The Orientalist and the Ghost (44 page)

Stephanie and I exchange furtive winces, to show that we don’t buy any of this.

‘Let’s play a drinking game!’ Stephanie suggests.

Drinking games are the secret money-spinners of this establishment. We play drinking games with cards, dice, ice cubes and beer mats, and sometimes more complicated games involving the phonetic alphabet and obscene hand gestures. The losing salaryman has to knock back his drink and buy the next round. Drinking games never fail to liven things up, getting the salarymen really sluiced and spending extortionate amounts on liquor. The down side is that I often end up getting drunk myself. Lately when I go to get more drinks I water my own whisky right down and charge them full price for it.

‘Great idea!’ I say. ‘Let’s play Queen of Hearts!’

There is a rumble of enthusiasm and Stephanie dashes to the bar to get a pack of cards. We shuffle our chairs closer round the table. Murakami-san’s eyes brighten in anticipation of debauched mayhem. It never happens. The only sure-fire outcome is that he will be completely fleeced.

I top up our drinks and Stephanie deals the cards.

I dream about this place a lot. I dream of sloshing whisky into glasses, the hiss and click of a Zippo lighter. I have come to resent the invasion of my subconscious; it’s like doing an unpaid shift in my sleep. I had a horrible dream recently, about one of our patrons, Fujimoto-san. In the dream I was sitting with him, listening to his golfing anecdotes, when his teeth began to fall out. Tapered pebbles of pearl grey hit the varnished wood of the table. I was alarmed but carried on as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening, listening as his words grew thick and incomprehensible. Then he turned to me with a knowing, toothless grin. I jerked bolt upright at that, my heart thrumming in the darkness. Sometimes I wake with dim memories of being kissed by clients, of letting hands roam where they shouldn’t, of being aroused by them. But dreams are often without rhyme or reason; it’s just the brain chewing over the events of the day. I’m no expert on dream analysis, but I’m sure it doesn’t mean I latently crave any of this.

When I leave Osaka my dreams will teem with foreign landscapes. Vast skies of obscene blue, tortuous valleys and ramshackle villages. Rickety train journeys to bustling cities, dense with heat and people. Sometimes I don’t know what agonizes me more, the itch to take off or leaving Yuji. It mystifies me, his lack of desire to travel. If I stay in one place for too long the world begins to narrow, like the sky viewed through a straw.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this book would have been impossible without the help of the staff of the following organizations: the British Library, the London School of Oriental and African Studies, King’s College Library, Queen Mary University Library, Senate House Library, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Royal Malaysian Police Museum, Odyssey Trust and Milton House.

Thanks to Vivian Smith of the Axe Street Project, Barking.

Thanks to Diana Francis of the University of Hertfordshire School of Life Sciences, for introducing me to the world of lab technicians.

Many thanks to the Arts Council of England.

Thanks to Jane Lawson, whose advice has made
The Orientalist and the Ghost
a much better book. Thanks to Eleanor Bradstreet, Daniel Septimus, Carole
Semaine
, Marianne Velmans and John Saddler.

Thanks to my aunts Yoke Moy, Yoke Fong, Yoke Lan, Yoke Pau and Yoke Lin, and to the rest of my family in Malaysia. Thanks to my father for his constant help and support. Thanks to my mother and Carol.

About the Author

Susan Barker
was born in London in 1978 to a Chinese Malaysian mother and an English father. Aged twenty-five, she completed the acclaimed novel
Sayonara Bar
(‘Funny, crisply written and engaging’
Times
), followed by
The Orientalist and the Ghost
(‘Sharp and original’
Guardian
). While writing her third novel
The Incarnations
she spent several years living in Beijing, researching modern and ancient China. Follow her on Twitter
@Susankbarker
.

Also by Susan Barker

SAYONARA BAR

THE INCARNATIONS

and published by Black Swan

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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THE ORIENTALIST AND THE GHOST
A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552772419
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781448169931

First published in Great Britain
Doubleday edition published 2008
Black Swan edition published 2009

Copyright © Susan Barker 2008

Susan Barker has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

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