World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) (6 page)

Big Alice, who was only twenty-four, was a heavy heroin smoker, and like most addicts had become sluttish, usually appearing in the bar in a grubby man's shirt with untidily rolled sleeves, and with her unhealthy pasty face devoid of make-up. However, sometimes she would go to the opposite extreme, turning up in some fussily patterned cheongsam in which she looked absurdly overdressed, and with her face now plastered too thickly with powder and rouge, her eyes grotesquely blackened, and her lips smeared carelessly with lipstick beyond their natural outline. Curiously, though, she enjoyed considerable success with the sailors, some of whom perhaps, intimidated by the smarter girls, found her sluttishness more homely. She also had a seduction technique of her own: instead of joining the sailors at their tables she would sit alone, choose a victim, and fix him steadily with her eyes. And her eyes could be extraordinarily disturbing; they had a quality of their own which was a mixture of the hypnotic and sexy. The sailor who found himself held by them would grow uneasy; he would try and ignore her, then find himself drawn; and presently, no matter that he was with another girl, he would get up on the pretext of going to the lavatory, and stop as if accidentally at Big Alice's table; and in five minutes they would be on their way upstairs.

It was thus hardly surprising that Big Alice, who at one time or another had stolen boy friends from nearly every girl, should have been unpopular with the Shanghai faction and her fellow Cantonese alike.

Little Alice, the plump little giggler, was one of the girls most in demand in the bar, though her nature was less agreeable than I had supposed at first encounter: she was, in fact, shallow, irresponsible, and mean. She had had three babies, and for this her parsimony had mainly accounted; for while other girls who found themselves pregnant would go to a Chinese doctor for an illegal injection, regarding the four hundred dollars' expenditure as an overhead expense of their trade, Little Alice had always resisted making the painful disbursement until too late. Yet unlike the others, and untypical of the Chinese who as a rule adored children, she had no use for babies, and had given away two for adoption. The third had died before she had got round to making arrangements—no doubt from neglect.

Little Alice's three passions were eating cream-filled chocolates, going to the cinema, and buying new clothes. Every day she would appear with some new item of clothing or jewelry, and she would discard clothes that she did not like after a single wearing; but she gave nothing away and once, when Gwenny had offered to buy a month-old brocade jacket from her, Little Alice had charged her the full shop price.

Her selfishness was unique among the girls. And almost unique, too, was her taste in sailors: for while most of the girls preferred older men, who were kinder and less trouble, Little Alice liked boys of twenty, or if possible under. Herself twenty-six, she would put up her price for men much her senior, and offend middle-aged matelots by making it clear, with giggles at their expense, that she only took them on sufferance. On the other hand if a sailor was sufficiently callow, and was out of funds, she would oblige him for nothing.

The girls were all in their early or mid-twenties except for two; and both of these, Doris and old Lily Lou, were on the wrong side of forty.

Lily Lou claimed to be only forty-one, and would whisper this figure huskily into my ear, adding, “But the girls think I'm only thirty-seven—you won't tell them my secret, will you?” She would wink conspiratorially, and pat my hand. “Good boy! Good boy!” In fact the girls knew perfectly well, and so did I, that she was not a day under fifty.

I could not help liking old Lily Lou. She reminded me of an old theater pro, who had grown up in a narrow professional world, took pride in the old-fashioned thoroughness of her technique, and looked down on the present-day youngsters for skimping their job. She remembered her own training in a smart brothel in Shanghai—oh, in those days you'd got to know how to please a man, you'd got to take trouble and time. It had been a real vocation; none of these modern girls would have lasted a minute. “They've got no mystery, dear,” she would whisper huskily, confidentially, patting my hand. “And that's what a man likes—mystery.” And she would smile her carefully enigmatic smile that, despite the old whore's shabbiness and over-rouged cheeks, could still just pass for mystery in the low diffused light of the bar.

