I strained my ears. I had stopped breathing. Then I heard her footsteps, uneven because of the missing heel. They did not go to the left, but to the right. Not towards the bathroom, but towards the lift and stairs. I heard them fading down the corridor. Then silence.
I lay for a minute without moving, not yet really believing. Then I sat up and turned on the light. The sight of the empty bed beside me gave me a new pang of dismay, as if I had still hoped to find her there. Then I thought: perhaps the bathroom was occupied. Perhaps she tried the door and found it locked and so went upstairs. In that case it must still be occupied, or I would have heard somebody come out. I jumped out of bed and went outside into the corridor to look. But the bathroom door was open, the room in darkness. My heart sank again. I returned to the room and put on my trousers and shirt, and then went down the corridor to the lift. Ah Ng was asleep behind his desk, his head tilted against the key-board. I leaned over and shook him, and one of his eyelids opened and there was nothing behind it but the gray jelly. The other lid opened in a muzzy slit.
“Where is she?” I said. “Where’s my wife?”
“Hah?”
“My wife—where’s she gone?”
He began to sit up, eager and interested, thinking for a moment that I was an accomplice. Then he saw that I was hostile and retired again behind the defense of muzziness. “I don’t know. I just sleep.”
I suddenly thought of her handbag. If she had gone to a man she would have taken it with her. But hadn’t it still been in the room? I couldn’t remember. I hurried back down the corridor. I went into the room but I could not see the bag. It was not on the dressing table or the chair or the table by the bed. I began to search the room, pulling open drawers and feeling behind the bed and tearing off the bed sheets, and thinking, Oh God, please let me find her bag, please let it be in this room. And then I had turned the room upside down, and it was not there, and I knew that she had gone to the Eurasian slicker, and had taken her bag because she would need her comb and cosmetics afterwards for tidying herself up. She would also need the bag for putting in money as she did with the sailors. And I dropped into the chair, and felt the great ache spreading from my heart, and I laid back my head and groaned.
I do not remember how long I remained in the chair. I remember only the ache, and not thinking of anything but the ache, not even of Suzie, and then finding myself staring at the painting of Suzie on the bed, and the painting coming into focus, and seeing her lying there among the rumpled bedclothes, and saying aloud at the painting all those words that you call women who behave like that, and then thinking that for Suzie you needed something worse, because it was simply like calling an actress an actress, or a shopgirl a shopgirl, and you couldn’t revile somebody by calling them what they already admittedly were. I wondered vaguely why she had done it; I supposed it was just reversion to type. You couldn’t keep a good whore down. Or at least up. Because at the first sight of a slicker with money and a Waikiki tie down she goes again, whoosh!
And I was still sitting there when the door began to open cautiously, and then stopped—she must have seen that the light was on, and realized with dismay that I had waked. Then it opened wider and she stood there in the doorway, and she looked very white and shaken, because she was afraid of what I was going to do, and she closed her eyes for a moment holding on to the handle. Then she went to the bed and sat down and closed her eyes again and said, “I told you I was no good. I told you I would just give you trouble.”
I noticed that under her eyes there were great blue smudges. Well, no wonder, I thought. No wonder. And I got up, and called her all the dirty names that came into my head, and then went out and closed the door.
I walked through the empty streets without caring where I was going. The air was heavy and humid and my trousers stuck to my legs. I noticed the pier where we had landed and the big white silent steamer waiting for tomorrow. Later I noticed the façade of the old cathedral with the gaping windows and nothing behind but the sky. It was all that remained, the lone wall. The rest had been destroyed by fire. Probably self-ignited, I thought. Probably the cathedral had given up in despair and committed suicide, because not even a cathedral could hold its own against the evils of this vicious hole. Then I did not notice anything more until there was somebody barring my way and it was a small African soldier with a rifle and bayonet and behind him was the barrier across the road and behind the barrier was Red China. Red China, where they had closed the brothels and put the girls into factories. Good for Red China. If Suzie was in Red China she would be tightening bolts on tractor wheels instead of selling her body to slickers in Waikiki ties and silk shirts.
