TONY ARRANGED to meet her the next day at about four-thirty, planning to return to Ipoh early. He knew there was no need to rush her that night. They were destined for each other. Besides, he was getting woozy in the head.
He stood up and went behind Ng’s chair and thanked him for the great night. Ng grabbed his arm and asked why he was leaving so soon. Then he added, “You taking Mimi?”
“Gosh, no. I’ve drunk too much tonight.”
“You no like her?”
“I’m crazy about her. She’s wonderful. But I really must go. Thanks for everything again.”
Tony left.
Ng danced a slow one with Mimi as soon as Tony left and asked her in Cantonese, “You like him?”
“Yes. He’s nice. A good dancer too.”
“He’s a very good man.”
“Why did he go off so early?”
“Has to be up very early tomorrow.”
“Why do you say he’s a good man?”
“Clever. Works hard. Honest.”
“I see …”
“One of the best.”
She suggested meeting at a coffeeshop near her place. She was there before he arrived. In a plain cheongsam with a pink and blue flowered pattern on a white ground. She wore no make up.
In the daylight he saw she was well built with a good but not fantastic figure. There was flesh and muscle in her, not like so many of the thin Chinese girls with bony arms one saw everywhere. She was browner than he remembered her.
But her eyes, her cheekbones, her lips were the same. Her big eyes, with something different about the eyelids that gave her what his friend Jimmy called a bedroom look. He knew it wasn’t just lust for her body that attracted him.
She was pleased to see him and they talked about each other easily and naturally. She had seen the way he looked at her the previous night and instinctively felt there was no need to put up a front with him.
He was pleased her English was good. Perhaps that is why Ng asked the Mummy to bring her to the table last night, he thought.
“You are not Cantonese?” he asked.
“I am,” she said smiling. “But I married a Penang Hokkien so that’s why my name is Tan.”
“Oh. You’re married?”
“Divorced now. After one year.”
“How come?”
“Another day, lah. O.K.?”
“I’m married, you know.”
“Yes I know …”
“How did …”
“I asked Wong, Mr Ng’s man …”
“Last night?”
“Yes. But I wanted to see you again …”
He explained that he worked outside Ipoh and returned late every evening. He had to change his plans that day to meet her.
She said she had nothing much to tell him about herself. She needed money for her family who lived in a village a few miles north of Ipoh and became a dance hostess because it was good money. She met Tan, who swept her off her feet, and she married him before she knew what was happening. He turned out to be a ‘bad man’ and she left him.
“No child?”
“No.” And she went back to the cabaret.
The clock on the coffeeshop wall struck six. He had to go.
“We’ll have lunch together tomorrow,” she said, and added quickly before he could say anything, “I’ll take the bus to Kampar. Meet you in the coffeeshop near the bus stop. You know it?”
“Yes.”
“Twelve o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“You can, then?”
She was standing when he walked away from the counter after paying for their iced coffees. She took his hand as he came up to her and started walking towards a backlane.
“Just come. A little while.”
It was a dirty deserted backlane stinking of garbage. She stopped and turned to him, her face raised, and put her arms around him. He kissed her and felt passion racing through him as she pressed her body against his and she yielded her open wet mouth to him.
Then she pushed him away with a beautiful smile in her eyes.
“Tomorrow, Tony.”
He sat astride his Sunbeam for a long time before he stood up and kick-started it.
She was at the coffeeshop when he went there at ten to twelve. She wore a pale blue samfoo and her shoulder-length hair was tied behind with a ribbon. It showed her high cheekbones. Again, she had no make-up on. She smiled a wide, beautiful, happy smile when she saw him. The samfoo was of some soft material and it clung to her body. He felt the blood rise in him.
She said the cook at that place was good and suggested she order fish and vegetables and rice.
Then she looked at him and asked, “Can you take the afternoon off?”
“Yes,” he said at once, surprised and thrilled that they would be together for some time.
“You have a beer and I’ll sip some of it,” she suggested.
