Turtle Beach

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  When Ralph strolled to the verandah and joined his friends – a Chinese, two Sikhs and a Tamil – a waiter detached himself from his motionless group and went to fetch a stengah for him.

  ‘I’m on beer tonight,’ Ralph called out. He noticed, as he looked after the waiter, that there were two or three women seated inside near the bar, and his expression became irritable again. The Dog’s polished long bar, on which planters had formerly ridden their bicycles on Friday nights, had once been out of bounds to women. Ralph considered it a blight on a good club to allow women in the bar.

  ‘What’s this, you bugger, drinking beer? Too mean to buy whisky now?’Johnny Kok said. His round, bespectacled face squeezed up with delight at his own wit. Johnny was in excellent spirits: his accountant had told him that morning that he was a millionaire in Malaysian dollars. Not bad, for a fellow of twenty-five.

  Ralph’s face creased again with irritability. ‘Doctor’s orders. I’m not meant to be drinking at all, with this gut of mine.’

  ‘You go to bloody lying Sikh witch-doctors,’ Johnny said. ‘You should go to a good Chinese doctor. A few little herbs, a bit of acupuncture, and you’re fixed! Isn’t it, Dr Singh?’ He poked the Sikh in the ribs.

  Dr Devinda Singh gave a big, slow grin and settled his feet more firmly on the floor tiles. A plump pod of genitals bulged the material of his flannels, his Sikh virility as undisguisable as a bull’s. ‘Listen to the Chinaman,’ he said, turning to his co-religionist, Dr Lukbir Singh.

  Dr Lukbir was not as modern as Dr Devinda and still wore the turban and beard. He was shorter and fatter, and giggled. ‘You should not be drinking, Ralphie,’ he said. ‘Better for us lions to drink! Alcohol is milk to us.’

  Ralph relaxed into the evening game. The creases that ran from his nostrils to his mouth and gave his face a look of handsome bitterness flattened out. ‘The bloody warrior race,’ he replied amiably. Swearing was de rigueur in the group but four-letter words were avoided, for this was neither a club nor a city in which working-class mannerisms were admired. Ralph’s voice moved carefully around vowels which rolled with ease from the Oxford-trained tongues of his large, dark companions. ‘All you buggers are called …’ Ralph added.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ Dr Lukbir became excited. He had been drinking with Devinda and Johnny for an hour already and was in the mood for recalling Sikh greatness. He beat at his chest with a brown dimpled fist like that of a giant baby’s. ‘We are called Lion. Our ladies are called Princess. We are warriors.’

  Sometimes, on the hockey field, Dr Lukbir used his stick as if it were a sword and so did Dr Devinda.

  Terry Donleavy, a third secretary – immigration – from the Australian High Commission had walked up to them and stood there, limp-armed and grinning. Ralph had invented his nickname, Opium, ‘which stands for Slow Working Dope,’ as he would explain.

  ‘G’day, Terry,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Hullo, boss. Hullo, chaps,’ Opium said eagerly. He was restraining within his body some momentous secret. In a second he would let it out, Ralph realized, for Terry’s blue eyes, always prominent, were bulging with excitement.

  Ralph felt a stab in his guts. Opium was a master of the foot-in-the-mouth statement.

  ‘You’ve heard? Her Ladyship’s disappeared,’ Opium said.

  The Sikhs smiled at him indulgently, familiar with the undisciplined jabbering of white trash. And of yellow.

  ‘You’re shickered, Terry,’ Ralph said. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you another beer.’

  He rose and escorted Opium to the bar, where a Malay was saying to another Malay, ‘Did you read that the Tamils threw chairs again at a political meeting in Petaling Jaya, last night?’

  When Ralph and Opium were a safe distance from the others he said tartly, ‘That’s for Australian ears only. The cables about it are classified secret.’

  ‘Jees,’ Opium said. ‘Other people know.’

  Like an anxious, blue-eyed puppy, Ralph thought. His own eyes were a cool grey. ‘Who told you?’ he asked.

  ‘That Malay from Reuters. He asked me to go for a drink at the Brass Rail and then he said, “What’s the latest on the search for Lady Hobday?”’ Opium’s expression was hurt. ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather. I didn’t even know she was missing.’

