My Life as a Fake (19 page)

The stolen book was fat with poetry, pulpy, puffy interleaved with small blue markers. I found it laid enticingly before me in exactly the place the reader will have already predicted: on a coffee table in the foyer of the Merlin. Yet even as Chubb lifted a napkin to reveal his treasure, I knew I might not yet possess it, not until I had recorded every remaining detail of his damn history.

The man is not the poems, he said, sliding his hand across the wrinkled, almost iridescent binding. Who can say what sort of being he was, Mem? Not me. He was the joke, and the joke cannot love its maker. So when he had me in his power he showed no mercy. He persuaded the Kaya Kaya I was a
hantu!

Obediently, I uncapped my pen.

The Kaya Kaya was a good enough fellow, he said, but McCorkle filled his ear with poison. Tie him up, lock him up. And so they put me beneath one of the thatched houses where they kept the chickens in their baskets. The baskets were lifted up beneath the floor so the pythons could not reach them in the dark. No such privilege for me. They tied me to a foundation post. Mosquitoes. Sand flies. That was not the worst of it. Since the war I had a fear of jungles in the night.

One day I was a chalk-wallah in Penang. Next morning I woke to find myself shamed by my own piss. I was bruised, broken, covered with red soil, swollen up from my bites. It was the villagers who came for me, but it was that bastard in
his
mechanist’s
overalls who was their supervisor. Did I say he had shaved his head again? He was so hard and shiny, Mem, like bone, and if he was a figment of my imagination he was a nastier thought than any I’d ever had.

They set me on a large
lanchut
, a miner’s wash box, and bound me to it with rattan.
Alamak!
I thought they meant to drown me in the river like a witch! I pleaded with him as a fellow poet, Australian, Christian. He was deaf to me.

And my dear child was at his side. And she
was
my child, Mem, I saw the proof of it in that grey and misty light, not in her beauty—all that was from Noussette—but in two tiny freckles, just here, and here, on her upper lip. See, I have the same. My mother also.

This I tried to tell her, that she was my blood. Yet when I pointed at my lip she became frightened, pushing her face against McCorkle and wrapping her arms around his great hairy fencepost of a leg. I begged him to set her free. The request amused him.

Malays are geniuses with rattan and these lads did a thorough job of binding me to the
lanchut
. So firmly was I held that they could now turn me upside down. They slid two thick bamboo poles through rattan loops and carried me down to the river like a shrieking, shitting pig. There I saw what they had planned for me—’raft’ was too fine a name for this tangle of sticks. Flotsam! As likely as not populated by water snakes and rats and starving fire ants still stranded from the monsoon. This pile of debris they had moored to their bathing box with a length of rattan and now they carried me out through the shallows and lashed me and my box on top of it, and once that was done they pushed me out, no word of warning, no bye-bye, no curse, or trial, or sentence. Two of the young men waded out beside me until my craft began to spin in the current.

I twisted my head towards the bastard.

God help me, man, I called.

The mongrel did not move a muscle of his cruel and handsome face.

At my feet I had seen a little
chee-chuk
scuttling around the branches. While the current took us with a lurch, the lizard and I, the young men waded back to the pretty little village where my daughter had already turned her back on me. I rotated like a leaf. Mist lay across the water and lapped the edges of the jungle. It was a beautiful sight, except I was on my way to death. It was a case
of telur di hujung tanduk
, an egg teetering on the tip of a horn. I had no clue of how far away the ocean was, but it did not matter. My raft was breaking up. A large branch drifted loose. This was minutes from the start. My chair tilted. I am not a brave man, Mem, but it was not myself I cared for now, it was my darling little girl. What purpose would she serve for him when I was not alive to torture?

How I did love her, love her without relent or hope of return. What is Auden’s line? ‘If equal affection cannot be,/let the more loving one be me’?

Christopher Chubb coughed, perhaps in embarrassment.

I asked him did he not, just sometimes, hate her a little.

Instead of answering he chose to tell me how the mist burned away, how the sun tormented him. He had no doubt that he would die.

