The Malayan Trilogy

by Anthony Burgess

  “Oh, lovely, lovely,” said Rosemary, briskly seeking jars for the flowers. “Robert,” she said, “be an angel and fill these with water. The amah’s gone to the market.” Robert Loo noted bitterly the mature approach, the gift of flowers. All he had been able to think of was to wear a tie. He sullenly took the jar that Rosemary proffered and went to the kitchen. As the water drummed in he heard Jalil say: “You have boy now. How much you pay him?” and Rosemary’s reply: “Oh, Jalil, what a filthy, what a cruel, unforgivable thing to say.” And then Robert Loo came out swiftly with the half-filled jar lest more be said. Cats milled round the table where Rosemary was arranging her flowers, and over one of these cats Robert Loo nearly stumbled. He recovered in time but splashed his shirt and tie. Rosemary said kindly: “Oh, you silly boy. You’ve made yourself all wet.” He blushed. The cat he had come up against crouched by a table leg with its ears back, its fur stiff.

  “I suppose,” said Robert Loo lamely, “I’d better be going.”

  “Oh, no,” said Rosemary swiftly. “Do stay. Have a glass of lemon squash or something.”

  “No, I must go.” His eyes tried to speak to her, but he was not one of those Chinese who have great liquid expressive eyes; his eyes were small, black, unable to convey much.

  “Perhaps you’d better go too, Jalil. Thank you so much for bringing the flowers.” But Jalil put one leg over the other, settling his shoulders more comfortably against the chair. He was going to stay. “Come drink,” he said. “Come make jolly time.”

  “Oh, Jalil!” Then Rosemary remembered that she was supposed to be ill. “My head,” she cried dramatically, both hands on her brow like a neuralgia advertisement. “Oh, it’s splitting.”

  At the door Robert Loo hesitated, thinking: ‘She’s a liar. She lies about everything,’ but feeling strong pangs of thwarted desire more painful than any headache. He would not go back to work: he would go and brood in a coffee-shop not his father’s.

  “You no headache,” said Jalil. “I see amah on street. She say you want be lazy today.” He smiled, nodding his head and then wagging his foot in a different rhythm.

  “I’m going,” said Robert Loo.

  “Yes, yes, all right,” said Rosemary. Then, to Jalil: “I haven’t forgotten about yesterday, you know. You’re a pig.” She kicked the leg of his chair. “A nasty, horrible pig.” Jalil laughed quietly. Shamed and frustrated, Robert Loo had gone.

  “We go in car,” said Jalil, “to Lotong. Drink and make jolly in Rest House.”

  Rosemary hesitated. It was not, she thought, a bad idea. Thirty miles, a chance to be away from the town. She had not expected these declarations from Robert Loo: she was somewhat embarrassed by the thought that it was perhaps all her fault. She did not want him coming back later in the day, more passionate, perhaps—in a boyish way—violent. And she did not want to be seen in the town here by people ready to report her healthy appearance to the headmaster. And what was the use of a day off if you couldn’t have a couple of drinks and a blow in a car?

  “I must write this letter first,” she said. “It’s important.”

  Jalil laughed, coughed, laughed again. “No use you write,” he said. “I tell you he not marry. He not love. Only me love.”

  “That’s just where you’re wrong,” said Rosemary haughtily and triumphantly. “I’ve got his proposal here.” She waved it. “And I’m going to write to him accepting. Tomorrow,” she added.

  “He never marry,” said Jalil. “Only me marry.”

  Robert Loo walked gloomily down the avenue, his hands in his pockets. As he approached the main street of the town he remembered that he was wearing a tie, so he removed his hands from his pockets to tear it off and open up the neck-buttons of his shirt. What did he want with wearing a tie? He came to the shop-window of Chung the dentist. In that window was a ghastly gilt picture of a cross-section of the human mouth and also a mirror. Above the mirror was written in Chinese: “Take a good look at your teeth. They are undoubtedly rotten. Come inside and I will make all well again.” And from within came the noise of all being made well again—groans and the practitioner’s encouraging laughter. Robert Loo looked at his face, not his teeth, and saw the smooth face of a boy, a thin neck, slim shoulders. Behind his image passed real boys, schoolboys on their way home from school, none of them wearing ties. Boy, boy, boy. Chinese boy. Portrait of the composer as a young boy. Then into the mirror flashed the face of another boy, brown, splay-nosed, his hair long, showing teeth in greeting. The greeting made Robert Loo turn to meet a shy hand ready for shaking. It was Syed Hassan.

