The Bell-Boy

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘I haven’t exactly found anything else yet, uncle, it’s true.’

  ‘Ah, but you haven’t been wasting your time, have you?’ Raju shot him a knowing sideways look. ‘Worked your way into any Italian knickers yet, have you?’

  ‘I can’t think what you mean,’ Laki cried.

  ‘I do beg your pardon. Maybe they’re English.’ When the boy merely looked confounded the night porter jogged his shoulder. ‘I’m not blind,’ he said. ‘I may be on nights but my eyes and ears still work perfectly well in daylight. “Oho,” I say to myself. “Now there’s a forward lad showing enterprise beyond the call of his very limited duties, buying fresh laran each morning and carrying out structural repairs. But how’s he going to turn this beautiful friendship into ready cash?” That’s the sort of thing I’ve been saying to myself.’

  This, of course, was the very question uppermost in Laki’s mind. With his mother’s letter fresh in his pocket the need for cash was acquiring new urgency. And if the session with hodlam Tapranne were a success, the Hemonys would not be staying in Malomba much longer. ‘There’s something about them, uncle,’ he said. ‘They’re different.’

  ‘Really? They seem pretty much the same to me. Quite nice, dim foreigners. But then I’ve scarcely seen much of them.’

  ‘No, there’s something,’ insisted Laki. ‘It’s not just that they’re ignorant – all foreigners are ignorant when they come here, aren’t they, uncle? Actually, these ones know quite a bit about religion and healing and things. I just think they … I think they want something to happen.’

  ‘Well. And what are you talking yourself into, boy?’

  ‘The daughter’s very beautiful,’ Laki said to the goat as it crunched away. ‘Maybe she’s the one who’s ill. Perhaps she’s a … a princess in disguise, or something.’

  Raju put a finger to one side of the boy’s jaw and gently pushed his head into profile against the light from the kitchen. ‘No beard,’ he said. ‘I see no beard. And in any case, what kind of foolishness is this? You don’t stand a chance, boy, take it from me. No pretty young European girl is going to look twice at an under-age bell-boy with dark skin in some scruffy provincial hotel. I’m sorry to ruin your dreams, but it’s so.’ And because Laki looked so crestfallen he added, ‘Any more than she’d look at an over-age night porter. They’re not here for that sort of thing. The woman’s here for psychic surgery. They’re serious; they’re the wrong sort of people.’

  Yet now it was out in the open, even if only to be dismissed, there was something satisfying about hearing it put into words. If the possibility existed as an idea, the possibility existed. Each time he said ‘uncle’ to Raju, Laki knew he was young and inexperienced, that the milk was still wet on his lips. Yet for the first time he had had an intuition he could not easily dismiss. He still thought the Hemonys were people who wanted something to happen and that there must be a way of converting this unfocused desire into advantage, into preferment, into cash. The heretical notion crossed his mind that the venerable Raju might be wrong; that anything could be made to happen with anyone, foreign or not. And chasing this idea came another, glimpsed in triumphant outline against an inner skyline: if Raju were so wise, why was he still a night porter at fifty-six?

  He made his way up the back stairs, stopping at Zoe’s floor to walk softly along the passageway and pause outside her door. Not a sound came from within, nor any light from crack or keyhole. Laki pictured her lying on her bed in an attitude of the utmost chastity, dressed in a voluminous white silk nightgown and with her blonde tresses spread on her pillow, a vision drawn largely from the film Sleeping Beauty which had recently been playing in town. Sadly he tiptoed away and paused on the floor above outside her brother’s door. But again there was no sign of life within and he recalled it was only nine o’clock in the evening and the family was doubtless dining out.

  He went on up to the roof and, catapult in hand, sat on the edge beneath the hanging brow of vine to gaze out across Malomba as if for inspiration. The holy city was quite as impressive at night as by day. There were lights everywhere. The shops remained open until late and a thousand bulbs, pressure lamps, candles and kerosene flares poured their luminance from doorway and window, from booth and bazaar. Spires and temples were outlined with strings of coloured lights. A madonna with a faulty neon halo winked coquettishly from above the façade of the pro-cathedral. Chinatown was a mass of green and red strip lighting. In the centre of town it seemed that only the Glass Minaret was unlit: not for the Ibn Ballur mosque the vulgar displays of artifice. Its great architect had planned that only the pure radiance of stars and moon would dash itself against his vision into seven hundred and seventy-seven thousand fragments. Unfortunately he had not foreseen twentieth-century technology. For hundreds of years his minaret had glittered austerely to the lunar phases like a column of mercury droplets stilled. Nowadays, though, its lower facets gave off haphazard sparks of pink neon, crude limes and raw oranges, as if at last an acidic pollution were seeping upwards from its base.

