“AND IF YOU did say you knew anything about it at all you’d be a bloody liar,” said Flaherty with a kind of epileptic vigour. “See the world, man. Get out into the highways and byways. The East,” he waved and twisted his arms ceilingwards in snake-dance gestures, “the bloody East. And this is no more the East than that bloody boot lying over there.” He pointed with a stiff shaking arm in a soap-box orator’s denunciatory gesture. “Now, I know the East. I was in it. Palestine Police from the end of the war till we packed up.”
Nabby Adams groaned from his narrow bed. If only he hadn’t annoyed the Crabbes by drinking a whole bottle of gin before breakfast the previous week-end he might now be lying on that hospitable planter’s chair on their veranda. As it was, he had to hear Flaherty burn away the hours of sleep in long drunken monologues. It was now nearly four in the morning, and there was nothing to drink.
“Why can’t you get to flaming bed?” said Nabby Adams.
“Bed? Bed? Listen who’s talking about bed. Never in his bed from one week’s end to the other, and just because he decides to honour the bloody establishment with his noble presence for once in a way he thinks he can rule the bloody roost and tell his superiors how to run their own lives. I’m telling you, I’m telling you,” said Flaherty, pointing with the blunt finger of the hell-fire preacher, “I’m telling you that the end isn’t far off, not far off at all. I’ve watched you go down the bloody drain, inch by inch of dirty water. I’ve looked after you like it might be your own mother, I’ve rescued the perishing on more occasions than one, I’ve nursed you and taught you the right road, but what thanks do I ever get? I’ve tried to educate you, you ignorant sod, telling you about the places I’ve been and them bints I’ve been with, and giving you a bit of intelligent conversation where another man would say, ‘Let him stew in his own juice, for ignorance is bliss,’ but I’ve never got as much as a word of gratitude out of your big toothless mouth. I’ve spent good money on you, I’ve covered up for you, I’ve warned you, but you remain what you always were, a big drunken sod who leads good men astray and hasn’t an ounce of decency of feeling or of gratitude for the acts of a friend in his whole blasted big body.” Flaherty glared from frowning eyes, panting.
“Did you bring any beer back, Paddy?” asked Nabby Adams.
“Beer? Beer?” Flaherty screamed and danced. “I’ll take my dying bible that if it was the Day of Judgment itself and the dead coming out of their graves and we all of us lined up for the bloody sentence and He in His awe and majesty as of a flame of fire standing in the clouds of doomsday, all you’d be thinking about would be where you could get a bottle of blasted Tiger. There’ll be beer where you’re going to at the last,” promised Flaherty, dripping with prophetic sweat. “There’ll be cases and cases and barrels and barrels of it and it’ll all be tasting of the ashes of hell in your mouth, like lava and brimstone, scalding your guts and your stomach, so that you’ll be screaming for a drop of cold water from the hands of Lazarus himself, and he in Abraham’s bosom on the throne of the righteous.”
Nabby Adams was transfixed with a pang of thirst like a Teresan sword. The sharp image of that eschatological drouth made him raise himself groaning from his bed of fire. The dog clanked under the bed, ready for any adventure, stretching herself with a dog’s groan as she appeared from behind the tattered slack of the mosquito-net. They plodded downstairs together, pursued by the oracular voice of Flaherty.
“Look at yourself, man. Pains in your back, and your teeth dropping out and your bloody big feet hardly able to touch the floor. And that scabby old mongrel clanking after you like a bloody ball and chain. It’s coming, I tell you. The end of the world’s coming for you.”
The raw light of the naked bulb showed dust and boot-mud in the empty living-room, the glacial off-white of the refrigerator’s door, dirtied by ten years of lurching drunken shoulders and succour-seeking hands that groped for the lavatory. Nabby Adams drank water from one of the bottles that stood in a chilled huddle. (Neither food nor beer waited in the grid-ironed body of the big icy cupboard.) Nabby Adams gulped, wincing as odd teeth lit up with momentary pain.
| Lim Kean Swee | $470 |
| Chee Sin Hye | $276 |
| Wun Fatt Titt | $128 |
Nabby Adams drank his fill, feeling his stomach churn and bubble, feeling the real thirst thirstily return. He plodded upstairs again, his dog after him, and found Flaherty out on the floor, burbling prayers to the Virgin, cluttering up Nabby Adams’s bedroom. Nabby Adams looked with contemptuous distaste and decided that Flaherty had better stay there. The dog thought differently. She growled and tried to bite, but Nabby Adams soothed her with:
“All right, Cough. Let the lucky bugger alone.”
