“Wong Mee-ling.”
Yes, of course. Wong Mee-ling. The girl who was forbidden to speak to sailors. I might have guessed it before from that little touch. It was the first thing she’d know about good girls, that they didn’t speak to sailors.
Gwenny noticed them as they went out through the swing door into the hall.
“Oh, what a pity, they’re going upstairs,” she said. “Never mind, I’ll introduce you when she comes down. I expect she’s only gone up for a short-time.”
I remembered my sketch of Mee-ling, and her wide innocent eyes as she had pointed to herself saying, “Yes, virgin—that’s me.” And now she had gone up for a short-time. I burst out laughing.
Gwenny looked at me in surprise.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“Nothing, Gwenny—except that I’m such an awful fool. And I’d always rather prided myself on being able to see into people’s souls!”
“I think you are very understanding.”
“Well, I’m trusting, anyhow,” I laughed. “You could have told me you were Mme. Chiang Kai-shek and I’d have swallowed it, Gwenny. That’s one thing about me—I’ll swallow anything I’m told.”
II
Actually Suzie Wong, alias Wong Mee-ling, did not reappear that night after all, and I did not see her again until the next morning, when she came into the bar about lunchtime. She was dressed exactly as she had been dressed on the ferry, in the green denim jeans and her hair in a pony tail. I suspected that this was no accident, but a gesture of defiance.
She sauntered past my table, pretending not to see me.
“Suzie!”
She took no notice but went on. However, Suzie’s behavior was full of surprises, and a few minutes later she sauntered up again of her own accord.
“You mind if I sit down?”
“Of course not, Suzie.”
Her manner neither admitted nor denied recognition. Her face was expressionless. I had often thought how absurd was the popular Western notion of Chinese inscrutability—many Chinese were positively Gallic in their vivacity of expression—but now Suzie came close to it. Only her eyes belied her casual indifference. I could see the deep and careful thought going on behind them.
“You live in this hotel?” she asked in a polite automatic tone.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What floor?”
“Third.”
“What room number?”
“Three-one-six.”
“I know, corner room,” she nodded. “You like it here?”
“I like it very much.”
“How long you stay?”
She kept up the polite trivialities for several minutes, then all at once switched to another key.
“All right.” She held me with a bold, level gaze. “You know something? I told you lies on that boat. All lies.”
This sudden interruption of the trivial evasions with absolute bluntness took me aback, though later I was to grow used to it. It was her standard form of procedure when there was anything on her mind: first the five minutes of preliminaries, then all at once that bold direct gaze and the blunt announcement. The gaze was always quite unflinching and would be maintained for minutes on end. I had never known anybody with a more direct look than Suzie. It was one of the reasons that I found her so difficult to deceive.
“Well, don’t worry about it, Suzie,” I said. “I’m always telling lies. I don’t mind a bit.”
“You know why I told those lies?”
“You don’t have to explain unless you want.”
“Yes, I want.” Her eyes held mine evenly. “You ever go to the cinema?”
“The cinema? Yes, often.”
“Then say one day you go to the cinema and see a film. And the hero-man is very rich. Very good-looking. And he has a big car. And a beautiful girl friend. And they go into the mountains where everything looks beautiful—and there is snow. And they are very happy. All right. You believe everything true?”
“I believe while I’m watching it,” I said. “I believe enough to enjoy it.”
“Yes. Only you know the hero-man is only pretending. You know maybe from the newspaper that really he is very unhappy—just got divorce from his wife. And you know the film was made up in somebody’s head. You know it is just a story, like Chinese opera. You believe—but you don’t believe.”
“That’s quite true, Suzie.”
“All right. So sometimes I make up a story in my head. And I believe—and I don’t believe.”
And she went on to elaborate this explanation with a lucidity that took my breath away. She had known exactly what she was doing. What was she in reality? A social outcast engaged in a dirty job; a bad girl who could never get married. And what did she want to be? A rich girl of good family; a good girl with virginity intact and marriage in store. And playing this fantasy role with a stranger, and making him believe in it, she could believe in it herself—believe in it enough to supply authentic detail, like the rich girl’s enjoyment of riding in tramcars. Believe in it in the same way that she could believe in a film. Believe—and not believe.
“But you never did a dirty job like me,” she said when she had finished. “I don’t think you understand.”
“Of course I understand, Suzie.”
“No.” She had suddenly withdrawn again, as if regretting what she had told me. She looked almost hostile. “I don’t think so. You’re a big man. Good class—I know. You never understand.”
“But everybody makes up stories for themselves, Suzie,” I said. “We’re all pretending to ourselves all the time about something or other—only we’re not usually honest enough to admit it like you.”
She gave me a shrewd, watchful look from the corner of her eye. I suddenly realized that there had been a hint of patronization in my tone: the blessedly tolerant fellow from a superior world patronizing the clever little water-front whore—oh, damn nice girls, some of ’em, damn nice!
Awful!
And she had caught it. She was as sharp as blazes, the little smooth-faced mischievously innocent Suzie-Mee-ling. She had caught it all right.
