World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (22 page)

“Now, what do you fancy for the next race?”

“Number Seven.”

She stuck to No. 7 all afternoon and won twice. The first time her horse was second favorite and the gleanings small, but the second time it was an outsider and she won two hundred dollars. I had one winner and ended up only ten dollars down. We managed to avoid running into Rodney again, except once when I found myself jostled against him in the crowd. We both kept our eyes averted, like secret agents in a film when they meet accidentally and pretend not to recognize one another. We did not see him again.

Suzie's second win was in the penultimate race, and after we had collected her winnings we left to escape the stampede. We walked back to Wanchai because there were already queues for the trams. On the way I went into a shop for cigarettes and when I came out Suzie had vanished. I looked round for several minutes, half anxious and half piqued because she had gone off without telling me. Then I saw her come out of a shop.

“I thought I'd lost you,” I said testily. “What were you doing?”

“I just bought myself some scent.”

“Scent?”

“Like that short-hair girl.”

She held up her little parcel. She looked so pleased with herself that I laughed and forgot my anger. We crossed Hennessy Road and walked down to the water front.

As we turned the corner to the Nam Kok a taxi stopped outside and Rodney got out. We waited, giving him time to go up in the lift, and then followed. When we got upstairs his door was ajar, so we tiptoed past and let ourselves quietly into my room. I rang the bell for tea, and we took the pot onto the balcony.

“You like to see my scent?” Suzie said. She handed me the parcel. “You open.”

I removed the string and brown paper. It did not contain scent after all, but a little silver box.

“It's beautiful, Suzie,” I said. “But I don't understand. Why did you say it was scent?”

“For surprise. It's for you.”

“Me? Suzie, don't be ridiculous!”

“Yes, it is a present.”

“Suzie, you're mad! You must have paid a fortune for it!”

“I paid nothing. Number Seven horse paid.”

“I don't know what to say, Suzie. I wish you hadn't done it.”

“Look, I bought it to match hairbrush.” She took the box and I followed her inside, where she laid the box beside my hairbrush on the dressing table. “Both silver.”

“But the hairbrush isn't really silver at all.”

“No? Then good thing Number Seven horse gave you this box. Because you are a big, important man—you need proper silver.”

“Suzie, bless you.”

“You can use this box for cigarettes. Or buttons. Yes, I think for buttons—when a button falls off you can put it inside this box, then I will come along and sew it on. You understand?”

I kissed her, feeling terribly touched. Then I broke away and went over to the door to lock it, but stopped with my hand on the bolt. The bottom part of the door was a ventilator with downward-sloping slats, so that you could see out but not in—and now through the slats I saw the bottom of a pair of green sharkskin trousers and a pair of suede shoes. They remained perfectly still. I waited a moment, then closed the bolt sharply and walked away. Just then there was a knock. I returned to the door and opened it.

“May I come in?” Rodney said.

“Yes, if you want.”

He entered with set face and glazed eyes and went out to the balcony. He dropped into a chair with his face in his hands. Suzie and I stood watching him.

“If you'd known, you'd never have done it,” he said. “You'd never have been so unkind.”

“If we'd known what?” I said.

“How much you were hurting me. I've cried myself to sleep every night.”

“I'm sorry, Rodney.”

He kept his face in his hands. “All right,” he said. “You win. You're the only friends I've got and I need your friendship. So I've got to take it on your terms.” He lifted his face and stood up, feet together, and extended his hand with military formality. “All right, let's shake on it, Bob.” We shook hands solemnly, then he shook hands with Suzie. “I wish you both luck. I hope you'll both be very, very happy.”

“Well, thanks,” I said awkwardly.

“And now thank God that's over.” He shook his head as if he was coming round from a nasty dream, scratching his bristly crew-cut scalp with both hands. Then he looked up at Suzie with a coaxing grin, like a little boy who has been naughty but knows he can win everybody round again with a little charm. “Now, supposing a fellow wanted a cup of tea—how would he set about getting round you?”

