Bernard, she says again. And Bernard, who cared not at all for the jumble of weeds in his own garden, bothered to bring wild orchids from the Perak forest to give to the wife of Chin, his worst enemy. Curiouser and curiouser. Should I dig further into the relationship between my uncle and the girl next door? She who knocks and says ‘it’s me’ and Bernard opens. But I don’t – with Bernard’s name spoken as if he is still alive, I find that catch in my throat again.
‘Anything wrong?’ asks Agnes.
‘No, nothing wrong. It’s just hearing Bernard’s name spoken as if he might suddenly appear when we both know he won’t.’
‘You two were very close, weren’t you? I can understand. I couldn’t sleep at all last night, kept crying. I, too, felt close to Bernard. I’ll miss Bernard terribly.’
There’s a moment’s silence. The ice cream and ice tea are finished so we have nothing to do with our hands on the table other than look at them. Agnes says she is going to walk around in the only patch of mosquito-infested virgin forest left in Singapore, at the heart of the Botanic Gardens, and would I like to come. I remember Venus at the flat, feel a bit guilty – not sure why – and say love to but I must get back. She reaches for my hand to say goodbye and holds it a lot longer than social etiquette requires. She holds it, I suspect, until she detects a spark of interest in my eyes – probably several sparks – and then she lets it go with a finger-tip-palm-slide, a smile on her lips, and next time then.
I watch her disappear into the trees – Agnes can, like her tree-top orchid, be sure of being alone in there – and turn my attention back to Barns. ‘I’ll have to think of finding you a home, old girl. Your friendship with Agnes surprises me, but it might take more than that to keep you on campus. You were tolerated because Bernard protected you but you’re not the dean’s dog anymore: you’re the enemy of the acting dean’s cats. Maybe Venus will take you? I’ll ask her. Would you like that, Barns?’
Barns looks at me as if I have taken leave of my senses. ‘Take me away from the university?!’ she snorts. ‘Isn’t it empty enough already? Take me away and there will be nothing left.’ With that, Barnaby runs off after Agnes into the darkness of the forest. There is such a lot I don’t know about such a lot of things.
I walk back quickly. It’s a long way in the heat of the day and I skip from shade-patch to shade-patch. My mind is full of Bernard, but it’s also now full of Agnes. She wasn’t in the crowd outside Bernard’s last night. Neither was Harry Chin. Neither was the Baron. Bernard’s death was announced only this morning by the VC. She must have heard about it from somewhere last night; if not, how come she couldn’t sleep all night because of it?
* * *
On arriving home alone, I am relieved to see K’s Mustang gone from outside my door and equally glad to see Venus waiting for me. ‘Where’s Barns?’ Venus asks. ‘Wong kept you for ages. Was it a real grilling?’ She is wearing the older of my two sarongs, tucked in selapas mandi style above her small firm breasts and flowing down to her beautiful knees. The old and flimsy cloth is almost transparent in the strong sunlight and clings to damp parts of her body. She is comb-surfing the gentle waves of her Peranakan hair. Everything about Venus, the dark flashing eyes, the honey skin, the round buttocks, everything, it all radiates natural sexual attraction – maybe I’ve said that before, maybe I’ll say it again, maybe I’m infatuated. And if I had felt arousal during an innocent ice cream with Agnes, I am now feeling hopelessly sinful in the close proximity of Venus.
‘Crazy dog. Gone digging for treasure in the jungle.’ Did I say that? I must have. ‘Yes, Wong had a lot to say but asked me not to repeat any of it, so I’d better not. Was the breaking news shown live last night on TV?’
‘You don’t know much about television, Tom. The Singapore Broadcasting Corporation packs in at 11.00. Siggy would need to take the film back and it would be processed and edited if a technician could be found in the early hours. It just about made the 7 o’clock news. It could have been on radio a bit earlier, but it wasn’t. Still, it beat the papers by a day.’
So, I’m thinking, Agnes didn’t see it on TV. Her night of crying must have another explanation – maybe the Baron knocked on her door when back from the Tanglin Club and said by the way, there’s been a hanging next door. Although, if he did, how did he know about it? ‘Need a pee,’ I say.
