The collected stories (55 page)

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE

'What were you talking about to those old men?' I asked.

'About the snake,' he said, and walked a bit faster.

'The snake?' No snake had been mentioned.

'The python that was caught yesterday. It is going to be killed. They think it is a bad omen, perhaps it means we will have a poor harvest. I know what you think - a silly superstition! But I tell you I have known these omens to be correct.'

I said, 'Have you known them to be wrong?'

'To you, this must seem a poor kampong,' said Sundrum. 'But a great deal happens here. This is not Ayer Hitam. Every year is different here. I could live anywhere - a schoolmaster can name his price - but I choose to live here.'

I looked again at the kampong and it was less than it had seemed on my previous visit, smaller, dirtier, a bit woebegone, with more naked children, and somewhere a radio playing a shrill song. I wanted to leave at once.

'I have to go,' I said.

'Europeans,' he said. 'Always in a hurry.'

'I've got work to do.'

'Look at those old men,' he said, and turned and looked back at the jelutong tree. 'They have the secret of life. They sit there. They don't hurry or worry. They are wiser than any of us.'

'Yes.' But I thought the opposite and saw them as only old and baffled and a bit foolish, chattering there under their tree year after year, meeting their friends at the mosque, facing the clock-tower to face Mecca, talking about the haj they would never take and going home when it got dark. Islanders.

Sundrum said, 'When I was in jail I used to hear the birds singing outside my window and sometimes I dropped off to sleep and dreamed that I was back here on the kampong. It was a good dream.'

'You're happy here.'

'Why shouldn't I be?' he said. 'I'm not like some people who write their books and then go to Singapore or KL to drink beer and run around with women. No, this is my life. I have my books, but what do they matter? Life is so much more important than books. I have no wish to live in Ayer Hitam.'

Ayer Hitam could be seen from the top of a palm tree; for Sundrum it was a world away, a distance that could scarcely be put into words. A year before I had seen him as a solitary soulful

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man, who had found contentment. Now he seemed manic; another visitor might find him foolish or arrogant, but his arrogance was fear. He had that special blindness of the villager. How cruel that he had turned to writing, the one art that requires clear-sightedness.

I said, 'You weren't at the Christmas party this year.'

'I went last year.'

'I know.'

'Were you there? I didn't know the people well. I went to gather material. I've finished with Christmas parties, but I still need perspective - perspective is everything. From the ground, all coconuts look the same, but climb the tree and you will see that each one is different - a different shape, a different size, some ripe, some not. Some are rotten! That is the lesson of my novel.'

We had reached his house. I said, 'It's late.'

'I promised you my book,' he said. 'Let me get it for you.'

I heard him crossing the floor of his house, treading the worn planks. No, I thought: every coconut is the same. It takes time to decide that your first impression, however brutal, was correct.

There was no party that night. After dinner I sat down with The Coconut Gatherer. The book was identical to the one he had given me the previous year, the friendly flourish of his inscription on the flyleaf exactly as it was in the other copy. But I read it again, this time with pleasure. I admired his facility, the compactness of his imagery, the rough charm of his sermonizing. It was clumsy in parts: he had no gift for punctuation. But I could not fault him for these mechanical lapses, since beneath the husk and fiber of his imitative lyricism so much of what he described was recognizably true to me.

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in my official capacity, but informally, to find out, before State Department representations were made, what steps were being taken to deal with terrorists. Unofficially, I had been told that the Malaysian government expected American military support. Though they had not been turned down, Flint in the Embassy in Kuala Lumpur had told me, 'They're whistling in the dark, but if it makes things easier for you tell them we're thinking of giving them air cover.'

The American position was: we'll help if the casualties are yours. I decided to hint this to the Sultan in the Oriental - or at least Malaysian - way. My opportunity came a few weeks after Gillespie's murder when talking with Azhari, the District Commissioner, at the ceremonial opening of a palm-oil estate, I asked if the Sultan was going to be there.

'He doesn't travel,' said Azhari, as if the Sultan were some rare wine. He searched my face suspiciously: had I meant my question as criticism?

I said that I had been longing to meet him; that I might be leaving soon. 'I'd hate to leave without having had a chat with him.'