I tried to rock my box, he said, and I would happily have tipped myself into the river and drowned if I could have. The thought of the cool yellow water was much to be desired. Then a single bee came to torment me. This was not one of those black-and-yellow bees like you have in England. It had pale-blue stripes. Cruel and beautiful, isn’t it? Once he had circled me a time or two he settled on my face, where he
began to drink my sweat. The bee was very small and my body was working very hard, producing as much sweat as he might need. Why would he ever leave me? My hands were bound. I could do nothing more than bat my lashes and blow through my nose, none of which annoyed him very much. If they had, of course, he would have bitten me.

I will not bore you with self-pity, Mem. Some time, a little after noon, I fainted.

I awoke with a blinding headache to see the river was flying at a fantastic rate. It was nearing dusk, and there was no heat in the sun, not that it mattered, for I had so much still in my own body. The banks were crowded with casuarinas, mangle groves, nipa palms, and another palm—don’t know its name—which towered over them all. Noisy as a market place with screeching birds, and behind this I could hear the pounding of the sea in which, I supposed, my end would come.

Seagulls came to look at me and I feared they would peck my eyes, but they let me off. The raft was floating lower now and my shoes were shipping water. I was travelling backwards and could not see how far I had to go when all of a sudden I was brought to a violent stop by what appeared to be a picket fence.

It was the year before Malayan independence, said Chubb, the modern age. Who could believe the squabbling that still
went on amongst the aristocracy? How they fought-
lah
. So many of them! But it was exactly this situation that saved me. This Raja Kecil Bongsu had driven fat bamboo poles across the width of the river and was exacting a tax from the communists and smugglers and others who used it for business of their own. There were gateways made with floating logs and these were guarded by his men. I do not understand what the Raja Kecil Bongsu was doing in such a place, if he had fallen out with the Sultan or simply liked the scenery. No way of me knowing. But he had built a fort out on the mud flats between two rivers and here his young soldiers lived in a hut whose walls were six feet thick and eight feet high. They carried krises in their silver sashes. No-one to tax? No worry-
lah
. They would fight each other. They slept tucked in along the walls for at high tide the floors were two feet under.

They had built a watchtower, but the ladder had been burned so it was no longer used. I don’t know how long I was bumping against the pickets before they spied me. A great shouting mob of them came splashing through the river just on dusk. They gave not a bugger for my sunburn or my headache. They pushed and pulled me and when I would not come from my box they took out their krises and cut me free. Not such a favour, Mem, for it was clear they meant to tax me blind.

There I was, a white man floating on a pile of sticks. Were they interested in how I got there? No-one asked a question until I had been taken across the mud flats to the village and here, after I had vomited, I was presented to the Raja Kecil Bongsu, who surveyed me very sniffily from his
selang
. You know
selang?
It was a kind of bridge that joined two parts of his rather humble house, nothing like the Kaya Kaya’s palace. He was a young man, very delicate. He had long lashes and limpid eyes and a way of speaking Malay which might have
made him seem effeminate had I not seen the authority he held over his men. To me he spoke coldly, in a very posh sort of English. Later I heard he had a first from Cambridge.

Where do you come from?

I am Australian.

Where have you travelled from on my river?

I was a Penang school teacher who had run away and been captured in a village whose name I did not know. All I could think might identify the place I had come from was the Austin Sheerline.

The young raja’s eyebrows raised and he cocked his head and then burst into high-pitched laughter. An Austin Sheer-line?

I am positive.

And this Austin Sheerline–wallah, what did you do to him?

This man was like liquid mercury, Mem, one moment whooping like a schoolboy, now narrowing his eyes as if preparing to slit my throat. So I
Tuan d
him, believe me.

Tuan
, I said, I did nothing to the Austin Sheerline–wallah. They have kidnapped my little girl,
Tuan
, and I came to rescue her.

He has kidnapped your daughter? No! He slapped his side and laughed again, this time at a pitch even higher than before. Oh, he is a fool, he said, a perfect fool. He is no better than a pirate and will not live as long as one. Excuse me, I am not laughing at your cruel loss, but at the ridiculous damned Orang Kaya Kaya. Come, come. You cannot stand down there amongst the hoi polloi.

He now spoke to his men and again I had the sensation of a different personality, clearly authoritive but exquisitely polite.

They will bring you to my house.

