“Gosh that feels good.” I closed my eyes, enjoying it, feeling my muscles unknot.
—breath control’s very important. Take a deep breath—way down. Beautiful. Now let it out real slow, and twist—
“Hop off, Thelma,” I said. I went over and looked through the view finder. The general crouched next to the girl in the bikini who was stretched out and making loud sounds of breathing. I snapped two pictures.
Thelma had stripped, and bare, seemed serious and businesslike, her nakedness like a uniform. She saddled herself on the small of my back and dug her knuckles against my ribs, and then went through the kneading and pinching routine again, neck, shoulders, and spine, warming me all the way down to my kidneys.
“Gorgeous,” I said. Her knees were tight against my ribs, and still she rode me, jogging slightly as she massaged.
—that’s what we call the crawl. Now let me show you the breast stroke. This is a very useful one. All you have to do—
“Picture,” I said, and Thelma slid off. I wound the film and shot.
“Turn over,” said Thelma when I crept onto the bed again.
“Hey, wait a minute—”
But she had already unbuckled my belt, and laughing softly, explored me as she shoved my trousers down to my ankles.
—push those hands all the way out—
“You say no, but he say yes.”
“He? Who’s he?” I looked at the tape recorder.
“This one,” said Thelma. She gave my pecker a squeeze and made it look at me with the single slit eye on its rosy dome.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Our friend here.”
—pretend you’re flying. That’s it—
I disengaged myself and hopped to the wall to take another picture.
“You very sexy, mister,” said Thelma. “Look!”
“That’s right,” I said, “broadcast it.”
“He like me, mister.”
“Not so loud,” I hissed.
“What style you wants?” She lay flat and put her hands behind her head, as if responding to the swimming lesson coming over the tape recorder’s speaker: Floating on your back is easy if you know how—. Then Thelma did an extraordinary thing; she knelt in a salaaming position, an expressive and dainty obedience, and put her face against the pillow, and raised her buttocks into the air. She laughed and said what sounded like, “Woof, woof.”
“Let’s keep it simple,” I said. I stood thoughtfully between the camera and the bed, holding my pecker the way a patient fisherman holds his pole. “And don’t be surprised if I hop up in the middle of it. I’ve got a job to do, Thelma.” I shuffled over to the bed, muttering, “And honestly it’s a very ticklish business.”
I embraced her, holding her tightly with my eyes shut; she rotated, helping me, and at once my engine began turning over, quietly rousing my body, warming old circuits in my belly and beyond. I had taught myself and shown others that love was the absence of fear; so this sexual veneration, pure joy, made the past accessible. I was raised up, a prince at the parapet of his castle tower, to look over a bright kingdom of memories. Today, without inviting him, I saw Roosevelt Rush, a black deck hand on the Allegro, who called me “Flahs” and slept with a nylon stocking drawn tight over his hair. One hot night, anchored in Port Swettenham, he stood in the engine room carefully pouring whiskey over his pecker. I remarked on the quality. “Black Label,” he said: “Ain’t nothing too good for this banana,” and he kept pouring. He flicked drops from his business end and explained, “Think I got me some clap from a ‘ho’.” I’d had it myself seven times, and got used to the progress of the complaint I called a runny nose: the unusual sting on the third day, the sticky dripping, the pinching pain of leaking hot needles, and the itch that was always out of reach. I knew tropical pox doctors by the solidly painted windows of their storefront clinics, and was treated by men with degrees from Poona who jammed syringes into my arm as if they were celebrating Thaipusam, said “drink plenty bottles of beer,” gave me capsules the size of Mexican jumping beans, and offered to waive the ten-rupee fee if I’d help them emigrate to Canada.
