Saint Jack

1

THE SMOKE behind me — Leigh combusted — as I drove from the crematorium with Gladys, was the same pale color as the mid-morning Singapore cloud that sinks in a steamy mass over the island and grows yellow and suffocating throughout the afternoon, making the night air an inky cool surprise. I felt relief, a springy lightness of acquittal that was like youth. I was allowed all my secrets again, and could keep them if I watched my step. It was like being proven stupid and then, miraculously, made wise: a change of air.

Leaving, I was reminded of the chase of my past, my season of flights and reverses; and I began to understand why I had never risen. The novelist’s gimmick, the dying man seeing his life flash before him, is a convenient device but probably dishonest. I had once been clobbered on the head: my vision was an unglued network of blood canals at the back of my eyes and the feeble sight of the sausage I’d had for breakfast. Pain made my memory small, and Leigh had looked so numb and haunted I doubt that he had remembered his lunch. A life? Well, the dying man risks pain’s abbreviations or death’s halting the recollection at a misleading moment. The live glad soul I was, bumping away from the crematorium, had access to the past and could pause to dwell on the taste of an ambiguity, or to relish an irony: “Let’s face it, Flowers,” the feller had said, “you’re an institution!” I was rueful: feeling chummy I had helped so many, stretching myself willingly supine on the rack of their fickleness — any service short of martyrdom, and what snatchings had been repeated on me! But, ah, I wasn’t dead.

Leigh was dead. He had told me his plans, everything he wanted. It amounted to very little, a quiet cottage on that rainy island, a few flowers, some peace — an inexpensive fantasy. He had got nothing. His example unsettled me; and as death rephrases the life of everyone who’s near, I felt I was reading something new in my mind, an altered rendering of a previous hope. It was a correction, needling me to act. It worried me. My resolution, inspired by his death, was also mocked by his death, which appeared like an urging to hope at the same moment it demonstrated the futility of all hope. His life said: Act soon. His death said: Expect nothing. My annoyance with him as a rude stranger who messed up my plans was small compared to my frustration at seeing him dead — there was no way to reply. And worse, his staring astonished look had suggested the unexpected, the onset of a new vision irritatingly coupled with an end to speech. Behind me, clouding Upper Aljunied Road, was the smoke of that dumb prophet, made private by death, who had stared at an unsharable revelation, which might have been nothing at all.

“Where I am dropping?” Gladys’s voice ended my reverie.

“Palm Grove.”

“Air-con?”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

“I like Palm Grove.” Gladys hugged herself. Her skinny hands and the back of her neck were heartbreaking.

“Good for you,” I muttered.

“You sad, Jack. I know. You friend dead,” said Gladys. “He was a nice man, I think.”

“He wasn’t,” I said. “But that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Marry with a wife?”

“Yeah,” I said. “In Hong Kong. The cremation was her idea. She chose the hymn. The ashes go off to Hong Kong in the morning, by registered mail. She thought it would be better that way.” I could see the mailman climbing off his bike and pulling a brown paper parcel out of his knapsack. Your husband, one pound, eight ounces; customs declaration and so forth: Sign here, missy.

“Why you not marry?”

“That’s all I need.” Marriage! Any mention of the Chinese gave me a memory picture of a caged shop near Muscat Lane, the family seated grumbling around a table (Junior doing his homework), beneath an unshaded bulb of uselessly distracting brightness; I couldn’t think of the Chinese singly — they lived in gangs and family clans, their yelling a simulation of speech. The word marriage gave me another picture, a clinical American bathroom, locked for the enactment of marriage: Dad shaving, Mom on the hopper with her knees pressed together, the kids splashing in the tub, all of them naked and yakking at once. It was unholy, safety’s wedded agony; I had been tempted, but I had never sinned that way. I said to Gladys, “What about you?”

“Me? Sure, I get marry every night!” She cackled. My girls were always asked the same questions — name, age, status — and they built a fund of stock replies. It was possible for me to tell by the speed and ingenuity of the reply how long a girl had been in the business. I get marry every night: Gladys was an old-timer.

In the lobby of the Palm Grove Hotel a huddle of tourists gave us the eye as we walked toward the elevator. If I needed any proof that there was no future in hustling for tourists there it was: two wizened fellers gasping on a sofa, another propped on crutches, a vacant wheelchair, a white-haired man asleep or dead in the embrace of a large armchair. Struldbrugs. Like the joke about the old duffer who says he has sex fifty weeks a year with his young wife. “Amazing,” says a youngster, “but what about the other two weeks?” The old duffer says, “Oh, that’s when the feller that lifts me on and off goes on vacation.”

Gladys was no beauty, I wasn’t young; the tourists were watching, trying to determine the relationship between the red-faced American and the skinny Chinese girl. I hooked my arm on hers like a stiff old-fashioned lover and began remarking loudly on the tasteful decor of the lobby and the thick carpet, pleased that the suit I was wearing would deflect some of the scorn. Who does that jackass think he is?

Upstairs, the feller answered the door in his bathrobe.

“My name is Flowers.”

He looked at Gladys, then at me.

“We spoke on the telephone about a month back, when you were passing through on the Empress.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d forgotten.”

“I made a note of it here,” I said, tapping my desk diary. “Anyway, here she is, skipper.”

Now he leered. Gladys nodded and looked beyond him into the cool shadowy room.

“Thanks very much,” he said. He opened the door for her, then fished five dollars out of his pocket and handed the money to me.

“What’s this?”

“For your trouble.”

“That doesn’t exactly cover it,” I said.

“It’ll have to.”

“Hold your horses,” I said. “How long do you want her for?”

“We’ll see,” he said.

Gladys was in the room, looking out the window.

“Gladys, don’t let—”

“Leave her out of this,” the feller said.

I wanted to sock him. I said, “Until tomorrow morning is a hundred and twenty bucks, or sterling equivalent, payable in advance.”

“I told you we’ll see” he said. “Now bugger off.”

“I’ll be downstairs.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“It’s my usual practice,” I said. “Just so there’s no funny business.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, and slammed the door.

At half past three Gladys was nowhere in sight. I was standing by the elevator, afraid to sit in the main lobby and get stared at by the Struldbrugs who would know what I was up to as soon as they saw me alone. Until Leigh came I had never found that embarrassing.

Next to the elevator there was a blue Chinese vase filled with sand, and bristling from the sand were cigarette ends, crumpled butts, and two inches of what looked to me like a good cigar. I was anxious, and I quickly realized that the source of my anxiety was a longing to snatch up that cigar, dust it off, and light it. What troubled me was that only the thought that I would be seen prevented me from doing it.

A fifty-three-year-old grubber in ashtrays, standing in the shadows of the Palm Grove lobby. Downtown, on Beach Road, a towkay hoicked my name and kicked his dog and demanded to know where I was. Between the cremation of a stranger and the session of hard drinking that was to come, I had obliged a feller with a Chinese girl and been handed five bucks and told to bugger off. I had kept the five bucks. I waited, doglike but without a woof, and I went on swallowing self-pity, hugging my tattoos and watching Chinese hurry through air remarkably like the smoke their own ashes would make. I knew mortality, its human smell and hopeless fancies. What was I waiting for?

“She’s not down here, skipper,” I said over the room phone. “You’re overtime.”

“You’re telling me!”

“Where is she?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“I’ll inform the management,” I said. “You leave me no other choice.”

“I’ll inform the management about you. Moo-wah!”

“Be reasonable, skipper. I don’t find that funny.”

“Stop pestering me. You her father or something?”

“Guardian you might say.”

“Is that what they call it these days!”

“I’ve just done you a big favor, pal!” I shouted. “And this is what I get for it, a lot of sass!”

“I don’t owe you a thing.”

