by Paul Theroux
“You owe me,” I said, “a great deal, and you owe Gladys—”
“Go away.”
“I’m staying put.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the feller said, and hung up.
In the basement corridor I passed a fire alarm; the red spur of a switch behind glass, with a handy steel mallet hanging next to it on a hook. The directions shouted to me. I waited until the corridor was empty, then sprang to it and followed the clear directions printed on the black label riveted to the wall. I smashed, I pulled. A bell above my head rapped and rang and lifted to a scream.
2
AN HOUR LATER, in a phone booth, that alarm was still screaming in my ears, turning my recklessness into courage as I dialed the American embassy. I held the receiver to my mouth like an oxygen mask; I was out of breath, and panting, felt incomplete—rushed and unimaginative. The phrases I was prepared to use, urgent offers of service my canny justifications, you might say, had once mercifully blessed, struck me as whorish. They had not troubled me before—“Anything I can do—,” “Just name it—,” “Leave it to me—,” “An excellent choice: couldn’t have done better myself—,” “No trouble at all—,” “It was a pleasure—,” “That’s what I’m here for—,” “What are friends for—?” But that was when I had a choice. This phone call was no decision. It was hardly my choice; it was the last plea possible. I was on my back. I needed a favor. Is there anything—anything at all—you can do for me?
“Ed, remember—”
“Flowers, is that you?” It was a relief to hear Shuck’s jaws, the familiar and endearing buzz as he casually moistened my name with the kiss of his fishy lisp. “Where have you been hiding yourself?”
“Had my hands full,” I said.
“It’s good to be busy.”
“It was driving me bananas,” I said.
“Nice to hear your voice.”
“Same here,” I said. “I thought I might drop around sometime. Chew the fat. Maybe this afternoon if it’s okay with you. Things are pretty quiet at the office. I could hop in a taxi and be over in a few minutes, or—”
“I’d really like that,” Shuck said. “But I’m tied up at the moment.”
For pity’s sake, I was going to say. I resisted. “Some other time then. It’s just that I’m free this afternoon, and, ah, I don’t know whether you remember, but we’ve got some unfinished business.”
Shuck hummed. He said, “Jack, to tell the honest truth I didn’t think I’d hear from you again. You know?”
“That’s what I want to explain.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you called,” he said. “I’m damned glad you called.”
“How about a drink?”
“Sorry,” he said.
“What about after work? What time do you knock off?”
“I’ll write you a letter,” Shuck said quickly.
“A letter? What if it gets lost in the mail?”
“You’re a card,” said Shuck. “Hey, heard any good ones lately?”
“Gags? No, nothing.” I thought of my double, the hilarity and malice he provoked, the embarrassment of his presence which was the embarrassment of a comic routine (“Does this establishment—?”), fumblings which circumstances twisted into laughless gestures of despair, the alien clown killed by tomfoolery. At a distance, as a story—with death absent—it was a joke I could enter into. But death turned the shaggy-dog story into tragedy by making it final. If Leigh had survived I would have found it all screamingly funny; I could have kicked his memory with a mocking story at the Bandung. But it was different, I was on the phone; the memory of smoke stopped my mouth.
“You’ll get the letter tomorrow,” said Shuck. “Stay loose.”
It was delivered to Hing’s by an embassy peon. I signed for it and took it into my cubicle to open. It was a limp envelope of the sort that just squeezing it in my fingers I knew contained nothing important. I slit it open and shook out a brown coupon and a small memo. The coupon said, HARBOUR TOUR—ADMIT ONE ADULT $3.50; the memo specified a day and time, and bore Edwin Shuck’s squinting initials.
“We can talk better here,” said Shuck on the launch Kachang. We climbed the ladder to the cabin roof and took up positions some distance from the tourists. Shuck looked back and said, “Hold the phone.”
A feller in a straw hat had crawled up behind us. He said, “Hi! Do me a favor? Take a picture of me and my wife? That’s her down there, with the hat. All you have to do is look through here and snap. I’ve set the light meter. Swell.”
