Saint Jack

by Paul Theroux

  A formation of swallows dived into view, pivoted sharply like bats, and then chased, lurching this way and that, toward the brightest part of the sky, where a reddening millrace of cloud poured this brightness into a subdued rosy wash. The palms towering above the Bandung did not sway—they never did in Singapore—but I could hear the papery rattle of the fronds shaking, hearing a coolness I couldn’t feel. To a northern-born American, the palm tree was when I was growing up, a graceful symbol of wealth: it suggested lush Florida, sunny winter vacations, certain movie stars and long days of play, white stucco hotels and casinos on wide beaches, and fresh fruit all year round; fellers had fun under nature’s parasol. I looked up at the Bandung’s palms, a tree I no longer associate with fun, so as to avoid looking at the top of the stockade wall enclosing the garden; on top of the wall glass shards were planted to discourage intruders and the sight of these bristling never failed to make my pecker ache.

  I crunched down the cobblestone path, under the tunnel of vines, in the comfortable damp of the freshly watered garden; the sun had dropped behind the roof of the Bandung and was now dazzling at the back door, shooting brilliant gold streaks through two rooms, along the ground floor on the gleaming tiles. My jacket sat well on me for the first time that day, and with Gunstone’s envelope of cash in my breast pocket, I was cool and happy.

  But I knew what I was in for: I quailed when I heard Yardley’s angry whoop of abuse echo in the big room. I paused near the wicker chairs on the verandah, and for a hopeless fluid moment I wished there was somewhere else I could go. It wasn’t possible. A man my age, for whom a bar was a habit and a consolation—a reassurance of community that could nearly be tender—a man my age didn’t drink in strange bars; that meant an upsetting break in routine; my friends interpreted absence as desertion, and they did not forgive easily. It would have seemed especially suspicious if I had avoided the Bandung after being responsible for bringing Leigh there the previous evening. Leigh had intruded and disturbed Yardley—Yardley’s last joke was proof of that. The blame was mine and an explanation was expected of me. I had come prepared to denounce Leigh.

  Yardley saw me and stopped whooping. Frogget was beside him; Smale, Yates, and Coony were at the bar, and over in an armchair drinking soybean milk and absorbed in the Reader’s Digest sat old Mr. Tan Lim Hock. Mr. Tan, a retired civil servant, helped the regulars at the Bandung with their income tax—“He can skin a maggot,” Yardley said. He was a rather tense man whom I had seen smile only twice: once, when he saw what Hing paid me (“Is this per mensem or per annum?” he asked), and once—that day in 1967—when China exploded her H-bomb.

  I crossed the tiles and ordered a gin. Yardley’s defiant silence, and the sheepishness on the faces of the rest, told me what I had expected: that Leigh was the subject of the abusive shouts.

  “What’s cooking?” I said.

  “Are you alone?” asked Yardley. Yates and Coony looked at him as if they expected him to continue, but all he said when I told him I was alone was, “Wally nearly got pranged this afternoon. Isn’t that right, Wally? Got a damned great bruise on his arm. Show us your bruise again, Wally, come on.”

  Wally, at the center of attention, was uncomfortable. “Not too bad,” he said, smiling at his bandaged elbow.

  “That’s not what you told me!” said Yardley. He turned to me. “Poor little sod nearly got killed!” Yardley was maddened; ordinarily, Wally’s injury would not have mattered to him—he might even have mocked it—but Yardley was in a temper, and his anger about Leigh, which I had deflected by barging in, had become a general raging. It was at times like this that he called Frogget “Desmond” instead of “Froggy” (and Frogget didn’t object: he had attached himself to Yardley and like Wally simplified his loyalty by surrendering to abuse for praise); and it was only in anger that Yardley remembered I was an American.

  “It’s these bloody taxis,” said Yates—the “bloody” was for Yardley’s benefit. Yates was a quiet soul, the only one of us who did not work for a towkay. He got what were called “perks,” home leave every two years, education and family allowances, and could look forward to a golden handshake and one hundred cubic feet of sea freight.

  “No, it’s not,” said Yardley. “It’s these jumped-up bastards who come here and act like they own the road.” He stared at me. “You know the kind, don’t you, Jack?”

  “I see them now and again,” I said.