Nabby Adams then considered it a good idea to have a look in Flaherty’s room. After all, if Flaherty made free with his, Nabby Adams’s, room, it was only fair that he should return the compliment. Nabby Adams did not believe that Flaherty had brought nothing back with him from the Malay Regiment Sergeants’ Mess.
Flaherty’s room was tidier than that of Nabby Adams. Hair-brushes were arranged carefully on either side of a clean comb, and a pair of recently pressed trousers lay over a chair-back. On the wall was a picture of Flaherty, made by an Arab artist on a cartographical principle. Gridlines had been ruled over a passport photograph, and then, square by enlarged square, the face had been transferred in horrid magnification on to a large sheet of cartridge paper. The artist had given Flaherty a preternaturally high colour, somehow suggesting a painted corpse, and added, from imagination, sloping shoulders and a big red tie. This portrait smiled without pleasure at Nabby Adams as he began his search. There was no beer in the wardrobe, nor under the bed, nor in four of the drawers of the dressing-table. But the fifth drawer revealed treasure. Nabby Adams looked, like hungry Gulliver eyeing Lilliputian sirloins, at a neat collection of tiny bottles containing single glassfuls of various liqueurs. There were about a dozen of these bottles, all different, some round, some square, some doubly bulbous, some fluting up from a globular bottom. Nabby Adams surveyed them all with pity. Poor devil, he thought. His litlle collection, saved up as a boy saves up fireworks against Guy Fawkes Night, to be gloated over in solitude, fingered and smoothed lovingly before bedtime. Poor bugger.
Nabby Adams ingested successively Cherry Brandy, Drambuie, Crème de Menthe, Cointreau, John Haig, Benedictine, Three Star, Sloe Gin, Kümmel, Kirsch. The terrible thirst abated somewhat, and Nabby Adams soon had leisure to feel shame. So he had come to this: stealing a child’s toys, as good as robbing a gollywog money-box, in order to slake his selfish and inordinate hunger. Leaving the bottles stacked neatly in the drawer—they still looked pretty—he returned to his own room, his dog after him. There lay Flaherty, flat out, his face contorted to a mask of deep thought. Nabby Adams found a paper packet of Capstan in Flaherty’s shirt-pocket, and, lighting himself a crushed and creased tube, lay again under the mosquito-net, taking stock of himself.
It had, perhaps, not been a very edifying life. On the booze in England, in India, in Malaya. Always owing, often drunk, sometimes incapable. Three times in hospital, three times warned solemnly to cut it out. What had he achieved? He knew nothing of anything really. A bit about motor-engines, army discipline, grave-digging, undertaking, sleeper-laying, boot-and-shoe manufacture, turf clerking, bus-conducting, Urdu grammar, organ-pumping, women, neck massage, but little else. There was this Crabbe, with a lot of books and talking about music and this ology and that ology. And there was he, Nabby Adams, whose only reading was the daily paper, who had only possessed three books in his life. One had been called The Something-or-other of the Unconscious which a bloke called Ennis had left in the guard-room and everybody had said was hot stuff, though it wasn’t really; one had been a Hindustani glossary of motor-engine parts; the other had been a funny book called Three Men in a Boat. There was nothing to show, nothing. Only moral debts and debts of money, only imagined miles of empties and cigarette-ends.
Nabby Adams heard the bilal calling over the dark, saying that there was no God but Allah. Another day was starting for the faithful. But for the faithless it was better that the night should prolong itself, even into the sunlight of Sunday morning. If he had been at the Crabbes’ place he would be stirring gently now in delicious sleep, fully dressed, on the planter’s chair. And then that boy of the Crabbes, or, as it was now, that amah of theirs, would bring him a cup of tea in gentle morning light. Unless, of course, Cough happened to be guarding the chair, in which case jealous growls would send the tea back. And then a couple of gins for breakfast and then the first beers of the day in a kedai. Nabby Adams looked back to a week ago as to an innocent childhood. He had been driven out of that Eden as his father had been driven out of his, because of his sinful desire to taste what was forbidden. In his, Nabby Adams’s, case, not an apple but the bottom of the solitary bottle of gin. In shame and anger he fell asleep, to lie abounden in a bond of dreams of a happy, coloured India, safe in the far past.
He awoke at first light to hear moans from the floor and growls from under the bed. Flaherty had come to, parched and sick and stiff as a board.
