The Bell-Boy

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  Dropping his bag, Laki carefully approached the pagoda’s doorway. Occasionally Father McGoohan would spend a reflective hour sitting inside, for a stone bench lined each of the little room’s six walls. Tonight there was no one, merely some dark clots on the floor which he knew to be monkey-dirt. Returning to his bundle, he took out a coil of washing-line appropriated from the Nirvana and tied one end to the bag, the other to his belt. Then he shinned up the wall to the pagoda’s first storey, using the easy handholds offered by its scrolls of exuberant decoration, and squeezed in through a narrow window slit. Inside was a smaller version of the room downstairs but without the benches.

  His discovery of this chamber, which was just wide enough to lie down in but in which he had to crouch, had actually been made from his own eyrie. With a pair of binoculars borrowed from a tourist’s room, he had deduced that the pagoda must consist of a series of ever-smaller chambers rather than being hollow throughout. He knew this because the monkeys had made the same discovery and could sometimes be seen gallivanting in its cells and grimacing from its windows. They even swarmed the flanged pinnacle on top and from there swung into the trees whose branches dipped conveniently close.

  Laki had long since investigated the structure from top to bottom, but had found only the first floor habitable. The diminishing size of the upper chambers made them suitable only for monkeys. They were full of mud-brick chips from his own rooftop target practice, as well as any amount of twigs and excrement. He had decided to keep this first storey monkey-free by setting traps. He caught several quite painfully and they had been variously boiled, roast, curried and stewed. After a while the monkeys became more prudent and although they could still now and then be seen using the pagoda as a climbing frame and cavorting in its ground-floor room, they rarely went into his chamber. Every so often a new generation was born and he had to set his traps again, but it was comparatively easy to discourage them.

  On the other hand they still stole any small object he left in the room, so it was bare but for the motheaten carpet he had installed (until lately the one article of luxury in Room 41) and a wooden box too heavy for the monkeys to lift. This had originally been made to hold the hotel’s fuses and wiring, but before it could be put up Laki had spotted that it would just fit through one of the pagoda’s narrow embrasures. It was wide and flat and weighted with catapult ammunition. Besides these pebbles it contained a box of matches and a stump of candle, as well as various snares and nooses made of stainless steel wire.

  Now he hauled up his bag after him and added to the box several purloined mosquito coils with their flimsy metal stands. Then he sat in the darkness with the crown of his head touching the cement ceiling. He was excited by this room in some way – excited by concealment, by knowing of secret niches where he could sit or lie unsuspected. He took delight in coming and going between mysterious haunts known to himself all over Malomba. The creek in the river where he and Jason had swum that morning was merely one of several places he visited regularly, setting traps and picking fruit or simply lying in a shady nook away from the dust and traffic.

  Here in the pagoda was a den where he could be the tiger in the garden with his glossy eyes and pelt, full of power. It was a certainty of his that one day when he was a man and married with a family he would still have such places to pass private hours – not doing anything particularly, but just being able to rejoice in a necessary latency. He liked this chamber’s smallness. He liked the fact that it reminded him of his room on the roof – even that here, too, a vine had twined itself about the pagoda and hung a spray of flowers and gourds in through two of the six window slits. Periodically the Fathers’ gardener hacked it back, but the ubiquitous vine was never daunted for long.

  He sat for a while in the dark taking swigs of warm toddy. The vespertine ceremonials were over; even the procathedral’s mournful Lenten tolling had ceased. Instead, the comparative silence of natural sounds filled the night. Frogs roared from the edge of the stream down below, a mosquito whined about his eyelids. Putting an ear to the plastic container, he listened to the soft fizz of toddy fermenting. He mustn’t drink too much, he thought, otherwise he would wind up like Raju; the porter would anyway complain that there wasn’t enough to see him through his night’s vigil. What was more, he had not yet had supper and at this very instant Raju might be polishing off his portion as well. He climbed down to the ground, put the rope back in his bag and set off for the fence. Toddy made his step light and he was whistling again as he reached the gap and wormed through.

  A hand fastened on his T-shirt and pulled.