  “Who was it, Wally? Was it a Chink that ran you down?”

  Mr. Tan Lim Hock was ten feet away; he chose not to hear.

  “European,” said Wally, blinking and gasping at his own recklessness. “He didn’t hit me, I fell. Assident.”

  “He hit you, you silly shit,” said Yardley. “I knew it was a European, and I’ll bet he doesn’t live in Singapore either. No sir, not him. Wouldn’t dare. Take someone like that friend of yours, Jack—”

  Yardley began blaming Leigh for Wally’s bruise. Not so incredible: a month earlier, in a similar series of associations, after he had been overcharged by the Singapore Water Board on an item marked “sewer fee,” he flung the crumpled bill in Wally’s face and said, “There’s no end to the incompetence of you fuckers.” Now, Yardley worked himself up into such a lather that soon he was saying—ignoring Wally and the bruise—“That pal of yours, that shifty little bastard would run down the lot of us if we gave him half a chance, I can tell you that. If Jack keeps bringing him in here I’m going to stay home—nothing against you, Jack, but you should know better. Wally, for God’s sake look alive and give me a double.”

  “Let me explain,” I said. They didn’t know the half of it; I could tell them Leigh’s lie about his club, the airport story about “What ship your flend flom?” and how he had suggested we go see Hing before having a drink (“Arse licker!” Yardley would have cried). But I flubbed it before I began by saying, “William arrived yesterday, and where else—”

  “William?” Yardley looked at me. “You call that little maggot William? Well, I’ll be damned.” He shook his head. “Jack, don’t be a sucker. Even bloody Desmond can see that bugger’s jumped-up, and he knows you’re a Yank so he can get away with telling you he’s governor general—you won’t know the difference. Listen to me. I’m telling you he’s so shifty the light doesn’t strike him.”

  “I hear he’s a nasty piece of work,” said Coony.

  “He’s all fart and no arse,” said Smale, who then mimicked Leigh, saying, “I haven’t the remotest idea.”

  “He’d try the patience of a bloody saint,” said Yardley.

  “Why don’t you lay off him,” I said, surprising myself with the objection.

  “Jack likes him,” said Yardley. “Don’t he, Desmond?”

  “Yeah,” said Frogget, turning away from me and rubbing his nose which in profile was a snout. “I fancy he does.”

  “I don’t,” I said, and although I had planned a moment earlier to denounce Leigh, I hated myself for saying it. When I first saw Leigh at the airport I had an inkling—a tic of doubt that made me want to look into a mirror—of how other people saw me. Now I understood that tic, and whatever I might say about Leigh did not matter: I could prove my dislike to these fellers at the bar facing me, but there was no way I could make myself believe it. It was not very complicated. Middle age is a sense of slipping and decline, and I suppose I had my first glimpse of this frailty in Leigh, the feeling of the body growing unreliable, getting out of control in a mournfully private way—only the occupier of the body could know. Once, I might have said, “He’s all fart and no arse,” but hearing it from Smale was a confirmation of my fear. The ridicule involved me—it was fear, and I was inclined now to defend the stranger, for hearing him ridiculed I knew how others ridiculed me; defending him was merciful, but it also answered a need in myself by providing me with a defense.

  It was so simple. But the peril of being over fifty is, with anger’s quick ignition, the age’s clinging to transparent deceptions. We let others confirm wh
at we already know, and we get mad because they say it; what appears like revelation is the calling of a desperate bluff: the young wiseacre who, starting his story, says, “This feller was really old, about fifty or sixty—” drives every listener over fifty up the wall. We knew it before he said it. What is aggravating is not that the wiseacre knows, but that he thinks it’s important and holds it against us. Our only defense is in refusing to laugh at his damned joke.

  So: “He’s not here,” I said, “and it’s not fair to talk behind his back.”

  “Look who’s talking about being fair!” said Yardley. He had overcome his colicky anger and was laughing at me. “Who is it that imitates the maggot skinner when his back is turned?”

