Paul Theroux - The Consul's File

I waited for the eventual break-up, but it happened sooner than I expected. One morning she appeared at the consulate just after we opened. She pushed Peeraswami aside, ignored the secretary's squawk and flung open my office door.

'I'm looking for the Consul,' she said.

'Do you have an appointment?' I asked.

'The secretary already asked me that,' she said. 'Look, this is an emergency.'

She sat down and threw her shoulder-bag on a side-table.

Is it only Americans who treat consulates as their personal property, and diplomatic personnel as their flunkies? 'They move in and walk all over you,' a colleague used to say — he kept his door locked against American nationals demanding service. It earned us, in Ayer Hitam, the contemptuous pity of the European consulates.

Miss Clem said, 'I want to report a break-in.'

'I'm afraid that's a matter for the police.'

'This is confidential.'

'They can keep a secret,' I said.

'You're my consul,' she said rather fiercely. 'I'm not going to any Malay cop.' She was silent a moment, then she said, 'A man's been in my room.'

I said nothing. She glared at me.

'You don't care, do you?'

'I find it hard to understand your alarm, Miss Clem.'

'So you know my name.' She frowned. 'They told me you were like that.'

'Let's try to be constructive, shall we?' I said. 'What exactly did the man do?'

'You want details,' she said disgustedly.

'Isn't that why you came here?'

'I told you why I came here.'

'You'll have to be specific. Are you reporting a theft?'

'No.'

'Assault?'

'Kinda.'

'Miss Clem,' I said, and I was on the point of losing my temper, 'I'm very busy. I can't read your mind and I'd rather you didn't waste my time. Now play ball!'

She put her face in her hands and began to blubber, clownish notes of hooted grief. She had that brittle American composure that breaks all at once, like a windscreen shattered with a pebble. A fat girl crying is an appalling sight, in any case, all that motion and noise. Finally she spoke up: 'I've been raped! '

I closed the door to the outer office, and said, 'Do you know who did it?'

She nodded sadly and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She said, ‘Ibrahim.'

'The Prince?'

'He's no prince,' she said. Then plaintively, 'After all I did for him.'

'You'll have to go to the police and make a statement.'

'What will I say?' she said in a small voice.

'Just tell them what happened.'

'Oh, God, it was really awful,' she said. 'He came through the window with no clothes on — just like that. I was up combing my hair and I saw him in the mirror. He turned off the light and grabbed me by the arm. I tried to push him away, but you know, it was really strange — he was all slippery. His skin was covered by some kind of oil. "Cut it out," I said. But he wouldn't. He didn't say anything. He just lifted me up by the legs like a wheelbarrow, and — I'll never forgive him for this. I was giving him English lessons! '

'Tell that to the police. I'll send you in my car. They'll want to know the times and that sort of thing.'

'What'll they do?'

'I imagine they'll arrest him, if they can find him.'

'They'll find him,' she said bitterly. 'I just saw him in town.'

So Ibrahim, The Prince, was picked up, and Miss Clem pressed charges. Only the younger members of the Club wondered why The Prince had stayed around. The rest of us knew how Miss Clem had ventured into danger; she had led him on and the poor dumb Malay had misread all her signs. Miss Clem had discovered how easy it was, after all, to be a Malay. It was typical enough for farce.

Squibb said, 'She got just what she deserved. She was asking for it.'

'She doesn't know the first thing about it,' said Strang.

Squibb squinted maliciously: 'She knows now. The Flower of Malaya's been deflowered.'

I said I agreed with them — it was fatal to disagree with anyone in such a small post — but I sympathized with the girl. She knew nothing of the country; she had fallen in head-first. All you had to do to survive was practise elementary caution. In one sense she deserved what she got, but it was a painful lesson. I had some sympathy for The Prince, too; he was not wholly to blame. He had mistaken her for one of his own. But how was he to know? They were all beginners, that was the worst of these inter-racial tangles: how infantile they were!

Predictably, Miss Clem stopped wearing her sarong. She tied her hair differently, and she began dropping into the Club alone. The members were kind to her — I noticed she usually had a tennis partner, and that was truly an act of kindness, since she was such a dreadful player. Overnight, she acquired the affectations of a memsahib; a bit sharp with the waiters and ball-boys, a common parody of hauteur in her commands, that odd exaggerated play-actor's laugh, and a posture I associate with a woman who is used to being waited on — a straight-backed rigidity with formal, irritated hand-signals to the staff, as if her great behind was cemented to a plinth. Then I disliked her, and I saw how she was patronized by the Club bores, who rehearsed their ill-natured stories with her. She encouraged them in racial innuendo; the memsahib lapping at the double peg in her hand. A month before she had been sidling up to a Malay and probably planning to take out citizenship; now she was in a high-backed Malacca chair under a fan calling out, 'Boy! '

There was, so far, no trial. Ibrahim the Prince was languishing in the Central Jail, while the lawyers collected evidence. But they hadn't extracted a confession from him, and that was the most unusual feature of the whole business, since even an innocent man would own up simply to get a night's sleep. The Ayer Hitam police

were not noted for their gentleness with suspects.

One night at the club Miss Clem spoke to me in her new actressy voice. 'I want to thank you for all you've done. I'm glad it's over.'

'You're welcome,' I said, 'but I'm afraid it's not over yet. There's still the trial. You won't like that.'

'I hope you'll be there to give me moral support.'

'I don't like circuses,' I said. 'But if there's anything useful I can do, let me know.'

The following week she had a different story, a different voice. She entered the consulate as she had that first time, pushing my staff aside and bursting into my office. She had been crying, and I could see she was out of breath.

'You're not going to believe this,' she said. Not the mem-sahib now, but that other voice of complaint, the innocent surprised. She sat down. 'It happened again.'

'Another break-in?'

'I was raped,' she said softly.

'The Prince is in jail,' I said in gentle contradiction.

'I'm telling you I was raped!' she shouted, and I was sure she could be heard all the way to the Club.

'Well who do you suppose could have done it?'

She said nothing; she lowered her eyes and sniffed.

'Tell me, Miss Clem,' I said, 'does this sort of thing happen to you often?'

'What do you mean "often"?'

'Do you find that when you're alone, in a strange place, people get it in their heads to rape you? Perhaps you have something that drives men wild, some hidden attraction.'

'You don't believe me. I knew you wouldn't.'

'It seems rather extraordinary.'

'It happened again. I'm not making it up.' Then she pulled the top of her dress across one shoulder and showed me, just below her shoulder bone, a plum-coloured bruise. I looked closer and saw circling it were the stitch-marks of a full set of teeth.

'You should have that seen to,' I said.

'I want that man caught,' she insisted.

'I thought we had caught him.'

'So did I.'

'So it wasn't The Prince?'

'I don't know,' she said.