World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (35 page)

“They are saying, ‘My heart is full of so many things. But I do not know how to explain.' Is that what you meant, sir?”

“It's just about what I meant, Ah Tong,” I said.

III

There were three weeks left before Suzie came out of Laichikok. The time went slowly and Ah Tong would come in and say, “Only ten days left, sir,” and, “Only nine today, sir.” He had consulted his Chinese Almanac and noted with satisfaction that the day of Suzie's release, the Fourteenth of the Tenth Moon, was particularly recommended for household removals and the changing of abode, and had solemnly announced, “It is an ideal day for leaving prison.”

“I should think that any day's ideal for that, Ah Tong,” I said.

“No, sir. If it had been the Thirteenth of the Tenth she might have been very unhappy after she came out. But now she will be happy. It is ideal.”

And then, despite all my impatience, when the day of Suzie's release arrived I was not at the prison gate to meet her. I had told her to expect me and had set off from the Nam Kok with plenty of time to spare; but then, by an unhappy stroke of fate, the ferryboat on which I was crossing to Kowloon came into collision with a rusting and dirty old tug, whose opium-dazed pilot had ignored the ferryboat's hooter. There was little damage to either boat but we remained stranded in mid-harbor for nearly an hour while the skippers held their protracted post-mortem. I became so frantic that I could have wept. I even thought of diving over the side and trying to swim for it. But that would have meant abandoning the luggage that I had brought with me so that we could go straight off to Macao. At last the boat began to throb again. It moved. We bumped against the Kowloon pier, the gangplank came down, and I pushed and shoved my way ashore with the two suitcases and the big awkward parcel of canvases. There was no taxi in sight. I staggered up the street with my load. A taxi came and I said, “Laichikok prison,” and collapsed in the back. When we reached Laichikok there was no sign of Suzie and they said at the gate that she had waited half an hour and then gone. Then the taxi driver suggested looking at the bus stop, and we drove round the corner and there she was, standing alone and forlorn in the blue silk cheongsam that she had worn in the magistrate's court, and the white high-heel shoes, and the familiar white handbag dangling from her hand.

“Suzie, I'm so dreadfully sorry,” I said, and explained what had happened.

“It doesn't matter,” she said flatly as if she really did not care; and I knew that after looking forward to coming out of prison for so long the actual event had seemed an anticlimax.

I said, “Suzie, we're going to Macao.”

“Macao? What for?”

“I've arranged for you to go into hospital, but I thought you'd like a little holiday first. Away from everybody you know.”

“All right.”

“You don't sound very enthusiastic.”

“I don't care. We will go if you want.”

The
Fatshan
was alongside when we arrived at the pier. There was still an hour before it sailed. We sat at a table in the empty dining saloon and Suzie drank a Coca-Cola while I had coffee. Some more passengers came in and took the next table, and Suzie glanced at them but avoided their eyes. She looked sheepish and uncomfortable.

“Don't worry, Suzie,” I said. “It doesn't show. Nobody knows where you've been.”

She did not say anything. She was silent for several minutes, and then said, “All right, I go now.”

“Go? What do you mean?”

“I don't want to go to Macao. You go alone.”

“I don't understand, Suzie. What's the matter?”

“I have been thinking in that monkey-house—I had plenty of time to think. You're a big man. You could get any girl you want. You could get some beautiful English girl with plenty of money, or some good-family Chinese girl. Only you have got a good heart, you feel sorry for me. You think, ‘I don't want to hurt Suzie—I must be nice to her.' Only that's no good. So I go now. I leave you.”

“Suzie, what utter rubbish!”

It was all I could do to keep her from going, and I was thankful when I heard the gangplank being removed and she could no longer leave the boat. Then, as Hong Kong receded into the distance she began to cheer up and enjoy herself and take an interest in the trip. I told her to go and change out of her silk cheongsam, and she disappeared with the stewardess and came back in her jeans and sandals and with a twinkle in her eye, giggling, “You know what that woman said to me? She said, ‘You have such beautiful clothes—you must be so rich!'” And she ran from one rail to the other watching the bare tawny little islands going by, and the great fleets of fishing junks scattered over the horizon like multitudes of toy boats.

“You know, this morning I didn't want to leave that monkey-house,” she said. “I thought, ‘I have no worries in here. Maybe when I get outside I will just steal something, or stick that Canton girl with scissors again, so they will send me back.' But I feel good now! I feel beautiful!”

