by Tash Aw
“Why are you taking it off?” he said. “Everyone is impressed by your attire. Everyone here is thrilled by the way you look.”
“No, Johnny—you are thrilled by my attire. No one else cares, no one has even noticed, for goodness’ sake. Even Snow hasn’t mentioned anything.” It was true. All evening, not a single person had complimented or even passed comment on my meticulously assembled costume. It was wasted on this lot. Perhaps satin capes and dinner jackets were commonplace in Chinese culture. In any event, I made a mental note never to rely on the good citizens of the Valley as barometers of taste.
“But you are the—what’s the word you used earlier?”
“Epitome.”
“Yes, the epitome of an Englishman.”
“No—Frederick Honey’s the type of Englishman you’re after. He’s your epitome.”
Johnny looked puzzled. He shook his head, frowning. “Frederick Honey is nothing.” He was not going to be convinced otherwise.
We went back inside, walking on the wide verandah that ran along all four sides of the house. I made for the piano, where a slender young woman was brusquely bashing out a rendition of the “Rondo alla Turca.”
“Shall we try something for four hands?” I said, easing myself onto the edge of the stool. She flashed a coquette’s smile at me and moved aside, swatting absently at the folds of my cape as if it were an insect that had landed too close to her. We found some sheet music for Schubert’s famous Fantasy and managed to blunder our way through the opening lines. “You’re too fast for me,” she complained, even though I thought I had slowed down.
“I’m sorry,” I said, frightened that I had committed another faux pas by offending a fellow guest. A small crowd had gathered to listen now, including, I noticed, my host and hostess themselves.
“No, that was very impressive,” T. K. Soong said. “Why don’t you play something else, Peter? On your own, perhaps.” I felt like a terrified schoolboy being set a test. I nodded and placed my fingers on the keys. In the polished façade of the upright I saw Honey’s white jacket as he joined the small audience. I began to play some Bach—a partita I had always been fond of—but not long after I started, I realised that I would not be able to finish it: I had forgotten how it ended. Ignoring the panic now swelling within me, I closed my eyes and allowed my fingers to be guided by instinct. Cunningly, I repeated bars here and there, until finally I could keep up the pretence no longer. I allowed the piece to end, pianissimo, hoping that no one would notice, although to my ears it sounded horribly brutal.
“Interesting interpretation,” Mr. Soong said. “I like Bach very much. Play more.”
I smiled, and played a little Scarlatti sonata, something less clever than the Bach, but which I was certain I knew. I went on to Liszt’s cheerful transcription of “Die Forelle,” which was greeted with scattered applause. When I turned around I found Mr. Soong seated at the edge of his voluminous rosewood chair; he was smiling and slowly clapping his hands. I glanced at Honey, whose face was set in studied indifference; my eye caught his and he smiled, his thin lips seeming to twist into a cruel little sneer. All this time, Johnny had been perched on the edge of the upright, watching my fingers on the keys. Occasionally he would look at the people behind me and smile tentatively—at Snow, perhaps? I wasn’t sure—and then glance at me with a look of untainted optimism. He was thrilled simply to be there, and that, in turn, made me feel the same.
“Shall I sing?” I asked Mr. Soong, knowing he would agree. I had the wind in my sails now and nothing was going to stop me. I began with a bit of Dichterliebe, which I thought I did remarkably well, given that I was accompanying myself. And then I went on to some folk songs—French and English, bright wholesome tunes, full of fun. “Thank you,” Mr. Soong said, smiling, as he stood up. And then, as he walked away laughing, “How young people are nowadays.” I regaled the remaining audience with some recent songs by Cole Porter and Ivor Novello, and was pleasantly surprised to find that some knew the words and sang along. The whisky had gone to my head too, I’m sure. I was singing an old English folk song, “I Know Where I’m Going,” when I realised that there were only two people left listening to me—Johnny and Snow. All evening I had been looking out for her—partly to thank her for her kindness to me on the day I had been bitten by the snake, and partly because I could scarcely remember her face. I wanted to assure myself that, really, she wasn’t as extraordinary as I remembered her to be; that it was the poison in my blood that had played tricks with my vision. But throughout the party she had been surrounded by other guests, many of whom appeared to be admirers. I could not get close enough to her to examine her face, yet now she was right in front of me, watching me intently as I played the piano. I became conscious of my voice, of its ridiculous Englishness and incongruous baritone amidst the softness of Oriental tones.
