“A lot of fuss about nothing. Here you have a few boys who want a bit of adventure. Where are they going to get it? At least, they’re not mooning in the cinema every night, hanging round the coffee-shops. They showed initiative. They meant no real harm. Look at these knives, which the police call deadly weapons.” Mr. Liversedge took one of the rusting exhibits. “This wouldn’t cut butter when it’s hot. Look at the point. You couldn’t harm a fly with it.” The four defendants hated Mr. Liversedge for these words. This, then, was British justice. “They stole nothing. The pair of trousers was recovered. If boys want to steal, they’ll steal more than a dirty baggy pair of trousers.” Maniam blushed. He had not been able to obtain a change of clothes from Pahang. “In this state there’s real villainy going on, in the jungle, in the villages, and a lot of people who should know better are aiding and abetting it. But don’t pick on a handful of harmless boys who are looking for an innocent bit of amusement. Don’t waste our time. We’ve bigger things to do.” The four boys pumped up their hate to hissing steam. Harmless, quotha. Innocent, forsooth. “The case is dismissed. But I’d like to warn these boys.” Warning, warn. They were being warned; that was better. “Like to warn them to find a better outlet for their spare energy and love of adventure. Join some bigger organisation. The Boy Scouts, for instance.” The four young Malays froze in horror. “And I’d like to add that it’s really the responsibility of this State to provide some kind of spare-time activity for young men of energy and initiative who otherwise might be tempted into adventure which, however harmless, might be construed by people old enough to know better as …” He read from the sheet ironically “…attempted murder, theft, assault with battery and heaven knows what. All right, hurry up with the next case.”
The Malay interpreter worked swiftly, condensing Mr. Liversedge’s already condensed judgment into a few packed, flavoursome idioms. Mr. Liversedge chewed gum amiably, looking round at the gay spectators, the protagonists making ready to go, Maniam and Lim both watching the time anxiously, both having planes to catch.
Outside the court Syed Omar, in collar, tie and jacket, clapped his son hard on the back. “You heard what he said,” he said. “He said that the Tamils only got what was coming to them. He said, in effect, that it is time the Malays chewed up the Tamils, and, by implication of course, the Chinese. For many years I have inveighed against British justice. Now I feel that there is something in it after all. Though, of course, this hakim is an Australian, which makes some difference. They have suffered under the yoke of the English. Perhaps that division ought to be made clear.”
“He never said that about the Tamils,” protested Syed Hassan. “I can understand some English.”
“You have to read between the lines,” said his father. “They are not so direct as us. They say a lot by implication. You saw the look he flashed on the Tamils, rolling his jaws in dislike. However, thank God, it is over. Now we can concentrate on our normal worries. Getting jobs, for instance. Borrowing money, for instance. Wait, the bail. That money will now go back to Crabbe. There is definitely one man I can borrow off.”
“There he goes now,” said Hamzah. “The Tamil, off to the airport. His nose is still swollen, but he has been a long time away from Pahang. He has to go back sometime.”
Syed Omar grinned viciously at the sight of the discomfited Arumugam, Sundralingam and Maniam getting into Sundralingam’s car. Then he opened his mouth in the shock of remembering that he had forgotten something. “My God,” he said. “Yusof. There he is. There is Yusof.” He saw ’Che Yusof, his former colleague, most clerkly in horn-rims and neat receding hair, getting into a small Austin car with his daughter, the daughter that, so Syed Omar had definitely at last learned, though only indirectly, having many times been ejected from the office where he had formerly worked, where he had given to the Department his blood and sweat for many years, was now occupying his desk, showing smiling teeth and a brown bosom to the C.P.O. in the intervals of typing reports, letters and memoranda. “My God,” said Syed Omar. He saw Mr. Lim from Penang, Anglicanly elegant, climbing into the Hillman that the firm used on this side of the peninsula, a Malay driver closing the door smartly after him. “Stop!” called Syed Omar. “Stop! I am coming with you!”
“Don’t be a fool, Father.”
“He has already made me a fool, that bastard. Wait!” called Syed Omar. He was at the car window, saying to the astonished Mr. Lim: “Follow that car, that Austin. Quick, it is a matter of urgency.”
“Really,” said Lim Cheng Po. “Really. I have to get to the airport. I have a plane to catch.”
