My Life as a Fake (18 page)

Years later the girl could remember the day of Chubb’s arrival at the palace. First, the Kaya Kaya had seen the
ber-hantu
, a pillar of red fire in the evening sky, but he had not become ill until a second bad omen appeared, a very large bird which flew directly in through the open door. It was amongst her most vivid memories, how this bird had caused the grey-haired Kaya Kaya to collapse onto his big teak bed, all his family scattering like frightened chickens.

Before this happened he had been, as usual, very civilised. He had sat with her bapa inside the car and her bapa had shown him the part which was broken and explained the method of repair. Then they were invited to sit with him in his palace, but on that day she had only one sip of her sweet red drink before there was a rush of air and a creature with heavy dark wings and a huge head and a pair of horns flew around the room moaning horribly. Then it sailed off into the dusk, gliding between the feathery leaves of palms. Then everyone ran away, leaving the Kaya Kaya alone on his bed with his blue shoes still upon his feet.

When people drifted nervously back to the big house, her bapa asked questions but they were too distressed to understand. Soon an old woman entered and this turned out to be the
pawang
. Dressed like a man in a short-sleeved jacket,
trousers, and a sarong, she placed bowls of fluid and candles on the floor all around the bed. Soon afterwards came five young women with skin drums, and then her bapa took the little girl to sit with him beside the open door. The women went into the farthest corner and began to play the drums softly, stroking them with those lovely long fingers the undersides of which were as pale and pretty as a seashell. Then the
pawang
covered her face with a yellow silk cloth and sang a strange song.

What is happening, Bapa?

I reckon she is going to get the demon from him.

The little girl wanted very much to see the bad spirit emerge. She wondered would it be a lizard, for she had almost seen this sort of demon once before, in another place. There was a witch who had been casting spells and killing babies so they tied her arms and legs and took her to the river and held her beneath the muddy water with a long, forked stick. When she was dead a lizard climbed out her nose and the women caught and killed it and then put it in a bottle and buried the bottle in the dirt by the bananas where it would not hurt anybody ever again. None of this had she been allowed to see. This time she had a ringside seat.

Then they were being asked to leave the room—she could not even bring her red drink with her—and her bapa took her out into the bananas and here they squatted on the bare red earth until the big sun sank into the river, turning the water the same orange-gold colour as the silk across the
pawang’s
face.

In Kuala Lumpur, when she was no longer a little girl, she told me how she complained to her bapa about the abandoned drink, and one could guess that she was used to having her way. In any case, she was exceedingly surprised when he suddenly clamped his big oily-smelling hand across her mouth.

There it is, he whispered in her ear, his breath smelling of peppermint and oranges. Look—the
hantu
. They have drawn him out.

And there it was, pulled down the hill by the
pawangs
insistent song. Large and clumsy, the
hantu
stumbled and rolled down the steep hill behind the house.

Shit! it cried out angrily. It was white all over like a ghost but had disguised itself with mud and filth. And she was now sorry to be watching for she knew it would hurt her if it could. Her bapa wrapped his arms around her and pressed her face against his shoulder so the
hantu
could not see her. She was safe as she could be, but who knew what a
hantu
might do?

It walked around the house, calling out in its great croaking voice, and then three of the Kaya Kaya’s sons ran down the steps. Two had krises drawn and one had a big fat gun and they leapt upon the
hantu
and soon had it tied up with rope. It cried and moaned, begging them to let it go, but the Kaya Kaya’s sons dragged it to the car and lashed it to the wheel so there was no hope of escape.

Then the
hantu
saw her and cried horribly, pleading for her to come to it, but the Kaya Kaya’s sons kicked the
hantu
until it stopped.

Once it was dark, she and her bapa went with everyone down to the river and soon the Kaya Kaya came too and they had a feast inside a floating house with walls of bamboo and everyone was happy. She wondered what would happen to the
hantu
, fearing that it would come and get her in the night, so her bapa took a burning stick and together they saw that the
hantu
was bound very tightly with a great deal of rattan.

Her bapa spoke directly to it. They know exactly what you are, he said.

You are a kidnapper, said the
hantu
, and I will catch you. Then you will go to prison for what you have done.

This frightened the girl terribly and she had to sleep next to her bapa all night long, but in the morning he showed her why there was nothing to fear. The
hantu
had been taken to a raft down on the river and sat there alone in its centre while men in boats guided it into the current and soon they let out a great cry as the river swept the raft away, carrying the
hantu
down to the sea where it would surely be destroyed and never again disturb the dreams of Kaya Kayas or little girls. Then her bapa picked her up and held her high and she looked down into his strong face and felt that lovely calm that only a child can feel, that you are perfectly loved, invincibly protected, and now she did not care what happened to the
hantu
, knowing only that the river would drag it to a place where the lizards would flee, running out of its ugly nose to meet their certain death.

On Thursday Chubb arrived far earlier than we had agreed and I therefore made him wait until lunch. As I was the one who had just three days remaining, this was perverse of me indeed, and not fully explicable even to myself. Quite likely I could not own to my growing involvement in his history, and was somehow embarrassed to see myself now making such detailed notes, cross-examining him so rigorously, and more often. I had become his collaborator, a role which made me, to say the least, uncomfortable.

