The Malayan Trilogy Read online

  Lim Kean Swee $395

  Chee Sin Hye $120

  Tan Meng Kwang $250

  And these shadowy bills, further back, grown as familiar as a wart or a jagged tooth. And the accounts in the drinking-shops. And the club-bill, three months old. And the letter that blasted swine Hart had written to his boss. Hart, the treasurer, the Field Force major, hail-fellow-well-met with the Sultan’s A.D.C., bowing with joined pudgy hands to H.H., well in, the man with the big future. ‘I’ll get him,’ thought Nabby Adams. ‘I’ll get that bloody car of his. I’ll have the Land Rover waiting next Friday because he’s always at the Club on Fridays and when he drives out I’ll give him a nice bloody little nick on his offside mudguard. He can’t do that to me.’ Proud, tall, unseeing, clutching the belly of the waterbottle, Nabby Adams stood, thinking up revenge, while the dog adored, panting.

  “That was the East, man. Palestine. You wasn’t there, so you wouldn’t know. There was one place I used to go to and there was a bint there who did a bit of the old belly-dancing. You know, you’ve seen it on the pictures. If you haven’t, you’re bloody ignorant. You know.” Flaherty got up and gyrated clumsily, lifting arms to show sweat-soaked armpits in his off-white shirt. He crooned a sinuous dirge as accompaniment. Then he sat down and watched Nabby Adams move to his bed and fall heavily upon it. With a clank the dog disappeared under the bed. “You know,” said Flaherty, “you’re not bloody interested. You’re not interested in anything, that’s your bloody trouble. I’ve travelled the world and I tell you about this bint and what we did in the back room and you don’t take a blind bit of notice. Here.” Flaherty took a cigarette from the tin on Nabby Adams’s bedside table. “Here. Watch this. And I bet these aren’t paid for either. Here.” He lit the cigarette and puffed till the end glowed brightly. Then he began to chew. Nabby Adams watched, open-mouthed, as the cigarette disappeared behind the working lips. It all went in, including the red glow, and it did not come out again. “Easy,” said Flaherty, “if you’re fit, which you’re bloody well not. Watch this.” He took a tumbler from the table and began to eat that too.

  “Oh, no,” groaned Nabby Adams, as he heard the brittle crunching. Eyes shut, he saw, white against red:

  The Happy Coffee Shop $67

  Chop Fatt $35

  “Easy.” Flaherty spat blood and glass on the floor. “By Christ, it was a good night to-night. You should have been there, Nabby, drinking with decent people, salt of the earth. Laugh? I never laughed so much. Here, listen. There’s a Malay sergeant-major there. They call him Tong, see? That’s Malay for a barrel, but you wouldn’t know that, being ignorant. I never seen such a beer-belly. Well, he told a story …”

  “Oh, go to bloody bed,” said Nabby Adams. Eyes closed, he lay as in death, his huge calloused feet projecting beyond the end of the bed, pushing out the mosquito-net.

  Flaherty was hurt, dignified in sorrow. “All right,” he said. “Gratitude. After all I’ve done. Gratitude. But I’ll show you the act of a gentleman. We still make gentlemen where I come from. Wait. Just wait. I’ll make you feel bloody small.”

  He lurched out to his own room. He lurched back in again. Nabby Adams heard an approaching clink. In wonder and hope he opened his eyes. Flaherty was carrying a carrier-bag covered with Chinese ideograms, and in the bag were three bottles.

  “There,” said Flaherty. “The things I do for you.”

  “Oh, thank God, thank God,” prayed Nabby Adams. “God bless you, Paddy.” He was out of bed, alive, quick in his movements, looking for the opener, must be here somewhere, left it in that drawer. Thank God, thank God. The metal top clinked on the floor, answered by the emerging clank of the dog. Nabby Adams raised to his lips the frothing bottle and drank life. Bliss. His body drank, fresh blood flowed through his arteries, the electric light seemed brighter, what were a few bills anyway?

  Flaherty watched indulgently, as a mother watches. “Don’t say I don’t do anything for you,” he repeated.