  “Where you go now?” asked Syed Hassan.

  “I don’t know. Just walking, just eating the wind,” said Robert Loo in Malay.

  “Tomorrow,” said Hassan with pride, “is the day of the trial. A big day.”

  “What will happen to you?”

  “Oh, prison, perhaps for many years. With hard labour, perhaps. Perhaps today is my last day of freedom.” He smiled proudly. “I have committed a terrible crime.”

  “Not so terrible.”

  “Oh, yes,” insisted Hassan. “Very terrible. Violence, attempted murder. Don’t say it’s not terrible.”

  “Terrible,” agreed Robert Loo.

  “Tonight we will celebrate,” suggested Hassan. “Have you any money?”

  “My father gave me ten dollars.” It was true. Inexplicably, when Robert Loo came down from his breakfast, washed and neck-tied, his father had put his fist in the till and brought out a note, saying: “There, my son, take this. Buy yourself a little something. Life should not be all work.”

  “I,” said Hassan, “have five dollars. I cleaned the car of a P.W.D. man called Mr. Wright.”

  “Oh,” said Robert Loo. And then: “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ll call for you this evening.” Syed Hassan winked. “At about ten o’clock. Then you’ll see what we’re going to do. But,” he remembered, “I forgot. There is the question of your beloved. When do you see her again?”

  “Not for a long time,” said Robert Loo. “She’s busy.”

  They parted. Robert Loo went back to his father’s shop. His father was out, gambling somewhere, his mother greeted him with three raw eggs beaten up in brandy.

  “Take this, son. You look very pale. And for lunch I am giving you fried pork. That makes blood.” This new solicitude was very puzzling.

  But Robert Loo could eat little. After lunch he sat in his accustomed place behind the counter, totting up bills mechanically, before him the few scored pages of the violin concerto, beneath them the many blank lined pages still to be filled. It was very hot. Dust swirled outside, a few listless coffee-drinkers lounged at the tables, the day slept. The great music-god was silent, the hours were propitious for the welling-up of theme and development from a subconscious the more lively because of the torpor of the mind’s surfaces. And nothing came. The solo violinist seemed to have vanished. Robert Loo took from the till a ten-cent piece and fed it to the sleeping god. It awoke languidly, searched with insolent slowness for the record Robert Loo’s random hand had chosen, and then the afternoon exploded into a larger-than-life dance orchestra crying false emotions. His chin on his fist, Robert Loo sat and listened behind his counter, his heart aching, his eyes staring at nothing, while his brothers cheerfully clopped around, occasionally calling to the kitchen, as customers drifted somnambulistically in:

  “Kopi O!”

  “Kopi O ping!”

  But he could not call for anything so simple as black coffee, hot or iced, to soothe this thirst which had no name. It was not a thirst for Rosemary, it was not that great thirst which, so Paul Claudel once said, is excited by woman but can only be slaked by God. And art seemed to give no solace. But when the record had ended and the machine dozed again, Robert Loo took a small piece of manuscript paper suitable for piano compositions and idly wrote a few bars of lush but near-astringent Debussyish chords. Hearing these with his mind’s ear, he felt comforted, as though
his self-pity were somehow connected with a great unseen plan organised by a god who was all soft lips and huge melting eyes, a god expertly invoked by Tchaikowski or Rachmaninoff or the early works of the French impressionistic composers. He glanced over the first bars of his violin concerto and, taking their scores from his dispatch-case under the counter, the string quartet and the symphony (whose last pages his father had torn up). Clever, he thought, all that counterpoint. The work of a clever boy who was top in maths. But what did it say to him now? Where was the yearning, the heartbreak, to be comforted by the easy message of the single flowing tune and the big chords? That music was not him; it was the work of somebody else, somebody he did not like very much.

