Earthly Powers (44 page)

       "Thanks for a pleasant evening." They would not let me get through. "Please," I said.

       "All the ladies have completely disappeared," Grieves said in feigned surprise. "All men together, situation normal, more or less. You," he said to the planter Booth, "are by way of being our new secretary. Is there a club rule that forbids debagging?"

       "Cut it out," Fothergill said. "We're not at school now."

       "Not," Symes said with mock prissiness, "before the natives. The DO," less mock, "would not be pleased."

       "Ah, come on," Grieves Liverpudlianly whined, "you don't know the DO like I do. It only means that Mr Toomey will parade in his shorts. Nothing indecent."

       I was glad to find myself feeling contempt. I was gladder when it moved to rage. "You and your bloody infantile games," I said to Grieves. I was surprised to see myself picking up Fothergill's empty pint glass by the butt. I opposed its mouth to that of Grieves. But wait, it had first to be cracked, jagged, to threaten to draw blood. The stern planter's hand of Booth grasped it, wrested it away before I could smash it on the bar-counter's edge. The number one boy Ah Wong, who must have been near seventy, crooned something, the fulfilment of some Taoist prophecy.

       Booth said, "The club rules certainly forbid violence or attempted violence between or to or from members, temporary or otherwise. I think we have a quorum. Will anybody put the motion?"

       "I can go, can I?" I said, shaking with indignation.

       "You not only can," Symes said.

       I could not find a trishaw. I walked to cool off, to heat up, up Bukit Chandan. Philip was not yet back. Yusof was in bed. I helped myself to a neat slug of Beehive brandy, shuddering with anger. I was dithering out another tumblerful when the Ford shook into the porch. "The bloody club," I told Philip as he came in. "The bloody bastards."

       "What's happened? Give me some of that. No, not that much. Christ, you're shivering."

       "They hinted, they leered, the bloody DO as good as spelt it out. They want to believe we're carrying on a homosexual relationship. Gives them a smug little thrill, the dirty-minded bastards."

       "Oh no." He sat in an armchair, I paced the Siamese carpet unsteadily. "Well, I suppose they were bound to, sooner or later. I just didn't think about it. The DO doesn't have much room to talk from what I hear. A homosexual relationship, eh? Well well well. Pure as the driven. We ought to have imported a couple of hints from the bazaar, that would have shut them. Looks as if I shan't want to come back here."

       "The trouble is. You remember that MP who came that time, Garside, the cocktail party at the Lstana? He did a bit of smearing, apparently. Bachelor writer living abroad, stories, actors, Oscar Wilde—"

       "Are you?" Philip looked at me pale. "Have you? I never even... It didn't cross my... Good God, my blessed innocence."

       "Ours. Ours. Whatever word I use will probably be wrong. We've just been 2 here together. We didn't have to put it into words. I was never so happy in my life. And I'm not leaving you, I'm not going to lose you."

       "No," Philip said very blankly. "We didn't have to put it into words. And we never talked about the future. What are we going to do?"

       "When does your leave start?"

       "Beginning of January. I get three months on full pay. Then back here, things as they were, Yusof on full pay too, caretaking. Pity. We'd just got things running nicely. Definitive thesis on yaws I thought, next tour, setting up of federal yaws clinic. Oh well, Ipoh, Penang, Kota Bharu, on the Beach of Passionate Love as they call it." He laughed without moisture. "Passionate love, well well."

       "We have to be together," I said. "But first I have to get out. I need to, anyway. I have to see Malacca. I thought of going up to Bangkok. Then I come home."

       "Where's home?"

       "You know damned well where home is. Where it will always be. Where did you propose spending your love, I mean leave?"

       "In a town I've never before visited, Adelaide, South Australia. My mother and stepfather are there. I haven't yet met my stepfather. A man who's gone partners with another man in a big sports store, the Aussies being keen on sport. Of the name of Black, which is a good plain no-nonsense unequivocal undescriptive kind of name, my mother's now, she being a very fair woman, very fair to herself, why not, why languish lifelong in widow's weeds?"

       "You don't approve?"

       "Oh, it's not up to me to have any opinion. Anyway, there's nowhere else to go."

       "I proposed the same general direction for myself, though further. I similarly have a stepparent unknown in the Empire, Canada as a matter of fact. No one in the world can plan all the way. We must think for the moment of a particular ship moving where?"

       "The SS Lord Howe, Singapore to Fremantle. Early January. Yes, we go together. We go everywhere together now. That's just something we know, isn't it? Is it wrong, I wonder? Are we depriving potential sexual partners of their right to a less, what's the term, Platonic bliss?"

       "It's not wrong, not from any point of view. This I know. I can leave now, I think, feeling, you know, for the first time—"

       "Secure, yes, secure, yes, secure. And that ought to make us both frightened. It's dangerous to feel secure, what with the big dirty Lord of Insecurity hovering. Don't go too far. Not without me. You need Malacca for this Raffles book?"

