Once upon a time in Chinatown

by Robert Ronsson

  Next morning, after he had eaten a solitary, late breakfast, Mick went to reception and conscious that this was his only full day in the city, asked which tourist attractions he should visit before he left for the north.

  The Chinese concierge bowed, his intelligent brown eyes shining from behind thick-lensed glasses. Using a felt-tipped pen, he marked the King’s Palace, the National Mosque, the telecommunications tower and the railway station on a map. ‘These are main things to see in KL,’ he said. ‘Where you heading tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m travelling north. Eventually I’ll go to Langkawi.’

  ‘Where in north, you go?’

  ‘Ipoh. Do you know it?’

  The concierge nodded enthusiastically showing off his teeth. ‘Yes! Ipoh fine town. Chinese town.’ He looked around and leaned forward. ‘KL now all Malay. Bumis everywhere. Ipoh better – more Chinese. Not much for tourist though. Why you go there?’

  ‘Have you heard of Kellie’s Castle?’

  The concierge nodded.

  ‘Well my family name is Kellie. I think my grandfather’s brother built it – the castle. I’m going to take a look at it. What can you tell me about it?’

  The concierge looked at the floor. ‘I not know castle. Can’t help you. Sorry!’ He pushed the map across the desk to signify their conversation was over.

  ‘But—’

  The concierge looked over Mick’s shoulder as if another guest was waiting but, when Mick turned, there was nobody there.

  ‘I thought you said—’

  The concierge’s eyes were wide and a line of sweat appeared below his hairline. He turned away to rummage in a drawer and for a moment Mick wondered whether he was ill. ‘Sorry, can’t help you. Anything you need more for trips in KL? I know good karaoke lounge for tonight – very pretty hostesses.’

  Later, while Mick sweltered on the tourist trail, he found himself unable to concentrate on the buildings and on what the guides were saying. Remembrances from the previous night kept intruding: the sight of the tropical pre-dawn moonlight; the smell of the swimming pool; the feel of the enveloping morning mist. Then there was the concierge’s strange reaction. Something about this overheated city was shifting his mental cargo, affecting his equilibrium.

  When he stood on the viewing deck of the Menara KL, looking out over the tops of tall buildings but only eye-to-eye with the middle of the Petronas Towers, or sat among locals eating Chinese-style seafood in the crowded Jalan Alor, he wanted to turn to one of the strangers alongside him and share his impressions of the exotic city. The alien bitter-spice smell of it. The clamour of its traffic. The way hundreds of mopeds, driven by young men in back-to-front zippered jackets, weaved dangerously between the cars. How the riders’ girlfriends, perching side-saddle on the pillion seats – modesty being more important than stability – clung limpet-like to their beaus. The city’s obsession with a strange fruit called a durian that apparently smelled like sewage but tasted of honey. The dank, deep gullies that ran beneath the pavements, tunnels that he imagined were thoroughfares for the city’s rat population.

  The unsettling nature of his encounters with Amy and the concierge had primed him for something. Events lay in his path. His future was preparing to ambush him. When his chance came – in whatever form it appeared – he would be ready to embrace it, not brush it away.

  At around 5pm, Mick, back in the cool of the hotel, watched from his window as a rainstorm passed over the city. The streets became torrents and the deserted square out front turned into a lake deep enough for a pack of strays to have to doggy paddle their way across. Within an hour, the rain stopped and the pavements steamed. The square’s drainage system coped (those cavernous rat-runs) and the floods were no more.

  That evening, Mick went to a restaurant recommended by the afternoon concierge. It was set back between high buildings alongside one of the main six-lane routes across town. The food was unremarkable and he’d washed it down with Tsingtao beer. The tables were outside on a series of wooden decks that cascaded down from the rear boundary marked by high palm trees and stands of bamboo. He imagined a sign: The Jungle Starts Here.

  While he ate, Mick had listened to a family group at the next table. One of them was soon to appear in court on drugs charges. It was another example of the bubble of the uncanny that encased him. Were they really talking, in English, about intimidating – no liquidating – witnesses? Was one of them naming members of the judiciary who could be bribed? Was the family patriarch targeting police officers who would be persuaded to revise their statements? Should they have discussed these subjects so openly when it must have been clear that Mick was eavesdropping on their competing boasts of graft and corruption?