“It’s not usually this crowded,” said Shuck, aiming the camera at the man and wife on the afterdeck.
“Thanks a lot,” said the feller, retrieving his camera. “How about a snap of you two? I’ll send you a print when we get back to the States.”
“No,” said Shuck sharply, and turned away and closed his eyes in an infantile gesture of refusal.
The Kachang’s engine whirred and pumped, and she leaned away from the quay steps. All around us a logjam of bumboats and sampans began to chug and break up, bobbing across our bow. Waiting behind a misshapen barricade of duffel bags and cardboard suitcases at the top of the stairs were six sunburned Russians, two stocky women with head scarves and cotton dresses, four men with Slavic lips, blond crew cuts, transparent nylon shirts, and string vests. One smoked a tubelike cigarette.
“Russkies,” I said.
“What do they want?” muttered Shuck.
“Going out to their ship,” I said. “Next stop Bloodyvostok, heh.”
Gray sluggish waves, streaked with garter snakes of oil slick, sloshed at the cement stairs, lapped at an upper step, then subsided into rolling froth, depositing a crushed plastic bottle on a step halfway down. A new wave a second later lifted the bottle a step higher. I watched the progress of this piece of flotsam traveling up and down the stairs—the stairs where small-toothed Doris Goh had stumbled and soaked herself, where my handsome girls boarded sampans in old pajamas and overalls and giggled all the way to the freighters.
It was late afternoon; the sun behind the customs house and maritime building put us in shadow that made the inner harbor all greasy water and dark vessels. But farther out, where the water was lit, purest at the greatest distance, ships gleamed and made true reflections in the sky-blue sea mirror.
“See that little jetty?” I said. “Years ago, I used to take gals out from it in little boats. There, where that old feller’s in the sampan.”
The old man in flapping black pajamas, his foot braced against a plank seat, stirred his long oar pole back and forth on its crutch, rocking the sampan through the continual swell.
“I used to worry. What if a storm comes up and blows us out to sea? We’re set adrift or shipwrecked. Makes you stop and think. You’d probably say, ‘Great, alone with some hookers on a desert island.’ But it would be fatal—you’d croak or turn cannibal. You’d be better off alone.”
“You’d still croak,” said Shuck.
“But you wouldn’t turn cannibal,” I said.
“I’m glad you made it today,” said Shuck.
“So am I,” I said. “God, I’m tickled to death.”
Shuck pulled a sour face. “The way you talk,” he said. “I can never make out if you’re putting me on.”
“Cut it out,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“At Paradise Gardens I used to see you rushing around, getting into a flap and think, Can he be serious?”
“I worried about those fellers,” I said. The Kachang was a hundred yards out; the tour guide had started his spiel. “That gray stone building over there is the general post office. One Christmas eve, about eleven o’clock, I stopped in to send a telegram for Hing. There were three Marines in there sending telegrams—to their folks, I suppose. I followed them out, and down the street. They headed over Cavanagh Bridge at a pretty good clip and I went after them. At Empress Place I was going to say something, wish them a Merry Christmas, offer them a drink, or
take them around. I had some dough then—I could have shown them a real good time. But I didn’t do a thing. They went off with their hands in their pockets. I felt like crying. I’d give anything to have that chance again.”
The story made Shuck uneasy. “I thought you were telling a joke,” he said. “Don’t sweat it, Jack. The military takes good care of themselves.”
“It wasn’t that they were soldiers,” I said. “They were strangers. I had the feeling that after they turned the corner something awful happened to them. For no good reason.”
“You would have made a good—what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “There isn’t one. Anyway, what’s on your mind?”
“Hey, you called me, remember?”
“This harbor tour wasn’t my idea,” I said. “I just wanted to shoot the bull in your office.”
“You said we had some unfinished business.”
“Did I? Oh, yeah, I guess I did.” I tried to laugh. Shuck’s silence prompted me. I said, “I’m looking for work.”
“What makes you think I can help you?”
“You said you had a proposition. I told you I wasn’t interested. Now I am.”