       "The look and feel of Malacca. I suppose I could get it all out of reading and imagination. But I feel I have to see Malacca."

       "Malacca, then. Stay at the rest house. I need to know exactly where you are."

       "Tomorrow, I thought."

       "Not tomorrow. Mahalingam's coming to dinner tomorrow."

       "Why for God's sake why?"

       "He was miserable, and no wonder. It's not the zombie son who's sick, it's the youngest, aged eight, the Benjamin, Jaganathan, the same as Juggernaut, a juggernaut's driving over him, poor little sod." Philip sounded drunk, it was the drunkenness of a sober elation for the first time articulated. "Tuberculous meningitis. Bad hygiene, bad feeding, a background of measles and whooping cough. They've left it late, trying to cure the vomiting with some bloody Indian confection and the constipation with castor oil. Now there's not much I can do. Mahalingam says he'll pay anything, anything, sell his daughters into concubinage, anything. I told him I couldn't do more than my best. 'My friend,' he said, 'my dear dear friend.' So he comes to dinner. And now we, tired out, much put upon, traduced, maligned, buggered about generally, go to bed."

       "Anyway, we know."

       "Yes yes, we know now, thank God we know."

       Mahalingam, in white tie and off-white suit, looking like a photographic negative of a European, came an hour early. The zombie son brought him in the phantom car: we heard objurgatory Tamil and metallic slaps before it sped off, too fast to be possible. "I have ordered the fool," Mahalingam told us, "to return for me in four hours' time." Oh Christ. "A very nice class of quarters," he admired grudgingly, "with ceiling fans and ornaments I take to be personal. This is your dead father, I see, and one of these two European ladies is your dead sister, the youngest of the two I must take it to be, the other is your living mother. Living, yes? Ah yes, it is your mother that is dead, Mr Tombey."

       A very necrological beginning to the evening. "Toomey."

       "That is the name I said. And this is you, Dr. Shawcross, standing at the wicket with bat awaiting delivery of ball. That is good, that makes you look young and well and content with life."

       "I've changed a bit since then."

       "To die," Mahalingam said, "to sleep, no more." Sitting down, accepting a watered whisky, he kicked off his shoes and allowed his large purple toes to touchtype the matting. "My dear son appeared better today, he seemed in much less pain, you thought so too, Dr. Shawcross, I know. We may hope now."

       "We may always hope," Philip said.

       "If anything happens to him, if anything happens...

       We waited. "Yes, Mr Mahalingam?" Philip said.

       "I do not properly know what I would do. Because he is the youngest and the best and also the last, because there will not be any more unless I rid myself of my present wife and marry a younger one, which it is not according to my 2 eclectic religion to do. You were wrong, Mr Toomey, to say electric, I think you were having a joke with me. For the son in the middle is not intelligent and the eldest son is a great fool, and in little Jaganathan rests all my hope, so we must hope. And also pray," he said fiercely to me alone. "Pray pray."

       "I promise you," I said, "I will do that. And not only for your own son, but for all children in pain and danger. Including the daughter of Mr Lee the grocer who, I understand, was admitted also last night."

       "With what disease?" Mahalingam asked Philip jealously.

       "A condition of the lower intestine. The prognosis is good," Philip said unwisely.

       "Intestines," Mahalingam sneered. "A girl. Chinese. A race of peoples that think themselves to be very clever." Yusof came from the kitchen into the dining alcove bearing a big partitioned dish of sambals, for we were to have a chicken curry. "Your boy,". Mahalingam confirmed to both of us. "How much do you pay him?"

       "The usual," Philip said. "He is well looked after." Mahalingam then loudly told Yusof in the special Malay of Tamils, the possessive morpheme punya used, for some reason, as a noun emphasizer, that he must be a good boy, loyal to his good master, undrunken, industrious and honest, not bringing dirty girls from the bazaar into his quarters, otherwise he, Mahalingam son of Sundralingam punya, would be on to him punya with visitations punya of various evil spirits, including the hantu hitam or black ghost punya. Yusof said nothing but looked toward Philip as if to know how seriously he must take all this, and Philip returned him a slight apologetic shrug.

       "They are superstitious peoples. Ghosts and spirits with floating lower intestines frighten them and make them do their work. They are stupid to believe such things can be seen when they cannot. For a spirit is of its spiritual nature invisible. It is serious study and not materials for superstition."

       "You know much about it, Mr Mahalingam?" I asked.

       "It is a very curious thing, Mr Toomey, and says much perhaps of ultimate constitution of the universe that invisible powers can rarely be employed to work good things. We cannot call spirits down to heal my poor little Jagana, than, who must be left to the mercy of human skills of Dr. Shawcross. But the spirits of destruction are ever eager to obey the call of even the unskilled caller upon them. This is a great mystery."

       "You mean it's an evil world?" I asked.

