Saint Jack

by Paul Theroux

  “Got,” said Mr. Sim.

  “Good, I knew I could count on you. But the thing is, we’re in kind of a rush—my friend’s ship is leaving in the morning—”

  “Six-twenty,” said the feller anxiously, still glancing around.

  “—and he doesn’t want one too old,” I said. The feller’s instruction meant he wanted one younger than himself; that was simple—he was over sixty, and no hooker downtown was over thirty. I went on to Mr. Sim, “And she has to be nice and clean. They’re clean, aren’t they? The feller was asking about that.”

  “Clean,” said Mr. Sim.

  “Fine,” I said. “So can we come in and have a look-see?”

  “Can,” he said. He undid the chain and swung the gate open. “Come in, please.”

  “A red light,” said the feller. “Appropriate.”

  “Yes, sir, appropriate all right!” I said, stepping back. “After you.”

  He was mistaken, but so pleased there was no point in correcting him. The red light was set in a little roofed box next to the door. It was a Chinese altar; there was a gold-leaf picture inside, a bald fanged warrior-god, grinning in a billowing costume, wearing a halo of red thunderbolts. He carried a sword—a saint’s sword, clean and jeweled. A plate of fresh oranges, a dish of oil, and a brass jar holding some smoking joss sticks had been set before it on a shelf. The feller had seen the light but not the altar. It was just as well: it might have alarmed him to know that the girls prayed and made offerings to that fierce god.

  “Cigarette?” asked Mr. Sim, briskly offering a can of them. “Tea? Beer? Wireless?” He flicked on the radio, tuned it to the English station, and got waltz music. “I buy that wireless set—two week. Fifty-over dollar. Too much-lah. But—!” He clapped his hands and laughed, becoming hospitable—“Sit! Two beers, yes? Jack! Excuse me.” He disappeared through a door.

  “So far, so good,” said the feller, fastidiously examining the sofa cushion for germs before he sat down and looked around.

  He seemed satisfied. It was what he expected, obviously the parlor of a brothel, large, with too much furniture, smelling of sharp perfume and the dust of heavy curtains, and even empty, holding many boisterous ghosts and having a distinct shabbiness without there being anything namably shabby in it. The light bulb was too small for the room, the uncarpeted floor was clean in the unfinished way that suggested it was often very dirty and swept in sections. It was a room which many people used and anyone might claim, but in which no one lived. The calendar and clock were the practical oversized ones you find in shops; the landscape print on the wall and the beaded doilies on the side tables looked as if they had been left behind rather than arranged there, and they emphasized rather than relieved the bareness. The room was a good indicator of the size and feel of the whole house, a massive bargelike structure moored at Muscat Lane. Outside, the date 1910 was chiseled into a stone shield above the door; the second-floor verandah had a balcony of plump glazed posts—green ones, like urns; the tiled roof had a border of carved wooden lace, and barbed wire—antique enough to look decorative—was coiled around the drainpipes and all the supporting columns of the verandah.

  The feller sniffed: he knew where he was. In the room, as in all brothel rooms, a carnal aroma hung in the air, as fundamental as sweat, the exposed odor from the body’s most private seams.

  “Ordinarily,” I said, “Mr. Sim wouldn’t have opened up for just anyone. Like I say, he knows me. They all do. Not that I’m bragging. But it’s the convenience of it.”

  “I’m very grateful to you,” he said. He was sincere. The house on Muscat Lane was a classic Asian massage parlor and brothel. If it had been a new semidetached house on a suburban street he would not have stayed. But when he spoke there was the same nervous quaver in his voice as when he had spied the rat. He was trembling, massaging his knees.

  That made half the excitement for a feller, the belief that it was dangerous, illegal, secretive; the bewildering wait in a musky anteroom, swallowing fear in little gulps. A feller’s fear was very good for me and the girls: it made the feller quick; he’d pay without a quibble and take any girl that was offered; he’d fumble and hurry, not bothering to take his socks off or get under the sheet. Fifteen minutes later he’d be out of the room, grinning sheepishly, patting his belt buckle, glancing sideways into a mirror to see whether he was scratched or bitten—and I’d be home early. I disliked the fellers who had no nervous enthusiasm, who sat sulkily in chairs nursing a small Anchor, as gloom-struck and slow as if they were at the dentists, and saying, “She’s too old,” or “Got anything a little less pricy?”

