Tida’ apa. No, that would not do any more. He longed for the evening, longed to be with Victor Crabbe and Fenella Crabbe. Strangely, not just with her, but with both of them. He was beginning to understand certain things now, things that he hoped would clarify themselves in time and, for some reason, with their help.
Alladad Khan composed himself, shrugged, twisted his moustache. He picked up his beret from the chair and buckled on his belt. He then went over to the Police Canteen and sat for half an hour over a cup of coffee and Hari Singh’s little book. He mouthed quietly to himself:
“This is a man. He is a big man. Is he a man? Yes, he is a man. Is he a big man? …”
Among the billiards-players and dicers, oblivious of the talk and the rattle of cups, he, Alladad Khan, the student of English, sat alone, proud, indifferent, misunderstood, longing for the evening.
8
NABBY ADAMS WAS by no means of a mean nature; he just lacked the means to be generous. As time passed and he enjoyed more and more of the hospitality of the Crabbes, Nabby Adams began to be tortured by guilt. The gin he had drunk, the bottles of beer, the odd reviving nip of brandy, the meals he had eaten, the cinemas visited, the petrol consumed, all at the expense of Victor Crabbe, began to clamour—though long vapourised, forgotten or digested—for more substantial return than mere gratitude.
“Thanks very much. You’ve looked after me and him real good.”
“You’ve saved my life, really you have. I’ve stopped shaking now. I think I can go back to the office.”
“You know, that’s the only thing I’ve been craving for in the eating line: a bit of gorgonzola and an onion and a couple of beers.”
“I had a real good sleep there, Mrs. Crabbe. It’s funny, I can always sleep in your house, any time of the day or night. I toss and turn all the time when I’m in the Mess.”
“I’ve been parched for that all morning, Victor. Couldn’t do no work for thinking about it.”
No, such expressions of gratitude were not enough. It was time he did something for the Crabbes. Once or twice he had brought a bottle of samsu, or Alladad Khan had purchased a small bottle of gin, and these offerings had been carried through hordes of small schoolboys, wide-eyed with interest, to the flat at the top of the stairs. But debts were growing, and Alladad Khan was finding it more and more difficult to extract money from the savings-box, even though his wife believed that the key had been lost. In the still watches she would stir and wake and ask of the stealthy naked figure that groped under the bed:
“What are you doing, disturbing me and the child with your noise?”
“I had a dream that someone was trying to steal the money-box. Thank Allah, it is still there.”
No, money must be obtained from somewhere, and legitimately at that. One of Nabby Adams’s tasks was to inspect vehicles—whether military, police or civilian—that had been involved in accidents, with a view to establishing material evidence of structural flaw or integrity that could be used in court. The Chinese owners would delicately hint that, if the police-lieutenant could bring himself to state that the brakes were quite in order, he should find that he had a new friend, a true friend, a friend indeed. And it frequently happened that the brakes were in order, and Nabby Adams would say so. Then he would be offered—“Do you smoke, Lieutenant?”—a cigarette-tin crammed with ten-dollar notes, and, groaning, Nabby Adams would have to refuse. Or, more delicate, more diabolic, “I should be glad to maintain an account for you, Lieutenant, in any drinking-shop you care to name.” Oh, the temptation, the temptation. But it was too bloody risky. And now sundry creditors were saying that they would be quite willing to accept payment in police petrol. Nabby Adams had nearly fallen, but six feet eight inches of integrity had reared itself heavenwards just in time. Oh, the suffering, the crucifixion.
How to get some money, legitimately. Nabby Adams had insisted once that they all go to Timah races together. He had had a few hot tips from a grateful Chinese owner-driver. And so, borrowing cards of membership of the Lanchap Turf Club, they had gone, the four of them, to sit in a dilatation of hope, a contraction of despair, a perisystole of speculation. And all the bloody horses had gone down the drain, all except those backed by their Chinese neighbours on the crammed stand. They, quacking and chirping with winners’ joy, had been reviled by Nabby Adams in deep grumbling Urdu, until Alladad Khan had had to say:
“Ap khuch karab bolta.”
“And I’ll say some bloody worse things if these buggers don’t keep quiet.”
