The collected stories (40 page)

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE

and it burned for days, first in the dry brush that lay under the marijuana, and finally consuming the marijuana itself and turning it into the bittersweet smoke of the narcotic.

The villagers were safe; their houses were surrounded by wide dirt compounds in which nothing grew. Instead of bolting when the fire started, they stayed where they were. And a strange thing happened: for five days, breathing the smoke from the grass fire, they remained high, staggering and yelling, beating gongs and behaving like madmen. They were people who had never tasted alcohol, orthodox Muslims who threw villagers in jail for eating during the daylight hours of Ramadhan. But they inhaled the smoke and forgot their prayers; they rolled in the dust, pounced on each other, ran naked through the kampong, and burnt a Chinese shop. Afterwards they were ashamed and stopped growing the weed, and a delegation of them made the haj to Mecca to ask Allah's forgiveness.

I thought it was a great story, but I could never make more of it than that. I had only the incident. 'That would make a terrific story,' people said at the Club. But that was the whole of it; to add more would be to distort it; it was extraordinary and so - in all senses - incidental. But stories like that convinced the club members that the town was teeming with 'material.'

They were an odd crowd who treasured their oddity. They thought of themselves as 'characters' - this was a compliment in that place and the compliment was expected to be repaid. They verified each other's uniqueness: Angela Miller's dog had once had a hernia, Squibb had met Maugham at the Sultan's coronation, Alec Stewart often went to work in his pajamas, Strang the surveyor had grown watercress in his gumboots, Duff Gillespie had once owned a Rolls-Royce. But there is something impersonal in the celebration of eccentricity. No one mentioned that Angela had had a nervous breakdown and still, frequently, went into the billiard room to cry, that Alec was married to a Chinese girl half his age, that Squibb - who had a wife in England - was married to a very fat Malay woman, or that Strang's wife, who was pretty and rapacious, danced with every member but her husband; and when Suzie Wong was staged at the Club no one commented on the fact that Suzie was played not by a Chinese girl but by a middle-aged and fairly hysterical Englishwoman.

Nor did anyone find it strange that in a place where there were

THE CONSUL S FILE

Hindu bhajans, Malay weddings and shadow plays, and Chinese operas, the club members' idea of a night out was the long drive to Singapore to see a British Carry On movie, which they would laugh about for weeks afterward. They remarked on the heat: it was hot every day of the year. They didn't notice the insects, how every time a mosquito was slapped it left a smear of blood in your palm; they didn't mention the white ants, which were everywhere and ate everything. Their locutions were tropical: any sickness was a fever, diarrhea was dysentery, every rainfall a monsoon. It wasn't romance, it was habit.

The town was some shops, the Club, the mission, the dispensary, the Methodist school, my Consulate. The Indians lived on the rubber estates, the Malays in neighboring kampongs, the Chinese in their shops. The town was flat; in the dry season it was dusty, in the wet season flooded; it was always hot. It had no history that anyone could remember, although during the war the Japanese had used one of its old houses as headquarters for the attack on Singapore. The Club had once had polo-ponies and had won many matches against the Sultan; but all that remained were the trophies - the stables had been converted to staff quarters. Apart from tennis, the Club had no games, and the table in the billiard room where Angela Miller sometimes went to cry was torn and unusable.

After my first week in the town I thought I knew everything there was to know about the place; I had seen it all, I felt, and would not have minded leaving and going back to Africa where I had begun my career in the Foreign Service. The early sunlight saddened me and made me remember Africa; and yet the sun illuminated my mind as well, each dawn lending its peculiar light to my dreams. I had never dreamed much in America, but this tropical sun stirred me and I began to associate it with imagination, like the heat and noise that always woke me with a feeling of my own insignificance.

The unvarying heat, so different from the chilly weather I had known in Africa, had a curious effect on me: I had no sense of time passing - one day was just like another - and I felt puny and very old, as if my life were ending in this hot town in the East that was so small and remote it was like an island.

I had not started writing, since I considered writing my last resort. I would familiarize myself with the town by reading the files, and when I had done that and had no more excuses I would

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE

begin writing, if I still felt restless and unoccupied. I would not write much about myself; I would concentrate on the town, this island in which more and more, as they became friendly and candid, so many people said nothing ever happened.