“That was very pretty,” she said. “My father approves of—indeed admires—your musical abilities, as we all do.” She spoke in a very direct manner, open and forthright, unlike the charmingly veiled way in which the other young women in the room spoke. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Her face was distinctly pubescent, yet there was something in her features that made her seem harder than a mere teenager—a quality of manliness, I thought. The way she carried herself, too, lent her an air of maturity.
I bowed my head to hide the flush that had inflamed my cheeks. “Thank you,” I said. “Do you play the piano? Yours seems an unusually musical family.”
She laughed. “Considering we are Chinese, you mean.”
“No,” I protested, “that’s not what I meant at all.” I felt at once tainted with the same horrible brush as had smeared Frederick Honey. I rose from the stool, the tide of anxiety rising ever higher inside me; my cape was caught under the legs of the stool, and I struggled to free myself. “I merely meant that you seem exceptionally appreciative of good music, and that’s very rare.”
She smiled, looking unconvinced. “Of course,” she said as she sat down. “We are unusual, you’re right. People in the Valley generally can’t afford the luxury of music.” When she brought her fingers to the keyboard I saw they were long and slightly stiff, but perfectly formed. She played slowly, a rustic, even crude melody that sounded entirely foreign to my ears. It was the loveliest thing I had ever heard.
“It’s a Malay folk song,” she said, “a love song. Not very smoothly transcribed, I’m afraid.” She said it unapologetically, smiling peacefully.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. She rose from the seat and walked slowly to the kitchen, her dress—a shapeless silky smock hanging loosely over equally voluminous trousers—obscuring the outlines of her figure. I began to follow her, but found Frederick Honey in my path instead. He held a drink in each hand and offered one to me. “Enjoying the party?” he said.
“I loathe spirits,” I said, looking at the tumblers of whisky.
“I was never overly fond of scotch myself,” he said, continuing to hold the drink before me, “until I came out to the tropics. Away from home—many thousands of miles away—my tastes have changed. I rather enjoy my whisky now; I drink it all the time. It’s much better for you than the filthy water here.”
“How Byronic of you, existing on alcohol and nothing else. Was that a tip you picked up at the School of Oriental Studies? Any other helpful hints you’d like to pass on?”
His face contorted slowly into a smile: mirth did not come easily to him. He leaned in close and pressed the drink into my unwilling hand. “Everything’s different here. Forget home; the same rules don’t apply. Just bear that in mind.” The smile faded and he left to regale Una Madoc with an inebriated, out-of-tune serenade, which she greeted with exaggerated hilarity. They linked arms and did an awkward little jig as if they had been transported back to the Scottish Highlands; they looked like Siamese twins suddenly separated, constantly falling away from each other but somehow unable to let go. The other guests looked upon this spectacle with bemusement; they remained
resolute in their reticence, chatting quietly as they had before. Some hardly seemed to notice the commotion. Dancing, it occurred to me, was not a very Chinese activity. I looked around for Snow but she was nowhere to be seen.
Afterwards, Johnny accompanied me as I cycled back to the rest house. I gave him my miserable cape and he wrapped it around himself, letting it trail behind him in the dark. His words were still rushed from the excitement of the evening. “Snow’s father cannot believe how a person like me can be friends with someone as cultured as you are.”
“Johnny, please,” I started to say, but I knew that nothing I could say would change his mind. I was feeling strangely exhausted, and wanted to be on my own.
“In his eyes I am an uncivilised animal and whatnot, you see. How can a sophisticated Englishman be my friend? With his daughter, yes, because she is educated and so on and so forth. Snow’s father thinks it is impossible for me to communicate with you, I know that for certain.”
“Does it matter what he thinks?”
