reading

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Anthony Burgess

Title Page

Introduction

Time for a Tiger

Dedication

Disclaimer

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

The Enemy in the Blanket

Epigraph

Disclaimer

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Beds in the East

Epigraph

Disclaimer

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Glossary

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917. He served in the army from 1940 to 1954 before becoming a colonial education officer. It was while he held this post that doctors told him he would die, and he decided to try to live by writing. A prolific and respected author, Burgess died in 1993.

Anthony Burgess

The Malayan Trilogy

Time for a Tiger
The Enemy in the Blanket
Beds in the East

ABOUT THE BOOK

Victor Crabbe is a well meaning, ineffectual English schoolteacher in the tropics, keen to teach the Malays what the West can do for them. In Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East Burgess lays bare the absurdities, conflicts and confusions of the dog days of Empire.

ALSO BY ANTHONY BURGESS

GLOSSARY

Since Malaysia became an independent state, the Romanized spelling of Malay—now called ‘The National Language’ or Bahasa negara—has changed a little. Thus ch is represented as c, and o has mostly become u. As the following glossary relates to the language of pre-1957 Malaya, the spellings given have not been modified in the new (and often inept) orthographical light.

ang pow (Chinese)—lit., red parcel. The token gift wrapped in red paper that is placed, for good luck, in the mouth of the New Year dragon.

amok (Malay)—a disease, probably wholly psychopathic, in which the victim kills indiscriminately until he is himself killed. The sick man is called an amok or a pěngamok.

bintang tiga (Malay)—lit., three stars. Applied to Communist terrorists on account of their badge.

bunga mas (Malay)—flower of gold. The elaborate and costly tribute paid annually by conquered Malay rulers to their Siamese conquerors.

chongsam (Chinese)—an elegant silk dress for ladies, close-fitting, with the skirt slit on both sides as far as the thigh.

chium (Malay)—a kiss; to kiss (though not in the European manner: the lover’s nose rubs the cheek of the beloved).

dhoti (Urdu)—a dress worn by some Indians, consisting of a cloth wound round the body.

dia takut kapak kěchil, tuan (Malay)—‘He is frightened of the (men with the) little axes, sir.’

gula malaka (Malay)—lit., Malaccan sugar. A dessert made of coconut milk, sago and molasses.

Hari Raya (Malay)—lit., ‘Great Day’—the day of festivity which celebrates the end of the fasting month.

ikan merah (Malay)—lit., red fish. An edible sea fish that has no European equivalent.

Jawi (Arabic)—East, Eastern. Used of the Arabic script as applied to the Malay language.

Kaum nabi lot (Malay from Arabic)—lit., tribe of the Prophet Lot. Homosexuals.

kědai (Tamil)—shop (often drinking shop where groceries are sold, or vice versa).

kung hee fatt choy (Chinese)—good luck and prosperity: a greeting at Chinese New Year.

ma’alum-lah (Malay, from Arabic)—It’s like this . . . Well, you see . . .

mee (Chinese)—pasta; the original spaghetti imported by Marco Polo to Italy from China.

merdeka (Malay from Sanskrit)—independence, freedom (the battle cry of the United Malay Nationalist Organization UMNO).

muezzin (Arabic)—A religious officer whose chief duty is to call the faithful to prayer. (Also bilal.)

nusus (Arabic)—refusal to engage in marital sex; one of the surest grounds for divorce in Islam.

padi (Malay)—rice (in the field). (Rice in the store is běras; rice on the table is nasi.)

parang (Malay)—knife, dagger—used for clearing scrub and jungle, also as a weapon.

pejabat kaum asli (Malay)—lit., office of tribe of originals, hence Department of Aborigines.

penanggalan (Malay)—vampire which possesses only a head and dangling entrails.

sakai (Malay)—term used to describe aborigines (improper: it literally means slave).

sama sama (Malay)—lit., same same, ‘The same to you.’ Formula used in reply to ‘thank you’.

sarong (Malay)—the tubular cloth wrapping worn as a skirt by both Malay men and women.

sělamat (Malay from Arabic)—lit., safe. Used in greetings and valedictions.

tack wallah (mock Urdu)—a man who takes much and gives little; a mean or parsimonious man.

tuan kasi lima linggit (Chinese version of Malay ‘lima ringgit’)—Tuan gave me five dollars.

