Paul Theroux - The Consul's File

There were eight or ten people at the Club the night Reggie came back. I noticed they were all Footlighters. I waited until they left him — they had been gathered around him, talking loudly — and then I told him I had the forms. 'Something's come up.’ he said. He grinned. 'I'm going to be in a film. That's why I was in Singapore. Auditioning. And I got the part-lah.'

'Congratulations.’ I said. 'What film is it?'

'Man's Fate,' he said. ‘I’m playing Ch'en. I've always adored Malraux and I love acting. Now I can draw on my philosophy background as well. So you see, it's perfect/

'What does your father think about it?'

'It's a job — he's keen.’ said Reggie. 'It's my big chance, and it could lead to bigger parts.’

'Hollywood.’ I said.

He smiled. 'I would never go to Hollywood. False life, no sense of values. I plan to make London my base, but if the money was good I might go to the States for a few weeks at a time.’

'When are they going to make Man's Fate?'

'Shooting starts in Singapore in a month's time.’

And the way he said shooting convinced me that the Fulbright forms would never be used.

After that I heard a lot about Reggie at the Club. Lady-smith, the English teacher, said, 'City Bar's son's done all right for himself, and Reggie was always in sight, in new clothes, declining drinks. Squibb said, 'These things never come off, and some people referred to Reggie as 'that fruit'. But most were pleased. The Footlighters said, 'I can say I knew you when/ and cautioned him about the small print in contracts, and when they filed in at dusk for the first drink they greeted him with, 'How's our film star?'

Reggie's reply was, 'I had a letter just the other day.' He said this week after week, giving the impression of a constant flow of mail, keeping him up to date. But I realized, as his manner became more abrupt and diffident, that it was always the same letter.

Then a job came up at the Anglo-Chinese school: a history teacher was needed. Reggie's name was mentioned, it was his old school, he was out of work. But he turned it down. 'I can't commit myself to a teaching post with this film in the pipeline! ' He lost his temper with the Chinese barman who mistook tonic for soda. He shouted at the ball-boys on the tennis courts. Like a film star, people said.

Twice a week, when the programme changed at the Capitol Cinema in Johore Bahru. Reggie made the sixty-mile drive in his father's van, usually with an English girl from the Club. There were rumours of romance, even talk of marriage; names were mentioned, Millsaps' daughter, Squibb's niece. Reggie spoke of going to London.

One day he was gone. I noticed his absence because the Club was holding rehearsals for a new play, and Reggie, who had not missed a major production since The Letter, was not in the cast. It was said he was in Singapore, and I assumed they were shooting Man's Fate.

Sometime later, the glimpse of a face being averted in a post office crowd reminded me of Reggie. I mentioned him to my peon, Peeraswami.

'At City Bar,' said Peeraswami.

'Then he is back.'

I remember the night I went over to offer my congratulations, and I could find it on a calendar even now, because there was a full moon over a cloud that hung like a dragon in the sky. The usual night-time crowd of drinkers and idlers were at City Bar. I looked for the figure in the scarf and sunglasses I had seen so many times in the Club, but all I saw were Chinese gesturing with coffee cups and Tamils drinking toddy — everyone in short-sleeved white shirts. A hot night in a Malaysian town has a particular bitter-sweet taste; the chatter and noise in that place seemed to make the taste stronger. I fought my way into the bar and saw Woo Boh Swee, scowling at the cash register.

'Where's Reggie?'

He jerked his thumb inside but stared at me in an excluding way. When I saw Reggie in the back, hunched over the mah-jongg table in the short-sleeved shirt that made him anonymous, his legs folded, kicking a rubber sandal up and down, I knew it would be an intrusion to go any further. I heard him abuse his opponent in sharp, unmistakably Hokkien barks, and he banged down a mah-jongg tile. I left before he caught sight of me and went back to the Club, crossing the road with that sinking feeling you get at a national boundary or an unguarded frontier.

Not one person I had known in Africa was my age — they were either much older or much younger. That could hardly have been true, and yet that was how it appeared to me. I was very young.

The Indian seemed old; I had never spoken to him; I did not know his name. He was one of those people, common in small towns, whom one sees constantly, and who, like a feature of the landscape, become anonymous because they are never out of view, like a newspaper-seller or a particular cripple. He was dark, always alone, and threadbare in an indestructible way. He used to show up at the door of the Gujarati restaurant where I ate, The Hindu Lodge, an old man with a cardboard box of Indian sweets, and he said — it was his one word of English— 'Sweetmeats.'

In my two-year tour in Uganda I saw him hundreds of times, in that open doorway, blinking because of the flies near his face. No one bought the food he had in the dirty cardboard box. He showed the box, said his word, and then went away. It was as if he was doing it against his will: he had been sent by someone conspiring to find out what we would do with him, a test of our sympathy. We did nothing. If anyone had asked me about him at the time I think I would have said that I found him terribly reassuring. But no one asked; no one saw him.

Ayer Hitam, half a world away, had her Indian conspirators, but being political, they had names. Rao had been arrested on a political charge. It was said that he was a communist. I found the description slightly absurd in that small town, like the cheese-coloured building they called the Ministry of Works or the bellyache everyone referred to as dysentery. In Malaysia a communist meant someone either very poor or very safe, who gathered with others in a kind of priestly cabal, meeting at night over a table littered with boring papers and high-minded pamphlets to reheat their anger. I could imagine the futile talk, the despair of the ritual which had its more vulgar counterparts in the lounge of the Ayer Hitara Club. It was said that the communists wanted to poison the Sultan's polo-ponies and nationalize the palm-oil estates. They were people seeking to be arrested. Arrest was their victory, and in that sense they were like early Christians, needing to be persecuted because they wished to prove their courage. They were conspirators; they inspired others in conspiracy against them. Most Malays were superstitious about them. To speak too much of the communists was to give their faith an importance it didn't deserve. But when they were caught they were imprisoned.

Rao had been in prison for some time. The Embassy told me of his release and how he had returned to Ayer Hitam. I was ashamed to admit that I had never heard of him. My people gave me a few facts: Rao had been a real fire-brand; he had given public speeches; he had started a cell in the mission school; he was a confidant of the Chinese goldsmiths who were, somehow, Maoists; he had caused at least two riots in town. I was sceptical but interested: large affairs, wild talk — but the town looked small and tame and too sparsely populated to support a riot. An unlawful assembly perhaps, but not a riot.

Virtually everyone I knew suspected me of being a spy. I was seen as a legitimate conspirator. In a small way I suppose I was. My information was negligible: I was sorry it mattered so little. It would have been encouraging to know that my cables were eagerly awaited and quickly acted upon. But what I sent was filed and never queried, never crucial. I was in the wrong place. I could have reported on the Chinese goldsmiths, but I knew better. Theirs was a sentimental attachment to China, their nationalism the nostalgia of souvenirs, like calendar pictures of Tien-An-Men Square in Peking. I reminded myself that an Italian in the United States would have a feeling for Italy no matter who governed. It was the same with the Chinese. My cables were as eventless as the town. I knew I didn't count.