World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399)

by Mason, Richard

  The Commissioner relaxed again. I went up to him and asked, “Have you got any babies out, sir?”

  “Six.” He was watching them choose the spot for the saw cut.

  “Can we look at them?”

  He glanced round, saw Suzie, gave me a mildly curious look, then decided he had no time to concern himself with us.

  “Under the tarpaulin,” he said, and returned his attention to the sawing.

  We scrambled back down the rubble. A stretcher was being lifted into an ambulance. It contained a young man who was muttering and crying out incoherently like someone in a nightmare. His trousers were ripped and the rain was splashing on his private parts. His face had the drained-out whiteness of death. Along the street were several tarpaulins, collecting pools of water where they sagged between the bodies. A Chinese policeman nodded toward one, indicating the babies. I lifted the tarpaulin, tipping off the pools of water which came flooding back round the bodies and over our feet. There were six small corpses, all but two with faces mutilated beyond recognition. The smallest was naked and lay face down and its two buttocks were together no larger than my fist. There were two about the same size as Suzie’s baby but one was a girl. Suzie stooped beside the other, lifted the hand, and examined the fingers and palm. She could not see properly because of the light. She laid down the hand and examined a foot. She suddenly bent closer, as if in recognition, then examined the hand again. An English police officer came up carrying a flashlamp and escorting a Chinese girl in cotton trousers. He saw Suzie and turned the lamp onto the child for her. Suzie immediately put down the hand and shook her head. The Chinese girl looked at the corpses and began to smirk and titter. The officer shone his lamp along the row and each seemed funnier to her than the last. I asked the officer if any children had been taken to hospital.

  He said, “One girl, but I doubt if she made it.” The girl in cotton trousers burst into fresh titters. He glanced at her, and then said to me, “Nerves. I used to think they were all callous bloody bastards, these Chinese—but it’s just nerves. You wouldn’t think it, but that girl’s heart is bloody near breaking.”

  He shone the torch for us while we looked under the other tarpaulins for the amah, but we could not find her. There were only twenty-seven bodies so far, and four survivors in hospital, and he reckoned that there must be a good hundred casualties altogether. He said that a house had also collapsed this afternoon over in Kowloon: it had been the same as this, old property earmarked for clearance in 1939, but the war had broken out to prevent it. And then after the war the influx of refugees, doubling the population almost overnight, had prevented clearance again until new housing could be completed.

  Later, as we stood watching again at the edge of the rubble, I suddenly remembered about Suzie’s savings, which she had kept in a tin under her floor.

  “Yes, I know,” she said tonelessly, when I reminded her.

  “But how much was there, Suzie?”

  She shrugged. “I forget.”

  “There must have been an awful lot, with all you managed to save when you were with Rodney.”

  “Yes, I think about five thousand dollars.”

  “My God, that’s more than three hundred pounds!”

  “Yes, gone.”

  “It might turn up,” I said.

  “Not with all those coolies.” Her voice was still toneless and indifferent. “Anyhow, that money was just for my baby. If my baby is finished, I don’t need that money.”

  “Well, let’s go and look.”

  I led her to the place where personal possessions found in the rubble were being collected under guard. There was a pile of old battered cooking tins, remnants of furniture, a few old shoes and clothes, and one clock that by some miracle was still going, though it would not continue to do so much longer out in the rain. The guard let us search through the pile, but we could not find Suzie’s tin. She shrugged indifferently: the loss of the money meant nothing to her beside the loss of the baby, and I do not think it had particularly occurred to her that she had lost everything she possessed in the world except the soaked clothes she was wearing. She had even lost the handbag and umbrella that she had been carrying when she had returned from the Happy Room.

  She had begun to tremble from shock or chill. Her teeth were chattering and her face and lips looked icy. I said I did not think it was any use staying, but she refused to leave.

  “I wait for my baby,” she said.

  “Suzie, I’ll wait,” I said. “You go and shelter in a shop or somewhere, and get warm.”

  “No, I shall wait.”

  “All right, I’ll see if I can get some brandy to warm you up.”

  I went off down the street that was being kept clear for police trucks and ambulances. The shops were closed, but some shopkeepers stood watching in their doorways. I could not get any brandy but I found a clothes shop and bought a big man’s sweater, and took it back to Suzie and helped her put it on in the doorway. She did not really know what she was doing because her attention was fixed all the time on the rubble, and she did not notice that the sleeves were too long, so I rolled them up for her. The rain was driving into the doorway and I looked round for somewhere else she could stand to keep the sweater dry. I remembered seeing an abandoned rickshaw near the tarpaulins, so I went to find it and dragged it back over the edge of the rubble, and set it down facing the scene of operations. It had been tilted down on the traces so that no rain had blown under the hood and the seat was dry. I led Suzie across from the doorway and made her get in, and then fixed the mackintosh sheet over her knees. She did not speak a word. She sat there without moving, except for the slight chatter of her teeth, with her eyes following every stretcher that was carried down from the flare-lit rubble. I was also feeling very chilled myself and I walked around and climbed up and down the rubble to try and warm myself up, and I kept looking back and seeing Suzie’s little round white face watching from under the rickshaw hood.