“That’s where he is going,” said Syed Omar. “I know. He is going to drink beer at the bar. It will be bitter beer for him.”
“No,” said Mr. Lim. “If you’re going to start any more of your nonsense, you can’t expect me to help you. Find your own way.”
“It is all one can expect from a Chinese,” called Syed Omar after the departing car. “The Chinese are our enemies. Curse you, you yellow-skinned bastard.” Then he called: “Taxi!” Ashamed, Syed Hassan shepherded his friends away. “To Loo’s place,” he said. “He invited us all to go there for a drink if we got off.”
“He? A Chinese?”
“He’s all right.”
Syed Omar, though unable to pay the fare, gave the driver of the taxi lordly instructions. ’Che Yusof’s car, like Sundralingam’s and Lim Cheng Po’s, was already long away, churning up dust in the rainless weather. The taxi coughed and shook at the tail of the procession. But, realised Syed Omar, as he sat back against a naked cushion spring and took off his tie and opened his shirt for action, there was no hurry. Nobody could get away. He hoped there would be a fair-sized crowd at the airport, enough people to justify the expense of all his dramatic talents, the energy of his blows. Cool air blew in from the open window. They cruised gently along, the road to themselves. Then the driver said, as they approached an attap coffee-stand on the outskirts of the village midway between town and airport:
“I need cigarettes. Pay me half my fare now and I can buy them.” He was a sly, hard, thin man of Syed Omar’s age, a man who had suffered much in his time from wives and no money. He had been already five years paying for his taxi.
“When we arrive,” said Syed Omar. “Not before. Come on, we have little time to lose.”
“Half the fare. A dollar.”
“You will have the whole fare when we arrive.”
“Show me your money. I suspect that you haven’t any.” A hard life had taught him much.
“Insolence,” said Syed Omar. “It’s your job to drive me to wherever I say. Who are you to start inquiring insolently into the financial position of your betters?”
The taxi was now parked by the attap coffee-stand. The driver looked forward to a leisurely altercation. “What do you mean, betters? I have a job and you haven’t. I don’t believe you have two cents to rub together.” He leaned an arm comfortably over the driver’s seat. The heat beat in, the breeze of motion gone.
“Allah most high,” swore Syed Omar. “I will argue with you another time. Your job now is not to argue but to get me to the airport. That’s what I am paying you for.”
“I doubt if I’ll see many signs of paying.”
“I am of the line of the Prophet. That’s what my name Syed means, though probably you’re too ignorant to know that. I have my honour, and you are impugning my honour. When I take a thing I always pay for it. Now, come on, quickly. The airport.”
“Let’s see the colour of your money.”
“You’ll see the colour of my fist if you don’t do what I say.”
“Fighting words, eh? Well, now, I’m really frightened.” The driver grinned, showing few teeth, but those golden. “You must have a lot of muscle hidden underneath that flab.”
“I refuse to argue further with you. Do your job and you will be paid at the end of it. But you’ve been so insolent that you certainly won’t get a tip.”
“Ha, that’
s a good one. No tip, he says. No fare either.”
“Look,” said Syed Omar, “I’ll go over there and get you cigarettes with my own hands. Will that satisfy you?”
“You won’t get any credit here. They know your kind.”
“My kind. By God!” Syed Omar began to beat the hard shoulder of the driver. “Go on. Do what I say. If you don’t, I’ll report you. I’ll report you to the police, to the Town Board, to the Mentri Besar. Do your job, damn you.”
At the sound of the hard word chelaka, the driver said: “Out. Go on, out. You can walk the rest of the way. You can be thankful that I’ve taken you half of the way for nothing.”
“Take me back to town, then.”
“Not likely. Go on, out.” The man got out of his own seat and opened the door for Syed Omar. “The airport’s in that direction,” he said, “if you don’t already know.”
“By God,” said Syed Omar, “you’ll suffer for this.” He got out, and squared up to the driver, but the driver laughed gaily and skipped back to his seat. He switched on, put the groaning vehicle into gear, turned it round skilfully and sped dustily townwards. Syed Omar shook his fist repeatedly. Meanwhile, the old woman who kept the coffee-stand sucked her gums and shook her head at the follies of the modern world.