Upanishad—One of the Sanskrit sacred books, usually ending with the threefold ‘Shantih’ (divine peace).

wayang kulit (Malay)—lit., show of skin. The Javanese Shadow play, in which figures of skin or hide are projected as moving shadows on to a lighted screen.

yashmak (Arabic)—the veil which covers the face of a married woman, except for the eyes.

yin-yang (Chinese)—the eternal opposition between the forces which sustain the universe is expressed through yin (the female principle) and yang (the male).

INTRODUCTION

Malaya, or the Federated Malay States, was the last major territory to achieve total independence of British control, and I, as a colonial officer in Malaya and Borneo from 1954 until 1960, was an eyewitness and also participant in the somewhat painful, somewhat comic, processes which brought it about.

Strictly speaking, Malaya was never a British colony in the sense that the North American territories were before 1776, or India was until its postwar partition. In the early nineteenth century the British East India Company had a trading post on the island of Penang and a fort called Butterworth on the mainland. The true East Indian colonists were the Dutch, but, when the Dutch and their overseas possessions came under the rule of Napoleon, it became necessary for the British to extend their sway, for the protection of trade routes, in the coastal areas of Malaya. Stamford Raffles, an East India Company clerk, exhibited that British gift for improvisation which had not yet been codified and solidified by a Colonial Office in London, and made out of an uninhabited mangrove swamp called Singapore a great port and trading depot. This, and Malacca – a decayed Portuguese colony whose harbour was silting up – and Penang became the only Malayan territories which flew the British flag, and their collective title was the Straits Settlements. The mainland of Malay was never ruled directly by the British at all.

Malaya consisted of a number of sultanates or rajahdoms which, except for Negri Sembilan, professed Islamic law and, in a somewhat eccentric way, subscribed to the Islamic religion. The Malays, a brown, handsome, lazy, wholly attractive race, had been converted to Islam by Arab traders but had a very vague idea of the origins of this conversion. Malay history seems to think that Alexander the Great, helped by Aristotle, had been the fount of it. The fact remained that, at the time of Raffles, Moslem sultans or rajahs ruled small kingdoms of Malays, but, because of the trouble caused by rebels, pirates and robber barons, they were anxious to have their authority stiffened by a British presence. This meant the availability of British soldiers and warships, as well as the setting up of a British Adviser in each of the Malay states. After the Second World War, during which the occupying Japanese ruled tyrannically, the Malays looked forward to a political independence for which, through training in the democratic processes, the British were very willing to prepare them. Kuala Lumpur, the centre of British administration, was to become the capital of a free federation of Malay states ruled over nominally by a sultan elected from the existing sultans. Singapore was to organise her own political future; Malacca and Penang were to join the federation. This is the situation as presented in my novel, which covers roughly the period from 1955 to 1957, the year of independence.

The Malays, who are mostly immigrants, historic or prehistoric, from such East Indian territories as Sumatra and Java, call themselves ‘the sons of the soil’ and consider that they are the only rightful inhabitants of the Malay peninsular. Political rule is totally in their hands, but they show little talent for industry and commerce. These activities, as well as the running of offices and railways, have traditionally and gladly been assumed by immigrants from China and India. The wealth of Malaya was always in the hands of the Chinese; Tamils and Bengalis and Sikhs took on posts in the Civil Service or in communications and the police force. One of the most attractive aspects of Malayan life, in the period of which I write, was the profusion of race and culture and language. But the races did not always get on well together. The Malays resented Chinese wealth and were determined to keep the Chinese out of politics. They despised the Indians and had derisive names for them. They even despised the English, whom they called ‘Mat Salleh’ or ‘Holy Joe’. The situation since independence has often been dangerous, and there have been odd eruptions of racial riot. But Malaya has to be accepted as a multiracial territory and, through language and culture, the former presence of the not unkindly British has been well remembered.

