by Peter Carey
Then he got into his MG and drove away.
The following morning, his sergeant found him in my parents’ bed. He had bloomed in the night, like a chrysanthemum, petals of blood thrusting through his skin.
In the moonlight Chubb saw how bright and excited his friend’s good eye shone. This man, he thought, is too dangerous for me.
Mulaha, all I want is my child.
Yes, you are lucky. She is alive.
I do not want to kill anyone.
Oh, and are you not wondering how this one died?
I suppose you had injected poison into one side of the melon.
But which melon—all three? And what would stop the poison flowing all through the fruit? No, you see, I used the Malay tradition. I prepared the knife. I will show you how to do the same. Can?
I don’t need to know.
In any case, I will show you. For this and fifty-six similar services in defence of my people, the Governor of Penang gave me the bloody Panglima. I had lost our house to the chettiars—long story…. I am back to being a cigku, one more poor Tamil teacher, like my grandfather.
They had by now reached the front gate of the school and they walked in silence around the dark and airless wall of jungle to Mulaha’s house. Here the host immediately unlocked the heavy padlock—a strange and intimate moment, as if some deep and dreadful knowledge waited inside the locked room, as if they were about to commit a crime or sleep together.
Come in, he said.
38
Dry bunches of vegetable matter were hanging from the ceiling and stacked in corners. Beneath the window was a grey metal desk, its surface completely covered by books, loose papers, scales, knives, and pieces of native pottery. Shelves filled every wall, crammed with glass jars which had formerly held peanut butter or honey but now bore white laboratory labels of identical size. The odour was overpowering, a smell like that of fermenting tea.
My little hobby, Christopher.
Chubb could recall only a few labels: ‘Cat Fish Gall,’ ‘Sting Ray Spine,’ ‘Dendang Beetle,’ ‘Grasshopper Pesan.’
But he had hundreds of them, Mem, can you imagine? Ants and frogs, and dried-up fish slime. At the time I thought it mumbo-jumbo, but I was wrong. I have read the literature in K.L. Most of these substances would kill you or make you very sick. The powders are the worst—powdered millipede, for instance. A puff of air and you are dead. This was why he would never have a window open. Cheh! What sort of maniac was this? You could die of his goodwill.
He had decided for me that I would murder McCorkle. No consultation on this issue. No need to thank him. He would kindly teach me how to do it properly. His point was that I was lucky to have met him, but at five in the morning it hardly felt like luck. He wished to find a dog and show me how to deal with it.
Tired, I said.
Forget the dog then. He would demonstrate how he had killed Suzuki only. I did not wish to know, not then or ever. He showed me the very knife he used on the musk melon. It had been soaked in urine so the poison would adhere. Then he mixed some powder with oil and began to coat one side of it. That was the trick, you see: poison on one side of the knife. Good eye, bad eye. Good side, bad side. He coated the bad side with four different poisons. The smell in the room was very strong and I had a strange taste in my throat. All I was thinking was I must depart.
The following afternoon, Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I walked all the way into George Town and there, oy-oy-oy, a long raving letter from Noussette. Page one: I was a leech. She would give me nothing, ever. Page two: I was a liar. She said I had brought McCorkle on myself. Page three was even better: the creature did not exist. She would sue me if I ever claimed that she’d met him in Kings Cross.
What could I say? I was now trapped at the Bukit Zam-rud English School and when the headmaster finally struck I was in no position to refuse his pitiful wages. Mathematics and Physics. Two hundred and fifty dollars a month less board. Chubb here looked down at his dry old hands. No more True Parrot for me—or maybe once. Each night I had to learn the maths I taught the following day.
For almost three months, until the end of the monsoon, Chubb continued at the poison house. He was twice excited by reports of McCorkle and his daughter, but nothing came of them and he quickly gave up hope. For Mulaha it was different: he would lose too much face if his promise was not honoured.