Syed Omar began to walk to the airport. Sweat pearled his tough brown skin, his fat bounced in rhythm. No car passed for him to flag. Nay, but a car did, coming from the airport, an Austin with a known and hated number—PP 197—and in the car ’Che Yusof and his daughter. The daughter waved and smiled. Syed Omar danced on the hot road. He had now passed the point of no return: the airport was a mile away, the town nearly three miles. He walked on, reaching an airport silver with sun on the waiting plane’s body, silver glancing from the glass of the control tower, cars parked. The plane, whose tortuous route accommodated both Pahang and Penang passengers, was late taking off. Perhaps the Sultan’s name was on the manifest and His Highness, aware that he was above schedules and the law, was still dawdling over early curry in the Istana. But no, there were instructions to passengers now crackling through the loudspeakers and, as Syed Omar came near to the airfield, he could see the thin string of people, turning often to smile and wave, already filing towards the air-hostess in the hole in the huge silver body. And here, as Syed Omar limped into the waiting-hall, were two Tamils saying good-bye to one other, embracing, slapping, hand-pumping, one with a girl’s voice piping high in most cordial valedictory emotion. Then Maniam, his nose not too red or swollen, almost, in fact, presentable to his masters in Pahang, joined the waving file, smiling back sadly. Syed Omar broke through the gentle cordon of white-clad Chinese officials. “A last-minute message,” he improvised. “From the police. Very urgent.” Maniam was the last of the embarking line. Syed Omar dived at him, bowled him over on the asphalt in view of the smiling wavers, the shining plane, the hot indifferent sun, and said:
“It was all your fault.” He knelt on Maniam and hit various parts of his face. Maniam wailed. “You started it all.” One on the chest. “We were happy till you came.” But now the officials were timidly interfering, and others were coming languidly to the scene, and even the police discussed this violence as possibly coming within the scope of their terms of reference. Syed Omar gave Maniam one good knuckling in the eye and was led off, not unsatisfied, saying: “He started it all. He put the idea of treachery into everybody’s head.” Meanwhile Maniam, disfigured, wailed forlornly.
“This time,” sighed Sundralingam, “he had better stay in your house. I’ve done my share. You’d better get a bed made up for him.”
“No room,” squealed Arumugam. “You know there’s no room.”
“Vythilingam, then. It’s time Vythilingam did something. Dear, dear, what a mess.”
But days passed, and Vythilingam did not return. In any case, Sundralingam had forgotten that Mrs. Smith and the wealthy orphan called Chelvanajaky were already installed in Vythilingam’s quarters (his predecessor had been a married man: there were rooms enough, though not now room for Maniam), Mrs. Smith herself sweeping out the corners, ordering the Siamese servant to scrub (whereupon he gave in his notice), planning tasty meals for her son’s return. And then mysterious news about Crabbe began to leak through many crevices and, in the manner of the East, news about Vythilingam was inferred from the external accidents of Vythilingam and Crabbe’s being in the same boat, going to the same place, both disappearing at the same time. More, there were signatures left in river and on river-bank, or near it—a black bag nearly empty of medicaments, a floating stick and overnight satchel containing, among other things, a shoe. The lizards, before fleeting off, had left their tails in the clutching hand of the upper air. Bodies, it was well-known, were near-irrecoverable in that river of deep-set weeds. Nobody felt inclined to give orders to drag: let the river keep them.
“It is clear what happened,” said Sundralingam, while Mrs. Smith sat dumbly but not over-sadly, for this was the East. “Your son was heroic. He dived in after this Mr. Crabbe, and Mr. Crabbe himself dragged him to his death, or else both were caught in the weeds. It is sad, but life has to go on. And, for us Hindus, death is not an end but a fresh beginning. I do not need to remind you of that, Mrs. Smith. Your son is already reincarnated. We do not know, of course, in what form. It would be pleasant to think that he was now one of the little animals being treated at this moment in his own dispensary, though, of course, his assistant will not be treating it very well. Or perhaps he is born again as some great future politician, some saviour of his people. But he always said there was more virtue in dumb animals than in some human beings. And he was, you will remember, himself very nearly dumb.”