“Sure. Great idea.”
“You’re looking beautiful today, Mimi.”
“You like it?” she asked, looking down at her samfoo.
“I mean you. I like the samfoo too. But you seem to be glowing today.”
“A handsome prince kissed me yesterday, that’s why,” she said, grinning.
“He’s been in a daze since then.”
The coffeeshop man came up to the table and she ordered.
“I am so pleased. I spent the last two days trying to find out something about you.” She put her hand on his under the table.
“And … I found out nothing.” She laughed. She was teasing him. “None of my friends in the bars or cabaret had heard of you.”
“A cabaret virgin, you might say,” he said.
“A good man.” With one of her lovely smiles.
“Mr Ng said you were a good man the other night,” she added.
Tony was silent. Why did she tell him that? She seemed to be so open and naive to him. She was not what he expected of a cabaret girl. Her easy manner encouraged him to express his thoughts.
“Mimi. You’re not like what I thought a cabaret girl would be. Unless of course you’re very smart and have seen the kind of girl I like and …”
“You think and decide. But I’m not like them. I learnt so much in that one year of my unhappy marriage. I’m not going to give away my life, my body, for money. I will work in a coffeeshop, sell food by the roadside if I have to. As long as Mummy Chin will have me, I will work at the cabaret. The money’s good if you’re booked out regularly.”
“You get booked out regularly?”
“Yes.” She smiled a wicked smile. “They all want to bed me. Because no one has talked about sleeping with me.”
“A teaser, eh?” he added, but wasn’t sure how she would take it.
“Because no one has.”
“Isn’t it a lonely job, then?”
“No. It’s the other way around. People go to the cabaret to buy happiness. It’s not like working in a bar. I worked in a bar for a short time. I hated it. You get all sorts in a bar. Not all the customers go there to drink and be happy.”
“But …” he hesitated. “Don’t most of the men who go to cabarets … aren’t they looking for sex?”
“Oh yes. Except the very young boys who are having their wild first nights out. And a few who really want to dance. Very few. To dance only, I mean.”
“So do most of the customers there get what they want?”
“You really don’t know anything about that world, ah?”
“Nightclub virgin, lah.”
“The truth is I don’t know. But many get too drunk. And most often they drink and joke and dance and tell dirty stories to us. You see there’s plenty of young and nicer looking women available for far less in the little hotels.”
The food arrived and she served him as a Chinese woman would serve her husband. Or lover.
It was a new and strange experience to Tony to be there alone with a girl he had met only three days ago. He had dreamed of himself sidling up to beautiful strange women and dazzling them with his sparkling cracks as he had seen on the screen when he was a teenager, or of sweeping one of the girls of his kampong off her feet, but he had known every one of them since they were children together and when they met there was no searching, no discovering, no mystery.
And Mimi didn’t fit the dream. Not there in the hot dirty coffeeshop in her simple blue samfoo with no make-up on, smacking her lips as she enjoyed the food.
“Hey, this is good chow,” he said.
“Chow?”
“Food, lah.”
“If you can’t talk Chinese, don’t try,” she said, laughing.
When they had finished their meal, she said to him, “Pay up. I want to take you to a friend’s place. You said you are free this afternoon, didn’t you?”
“Yah.”
“It’s not far. Leave your bike here. We’ll walk.”
“Who’s this friend of yours?”
“She used to work at the cabaret. Then she got too fat. So the Mummy wouldn’t have her any more. She works at a tin-mine here. As a labourer.”
He followed Mimi along the five-foot-way and through a dark doorway beside a hardware shop. She held his hand as they walked up a narrow staircase. At the top of the steps she led him along the dark corridor to the back of the house, and stopped in front of a room with a padlocked door. She took a key from her pocket and opened it, and held the door open for him to go in. As soon as they were inside she drew back the three bolts that were fixed to the door. All of them looked flimsy to Tony.