“When he looked at me this evening I could see in his eyes, for the first time ever, that he was impressed, et cetera. He regards me differently because of you, I think.”
“He can think what he likes, it makes no difference to anything.”
We rode on in silence for a while. My head began to throb; even at this time of the night the heat had not abated.
“Peter,” Johnny said. I had not even realised that he had stopped bicycling. His voice, quieter now, emerged from the dark some distance behind me. “Can I ask you something?”
I didn’t answer.
“If anything bad happens with the Japanese,” he said, “you’d help me, wouldn’t you? Me and Snow. I don’t care about the others. Just me and Snow.”
“We don’t know yet that anything is going to happen at all,” I said.
“But if something does happen.”
In the dark, I remembered the picture of his innocent, trusting face squinting into the sun as we stood on that hill. St. John. Friendship. Love. Sacrifice. The first time I had ever known the truth of those words.
“Yes,” I said, “I promise.”
THIS AFTERNOON we were taken on a shopping expedition to Malacca Town. Half a dozen of us squeezed into the rickety minivan, a clatter of walking sticks and obdurate wheelchairs refusing to fold. Merely getting into the vehicle was a military campaign, I thought, as I sat serenely in the front passenger seat, disassociating myself from the unearthly clamour behind me. It is a wonder that these trips do not more often result in someone leaving behind a prosthetic limb. “Taking a group of eighty-year-olds anywhere is an act of mercy,” Alvaro said as he took his seat.
“Not an act of mercy,” I said, peering at him from behind my sunglasses, “an act of foolishness.”
The purpose of our trip was to buy presents and a few sad little decorations for Christmas, still two months away—plenty of time for the boxes of chocolate to be forgotten (or eaten) and the baubles lost amidst the general confusion that holds reign over our House. As usual, the instigator of this idea that we, the residents, should participate in Christmas festivities was Alvaro. “We can’t let the House organise everything,” he said when we learnt that a special collection had been made at Sunday Mass for us that week. “We are not a bunch of invalids!” he cried.
“Aren’t we?” I said, looking around the room, but there was no stopping him. He is, I suspect, excited now that there is every possibility of our garden being transformed. I suppose it is only natural that he expects the interior of the house to match its eventual exterior. Some hope.
We were dropped off by the Stadhuys, the journey having lasted a mere quarter of an hour (though, as always, it felt much longer, what with the constant grizzling from the back of the van). Our minders—three earnest volunteers, sixth-form boys from the church school—greeted us and quickly took charge of those unfortunates in wheelchairs. There followed the usual cacophony: who wanted to do what where when etc. I stood apart from this unsightly melee, taking stock of the “Red” Square. I never thought of the square as being particularly red when I first saw it more than fifty years ago. The colour of the Stadhuys was, I think, truer to its original then—a weatherworn terra-cotta, red only in the sense that an Etruscan urn is red. Now, meticulously repainted by the town council, it looks too shiny and too orange. Given the nationalistic evangelism of the town council, I doubt very much that this colouring was a subtle hommage to its Dutch heritage. Christ Church is, of course, properly red, built as it is of laterite. When I first saw it, I was struck by the richness of its colour, which spoke of all the warmth of these new tropical lands. I discovered only recently that the red stone is only a façade, a pretty cladding over the church’s true fabric of bricks imported from Holland. Suddenly it appeared colder, more foreign; a fake. Not that it makes much difference anyway, seeing as we are actively discouraged from visiting this great bastion of Dutch Protestantism. As if to spite me, our church is, in contrast, a dull nineteenth-century monstrosity—built, naturally, by a Frenchman.