Lily Lou was the only girl besides Little Alice who sought out younger men; though in her case it was from expedience, since she appeared to succeed with them most. Doubtless she was more skilled than the younger girls with the inexperienced and shy, and more cozy; and in addition, of course, she appealed to the pocket, for as you grew older, mystery or no mystery, your prices had to drop. She would tell the other girls that she never took less than ten dollars. But they all exaggerated themselves, out of pride, about their minimum prices; and they knew perfectly well that old Lily Lou, at a pinch, would go upstairs for five.

And then Doris . . . Doris Woo was a little over forty, with a remarkably smooth complexion for her age and not bad-looking, but with the misfortune to wear glasses. She favored the rimless kind, presumably in the belief that these were more easily overlooked.

She was also hard—hard in the calculating, commercial way that was characteristic of some Chinese women. She was much harder than old Lily Lou, although she had only been at the game for a few years since she had come as a refugee from Pekin. She had no friends in the bar and always chose a table by herself—sitting very erectly, and turning her head with abrupt little movements as she surveyed the room for likely business, looking like a schoolmistress watching for notes being passed under desks. She had little success, and would sometimes sit for twelve hours in the bar, from noon till midnight, and go home without having made a cent—and poorer by the cost of her meals. She probably found, on the average, four or five clients a week. These were usually sailors who were too polite, too weak-willed, or too drunk to turn her down, or who, on a busy night, found themselves left with no alternative; though occasionally some sailor with a fetish about schoolmistresses or glasses would take her for choice.

Doris was even more unpopular among the other girls than the heroin addict Big Alice. I thought their hostility toward her was ungenerous, and told them so, saying I was sure that a little kindness toward her would work wonders; but I received only cynical looks, and even the kindly Gwenny seemed unpersuaded. Then one morning, returning from town, I found myself beside Doris on top of the tram; and grasping this opportunity to prove what kindness could achieve, I invited her to have lunch with me. I suggested a little restaurant close to the tram stop in Hennessy Road where we had alighted; I had been there already and knew we could eat well for a few dollars. She accepted the invitation in principle but thought the restaurant looked sordid; and proposing an alternative, she coaxed me into taking a taxi to reach it. At the restaurant she disappeared on the pretext of making a telephone call, though in fact, I had no doubt, to arrange commission for herself on the meal; and when she returned I found that without consulting me she had already given the order. The dishes began to arrive. They continued to arrive in fairly rapid succession for an hour. Finally I was presented with the bill. It was forty-eight dollars.

Blackmail, I decided as I paid up, could hardly go further. But it could, and did. For we were no sooner outside the restaurant than Doris, using that coaxing tone that was meant to be attractively feminine but that was in fact as hard as nails, urged me to “lend” her five dollars: she wanted a taxi back to the Nam Kok.

I decided that the time had come for a stand.

“I've never used a taxi before this morning,” I said. “I can't afford it. Why not take a tram?”

She flushed, and sudden anger glittered in her eyes behind the rimless glasses.

“I'm a business girl,” she said nastily. “You're supposed to pay for my time. I've wasted nearly two hours with you.”

I suddenly could not bear to enter into argument. I felt in my pocket. I had nothing left but a few coins and a ten-dollar note. “There,” I said coldly, and handed her the ten dollars. She took it without gratitude, still in a huff, and walked away briskly across the road. An oncoming tram narrowly missed her. And I was so angry at being exploited, my vanity was so hurt, that I half wished it had run her down.

And it was not until weeks later that I really forgave her: not until one night when, glancing at Doris as she sat alone in her usual erect, schoolmarm way, I happened to notice with surprise that her eyes were closed, and that there were tears running from under the lids behind the rimless glasses.

“Look,” I said, pointing her out to Gwenny. “What's the matter with Doris?”

“It's her children—you know she has two?”

“Yes,” I said. “Are they ill or something?”

“No, but she has no money. She's only had one short-time in the last week.”

I gave Gwenny ten dollars, asking her to slip them somehow into Doris's bag. It was conscience money because my effort at kindness had been so feeble, and so short-lived—as if one invitation to lunch could cancel out years of bitterness and despair.