My story is about the races of Malaya, as exemplified in characters who have, or had, counterparts in real life. Acting as a somewhat ineffectual buffer between Sikhs, Tamils, Eurasians, Chinese and Malays is Victor Crabbe, an education officer who has come to Malaya after the death of his first wife and his marriage to his second. He genuinely loves Malaya but seems powerless to help it along the peaceful road to self-determination. His progress is backward and leads to a death occasioned by a shocking revelation about his first wife. He is not untypical of the decent, well-equipped, well-meaning Englishmen who took on posts in the tropics. His second wife is not untypical of the British memsahib, who considered herself superior to the ‘natives’. The other characters may sometimes seem implausible, but the reader may be assured that such characters existed during the period of my term in Malaya.

The action takes place in Malay sultanates with invented names. I think it is now safe to declare identities. Crabbe starts off in Kuala Hantu (‘Ghost Estuary’) in the state of Lanchap: this is really Kuala Kangsar, the site of the famous Malay College, in the state of Perak. He moves to the east coast for the second book – to what is really Kota Baharu in Kelantan. In the final third of his story he is in an unnamed territory which may be identified with any part of the federation the reader wishes: it is a kind of Malaya in microcosm.

Fictitious or not, all the Malay states that abutted on the jungle were, during the period described, plagued by the activities of Chinese communist terrorists. These were young men and women, possessed of weapons left over from the war and animated by political ideals taken from Peking, who were determined to prevent Malaya’s emergence to parliamentary democracy and wished to see a communist Malaya ruled by Chinese. The situation was called the dzarurat – Arabic for ‘emergency’ – but it was really a war. The Malay Regiment, which combined British and Malay troops, was dedicated to ridding the jungles and villages of the terrorists, and the armed police force did its own share in burning out pockets of dissidence and violence. The police force is mentioned often in this book. It was a specially augmented organisation equipped for war as well for the keeping of civil order and it had a large number of police lieutenants, most of whom had served in the Palestine Police. The states were divided into police zones – circles and contingents – and titles of authority abounded with impressive initials. The conduct of the war was in the hands of so-called war committees, usually headed by the Mentri Besar or Prime Minister, the executive assistant of the ruler of the state. The war was resolved not in the Vietnam manner, with napalm and deforestation, but through the declaration of amnesties, the provision of free passages to communist China, the protection of rural Malaya throughout the creation of ‘new villages’ away from the jungle and the systematic freezing of supplies from the terrorists.

We have to understand the nature of the East, and also of Islam: we can no longer, since Vietnam, regard those far regions as material for mere fairy tales, like the popular but regrettable Sandokan. It was considered in America that, if my book had appeared earlier, it might have had some small effect on the attitude towards Orientals which, during the Vietnam adventure, vitiated any hope of American success. The Americans understood neither their friends nor their enemies. To many, the Far East hardly exists, except as material for televisual diversion. It is hoped that this novel, which has its own elements of diversion, may, through tears and laughter, educate.

“EAST? THEY WOULDN’T know the bloody East if they saw it. Not if you was to hand it to them on a plate would they know it was the East. That’s where the East is, there.” He waved his hand wildly into the black night. “Out there, west. You wasn’t there, so you wouldn’t know. Now I was. Palestine Police from the end of the war till we packed up. That was the East. You was in India, and that’s not the East any more than this is. So you know nothing about it either. So you needn’t be talking.”

Nabby Adams, supine on the bed, grunted. It was four o’clock in the morning and he did not want to be talking. He had had a confused coloured dream about Bombay, shot with sharp pangs of unpaid bills. Over it all had brooded thirst, thirst for a warmish bottle of Tiger beer. Or Anchor. Or Carlsberg. He said, “Did you bring any beer back with you?”

Flaherty jerked like a puppet. “What did I tell you? What am I always saying? May God strike me down dead this instant if I wasn’t just thinking to myself as I came in that that’s the first bloody question you’d ask. Beer, beer, beer. For God’s sake, man, haven’t you another blessed thought in your head at all but beer? And supposing I had put a few bottles for myself in the fridge, don’t you think it would be the same as always? You lumbering downstairs with your great bloody big weight and that dog after you, clanking its bloody anti-rabies medal against the treads of the stairs, and you draining the lot of it before breakfast and leaving the bloody empties on the floor for any self-respecting decent man who keeps Christian hours to trip over. I did not bring any beer back, though those soldiers is generous to a fault and was for plying me with loads of the stuff and as much as you want, they said, any time you like and all at N.A.A.F.I. prices.”

