World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399)

by Mason, Richard

  I was trying to think of some vitriolic retort when I sensed Suzie’s discomfort: she had been nervous enough anyhow about entering the Consul’s office, and a scene would only upset her. So I climbed down and tried blandishments instead, telling the Consul that we had only dared to trespass on his valuable time because on the boat we had been told of his great good nature and of his reputation for helping souls in distress—a rather free interpretation of “Not a bad fellow, but bone-headed and bone-idle.” The recipe worked wonders, and in a few minutes the thin pale beautiful typist was ransacking shelves and loading his desk with heavy consular tomes, while the Consul was turning pages at random and periodically exclaiming, “Well, I’m blowed! I never knew I could do that!” Finally the idea of marrying us began to tickle him, and he was as disappointed as ourselves when he found that the regulations required us to give notice and he could not marry us for three weeks. And he asked anxiously, “You’ll still be here then, I hope? You won’t have left?”

  “No, I think we’ll still be here,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Good. That makes it—let me see?—Miss Ruggeroni, you’ve got my diary? Ah, here! Yes, then that makes it a Wednesday. The morning suit you? Eleven-thirty?” And I fancied that we had furnished him with something really good to tell dear old Hughie, and that as soon as we had gone he would write, “Well, I certainly can’t complain there’s no variety in my job—now I’m a ruddy parson!”

  He conducted us to the door, shook our hands damply, and exhorted us with a humorous wink to see that we behaved ourselves until he had joined us in wedlock. And then we were outside again in the hot sticky street.

  Chapter Six

  Suzie was very happy for the next few days. She looked radiant. Her favorite game was pretending to be the future Mrs. Lomax, behaving very grandly and snottily and putting people in their places.

  “How do you do? I am Mrs. Lord Lomax—my husband is a famous Lord, you know. What, you being rude to me? All right, I will just tell my husband. He will see you get ten years in the monkey-house.” She giggled and then suddenly looked anxious, afraid that a telegram would come from Kay before we were married—for as soon as the vacancy occurred at the hospital we should have to return. “Robert, you think that telegram will come today?”

  “No, I don’t think today.”

  “No?” She promptly brightened, and returned to her game. “Good afternoon, Mr. Lord Piccadilly. No, I’m sorry, my husband is having tea with the Queen at Westminster Abbey.”

  “You don’t have tea at Westminster Abbey, Suzie.”

  “So sorry, Mr. Lord Piccadilly—I mean at her house.”

  Macao was on the tip of a peninsula, and in ten minutes you could walk from the Praya on one side to the beach on the other, and in twenty minutes from the center of the town to the frontier across the peninsula neck, where you could see the Red China flag flying down the road—though of course in that heat you never did walk, but took trishaws everywhere. Macao had flourished for centuries as the gateway to China, but now the gateway was closed and there was no trade any longer, no industry, no business—nothing to keep the town alive except opium and gambling and girls. And at the hotel where we were staying you could get all three—the gambling on either of the two floors devoted to casinos, and the opium and girls in your room by pressing the bell and asking the floor boy. And for that matter the floor boy would also provide a go-between with the casino, so that if you believed in doing things thoroughly you could gamble and smoke opium and have a girl at the same time.

  Our floor boy was called Ah Ng and had a walleye. The other eye burnt day and night with an eagerness to do business, and whenever he caught me alone he would sidle against me, fixing me with the good eye while the walleye gazed up innocently at the ceiling, and whisper furtively that he could fix me up with a Portuguese girl of sixteen, who would be far more worthy of my attentions than Suzie. His disparaging tone when speaking of Suzie suggested that even a coolie would think twice before demeaning himself in her embrace. But an hour later, catching Suzie alone, he would whisper to her that she had exceptional qualities which clearly I had failed to perceive, and that she could be making her fortune. And he would offer to introduce her to a Portuguese officer down the corridor for only 30 per cent commission.

