My Life as a Fake (20 page)

The argument over the child’s return was rendered moot next morning when McCorkle himself strode into the compound, trailed by a jostling mob of excited tax collectors. They accompanied him, not in the bullying, sullen way they had escorted Chubb but as an admiring crowd around a gladiator, jealously elbowing one another in order to be closest to their hero and his monkey woman, both of whom were carrying great canvas bags upon their heads.

The young men ushered the giant to Raja Kecil Bongsu’s front steps and there he threw his heavy bag down on the ground.

Tina, he cried. It was the first time Chubb ever heard his daughter’s name.

The child had been sucking on a can of
susu
but she responded immediately to the call and came running out onto the verandah, the can still clutched in both her hands. The wives had dressed her as a tiny princess in a purple sarong shot through with silver and her tangled hair had been oiled and combed and pulled back in a braid to show off her perfect little ears. At the top of the steps she hesitated, then smiled. But running down the steps she was already shuddering, and as her poise collapsed she buried her face in that massive shoulder and wept while his hands wrapped her shaking shoulder blades.

Like a villain in a village melodrama, her father watched the reunion from behind the verandah shutters. What he saw
was intolerable, beyond belief. He had been sustained, until this moment, by his will to save his child from harm, but in defeat his mouth curved downwards, thin as the blade of a kris.

He was hauled out to stand before his rival, whose cold eyes glittered behind slitted lids.

If I see you one more time, said Bob McCorkle, I will destroy you.

You have destroyed me already.

He smiled, Mem, he smiled with pleasure, and at that moment I could have ripped his heart out. Oh, I imagined it—my hand deep inside his chest, his vital organs like warm mud in my fist.

If I could create you, I said, did you never fear I might unmake you too?

He did not answer, but put out his great leg and tripped me up. As I tried to rise he kicked me in the backside and sent me sprawling in the mud. This caused everyone to laugh, my child as well.

I was covered in filth, squealing like a hunted pig. I thought, I will kill him for this moment. I will see him die like a chicken or a dog dragging its legs into the dark.

Chubb now touched the book which had sat there on the table these last three hours. Its binding was both disfigured and beautiful, like the bark of a birch, but also wrinkled and tropical, like a Morton Bay fig. It was mottled, striated, and when he laid his square hand on it and his cracked nails and liver spots made contact with its weathered skin, both book and hand seemed to be related parts of the same creature.

I had been writing so rapidly that my hands were cramping, and therefore was pleased to take the opportunity to lay my thin biro on the table. As I did so he moved the book an
inch or two towards me. It was an oddly flirtatious gesture, like a woman teasing with the buttons of her blouse. He began to slide the book back and forth, perhaps taunting me, or merely acting out his indecision—I could not tell—but he passed it through a little spill of tea.

Careful, I said. The tea.

Oh, he said, smiling, it has been through worse than that.

I would change my mind so often on this issue, but at that particular moment I again suspected that he was the author of this poem, and when I saw how gently he took the volume in his hand, I was completely certain.

You liked the little that you read, he asked.

So exactly like a poet, I thought.

He now placed the book directly in front of me, and I frankly told him I hadn’t been able to get it out of my mind.

You were hooked, eh?

Well, yes.

Not always so obvious, a great work. You know what I am saying, Mem? What is this mumbo-jumbo? No head, no tail. Very
bad-lah
. But it has got its claws into you just the same.

He gave the book a sudden push and it was square in front of me. My heart was pounding.

I will leave it with you, he said abruptly.

It was much heavier than I had expected, and very strange to touch—a peculiar texture, slightly oily in places, scaly in others.

I can trust you, no? His emotion was obvious.

Yes, I said, you can trust me.

Then we will meet here in the morning.

I forced myself to wait until the Sikh opened the door for him respectfully, and only when he’d rounded the corner did I hold the poems of Bob McCorkle against my breast.

