The collected stories (50 page)

Raziah said, 'You can play me.'

Shimura hesitated and before he replied he looked around in disappointment and resignation, as if he suspected he might be accused of something shameful. Then he said, 'Okay, let's go.'

'Now watch him run,' said Evans, raising his glass of beer.

Raziah went to the baseline and dropped his sarong. He was wearing a pair of tennis shorts. He kicked off his flip-flops and put on white sneakers - new ones that looked large and dazzling in the sunlight. Raziah laughed out loud; he knew he had been transformed.

Squibb said, 'Tony, you're a bloody genius.'

Raziah won the toss and served. Raziah was seventeen; for seven

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of those years he had been a ball-boy, and he had learned the game by watching members play. Later, with a cast-off racket, he began playing in the early morning, before anyone was up. Evans had seen him in one of these six o'clock matches and, impressed by Raziah's speed and backhand, taught him to serve and showed him the fine points of the game. He inspired in him the psychic alertness and confidence that makes tennis champions. Evans, unmarried, had used his bachelor's idleness as a charitable pledge and gave this energy and optimism to Raziah, who became his pet and student and finally his partner. And Evans promised that he would, one of these years, put Raziah up for membership if he proved himself; he had so far withheld club membership from the Malay, although the boy had beaten him a number of times.

Raziah played a deceptively awkward game; the length of his arms made him appear to swing wildly; he was fast, but he often stumbled trying to stop. After the first set it was clear that everyone had underestimated Shimura. Raziah smashed serves at him, Shi-mura returned them forcefully, without apparent effort, and Shimura won the first two sets six love. Changing ends, Raziah shrugged at the verandah as if to say, Tm doing the best I can.'

Evans said, 'Raziah's a slow starter. He needs to win a few games to get his confidence up.'

But he lost the first three games of the third set. Then Shimura, eager to finish him off, rushed the net and saw two of Raziah's drop shots land out of reach. When Raziah won that game, and the next - breaking Shimura's serve - there was a triumphant howl from the verandah. Raziah waved, and Shimura, who had been smiling, turned to see four men at the rail, the Chinese waiters on the steps, and crouching just under the verandah, two Tamil gardeners - everyone gazing with the intensity of jurors.

Shimura must have guessed that something was up. He reacted by playing angrily, slicing vicious shots at Raziah, or else lifting slow balls just over the net to drop hardly without a bounce at Raziah's feet. The pretense of the casual match was abandoned; the kitchen staff gathered along the sidelines and others - mostly Malay - stood at the hedge, cheering. There was laughter when Shimura slipped, applause when the towel fell from his neck.

What a good story a victory would have made! But nothing in Ayer Hitam was ever so neat. It would have been perfect revenge, a kind of romantic battle - the lanky local boy with his old racket,

THE TENNIS COURT

making a stand against the intruder; the drama of vindicating not only his own reputation as a potentially great tennis player, but indeed the dignity of the entire club. The match had its charms: Raziah had a way of chewing and swallowing and working his Adam's apple at Shimura when the Japanese lost a point; Raziah talked as he played, a muttering narration that was meant to unnerve his opponent; and he took his time serving, shrugging his shoulders and bouncing the ball. But it was a very short contest, for as Evans and the others watched with hopeful and judging solemnity, Raziah lost.

The astonishing thing was that none of the club staff, and none of Raziah's friends, seemed to realize that he had lost. They were still laughing and cheering and congratulating themselves long after Shimura had aced his last serve past Raziah's knees; and not for the longest time did the festive mood change.

Evans jumped to the court. Shimura was clamping his press to his racket, mopping his face. Seeing Evans he started to walk away.

Td like a word with you,' said Evans.

Shimura looked downcast; sweat and effort had plastered his hair close to his head, and his fatigue was curiously like sadness, as if he had been beaten. He had missed the hatred before, hadn't noticed us; but the laughter, the sudden crowd, the charade of the challenge match had showed him how much he was hated and how much trouble we had gone to in order to prove it. He said, 'So.'

Evans was purple. 'You come to the Club quite a bit, I see.'

'Yes.'

'I think you ought to be acquainted with the rules.'

'I have not broken any rules.'

Evans said curtly, 'You didn't sign in your guest.'

Shimura bowed and walked to the clubhouse. Evans glared at Raziah; Raziah shook his head, then went for his sarong, and putting it on he became again a Malay of the town, one of numerous idlers who'd never be members of the Ayer Hitam Club.

The following day Shimura left. We never saw him again. For a month Evans claimed it as a personal victory. But that was short-lived, for the next news was of Raziah's defection. Shimura had invited him to Kuala Lumpur and entered him in the Federation Championship, and the jersey Raziah wore when he won a respectable third prize had the name of Shimura's company on it, an electronics firm. And there was to be more. Shimura put him up

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for membership in the Selangor Club, and so we knew that it was only a matter of time before Raziah returned to Ayer Hitam to claim reciprocal privileges as a guest member. And even those who hated Shimura and criticized his lob were forced to admire the cleverness of his Oriental revenge.

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though drinks at the Club were more expensive than at City Bar, Reggie was at the Club, drinking, nearly every evening.

One night I saw him alone in the lounge. He looked like an actor who hadn't been warned that his play was canceled; dressed up, solitary, he was a figure of neglect, and his expectant look was changing into one of desolation. I joined him, we talked about the heat, and after a while I told him he ought to get a scholarship to study overseas.

'I wouldn't mind!' He brushed his hair out of his eyes. 'How do I go about it?'

That depends,' I said. 'What's your field?'

'Philosophy.'

I was prepared to be surprised, but I was unprepared for that. It was his clothes, narrow trousers, pointed shoes, a pink shirt, and a silk scarf knotted at his throat. 'It would be strange,' I said. 'A Chinese from Malaysia going to the States to study Oriental philosophy.'

'Why do you say Oriental philosophy?' He looked offended in a rather formal way.

'Just a wild guess.'

'A bad guess,' he said. 'Whitehead, Russell, Kant.' He showed me three well-manicured fingers. Then a fourth. 'Karl Popper.'

'You're interested in them, are you?'

'I studied them,' he said. 'I wrote on the mind-body problem.'

'I'll see what I can do.'

The Fulbright forms had to come from Kuala Lumpur, so it was a week before I looked for him again, and when I looked he wasn't there - not at the Club and not at City Bar. 'In Singapore,' his father said. 'Got business.'

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-/tf/?.'

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

'Man's Fate,' he said. Tm 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.'

REGGIE WOO

'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. Ladysmith, the English teacher, said, 'City's 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 Foot-lighters 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 program 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 rumors of romance, even talk of marriage; names were mentioned, Millsap's 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.

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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 nighttime crowd of drinkers and idlers was 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 bittersweet 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 mahjong 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 Cantonese jeers as he banged down a mahjong 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.

Conspirators

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-colored 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 counterpart in the lounge of the Ayer Hitam Club. It was said that the communists wanted to poison the Sultan's

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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.