The collected stories (35 page)

'Ah Meng?'

She didn't turn. She swallowed. Len thought she was going to speak. She sipped again at her mug.

'My lunch. Where is it?'

She swallowed again, gargling loudly. That was her reply. It was as if she had said, 'Get stuffed.'

'Is it in the-' Len opened the refrigerator. The lunch was not inside. He was going to speak again, but thought better of it. Marian was around the corner, at the table - out of sight but probably listening. Len found a paper bag in a drawer. He put three bananas in it and looked for something more. He saw a slice of bread on the sideboard and reached for it. Ah Meng snatched it up. She bit into it, and sipped at her mug. Her back seemed to wear an expression of triumph. Len left the kitchen creasing the bag.

'Got it,' he said. He went behind Marian and kissed her on her ear. She was raising a spoonful of egg to her mouth, which was open. She stopped the spoon in midair, held it, let Len kiss, and then completed the interrupted movement of the spoon to her mouth.

That evening, when Len returned from the department, Marian said, 'Ah Meng wants a raise.'

DOG DAYS

'Really?' said Len. i thought we just gave her one.'

'We did. At least you were supposed to. I wouldn't put it past you to hold back the five dollars and buy something for yourself.'

'No,' said Len. He ignored the sarcasm. He had given Ah Meng the raise. He remembered that well: it was one of the times he had been about to seize and press her hand; but he had handed over the money and panicked and run. 'I did give it to her. When was that? About a month ago?'

'I told her she gets more than the Novaks' Susan, and doesn't have children to mind. She gets her food and we pay her Central Provident Fund. I don't know what more she wants.'

'What did she say?'

'She insisted. "Want five dollar, mem,'" said Marian, imitating absurdly. Her mimicry was all the more unpleasant for the exaggerated malice of its ineptness. 'It's not the five dollars, it's the principle of the thing. We gave her a raise a month ago. If we give in this time she'll ask again next month, I know. I told her to wait until you came home. You're better with her.'

'Maybe we should give it to her,' Len said. 'Five bucks Singapore is only one sixty US.'

'No, I expect you to be firm with her. No raise this month!'

In the kitchen, Ah Meng faced him - was that a sneer or a smile? Len said, 'Mem says you want a raise. Is that right?'

She didn't blink. She continued to sneer, or perhaps smile. There was a red mark, just at the base of her neck, near the bump of her shoulder bone, a slight love scratch. From his own hand.

'Says you want five dollars more.'

Her expression was that of a person looking at the sun or facing a high wind. It was a look only the Chinese could bring off. It revealed nothing by registering the implausible, severe pain. And this pain had to be discounted, for the face, on closer inspection, bore no expression at all: the eyes were simply a shape, they were not lighted, they gave Len no access.

Marian, out of sight, called from the dining room: 'Tell her if she does her work properly we'll give her something around Christmas!'

'If you do your work properly,' said Len loudly, taking out his wallet, fishing around and discovering that he had three tens and two ones, and then giving her a ten which she folded small and put in her handkerchief and tucked into the sleeve of her blouse,

SINNING WITH ANNIE

'- if you do your work properly we might give you something around Christmas. But we can't give you anything now.'

The might came to him on the spur of the moment, and Marian, who overheard, thanked him for it.

Len felt cold and started to shake. He went upstairs and clicked his red ballpoint at the unmarked essays. His dog days were over. But something new was beginning: intimidation. He didn't like it.

For the next few days he stayed up until Marian went to bed. Then he made his lunch in the kitchen, remembering to crease the paper bag, and this he placed on the dining-room table, which was set for breakfast.

On Tuesday he had an idea. Marian was having her Pernod on the verandah, a touch she learned from a foreign film; she played with the small glass and watched its cloudy color.

'Is Ah Meng around?' Len whispered.

'At the market. We ran out of salt.'

Then I don't have to whisper.' But this was a whisper. Len had downed five stengahs on the way home. 'Marian, seriously, I think we should fire her.'

'Why?' Marian frowned.

Len expected to be challenged, but not so quickly or (Marian was squinting at him) aggressively.

'Lots of reasons,' said Len, starting.

'I thought you were so pally with her.'

'Me? Pally? That's a laugh.' Len forced a laugh. He heard its cackling falsity as a truly horrible sound, and stopped. 'Here, look what she did to my pants.'