  During the second week Suzie’s high spirits began to desert her and she became depressed. Once I entered her room to find her crying, and the same evening she burst into tears at dinner; but when I asked her what was the matter she only shook her head. Still, I knew without her telling me: the strain of waiting to be married was proving too much for her, and she had begun to think that it was a mistake and to feel shame about her past. Now she would never speak of her past, or even mention the Nam Kok; and when I did so purposely, to try and reassure her that I did not mind, she flushed and pretended she had not heard. And now, instead of dreading the arrival of the telegram, she hoped it would come, for it would be a clear indication that our marriage was not intended by fate, and would conveniently relieve her of decision.

  The third week her depression became worse, and she brooded or cried all the time. Her unhappiness made her a stranger to me, so that I began to have doubts about the marriage myself. Then on the day before we were due to be married she finally broke down and said she could not go through with it—she wanted only to go back to Hong Kong, to her girl friends, to the familiar way of life. Because that was all she was fit for. That was all she was: a water-front girl, a sailor’s whore, and an ex-gaolbird to boot. Why pretend to be anything else? No, she was going back to the Nam Kok, she had made up her mind.

  I said, “If that’s what you want, Suzie, I won’t try and stop you. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s just that going back is safe and easy, while going on is difficult because it’s unknown, and it scares you.”

  And I reminded her of an incident that morning, when we had been strolling along the Praya and had run into a nice innocuous young English couple on honeymoon from Hong Kong, whom I had met before in the casino. We had exchanged greetings and then I had turned to introduce Suzie, only to find that she had moved away and was standing along the quay with her back turned. I had gone to her, but she had stubbornly refused to come back and be introduced; and then she had begun to cry, saying that she thought the couple was hateful and she did not know how I could befriend them. But I knew of course that the real cause of her distress was the fear of their contempt—and now I did my best to convince her that such a fear had been quite unfounded.

  “Actually they’d told me in the casino that they thought you looked charming,” I said. “They weren’t contemptuous a bit. But when you’re afraid of people’s contempt you see your fears reflected everywhere. Every new face is a mirror. But even if they had been contemptuous you shouldn’t have turned away. People take you at your own estimate of yourself, and if you’re ashamed of yourself they’ll point and say ‘Yah!’ because they’re all ashamed of themselves too in different ways, and it makes them feel better to run down somebody else. But if you face up to them, and look them in the eyes, and think ‘I may have been a water-front tart, but I’m not ashamed of it—I feel as good as you,’ they’ll start to respect you. And you know who taught me that? You. You could always look people in the eyes. You always had courage. And you’ve still got it. Only just lately all your little anxieties have been undermining it, gnawing away at it from underneath like busy mice.”

  She was silent. She had stopped crying. She asked me to leave her alone for a while, so I went up to the casino on the top floor. An hour later she came in, walking with that careful poise that showed how much tension there was inside her, and how hard she was fighting against her fears and doubts. She looked me straight in the eyes.

  “You still want to marry me?” she said.

  “Of course, Suzie.”

  “You’re sure? Even after the way I have behaved?”

/>   “Absolutely sure.” And now it was true again, because her courage had come back.

  “All right, I will marry you.”

  “Bless you, Suzie. And now let’s go and buy you a new dress—you must have a new dress to be married in.”

  She was very quiet for the rest of the evening. The next morning she wanted to dress alone and I went out for some coffee, and at eleven returned to the hotel to wait for her in the hall. Twenty minutes later she came out of the lift. The new plain primrose-yellow cheongsam was molded smoothly over her figure, and the discreetly split skirt gave a glimpse of nylon.

  “I am sorry I kept you waiting,” she said.

  “Suzie, you look marvelous. I’m so proud of you. I wish we were important and there were crowds of people and newsreel cameras.”

  “I don’t. I don’t want anybody.”

  “I want the whole world to see you. I want everybody to see how beautiful you are, and all the men to want you and to know they can’t have you because you’re mine.”