“Oh God, my bloody back. I’m paralysed, man, my face has gone all dead. Oh, why did you leave me here? Why didn’t you show the act of a Christian and put me to bed, as you knew was your duty? Oh, I’m going to die.” Flaherty tottered out. Nabby Adams heard a heavy weight collapsing on bed-springs, a groan or two, then silence.
He awoke again when the sun had made the air all lemon-yellow and begun to taint the damp coolness. A figure stood by the bed, stealthily drinking tea. Through glued eyelids Nabby Adams saw Jock Keir, mean as bloody dirt, stealing the cup of tea which the cook-boy had brought for Nabby Adams. Stealing it because he knew that Nabby Adams rarely touched tea, because, saving heavily, Keir refused to pay anything for messing and preferred to send out for a single day’s meal of fifty cents’ worth of curry. Nabby Adams closed his eyes again.
At nine o’clock Nabby Adams was fully awake and very thirsty. He lay for a while wondering how to raise the dollar he needed. Vorpal wouldn’t lend him one, Keir wouldn’t, Flaherty couldn’t, not just now. The kuki? No, not again. Nabby Adams put on his trousers and slippers and went downstairs. A week ago he had paid off ten dollars of his debt to the old towkay across the road. Crabbe had lent him the ten dollars. Surely one small bottle was not too much to ask?
In the living-room the cloth had been laid and two bottles of sauce stood near three egg-cups. Nobody had had breakfast yet. The cook-boy stood anxiously by.
“Saya t’ada wang, tuan.”
“I know you’ve got no bloody money. I wouldn’t ask you even if you had.” Proudly man and dog went out and crossed the road.
In the kampong street Sunday was just another day. The kedais had been long open and the Malay children had long since departed for school. Nabby Adams grimly sought the shop of Guan Moh Chan, Cough clanking after him, his upper body’s crumpled pyjama stripes proclaiming to all the world the urgency of his quest. The dark shop was full of family. The old man scolded a young shapeless woman who carried one baby and led another by the hand into the black depths of the living quarters. Three sons quacked to each other, sprawled about the single table, one probing his golden mouth with a toothpick. Nabby Adams spoke:
“Satu botol.”
The old wrinkled man chortled regretfully, sorting out the account books.
“I know all about that,” said Nabby Adams. “I’ll bring some money next time.”
“Dua latus linggit,” began the old man.
“Dua ratus ringgit. Two hundred bloody dollars. Look here,” said Nabby Adams, “if you give me one bottle now it’s not going to make all that difference, is it?” The family listened, uncomprehending, inscrutable. “I mean, if I owe all that bloody much already, one dollar’s not going to break anybody’s heart.”
The old man said, “Satu botol, satu linggit.”
“But I haven’t got a bloody dollar. Look.” Nabby Adams pulled from his trouser-pocket an old wallet, made in India long ago, torn at the seams, holding only an identity-card, a folded letter and a lottery ticket. He looked at the lottery ticket. Not a bloody chance. “Here,” he said, “take this. It cost a dollar. It might be worth three hundred thousand. I’ll risk it. A bloody good chance like that for one bottle of Anchor.”
The old man looked carefully at the number of the ticket. His sons came over to look also. One son foolishly registered mild excitement but was quelled with a quack from his father. ‘Something about the bloody number,’ thought Nabby Adams. The Chinese went in a lot for lucky numbers.
Nabby Adams was given a small dusty bottle of Anchor beer to hide in his hand. He went off with it, hearing quacking from the whole bloody family. Bloody fools. As though there was anything in the lucky number idea. A lucky number for him, Nabby Adams, anyway. He had got a small bottle of beer out of it. That was the most he had ever got out of a lottery ticket.
The Chinese shopkeeper and his family watched the stiff retreating form of Nabby Adams and the wagging rump of his dog. Then they looked again at the number, quacking with great excitement. Ostensibly Christian, they were all profound Taoists in fact, and what excited them now was an arrangement of nine numbers which could easily be resolved into the Magic Square:
4 9 2 3 5 7 8 1 6
The Noah of China, Emperor Yu, walked along the banks of a tributary of the Yellow River one day after the Great Flood. He saw a tortoise rising from the river with a strange pattern on its back. Miraculously, this pattern resolved itself in his eyes into the Magic Square, the ideal arrangement of the yin-yang digits. Out of this came a plan for reconstructing the world and devising the perfect system of government.