I opened the volume not at the beginning but somewhere
in the middle. It was a curiously old-fashioned hand, very beautiful, with long austere ascenders and descenders and curiously ornate S’s and G’s.

‘—she’s burning, our dew-lap beebee’

That was all I read before Slater dropped companionably beside me, his arm immediately extending along the sofa behind my back.

Ah, Micks!

Furious, I closed the book.

Micks, darling, you’re blushing. He looked at me quizzically, then began searching the empty foyer for a waiter. At least he had not seen the book, or so I thought.

In any case, you have her book back. Well done, darling.

He picked it up, and I confess I loathed the sight of it in his hands.

John, we have no idea whose book this is.

Did old Chubby say it was his?

No, but surely he wrote it. He certainly acts as if he did.

Slater now had found a waitress and was engaged in conversation about his order. Though I waited for him to relinquish the book, his hand was firmly clamped around its spine.

Have you read any of it, John?

Do you recall the photograph, in the little shrine? I showed you. That was Bob McCorkle.

You believe that?

Yes.

You’re not being delusional?

This made him rather irritated. Well, how about this: we can say that the man in that photograph is Tina’s father.

John, I don’t think that’s true.

Not only is he the father, but the girl was with him when he wrote the bloody poetry. Don’t make faces, Micks. The
book is hers, darling, no matter how you quibble. It is certainly not yours or mine. We have to give it back, even though you obviously don’t wish to. Remember what you said when you left her?

That I would find Chubb.

You know what she understood, that you were rescuing her book.

Oh, John, don’t be a beast. Please. I reached for the book but he moved it beyond my reach.

Sarah, you are behaving as if you are going to publish this work. Have you been sending wires to Antrim?

How do you know that?

Let’s say you were going to publish it, or some of it. You would have to deal with the estate, don’t you think?

Tina?

That’s her name, yes.

Do you think she would permit it to be published?

Would she permit it? Darling, you’re bonkers. Of course she would. Did you not see how proud those two women are of Mr Bob?

Whoever he is.

Yes, whatever.

Why didn’t they do it before?

They are hardly intellectuals. How could they know where to begin?

Just like Bob McCorkle’s sister.

What are you talking about?

I picked up my notebook and was able to quote him Beatrice McCorkle’s actual words: ‘I am not a literary person myself,’ I read, ‘and I do not feel I understand what he wrote, but I feel that I ought to do something about them.’ That is what Beatrice McCorkle wrote to Weiss.

What are you saying—that it’s a fake and therefore public
property? If you want it, Sarah, you have got to ask permission. You can’t just steal it for the glory of the empire.

You did read my telegram.

I don’t give a fuck about your telegrams. You have to pay them the courtesy of making an offer.

Yes, but first I must read it.

I reached for the book, but he would not relinquish it.

Micks, listen. They are poor people in a bloody bicycle shop. You cannot treat them this way.

All right, I said, standing up. Come on.

Come on what?

Let’s do the business.

Now? They’ll have their door shut.

Then we’ll knock on it, I said.

And so, with Slater finally granting me possession of the book, we marched out into the night.

Of course I did not come to Jalan Campbell with the slightest intention of surrendering the poetry. I did not know how I would manage to retain it, only that I was an editor and that finally it must be mine. On entering the Moorish colonnade from the west end, I could see that the bicycle shop, far from being closed to me, was open wide, bright white neon flooding the footpath where the mad Mrs Lim and Tina sat sucking down their bowls of soup.

It will always feel far too familiar to call the girl Tina, for
that would suggest an intimacy we will never share and a fondness I am very far from feeling. It is simply that I do not know her by any other name, not even now.

When I extended my hand to shake, she abandoned her soup to Mrs Lim and deftly, without a word yet spoken, snatched the volume from my grasp.

Jesus, I cried.

Slater immediately set a warning hand upon my shoulder, but when I turned to him for support he was completely passive, grinning like an idiot.

The hard-eyed thief—she was wearing the same white blouse and grey skirt which had earlier given such a girlish cast to her beauty—placed her booty on the top of the dusty glass display case and slowly checked each page—for what? Jam spots?