“You owe me,” I said, “a great deal, and you owe Gladys—”

“Go away.”

“I’m staying put.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the feller said, and hung up.

In the basement corridor I passed a fire alarm; the red spur of a switch behind glass, with a handy steel mallet hanging next to it on a hook. The directions shouted to me. I waited until the corridor was empty, then sprang to it and followed the clear directions printed on the black label riveted to the wall. I smashed, I pulled. A bell above my head rapped and rang and lifted to a scream.

2

AN HOUR LATER, in a phone booth, that alarm was still screaming in my ears, turning my recklessness into courage as I dialed the American embassy. I held the receiver to my mouth like an oxygen mask; I was out of breath, and panting, felt incomplete — rushed and unimaginative. The phrases I was prepared to use, urgent offers of service my canny justifications, you might say, had once mercifully blessed, struck me as whorish. They had not troubled me before—“Anything I can do—,” “Just name it—,” “Leave it to me—,” “An excellent choice: couldn’t have done better myself—,” “No trouble at all—,” “It was a pleasure—,” “That’s what I’m here for—,” “What are friends for—?” But that was when I had a choice. This phone call was no decision. It was hardly my choice; it was the last plea possible. I was on my back. I needed a favor. Is there anything — anything at all — you can do for me?

“Ed, remember—”

“Flowers, is that you?” It was a relief to hear Shuck’s jaws, the familiar and endearing buzz as he casually moistened my name with the kiss of his fishy lisp. “Where have you been hiding yourself?”

“Had my hands full,” I said.

“It’s good to be busy.”

“It was driving me bananas,” I said.

“Nice to hear your voice.”

“Same here,” I said. “I thought I might drop around sometime. Chew the fat. Maybe this afternoon if it’s okay with you. Things are pretty quiet at the office. I could hop in a taxi and be over in a few minutes, or—”

“I’d really like that,” Shuck said. “But I’m tied up at the moment.”

For pity’s sake, I was going to say. I resisted. “Some other time then. It’s just that I’m free this afternoon, and, ah, I don’t know whether you remember, but we’ve got some unfinished business.”

Shuck hummed. He said, “Jack, to tell the honest truth I didn’t think I’d hear from you again. You know?”

“That’s what I want to explain.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you called,” he said. “I’m damned glad you called.”

“How about a drink?”

“Sorry,” he said.

“What about after work? What time do you knock off?”

“I’ll write you a letter,” Shuck said quickly.

“A letter? What if it gets lost in the mail?”

“You’re a card,” said Shuck. “Hey, heard any good ones lately?”

“Gags? No, nothing.” I thought of my double, the hilarity and malice he provoked, the embarrassment of his presence which was the embarrassment of a comic routine (“Does this establishment—?”), fumblings which circumstances twisted into laughless gestures of despair, the alien clown killed by tomfoolery. At a distance, as a story — with death absent — it was a joke I could enter into. But death turned the shaggy-dog story into tragedy by making it final. If Leigh had survived I would have found it all screamingly funny; I could have kicked his memory with a mocking story at the Bandung. But it was different, I was on the phone; the memory of smoke stopped my mouth.

“You’ll get the letter tomorrow,” said Shuck. “Stay loose.”

It was delivered to Hing’s by an embassy peon. I signed for it and took it into my cubicle to open. It was a limp envelope of the sort that just squeezing it in my fingers I knew contained nothing important. I slit it open and shook out a brown coupon and a small memo. The coupon said, HARBOUR TOUR — ADMIT ONE ADULT $3.50; the memo specified a day and time, and bore Edwin Shuck’s squinting initials.

“We can talk better here,” said Shuck on the launch Kachang. We climbed the ladder to the cabin roof and took up positions some distance from the tourists. Shuck looked back and said, “Hold the phone.”

A feller in a straw hat had crawled up behind us. He said, “Hi! Do me a favor? Take a picture of me and my wife? That’s her down there, with the hat. All you have to do is look through here and snap. I’ve set the light meter. Swell.”

“It’s not usually this crowded,” said Shuck, aiming the camera at the man and wife on the afterdeck.

“Thanks a lot,” said the feller, retrieving his camera. “How about a snap of you two? I’ll send you a print when we get back to the States.”

“No,” said Shuck sharply, and turned away and closed his eyes in an infantile gesture of refusal.

The Kachang’s engine whirred and pumped, and she leaned away from the quay steps. All around us a logjam of bumboats and sampans began to chug and break up, bobbing across our bow. Waiting behind a misshapen barricade of duffel bags and cardboard suitcases at the top of the stairs were six sunburned Russians, two stocky women with head scarves and cotton dresses, four men with Slavic lips, blond crew cuts, transparent nylon shirts, and string vests. One smoked a tubelike cigarette.

“Russkies,” I said.

“What do they want?” muttered Shuck.

“Going out to their ship,” I said. “Next stop Bloodyvostok, heh.”

Gray sluggish waves, streaked with garter snakes of oil slick, sloshed at the cement stairs, lapped at an upper step, then subsided into rolling froth, depositing a crushed plastic bottle on a step halfway down. A new wave a second later lifted the bottle a step higher. I watched the progress of this piece of flotsam traveling up and down the stairs — the stairs where small-toothed Doris Goh had stumbled and soaked herself, where my handsome girls boarded sampans in old pajamas and overalls and giggled all the way to the freighters.

It was late afternoon; the sun behind the customs house and maritime building put us in shadow that made the inner harbor all greasy water and dark vessels. But farther out, where the water was lit, purest at the greatest distance, ships gleamed and made true reflections in the sky-blue sea mirror.

“See that little jetty?” I said. “Years ago, I used to take gals out from it in little boats. There, where that old feller’s in the sampan.”

The old man in flapping black pajamas, his foot braced against a plank seat, stirred his long oar pole back and forth on its crutch, rocking the sampan through the continual swell.

“I used to worry. What if a storm comes up and blows us out to sea? We’re set adrift or shipwrecked. Makes you stop and think. You’d probably say, ‘Great, alone with some hookers on a desert island.’ But it would be fatal — you’d croak or turn cannibal. You’d be better off alone.”

“You’d still croak,” said Shuck.

“But you wouldn’t turn cannibal,” I said.

“I’m glad you made it today,” said Shuck.

“So am I,” I said. “God, I’m tickled to death.”

Shuck pulled a sour face. “The way you talk,” he said. “I can never make out if you’re putting me on.”

“Cut it out,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“At Paradise Gardens I used to see you rushing around, getting into a flap and think, Can he be serious?”

“I worried about those fellers,” I said. The Kachang was a hundred yards out; the tour guide had started his spiel. “That gray stone building over there is the general post office. One Christmas eve, about eleven o’clock, I stopped in to send a telegram for Hing. There were three Marines in there sending telegrams — to their folks, I suppose. I followed them out, and down the street. They headed over Cavanagh Bridge at a pretty good clip and I went after them. At Empress Place I was going to say something, wish them a Merry Christmas, offer them a drink, or take them around. I had some dough then — I could have shown them a real good time. But I didn’t do a thing. They went off with their hands in their pockets. I felt like crying. I’d give anything to have that chance again.”

The story made Shuck uneasy. “I thought you were telling a joke,” he said. “Don’t sweat it, Jack. The military takes good care of themselves.”

“It wasn’t that they were soldiers,” I said. “They were strangers. I had the feeling that after they turned the corner something awful happened to them. For no good reason.”

“You would have made a good — what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “There isn’t one. Anyway, what’s on your mind?”

“Hey, you called me, remember?”

“This harbor tour wasn’t my idea,” I said. “I just wanted to shoot the bull in your office.”

“You said we had some unfinished business.”

“Did I? Oh, yeah, I guess I did.” I tried to laugh. Shuck’s silence prompted me. I said, “I’m looking for work.”