Her eyes were shining as she put her handbag down on the small table by the bed and fell into his arms.
He held her close to him. Over her shoulder he looked at the small room with just enough space for a single bed. There was a thin rough Malay mat on the floor. A tin basin. A stack of Chinese newspapers. Clogs. A pair of pliers, on the floor.
Hanging from steel hooks screwed into the plank walls were various articles of female clothing, a beer advertisement calendar, a hair net. The room smelt of some Chinese herb than Grandma smelt of now and then. It was dark because there was only a small glass panel in the single wooden window, which was shut. There were cobwebs all over the ceiling.
“She rents this.”
“For how much?”
“Kiss me, Tony. Kiss me.”
She was writhing like a snake in his arms. He held her tight and lowered her gently on the bed which creaked as her weight went down on it and he lay on top of her and kissed her.
She opened her legs so that he could lie comfortably on her.
Her body was far more beautiful than he had imagined. The line of her naked rump and the back of her thighs sent his passion soaring as he watched her bend over the bedside table to get a rubber out of her bag. She had thought of everything.
She held him in check with her big eyes opened wide at times and shut her eyes with her mouth open finally, telling him she loved him.
“Oh, Tony. I love you. Oh. I’ve found you.”
They were both drenched in sweat when they finished. His body felt sticky and he needed a pee. The herbal smell was getting to him.
She found a ‘Good Morning’ towel and wiped him. Then she opened a cupboard he hadn’t noticed earlier and took out a bath towel.
“The bathroom’s that way. You go first.”
When he came back she was writing a note in Chinese. His heart went out to her at that moment, seeing her concentrating with so much effort in the dingy room, her nude body glistening with sweat.
Gripping her arms from behind, he pulled her up and held her close to him. With the pencil still in her hand. They were both covered in perspiration again.
“Let’s go together,” she said and she found another towel to wrap round her as they tiptoed hand-in-hand to the bathroom.
“I’ll be late if I don’t catch the four o’clock bus,” she said as they left the room.
“I’ll take you on the bike.”
Her face lit up. “I’ve never been on the back of a motorcycle! Wow!”
DYMOND SENT for Tony the next day. He said he was pleased how Tony had tightened up the fellows out there in the south and to his mind Sundram could now carry more responsibility. They were getting another engineer and he would be expanding and upgrading the design office. So he had decided Tony should be part of the design team and need only go to his construction sites three days a week. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays he would be at the design office in Ipoh.
Pleased, Tony thanked Dymond. At the end of the meeting, Dymond said, to Tony’s surprise, “Got a letter from Starkey yesterday. Says you played for Malacca state?”
“Yah. When I was still in school.”
“Then you stopped?”
“Broke a leg.”
“Is that an excuse?”
“Yes. In a way. My play was unbalanced in some ways. I was not fast enough. And …”
“Pity. I was hoping to get you for our rugger team.”
“Never played it …”
“But you know the game?”
“Yah. I like watching it. It needs brains to play.”
“Well, if you ever feel like trying something new and exciting … tell me.”
Ng threw another dinner a week later and Tony was invited.
“You are the only one from Roads South coming, so don’t tell the others. It’s mostly the irrigation buggers,” Ng said.
“I might see you tonight,” he said to Mimi the day of the dinner after they had lunch together. He told her about Ng’s dinner.
“Listen. You don’t drink too much, Tony. And don’t leave me. When they all go off, I’ll get a lift from someone. You wait half an hour, then come round to my Menglembu place. No matter how late it is. Understand?” Mimi said.
“Aiyah! Another dinner. With all that drinking,” Gloria complained. “Why don’t they ask wives, huh?”
“Inche,” the mechanic said, “you must let me have it for a day. The brake linings. Clutch. The petrol tank needs cleaning out.”
“The contractor is pouring concrete for the slab ever so early tomorrow morning. Can you come? The reinforcement is a bit complicated for me, sir,” Sundram said.