  ‘Little pus-bubble. Oh yes, now we have you,’ said Mr Muffy’s voice in accents of real satisfaction, and Laki found himself dragged through the hole even before he had time to jettison the toddy. ‘And what have you been doing, swine-face? What evil adventure is it this time?’ He jerked the container from his bell-boy’s grasp and shook it at eye-level. ‘Kerosene, is it? A bit of fire-raising, maybe, to chase away boredom? But no,’ he said, affecting to avert his face fastidiously, ‘our breath gives us away. Pure essence of carrion, boy. You’ve a stench on you like a toddy-shop harlot.’

  It was most unfortunate that Mr Muffy had been in the yard, for normally he went home a good two hours earlier. Today, however, the proprietor had become absorbed by the new adding machine whose buttons he had now mastered. He was about to embark on a great Plan to take the Nirvana up-market in a single dazzling move, to engage the Chinese on their own ground. The idea had come to him all at once, as such things did to men of vision. The monopoly the Chinese enjoyed enabled them to fix their prices scandalously high. If he couldn’t provide the same standards for a third of the price and still turn a decent profit, then he didn’t deserve to be a porter in the Wednesday Market. The prospect inflamed and exhilarated him. In sober moments, however, he knew he was going to need allies. Apart from the Chinese themselves, there were powerful cabals in town who would have to be sweetened.

  Part of the solution, he knew, lay with the plain-clothes police. They demanded regular payment and occasional tidbits, but it was worth it in return for being thought a good citizen. If he was hoping to compete with hotels such as the Golden Fortune and the Seven Blessings, he would need at the very least to provide a massage service. He had once heard Mr Botiphar, the Mayor’s brother, say that foreigners also liked video films of dwarves giving each other colonic irrigations, and suddenly he had felt completely out of his depth. If that was what it took to stay on top in the hotel business, then so be it; but it was evident that the advice and cooperation of the police would be essential. He had hitherto kept his dealings with them to a nervous minimum but could sense that this would no longer suffice. They liked active compliance, they liked to be kept informed. He sighed. The world of big business was indeed hard. One needed enterprise, sure enough; but one also had to become involved in all sorts of distasteful politicking and grovelling … Still, he thought, he was equal to the challenge.

  Mr Muffy had fed some projected figures into his machine and the little scroll of paper it spat out caused him much satisfaction. Locking up his office, he was just setting off to tell his wife that if she behaved herself he might soon buy her the gold lamé Hindu pantaloons she coveted when he remembered she had asked him to take a look at the goat and see if it was fat enough to be eaten. He was prodding it when Laki’s familiar whistle from beyond the bananas had caught his ear. Now the sight of his bell-boy standing there in shorts and reeking of drink made all too clear the Nirvana’s need for radical change.

  ‘Knife,’ he said contentedly, having seized the bag and shaken out its contents. ‘Rope. Looks to me like a clear case of breaking and entering premises at present unknown. But we’ll find out, won’t we? Or – no, I’ve got it. We were bringing our dying mother a life-saving draught of her favourite drink, weren’t we? We had to penetrate the isolation ward of Malomba General Hospital. The knife was in case you met with opposition from the nursing staff. Of course. Well,
I’m deeply touched, boy; deeply touched …’ And more in the same ironic vein, during which his grip shifted from the bell-boy’s T-shirt to his ear.

  Laki, waiting with apparent submission, debated whether to punch his employer in the kidneys and have done with it. In addition to being wonderfully satisfying, it would bring to an end all vacillation and ensure his having to move on. But it would also throw away unfinished all the work he had been putting into the Hemonys. Besides losing his room, he would be banished for ever from the sight of Zoe. Despite the pain in his ear (for Mr Muffy was all the while leading him off through the yard, the kitchens, and along the passage to his office behind the front desk) Laki decided to endure. An end to his troubles was in sight and it would be a pity to spoil it all … He would not have been able to say quite how his troubles were going to end, only that he had a definite feeling about the foreign family with which he was building up such cordial relations. Kindness did not go unrewarded, he knew, especially when one was dealing with spiritual visitors. And anyway, foreigners of all kinds were notorious for their impulsive acts of generosity to evade embarrassment, as well as for their miraculous power to change people’s lives.

