World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (31 page)

And I groaned to myself at my own stupidity in not foreseeing the danger: at my own selfishness in not bothering to understand her. I could probably have prevented this from happening. There was nobody more to blame than myself. And now I wondered if I ought not to return to Hong Kong at once to help her out of the mess—if I ought not to skip Hokkaido, return tomorrow.

But that would mean breaking an agreement: it would be a professional breach of faith. My first job as an artist, and I fell down on it.

But what about the breach of faith with Suzie? Wasn't my first allegiance to her . . . ?

I crossed and recrossed Hibiya Park in an agony of indecision. Finally I decided that I must go to Hokkaido and finish my job: after all, it was only another two weeks, and I might still be back in Hong Kong in time for her appearance in court, for which she had given no date in her letter. And I left the park and went over the road to the post office in the Imperial, and sent Suzie a cable telling her to contact a solicitor called Haynes. He was the only solicitor in Hong Kong whose name I knew, though I knew nothing else about him and had never met him—I had simply read his name one day in the newspaper as the defending solicitor in a rent case, and an hour later happened to see it again at the entrance of an office building in town, and because of the odd coincidence the name had stuck in my mind. And I told her not to worry, and that whatever happened I would be behind her, and sent her my love.

I also sent a cable to Haynes, and then remembered that in Suzie's cable I had not told her the date of my return. I went over to the B.O.A.C. counter in the hotel foyer to make sure of my booking in two weeks' time, then returned to the post office and sent her another cable about my arrival. And I added another reassurance, and told her about the pink umbrella, and sent some more love. And then I took a taxi back to my hotel where the flock of little sparrows went down on their knees in the porch, and I sat on the wooden step while two of them untied my laces and took off my shoes. I told the taxi to wait, and the little sparrows came twittering along to my room and helped to pack my bag; and I tied up all my Japanese drawings and gave them to the proprietress for safekeeping. Then the sparrows all went down on their knees again in the porch, giggling and shaking warning fingers and pulling illustratively at their hair, by way of telling me to behave myself with the aboriginal girls of Hokkaido who were commonly known as the Hairy Ainu; and then I got back into the taxi and drove out to the airport, and caught the plane for Hokkaido with ten minutes to spare.

Chapter Three

“T
hose police, you know, they gave me a bad time. Yes! They kept me in the monkey-house all night! Not the real monkey-house, but the little monkey-house at the police station, which was worse!”

We stood outside the airport building waiting for a bus into Hong Kong. The plane from Japan had been three hours late, but as I stepped out onto the tarmac I had recognized Suzie in her jeans behind the wire-mesh fence, excitedly craning on tiptoe and fluttering her hand, as if she had stood there ever since my departure two months before. During my absence full summer had arrived in Hong Kong, bringing with it a stifling heat and humidity that was worse even than Malaya. The perspiration trickled down inside my shirt. I mopped my forehead and neck with my handkerchief as Suzie exploded with indignation about her ordeal at the hands of the police.

“Oh, it was terrible, that place—all full of horrible, dirty people! Yes, those horrible police, they treated me just like a street girl!”

I said, “Suzie, what about Betty? Is she all right?”

“That Canton girl?” Suzie said. “Oh, yes, you needn't worry about her.”

“I'm only worrying about you. I've been so scared about the consequences for you if she was really in danger. Is she still in hospital?”

“Yes, I expect so,” she said indifferently.

“But don't you know?”

“Oh, yes, she is in hospital—but I haven't finished telling you about my bad time in the monkey-house yet. Oh, it was terrible! I told them, ‘You let me out! I'm not a bad girl! My boy friend's an Englishman. He's in Japan just now for a big American company, getting more money in one week than your Number One gets in a month, or maybe even a year. Look, he gave me this check book, and I just have to write down on one of those checks how much I want, and the bank will give me any amount. Yes, my boy friend's a big man, and when he comes back he will make trouble. He will see that you policemen get a bad time!' But they kept me all night in that horrible place—oh, I couldn't sleep a wink!”

I said, “Suzie, I wish you'd start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”

“I told you, that Canton girl said something bad to me, so I just stuck her with the scissors.”

“But
what
did she say?”

“Oh, I don't remember exactly,” she said quickly. “I just remember it was something bad, that's all—and I wish I had stuck her harder.”

“Thank God you didn't! Anyhow, what were you doing with the scissors?”

“I just had them.”

“But what on earth—” I began, but she interrupted impatiently.

“Anyhow, why are you so worried about that Canton girl? She only got what she deserved. Everybody said so. Everybody told me, ‘Suzie, you did right. You did a very good thing.' They all congratulated me, you know—all except those stupid police!”