To make matters worse, it was only Crabbe who had really lost, for neither Alladad Khan nor Nabby Adams had five dollars—the minimum stake—between them. After the gloomy day, money thrown down the drain, they had had to go and have a drink somewhere, and then Mrs. Crabbe had started on Victor Crabbe:
“We haven’t got all that much money, you know. Wasting it all on horses and then beer, and then … Oh, it’s too bad, too bad.” And then the three men had sat in gloomy silence over their beer while she snivelled into a tiny handkerchief. “It’s too bad. I’m going home on the next boat.”
“Well, go home then.”
“I will, I will.”
Nabby Adams had felt very guilty; it had all been his fault.
Nabby Adams bought monthly a lottery ticket, but he had no real hope of winning anything. That first prize—$350,000—was a mere fable, something you pretended to believe in, like them stories in the Bible about the age of Methuselah and what-not, but which you knew deep down didn’t really, couldn’t really, be true.
In desperation, Nabby Adams had nearly thought of marriage. There was an old Malay woman in the town who wanted desperately to marry, because she believed that spinsters were not accepted in Heaven. She had a nice little sum tucked away. It meant that Nabby Adams would have to embrace the Muslim faith, but that wouldn’t have mattered. He could still drink, like Alladad Khan, who was a bloody poor advertisement for the faith, did. But Nabby Adams could see himself as a turbaned haji, turning up shocked eyes at bottles of Tiger and samsu, far more easily than he could see himself as a married man. It was all very difficult.
And yet Nabby Adams continued to accept the hospitality of the Crabbes. A fantastic pattern of sodality began to emerge. When somebody had some money there was drinking in one of them little kedais. There they would sit, over their Tiger or Anchor or Carlsberg, while the flying ants beat against the naked electric bulb and the mosquitoes took tiny sips of the blood of Mrs. Crabbe. Around them the gawping locals sat, amazed with an amazement that never grew less, drinking in with their syrupy coffee or tepid mineral-water the strange spectacle of the huge rumbling man with the jaundiced complexion, the neat Punjabi fingering his ample moustache, the pale schoolmaster, the film-star woman with the honeyed skin and the golden hair. Three languages rapped, fumbled or rumblingly oozed all the while. At these sessions Nabby Adams spoke only Urdu and English, Alladad Khan only Urdu and Malay, the Crabbes only English and a little Malay. And so it was always, “What did you say then?” “What did he say?” “What did all that mean?”
A question would be put to Alladad Khan through Nabby Adams. Alladad Khan would hurl, expressively, eyes flashing and melting, shoulders emphasising, out of a sincere mouth the long answer. Then Nabby Adams would translate:
“He says he don’t know.”
Sometimes they would go to the cinema and, tortured by bugs, watch a long Hindustani film about Baghdad, magic horses that talked and flew, genies in bottles, swordplay, sundered love. Alladad Khan would translate the Hindustani into Malay and Nabby Adams, before he slept, would forget himself and translate the Hindustani into Urdu. Or perhaps they would go to see an American film and Fenella Crabbe would translate the American into Malay and Nabby Adams would, before he slept, translate what he understood of it into Urdu.
Many an evening they would return to the flat and then Nabby Adams would say, “Just five minutes,” and sleep till dawn on the planter’s chair. Crabbe himself, aware of early
work next day, would go to bed, leaving Alladad Khan and Fenella alone. The curious thing was that, now, Alladad Khan had no further desire to win the lady’s heart. The two would sit on the veranda, talking interminably in broken Malay and broken English, and Alladad Khan began to see at last what was the relationship he desired.
It was rather complicated. He, alone, was seeking others who were alone. He was the only Khan for many states around who had come here, an exile, to live among alien races. His wife was a Malayan, born in Penang; Abdul Khan had seen England and France, but not the Punjab. Alladad Khan saw in Fenella Crabbe also an exile, cut off from her own country, cut off from the white community—alone, she had walked in the sweating heat, while the insolent cars of Government officers bore languid wives to the Club and the shops in Timah. Something was crystallising in Alladad Khan’s mind, and the time had come to unlade the burden, haltingly, though the cranes and hoists of language creaked and broke. And she, Fenella Crabbe, took gently the burden from him, questioning, drawing out.