Chapter Four

T
he lunch with Doris had occurred only about ten days after I had moved into the Nam Kok. And it was on that same day that another extraordinary thing happened.

I had been so ruffled by Doris's behavior that my work that afternoon had been worse than indifferent, and at five o'clock I decided to pack up. There was a film I wanted to see at the New York. I couldn't afford it—but what was another couple of dollars after the debacle at lunch? I cleaned my hands with paraffin and then washed them in the basin. I looked round for the towel. It was on the back of the armchair. The seat of the chair was cluttered with odd sketches and drawings, and as I dried my hands my eye fell on the charcoal sketch at the top. It was the sketch of Mee-ling——the little virgin of the ferry.

It was not yet a week since our encounter, and despite the absorbing interest of the Nam Kok she had kept returning to my mind. That round enchanting little face. That look of mischievous innocence. That absurd pony tail—and those knee-length jeans. And only two days ago I had thought I recognized her on the quay, in a crowd of ferry passengers disgorging from the pier. I had been astonished at my own excitement. I had dashed toward her, but had tripped over the gangplank of a junk and sprawled headlong—and by the time I had picked myself up she was being whisked off in a rickshaw. The pain in my shin had not stopped me racing in pursuit. I had shouted her name, and the rickshaw coolie had looked back over his shoulder and slowed his pace.

“Mee-ling!” I had called again.

“Hah?” A girl's puzzled face had looked out of the rickshaw. A fringe and two gold teeth. I had made a mistake.

“I'm awfully sorry—I thought it was somebody else.”

“Hah?”

“It doesn't matter.”

I had left her staring after me in bewilderment. I had felt very foolish—and my shin had ached all the more because I had hurt it for nothing.

I finished drying my hands, smiling at the caption under the sketch, “Yes, virgin—that's me.” I was still musing about her as I left the room. I handed the key to Ah Tong who was talking to the liftman. Somebody was calling the lift from downstairs and there was an angry buzzing. The buzzing became continuous as we rumbled downward. We reached the ground floor and the liftman clanked open the gates. A sailor and a girl were waiting outside, the girl with her hand on the bell-push. She gave it a couple of final jabs to express her indignation at being kept waiting. I had not seen her before during my ten days' residence, but several girls had been away because of illness or because they had “regular” boy friends, and new faces were still turning up. She looked pretty, if at the moment rather cross. I stepped out of the lift. I passed close to her, glancing to see her better—and stopped dead.

“Mee-ling!”

It was absurd, incredible—and yet there could be no mistake. It was Mee-ling. Mee-ling with her hair loose on her shoulders instead of in a pony tail. Mee-ling in a cheongsam instead of jeans. But unquestionably Mee-ling.

She seemed not to hear.

“Mee-ling!” I repeated.

The girl glanced round. She looked at me blankly. She seemed to recognize neither me nor her own name. She turned away and entered the lift, saying something to the liftman in Chinese—it sounded like a passing rebuke for his slackness. The sailor entered behind her. And then there was a loud metallic clank as the gate shut them off.

I stood staring in bewilderment. Well, either that girl is Mee-ling, I thought, or I am going out of my mind. And I turned and went outside.

I walked slowly along the quay, determined to take it calmly. It was true that it was the second time this had happened—but this time it had been different. I had been only a yard from her. And it had been Mee-ling—I was positive.

In that case there were two possibilities. Either she had taken to this profession in the last few days, since our meeting on the ferry, or else everything she had told me on the ferry had been invented.

But no girl who'd been a virgin a week ago would have buzzed so impatiently for the lift—would have been in such a hurry to get upstairs. No, that girl at the lift had known her way around; she could have gone through the routine with her eyes closed. So that ruled out the first possibility.

Therefore everything she told me on the ferry must have been make-believe: the rich father, the five houses, the uncountable number of cars, the arranged marriage. All invented.

But no, that was impossible, I thought. There had been too many convincing details—as when she had said that she enjoyed riding in trams. If it had all been a boast, a fantasy, she would have pretended to disdain trams. Such touches were authentic—she couldn't have been inventing.