On the bus, and again during the ferry-crossing to Wanchai, I taxed her for more details of the stabbing and of what Betty had said to provoke her, but her answers were vague and evasive; and when we reached the Nam Kok I was still little wiser about what had happened than I had been in Tokyo.

My shirt was wringing wet with perspiration after the brief trip from the airport and I was already breaking out in prickly heat. Suzie, who had put flowers in the room for my reception, helped me to unpeel the sticky garments from my body and laid out replacements. I sponged myself down at the basin, and Suzie sponged my back; and after this I felt quite refreshed and ready to tackle Suzie about her reluctance to impart details of the Betty affair. I made her lie beside me on the bed, and said, “Now let's start at the beginning, Suzie. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and you were sitting in the bar—were you alone?”

“No, I was sitting with Gwenny.”

“All right, and where was Betty?”

“She just came into the bar, and she walked past with that show-off wiggle-waggle walk. I think it's disgusting that way she walks. She only does it to—”

“All right, and who spoke first?”

“She spoke—that Canton girl. She said something bad to me.”

“Well, what?”

“I don't remember.”

“But you must remember, Suzie. If it was so bad that it made you attack her you couldn't possibly have forgotten.”

“I just remember it was the same bad thing that she said the day before.”

“And what was that?”

“I don't remember.”

“Suzie, look at me. No, look at me properly. All right, are you telling me the truth?”

“No.”

“You mean you do remember?”

“Yes.”

“Then what was it?”

She averted her eyes. “I can't tell.”

“But why on earth not?”

She was silent. It was the first time she had refused me her confidence, and I was puzzled and hurt.

“All right, let's leave that for a minute,” I said. “Just tell me what happened when she said whatever-it-was the first time.”

“I told her, ‘If you ever say that again, I will kill you.'”

“You didn't really, Suzie? Not those very words?”

“Yes, I warned her. I told her ‘I will kill you.'”

“Oh, Christ!”

“And she said, ‘Pooh to you!'” Suzie went on blithely. “‘Pooh,' she said, ‘I will say it any time I like—I will say it again tomorrow.' So I went out and bought scissors.”

“You
what?
”

“Yes, from that first shop round the corner in Hennessy Road. Big scissors—maybe six, eight inches. I can't show you because those police took them away—yes, stole them!”

“And after you'd bought the scissors?”

“I put them in my handbag to keep ready. Then the next afternoon that Canton girl came past the table like I told you, and she said that same bad thing again, so I took out the scissors, and she was just walking way, so I said, ‘You've got a dirty, filthy mind, you dirty Canton girl,' and she turned round and I stuck her with the scissors between her titties. I wouldn't mind if I had hit her titties after what she said, but the scissors went between. Then I pulled them out to hit her again, but Gwenny and somebody stopped me, and that Canton girl just fell on the floor with a lot of blood, making a silly noise—but she wasn't half so bad as she pretended.”

“Well, thank God for Gwenny, that's all I can say.”

“No, I wanted to kill that girl. I was very sorry that Gwenny pulled me off.”

“But you're not still sorry?”

“Yes, of course. I warned her the day before, so she deserved it. She had no excuse. I feel angry when I think that Gwenny pulled me off.”

I said, “Listen, Suzie. I don't think you've any idea how serious this is, even though you didn't kill her. Frankly, I'm only surprised they gave you bail.”

“I'm not worried. You ask anybody downstairs, they all say, ‘Suzie you did a good thing.' I shall just tell them in court what happened. I shall tell them that I warned that Canton girl first, so they will understand.”

“They'll understand far too much,” I said. “We've got to do some hard thinking, Suzie. And first of all you must tell me what Betty said to you, because I can't help you until I know. Now what was it?”

“I can't tell.”

I said, “Suzie, for God's sake! Can't you understand what this means? You're in danger of going to prison.”

“They won't send me to the monkey-house when I tell them what happened.”

“But they will! That's exactly what they will do! You didn't just attack Betty on the spur of the moment, but threatened to kill her and then tried to carry out the threat. And we've got to work out some damn good story, and before we can do that I've got to know what she said. Now, come on. Tell me.”

“No.”

And then I lost my temper. I lost it as I would never lose it in the cool weather but only in the damp sticky heat, which causes little knots of rage to grow inside you as it causes fungus to grow on your shoes, and I vituperated at her so furiously that she began to cry; but I still went on swearing at her and chastising her for her stupid idiotic pride—for it could only be from fear of losing face that she refused to repeat what Betty had said. And I told her that so far from saving her face in my eyes she was rapidly destroying the last shreds of my respect for her.

And at last she said in tears, “All right, I will tell you.”