He made me prepare the damned E.S. parcel even though nothing more was forthcoming from the rickshawallahs. I was to kill him this way—no, no, that way. Whenever he changed his mind he must test the poison on some poor dog or chicken and have me watch it die. I hated to see the suffering. More than once he poisoned himself and then there were great scenes of retching and shuddering in the middle of the night. Never sure if some were not intentional. Three times he got out of taking the cricket team to Kuala Kangsar— severe vomiting at six a.m.—and each time I had to take his place and then I was trapped in the company of the headmaster. David Grainger from Ballan. Must sit next to him. No reading permitted, must listen to the moron talk. ‘The Malay Character’ was his hobby-horse.
Zinc cream all over his stupid nose, Mem, like a bloody sunburned ostrich. He knew nothing of Malaya but had a great terror of amok. On and on until the bus stopped unexpectedly. What’s this? What’s this? His first thought, of course, was terrorists.
Nothing, I said. A car broken down.
But Grainger was now standing in the aisle poking his bright white nose over the driver’s shoulder.
A large silver car was stopped at an angle across the road. Surrounding it was a mob of Malays in colourful dress.
Nothing, dear chap? Nothing? It’s an Orang Kaya Kaya!
The thing was this, Chubb explained to me, an Orang Kaya Kaya is not royalty, but almost as good. The title means he’s bloody rich. Grainger immediately roared at the driver. His proper name was Kee Guat Eng but Grainger called him Ah Kee, as if he was a dog.
Ah Kee, door open.
Then the fool went hopping out onto the road like a scavenger that has found something nice and dead to eat.
The crowd opened like a gorgeous poppy and in its centre Chubb saw a tall light-skinned man whose grey hair and white moustache did nothing to hinder an expression of extreme hauteur. His tartan jacket combined many violent colours, and his loose white silk trousers were fastened by many yards of scarlet waist-cloth. All this he set off with sky-blue canvas shoes.
Before this luminous individual the sheep-coloured Grainger all but prostrated himself. The Kaya Kaya allowed himself a few words in reply before turning to speak to an equerry, thus leaving the headmaster uncertain of whether he should stay or go. Finally he bowed to the Kaya Kaya’s back and boarded the bus. Chubb sighed and put his book away.
I offered him a ride, the headmaster said, but do you know what he told me? ‘I have my own mechanist.’ Ha ha. That’s good, isn’t it? Mechanist. But imagine the piles of dough these fellows have. Travels with his bloody mechanist. Look, there he is.
The bus was pushing slowly through the crowd and as they passed the car—an Austin Sheerline—the great hulking body of the mechanic emerged slowly from underneath and a white face blinked up at them.
Good grief, cried Grainger, a bally Englishman!
It was Bob McCorkle. When Chubb saw him, he cared not a damn about the first eleven or David Grainger either. He rose from his seat and made his way forward.
Stop the bus, he demanded.
You sit, said Kee Guat Eng. Too late already.
Gostan, please. Meaning: Back up.
But then Grainger clapped a hand on his shoulder. Come, old chap, don’t panic. You must sit down.
Chubb does not seem to have been a violent man, but the bus was now picking up speed and no-one was about to gostan for him. So he pushed the headmaster in the chest, just at the moment Kee Guat Eng accelerated, and Grainger followed the laws of first-form physics (M = m × v), tottering backwards down the aisle with his hands held high and his freckled face con
torted in a rictus of alarm.
Sorry, Chubb cried.
For a moment it seemed the headmaster would maintain his dance all the way to the back seat, but suddenly he fell hard upon his tailbone.
Stop the bus, cried Chubb.
Get him, boys, Grainger shouted. Get the cad.
Both orders were obeyed and, as the bus came to a halt, fourteen doe-eyed princes descended on their maths teacher in a wave of soap and garlic, banging his forehead and scratching his face and arms and pounding his body with their bony knees and elbows. Chubb could not bring himself to strike back and so was held prisoner for the headmaster to inspect.
Get up, man.
All Chubb knew was he had to get out of that bus.
In your seat, said David Grainger.
I must get out.
Sir, be seated.
