The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  “Hamidin,” he said, “should not have been in the house-boy’s room. Those quarters are out-of-bounds. I cannot believe that the meeting of Hamidin and this woman was accidental. I cannot believe that Hamidin would merely want to discuss politics or the differential calculus with this woman. Who was she, anyway?” He stopped his promenade and craned his neck at Toong Cheong.

  Toong Cheong stood up. “She is a schoolgirl, sir. From Government English Girls’ School.” He sat down again.

  “Well.” Crabbe resumed his walk. “Frankly, speaking as a private individual and not as a member of this staff, I would say that, whatever Hamidin was doing in that room with that girl …” He turned again towards Toong Cheong. “What was it alleged that he was doing, by the way?”

  This time there was a serpentine chorus. “Kissing. Kissing, sir. They said he was kissing her, sir. Pushpanathan alleged they were kissing, sir. Kissing.”

  “Oh, kissing.” Crabbe faced them squarely. Toong Cheong sat down, still hissing the word quietly. “All of you here are of marriageable age. Some of you would have been married years ago, perhaps, if the Japanese occupation had not played havoc with your educational careers. I, personally, can see no great crime in a young man of nineteen consorting innocently with a girl. I can see no great crime, frankly, in a young man’s kissing a girl. Though I had thought that kissing was not practised by Malays. Still, it seems to me one of the less harmful Western importations.”

  He caught shy smiles, delicate as foam.

  “I do not, speaking again as a private individual, think that such conduct merits expulsion. Even,” he added, “if it could be proved that such conduct took place. Did Pushpanathan have any witnesses, other than himself? What did the house-boy say?”

  “The house-boy was expelled, too,” said Toong Cheong, levering himself up to a half-standing position.

  “Dismissed, you mean.”

  “Dismissed, sir. He was told to go by Headmaster right away.” Toong Cheong sat down.

  “So,” said Crabbe, “it was Pushpanathan’s word against Hamidin’s. And the Headmaster sent Hamidin home immediately, and Hamidin’s career is ruined. Is that the right story?”

  More quiet hisses, hisses of affirmation.

  “Has Hamidin’s Housemaster been approached about this matter?”

  A thin bright-eyed Tamil stood up to say, “Mr. Crichton said he would do nothing because Headmaster’s decision is a right one and it is right that Hamidin should be expelled. That is why we ask you as form-master to tell the Headmaster that it is not right and that grave injustice have been done to the innocent.” He sat down with grace and dignity.

  “Well.” Crabbe looked at them all. “It seems possible, probable indeed, that a very hasty decision has been taken, and that an injustice may have been done. Of course, I don’t know the whole story. But expulsion is certainly a terrible thing. It is your wish then that I convey to the Headmaster your dissatisfaction with his summary procedure, his harsh sentence, his decision made on what seems to you insufficient evidence?”

  There were eager hisses, a controlled tiny surge, a wind-ripple, of excitement. The class tasted the word ‘harsh’. It was the right word, the word they had been looking for. ‘Harsh’. Its sound was harsh; it was a harsh word.

  “I will see the Headmaster as soon as I can this morning, then,” said Victor Crabbe. “And now we must learn a little more about the Industrial Revolution.”

  They turned obediently to text-books and note-books, the word ‘harsh’ echoing still through the creaking of desk-lids, the borrowing of a fill of ink. Crabbe realised he had gone too far. Somebody would now tell Crichton or Wallis that Mr. Crabbe had talked about the Headmaster’s ‘harsh sentence’, and Crichton or Wallis would pass this back to the Headmaster, and then there would be talk of loyalty and not letting the side down, and at Christmas an adverse report, perhaps, but certainly more material for Club calumny. “He likes the Asians too much. He tells the Asians too much. Why, he complains about the Europeans on the staff to the Asian kids. What’s he after, anyway?”

  Tida’ apa.