  Vythilingam sat, sweating and breathing hard, in one of Rosemary’s arm-chairs. She was out, the amah had said, she had gone out for the day with the Turkish gentleman. Round Vythilingam were ranged the cats, a soft army, knowing him, not disliking him despite his sharp needles and his strong medicine-feeding hands, half-attracted by the mysterious scents that his clothes had brought from the surgery. Vythilingam did not see them. Rosemary was out. Rosemary was out. The amah did not know when she would be back.

  This at least was not dreaming. The wood of the chair-arms was solid beneath his nails. And now he could hear the whirr of the ceiling-fan which Rosemary, careless of electricity bills, had not turned off. That was real enough, and so now were the twitching muzzles, the yawns, the washings of furry legs like turkey drum-sticks, the panther-glidings all about him. What was dream, untrue, not to be thought of more, was his standing there in the surgery, delicately inserting the hypodermic nozzle into the anus of the ailing pet honey-bear, and then the inanely smiling herald-face of Arumugam, and then the fat handsome woman in the sari, and then the nervously grinning girl behind, plump, prettyish, dumb, and then the greetings …

  One of his assistants had taken over the honey-bear, smiling whitely, aware of what was happening, hearing the words “My boy!” and Arumugam’s stupid squeal about a lovely surprise.

  Oh, God, a beast, that wants discourse of reason … The beasts, the beasts, he had to go and see about the beasts. Work would not wait. Yes, yes, Arumugam would take them to his house in the car. He would meet them later. But now, suffering another kiss from the handsome black woman, he had to go. Half an hour, no more. They would go out for lunch somewhere. But he had to see to the beasts.

  The furry beasts grew tired of watching and nosing around one so still, limp and sweating in an arm-chair. They went about their business, to licking saucers, to washing, to blinking in the sun. It would have been easy, thought Vythilingam, easy if they had been married. Even now, if she accepted him. But he could not pretend to his mother: she would see through all disguises, pull down his dusty curtains, that strong woman, that woman whose name was frailty. But still, of course, it wasn’t true. After a brief breathing spell he would go back to empty bachelor quarters and, in the afternoon, to the cool aseptic quiet of the Veterinary Department, the whole vision exorcised by an hour or so of calm and deep breathing.

  But the cats twitched and stirred, hearing with sharper ears than his the approach of a car. The amah came out, saying that perhaps Missi had returned. But Vythilingam knew it was not that. They were after him, the leisurely following feet. Hide? But the Veterinary Department Land-Rover was outside, twenty yards down the street. If he could get into that, rush off, shouting, if they saw and hailed him, that there was more urgent work to be done, that he couldn’t stop. But he would stutter out the words, waste time, they would be on to him. This was the work of Sundralingam and Arumugam. ‘Hale him out, keep him away from that woman, that corrupting unclean Christian woman. We told you we’d find him here, Mrs. Smith. He comes here, but there is really nothing in it, ha ha. Just friends. He looks after her cats, that’s all. You will hear as much from his own lips. But now somebody else can look after the cats, for he will have much else to occupy him.’

  No! Vythilingam, hearing already known voices, the slam of the car door, saw a way out through the kitchen, through the servants’ quarters, a way out that Rosemary herself had, so little time ago, sought blindly. Now there was knocking at the front door. Vythilingam nodded vigorously, with shaking nerves, to the amah, miming that she should open the door, let in the visitors. The amah, a not very bright Malay girl, looked at Vythilingam with frowning brows of no comprehension.

  “He must be here.” Arumugam’s voice, outside the door. Vythilingam rushed through to the kitchen, the quarters beyond, as the amah at last caught his drift, went to open. He was out, stumbling over servants’ litter, an overflow of cats from the house itself, under the sun. He saw known backs at the front door as he sought his own car. Let them take the Land-Rover, with its space at the back for animals of some bulk. Let them, beasts that want discourse of reason. The visitors—Arumugam, Sundralingam, the fat handsome woman, but not the grinning girl—turned in surprise as they saw him there, already in the driver’s seat, switching on the ignition. His face twitched in a grin of agony as he called: “Urgent!” And then he wrestled with the word ‘must’ but abandoned it, shrugging his shoulders at them, pantomiming swiftly “Duty, duty, duty. What can I do? I’ll be back later.” They called, they began to come down to him, but the engine responded, he was in gear, he was off.