She watched happily as we passed close to a great proud junk with eight sails all taut and bulging in the hot damp sticky wind. It carried the red flag of Communist China. A few minutes later the sea abruptly changed from cobalt to the color of milky tea with mud from the Pearl River.

“How long more to Macao?” Suzie said.

“I should think about another hour,” I said. “And by the way, I forgot to tell you. We're going to get married in Macao.”

“Get married? Who said?”

“It's as good a place as any to get married in. You will marry me, won't you?”

“No.”

“Then I'll just have to marry you by force. It's very easy in Macao—it's such a wicked place. I shall bribe the necessary official and have him concealed under the table, and then ask you if you will have some more fried duck's liver; and you will say ‘Yes,' and the official will bob up and say, ‘Thank you, there is your marriage certificate! Good evening.'”

She giggled. “And next day I will ask you, ‘You want some more fried rice, my husband?' And you will say ‘Yes,' and this man will poke out his head and say, ‘Thank you, you are now divorced.'”

Then she was silent, looking over the rail at the sea. After a while she said, “I dreamed once we were married. I was in a street, and there were crowds of people, and I saw you, only I couldn't get to you because of the crowd. I began to cry. Then you pushed everybody away, and said, ‘Go away, you silly people. This is Suzie, my wife.' And they all went away just because you had told them. Then I woke up.”

“And found you weren't my wife after all. Were you glad or sorry?”

She did not answer. She was silent for a bit and then she said, “I can't marry you because I am sick. And the medicine I took to stop you getting sick was no good. The doctor at Laichikok told me.”

“I still didn't get sick,” I said. “Anyhow, you're going to St. Margaret's in two weeks, and then you'll be properly cured.”

“I don't think so. I don't think people ever get properly cured.”

“Of course they do, Suzie. You're nearly cured now, and with another month or two in hospital you'll be fine.”

She was silent again. Then she turned and strolled away up the deck and stood by herself at the rail. After a while she came back.

She said, “Robert, I never knew anybody so good as you. I never knew anybody with such a beautiful heart. I like you very much.”

“Bless you, Suzie. Does that mean yes?”

“Yes, if you want. I will do anything you want. I will get married if you want, or jump in the sea, or anything.”

“The sea's too muddy to jump in here. I'd much rather we got married.”

At Macao we took a trishaw to a hotel. It was bigger than a rickshaw with a seat for two and room for the baggage under our legs. The trishaw driver wore torn khaki shorts and the rim of a straw hat without any crown. It looked like a tattered old halo. The town was very sleepy after Hong Kong and had an air of decadence and decay. We passed a Catholic church that had started as Spanish baroque, but had blended with its surroundings like the face of an old China-hand and begun to look Chinese. We dumped our baggage at the hotel and told the trishaw driver to take us to the office of the British Consul. He grinned and nodded and said he understood. Five minutes later he came to a standstill outside a building guarded by Portuguese East African troops with rifles and bayonets and faces the color of coffee beans.

“Good?” he said.

“No good,” I said. “That's the Portuguese government. We want the British Consul.”

“All right, I know!”

He pedaled off happily. We eventually found the Consul in an old office with creaking ceiling fans that looked in danger of breaking free and lopping off somebody's head. A beautiful half-caste typist was seated at her machine. She had a pale shy delicate face and masses of loose black hair, and wore a gold crucifix round her neck. The Consul was a fat bald man with perspiring forehead and crescents of perspiration under the arms of his white shirt. He was writing a private letter when we arrived. He listened to our request with irritation, his pen still poised over the letter.

“Now I'll tell you your best plan,” he said. “You want to pop over to Hong Kong and get married there.”

“But we've just come from Hong Kong,” I said. “We wanted to get married in Macao. I thought you were licensed to do it.”

“Well, I'm going to be frank with you. This is the first time anybody's ever asked me to marry them, and I don't know the form. So I'm afraid there's nothing more to be said.”

“Couldn't we find out the form?” I said. “I mean, surely there are regulations about it?”

“I haven't the time,” he snapped. “I'm a busy man.” He remembered the letter under his hand. I could read the opening upside down:
My dear old Hughie.
He began to slide the blotter over it, then changed his mind and leaned back in his chair, leaving the letter exposed on the desk as though to say, “There, I'm lying to you and I don't mind your knowing, so that shows you how little I think of you.”