“Well, thank God for that. Thank God I've at last knocked some sense into you.”

And then she told me, and all my anger promptly went and I felt bitterly ashamed—because it was not her own face that she had been trying to save, but mine.

And it made it no better that it was all so trivial. It appeared that Betty had simply taunted her with the malicious little invention that I was a
blankety-blank
(or whatever was the Chinese word), meaning one of those men who favored an unorthodox manner of sexual union which the girls found repugnant. She had told Suzie that on the occasion of her visit to my room I had invited her co-operation in this matter, and that she had refused; but that I had admitted to practicing it with Suzie, who she understood had been more obliging.

On the following day, in the bar, she had simply tossed the one word “
blankety-blank
” at Suzie
en passant
. And it had been enough to bring Suzie within an ace of a capital charge.

“Because I will kill anybody who tries to make you dirty,” she said. “I told her, ‘You can make me dirty, but not my boy friend'—because dirt doesn't show on a dirty little yum-yum girl who is dirty already, but it shows on you because you are a good man, and you have got no dirt on you, not inside or outside or anywhere, and I will kill anybody who tells lies about you and throws dirt.”

I said, “Suzie, I don't know what to say. Except that I've never felt dirtier than I do now, after all those things I just said.”

“I don't mind. Not now you understand that I did a good thing, sticking that Canton girl with the scissors.”

“I still wish you hadn't done it, Suzie. I'm terribly worried about it.”

“You worry too much.”

“What did Haynes say?”

“Oh, he is just a stupid old man. He couldn't understand anything. He said, ‘Maybe they will send you to Laichikok'—that is the woman's monkey-house. But I heard that the judge is a very kind, good man, and has a very good heart—so he will understand.”

“The trouble is, Suzie, that although the magistrate might be very good-hearted, the law's got no heart at all. And the law doesn't happen to approve of assassination with scissors, even if the victim deserved it.”

But I could not make her understand how serious her position was, and presently I went out on the balcony to think it over. I remained there for about twenty minutes, and then returned to the room.

“Suzie, there's one lesson I've learned from you,” I said, “and that is that whatever one decides to do, good or bad, one must stick to one's own decision and act on it boldly. Well, we're going to do something bad. We're going to commit a terrible offense called perjury. And that means we're going to work out some lies very carefully, and learn them by heart, and tell them in court, although we'll have sworn by all that's holy to us that we're telling the truth. Because if we don't they're going to send you to Laichikok for six months, or even a year, and I'd perjure myself into hell sooner than let them do that. Now, let's think about those scissors. When did you buy them?”

“I bought them after that Canton girl first said that dirty thing to me.”

“No, you didn't. You bought them weeks before. You bought them after your house fell down and you'd lost all your possessions. And you bought them at a street stall, not at that shop in Hennessy Road—because we don't want the police investigating.”

“I don't want to tell lies. I will just tell the truth, what really happened.”

“Suzie, you've just got to believe me that if you do you'll be sent to gaol. And if you can't understand yourself why that should be so, you must take it from me on trust.”

“All right, if you want.”

“Good. Now, when did you buy those scissors?”

“After my house fell down.”

“And where?”

“Street market.”

“And where do you usually keep them?”

“Top drawer.”

“No, you don't. You keep them in your handbag because you're always using them for your sewing or knitting in the bar. And where were they when Betty passed your table and flung that taunt at you?”

“In my bag.”

“No, they were in your hand. You were using them for your sewing. And when you lost your temper and threw yourself at Betty you just struck out at her blindly, without even realizing what you were doing.”

“No, that lie is no good, because other girls saw. They saw everything.”

“How many girls? How many were near enough?”

“There was Gwenny and Little Alice, and Wednesday Lulu, and Doris Woo. Four girls—they all saw.”

“Well, go and get them. Go and tell them we've got something very important to discuss and ask them to come up here.”

The four girls all proved more amenable than I had dared to hope. I had expected the most difficulty from Wednesday Lulu, thinking that her high principles might well be inexorably opposed to organized perjury in the witness box; however, since one of her foremost principles was loyalty to colleagues in trouble, other scruples were overridden and she entered into the occasion calmly and contributed several good suggestions. Doris had also seemed a likely stumbling block; and for a while she did indeed remain noncommittal and aloof, her schoolmarm mouth set with disapproval and her eyes blinking and withdrawn behind the rimless glasses. Her only comment, when it came at last, was the pointed reminder that by attending court as a witness she would be losing business in the bar; so when the others left I asked her to remain behind and gave her fifty dollars, and promised another fifty when the job was successfully done. For having entered on a course of corruption, I saw no reason to jib at a little bribery.