World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399)

by Mason, Richard

  “Then perhaps one day Christian people will say, ‘A man must have twenty wives.’”

  “Yes, the Mohammedans already say you can have several, and they believe in the same God.”

  “All right, go on reading.”

  “No, let’s talk a bit more about wives. Suzie, I’m so ridiculously happy with you. Let’s go mad and get married.”

  “No, you go and find some virgin girl. Christian men are supposed to marry virgin girls.”

  “Perhaps one day they will say you can only marry a girl who has worked two years at the Nam Kok. Anyhow you are a virgin.”

  “You think so? Well, you said the brain can believe anything!”

  “You’re an intellectual virgin. That’s what I love about you. It makes me feel like a Pygmalion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Never mind. Will you marry me?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t say ‘No,’ Suzie?”

  “Yes.”

  IV

  The telephone rang and Suzie picked it up.

  “No, he’s busy. . . . All right.” She handed me the receiver. “It’s that man.”

  I thought for a moment, from the disdainful way she said “That man,” that Rodney must have turned up again. But it was Haynes.

  “Well, we’re not going to have to wait so long after all,” Haynes said. “There’s been some re-shuffling at the court, and the hearing’s been fixed for next week. Anyhow, we’ve got the right magistrate. We’ve got Charlie Kwok.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Should have a bit of fun with old Charlie. He’s got rather an eye for the—ah—girls.”

  Suzie was delighted when I told her the news. She was looking forward to the hearing as an opportunity for letting off steam about Betty.

  “I am going to tell them that girl is no good,” she said. “I am going to tell them everything.”

  “You’re not, Suzie. You’re going to tell them only what I told you to tell them.”

  “I forget what you said.”

  “Don’t worry, I shall remind you.”

  The hearing was on a Thursday, and on the previous afternoon I spent an hour putting Suzie and the four girls through their paces and firing tricky questions to try and catch them out. The next morning we all set off to the Central District by tram—minus only Little Alice, who had disappeared to another hotel with a boy friend the night before and failed to reappear. We left the tram and climbed up through the steep narrow streets. The magistrate’s court was next to a police station and the old city gaol. There were several courtrooms and the entrance hall was crowded with people assembling for the various hearings. Suzie went off cheerfully to surrender to her bail. The three girls, who were all much more nervous than Suzie herself, stood in a silent anxious little group, glancing about sheepishly at the khaki-clad policemen. I led them to the room where witnesses had to report and then went and sat in the empty courtroom. It might have been a London magistrate’s court except for the heat and the fans. The hot damp heat was appalling even at half-past nine in the morning, and my shirt and trousers were sticking to my body after the climb up the hill. Presently Haynes arrived, wiping his neck with a handkerchief, and said miserably, “I wish our hearing was in the High Court.”

  “The High Court?” I said, alarmed. “Why?”

  “The High Court’s air-conditioned.”

  I had sat down on one of the public benches, but he told me to move up to the press bench because there would be nobody else there, and I would “feel more one of the family.”

  Soon the court began to assemble desultorily and the hearing began. And the atmosphere was so friendly and informal that it did indeed seem almost like a family party, and it was all I could do to stop myself butting in: I felt sure that nobody would have minded. Charlie Kwok, who was Cantonese but very westernized, was small, twinkling, and birdlike. He punctuated the proceedings with chatty and humorous asides. And even the police prosecutor, a young Chinese inspector, seemed to bear no ill will, and his manner was so obliging and gentle that I felt quite ashamed to think we were taking advantage of him.

  The first witness to be called was Doris. She was the girl in whom I had the least confidence, for I would not have put it past her to turn against us in the witness box and expose our conspiracy. I sat watching anxiously. But I need not have worried, for she gave her answers drily but exactly as she had been drilled, and the nice Chinese inspector asked no awkward questions and made no attempt to trick her.