I was trying to think of some vitriolic retort when I sensed Suzie's discomfort: she had been nervous enough anyhow about entering the Consul's office, and a scene would only upset her. So I climbed down and tried blandishments instead, telling the Consul that we had only dared to trespass on his valuable time because on the boat we had been told of his great good nature and of his reputation for helping souls in distress—a rather free interpretation of “Not a bad fellow, but bone-headed and bone-idle.” The recipe worked wonders, and in a few minutes the thin pale beautiful typist was ransacking shelves and loading his desk with heavy consular tomes, while the Consul was turning pages at random and periodically exclaiming, “Well, I'm blowed! I never knew I could do that!” Finally the idea of marrying us began to tickle him, and he was as disappointed as ourselves when he found that the regulations required us to give notice and he could not marry us for three weeks. And he asked anxiously, “You'll still be here then, I hope? You won't have left?”

“No, I think we'll still be here,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Good. That makes it—let me see?—Miss Ruggeroni, you've got my diary? Ah, here! Yes, then that makes it a Wednesday. The morning suit you? Eleven-thirty?” And I fancied that we had furnished him with something really good to tell dear old Hughie, and that as soon as we had gone he would write, “Well, I certainly can't complain there's no variety in my job—now I'm a ruddy parson!”

He conducted us to the door, shook our hands damply, and exhorted us with a humorous wink to see that we behaved ourselves until he had joined us in wedlock. And then we were outside again in the hot sticky street.

Chapter Six

S
uzie was very happy for the next few days. She looked radiant. Her favorite game was pretending to be the future Mrs. Lomax, behaving very grandly and snottily and putting people in their places.

“How do you do? I am Mrs. Lord Lomax—my husband is a famous Lord, you know. What, you being rude to me? All right, I will just tell my husband. He will see you get ten years in the monkey-house.” She giggled and then suddenly looked anxious, afraid that a telegram would come from Kay before we were married—for as soon as the vacancy occurred at the hospital we should have to return. “Robert, you think that telegram will come today?”

“No, I don't think today.”

“No?” She promptly brightened, and returned to her game. “Good afternoon, Mr. Lord Piccadilly. No, I'm sorry, my husband is having tea with the Queen at Westminster Abbey.”

“You don't have tea at Westminster Abbey, Suzie.”

“So sorry, Mr. Lord Piccadilly—I mean at her house.”

Macao was on the tip of a peninsula, and in ten minutes you could walk from the Praya on one side to the beach on the other, and in twenty minutes from the center of the town to the frontier across the peninsula neck, where you could see the Red China flag flying down the road—though of course in that heat you never did walk, but took trishaws everywhere. Macao had flourished for centuries as the gateway to China, but now the gateway was closed and there was no trade any longer, no industry, no business—nothing to keep the town alive except opium and gambling and girls. And at the hotel where we were staying you could get all three—the gambling on either of the two floors devoted to casinos, and the opium and girls in your room by pressing the bell and asking the floor boy. And for that matter the floor boy would also provide a go-between with the casino, so that if you believed in doing things thoroughly you could gamble and smoke opium and have a girl at the same time.

Our floor boy was called Ah Ng and had a walleye. The other eye burnt day and night with an eagerness to do business, and whenever he caught me alone he would sidle against me, fixing me with the good eye while the walleye gazed up innocently at the ceiling, and whisper furtively that he could fix me up with a Portuguese girl of sixteen, who would be far more worthy of my attentions than Suzie. His disparaging tone when speaking of Suzie suggested that even a coolie would think twice before demeaning himself in her embrace. But an hour later, catching Suzie alone, he would whisper to her that she had exceptional qualities which clearly I had failed to perceive, and that she could be making her fortune. And he would offer to introduce her to a Portuguese officer down the corridor for only 30 per cent commission.

During the second week Suzie's high spirits began to desert her and she became depressed. Once I entered her room to find her crying, and the same evening she burst into tears at dinner; but when I asked her what was the matter she only shook her head. Still, I knew without her telling me: the strain of waiting to be married was proving too much for her, and she had begun to think that it was a mistake and to feel shame about her past. Now she would never speak of her past, or even mention the Nam Kok; and when I did so purposely, to try and reassure her that I did not mind, she flushed and pretended she had not heard. And now, instead of dreading the arrival of the telegram, she hoped it would come, for it would be a clear indication that our marriage was not intended by fate, and would conveniently relieve her of decision.

