Saint Jack (15 page)

“You got a problem, fella,” the cop said, “but it ain't no weight problem. Better come along with us.”

Rita screamed at him.

In the squad car the cop driving said, “We know all about you and those kids. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I was charged with possessing drugs without a prescription, procuring drugs for a minor, and on hearsay, on charges of fornication, bigamy, homosexuality, and petty theft. My trial would be in three weeks. Bail was steep, but the coffee shop fellers and some sympathetic faculty members started a fund and bailed me out; they told me I was being victimized.

Jumping bail was easy; the only loss was the money. I took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles, and leaving everything including my name, flew to Hong Kong and signed on the
Allegro.
It was not despair; it was the convenience of flight, an expensive exit that was possible because it was final. I had no intention of going back. It would have been bad for my heart, and I'm using that word in its older sense.

And: “Flowers,” said the skipper of the
Allegro
, reading my name from the crew list. He made a mark on the paper. “Age—thirty-eight. Single. No identifying marks or scars.” He looked up. “Your first contract, I see. Know anything about oiling?”

“No,” I said, “but I don't think it would take me long to learn.”

“What
can
you do?”

“Anything,” I said. “I suppose you've heard this one before, but what I really wanted to do was write.”

“Take that pencil,” the skipper said.

“This one?” I selected one from a pewter mug on his desk.

“And that pad of paper.”

The letterhead said,
Four Star Shipping Lines.

“Write,” he said.

“Shoot,” I said.

“Carrots, eighty pounds,” he said. “White flour, two hundred pounds. Fresh eggs—”

A
YEAR LATER
, nimble in my soft white shoes, I was guiding a deeply tanned cruise passenger in his club blazer through the low sidewalk corridors of Singapore back lanes. It was night, dark and smelly in the tunnel-like passageways, and quiet except for the occasional snap of mahjong tiles and the rattling of abacus beads—no voices—coming from the bright cracks in burglar doors on shophouse fronts. Some shops, caged by protective steel grates, showed Chinese families sitting at empty tables under glaring bulbs and the gazes from the walls of old relations with small shoulders and lumpy heads in blurred brown photograph ovals—the lighted barred room like an American museum-case tableau of life-size wax figures depicting Chinese at night, the seated mother and father, ancestral relics, and three children's little heads in a coconut row at the far edge of the table. Sikh watchmen huddled, hugging themselves in bloomers and undershirts on string beds outside dark shops; we squeezed past them and past the unsleeping Tamil news vendors playing poker in lotus postures next to their shuttered goods cupboards. Here was a Chinese man in his pajamas, crouching on a stool, smoking, clearing his throat, watching the cars pass. Farther along, four children were playing tag, chasing each other and shrieking in the dark; and under a street-corner lamp, a lone child tugged at an odd flying toy, a live beetle, captive on a yard of thread—he flung it at us as we passed and then pulled it away, laughing in a shy little snort.

“Atmosphere,” murmured the feller.

“You said it.” There was a quicker way to Muscat Lane, but that took you over uncovered sidewalks, past new shops, on a well-lighted street. The atmosphere was an easy detour.

“It's like something out of a myth.”

“Too bad the shops are closed,” I said. “One down this way has bottles filled with dead frogs and snakes—right in the window. Frog syrup. Sort of medicine. The mixture—two spoonfuls three times daily. Hnyeh!”

“You seem to know your way around.”

“Well, I live here, you see.”

“Funny, meeting someone who actually
lives
in a place like this,” said the feller. “I'm glad I ran into you.”

“Always glad to help out. You looked a bit lost,” I said. I had met him in the Big South Sea, and all I had said—it was my new opening—was “Kinda hot.”

“By the way, it's not very far from here.”

“Wait,” he said, and touched my arm. “Is that a rat?”

A smooth dark shape, flat as a shadow, crept out of the monsoon drain and hopped near a bursting barrel.

“Just a cat,” I said. “Millions of them around here.” I stamped my foot; the rat turned swiftly and dived back into the drain. “A small pussy cat.”

“I've got a thing about rats.” There was a child's fearful quaver in his voice.