  The proceedings were slow because the language of the court was English and the interrogation of witnesses had to be conducted through an interpreter—a small sleek conceited young Chinese with an impeccable Palm Beach suit and a taste for difficult and technical words. Doris was in the box for about fifteen minutes, and as she left the courtroom Charlie Kwok turned to the inspector and said with a twinkle, “I shouldn’t think she gets much business, does she?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “I mean, those glasses,” Charlie Kwok chuckled. “I shouldn’t think she gets much business with those glasses. Still, I remember when I was a student in London—you’d hardly believe it—I mean, some of those girls in the streets! Well, certainly not my cup of tea! I suppose it’s still like that in London, isn’t it, Mr. Haynes?”

  “Well—ah—yes, I suppose so.”

  “Now, let’s get on. What else have you up your sleeve?”

  Gwenny and Wednesday Lulu both gave their evidence without a slip. Then Betty Lau herself was called. She had only been out of hospital a few days and I could hardly recognize her, for she wore no make-up, no false eyelashes, and she crossed the courtroom with scarcely a sign of a waggle. She was very subdued in the witness box, and less concerned with making things awkward for Suzie than with whitewashing herself. She maintained that at the Nam Kok she had never gone upstairs with sailors: she had only gone to the bar to talk and drink with them. This pretense, which cast doubts on the truth of her other evidence, made her unwittingly more of a help to Suzie than otherwise. And when Haynes asked her what she had said that had provoked Suzie, she was evasive. She had to be pressed. Finally she yielded, and the natty young interpreter rendered her reply in his technical English:

  “‘I told her what I had heard about her boy friend—that he was perverse and vicious, and addicted to a certain unnatural practice.’”

  Charlie Kwok chuckled and said, “Well, she went into rather more detail than that—but evidently our interpreter doesn’t think it fit for your ears, Mr. Haynes. Are you satisfied?”

  “Yes, I think the witness has made her attitude sufficiently—ah—clear,” Haynes said. “I have nothing more to ask.”

  Then Suzie was called and came down out of the dock. She was looking very pretty in a blue silk cheongsam and as she crossed the court Charlie Kwok twinkled appreciatively and winked at the prosecutor, “I’d like to wrap her up and take her home.” And he spoke to her in the witness box like an uncle talking to a pretty niece with whom he is regretfully aware that on account of family relationship he is obliged to behave.

  However, it was Suzie herself who came nearest to ruining her own case. She was still so convinced of the justice of her attack on Betty that soon she had thrown all my warnings to the winds; and thrusting aside the questions of the kindly prosecutor, she tried to address herself directly to the magistrate. She just wanted to tell him what a nasty wicked person Betty Lau really was. She knew he would understand. And Charlie Kwok was obliged to rebuke her for these indignant outbursts and call her to order.

  “Well, she’s got spirit, I will say that for her,” he twinkled.

  Then Haynes cross-examined her, and all went well until he asked for her assurance that her attack on Betty had been committed thoughtlessly, in a sudden access of anger, and that she was
now sorry for what she had done. This was too bitter a pill to swallow. Sorry? For hurting that Canton girl? For punishing her for saying that spiteful dirty thing? I saw her struggle with herself. My heart stopped beating. And then all at once she burst out in Chinese and I could not understand what she was saying but I knew that it meant she was not sorry at all because Betty had deserved it, and—

  And then she stopped. She had caught my eye. She looked defiant for a moment, and I went on holding her eyes and trying to exert my will on her; and then she began to look a bit ashamed, and after another moment she glanced at the interpreter and said something in a tone that meant that she did not believe what she was saying, in fact she could see no earthly sense in it, but that she was saying it nevertheless to please her boy friend who had the silly idea that she could be sent to the monkey-house for committing an act of justice.

  “‘Yes, I am sorry for what I did,’” translated the sleek complacent young interpreter—and for the first time I positively liked him, for fancying himself as an actor, he had put an expression of sincerity into his voice that in Suzie’s had been so notably lacking. “‘I am very sorry.’”