  “I wonder what’s keeping your friend,” said the feller, leaning over to look through the door. The movement made him release one knee; that leg panicked and jumped.

  “He’ll be along in a jiffy,” I said. “He’s probably getting one all dolled up for you.”

  “I was going to ask you something,” the feller said. “The purser on the ship said there were pickpockets here. People in Singapore are supposed to be very light fingered.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” I said.

  “I was just asking,” he said. “The purser lost a month’s salary that way.”

  “It happens, sure,” I said. “But no one can take that fat pig-skin thing you cart around.”

  “How did you—?” He hitched forward and slapped his backside. “It’s gone!”

  I pulled his wallet out of my pocket and threw it over to him. “Don’t get excited. I pinched it when we saw the rat. It was hanging out a mile—I figured you might lose it.”

  The explanation upset him. He checked to see that all the money was there, then tucked the wallet inside his blazer. “So it was a rat.”

  “Well—” I started, and tried to laugh, but at that moment Mr. Sim came through the door with Betty, who was carrying a tray with two beers and some cold towels on it. “Hi, sugar,” I said.

  The nutcracker, I called her, because her legs were shaped exactly like that instrument; she was not simply bowlegged—her legs had an extraordinary curvature, and the way they angled into the hem of her skirt gave no clue to how they could possibly be hinged. Her legs were the kind a child draws on the sketch of a girl, a stave at each side of a flat skirt.

  Betty poured the beers and handed us each a cold towel with a pair of tongs. She took a seat next to the feller and waited for him to wipe his face with the towel and have a sip of the beer before she put her brave hand casually into his lap. The feller clutched his blazer, where he had stuck the wallet.

  “You like boochakong?” asked Betty.

  The feller looked at me. “They understand that my ship is leaving at six-twenty?”

  “She know,” said Mr. Sim. “I tell her. Betty very nice girl. She . . . good.”

  “She’s a sweetheart. She’ll really go to town on you,” I said to the feller; and to Betty, “You take good care of him—he’s an old pal of mine.” I stood up. “Well, nice meeting you.”

  “You’re not going, are you?” said the feller. He plucked Betty’s hand out of his lap and stood up.

  “Things to do,” I said, burying my face in the cold towel. “I’ve got to get some rest—the fleet’s in this week. Those fellers run me ragged.”

  “I’ll never find my way back.”

  “Can ring for a taxi,” said Mr. Sim. “Where you are dropping?”

  The feller was beside me. “Stay,” he whispered, “please. I’ll pay for your trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” I said. “I just wanted to help you out. You looked lost.”

  “I’ll treat you to one,” he said confidentially.

  “It doesn’t cost me anything,” I said.

  “I thought maybe you were doing this for the money.”

  “I get my share from Mr. Sim,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “So there’s no way I can get you to stay?”

  “You can ask.”

  “I’m asking, for Pete�
��s sake!”

  “Okay, I’ll hang on here,” I said. “Take your time.”

  “Thanks a million,” he said, and nodded in gratitude.

  “What your name?” asked Betty, steering him out of the room, carrying his glass of beer.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” I heard the feller say to her on the stairs.

  “He’ll be back in ten minutes,” I said to Mr. Sim.

  “No, no!” said Mr. Sim. “Rich fella—old man. Halfhour or more-lah.”

  “Bet you a fiver.”

  “Bet,” said Mr. Sim, eager to gamble.

  We put our money on the table and checked our watches.

  “Quiet tonight,” I said.

  “Last night! English ship! Fifty fella!” He shook his head. “All the girls asleeping now. Tired! You like my new wireless set?”

  “Nifty,” I said. “Nice tone. It’s a good make.”

  “The fella come back, he want me to eat a mice?”

  It was Mr. Sim’s party trick. He ate live ones whole to astonish and mortify rowdy seamen; he appeared beside a feller who was getting loud and offered a handful of them. When they were refused, Mr. Sim would dangle one before his mouth, allowing it to struggle, and then pop it in like a peanut, saying, “Yum, yum!” It was a shrewd sort of clowning, and it never failed to quiet a customer.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Might give him a fright. He’s scared of rats.”