  When the family left, Mick ordered a brandy. It came in a balloon glass big enough to give a goldfish agoraphobia. The ‘tot’ was generous but merely lined the bottom of the bowl. As he sat back, once again contemplating the unsettling other-worldliness of the East, the lights dimmed and the remaining diners departed tables on the other decks. He was alone on the middle stage and below him the waiters talked together by their station, glancing at him: silent entreaties to pay and leave.

  Something fluttered past his left ear. Given the lateness of the hour, Mick assumed a tiny bat had flown close to his head and he watched it skid to earth beneath a table on the lower deck. It scuttled a few paces and the strangeness of its movement made Mick lean forward for a closer look. It had two antennae, six legs and an armoured body. Mick jerked back and watched squeamishly as more cockroaches flew in. They were careful to avoid his table and soon the surface of the lower deck resembled one of the city’s multi-highway junctions with the invertebrate traffic avoiding collisions only narrowly as it darted that way and this.

  The first of the rats came tentatively, peering around the corner of one of the decking posts on the highest level, then more boldly as it was joined by others until four of them plundered crumbs under the tables farthest from him.

  It was time to leave. He looked over to the waiters. They were oblivious, or more likely inured to, the invasion. He would have to negotiate the area where the cockroaches were most populous. As he pondered his route, he heard a chattering call and a monkey landed with a thud on a table behind him, beneath the palm trees. Two others followed. They were grey and mangy with yellow teeth that they bared at each other as they fought over scraps.

  Mick hurried for the exit, not caring what he would have to tread on to reach it, and he was relieved when his Moses-like presence caused the scampering masses to part. This was confirmation of something else that he had been dimly aware of; the jungle was out there primed to take over.

  And as he hurried back to the hotel, ignoring the man-girl prostitutes who loitered by the entrance, he was again aware how welcome it might have been to have been able to say to someone – almost anyone: ‘You’ll never guess what just happened.’

  Early next morning, Mick collected a Proton Mira and drove up the main highway to Ipoh. All the way, he was reminded of the lesson he had learned the night before. The word ‘tropical’ signified rampant nature, restrained by man but never totally controlled. The road took him to the west of the central highlands where, he had read, the British had built summer homes to escape the worst of the heat. On the lower slopes, regimented rows of trees spread in every direction. The ranks were so precise that, when the angle was right, he could see the diagonals were as neat and straight as the parallels.

  This was his view for scores of miles until the road continued north in the company of a river, sharing the valley as it twisted through high outcrops of rock. The river ran only as a trickle before the afternoon rain and fleetingly Mick saw the man from his photograph – or thought he did. He was riding bareback along the riverbed with his mount carefully selecting safe spots for its hooves among the dry, rounded stones. The image flashed by. Mick looked for a place to stop but there was nowhere and, before he could think any more about it, he was taking the slip road to Ipoh where he
had booked a room in the Excelsior Hotel.

  The drive into the centre was a nightmare. Traffic came at him from every direction. The moped riders in their back-to-front tops zoomed about him like Kamikaze pilots. Despite the car’s air-conditioning, Mick was wired and sweaty when he pulled the car onto the hotel’s frontage. A valet-parking assistant took the keys from him and the doorman called a bell-hop for Mick’s bags. Three people. Malaysia was proud of its 100% employment rate but so many of the workers had meaningless jobs.

  After check-in, while a porter took his bag to the room, Mick sauntered across the marble-floored atrium to the concierge’s desk.

  The badge on the man’s lapel told Mick that he was addressing Anwar. ‘I wonder whether you can help me. I’m only in Ipoh for a couple of days and I’m very keen to see Kellie’s Castle while I am here. Do you know it?’

  The man nodded in a way that could have been interpreted as a respectful bow. ‘Yes, sir. Of course. Do you have a car?’

  ‘I do. But is it close enough for a taxi?’

