Paul Theroux - Saint Jack

“ Telephone call for Bishop Bradley … Bishop Bradley …” The slow demanding announcement came over the loud-speaker in the lounge, a cloth-faced box on the wall above a slender palm in a copper pot. No one got up. Two ladies looked at the loud-speaker.

It stopped, the voice and the hum behind it; there was and expectant pause in the lounge, everyone holding his breath, knowing the announcement would start again in a moment, which it did, monotonously.

“ Bishop Bradley… Telephone call for Bishop Bradley …”

Now no one was looking at the loud-speaker.

I had fastened all the buttons on my black suit jacket. I stood up and turned an impatient face to the repeated command coming from the cloth-faced box. I swigged the last of my gin and with the eyes of those people upon me, strode out in my clerical-looking garb in the direction of the information desk. I knew I had made them sorry for staring at my sockless feet, for judging my action at the desk, and There goes the bishop , they were saying.

Outside I walked up and down Orchard Road until Gunstone and Djamila appeared, all the while blaming Leigh for this new behavior of mine, embarrassment and fumbling shame making me act strangely. His shadow obscured my way: I wanted him to go.

IT WAS EARLY lighted evening, that pleasant glareless time of day just before sunset; the moon showed in a blue sky — a pale gold sickle on its back — and it was possible to stroll through the mild air without hunching over and squinting away from the sun. It was the only hour when the foliage was not tinged with hues of sickly yellow; trees were denser, green, and cool. All the two-story Chinese houses set in courtyards along Cuppage Road had their doors and green shutters open for the breeze, and there was a sense of slowed activity, almost of languor, that the sight at dusk of men in pajamas — the uniform of the peaceloving — produces in me.

A formation of swallows dived into view, pivoted sharply like bats, and then chased, lurching this way and that, toward the brightest part of the sky, where a reddening millrace of cloud poured this brightness into a subdued rosy wash. The palms towering above the Bandung did not sway — they never did in Singapore — but I could hear the papery rattle of the fronds shaking, hearing a coolness I couldn’t feel. To a northern-born American, the palm tree was when I was growing up, a graceful symbol of wealth: it suggested lush Florida, sunny winter vacations, certain movie stars and long days of play, white stucco hotels and casinos on wide beaches, and fresh fruit all year round; fellers had fun under nature’s parasol. I looked up at the Bandung’s palms, a tree I no longer associate with fun, so as to avoid looking at the top of the stockade wall enclosing the garden; on top of the wall glass shards were planted to discourage intruders and the sight of these bristling never failed to make my pecker ache.

I crunched down the cobblestone path, under the tunnel of vines, in the comfortable damp of the freshly watered garden; the sun had dropped behind the roof of the Bandung and was now dazzling at the back door, shooting brilliant gold streaks through two rooms, along the ground floor on the gleaming tiles. My jacket sat well on me for the first time that day, and with Gunstone’s envelope of cash in my breast pocket, I was cool and happy.

But I knew what I was in for: I quailed when I heard Yardley’s angry whoop of abuse echo in the big room. I paused near the wicker chairs on the verandah, and for a hopeless fluid moment I wished there was somewhere else I could go. It wasn’t possible. A man my age, for whom a bar was a habit and a consolation — a reassurance of community that could nearly be tender — a man my age didn’t drink in strange bars; that meant an upsetting break in routine; my friends interpreted absence as desertion, and they did not forgive easily. It would have seemed especially suspicious if I had avoided the Bandung after being responsible for bringing Leigh there the previous evening. Leigh had intruded and disturbed Yardley — Yardley’s last joke was proof of that. The blame was mine and an explanation was expected of me. I had come prepared to denounce Leigh.

Yardley saw me and stopped whooping. Frogget was beside him; Smale, Yates, and Coony were at the bar, and over in an armchair drinking soybean milk and absorbed in the Reader’s Digest sat old Mr. Tan Lim Hock. Mr. Tan, a retired civil servant, helped the regulars at the Bandung with their income tax—“He can skin a maggot,” Yardley said. He was a rather tense man whom I had seen smile only twice: once, when he saw what Hing paid me (“Is this per mensem or per annum? ” he asked), and once — that day in 1967—when China exploded her H-bomb.

I crossed the tiles and ordered a gin. Yardley’s defiant silence, and the sheepishness on the faces of the rest, told me what I had expected: that Leigh was the subject of the abusive shouts.

“What’s cooking?” I said.

“Are you alone?” asked Yardley. Yates and Coony looked at him as if they expected him to continue, but all he said when I told him I was alone was, “Wally nearly got pranged this afternoon. Isn’t that right, Wally? Got a damned great bruise on his arm. Show us your bruise again, Wally, come on.”

Wally, at the center of attention, was uncomfortable. “Not too bad,” he said, smiling at his bandaged elbow.

“That’s not what you told me!” said Yardley. He turned to me. “Poor little sod nearly got killed!” Yardley was maddened; ordinarily, Wally’s injury would not have mattered to him — he might even have mocked it — but Yardley was in a temper, and his anger about Leigh, which I had deflected by barging in, had become a general raging. It was at times like this that he called Frogget “Desmond” instead of “Froggy” (and Frogget didn’t object: he had attached himself to Yardley and like Wally simplified his loyalty by surrendering to abuse for praise); and it was only in anger that Yardley remembered I was an American.

“It’s these bloody taxis,” said Yates — the “bloody” was for Yardley’s benefit. Yates was a quiet soul, the only one of us who did not work for a towkay. He got what were called “perks,” home leave every two years, education and family allowances, and could look forward to a golden handshake and one hundred cubic feet of sea freight.

“No, it’s not,” said Yardley. “It’s these jumped-up bastards who come here and act like they own the road.” He stared at me. “You know the kind, don’t you, Jack?”

“I see them now and again,” I said.

“Who was it, Wally? Was it a Chink that ran you down?”

Mr. Tan Lim Hock was ten feet away; he chose not to hear.

“European,” said Wally, blinking and gasping at his own recklessness. “He didn’t hit me, I fell. Assident.”

“He hit you, you silly shit,” said Yardley. “I knew it was a European, and I’ll bet he doesn’t live in Singapore either. No sir, not him. Wouldn’t dare. Take someone like that friend of yours, Jack—”

Yardley began blaming Leigh for Wally’s bruise. Not so incredible: a month earlier, in a similar series of associations, after he had been overcharged by the Singapore Water Board on an item marked “sewer fee,” he flung the crumpled bill in Wally’s face and said, “There’s no end to the incompetence of you fuckers.” Now, Yardley worked himself up into such a lather that soon he was saying — ignoring Wally and the bruise—“That pal of yours, that shifty little bastard would run down the lot of us if we gave him half a chance, I can tell you that. If Jack keeps bringing him in here I’m going to stay home — nothing against you, Jack, but you should know better. Wally, for God’s sake look alive and give me a double.”