  “Rats,” Mr. Sim laughed. “During Japanese occupation we eating them.”

  “Rat foo yong,” I said. “Yech.”

  “No,” Mr. Sim said, seriously. “Egg very scarce. We make with tow foo, little bit chilies, and choy-choy.” He wrinkled his nose. “We hungry-lah.”

  “I’m not scared of rats,” I said. “But I really hate cockroaches. I suppose you could say I’m scared of them.” And what else? I thought—odd combinations: locked rooms, poverty, embarrassment, torture, secret societies, someone in a club asking me “Who are you,” death, sun-bathing.

  “Aren’t you scared of anything, Mr. Sim?”

  “No,” he said firmly, and he looked handsome.

  “What about the police?”

  “These Malay boys? I not scared. But they making trouble on me.”

  “Buy them off,” I said.

  “I buy-lah,” he said. “I give kopi-money. Weekly!”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “These politics,” said Mr. Sim. “The other year some fella in here shopping votes—‘Okay, Sim Xiensheng, vote for me-lah’—and now they wanting close up house. Pleh!” He laughed—the insincere, unmodulated Chinese cackle, the mirthless snort of a feller surprised by a strong dig in the ribs. It was brief, it had no echo. He said, “They close up house—where we can go? What we can do?”

  “Go someplace where they can’t find you,” I said. “I know a few. I’ve been playing with the idea of starting up on my own, something really fancy.” Mine would be at the edge of town, a large house with stained-glass windows—dolphins, lilies, and white horses—to keep the sun out; an orchestra in the parlor—six black South Indians with brilliantined hair, wearing tuxedos, playing violins; silk cushions on the divans, gin drinks and sweet sherbets. “Jack’s place,” they’d call it.

  Mr. Sim laughed again, the same reluctant honking. “You not start a house. You get trouble.”

  “Well, no more than you.”

  “More,” said Mr. Sim, and he showed me his face, the Hakka mask of a tough pug, the broad bony forehead, no eyebrows, just a fold in the brow, the swollen eyes and lower lip thrust out and the hard angular jaw. He said again, “More.”

  The door opened.

  “Hi there,” said the feller, moving quickly toward us. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  Mr. Sim looked at his watch and grunted.

  “That’s mine, I believe,” I said, and scooped up the ten dollars from the table.

  The feller sat down. Betty brought him a glass of tea and a hot towel. The feller wiped his hands thoroughly, then started on his chin, but thought better of it and made a face; he dropped the towel on the tin tray. “Shall we go?”

  “I’ll just knock this back,” I said, showing him my glass of beer. “Won’t be a minute.”

  He had crossed his legs and was kicking one up and down and attempting to whistle. What looked like impatience was shame.

  “Betty . . . good,” said Mr. Sim.

  “Very pleasant,” said the feller. But he avoided looking at Betty as he said so. To me, he said, “You must find Singapore a fascinating place. I wish we had more time here. We’ve got three days in Colombo, then off to Mombasa—a day there—then—”

  “Nice watch,” said Mr. Sim. “Omega. How much?”

  “Thank you,” said the feller, and pulled his sleeve down to cover it. “Er, shouldn’t we be going?”

  “Plenty of time,” I said. “It’s only a little after eleven. Say, how’d it go inside?”

  “Not, um, too bad,” he said, still kicking his leg. “Say, I really think we must—”

  “Jack,” said Betty.

  “Yoh?”

  “He got one this big!” She measured eight inches with her hands. It was a vulgar gesture—the feller winced—but her hands were so small and white, the bones so delicate, they made it graceful, turning the coarseness into a dancer’s movement. Only her open mouth betrayed the vulgarity. I saw a tattoo on her arm and reached over to touch it.

  “That’s pretty,” I said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “No,” she said. She covered it.

  The feller coughed, stood up, and started for the door.

  “See you next time,” said Mr. Sim.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  “Don’t mention. Bye-bye, mister,” he called to the feller. Then Mr. Sim drew me aside. “You taking girls out to ships, some people they don’t like this but I say forget it. Everybody know you a good fella and I say Jack my friend. No trouble from Jack. Two hand clap, one hand no clap. But you listen. You don’t pay kopi-money. You don’t start up a house, or—” He rubbed his nose with the knuckles of his fist and looked at the floor, saying softly, “Chinese fella sometime very awkward.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said.

