Saint Jack (16 page)

“I'll never find my way back.”

“Can ring for a taxi,” said Mr. Sim. “Where you are dropping?”

The feller was beside me. “Stay,” he whispered, “please. I'll pay for your trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” I said. “I just wanted to help you out. You looked lost.”

“I'll treat you to one,” he said confidentially.

“It doesn't cost me anything,” I said.

“I thought maybe you were doing this for the money.”

“I get my share from Mr. Sim,” I said. “Don't worry about that.”

“So there's no way I can get you to stay?”

“You can ask.”

“I'm
asking
, for Pete's sake!”

“Okay, I'll hang on here,” I said. “Take your time.”

“Thanks a million,” he said, and nodded in gratitude.

“What your name?” asked Betty, steering him out of the room, carrying his glass of beer.

“Oh, no you don't!” I heard the feller say to her on the stairs.

“He'll be back in ten minutes,” I said to Mr. Sim.

“No, no!” said Mr. Sim. “Rich fella—old man. Halfhour or more-
lah.
”

“Bet you a fiver.”

“Bet,” said Mr. Sim, eager to gamble.

We put our money on the table and checked our watches.

“Quiet tonight,” I said.

“Last night! English ship! Fifty fella!” He shook his head. “All the girls asleeping now. Tired! You like my new wireless set?”

“Nifty,” I said. “Nice tone. It's a good make.”

“The fella come back, he want me to eat a mice?”

It was Mr. Sim's party trick. He ate live ones whole to astonish and mortify rowdy seamen; he appeared beside a feller who was getting loud and offered a handful of them. When they were refused, Mr. Sim would dangle one before his mouth, allowing it to struggle, and then pop it in like a peanut, saying, “Yum, yum!” It was a shrewd sort of clowning, and it never failed to quiet a customer.

“I don't think so,” I said. “Might give him a fright. He's scared of rats.”

“Rats,” Mr. Sim laughed. “During Japanese occupation we eating them.”

“Rat
foo yong
,” I said. “Yech.”

“No,” Mr. Sim said, seriously. “Egg very scarce. We make with
tow foo
, little bit chilies, and
choy-choy.
” He wrinkled his nose. “We hungry-
lah
.”

“I'm not scared of rats,” I said. “But I really hate cockroaches. I suppose you could say I'm scared of them.” And what else? I thought—odd combinations: locked rooms, poverty, embarrassment, torture, secret societies, someone in a club asking me “Who are you,” death, sun-bathing.

“Aren't you scared of anything, Mr. Sim?”

“No,” he said firmly, and he looked handsome.

“What about the police?”

“These Malay boys? I not scared. But they making trouble on me.”

“Buy them off,” I said.

“I buy-
lah
,” he said. “I give
kopi
-money. Weekly!”

“So what's the problem?”

“These politics,” said Mr. Sim. “The other year some fella in here shopping votes—‘Okay, Sim
Xiensheng
, vote for me-
lah
'—and now they wanting close up house. Pleh!” He laughed—the insincere, unmodulated Chinese cackle, the mirthless snort of a feller surprised by a strong dig in the ribs. It was brief, it had no echo. He said, “They close up house—where we can go? What we can do?”

“Go someplace where they can't find you,” I said. “I know a few. I've been playing with the idea of starting up on my own, something really fancy.” Mine would be at the edge of town, a large house with stained-glass windows—dolphins, lilies, and white horses—to keep the sun out; an orchestra in the parlor—six black South Indians with brilliantined hair, wearing tuxedos, playing violins; silk cushions on the divans, gin drinks and sweet sherbets. “Jack's place,” they'd call it.

Mr. Sim laughed again, the same reluctant honking. “You not start a house. You get trouble.”

“Well, no more than you.”

“More,” said Mr. Sim, and he showed me his face, the Hakka mask of a tough pug, the broad bony forehead, no eyebrows, just a fold in the brow, the swollen eyes and lower lip thrust out and the hard angular jaw. He said again, “More.”

The door opened.

“Hi there,” said the feller, moving quickly toward us. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Mr. Sim looked at his watch and grunted.