I turned and went back down the road, and there was the cathedral again with the gaping windows like the gaping eyes of a skull, the cathedral that had committed hara-kiri because it was no match against sin. It was growing light. I felt tired and sat down under the lone wall of the cathedral and I did not move until the sun was throwing shadows and my watch said half-past eight. Then I got up and went back to the hotel.
I went upstairs in the lift and turned down the corridor to the room. Suzie was lying on the bed. She had been crying and her face was red and ugly and swollen, and her eyes were dull and empty as if life was finished and she wanted to die.
I said, “The boat goes at ten-thirty. Will you be ready?”
She was about to reply but started crying again and the words were lost in her throat. The tears began running down from her eyes as suddenly as if a tap had been turned on, and I remembered a Madonna I had seen in Italy and the priest turning on the hidden tap, and the tears leaking out of the Madonna’s eyes and running down the white glazed cheeks, and the priest saying proudly, “The Weeping Virgin!”
The weeping virgin. That was good.
“I’m going to have a shower,” I said.
I collected my razor and toilet things and went out, leaving her weeping on the bed. The bathroom next door was engaged so I turned back along the corridor past the floor boy’s desk where Ah Ng was quarreling over commission with one of his whores, and went upstairs to the bathroom on the next floor, and locked the door, and undressed, and started the shower over the bath—and it was only as I was about to step over the side of the bath and go under the shower that I noticed the red spattering on the bath, and the pink smears where the spattering had been wiped away, and the water from the shower trickling pink along the bottom of the bath to the outlet, and I wondered grimly if somebody had cut his throat, and I thought, “Well, after all, that’s nothing for Macao.” And then I caught sight of the yellow enamel spittoon, and the red-soaked woman’s handkerchief in the bottom of the spittoon, and my knees went weak, and I thought, “It’s Suzie’s,” and I picked it out of the spittoon to make sure, and saw the embroidered flower in the corner that I had once said was a rose and Suzie had said was some other flower whose name she had only known in Chinese. It was stiff with congealed blood.
Oh, Christ, I thought. Oh, Christ, oh, Christ.
I stood staring at the red crumpled bit of material in my hand, and now I knew that she had not gone to the Eurasian at all, but had been ill, and had not wanted me to know she was ill, so she had come to this bathroom upstairs where I would not hear; and she had been all alone up here being ill and perhaps nearly dying. And I thought of her coming back into the room, and standing in the doorway with the white ravaged face, and saying, “I told you I would give you trouble,” and I thought of the dirty names I had called her and the way I had walked out.
Oh, God. Oh, Christ.
I felt so weak that I had to lean for support against the wall. I closed my eyes with my head against the damp perspiring plaster. I heard the water from the shower drumming in the bath and gurgling away down the waste.
Oh, Suzie, I thought. My poor sweet Suzie. How can you ever forgive me?
And then I opened my eyes again and saw the re
d little handkerchief in my hand, and I thought, “Perhaps she’s going to die,” and I noticed that my hand was trembling as though from fever and I felt chilled with fear; and I grabbed my clothes and began to dress, struggling to pull down the wet sticky shirt over my shoulders, and glimpsing my face in the mirror with the perspiration and the night’s stubble of beard and the eyes full of fear, and then I pulled on my trousers and fastened them and ran down the stairs.
Chapter Seven
“Suzie, you’re so beautiful.”
“No, I am ugly. I have cried so much that my cheeks are all swollen. I can see them. They are like big bumps in front of my eyes.”
“I don’t care, you’re beautiful.”