“No.” She shook her head. “You never understand.”
“Well, perhaps not, Suzie. Anyhow, let’s have some lunch.”
“No.”
I laughed. “I’m not letting you off this time. I’ve learned my lesson.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Why you want to invite me?”
“Why? Well, I don’t know. I suppose because I rather like you.”
“No—you lie.”
“Really? And how do you know if I like you or not?”
“You like Mee-ling. You like that virgin girl on the boat. But I’m Suzie. I do dirty job. Go upstairs with sailors.”
“That doesn’t stop you feeling hungry,” I said. “Come on, what shall we eat?”
But she went on, determined now to rub my nose in it. “You know how long I do this job? Six years—since seventeen years old.”
“That makes you twenty-three. You don’t look it, Suzie.”
“Six years. Six years I go with men—make ‘lovely.’” She used the pidgin expression to make it sound worse.
“There must have been an awful lot of men in that time. I wonder how many?”
“I don’t know. I never counted. Maybe two thousand.”
“Good Lord!” I laughed.
“Why you laugh?”
“You must admit, it’s terribly funny, Suzie. I mean, that you really took me in about being a virgin—and now you tell me you’ve made love with two thousand men!”
“Maybe three thousand—four thousand.”
“Well, I can only say that more women ought to try it, because you look marvelous on it. I suppose it’s partly that indes
tructible Chinese complexion. Look at you, that lovely smooth skin!”
“Yes—smooth. So you can’t see how much dirt inside.”
“Oh, stop it, Suzie! Come on, I want to try a new dish—what do you recommend?”
“I don’t know. I go now.”
“Suzie, sit down.”
“No, I got my job to do. I got to make ‘lovey-lovey.’ You go and find Mee-ling—go and find virgin girl.”
And she went off and sat down with an American Negro sailor who had just come into the bar.
III
The next evening at ten o’clock my telephone rang.
“Hello, this is Molly.”
“Who?”
“Molly.” There were voices and music in the background that sounded like the bar downstairs, but I knew no girl of that name at the Nam Kok. And the voice continued, “What, you forget me already? You catch me last week!”
“It certainly wasn’t me.”
“Yes! Make lovey all night!”
“I did nothing of the kind!”
“Yes, you just forget! Butterfly! Catch too many girls!” There was a splutter of delighted giggles, followed by a clatter as the receiver was dropped. Then another clatter as it was picked up again.
“Hello, this is Gwenny,” said Gwenny’s familiar voice. “That was Suzie—did you guess? We were just having a joke.”
“Well, I’m delighted,” I laughed. “I didn’t know that Suzie and I were even on speaking terms.”
“Oh yes, I have told her you are really very nice and not stuck-up, and she is sorry about yesterday. Now she would like to see you.” Her voice abruptly faded as the receiver was snatched from her hand.
“Hello,” said the first voice, cheekily pleased with itself. “What are you doing now?”
“Nothing.”
“All right. I come and see you.”
When she appeared, about twenty minutes later, the cheeky high spirits of the telephone call had deserted her, though for a time she tried to maintain the mood artificially, sauntering round the room and inspecting its contents with a rather false bravado, demanding, “What’s that for?” and “How much did that cost?” She was wearing a silk cheongsam with high, tight-fitting collar, which although very smart was too sophisticated for her: I thought the pony tail and jeans better suited to her style. She had also put on too much make-up, and I suspected that this titivation accounted for the delay in her coming upstairs. I wondered rather uncomfortably if she was out to impress me.
I poured out two glasses of tea and we took them onto the balcony, leaning on the balustrade to look at the lights of the harbor. She fell silent. We watched two ferryboats crawling towards each other like luminous caterpillars. Their noses appeared to join as they drew level and they became a single long caterpillar that rapidly contracted to the length of one, expanded again, then was torn apart in the middle. The two halves crawled away in opposite directions. We turned our attention to the Peak, picking out the moving light of the Peak tramcar as it began its descent from the top. Lower down the escarpment the thickly clustered lights were like a cascade of jewels tipped from a casket. And below was the great glittering jewel heap of Hong Kong, fringed by the emeralds, rubies, and sapphires of neon along the water front.
“I go now,” Suzie said.
“But you’ve only just come.”
“I got to work, you know. Maybe I can get two more short-times tonight.” She was laying it on thick again.
“Why did you come up and see me, Suzie?” I asked, puzzled.
She shrugged evasively. “No reason. I just get tired of that bar sometimes. Too much smoke. It gives me headache.” She turned off the balcony, but halfway across the room paused as her eye fell on something under my bed. “What’s that? Gramophone?”
“No, it’s a tape recorder.” It was an obsolescent model that I hired very cheaply for practicing Chinese intonation, though my use of it had been sadly sporadic.
“What’s it for?”
“Well, it’s like a gramophone, but you make your own records.”
She nodded indifferently, not taking it in; she had lost interest. However, I thought the tape recorder might break the ice and I pulled it out from under the bed, opened the lid, attached the lead from the microphone on the dressing table, and switched on. Soon the quivering green light appeared. I switched over to “Recording” and the reels of tape began to revolve.