  The fact was that Victor Crabbe, after a mere six months in the Federation, had reached that position common among veteran expatriates—he saw that a white skin was an abnormality, and that the white man’s ways were fundamentally eccentric. In the early days of the war he had been in an Emergency Hospital, a temporary establishment which had taken over a wing of a huge County Mental Hospital. Most of the patients suffered from General Paralysis of the Insane, but the spirocæte, before breaking down the brain completely, seemed to enjoy engendering perverse and useless talents in otherwise moronic minds. Thus, one dribbling patient was able to state the precise day of the week for any given date in history; no ratiocinative process was involved: the coin went in and the answer came out. Another was able to add up correctly the most complicated lists of figures in less time than a comptometer. Yet another found a rare musical talent blossoming shortly before death; he made a swanlike end. The Europeans were rather like these lunatics. The syllogism had been the chancre, the distant fanfare of the disease, and out of it had come eventually the refrigerator and the hydrogen bomb, G.P.I The Communists in the jungle subscribed, however remotely, to the Hellenic tradition: an abstract desideratum and a dialectical technique. Yet the process of which he, Victor Crabbe, was a part, was an ineluctable process. His being here, in a brown country, sweltering in an alien class-room, was prefigured and ordained by history. For the end of the Western pattern was the conquest of time and space. But out of time and space came point-instants, and out of point-instants came a universe. So it was right that he stood here now, teaching the East about the Industrial Revolution. It was right that these boys too should bellow through loudspeakers, check bomb-loads, judge Shakespeare by the Aristotelian yardstick, hear five-part counterpoint and find it intelligible.

  But it was also right that he himself should draw great breaths of refreshment from the East, even out of the winds of garlic and dried fish and turmeric. And it was right that, lying with Rahimah, he should feel like calling on the sun to drench his pallor in this natural gold, so that he might be accepted by the East. And, if not right, it was at least excusable if he felt more loyalty to these pupils than to the etiolated, ginger-haired slug who yawned in the Headmaster’s office. His indiscretion was based on something better than mere irresponsibility.

  “But surely, sir, it was not good if these machines made people have no work, and they were right, sir, if they wished to destroy them.” The Malay sat down, awaiting an answer. The West always had an answer.

  “You must remember,” said Crabbe, “that technological progress has always, in theory, at any rate, sought to serve the end of greater and greater human happiness.” The Malay boy nodded vigorously. “Man was not born to work.” All the Malays nodded. “He was born to be happy.” The solitary Sikh smiled through his sparse beard. “Man needs leisure to cultivate his mind and his senses. A great Italian poet said, ‘Consider your origins: you were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.’ But we cannot follow virtue and knowledge or the pleasures of the senses—which are just as important—if we have little leisure. And so the machines come along and they do more and more of our work for us and give us more leisure.”

  The Malay boy seemed puzzled. “But, sir, in the kampongs they have no machines but they have a lot of leisure. They sit in the sun and do no work and they are happy. I do not see how machines can give leisure.”

  “But,” said Crabbe, “surely we all want more out of life than a kampong existence can give us. You, Salim, like gramophone records of American singers. Dairianathan here is a photographer and needs cameras. You cannot expect these to fall like coconuts from the trees. Again, you all wear shoes. These have to be made, and making them is work. We have to work to get the things we need. The more things we need the more advanced is our civilisation; that is how the argument runs. If we can get machines to make these
things for us, well, we get the best of both worlds. We get many pleasures to feed our souls and our bodies and we get plenty of leisure in which to enjoy them.”

  “Sir,” said Ahmad, a Malay boy with a moustache and a pitted complexion, “we only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet.”

  “But roads were not built so that your feet might be hurt. They were built for transport, so that the things you need could be brought quickly from distant towns.”

  “But, sir, they could be brought by the railway,” said a small Tamil with a radiant smile.

  “Or by aeroplane,” said Latiff bin Haji Abbas.

  “The aeroplane is more expensive than the railway.”

  “That is not true. It costs thirty dollars less by aeroplane than by railway to come from Alor Star. I know, because I inquired about it.” This was a tall, thin Chinese boy named Fang Yong Sheak.

  “All right, all right!” Crabbe scotched the argument at birth. “Don’t get off the point.” But, he realised, they had never been on the point. Again he felt hopeless. This was the East. Logic was a Western importation which, unlike films and refrigerators, had a small market.