  “Yes, yes,” gasped Nabby Adams, breathless after the first draught, his body hungering for the next. “Yes, Paddy.” He raised the bottle and drank life to the lees. Now he could afford to sit down, smoke a cigarette, drink the next bottle at leisure. But wait. What time was it? Four forty-five, said the alarm-clock. That meant he would have to go back to bed and sleep for a little. For if he didn’t what the hell was he going to do? Three bottles wouldn’t last him till it was time to go to the Transport Office. But in any case if he drank another bottle now that would mean only one bottle to wake up with. And no bottle for breakfast. He groaned to himself: there was no end to his troubles.

  “Those Japanese tattooists,” said Flaherty. “Bloody clever. By God they are. I seen one fellow in Jerusalem, wait, I’m telling a lie, it was in Alex, when I went there for a bit of leave, one fellow with a complete foxhunt on his back. Bloody marvellous. Horses and hounds and huntsmen, and the bloody bugle blowing tally-ho and you could just see the tail of the fox, the bloody brush you know, disappearing up his. What’s the bloody matter with you?” He writhed in petulance, his lined frowning face stern and beetled. “In God’s name what’s the matter? I bring you home food and drink and expect a bit of gratitude and a bit of cheerful company and what do I get? The bloody miseries.” He loped round the room, hands clasped behind, head bent, shoulders hunched, in a mime of lively dejection. “Here,” he said, straightening, “this won’t do. Do you know what the bloody time is? If you can sit up all night I can’t. We do a bit of work in Operations. We help to kill the bloody bandits. Bang bang bang.” He sprayed the room with a sub-machine-gun of air. “Takka takka takka takka takka.” Stiff-legged he moved over to Nabby Adams and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Never you mind, Nabby my boy, it’ll all be the same in a hundred bloody years. As Shakespeare says. Listen.” Eagerly he sat down, leaning forward with crackling eageness. “Shakespeare. You’ve never read any, being bloody ignorant. Or Robbie Burns. Drunk as a fiddler’s bitch.” He leaned back comfortably with closed eyes, singing with wide gestures:

  “Oh, Mary, this London’s a wonderful sight,

  With the people all working by day and by night.”

  “You’ll wake them up,” said Nabby Adams.

  “And what if I do,” said Flaherty. “What have they ever done for me? That bloody Jock Keir with the money rattling in his pocket. Tack wallah’s joy-bells. Saving it up, bloody boat-happy, but he’ll down another man’s pint as soon as look and with never a word out of him. Have you seen his book at the Club, man? Virgin soil. Three bucks’ worth of orange squash in six bloody months. Where is he till I get at him?” Flaherty sent the chair flying and tore raggedly out of the room. On the landing he forgot his mission and could be heard bumping and slithering down the stairs. Nabby Adams listened for the flush of the lavatory, but there was no sound more to be heard. Nothing except the dog truffling for fleas, the tick of the rusty alarm-clock. Nabby Adams went back to bed, the dog rattled her way under it, then he realised he hadn’t put out the light. Never mind.

  He dozed. Soon the bilal could be heard, calling over the dark. The bilal, old and crotchety, had climbed the worm-gnawed stairs to the minaret, had paused a while at the top, panting, and then intoned his first summons to prayer, the first waktu of the long indifferent day.

  “La ilaha illa’llah. La ilaha illa’llah.”

  There is no God but God, but what did anybody care? Below and about him was dark, and the dark shrouded the bungalow of the District Officer, the two gaudy cinemas, the drinking-shops where the towkays snored on their pallets, the Istana—empty now, for the Sultan was in Bangkok with his latest Chinese dance-hostess, the Raja Perempuan at Singapore for the race-meetings—and the dirty, drying river.

  “La ilaha illa’lah.”

  Like a lonely Rhine-daughter he sang the thin liquids, remembering again the trip to Mecca he had made, out of his own money too, savings helped by judicious bets on tipped horses and a very good piece of advice about rubber given by a Chi
nese business-man. Gambling indeed was forbidden, haram, but he had wanted to go to Mecca and become a haji. By Allah, he had become a haji, Tuan Haji Mohammed Nasir bin Abdul Talib, and, by Allah, all would be forgiven. Now, having seen the glory of the great mosque at Mecca, the Masjid-ul-Haram, he despised a little his superstitious fellow-countrymen who, ostensibly Muslim, yet clung to their animistic beliefs and left bananas on graves to feed the spirits of the dead. He had it on good authority that Inche Idris bin Zainal, teacher in the school and a big man in the Nationalist Movement, had once ordered eggs and bacon in a restaurant in Tahi Panas. He knew that Inche Jamaluddin drank brandy and that Inche Abu Zakaria sneaked off to small villages during the fasting month so that he might eat and drink without interference from the prowling police.