We lay clutched together. We had neither of us been able to speak when I had come back into the room, but she had known as soon as she saw me that I had found out what had happened and had begun to cry again, and I had wanted to go to her, but had felt too ashamed. I had felt too ashamed to touch her. And then suddenly I had gone to her and taken her hand, and pressed it to my cheek and kissed it, and then kissed her face, and then she was clinging to me and kissing me and crying at the same time; and then the great joy had swept over us, because the two imperfect halves had come together again, and without speaking or even thinking we had made love, and it had been like the first time we had made love because Suzie had again been shaken by those great cataclysmic sobs; and then the sobs had brought me back to earth, and I had been frightened because of their violence, and because I had been carried away and had forgotten that she was ill.
I kissed her nose, and the red swelling under her eyes. She closed her eyes and I kissed the soft eyelids.
“Suzie, that was awful of us. We shouldn’t have done that.”
“I’m glad. I feel beautiful.”
“I’d get a doctor if there was time—but I think it’s better to go if you feel all right.”
“Yes, I told you—I feel beautiful now.”
“Well, you needn’t move yet. Just lie quietly while I pack.”
We took a trishaw to the boat. Suzie seemed to have quite recovered, but despite her protests of unnecessary expense I took a bunk for her and made her lie down. The other occupant of the cabin was an English schoolmistress from Hong Kong, who said she always “splurged” on a cabin because she was easily seasick and liked to be sick in private. She already looked green about the gills from apprehension alone. She asked the steward if it was going to be rough and the steward said, “No, it’ll be nice today,” but after he had gone she said, “Do you think he was telling the truth? You haven’t heard anything?”
“I should think it’ll be like a millpond,” I said.
It was a hot oppressive day with the usual heat haze over Macao and there was no wind in the harbor. However, crossing before the mouth of the Pearl we hit a stiff breeze, and there was a good sea running. The Fatshan began to creak and lurch. I went along to the cabin. Suzie did not mind the lurching and was nearly asleep, but the schoolmistress was retching over an enamel spittoon, so I retired again and went into the bar for a brandy. I was still in the bar an hour later when the ship suddenly changed course, and the loud-speaker announced that an overturned sampan had been sighted with survivors clinging to the wreckage. I went out onto the deck. The engines of the Fatshan fell to a low throb. A lifeboat was lowered and the passengers hung over the rail to watch the rescue. Next to me a tall powerful bull of a man, with a ginger mustache, exclaimed “Clots!” as the Chinese seamen maneuvered the lifeboat clumsily, and he also called the sampan crew mucking clots for coming so far out in rough weather—the boat people were all the same, it was the third time that this had happened to him on trips to Macao. Then the loud-speaker crackled and a voice urgently requested any doctors among the passengers to go down to “B” deck. “Muck ’em, they won’t get me,” said the big ginger bull, evidently a doctor himself. “It’s the muckers’ own fault—let ’em drown.” But it was only a token protest and when I looked round a moment later he had gone. I watched the bedraggled figure of an old woman hauled aboard. She looked as tiny and fragile as a featherless bird with her drenched black silk suit clinging to her body. Then a young man was hauled up, nervously tittering and laughing although three-parts drowned, and then somebody touched my arm and I looked round, and it was the schoolmistress. Her face was ghoulish green. “I think you’d better come,” she said.
“What’s happened?”
Her gray parched mouth moved but no words came, and I did not know whether it was because she was sick or because the answer would have been too distressing. I turned quickly and groped my way along the cakewalk of the deck, and as I entered the cabin my foot skidded and I nearly fell. The floor was smeared with vomit. The cabin smelt of vomit and there was a tinny clatter as the spittoon rolled back and forth on the floor. I went over to Suzie. Her eyes were closed and her face was very white and there was a pink foam at the corner of her mouth dribbling onto the pillow.
“Suzie!”
She opened her eyes and closed them again without speaking.
“I’ll get the doctor,” I said. “I won’t be long.”