  ‘Forget he told you,’ Ralph said. Opium was gazing at him with awe; its unconscious stimulation of egotism worked. Ralph added unwillingly and irritably, ‘All anybody knows is that she didn’t arrive at the Pantai Motel the night before last. Neither she nor her driver has been seen since they left KL on Monday. Special Branch is checking the villages and kedais.’

  ‘Jees,’ Opium said.

  Ralph wished sometimes that he was not Terry’s boss, so that he could flatten him. Instead, in the office, he imposed small humiliations on him and suffered moments of revulsion for both of them when Terry, cheerful and innocent, carried out unnecessary tasks. ‘They’re also checking the East Coast camps,’ he said, to cover his animosity.

  ‘Has there been a ransom note?’ Opium whispered.

  ‘No.’ This idea – that Minou had been kidnapped – had not occurred to Ralph himself. He wanted to add, Your moments of intelligence, Opium, are more frightening than your stupidity.

  He was about to abandon Opium at the bar when he thought of something else. ‘There is an Australian journalist, a sheilah called Judith Wilkes, coming in on the Qantas flight tonight. Don’t tell her anything about the boat people that isn’t official information. Nothing about the coppers or the blackmarket, understand?’

  Opium winked at him. Ralph thought his head would explode. The indiscreet little shit.

  ‘Can I buy you a beer?’ Opium asked.

  ‘No thanks. I’m getting the drinks for our group.’ Ralph signed a chit and returned to his peers.

  They had entertained themselves in his absence with more play. One of the main rules of their game, of which they never tired, was that Johnny Kok, being the youngest and unmarried, and the richest, should be oppressed by the older men. His role was to provoke them, up to a limit. None of them doubted that when at last the Chinese came to power that Johnny would be among the leaders. Already he had established a mess for useful friends; the girls there, people knew, were Javanese and Thai, and remarkably proficient. Ralph was the only member of The Dog whom Johnny had invited to the Kuala Lumpur Film Distributors’ Association Mess, and he had been shocked by the politically radical conversation there. He had spent the night talking, reluctantly leaving the sitting room for a five-minute bang only once, despite Johnny’s hostly urgings to try the Thai girl as well. Johnny had not invited him again, but had said, ‘You’re like me, man. Not really interested in the ladies,’ to which Ralph had replied, ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

  Judging from the way Johnny’s arms were jerking in the air and from his yelps of ‘Bloody black-faced buggers!’ his teasing by the others was now well advanced. The only one who was not either talking loudly or laughing was the Tamil, Dr Kanan, whose title referred to philosophy and history. Ralph’s eyes rested on him. No Caucasian could resist for long the temptation to gaze at Kanan, although he spoke rarely and hid, rather than sat, in chairs. An Englishwoman had once remarked to Ralph, ‘He looks as if even his eyelashes were made personally, by God’, and Ralph had replied tersely, ‘Yes. And he keeps them for his wife.’ It had already occurred to Ralph that if he were a homosexual he would fall in love with Kanan. Once, thinking of his friend, he had tried a Tamil girl and had been sickened to see that his skin looked pale green against her purple blackness. The envy he had felt for her body had kept him away from Tamil girls afterwards.

  Kanan’s eyes seemed to admire whatever they rested upon; for the moment this was Ralph’s haggard, handsome face, already marked by death. It embarrassed Ralph, this grave, tender regard of Kanan’s. He returned it with a grin and an up-your-arse hand gesture, then turned to the Sikhs. His tone was confidential: ‘You know, of course, that Kanan comes from a v
ery strict religious background, where beef is eaten only on Fridays?’

  They all chased this new hare, baying with merriment. More drinks arrived. The backcloth of sky turned grey for a few minutes then invisible stagehands whisked it away to replace it with a dark blue and, seconds later, a black one. Change was swift and uncompromising close to the equator. The bats disappeared and the outer darkness became luminous from orange public lighting.

  Kanan was laughing. At length, run to a standstill, he said, ‘To be very frank with you, Ralph, I am named after the god of Thaipusam. He discovered “OM”. One of the names of the Lord Subramaniam is Discoverer of OM’.

  ‘All you cow-worshipping buggers have got dirty names!’ Johnny yelped.

  The Sikhs chuckled and swayed about on their fat bottoms. They had no problems with names, like the Hindus, who were called improper things such as Great Sex. Dr Lukbir Singh began crooning softly, using the tune of a famous Indonesian song, popular among the Malays.

