World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (15 page)

“Hullo, this is Suzie!” the instrument vibrated in my ear; for Suzie always shouted on the telephone, as if she had little faith in it. “That man still there?”

I had to keep the instrument pressed hard against my ear to muffle the words from Rodney. Her voice pierced my eardrum, and the pain was so acute that I feared lifelong injury. I muttered hurried regrets, as though at the news of her baby, and rang off.

Rodney said at once, “That was Suzie, wasn't it?”

I turned back to him, and for a moment was aghast at the change that had come over him. He was standing quite rigid, with every muscle in his body tensed like a dog watching a rabbit hole. The blood had drained from his face, and he no longer looked young but middle-aged. There were little angry glinting lights in his eyes.

“Yes, that's right, she rang up to say—” I began, but he interrupted.

“All right, I can guess.” He spoke with a kind of deadly patience and control. “I can guess, Bob. She's not coming back, is she?”

“No, she's awfully sorry, but her baby's ill.”

He said carefully, “Balls.”

“I know it's had a cough. She's been very worried for a long time.”

“I said balls, Bob.”

We stared at each other. The little pink angry fires in his eyes gave him such a dangerous mad-dog look that I now understood why Suzie had said she was scared. He went on, with that same painstaking control, “Now, that was a very nasty trick she played on me, Bob. A very, very nasty trick. And I am not going to let her get away with it, so I would be very much obliged, Bob, if you would tell me where she lives.”

“Rodney, you really can't—”

“I asked you a question, Bob. Perhaps you didn't hear, so I shall repeat it. Would you kindly tell me where she lives?”

“I've no idea,” I lied.

“Now, I thought you were my friend, Bob. I thought that this evening I had made a real friend, and I was doing my best to reciprocate. But evidently I was mistaken. Evidently you are not my friend, and have got something against me, or you would answer my question.”

“I've nothing against you.”

“Then please don't lie to me, Bob. Where does she live?”

“I'm sorry, I can't tell you.”

And when I continued to refuse he relaxed the control on himself and gave way to violent rage. His face became flushed and distorted with spite and he submitted me to a stream of abuse, accusing me of taking a dislike to him the moment he entered the room, and of only being nice to him because of what I could get out of him. It was no use trying to protest; I could not get a word in edgeways. I stood helplessly, until after five minutes or so the storm began to pass. A few minutes later he dropped into a chair, buried his face in his hands, and began to sob with self-pity.

“I'm sorry, Bob,” he cried. “Oh, God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I wanted so much to be friends with you. And now I've messed it up. I've ruined it. Now you just despise me.”

I assured him to the contrary. Very soon he had begun to cheer up, and five minutes later he was quite himself again, grinning at me with that boyish charm as if the scene had never taken place. He said, “You know, you're great, Bob. I like you very, very much. And now I'm going to ask you a very personal question. What was your first impression of me? Now, think carefully. What was your very first impression when I came through that door?”

I said, “Well, I guessed that you were American from your crew cut—and I thought how quietly dressed you were for an American. I mean, you weren't wearing a picture tie, or anything like that.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I thought how charming and friendly you were, and how self-assured—”

“Sorry to interrupt, Bob. You did say self-assured?”

“Yes, extremely—the way you asked me if you could call me Bob, and told me about the chap who was my namesake, and so on.”

He looked gratified, as if this was exactly what he had wanted me to say. “Now, it's very, very interesting that you should say that, Bob. Because two years ago, if I'd had to walk into a room like that and meet a stranger, I'd have been too scared to open my mouth, and—well, the state of my pants would have been nobody's business. In fact I'd have sooner faced a firing squad than come in here like that. So now you know what it means to me when you tell me that you thought I was self-assured. Because I think you mean it. I think it was your honest impression. And now I'm going to let you into a secret. All the way over in the taxi I'd been in a real stew about whether to call you Mr. Lomax, or Robert, or plunge right in with Bob—and preparing that little story about your namesake.”

“But it was true, wasn't it? You really did have a classmate called Lomax?”