  I had bought her a corsage of three very small delicate orchids, whose subtle smoky blue went beautifully with the primrose dress. I pinned it on for her, then we went outside to the street and took a rickshaw. I could smell Suzie’s perfume mixed with the faint clean familiar smell of her hair. I felt the nervous tremor of her hand in mine. She could no longer speak for nerves; and as we entered the Consul’s office she withdrew into her protective shell in order to keep her composure, looking aloof and remote as if the occasion left her quite cold, and I thought: now she is really inscrutable. If I saw her for the first time now, I would have no inkling of what she felt.

  The Consul was delighted to see us, for he had clearly been afraid that we might not turn up and that he would be denied the novelty of uniting us; but since the Governor of Hong Kong was arriving this afternoon on an official visit, and he was involved in the preparations, he was genuinely pushed for time.

  “Right, all set?” he said and stood up behind his desk as if it would have been disrespectful to marry us sitting down, his forehead shiny with sweat and fresh sweat-patches under the arms of his clean white shirt. And we stood facing him, under the dangerous creaking fan, while just behind us stood the two witnesses—Miss Ruggeroni, with her masses of black hair and gold crucifix and white thin beautiful Eurasian face, and Ted Rose, a brokendown English scrounger in tattered khaki shirt and shorts, who had been pestering us daily with hard-luck stories in the streets and whom I had promised twenty dollars for fulfilling this task.

  The Consul pronounced the formula of marriage with uneasy solemnity, as if he was afraid he looked silly and was wondering if he might have done better to treat the whole affair as a lark. We murmured our answers, and then I placed a plain gold ring on Suzie’s finger. This took her by surprise, for when she had tentatively mentioned the matter of a ring I had said that after living together for so long without one I hardly saw its necessity; and now when she realized what I was doing she could no longer hold back her tears. Then we were required to sign our names, and she wiped her eyes with a knuckle and wrote Wong Mee-ling in Chinese characters, and then Suzie Wong in Roman script.

  “I say, the bride must be in a state!” the Consul chuckled, now feeling that he could relax safely into jocularity. “She’s written the Z back-to-front!”

  “It’s her trade-mark,” I said. “I’ll divorce her if she ever writes it differently.”

  “Now, I’m afraid I’ll have to push you out soon,” the Consul said. “But first I’d just like to wish you luck.”

  He opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Portuguese red wine, and I felt very touched by this kind gesture. He drew the cork while Miss Ruggeroni fetched tumblers, and then poured out the wine and raised his glass for a formal toast, and then added informally, “No, but seriously, I hope you’ll be really happy and hit it off, because you’re a damn nice couple. And I’m not just saying that. I mean it. Damn nice, both of you.” He was growing very emotional about how nice we were. “And I really do mean it. I told Miss Ruggeroni after you first came to see me, I said—well, Miss Ruggeroni will tell you herself. What did I say, Miss Ruggeroni?”

  “You said they were very nice,” Miss Ruggeroni said in the dreamy yearning voice of a Eurasian who belongs nowhere.

  “There you are,” the Consul said. “I said you were damn nice the very first time I saw you. Well, here’s the best to you again.”

  Suzie kept stealing glances at her ring. Miss Ruggeroni yearned dreamily. Ted Rose, behind whose ear was the telltale brown callosity caused by the opium smoker’s wooden pillow, slyly watched the Consul. He saw his opportunity and sidled up and launched rapidly into one of his self-pitying appeals, almost incoherent in his haste to reach the point before the Consul could stop him.

  “Damned interesting, old man,” the Consul interrupted coldly. “But you ought to know you’re wasting your breath on me. Now, come on, the newlyweds—the other half.”

