Paul Theroux - Saint Jack

All this time I was his customer; the ritual friendship ended when I became his employee, and at 600 Straits dollars a month I was treated as a difficult burden, crowding his shop with my bulk, wasting his time, eating his money. He stopped speaking to me directly, and if the two of us were in the shop alone he assumed a preoccupied busy air, rattling scraps of paper, pretending to look for things, banging doors, groaning, saying his commercial rosary on his abacus. He spoke to me through his dog; my mistakes and lapses got the dog a kick in the ribs. I thought I might be promoted, but I learned very early that no promotion would come my way. The job interested me enough so that I could do it without any encouragement from Hing. For Hing to thank me, something he never did, would have been an admission on his part of dependency, a loss of face: civility was a form of weakness for him. I understood this and took his rudeness to be the gratitude it was. We had no contract; after our verbal agreement Hing arranged a visa for me which allowed me to stay in Singapore as long as I worked for him. This was convenient (the bribe came out of his pocket), but limiting: if he fired me the visa would be canceled and I would be deported. He needed me too much to fire me, but I knew that to remind him of this would be to ask for a sacking, for that was the only way he could demonstrate I wasn’t needed.

But I was. A year on the Allegro and all the calls we had made at Singapore had acquainted me with most of the other vessels and skippers who called regularly, and I knew many of the fellers in the Maritime Building who managed the shipping lines. The advantage I had, which Hing had hinted at, only dawned on me later: I was white. The rest of the ship chandlers in Singapore were either Indian or Chinese. As a paleface in the late fifties in Singapore I drank in clubs and bars where “Asians,” as they were called, were not allowed. Largely, I drank in these places because I was not welcome in the Chinese clubs, and I didn’t like the toddy in the Indian ones. It offended me that I was forced to drink with my own race — later, I would not do otherwise: I couldn’t relax with fellers of other races — but in the end, this simple fact of racial exclusiveness landed Hing with many contracts for supplying European ships. I was learning the ropes: Chinese and Indians transacted all their business in offices, Europeans did it in clubs and used their offices as phone booths.

A club, even a so-called exclusive one, was easy to enter but hard to join. The doormen were Malays or Sikhs, and I had learned how to say “How’s every little thing, brother?” in Malay and Punjabi. In any case, they would not have dared to turn an ang moh away; and as for signing the drink chits, I had a number of match tricks and brain twisters that I’d spring on anyone drinking alone. The loser had to sign for the drink. I never lost.

“Just in from Bangkok,” I’d say. “Feller up there showed me a cute gimmick. You’ve probably seen it. No? Well, you put six matches down like this, make a little sort of circle with them. There. Now — I wonder if I’ve got that right? I’m a real jerk when it comes to these tricky things. What you’re supposed to do is rearrange five matches without disturbing—”

After I explained, I’d say, “Loser signs, okay?” and the drink would be as good as mine. That was a British con. Americans were easier. “Bet you can’t name the twelve apostles,” or “Whose picture’s on the hundred?” or “What’s the capital of Maine?” secured my drinks with Americans, and with a drink in my hand I could stay in a club bar for hours, making up stories, chatting, or telling jokes that appealed to the listener’s prejudices by confirming them. There were not many Chinese jokes, apart from the funny names, of which I had a long list, culled from the Singapore telephone directory (“Pass me the phone book, Ali; my friend here doesn’t believe Fook Yew and Wun Fatt Joo really live in Singapore”). There were many good Indian jokes, and these always went down well. I told Englishmen the joke about the Texan who’s accused of sodomizing animals. “Cows, pigs, mules,” says his accuser, a girl he wants to take home. She goes on, “Sheep, dogs, cats, chickens—” The Texan interrupts in annoyance: “What do you mean, chickens? ”

Americans were always bowled over by the story of the Englishman whose pecker is accidentally cut off. After a painful month he finally decides to see a doctor, who says he knows how to sew the thing back on. “Just hand it over and I’ll see to it straightway.” The Englishman slaps his pockets, says, “I’ve got the damned thing here somewhere,” and gives the doctor a huge cigar. “This is a cigar,” says the perplexed doctor, and “My word,” says the Englishman, “I must have smoked my cock!”

Sometimes I clowned around, like making a great show of ordering cherries in brandy, simply to say, “To tell the truth, I hate these cherries, but I like the spirit in which they’re given!” So, even without the match tricks and brain twisters, someone was always buying me a drink and saying, “You’re a card.” And in clubs where I was not a member, fellers said, “We haven’t seen you lately — missed you at the film show,” and “Don’t forget the A.G.M. next week, about time we tackled that gatecrashers’ clause”; eventually, a feller would ask, “Say, Jack, what’s your line of work?”

“Me? I’m in ship chandling.” I never said I was a water clerk.

“Odd, that,” would be the reply.

“I know exactly what you mean,” I’d say. “But the way I figure it, this business could use a little streamlining. Methods haven’t changed since Raffles’s time, and by God neither have some of the groceries they’re flogging, from the taste of them! Shops haven’t been swept in years, bread’s as hard as old Harry, weevils in the rice — mind you, I’ve got nothing against our Asiatic brothers. It’s just as you say, they work like dogs. On the other hand, your Indian is never really happy handling meat — but you can’t hold their religion against them, can you?”

“One can’t, I suppose. But still—”

“And your Chinese ship chandler — he’ll give you a turd and tell you it’s an orchid. Shall I tell you what I saw one day in a Chinese shop? This’ll kill you—”

The feller would be agreeing with me and putting his oar in from time to time. I’d tell my valve story and he’d cap it with a better and terrifying one about defective life jackets or wormy provisions, all the while working up the indignation to change ship chandlers.

My most effective selling ploy, which I used just before mealtimes, when conversations always got around to food, was my English breakfast. This never failed. The English, I had discovered, had a weakness for large breakfasts; it might have had a literary source — a Dickens character having a beefsteak with his tea — or a tradition begun on those cold mornings when the Thames used to freeze over, or war rationing. Whatever the reason, it was an inspired way of getting a contract.

I hit on this a few months after I began ship chandling in Singapore, with a feller from the Victoria Shipping Lines. It was on the verandah of the Singapore Cricket Club, on a Saturday just before tiffin. The feller was sitting beside me in a wicker chair and we were watching some ladies bowling on the grass. This form of bowling was exactly like the Italian game bocce , which my father played in an alley in the North End every Sunday afternoon. It was the only game I knew well, and I was commenting on the ladies’ match to the feller on my right. “Gotta have more left-hand side… Not enough legs on that one… Kissed it… Never make it… She’s out for blood — it’s going like a demon—” The ladies took a rest. I turned to the feller and said, “Seems there was this Texan—”