'I can arrange that,' said Azhari.

I felt I had gone about it in the right way. The Sultan might get in touch with me, or Azhari might give me the go-ahead. I'd write a personal note and wouldn't mention security - I didn't want to talk to a general. But nothing happened. It was so often the case with the Oriental approach: one needed Oriental patience, like Gillespie.

It was a sign of our diminishing numbers, perhaps a siege mentality, that we began meeting together for lunch, Alec, Squibb, Evans, Strang, and sometimes Prosser. A club within the Club, for since I had arrived many expatriates had left and the membership committee started encouraging locals to join. It looked like tolerance; it was a way of paying the bills. Our lunches might have been a reaction to the Chinese tables, the Malay tables, the Indian tables. A multiracial club seemed to mean nothing more than a dining room filled with tables at which the various races asserted their difference by practicing exclusion.

At one of those lunches I noticed Alec carrying an odd familiar stick that I recognized and yet could not name.

'A shooting stick,' he said when I asked. 'You sit on it, like so.' He opened it, stuck it into the dining-room carpet and sat. There

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE

were some stares; the local members had not progressed to the point where they were allowed this sort of eccentricity.

'Going shooting?' asked Evans.

'Polo,' said Alec. 'I'm driving down to the Sultan's. This is the last day of the festival.'

'Hari Raya Haji's months away,' I said.

'Not that festival, you idiot. The Sultan's not a complete barbarian.' He winked at me. 'Polo festival. It's been going on for a week. This will be the best day - Pahang's playing. And tonight the Sultan awards his cup. But I shan't stay for that hoo-hah.'

'Do you mind if I come along with you?'

Alec spoke to Squibb. 'Hear that? I told you we'd make a gentleman out of this Yank.'

And Alec even found me a shooting stick in one of the Club's storerooms. 'Remember,' he said, 'pointed end in the ground. Got it?'

There were flags flying at the gateway of the Sultan's mansion, the flags of all the states, and colored pennants fluttering on wires. Across the driveway were the Christmas lights the Malays dragged out for special occasions. The day was overcast and sultry and the spectators looked subdued in the heat - a crowd of Malays standing on the opposite side, some still figures on our side, surrounded by many empty chairs. As we passed behind the awnings of the Royal Pavilion Alec said, 'Just follow me and set your stick up. Don't turn around. Concentrate on the match.'

'What's wrong?'

'He's here,' said Alec. 'I was hoping he wouldn't be. Worse luck.'

'Who?'

'Buffles,' said Alec.

'The Sultan?'

'Buffles. And if I catch you calling him "Your Highness" I'll never give you lunch again.'

We were not at the sidelines - Alec said we'd be trampled there. We had set up our sticks about thirty feet from the margin of the field, our backs to the pavilion.

It was to me an unexpectedly beautiful sport, graceful horses leaping back and forth on a field of English grass; like mock warfare, a tournament, chargers in the colors of chivalry, green and gold. No shouts, only the hoof beats, the occasional crack of sticks,

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and the small white ball flying from the scrimmage of snorting horses.

Third chukka,' said Alec. 'There's Eddie Pahang - awfully good player. Get him!' Alec lurched with such excitement he drove his shooting stick deeper into the ground.

'I say, aren't you playing, Stewart?'

It was a high querulous voice. Alec sighed and said, 'Buffles.' But he turned smiling towards the striped awning. 'Not today!'

I had not taken a good look at the Sultan when we entered the polo ground. Now I saw him and, seated next to him, Angela Miller in her garden-party outfit, white gloves and a long dress and a wide-brimmed hat. The Sultan wore a batik sports shirt and dark glasses; his head came to Angela's shoulder, her hat shielding him like an umbrella.

'Sit here, Stewart,' he said, patting an armchair in front of him. 'Join us - bring your friend.'

Alec smiled rather coldly at Angela, as at a betrayer, then introduced me.

The Sultan said, 'I didn't know there was still a consulate in Ayer Hitam. Why don't my people tell me anything?'

'It's really a small affair,' I said.

'Ayer Hitam is lovely. Like those villages in the Cotswolds one sees. One drives through and always wishes one could stop. But one never does. Stewart, what do you think of the game?'