  ‘Yes. It’s 20 clicks out on the Batu Gajah road.’

  ‘Clicks?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. 20 kilometres. Possibly 10 miles or so?’

  ‘I think I’ll take a taxi.’ He looked at his watch. It was approaching 2pm. ‘Is it open this afternoon?’

  ‘It is always open, sir. It’s a ruin. There is nothing to see. Just an old building.’

  ‘So I could see it this afternoon?’

  ‘Any time.’

  After a quick visit to his room to freshen up, Mick returned to the ground floor and went out onto the forecourt. After the air-conditioning in the hotel, the heat hit him as if he’d walked into blast furnace. He took off his sweater and carried it over his arm as he approached the taxi rank.

  A Chinese man was leaning nonchalantly on the bonnet of his black Mercedes. As Mick approached, the driver stubbed his cigarette out on the sole of his trainers and deposited the stub in the breast pocket of his vividly coloured Hawaiian shirt.

  ‘Kellie’s Castle?’

  ‘Sure, boss. Jump in.’ He smiled through misshapen yellow teeth.

  The interior of the car smelled of stale cigarettes, body odour and something rancid, indeterminable, as if someone had recently been sick. Mick was torn between opening the window for the fresher air outside and keeping cool. He opted for the fresher air, sitting in the sagging leather bench seat, leaning forward so his forehead could rest against the interior above the window opening.

  ‘You been Kellie’s Castle before, boss?’

  He shook his head. ‘No’

  ‘You feeling okay?’

  Mick turned back into the interior. It was the faded vomit stench, rather than anything emanating from the driver, that was making his stomach lurch.

  The driver grinned into his rear-view mirror. ‘Some damn Bumi smuggled durian into car one night. Had car fumigated since but that damn durian smell it don’t go way. They say it taste like heaven and smell like shit!’

  ‘I wish you had said.’ Mick muttered and resumed his nose’s vigil at the window.

  The driver was looking in the mirror again. ‘Not much see Kellie’s Castle. But I show you round. I show all tourists. Take you temple. See Kellie-man’s statue. You know story of Kellie-man?’

  They were now leaving the city and Mick realised that he wasn’t going to be able to stay in the car for the full journey. If, as the concierge at the Excelsior implied, the castle site was deserted he would have to rely on this cab to get back. Another half an hour in this fetid atmosphere was a prospect he couldn’t contemplate. He was irritated with the driver for using the car when he knew that it was so rank. ‘Yes, I know the story. The man Kellie was my grandfather’s brother…’ At that moment, they passed a hotel on the edge of the city and he spotted a taxi rank with two cars. ‘Stop! Stop here, please.’

  The driver evidently thought he was going to be sick and swerved to the side of the road. ‘You okay, boss?’

  ‘Yes. Look I’m going to take a walk.’ Why did he feel the need to explain? ‘How much do I owe you?’ He paid and gave the driver a generous tip that he immediately regretted.

  ‘Thanks, boss!’ The wheels of the Mercedes squealed as it performed a U-turn and headed back to the city centre. Mick waited for it to be out of sight and strode across to the cab rank. The driver of the front car wore a turban. ‘Where to?’ he asked.

  Mick sat on the back seat and consulted his watch. Perhaps he had been too ambitious to want to see the castle on his first day. He didn’t know what to expect there and he realised that if he went now he’d probably feel constrained by the driver’s waiting time. No, despite the awful prospect of driving in the traffic once again, he thought it would be best to drive himself there tomorrow morning. He’d seen the route he’d have to take. He’d have all the time in the world tomorrow.

  The Sikh driver was looking over his shoulder expectantly. ‘Where to?’

  Mick sighed. ‘Back to Ipoh, please. The Excelsior Hotel.’

  8

  When Mick arrived in Ipoh, he had been primed for romance by his encounter with Amy on the flight to Kuala Lumpur. His introductory days in Malaysia had disoriented him (if such a thing is possible in the orient) and heightened his isolation. That first morning in Ipoh the stench-memory of yesterday’s durian-defiled taxi was still lodged at the back of his throat but he was fated to undergo one more trial before his salvation.