“So do I!” I said, so he would not be embarrassed. “They scare the living daylights out of me. Feller I know has dozens of them in the walls of his house. They scratch around at night—”

“Please.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Not to worry. Take a left—mind your head.”

We passed under a low black archway into Sultana Street; a darkened shophouse smelling gloriously of cinnamon made me slow down to take a good whiff of the sweet dust in the air. Then we turned again into an alley of wet cobblestones where there was no sidewalk, Muscat Lane.

“I never would have found this place alone,” the feller said behind me, and I could tell by his voice that he had turned to look back. He was nervous.

“That's what I'm here for!” I said, trying to calm him with heartiness. “I just hope they're not all asleep.” I stopped at an iron gate, the only opening in a high cement wall, burglar-proofed with rows of sharp iron crescents instead of broken glass bristles. The house had once belonged to a wealthy Muslim, and the iron gate was worked in an Islamic design. Across the alley, four yellow windowsquares in the back of a shophouse illustrated the night: a Chinese man and wife faced each other in chairs at one; above them a schoolboy, holding a fistful of his hair, wrote at a desk; next to him, an old man looked into a mirror, scraping his tongue with a stick; and in the yellow window under the old man's an old lady nuzzled an infant.

“It's night,” said the feller, “but it's so hot! It's like an oven.”

A padlock chained to the bars held the gate shut. I was rapping the lock against a bar.

“Yes?” A dim face and a bright flashlight appeared at the side of the gate.

“Mr. Sim, is that you?”

“Jack,” said Mr. Sim.

“Yeah, how are they treating you? I thought you might be in the sack. Look, have you got a girl you can spare?”

“Got,” said Mr. Sim.

“Good, I knew I could count on you. But the thing is, we're in kind of a rush—my friend's ship is leaving in the morning—”

“Six-twenty,” said the feller anxiously, still glancing around.

“—and he doesn't want one too old,” I said. The feller's instruction meant he wanted one younger than himself; that was simple—he was over sixty, and no hooker downtown was over thirty. I went on to Mr. Sim, “And she has to be nice and clean. They're clean, aren't they? The feller was asking about that.”

“Clean,” said Mr. Sim.

“Fine,” I said. “So can we come in and have a look-see?”

“Can,” he said. He undid the chain and swung the gate open. “Come in, please.”

“A red light,” said the feller. “Appropriate.”

“Yes, sir, appropriate all right!” I said, stepping back. “After you.”

He was mistaken, but so pleased there was no point in correcting him. The red light was set in a little roofed box next to the door. It was a Chinese altar; there was a gold-leaf picture inside, a bald fanged warrior-god, grinning in a billowing costume, wearing a halo of red thunderbolts. He carried a sword—a saint's sword, clean and jeweled. A plate of fresh oranges, a dish of oil, and a brass jar holding some smoking joss sticks had been set before it on a shelf. The feller had seen the light but not the altar. It was just as well: it might have alarmed him to know that the girls prayed and made offerings to that fierce god.

“Cigarette?” asked Mr. Sim, briskly offering a can of them. “Tea? Beer? Wireless?” He flicked on the radio, tuned it to the English station, and got waltz music. “I buy that wireless set—two week. Fifty-over dollar. Too much-
lah
. But—!” He clapped his hands and laughed, becoming hospitable—“Sit! Two beers, yes? Jack! Excuse me.” He disappeared through a door.

“So far, so good,” said the feller, fastidiously examining the sofa cushion for germs before he sat down and looked around.

He seemed satisfied. It was what he expected, obviously the parlor of a brothel, large, with too much furniture, smelling of sharp perfume and the dust of heavy curtains, and even empty, holding many boisterous ghosts and having a distinct shabbiness without there being anything namably shabby in it. The light bulb was too small for the room, the uncarpeted floor was clean in the unfinished way that suggested it was often very dirty and swept in sections. It was a room which many people used and anyone might claim, but in which no one lived. The calendar and clock were the practical oversized ones you find in shops; the landscape print on the wall and the beaded doilies on the side tables looked as if they had been left behind rather than arranged there, and they emphasized rather than relieved the bareness. The room was a good indicator of the size and feel of the whole house, a massive bargelike structure moored at Muscat Lane. Outside, the date 1910 was chiseled into a stone shield above the door; the second-floor verandah had a balcony of plump glazed posts—green ones, like urns; the tiled roof had a border of carved wooden lace, and barbed wire—antique enough to look decorative—was coiled around the drainpipes and all the supporting columns of the verandah.