I clambered down the companionway to the lower deck. Chinese seamen were carrying one of the survivors into a cabin. Others lay on the deck and the big ginger bull of a doctor who had said, “Let the muckers drown,” was astraddle a woman on his knees, with his big hands spread over the woman’s back. He thrust down on his hands, groaning with exertion, crushing her ribs under his weight. The woman was unconscious but when the doctor lifted his weight the air was sucked through her open mouth with the silver teeth and gurgled down her throat into her lungs.
“Doctor, my wife’s ill,” I said.
He said without looking up, “Your mucking wife can go to mucking hell. This woman’s dying.”
“I think my wife’s dying.”
He did not say anything but went on working on the woman, thrusting down on his big spread hands until the air moaned out of the woman’s throat and there was no air left and her throat was silent, and still thrusting, and then lifting his weight so that the air gurgled back, and then thrusting again. And then after a minute he said without taking his eyes off the woman, “Who can take over? Anybody here can take over?”
“Yes, sir, I am a trained lifesaver, sir,” a Chinese seaman said smartly. “I have a certificate and a medal, sir.”
“Come here.”
He went on thrusting but lifted one knee over the woman so that he was kneeling on one side of her, and the seaman kneeled on the other side and placed his hands flat over the doctor’s, and they thrust together until the doctor was satisfied that the seaman had got the rhythm, and then he withdrew his own hands, and the seaman lifted one knee over the woman’s body and went on thrusting alone. The doctor watched him to make sure he was doing it right and then got up, saying, “Now who wanted me? Who spoke to me just now about his wife?”
“It was me,” I said. “I’m sorry, but she’s really ill.”
He glared at me without belief, as if he suspected that she was only seasick and that I was rating her comfort above a Cantonese fisherwoman’s life. “She’d mucking better be,” he muttered. He followed me to the upper deck and we went into the cabin. The schoolmistress was standing helplessly by Suzie’s bunk, her color-drained mouth dragged down at the corners. There was the sharp sweet smell of vomit. The doctor went over to Suzie and glanced at the pink trickle of foam. He looked up and sniffed and said, “Christ, let’s have some bloody air—you two get out.”
I followed the schoolmistress out onto the deck. We stood clinging to the rail in the hot sticky wind that left a film on the skin like oil. The last of the sampan family was brought on board, and there was a lot of shouting, and then the lifeboat was hauled up. The engines began to throb again.
“I’m sorry about the cabin,” I told the schoolmistress.
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br /> “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “The cabin doesn’t matter. I only wish I could be more help. I’m usually so good at helping at times like this—but I feel so useless when I’m sick.”
The doctor came out of the cabin. The ship gave a roll and he lurched across the deck, crashing against the rail and knocking a wooden litter-box askew with his knee. I waited for him to swear but he only winced and nursed the knee with his hand.
That’s bad, I thought. If Suzie had been all right he’d have sworn and called me a mucker for wasting his time.
“Well, we’re moving again—we’ll be in pretty soon,” he said. “There’s not much we can do until then except keep her cool. Get some ice from the steward and give her a compress. Here, over the lungs.”
The schoolmistress said eagerly, “I’ll do that. I’ll get some ice. I can make a compress from a pillowcase. I’ve done it before.”
“And give her some ice to suck,” the doctor said.
I said, “How bad is she really?”
“She’ll be all right once she’s in hospital,” the doctor said. “She’s lost a bit of blood, but they’ll fix her up all right in hospital. They’ll be getting some ambulances for these boat people, so she can go with them to King’s.”
“She’s got a bed waiting for her at St. Margaret’s,” I said. “They’ve a special T.B. ward there.”
“I can’t promise anything.” He strained his ear to listen to the loud-speaker as a voice announced that a hat would be passed round for the sampan survivors, whose sampan had not only provided their livelihood but had also been their home. They had lost everything. The doctor looked defiant and said, “Muck ’em—they won’t get a mucking penny out of me,” and felt for his wallet in readiness to hand out fifty dollars. “Well, I must get down below again—and I’m afraid you may have to settle for King’s.”
World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) Page 36
