World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (19 page)

“Yes, pushes me out! And tries to give me money!” She slashed at the bed with a paintbrush that I had overlooked, leaving some pink paint from the brush on the blanket, and some hairs from the blanket on the brush. She had not noticed what she was holding, and there was already paint on her hands, her jeans, her face.

“Suzie, you'd better let me have—”

She ignored me. “Yes, he tried to give me money! I told him, ‘You think I'm a street girl or something? You keep your filthy money!'”

“Good for you, Suzie.” In her first version of the incident, before she had really got going, she had described her refusal of the money as dignified and polite. But the exaggeration was pardonable.

“Yes, I'm going to make trouble for that man! Tomorrow I'm going to his office, I'm going to tell everybody ‘Your boss is no good! I was a virgin, a good girl, and your boss seduced me!'”

She momentarily made herself believe that this was true, and her indignation renewed itself. She thought of other ways she could punish him. She would also go to his house and expose him to his servants. And best of all, she would write a letter to the Number One Top Englishman of Hong Kong—at least I would write the letter from her dictation—recounting the episode of the spanking, when Ben had masqueraded as a policeman. He would undoubtedly be sent to gaol for this offense—“Yes, they'll put him in the monkey-house! For maybe two, three years! That will serve him right!”

However, the discovery that she wielded the power to send him to gaol slightly awed her. Her anger noticeably subsided.

“Let's hope he gets three years,” I said encouragingly. “It'll be well deserved.”

She said doubtfully, “Yes, he deserves a bad time, that man.” She was not sure that she liked to hear me disparaging Ben; it was her own privilege. It made her want to defend him. And a few minutes later she was doing so, and diverting all the blame to the evil influence of Elizabeth. But she had blown off nearly all her steam; she was almost back to normal.

I said, “Suzie, have you seen your face? Look in the mirror.”

She did so, and sullenly resisted a smile. “What, that bit of paint? I don't care.” But soon she was managing to smile at herself, and saying, “Well, suppose I did go to his office? They wouldn't know I wasn't a virgin—I could make plenty of trouble for him!”

“I still like the idea of the letter to the Governor best.”

She glanced at me a trifle anxiously, afraid I might try and hold her to her threat. “No, that's no good—that wouldn't punish his wife. It's his wife who ought to go to the monkey-house.” She looked at her hands and giggled. “I'm in a mess!”

“Here, catch.” I threw her the turpentine rag. “And you must be frightfully hungry after all that, aren't you, Suzie?”

“No, I couldn't eat anything.”

“Well, you've got to try. Because I had none of your scruples about accepting Ben's money, and I've got a hundred dollars just for taking you out to dinner. So come on, let's go and enjoy ourselves.”

She consented without much enthusiasm, and after she had cleaned herself up we set off. Ah Tong was just going off duty, and as we waited at the lift he grinned and said, “Your friend has gone out. You are safe, sir.”

“Thank God for that,” I said.

Rodney had still not spoken to either Suzie or myself since the scene in the car two days ago, and Ah Tong, who saw no hope of being able to reconcile us, had taken to reporting Rodney's movements to me, so that as far as possible I could avoid the embarrassment of running into him.

“That stupid butterfly man!” Suzie fluttered her hands like a butterfly. “You know, I feel better now. Yes, I feel quite hungry!”

“That's marvelous, Suzie. Where shall we go?”

“Some small place. No, I think some big place. Yes, let's go to some big stuck-up place with music, and make that man give us a good time!”

We settled on a restaurant in Kowloon where there was dancing and cabaret, and since this meant that Suzie would have to change we arranged to meet in three quarters of an hour at the ferry. I went back to my room to put on jacket and tie, and then passed the time strolling along the quay. I arrived first at the ferry and stood watching three men and a woman playing mah-jongg in a sampan tied up near the pier. It was dark and they played by the light of a hurricane lamp, squatting round a low packing case, indifferent to the little vessel's bobbing and lurching. It made me seasick even to watch and I turned away, just as Suzie came up in a rickshaw. She wore a little Chinese brocade jacket over a plain white silk cheongsam, and white shoes. She carried a gold handbag to match the gold thread of the brocade. Her nails were freshly painted.