I asked her was anything missing.

She was solemn in return. Your
orang puteh
friend, she began.

My what?

She means Chubb, old girl. White man.

Yes, she said to me, your friend Mr Chubb stole a page last week.

She held out the book and I could see the butt of the missing page, presumably the ‘sample’ he had brought to the hotel.

You have
bisnis
with me, she said. Not him.

This at least was encouraging. I tried to smile, though I am not very good at that sort of thing and doubtless I looked as grotesque as a de Kooning. Well, I said, I am the editor of a poetry magazine.

Yes. Her eyes were dark, unblinking. But first, she said, I roll down the door. Please be quiet-
lah
. Better the old man stay asleep. Too angry otherwise.

Slater and I waited amongst the tangled bicycles while the two women rolled down the door and padlocked it. Then, without my having had a chance even to whisper my outrage to Slater, they switched off the long neon light and shepherded us through to the back of the store where a reedy breathing told me Christopher Chubb was asleep in that hard bed. The air was alive with oil and petrol, but as they led us to the stairs up which Mrs Lim had made her machete charge the smells began to change. Inside the shrine the air was once more scented with pine and sandalwood and that other lovely smell, the aroma of libraries in country houses, thousands of spinster books with their pages chastely jammed together.

Slater and I waited in the foreign darkness while the two women closed off the stairwell with what seemed to be a heavy trapdoor. I had a moment of claustrophobic panic and wondered where the machete was. But then they turned on the light and Mrs Lim set up two folding metal chairs, one in front of the other like on a bus.

You sit now.

I sat behind Slater as Tina stood before us holding the book against her breast. Mrs Lim stood a little to one side. She was unarmed. We have
bisnis
now, she said, making it sound actually threatening.

Slater turned around in his chair, rolling his eyes like a naughty school boy.
Bisnis
, he said to me.

Tina meanwhile gestured to the walls of books. This is our family, she said.

Oh dear, I thought. Please, no. This sort of reverence really makes me sick.

Our ancestor, Mrs Lim explained.

I was beginning to understand how tiresome this negotiation might prove to be. I wished there were someone I could roll my eyes at, but Tina had me pinned.

Bob McCorkle had his country stolen, she said. He came here, knew no names, nothing. Our job has been to gather all the names for him.

All the names, said Slater, how extraordinary. Do you really mean that, Tina? The mind boggles.

Of course Slater was making fun for my benefit, but at the same time he was succeeding in flattering her.

Bob McCorkle is the
tree-ah
, she said, we are the roots. These poems are the flowers. You know what I am saying? When that old man steals this book, he has broken the flowers from the tree. You understand?

I could have done without the metaphors but was very interested to note that Chubb was not thought to have written anything at all.

Slater was obviously noticing the same thing. So the poetry is yours, he said, to sell or not to sell?

We will never sell this book, she bristled, not ever. We would die first.

I was speechless, literally. How in the world could one deal with such an ignorant and stubborn little girl?

Yes, said Slater, but I am sure you would sell the right to publish the words in a book?

For answer she turned to me. Memsahib, you brought your magazine here.
The Modern Review
, isn’t it? When Mrs Lim gave it to me she said a lady wished to do some
bisnis
with me. Then you start to do bisnis with the old man. Maybe you thought you get it cheaper.
Cheh!
It is never his to sell.

Well, first I would like to actually read the poetry. I can’t talk about it before I know exactly what it is.

Bob McCorkle is a genius, don’t worry.

Don’t you think that’s for me to decide?

Oh no, but you will be able to read soon. Mrs Lim and I
have seen your magazine. What we could not know from that: how much money you would pay us?

I laughed. Tina, I’m afraid that poets don’t make very much money, nor their editors.

Yes. She smiled impatiently. But Bob McCorkle is a genius, isn’t it?

Even geniuses don’t make a lot of money.