Thelma groaned; I rode her like a dolphin and plunged back into my memory: I was lying on Changi Beach eating a melting ice cream with Tai-ann and Choo-suat; in the Botanical Gardens hearing a smart Sikh regiment of bagpipers play, “Will You No Come Hame Again”—and I cried then into my hands; in my narrow back garden discovering with surprise and pleasure a wild orchid fastened to my elastic fig; in a cool bedroom in Queen Astrid Park with that beautiful woman who panted “Jim, Jim” into my ear, and then laughed; in that noisy little hotel on Prinsep Street one afternoon, where I held a short-haired girl from behind and was jerked from my towering reverie by a screech of brakes in the street below, a wicked bump, a howling dog that went on howling even after I stopped. That memory froze me today.
And of course there were the pictures.
Sexual desire, a molehill for a boy of twenty, gets steeper with age, and at fifty-three it is a mountain. You pant up slowly at a tricky angle; but pause once and you slide back to where you started and have to begin all over again. You’re learning real quick, the general said; and Try it this way—don’t be shy; and Let me hold you. The interruptions of these three pictures almost undid me, and at the end Thelma said, “Ai-yah! Like Mr. Frank!”
“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick there, sugar,” I said. Frank, one of the balding “eggs” from the Cricket Club, supported his lovemaking with an assortment of Swedish apparatus. The pesky things were always slipping or jamming and needed constant adjustment. One day I met the old feller on Bencoolen Street. He was smiling. He took an ugly little cellophane-wrapped snorkel out of his briefcase and said proudly, “I think this is the answer, Jack. She runs on batteries.”
Thelma shook her head. She was amused but nevertheless disgusted.
“This is official business,” I whispered. “You wouldn’t laugh if you knew what.”
“Like Mr. Frank!”
“Have it your way,” I said, and paid her. “Feel like sticking around?”
She counted the money and put it into her purse. “Madam Lum say come back with legs on. If I late she scold-lah.”
“Stay till six,” I said. “For old times’ sake.”
She smiled. “For twenty-over dollar.”
I considered this.
She said, “For twenty, can.”
“Never mind,” I said. I opened the door for her, and then I had the same feeling that worried me when the boys left: with no one else in the room I didn’t exist, like an unwitnessed thunderclap in the desert. I sat down with a gin and read through the Belvedere brochures. They offered room service—“Full-course dinners or snacks served piping hot in the traditional Malay style.” Also: “Relax at our poolside bar—or have a refreshing dip” and “Your chance to try our newly installed sauna” and “It’s happening at our discotheque—the ‘right now’ sounds of The Chopsticks!” Another bar promised “alluring hostesses who will serve your every need.” There were a 24-hour coffee shop, a secretarial service, French, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants, and a nightclub, “Featuring the Freddy Loo Dancers,” a Japanese kick line and an Australian stripper. And mawkish suggestions: No visit to Singapore is complete without—and You will also want to try—
This you they kept addressing, was it me? I looked at the nightclub brochure again. The stripper was waving from the seat of a motorcycle. That finished me. I changed into my flowered shirt and started lacing my shoes.
—You’re sure I’m not hurting you?
—Sure.
I wound the film. I closed my eyes. I snapped; and securing my room with a DO NOT DISTURB sign, fled down the fire stairs.
They were on the verandah of the Bandung, in the low wicker chairs with the swing-out extensions on the arms, all of them with their feet up, their heels hooked, as if they were about to be shaved. Yardley was reading the Straits Times to Frogget, who listened with a pint of beer resting
on his stomach.
“That ghastly old sod got an O.B.E.,” said Yardley. “Would you believe it? And guess who got an M.B.E.? This is ridiculous—”
“What’s cooking?” I said, pulling out the arm extensions on a chair next to Yates and settling in. I put my legs up and was restored.
“Honors’ List just published,” said Yates. “Yardley’s rather cross. He wasn’t knighted.”
“I’d send the bloody thing back,” said Yardley. “I wouldn’t be caught dead on the same list with that abortionist. Christ, why don’t they give these things to people who deserve them?”
“Like Jack,” said Frogget.
“Maybe Jack got an O.B.E.,” said Smale.
“Very funny,” I said.
“Let’s have a look,” said Yardley. He rattled the paper.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “Pass me the shipping pages.”