  ‘… and then I think we’ll telephone the Beetles and give their canes some practice. Warm up that juicy little rump of yours, turdlet, h’m? Oh turdlet, turdlet. It’s a criminal child I’ve been feeding and housing all these years. Dear, dear …’

  They rounded the corner and there were the Hemonys at the unattended front desk. At once Mr Muffy’s hand left Laki’s ear-lobe and went around his shoulder as he switched to English.

  ‘Good evening, ladies,’ he greeted them jovially. He gave Laki the simulacrum of an affectionate pat on the shoulder. ‘Poor boy,’ he explained vaguely, as if to dismiss him.

  ‘We want to thank you for lending him to us this morning,’ said Tessa. ‘Jason had a wonderful time, didn’t you, Jay? and we’re really grateful. Children don’t always want to drag around after adults, do they? Especially boys. They’re so bouncy and independent.’

  Mr Muffy was smiling bleakly, hand apparently frozen to Laki’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m sure you found you could spare him after all, didn’t you?’ Tessa went on. The proprietor was not certain whether she had seen him pulling the little maggot along by the ear but her next remark made him think she had. ‘Young people need their time off, Mr Muffy, especially when they’re far from home and worried about their mothers being ill.’ This made her glorious daughter shoot her a glance he couldn’t begin to interpret. ‘Compassion is all, isn’t it? To be harsh and lacking in sympathy is only another form of grasping, you know. We certainly hope to be seeing a lot more of our young friend while we’re staying here in your excellent hotel.’

  This sally, not least the protective phrase ‘our young friend’, faced Muffy with the inevitable. He gave the bell-boy a final pat, his one concession to his feelings being to maintain the smile while lapsing out of English long enough to remark, ‘What a lucky turdlet it is to have this silly foreign cow on his side. But she’ll be leaving soon and then what fun there’ll be.’

  Laki favoured him with a confident grin and with dazzling impertinence unhitched his bag from his employer’s fingers. ‘Good night, sir,’ he said in English. ‘Good night, missus. Good night, miss.’ He winked at Jason and walked jauntily off towards the back regions. On the way he met Raju coming from the kitchen wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and belching cardamom fumes. ‘I’ve been caught, uncle,’ he explained softly in the passageway. ‘I’m afraid there’s no toddy tonight. Muffy’s at the desk and he’s furious.’

  ‘Oh dear, I am a bit late, it’s true,’ admitted Raju. ‘There was such a lot to eat tonight. I’d better go at once.’

  Laki watched him go, frowning at the old man’s servile haste before turning back towards the kitchen to see if there was anything left. What scraps he could find he took straight up to his room, recognising the need to make himself scarce for the rest of the evening. Sitting beneath the pergola of vines chewing an end of sausage with a lump of stale laran bread, he reviewed recent events. Unfortunate, no doubt about that; but nothing like as disastrous as they would have been before the advent of the Hemonys. He thought of the two hundred piku the missus had so promptly given him and felt a half-erotic, half-sentimental swelling at her kindness and the circumstances which had provoked it.

  He had passed the day in a cocoon of amazement at how easy it was after all to get on in this world. One simply wept a little at the right moment and in the right company. There had been more to it than that, he knew, but he was vaguer about the other magic component and settled for repeating to himself his insight that these were people who wanted something to happen. And maybe old Raju had been right, too: Never steal a watch when you can steal a heart. He spat an intractable lump of gristle over the edge of the roof and then couldn’t resist looking to see if it had hit anything interesting in the street below.

