“What’s the beer like?” Smale asked Leigh.
“My dear fellow,” said Leigh, “I haven’t the remotest idea.”
That annoyed everyone, and Yardley said, “Got a right one ’ere.” At that point I wasn’t sure who I disliked more — Yardley for being rude to Leigh, or Leigh for spelling his name and saying “I haven’t the remotest idea” to what was meant as a friendly question. The next thing Leigh said put me on Yardley’s side.
“Flowers,” said Leigh sharply, ignoring the others, “I thought you said we could get a drink here.”
This magisterial “Flowers,” in front of my friends. Frogget grinned, Smale winked and raised his glass to me, Yates frowned, and Yardley smirked as if to say, “You poor suffering bastard”—all of this behind Leigh’s stiffened back.
I knocked for Wally and ordered two gins. Leigh wrapped his hanky around his glass and drank disgustedly. It may have been anger or the heat, but Leigh was reddening and beads of sweat began percolating out of his face. Ordinarily, Yardley would have behaved the same as Gunstone and said, “Ever run into old So-and-So in Kowloon?” which might have brought Leigh around. Or he would have told his story about the day the swarm of bees flew through the window, and if he was in a good mood he would have embellished it by imitating the bees, running from one side of the room to the other, flapping his arms, and buzzing until he was breathless.
“Bit stuffy in here,” Smale said.
Yardley was looking at Leigh. Leigh seemed unaware that he had nettled Yardley. Yates said he had to go home and Yardley said, “I don’t blame you.”
“Say good night to Flowers,” said Frogget.
“Mister Flowers to you, Froggy,” I said.
Yates left, saying good night to everyone by name, but omitting Leigh. Leigh said, “Tiffin time — isn’t that what they call it here?”
Yardley had not taken his eyes off Leigh. I thought Yardley might sock him, but his tactic was different. He told his McCoy joke, the one he always told when there was a woman in the bar he wanted to drive out. It concerned four recruits being interviewed for the army. The sergeant asks them what they do for a living and the first one, saying his name’s McCoy, mutters that he’s a cork sacker (“puts the cork into sacks, you see”); the next one, also a McCoy, is a cork soaker (“soaks it in water, you understand”); the third McCoy is a coke sacker (“sacks coke for a dealer in fuel”); and the last one, a mincing feller in satin tights, says that he’s the real McCoy. Yardley told it in several accents, lengthening it with slurs and pauses (“What’s that you say?”), and obnoxiously set it in Hong Kong.
Leigh made no comment. He ordered a gin for himself, but none for me.
“You giving up the booze, Jack?” said Smale, who noticed.
“A double, Wally,” I said.
Yardley giggled. “I must have my tiffin,” he said.
“Tiffin time, breh-heh,” said Frogget.
“Take care of yourself, Jack,” said Yardley, and left with Frogget shambling after him.
“I think I’ll go whore hopping,” said Smale in a thoughtful voice. He pressed down the lid of his cigarette can and said, “Say, Jack, what was the name of that skinny one you fixed me up with? Gladys? Gloria?”
I pretended not to hear.
“Give me her number. God, she was a lively bit of crumpet.” He stared at Leigh and said, “She does marvelous things to your arse.”
“Ask Wally,” I said.
“It was like being dead,” said Smale, still addressing Leigh. He grinned. “You know. Paradise.”
Wally was polishing glasses at the far end of the bar, smiling at the glasses as he smiled at the counter when he wiped it and at the gin bottle when he poured. Wally said, “What you want, Mr. Smale? You want mushudge?” He nodded. “Can.”
“Aw hell,” said Smale. “Maybe I should forget it. I could have another double whiskey, toss myself off in the loo, and go down to the amusement park and play the pinball machines. What do you think?” He leered at me, then snorted and sloped off.
Leigh did not say anything right away. He climbed onto a barstool and dabbed at the perspiration on his upper lip with his finger. He looked at his finger, and feelingly, said, “How do you stand it?”