This in turn invigorated him and when I met him in the lobby he presented me with a huge oil-stained map of Japanese-occupied Malaya. As we spread it across the table of the hotel’s Chinese restaurant I began to imagine a whopping big issue of
The Modern Review
, one which would set Chubb’s narrative against McCorkle’s poem, a treasure which I was now so confident of obtaining that by five o’clock that afternoon, having drunk nothing more potent than tea, I sent a wire to Antrim:
GREAT TREASURES LOOTED FROM THE EAST. I SIGNED ELGIN.

Slater I did not see at all, and if you had told me he was robbing banks or bonking little boys I doubt I would have cared. I was racing for the finish line.

Early in the evening Chubb invited me to stroll with him through the soupy air to Jalan Campbell. Never once did I put my notebook away, and as we walked I questioned him about the various names and phrases that had poured from him. Malaysia, once so alien to me, was coming to feel more and more familiar.

We arrived soon enough at the bicycle shop and there, at the very front of the store, behind the glass display case with its violently tangled contents, was Mrs Lim, a large box of chocolates on her lap. At her side was a Chinese boy I had never seen before. Chubb spoke to them in his laboured Malay, and as he did so Mrs Lim unwrapped a chocolate. It was only then, it seems, that Chubb noticed what she was eating, and the sight of this extravagance somehow enraged him.

As he rushed around the display case Mrs Lim’s astonishment was obvious, and it certainly did not diminish when Chubb snatched the box, turned it upside down, and violently shook its contents onto her lap and across the concrete floor.

Chubb spoke a single word. She curled her lip defiantly. The boy began to gather up the chocolates.

Chubb spoke again, much more sharply, and the woman stilled the boy. Perhaps it was the suit that gave Chubb this new authority, or perhaps it had always been like this.

Chubb now barked a question and she glanced towards the back of the store.

Come, he ordered me, and we pressed our way through a tangle of old bicycles into an open space where there was a tap and basin and a rather cruel-looking iron bed, beneath which I spotted an English edition of
The Duino Elegies
.

Not here, he said, and led me around the corner and up an echoing wooden staircase and there, on the top floor, we stepped into a room the nature of which one could never have predicted from the floor below. It was clean, uncluttered, with a high ceiling and oiled floorboards at least twelve inches wide. The walls were lined with books, not poems or novels or biographies but volumes the size of telephone directories whose spines were marked with Arabic script.

By the window sat John Slater, posing as Somerset Maugham in an artfully woven rattan chair, and at his feet was the girl we had both seen through the window on Monday night. Though I knew she was twenty, in Slater’s company she looked shockingly young, almost a child.

Hello, old chap. Slater and his companion had been looking at a book but now he stood up, rather too quickly, and brought me the volume, as if it were proof of his innocent occupation.

Hello, Sarah. The pages held pressed flowers and leaves, all of them densely annotated. But although I would later regret not having taken the opportunity to study their very particular beauty, all I could think of in that moment was that Slater had thoroughly deceived us. I was not only angry but rather sick at heart to see him paying court to a child, and he all old and yellowish, with wrinkling folds of flesh above his collar.

She says her father made this, he said.

I saw not the book but his slack, sensual mouth and shifty eyes. I was so very sorry he had soiled our new-born friendship, rescuing and betraying me within three days.

There are fifty more just like it, he said.

You bastard, I said. I should slap your face.

He took me by the arm, as he would a pretty woman at a cocktail party, and led me quietly to one side. I’m truly sorry Micks, he whispered, but in a moment you will understand.

It’s pretty bloody clear already.

Shut-up. You have no inkling of what this is. Micks, this entire room is a
bloody shrine
to Bob McCorkle. He rolled his eyes, but this was more likely a habit of his reflexive mockery and I am sure he did not mean to undercut the notion, for there was something rather excited in his tone. Look, he whispered.

I found myself confronting a peculiar little altar where a thin line of fragrant smoke was rising from a pale-pink joss stick. Beside it were three small ceramic objects—idols, I suppose one would call them—and, in a gaudy frame, a newspaper photograph of a severe and handsome white man whose long black hair was swept back from a high forehead.

This is him?

I picked up the frame and for the first time looked into Bob McCorkle’s eyes, staring at me from under a veil of fifty-five screen dots. I would prefer it, said its creator, if you did not whisper.

I was explaining to Sarah, Slater said, that this is Tina’s father.

He isn’t, said Chubb.

‘Bapa,’ said Slater, means ‘father,’ as we both know.

Chubb looked to the girl and she, now seated in the large rattan chair, smirked at him. Even thus contorted her features were extraordinarily beautiful, with limpid brown eyes and
clear olive skin. It was really impossible to say what race she might be.

Chubb snatched the framed photograph from me, and the girl stiffened.

This is not your father, said Chubb, as you damn well know.

Are you
her father, old man?

Chubb hesitated, slipping his right hand in his jacket pocket. If I was, he said, I would not want you courting her like some debauched old toad in a Beardsley print.

Now, steady on.