  The bell sounded. It was a hand-bell, rung by a boy in the next class-room. He rang it early when he was bored with the lesson or thought he was likely to be asked a question to which he did not know the answer. Very occasionally he rang the bell late. That was when he was dreaming about being a film-star, or the great Malay singer or the leader of U.M.N.O. He did not dare nowadays to extend the mid-morning break by more than ten minutes. Once he had extended it by as much as forty-five minutes. Nobody had minded except the Headmaster, who had given him detention. Just now he was roughly on time.

  Crabbe had a free period, so he went straight to the Headmaster’s office. He knocked on the swing-door and was told to enter. The Malay Chief Clerk was saying something about estimates. Files were spread on the desk. The swift blades of the ceiling-fan were reflected in the rare naked parts of the glass top, on which Boothby leaned his chubby elbows.

  “Dese estimates den we must do six copies of.”

  “Awwwww!” Boothby yawned with great vigour. He was fond of yawning. He would yawn at dinner-parties, at staff-meetings, at debates, elocution competitions, sports days. He probably yawned when in bed with his wife. His yawning seemed almost a deliberate physical exercise, involving squaring of the shoulders, bracing of the hands on the chair-arms, throwing back the whole of the upper body. When Crabbe had first seen him yawn in the middle of a passionate speech about religious holidays made by ’Che Jamaluddin at a staff-meeting, he had thought that Boothby was going to sing. “Awwwwww!” The boys had often said, “But, sir, if we go to see him about this he will only yawn at us.” Now Boothby turned to Crabbe, yawned, and said, “Take a pew.” The Malay Chief Clerk went back to the noise of gossip and typewriters.

  “This pew seems to have hymn-books on it. May I move them?”

  “Those are copies of the new Malayan History for Schools. Cooper at K.L. wrote it. Awwwwww! You’ll be using it next year.”

  “I don’t know whether it’s any good yet. Cooper’s a woodwork specialist, isn’t he?” Crabbe looked at the first chapter. “This Malaya of ours is a very old country. It is a country with a very long history. History is a sort of story. The story of our country is a very interesting story.” Crabbe closed the book quickly.

  “What can I do for you, Victor?” Boothby had thinning ginger hair and ginger eyebrows. He had a sulky frog’s mouth, perhaps enlarged by much yawning, a potato nose, and pale eyes framed by large reading-glasses.

  “It’s about Hamidin. The boys in Form Five think he shouldn’t have been expelled. They say that there was no real evidence and that the duty prefect had it in for the boy. They talked about injustice.”

  “They did, did they? And what do they know about injustice?”

  “They asked me to say something to you about this business. I’ve said something. Perhaps you have something to say to them.”

  “Yes. You can tell them to mind their own bloody business. No,” Boothby added with haste, “tell them that I am perfectly satisfied my decision was the right one.”

  “It seems a very considerable punishment for a slight offence.”

  “You call fornication a slight offence? On School premises, too?”

  “Pushpanathan said he was kissing the girl. That may or may not be true. Anyway, you can’t call kissing fornication. Otherwise I shall have to admit that I fornicated with your wife last Christmas. Under the mistletoe.”

  Boothby killed a yawn at birth. “Eh?”

  “Expulsion’s a terrible thing.”

  “Look here,” said Boothby, “I know the facts and you don’t. Their clothes were disarranged. It’s obvious what was going to happen. You haven’t been here as long as I have. These Wogs are hot-blooded. There was a very bad case in Gill’s time. Gill himself was nearly thrown out.”

  “I didn’t realise that Hamidin was a Wog. I thought he was a Malay.”

  “Look here, Victor, I’ve been here since the end of the war. I tried the bloody sympathy business when I started teaching at Swettenham College in Penang. It doesn’t work. They let you down if they think you’re soft. You’ve got to take quick action. Don’t worry.” He yawned. “They’ll forget about it. Anyway, tell them that from me: I am perfectly satisfied my decision was the right one.” Boothby began to look for a file.

  “You’ve only got Pushpanathan’s word for it.”

  “I trust Pushpenny. He’s a good lad. He’s better than most of them.”