  It was true; I did. When Mr. Tan left the bar I sometimes did an imitation of him with his Reader’s Digest and bottle of Vimto soybean milk. I looked over and was glad to see that Mr. Tan had gone home; Yardley’s “Chink” had done it. My other routines were Wally polishing glasses, Frogget’s shambling, and Yardley, drunk, forgetting the punch line of a joke. My imitations were not very accurate, but my size and panting determination made the attempt funny. Mimicry reassures the weak, and the envious fool takes the risk as often as the visionary who mocks the error and leaves the man alone; I did not like to be reminded by my brand of mimicry.

  “I’m turning over a new leaf,” I said.

  “By wearing a suit?” Smale asked.

  Of course. I had forgotten I was wearing a suit. That bothered them most of all. They were sensitive about fellers who dressed up and made a bluff of the success they felt was denied everyone because it was denied them.

  “I had to go to a funeral,” I said. I took off my jacket and rolled up my shirt-sleeves. I knew instantly what Yardley’s next words would be.

  He said: “Don’t tell me your friend’s packed it in!”

  “That’d be a ruddy shame,” said Smale.

  “Let’s drop it, shall we?” I said. After all my indignant sympathy that was the only rebellion I could offer.

  Then Leigh walked in.

  I heard Gopi’s characteristic trampling of the cobbled path in the garden, his whisper, and Leigh’s, “Ah, yes, here we are,” and my heart quickened.

  “Long time no see,” said Yardley.

  Leigh brightened; but Yardley was beckoning to Gopi and ordering Gopi a drink. “How you doing?” said Yardley, putting his arm around the peon.

  “There you are,” said Leigh. I winced at the demonstration of pretended relief. Leigh glanced at the others and said, “’d evening” and “M’ellew.”

  “Go on,” said Yardley, “drink up! There’s a good chap.”

  Gopi had a whiskey in his hand. He drank it all and at once his eyes glazed, his face went ashen and matched his caste mark.

  “Leave him alone,” I said. “Gopi, don’t drink if you’re not in the mood.”

  “He’s going to be sick,” said Coony.

  “I like this little chap’s company,” said Yardley. It was his revenge on Leigh. “Have another one?”

  Gopi nodded, but he was not saying yes. He covered his face with a hanky and pedaled to the door. Outside, in the garden, he became loud, hawking and spitting.

  “The call of the East,” said Smale.

  Gopi groaned, and dragged himself away.

  “That was mighty nice of you,” I said to Yardley.

  “He’ll be all right,” Yardley muttered, and turned away, saying, “Now, where was I?” to Frogget and Smale.

  “How are you doing?” asked Leigh.

  “Anyone I can,” I said.

  “That clerk of yours very kindly showed me the way here. Poor chap’s got a sort of gammy leg, hasn’t he, and I was a bit sorry he had to—” Leigh was still talking about Gopi’s lameness, but he was not looking me in the eye. He stared at my tattoos, the ones on my left arm, and in particular at the long blue crucifix crowned with a circle of thorns dripping inverted commas of blood onto my wrist. I pressed my right to my side as soon as I saw him fasten on the left.

  “He’s a wonderful feller,” I said. “Minds his own business.” I reached for my drink and when I lifted it his gaze lifted until it met my own. He looked tired. He had been hard at work all day, probably sitting in that low chair in Hing’s office, out of range of the fan’s blowing, while Hing looked on and slapped at papers on his desk. Leigh’s eyes were watery and his hair was stuck to his head with sweat; the floridness of his face, which had looked like ruddy good health the day before, was not a solid color, but rather many little veins and splotches. I looked at him as at a picture in a newspaper that goes insubstantial with closeness, the face blurred to a snowfall of dots.

  “How do the accounts look?” I asked, handing Leigh a tumbler of gin.

  “Bit ropey,” said Leigh. “Any of the pink stuff?”

  Wally shook some drops of Angostura into the gin.

  “That’ll put lead in your pencil,” I said.

  “Best to put it in the glass before the gin and work it around the sides,” said Leigh. He wrapped the glass in his hanky, said, “Cheers,” and drank.

  “I don’t mind telling him to get knotted,” Yardley was saying.

  “Bit ropey,” Leigh repeated, smacking his lips. “We’ll sort it out, though if you ask me, your towkay’s missing a few beads from his abacus.”

  “He’ll drive you out of your gourd,” I said.

  “Funny little thing, isn’t he? I can’t understand a word he says.”