  Presently an announcement was made from a police loudspeaker car, in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, that no more survivors were expected to be found. Unclaimed bodies, and the bodies of those whose relatives did not wish to make private arrangements, would be buried at public expense. Facilities would be provided for identification by relatives in the morning, and although excavations would continue, people were advised to go home.

  I went back to Suzie and urged her to take this advice. But she shook her head.

  “I wait for my baby.”

  Another hour went by, and then I was suddenly shaken out of my stupor of chill as I recognized the body of the old amah carried past me on a stretcher. It seemed too much to hope that the child’s body had fallen in neat proximity and would be discovered next; but only a moment or two later, as I was crossing to tell Suzie about the amah, I saw her rise from the rickshaw and start towards another stretcher that was being carried from the rubble. It was as if she had been prompted by some instinct, for she could not possibly have seen from the rickshaw what the stretcher contained. I joined her as she stopped and watched it carried past. On it lay the corpse of a baby. The body was so tiny, just a little mutilated object in the center of the stretcher, that it seemed absurd for two hefty males to be engaged in carrying it. Its face was a mess of raw flesh stuck with bits of rubble and quite unrecognizable. It had lost an arm.

  Suzie followed the stretcher without taking her eyes from the baby. The rain had stopped half an hour ago and the row of babies’ corpses lay uncovered. The stretcher was lowered and its burden placed alongside the others. Suzie crouched beside it. The English officer shone his torch unsuspectingly on the mess of the face, which in the white concentrated beam of light all at once achieved a startling, almost unreal, clarity of color and detail, like some varnished, overrealistic painting of still life. He quickly pointed the torch away, and held it so that only the edge of the beam was
on the body and the face was in shadow. Suzie lifted the hand and spread the tiny fingers. Then she put it down and felt for the other hand. She could not find it. She looked puzzled, like somebody who has lost something only just laid down. She began to roll the body carefully, searching for it. The officer touched her on the shoulder. He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Gone.”

  Suzie stared at the baby as if she could not believe the hand had gone. The baby must have a hand. Then she noticed the torn empty shoulder from which the arm had been wrenched. She contemplated this for a moment then turned her attention to the feet. She examined each foot in turn and afterwards both together, holding her hand under the heels. She laid them carefully down.

  “Yes,” she said. “My baby.”

  She got up and began to walk away.

  “Excuse me,” the police officer said. “I say, hang on one minute! Hey, young lady!” Suzie stopped and looked round. “How about burial? You want to look after it yourself?”

  “No,” Suzie said. “Finish.”

  “Leave it to us, eh?”

  “Yes—you bury.” She turned away again.

  I hurried after her. I said, “Suzie, you needn’t worry about the cost of a proper funeral. I’ll look after that for you.”

  She shook her head. “No. Finish.”

  “Are you sure, Suzie? You’re sure it’s not just a question of money?” I could not make her out. I knew that Chinese babies were never accorded the adult privilege of a funeral procession with white-cloaked mourners and brass bands, and that even well-to-do Chinese parents would simply give somebody a few dollars to cart off their dead infant; but after all Suzie’s anxiety to wait and see the corpse, I had not expected her to abandon it so unceremoniously.

  However, she still shook her head. “No, not money.”

  “I hope not, Suzie,” I said. “Because it’s no use feeling scruples about borrowing from me now. I must see you on your feet again.”

  She glanced at her hands, as if looking for her handbag, but remembered that even that had gone. She stopped. “You don’t mind lending me just ten dollars?”

  “Of course not, Suzie. But you’re going to need much more than that.”

  “I only need ten dollars now, to buy something for my baby.” She saw that I looked puzzled, and said carefully, “My baby is not dead, you know. That is not my baby we saw there. That is just his body. My baby has gone somewhere else to live, and I must still look after him. I must send him presents.”

  I began to understand. “You mean paper presents?”

  “Yes, paper. Because he will need many things in that new place where he has gone.”

  There were dozens of paper shops in the neighborhood, but all were shuttered and locked. Presently we found one with spaced wooden bars in place of a door. We peered inside. An oil lamp burned in front of a wall shrine with a dim yellow light. Under the shrine a man lay asleep on a wooden bed. He wore a pair of blue running shorts and a white singlet in holes. We knocked until he woke. He slipped his feet into wooden sandals and clopped across the shop. He removed one of the wooden bars to admit us. The shop was stacked with joss sticks, firecrackers, pictures of gods for household shrines, and all the paraphernalia of Chinese religious observance, with a few shelves devoted to ball-point pens, airmail envelopes, and toilet rolls. The ceiling was hung with paper models, and as Suzie made her selection the shopkeeper unhooked them with his stick. She chose a bridge to facilitate the crossing into the next world, three suits in different sizes, a bundle of dummy million-dollar notes, and a junk—since even if her baby did not wish to become a seafarer himself, he could always let out a junk very profitably on hire. She also bought a paper house about the size of a parrot cage, because if he owned his own house he could insure that it was kept in a proper state of repair and would not fall down in the rain. Only one article that she wanted was out of stock; however, at her request the shopkeeper set to work with a pair of scissors and a pot of paste to make up the deficiency, sticking oblong sheafs of yellow tissue paper into red paper covers.