Slowly the third son wrote out the number on Nabby Adams’ lottery ticket in the form of a square:
4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6
Yes, yes, it was! Whichever way you added up, across or down or diagonally, you got the number 15, symbol of Man Perfected. Their dancing excitement was succeeded by a feeling of awe. Perhaps this huge yellow man was really a sort of god, perhaps it was their duty to feed him with all the beer he wanted. See how that dog follows him everywhere; he has power over animals. He is bigger than the common run of men; he speaks a strange tongue. And now he gives a piece of paper with the Magic Square telescoped on it.
“We must wait till the result is put in the newspaper. Then when we win we can give him perhaps a chicken or perhaps even a small pig.”
“He does not eat.”
“Then perhaps six bottles of beer.”
“And his bill?”
“He does not know it, but his bill has been paid already. There is a man he has helped with his car which was in a bad accident and he would not take a bribe so this man came to me and said I must send the bills to him. This I have done, but he, the big man, does not know that yet. Nor shall he ever be told by me.”
The sons chortled at their old father’s cunning. Then one son said:
“Surely to-day is the day of the lottery draw?”
“Find out moonshine.” They went to their Chinese calendar. “Yes, it is to-day that the winning numbers are published. The English papers are out now, but the Chinese paper will arrive at noon.”
“It is but a short time to wait. How providential that we should be given the winning ticket but three hours before the result is announced. This big man shall most certainly be rewarded with a gift of beer.”
The big man had entered the shabby living-room of the mess. Keir was sneering over his Sunday paper, while Vorpal cracked a boiled egg.
“Can’t beat a bit of the old egg-fruit-lah. Though this one’s a bit on the high side. Seen better days-lah.”
Keir said, “Somebody in Lanchap’s got the winning number. Not me, anyway. It’s a mug’s game. Million-to-one chance. If you don’t spend a dollar you know you’ve got a dollar. That’s two-and-fourpence back home, and you can do a lot with two-and-fourpence.”
“Somebody in Lanchap?” said Nabby Adams.
“Yes,” sneered Keir. “Are you the lucky man?”
But Nabby Adams was off, the bottle still hidden in his vast paw. Breathless, the dog followed after.
In the kedai Nabby Adams said, “Here’s your bottle back. Let’s have a look at that bloody ticket.”
The towkay indicated deep regret. A transaction had been completed, could not be revoked. Nabby Adams was now bloody sure that that was one of the winning tickets, that they had seen the blasted results already, that was why that young bastard had got so bloody excited and the old man had tried to shut his bloody trap for him.
“Look here,” said Nabby Adams. “I want that ticket. Here’s your beer. You get your beer back; I get my ticket back. You savvy?”
The old man offered Nabby Adams a dollar note. Nabby Adams went wild and his dog barked. “If I don’t get that bloody ticket back I’ll break the bloody shop up.” He threatened, huge, angry. The Chinese family realised that the anger of even a minor god was a thing to be reckoned with. The towkay took down from a shelf a small bundle of lottery tickets and offered a ticket to Nabby Adams. Nabby Adams looked at it suspiciously.
“Can take beer too,” said the old man.
“This isn’t the right ticket,” said Nabby Adams. “You’re trying it on. Why are you so bloody eager to give me the bottle of beer as well?”
“Is ticket,” said the towkay.
“Is bloody not,” said Nabby Adams. “Give me the right one or I’ll smash it all up, all the bloody lot, beginning with that bloody shelf of condensed milk there.” A huge flailing arm was ready. The dog barked. The towkay tut-tutted and clucked and, searching carefully through the sheaf of tickets, chose another one which he gave to Nabby Adams.
“Come to your bloody senses,” said Nabby Adams. “That’s more like it.” He scanned the number—112673225—and wished to God he could remember whether it was the right one.
“And I’ll keep the beer,” said Nabby Adams.
Ten minutes later Nabby Adams sat dumbfounded, the bottle still unopened, over the front page of the Sunday paper. It couldn’t be true. It was all a bloody practical joke.
112673225.
Vorpal drank a fourth cup of tea and said, “Something wrong with old Nabby-lah. First time I ever seen him not want any breakfast-lah. Crying out for beer and when he’s got it he won’t touch it-lah.” Keir sneered and went to suck his empty teeth on the veranda. Nabby Adams closed one eye, opened it, closed the other, and quizzed the number again. There were so many bloody numbers and he couldn’t keep the paper steady. Clamped to the paper with his thumb was the ticket.
112673225.