       "I did not say that, Mr Toomey. I spoke of mystery. Destruction and creation are together with Siva and his wife Kali in mythology of Hindus. Evil and good are not words to be employed lightly. When we speak of good things we mean good for ourselves, which may not be good for eternal beings. But we are weak and ignorant and must live our human lives, and love of our own flesh and blood may be stupidity and foolishness in world of the eternal beings, but still Z9 to us it is real. He must, he must," with violence, "he must be made hale and hearty and safe and sound again."

       "I know," Philip said, "you have an eccentric that is eclectic religion, whatever it is, but there are orthodox Hindus who say all life is sacred. This means the mycobacterium tuberculosis and the spirochete as well as the worms and insects that Indian labourers here so laboriously remove from their shovels. Western medicine seeks to kill these organisms. Is this a blasphemy?"

       "We must," I said, "draw the line somewhere."

       Mahalingam shook his head sadly and much. "I can speak only of love and loss and human misery. My dear son is in your hands, Dr. Shawcross, and I wonder why at this moment we are sitting here with our whisky and in expectation of by the aroma a curry when we, meaning your good self, should be watching over him with the eyes of eagles. Though I recognise the necessity of brief relaxation from work and sorrow, yes yes, but still I wonder. Still, I am now in your house and that is a blessing of itself. It is a balance and a control of things," he added obscurely.

       "He's sleeping," Philip said wearily. "I telephoned Dr. Lim a little while ago," he lied. "He is sleeping peacefully. His pulse is near to normal though his temperature is still high. We can do nothing more for the moment."

       "Yes yes yes, I see that. In my house both you gentlemen have observed many photographs of friends and colleagues fixed to the door of electric and also, Mr Toomey, eccentric icebox. As I now know you are a friend, Dr. Shawcross, I beg a little little favour, and that is of a photograph of yourself to join them. The one of yourself in batting posture at wicket should serve well and be deeply cherished. I ask only the picture, not the frame."

       "Well," Philip said, embarrassed, "this is a request that—Well, I suppose so. If I want to look at myself I suppose I can always look in the mirror."

       "Makan sudah siap," Yusof announced. The curry and the rice steamed on the table.

       "We must eat, yes, eat," Mahalingam sighed, getting up quickly and first. "My deep thanks," he said, going to the little display of photographs and, with remarkably nimble fingers for such great puddings of hands, freeing cricketing Philip from the staples at the back of the frame. "Now I know I have you with me all the time." The sort of thing I should have said and done, having a period of absence from home ahead of me, but Philip and I were British and not much, except about animals, given to sentimentality.

CHAPTER 37

The following morning we were both still exhausted after four hours and more of Mahalingam. Mahalingam's anxiety about his Benjamin had expressed itself in large appetite and atavistic table manners, a session of unashamed weeping, a phase of profound and anxious dyspepsia which Philip had to treat with a solution of baking soda inducing resonant relief, a request that we should all go and spend the night around little Jaganathan's bed, temporary anger at our unwillingness to comply, a maudlin assurance that despite everything we would always be his friends unless we harmed him in which eventuality he would demonstrate that he could be a proper pig, a desire to threaten over the telephone the nursing staff with direst consequences in the case of deterioration of the patient's condition, a long pseudophilosophical disquisition on the joys and agonies of paternity, a number of regurgitations of ill-digested school Shakespeare, a cadenza of ancient proverbs, a detailed account of his, Mahalingam's, career as a public servant, a Timonesque diatribe against an ungrateful Madras, vitriolic brief lives of treacherous friends and colleagues, and an embarrassing and most explicit catalogue of copulatory postures. It was no wonder that Mahalingam was heavily on Philip's mind: his first act on waking was to telephone the hospital and enquire as to the Benjamin's condition. The juggernaut had been apparently deflected from its crushing course, for Philip said "Good" and even tiredly smiled. "Call the father, will you?" he said. "Yes, at the waterworks. Thanks." He sat down to tea and toast and segments of pomelo on the verandah saying, "It looks as though the diagnosis was wrong. A sort of colitis, Lim thinks, just like the Lee kid. Constipation, so the mother stuffs him with aperients. Pain, so she pours in the laudanum. No wonder they couldn't get him to wake up. I've had meningitis a bit too much on my mind lately perhaps. Anyway, temperature's down and pulse near normal. That's a load off. Don't much like the look of the weather." Coiling clouds that seemed loaded with machine oil rolled as in slow pain. You could almost wring the air of humidity. "Monsoon time coming, though, have to expect it. Hits the lower part of the town badly when the rains start. The river overflows and some of them have to drag their bedding and kualis and umbrellas onto the roof. Crocodiles snap at them. I had an old Chinese year before last with an arm bitten off at the elbow. Snakes nest in the trees. Last year wasn't too bad. We may be lucky again. Anyway, thank God we're on a hill." He looked at me in a new way, appropriate to a joint avowal that Mahalingam had temporarily driven out. "You're off today then?"