“What makes you think I can help you?”

“You said you had a proposition. I told you I wasn’t interested. Now I am.”

“I remember,” said Shuck. “You told me to roll it into a cone and shove it.”

“A figure of speech,” I said. “I got a little hot under the collar — can you blame me?” I leaned close. “Ed, I don’t know what you had in mind, but I could be very useful to you.”

If he laughs I’ll push him overboard, I thought.

Shuck said faintly, “Try me.”

I was trembling. I was prepared to do anything, say anything. “See that channel?” I said. “Well, follow it far enough and you come to Raffles Lighthouse. Go a little beyond it and you’re in international waters. You don’t know what goes on there. I do.”

“What does that prove?”

“Listen,” I said, “smugglers from Indonesia sink huge bales of heroin in that water and then go away. Skindivers from Singapore go over and dredge it up. That’s how the stuff’s transferred — underwater. You didn’t know that.”

“That’s the narcotics division. Dangerous drugs,” said Shuck. “Not my bag.”

“Commies your bag? How about the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Union on Bras Basah Road — what do you know about them?”

“We’ve got a file on them.”

“I know a feller who’s a member — pal of mine, calls me Jack. He makes teeth for my girls. I could show you the teeth.”

“Making gold teeth doesn’t count as subversion, Jack.”

“He’s a Maoist,” I said. “They all are. What I’m trying to say is I’m welcome in that place anytime. I could get you names, addresses, anything.”

“That stuff’s no good to us.”

“I’ll buy that — I’m just using it as an example,” I said. “Don’t forget, I’ve been hustling in Singapore for fourteen years. What I don’t know about the secret societies isn’t worth knowing. See those tattoos? I’ve learned a trick or two.” Shuck smiled.

“You look suspicious,” I said.

“You’re too eager,” said Shuck. “We get guys coming into the embassy every day with stories like that. They think we’ll be interested. Lots of whispering, et cetera. The funny thing is, we know most of it already.”

I tried a new tack. “Tell me frankly, what’s the worst job you can imagine?”

“Frankly, yours,” said Shuck. “I think hustling is about as low as you can go.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Now, who’s the straightest feller you know?”

“I used to think it was you.”

“Why don’t you think so now?”

“You’re coming on pretty strong, Jack.”

“I’m looking for work,” I said. I was getting impatient. “You told me you had a proposition. All I want to know is — is it still on? Because if it is, I’m your man.”

The Kachang was speeding alongside a wharf where a high black tanker was tethered. The tour guide was saying, “—fourth largest port in the world—”

“It was just an idea,” said Shuck finally. “And the whole thing’s pretty unofficial. I mean, it’s my baby, not Uncle Sam’s.”

“All the better,” I said. “So it’s just between us two.”

“There’s someone else,” said Shuck. “But he doesn’t know a thing.” Shuck spoke slowly, teasing me with lisps and pauses. “Let’s call this guy Andy Gump. He comes to Singapore now and then. From Saigon. Is there anyone behind me? No? Andy Gump doesn’t do much here — probably picks up a hooker and rips off a piece of ass. That’s not news to you. In Saigon, though, it’s a little bit different. He makes policy there.”

“How high up is he?”

“High,” said Shuck. “Now this is the crazy thing. No one finds fault with what he does there, but they’d shit if they knew what he did here. I’m talking about pictures and evidence.”

“Can we be a little bit more concrete?”

“I’m just sketching this thing out,” said Shuck. “Take a guy that’s got the power to keep a whole army in Vietnam. He says he’s idealistic and so forth. Everyone believes him, and why shouldn’t they? He’s got some shady sidelines, but he’s a family man, he’s fair to his troops — more than fair, he covers up for them when they kill civilians. He does his reports on time and flies to Washington every so often to explain the military position. So far, so good. Now, let’s say we know this guy is screwing Chinese whores — maybe slapping them around, who knows? Ever hear of a credibility gap?”

Even in the stiff sea breeze my hands were slippery. I said, “For a minute I thought you were going to ask me to kill him.”

“You’re not that desperate for work,” said Shuck. “Are you?”

“In despair some fellers contemplate suicide,” I said. “I’m different. I contemplate murder.”

“From what we hear, the same might be true of Andy Gump.”

I said, “You want something on him?”

“That would be nice,” said Shuck, squashing “nice” with a buzz.

“A few years ago,” I said, “you would have been pimping for him. With a smile.”

“That was a few years ago,” said Shuck. “Now you’re going to pimp for him. You know all the girls, you’ve got friends in the hotels. It should be easy.”

“I don’t monkey around with a feller’s confidence,” I said. “This is pretty nasty.”

“It stinks,” said Shuck. “I wouldn’t do it myself. But you might think it over and if it interests you — you say you’re looking for work — maybe we can talk about the details.”

“There’s only one detail I’m concerned about,” I said. “Money.”

“You’ll be paid.”

“Who names the price?”

“Good question,” said Shuck. “Tell me, in your business who does that?”

“With hustling?” I said. “The gal does.”

“The whore?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The one that does the work.”

“So what’s your price?”

I scratched my tattoos; the tourists hooted in the cabin below; the breeze on my face was so warm it made me gasp, and when I looked at the kampong on stilts we were passing I saw some children swimming near the hairy bobbing lump of a dead dog. I said, “I won’t lift a finger for less than five grand.”

Shuck didn’t flinch.

“And another five when I finish the job.”

“Okay,” said Shuck. Was he smiling, or just making another fishmouth?

“Plus expenses,” I said.

“That goes without saying.”

“I could use a drink.”

“They pass out Green Spot when we get to the model shipyard in Kallang Basin,” Shuck said. “What’s wrong?”

“I was just thinking about Andy Gump,” I said. “How old would you say he is?”

“Mid-fifties.”

I shook my head. “I might have known.”

“I’ll tell you a couple of stories,” said Shuck, “just so you don’t go and get a conscience about him.”

3

“AND GET THIS—” Shuck rattled on, itemizing Andy Gump’s waywardness with such gloating and sanctimonious fluency he could have been lying in his teeth. Still, the image of the man, whose proper name was Andrew Maddox, rank major general, was a familiar one to me — so familiar that twice I told Shuck I had heard enough to antagonize me: it was not the man I was after, but the job. I did not need convincing; my mind was made up. This effort of mine, a last chance to convert my fortunes in a kind of thrusting, mindless betrayal, had required a number of willful deletions in my heart.

But Shuck was unstoppable. He ranted, pretending disgust, though the man he described was of a size that every detail, however villainous, enhanced. Shuck’s accusations were spoken as the kind of envious praise I always thought of when I overheard someone in a bar retailing the story of a resourceful poisoner.

“You name a way to make a fast buck, and he’s tried it,” said Shuck. And he added in the same tone of admiring outrage that General Maddox had a yacht, smoked plump cigars, sported silk shirts, went deep-sea fishing off Cap St. Jacques, and stayed in expensive hotels.

“I know the type,” I said.

The stories were not new — the fellers at Paradise Gardens had told me most of them without naming the villain, and Shuck had alluded to him before. But while I had taken all of it seriously, none of it had given me pause. I had lived long enough to know how to translate this bewilderment. I heard it as I heard most human sounds — Leigh’s pastoral retirement plans, Yardley’s jokes, Gunstone’s war stories, my old openers (Years ago—and I once knew a feller—), and especially the exultant woman’s moan of pleasure and pain, half sigh, half scream, while I knelt furiously reverent between her haunches — all this I heard as a form of prayer.