  Near the Chinatown gateway Laki could pick out a single point of deep ruby. This was the glans of the phallus atop the Lingasumin, otherwise an unlit squat bulk full of suggestive possibilities. At night his eyes were drawn to it as much as his feet by day. How was he ever to get a glimpse inside? Given the intimate and restricted nature of the congregation, it was surely impossible to infiltrate it in disguise, particularly as sooner or later every last stitch would have to be removed. A simple turban would clearly not suffice. In any case the only people he had ever seen going into the Lingasumin had been dressed as ordinary businessmen in shiny Indian suits, some carrying small fibre suitcases about whose contents he could only speculate.

  How anguishing it was to be so full of pressing needs of one sort or another while having to sit and stare out over a city crammed with potential! Nobody understood a boy’s dilemma, Laki thought, least of all old people like Raju. To be full of energy and yet to be constantly frustrated! Thanks to friends like Mr Bundash, he understood much of what went on in Malomba; yet whenever he sat beneath his vine and breathed its perfume, his mind seemed to drowse and skid off among possible projects as numerous as the streets and alleys below him which fumed them up. His mother, now: he really had to get some money to the family within the week. But how? Theft? That was the most obviously straightforward way of getting things in this world, but Laki had witnessed the public flogging in the market-place of many thieves, real or alleged, and it was not a risk he cared to run. The last victim had expired of heart failure beneath the rod, for all that a sympathetic crowd had exercised its prerogative of pelting his lacerated buttocks with rotten fruit in between strokes in order to soothe and cool them. So if not theft, what? Wherein lay money?

  The answer staring him in the face was, of course, religion. It was Malomba’s number one industry and, despite Raju’s warning, he still thought it had possibilities. For twenty minutes or so he turned over various ideas for founding a religion. Most of them quickly degenerated into outlines of rites involving virgins and several times he had to force himself back on to strictly practical lines of thought. Probably the best plan would be to found one with a few friends and build some kind of simple chapel somewhere. Then they would be added to Malomba’s list as its fortieth temple. They could charge admission to tourists and visiting anthropologists and give expensive interviews for their hand-held videos. Laki began to warm to his idea. They would need a unique selling point: a new kind of deity, certainly, since the old ones were all spoken for; or a system of worship so arcane that people would pay or do anything to watch it. (The ruby light glowed steadily some way off below him.)

  No, that was too unoriginal. He could never hope to beat the Left-Handed Shaktas at that game. All right then, what about something so flamboyant it was a spectacle no one would want to miss? But the trouble with robes and lace and cloths of gold was that they were hopelessly outside his budget. Maybe he ought to settle for building up a reputat
ion as a very spiritual sect. Laki was not at all sure what this meant, but he had heard it said that a people’s true spirituality could be measured by the austerity of their worship, and wasn’t austerity another word for cheapness? For example, he had also heard it said that the Chinese were the least spiritual people in town, and certainly the carryings-on in their quarter seemed to bear this out. They were forever holding dragon parades with all manner of fireworks and colourful bedlam which obviously cost a fortune. Then at night the narrow streets of Chinatown echoed to the crash and the rattle of mah-jongg tiles in upper rooms where slow-bladed fans stirred thick air beneath the actinic glare of strip lighting. Rumour had it that still further fortunes were nightly won and lost. Terrible fights broke out, and he remembered once seeing somebody’s entrails hanging from a window-box. Worship of any kind seemed to have slipped unnoticed from the Chinese calendar, squeezed out by a busy round of festivals, opening new hotels, moneymaking and the more fanciful kinds of divination.

