World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399)

by Mason, Richard

  She held out her hand. I realized that I was being dismissed. However, as she accompanied me across the hall to the entrance I sensed a softening of her mood. We paused rather awkwardly on the top step. Then she said, “Are you really? I mean seriously?”

  “Going to marry her? Yes.”

  “I know it’s none of my business, but wouldn’t it be better just to live with her? Without tying yourself down?”

  “I want to marry her.”

  “I can’t help feeling it’s only out of pity—because of what she’s been.”

  “No, I’ve thought all that out,” I said. “It’s not pity.”

  “You wouldn’t have married her if she’d just been some shopgirl you’d seduced.”

  “No, but if she’d been a shopgirl she wouldn’t have been Suzie. What she’s been is part of her.”

  “Then why are you marrying her?”

  “Kay, you wouldn’t like to have dinner?”

  “Well . . . all right.”

  We had a Chinese dinner and I tried to explain to her why I wanted to marry Suzie, but I did not convince her and she still shook her head and said, “Well, I may be biased, but I’m sure you’re being a fool.” I was not surprised because I had not even convinced myself. All the reasons that I had given her had sounded superficial, and I felt sure that I had left out the most important reason of all. Yet I did not know myself what it was. Then after dinner Kay took me along to a party to which she had been invited. It was in somebody’s flat on the Peak—a party of gay and pleasant young people most of whom were only recently out from England and not yet imbued with the older residents’ stereotyped colonial way of thought. There was a high-fidelity long-playing gramophone with loud-speakers mysteriously hidden about the room, and we danced to the oozing sexy voice of a colored American crooner currently in fashion. A silent impersonal house boy filled our glasses with iced gin drinks. There was intellectual discussion about music, books, and films. It was mostly above my head. Then I was approached by a young man with a beard, a professor of English at the Hong Kong university, who said that he had seen my Malayan paintings and pastels when they had been exhibited in London, and had been sufficiently struck by them to remember my name. He had realized that I had “something to offer.” I was very touched and flattered, for he could even remember the work well enough to discuss it in detail and give a sound appreciation of its merits and faults. He went on to discuss critical theories of art and the work of various modern artists; but I knew little of theory and few of the artists’ names, and when he asked me about my own work I could say little more than that I had wanted to try and express something, and had done my best to do so. I felt ashamed of my ignorance and incoherence. I was self-consciously aware that each time I opened my mouth I sank lower in his estimation. And the flattery over, I began to grow bored, and to feel a creeping claustrophobia in this beautiful hygienic modern flat, among the high-fidelity loud-speakers and the martinis and the hygienic theories of art. Then the Chinese house boy, who was not a boy at all but an elderly man, came to refill my glass, and while he was doing so I noticed his eyes—small deep withdrawn Chinese eyes that belonged to a world infinitely remote from everything else in this room. And it was as though all at once a window had been thrown open and I had breathed fresh air; for although I had only been afforded the merest glimpse of that remote world, it had been enough to reassure me, “Don’t worry, you’re not trapped in this room. This is only a tiny unimportant corner of life—and there’s the whole universe waiting outside to be explored.” And I knew that I had come close to the answer I had been seeking. If I had married Kay or the pretty girl in the cocktail dress who was saying, “Of course it’s the theater I miss,” I would have been shutting myself in this room and bolting the windows and doors. But marrying Suzie would be like taking a flying leap (suicidal, Kay would say) from the sill.

  The party looked all set until the early hours. Kay was ensconced on the sofa with an admiring young man and looked all set for a long time, too. I left and walked home alone, musing about beautiful hygienic conventional rooms and leaping from windows. Then suddenly there came into my head a random memory of Suzie, as I had encountered her one evening in the entrance hall of the Nam Kok on my return from a stroll. She had at that moment been parting from a sailor with whom she had just been upstairs. The sailor was no more than a blurred face in the background, with one hand lifted to tilt his hat, and that expression of false jauntiness with which men leaving brothels are wont to hide their disillusionment after the departure of desire. Suzie was half turned away from him, her face pale and a little tired. She had already forgotten the sailor’s existence and had just caught sight of me. Her expression showed fleeting embarrassment, for she wanted me to be in love with her and knew my feelings about her job. She wished that I had come a second or two later after the sailor had gone. But instantly she realized that embarrassment was pointless and only a refusal to face facts; and in a moment the embarrassment had passed and a new expression had taken its place that seemed to say, “There is a whole world behind me, a whole field of experience, that you can never understand. But it is part of me, and I cannot be otherwise, even though it means losing you.” And there was hurt in her eyes, and sadness, but there was also pride. And now in memory the expression seemed to me very moving and beautiful, and I knew I must paint it.

  And I had no sooner felt this compulsion to start a new painting than I glanced about to see where I was walking, and quickly moved from the center to the side of the road. For at such times I would always go in dread of being knocked over by a car, or of war breaking out, or of some cataclysm occurring; for an unborn painting was like an unborn child and made me responsible for another life besides my own. I began to hurry. I did not usually paint at night because in artificial light the colors changed their values, but the impulse was so strong that I determined to try, and the moment I got back to my room I placed a new canvas on the easel and started.