My handsome young robbers now returned their krises to their sheaths. What a change in them. This way,
Tuan
. They led me straight underneath the house, which was supported on high thin stilts, and delivered me to the front steps where, with great ceremony, witnessed by his family and his soldiers, the Raja Kecil Bongsu formally offered me his protection. Could not have said it better if he was the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I was sick and dirty as a pariah dog but I limped up the steps, and the raja personally showed me to a room. You will sleep here, he said. I did not know that I had been given the
rumah ibu
. This term you will not know. It is a room, of course, a bedroom, living room, and chapel all at once. Because I had been given the
rumah ibu
the raja and his family must sleep on the verandah. That’s very nice, I said, and may I have a glass of water? I had not the least bloody idea of the extravagance of his gift.

I wanted water? No problem-
lah
. A very old Tamil woman was sent off and soon brought me not only a glass and pitcher and a large bowl of warm water to wash with, but also a butter box containing some stuff to rub on my injuries. This medicine stank of rotten fish and mango but I applied it as she demonstrated.

My own clothes were very dirty, and when I joined the family in the little dining room it was in a sarong and clean white shirt the most senior wife had provided me.

I had no appetite for their food, so the raja called his youngest wife. Get this man baked beans. Words to that effect. After dinner we retired to the verandah. Not a decent chair, of course. Crossed legs, aching bum. Then what a recital followed: the sins of the Sheerline-wallah. What a rotten egg was this Orang Kaya Kaya, wicked, foolish, a liar and a cheat.

I felt like death, of course, but must pay attention as he
recited the crimes of our mutual foe. The Kaya Kaya, so he told me, kept a concubine.

Oh, I said, how terrible.

No, that was not offensive, but he publicly neglected his wife in her favour.

I clucked my tongue.

No, that might have been permissible, but his wife was of royal blood and that was why her humiliation could not be forgiven. It takes a great deal to lose the common people’s love, but this one had done a damn good job of it. Even his own children had lost their respect for him and could be observed walking with their little toes curled up in mocking imitation of his waddle.

You see, said the raja, the people always wish to obey their betters. My men will stay on guard all night for me, but they also know I will not disgrace their good name. That fellow, on the other hand—a famous liar. His people know that. He does not pay his debts. He saw the Austin Sheerline in a showroom in George Town. What a scoundrel. He said he would take it out to give it a test and then he never brought it back. It was a Chinaman he robbed like this. The Chinaman took him to court and as it happens I was in Kuala Kangsar for a polo match, so I stayed on to see what lies he would tell in his defence. It was worse than even I imagined, Mr Chubb. No, he told the magistrate, he had never seen this Chinaman. No, he never took an Austin. He did not even know what an Austin was. Perhaps an Austin was a British Lord? No? A car? He detested cars. If he wished to move anywhere he had people who would carry him, and so on. Well, the sad truth is you can never win a case against a raja and the judge, being a Malay, naturally found against the Chinaman. But there was some justice, Mr Chubb, for very soon afterwards the Austin broke down and of course the Orang Kaya Kaya dare not ask anyone to repair it, certainly not the Chinaman. So the car
stayed mouldering by the river through the wet season, at the end of which there was, so I’m told, lawyer vine growing all over it. There it would have rusted into the earth had not the big white mechanic arrived. This white man may not yet know what he has stepped into but he has as much chance of freedom as a crab eating happily inside a trap.

Christopher Chubb then apprised the raja of his daughter’s kidnapping by this same mechanic. He was very forthright, so he says, not withholding any details, and the raja responded exactly as he wished, passionately slapping his leg and saying that the girl must be returned. It was a matter of honour. Also much dishonour for the Kaya Kaya to have his criminality so exposed to those in higher places.

Isolated by both language and his continuing illness, Chubb had no idea of the effect his story had upon the villagers. Though to him they showed no sign of it, they took his sorrow to their hearts. But all he saw the next morning was that shoals of a fish like mullet had just arrived in the river and everybody, women and children too, had been involved first in the harvest and then in the business of laying the catch on racks to dry.