Nabby Adams stirred on his bed and the dog beneath it stirred too, the medal on its collar chinking like money on the floor. Should he get up now and drink water? He shuddered at the thought of the clean, cold, neuter taste. But thirst seemed to grip his whole body like a fever. He levered himself up slowly, six feet eight inches of thirst, ghostlike behind the darned and frayed mosquito-net.

“I’m worried about you, Nabby,” said Police-Lieutenant Flaherty. “Worried to death. I was saying to-night that you’re not the person I made you into at the end of your last tour. By God, you’re not. By Christ, you’re back to the old days in Johore with the towkays round at the end of the month waving their bills round the office and me not able to go into a kedai at all for fear of the big bloody smarmy smiles on their yellow faces and they saying, ‘Where’s the big tuan?’ and ‘Has the big tuan got his pay yet, tuan?’ and ‘The big tuan has a big kira, tuan, and when in the name of God is he going to pay?’ Christ, man, I was ashamed of my white skin. You letting the side down like that. And I got you right. I got you clear. I got you on that bloody boat with money in your pocket. And now look at you.” Flaherty dithered in a palsy of indignation. “I’ve covered up for you, by God I have. There was the other day with the C.P.O. round and you on the beer again in that filthy bloody kedai where I’d be ashamed to be seen, boozing away with that corporal of yours. Leading him astray, and he a bloody Muslim.”

“You leave him alone,” said Nabby Adams. He was on his feet, a little unsteady, a huge hand stained with tobacco-tar seeking support from the dressing-table. Gaunt, yellow-brown, towering, he moved another step. The black bitch came from under the bed and shook herself. Her medal clanked. Her tail stirred as she looked up, happy and worshipping, at the vast man in shrunken dirty pyjamas. “You leave him alone. He’s all right.”

“Christ, man, I wouldn’t touch him with my walking-stick. They’re talking, I tell you, about you letting the side down, slinking from kedai to kedai with your bloody corporal at your tail. Why don’t you mix a bit more with your own race, man? Some damn good nights in the Club and they’re the salt of the earth in the Sergeants’ Mess, and that fellow Crabbe was playing the piano the other night, a real good singsong, and all you do is prowl around looking for credit in dirty little kedais.”

“I do mix with my own race.” Nabby Adams was moving slowly towards the door. The dog stood expectant by the stairhead, waiting to escort him to the refrigerator. Her tail beat dully on the door of the bedroom of Police-Lieutenant Keir. “And you wouldn’t speak like that if you wasn’t tight.”

“Tight! Tight!” Flaherty danced on his bottom, gripping the chair-seat as if he thought it would take off. “Listen who’s talking about being tight. Oh, God, man, get wise to yourself. And make up your mind about what bloody race you belong to. One minute it’s all about being a farmer’s boy in Northamptonshire and the next you’re on about the old days in Calcutta and what the British have done to Mother India and the snake-charmers and the bloody temple-bells. Ah, wake up, for God’s sake. You’re English right enough but you’re forgetting how to speak the bloody language, what with traipsing about with Punjabis and Sikhs and God knows what. You talk Hindustani in your sleep, man. Sort it out, for God’s sake. If you want to put a loincloth on, get cracking, but don’t expect the privileges —/—” (the word came out in a wet blurr; the needle stuck for a couple of grooves) “the privileges, the privileges …”

Nabby Adams went slowly down the stairs. Clank, clank, clank came after him, and a dog’s happy panting. He switched on the light in the big, bare, dirty room where he and his brother officers ate and lounged and yawned over the illustrated papers. He opened the refrigerator door. He saw only chill bottles of water. In the deep-freeze compartment was a rich bed of snow with incrustations of month-old ice on the metal walls. He took a bottle of water and gulped down mouthful after mouthful, but the thirst abated not at all, rather the lust for a real drink mounted to an obscene pitch. What day was it? Confused, he wondered whether this was late in the night or early in the morning. Outside the smeared uncurtained windows was solid black, heavy and humid, and there was not a sound, not even a distant cock-crow. It was near the end of the month, of that he was sure, a day or two off at the most. Must be, because of the petrol returns. But then, what difference did that make? Gloomily he watched bills parade and curtsy before his inward eye.