“Aw, that’s a shame,” said Yardley. “They missed you out again.”
“Where’s Wally?” I asked.
“Wally!” shouted Smale. Once, a feller came to the Bandung and did that very same thing, shouted Wally’s name from the verandah; and Smale said, “If you do that again I’ll boot your rude arse.” The feller was an occasional drinker; no one had ever spoken to him, and after Smale said that he never came again. Soon, each of us had a story, a reminiscence of his behavior, and Yardley finally arrived at the view that the feller was crazy.
Wally appeared at my elbow.
“A double pink gin with a squirt of soda,” I said. “And ask these gentlemen what they’d like.”
“Telephone for you, today morning,” said Wally. “Mr. Gunstone.”
It passed without a remark. I had just bought everyone a drink.
“What about you, Yatesie?” asked Smale. “When’s your M.B.E. coming around?”
“It’s just a piece of paper,” said Yates.
“Listen to him,” said Yardley. His legs clattered on the wooden rests as he guffawed. “When I came in here at half-five he was reading the paper, looking for his name.”
“That is untrue,” said Yates with a note of hurt in his voice that contradicted his words.
“He’d give his knackers for an M.B.E.,” said Yardley, “and even the flaming Beatles got that.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” said Smale, and cursed under his breath. “I wouldn’t complain if I got one of those things. Face it, none of you would.”
There was a moment of silence then, the silence a bubble of sheepishness, as mentally we tried on a title. Viscount Smale. Lord Yardley. Sir Desmond. Lord Flowers, I was thinking, Saint Jack.
“Who’s on the list?” I asked. “Anyone I know?”
“Apart from Wally, who got a knighthood—right, Wally? Sure you did—only Evans, the twit that works in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. M.B.E.”
“Evans? Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know him. He’s in the Cricket Club.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Yardley.
“Or so I heard,” I said.
“He makes a good screw,” said Smale. “Him a banker.”
“Rubbish,” said Yardley. “Not more than three or four thousand quid.”
“Call it four,” I said. “It’s ten thousand U.S. That’s pretty good money.”
“Pretty good money,” said Yardley, mocking me. “Four thousand quid! That’s not money.”
“Ten thousand bucks would take you pretty far,” I said. Frogget laughed uncertainly and looked at Yardley.
Yardley shifted in his chair. He said, “That’s not money.”
“No,” said Smale. “Not real money.”
“I suppose not,” I said.
We stared into the garden. It was darkening; the garden became simple and orderly in the twilight, the elastic fig and the palm it strangled were one. The mosquitoes were waking, gathering at the verandah light and biting our exposed ankles. Frogget slapped at his bare arm.
“Say fifty or sixty thousand quid,” said Yardley. “That’s money.”
Someone’s wicker chair creaked.
“Or maybe a hundred,” said Frogget.
“You could live on that,” said Yardley.
“You certainly could,” said Yates.
“Imagine,” said Smale.
“Funnily enough,” I said, “I can.”
“So can I,” said Frogget.
“The last time I was on leave,” said Smale, “I took a taxi from Waterloo to King’s Cross. Had a lot of baggage. I paid the fare and told the driver to keep the change. ‘A bob,’ he says, and hands it back to me. ‘Fit it up your arse.’”
“That rosebush wants pruning,” said Yates.
“‘Fit it up your arse’,” said Smale. “A shilling!”
“It wouldn’t fit,” said Frogget.
“That reminds me,” said Yardley. “The funniest thing happened today. It was at Robinson’s. Jack, you’re not listening.”
“I’m all ears,” I said.
5
MY WEEK was over, though it seemed like more than a week: it was very hard for me to tell how fast the time went with my eyes shut. It was the suspenseful captivity I had known with Toh’s gang, the time no one ransomed me. I sat blinded by resolution in my luxurious armchair—luxury at that price now something like a penalty—and I recorded the general confirming his plane ticket, packing his bags, phoning for a taxi; I knew that I was listening to the end. Mr. Khoo came up and filled the holes in the wall. I checked out quietly and went back to Moulmein Green. It was three in the afternoon. I slept under the fan and woke up the next day to the squeals of children playing outside my window. They were comparing paper lanterns they had obviously just bought, squarish roosters in red cellophane, airplanes and boxy fish.
