Paul Theroux - The Consul's File

I said sharply, 'It's the same damned person! ' 'Listen, my friend. I will explain you for the last time. Tiger killed girl and perhaps man became tiger. But, if such is the case, he was not man when he killed girl and therefore man cannot be held responsible for crime. He can change shape, into monkey or tiger or what-not. He can work magic. So traditional law applies.' 'Has he got a chance?'

'No, but it will be interesting all the same.' The magistrate returned. The bomoh's lawyer outlined the facts of the case, arguing along the lines the Indian next to me had suggested, and he concluded, 'I submit, m'lud, that my client is innocent of this deed. He has never been to the kampong in question, he has never seen the girl.'

The bomoh was put in the witness box and cross-examined through a translator. He sat with his head slightly bowed, answering softly in Malay. The prosecuting lawyer charged him, flung his arms about, rounded on him with accusations. But the bomoh said, 'Yes, I took the money— half of it — but I did not kill the girl. A tiger did that.'

'I am putting it to you that you are the tiger,' said the furious lawyer.

The bomoh spoke, then smiled. It was translated. 'I think that someone like you who has been to a school can tell the difference between a tiger and a man.'

There was little more. An adjournment, the sound of rain, the suffocating heat. Then the verdict: guilty. The magistrate specified the punishment: the bomoh Noor was to be hanged.

People stood and howled and shook their fists, and I saw the bomoh being led away, a small foolish man in a faded shirt, handcuffed to two hurrying policemen.

It was difficult not to feel sorry for the deluded witchdoctor who had sued the kampong for breach of contract and delivered himself into the hands of the police. He was a murderer, undoubtedly, but my sympathy for him increased when his appeal was turned down. The people at the Club, some of them, asked me if I could use my influence as a member of the diplomatic corps and get them into the hanging at the Central Jail.

There were some stories: a French priest from the Catholic mission had visited him, to hear his confession— what a confession that would have been! — but the bomoh sent him away; in another version of that story, the bomoh was baptized and converted to Catholicism. Food was brought to the bomoh by a group of Larut tribesmen, and it was said that attempts had been made to poison it.

The failure of his appeal met with general satisfaction. Squibb said, 'I'd hang him myself if they gave me a chance. I've got the rope, too.'

The night before the hanging I heard a cry, a low continual howl. I had just come back from the Club and was having a brandy alone on my upstairs verandah. I closed my eyes and listened very carefully. I had not imagined it: it had roused the village dogs, who replied with barks.

I gasped and had to put my glass down. For a moment I felt strangled — I couldn't breathe. My mind hollowed and in its emptiness was only the sound of crickets and a solitary gecko. I had never experienced such frightful seconds of termination. But it was the rain: I had become so accustomed to the regular sprinkle it was like a sound within me. Now there was no rain, and it was as if my heart had stopped.

The sun — the first for many weeks — woke me the following morning, and hearing excited voices from the road, I rose and instead of having breakfast, took the car into town. There was a great mob gathered at the Central Jail, mostly Malays. I parked the car and pushed to the centre of the mob, where there were half a dozen policemen holding the crowd back. A police guard in a khaki uniform lay in the mud, his arms stretched out, one puttee undone and revealing not a leg but the bone of a leg. And his face had been removed: he wore a mask of dark meat.

Fifty feet away the jail door was open. The hasp of the lock dangled — it had obviously received a tremendous blow. The Malays' interest was all in the dead man, stinking in that bright dawn, but what interested me was not the twisted hasp or even the disorder that led to the cells, the smashed bench, the overturned chair, but rather the door itself, which was painted that Ministry of Works green. It had been raked very deeply with claws.

‘Tuan!'

I turned. It was Peeraswami, all eyes and teeth, and he hissed at me, 'Matjan!'

'Welcome, welcome,' said Sundrum, tightening his sarong and showing me to a chair. He had raised his voice; there were children playing under the window, shouting and thumping against the frail wall of the house.

'I'm surprised you get any work done, with that racket.' 'Children/ said Sundrum. 'I love them. Their voices are music.'

It was my first visit to Sundrum's. I had met him at Alec's Christmas party, where he'd talked about the snow he had always wanted to see. Sundrum had been introduced to me as a teacher. I discovered later that he was a writer as well, Ayer Hitam's only novelist. And I was moved by that description: the Chekhovian character stifling in an airless provincial town, comforted by his books, puffing his pipe, casting ironic glances at his neighbours and keeping his diary up to date.

'So you have this symphony every day?' The children were still at it, yelling and banging.

'How else could I work?' said Sundrum. He was half-Chinese, half-Indian and so looked Malay, with a pot-belly and a grin. It was a Malaysian grin, the result of the heat, and it seemed cooked into his face. 'Foreigners say this is a noisy country. I never notice it — perhaps it is because I am so busy.'

Td be embarrassed to tell you how little I have to do.'

'Writing is my life,' he said. 'I realized when I was in jail that life is short. I've had to make up for lost time.'

'You don't seem the criminal type.'

'I was imprisoned for my views. It was during the Emergency.'

'You must have had strong views.'

'I — was held a month and then released.'

'I see.' A month's imprisonment: people got that for letting mosquitoes breed in their back-yard. But I was angry with myself for ridiculing his jail sentence.

Sundrum said, 'I didn't suffer. I listened to the birds. It is a matter of perspective. Perspective is everything, don't you agree?'

'Absolutely.'

'People come here and write about Ayer Hitam. They are tourists — what do they know?' He threw open his arms and said, 'But if you live here it's different! You have perspective. You don't hear children screaming — you hear the voices of the future. Music.'

I was sorry I'd mentioned the children. Was he trying to rub it in?

'This is quite a library,' I said, indicating the bookshelves, a rare sight in a Malaysian household. A pedestal held a dictionary, which was open in the middle.

'My books,' said Sundrum. 'But what do they matter? Life is so much more important than books. I write, but I know I am wasting my time. Do you know what I always wanted to be?'

'Tell me.'

'A gatherer of coconuts,' he said. 'Not a farmer, but a labourer — one of those men who climbs the trees. Have you seen them? How they scramble up the vertical trunks? They cling to the tops of the trees and hack at the coconuts.' He motioned with his hands, illustrating. 'They defy gravity. And they see more from the tops of those palm trees than anyone on the ground. I have spoken to those men. Do you know what they say? Every coconut is different.'

'Is that so?'

'Every coconut is different! ' He said it with surprising energy. 'They are the true poets of this country. They have perspective. I must say I envy them.'

Coconut gathering didn't seem much of an ambition. I had seen trained monkeys do it in Ayer Hitara. But Sun-drum had spoken with enthusiasm, and I was almost persuaded. I thought: At last, a Malaysian who doesn't want a car, a passport, a radio, his air fare to New York. He was the first really happy man I had met in the country.