Not until two or three days had passed, by which time the stench of drying fish was carried on the sea breeze through the
rumah ibu
, did the convalescing Australian stir himself sufficiently to walk down to the mud flats. There he observed two canoes setting off against the tide. Naturally it did not occur to him that their voyage could have anything to do with him, and that night he was mildly surprised to learn that one of the rowers had been the raja himself. Two days later a beaming Kecil Bongsu returned to the village with the news that the kidnapper had been found living in the dense forest about a mile downstream from his shameful master’s palace. Initially they assumed he had run away, but now it appeared that was not true. The girl was with him, as well as a
Chinese woman from Sumatra whose husband had been murdered by Ambonese pirates within months of the couple’s arrival in Perak. This woman was clinging to the white man like a leech. They had seen her climbing like a monkey in the tree. As everyone knew women did not climb, they had thought it the most comical event and made many crude jokes about her thighs clamping tightly around the smooth bark, etc. When it was discovered she was bringing nothing down but flowers, this amusement spread up and down the river and people who had never seen the mechanic and his entourage still knew this monkey woman.

Now it seems likely that even as the Raja Kecil Bongsu was telling this story so happily his wives were already disenchanted with their foreign visitor. A Malay would have known not to accept the offer of the
rumah ibu;
it may be offered, of course, but obviously must be declined. Chubb had no inkling of what he had done and it would be years before he would understand what an outrage it must have been to these wives, who normally regarded this part of the house as their own.

Perhaps, he told me, this is why the men undertook to fetch my daughter. Just to get rid of me, no? But who can say Mem.

On the seventh morning of his stay, Chubb woke to a dreadful shrieking. Monkeys, he thought, and paid no particular attention. Once dressed, he opened a can of Spam and, in the absence of silverware, ate it with his fingers. The screams continued as he washed his hands. Perhaps it was a pig, but his hosts were Muslims so this could not be. He then descended to the sandy compound which was, to his surprise, completely deserted. Now the screams seemed to augur something ill. He hurried towards their source, down to the river, where he found what appeared to be the entire population of the village crammed onto the mud flats with the tide washing
around their ankles. Thinking it some religious ceremony, he kept himself respectfully on the outskirts, but once his presence was noted the mob parted and he saw a large cane basket set upon the flats, perhaps two inches of water running through it. The basket was a larger, stouter version of the ones the Orang Kaya Kaya used to keep his chickens safe beneath his house.

To the reader the nature of this animal may be obvious, but it was a dreadful shock for Christopher Chubb to understand that the beast screaming inside this cage was his own beloved child.

He could not bear to hear her terror and so squatted down, moving slowly towards her through the mud.

It’s okay, he said. Everything is fine.

But of course it was not fine at all. When the child saw the
hantu
stretching out his hands towards her, she froze. And the
hantu
, taking the silence for acquiescence, reached between the canes to stroke her hair.

The villagers watched the hand reach inside the cage, then heard a cry of pain, and saw the hand jerked back. The child began to shriek in earnest, the basket rocking on the mud flats like a distressed sea creature pulled up from the depths. The villagers stood there still as stones. Only their raja moved, and not very much, although Chubb was chilled by the way in which he stroked his fine moustache.

The raja then spoke briefly—to no-one in particular, it seemed. Then, without so much as glancing at his guest, he and his retainers started back towards the compound.

Once he had gone, Christopher Chubb could not induce a soul to look his way, in spite of which their collective disapproval was as palpable as the cloying heat. Of course their reaction is no mystery. Most of us would feel the same, and the Malays, who are such gentle souls with their own children, had already decided who the kidnapper really was.

They watched miserably as their young men slid cane poles carefully through the basket and then lifted the white girl to their shoulders. Chubb walked beside her as one might accompany a coffin to the grave while by his side the little creature shrieked in outrage at her situation.

At the raja’s house she was first taken to the
rumah ibu
but then, at the insistence of the wives, was moved onto the verandah. Judging her too fierce to release, they brought a small bowl of black rice pudding and two bananas to set beside her cage.

All this Chubb watched from an awkward distance, keenly feeling the force of the wives’ disapproval, but having no language to communicate the complications of his position. He watched how the women edged towards the cage and how one held out a plastic spoon of the pudding, making small cooing noises until a dirty little hand shot out and snatched the food away. So melancholy was his frame of mind, Chubb told me, that for a moment he was insensible to the presence of the raja at his side.

I have lost face with the idiot Kaya Kaya, his benefactor said in his soft, sibilant way, and if you had not looked into his eyes you could never have gauged his fury.

I am sorry.

You must take her back.

I will not.

For answer, Mem, he gave me the most awful slap across the face. I looked at him then, this man I had once thought effeminate, and understood he might kill me. I am not a brave man, but now there was no choice. I told him I would never give my daughter away. It was a very restless night that followed.