King Rat

She came through the curtains with a towel. She stood looking at him. Yes, her tuan was a fine man. Strong and fine and the color of his skin pleasing. Wah-lah, she thought, I am lucky to have such a man. But he is so big and I am so small. He towers over me by two heads.

Even so, she knew that she pleased him. It is easy to please a man. If you are a woman. And not ashamed of being woman.

“What’re you smiling at?” he asked her as he saw the smile.

“Ah, tuan, I just think, you are so big and I so small. And yet, when we lie down, there is not so much difference, no?”

He chuckled and slapped her fondly on the buttocks and took the towel. “How ’bout a drink?”

“It is ready, tuan.”

“What else is ready?”

She laughed with her mouth and her eyes. Her teeth were stark white and her eyes deep brown and her skin was smooth and sweet-smelling. “Who knows, tuan?” Then she left the room.

Now there’s one helluva dame, the King thought, looking after her, drying himself vigorously. I’m a lucky guy.

Kasseh had been arranged by Sutra when the King had come to the village the first time. The details had been fixed neatly. When the war was over, he was to pay Kasseh twenty American dollars for every time he stayed with her. He had knocked a few bucks off the first asking price—business was business—but at twenty bucks she was a great buy.

“How do you know I’ll pay?” he had asked her.

“I do not. But if you do not, you do not, and then I gained only pleasure. If you pay me, then I have money and pleasure too.” She had smiled.

He slipped on the native slippers she had left for him, then walked through the bead curtain. She was waiting for him.

Peter Marlowe was still watching Sutra and Cheng San down by the shore. Cheng San bowed and got into the boat and Sutra helped shove the boat into the phosphorescent sea. Then Sutra returned to the hut.

“Tabe-lah!” Peter Marlowe said.

“Would thou eat more?”

“No thank you, Tuan Sutra.”

My word, thought Peter Marlowe, it’s a change to be able to turn down food. But he had eaten his fill, and to eat more would have been impolite. It was obvious that the village was poor and the food would not be wasted.

“I have heard,” he said tentatively, “that the news, the war news, is good.”

“Thus too I have heard, but nothing that a man could repeat. Vague rumors.”

“It is a pity that times are not like those in former years. When a man could have a wireless and hear news or read a newspaper.”

“True. It is a pity.”

Sutra made no sign of understanding. He squatted down on his mat and rolled a cigarette, funnel-like, and began to smoke through his fist, sucking the smoke deep within him.

“We hear bad tales from the camp,” he said at last.

“It is not so bad, Tuan Sutra. We manage, somehow. But not to know how the world is, that is surely bad.”

“I have heard it told that there was a wireless in the camp and the men who owned the wireless were caught. And that they are now in Utram Road Jail.”

“Hast thou news of them? One was a friend of mine.”

“No. We only heard that they had been taken there.”

“I would dearly like to know how they are.”

“Thou knowest the place, and the manner of all men taken there, so thou already knowest that which is done.”

“True. But one hopes that some may be lucky.”

“We are in the hands of Allah, said the Prophet.”

“On whose name be praise.”

Sutra glanced at him again; then, calmly puffing his cigarette, he asked, “Where didst thou learn the Malay?”

Peter Marlowe told him of his life in the village. How he had worked the paddy fields and lived as a Javanese, which is almost the same as living as a Malay. The customs are the same and the language the same, except for the common Western words—wireless in Malaya, radio in Java, motor in Malaya, auto in Java. But the rest was the same. Love, hate, sickness and the words that a man will speak to a man or a man to a woman were the same. The important things were always the same.

“What was the name of thy woman in the village, my son?” Sutra asked. It would have been impolite to ask before, but now, when they had talked of things of the spirit and the world and philosophy and Allah and certain of the sayings of the Prophet, on whose name be praise, now it was not rude to ask.

“Her name was N’ai Jahan.”

The old man sighed contentedly, remembering his youth. “And she loved thee much and long.”

“Yes.” Peter Marlowe could see her clearly.

She had come to his hut one night when he was preparing for bed. Her sarong was red and gold, and tiny sandals peeped from beneath its hem. There was a thin necklace of flowers around her neck and the fragrance of the flowers filled the hut and all his universe.

She had laid her bed roll beside her feet and bowed low before him.

“My name is N’ai Jahan,” she had said. “Tuan Abu, my father, has chosen me to share thy life, for it is not good for a man to be alone. And thou hast been alone for three months now.”