Miss Leong, my secretary, had told me about the files. She had never seen them, but a succession of consuls had referred to them. They were secret; they were the reason my predecessors had chosen to take days off to work undisturbed at the Residence. Miss Leong was confidential, and she gave me the key, which in her loyal Chinese way she had never used. She transmitted this sense of mystery to me, of the secrets that lay in the box-room of the Residence, and it seemed to give my job an importance greater than any I could achieve as a writer of stories. Of the three men in the Foreign Service I knew to be writers, two were failures in their diplomatic duties and the third ended up selling real estate in Maryland.

I gave Ah Wing, my houseboy, the day off; I told Miss Leong that I was working at home; and I opened the box-room. It was very dusty, and when I walked in cobwebs brushed my eyes and trailed down my face. I smelled decayed wood and the peanut-stink of dead insects. The room was small and hot and just being there made me itch. I found some cardboard boxes and, inside, stacks of paper bound with string. I didn't have to untie the string: I lifted it and it broke and I saw that what it had held were ragged yellow papers in which white ants had chewed their way to nest. Many of the ants were dead, but there were still live ones hurrying out of the chewed pages. Another story, dramatic: the consuls' files made illegible by the white ants, because the files were hidden and secret. Well, that was true, but I did not have to look for long to discover that there was little writing on them, and certainly no secrets; in fact, most of the pages were blank.

Dependent Wife

A road, some gum trees, a row of shop-houses, three parked cars: Ayer Hitam was that small, and even after we parked in front of the coffee shop I was not sure we had arrived. But apparently this was all - this and a kind of low dense foliage that gave, in the way it gripped the town, a hint of strangulation. It was to be months before I made anything of this random settlement. It seemed at times as if I was inventing the place. I could find no explanation for its name, which meant 'Black Water.'

The trip had started gloomy with suppressed argument. Flint, number two in the Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, had offered to drive me down and show me around. With no Malay syce to inhibit conversation I had expected a candid tour - Flint had been recommended to me as an old Malaysian hand. I needed information to give life to the position papers and the files of clippings I'd studied all summer in Washington. The Political Section had briefed me in KL, but the briefing had been too short, and when finally I was alone with the Press Officer he launched into a tedious monologuing - a clinical dithyramb about his bowel movements since arriving in the country.

Flint also had other things on his mind. As soon as the road straightened he said, 'The Foreign Service isn't what it was. I remember when an overseas post meant some excitement. Hard work, drinking, romance, a little bit of the Empire. I never looked for gratitude, but I felt I was doing a real job.'

'"The White Man's Burden,'" I said.

Flint said, 'That's my favorite poem. Someday I'll get plastered and recite it to you. People think it's about the British in India. It isn't. It's about us in the Philippines. It's a heartbreaking poem -it makes me cry.' He smacked his lips in regret. 'God, I envy you. You're on your own here. The telephone will be out of order half the time, there's a decent club, and no one'll bother you. It's just the kind of job I had in Medan in sixty-two, sixty-three.'

'It doesn't have much strategic value.'

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE

'Never mind that,' said Flint. 'It's a bachelor post.'

I've always hated the presumption in that phrase; like dirty weekend it strikes me as only pathetic. I said, 'We'll see.'

'It's no reflection on you,' he said. 'They don't send married men to places like Ayer Hitam anymore. Sure, I'd be off like a shot, but Lois wouldn't stand for it.' He was silent for a while, then he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and said, 'It's in the air, this dependent wife business.'

I said, 'At that party in KL the other night I met a very attractive girl. I asked her what she did. She said, "I'm a wife.'"

'See what I mean? I bet she was eating her heart out. Hates the place, hates her husband, bores the pants off everyone with what it means to be a woman.'

'It was a silly question,' I said. 'She seemed happy enough.'

'She's climbing the walls,' said Flint. 'They hate the designation

- dependent wife. Lois is going crazy.' 'I'm sorry to hear it.'

He shrugged, bringing his shoulders almost to his ears. 'I've got a job to do. She's supposed to be involved in it, but she refuses to give dinner parties.'

I said, 'They're a lot of work.'