Suzie glanced at me, then went inside for another glass. Rodney sat down again, puckered his brow, and leaned across the table towards me. “Look, Bob, there's something I want to ask you,” he said, with the earnest humility of a student addressing a learned professor. “Now, don't get angry with me—remember I'm just a stupid hysterical American. But I confess it's got me beat. All right, now to start—how far would you say it is from here to the China border?”

“I suppose about thirty miles,” I said.

“About thirty miles. O.K. Right. And what's the population of Red China?”

“Say four hundred million.”

“Say four hundred million. O.K. Right. So that makes four hundred million Reds thirty miles away across the border—as against a few thousand of you British sitting here in Hong Kong. And yet to judge by that race track this afternoon, there's not a goddam one of you turning a hair. Well now, Bob, what I want to know is this. Just how the hell is it done? And are you crazy—or am I?”

He was still there after an hour. Suzie had retired into the room and was sighing heavily, banging down glasses, and throwing me challenging looks that said, “If you were half a man, you'd throw him out!”

Finally I rose and began to pace the balcony impatiently. Rodney ignored the hint, and also the mounting crescendo of angry noises from Suzie within, and continued to talk and ask me absurd questions, as though defying me to reject his olive branch and again offend him.

I gave him ten more minutes to leave of his own accord. And when the ten minutes were up and he had still not moved I told him bluntly that I wanted to work and must throw him out.

The glazed, hostile look returned to his eyes.

“I'm sorry, Bob, I was enjoying our discussion. And I thought that maybe you'd want to show me that my friendship meant something to you. But evidently I was mistaken.” And without looking at either of us, he marched from the room.

I quietly bolted the door behind him. Later Suzie went out for an hour to see her baby, and after she came back we had dinner sent up from the restaurant round the corner. We were in bed about ten.

Twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door.

I gripped Suzie tightly. We closed our eyes, tensed, trying to fortify ourselves against the interruption and keep our mood intact. I knew that Rodney could see the light through the ventilator but there was nothing to be done.

“I've brought you a bottle of Scotch,” Rodney said. “I thought it might come in handy.”

Pause. We lay in agony.

“I'll just hand it over—I won't stay,” Rodney said.

Please go away, we silently begged him. Please, please go away. But we could hear him standing there outside, his breathing growing heavier, more emotional, more hating.

“All right, if that's the way you want it,” he said. “And this time let's make it final.”

He went away. We heard his door close. We were still held by the lingering tension. We did not speak for a long time.

II

I did not go out for the next two days because I did not want to break the spell of enchantment, and Suzie only went out for odd hours to see her baby. In the mornings she brought the baby back to the room, and we spread the blanket for it on the balcony. It was beginning to walk, and we crouched on either side and let it stagger between us, waving its arms and dribbling and sometimes sprawling on its tummy. It choked with delight as Suzie grabbed it and tickled its ribs.

“Hey, you got to learn to walk properly if you want to be a film star! Yes, you got to grow up big, strong, good-looking, like Gary Cooper! And talk with a deep voice like my boy friend, and tell your girl friend, ‘Hello, darling'—boom-boom, like that!”

At twelve o'clock she took the baby downstairs and handed it over to the amah waiting below on the quay. And then the coolie came with our lunch on his carrying-pole, and Ah Tong brought the bottle of rice wine which we had given him to warm.

The second morning Ah Tong stayed for five or ten minutes talking to Suzie in his native Cantonese, which by now Suzie herself spoke about as well as English; and after he had gone I asked her what they had been saying.

At first she was evasive; but when I pressed her, she told me that Ah Tong had been curious to know why, although we had been friends so long, we had only just become lovers.

“And what did you tell him?” I asked.

“I told him the truth. I told him I wanted to go to bed, only you said, ‘No, not while you go with sailors.'”