N
o, you
steady
on-lah
. At the airlines, is it! But you cannot have her even if she wants you to. You own us all, is that it? Suit, chocolates, God knows what else you paid for.
Ada gula, ada semut
. Where there is sugar, there are ants. One more old white man come to Asia buying sex.

Sarah, Slater appealed to me.

But as seduction had really been his life and art, I did not see what I could honestly offer in his defence.

Chubb turned back to the girl. You trust him, is it?

The girl stared back implacably.

Chubb threw up his hands. I’m tired, he said, sick and tired of my
boh-doh
bloody life!

Again she smirked. She was a bad girl, that was clear, but who could know if she understood what he was getting at.

You realise how I work, yes or no? You see me with the stupid bloody bicycle. I am a scholar, isn’t it? First-class honours. First-class. Then why am I here? For who? For what? You think I’m Chua Chen Bok? Buy you a bloody mansion with my bicycles?

Now listen, old man.

Chubb wheeled around. You defend her, Slater?

Yes, exactly.

Then buy her, he said abruptly. Good price.

Whatever was happening, it was terrible to see: a man crumbling to dust before my eyes.

Buy them all, he shrieked. One price-
lah
. Very cheap. The garbage of my life—women, bicycles, vulcanizer, everything.

He looked around wildly, as if searching for something or someone to smash and hurt. He was not yet old—just on fifty I would reckon—and now he spun around and snatched a single volume from the shelf behind him.

I knew what it was. When I saw the cover, grey and wrinkled like the bark of a tree, a thrill ran through my body. Then I heard a howl of outrage from the girl, saw a rictus of triumph on Chubb’s face.

There now entered a new ingredient into this chaos—the scarred woman appeared at the top of the stairs, crouched low, a rusty machete in her hand.

Jesus, I said.

As Chubb turned to confront her, the girl rushed to take possession of the book—but the papery sweep of her slippers betrayed her and he flung her brutally aside. There was a loud clatter as a silver kris fell to the floor.

I say, said Slater.

The girl darted for her weapon, but Chubb kicked it from her hand. The girl cried out and the kris skittered like a puck across the floor and clattered down the stairs. At the same time the queerly twisted little warrior advanced into the room, swishing the rusty blade in front of her.

I was a complete and utter coward, but John Slater, to his great credit, calmly stepped into her path.

Give it to me, nanny, won’t you? There’s a darling.

The blade was swishing fast as a propeller yet he offered a hand to her.

The woman paused, her eyes dangerously bright. I swear I
saw her calculating whether it might be worth it just to kill us all.

There we are, nanny, Slater cooed.

She lowered her weapon but did not relinquish it or abandon her sense of readiness. Slater never took his eye off her but he spoke to Chubb, who was holding the book against his chest like a missal.

Give her back the book, Christopher.

This is not your business, Slater.

Put it back. Do as I say.

They don’t understand a word of it, said Chubb, neither of them. He jutted his round chin like a stubborn boy. Try them on your own stuff. I wish you luck.

Just lay it down, Chris.

Chubb then cast a sharp look in my direction as if to say Look how thick it is! So much poetry! I could not tell if he was celebrating or taunting me. You wish, he said to me, that I should leave this here to rot?

I dared not speak.

One could tell he was afraid of the Chinese woman but it was also clear that she was losing some of her resolve, for when Chubb rushed past she did not slash at him.

If the murderous kris and the machete had not indicated the value of that single volume, the triumphant look in Chubb’s eyes now left no doubt. As he clattered down the stairs, I thought: Fucking hell, what an issue I will have! For I knew that what he was escaping with was the life’s work of the creature known as Bob McCorkle, although had his name been revealed as Rumpelstiltskin I doubt I would have cared.

He will burn the bloody thing!

This was the first time I heard the girl’s speaking voice, and what a surprise it was, this rather rough Australian accent coming from her lovely face.

You bastard, she shouted, we will have you killed. And then she also dashed towards the stairs, where Slater, I am pleased to say, obstructed her.

Now, now, my sweet, he said, patting her slender shoulder. Mr Chubb is a man of letters. He will not burn a single couplet, I promise you. My friend Sarah is going to make sure of it.

He already killed my bapa.

Slater turned back to me. In his eyes there was an odd, excited light. You do understand, don’t you?

I know. It is Bob McCorkle.

Hearing this name, the girl for once looked at me directly. You knew Mr Bob, Mem?

Behind her back, Slater was making dramatic signals which I could not understand.

I have read some of his poetry, I told the girl. I would like to read more. I would like to see it published in a book.

Yes, she said firmly, that is what we want. He was a genius.

Good, I thought. This was moving far better than the krises and machetes might have predicted.

Please show Miss Wode-Douglass the journals, Slater said quickly You really must see them, Sarah, they’re truly extraordinary. That’s what I’ve been doing. It’s not what you think at all.

He was a genius, Tina said, as if daring me to disagree.

Yes, but I must find Mr Chubb.

It is dark, the girl said. He could be anywhere. How would you find him now?

He can only be in one place, I said, and I will go and see him there.

It was Thursday at eight o’clock. Suddenly it seemed I had all the time in the world.