  Bengali one is so long

  Melayu one is potong

  But China one is like sontong …

  There was laughter from another table. Ralph looked over, saw Tunku Jamie and raised his hand in greeting. The prince returned it with a jolly, regal nod.

  ‘Say hullo to the opening batsman, Johnny,’ Ralph said. As everyone knew, it burned Johnny that for political reasons the captain of the Dog’s cricket team, his brother in race, had been forced to make ‘that useless Malay bugger’ (as he referred to Jamie in private) opening bat, instead of Johnny. Johnny regarded all Malays as useless. He had recently discovered a way to avoid the government’s instruction that one-third of all employees must be Malay. It was expensive – he had to pay a double set of salaries and keep another set of books – but it was worth not having the lazy, privileged buggers in his offices. He retained a couple of sleepy minor nobles on his board and sometimes took them to the mess, where they spent the whole night making love with the Javanese girls. It was well known to the Chinese where the Malays’ brains were.

  ‘Good evening, Your Highness,’ Johnny said. He slunk down in his armchair and stared with eyes grown as small as cracks behind his spectacles at Dr Lukbir’s blue turban. Two metres away the prince was giving out rich gurgles of amusement at the song.

  The song ended. Johnny Kok stood up and knocked Dr Lukbir’s turban off his head.

  For a moment it seemed as if even the ceiling fans had stopped spinning overhead. Then Dr Devinda Singh rose to his feet. Johnny’s spectacles went flying across the tiled floor. ‘You Mao Tse Tung bastard,’ Singh bellowed. He glanced at his co-religionist whose skull, streaked with sickly strands of metre-long hair, was shamefully exposed as he scrabbled beneath a chair for his turban. Dr Devinda Singh thumped his heart. He trod heavily on Ralph’s foot as he launched himself across the verandah, down the steps and on to the padang. Johnny had not bothered with the steps, but had vaulted the verandah rail.

  ‘I say!’ said Tunku Jamie. ‘Old Dev is giving Johnny stick!’ He sauntered to the rail, squinting across the darkened field. ‘Do you think he’ll catch him?’ he asked conversationally. ‘Damned shame we can’t see.’

  Only Kanan made a reply: he shook his head. Ralph was doubled up, stretching towards his injured foot. The sudden pain of it had flashed upwards into his bowels and had exploded there.

  ‘Kanan,’ he whispered, ‘Kanan.’

  ‘You are very ill,’ Kanan said as he walked beside Ralph to the lavatory. He knew it was futile to tell Ralph the truth written in the clenched lines of his body, that he was dying. And so he said nothing. People who brutalized themselves died in this horrible way, by ripping themselves apart and calling it frustration or illness.

  ‘Come off it, mate. All I’ve got is a dose of the shits. Lousy Indian food.’

  Kanan waited for him outside the lavatory.

  ‘You’re immune,’ Ralph said when he emerged.

  Kanan had experienced his friend’s pain and felt faint himself. He decided to try to help. ‘Ralph, it’s your job,’ he said and saw that Ralph understood him and accepted his fond concern; they had been friends for fifteen years.

  Ralph reached forward and touched his fingertips to Kanan’s cheekbone, then withdrew his hand quickly, and snorted. ‘You think I should give up work and live off Sancha’s dough? Not me, mate.’

  Kanan said mildly, ‘But you married her for her money.

  If one’s wife has a big dowry …’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that, is it?’ Ralph muttered. They’d discussed it all before. As an immigration officer posted overseas Ralph could offer Sancha the benefits of expenseaccount living: a vast house paid for and maintained by the Australian government; servants; a duty-free Mercedes; duty-free booze; subsidies for the children’s school fees; free holiday travel. And for this self-respect in the role of husband-provider, Ralph had undertaken a job that gouged at his humanity, bit by bit, hour by hour, using to himself and others the excuse ‘I don’t make government policy. I only execute it.’ The alternative was for him, Sancha and the four kids to live on an unenhanced Australian salary, assuming he could find a job in some other area of the public service or in a university, and that was not good enough. When her sister, who’d married a stockbroker, came to stay with them in KL, Ralph had been flooded with uxorious affection and well-being as he heard Sancha sympathizing, ‘How devastating for you, Di, not to have a cook. Can’t Tony write one off as a typist, or something?’ Di, who was a bloody good sort, had replied with exasperation and a coquettish smile at Ralph, ‘We’re not millionaires, you know.’ Such comments weighed in as huge deposits in the account books of one’s life; keeping them balanced was the process by which you strove to stay alive.