I followed the others acquiescently into the new shopping precinct, a frightful collection of fluorescent-lit shops selling an array of plasticky objects of virtu. I endured, as usual, the tediously unimaginative taunts of “Mat Saleh,” spat at me by bored adolescents. It has always baffled me how the name of a minor Malay nationalist who fought against the British came to be a term of cheerful abuse, hurled with alacrity at any passing Caucasian. If memory serves me correctly, Mat Saleh died in vain, shot by the British Army. Independence didn’t come to this country for another sixty years after his death; he was hardly a hero. I never used to experience these vulgarities—not even after Independence, when so many people were fiercely proud of their new country. I cannot recall when the insults first began—in the seventies, I suppose. So inured am I by twenty years of these moronic taunts that I scarcely notice them nowadays. I did, however, notice what the other old men were buying: Christmas-tree angels dressed in the costume of Straits Chinese; boxes of vile-smelling durian cake, tied with bows; dodol, that gum-rotting confection of condensed palm sugar; lengths of violently red-coloured paper—“for cutting into animal shapes,” Gecko told me. He also bought a CD of Christmas music which had, on its cover, a group of smiling, vacuous American teenagers whose gleaming teeth betrayed a startling overconsumption of calcium. It included such songs as “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” and “¿Mamasita, Dónde Está Santa Claus?”
“What on earth are you going to play this on?” Alvaro demanded of Gecko.
“My radio,” he said with utter certainty before wheeling himself away in his shiny new wheelchair.
I drifted to the back of the group and waited until our teenage minders were distracted by a poster of a young woman, tartily dressed and inappropriately named Madonna. Then, when I was sure no one was looking, I slipped quietly away, escaping via a nearby fire exit. Out in the open, I retraced my steps, heading down to the water’s edge. At Porta de Santiago I paused to buy myself a bottle of purple Fanta, for which I have an abnormal weakness. The athletic young woman who ran the stall smiled at me sweetly, and I felt obliged to buy a bag of pickled mango too; I discarded it in some bushes as soon as I was out of sight. On the esplanade that runs along the seawall, I strolled under acacia trees whose tiny leaves lay scattered like confetti across the ground. In the deep shadows of the undergrowth young men and women canoodled, too drenched in young love to notice my hobbling presence. I stopped at a dirty wooden bench, looking out at the mud-grey sea. A raft of flotsam, ensnared by a fisherman’s net, drifted placidly on the scum-topped waves. I did not have to wait long before I heard a tuneless whistle and a soft coo-cooing from the bushes behind me. “Hello-o, mister,” a voice called. I turned around and saw a young woman leaning against a tree, her powdered face accentuated by scarlet lips. She sashayed towards me, eyes hidden behind huge mirrored sunglasses. I knew at once that she was a transvestite, and a prostitute too. Slowly, I began to relax, w
ashed by the waves of a familiar excitement as she sat with me and struck up the usual anodyne patter: what’s my name, where do I come from, what nice thick hair I have. The girls may come and go but their talk remains the same. Always, I invent the answers. It’s easier for both of us. How could I respond truthfully and fully to the question “Where is your home?” I couldn’t possibly begin. My only dwelling place is now no longer on this earth—I destroyed it many years ago. And so, over the years, I have sought occasional refuge in the fleeting company of these glossy-haired girls. Their hands are always quick and smooth, their lips cool and efficient. I do not seek these girls to relive the fervid longings of younger days. Memories are things to be buried. They die, just as people do, and with their passing, all traces of the life they once touched are erased, forever and completely. Many years may pass until another encounter with such a girl, but I know the next one will be just as this one was. She will finish with me, smiling kindly at my flaccid failure and earnest pleadings; she will take her small fee and deposit it swiftly in her handbag; and then she will walk away, leaving me whimpering quietly to myself, all alone before the silent, muddy sea.
THE FIRST TIME I saw Kunichika he was standing under a tree looking through a pair of binoculars. I was returning from an outing with Johnny and chose to walk along the ridge of hills that ran above the rest house. I walked down the path that led to the rest house, singing “La donna è mobile” with much brio, when I suddenly noticed a tiny mirrored glint, a pinprick flash of light from the escarpment above me. It took me a while to locate him standing in the shade of a small tree whose tiny, twisted trunk seemed all the more tiny and twisted next to his easy, erect figure. Never one to leave the itch of curiosity unscratched, I scrambled up the rocky path, through a tangle of trees, to where he was standing. He did not drop the binoculars when I approached; for a second I thought he had not noticed me.