  “La ilaha illa’lah.”

  God knoweth best. Allahu alam. The nether fires awaited such, a hot house in naraka. Not for them the Garden with the river flowing beneath. He looked down on the blackness, trying to pierce it with his thin voice, seeking to irradiate with the Word the opacity of Kuala Hantu. But the town slept on. The white men turned in their sleep uneasily, dreaming of pints of draught bitter in wintry English hotels. The mems slept in adjoining beds, their dreams oppressed by servants who remained impassive in the face of hard words and feigned not to understand kitchen-Malay made up of Midland vowels. Only in a planter’s bungalow was there a dim show of light, but this was out of the town, some miles along the Timah road. The fair-haired young man in the Drainage and Irrigation Department was leaving, sibilating a sweet good-morning to the paunched planter who was his friend. He stole to his little car, turning to wave in the dark at the lighted porch.

  “Good-bye, Geoffrey. Tomorrow night, then.”

  “To-morrow night, Julian. Be good?”

  But soon the dawn came up, heaving over the eastern edge like a huge flower in a nature-film. The stage electrician, under notice, slammed his flat hands on the dimmers and there was a swift suffusion of light. The sky was vast over the mountains with their crowns of jungle, over the river and the attap huts. The Malayan dawn, unseen of all save the bilal and the Tamil gardeners, grew and grew and mounted with an obscene tropical swiftness, and morning announced itself as a state, not a process.

  At seven o’clock Nabby Adams awoke and reached for the remaining bottle. The dog came from under the bed and stretched with a long groan. Nabby Adams put on yesterday’s shirt and slacks and thrust his huge feet into old slippers. Then he went softly down the stairs, followed closely by the clank clank clank of the dog. The Chinese boy, their only servant, was laying the table—a grey-white cloth, plates, cups, two bottles of sauce. Nabby Adams approached him ingratiatingly. Though he had been in the Federation for six years he spoke neither Malay nor Chinese: his languages were Hindustani, Urdu, a little Punjabi, Northamptonshire English. He said:

  “Tuan Flaherty he give you money yesterday?”

  “Tuan?”

  “Wang, wang. You got wang to buy makan? Fat tuan, he give wang?”

  “Tuan kasi lima linggit.”

  Lima ringgit. That was five dollars. “You give lima ringgit to me.”

  “Tuan?”

  “You give lima ringgit to saya. Saya buy bloody makan.”

  The squat, ugly, slant-eyed boy hesitated, then pulled from his pocket a five-dollar note.

  “Tuan beli sayur? Vegitibubbles?”

  “Yes, yes. Leave it to saya.”

  Nabby Adams went through the dirty stucco portico of the little police mess, out into the tiny kampong. The police mess had formerly been a maternity home for the wives of the Sultans of the state. Faded and tatty, peeling, floorboards eaten and unpolished, its philoprogenitive glory was a memory only. Now the spider had many homes, the chichaks, scuttling up the walls, throve on the many insects, and tattered calendars showed long-dead months. The cook-boy was not very efficient. His sole qualification for looking after four police-lieutenants was the fact that he had himself been a police-constable, discharged because of bad feet. Now he fed his masters expensively on tinned soups, tinned sausages, tinned milk, tinned cheese, tinned steak-and-kidney pudding, tinned ham. Anything untinned was suspect to him, and bread was rarely served with a meal. The porch was littered with flattened cigarette-ends, and the bath had a coating of immemorial grime. When plaster fell from the ceiling it lay to be trampled by heavy jungle-boots. But nobody cared, for nobody wanted to think of the place as a home. Nabby Adams thirsted for Bombay, Flaherty yearned for Palestine, Keir would soon be back in Glasgow and Vorpal had a Chinese widow in Malacca.