It made me cringe. It happened, this moment of worry when, hearing a question that never occurred to me, I discovered that I had an answer, as once in the Tai-Hwa on Cecil Street, a stranger wearing dark glasses asked, “Where you does wuck?” and I remembered and was afraid.
4
IN MY CUBICLE, irritably dialing a third hotel, I heard Gopi coming. Then, in Singapore, disability determined the job; Gopi, a cripple, was a peon from birth. He could be heard approaching by the sigh-shuffle-thump of his curious bike-riding gait. One leg was shorter than the other, and the knee in that rickety limb bent inward, collapsing into the good leg and making Gopi lean at a dangerous angle as he put his weight on it. A long step with his good leg checked his fall, and that was how he went, heaving along, dancing forward, swaying from side to side, like the standing dance of a man pumping a bike up a steep hill.
Some years ago a horse named Gopi’s Dream ran an eight-furlong race at the Singapore Turf Club. I was not a member of that club, but two dollars got me into the grandstand with the howling mob; and it was there that I spent at least one afternoon of every race meeting. I had just arrived and was getting my bearings when I saw that the horse I had picked for the first race had been scratched. There were poor odds on all the others except Gopi’s Dream, and the logic of choosing this horse was plain to me. I put ten dollars on him to win, though my usual bet was a deuce on a long shot to place, bolstered by a prayer, which I screamed into my hands as the ponies leaped down the homestretch. I told myself that half the bet was Gopi’s Deepavali present. Gopi’s Dream won, as all horses do when the logic is irrefutable, and it paid two hundred dollars; half I put away for Gopi, the rest I lost in the course of the afternoon.
The next day I took Gopi to a shop over on Armenian Street and had him fitted for a brace and a boot with a five-inch sole. He was a bit rocky on it at first, but soon he got the hang of it and instead of his cyclist’s swaying he learned a jerking limp, dragging the enormous boot and clumping it ahead of him and then chasing it with the other leg. The brace clinked and the boot gave out long twisting squeaks. The odd thing was that although he walked fairly straight he walked much more slowly, perspiring and pulling and swinging the boot along.
He stopped wearing the apparatus. He told me in Malay that it was “biting” his leg and that it was at the cobblers being put right. After a week I asked him about it; he started wearing it — two days of clinks and squeaks, then he stopped. I asked why. It was biting. The brace was a greater affliction than the limp, a cure more painful than the ailment; the incident cured me of certain regrets.
“All full up,” the voice was saying to me over the phone. Gopi peddled over and I slammed the receiver into its cradle.
“Hupstairs,” said Gopi, pointing his slender finger to indicate that Leigh was in Hing’s office. He clamped his tongue at the side of his mouth and scribbled in an invisible ledger to show he had seen Leigh writing. Then he asked me about Leigh: Who was he? Where was he from? Did he have children? Was he a Eurasian?
I told Gopi what I knew and asked what time Leigh had arrived.
“Seven-something.”
That was news. As an eager new employee at Hing’s, with the hunch that if I did a good job I had a chance for promotion, I used to come in at seven-something, too. By the time Hing rolled in I was already in a sweat, saying “Right you are, Mr. Hing,” and “Just leave it to me.” There was no promotion. I asked for Christmas off; Hing said, “I am Buddhist, but wucking on Besak Day, birthday of Buddha, isn’t it?” I started to come in at eight-something and never said “Leave it to me,” and after I made a go of my enterprise it was ten before I showed my face. I would not be promoted, but neither would I be sacked: he could never have gotten another ang moh for what he paid me. In the acceptance of this continuing meekness, the denial of any ambition, was an unvarying condition of enduring security and the annual promise of a renewed work permit. It was an angle, but it cost me my pride. When someone at a club bar or hotel lounge said, “Go on, Jack, have another one,” I was happy; I had the satisfaction of having earned my reward. The reminder that the drink would never have been offered if I hadn’t had a girl in tow was something that didn’t worry me unless a feller like Leigh woke up my scrupling with, “How do you stand it?” A feller who lived in Singapore and knew me would never have asked that. The real question was not how but why. My answer would have unstrung him, or anyone.