Vietnam stories throbbed with contradiction, but were as prayerful and pious as any oratorio. Like the tales of murder and incest associated with Borgia popes — horror stories to compliment the faith by supposing to prove the durable virtue of the Church — the song and dance about corruption in Vietnam never intended to belittle the bombings and torturings or the fact of any army’s oafish occupation (the colonial setup, with Maddox as viceroy), but were meant as a curious sidelight on a justly fought war in which Shuck maintained, and so did some of the fellers, we had already been rightfully victorious: “But human nature being what it is—”

“I’ll tell you another thing about him,” said Shuck. He screwed up his face. “He’s got a finger in the B-girl rackets.”

“So he can’t be all bad,” I said. The Kachang, turning to port, pitched me close to Shuck’s face. “Ed, I’ve got a whole arm in those!”

“He’s a general in the U.S. Army,” said Shuck. “You’re not.”

Shuck then set out to describe what he took to be the darkest side of General Maddox, his operating a chain of Saigon brothels, and his involvement with the less profitable skin-trade sidelines — which I knew to be inescapable — wholesaling massages, pornography, exhibitions; forging passports, nodding to con men, and smuggling warm bodies over frontiers — for the servicemen. Without wishing to, Shuck convinced me that, murder apart, this general was a more successful version of myself, his charitable carnal felony a fancier and better-executed business than “Kinda hot,” the meat run, or Dunroamin. I hadn’t bargained on this; warm wretchedness thawed my resolve.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Your objection to this feller is that he’s ungallant.”

“He’s a creep,” said Shuck. “A disgrace.”

“Tut tut, you’re flattering yourself,” I said, and went on, “Still, he’s no stranger to me. If you called him a hero I’d find him ten times harder to understand.”

“That’s what you say.”

“Heroes aren’t my department,” I said. “You want to end the war, so you try to unmask the villain. Me, I’d unmask the hero — he’s your feller. Especially war heroes. If I was in charge I’d have them shot.”

“You’ve got some screwy ideas,” said Shuck.

“I haven’t had your advantages,” I said. “See, I don’t know very much about virtue.”

“I do,” said Shuck.

“Good for you,” I said. “Virtue is the distance that separates you from your favorite villain, right? It’s an annual affair — every year there’s a new American villain. Ever notice that? Virtuous people like you elect him, and then stone him to death. It’s a sign of something.”

“Maybe it’s because we’re puritanical,” said Shuck.

“I was going to say bankrupt, and pretty fickle.”

Shuck gave me a sour laugh. “So Maddox is an angel.”

“Maddox is a hood, obviously,” I said. “But you think he has a complicated motive. I know lots of fellers like him who behave that way because they’re middle-aged and have bad teeth.”

“Suppose he really is evil,” said Shuck. “Think what a service you’ll be doing by nailing his ass to the wall.”

“Don’t give me that,” I said.

“You know what I think?” said Shuck. “I think you don’t want to do this.”

“I don’t always want what I need,” I said. “Why else would I have so little?”

“You’re losing your nerve.”

“Only when you try to justify this lousy scheme.”

“Who’s justifying? I told you the whole thing stinks.”

“Now you’re talking!” I said.

Not a job — an exploit, blackmail, an irrational crime with an apt rotten name; it was what I needed, the guarantee of some evil magic I didn’t want to understand. Like a casual flutter at the Turf Club with an unpromising pony, and then a big payoff; the single coin in the fruit machine for the bonus jackpot; anything for astonishment, no questions asked. Then I understood my fantasies — they were a handy preparation for making me bold; little suggestions made my tattooed bulk jump to oblige. As a young man I often dreamed of a black sedan pulling up beside me as I sauntered down an empty street, the door swinging open, and the exquisite lady at the wheel saying softly, “Get in.”

My fantasies provided something else: method, and a means of expression.

So: “Follow that car,” I said to the taxi driver at the airport. The fantasy command, immediately suspicious to any native English speaker, I could use in Singapore. I had wormed a copy of the passenger list from May Lim, a fruit fly turned ground hostess. From behind a pillar near the Customs and Immigration section, not far from the spot where I had first recognized Leigh, I watched the general arrive — a tanned, well-shod, barrel-chested man who walked with the easy responsible swing of a man accustomed to empty hands. He strode past me, followed by a laden porter, and got into a waiting taxi. Now, in my own taxi, I was saying, “Don’t lose him—keep on his tail.”

At the Belvedere I stood next to him while he checked in. He signed the register with a flourish, then straightened up. He untangled the springy wire bows of his military sunglasses from his ears and glanced around the lobby: that look of lust, the prompt glee of the man about to deliver a speech. I caught his eye.

“Kinda hot.”

He agreed. “Muggy.”

“This way, sir,” said a costumed porter to him. He said, “See you around,” and overtook the porter with long scissor steps.

I scribbled my name in the register, noting that Maddox had omitted his rank, that he was in room 913 and was staying for a week.

“Here I am again,” I said to the Chinese clerk. “Remember me?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, without looking up. He was scribbling on a pad. “So you like Singapore? Clean and green.”

“A great little place,” I said.

“Don’t mention,” he said, still scribbling.

“And this is a mighty fine hotel,” I said. “I wouldn’t stay anywhere else. I got sorta attached to that room you gave me before — nine-fifteen. Can you put me in the same one?”

“If it is empty.”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” I said softly.

“Can,” he said, glancing at the pigeonholes behind him.

I congratulated myself on knowing that odd-numbered rooms were on one side of the corridor, evens on the other. After all, it had only been a matter of weeks since I had fixed up Gunstone with Djamila here; over there, in the bar lounge, I had pretended to be Bishop Bradley.

“This way, sir,” said the porter, at the elevator door.

“Put my suitcase in the room,” I said, when we got to the ninth floor. “I’m just going to have a word with my friend here.”

The elevator operator’s face creased with terror. He shut, his mouth.

“You look like a smart feller,” I said. “Do you know how to keep your eyes open?”

“Do,” he said, and widened his eyes.

“That’s it,” I said. “You’re destined for big things. If you want to make a little extra money, just listen—”

After an hour my buzzer rang.

“Yoh?”

It was the elevator operator, grinning. “I take him down to lobby. He walk outside. I come straight back.”

“Beautiful,” I said, handing him five dollars. “Keep up the good work.”

“Okay boys, this is it,” I said into the phone, and five minutes later, Mr. Khoo, Jimmy Sung, and Henry Chow were in my room, sitting on the edge of the bed, straining to understand the plan. The boys, the room, the plan: the labels had an appealing sound.

What was most touching was the way the patient fellers listened, gaunt, threadbare, unblinking: my shabby gang of Chinese commandos. It was pleasing to conspire with a makeshift army, skinny sharpshooters in cast-off clothes. I had always served the rich by depending on such people, putting trust in the only helpers I could afford, the irregulars, the destitute, the socially famished — silent Karim, crooked Ganapaty, limping Gopi, the whispering urchins who stood sentry duty outside the blue-film sheds off Rochore Road, my girls. Poverty made them invisible, and I saw how much their devious skills resembled mine. I picked them for cunning and loyalty. I liked the drama: the rumpled middle-aged blackmailer in the elegant but smoke-fouled hotel room, saying, “Okay, boys—” to his team of ragged disciples who might have had nicknames like Munkypoo, Broomface, and The Ant.

In his lap, Mr. Khoo cradled an electric drill, like a nickel-plated Tommy gun; Jimmy Sung held a tape recorder, Henry Chow a camera. They hadn’t asked why, and wouldn’t — Chinese: the people with no questions.

“You know what you’re supposed to do,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”

Henry Chow flipped the lever on the camera; he had removed the ratchet from the spools: it wound noiselessly. Mr. Khoo speedily drilled and reamed a hole through the baseboard, into the next room, just under the general’s bed. We took the additional precaution of disguising the microphone as a light socket. The positioning of the camera was next. Henry took a bucket and window washer’s squeegee and crawled from my balcony to the general’s, and giving the glass doors a good splash, estimated the angle for a shot at the bed. He returned, white-faced and shuddering, heaving himself slowly over the parapet, holding lightly to the balcony rail.