“Why did you join the Army at thirteen?”
“I ran away from home.”
“Why did you do that?”
“It was my mother’s fault. She insisted that I marry this girl, and I did not wish to marry her.”
“But surely thirteen is young to marry?”
“From my earliest days it had been arranged, perhaps even before I was born. The two families were to be united through a marriage. And when I was a small boy I was made to play with this girl, though I hated her. It was always intended that we should marry, but I would have died sooner than marry her. Even now I can say that.”
“Did you not want to marry at all?”
“How can one say at that age? But there was one other girl whom I believed I loved, and now, when it is too late, I am sure I loved her. We were at school together and, even when we were only twelve, we would meet and I would give her small presents. And one day I went and poured my heart out to an aunt, an aunt I thought I could trust. But she told everything to my mother. One day I came home from school and threw my books, as was my custom, into the four corners of the living-room. And, unsuspecting as I was, my mother turned on me, reproaching me, and forbidding me ever to see this other girl again. Then, just as I was, I walked out of the house and went to the recruiting-office, stating my age wrong. Thus I became a soldier.”
“And the girl you loved?”
“She said she would wait, for ever if need be. I wrote letters and she answered. We were to marry. Then one letter came from my mother saying that she had married someone else, and that she did not want to hear from me again. And, indeed, no further letters came from her. That was because, I later discovered, they had told a similar story to her. And so I married here in Malaya. A month after my marriage I got a letter from my brother, telling me the whole story, and also a letter from this one I loved. But then it was all too late. We Punjabis do not divorce like other Muslims. When we have married a wife we cling to her only, remembering our duty.” Alladad Khan, at this point, began to cry. Fenella, shocked and overcome with pity, put her arms round him, comforting. Meanwhile Nabby Adams, prone on the planter’s chair, snored on. Only those sounds in the still Malayan night: the sobbing. the inadequate words of comfort, the gentle snore of the big broken man.
Fenella Crabbe talked less now about going back to England on the next boat. She had responsibilities. Alladad Khan had opened his heart to her, the great motherless wreck of Nabby Adams had to be helped and, as Fenella was a woman, reformed.
But Nabby Adams appealed to another side of her, the bookish side. He fascinated her, he seemed a walking myth: Prometheus with the eagles of debt and drink pecking at his liver; Adam himself bewildered and Eveless outside the Garden; a Minotaur howling piteously in a labyrinth of money-worries. She treasured each cliché of his, each serious anecdote of his early life, she even thought of compiling his sayings in a book of aphorisms.
“I don’t bath very much here, but I had a bloody good wash on the boat coming over.”
“I mean, when you’ve been out with one of them tarts you look at yourself careful for a few days after, don’t you, Mrs. Crabbe?”
“Like yourself, Mrs. Crabbe, I’m no angel. But I don’t ask much. Like yourself. A couple of dozen bottles of Tiger every day and I’m quite happy. As it might be yourself, Mrs. Crabbe.”
“He’s nothing but a load of old shit. I mean, what else can you call him, Mrs. Crabbe? There’s no other way of putting it, is there?”
“I bet you was dying for that, Mrs. Crabbe.” (The first queasy drink of the morning after.)
And the stories about the time when he was an undertaker’s assistant. “Well, this one had a wig, see. But I couldn’t get it to stick on his head when I was laying him out in his shroud. So I called downstairs, ‘Mr. Protheroe, have you got a bit of glue?’ And then I said, ‘It’s all right, I’ve found a couple of drawing-pins.’” And other stories about Nabby Adams in the Northampton shoe-factory, and Nabby Adams the bookmaker’s clerk, and Nabby Adams of India.
But what was Nabby Adams? She could not believe that his first name was really Abel. And the genesis of Nabby Adams. Did he really have an Indian mother, or a Eurasian father? These characters emerged in his stories as salty Northamptonshire rurals. His father had been a sexton, his mother a good hand with pastry and curing a ham. At the core of Nabby Adams lay a mystery never to be solved.
“I’m not one for church, Mrs. Crabbe, but I do like a good im.”
“A good …?”
“Im.”