“All my plans disarranged,” said Mrs. Smith. Her voice was curiously deep and compelling, unlike the pretty birdsong of so many of the women of her race. Her voice was the voice of some competent chairman of a ladies’ social guild, as her handsome and bulky person, with its rich sari, was apt for the heart of a group photograph in a local Ceylon newspaper. “I had hoped so much,” she said. “Perhaps I am very deeply to blame for being out of touch with him for so long. But I wrote letters, I tried to arrange marriages. I had my own commitments, you see. One cannot do everything. But,” she sighed, “perhaps I can make amends in another life. He needed his mother, perhaps, more than we shall ever know. I do not think he was too happy. Men only do brave and desperate things when they are not too happy, and this thing was brave and desperate. What was this Englishman to him, anyway?”
“He was just an Englishman,” shrugged Sundralingam. “But your son would save the life of a rat or a toad if he could. I think it quite likely that he would try to save an Englishman.”
To those who doubted that Crabbe and Vythilingam—one or other or both—were dead, Sundralingam said: “Look at the facts. Both have disappeared. People have to disappear somewhere. The river is the obvious place.”
“There is the jungle. They could both have taken to the jungle.”
“Well, yes,” Sundralingam would say. “I think Crabbe possibly might go and join the Communists. A Tamil gentleman named Jaganathan—a gentleman who worked with Crabbe in Dahaga, whom I met in Kuala Lumpur—said that he had strong Communist leanings. Again, he may have embezzled cash or taken many bribes and now be over the border in Thailand with his ill-gotten gains. One cannot be sure. But Vythilingam is certainly dead. You can be quite sure of that.” And then Sundralingam would spend a cosy evening with Mrs. Smith and Chelvanajaky, while Arumugam fretted jealously, aware of what Sundralingam was after, aware, as Sundralingam was aware, that, owing to the economic recession, fathers were cutting dowries by as much as fifty per cent and that here was a pleasingly shy and not unpersonable girl whose dowry could never be cut.
But there were men, white, whose word could naturally be relied on, who were prepared to ease the work of the police so far as Crabbe’s disappearance was concerned. The Independence celebrations were coming, contingents of police had to be drilled and bla
ncoed and starched before proceeding to Kuala Lumpur to represent the state. Crabbe’s disappearance, if pursued to the point of river-dredging or keeping a file open till the body bobbed up down-stream, would mean overmuch trouble at this busy time. And so the Malay C.P.O. listened, with a Tertullian willingness to believe, to the white men’s stories.
George Costard said that the boatmen, reporting to their launch for the afternoon down-stream voyage, found a stick and a bag floating, and one said he saw bubbles, and the other could not swear to it but thought he saw a hand come up and grasp at air for the last time. Costard had no doubt that Crabbe had accidentally or, for all he knew, not so accidentally drowned. He added that he had been forced to tell his coolies that this white man had deliberately taken his own life to compensate, by obscure logic, for the death of Yogam the Tamil schoolmaster—a white for a black, a restoration of the balance of life. Otherwise there would be a tendency for them to think that a sudden and unexpected death was a bad augury for the prosperity of the estate under its new manager. Small shrines were already in existence in the coolie lines, dedicated to the spirit of the man with the strange name, and offerings of crayfish (in default of saltier crustaceans) were already being made. This would not last long, however. The tiny cult would be swallowed up in the bigger ones, probably on the next Hindu feast-day. The point was that Costard’s first duty, as the C.P.O. would realise, had to be to the estate and the company that owned it. Thank you, Mr. Costard.
“A nice chap,” said Tommy Jones, promoting thirst in the State capital, “but a bit queer. Didn’t know his name at the time, of course, but met him on the train going to Tikus, and we had a sort of night out together, though neither of us did anything really. He said he’d been told that it was up-river that he’d conk out sometime or other, and I got the idea that he wasn’t all that keen on carrying on, he wouldn’t mind snuffing it all that much. But I didn’t pay too much attention because you don’t really when a bloke talks that way. Met too many of them in my line of business. Still, he was a bit low because his wife was a bit too brainy for him or something. Anyway, she’d been writing poetry about him in some paper or other, a paper that didn’t much go for putting flowers on dogs’ graves, I do at least remember that bit. That made him a bit down in the mouth. He didn’t seem himself the next morning either, kept talking about the Prophet Mohammed inventing beer or some such story. A bit crackers, I thought. He travelled with a pig in a Land-Rover.”
The Malayan Trilogy Page 58