  At the opposite extreme, Laki guessed, lay something called Anglicanism, whose adherents were so austere and restrained their church had stood completely unattended for thirty-one years. Mr Bundash was his only source of information about this religion, since the building itself had been pulled down well before he arrived in Malomba. It was indeed the only example of a religious edifice so redundant as to have merited demolition. On its site now stood the Vudusumin from which screaming could occasionally be heard.

  Laki presumed that ranking next in austerity to this defunct church was the grey stone building on the outskirts of town known as the Auld Strait Kirk. This was something of a memorial to a small band of Scotsmen who had come to the area in the last century to start the tea plantations with which they intended to rival Ceylon. They had not easily relinquished this plan. One by one they were carried off by disease, drink and despair, but not before they had built a church to invoke God’s blessing on their enterprise and his mercy on their souls. Scotsmen had long since died out in Malomba, but the church was still patronised by a handful of locals led by their Elder, Hamish Patel. Laki had once passed the open door during a service and had glimpsed a bare room with a tableful of hats and people chanting lugubriously. One could hardly get more austere than that, he decided; and since that moment this church had come to represent for him the apogee of spirituality.

  Thus as he sat beneath the heavy-scented vine he sketched out the Auld Strait Kirk of Laki, Malomban Rite, whose temple was a building bare of all needless extravagance but for a plain table piled high with virgins … No, he thought crossly, trying to shake the drowsiness out of his head, he would have to do better than this if he were to be sending money home this week. He got to his feet and moodily kicked a chunk of mud brick from the dovecote wall, loosing part of it into the Redemptorist Fathers’ garden with his catapult. The garden lay in total darkness but for swarms of fireflies, and it gave him satisfaction to hear the dried mud smack against the invisible pagoda, which was what he had been aiming for.

  On impulse he thrust the catapult away and hurried downstairs. Behind the desk in the hall Raju sat staring glassily at a picture of a paddy field on the opposite wall. The picture concealed a hole caused by Mr Muffy’s attempt to put up a fusebox which had been mysteriously stolen before it could be screwed in place. Laki recognised the porter’s glassiness as authentically that induced by palm toddy, a flagon of which would be set down out of sight by his feet.

  ‘Are they in, uncle?’ he asked.

  ‘Who, boy?’

  ‘Those foreigners. You know.’

  ‘Ah. Er,’ Raju twisted his head and squinted up at the board, ‘no, doesn’t look as if they are. The keys are all here. And no, you can’t have the pass-key.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ Laki told him with virtuous surprise. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘If Muffy ever found I’d given you the key so you could go skulking about guests’ rooms after dark, it’d be as much as my job’s worth. You’d lose yours, too, but not before you’d also lost a few inches of skin off that handsome little backside.’

  How dreadfully drunk he is tonight, thought Laki as he went upstairs once more. He passed through to the servants’ staircase and sat down on the dusty brick landing which led to Mrs Hemony’s corridor, turning off the light and slightly opening the door so he might hear her approach. He had scarcely begun to doze before he heard the sound of voices and feet on the marble steps. To his relief the two children went straight up to their rooms after mutual good nights, leaving their mother to make her way slowly along in the gloom to her own door. Just as she reached it Laki produced a handkerchief and, pressing it to his face, stumbled through the landing door towards her as his other hand groped for the switch. The light came on and, catching sight of her, he affected to pull himself together.

  ‘Good evening, missus,’ he said thickly.

  ‘Lucky! Why, whatever is the matter?’ Tessa paused in the act of unlocking.

  ‘Oh, missus. Oh, it is nothing.’

  ‘Are you hurt, then? Ill?’ She withdrew the key and pushed the door, reaching round its edge to turn on her own light.

  ‘No, not ill, missus. Not sick. Oh!’

  ‘Then what? You can tell me, Lucky. We’re friends, aren’t we?’ She put a maternal hand on his shoulder and drew the overcome bell-boy into her room. ‘Maybe I can help.’

  Laki was shaking his head and sniffing. ‘No, missus, you very kind. Everyone say how kind the missus. But no help can give. It my mother. Oh!’

  ‘Your mother? She isn’t dead?’

  A wail, bravely stifled, escaped the handkerchief. ‘Not dead, missus. Or maybe now she dead.’ From his pocket he drew the letter and gave it to Tessa.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, Lucky, I can’t read your language.’ She turned the grimy sheet over and over as if looking for familiar roman letters among the elegant curlicues of the script.