  “Well, you know how the form feels. You know how I feel. Presumably there’s nothing more to be said. Except that I think you’re being damned autocratic.”

  Boothby was angry. The quick red of the ginger-haired suffused his untanned face. “Wait till you’ve been in the country a few bloody years longer. You’ll learn that you’ve got to be able to make decisions, and make them quickly. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway, telling me how to run this place? Come back in ten years’ time and tell me I’m being damned autocratic.” Crabbe caught a hint of clumsy parody in Boothby’s pronunciation of these last two words. Boothby had a Northumberland whine which he rarely took the trouble to mask. He threw Crabbe’s words back at him with a jaw-dropping affectation of gentility. Crabbe prepared to leave. As he pushed open the swing-door Boothby called after him, “Oh, by the way!”

  “Yes?”

  “Where’s your report-book? It should have been handed in on the 26th.”

  “What do you want it for?”

  “It’s laid down in those rules you got when you came. Twice a term you hand it in to me. I didn’t mention it last time because you were new. I must know what the boys are learning and how they’re getting on.”

  “You get the examination results.”

  “I must know what the syllabuses are. I must have some idea of whether the boys are learning anything or not. I want to see their marks for prep. and classwork.”

  “Well, you know what I’m teaching. English History and Malayan History.”

  “Yes, but I want to see how much they’re taking in.”

  “But, look here, I’m not a probationary teacher. Surely you can leave it to your staff to get on with the work they know best.”

  “I can’t trust the Wogs on the staff. I’ve got to know what they’re doing.”

  “Presumably we’re all Wogs, then?”

  “That’s the rule. Report-books in twice a term. Bring yours in to-day.”

  Swing-doors cannot be slammed; they can only swing. This one swung viciously. Crabbe went to the staffroom in a flaming temper. There he found Mr. Raj and Mr. Roper exchanging grievances. Mr. Raj had been lured from Ceylon to train Malayan teachers. He was a man of rich culture of which he would give anybody the benefit in long, slow, rolling, monotonous monologues. He had already spent two years in the Mansor School, teaching Geography to junior forms. His subjects were Education
and Asian History. He complained endlessly in the staffroom about the wrongs that had been done to him. Mr. Roper was a Eurasian, the son of an English planter and Tamil woman of low birth. He could never forgive the English for this act of miscegenation, even though it had produced in him a singular beauty. Tall, muscular, golden-skinned, he ranted bitterly about the injustice done to him pre-natally. Crabbe could hear him now.

  “I applied for this increment, but they would not give it to me. And why? Because I am not a white man, an orang puteh. They say I am not well-qualified, but, believe me, they are not thinking of university degrees. I can see what is in their minds. He is not an orang puteh, they are thinking all the time. He is dirt, he must be kept down, the money is for the orang puteh.”

  And yet he owned a rubber plantation and the finest car in Kuala Hantu. And Crabbe, for one, envied that intense physical beauty, a beauty which was a mark of shame to its possessor. How complicated life was for the Eurasian.

  Raj rumbled in reply. The sesquipedalian words flowed in an unintelligible sound-pattern. The calm orgy of bitterness would continue till the bell rang.

  Crabbe sat at his table, which was piled with unmarked books, and rested his head in his sweating hands. He could hear Crichton’s Australian voice from the far corner, talking about Shykespeare and Bycon. Crichton taught English. Crabbe thought, ‘I should want to go home, like Fenella. I should be so tired of the shambles here, the obscurantism, the colour-prejudice, the laziness and ignorance, as to desire nothing better than a headship in a cold stone country school in England. But I love this country. I feel protective towards it. Sometimes, just before dawn breaks, I feel that I somehow enclose it, contain it. I feel that it needs me. This is absurd, because snakes and scorpions are ready to bite me, a drunken Tamil is prepared to knife me, the Chinese in the town would like to spit at me, some day a Malay boy will run amok and try to tear me apart. But it doesn’t matter. I want to live here; I want to be wanted. Despite the sweat, the fever, the prickly heat, the mosquitoes, the terrorists, the fools at the bar of the Club, despite Fenella.’