you. Your mother was worried, I believe. She’s gone back now. She’ll be so pleased you’re alive. There’s so much news, Vy. Will you be in tomorrow? Bless you. Now we’ve got to fly. We mustn’t keep the Brigadier waiting.”

  “Oh, the Brig’s always late,” said Anstruther. “Still, we’d better go. Get ginned up a bit before the fun starts. Good-bye, Mr. er—I hope we meet again.”

  “Good-bye, Vy,” said the magnificent Rosemary, a vision of warm brown skin and rustling red silk. “You’re a dear.”

  They were gone. The door slammed, Anstruther’s cigarette smoke and Rosemary’s perfume still faintly riding the air. Their laughter could be heard as they got in the car, fading as the car started and they moved off to the Mess. Vythilingam tenderly stroked Tigger, wiping with a bit of paper tissue the defiled mouth of the beast. He would get well. They would all get well. There was a medicine for everything. If one failed, you could try another. Vythilingam sighed, packed his State Veterinary Department bag, and left the cats lying there, confident that the healing juices would soon start their work. In the meantime there was bound to be a big back-log of correspondence in the office.

  His car started quite well. That station-master had looked after it. And, moving gently down the avenue, Vythilingam thought that he had better pay a brief visit to his friends, the staid bachelor Sundralingam, and Arumugam of the high voice, before he returned to the office. They, at least, unchanged and yearning for better things, might welcome him back. He smiled slightly as he drove on the wrong side of the road.

  It was a lovely night for Rosemary. The lights, the music, the attention. White-coated National Servicemen brought her pink gins (many, many: she forgot her promise to God and St. Anthony and the Little Flower and the rest of the baroque pantheon) and occasionally winked at her appreciatively. At so many levels did she appeal. So many officers with cummerbunds round slim waists, smelling of sweet young dewy manhood, asked her to dance. And she danced so well. She told a group, graduated from one star to three and crown, about her London experiences and decorations-will-be-worn and television appearances and Oooooh, the proposals. Everybody was very gay.

  The refreshments were excellent. Canapés of many kinds, galantines to be scooped or carved, cheese and onions, no Worcestershire sauce. But you could not have everything. The mousse of crab was most tasty. At the fifth mouthful something smote Rosemary hard. It was a memory of a poetry lesson in her training college in Liverpool: an earnest Empsonian young man, not really attractive. Tears began to smudge her mascara. “Poor Victor,” she said to an empty space by the white-clothed table, “poor, poor Victor.”

  “He came, he saw, he conquered,” said a quite handsome subaltern. “Victor ludorum.”

  “Poor Victor.” And then somebody asked her to dance.

  GLOSSARY

  Since Malaysia became an independent state, the Romanized spelling of Malay—now called ‘The National Language’ or Bahasa negara—has changed a little. Thus ch is represented as c, and o has mostly become u. As the following glossary relates to the language of pre-1957 Malaya, the spellings given have not been modified in the new (and often inept) orthographical light.

  abang (Malay)—elder brother.

  achcha (Urdu)—good, right.

  Achinese—one of the Malay people of Achin in the Malay Archipelago.

  ada baik (Malay)—good, fine, things are going well.

  Ai, mek! (Malay)—a call to a girl (somewhat insolent).

  Allahu alam (Arabic)—God knows best.

  amah (Malay)—nurse, cleaning woman, woman servant.

  ang pow (Chinese)—lit., red parcel. The token gift wrapped in red paper that is placed, for good luck, in the mouth of the New Year dragon.

  amok (Malay)—a disease, probably wholly psychopathic, in which the victim kills indiscriminately until he is himself killed. The sick man is called an amok or a pěngamok.

  apa? (Malay)—what?

  apa ada? (Malay)—What is the matter? (lit., What does he have?)

  attap (Malay)—palmleaves used as a roof covering.

  ap khuch karab bolta (Urdu)—You said something bad.

  awak (Malay)—you.

  baik-lah (Malay)—good; very well.

  banchoad (Urdu)—sister-fucker.

  baju (Malay)—tight women’s jacket worn above sarong.

  banyak (Malay)—much, many.

  barang (Malay)—things, especially personal belongings.

  běli (Malay)—buy, bought.

  bělum lagi pegang janji (Malay)—you have not yet fulfilled your promise.

  běnar (Malay)—true, truly.

