Paul Theroux - The Consul's File

Alec looked at me slyly and said, 'That Canadian never tasted haggis.'

'The syces here eat it,' said the Sultan.

'Haggis?' said Alec.

But the Sultan hadn't heard. 'My father was a sportsman. Oh, he was a great hunter. He shot everything, too, elephants, lions. He shot the last tiger in Malaya — the very last one! You might like to see his trophies after the match.'

'We'll have to be heading back,' said Alec.

'My father said horsemeat was good to eat. Yes, indeed. But it's very heating, he said.' The Sultan placed his freckled hands on his belly and tugged. 'You can't eat too much of it. It's too heating.'

'You've tried it then?' I said.

He looked disapproving. 'My syces eat it.'

There was a shout from the Malays at the periphery of the field.

'What was that? A goal?'

'A foul, Your Highness,' said Angela.

'A foul? What did he do?'

'Crossed-over, Your Highness.'

'Is that a foul?'

'Yes, Your Highness.'

The Sultan grimaced in boredom. 'Stewart, I was in Singapore yesterday. They gave me an escort and then they cleared Bukit Timah Road for me. Just closed the road. Too bad, chaps, they said. Took me fifteen minutes to get back from the Seaview.'

'Fancy that,' said Alec.

'The Bird Park's open,' said the Sultan. 'It's full of chickens, they say. Chickens of various kinds. They wanted me to see them. Know what I told them? I said, "I have penguins". I do — eight or ten. Perhaps your friend would like to see them after the match.'

'We're expected back in Ayer Hitara when the match is over,' said Alec. He scowled at his watch. 'Which should be any minute now.'

‘I won't let you go,' said the Sultan. He spoke to Angela. 'I won't let them go.'

'No, Your Highness.'

The match ended soon after she spoke. The Sultan said, 'Come, Stewart,' and he took Angela's arm. 'If you don't come I shall never speak to you again.'

Alec whispered, 'He's not joking.'

We were in the Sultan's ballroom. The lights of the chandeliers were on, and the fans rattled their glass. But it was not yet dark outside; the setting sun diminished these lights and made them look cheap, like the garish illuminations of an arcade. Some of the glass hangings were missing or broken; the wall-mirrors were imperfect and had that tropical decay that showed as grey blistered smears on their undersides. I saw the Sultan's flowered shirt in one of the mirrors; it passed into a smear and he was gone.

The room was filled with people — women dressed like Angela, men in white suits, waiters carrying trays of drinks. The polo players were still in their uniforms, much grimier than they had looked on their horses, with mud-spattered boots. It was their celebration: they wore their mud proudly like a badge of combat.

'Have a drink,' said a Malay polo player. He handed me a large gold cup.

The metal was warm and sticky, and I hesitated again when I saw the sloshing liquid, faintly yellow under a spittly froth. I tried to pass it back to him.

'Drink,' he said. 'It's champagne. We won! '

'Congratulations,' I said, and made a show of drinking.

'It's solid gold,' he said. 'From Asprey's.'

The cup was taken from me by a fat Malay girl who raised it to her mouth so quickly it splashed down her dress.

'That's okay,' she said, and brushed at her dress. 'It's just a cheap thing I got in London.'

'Very pretty,' I said.

'Do you like it? It's from a boutique. "Che Guevara" in Carnaby Street.'

'The Che Guevara boutique,' I said. 'That sums up the past fifteen years, doesn't it?'

She said, 'The cup's from Asprey's. It cost three thousand dollars.'

The polo player smiled. 'Three thousand eight hundred.' As he spoke his teeth snagged on his lip.

I was relieved to see Alec making his way towards us. He greeted the girl, 'How's my princess? You're looking fit.'

'I'm not,' she said. 'It's this stinking climate. Daddy insists I spend my hols here. He knows I hate it, so he bought me a car this time. Red. Automatic transmission. It's the only one in the country.'

'Drive up and see us some time,' said Alec.

'You'd like that, wouldn't you?' she said. 'Excuse me, I need a drink.' She wandered into the crowd.

'The princess,' said Alec. 'She's a hard lass. Her tits are solid gold.'

'Who are all these people?'

'Royalty of various kinds,' said Alec. 'They're all in the stud book. Try to look interested — we won't be here long.'

'I was hoping to talk to the Sultan.' 'I thought you'd had your fill of that.'

'Political questions,' I said. But I didn't want to ask them. I knew the answers, and I was certain it would only make me angrier to hear him say them.

Alec said, 'It doesn't matter. Whatever you ask him, he'll turn the conversation to Beverley Nichols and Willie Maugham. Here he comes.'

The Sultan entered the room. He had changed into a buff-coloured military uniform that resembled a Masonic costume. None of the medals and ribbons thatched on his breast pocket were as striking as the buttons down the front of his jacket, which turned the dim light from the chandeliers into a dazzle. There was some applause as he took his seat at the head table.

'Those buttons are something,' I said.

'Diamonds,' said Alec. 'That's how we kept these jokers on our side, you know. We let them design their own uniforms. Buffles is one of the better ones. True, he barely speaks Malay, he's half ga-ga and he thinks Beverley Nichols is Shakespeare. But I tell you, Buffles is one of the better ones.'

'Isn't this rather an expensive farce?' I said. I looked around and thought: Gillespie died for them. But Gil-lespie had been a polo player.

'It's your farce from now on. You Americans will pay for it.'

'No,' I said. 'They're whistling in the dark.'

'We're being summoned,' said Alec. 'Here comes the princess. What did I tell you? Now we have to stay.'

'No,' I said. 'I'm not hungry any more.'

The princess said, 'Daddy wants you to sit down.'

The Sultan had already begun eating. He was hunched biliously over his food and appeared to be spitting into his plate.

'We'll be right over,' said Alec.

'I'm expected in Ayer Hitam,' I said.

'Daddy said you're to stay.'

'I'm afraid that's out of the question,' I said.

Alec tried to soothe her, but she stepped in front of him and said crossly, 'Daddy said so.' She went back to the Sultan and whispered in his ear. The old man looked up, trying to focus on me. He looked blackly furious, and then his cheeks bulged with a bone which he spat on the tablecloth.

'Now you've done it,' said Alec.

The princess returned to us. 'Go, if you want to,' she said. 'Daddy doesn't care. But I do. You have no right to treat him that way. You know what I think of you? I think you're a typical rude American.'

'If you believe that,' I said, 'then it won't surprise you if I tell you that I think you're a fat overprivileged little prig.'

Her eyes widened at me. I thought she was going to scream, but all she said was, 'I'm telling Daddy.'

'Please do.'

Alec said, 'Are you off your head?' He rushed over to the Sultan and spoke to him, and he did not leave until he had the Sultan laughing, agreeing, sharing whatever story he had concocted to excuse himself for my bad manners.

'What were you telling the Sultan?' I asked on the way back to Ayer Hitam.

'Nothing,' he said. Then suddenly, 'You don't have to live here — I do.'

The road was dark; we drove in silence for a while past the ruined rubber estates. At one, there was a shack at the roadside. I heard a child bawling. I said, 'Poor Gil-lespie.'

Alec grunted. He said, 'Gillespie would have stayed.'

He was right, of course. Gillespie would have stayed and charmed the Sultan and complimented the princess. I had over-reacted — my squawk was ineffectual. But Gillespie didn't matter much. He was just another Maugham hero whose time was up. Only the night mattered, and those feebly lighted shacks, and the cry of that child in the darkness, and the danger that all of us deserved. We drove down the road which was made cavernous by hanging branches, and there was no sound but the pelting insects smashing against the windscreen.