Paul Theroux - Saint Jack

Thelma groaned; I rode her like a dolphin and plunged back into my memory: I was lying on Changi Beach eating a melting ice cream with Tai-ann and Choo-suat; in the Botanical Gardens hearing a smart Sikh regiment of bagpipers play, “Will You No Come Hame Again”—and I cried then into my hands; in my narrow back garden discovering with surprise and pleasure a wild orchid fastened to my elastic fig; in a cool bedroom in Queen Astrid Park with that beautiful woman who panted “Jim, Jim” into my ear, and then laughed; in that noisy little hotel on Prinsep Street one afternoon, where I held a short-haired girl from behind and was jerked from my towering reverie by a screech of brakes in the street below, a wicked bump, a howling dog that went on howling even after I stopped. That memory froze me today.

And of course there were the pictures.

Sexual desire, a molehill for a boy of twenty, gets steeper with age, and at fifty-three it is a mountain. You pant up slowly at a tricky angle; but pause once and you slide back to where you started and have to begin all over again. You’re learning real quick , the general said; and Try it this way — don’t be shy; and Let me hold you. The interruptions of these three pictures almost undid me, and at the end Thelma said, “ Ai-yah! Like Mr. Frank!”

“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick there, sugar,” I said. Frank, one of the balding “eggs” from the Cricket Club, supported his lovemaking with an assortment of Swedish apparatus. The pesky things were always slipping or jamming and needed constant adjustment. One day I met the old feller on Bencoolen Street. He was smiling. He took an ugly little cellophane-wrapped snorkel out of his briefcase and said proudly, “I think this is the answer, Jack. She runs on batteries.”

Thelma shook her head. She was amused but nevertheless disgusted.

“This is official business,” I whispered. “You wouldn’t laugh if you knew what.”

“Like Mr. Frank!”

“Have it your way,” I said, and paid her. “Feel like sticking around?”

She counted the money and put it into her purse. “Madam Lum say come back with legs on. If I late she scold- lah .”

“Stay till six,” I said. “For old times’ sake.”

She smiled. “For twenty-over dollar.”

I considered this.

She said, “For twenty, can.”

“Never mind,” I said. I opened the door for her, and then I had the same feeling that worried me when the boys left: with no one else in the room I didn’t exist, like an unwitnessed thunderclap in the desert. I sat down with a gin and read through the Belvedere brochures. They offered room service—“Full-course dinners or snacks served piping hot in the traditional Malay style.” Also: “Relax at our poolside bar — or have a refreshing dip” and “Your chance to try our newly installed sauna” and “It’s happening at our discotheque — the ‘right now’ sounds of The Chopsticks!” Another bar promised “alluring hostesses who will serve your every need.” There were a 24-hour coffee shop, a secretarial service, French, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants, and a nightclub, “Featuring the Freddy Loo Dancers,” a Japanese kick line and an Australian stripper. And mawkish suggestions: No visit to Singapore is complete without —and You will also want to try —

This you they kept addressing, was it me? I looked at the nightclub brochure again. The stripper was waving from the seat of a motorcycle. That finished me. I changed into my flowered shirt and started lacing my shoes.

— You’re sure I’m not hurting you?

— Sure.

I wound the film. I closed my eyes. I snapped; and securing my room with a DO NOT DISTURB sign, fled down the fire stairs.

They were on the verandah of the Bandung, in the low wicker chairs with the swing-out extensions on the arms, all of them with their feet up, their heels hooked, as if they were about to be shaved. Yardley was reading the Straits Times to Frogget, who listened with a pint of beer resting on his stomach.

“That ghastly old sod got an O.B.E.,” said Yardley. “Would you believe it? And guess who got an M.B.E.? This is ridiculous—”

“What’s cooking?” I said, pulling out the arm extensions on a chair next to Yates and settling in. I put my legs up and was restored.

“Honors’ List just published,” said Yates. “Yardley’s rather cross. He wasn’t knighted.”

“I’d send the bloody thing back,” said Yardley. “I wouldn’t be caught dead on the same list with that abortionist. Christ, why don’t they give these things to people who deserve them?”

“Like Jack,” said Frogget.

“Maybe Jack got an O.B.E.,” said Smale.

“Very funny,” I said.

“Let’s have a look,” said Yardley. He rattled the paper.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “Pass me the shipping pages.”

“Aw, that’s a shame,” said Yardley. “They missed you out again.”

“Where’s Wally?” I asked.

“ Wally! ” shouted Smale. Once, a feller came to the Bandung and did that very same thing, shouted Wally’s name from the verandah; and Smale said, “If you do that again I’ll boot your rude arse.” The feller was an occasional drinker; no one had ever spoken to him, and after Smale said that he never came again. Soon, each of us had a story, a reminiscence of his behavior, and Yardley finally arrived at the view that the feller was crazy.

Wally appeared at my elbow.

“A double pink gin with a squirt of soda,” I said. “And ask these gentlemen what they’d like.”

“Telephone for you, today morning,” said Wally. “Mr. Gunstone.”

It passed without a remark. I had just bought everyone a drink.

“What about you, Yatesie?” asked Smale. “When’s your M.B.E. coming around?”

“It’s just a piece of paper,” said Yates.

“Listen to him,” said Yardley. His legs clattered on the wooden rests as he guffawed. “When I came in here at half-five he was reading the paper, looking for his name.”

“That is untrue,” said Yates with a note of hurt in his voice that contradicted his words.

“He’d give his knackers for an M.B.E.,” said Yardley, “and even the flaming Beatles got that. ”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Smale, and cursed under his breath. “I wouldn’t complain if I got one of those things. Face it, none of you would.”

There was a moment of silence then, the silence a bubble of sheepishness, as mentally we tried on a title. Viscount Smale. Lord Yardley. Sir Desmond. Lord Flowers, I was thinking, Saint Jack.

“Who’s on the list?” I asked. “Anyone I know?”

“Apart from Wally, who got a knighthood — right, Wally? Sure you did — only Evans, the twit that works in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. M.B.E.”

“Evans? Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know him. He’s in the Cricket Club.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Yardley.

“Or so I heard,” I said.

“He makes a good screw,” said Smale. “Him a banker.”

“Rubbish,” said Yardley. “Not more than three or four thousand quid.”

“Call it four,” I said. “It’s ten thousand U.S. That’s pretty good money.”

“Pretty good money,” said Yardley, mocking me. “Four thousand quid! That’s not money.”

“Ten thousand bucks would take you pretty far,” I said. Frogget laughed uncertainly and looked at Yardley.

Yardley shifted in his chair. He said, “That’s not money.”

“No,” said Smale. “Not real money.”

“I suppose not,” I said.

We stared into the garden. It was darkening; the garden became simple and orderly in the twilight, the elastic fig and the palm it strangled were one. The mosquitoes were waking, gathering at the verandah light and biting our exposed ankles. Frogget slapped at his bare arm.