The Orientalist and the Ghost Read Free Page A

to the veranda. Seconds later there was a flutter above Charles’s head as a fan of fluted paper wafted the air, disturbing his pale Byronic curls. The fan was attached to the ceiling and was moved back and forth by a length of string. The string descended to the veranda, where it ended in a loop secured around the big toe of the servant boy. The servant boy sat on a chair, swinging his foot and simmering with humiliation. I thought the contraption vulgar and decadent and very clever. Under the fluted paper breeze Charles tippled on gin and lemon barley and enlightened me about my future duties as Assistant Resettlement Officer.
    Evening came and consumed Malaya with a rich and sultry darkness. As Charles lit an oil lamp a powerful siren tore through the village.
    ‘Seven p.m. curfew,’ Charles said. ‘All the villagers are confined to their huts from now till five a.m.’
    ‘Does the curfew apply to us as well?’ I asked.
    ‘No. Though to stray beyond the fence after dark might be damaging to your life expectancy.’ Charles gave a rueful chuckle, like a host regretting the north-facing aspect of the guestroom.
    We dined on the veranda, the kerosene lamp bringing in moths from far and wide. How the winged fiends rejoiced , pirouetting and colliding midair, their shadowy doppelgängers looming on the walls. We dined on quail-egg soup, duck in ginger and
hoi sin
sauce, jasmine rice and a dessert of lychees and rambutans, served to us by Winston Lau, the cook. Once he’d put the plates on the table Winston retreated to the shadows, hungering for leftovers and resenting what mouthfuls we ate.
    Much of the village could be seen from the veranda. One could see as far as the perimeter fence, where armed guards strolled by on night patrol. Tilly lamps illuminated the outermost foliage of the jungle; threshold to the land of scorpions, flying reptiles and orang-utan (and other beasts of razor teeth and poison stings in my wildlife encyclopaedia of South East Asia). The jungle was nature at its most terrible and prolific. Beneath the tranquil surface of leaves it lay in wait, claws protracted.
    Candle- and lamp-light leaked from hut doorways and the ventilation gaps under the roofs. Charles told me how the Chinese families lived in those huts in the hours of curfew; how they piddled in buckets and slept back-to-back on thin reed mats, always breathing the breath of others. The look on my face betrayed my disquiet, and Charles quickly reassured me that the squatter culture is very different from ours, and the Chinese are less desirous of privacy.
    No sooner had we laid down our forks than Winston Lau swiped our plates and substituted them with tall warm bottles of Tiger beer. The presence of the beer, or perhaps the hiss of liberated carbonates as bottle opener detached cap, soon enticed a gang of Malay Special Constables. They had a slow, languid walk and carefree laughter, as if the rifles they wore were for hunting squirrels. They laughed to hear who I was – as though I were the incarnation of some joke they’d heard about Englishmen – and introduced themselves melodiously; a barbershop quartet of Abdullahs and Mohammeds. They bantered with Charles in Malay and accepted his offer of beer – anticipation of this offer having brought them over in the first place. They drank with drowsy smiles and I found it hard to imagine them chasing bandits or shooting guns or being anything other than good-natured and lazy.
    After they had gone I began to yawn – mad, despotic yawns that wrenched my mouth into a fathomless cave. The night was syrupy with heat and the mosquitoes had savaged me, leaving my skin a hideously itchy, bumpy terrain. I scratched, irresponsible as a dog with fleas, until my arms became swollen and bled rubies of blood.
    On my hundredth yawn Charles stood up and announced he would put some music on. ‘Jolly good,’ I murmured.
    In his absence the throb of my pulse, made loud and authoritative by alcohol,