‘And a shower!’ she adds.
* * *
The bathroom is sultry with the lingering presence of Venus. I look in the steamy mirror, extract a couple of Agnes hairs that have somehow attached themselves to me and dispose of them through the grill covering the ever-open window and stand naked under the cold water to wash away the aroma of Agnes lingering guiltily in my nostrils.
My bathroom is empire scale. I could give a lecture in there – with the size of my Economic Anthropology class there would be room to spare. Size, it seems, does matter, or it did to the Empire. And so does age. Age spots pock-mark the wall of weathered Javanese marble surrounding a brown-stained enamel cold-water bath. It’s a room of multi-barrelled adjectives. A room that has seen smarter days but retains the dimensions and mood of faded imperial dignity. My Singapore bathroom alone is larger than the entire bedsit (shared toilet downstairs along the corridor) in which I survived as a student-in-exile in London. In London, my one sun-deprived pot-plant hung its leaves in constant depression – in the City State, a husked coconut in one corner of the bathroom survives on humid air alone and shoots its own tree up towards the sunlight of great, open windows; in sultry Singapore, it grows like the living goddess of Kathmandu, without once touching the ground.
I look out at lush, green Singapore. Surrounded by nature, I soap up and think I am a pretty lucky guy what with Venus just outside the door and all. An apparition of Venus forms spontaneously in the veins of marble that surround my nakedness. I often see images in the marble; like an Englishman in England sees them in the flames of a fire. This particular image of Venus is eating ice cream, has strands of hair falling from under a widebrimmed hat and is surrounded by lonely orchids.
The reality of Venus is in the kitchen, from where she calls out and asks if I know K has taken David and Toshi across to Johor Bahru for the day since the university is closed anyway? No, I do not. But how like the man! To ignore the VC’s request to stay available to help the police. Still, none of my business.
* * *
Venus has been in my flat since breakfast. Her first breakfast at my place and she brought it with her. I feel a twinge of guilt at having left her alone and the Agnes interlude. Although it was an accidental collision of breasts against my tummy, the memory of it is no accident, nor the ice cream that followed. And, a bit of a surprise, and not by accident, I now know more about the relatives and husband of Agnes after a casual ice tea than I know about the relatives and husband of Venus after two months, particularly that husband, enigmatic Richard, more inaccessible than the remotest orchid.
Venus has showered before me and wears my old sarong as if by right. No woman ever wore it before and, given its threadbare state, it’s a sure bet no woman will ever wear it again. Only Venus can make that old rag look the height of fashion. Her skirt, her blouse and her underwear are draped neatly and provocatively around the many bathroom hooks and rails. No way I can ignore them. I lift the knickers to my lips and rub my nose in them – men are like that when nobody’s looking.
Bathroom appearances suggest we are in the familiarity phase of cohabitation – but appearances are deceptive when it comes to Venus. I do not want to blow everything by pushing too hard or for that matter pushing at all. I am waiting for Venus. Chase her and I feel she might run away.
I can’t be certain my encounter with Agnes doesn’t have as much to do with it as the soft feel of Venus’s knickers, but for whatever reason, I am aroused. Am I, I ask myself, man enough to walk out, Homo erectus, and carry Venus off to my bed? K would no doubt advise such direct action; I can imagine his words: ‘Any wench who leaves her knic
kers in a chap’s bathroom and floats around naked under his flimsy sarong is obviously gagging for it.’ I make a token dab with the towel, have a quick mouthwash, and fresh and wet step into the bright new Javanese sarong that Venus had not selected for herself. I walk out cleansed, suggest a siesta under the fan would be nice, take the slim hand of Venus and gently lead her to my bed. She comes like a lamb.
‘You don’t mind my closing the shutters, do you Venus?’ I ask as casually as my enthusiasm allows. She minds. Why did I ask? Because I really am not all that good at leading lambs to slaughter. Venus says to let the air in, outside is so green and fresh, it’s a pity to cut ourselves off from such a pleasant world. How to argue with that? So, the shutters stay open and she tells me to lie down and rest – after that long questioning by the police – and she will watch over me like a guardian angel.