  It was then time for lunch and there was an informal discussion about whether the hearing should be continued in the afternoon or the next morning. Charlie Kwok said obligingly that he was indifferent, and that it was up to Haynes and the inspector. Haynes mopped his brow, and glanced up at the ceiling for the twentieth time to see if the fans were still working. He said that he had really hoped to spend the afternoon at his office. He did not mention that his office happened to be air-conditioned. However, the inspector had just remembered that tomorrow morning he had a case over in Kowloon. He could only manage this afternoon.

  Suzie remained in custody during the break and I took Haynes to lunch at the Parisian Grill. He had chosen the P.G. himself because it was air-conditioned. It was also very expensive, but he had handled the case so well for us that I did not mind, and even suggested a bottle of wine to celebrate.

  “Wine?” he said. “Good Lord, no! It makes you too damned hot.”

  “Well, what’s in store for us this afternoon?”

  “We’ll be through by three o’clock. We’ve just got to sum up, then after Kwok’s found her guilty I’ll put in a plea of mitigation. I’ll say that she’s a decent girl though a bit hot-tempered, and that she’s now settled down with a regular boy friend of the highest integrity. Then Charlie will deliver a homily, tell her he’s being lenient and hopes she’s learnt her lesson, and fine her two hundred dollars.”

  “You said three hundred before.”

  “It’s gone better than I hoped.”

  An hour later we were back in court. And it all went as Haynes had predicted except in the last particular—Suzie was not fined two hundred dollars, but was sentenced to gaol.

  V

  It was not Haynes’s fault that he had failed to anticipate this sentence. For he could not have done so without knowing why the hearing had been changed to an earlier date, and this did not become apparent until Charlie Kwok enlightened us in his homily.

  “Recently we have been given a lot of trouble by girls who work in dance halls and bars,” he said, and he did not say it with a twinkle because he had left the twinkle behind at lunch. In fact it was almost as if Charlie Kwok himself had got left behind at lunch, and only the impersonal magistrate had returned; for he had acquired such an appearance of weighty authority that he seemed twice the size of this morning’s twinkling little robin. “In the past we have been very lenient with them, and they appear to have got the mistaken idea that they can take the law into their own hands. And there are now so many cases of this kind waiting to be heard that we have brought some of them forward, to show other girls that such nonsense must stop. Now you, Wong Mee-ling, have inflicted a very serious injury on another girl, with a pair of scissors, and you are very lucky not to be standing in the High Court on a much graver charge. I do not even get the impression that you are sorry for what you have done. I take a very serious view, and since I do not think that a fine will teach you a sufficient lesson, I am going to send you to gaol.” He paused and wrote something, and said without looking up, “Three months.”

  I could not grasp it for a minute. After the magistrate’s remarks I had been prepared for a heavier fine, but not for gaol. And there was Suzie standing only a few yards from me in her blue cheongsam and looking so pretty. They could not really be going to take her away and lock her up in Laichikok. It couldn’t happen.

  The interpreter repeated in Shanghai dialect, “‘Three months.’”

  Suzie frowned. She could not believe it either. She looked at the magistrate for an explanation but the magistrate was writing. One of the two Chinese policewomen in the dock said something to her. She did not hear. The two policewomen took her arms and marshalled her out of the dock. She looked round desperately for me but had lost her bearings and looked over the wrong shoulder. She stumbled over one of the policewomen’s feet and nearly fell. Before she could recover herself and look round again she had been whisked away through the door.

  I sat stunned. The magistrate rose from the desk on the rostrum. But he was the magistrate no longer—he had cast off the cloak of authority and reassumed the twinkling bird-like personality of Charlie Kwok, as deftly as one might remove bowler hat and overcoat and don a paper hat and false nose.

  “Well, I’m off to the dentist,” he told the inspector. “Just for a scaling. Wife refuses to go out with me until I get all this black off. Of course it’s smoking.”