“I know,” Suzie said. “Cinema. You make film.”
“No, it’s not film.”
“I go now.”
“Wait just a moment.”
I kept her talking for another minute or two about going to the cinema, then reversed the tape and switched over to “Loudspeaker.” I had run the tape back too far and first there issued a series of curious noises like bad farmyard imitations, which Suzie clearly failed to recognize as my attempts to master the elusive Chinese tones. They stopped abruptly. There was crackling. Then Suzie’s voice said, “I know. Cinema. You make film.”
A queer sigh. Then a pause—one of those pauses that make you wonder, when listening to recorded conversation, what on earth you could have been doing. And then my voice said, “No, it’s not film.”
“I go now,” said Suzie’s voice.
Suzie gazed blankly at the instrument. She had not yet recognized the voices distorted by the loudspeaker.
“Radio?” she said.
“No, Suzie. That’s us.”
I pointed to the microphone. She had seen plenty of microphones in films and understood at once. She glanced back sharply at the recorder.
“Yes, I go often,” her voice was saying, “I go to the Roxy, Princes, Majestic, New York—every cinema.”
She looked startled.
“Me?” she said. “That’s me?”
“Yes.”
She listened in disbelief—for nothing sounds more improbable than one’s own voice when heard for the first time; it might be the voice of a perfect stranger, and it is a shock to realize that this stranger has been one’s spokesman all one’s life. Then she giggled, beginning to enjoy herself; but at that moment there was a perfunctory oscillation and the voices stopped.
“Finish?” she inquired anxiously.
“You can hear it again if you like.”
“Yes—again.”
I reset the tape and once more our conversation began to unfold. Suzie sat on the edge of the bed clutching a pillow to stop herself giggling. However, it was too much for her: soon her giggles were out of control and she was rolling about on the bed with her face buried in the pillow, and I was laughing helplessly in sympathy.
The recording ended and she looked up from the pillow, pink with merriment.
“Again!”
“Let’s do another, Suzie. Can you sing?”
“Yes, I know Pekin songs, Shanghai songs—plenty of songs.”
She became serious, required a private rehearsal, and scuttled out onto the balcony, shutting the door behind her so that I should not hear. Ten minutes later she reappeared.
“I sing you a Pekin country song,” she announced. “It’s about a boy cloud who falls in love with a girl cloud. But the girl cloud says, ‘You’re no good—you’ve not got a good heart. I wait for some boy with a good heart.’ So the boy cloud feels very sad. He starts to cry, and his tears make rain—because that’s all rain is, just a cloud crying. Well, down below sits an old man. He is very hungry, because there is no water for the rice paddy. The soil is hard like stone. The rice will not grow. Then he sees the rain falling down. He feels happy. So the girl cloud tells the boy cloud, ‘You did a good thing. Maybe you’re not so bad as I thought.’ So in the end they get married.”
She was nervous in front of the microphone, and after listening, head cocked critically, to the p
layback of her first attempt, she said “No good. I sing again.”
And the second time she sang charmingly, in a funny high-pitched little voice that went on and on, with that characteristic monotony of Mandarin songs. She listened to the playback, decided she could do no better, and promptly lost interest in the recorder. But it had done its job—the ice was broken.
We drank tea and chattered.
“I show you my room sometime,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed swinging her legs. “Then you can see my baby.”
“Your baby?”
“Yes, very nice baby.”
“But Suzie, don’t be ridiculous!” I laughed. “It’s not your own?”
“Yes—my baby. Half-caste.”
“Who was the father, Suzie?”
“My boy friend. English policeman—only he disappeared off to Borneo.”
“But is it a boy or a girl?”
“Boy—very good-looking. Soon one year old. I like him very much.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Yes. Some girls don’t like half-caste baby. They give away. But I like my baby. I will never give him away.”
“And who looks after him when you’re working?”
“My amah. Oh yes, I pay her plenty of money, my amah.” She looked worried. “Only my baby coughs too much, you know. Cough-cough! Cough-cough! You think my amah leaves him in a draft?”
“I don’t know, Suzie.”
“I think so. I think she leaves him in a draft.”
Presently I rang the bell for a fresh supply of tea, and Ah Tong came in with a new teapot. While he was exchanging it for the old teapot in the padded container I noticed Suzie stealing glances at me from the corner of her eye, as if estimating my state of readiness to bear something that she had to say. Ah Tong departed, closing the door. Suzie chattered inconsequentially for another minute or two, then broke off and fixed me with that level gaze. “You know why I come to your room?” she said.
“I’ve no idea, Suzie.”
“Then I will tell you. This evening I go upstairs with a sailor, come down again, say good-by in the hall. I come back into the bar. Another sailor pulls my arm. ‘Yum-yum,’ he says. ‘Pretty girl! Come and sit on my knee.’ I sit on his knee. ‘Yum-yum,’ he says. ‘How much for short-time?’ I say, ‘Hundred dollars.’”
World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) Page 7