“I've never met anybody called Lomax in my life before tonight.” He smiled with satisfaction at my astonishment. “It was just a little idea that I picked up from someone back in the States—a very, very successful man, who started off as an ordinary salesman, and who told me that he put down his success to that one little trick for breaking the ice with his customers. If he saw a fellow was going to be sticky, he'd just start talking about this namesake called Red, and then call the fellow Red by mistake—and by then they'd be getting along like old buddies, and he'd make his sale.”

I said, “Well, I'm damned.”

“And I suppose that when I asked to use your bathroom, you thought I really wanted to go?”

“I did rather assume so.”

“Well, I didn't. I didn't want to go at all. I only asked because I used to be scared to tell strangers I wanted to go to the bathroom, and I'd hold on until I was bursting. So now I just like to show myself I can do it. And every time I do something like that I say a little prayer in my heart to Dr. John Howard Salter.”

“Who's that?”

“Well, Bob,' Dr. John Howard Salter is a very, very brilliant man who lives in New York, and whom I wish that some day you could meet, because he is a man for whom I have the very, very greatest respect and admiration.”

Dr. John Howard Salter was a psychoanalyst, and it appeared that Rodney had spent a daily fifty minutes on Dr. Salter's couch for five days a week for the last two years. Finally Salter had advised him—or at least, since analysts never took it upon themselves actually to give advice, had enabled Rodney to see for himself—that the treatment could never wholly succeed while he continued to live at home under the disturbing influence of his possessive mother. He had also been enabled to see for himself in the process of analysis that he must cultivate to the maximum the company of the opposite sex, and let no inhibitions deter him from finding normal and regular sexual outlet. He had thus prescribed for himself a world tour, whose therapeutic advantages would include the breaking of the mother-bond, and the provision of sexual stimulation in every possible shade of skin.

He was now in his second month of travel and at his third port of call. He had previously visited Hawaii and Japan, both of which places had made ample provision not only of stimulation, but also of what Rodney called “outlets.”

However, it seemed that the mere quantity of his conquests (or purchases, as they were more often) provided no answer to his basic problem of inferiority. He dreamed of women adoring him, yet believed himself unloved, unlovable; and if indeed some girl did actually show signs of liking him, he would conclude that there must be something wrong with her and disqualify her as a true test case. He seemed perversely determined to prove to himself that he was despised. And Suzie's behavior this evening had been more grist to his mill; he had becen told that dance girls would always go home with you if they liked you, so that her refusal had seemed to him a personal slight. A slight that both hurt and gratified him.

This unhappy state of mind clearly caused Rodney much distress, yet as I listened to him talking I remained quite unmoved. I felt rather ashamed of myself; for, after all, such mental suffering was as much to be pitied as physical illness. A man could no more help being neurotic than he could help being afflicted by tuberculosis or cancer. I tried hard to feel more sympathy. But it would not come.

And then I began to understand. The fact was that something did not quite ring true. He described his own mental complexities with a little too much loving analytical care, a little too much relish; and I realized now that I did not really believe in them. I suspected that they were chiefly a device to make himself more interesting. A device of his self-pity, to attract that very sympathy in which I had found myself deficient—a device to win friends and influence people. I no longer believed that two years ago he had been anything like the frightened little boy he had made out; and I no longer believed in his explanation of the namesake story, or of his visit to the bathroom. I was certain that both these little pantomimes had been performed, not for the reasons given, but for the sole purpose of arousing my interest and sympathy when he told me about them later. I even thought it possible—and the theory gave me a certain malicious amusement—that he had gone to the bathroom for perfectly natural reasons, and had duly relieved himself, and had only afterwards thought of twisting the incident to suit the needs of his self-pity.

All this, of course, meant that he was still a neurotic—but a neurotic of a different kind. A kind whose chief trouble, I suspected, was too much money and no compulsion to work. And with a pauper's satisfaction I reflected on the terrible misfortune of wealth.