  Bengali tonchit (Malay)—a Malay expression for a Sikh (somewhat insulting).

  běrok (Malay)—a monkey trained to pick coconuts.

  běruang (Malay)—a bear, bears.

  běsar (Malay)—big, great.

  besok (Malay)—tomorrow.

  bilal (Arabic)—the mosque official who calls the faithful to prayers.

  bint (Arabic)—woman, daughter.

  bintang tiga (Malay)—lit., three stars. Applied to Communist terrorists on account of their badge.

  bodek (Malay)—testicles.

  bomoh (Malay)—magician or medicine man.

  bunga (Malay)—flower, flowers.

  bunga mas (Malay)—flower of gold. The elaborate and costly tribute paid annually by conquered Malay rulers to their Siamese conquerors.

  bunting (Malay)—pregnant.

  bunyi-bunyian (Malay)—lit., sound—sounds. Music.

  chakap (Malay)—talk; to talk.

  charpoy (Urdu)—bed.

  chelaka (Arabic)—cursed, damned. (Also used as an expletive.)

  chongsam (Chinese)—an elegant silk dress for ladies, close-fitting, with the skirt slit on both sides as far as the thigh.

  chettiar (Bengali)—money-lender.

  chichak (Malay)—a house lizard or gecko.

  chili—the Oriental red pepper.

  chium (Malay)—a kiss; to kiss (though not in the European manner: the lover’s nose rubs the cheek of the beloved).

  dahaga (Malay)—thirst.

  dalam (Malay)—in, within, into.

  Deepavali (Tamil)—a Hindu feast of lustration.

  diam (Malay)—Be quiet!

  dhobi (Urdu)—washing, laundryman.

  dhoti (Urdu)—a dress worn by some Indians, consisting of a cloth wound round the body.

  dia takut kapak kěchil, tuan (Malay)—‘He is frightened of the (men with the) little axes, sir.’

  dua (Malay)—two.

  dua orang (Malay)—two people.

  echt (German)—genuine.

  gula malaka (Malay)—lit., Malaccan sugar. A dessert made of coconut milk, sago and molasses.

  guru besar (Malay)—lit., big teacher, headmaster, principal.

  haji (Arabic)—Mecca pilgrim.

  hakim (Arabic)—judge, magistr
ate.

  halal (Arabic)—not forbidden by religion: clean, kosher.

  hamil (Malay from Arabic)—pregnant.

  hantu dapur (Malay)—kitchen ghost.

  haram (Arabic)—forbidden by religion.

  (h)ela (Malay)—roughly, a metre (usually of cloth).

  Hari Raya (Malay)—lit., ‘Great Day’—the day of festivity which celebrates the end of the fasting month.

  hati (Malay)—liver, equivalent to heart as centre of the emotions.

  hsieh hsieh (Chinese)—thank you.

  Hokkien—a dialect of Chinese.

  hulu (Malay)—head, particularly the head or source of a river.

  ibu (Malay)—mother.

  ikan merah (Malay)—lit., red fish. An edible sea fish that has no European equivalent.

  itu chantek (Malay)—that is pretty.

  ingal (Malay)—think.

  jalan (Malay)—go; travel; street, road.

  jamban (Malay)—toilet, W.C.

  jangan takut (Malay)—Do not be frightened.

  Jawi (Arabic)—East, Eastern. Used of the Arabic script as applied to the Malay language.

  kampong (Malay)—village.

  kapak (Malay)—axe.

  kaseh (Malay)—love, affection.

  Kathi (Arabic)—a Muslim religious officer of high standing.

  Kaum nabi lot (Malay from Arabic)—lit., tribe of the Prophet Lot. Homosexuals.

  kawin (or kahwin) (Malay)—marriage.

  kěchil (Malay)—little.

  kědai (Tamil)—shop (often drinking shop where groceries are sold, or vice versa).

  khabar (Arabic)—news, as in the greeting, Apa khabar?—What news?

  kita (Malay)—we, us.

  kira (Malay)—a bill.

  kuali (Malay)—cooking vessel, deep pan.

  kuki (Malay from English)—cook.

  kung hee fatt choy (Chinese)—good luck and prosperity: a greeting at Chinese New Year.

  kěamanan (Malay)—peace.

  la ilaha (Arabic)—the bilal’s call: ‘There is no God but Allah.’

  laksamana (Sanskrit)—a high-ranking naval officer of ancient Malacca.

  lanchap (Malay)—smooth; masturbation, to masturbate.

  lauk (Malay)—food: specifically the accompaniment to rice.