  I painted all through that night. My mind was clear and the memory so vivid that I could have done no better even with Suzie there as a model. I did not feel any need for sleep. And when the dawn came and I saw the colors I was very pleased, because although the tones were not what I had intended, they were oddly effective and heightened the feeling.

  I finished at ten o’clock in the morning. I had painted the scene exactly as I remembered it, with the matelot behind Suzie with his hand tilting his hat, and Suzie half turned away from him with the hurt and the sadness and the pride in her eyes. And Ah Tong, bringing tea for the fourth time, stood gazing at it for a long while and I could see he was moved. And then the telephone rang, and it was Kay.

  She said, “Well, I’ve done my best for you, though I can’t think why. I’ve just spent nearly an hour soft-soaping the Registrar, and he’s promised a bed in about six weeks.”

  “Kay, bless you.”

  “That was the earliest he could manage without seriously upsetting anybody. She’ll be able to hang on until then, won’t she?”

  “Yes, it’s perfect. The prison doctor said a holiday would do her good. I think I’ll take her to Macao.”

  “I always wanted to go to Macao.”

  “You can come with us if you like.”

  “That would be fun for you!”

  Ah Tong was still studying the picture when I rang off. He said, “It is very beautiful, sir. She looks so unhappy.” And then he said, “She is looking at me, sir. It is very curious. She was looking at me when I stood over there. Then I came over here and she is still looking. Her eyes are speaking to me.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “They are saying, ‘My heart is full of so many things. But I do not know how to explain.’ Is that what you meant, sir?”

  “It’s just about what I meant, Ah Tong,” I said.

  III

  There were three weeks left
before Suzie came out of Laichikok. The time went slowly and Ah Tong would come in and say, “Only ten days left, sir,” and, “Only nine today, sir.” He had consulted his Chinese Almanac and noted with satisfaction that the day of Suzie’s release, the Fourteenth of the Tenth Moon, was particularly recommended for household removals and the changing of abode, and had solemnly announced, “It is an ideal day for leaving prison.”

  “I should think that any day’s ideal for that, Ah Tong,” I said.

  “No, sir. If it had been the Thirteenth of the Tenth she might have been very unhappy after she came out. But now she will be happy. It is ideal.”

  And then, despite all my impatience, when the day of Suzie’s release arrived I was not at the prison gate to meet her. I had told her to expect me and had set off from the Nam Kok with plenty of time to spare; but then, by an unhappy stroke of fate, the ferryboat on which I was crossing to Kowloon came into collision with a rusting and dirty old tug, whose opium-dazed pilot had ignored the ferryboat’s hooter. There was little damage to either boat but we remained stranded in mid-harbor for nearly an hour while the skippers held their protracted post-mortem. I became so frantic that I could have wept. I even thought of diving over the side and trying to swim for it. But that would have meant abandoning the luggage that I had brought with me so that we could go straight off to Macao. At last the boat began to throb again. It moved. We bumped against the Kowloon pier, the gangplank came down, and I pushed and shoved my way ashore with the two suitcases and the big awkward parcel of canvases. There was no taxi in sight. I staggered up the street with my load. A taxi came and I said, “Laichikok prison,” and collapsed in the back. When we reached Laichikok there was no sign of Suzie and they said at the gate that she had waited half an hour and then gone. Then the taxi driver suggested looking at the bus stop, and we drove round the corner and there she was, standing alone and forlorn in the blue silk cheongsam that she had worn in the magistrate’s court, and the white high-heel shoes, and the familiar white handbag dangling from her hand.

  “Suzie, I’m so dreadfully sorry,” I said, and explained what had happened.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly as if she really did not care; and I knew that after looking forward to coming out of prison for so long the actual event had seemed an anticlimax.

  I said, “Suzie, we’re going to Macao.”

  “Macao? What for?”

  “I’ve arranged for you to go into hospital, but I thought you’d like a little holiday first. Away from everybody you know.”

  “All right.”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

  “I don’t care. We will go if you want.”

  The Fatshan was alongside when we arrived at the pier. There was still an hour before it sailed. We sat at a table in the empty dining saloon and Suzie drank a Coca-Cola while I had coffee. Some more passengers came in and took the next table, and Suzie glanced at them but avoided their eyes. She looked sheepish and uncomfortable.

  “Don’t worry, Suzie,” I said. “It doesn’t show. Nobody knows where you’ve been.”

  She did not say anything. She was silent for several minutes, and then said, “All right, I go now.”

  “Go? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to go to Macao. You go alone.”

  “I don’t understand, Suzie. What’s the matter?”

  “I have been thinking in that monkey-house—I had plenty of time to think. You’re a big man. You could get any girl you want. You could get some beautiful English girl with plenty of money, or some good-family Chinese girl. Only you have got a good heart, you feel sorry for me. You think, ‘I don’t want to hurt Suzie—I must be nice to her.’ Only that’s no good. So I go now. I leave you.”

  “Suzie, what utter rubbish!”