I had supposed that my lack of sympathy must inevitably communicate itself to Rodney. However, apparently it did not do so, for when at length he rose to go, he warmly shook my hand, thanked me for my wonderful patience and understanding, and swore that not for years had he made a better friend; and his manner was so sincere that I began to like him again and feel guilty of misjudging him. And it was only at the very last, as we stood in the open door at the point of parting, that he dropped his bombshell.

“You know, Bob, I think I'll move out of the Gloucester and join you down here,” he said. “That is, of course, if you've no objection.”

The possibility of him wanting to do this had vaguely occurred to me earlier, but I had neglected to prepare any defenses, and I could only stammer unhappily that of course I had no objection at all. Oh, heavens no, I should be delighted. Except that, well, I was rather the sort of chap who liked to bury himself, and—

“Now, you needn't worry on that score, Bob,” he interrupted. “Because I know that solitude is very, very precious to a painter, and I shall treat your room as if there was a plague warning on the door.”

“Actually, there's another thing,” I said, growing a little bolder. “You see, as the only resident here I've got a rather privileged position—”

“Sure, I gathered from Suzie that you were practically Jesus Christ to all the girls down in the bar.” He smiled charmingly. “Well, you needn't be afraid that I'll horn in on that racket, because nobody's going to mistake me for Jesus Christ.”

This struck uncomfortably near the mark; for however ludicrous his analogy, the ignoble truth was that I was jealous of my position among the girls, and didn't want anybody “horning in.” I wanted to continue my solitary enjoyment of their esteem. I resented competition.

I deflated like a punctured tire. “Well, of course you must come here if you want.”

“Thanks, Bob. That's very generous of you. And I know we're going to become very, very great friends.”

And the next morning he moved in, taking a room on the same floor, next but one to mine. He was installed by nine o'clock—showing an alacrity which wasn't bad going, I thought, for such a hopeless neurotic.

II

Rodney's presence, as it turned out, made no difference to my status at the Nam Kok, though it did cause a certain wonderment at my choice of friends. For the girls, whose shrewdness in judging character never failed to astonish me, saw through him at once: they pronounced him to be a phony, and not to be trusted farther than you could throw the juke box. However, taking cynical approval of his prodigious wealth, they set themselves out to be nice to him, while all the time watching him from withdrawn half-amused little eyes, keeping all but their bodies locked up from him. They nicknamed him “The Butterfly”—and indeed never before had there been seen in the bar such an unequivocal flutterer. He was the butterfly to end all butterflies—a self-proclaimed butterfly who made no secret of his tendency to lose interest in a girl after he had slept with her once. He called this “my little peculiarity.”

And his sexual capacity was astonishing. The girls, who after all should have known, declared it to be a phenomenon, and it had soon become a humorous yardstick by which others were judged, and the subject of numberless jokes. He pursued love-making joylessly, with that dogged perseverance with which other men pursue their careers, as though under some obligation to get through the work however much, at times, it might go against the grain; and he discussed his activities in a matter-of-fact manner like the day's affairs at the office. He seemed virtually indifferent to his partner's age, shape, or size: the only condition he imposed was novelty. And thus in a remarkably short time he had disposed of all the Nam Kok girls who were willing, including even old Lily Lou and Doris of the Rimless Glasses—both of whom, indeed, survived their innings, whereas the poor Gwenny Ching was thrown out of his room after only half an hour, for what he afterwards described to me as “lack of imagination and bone laziness,” and replaced by another girl summoned by telephone from the bar.

He paid the girls on the whole generously; but now and again he would suffer an acute attack of meanness, when he would haggle over fifty cents, lose his temper, accuse girls of trying to exploit him, and swear never to touch any of the mercenary bitches again. He would also, at such times, accuse waiters of shortchanging him—though if I happened to be with him, he would take good care to disappear before the arrival of the bill. These attacks occurred unpredictably and also became a stock joke among the girls, who claimed they could tell if it was one of his mean days the moment he entered the bar: they said it made his face look pinched and cold.