  He did not know where he was driving. It was too late now, he thought. If he could have asked Rosemary, if he could have pleaded with her to say yes. And he felt that she would, for this Joe business was all over, he was sure of that, for the Turkish gentleman had told somebody and somebody had told Vythilingam. If only he could have confronted her, that handsome fat woman, together, both of them, Rosemary saying: “He is mine. We’re going to be married,” or better still, not lying but just stating proleptically: “We are married. He’s my husband first. He’s your son second.” A woman to meet a woman, black eyes flashing opposing swords. “Leave us alone. Let us be happy together. You have no power over him any longer, no rights of any kind.” But it was too late.

  Where should he go? He could see no following Land-Rover in the driver’s mirror. He had to hide. No. He slowed down, parked for an instant at the side of the road—it was the long empty road leading out of town—to think that it was no longer merely a question of hiding. She had come for him. She would not rest till she got him. And he knew he would yield all too easily.

  And now what about Chou En Lai and the Communist Manifesto? Eh? Were they over, then, the days of doctrinaire musings, the mere dreaming of action? Was it at last time to act?

  But there were the animals to think of, there was his duty to the animals.

  How about duty to mankind?

  These things must be thought about later, at leisure, if there was ever to be leisure for thinking again. In the meantime, on, on. He was, he noticed, on the road to Anjing. Anjing to Mawas. By railway. His car could, or could not, be sent on later. It could, or could not, be left in the station yard to be picked up on his return. And, anyway, it was time he went to Mawas. In the routine of tending sick buffaloes and goats he could slowly arrive at some kind of decision. The train to Mawas went some time in the evening. But where was his black bag? Of course, there it was, on the car floor beside him. That had made them suspicious, seeing it there when they drove to his house, wondering why he should plead urgent duty and yet forget to take his black bag. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? But he wasn’t really running away from them. It was time he went to Mawas, wasn’t it? There was, in a sense, always urgent duty.

  Duty, duty, duty. The car sped down the hot road, its horn, as it warned a careless old man, hesitant at the roadside, calling: “Duty, duty.”

  “It’s down this street you see most of them,” said Syed Hassan. “Now that they’ve closed down the Park.”

  “Yes,” said Robert Loo. He did not care much one way or the other. It was dark, dark that enclosed in one big coat Crabbe in Mawas, groaning with his scorpion bite, Vythilingam in the gently ambling train, Rosemary h
ome at last, with the door shut on Jalil, Syed Omar cursing his lot in a coffee-shop over cadged brandy and ginger ale. And the dark brought out the prostitutes, Malay divorcées mostly, quietly moving from light to light, gaudy and graceful, like other of night’s creatures.

  Hassan could not hide either his fear or his excitement. He did not try to pose as a young man of the world: Robert Loo’s experience stood between the two of them like another person, a person Hassan had deliberately sought as a dragoman. At one point, breathless, he said: “What shall we do? Shall we speak to two of them?”

  “I think,” said Robert Loo, “the best thing is just to stand somewhere and wait.” And now he too felt excitement stirring: he was to know that complex of sensations again, that piece of music which was all crescendo. But was it right just to seek it blindly, in a void, with no reference to what they called love? Last night he had not looked for it at all; it had just happened. Let the same thing happen again now, let the moment arrive. And so they waited, and Hassan took from his shirt pocket a packet of Rough Rider cigarettes and offered one to Robert Loo. Robert Loo refused: he had no vices. Hassan puffed till the end glowed bright and the tube itself grew almost too hot to hold. And they waited.

  They did not have long to wait. The two girls were clean, though they reeked of ‘Himalayan Bouquet’ perfume. They were tiny though well-developed. Their costumes proclaimed modest submission to custom and religion while at the same time suggesting untold treasures beneath for the asking, or buying. They went off with their young customers, arms linked warmly, chattering in soft dark Malay, Malay of the night, off to the same house. Robert Loo’s girl was called Asma binte Ismail, and she lived a floor above her colleague. It was not hard to make love to her.