“Can we sling a camera up?”

“Can,” he said, “but curtains—”

“It’s no good,” I said. “If he goes out to the balcony he’ll see it and the jig’s up. We can’t do it that way.” I was stumped. How did you take pictures in a feller’s room without his knowing it? After I had spoken to Shuck I imagined myself, tape recorder slung over one shoulder, camera over the other, in a blackmailer’s crouch, by a keyhole or window, listening, watching, pressing buttons, and then hopping away on tiptoe with the damning evidence.

The simplicity of that had struck me as cruel, but it wasn’t so simple. This was a technical problem, a dilemma which in the solving made the cruelty slight, and as an executioner might think of himself as an electrician, absorbed in the study of watts and volts, a brainwasher a man concerned with candlepower, my sense of betrayal was soon forgotten in my handyman’s huffing and puffing over the matter of wires, lenses, drilling, and testing — so complicated the general no longer seemed vulnerable. He was safe; I was the victim.

“Now, let’s see here,” I said. “We can’t put the camera on the balcony. What about in his air conditioner? Make it look like a fuse box.” My boys were silent. I replied to my own question. “That means we have to get into the room.”

“Get a key,” said Jimmy Sung.

“If only the bed was on the other side of the room,” I said. “Then we could cut a hole up there, stick the camera through, and bingo.”

“Move the bed,” said Henry.

“He’ll see the mike if we do that,” I said. “Gee, this is your original sticky wicket.”

Jimmy Sung suggested an alternative. He had once been hired to spy on a towkay’s wife, to get evidence of adultery. He followed the wife and her lover to a hotel. He bribed the cleaning woman to give him a key and had simply burst through the door at an opportune moment, taken a lightning shot of the copulating pair, and run.

“That’s okay if you want one picture,” I said. “But one’s not enough. There must be another way.”

I paced the room. “Henry says the general’s room is just like this one, right? Bed here, chair there—” The three men looked from object to object as I named—“bureau there, desk over there—wait!”

Over the desk was a large rectangular mirror, reflecting the room; Mr. Khoo, Jimmy Sung, Henry Chow, seated uneasily on the bed. A mirror, distracting for anyone using the desk, made it useful as a woman’s dressing table.

“We can’t photograph the bed,” I said, “but we can make a small hole in the wall and aim the camera at that mirror. It’s right across.”

“Wide-angle lens,” said Jimmy.

Henry Chow smiled.

This time Mr. Khoo used his drill like a chisel, to loosen plaster and scoop out brick from our side of the wall. He made a niche for the camera and punched a small lens hole through to the other side. Jimmy Sung fitted the camera with a plunger on a long cable, and fixed the camera against the hole, bandaging it into the niche with adhesive tape.

“I guess that wraps it up,” I said.

Mr. Khoo wiped his drill with a rag.

“This calls for a drink.”

Henry said no. Mr. Khoo shook his head. Jimmy Sung scratched his head nervously and said he had to take his wife shopping.

“Come on, I’ll treat you,” I said. “They’ve got everything at this hotel. We could have lunch sent up. Anything — you name it. No charge!”

Mr. Khoo muttered something in Chinese. Henry looked embarrassed. Jimmy said, “Seng Ho want money,” and winced.

“Anything you say.” I paid them off, and when I did they edged toward the door. I said, “What’s the rush? It’s early. Stick around.”

There is a Chinese laugh that means “Yes, of course!” and another that means “No, never!” The first is full of sympathy, the second is a low mirthless rattle in the throat. They gave me the second and were gone.

“So long, boys.” I was alone. It was bright and noisy outside, but waiting I felt caged in the dim cold room of the Belvedere’s ninth floor. On the far wall was the print of an old water color, Fort Canning, ladies with parasols, children rolling hoops, the harbor in the distance. I became aware of the air-conditioner roar, and shortly it deafened me and gave me goose flesh. In my bedroom in Moulmein Green I had a friendly fan that went plunk-a-plunk and a scented mosquito coil; a fig tree grew against the window. An old phrase came to me, my summing up: Is this all? I looked at the completed handiwork and hated it. The problem of eavesdropping had been complicated and nearly innocent. The solution was simple and terrible, the sticky tape, the wires, the mirror, the black contraptions, the violated wall.

4

CRASH, BANG. The general went to his room after lunch, and my tape recorder amplified the racket of his entry to a hurried blundering. The door banged, the fumbled bolt was shot. Footsteps and belches and undressing noises, the flip-flap and yawn of a shirt being stripped off, coins jingling in lowered trousers, the bumps of two discarded shoes. Then bedsprings lurching, sighs, yawps. I stood on a chair and peeked through the camera’s view finder. No girl; he napped alone, his arms surrendering on his pillow. He slept, snorting and shifting, for over an hour, awoke, changed into a green bathing suit, scratched his chest, made a face at me in the mirror, and went out in clunking clogs, with a towel scarflike around his neck — I guessed he was going to the swimming pool on the roof.

He needed tempting. But I had a sprat to catch this mackerel.

“Madam Lum? Jack here. Thelma busy? Yeah, right away. You’re a peach—”

Thelma Tay goggled at the room. “Smart,” she said, pronouncing it smut. She tossed her ditty bag on the bed and went over to the window. She worked the Venetian blinds and said, “Cute.”

“It’s great to see you,” I said, giving her cheek a pinch. “I’ve been going out of my gourd.”

She glided up and down, sniffing, touched the ashtray, turned on the bedside lamp, felt the curtains. She was no beauty, but I knew she was capable and had the right enthusiasm. Her glossy black hair was carefully set in ringlets and long curls and crowned with a small basket of woven plaits; she had the lovely hollows in her face that indicate in a Chinese girl small high breasts. She kicked off her shoes and smoothed her shiny belted dress. She posed and said, “Wet look.”

“It’s catching on,” I said. “Very classy.”

She undid the belt and pulled the dress over her head, and then, in her red bra and red half-slip, walked over to me and leaned her soft stomach into my face. “You ready?”

“Wait a sec, Thelma,” I said, looking up. “It’s next door.”

She stepped back. “You not want?”

“Not me — the feller in there,” I said, pointing to the broken wall. “He just stepped out, but he’ll be back pretty soon.”

“Oh,” she said. She sat on the edge of the bed and found something on her elbow to pick.

“How’s Madam Lum?”

“Is okay. Not so busy.”

“It’s hard all around,” I said. “Not like it used to be. These people from the package tours — they’re all ninety years old. God knows why they come here.”

Thelma wasn’t listening. She made a meowing sound in her nose — a Chinese pop song.

“Seen any good films lately?”

“Dracula,” she said. “At Cathay.”

“How was it?”

“I was scared-lah!” She laughed.

I poured myself a neat gin. “You want one?”

“Soft drink,” she said. “Got Green Spot?”

“Thelma, anything you want—”

Crash, bang.

“It’s him,” I whispered. “Wait here. The lift boy’s going to introduce you.” I tiptoed over to the chair and looked through the viewfinder.

A dark Chinese girl in a frilly bikini walked past the mirror. The door banged, and my tape recorder spoke: No, really, I think you were getting the hang of it. You’ve just got to remember to keep your legs straight and kicking and paddle like this—

“You dirty devil,” I mumbled, fiddling with the volume knob.

“I go now?” asked Thelma. She held her shiny dress up.