  It was all I could do to keep her from going, and I was thankful when I heard the gangplank being removed and she could no longer leave the boat. Then, as Hong Kong receded into the distance she began to cheer up and enjoy herself and take an interest in the trip. I told her to go and change out of her silk cheongsam, and she disappeared with the stewardess and came back in her jeans and sandals and with a twinkle in her eye, giggling, “You know what that woman said to me? She said, ‘You have such beautiful clothes—you must be so rich!’” And she ran from one rail to the other watching the bare tawny little islands going by, and the great fleets of fishing junks scattered over the horizon like multitudes of toy boats.

  “You know, this morning I didn’t want to leave that monkey-house,” she said. “I thought, ‘I have no worries in here. Maybe when I get outside I will just steal something, or stick that Canton girl with scissors again, so they will send me back.’ But I feel good now! I feel beautiful!”

  She watched happily as we passed close to a great proud junk with eight sails all taut and bulging in the hot damp sticky wind. It carried the red flag of Communist China. A few minutes later the sea abruptly changed from cobalt to the color of milky tea with mud from the Pearl River.

  “How long more to Macao?” Suzie said.

  “I should think about another hour,” I said. “And by the way, I forgot to tell you. We’re going to get married in Macao.”

  “Get married? Who said?”

  “It’s as good a place as any to get married in. You will marry me, won’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll just have to marry you by force. It’s very easy in Macao—it’s such a wicked place. I shall bribe the necessary official and have him concealed under the table, and then ask you if you will have some more fried duck’s liver; and you will say ‘Yes,’ and the official will bob up and say, ‘Thank you, there is your marriage certificate! Good evening.’”

  She giggled. “And next day I will ask you, ‘You want some more fried rice, my husband?’ And you will say ‘Yes,’ and this man will poke out his head and say, ‘Thank you, you are now divorced.’”

  Then she was silent, looking over the rail at the sea. After a while she said, “I dreamed once we were married. I was in a street, and there were crowds of people, and I saw you, only I couldn’t get to you because of the crowd. I began to cry. Then you pushed everybody away, and said, ‘Go away, you silly people. This is Suzie, my wife.’ And they all went away just because you had told them. Then I woke up.”

  “And found you weren’t my wife after all. Were you glad or sorry?”

  She did not answer. She was silent for a bit and then she said, “I can’t marry you because I am sick. And the medicine I took to stop you getting sick was no good. The doctor at Laichikok told me.”

  “I still didn’t get sick,” I said. “Anyhow, you’re going to St. Margaret’s in two weeks, and then you’ll be properly cured.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think people ever get properly cured.”

  “Of course they do, Suzie. You’re nearly cured now, and with another month or two in hospital you’ll be fine.”

  She was silent again. Then she turned and strolled away up the deck and stood by herself at the rail. After a while she came back.

  She said, “Robert, I never knew anybody so good as you. I never knew anybody with such a beautiful heart. I like you very much.”

  “Bless you, Suzie. Does that mean yes?”

  “Yes, if you want. I will do anything you want. I will get married if you want, or jump in the sea, or anything.”

  “The sea’s too muddy to jump in here. I’d much rather we got married.”

  At Macao we took a trishaw to a hotel. It was bigger than a rickshaw with a seat for two and room for the baggage under our legs. The trishaw driver wore torn khaki shorts and the rim of a straw hat without any crown. It looked like a tattered old halo. The town was very sleepy after Hong Kong and had an air of decadence and decay. We passed a Catholic church that had started as Spa
nish baroque, but had blended with its surroundings like the face of an old China-hand and begun to look Chinese. We dumped our baggage at the hotel and told the trishaw driver to take us to the office of the British Consul. He grinned and nodded and said he understood. Five minutes later he came to a standstill outside a building guarded by Portuguese East African troops with rifles and bayonets and faces the color of coffee beans.

  “Good?” he said.

  “No good,” I said. “That’s the Portuguese government. We want the British Consul.”

  “All right, I know!”

  He pedaled off happily. We eventually found the Consul in an old office with creaking ceiling fans that looked in danger of breaking free and lopping off somebody’s head. A beautiful half-caste typist was seated at her machine. She had a pale shy delicate face and masses of loose black hair, and wore a gold crucifix round her neck. The Consul was a fat bald man with perspiring forehead and crescents of perspiration under the arms of his white shirt. He was writing a private letter when we arrived. He listened to our request with irritation, his pen still poised over the letter.

  “Now I’ll tell you your best plan,” he said. “You want to pop over to Hong Kong and get married there.”

  “But we’ve just come from Hong Kong,” I said. “We wanted to get married in Macao. I thought you were licensed to do it.”

  “Well, I’m going to be frank with you. This is the first time anybody’s ever asked me to marry them, and I don’t know the form. So I’m afraid there’s nothing more to be said.”

  “Couldn’t we find out the form?” I said. “I mean, surely there are regulations about it?”

  “I haven’t the time,” he snapped. “I’m a busy man.” He remembered the letter under his hand. I could read the opening upside down: My dear old Hughie. He began to slide the blotter over it, then changed his mind and leaned back in his chair, leaving the letter exposed on the desk as though to say, “There, I’m lying to you and I don’t mind your knowing, so that shows you how little I think of you.”