The feller sniffed: he knew where he was. In the room, as in all brothel rooms, a carnal aroma hung in the air, as fundamental as sweat, the exposed odor from the body's most private seams.

“Ordinarily,” I said, “Mr. Sim wouldn't have opened up for just anyone. Like I say, he knows me. They all do. Not that I'm bragging. But it's the convenience of it.”

“I'm very grateful to you,” he said. He was sincere. The house on Muscat Lane was a classic Asian massage parlor and brothel. If it had been a new semidetached house on a suburban street he would not have stayed. But when he spoke there was the same nervous quaver in his voice as when he had spied the rat. He was trembling, massaging his knees.

That made half the excitement for a feller, the belief that it was dangerous, illegal, secretive; the bewildering wait in a musky anteroom, swallowing fear in little gulps. A feller's fear was very good for me and the girls: it made the feller quick; he'd pay without a quibble and take any girl that was offered; he'd fumble and hurry, not bothering to take his socks off or get under the sheet. Fifteen minutes later he'd be out of the room, grinning sheepishly, patting his belt buckle, glancing sideways into a mirror to see whether he was scratched or bitten—and I'd be home early. I disliked the fellers who had no nervous enthusiasm, who sat sulkily in chairs nursing a small Anchor, as gloom-struck and slow as if they were at the dentists, and saying, “She's too old,” or “Got anything a little less pricy?”

“I wonder what's keeping your friend,” said the feller, leaning over to look through the door. The movement made him release one knee; that leg panicked and jumped.

“He'll be along in a jiffy,” I said. “He's probably getting one all dolled up for you.”

“I was going to ask you something,” the feller said. “The purser on the ship said there were pickpockets here. People in Singapore are supposed to be very light fingered.”

“You don't have to worry about that,” I said.

“I was just asking,” he said. “The purser lost a month's salary that way.”

“It happens, sure,” I said. “But no one can take that fat pig-skin thing you cart around.”

“How did you—?” He hitched forward and slapped his backside. “It's
gone!
”

I pulled his wallet out of my pocket and threw it over to him. “Don't get excited. I pinched it when we saw the rat. It was hanging out a mile—I figured you might lose it.”

The explanation upset him. He checked to see that all the money was there, then tucked the wallet inside his blazer. “So it
was
a rat.”

“Well—” I started, and tried to laugh, but at that moment Mr. Sim came through the door with Betty, who was carrying a tray with two beers and some cold towels on it. “Hi, sugar,” I said.

The nutcracker, I called her, because her legs were shaped exactly like that instrument; she was not simply bowlegged—her legs had an extraordinary curvature, and the way they angled into the hem of her skirt gave no clue to how they could possibly be hinged. Her legs were the kind a child draws on the sketch of a girl, a stave at each side of a flat skirt.

Betty poured the beers and handed us each a cold towel with a pair of tongs. She took a seat next to the feller and waited for him to wipe his face with the towel and have a sip of the beer before she put her brave hand casually into his lap. The feller clutched his blazer, where he had stuck the wallet.

“You like
boochakong?
” asked Betty.

The feller looked at me. “They understand that my ship is leaving at six-twenty?”

“She know,” said Mr. Sim. “I tell her. Betty very nice girl. She . . .
good.
”

“She's a sweetheart. She'll really go to town on you,” I said to the feller; and to Betty, “You take good care of him—he's an old pal of mine.” I stood up. “Well, nice meeting you.”

“You're not going, are you?” said the feller. He plucked Betty's hand out of his lap and stood up.

“Things to do,” I said, burying my face in the cold towel. “I've got to get some rest—the fleet's in this week. Those fellers run me ragged.”