So that ruled out the second possibility—and proved that, after all, the girl could not have been Mee-ling. I had again been mistaken.

Well, I must watch my step, I thought. No more accosting, or I'll get a bad reputation. And with this matter settled, I walked up to Hennessy Road and took a tram along to the cinema.

I walked back after the cinema. It was nearly ten o'clock when I reached the quay, but many of the shops were still open. There was a busy noise of sewing machines coming from the shirt maker's. Four thin young men in shirt sleeves were working at the back under a naked bulb. In the workshop next door a man was welding: the bright white glare of the welding torch threw shadows among the ceiling-high stacks of metal junk. Farther on a red neon sign glowed over a lighted doorway. There was a great clatter like the noise of a factory that grew deafening as I approached—the most familiar noise of the Hong Kong night, the noise of mah-jongg. I glanced inside at the packed smoky room, where the players sat clicking the white bricks on the hard-topped tables. The clatter faded as I walked on. I passed the naval tailor's with the glass window and the fat beaming proprietor in the doorway and the blackboard beside him with
WELCOME TO ALL MEMBERS OF
in white paint at the top, and three numbers chalked below—the numbers of the three American ships in port. There were a few more shops and then the blue neon sign of the Nam Kok. I could see Minnie Ho standing like a stray kitten outside the bar entrance. I knew that as soon as she noticed me she would say, “Oh, Robert! Please will you take me in!” It was a cry I heard several times a day, because the girls were not allowed to enter the bar without an escort: thus could the law be technically satisfied that they were not entering for the purpose of soliciting, and that the Nam Kok was not a brothel. The bar manager insisted on meticulous observance of the rule, and would shoo out any girl who tried to slip in unnoticed without a man. My frequent presence had thus become very useful to the girls. In the mornings they would peer through the glass door to see if I was in the bar, and then tap on the glass to attract my attention, and I would go out and escort them inside—sometimes half a dozen at once. It saved them the long dreary wait for the first sailor to appear.

Minnie suddenly recognized me approaching.

“Oh, Robert! Please will you take me in!” It was like a kitten's plaintive mew.

“All right, Minnie.”

The moment I came within reach she entwined herself round my arm and snuggled against me, sighing, “Oh, Robert, you are sweet,” infinitely grateful and relieved because loneliness had been ended, human contact restored. I pushed open the door and we went inside. The bar was crowded and very noisy and there were several near-drunks. Minnie spotted a familiar face, squeezed against me gratefully, kissed the tips of two fingers, transferred the kiss to the tip of my nose, giggled, and made off.

I saw Gwenny sitting with some Americans. I sat down at the emptiest table, occupied by only one matelot who was slumped forward with his face buried in his arms. I caught the waiter as he passed and said, “Small San Mig.”

The sailor lifted his bleary face.

“Fred?” he said. He tried to focus his eyes.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Where's Fred? Where's my mate?”

“I don't know, I've only just come.”

“Fred's my mate. We're like brothers, we are, Fred and me.” An American sailor knocked against the table. “Fred?”

The American went on. The matelot grunted and his eyes began to close again inexorably. He dropped his face back onto his arms. Just then I noticed the girl I had seen getting into the lift. She was sitting with an American sailor on the bench seat of an alcove table, making teasingly amorous play with him. She entwined his arm and took his hand, pretending to read his palm. She looked less like Mee-ling now. It was true that there was a similarity in the round smooth face and the black ellipses of the eyes—she was probably also a northerner. But it was absurd of me to have made the mistake.

A girl was squeezing behind my chair. It was Fifi, the comedienne.

“Hey,
Chow-fan,
you're too fat,” she grinned at me.
Chow-fan
meant fried rice. It was her nickname for me because I practically lived on it.

“Fifi, who's that girl over there?” I asked her, indicating the girl I had mistaken for Mee-ling.

“That girl? Suzie.”

“Oh, it's
Suzie!
”

“Sure, she's just come back. Her regular boy friend went off this morning. Why, you like her?”