Len stood and showed Marian his leg. On the thigh was a brown mark of an iron, the shape of a rowboat. Between the Conrad lecture and the Donne tutorial Len had borrowed an iron from a Malay woman at the Junior Staff Quarters, and he had scorched his pants in his locked and darkened office. 'Burned the hell out of them.'

'That's a shame,' said Marian.

'Burned the hell out of them,' Len repeated.

Marian said, 'You know, I've never said anything, but she's done that lots of times to my dresses. She scorches the collars.'

'That's it then! Out she goes!'

'Okay, Len, if you say so. But there's going to be trouble with the Labor Exchange. It'll be just like the Novaks.'

DOG DAYS

'What about the Novaks?'

'Investigated,' said Marian. 'By the Labor Exchange. After Susan's hair fell out, Tony said he didn't want to see her around, couldn't stand that bald head, or so he said. The Labor Exchange came to investigate - Susan told them of course - and there was a great to-do.'

'I didn't know they did things like that.'

'Went on for weeks,' said Marian. The Pernod was to her lips.

Ah Meng entered the house and went into the kitchen.

'I'll speak to her,' said Marian.

'That's okay. I will - they're my pants,' said Len.

He went into the kitchen and closed the door. Ah Meng's back was to him; she was removing small parcels wrapped in newspaper, bound with rubber bands from her market basket. Len made himself a gin and tonic.

'I guess we ran out of salt, eh?'

Ah Meng walked past him and closed the refrigerator door hard.

Len went out to the verandah.

'She says she's sorry.'

Thursday came. Len asked, barely disguising the desperation in his voice, 'Say Marian, how about letting me come with you to the Film Society. We can go out to eat afterward. What do you say?'

'Are you putting me on?'

'No, honest to God,' said Len, his voice cracking. 'Take me. I won't make any comments. I'd love to come.'

'Mister is coming with me,' said Marian to Ah Meng later.

Momentarily, Ah Meng faced a high wind; then she turned away.

The film was UAvventura. Len watched with interest. He murmured that he was enjoying it, and he meant it. At the end, when Sandro sits abjectly on the bench and wrings his hands and starts to cry, blubbering with a pained look, Len understood, and he snuggled close to Marian in the darkness of the Cultural Center. Marian patted him on the knee. Afterward, as Len promised, they went to the Pavilion and he had cold, silky oysters with chili sauce, and tankards of stout.

Marian said, 'We should do this more often,' and at home, confidentially, 'Keep me awake, Len,' which was the whispered euphemism she used when she wanted to make love. Len was tired, but put the fan on full and made love to Marian with resolve,

SINNING WITH ANNIE

allowing his vigor to announce his new fidelity. Then he turned the fan down.

He lay on his back, his hands folded across his chest, proceeding feetfirst into sleep; but even much later, in the stillness of deep night, sleep was only to his knees. His eyes were open, his mouth clamped shut, and he was apprehensive, at that stage of fatigue where one's mind is vulnerable enough to suggestion to be prodded and alarmed and finally reawakened by a sequence of worrying images, broken promises, papers not marked, unpaid bills. He shooed his thoughts as they appeared tumbling and circling like moths attracted to the glowing bulb of his half-awake brain. He made an effort to switch off his mind - as one would a lamp in an upper room on a summer night, so as to quiet what had collected and not to attract more. But something in that darkness stung him: it was the thought of his lunch.

He went down to the kitchen. The sleepiness made him look like a granny in rumpled pajamas and electrified hair - like the elderly Hakka woman with the simian face and loose sam foo, her silk trousers with cuffs a yard wide, her narrow shoulders and square, swollen knuckles. He muttered like her and nodded at what he was doing, and just like her, in the curious conserving motion of the very old, fussed nimbly with his hands and at the same time shuffled slowly in broken shoes. He opened and closed cupboards, found a lunch bag, cut tomatoes, and he dealt out bread slices onto the sideboard as if starting a game of solitaire. With his impatient fingernail he pecked the boiling egg into its suds of froth.

A hand brushed the back of his neck. It was a caress, but he reacted as if dodging a dagger swipe.

'You scared the life-'

Ah Meng took his hand and did not let go. 'Ren,' she said, giving his name the rising intonation of a Chinese word.

Len shook his head. He said, 'No.'