Tony enjoyed the dinner. Sha’ari, the irrigation T.A., had an inexhaustible repertoire of jokes. Leong Say Lin, who was operating in the same region as Tony, discussed subsoils and drainage patterns of the area with him for a long time. And the food was as good as it was before.
When dinner was over, Ng, his men, Wong and Cheong, Leong, Sha’ari, Tony and another irrigation engineer went to the cabaret across the road.
The drinks were ordered, the girls were discussed with the Mummy and they appeared. He saw Mimi walk up and they greeted each other. Before Ng could place her she sat beside Tony. The music was loud and they talked with their heads close together.
Sha’ari was on the floor at once when the old one, Louise, was played. He started singing softly as he got up, Every little breeze, whispering Louise …
There were seven of them and five girls. Later Tony would learn that Ng never balanced the numbers for bigger parties because there were usually some who would not dance. And he believed when there was a shortage of any goods they were more appreciated.
“Why don’t the two of you dance?” Ng asked Tony.
“Yeah, Mimi. Why not?”
So they went on to the dance floor. Mimi wrapped herself round him as they drifted to the lilt of the slow foxtrot.
Ng did not dance. Lili, next to him, tried to engage him in conversation but he sat smoking and kept silent. Lili knew the regular cabaret goers ignored the girls at times. She soon realised he was watching Mimi and her partner with great concentration.
Ng scowled. The bastard. Nine months I’ve tried to get her. And I swear now the two of them have got something going. They’ve been meeting. He’s been bedding her. For sure. For bloody sure! Shit, the woman’s rubbing herself against him there on the floor.
It wasn’t jealousy. It was the thought of being beaten to it.
He remembered how he would not book her that first night he took Tony to the cabaret. He’d told the Mummy to reserve her, he’d pay for the reserved hours till the others left. But when he saw that Tony could not talk to the other girls in Cantonese, he had changed his mind and asked Mummy Chin to bring her to the table.
He had been pleased Tony and Mimi seemed to get on with each other, then Tony had left so early. Ng had taken her home to her room in Menglembu but once again she had said no.
Bastard! What has he got … His eyes narrowed. I must stick to my first decisions. Like not calling Mimi that night. And … He struggled with himself over the other decision he had made that night. To Lili’s surprise, he snapped his fingers in the air.
He would stick to it! He would get Tony to work with him. The man’s got a lot. He smiled. Yes. The bastard got that bitch. After I tried so hard for so long.
He smiled again when he saw Tony walking back to their table, holding Mimi’s hand, looking at her starry-eyed. He owes me one now. And I’ve got the drop on him. Right! I put out the Queen of Hearts and lost it but I’ve picked up two Aces.
He called for Mummy Chin. He whispered to her that if Tony came to the cabaret any time and booked Mimi, he would pay for everything. Drinks and booking fees. And the usual tip for her.
Mummy Chin smiled. She’s a gold mine. She remembered how Mummy Chan had told her Mimi should be dropped because she wouldn’t please the customers all the way. But Mummy Chin had said that was precisely her attraction. All the rich tin men were battling with each other to get her. “The girl’s a snake, you know. I mean born in the snake year,” she’d told Mummy Chan. “Ah …” Mummy Chan had understood. But they both knew what was left unsaid; when her hard-to-get game wore off, she would have to go.
All the pieces of Tony’s jigsaw puzzle world fell into place. The alternate days at the design office, days he could be with Mimi. And still enjoy the freedom and the fresh air, the open spaces, the streams, trees, wind and water of his site work south of Ipoh.
With Ng paying for everything when he wanted Mimi in the evenings.
There were problems. He had to keep on his toes all the time. The net of deception he had begun to weave got more and more complicated. With Gloria. With Longfellow the design office engineer. With Sundram. And Dymond.
And he was spending more than he should. Not living beyond his means but not saving for that car Gloria and he had decided they must get. “Before the rains come in November, my love,” Gloria had said, setting the target.