I drew her over to the bed. “Apparently,” I said, “it’s all been fixed.”—

— no, keep your fingers together. That’s right. Here, hop on the bed and I’ll show you—

“I’m sorry about this,” I said. “Wait a minute. I’ll explain.” I grasped the plunger and snapped a picture, then went back and sat on the bed next to Thelma. “It looks like I got you up here for nothing.”

“You no want fuck?”

“I’ve got my hands full,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you just the same. In the meantime let’s watch our language?”

“Mushudge?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

— lift those arms up! Like this — keep kicking! Sort of move your head—

Thelma started kneading my shoulders, working her way down, and then pinching my backbone. It was soothing. I got down on the bed and she took my shirt off and straddled me, hacking at my shoulders and back with the sides of her hands, rubbing, clapping, like someone preparing a pizza.

“Gosh that feels good.” I closed my eyes, enjoying it, feeling my muscles unknot.

— breath control’s very important. Take a deep breath — way down. Beautiful. Now let it out real slow, and twist—

“Hop off, Thelma,” I said. I went over and looked through the view finder. The general crouched next to the girl in the bikini who was stretched out and making loud sounds of breathing. I snapped two pictures.

Thelma had stripped, and bare, seemed serious and businesslike, her nakedness like a uniform. She saddled herself on the small of my back and dug her knuckles against my ribs, and then went through the kneading and pinching routine again, neck, shoulders, and spine, warming me all the way down to my kidneys.

“Gorgeous,” I said. Her knees were tight against my ribs, and still she rode me, jogging slightly as she massaged.

— that’s what we call the crawl. Now let me show you the breast stroke. This is a very useful one. All you have to do—

“Picture,” I said, and Thelma slid off. I wound the film and shot.

“Turn over,” said Thelma when I crept onto the bed again.

“Hey, wait a minute—”

But she had already unbuckled my belt, and laughing softly, explored me as she shoved my trousers down to my ankles.

— push those hands all the way out—

“You say no, but he say yes.”

“He? Who’s he?” I looked at the tape recorder.

“This one,” said Thelma. She gave my pecker a squeeze and made it look at me with the single slit eye on its rosy dome.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “Our friend here.”

— pretend you’re flying. That’s it—

I disengaged myself and hopped to the wall to take another picture.

“You very sexy, mister,” said Thelma. “Look!”

“That’s right,” I said, “broadcast it.”

“He like me, mister.”

“Not so loud,” I hissed.

“What style you wants?” She lay flat and put her hands behind her head, as if responding to the swimming lesson coming over the tape recorder’s speaker: Floating on your back is easy if you know how—. Then Thelma did an extraordinary thing; she knelt in a salaaming position, an expressive and dainty obedience, and put her face against the pillow, and raised her buttocks into the air. She laughed and said what sounded like, “Woof, woof.”

“Let’s keep it simple,” I said. I stood thoughtfully between the camera and the bed, holding my pecker the way a patient fisherman holds his pole. “And don’t be surprised if I hop up in the middle of it. I’ve got a job to do, Thelma.” I shuffled over to the bed, muttering, “And honestly it’s a very ticklish business.”

I embraced her, holding her tightly with my eyes shut; she rotated, helping me, and at once my engine began turning over, quietly rousing my body, warming old circuits in my belly and beyond. I had taught myself and shown others that love was the absence of fear; so this sexual veneration, pure joy, made the past accessible. I was raised up, a prince at the parapet of his castle tower, to look over a bright kingdom of memories. Today, without inviting him, I saw Roosevelt Rush, a black deck hand on the Allegro, who called me “Flahs” and slept with a nylon stocking drawn tight over his hair. One hot night, anchored in Port Swettenham, he stood in the engine room carefully pouring whiskey over his pecker. I remarked on the quality. “Black Label,” he said: “Ain’t nothing too good for this banana,” and he kept pouring. He flicked drops from his business end and explained, “Think I got me some clap from a ‘ho’.” I’d had it myself seven times, and got used to the progress of the complaint I called a runny nose: the unusual sting on the third day, the sticky dripping, the pinching pain of leaking hot needles, and the itch that was always out of reach. I knew tropical pox doctors by the solidly painted windows of their storefront clinics, and was treated by men with degrees from Poona who jammed syringes into my arm as if they were celebrating Thaipusam, said “drink plenty bottles of beer,” gave me capsules the size of Mexican jumping beans, and offered to waive the ten-rupee fee if I’d help them emigrate to Canada.

Thelma groaned; I rode her like a dolphin and plunged back into my memory: I was lying on Changi Beach eating a melting ice cream with Tai-ann and Choo-suat; in the Botanical Gardens hearing a smart Sikh regiment of bagpipers play, “Will You No Come Hame Again”—and I cried then into my hands; in my narrow back garden discovering with surprise and pleasure a wild orchid fastened to my elastic fig; in a cool bedroom in Queen Astrid Park with that beautiful woman who panted “Jim, Jim” into my ear, and then laughed; in that noisy little hotel on Prinsep Street one afternoon, where I held a short-haired girl from behind and was jerked from my towering reverie by a screech of brakes in the street below, a wicked bump, a howling dog that went on howling even after I stopped. That memory froze me today.

And of course there were the pictures.

Sexual desire, a molehill for a boy of twenty, gets steeper with age, and at fifty-three it is a mountain. You pant up slowly at a tricky angle; but pause once and you slide back to where you started and have to begin all over again. You’re learning real quick, the general said; and Try it this way — don’t be shy; and Let me hold you. The interruptions of these three pictures almost undid me, and at the end Thelma said, “Ai-yah! Like Mr. Frank!”

“You’ve got the wrong end of the stick there, sugar,” I said. Frank, one of the balding “eggs” from the Cricket Club, supported his lovemaking with an assortment of Swedish apparatus. The pesky things were always slipping or jamming and needed constant adjustment. One day I met the old feller on Bencoolen Street. He was smiling. He took an ugly little cellophane-wrapped snorkel out of his briefcase and said proudly, “I think this is the answer, Jack. She runs on batteries.”

Thelma shook her head. She was amused but nevertheless disgusted.

“This is official business,” I whispered. “You wouldn’t laugh if you knew what.”

“Like Mr. Frank!”

“Have it your way,” I said, and paid her. “Feel like sticking around?”

She counted the money and put it into her purse. “Madam Lum say come back with legs on. If I late she scold-lah.”

“Stay till six,” I said. “For old times’ sake.”

She smiled. “For twenty-over dollar.”

I considered this.

She said, “For twenty, can.”

“Never mind,” I said. I opened the door for her, and then I had the same feeling that worried me when the boys left: with no one else in the room I didn’t exist, like an unwitnessed thunderclap in the desert. I sat down with a gin and read through the Belvedere brochures. They offered room service—“Full-course dinners or snacks served piping hot in the traditional Malay style.” Also: “Relax at our poolside bar — or have a refreshing dip” and “Your chance to try our newly installed sauna” and “It’s happening at our discotheque — the ‘right now’ sounds of The Chopsticks!” Another bar promised “alluring hostesses who will serve your every need.” There were a 24-hour coffee shop, a secretarial service, French, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants, and a nightclub, “Featuring the Freddy Loo Dancers,” a Japanese kick line and an Australian stripper. And mawkish suggestions: No visit to Singapore is complete without—and You will also want to try—

This you they kept addressing, was it me? I looked at the nightclub brochure again. The stripper was waving from the seat of a motorcycle. That finished me. I changed into my flowered shirt and started lacing my shoes.

— You’re sure I’m not hurting you?

— Sure.

I wound the film. I closed my eyes. I snapped; and securing my room with a DO NOT DISTURB sign, fled down the fire stairs.

They were on the verandah of the Bandung, in the low wicker chairs with the swing-out extensions on the arms, all of them with their feet up, their heels hooked, as if they were about to be shaved. Yardley was reading the Straits Times to Frogget, who listened with a pint of beer resting on his stomach.