  “Would it be safe to take a taxi?” the feller asked when we got to the corner of Sultana Street.

  “Oh, sure,” I said, and flagged one down.

  On the way to the pier I said, “It’s rather late for intros, but anyway. My name’s Jack Flowers—what’s yours?”

  “Milton,” he said quickly. “George Milton. If you’re ever in Philadelphia it’d be swell to see you. I wish I had one of my business cards to give you, but I’m fresh out.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. He was lying about his name, which on the I.D. card in his wallet was W. M. Griswold; and his address was in Baltimore. It might have been an innocent lie, but it hurt my feelings: he didn’t want to know me. I had rescued him, and now he was going away.

  “The first thing I’m going to do when I get down to my cabin is brush my teeth,” he said. The taxi stopped.

  “I don’t blame you, George,” I said.

  “Will you take twenty bucks?”

  “Now?” I said. “Yes.”

  “Be good,” he said, handing it over.

  It was still early and I was within walking distance of the seafront bars. I strolled along the pier, stepping carefully so I wouldn’t get my shoes dirty on the greasy rope that lay in coils between the parked cars and taxis. At Prince Edward Road, near the bus depot, two fellers were standing under a streetlamp trying to read what looked like a guidebook. They were certainly tourists, and probably from Griswold’s liner; both wore the kind of broad-brimmed hat strangers imagine to be required headgear in the tropics. It gave them away instantly: no one in Singapore wore a hat, except the Chinese, to funerals.

  I walked over to them and stopped, rattling coins in my pocket with my fist and negligently whistling, as if waiting for a bus.
Their new shoes confirmed they were strangers. I could tell a person’s nationality by his shoes. Their half-inch soles said they were Americans.

  “Kinda hot.”

  They turned and enthusiastically agreed. Then they asked their reckless question in a mild way. I nodded, I whistled, I shook my jingling coins; I was the feller they wanted.

  It was so easy I could not stop. I hustled at a dead run until the streets were empty and the bars closed. New to the enterprise, I had the beginner’s stamina. It wasn’t the money that drove me; I can’t call it holy charity, but it was as close to a Christian act as that sort of friendly commerce could be, keeping those already astray happy and from harm, within caution’s limits. I raided my humanity to console them with reminders of safety, while reminding myself of the dangers. I was dealing with the very innocent, blind men holding helpless sticks; their passions were guesses. It especially wounded me that Griswold had lied about his name: in my conscientious shepherding I believed I was doing him, and everyone, a favor.

  Guiding rather than urging, I paid close attention to a feller’s need and was protective, adaptable, and well-known for being discreet. In those days it mattered, and though I acted this way out of kindness, not to impress anyone as a smoothie, it won me customers. There were so many then, and so grateful. I shouldn’t remember Griswold among them, for he was so typical as to be unmemorable—something about the very desire for sex or the illicit made a feller anonymous without trying. But Griswold had lied; the lie marked him and identified his otherwise nameless face and brought back that evening. His distrust made me relax my normally cautious discretion, and for years afterward if a feller said he was from Baltimore I replied, “Know a feller named Griswold there?” Some knew him, or said they did, and one night a feller said, “Yes, we were great friends. That was such a damned shame, wasn’t it?” And I never mentioned him again, this man who had refused my grace.

  6

  THE HOUSE on Muscat Lane was one of several in Singapore that did business in the old way. Any port is bound to cater to the sexually famished, but the age and wealth of a city, until recently, could be determined by how central the brothels were. Once, in old and great cities, they were always convenient, off shady boulevards, a stone’s throw from the state house; in the postwar boom they went suburban to avoid politicians and high rents; then they moved back to the center—Madam Lum’s place was near a supermarket—and it was no longer possible to tell from their location the city’s age, though prosperity could still be measured by the number of whores in a place: the poorest and most primitive, having none, made do with forced labor, blackmail, or unsatisfying casual arrangements in ditches and alleyways and in the rear seats of cars.