Paul Theroux - Saint Jack

“Carrots, eighty pounds,” he said. “White flour, two hundred pounds. Fresh eggs—”

A YEAR LATER, nimble in my soft white shoes, I was guiding a deeply tanned cruise passenger in his club blazer through the low sidewalk corridors of Singapore back lanes. It was night, dark and smelly in the tunnel-like passageways, and quiet except for the occasional snap of mahjong tiles and the rattling of abacus beads — no voices — coming from the bright cracks in burglar doors on shophouse fronts. Some shops, caged by protective steel grates, showed Chinese families sitting at empty tables under glaring bulbs and the gazes from the walls of old relations with small shoulders and lumpy heads in blurred brown photograph ovals — the lighted barred room like an American museum-case tableau of life-size wax figures depicting Chinese at night, the seated mother and father, ancestral relics, and three children’s little heads in a coconut row at the far edge of the table. Sikh watchmen huddled, hugging themselves in bloomers and undershirts on string beds outside dark shops; we squeezed past them and past the unsleeping Tamil news vendors playing poker in lotus postures next to their shuttered goods cupboards. Here was a Chinese man in his pajamas, crouching on a stool, smoking, clearing his throat, watching the cars pass. Farther along, four children were playing tag, chasing each other and shrieking in the dark; and under a street-corner lamp, a lone child tugged at an odd flying toy, a live beetle, captive on a yard of thread — he flung it at us as we passed and then pulled it away, laughing in a shy little snort.

“Atmosphere,” murmured the feller.

“You said it.” There was a quicker way to Muscat Lane, but that took you over uncovered sidewalks, past new shops, on a well-lighted street. The atmosphere was an easy detour.

“It’s like something out of a myth.”

“Too bad the shops are closed,” I said. “One down this way has bottles filled with dead frogs and snakes — right in the window. Frog syrup. Sort of medicine. The mixture — two spoonfuls three times daily. Hnyeh!”

“You seem to know your way around.”

“Well, I live here, you see.”

“Funny, meeting someone who actually lives in a place like this,” said the feller. “I’m glad I ran into you.”

“Always glad to help out. You looked a bit lost,” I said. I had met him in the Big South Sea, and all I had said — it was my new opening — was “Kinda hot.”

“By the way, it’s not very far from here.”

“Wait,” he said, and touched my arm. “Is that a rat?”

A smooth dark shape, flat as a shadow, crept out of the monsoon drain and hopped near a bursting barrel.

“Just a cat,” I said. “Millions of them around here.” I stamped my foot; the rat turned swiftly and dived back into the drain. “A small pussy cat.”

“I’ve got a thing about rats.” There was a child’s fearful quaver in his voice.

“So do I!” I said, so he would not be embarrassed. “They scare the living daylights out of me. Feller I know has dozens of them in the walls of his house. They scratch around at night—”

“Please.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Not to worry. Take a left — mind your head.”

We passed under a low black archway into Sultana Street; a darkened shophouse smelling gloriously of cinnamon made me slow down to take a good whiff of the sweet dust in the air. Then we turned again into an alley of wet cobblestones where there was no sidewalk, Muscat Lane.

“I never would have found this place alone,” the feller said behind me, and I could tell by his voice that he had turned to look back. He was nervous.

“That’s what I’m here for!” I said, trying to calm him with heartiness. “I just hope they’re not all asleep.” I stopped at an iron gate, the only opening in a high cement wall, burglar-proofed with rows of sharp iron crescents instead of broken glass bristles. The house had once belonged to a wealthy Muslim, and the iron gate was worked in an Islamic design. Across the alley, four yellow windowsquares in the back of a shophouse illustrated the night: a Chinese man and wife faced each other in chairs at one; above them a schoolboy, holding a fistful of his hair, wrote at a desk; next to him, an old man looked into a mirror, scraping his tongue with a stick; and in the yellow window under the old man’s an old lady nuzzled an infant.

“It’s night,” said the feller, “but it’s so hot! It’s like an oven.”

A padlock chained to the bars held the gate shut. I was rapping the lock against a bar.

“Yes?” A dim face and a bright flashlight appeared at the side of the gate.

“Mr. Sim, is that you?”

“Jack,” said Mr. Sim.

“Yeah, how are they treating you? I thought you might be in the sack. Look, have you got a girl you can spare?”

“Got,” said Mr. Sim.

“Good, I knew I could count on you. But the thing is, we’re in kind of a rush — my friend’s ship is leaving in the morning—”

“Six-twenty,” said the feller anxiously, still glancing around.

“—and he doesn’t want one too old,” I said. The feller’s instruction meant he wanted one younger than himself; that was simple — he was over sixty, and no hooker downtown was over thirty. I went on to Mr. Sim, “And she has to be nice and clean. They’re clean, aren’t they? The feller was asking about that.”

“Clean,” said Mr. Sim.

“Fine,” I said. “So can we come in and have a look-see?”

“Can,” he said. He undid the chain and swung the gate open. “Come in, please.”

“A red light,” said the feller. “Appropriate.”

“Yes, sir, appropriate all right!” I said, stepping back. “After you.”

He was mistaken, but so pleased there was no point in correcting him. The red light was set in a little roofed box next to the door. It was a Chinese altar; there was a gold-leaf picture inside, a bald fanged warrior-god, grinning in a billowing costume, wearing a halo of red thunderbolts. He carried a sword — a saint’s sword, clean and jeweled. A plate of fresh oranges, a dish of oil, and a brass jar holding some smoking joss sticks had been set before it on a shelf. The feller had seen the light but not the altar. It was just as well: it might have alarmed him to know that the girls prayed and made offerings to that fierce god.

“Cigarette?” asked Mr. Sim, briskly offering a can of them. “Tea? Beer? Wireless?” He flicked on the radio, tuned it to the English station, and got waltz music. “I buy that wireless set — two week. Fifty-over dollar. Too much- lah . But—!” He clapped his hands and laughed, becoming hospitable—“Sit! Two beers, yes? Jack! Excuse me.” He disappeared through a door.

“So far, so good,” said the feller, fastidiously examining the sofa cushion for germs before he sat down and looked around.

He seemed satisfied. It was what he expected, obviously the parlor of a brothel, large, with too much furniture, smelling of sharp perfume and the dust of heavy curtains, and even empty, holding many boisterous ghosts and having a distinct shabbiness without there being anything namably shabby in it. The light bulb was too small for the room, the uncarpeted floor was clean in the unfinished way that suggested it was often very dirty and swept in sections. It was a room which many people used and anyone might claim, but in which no one lived. The calendar and clock were the practical oversized ones you find in shops; the landscape print on the wall and the beaded doilies on the side tables looked as if they had been left behind rather than arranged there, and they emphasized rather than relieved the bareness. The room was a good indicator of the size and feel of the whole house, a massive bargelike structure moored at Muscat Lane. Outside, the date 1910 was chiseled into a stone shield above the door; the second-floor verandah had a balcony of plump glazed posts — green ones, like urns; the tiled roof had a border of carved wooden lace, and barbed wire — antique enough to look decorative — was coiled around the drainpipes and all the supporting columns of the verandah.