  “What are those, Suzie?” I asked. “Books?”

  “Yes, teaching books. Those books will teach my baby to read and write, so he doesn’t grow up a coolie boy.” And she told the shopkeeper what title to write on the outside of each.

  We were both chilled through to the bones by the time we left the shop. We walked through the silent empty streets festooned with Suzie’s purchases.

  I said, “Suzie, do you want to come to the Nam Kok, or would you rather find another hotel?”

  “I will come to the Nam Kok,” she said.

  “All right, there’s sure to be a room.”

  She was silent for a bit, and then said doubtfully, “All right.”

  I said, “Suzie, you can come to my room if you like. I only thought that tonight you might rather be alone.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “You mean you’d rather come to my room?”

  “Yes, but only if you want me.”

  “Of course I want you.”

  It was half-past four when we got back to the Nam Kok. Ah Tong was asleep behind his desk. I woke him and he brought clean towels and we rubbed ourselves down until the chill had gone and our bodies glowed, and then we sat on the bed drinking hot tea. Suzie fell silent again, her eyes stricken. She looked at the bedraggled cheongsam over the back of the chair, the torn mud-spattered stockings, the ruined shoes—all that was left of her life. She turned as if for relief to the array of paper articles on the dressing table. She got up.

  “All right, I send my baby his presents now. You have matches, please?”

  “I’ve a lighter.”

  She took the paper models out onto the balcony and laid them down on the concrete floor. She came back into the doorway.

  “I had better shut the door, or the smoke will make you cough,” she said.

  I got into bed. Through the glass doors I could see her squatting on her haunches, arranging the paper models in two rows in the order she intended to burn them, working very carefully and deliberately, and sometimes changing two models round to make the order right. She wore a pair of my pyjama trousers, and one of my shirts on top because I had thrown away the jacket which had gone into holes. She experimented with the lighter, then held up the first article and set it alight. She waited until the flames licked her fingers, and then dropped it, and watched between her spread knees as it burned on the floor. When the flames had died, she recovered a fragment of unburned paper the size of a postage stamp and applied the lighter to it again. The breeze on the balcony began to swirl the paper ash against the glass. She burned some bank notes and a paper suit, then returned to the room holding the lighter.

  “Petrol finish,” she said.

  I refilled the lighter for her and she went out to the balcony and closed the door again. Ten minutes later there was only the house left. She set a light to it on the floor. The flames leaped up to twice the height of the balustrade and quickly died. She burned the few remaining fragments of paper and bamboo frame, then came back inside, hooking the door open. There was a smell of paper ash. Her eyes were now quite calm. She took off her clothes and got into bed, and I turned off the light. I could feel her lying awake in the darkness. After a time there was a soft movement and she rolled against me, and I could taste tears on her face and on her eyes. She cried for a while without making any sound. Then the tremor of her crying died and she lay quite still, and after a while she said in a little desolate voice, “You know something, Robert? I don’t really believe about those presents. I don’t really believe my baby will get them.”

  “Don’t you, Suzie? But you believed when you were burning them, didn’t you?”

  “Half,” she said. “I half-believed. You see, when I saw my baby all smashed up like that, I thought, �
��If I believe that my baby is finished, I shall feel so much pain that my heart will burst. I will go mad with so much pain. So I must pretend that he is not really smashed up, but still alive somewhere, and that I must still look after him.’ You understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.” And I remembered our first meeting on the ferry, when she had pretended to be the rich little virgin—knowing exactly what she was doing, and yet believing in the invention enough to make it work. Believing—and not believing. She had always been good at that.

  “Now I have nobody to look after—only you.” She clung to me tightly, burying her face in my neck. “You would like me to stay and look after you?”

  “Of course I would, Suzie. You can stay as long as you like.”

  “I will never leave you now. Not unless you tell me, ‘Suzie, go away.’”

  “But I still can’t afford to keep you.”

  “I don’t want any money. It’s different now. I only wanted money for my baby.”

  “You’ll need a bit of money. You’ll need clothes.”

  “Just one dress, that’s all.”

  “I think I could just afford a dress.”

  “But I don’t mind if you can’t. I can just wear your shirt and stay in this room. I needn’t go out.”

  “You’ll get awfully bored.”

  “No, I shall be so busy looking after you. I shall sew on your buttons, and clean your shoes, and brush your hair—you like to have your hair brushed?”

  “I don’t know, I never tried it.”

  “I can shave you, too, and knit your socks. What color would you like socks?”

  “I think yellow.”

  “Yes, I shall knit yellow socks, and do everything for you. I shall make you the best girl friend you ever had.”

  “I never had a girl friend like that before.”

  “But you want me? You’re not just pretending?”

  “No, I’m not pretending.” She switched on the light and I said, “What’s the matter, Suzie?”

  “I want to see if you are pretending.”