“I remember,” said Shuck. “You told me to roll it into a cone and shove it.”
“A figure of speech,” I said. “I got a little hot under the collar—can you blame me?” I leaned close. “Ed, I don’t know what you had in mind, but I could be very useful to you.”
If he laughs I’ll push him overboard, I thought.
Shuck said faintly, “Try me.”
I was trembling. I was prepared to do anything, say anything. “See that channel?” I said. “Well, follow it far enough and you come to Raffles Lighthouse. Go a little beyond it and you’re in international waters. You don’t know what goes on there. I do.”
“What does that prove?”
“Listen,” I said, “smugglers from Indonesia sink huge bales of heroin in that water and then go away. Skindivers from Singapore go over and dredge it up. That’s how the stuff’s transferred—underwater. You didn’t know that.”
“That’s the narcotics division. Dangerous drugs,” said Shuck. “Not my bag.”
“Commies your bag? How about the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Union on Bras Basah Road—what do you know about them?”
“We’ve got a file on them.”
“I know a feller who’s a member—pal of mine, calls me Jack. He makes teeth for my girls. I could show you the teeth.”
“Making gold teeth doesn’t count as subversion, Jack.”
“He’s a Maoist,” I said. “They all are. What I’m trying to say is I’m welcome in that place anytime. I could get you names, addresses, anything.”
“That stuff’s no good to us.”
“I’ll buy that—I’m just using it as an example,” I said. “Don’t forget, I’ve been hustling in Singapore for fourteen years. What I don’t know about the secret societies isn’t worth knowing. See those tattoos? I’ve learned a trick or two.” Shuck smiled.
“You look suspicious,” I said.
“You’re too eager,” said Shuck. “We get guys coming into the embassy every day with stories like that. They think we’ll be interested. Lots of whispering, et cetera. The funny thing is, we know most of it already.”
I tried a new tack. “Tell me frankly, what’s the worst job you can imagine?”
“Frankly, yours,” said Shuck. “I think hustling is about as low as you can go.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Now, who’s the straightest feller you know?”
“I used to think it was you.”
“Why don’t you think so now?”
“You’re coming on pretty strong, Jack.”
“I’m looking for work,” I said. I was getting impatient. “You told me you had a proposition. All I want to know is—is it still on? Because if it is, I’m your man.”
The Kachang was speeding alongside a wharf where a high black tanker was tethered. The tour guide was saying, “—fourth largest port in the world—”
“It was just an idea,” said Shuck finally. “And the whole thing’s pretty unofficial. I mean, it’s my baby, not Uncle Sam’s.”
“All the better,” I said. “So it’s just between us two.”
“There’s someone else,” said Shuck. “But he doesn’t know a thing.” Shuck spoke slowly, teasing me with lisps and pauses. “Let’s call this guy Andy Gump. He comes to Singapore now and then. From Saigon. Is there anyone behind me? No? Andy Gump doesn’t do much here—probably picks up a hooker and rips off a piece of ass. That’s not news to you. In Saigon, though, it’s a little bit different. He makes policy there.”
“How high up is he?”
“High,” said Shuck. “Now this is the crazy thing. No one finds fault with what he does there, but they’d shit if they knew what he did here. I’m talking about pictures and evidence.”
“Can we be a little bit more concrete?”
“I’m just sketching this thing out,” said Shuck. “Take a guy that’s got the power to keep a whole army in Vietnam. He says he’s idealistic and so forth. Everyone believes him, and why shouldn’t they? He’s got some shady sidelines, but he’s a family man, he’s fair to his troops—more than fair, he covers up for them when they kill civilians. He does his reports on time and flies to Washington every so often to explain the military position. So far, so good. Now, let’s say we know this guy is screwing Chinese whores—maybe slapping them around, who knows? Ever hear of a credibility gap?”
Even in the stiff sea breeze my hands were slippery. I said, “For a minute I thought you were going to ask me to kill him.”
“You’re not that desperate for work,” said Shuck. “Are you?”