  ‘It from my brother. He say’ – Laki took back the letter and skimmed it distractedly as if searching for a single recognisable word amongst the illiterate scrawl – ‘he say here my mother very very sick to Red Fever.’

  ‘Red Fever? Scarlet fever? Oh Lucky, how awful! I’m truly sorry. When was the letter sent?’

  ‘One week. Oh.’

  ‘She’s at home in your village?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Saramu Province. Very far, very poor. I am thinking she to dying without medicine.’

  ‘Well,’ said Tessa, being practical, ‘first you must telephone to find out how she is.’

  ‘Oh missus, no telephone. No telephone arriving in Saramu.’

  ‘What, none in the entire province?’

  ‘No telephone, missus. I think she to needing medicine not telephone. But no have money. How much they pay me here to Nirbana Hotel is nothing. Oh.’

  ‘I see.’ As indeed she did, being suddenly reconciled to funding his poor mother’s recovery. ‘How far away is this village of yours?’

  ‘Eighty miles, missus.’ The alarming thought struck him that she might insist on going in person. ‘Very bad bus. Very danger road because of freedom fighters. Bandits, they kill. Also Saramu Province close now.’

  ‘The province is closed?’

  ‘Yes, yes, closed. No are going. Policemen to stopping. Too much bandit. Too much Red Fever.’

  ‘Poor Lucky.’ Tessa was visualising his mother lying sick in a rude hut on a remote littoral isolated by indigence, guerrilla activity and contagious disease, and was not stuck for a remedy. ‘Pennyroyal,’ she said. ‘We must see how we can get her some oil of pennyroyal at once. Is she pregnant? I mean, she’s not having a baby?’

  ‘No, no, my father he tie.’

  This syntax made her unwilling to pursue the subject further. ‘In that case she can have pennyroyal. It’s wonderful for the kidneys and that’s where the danger lies in scarlet fever. Oh, and cypress oil.’

  ‘I think she wanting antibiotic, missus.’

  Poor child (thought Tessa); I haven’t the heart to explai
n the dangers of conventional medicine to him at this moment. As soon as the crisis was over, though, she resolved to set him straight. But first things first. His evident upset must be calmed since the bond between mother and son was such that if his spirit were distraught it might materially affect her chances of recovery. This was one of the Swami’s greatest Teachings, that mental distress produced far worse imbalances than any physical yin-yang disequilibrium. She sat Laki down on the edge of her bed, where he perched with the unease of a child who knows himself to be out of bounds even though in extenuating circumstances. ‘Now look,’ she took one of his hands. ‘Your mother will be all right. I know. She will be well, do you understand? We’ll send her antibiotics.’

  ‘Oh missus, you kind kind lady. But it better we send money for to buy.’

  ‘But can she get antibiotics where she is?’

  ‘Yes, yes, village shop they have.’

  ‘Antibiotics in a village shop?’ Even in a country as bizarre as this it seemed unlikely.

  ‘Yes, yes. But very expensive, missus.’

  Well, she supposed they would be. ‘How much do you need, Lucky?’

  ‘Oh missus, too much … You too kind … No, no. Oh.’ This babbling, during which he blotted his eyes once more, gave him the chance to think for a moment. What was it reasonable to ask for? He had been resigned to getting Raju to lend him a twenty-note under the veiled threat of reneging on his part in the toddy-tapping. In the best of all possible worlds – that obtaining within minutes of getting his salary on time from Mr Muffy – he might have aspired to fifty piku. How high would she go? ‘A hundred is …’ He choked tactically.

  ‘Of course, Lucky.’

  ‘… not enough, missus. I think maybe two hundred okay. But you must not to giving me. I am nothing. I am unknown boy.’ And he dabbed afresh.

  But Tessa was taking four fifty-notes from her purse. ‘Don’t be silly, Lucky, you’re our friend. You’ve helped us and now we’re doing a bit in return. Even if you were a complete stranger it’s bliss to be able to help people, isn’t it? Now look.’ She folded up the notes and tucked them into the pocket of his jacket. ‘You go right off and send your mother what she needs with our love and tell her she’s already getting better. All right?’ And she patted the back of his hand encouragingly.