I lay on my back, sarong loose around my waist, something rising under the cloth like a snake from an Indian’s basket. The guardian angel notices; it would be hard to miss. She sits on the bed, legs tucked up under her and tries to talk it down. ‘I’m sorry, Tom darling. It’s just, you know, I can’t – well – betray – you know. Betray’s not the right word. Oh Tom, what do I really mean?’
What Venus really means is take me, I’m yours. But I don’t tell her. I know the kind of response she is expecting and give it to her – to score points. ‘Maybe what you mean, Venus, is that you feel you would be betraying yourself, maybe betraying your dreams and hopes from the past, your love for a man who would probably still love you if only he could.’
‘Thank you, Tom. For being so understanding. You put it beautifully.’ She laughingly makes as if to pat my spontaneous levitation but pats only the air above it and says, ‘Oh, sorry again. I shouldn’t do things like that. Not fair to you, is it? Not fair to either of us.’
As if to control her hands, she lies down on them. Front down, inches from me but not touching, her eyes looking straight into mine. I am torn between the beauty of Venus’s eyes and the curves of her backside. I am not the only thing tearing apart. I can see a hole in the old sarong slowly expanding, silently pulling itself open until it forms a perfect frame for Venus’s right buttock. I turn on my side towards her. It’s time. I sniff her cheek in an Asian kiss and feeling no resistance, work my lips towards her mouth and there we are, like two fighting fish, mouths locked together, a sucking, hungry vacuum between us. No more words. No more talk of betraying Richard. I run my hands softly over her body, loosen the tuck of the sarong and feel her lips press harder. And then, and then, as far as it is possible to do so a few metres above sea level on the equator, I freeze.
‘Ah. Doc-tor Had-dok. Li Fang come.’
We do not move. Maybe if we play dead, Li Fang will go away.
‘Doc-tor Had-dok. Madhu he phone say I come you.’
Is Li Fang in secret league with Richard? Can’t the man see I am within a pubic hair of bedding the most desirable woman in Singapore? Does the man have no sense of decency?
‘Madhu phone.’
Venus recoils. I turn towards the familiar backlit shadow, swing my legs off the bed, tighten the sarong around my waist, hold my temper firmly in and cross the room. ‘Yes, Li Fang, what is it?’
‘Madhu come see you 5 o’clock.’
‘He wants to see me here at 5 o’clock?’
‘Uh.’
‘Thank you, Li Fang.’
I squeeze Li Fang away from the window. He begins talking excitedly in Hokkien and is still rattling on when I finally get the shutters closed and locked. I look back at the bed. Venus is still there but sitting, sarong realigned, the apologetic look back on her face.
‘I’m sorry, Tom. You know how it is.’
Richard wins again. Like Harry Chin, I think unkindly, poor Richard can win without lifting a finger. In fact, Richard wins because he cannot lift a finger.
‘Hell, Venus. I don’t know how it is. I just don’t understand. I mean, do you want me or not?’
‘Please, Tom, it’s not as simple as that. Please don’t be angry. It’s not what I want. There’s something holding me back.’
I dress grumpily. Maybe I should take another walk to the Botanic Gardens and accidentally bump into Agnes in the virgin forest. I’m sure she won’t have too much holding her back. Barnaby, back from her walk in the woods, pads into the bedroom, lays her head on Venus’s lap and looks at her in sympathy, one woman who knows what another is going through.
‘Barns is hungry, let’s go have lunch,’ says Venus. Barns and Venus share a love of eating. I wonder vaguely whether Barns ever had a beautiful figure and whether one day Venus will be all roly-poly. Maybe they should shack up together. Barns sitting beside Venus on prime-time news – something to stir the interests of the nation’s apartment-bound dogs – and then they can both go for a late supper at Newton Circus. ‘Give me a few minutes.’ She disappears into the bathroom to redecorate and make herself less attractive.
I go into the kitchen; might as well have an early beer. And there on the worktop I find a bulging carrier bag. Venus said she found the dog collar there last night but didn’t mention any carrier bag. I call through from the kitchen, ‘Venus, did you see this bag here last night?’
‘What bag, where?’