She stared accusingly at John Slater. But you are rich.

Oh no, not at all.

I saw your hotel. You bought a suit, chocolates, nice clothes for me.

Nice clothes?

Well you see, dear, I have made some money writing novels. Bob McCorkle would not think well of me.

A genius would sell even more! She was close to tears.

Tina, I said, please. We must all relax. I will read the poems.

No, not please. You do not understand. Please, Mr Slater, she said, please turn around. Close your eyes.

Slater turned in his chair to face me, his face now rather pale and serious as he hissed, What is she
doing?

I had thought she wanted privacy in which to weep but I was completely off the track for now, without a single word of excuse or explanation, with nothing more than the quiet rush of cotton brushing naked skin, the girl shed her skirt and blouse. My first thought was what a splendid, perfect body, sturdy yet refined, narrow waist but robust hips, nothing weak about her. But then I saw what she was showing me was not the mound of her pubis but the nature of her skin, which was mottled with scars as dense and as widely distributed as those on a rubber tree. It was not in the least disgusting, only strange, so strange in fact that it has never left my mind and I have spent considerable time since with books of
tropical dermatology, examining gruesome photographs of trichophyton and miliaria and all the wood allergies for which the Malay Peninsula is famous. Most of these tend to present themselves as red and raw and ugly, whereas Tina’s skin appeared thickened, callused in places like the sole of a foot. The insides of her thighs showed a grey lace-like pattern that was alien and beautiful at once, as if not only her mind but also her body had been singed by the poet’s extraordinary will.

Slater was staring over my shoulder and I knew that he was looking at her reflection in the window.

Don’t, I said.

But then she was dressing, still speaking to me: We helped him make his poetry. We gave everything. Now we must have money.

How could I not be moved by that body—and angered by it too, to see it so abused and used by her protector. You must let me read the work, I said. I have to judge myself.

You will not be disappointed.

Without reading it I cannot discuss money with you.

She stared at me, not so much hostile as stubborn. Here, she said suddenly, thrusting the book upon me.

My hands once again responded to the disturbing organic softness of the thing.

You can read it now, she said.

Now?

In this room.

I can no more read under supervision than a dog can eat while being watched.

You see? Tina said.

At the best of times my attention flickers and fades, and in order to pay proper attention I require not only solitude and silence, but also a pen to help fix my skittering mind onto the page. And now, at what I hoped would be the most
important reading of my life, I had to contend with Tina’s constant interruption, pacing feet, insects in my hair and ears, a tangled and eccentric handwriting and, not least, the panicked feeling that this might be my only chance to judge the work. It was like standing on a New York window ledge far above the street, the wind blowing, pages rattling.

But even here, in these appalling conditions, it was clear that this work was outside the law of taste and poesy. Whoever he was or had been, Bob McCorkle was indeed a genius. He had ripped up history and nailed it back together with its viscera on the outside, all that glistening green truth showing in the rip marks.

What a bloody battle it has been, and all through the combat the personae of the poet rage like a Hindu hero, many-limbed, a swirling figure, at once God and Fool. ‘Not a word was known to him and twenty four years gone.’ To say that the poet had attempted to create a country may sound simply glib, until you understand that this is exactly what he has done, and so deeply, and in such breadth that he sends you, as Pound will, back to the library of Babel, deep into the histories and theologies and dictionaries, like
Hobson-Jobson
with its treasury of
jamboo, jumboo, lac
, and
kyfe
. It was so far beyond what I had promised Antrim, ‘beyond’ in that it was previously unimaginable. This was worth being born for, this single giddy glimpse, on this high place, with the sound of my own blood singing in my ears.

It was with great reluctance that I gave up the volume to its custodians, who wished me not only to assess the financial value of the work but to listen to their own versions of the history. They were anxious to correct false impressions I may have gained from Chubb. Thus I was torn from the presence of this great book and transported back to the Kaya Kaya and the jungles of Perak. Not for the first time, I judged it politic to uncap my pen.