“That's mine, I believe,” I said, and scooped up the ten dollars from the table.

The feller sat down. Betty brought him a glass of tea and a hot towel. The feller wiped his hands thoroughly, then started on his chin, but thought better of it and made a face; he dropped the towel on the tin tray. “Shall we go?”

“I'll just knock this back,” I said, showing him my glass of beer. “Won't be a minute.”

He had crossed his legs and was kicking one up and down and attempting to whistle. What looked like impatience was shame.

“Betty . . .
good
,” said Mr. Sim.

“Very pleasant,” said the feller. But he avoided looking at Betty as he said so. To me, he said, “You must find Singapore a fascinating place. I wish we had more time here. We've got three days in Colombo, then off to Mombasa—a day there—then—”

“Nice watch,” said Mr. Sim. “Omega. How much?”

“Thank you,” said the feller, and pulled his sleeve down to cover it. “Er, shouldn't we be going?”

“Plenty of time,” I said. “It's only a little after eleven. Say, how'd it go inside?”

“Not, um, too bad,” he said, still kicking his leg. “Say, I really think we must—”

“Jack,” said Betty.

“Yoh?”

“He got one
this big!
” She measured eight inches with her hands. It was a vulgar gesture—the feller winced—but her hands were so small and white, the bones so delicate, they made it graceful, turning the coarseness into a dancer's movement. Only her open mouth betrayed the vulgarity. I saw a tattoo on her arm and reached over to touch it.

“That's pretty,” I said. “Where'd you get it?”

“No,” she said. She covered it.

The feller coughed, stood up, and started for the door.

“See you next time,” said Mr. Sim.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Don't mention. Bye-bye, mister,” he called to the feller. Then Mr. Sim drew me aside. “You taking girls out to ships, some people they don't like this but I say forget it. Everybody know you a good fella and I say Jack my friend. No trouble from Jack. Two hand clap, one hand no clap. But you listen. You don't pay
kopi
-money. You don't start up a house, or—” He rubbed his nose with the knuckles of his fist and looked at the floor, saying softly, “Chinese fella sometime very awkward.”

“Don't worry about me,” I said.

“Would it be safe to take a taxi?” the feller asked when we got to the corner of Sultana Street.

“Oh, sure,” I said, and flagged one down.

On the way to the pier I said, “It's rather late for intros, but anyway. My name's Jack Flowers—what's yours?”

“Milton,” he said quickly. “George Milton. If you're ever in Philadelphia it'd be swell to see you. I wish I had one of my business cards to give you, but I'm fresh out.”

“That's all right,” I said. He was lying about his name, which on the I.D. card in his wallet was W. M. Griswold; and his address was in Baltimore. It might have been an innocent lie, but it hurt my feelings: he didn't want to know me. I had rescued him, and now he was going away.

“The first thing I'm going to do when I get down to my cabin is brush my teeth,” he said. The taxi stopped.

“I don't blame you, George,” I said.

“Will you take twenty bucks?”

“Now?” I said. “Yes.”

“Be good,” he said, handing it over.

It was still early and I was within walking distance of the seafront bars. I strolled along the pier, stepping carefully so I wouldn't get my shoes dirty on the greasy rope that lay in coils between the parked cars and taxis. At Prince Edward Road, near the bus depot, two fellers were standing under a streetlamp trying to read what looked like a guidebook. They were certainly tourists, and probably from Griswold's liner; both wore the kind of broad-brimmed hat strangers imagine to be required headgear in the tropics. It gave them away instantly: no one in Singapore wore a hat, except the Chinese, to funerals.

I walked over to them and stopped, rattling coins in my pocket with my fist and negligently whistling, as if waiting for a bus. Their new shoes confirmed they were strangers. I could tell a person's nationality by his shoes. Their half-inch soles said they were Americans.

“Kinda hot.”

They turned and enthusiastically agreed. Then they asked their reckless question in a mild way. I nodded, I whistled, I shook my jingling coins; I was the feller they wanted.