A few days later, at Hing’s, I was standing in the shade of the portico, watching the traffic on Beach Road, my hands in my pockets.
“Sorry,” said a voice behind me. I turned and saw Jimmy Sung unzipping a briefcase. “The pictures,” he said, laughing, “no good, myah!” He passed me a thick envelope of pictures.
“If they’re duds it’s not your fault,” I said. I flicked through the envelope and saw rippling water stains on an opaque background; some were totally black, others smirched and blurred. No human form was apparent. I was off the hook.
“Wrong esposure,” he said.
“That’s how it goes,” I said. I wanted to hug him.
“And these,” he said. He gave me a smaller envelope.
“What’s this?”
“Some good ones.”
“You said they were all dark.”
“Not all.” He nodded. “I make some estra print. Okay, Jack, I see you.”
“Be good,” I said. I took the envelope into my cubicle to open it, and with fingers slowed by dread I started shuffling. The swimming lesson was first, and though “swimming lesson” sounds like the euphemism for a pervert’s crimp, this one looked genuine enough: the girl thrashed, the general stood at the end of the bed and coached, and in one he appeared to be giving the girl artificial respiration. Some showed the girl alone, or the general alone, and at the side of the picture the arm or leg of the other. Two I liked. In the first the general was wagging his finger at the grinning girl; in the second they were staring in different directions, the general vacantly at his watch, the girl at her splayed-out fingers. It was always the swimmer. One I treasured: the general’s arms were folded around the dark girl who sat in his lap and held his head in her hands. He was a big man, his embrace was protective, and her posture replied to this. If the photograph of a posture could prove anything, this proved fondness, even if it was a hopeless flirtation like his own war.
As blackmail they were of no value—the opposite of incriminating. It might have been different; in the Belvedere that week a crime fantasy had sustained me. The blackmailer photographing what he thinks is an infidelity discovers that he is witnessing a murder; he hears the threats, he sees the violence, he springs into the room, a nimble rescuer in t
he nick of time. It would have made a good story. Mine was not so neat, but there in my cubicle I had my first insight into the whole business: betrayal may damn, or it may vindicate. It was, after all, revelation. I had spied on the general to find him guilty; I came away with proof of something ordinary enough to be blameless. I was as relieved as if it was an affirmation of whatever well-intentioned gesture I had made: that impulsive embrace when one can believe for a full minute that one is not alone. So I was saved, and I thought: might not some chilly gray intriguer, hard by an enemy window, watch sadness or love rehearsed and change his mind? Shuck held him responsible for a war. I could not speak for that outrage, but in one respect, the only one I had seen, the man was gentle. I had spied on innocence.
“You looked pleased with yourself,” said Shuck in the Pavilion. Shuck had taken a corner table, and he looked around the bar as he spoke to me.
“I’ve got them.” I patted my breast pocket. “He’s in here.”
“How about a drink first,” said Shuck. “I’m just having a Coke.”
“Gin for me,” I said. “Well, here they are.”
We were beside a ship’s clock, under a long shelf of brassware, old pistols, sabers, and muskets. Shuck looked closely at the clock before he opened the envelope. He kept his poker face while he examined each picture, and when he finished and put them back he said, “Any others?”
“Nope.”
He creased the envelope. “He’s no Casanova, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t have believed it. But these’ll be useful. I mean, he’s with a Chinese girl, loving her up and so forth. He’ll have a hard time explaining that to the Pentagon. You know the girl?”
“Swimming lessons,” I said. “Can I see them a minute?”
Shuck palmed them and put them into my hand. I slipped the envelope into my pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Keeping them.”
“Maybe it’s better that way, for the time being.” Shuck was still looking around the bar, half covering his mouth when he spoke, though with his lisp I doubted whether anyone could have understood a word he said.