  The inspector said, “You haven’t tried these new Red Spot cigarettes, sir? I’m told Red Spot don’t stain the teeth at all.”

  “Red Spot, eh? I’d be scared to touch them—might come out in a rash!”

  He chuckled off through the door behind the rostrum. Haynes came over mopping his neck. He looked really shattered.

  “Well, I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  “I ought to have known there was something up. I ought to have guessed.”

  “Can I see her before they take her off?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Only her solicitor—I can see her. I can give her a message if you want.”

  “I might see her when they bring her out.”

  “You’ll only see the van.”

  “I think I’ll wait all the same. Will you tell her I’ll be waiting?”

  I waited with Gwenny at the gate outside the court. It was two hours before the van came, and then it came across the courtyard quickly and a policeman stood out on the road waving it on so that it did not have to stop. The windows were dark blue glass and we could not see inside, but we waved and blew kisses in case Suzie could see out. It swung out onto the road and disappeared. We walked down the hill into the town and turned along the quay. There was a queue of cars at the vehicle ferry and the police van was at the head, waiting to cross over to Kowloon. The ferry was just coming alongside. The cars from the ferry came up the ramp in quick succession. After the last car had come off, the van went forward down the ramp and disappeared into the covered deck. The other cars followed and a minute later the water began churning again. We stood watching as the boat moved off from the pier. I realized that Gwenny was holding my hand. We watched until the boat went out of sight behind an anchored merchant ship, then turned away in silence and walked up to Queens Road to the trams.

  Chapter Five

  The only girl at the Nam Kok who had ever been in Laichikok before was the heroin-smoker Big Alice, who had served a month for acting as go-between in supplying drugs to sailors. That night I asked her what it had been like, and she shuddered with disgust and said, “Terrible. It is a terrible place. You have to work all the time. If you stop work for one second they beat you up. Sure! They don’t care if you die�
�they just beat you to death.”

  “Beat up the women? They don’t really, Alice?”

  “Sure! Lots of women get beaten every day.”

  Wednesday Lulu said, “I never heard that. I heard it is not bad in Laichikok, and nobody is beaten.”

  “I have been there, haven’t I?” Big Alice said. “I have been one month in that terrible place, and women died every day, and I came out with lice and crabs.”

  Fifi grinned. “They’re just honest. If you take something in, they give it to you back when you come out.”

  I asked Alice, “How soon can I visit Suzie?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “But she only went in today.”

  “Yes, but you can go and see her tomorrow.”

  Big Alice was very unreliable, and I was no more inclined to believe this than her stories of daily beatings-up. However, I rang the gaol to make sure and found out that it was true: the early visit was allowed so that women who had just been sentenced could arrange their domestic affairs. And so the next day I took a ferry over to Kowloon, then a bus out to Laichikok. After being kept waiting for a while at the gaol I was led to the visiting room and directed to a booth backed with wire mesh. Beyond the mesh was a narrow corridor patrolled by a wardress, then another thickness of mesh. Behind this stood a sad pale little figure with shorn-off hair and sallow unpainted face, wearing coarse gray smock and trousers several sizes too big.

  I said, “Hello, Suzie.”

  “Hello.”

  Her mouth was dragged down at the corners. Her eyes welled with tears. In another booth a woman was howling. And I understood why most prisons did not allow visitors while the wound was still fresh.

  “The girls all send their love,” I said. “They were terribly upset to hear what had happened, and we’re all just counting the days until you come out.”

  She could not speak. She could say nothing at all but stood there quite still with her arms at her sides and her mouth dragged down and the tears coming faster and rolling away down her cheeks. I went on talking but she did not open her mouth for fear of breaking down. I knew she could not bear the strain much longer, and presently I said, “Suzie, I’m going now, but I shall be thinking of you every minute,” and I turned and walked out of the booth without looking back. The time allowed for the visit was twenty minutes, but I had not been there more than five.