I was silent. This came too near to breaking the spell. What were we going to do? I had tried to give Suzie money but she had refused it; and when I had slipped some notes into her purse, they had turned up later in one of my pockets. I knew that she must be spending her own savings; dipping into the tin which she kept hidden under the floor boards of her room. This tin contained about three thousand dollars—money carefully husbanded for her child's education, to keep him from growing up illiterate like herself. She even had dreams of saving enough money eventually to send him to the University of Hong Kong. She liked to add something to the tin every week. And it upset me to think that now on my account she was taking money out.

Then Ah Tong returned with a fresh pot of tea, providing a welcome distraction. I put the awkward problem out of my mind, and abandoned myself once more to the spell. There was only Suzie and myself and this room and nothing outside existed. And I remained in this state of illusory bliss for the rest of the day.

The next morning we sat in bed drinking tea until nearly eleven, and then Suzie got up and dressed.

“Suzie, you'll bring your baby again this morning, won't you?” I said.

She shook her head. “No.”

“No? Why not?”

“Not today.”

I watched her in puzzlement as she finished her dressing. She went to the door and paused. “All right, I come back tonight.”

“Tonight? Suzie, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Holiday finish.” She held my eyes with that level gaze. “Now I go back to work.”

“Suzie, don't be absurd! Come here and sit down. We've got to talk.”

“No good talking.”

She opened the door. I jumped up and slammed it shut.

“Suzie, you're not just going like that. We'll think of something. We'll borrow some money from somewhere. We could borrow from Ben.”

She shook her head again. “No. We borrow money, and maybe our holiday will last one more week—then finish again, just like today.”

“It'd give us time to think. We might find you a job.”

“Yes, one hundred dollars a month.”

“You could get more than that.”

“No. I can't read, can't write. One hundred dollars.”

“I could make it up to three hundred. You could just manage.”

“Yes—manage. And watch my baby grow up a coolie boy. Watch him carry lunch for people. Get hard shoulder from carry-pole.”

“Suzie, we must at least think it over—think what's best to do.”

“No, I think too much already. I think all day, all night, about what to do. But there is nothing to do.” She opened the door again. “All right, I go now. I come back at ten o'clock. Or maybe eleven, it depends.” And the door closed behind her.

I lay for a long time on the bed. Then I could not stand being alone in the room any longer, and I went out and walked about the streets until it was time for lunch. I did not want any lunch but it was something to do. I went into a cafe and ordered a dish of fried meat dumplings for a dollar. There were a dozen dumplings on the plate but I could only eat two. I sat for an hour drinking tea. I paid the bill and went out again into Hennessy Road. I did not know what to do with myself. I was afraid to go back to the Nam Kok in case I ran into Suzie with a sailor. Then I saw a cinema and went in and bought a ticket. I thought the film might distract me. It was an American film and had just begun. Soon the hero caught his girl kissing another man and went nearly berserk. My God, I thought, if that's what a bit of kissing does to you, how would you feel if you knew your girl was upstairs with a sailor? Then there was a newsreel, with a naval review at Portsmouth and the sailors lined up with beautiful precision on the deck of a cruiser, and I thought: I wonder how many of you have been out East. I wonder how many of you have been to the Nam Kok. I wonder how many have been with Suzie. And then there was a Donald Duck, and I thought: well, ducks are promiscuous. I suppose they don't mind their girls waddling off for short-times.

After the cinema I went back to the Nam Kok. The lift was waiting and I went up without meeting anybody and closed my door with relief.

Later business began to warm up and I could hear the lift gate clanking every few minutes and couples coming down the corridors and going into rooms and the doors shutting. Sometimes I could still hear them after the door was shut. I knew that Suzie would not come to my floor if she could help it. But every time I heard a girl's voice it sounded like Suzie's, and finally I could not stand it any more and went out to another cinema. I came back at half-past nine and sat out on the balcony. But the balcony was worse than the room for noises, because the doors onto the neighboring balconies were all open, so I moved back inside. A few minutes later there was a tap on the door and Suzie came in.