Ah Meng pressed his hand. She was unhurried, looking at him without blinking. She tugged. Len tried to pull away. But she was the stronger; with his free hand Len turned the gas off under the cooking egg. She led him to her room. He would have time before dawn to finish making his lunch.

SINNING WITH ANNIE

ship's hardware. I was thinking to myself, as I was driving over to Mr Aaron's, that it would have been simpler for all of us if Abe had died in Singapore.

'I'm not surprised,' Mr Aaron said. But he had closed his eyes on hearing the news, and his wife had groaned. 'We haven't seen Abe down here for months.' He shook his head. 'We should have visited him, you know. And the funny thing is, I passed through Tretes a week ago. It was so late I thought I'd better hurry back. My driver is hopeless after dark. I bought a basket of apples and didn't see anyone.'

Mrs Aaron was sitting next to her husband. Her plump shoulders shook with sobs, and when Mr Aaron mentioned buying the apples and coming straight back she groaned again in what struck me as the deepest grief, disappointment.

'What time did it happen?' Mr Aaron asked.

I had forgotten to ask the cook, but he had discovered him in the morning, so I guessed it was after midnight.

'Let's call it four a.m.,' said Mr Aaron. Mrs Aaron looked at him and seemed slightly horrified; but she didn't say anything.

Mr Aaron shrugged, not carelessly but hopelessly. 'I was just going to have my nap,' he said, pulling off his corduroy slippers and showing them to me.

i thought we could use your van,' I said.

'Oh, yes,' he said, lacing his shoes. 'Gunawan will be back about three. We can go up together. We'll have to leave the burial till tomorrow.'

'Disgraceful!' Mrs Aaron said.

'We can't bury him any quicker than that,' said her husband. 'It's lucky he hasn't got a wife who'll see us doing it this way. That would be awful for her.'

'It is awful,' Mrs Aaron said in a whisper more terrifying than a shout.

'It can't be helped,' said Mr Aaron. 'Benjamin can conduct the ceremony. Is that cousin of Abe's still in Hong Kong, do you think?'

'Benjamin will know,' I said.

k Try to calm yourself, Lool,' said Mr Aaron to his wife. 'Get Benjamin on the phone and tell him about Abe. He can cable -what's the fellow's name? Greenman? Greenberg? We'll go around town and tell the people here. Everyone's going to be napping: it's after two.' He sighed. 'I haven't finished my papaya. 1

A BURIAL AT SURABAYA

Mrs Aaron said, 'What if it was you? That's what I keep thinking! I don't want it to be like this, to make a chore out of your funeral.'

Mr Aaron, like me, was born in Baghdad; but he looks like a man of the desert, and I have always looked like an iron-monger. His lean face has the furrows of dry soil, aging like erosion; he has a skinny hawk nose, his teeth are bad, black from cheroots and the poor food at Tjimahi Camp during the war. He often jokes, though he never smiles. He said to his wife, 'At least, when I die no one will have to drive all the way to Tretes to pick up my body.'

Glassman was the cousin's name. I remembered it as we were driving back in the van. None of us had ever seen him, but Abe had told us that if we were ever in Hong Kong we should look him up - he'd be glad to see us. Abe made a point of saying that this Glassman was something important in one of the banks there.

In the old days we might have seen him at a wedding, like the Meyer girl's in Djakarta. Old Meyer invited people from all over. They looked out of place - they kept saying how hot it was - and asked us how was business and why not try Manila or Singapore or wherever, if it's so bad? No one admitted it was bad, but these strangers knew the sugar price was down; and none of us said that Surabaya was hotter than Djakarta. You could look at people's shoes and know exactly how business was, and more than that, you could tell from their shoe styles where their business was. The Philippine friends had these huge pebbly-orange or purplish American shoes, the ones from Singapore and Hong Kong had English-style, rather smaller, without laces, and other people had low, narrow Italian ones with thin soles, bankers' shoes. Ours were old-fashioned, square-toed and stitched, and some were scuffed from the train. We were staying with friends, not in hotels where the room boys polish them every night. It was quite a wedding, and after the champagne some of us sat up all night, liking the company, drinking cold little glasses of Bols genevaer and eating beady caviar on small squares of toast. 'I wish we could meet like this every year,' said Meyer. 'We've got enough money - we owe it to ourselves.' He had enough money, but he went to Zurich a few years later, and they say his daughter's in Israel. The rest of us took our hangovers to Surabaya.