“No, I just wondered.”

“If you want a girl friend, you take me,” she grinned.

“You'd make me laugh too much, Fifi.”

“Well, what else you go to bed for? Not that same dirty business like everybody else?”

“Get off with you.”

So it was Suzie. Gwenny's girl friend. In fact Gwenny's heroine—because twice when there had been long spells with no ships, and business had been in the doldrums, she had helped Gwenny out financially: she was one of the girls most in demand, and made two or three times as much money as Gwenny herself. Gwenny adored her and had never stopped singing her praises to me. She had been longing for Suzie's return so that she could introduce us: she had been away over a fortnight, devoting herself to a boy friend whose ship was undergoing repairs.

Just then Gwenny came over to join me. She sat down next to the matelot slumped over the table; he was groaning now but she did not notice. She was too excited.

“My girl friend's back,” she said. “You know—Suzie. She's back.”

“Yes, over there—I've seen her,” I said.

“You haven't spoken to her yet?” She looked anxious.

“Oh, no.”

She smiled in relief: she had so looked forward to introducing us, to showing us off to each other. “What do you think of her? Don't you think she is pretty?”

I looked across at the girl again. The American had been seized by sudden violent passion and was thrusting her back into the corner to kiss her and the girl was struggling, though only half-heartedly as if she found it no more than tiresome. There was not much to be seen of her but her kicking legs and her thigh through the split skirt. I laughed. “Well, she's got beautiful legs, anyhow.”

“But don't you think she is the prettiest girl in the bar?”

“Well, I don't know . . .”

“Oh, she is! She is lovely! You will see when I introduce you!”

The black-suited manager limped hurriedly toward them. In the bar the decencies had to be preserved—they were sailing close enough to the wind without this kind of thing. He tapped the sailor on the shoulder, nervously grinning: he knew how easily sailors turned nasty. He reserved the scolding for Suzie, shook an admonishing finger at her. Suzie expostulated. The sailor waved a big weary hand and cocked his head at the ceiling, as if saying, “Oh, beat it—we're going upstairs in a minute anyhow.” The manager retired, satisfied. Suzie looked fed up, snapped open her bag, began to dab at her face. The sailor leaned to kiss the side of her neck. She brushed him off irritably.

“She has a temper,” Gwenny said proudly. And she giggled, “Once she threw a beer bottle at a sailor. He was a terrible brute—it was very brave of her.”

“Did she miss?”

“Oh no, she hit him. Here, on the forehead. He was knocked out for ten minutes.”

“What did he say when he came round?”

“He made the manager telephone to the police. The manager pretended to telephone, but put his finger somewhere so that the telephone did not work, because he likes Suzie very much.”

“Is she sad that her boy friend's gone?”

“Oh, yes, of course. She said he was not particularly nice—but she was very sad.”

“Why, if he wasn't nice?”

“Well, it is much better to have only one boy friend, even if he is not very nice. She hated coming back to the bar. You know what she said to me this morning? She said, ‘Gwenny, you don't know how I hate short-times—I wish there was a law against them!'”

“Perhaps that's why she looked so fed up when I saw her going upstairs this afternoon,” I said. I watched Suzie and the American approaching. She looked more like Mee-ling again when she was standing up, and I had another momentary start of uncertainty. Then I saw she was taller. Of course—much taller. She led the way between the tables. She looked very bored and as though oblivious of the American following behind.

“But you didn't speak to her this afternoon?” Gwenny said.

“Not really,” I said. “Only a word—I'd thought for a moment she was a girl I'd met on the ferry.”

“But she wasn't?”

“No, not by a long chalk,” I laughed. “The girl on the ferry was a very diff—”

I suddenly broke off. Because at that moment Suzie, passing the table at which Typhoo was irrepressibly holding forth, had picked a drinking-straw from a bunch on the service table and flippantly planted it, unnoticed, in Typhoo's hair—and then turned away with a mischievous giggle.

And it was Mee-ling giggling as she watched me crack melon seeds. Mee-ling giggling as she said good-by on the quay.