In a display of ingenuity that he was still proud of years later, Chubb doubled over and began to retch.
Open the door, cried the headmaster.
With one bound Chubb sprang out and began sprinting up the dusty Ipoh Road. In so doing he abandoned a notebook full of poetry, three shirts, two pairs of trousers, and his copy of Mallarmé, all of which were in Mulaha’s cottage.
They had only travelled a mile or two past the Austin Sheerline but in reverse it was all uphill and severely rutted from the wet season, with the result that Chubb’s sprint soon became a limping walk and when he arrived at the place where McCorkle had lain so short a time before all he found was a large black oil stain in the dirt. This might have made another man regret his actions, but Chubb reckoned that so many people could not have been accommodated inside the Austin, and as no-one was visible on the road ahead they must therefore have come from a settlement nearby. There was a large river not far distant, and so he reasoned the Kaya Kaya’s palace was most likely on its bank. Further, there must be a path from here to there. Of course there was no guarantee that McCorkle would be with them, only that so oil-stained a man was unlikely to be welcome inside so grand a motor car.
He found a track which started out smoothly enough but soon became, Chubb told me, a succession of holes filled with mud and water, pretty much what you might expect if you knew it had been constructed and maintained by elephants for their own convenience.
He set off in cricket whites. Six hours later, toward the end of the afternoon, he emerged from the jungle covered with red mud and bitten beyond endurance. In spite of this, he was gratified to find himself looking across a wide, clear river, on the banks of which he could make out, beneath the foliage, houses and orchards and rice fields. It was a splendid view, made all the more so by the crimson streak in the sky above the last spur of a picturesque range of mountains. On the flats stood a number of large palm-thatched houses on stilts, and off by itself, a bright-yellow palace with high-pitched tile roofs and a cross-hatched gingerbread appearance. In the shadow of the palace was the Austin Sheerline.
I closed my notebook, and the extraordinary fellow looked at me with surprise.
It is not the end, he said. There is more to tell.
Mr Chubb, you have talked all day and almost half the night. I need a little rest.
Of course, he said. I will come back at noon.
I did not wait for him to go, but went to the bathroom to scrub the inkstains from my aching hands.
39
Years later the girl could remember the day of Chubb’s arrival at the palace. First, the Kaya Kaya had seen the ber-hantu, a pillar of red fire in the evening sky, but he had not become ill until a second bad omen appeared, a very large bird which flew directly in through the open door. It was amongst her most vivid memories, how this bird had caused the grey-haired Kaya Kaya to collapse onto his big teak bed, all his family scattering like frightened chickens.
Before this happened he had been, as usual, very civilised. He had sat with her bapa inside the car and her bapa had shown him the part which was broken and explained the method of repair. Then they were invited to sit with him in his palace, but on that day she had only one sip of her sweet red drink before there was a rush of air and a creature with heavy dark wings and a huge head and a pair of horns flew around the room moaning horribly. Then it sailed off into the dusk, gliding between the feathery leaves of palms. Then everyone ran away, leaving the Kaya Kaya alone on his bed with his blue shoes still upon his feet.
When people drifted nervously back to the big house, her bapa asked questions but they were too distressed to understand. Soon an old woman entered and this turned out to be the pawang. Dressed like a man in a short-sleeved jacket, trousers, and a sarong, she placed bowls of fluid and candles on the floor all around the bed. Soon afterwards came five young women with skin drums, and then her bapa took the little girl to sit with him beside the open door. The women went into the farthest corner and began to play the drums softly, stroking them with those lovely long fingers the undersides of which were as pale and pretty as a seashell. Then the pawang covered her face with a yellow silk cloth and sang a strange song.
What is happening, Bapa?
I reckon she is going to get the demon from him.
The little girl wanted very much to see the bad spirit emerge. She wondered would it be a lizard, for she had almost seen this sort of demon once before, in another place. There was a witch who had been casting spells and killing babies so they tied her arms and legs and took her to the river and held her beneath the muddy water with a long, forked stick. When she was dead a lizard climbed out her nose and the women caught and killed it and then put it in a bottle and buried the bottle in the dirt by the bananas where it would not hurt anybody ever again. None of this had she been allowed to see. This time she had a ringside seat.