“That ghastly old sod got an O.B.E.,” said Yardley. “Would you believe it? And guess who got an M.B.E.? This is ridiculous—”

“What’s cooking?” I said, pulling out the arm extensions on a chair next to Yates and settling in. I put my legs up and was restored.

“Honors’ List just published,” said Yates. “Yardley’s rather cross. He wasn’t knighted.”

“I’d send the bloody thing back,” said Yardley. “I wouldn’t be caught dead on the same list with that abortionist. Christ, why don’t they give these things to people who deserve them?”

“Like Jack,” said Frogget.

“Maybe Jack got an O.B.E.,” said Smale.

“Very funny,” I said.

“Let’s have a look,” said Yardley. He rattled the paper.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “Pass me the shipping pages.”

“Aw, that’s a shame,” said Yardley. “They missed you out again.”

“Where’s Wally?” I asked.

“Wally!” shouted Smale. Once, a feller came to the Bandung and did that very same thing, shouted Wally’s name from the verandah; and Smale said, “If you do that again I’ll boot your rude arse.” The feller was an occasional drinker; no one had ever spoken to him, and after Smale said that he never came again. Soon, each of us had a story, a reminiscence of his behavior, and Yardley finally arrived at the view that the feller was crazy.

Wally appeared at my elbow.

“A double pink gin with a squirt of soda,” I said. “And ask these gentlemen what they’d like.”

“Telephone for you, today morning,” said Wally. “Mr. Gunstone.”

It passed without a remark. I had just bought everyone a drink.

“What about you, Yatesie?” asked Smale. “When’s your M.B.E. coming around?”

“It’s just a piece of paper,” said Yates.

“Listen to him,” said Yardley. His legs clattered on the wooden rests as he guffawed. “When I came in here at half-five he was reading the paper, looking for his name.”

“That is untrue,” said Yates with a note of hurt in his voice that contradicted his words.

“He’d give his knackers for an M.B.E.,” said Yardley, “and even the flaming Beatles got that.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Smale, and cursed under his breath. “I wouldn’t complain if I got one of those things. Face it, none of you would.”

There was a moment of silence then, the silence a bubble of sheepishness, as mentally we tried on a title. Viscount Smale. Lord Yardley. Sir Desmond. Lord Flowers, I was thinking, Saint Jack.

“Who’s on the list?” I asked. “Anyone I know?”

“Apart from Wally, who got a knighthood — right, Wally? Sure you did — only Evans, the twit that works in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. M.B.E.”

“Evans? Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know him. He’s in the Cricket Club.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Yardley.

“Or so I heard,” I said.

“He makes a good screw,” said Smale. “Him a banker.”

“Rubbish,” said Yardley. “Not more than three or four thousand quid.”

“Call it four,” I said. “It’s ten thousand U.S. That’s pretty good money.”

“Pretty good money,” said Yardley, mocking me. “Four thousand quid! That’s not money.”

“Ten thousand bucks would take you pretty far,” I said. Frogget laughed uncertainly and looked at Yardley.

Yardley shifted in his chair. He said, “That’s not money.”

“No,” said Smale. “Not real money.”

“I suppose not,” I said.

We stared into the garden. It was darkening; the garden became simple and orderly in the twilight, the elastic fig and the palm it strangled were one. The mosquitoes were waking, gathering at the verandah light and biting our exposed ankles. Frogget slapped at his bare arm.

“Say fifty or sixty thousand quid,” said Yardley. “That’s money.”

Someone’s wicker chair creaked.

“Or maybe a hundred,” said Frogget.

“You could live on that,” said Yardley.

“You certainly could,” said Yates.

“Imagine,” said Smale.

“Funnily enough,” I said, “I can.”

“So can I,” said Frogget.

“The last time I was on leave,” said Smale, “I took a taxi from Waterloo to King’s Cross. Had a lot of baggage. I paid the fare and told the driver to keep the change. ‘A bob,’ he says, and hands it back to me. ‘Fit it up your arse.’”

“That rosebush wants pruning,” said Yates.

“‘Fit it up your arse’,” said Smale. “A shilling!”

“It wouldn’t fit,” said Frogget.

“That reminds me,” said Yardley. “The funniest thing happened today. It was at Robinson’s. Jack, you’re not listening.”

“I’m all ears,” I said.

5

MY WEEK was over, though it seemed like more than a week: it was very hard for me to tell how fast the time went with my eyes shut. It was the suspenseful captivity I had known with Toh’s gang, the time no one ransomed me. I sat blinded by resolution in my luxurious armchair — luxury at that price now something like a penalty — and I recorded the general confirming his plane ticket, packing his bags, phoning for a taxi; I knew that I was listening to the end. Mr. Khoo came up and filled the holes in the wall. I checked out quietly and went back to Moulmein Green. It was three in the afternoon. I slept under the fan and woke up the next day to the squeals of children playing outside my window. They were comparing paper lanterns they had obviously just bought, squarish roosters in red cellophane, airplanes and boxy fish.

A few days later, at Hing’s, I was standing in the shade of the portico, watching the traffic on Beach Road, my hands in my pockets.

“Sorry,” said a voice behind me. I turned and saw Jimmy Sung unzipping a briefcase. “The pictures,” he said, laughing, “no good, myah!” He passed me a thick envelope of pictures.

“If they’re duds it’s not your fault,” I said. I flicked through the envelope and saw rippling water stains on an opaque background; some were totally black, others smirched and blurred. No human form was apparent. I was off the hook.

“Wrong esposure,” he said.

“That’s how it goes,” I said. I wanted to hug him.

“And these,” he said. He gave me a smaller envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Some good ones.”

“You said they were all dark.”

“Not all.” He nodded. “I make some estra print. Okay, Jack, I see you.”

“Be good,” I said. I took the envelope into my cubicle to open it, and with fingers slowed by dread I started shuffling. The swimming lesson was first, and though “swimming lesson” sounds like the euphemism for a pervert’s crimp, this one looked genuine enough: the girl thrashed, the general stood at the end of the bed and coached, and in one he appeared to be giving the girl artificial respiration. Some showed the girl alone, or the general alone, and at the side of the picture the arm or leg of the other. Two I liked. In the first the general was wagging his finger at the grinning girl; in the second they were staring in different directions, the general vacantly at his watch, the girl at her splayed-out fingers. It was always the swimmer. One I treasured: the general’s arms were folded around the dark girl who sat in his lap and held his head in her hands. He was a big man, his embrace was protective, and her posture replied to this. If the photograph of a posture could prove anything, this proved fondness, even if it was a hopeless flirtation like his own war.

As blackmail they were of no value — the opposite of incriminating. It might have been different; in the Belvedere that week a crime fantasy had sustained me. The blackmailer photographing what he thinks is an infidelity discovers that he is witnessing a murder; he hears the threats, he sees the violence, he springs into the room, a nimble rescuer in the nick of time. It would have made a good story. Mine was not so neat, but there in my cubicle I had my first insight into the whole business: betrayal may damn, or it may vindicate. It was, after all, revelation. I had spied on the general to find him guilty; I came away with proof of something ordinary enough to be blameless. I was as relieved as if it was an affirmation of whatever well-intentioned gesture I had made: that impulsive embrace when one can believe for a full minute that one is not alone. So I was saved, and I thought: might not some chilly gray intriguer, hard by an enemy window, watch sadness or love rehearsed and change his mind? Shuck held him responsible for a war. I could not speak for that outrage, but in one respect, the only one I had seen, the man was gentle. I had spied on innocence.

“You looked pleased with yourself,” said Shuck in the Pavilion. Shuck had taken a corner table, and he looked around the bar as he spoke to me.