‘Here on the worktop thing, counter, whatever you call it.’
‘Yes. Saw it. Next to the collar. Why?’
‘Nothing.’
I look inside. Crumpled old Malay school exercise books, lots of them, giving off the pong of old paper badly ventilated. What are they doing here? Each is numbered on its front cover: 1 to 27. Number 1’s on top. I flick through it. Bernard’s handwriting. It seems to be some sort of log. Now, I tell myself, here’s a mystery. I start to read.
* * *
‘Intriguing, Li Fang’s message,’ Venus calls from the bathroom.
‘About as intriguing as any note inside any Chinese cracker,’ I reply cynically, already lost in Bernard’s world of 1942.
‘Well, Li Fang intrigued me if not you.’ Venus speaks with just a tinge of annoyance.
‘Venus,’ I say, feeling, and probably sounding, testy. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ My eyes are still fixed on the open exercise book. I’m hearing Venus but reading Bernard.
‘Well! What Li Fang said, of course.’
Like many Singaporeans – Harry Chin a notable exception – Venus is so perfectly at ease in several languages she sometimes doesn’t notice what language is being used.
‘Okay,’ I call out. ‘What great revelations in Hokkien did I close the shutters on?’
‘Only that Professor Fox wasn’t really hanged at all.’
8
On the Wireless
TODAY WE ARRIVED at Chin Peng’s jungle camp. It looks more like a refugee camp than a military base. I’ve yet to meet the famous Chin Peng. About the only attractive thing here are the young aboriginal ladies; maybe in time I’ll get used to being surrounded by naked breasts, but I hope not. One gave me this school exercise book and a pencil.
Since I have absolutely nothing to do other than stay alive, I intend to write a sort of diary of my time here, hoping it will be very short. At the moment, boredom seems a greater enemy than the Japanese. I should begin my story last week on the first day of 1942, since that is when I encountered the remarkable Li Fang.
It was not a happy new year for me. I was sitting in Tanjung Malim waiting for the Japanese to be defeated or take me prisoner or worse, and fiddling with the knobs on my huge wireless set, trying to get a human voice within the static. Kuala Lumpur’s just forty miles away, but it takes forever to get somebody on the wireless there.
There’s a knock on the open door. I look up and see a young Chinese at the door. ‘What do you want?’ I say in English, following up automatically, since I don’t speak Chinese, with ‘Apa yang awak mahu?’ in Malay.
‘You,’ says the Chinese in English. ‘You go now. Me go also.’
‘What do you mea
n?’
‘You go now. Me go also.’
I spent two years learning Malay yet I’m constantly reduced to guess-work conversations in ten-word English. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I just arrived here last week. And the wireless doesn’t work so I can’t go anywhere. If you don’t want anything, please don’t want it somewhere else.’ I know the kid at the door doesn’t understand but say it anyway because there’s nobody to speak to but myself.
‘Me go also.’
I lift myself tiredly from my chair and move to close the door. In Tapah, as Batang Padang District Officer, there’d been somebody to protect me from such time-wasters. I put a hand on the boy’s arm and gently ease him out of the doorway as I close the door.
‘No,’ says the boy. ‘You go now.’
‘Go – there,’ I say, pointing to the closed door of the person who’s supposed to be my assistant. ‘He speaks Chinese.’ The boy doesn’t move, confusion on his face. Well, too bad; I have my own problems. ‘Please leave my office.’
The confused look on the young face before me slowly dissolves into a smile. ‘Got you! I think I’d best introduce myself … if that’s all right with you.’
I sheepishly open the door. ‘You’d better come in.’
* * *
‘I’m Li Fang. I’ve just graduated from the special school in Singapore. I was told to come to see you. Took the bus up to Kuala Lumpur yesterday and came on this morning. You must have been told I was coming? Wireless message, no?’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got the better of me. Why the games? Your English is perfect, but I’m not expecting you or anybody else. The wireless doesn’t work, so I haven’t got any message.’
‘They would have sent you a signed coded fax as backup.’
‘They might have. There’s a fax message waiting for me to decode. Haven’t got round to it yet.’
Waiting for Venus - A Novel Page 8