  ‘It’s easy for you,’ Ralph added to Kanan.

  On the verandah Ralph shouted, ‘Goodbye chaps. It’s been wonderful knowing you. I’ve just agreed to let Kanan drive me home.’ It raised a few laughs, but not from the Sikhs. Devinda had rejoined his friend and now four other Sikhs, all turbaned, were sitting with them, holding cricket bats between their knees.

  ‘Johnny over-reacted,’ Ralph said as they walked back past the famous dog-chaining verandah posts. ‘Chinese nerves are at breaking-point with this refugee business.’

  Kanan nodded. ‘The boat people are their kin. When the villagers stone them the Chinese feel they are being stoned. It’s back to ’69.’

  Outside in the still, warm air Ralph felt well again; his body was at peace after the tearing attack. ‘They’re frightened of them, too. Johnny said to me the other day, “We Chinamen don’t like any limitations on us. We like to make money all ways. Bloody Chinese Vietnamese made so much money, under Diem, under Kee, under Thieu. Now they can’t make money, so they come here.” Making dough is a soft option in Malaysia. The local Chinese don’t want competition from real pros.’

  In the car Ralph went on, ‘The refugees are phase four of the Vietnam war. Thailand will collapse from the weight of their numbers. The King will be assassinated, or become an exile, like Sihanouk. Malaysia will be up for grabs by combined local and northern communists, or from the south, by the Indonesian generals. It’s only a matter of time. Maybe five years.’

  ‘Everything is only a matter of time,’ Kanan said. He was manipulating the gear stick with deep concentration, as if it were a dislocated shoulder joint. The car jumped forward and smashed a headlight on the tree trunk in front of it.

  ‘Poor tree,’ Kanan said. He got out and examined the broken bark. ‘I think it will be all right,’ he said to Ralph, doubtfully. He watched with curiosity and delight as Ralph put the car into reverse for him. He has lover’s eyes, Ralph thought.

  They steered slowly through the commercial centre, over roads that were being constantly dug up, widened or altered in direction. The whole city was in a phase of diastole, responding to the demands of the economic miracle brought on by the ten good years the Vietnam war had given the ASEAN nations, and buoyed up now by the booming c
ommodities market. In the commercial centre bigger, brighter office blocks were climbing monthly on the sites of smaller buildings not yet old enough to be dilapidated. In the suburbs the jungle was being torn down and the old rubber plantation trees slaughtered to give ground for Hiltons and housing complexes. The trishaws had disappeared. Around the Golf Club pool English ladies said, ‘Every South Chinese coolie is driving a Mercedes these days,’ and ‘The boarding schools at home are full of Malay children.’ Their husbands warned club newcomers, ‘You can get a game for a thousand dollars a hole, any day of the week.’

  As they passed the Ampang Park shopping complex where red-and-gold Chinese New Year banners, three metres wide, hid some of the smaller advertisements on the facade, Ralph said, ‘This was once the prettiest city in South-East Asia.’

  ‘You are a conservative these days, isn’t it?’ Kanan replied. He laughed softly. ‘I still remember the day you stood on a box at Sydney University and shouted that you wanted to be drafted so that you could burn your draft card, too.’

  ‘I was bloody lucky I was already too old for the draft,’ Ralph said. ‘Sancha’s father was convinced I was a communist. If I’d been arrested as well …’

  ‘You would have enjoyed that, isn’t it?’ Kanan said. ‘You are still a romantic’ Ralph was used to such assertions from Kanan who, western-educated though he was, was Indian down to the pale yellow tips of his black fingers, and who had an Indian’s vanity of omniscience concerning the human heart.

  ‘Get fucked,’ Ralph replied mildly.

  They had crossed Jalan Pekeliling and were now near Ralph’s house. The streets here were poorly lit so that coming in to the area for the first time, at night, one could imagine it was almost uninhabited. In fact the houses here were mansions set in huge gardens, commonly half a hectare or more; they were hidden from the road by high vine-covered fences and giant trees. The suburb was unnaturally cool and quiet because of the vegetation. Whenever one of the trees was cut its stump would be invaded by parasite vines and within a few days the stump would be smothered. All life was constantly alert here, not with circumspection as in temperate climates, striving merely for survival, but boldly, striving for conquest.