“In despair some fellers contemplate suicide,” I said. “I’m different. I contemplate murder.”
“From what we hear, the same might be true of Andy Gump.”
I said, “You want something on him?”
“That would be nice,” said Shuck, squashing “nice” with a buzz.
“A few years ago,” I said, “you would have been pimping for him. With a smile.”
“That was a few years ago,” said Shuck. “Now you’re going to pimp for him. You know all the girls, you’ve got friends in the hotels. It should be easy.”
“I don’t monkey around with a feller’s confidence,” I said. “This is pretty nasty.”
“It stinks,” said Shuck. “I wouldn’t do it myself. But you might think it over and if it interests you—you say you’re looking for work—maybe we can talk about the details.”
“There’s only one detail I’m concerned about,” I said. “Money.”
“You’ll be paid.”
“Who names the price?”
“Good question,” said Shuck. “Tell me, in your business who does that?”
“With hustling?” I said. “The gal does.”
“The whore?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The one that does the work.”
“So what’s your price?”
I scratched my tattoos; the tourists hooted in the cabin below; the breeze on my face was so warm it made me gasp, and when I looked at the kampong on stilts we were passing I saw some children swimming near the hairy bobbing lump of a dead dog. I said, “I won’t lift a finger for less than five grand.”
Shuck didn’t flinch.
“And another five when I finish the job.”
“Okay,” said Shuck. Was he smiling, or just making another fishmouth?
“Plus expenses,” I said.
“That goes without saying.”
“I could use a drink.”
“They pass out Green Spot when we get to the model shipyard in Kallang Basin,” Shuck said. “What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking about Andy Gump,” I said. “How old would you say he is?”
“Mid-fifties.”
I shook my head. “I might have known.”
“I’ll tell you a couple of stories,” said Shuck, “just so you don’t go and get a conscience about him.”
3
“AND GET THIS—” Shuck rattled on, itemizing Andy Gump’s waywardness with such gloating and sanctimonious fluency he could have been lying in his teeth. Still, the image of the man, whose proper name was Andrew Maddox, rank major general, was a familiar one to me—so familiar that twice I told Shuck I had heard enough to antagonize me: it was not the man I was after, but the job. I did not need convincing; my mind was made up. This effort of mine, a last chance to convert my fortunes in a kind of thrusting, mindless betrayal, had required a number of willful deletions in my heart.
But Shuck was unstoppable. He ranted, pretending disgust, though the man he described was of a size that every detail, however villainous, enhanced. Shuck’s accusations were spoken as the kind of envious praise I always thought of when I overheard someone in a bar retailing the story of a resourceful poisoner.
“You name a way to make a fast buck, and he’s tried it,” said Shuck. And he added in the same tone of admiring outrage that General Maddox had a yacht, smoked plump cigars, sported silk shirts, went deep-sea fishing off Cap St. Jacques, and stayed in expensive hotels.
“I know the type,” I said.
The stories were not new—the fellers at Paradise Gardens had told me most of them without naming the villain, and Shuck had alluded to him before. But while I had taken all of it seriously, none of it had given me pause. I had lived long enough to know how to translate this bewilderment. I heard it as I heard most human sounds—Leigh’s pastoral retirement plans, Yardley’s jokes, Gunstone’s war stories, my old openers (Years ago—and I once knew a feller—), and especially the exultant woman’s moan of pleasure and pain, half sigh, half scream, while I knelt furiously reverent between her haunches—all this I heard as a form of prayer.
Vietnam stories throbbed with contradiction, but were as prayerful and pious as any oratorio. Like the tales of murder and incest associated with Borgia popes—horror stories to compliment the faith by supposing to prove the durable virtue of the Church—the song and dance about corruption in Vietnam never intended to belittle the bombings and torturings or the fact of any army’s oafish occupation (the colonial setup, with Maddox as viceroy), but were meant as a curious sidelight on a justly fought war in which Shuck maintained, and so did some of the fellers, we had already been rightfully victorious: “But human nature being what it is—”