“Suzie, you look marvelous,” I said. “And you've been so quick about it.”

“I'm so angry—I tore my stocking getting into that rickshaw.” She craned backwards to examine one of her nylons.

“Have you dabbed it with spit?”

“Spit?”

“Don't you know? I'll show you on the boat.”

She held my arm as we went to the turnstile. “I feel happy now, you know! I feel beautiful!”

Her gaiety was a trifle forced, and the hurt was still visible underneath; but she had accepted the situation now as a
fait accompli,
and had made up her mind that she was not going to let it get her down. And on the ferry she gaily pretended that we were on a steamer bound for America, and waved her handkerchief as though to Ben, saying, “Good-by! Good-by! So sorry to leave you, only I'm off to marry a rich Yankee!” And when we disembarked on the other side, she said, “I never knew there were so many Chinese in New York—it looks just like Kowloon!”

We decided that on Ben's money we could afford a taxi, but there was no taxi to be seen so we took two rickshaws. We turned into Nathan Road, twisting in and out of the congested buses and cars, the rickshaw men keeping up a steady jog trot, their broad bare calloused feet padding the hard city street. The shirt of my man was in holes, I could see his shoulder blades working. We halted at traffic lights, turned off to the left, stopped outside a building with a red neon sign. The sign cast a glow on the pavement. The sign went out and the glow vanished; then, as the Chinese characters came alight again one by one the glow reappeared, becoming redder each moment like the reflection of a fire being fanned by the wind. We went up in the lift to the restaurant on the top floor, where the Chinese manager in white dinner jacket led us through the crowded room. There were parties of both Chinese and Europeans at the tables, many in evening dress, and there was a dance floor and a Filipino band. Suzie followed the manager with poise: in her early days in the dance halls she had been brought often to such places, and she was more accustomed than I was to their sophistication.

The manager took us to a table within a few feet of the band. I was about to accept it meekly, but Suzie said, “There is too much noise here. There is a better table over there.”

“It is reserved,” the manager grinned. “You see the notice—Reserved.'”

“We will go deaf at this table,” Suzie said.

“I am sorry, it is the only table.”

“All right, we will go somewhere else. You charge a big price in this restaurant, and we are not going to pay a big price to go deaf.”

“Well, perhaps the party that reserved the other table will not turn up. I will take a chance.”

He took us to the reserved table, removed the sign, deferentially lit my cigarette, and gestured to a waiter who was busy at another table to come and attend us. After he had gone I laughed and said, “He was fearfully impressed, Suzie—and so am I. You've got such aplomb.”

“What does that mean, ‘aplomb'?”

“It means you could wipe the floor with any other woman in this room.” I nodded to the menu that the waiter had put into her hands. “Now, what do you fancy?”

She gave me an odd look, and I suddenly remembered that she could not read the menu. I laughed and said, “Suzie, how ridiculous of me! Well, that just goes to show. You've got so much aplomb that I'd completely forgotten.”

“And now you feel ashamed of me.”

“Ashamed! Suzie, if you say anything like that again I'll turn you upside down and spank you like Ben—because I'm so proud of you that I have to keep looking round to make sure that people are watching us.”

I did really feel proud of her, for I thought she looked lovelier than I had ever seen her in the white silk cheongsam, with the black smooth hair falling to her shoulders and framing the little white face with the high Mongolian cheekbones and the long black elliptical eyes. And then there was a kind of old-fashioned primness and modesty about her appearance, due partly to her prim erect Chinese manner of sitting without leaning against the back of the chair, and partly to the tall collar of her cheongsam, reminiscent of those high neckbands worn by Victorian ladies to effect the maximum concealment of skin; and this appearance amused and enchanted me, all the more so because of its incongruity.

Suzie said, “They are eating Pekin duck over there. You like Pekin duck?”