  Even if something went badly wrong with these people – Laki resumed his seat and his chewing – there were all the other foreigners in town. Having refined one’s technique, whatever it was, it could presumably be applied to anybody. Suddenly he saw himself as a pioneer. He would no longer be a bell-boy or a washer-up, another of Malomba’s shiftless band of skivvies and menials who barely managed to support themselves, let alone anybody else. No more would he send home irregular remittances to keep his family an inch above disaster. Instead he would be earning the sort of money to change their status once and for all. Architect of the family’s fortune, he would himself buy the twelve-horsepower petrol engine which would transform his father’s fishing. (He saw the hired jeep bouncing among the palms towards their house, the crated engine gleaming in the back; he saw his family’s surprise at this unexpected vehicle as they ran up in the dust cloud of its halting; he saw his father’s tears when he finally realised the motor was for him.)

  All this Laki clearly saw, and much besides. He saw his mother with new pots and pans and her own private medicine cabinet of antibiotics. He saw his sisters in new dresses, his brothers with air rifles instead of catapults. He saw the plot of land behind their hut expanding and swallowing up the neighbours’, stocked with ever-increasing herds of goats and pigs … What nothings were the Muffys of the world! Acidulous men in their fifties with their crummy businesses, just keeping afloat by dint of wearisome fiddles and sharp practice. That was no way forward for a boy – a young man, rather – with ambition and real earning potential. One day he would eat Mr Muffy alive. He would come back and simply buy him out. Then, scorning all attempts by the BDL next door to do a deal, he would tear down the Nirvana and … and … of course, put up the Auld Strait Kirk of Laki, Malomban Rite. Then he would really start making money as part of the city’s religious establishment.

  And punctually his mind skidded round to the tableful of virgins and his eyes lifted to the glowing ruby light of the Lingasumin, whence came so much imaginative strength. He shifted his seat. It was an erotic business, glimpsing the future. The mere planning of it, the anticipation of power and the freedom to act was enough to make his fingertips unconsciously brush upwards at the corners of his mouth, to stray across his upper lip, chin and throat as he stared out across the holy city towards a morrow of his own creating.

  Tonight the future collapsed before two obtrusive chunks of the present: this fresh trouble with Mr Muffy and his mother’s illness. ’Flu was one thing, but he was superstitious about having wished scarlet fever on her for momentary effect. It might come true. He was glad he had tracked down the dried-fish merchant who was an old and trusted messenger for both Raju and himself, coming and going regularly between the east coast and Malomba. But the man had not been due to return to Saramu until this evening – might only just this minute be leaving – so the money wouldn’t reach her until late tomorrow or even the day after. Not perfect, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Less perfect still was Mr Muffy’s threat to call in t
he Beetles. These were the holy city’s plain-clothes police, so named because in addition to black slacks they wore reflecting sunglasses for sinister effect, even at night. The Beetles had their own system of justice and were the lawless law; one did anything to avoid falling into their hands. They controlled most of the rackets in town while deciding for themselves who or what was undesirable. Of late they had prospered mightily from the tourist boom, especially from the appetite for sima displayed by what Tominy Bundash had described as ‘the hippy element’. But there appeared to be an imponderable line drawn between the encouragement of this trade and its suppression. Quite often the flogged bodies of pushers or ordinary vagrants were found on rubbish-dumps in Malomba’s untouristed outskirts, reminders that the Beetles never shot or strangled or knifed but always caned their victims to death. Among the poor it was commonly held that anybody might be eligible for ‘tenderising’; enough that a squad of Beetles in one of their scarlet jeeps be bored or drunk and pick a quarrel with someone who answered back. They seldom interfered with foreigners, content merely to stare from a passing vehicle at anyone they thought sufficiently scruffily-dressed to be unwelcome on account of poverty. Insofar as the Beetles were ever pleased to see anyone, they were happiest with a rich, conventionally dressed foreigner who put up at a good Chinese hotel and sent out for quantities of sima and little massage-girls at night, while tottering out for some psychic surgery by day.

  Laki, as he himself well knew, fell precisely into the category of the Beetles’ preferred victim. He had no illusions about what would happen if Mr Muffy did send for them, but it was obviously just another of the man’s empty threats, for what would he stand to gain? In the event Laki might not merit tenderising the first time, but he would certainly be meted out some exemplary treatment as a warning. Anyway, once you had claimed their attention you became trouble by association and no one in town would ever give you another job.