Such a bloody long number. He tried again slowly. 1126. 1126. That was all right. He trembled and blood sang in his ears so that he couldn’t hear what Vorpal was saying. Steady now. He breathed in deeply and tried the number from the end. 5223. 5223. Christ, that was all right too. He began to feel very sick. Now the bloody figure in the middle, if he could get that far. But which way to go? From the beginning or the end? He almost closed his eyes and tried to focus on the heart of the trembling number, almost praying that it wouldn’t be 7, that there would be no need for palpitations and perhaps fainting and all the new life that this would mean. He wanted to be left alone, in debt, always thirsty. He took a shot at the core of the long number and nearly reeled over.
7.
Oh Christ, it was true.
“You don’t look so good, Nabby,” said Vorpal with anxiety. Then he moved forward, staring at the prodigy, and Keir came in from the veranda too, as Nabby Adams crumpled and crashed off his chair. The house rumbled seismically at the heavy fall. The dog barked. The two men tried to lift the huge dead weight.
“Leave him there-lah,” ordered Vorpal. “Get some bloody brandy, quick.”
“There isn’t any,” said Keir. “It wouldn’t last two minutes if there was, not with him about.”
“Well, get that bloody beer-bottle open,” urged Vorpal. “Pour it down his throat-lah. Come on, man.”
“It’s caught up with him at last,” sneered Keir.
Vorpal tipped beer down Nabby Adams’s gullet, and the frothy brew spilled over stubbly chin and faded pyjama jacket. All the time the dog danced and barked.
“He’s coming round-lah,” said Vorpal. “Speak to me, Nabby. How do you feel now-lah? Christ, you gave us a turn-lah.”
“I’ve won,” groaned Nabby Adams. “I’ve won. I’ve bloody won. I’ve won, I tell you. I’ve won the bloody first prize. The first bloody prize. I’ve won. Oh.” And he passed out again.
The two men, awed as in the presence of imminent death, could only look down on the huge wreck which the dog, whimpering, ranged over, looking for places to lick. The lavish cold tongue, laving his frothy lips, brought Nabby Adams back to life. He groaned.
“I’ve bloody well won. I’ve won. The first bloody prize.”
“And, by Christ, he has too.” Vorpal held paper and ticket, scanning, checking, re-checking, confirming.
“There must be a mistake,” said Keir, pale, forgetting to sneer.
“There’s no mistake. It’s there in black and white. Look, man.”
“I’ve won. I’ve won. Oh Christ, I’ve won.”
“There, there, Nabby,” soothed Vorpal. “You’re with friends-lah. You’ll feel a bit better in a minute. I’ll send the kuki out for some beer.”
“I’ve won, I’ve won, I tell you. Oh God.”
“Three hundred and fifty thousand bucks,” said Vorpal. “Settling day one week from now-lah.”
“Three hundred and fifty thou …” Keir sat down, limp as a leaf.
“I’ve won.” Nabby Adams was calmer now, resigned, pale as death, reconciled to the dread sentence. He sat, wretched, on a chair, and absently patted the dog.
“You’ve won, boy,” said Vorpal. “Kuki!” he called. “We’re going to celebrate-lah. A case of Tiger.”
“Carlsberg,” said Nabby Adams. “It’s a bit dearer, but it’s a better beer.”
“Carlsberg,” said Vorpal. “Brandy. Champagne-lah. Any bloody thing you like.”
Nabby Adams gloomily scanned the winning ticket, his hands still hardly able to hold it.
‘For God’s sake don’t lose that,” said Vorpal. “I’ll look after it for you.”
“No,” said Nabby Adams. “He’ll look after it. It’s safer with him.”
“Who?”
“Crabbe. Crabbe’ll look after it. I’ll give it to Crabbe. It’ll be all right with him.”
The kuki, staggering back with a clanking case of beer, said that this was a present for the big tuan. On top of the bottles was a skinny chicken, glistening with refrigerator-ice.
“It’s always the bloody same,” said Nabby Adams gloomily. “When you’ve got it you go on getting it. I wish I was bloody dead.”
“You will be,” sneered Keir. “You soon will be.”
Then a strange thing happened. The dog Cough bared her teeth at Keir and with a profound belly-growl advanced on him.
“Take her away! Call her off!” Keir backed on to the porch, Cough’s naked teeth ready to lunge. “Bloody dog!” Then Keir ran into the street, Cough, out for blood, after him. Man and dog disappeared, gaining speed. Nabby Adams could see astonished faces of Malays looking off-stage. He decapitated a bottle of Carlsberg.
“I’ve won,” he said, before drinking.