“I only had it once, it's so expensive—but I loved it. And let's have some Chinese wine.”

“Hot?”

“Oh, yes, hot.”

The food was delicious, but Suzie had become rather silent and preoccupied and ate little, and we did not talk much, except to discuss the Pekinese singer who had appeared at the microphone with the Filipino band. She wore a long shiny black cheongsam with sequins, and looked like a beautiful stiff china doll, and she sang with doll-like mannerisms as if she was operated by strings. The collar of her cheongsam was even stiffer and taller than Suzie's, and made her look like a giraffe-woman with elongated neck. She had appeared first in a jacket of white fluffy fur, that you wanted to blow like the fluff of a dandelion to see how many blows it took to make it disappear; and this now lay behind her on the grand piano like a gigantic powder puff of swan's-down. She looked no more than twenty-five across the room, but according to Suzie she was at least forty, and was the concubine of a rich businessman who had brought her out of China with his wife and children before the revolution.

She sang Mandarin songs in a small squeaky plaintive voice, going on and on with that characteristic Mandarin monotony, with the same tone and the same stiff doll-like mannerisms whether the songs were happy or sad.

“I think you sing just as well, Suzie,” I said. “And you certainly manage to look more human about it. But I suppose it's remarkable that she can sing at all in that collar.”

“It is very smart, that collar,” Suzie said, a little envious that it was taller than her own. “Oh yes, a tall collar is very smart.”

“Let's dance.”

I was a poor dancer but Suzie, like many dance girls, danced beautifully; and moreover she had that art of transmitting her skill, while seeming to remain all the time passive and as light as a feather, so that her partner might believe it his own. And as I abandoned myself to this beguiling illusion, and seemed to blossom with new talent, my usual self-consciousness on the dance floor miraculously vanished. I had never enjoyed dancing so much before. And whereas before I had always been puzzled by the vast enjoyment that ballroom dancing apparently gave to others, now all at once, as the rhythm spun round us a silken thread and sealed us together inside a cocoon, and our limbs moved intricately and magically together like the limbs of a single being, the secret revealed itself: we had created a unity that answered the yearning of loneliness. We had been two imperfect halves that had come together and made a perfect whole; and this merging of selves had no parallel except in the act of making love.

The music ended; the silken cocoon that had held us together as a single being was suddenly gone; we fell apart. The perfect whole had split again into its two imperfect halves. It was like the shock of amputation; and in my solitary imperfection I felt self-conscious and awkward and rather absurd. I sensed that Suzie, too, had felt a kind of amputation. We returned to the table in silence. We did not talk for several minutes.

And then Suzie said, looking me evenly in the eyes: “You think Ben will be happy now with his wife?”

“I rather doubt it, Suzie,” I said. “Not for long.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I think Elizabeth's bound to start nagging and becoming overpossessive again.”

“You blame her? You think it is all her fault?”

“I think it's mostly her fault. Don't you?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“But I thought you did,” I said, surprised. “In my room you were blaming her for everything.”

“I was still upset in your room. I said anything that came into my head. But I don't think it is her fault. I think she is very unhappy, his wife.”

And she proceeded to express her view which, summed up in terms that she herself would probably not have understood, was to the effect that Elizabeth's nagging and over-possessiveness were due to her feeling insecure and unloved, and that Ben's incapacity to feel real love for any woman was basically at fault. She realized now that she had become blinded to Ben's character by her infatuation, and that her first judgment of him had been correct.

“He is not a bad man,” she said. “He doesn't want to hurt anybody, you know. He is good, nice, kind. But he has got a small heart—too small to hold much feeling. Maybe just enough for himself, but not enough feeling to give out to anybody. He couldn't really love anybody, that man.”

“You're awfully bright, aren't you, Suzie?” It was not the first time that her perception had proved more acute than my own; and I found the truth of her observations all the more astonishing when I remembered that she had not even met Elizabeth. “Anyhow, if that's how you feel about Ben, perhaps you won't mind so much about what's happened.”