The third week her depression became worse, and she brooded or cried all the time. Her unhappiness made her a stranger to me, so that I began to have doubts about the marriage myself. Then on the day before we were due to be married she finally broke down and said she could not go through with it—she wanted only to go back to Hong Kong, to her girl friends, to the familiar way of life. Because that was all she was fit for. That was all she was: a water-front girl, a sailor's whore, and an ex-gaolbird to boot. Why pretend to be anything else? No, she was going back to the Nam Kok, she had made up her mind.

I said, “If that's what you want, Suzie, I won't try and stop you. But I don't think it is. I think it's just that going back is safe and easy, while going on is difficult because it's unknown, and it scares you.”

And I reminded her of an incident that morning, when we had been strolling along the Praya and had run into a nice innocuous young English couple on honeymoon from Hong Kong, whom I had met before in the casino. We had exchanged greetings and then I had turned to introduce Suzie, only to find that she had moved away and was standing along the quay with her back turned. I had gone to her, but she had stubbornly refused to come back and be introduced; and then she had begun to cry, saying that she thought the couple was hateful and she did not know how I could befriend them. But I knew of course that the real cause of her distress was the fear of their contempt—and now I did my best to convince her that such a fear had been quite unfounded.

“Actually they'd told me in the casino that they thought you looked charming,” I said. “They weren't contemptuous a bit. But when you're afraid of people's contempt you see your fears reflected everywhere. Every new face is a mirror. But even if they had been contemptuous you shouldn't have turned away. People take you at your own estimate of yourself, and if you're ashamed of yourself they'll point and say ‘Yah!' because they're all ashamed of themselves too in different ways, and it makes them feel better to run down somebody else. But if you face up to them, and look them in the eyes, and think ‘I may have been a water-front tart, but I'm not ashamed of it—I feel as good as you,' they'll start to respect you. And you know who taught me that? You. You could always look people in the eyes. You always had courage. And you've still got it. Only just lately all your little anxieties have been undermining it, gnawing away at it from underneath like busy mice.”

She was silent. She had stopped crying. She asked me to leave her alone for a while, so I went up to the casino on the top floor. An hour later she came in, walking with that careful poise that showed how much tension there was inside her, and how hard she was fighting against her fears and doubts. She looked me straight in the eyes.

“You still want to marry me?” she said.

“Of course, Suzie.”

“You're sure? Even after the way I have behaved?”

“Absolutely sure.” And now it was true again, because her courage had come back.

“All right, I will marry you.”

“Bless you, Suzie. And now let's go and buy you a new dress—you must have a new dress to be married in.”

She was very quiet for the rest of the evening. The next morning she wanted to dress alone and I went out for some coffee, and at eleven returned to the hotel to wait for her in the hall. Twenty minutes later she came out of the lift. The new plain primrose-yellow cheongsam was molded smoothly over her figure, and the discreetly split skirt gave a glimpse of nylon.

“I am sorry I kept you waiting,” she said.

“Suzie, you look marvelous. I'm so proud of you. I wish we were important and there were crowds of people and newsreel cameras.”

“I don't. I don't want anybody.”

“I want the whole world to see you. I want everybody to see how beautiful you are, and all the men to want you and to know they can't have you because you're mine.”

I had bought her a corsage of three very small delicate orchids, whose subtle smoky blue went beautifully with the primrose dress. I pinned it on for her, then we went outside to the street and took a rickshaw. I could smell Suzie's perfume mixed with the faint clean familiar smell of her hair. I felt the nervous tremor of her hand in mine. She could no longer speak for nerves; and as we entered the Consul's office she withdrew into her protective shell in order to keep her composure, looking aloof and remote as if the occasion left her quite cold, and I thought: now she is really inscrutable. If I saw her for the first time now, I would have no inkling of what she felt.

The Consul was delighted to see us, for he had clearly been afraid that we might not turn up and that he would be denied the novelty of uniting us; but since the Governor of Hong Kong was arriving this afternoon on an official visit, and he was involved in the preparations, he was genuinely pushed for time.

“Right, all set?” he said and stood up behind his desk as if it would have been disrespectful to marry us sitting down, his forehead shiny with sweat and fresh sweat-patches under the arms of his clean white shirt. And we stood facing him, under the dangerous creaking fan, while just behind us stood the two witnesses—Miss Ruggeroni, with her masses of black hair and gold crucifix and white thin beautiful Eurasian face, and Ted Rose, a brokendown English scrounger in tattered khaki shirt and shorts, who had been pestering us daily with hard-luck stories in the streets and whom I had promised twenty dollars for fulfilling this task.

