Paul Theroux - Saint Jack

Around us, Chinese businessmen, towkays in immaculate suits, applauded wildly and shouted, “ Hen hao! ” which meant “very good” and sounded like “And how!”

“This is where I draw the line,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” The act had disturbed me — what fantasy did such violence promote? — and I avoided mentioning it to Shuck. Walking down Orchard Road, past Tang’s, and confounded by what to say, I asked him again about his business.

“You might say Asian affairs,” said Shuck.

“Well,” I said, “how do you expect to know anything about Asian affairs if you’ve never had one?”

Madam Lum greeted me as an old friend, with an affectionate bear hug, and with her arms around me she turned to Shuck and said, “Mr. Jack a very nice boy and he my best brother, no, Jack?”

“She’s a real sweetie,” I said.

“You want Mona?” asked Madam Lum. “She free in a coupla minutes — hee hee!”

“Who’s Mona?” asked Shuck.

“One of the fruit flies,” I said. “Rather athletic. She’s got a nine-inch tongue and can breathe through her ears.”

“Just my type,” said Shuck, looking around. “Cripe, look at all the broads.”

Over by the window, three girls were seated on a sofa, languidly reading Chinese comic books; one in a chair was buffing her fingernails, and another was eating pink prawns off a square of newspaper. No towels, no tea. It would never have happened at Dunroamin: no girls sat down if two fellers had just come through the door. “This is your newer sort of wang house,” I said to Shuck. “Not my style at all.” One of the girls put down her comic and sauntered over to Shuck, smoothing her dress.

“What your name?” she asked.

“Shuck.”

“Twenty-over dollar.”

“No, no,” said Shuck, wincing, setting his mouth so as not to lisp. “ Me Shuck.”

“ Me shuck you,” said the girl, pointing.

“Forget it,” I said. But I had recorded the exchange; it was ‘material,’ and it bothered me to acknowledge the suspicion that very soon, chewing the fat with an admiring stranger who had looked me up, I would be saying, “Funny thing happened the other day. I know a feller with the unfortunate name of Shuck, and we were goofing off in—”

“Mona coming,” said Madam Lum.

“Not tonight,” I said. “But my buddy here might be interested. What do you say, Ed?”

“I’m just window-shopping,” he said. Buzz, buzz. “What was the name of that other place you mentioned?”

“Bristol Chambers,” I said. “But, look, they don’t like people barging in and out if they’re not serious about it.”

“You’re a funny guy,” said Shuck. “I used to know a guy just like you.”

That annoyed me. It was presumptuous; he didn’t know me at all. I could not be mistaken for anyone else. The half-baked whoremonger in the flowered shirt, with the tattoos on his arms, hamming it up on Orchard Road (“How do you expect to know anything about Asian affairs if you’ve never had one?”) — that was all he saw. I resented comparisons, I hated the fellers who said, “Flowers, you’re as bad as me!” They looked at me and saw a pimp, a pornocrat, an unassertive rascal marooned on a tropical island, but having the time of his life: a character. I said, “I don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Shuck.

“Well, what the heck’s wrong with that?”

“The next thing you’ll be telling me is that they’ve got hearts of gold, like these strippers that say they do algebra in their dressing rooms. They’re better than we are or something.”

“Not on your life,” I said, and feeling the prickly sensation that his judgment on them was a judgment on me, added, “But they’re no worse.”

“I guess you’re right. We’re all whores one way or another,” said Shuck, with a hint of self-pity. “I mean, we all sell ourselves, don’t we?”

“Do we?”

“Yeah. We all sell our souls.”

“Those girls don’t sell their souls, pal. There’s no future in that.”

“You know what I mean. Holding a job, people climbing all over you. It’s a kind of screw. I do it for fifteen grand.”

“Madam Lum does it for fifty,” I said, trying to wound him. “Tax free.”

Walking down Mount Elizabeth I said, “Years ago, it was better, with the massage parlors and all that. There are still some in Johore Bahru. Madam Lum’s place always reminds me of a doctor’s office. Did you notice the potted plants and magazines? The only good thing about it is that it’s convenient. The number twelve bus stops here and that supermarket over there is very good, probably cheaper than cold storage. I usually pick up half a pound of hamburg and some frozen peas before I nip over to Madam Lum’s. You can’t beat it for convenience.”

“You really are a funny guy,” said Shuck.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I mean it in the good sense,” he said.

“I’ll take you to the Bristol,” I said. “It’s not far. But you can’t go inside unless you want some action.”

“If I must,” said Shuck, buzzing. “What’s the attraction?”

“The guy that runs it isn’t very friendly,” I said. “And the girls are nothing to write home about. It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill sort of place, except for one thing.”

“Spit it out.”

“One of the bedrooms — the air-conditioned one — faces the Prime Minister’s house. Some afternoons you can see him on his putting green. At night, around this time, you can get a look at him through the window. While you’re in the saddle, you know? Strictly for laughs. But since you’re interested in Asian affairs—”

“I think I saw him,” Shuck said later at the Pavilion where we had agreed to meet for a drink. “He was talking to a guy with a goatee and a shirt like yours. That takes the cake,” he said, smiling to himself. “But the hooker kept telling me to hurry up. Is that the usual thing? God, it put me off.”

“It’s a popular room,” I said.

“Vientiane,” said Shuck, using the monotone of reminiscence. “That’s a wide-open place. Lu-Lu’s, The White Rose. First-class hookers. They do tricks with cigarettes. ‘Hey, Joe, you wanna see me smoke?’ I had the strangest experience with a broad there — at least I thought it was a broad.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, but that’s not the whole story,” said Shuck.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” said Shuck. “I’m not finished.”

“I’ve heard it before.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“About the bare-assed waitresses in The White Rose in Vientiane, and the girl that was really a feller, and the nympho you used to know? I’ve heard it before. Now, if you’ll pipe down and excuse me—”

“Jack,” said Shuck, “sit yourself down. I’ve got some good news for you.” Buzz, buzz.

SEX I HAD SEEN as a form of exalted impatience, trembling as near to hilarity as to despair — just like love — but so swift, and unlike love, it happily avoided both; that was a relief, grace after risk. And the strangest part of the sex wish: you wore all of it on your face. This assumption had been the basis of my whole enterprise. Paradise Gardens, Shuck’s good news, made me change my mind about this.

“Here she comes,” I said, and Ganapaty scrambled to his feet. I was standing in bright sunshine at the end of the cinder drive by his sentry box, squinting down Adam Road where, at the junction, the shiny bus had stopped at the lights. I folded my arms. The first fellers were arriving. Behind me, glittering, was Paradise Gardens, known in District Ten as a private hotel.