The Sultan was about seventy, with the posture and frown of an old toad. I had never seen a Malay who looked quite like him, certainly none as fat. And there was a greater difference - his skin was unmistakably freckled and in places blotchy, crushed, and oddly pigmented: strange for the ruler of such sleek unwrinkled people.

'- spirited,' Alec was saying.

'Yes, spirited, spirited,' said the Sultan. 'That's just what I was telling Angela.' He peered again at me, so that I could see my face in each of the lenses of his glasses. 'Did you say you were a writer?'

'Consul,' I said.

'But you know Beverley Nichols.'

'I've heard of him.'

'English,' said the Sultan. 'Frightfully clever. Wrote a book-' The Sultan fidgeted, trying to remember.

'The Sun in My Eyes, Your Highness,' said Angela.

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (i): THE CONSUL'S FILE

'That's it. Frightfully good book.'

'His Highness appears in the book,' said Angela.

'We must get it for the club library,' I said.

'It's there,' said Alec. 'Nichols stopped for the night a few years ago. Gave us a signed copy. Bit of an old woman actually.'

Angela said, 'Literary gossip! It makes me homesick.'

'He stayed with me a fortnight,' said the Sultan. 'I had a letter from him yesterday. His book was a best-seller.' He turned to Angela. 'Someone's coming to stay. Lord - who is it?'

'Elsynge, Your Highness.'

'Elsynge is coming, yes. Elsynge. Had a letter from him. Here,' he said, 'you two sit here. Do put those sticks away. You'll be more comfortable.' He motioned to the armchairs in front of him and after we sat down he touched me on the shoulder. 'Somerset Maugham - did you know him?'

'I never had the pleasure,' I said.

'He visited,' said the Sultan. 'With his friend Earl, of course. Had to have Earl.'

'He came to your coronation, Your Highness.'

'Yes, he came to my coronation. He was here a week. But he stayed at Raffles Hotel. He liked Raffles. If he was alive to see it now he'd die!'

Alec said, 'He's away!'

A pack of horses galloped down the field after one rider who had broken away swinging his mallet. The handle curved as he hit the ball, which rose toward the goal. There was a great cheer from the Pahang side. The horses trotted away to regroup on the field.

The Sultan said, 'Was that a goal?'

'No, Your Highness, but very nearly,' said Angela.

'Very nearly, yes! I saw that, didn't I?'

'Missed by a foot,' said Alec.

'Missed by a foot, yes!' said the Sultan and wiped his face.

'They're beautiful horses,' I said. 'I had no idea it was such a graceful sport.'

The Sultan said, 'Did you say you're a Canadian?'

'American.'

'Do you know what a Canadian told me once? He said horsemeat is very good. This Canadian had pots of money - he owned all the cinemas in Canada. He went on safaris and shot grizzly bears

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in Russia and what not. He said to me, "Bearmeat is the best, but the second best is horsemeat." He said that. Yes, he did!'

Alec looked at me slyly and said, 'That Canadian never tasted haggis.'

'The syces here eat it,' said the Sultan.

'Haggis?' said Alec.

But the Sultan hadn't heard. 'My father was a sportsman. Oh, he was a great hunter. He shot everything, too, elephants, lions. He shot the last tiger in Malaya - the very last one! You might like to see his trophies after the match.'

'We'll have to be heading back,' said Alec.

'My father said horsemeat was good to eat. Yes, indeed. But it's very heating, he said.' The Sultan placed his freckled hands on his belly and tugged. 'You can't eat too much of it. It's too heating.'

'You've tried it then?' I said.

He looked disapproving. 'My syces eat it.'

There was a shout from the Malays at the periphery of the field.

'What was that? A goal?'

'A foul, Your Highness,' said Angela.

'A foul? What did he do?'

'Crossed over, Your Highness.'

'Is that a foul?'

'Yes, Your Highness.'

The Sultan grimaced in boredom. 'Stewart, I was in Singapore yesterday. They gave me an escort and then they cleared Bukit Timah Road for me. Just closed the road. Too bad, chaps, they said. Took me fifteen minutes to get back from the Seaview.'

'Fancy that,' said Alec.