Fenella Crabbe submitted Nabby Adams to all kinds of curious experiments. She played Bach to him on the gramophone, and he said:
“That’s very clever, Mrs. Crabbe. You can hear five different tunes going on at the same time.”
She read to him and Alladad Khan the whole of Mr. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and Nabby Adams said:
“He’s got that wrong about the pack of cards, Mrs. Crabbe. There isn’t no card called The Man With Three Staves. That card what he means is just an ordinary three, like as it may be the three of clubs.”
And when they came to the dark thunder-speaking finale of the poem, Alladad Khan had nodded gravely.
“Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih. Shantih. Shantih.”
“He says he understands that bit, Mrs. Crabbe. He says that’s what the thunder says.”
Inexhaustible. Often Fenella cursed, cried, sent him away in disgrace. As, for instance, when he got up early, stole unbeknown to the drink-cupboard, and finished a whole bottle of gin before breakfast. Or when he fell up the stairs with the shocked boys of Light House looking on, saying:
“I’ve had it, Mrs. Crabbe. I must have a sleep and a drop of something. I can’t go back to the office like this.”
But there was nobody like him. Fenella Crabbe forgot about the Film Society in Timah and she never saw The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, Les Visiteurs du Soir or Sang d’un Poète. Tida’ apa.
9
“SHE WOULD INSIST on coming,” said Nabby Adams. “There wasn’t doing nothing with her, yelling the house down. And by the time me and him had put her out of the car three or four times, we thought she might as well come. Although,” said Nabby Adams, “I’ve got to agree she smells a bit. I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Crabbe. She hasn’t had a bath for a month or two. I haven’t had a chance to give her one.”
“Did she have a bloody good wash on the boat coming out here?” asked Crabbe.
“Oh, she didn’t come out with me,” said Nabby Adams seriously. “She’s not my dog at all. She belonged to the bloke before me. I took her over when I took his room over, see.”
“She’s a nice-looking dog,” said Fenella, patting the heavy matted black hair. “What do you call her?”
“Her name’s Cough,” said Nabby Adams apologetically. “That’s all she’ll answer to. I suppose the other bloke was always telling her to get from under his feet, or something like that.”
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br /> “I don’t quite see that,” said Fenella.
Crabbe explained in a quick whisper. Blushing, she saw.
“We’ll have to be pushing off now,” said Nabby Adams, “if we’re going to get back to-night.” He spoke Urdu to Alladad Khan who sat, bereted and uniformed, in the driver’s seat. Alladad Khan produced a revolver from the cubby hole. “Achcha,” said Nabby Adams. “He’s got his, anyway.”
“Is it a bad road?” asked Fenella.
“There’s a bad stretch,” said Nabby Adams. “About nine miles. I shouldn’t let it worry you, Mrs. Crabbe, though.” Nabby Adams sat down with Crabbe on the back seat. The dog crawled all over him, licking, nuzzling, finally subsiding, grunting with content, on his knees. “I reckon what will be will be. It stands to reason. If you don’t get a bullet in your guts to-day you’ll get run over to-morrow.” Fenella sat next to Alladad Khan.
It was Friday, the Muslim Sabbath and a free day at the School. They were going to Gila, a little town on the State border, where Nabby Adams had to inspect vehicles. Nabby Adams, unable to repay hospitality in any other way, had thought up this treat for the Crabbes. Bandits on the road and a small town whose Malay name meant ‘mad’. But there were a few kedais on the way where Nabby Adams owed comparatively small sums. He would buy them a couple of beers. The least he could do.
“Are you sure we can get back to-night?” asked Crabbe. “It’s a long way.”
“You’ll be back in time to have a good night’s rest before your Sports Day,” said Nabby Adams. “Don’t you worry about that.”
Lolling back in his commandeered car, Crabbe thought about Sports Day. There was going to be trouble. He sensed that Boothby would not be yawning very much when that day was over. He had been hearing whispers, catching out boys in conspiratorial nods and glances. The time had, perhaps, come, the full-dress occasion for revenge, for striking back at the tyrannical British. He knew that something was going to happen, but precisely what he could not say. A genuine revolt? The long knives? The cremation of the School buildings?
The Malayan Trilogy Page 13