  “What about your towkay—in Hong Kong?” I asked.

  “Him!” Leigh gathered his features solemnly together and said, “In actual fact . . . he’s a cunt.”

  Yardley heard and smiled, and I wondered for a moment whether the obscenity would redeem Leigh. It didn’t. Yardley continued to talk to the fellers on my right, and sometimes to me; Leigh spoke only to me. I was, awkwardly, in the middle, a zone of good humor. There was no way out of it; to skip off with Leigh would mean the end of my drinking at the Bandung; the desertion would prohibit my return. Soon Yardley was saying less and less to me, and Leigh growing quite talkative on his third drink.

  “—God, sometimes I hate it,” Leigh said. “One thinks one is going to the tropics and one finds oneself in the Chinese version of Welwyn Garden City. The call of the East indeed—your friend over there was right. That fantastic hoicking puts me off my food, it really does. Still, it won’t be much longer.”

  “How long do you plan to stay in Hong Kong?”

  “My dear fellow,” said Leigh, “not a moment longer than is absolutely necessary.”

  In different words, for fourteen years I’d said the same thing to myself; it was an ambiguous promise, and when I said it, it sounded like never. But Leigh’s sounded like soon.

  “Margaret—my wife—Margaret’s got a magnificent cottage picked out. In Wiltshire—you know it? Fantastic place. When I go all broody about the Chinese, Margaret looks at me and says, ‘We’re halfway to Elmview’—that’s the name of the cottage. That cheers me up. And then I don’t feel so bad about—”

  The name depressed me; it sounded like the name of an old folks’ home, and I imagined an overheated parlor, a radio playing too loud, an elderly inmate snoring in an armchair, another in a frilly apron busying himself with a dustpan and brush, and a young heavy nurse patiently feeding a protesting crone who was wearing a blue plastic bib and batting the spoon away with her hand. Just saying the name lifted Leigh’s spirits; he was still talking about the cottage.

  “—thought of doing a little book about my experiences. Call it Hong Kong Jottings and pack it with sampans and chatter from the club, that sort of thing. I see myself at Elmview on a spring morning, in the front room, sun splashing through the window, working on this book. In longhand, of course. Outside I can see masses of bluebells and a green meadow.” He sighed. “An old horse out to pasture.”

  “It sounds—” I could not think of another way of saying it—“very agreeable.”

  “You kno
w,” he said, “I’ve never set foot in that cottage. I saw it from a motorcar; Margaret pointed it out from the road. It was raining. We had a ploughman’s lunch in the village—beautiful old pub—and went back to London that same afternoon. But it’s as if I’ve been living there my whole life. I can tell you the position of every stick of furniture, every plate, how the sun strikes the carpet. I can see the tea things arranged on the table, and there’s that—” he sniffed—“curious stale smell of cold ashes in the grate.”

  Yardley used to say, “Everyone in the tropics has a funkhole,” and Leigh had told me his; his description had taken the curse off the name—the place was happy, a credible refuge. I had my own plans. I had never told a soul; I had kept my imaginings to myself and added little details now and then over the years. Maybe I had had one gin too many, or it might have been my triumphant feeling over that Bishop Bradley business. Whatever it was—it might have been Leigh’s candor magnetizing mine—I drew very close to him and whispered, “It’s an odd thing, isn’t it? Everyone imagines a different funkhole. Take mine, for example. You know what I want?”

  “Tell me,” said Leigh, sympathetically.

  “First, I want a lot of money—people don’t laugh at a feller with dough. Then I want a yacht that you can sleep on and a huge mansion with a fence or a wall around it and maybe a peacock in the garden. I’d like to walk around all day in silk pajamas, and take up golf and give up these stinking cheroots and start smoking real Havana cigars. And that’s not all—”

  Leigh gave me an awfully shocked look; it rattled me so badly I stuttered to a halt and finished my drink in a single gulp. He thought I was mocking him. The dream of mine, the little glimpse of fantasy that had widened into the whole possible picture I saw every day I spent on that island, saving my sanity as I obeyed Hing or turned my girls out or sorted pornographic pictures on the kitchen table in my house in Moulmein Green, hopeful and comforting in its detail, making me resourceful—that to him was mockery.

  He said, “Are you taking the mickey out of me?”