My Life as a Fake Read Free Page B

and if he had not stopped, I doubt I would have had the courage to address him.
    Was that John Slater, he asked.
    The moment I heard that nasal, reedy voice I understood he was Australian.
    Yesterday, he said. That
matt saleh
with the camera?
    Yes, I said.
    He raised his thin black eyebrows but offered nothing more.
    Do you know him? I said.
    As he considered this, I admired his face, the impressive eyebrows falling away at a severe angle, the possibility of a smile hiding in the shadowy corners of his rather wistful mouth. He was bone and muscle, self-effacing, a little melancholy.
    Not really-
lah
.
    Are you a poet?
    He looked a little startled. I thought it was Slater, he said, then blinked. Isn’t it extraordinary how some people remain recognisable? One kind-
lah
.
    Shall I remember you to him?
    Oh, he wouldn’t know me, he said, and with no more than a nod of farewell, he set off, pushing the squeaking bicycle along the edge of a treacherous storm-water drain. Nothing in his manner invited me to follow and so I wandered back towards the hotel wondering what curious events had led a cultured Australian to a repair shop in a street called Jalan Campbell.

3
    At Heathrow John Slater had promised me chili crab and banana-leaf curry, but he was clearly a man who made his promises easily. I had been left alone to find what delicacies I could and had already wandered out into the dusty streets of Kampong Baru where there was a market, not in the street exactly, but in a sort of car park under a pair of giant mango trees. When I returned there it was already dark. It was not raining but I imagined it was the season that my father, who had done his stint in India, called Mango Showers, and in the yellow nimbus of the carbide lamps above the stalls and trolleys of the vendors, you could see and smell the damp as it mixed with the odours of sandalwood and satay and the inevitable undercurrent of sewage. In the distance there were a few sodium streetlamps and in the liquid dark beneath the mangoes one could see the glistening possum eyes of Malay men and boys whose idea of my rather tall white body seemed to have been formed by brightly lit images of American giants with ripped dresses and open thighs.
    Where you come from?
    They were not threatening but they were persistent and, finally, a little creepy.
    Where your husband?
    I had set out feeling angry with Slater but when I noticed him, seated alone at a table beneath the mangoes, I felt considerable relief.
    Seeing me, he rose, two long arms held high into thenight, as if he had been waiting to greet me all this time. I am not being modest when I say that I looked a fright: frumpy cotton frock, no hat, no make-up, my hair cut in a style one can achieve only with two mirrors and a pair of nail scissors, a look I had mastered years before at St Mary’s Wantage.
    Ah, the White Goddess!
    What tosh! Yet when his hand enclosed my own, it was persuasive. I cannot explain it—partly the size, but also a dry sort of heat, like a river rock. I was ridiculously relieved to see him.
    Then he was doing everything at once, seating me in the most gallant style, calling for more beer, delivering a proprietary discourse on the etiquette of eating from a banana leaf.
    I must say I do envy you, Micks, discovering everything yourself for the first time. You should write it all down. You know Lafcadio Hearn? ‘Do not fail to write down your first impressions as soon as possible.’ A tiny fellow, Hearn, very strange-looking. ‘They are evanescent, you know; they will never come to you again.’
    It was not hard to believe that he’d learned those inconsequential lines just now, and only in order to charm me. He was capable of it, I’m sure. Yet when he crushed my hand I was completely persuaded of his sincerity, also that his abandonment of me had been an exquisitely designed gift which I had insufficient character to properly appreciate. Thus, so easily, was my anger dealt with, and soon I