 

It was so easy I could not stop. I hustled at a dead run until the streets were empty and the bars closed. New to the enterprise, I had the beginner's stamina. It wasn't the money that drove me; I can't call it holy charity, but it was as close to a Christian act as that sort of friendly commerce could be, keeping those already astray happy and from harm, within caution's limits. I raided my humanity to console them with reminders of safety, while reminding myself of the dangers. I was dealing with the very innocent, blind men holding helpless sticks; their passions were guesses. It especially wounded me that Griswold had lied about his name: in my conscientious shepherding I believed I was doing him, and everyone, a favor.

Guiding rather than urging, I paid close attention to a feller's need and was protective, adaptable, and well-known for being discreet. In those days it mattered, and though I acted this way out of kindness, not to impress anyone as a smoothie, it won me customers. There were so many then, and so grateful. I shouldn't remember Griswold among them, for he was so typical as to be unmemorable—something about the very desire for sex or the illicit made a feller anonymous without trying. But Griswold had lied; the lie marked him and identified his otherwise nameless face and brought back that evening. His distrust made me relax my normally cautious discretion, and for years afterward if a feller said he was from Baltimore I replied, “Know a feller named Griswold there?” Some knew him, or said they did, and one night a feller said, “Yes, we were great friends. That was such a damned shame, wasn't it?” And I never mentioned him again, this man who had refused my grace.

T
HE HOUSE
on Muscat Lane was one of several in Singapore that did business in the old way. Any port is bound to cater to the sexually famished, but the age and wealth of a city, until recently, could be determined by how central the brothels were. Once, in old and great cities, they were always convenient, off shady boulevards, a stone's throw from the state house; in the postwar boom they went suburban to avoid politicians and high rents; then they moved back to the center—Madam Lum's place was near a supermarket—and it was no longer possible to tell from their location the city's age, though prosperity could still be measured by the number of whores in a place: the poorest and most primitive, having none, made do with forced labor, blackmail, or unsatisfying casual arrangements in ditches and alleyways and in the rear seats of cars.

Singapore was very old then, not in years but in attitude and design because of the way the immigrants had transplanted and continued their Chinese cities, duplicating Foochow in one district, Fukien in another. As a feller who had seen Naples and Palermo duplicated down to building styles, hawkers' cries, gangster practices, and patron saints in the North End of Boston, I understood that traditional instinct to preserve. The completely Chinese flavor of vice in Singapore made it attractive to a curious outsider, at the same time releasing him from guilt and doubt, for its queer differences (Joyce Li-ho had the tattoo of a panther leaping up her inner thigh) made it a respectable diversion, like the erotic art anthropologists solemnly photograph, maharani and maharajah depicted as fellatrix and bugger on the Indian temple. The sequence of activities in a Chinese brothel parodied Oriental hospitality: the warm welcome—the host bowing from the waist—the smoke, the chat, the cold towel, then the girl—usually the feller chose from one in a parade; money changed hands in the bedroom when the feller was naked and excited; then the stunt itself, and afterward, a hot towel and a glass of cold tea on the verandah while some old
amahs
ironed bedsheets and yapped beyond the rail.

It was the Chinese host's puritanism, his ability to make pleasure into a ritual, that added so much enjoyable delay to it. And though the Chinese customers with a harelike speed treated the whole affair with no more concern than we would in popping out for a quick hamburger, the fellers I took along, mainly gawking travelers bent on carrying away an armload of souvenirs, welcomed the chance to enter, and more than enter—participate—in a cultural secret, to be alone with the exotic Oriental girl in a ceremonial state of undress, and later to have that unusual act of love to report upon. It was much appreciated because it was perfect candor, private discovery, the enactment of the white bachelor's fantasy, the next best thing to marrying a sweet obedient Chinese girl. I could provide, without danger, the ultimate souvenir: the experience, in the flesh, of fantasy.

By never putting a price on my services, and by joking about the enterprise the feller would take so seriously—Americans treating it, they'd say, as part of their education, continentals looking on it as a kind of critical therapy, the English preferring not to discuss it—I always came out better. I was prompt and responsive; I didn't insist on my presence; and I had a sense of humor.