My Life as a Fake Read Free

Kangsar.
    He had said nothing about any such place. I know it. It was the first time I ever heard the words pronounced, and I was sure then—and am positive now—that as usual he had followed some opportunity, and not one of the mind. Recklessness and hedonism had fuelled the engine of his early genius, but they had also, ultimately, betrayed his promise. If he had written more and whored and sucked up just a little less, perhaps Lowell would’ve known exactly who he was.
    Well, he said, I’ll definitely be back for Wednesday dinner. Enjoy KL. I really envy you discovering it.
    And that was it. No apologies. No concern for my well being. As I hung up the phone I finally understood poor Lizzie Slater, the second wife, the one who ended up in St Bart’s with alcoholic poisoning.
    The thing is, poor ruined pretty Lizzie told me, the thing about dear old Johnno, dear, he always does exactly as he damn well likes.
    I am not a good tourist, as I said, but that second night I was too angry to stay in my comical hotel. I forced myself to eat satay in a street market in what is called Kampong Baru, a Malay quarter five minutes’ walk from the Merlin.
    The next day, likewise, I grumpily stepped out to stare at the Batu Caves, the Moorish railway station, the stinking Chinese wet markets. The smells were the most challengingaspect of my tourism, not merely the wet markets, but also the alien mixture of smoke and spice and sewer and two-stroke exhausts and all the sweet mouldy aroma of those broad-leafed tropical grasses. I preferred walking the streets very early in the cool morning as the Sikh bank guards were eating sweet
barfi
and drinking their beloved cow’s milk in the street. The rain trees were lovely, all of Jalan Treacher heavy with green leaves and yellow flowers. Only the sight of a boy cutting a banana tree with a machete reminded me that, not three years before, the gentle smiling inhabitants of Kampong Baru had been butchering their Chinese neighbours. Blood had run along those deep drains beside which I now walked.
    I wandered largely without harassment. This was 1972 after all, and one would’ve had to travel to the east coast to find people easily exercised by the length of a dress or the bareness of one’s shoulders. Moreover, the British colonial past was still almost the present and one could pop off Batu Road into the Coliseum and find, on every one of the white-clothed tables, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. This was all interesting enough, but what I had told Slater was true: I was an editor, and
The Modern Review
was my life. I actually preferred to sit inside my hotel room and read, not only the poetry submitted to the magazine, but also
Paradise Lost
, which always reminded me, Mr Leavis notwithstanding, of what my life was given to. In the afternoon I again paid service to the word by writing long letters to my three most important board members: Lord Antrim, Wystan Auden, and a wonderful Mrs McKay, the divorced wife of a Manchester industrialist whose generosity had saved the magazine more than once. In each letter I mentioned our outstanding printers’ bill but did not really expect anything to come of it. They had risen to the occasion too many times before and were, Isuspected, exhausted by a magazine which might never be what we had all hoped.
    Slater showed up on Thursday, unexpectedly falling into step beside me as I walked across the bridge towards Jalan Campbell where I had been anticipating the company of sodden red-faced planters who I hoped would say appalling raj-like things.
    He was wearing walking shorts and heavy boots, and was still so sunny and unrepentant that I began to wonder if he had forgotten our conversation at the Faber dinner party, if he imagined that I would actually enjoy exploring a steaming Asian city on my own.
    Micks, he said, I have something to tell you.
    Ah, I thought—and was disappointed when he launched not into an apology but a very detailed account of his