  He drained the bottle into our glasses. I finished my glass and Suzie surreptitiously exchanged it for hers because she did not care much for wine. Then the Consul said he must turn us out and warmly wrung our hands at the door, saying with a jocular wink, “By Jove, I hope I got that business right. Damned embarrassing if I made some damn-fool slip-up, and you weren’t really married!” He saw Rose hanging back in the office in the hope of catching him after we had gone, and pointedly stood aside for him to leave. Miss Ruggeroni with sudden impetuosity dashed back to her desk, snatched a gold-plated powder compact from her bag, and returned to press it on Suzie, saying, “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s not new or anything. It’s just a silly little present—you can throw it away if it’s no use.” And then we were outside again, and Rose was muttering resentfully that the Consul had insulted him, and that if we knew all that he knew about the Consul we would understand why despite his consulship he was not fit to lick his, Rose’s, boots. I handed him twenty-five dollars, five more than agreed, but he was too preoccupied with his grievance to notice the bonus.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said, and climbed into the waiting trishaw beside Suzie. The trishaw driver stood up to put his weight on the pedals and give the vehicle momentum and we moved off, and I looked back and saw Rose still muttering on the pavement as if he had not noticed we had gone.

  I had ordered lunch at a restaurant in the Beco da Felicidade, which was narrow and cobbled and smelled of incense and was as enchanting as its name, and for a street called the Street of Happiness that was saying a good deal. The restaurant specialized in roast pigeon and you could get good cheap Portuguese wine. We climbed the narrow staircase to the first floor, which was partitioned like most Chinese restaurants into a warren of private rooms, and were given a room hung with a patchwork of decorated mirrors which the Chinese thought lucky. A waiter brought a plate of hot towels smelling of disinfectant. He handed us each a towel with a pair of tongs and we wiped our hands and faces. He poured out cups of pale tea and then collected our towels on a plate and went out, and we sat picking at the saucer of red melon seeds while we waited for lunch. In the mirrors I could see Suzie reflected from all angles, her hand laid casually on the table to facilitate glances at her ring.

  “Look at all my new wives,” I said. “Not a bad morning’s work.”

  “You gave them all rings—all those wives?” Suzie said.

  “Oh, yes, I treat all my wives equally.”

  “They must have cost a lot of money, so many rings.”

  “I bought them in a shop with mirrors to make the money go further.”

  “You know something, Robert? I can’t believe we’re really married.”

  “I know, isn’t it funny? One expects to feel quite different, but one’s just the same.”

  “Are you really my husband now?”

  “Yes, I’ve got a certificate. I can prove it.”

  “M
aybe if you tell me I will believe it. Say, ‘Suzie, I’m your husband.’”

  “Suzie, I’m your husband, and you’re my very dear and beautiful wife. And I love you in that dress. It gives me indecent ideas. Though I suppose you can’t call them indecent any more now we’re married.”

  “Perhaps now we are married you won’t want me for going to bed. Just for sewing and cooking—while you go to bed with other girls.”

  “I think you’ll last me for a bit between the lot of you.”

  “Which one do you want for this afternoon? That one in the big round mirror?”

  “No, she looks a bit insubstantial. I think this afternoon I’ll start with the one at the table.”

  That evening there was a telegram from Kay. I had wired her three days earlier for news, and now she replied that she expected a vacancy in about a week, but that anyhow we were not to worry because she hadn’t forgotten us. We were both delighted to have another week’s reprieve, since Suzie was keeping well and there seemed no urgency about getting her back into hospital. Nevertheless I made her take it easy and rest in the afternoons, and we usually went early to bed. I had brought a good selection of books to Macao, which we had not yet read because she had been too upset for reading before we were married. But now I read to her a great deal, and we would have lengthy discussions afterwards about what I had read, in particular about problems of right and wrong. She was fascinated by ethics, especially in so far as they concerned herself, for she wanted to work out by what standards her own life had been wrong; and with her exact, logica1 mind she could often pick flaws in my own arguments which I had thought unassailable. And we would keep coming back to the question of her attack on Betty Lau, about which she had left prison unrepentant; and though eventually her logic induced her to admit that she had been in the wrong, she promptly followed the admission with a mischievous twinkle and said, “But I still wish I’d stuck her harder with those scissors—because she deserved it!”