  At the restaurant, Mick discovered that his room rate did not include breakfast. He would have to pay extra. Undeterred, he found his way to the long buffet cabinet of local items spread on banana leaves: various types of curry, dishes of noodles, rice dishes mixed with various meats. These all appeared to be cold. There was a small plate with a few slices of cheese that appeared to have dried out from exposure to the cabinet’s lights. Further along there were bains-Marie: he lifted the lids, bacon in one, pale sausages in another, tomatoes, and hash browns. A sign caught his attention: English Breakfas: Egg at choice with beef bacon, turkey sausage, hash brown’s and toast. The price was insanely low compared to what he would pay in the UK, even in a greasy spoon.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ The man on the other side of the counter had the name label ‘Tifanu’ and appeared to be a local Malay.

  ‘I’m going to have the English Breakfast, please. No egg.’

  ‘How would you like the egg?’

  ‘I don’t want egg.’ Mick had an aversion to eggs cooked by others. More often than not, they were either undercooked, so that he had to negotiate near-raw embryonic fluid, or they were overdone to a consistency that made them bounce. For as long as he could remember he had only eaten eggs he had cooked himself.

  Tifanu took a plate and used tongs to compile Mick’s breakfast: beef bacon, turkey sausage, two hash browns and a slice of white bread, toasted. He placed it on a tray and slid it along to the pay point.

  Tifanu himself appeared behind the till. ‘That will be…’ and he quoted a price 5 Ringitts more than was advertised.

  Mick checked the sign. ‘No, it’s…’ pointing to the figure written there.

  Tifanu drew himself up to his full height. ‘That’s for the English Breakfas, sir. You have chosen items separately.’

  ‘But it’s less than the English breakfast. I haven’t had an egg.’ The difference of 5 Ringitts meant nothing to him but he baulked at the absurdity of being charged more for less.

  ‘Sir, you haven’t had an English Breakfas.’

  ‘If you put an egg on this plate I would pay the price on the sign, right?’

  ‘Yes, sir. What egg would you like, boiled, scrambled or fried? It will take a few minutes, of course.’

  Mick automatically looked at his watch. He wasn’t pushed for time but the food on his plate was going cold and a queue of other guests was building behind him. ‘Just put an uncooked egg in its shell on the plate, charge me for the English Breakfast and I’ll give you the egg back.’ He smiled the smile of a ma
n who had beaten the system.

  Tifanu shook his head. His expression changed to that of a vet about to tell Mick that his dog had not long for this world. ‘We can’t sell you a raw egg, sir. I’m sure that would be against our health ordinances. Now, how would you like the egg cooked?’

  Mick put up his palms and admitted defeat. ‘Okay I’ll pay for what’s on the plate.’

  As he picked at the assortment of Halal meats and the hash browns that he now wished he hadn’t ordered, Mick felt again the loneliness that had gripped him since arriving in KL. How much better would his life be if there had been somebody waiting for him at the table watching this ludicrous pantomime? Being able to recount the details of the interaction between him and the man at the till would have been so much fun. He might have dressed it up to make it even more ridiculous: perhaps extending the interplay further before he gave up. What was the man’s name? Tifanu. That was it. Breakfast at Tifanu’s! He laughed out loud, much to the consternation of the Chinese gentleman at the next table who was noisily slurping up the gelatinous contents of a savoury noodle bowl and following each mouthful with a bite of a sugared doughnut.

  Because Mick had slept in, because he was still battling the effects of jet lag, and because he had followed his breakfast with a leisurely coffee while he read a couple of chapters of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, it was approaching midday when he left the restaurant. In truth, he had been procrastinating: he wasn’t looking forward to the drive out of the city. Nevertheless, now steeled for the fray, he intended to go to his room, freshen up and then drive out to the castle. He was heading for the lift when he became aware of somebody approaching fast at an angle. It was a woman hurrying to pass in front of him but, as he slowed, she appeared to change her mind and with it her direction. They collided shoulder to shoulder and she spun round spilling a carton of leaflets. They scattered across the polished floor, skidding under the coffee tables and easy chairs that lined the lobby.