'The hell they are - she's got three goddamned servants!' Flint glowered at the road. For miles we had been passing rubber estates: regular rows of slender trees scored with cuts, like great wilted orchards crisscrossed by perfectly straight paths, a yellowing symmetry that made the landscape seem hot and violated. I had expected a bit more than this. 'And sometimes - I'm not kidding

- sometimes she refuses to go to dinner parties with me. We've got one tonight - I'll have to drag her to it.' He squinted. 'I will drag her, too. She says I'm married to my job.'

k I can sympathize with some of these wives,' I said. 'They get married right out of college, the husband gets an overseas post and everything's fine - the woman becomes a hostess. Then she sees that what she's really doing is boosting her husband in his job. What's in it for her?'

Til tell you what's in it tor her,' said Flint, turning angry again. 'She's got three square meals, duty-free booze, a beautiful home, and all the servants she wants. No dishes, no laundry, no housework. And for that we get kicked in the teeth.'

'1 wouldn't know about that.'

}02

DEPENDENT WIFE

'Then listen/ said Flint. 'Lois is upset, but the younger ones are bent out of shape. Sure, they're pleasant when you first meet them, but later on you find out they're really hostile. They want jobs, they want to read the cables, they write letters to Stars and Stripes and sign them "Disgusted." Then they corner the Ambassador's wife and start bending her ear.'

'We had a few problems like that in Uganda.'

'This isn't a problem, it's an international incident.' Now Flint was pounding the steering wheel as he spoke. 'The wives in Saigon - you know whose side they were on? The Vietcong! I won't name names but a lot of those gals in Saigon got it into their heads that they were oppressed, and believe me they supported the VC. No, they didn't give speeches, but they nagged and nagged. They talked about "our struggle" as if there was some connection between the guerillas shelling Nhatrang and a lot of old hens in the Embassy compound refusing to make peanut-butter sandwiches. It's not funny. I knew lots of officers who were shipped home - their wives were a security risk.' Then Flint added warily, 'You probably think I'm making this up. I'm not. They don't want to give dinner parties, they don't wear dresses anymore - just these dungarees and sweatshirts. They hate coffee mornings. "What do you do?" "I'm a wife." Whoever said that to you - I'm not asking - is a very unhappy woman.'

In this way, when he could have been filling me in on Ayer Hitam, Flint ranted for the entire trip from KL. When we arrived at the coffee shop he was a bit breathless and disappointed, as if he wished to continue the journey to continue his rant.

The door of the car was snatched open. Outside was a woman of about thirty, not fat but full-faced, yellow-brown, with thick arms and a tremendous grin. She wore a sarong kebaya, and her feet, which were bare, were so dirty I took them at first for shoes. She saw the two of us and let out a cry of gratitude and joy, a kind of welcoming yelp.

It had started to rain, large widely spaced drops going phut at the roadside and turning to dust.

She said, 'It's raining! That means good luck!' She ran around to Flint's side of the car, tugged his sleeve and dragged him to a seat on the verandah, repeating her name, which was Fadila.

'Yes, yes,' she said. 'Two coffees and what else? Beer? I got some cold Tiger bottles waiting for you. You want a bowl of Chinese

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE

noodles? Nasi goreng? Laksa? Here, have a cigarette.' She offered us a round can of mentholated cigarettes and muttered for a small Chinese boy to leave us alone. 'Welcome to Ayer Hitam. Relax, don't be stuffy.'

We thanked her and she said something that sounded like 'Hawaii.' We persuaded her to say it more slowly. She said, 'Have you a wife?'

'Not him,' said Flint, slapping me on the arm in what I am sure he meant as congratulation.

'I'm coming,' she said.

She left. Flint said, 'I've never seen her before.'

'Seems very friendly.'

'Typical,' said Flint, full of approval. 'The Malays are fantastic. You get people like this all over the Federation - plenty of time for small talk, very hospitable, give you the shirt off their back. I got this theory. You ask a guy directions in Malaysia. If the guy's Chinese he knows where you want to go but he won't tell you how to get there. If he's Indian he knows and he'll tell you. If he's Malay he won't know the place but he'll talk for ten hours about everything else. It's the temperament. Friendly. No hangups. Outgoing. All the time in the world.'