Then they were being asked to leave the room—she could not even bring her red drink with her—and her bapa took her out into the bananas and here they squatted on the bare red earth until the big sun sank into the river, turning the water the same orange-gold colour as the silk across the pawang’s face.
In Kuala Lumpur, when she was no longer a little girl, she told me how she complained to her bapa about the abandoned drink, and one could guess that she was used to having her way. In any case, she was exceedingly surprised when he suddenly clamped his big oily-smelling hand across her mouth.
There it is, he whispered in her ear, his breath smelling of peppermint and oranges. Look—the hantu. They have drawn him out.
And there it was, pulled down the hill by the pawangs insistent song. Large and clumsy, the hantu stumbled and rolled down the steep hill behind the house.
Shit! it cried out angrily. It was white all over like a ghost but had disguised itself with mud and filth. And she was now sorry to be watching for she knew it would hurt her if it could. Her bapa wrapped his arms around her and pressed her face against his shoulder so the hantu could not see her. She was safe as she could be, but who knew what a hantu might do?
It walked around the house, calling out in its great croaking voice, and then three of the Kaya Kaya’s sons ran down the steps. Two had krises drawn and one had a big fat gun and they leapt upon the hantu and soon had it tied up with rope. It cried and moaned, begging them to let it go, but the Kaya Kaya’s sons dragged it to the car and lashed it to the wheel so there was no hope of escape.
Then the hantu saw her and cried horribly, pleading for her to come to it, but the Kaya Kaya’s sons kicked the hantu until it stopped.
Once it was dark, she and her bapa went with everyone down to the river and soon the Kaya Kaya came too and they had a feast inside a floating house with walls of bamboo and everyone was happy. She wondered what would happen to the hantu, fearing that it would come and get her in the night, so her bapa took a burning stick and together they saw that the hantu was bound very tightly with a great deal of rattan.
Her bapa spoke directly to it. They know exactly what you are, he said.
You are a kidnapper, said the hantu, and I will catch you. Then you will go to prison for what you have done.<
br />
This frightened the girl terribly and she had to sleep next to her bapa all night long, but in the morning he showed her why there was nothing to fear. The hantu had been taken to a raft down on the river and sat there alone in its centre while men in boats guided it into the current and soon they let out a great cry as the river swept the raft away, carrying the hantu down to the sea where it would surely be destroyed and never again disturb the dreams of Kaya Kayas or little girls. Then her bapa picked her up and held her high and she looked down into his strong face and felt that lovely calm that only a child can feel, that you are perfectly loved, invincibly protected, and now she did not care what happened to the hantu, knowing only that the river would drag it to a place where the lizards would flee, running out of its ugly nose to meet their certain death.
40
On Thursday Chubb arrived far earlier than we had agreed and I therefore made him wait until lunch. As I was the one who had just three days remaining, this was perverse of me indeed, and not fully explicable even to myself. Quite likely I could not own to my growing involvement in his history, and was somehow embarrassed to see myself now making such detailed notes, cross-examining him so rigorously, and more often. I had become his collaborator, a role which made me, to say the least, uncomfortable.
This in turn invigorated him and when I met him in the lobby he presented me with a huge oil-stained map of Japanese-occupied Malaya. As we spread it across the table of the hotel’s Chinese restaurant I began to imagine a whopping big issue of The Modern Review, one which would set Chubb’s narrative against McCorkle’s poem, a treasure which I was now so confident of obtaining that by five o’clock that afternoon, having drunk nothing more potent than tea, I sent a wire to Antrim: GREAT TREASURES LOOTED FROM THE EAST. I SIGNED ELGIN.
Slater I did not see at all, and if you had told me he was robbing banks or bonking little boys I doubt I would have cared. I was racing for the finish line.