Mimi was everything he had dreamed of in a woman. The fellow Tan she had married must have been quite a guy. She had learnt so much, much more than Gloria, he had discovered in their exciting explorations as strangers in the intimate world of sex.
Towards the end of 1938 Gloria gave him a shock.
“Darling, you know what? I’m pregnant.”
SHE HAD been to the doctor and it was confirmed. It was a shock to him when she told him. Later he couldn’t understand why it had come as a surprise.
“Shall I tell Pa and Ma?” she asked.
He hugged her with happiness. But the thought crept into his head, What if Mimi got pregnant?
Whether it was true or not, Gloria believed absolute abstinence was necessary during pregnancy. The last piece of the jagged-edged puzzle slipped into place with no effort.
To top it all Dymond gave him the big road bypass project.
It was known as The New Road, the job every T.A. at the P.W.D. was eyeing. They envied him. It would be the finest thing in roads in the north of Malaya when it was finished. So Longfellow said. He designed it. It became as important as Mimi and Gloria in Tony’s life.
There were problems, Dymond warned him. A lot of paperwork with the business of clearing illegal squatters who had erected attap shacks on Crown Land on the Road Reserve. Dealing with that clown, Aziz, the Collector of Land Revenue, talking to the squatters through the interpreter Woon, who embellished everything Tony said. However, despite all the angry scenes, Aziz’s idiotic sense of compensation and the scruffy little Ceylonese lawyer who represented Loo, the man who lived in the shack near the stream, clearing the squatters was not as bad as he had at first imagined.
Except for Tit, whose name at first simply amused him. It finally came to the crunch. He would not move out and the roadworks would reach his shack the following week.
“The fellow’s got enough of notice,” he told Dymond. “He’s just being bloody-minded. Let’s demolish the place over his head.”
Dymond looked at Tony.
“It’s a painful thing … but thank God there are no women and children. He lives alone, I see in the file. Schoolteacher, eh?”
“Yah.”
“So go ahead as you proposed. Pull the place down over his head. We’ll pay for three nights at some whorehouse hotel as sort of compensation. And see that you men stack all the materials so he can sell them or whatever …”
Tony went to the site an hour after they had programmed to demolish the shack.
“The bugger’s shouting and cursing,” his man told him when he arrived on his Sunbeam.
The roof was off but the back walls of the shack were still standing. Tony stood in the main living-dining-bedroom looking at the man’s possessions which had been packed into boxes. He was surprised to see so many Chinese books, forgetting that Tit was a schoolteacher.
Then Tit appeared from behind one of the last few walls still standing. He was pale with anger. He glared at Tony for a second then started shouting at him in Cantonese. Tony’s Cantonese had improved. He understood that Tit was heaping all the blame on him, the foreign devil.
Calmly, he said in Malay, “Shut up, Mr Tit, and get out of the way. We’ve given you enough notice. We can’t let a stubborn, selfish person stand in the way of progress. Progress for the people.”
Tit obviously understood. Tony’s words triggered off a terrible rage. He screamed something in Cantonese and ran behind the kitchen wall.
The same strange feelings that had stirred in him when he read the goalkeeper’s mind as he took penalty kicks in his football days raced through him. He bent down and picked up a stout round pole about six feet long which had been part of the roof.
As he straightened up Tit came charging out of the kitchen with a heavy meat chopper in his hand. His eyes were bloodshot and he did not look at Tony as he charged at him. Tony gripped the pole with both hands and pointed it towards Tit. He ran into it like a madman. Only then did Tony realise that the tip was pointed. It pierced Tit’s stomach. He fell with the pole sticking in him as Tony released his grip on it.
He moaned and muttered a final curse and a threat in Cantonese as he fainted, “I’ll get you, you mixed-blood swine, you and your Cantonese girlfriend.”
Tony understood it all. He looked at the men around him. They were all Indians.
His knees went soft. The man’s last words cut through him like the cold steel of the chopper … you and your Cantonese girlfriend.