The Consul pronounced the formula of marriage with uneasy solemnity, as if he was afraid he looked silly and was wondering if he might have done better to treat the whole affair as a lark. We murmured our answers, and then I placed a plain gold ring on Suzie's finger. This took her by surprise, for when she had tentatively mentioned the matter of a ring I had said that after living together for so long without one I hardly saw its necessity; and now when she realized what I was doing she could no longer hold back her tears. Then we were required to sign our names, and she wiped her eyes with a knuckle and wrote Wong Mee-ling in Chinese characters, and then Suzie Wong in Roman script.

“I say, the bride must be in a state!” the Consul chuckled, now feeling that he could relax safely into jocularity. “She's written the Z back-to-front!”

“It's her trade-mark,” I said. “I'll divorce her if she ever writes it differently.”

“Now, I'm afraid I'll have to push you out soon,” the Consul said. “But first I'd just like to wish you luck.”

He opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Portuguese red wine, and I felt very touched by this kind gesture. He drew the cork while Miss Ruggeroni fetched tumblers, and then poured out the wine and raised his glass for a formal toast, and then added informally, “No, but seriously, I hope you'll be really happy and hit it off, because you're a damn nice couple. And I'm not just saying that. I mean it. Damn nice, both of you.” He was growing very emotional about how nice we were. “And I really do mean it. I told Miss Ruggeroni after you first came to see me, I said—well, Miss Ruggeroni will tell you herself. What did I say, Miss Ruggeroni?”

“You said they were very nice,” Miss Ruggeroni said in the dreamy yearning voice of a Eurasian who belongs nowhere.

“There you are,” the Consul said. “I said you were damn nice the very first time I saw you. Well, here's the best to you again.”

Suzie kept stealing glances at her ring. Miss Ruggeroni yearned dreamily. Ted Rose, behind whose ear was the telltale brown callosity caused by the opium smoker's wooden pillow, slyly watched the Consul. He saw his opportunity and sidled up and launched rapidly into one of his self-pitying appeals, almost incoherent in his haste to reach the point before the Consul could stop him.

“Damned interesting, old man,” the Consul interrupted coldly. “But you ought to know you're wasting your breath on me. Now, come on, the newlyweds—the other half.”

He drained the bottle into our glasses. I finished my glass and Suzie surreptitiously exchanged it for hers because she did not care much for wine. Then the Consul said he must turn us out and warmly wrung our hands at the door, saying with a jocular wink, “By Jove, I hope I got that business right. Damned embarrassing if I made some damn-fool slip-up, and you weren't really married!” He saw Rose hanging back in the office in the hope of catching him after we had gone, and pointedly stood aside for him to leave. Miss Ruggeroni with sudden impetuosity dashed back to her desk, snatched a gold-plated powder compact from her bag, and returned to press it on Suzie, saying, “Oh, it's nothing. It's not new or anything. It's just a silly little present—you can throw it away if it's no use.” And then we were outside again, and Rose was muttering resentfully that the Consul had insulted him, and that if we knew all that he knew about the Consul we would understand why despite his consulship he was not fit to lick his, Rose's, boots. I handed him twenty-five dollars, five more than agreed, but he was too preoccupied with his grievance to notice the bonus.

“Thanks for your help,” I said, and climbed into the waiting trishaw beside Suzie. The trishaw driver stood up to put his weight on the pedals and give the vehicle momentum and we moved off, and I looked back and saw Rose still muttering on the pavement as if he had not noticed we had gone.

I had ordered lunch at a restaurant in the Beco da Felicidade, which was narrow and cobbled and smelled of incense and was as enchanting as its name, and for a street called the Street of Happiness that was saying a good deal. The restaurant specialized in roast pigeon and you could get good cheap Portuguese wine. We climbed the narrow staircase to the first floor, which was partitioned like most Chinese restaurants into a warren of private rooms, and were given a room hung with a patchwork of decorated mirrors which the Chinese thought lucky. A waiter brought a plate of hot towels smelling of disinfectant. He handed us each a towel with a pair of tongs and we wiped our hands and faces. He poured out cups of pale tea and then collected our towels on a plate and went out, and we sat picking at the saucer of red melon seeds while we waited for lunch. In the mirrors I could see Suzie reflected from all angles, her hand laid casually on the table to facilitate glances at her ring.

“Look at all my new wives,” I said. “Not a bad morning's work.”

“You gave them all rings—all those wives?” Suzie said.