  Where, in the old days of many royal confinements, there had been a field and a lane, now straggled a village. Villages were appearing now in the oddest places; the Communist terrorists had forced the Government to move long-established kampong populations to new sites, places where there was no danger of ideological infection, of help given to the terrorists freely or under duress. This newish village, on the hem of the town’s skirt, already looked age-old. As Nabby Adams moved like a broken Coriolanus through the heavy morning heat, he saw the signatures of the old Malaya—warm, slummy comfort as permanent as the surrounding mountain-jungle. Naked brown children were sluicing themselves at the pump, an old mottled Chinese nonya champed her gums at the open door, a young Malay father of magnificent physique nursed a new child. His wife, her sarong wound under her armpits, proffered to Nabby Adams a smile of black and gold. Neither he nor his dog responded. They both made straight for the kedai of Guan Moh Chan, where he owed a mere hundred dollars or so. Would this tribute of five soften the hard heart of the towkay? He could feel already the sweat of anxiety more than heat stirring beneath his shirt. He needed at least two large bottles.

  The shutters were being taken down by the youngest son of the large family—huge planks that fitted into the shop-front like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. The towkay, in working costume of vest and underpants, grinned, nodded, sucked a black cigar. His head was that of an old idol, shrunken, yellow, painted with a false benignity. Nabby Adams addressed his prayers to it.

  “Saya bring wang. Saya bring more wang to-morrow.”

  The towkay, happy, chirping laughter, produced a book and pointed to a total with a bone of a finger. “Salatus tujoh puloh linggit lima puloh sen.”

  “How much?” He read for himself: $170.50. Christ, as much as that. “Here. Give us a couple of bottles, big ones. Dua. You’ll get some more wang to-morrow.”

  Clucking happily, the old man took the five-dollar note and handed Nabby Adams a single dusty small bottle of Tiger beer. “You mean old bastard,” he said. “Come on, be a sport.”

  It was no good. Nabby Adams went back with the one bottle hidden in his vast hand. He felt, irrationally, cheated. Five dollars. One dollar seventy a big bottle. The bloody old thief. Man and dog entered the mess to find Keir and Vorpal already at breakfast. Keir, in jungle green, sneered up at Nabby Adams, and Nabby felt a sweat of hatred for the Glasgow whine and the smug meanness. Vorpal, eupeptically bubbling greetings, bathed a sausage in a swimming plate of sauce. The cook-boy stood by, anxious, and said:

  “Tuan beli vegitibubbles?”

  “Yes,” said Nabby Adams, “he’s sending them round.” He prepared to mount the stairs with his bottle. Keir said:

  “I hope you made enough row in the night. I couldn’t get a wink of sleep with your banging around and your drunken singing.”

  Nabby Adams felt his neck-muscles tighten. Something in the mere quality of the impure vowels smote at his nerves. He said nothing.

  Vorpal had the trick of adding a Malay enclitic to his utterances. This also had power to irritate, especially in the mornings. It irritated Nabby Adams that this should irritate him, but somewhere at the back of his brain was the contempt of the man learned in languages for the silly show-off, jingling the small change of ‘wallah’ and charpoy. The irritation was exacerbated by Nabby Adams’s realisation that Vorpal was not a bad type.

  “Let the boy have his fun-la
h. If you took a wee drappie yourself you’d sleep through it like I do.” He crammed a dripping forkful in his mouth, chewing with appetite. “Old Nabby’s quiet enough during the day-lah.”

  “Paddy’s ill, too,” said Keir. “He can’t get up this morning. You might have a bit of consideration for a sick man.”

  Nabby Adams turned to reply and saw at that moment a sight that brought a fearful thirst to his throat. His beating blood had dulled his ears to the sound of the approaching car, the car that now slid into the porch and stopped. Next to the Malay police-driver was the Contingent Transport Officer, Hood, who now, tubby and important, slammed the car door and prepared to enter the mess. Nabby fled up the stairs, the dog panting and clanking after him.

  With the dry rázor on his chin, Nabby Adams listened to salutations below, condescending, servile. The bottle stood on the dressing-table and grinned mockingly at him.

  “Adams!”

  Adams. Usually it was Nabby. Things must be bad. Nabby Adams called down, “Yes, sir, shan’t be a minute, sir,” in the big confident voice, manly but not unrefined, he had learnt as a regimental sergeant-major. He tore into uniform shirt and slacks, cursing the dog as she lovingly got under his feet. He clumped down the stairs, composing his features to calm and welcome, putting on the mask of a man eager for the new day. The unopened bottle sneered at his descending back.