“I’ve got them.” I patted my breast pocket. “He’s in here.”

“How about a drink first,” said Shuck. “I’m just having a Coke.”

“Gin for me,” I said. “Well, here they are.”

We were beside a ship’s clock, under a long shelf of brassware, old pistols, sabers, and muskets. Shuck looked closely at the clock before he opened the envelope. He kept his poker face while he examined each picture, and when he finished and put them back he said, “Any others?”

“Nope.”

He creased the envelope. “He’s no Casanova, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t have believed it. But these’ll be useful. I mean, he’s with a Chinese girl, loving her up and so forth. He’ll have a hard time explaining that to the Pentagon. You know the girl?”

“Swimming lessons,” I said. “Can I see them a minute?”

Shuck palmed them and put them into my hand. I slipped the envelope into my pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping them.”

“Maybe it’s better that way, for the time being.” Shuck was still looking around the bar, half covering his mouth when he spoke, though with his lisp I doubted whether anyone could have understood a word he said.

“For good,” I said. “Until I burn them.”

“Hey, not so fast,” he said. “Those pictures are mine.”

“I took them,” I said. “They’re mine.”

Shuck laughed uncertainly. “I know your game,” he said. “You want more money. Okay, I’ll give you more — in addition to the ten grand we agreed on.”

“It’s not enough.”

Shuck gripped his Coke; his face was malevolent. “Another five.”

“No.”

“Jack—”

“It’s not enough.”

“Six,” he lisped, and his expression changed from malevolence to concern. “I understand. You’re holding out for more and you think I have to give it to you because you’ve got something on me — because I put you up to this. I’ve got news for you — it won’t wash. Now hand over the goods.”

“It’s not enough money, one,” I said. “And, two, you’re not getting them anyway.”

“It figures,” said Shuck. His smile was grim. “This happens with nationals all the time. Thais, say, or Cambodians. They agree on a price, usually peanuts — but they’re Thais, so how do they know how much to ask? They deal in small figures, then later they want more. It always gets bigger. And then they really get expensive.”

“So you tell them to get lost.”

“Sometimes,” said Shuck. “Anyway, as soon as you told me how much you wanted I knew you’d been out of the States for a long time. You really belong here. Ten grand! I couldn’t believe it.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s not money. I’m glad you didn’t ask me to shoot him. I might have done that for fifteen.”

“So what’s your price?”

“No price.”

“You’re putting me on again, aren’t you?”

“I’m not,” I said. “No price, no pictures. I’m giving you back the five grand. No sale.”

“You did lose your nerve after all,” said Shuck.

“Not on your life,” I said. “I’ve even got tapes of the guy — more graphic than the pictures in a way, but harder to visualize. Muffled noises, very touching really.”

“Jack,” said Shuck. “Are you going to the other side with them?”

“You’re a tricky feller,” I said. “Do you know that until now that possibility hadn’t even occurred to me?”

“You’re playing with dynamite.”

“Dynamite,” I said. “A feller kissing a girl. A girl saying fuck. A feller in bed. A girl doing the breast stroke. Dynamite!”

“He’s a general!” said Shuck.

“He was out of uniform,” I said. “I want to change the subject.”

“I know you’re going to the Russians,” said Shuck. “Or is it the Chinese?”

“Neither.”

“I’ll tell you something,” said Shuck. “They’re not even good pictures. They’re very amateurish.”

“To me they’re hopeful,” I said. “I’d give them to you — for nothing — but you’d do the wrong things with them. You’d misuse them.”

“Jack, I promise—”

“You’d put the wrong interpretation on them,” I said. “That would kill me.” And I wanted to say, but I couldn’t phrase it, that the honor he talked about was a very arbitrary notion, as temporary as power, and would be out of fashion tomorrow, when the sides changed. I wanted no part of the graceless distortion. I was a person of small virtue; virtue wasn’t salvation, but knowing that might be.

“I don’t believe he’s guilty,” I said at last.

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m not.”

“If you don’t hand those over you are.”

“If I give you these,” I said, “I’m sunk.”

“So you’re trying to save yourself!”

“And you, too,” I said.

Shuck appealed, but I was scarcely listening: “You’d never have to worry… I’m not talking about nickels and dimes… Blow the lid off this thing… only the beginning… everything you always wanted… famous.”

I was looking at the old waiter with the lucky moles on his face, the dusty sabers, the pots of beer; and I was thinking: What a pleasant bar this is, what happy people.

And I walked. Alone, leaving Shuck and my untouched gin, out the swinging doors, and stumping regally down Orchard Road, which was choked with traffic and the nighttime bustle of shoppers and late eaters; past the car dealers and the Istana Gardens, to Dhoby Ghaut, where a gigantic blood-flecked poster of a fanged and green-faced Dracula was suspended, garishly lit, over the Cathay marquee; past the secondhand bookshops on Bras Basah Road (“Ksst. Mistah, something special?”). I had panicked and acted. I shouldn’t have panicked; but the act released me. I was a lucky feller.

“Hey Jack!” A nasal Chinese yell, the man’s shyness causing him to scream. I saw a white shirt in a doorway, not a zombie — a friend with no face.

I waved to him and kept walking, cutting through the noise that was crowding me, liking the night air. I had had my nose pressed against two fellers, one dead, one alive. I knew them, and my betrayal, begun exclusively as a crime — I had insisted on that — ended as an act of faith, the conjuring trick that fails when you understand it. The Oriental Bookstore, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, Bamboo Bar, Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Union — mottled and beflagged — and down Victoria Street I could see children ducking into alleys, carrying flimsy red lanterns for the moon festival: colored lights jostling in the dark, illuminating shirtfronts and faces. I walked across the grassy maidan, past the War Memorial to civilians which looks like four enormous floodlit chopsticks, and dodging traffic — pretty nimble for a feller my age — bounded to the steel rail on the harbor promenade. Out there, ship lights twinkled. This was the very edge of the island, on the thickest part of the world.

Not one life — I had had many. A memoir selects from the interruption of different fears. There had been others; I expected more, and I was calm, for I had had a death as well. But all I thought were preparations for flight had readied me for staying, a belonging the opposite of what I wanted: familiar, yes, and yet who would willingly die here? I was no exile. There were fast planes west, and I knew the cosiest ships. Being away can make you a stranger in two places, I thought; but it wasn’t a country I needed, and not money, though I knew some cash would improve my backward heart. I had a ten-dollar win ticket on Major General in the fourth race on Saturday, and a lottery ticket — Toto Number 915. Fortune might be denied me, but that denial still held a promise like postponement. No drums, no trumpets; a love gallop thundered in my head, and the random sea splash quickened below me, signals of danger very much like the sounds of rescue.

I was tranquil enough at last to kill myself — to toss myself into the harbor; but I changed my mind and decided to live for a hundred years. So my life was only half gone. I would celebrate the coming glory with an expensive drink at Raffles, down the road, and, time permitting, do a spot of work before I put in an appearance at the Bandung. Children with bright lanterns moved along the promenade toward me, swinging their blobs of light. I blessed them simply, wishing them well with a nod.

There was another admirer. A woman in a white dress, with a camera slung over her shoulder, leaned against the sea rail twenty feet away. When the children passed by, she approached me, smiling.

“What beautiful children,” she said. “Are they Chinese?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But they should be in bed at this hour.”

“So should I,” said the woman, and she laughed gently. She was a corker. She looked across the street and held her fingers to her mouth and kissed them in concentration. “Oh, hell,” she said, “I’m lost.”

“No, you’re not,” I said.

“Hey, you’re an American, too,” she said. “Do you have a minute?”

“Lady, believe me,” I said, and a high funny note of joy, recovered hope, warbled in my ears as I pronounced the adventurous sentence, “I’ve got all the time in the world.”