And these shadowy bills, further back, grown as familiar as a wart or a jagged tooth. And the accounts in the drinking-shops. And the club-bill, three months old. And the letter that blasted swine Hart had written to his boss. Hart, the treasurer, the Field Force major, hail-fellow-well-met with the Sultan’s A.D.C., bowing with joined pudgy hands to H.H., well in, the man with the big future. ‘I’ll get him,’ thought Nabby Adams. ‘I’ll get that bloody car of his. I’ll have the Land Rover waiting next Friday because he’s always at the Club on Fridays and when he drives out I’ll give him a nice bloody little nick on his offside mudguard. He can’t do that to me.’ Proud, tall, unseeing, clutching the belly of the waterbottle, Nabby Adams stood, thinking up revenge, while the dog adored, panting.

“That was the East, man. Palestine. You wasn’t there, so you wouldn’t know. There was one place I used to go to and there was a bint there who did a bit of the old belly-dancing. You know, you’ve seen it on the pictures. If you haven’t, you’re bloody ignorant. You know.” Flaherty got up and gyrated clumsily, lifting arms to show sweat-soaked armpits in his off-white shirt. He crooned a sinuous dirge as accompaniment. Then he sat down and watched Nabby Adams move to his bed and fall heavily upon it. With a clank the dog disappeared under the bed. “You know,” said Flaherty, “you’re not bloody interested. You’re not interested in anything, that’s your bloody trouble. I’ve travelled the world and I tell you about this bint and what we did in the back room and you don’t take a blind bit of notice. Here.” Flaherty took a cigarette from the tin on Nabby Adams’s bedside table. “Here. Watch this. And I bet these aren’t paid for either. Here.” He lit the cigarette and puffed till the end glowed brightly. Then he began to chew. Nabby Adams watched, open-mouthed, as the cigarette disappeared behind the working lips. It all went in, including the red glow, and it did not come out again. “Easy,” said Flaherty, “if you’re fit, which you’re bloody well not. Watch this.” He took a tumbler from the table and began to eat that too.

“Oh, no,” groaned Nabby Adams, as he heard the brittle crunching. Eyes shut, he saw, white against red:

“Easy.” Flaherty spat blood and glass on the floor. “By Christ, it was a good night to-night. You should have been there, Nabby, drinking with decent people, salt of the earth. Laugh? I never laughed so much. Here, listen. There’s a Malay sergeant-major there. They call him Tong, see? That’s Malay for a barrel, but you wouldn’t know that, being ignorant. I never seen such a beer-belly. Well, he told a story …”

“Oh, go to bloody bed,” said Nabby Adams. Eyes closed, he lay as in death, his huge calloused feet projecting beyond the end of the bed, pushing out the mosquito-net.

Flaherty was hurt, dignified in sorrow. “All right,” he said. “Gratitude. After all I’ve done. Gratitude. But I’ll show you the act of a gentleman. We still make gentlemen where I come from. Wait. Just wait. I’ll make you feel bloody small.”

He lurched out to his own room. He lurched back in again. Nabby Adams heard an approaching clink. In wonder and hope he opened his eyes. Flaherty was carrying a carrier-bag covered with Chinese ideograms, and in the bag were three bottles.

“Oh, thank God, thank God,” prayed Nabby Adams. “God bless you, Paddy.” He was out of bed, alive, quick in his movements, looking for the opener, must be here somewhere, left it in that drawer. Thank God, thank God. The metal top clinked on the floor, answered by the emerging clank of the dog. Nabby Adams raised to his lips the frothing bottle and drank life. Bliss. His body drank, fresh blood flowed through his arteries, the electric light seemed brighter, what were a few bills anyway?

Flaherty watched indulgently, as a mother watches. “Don’t say I don’t do anything for you,” he repeated.

“Yes, yes,” gasped Nabby Adams, breathless after the first draught, his body hungering for the next. “Yes, Paddy.” He raised the bottle and drank life to the lees. Now he could afford to sit down, smoke a cigarette, drink the next bottle at leisure. But wait. What time was it? Four forty-five, said the alarm-clock. That meant he would have to go back to bed and sleep for a little. For if he didn’t what the hell was he going to do? Three bottles wouldn’t last him till it was time to go to the Transport Office. But in any case if he drank another bottle now that would mean only one bottle to wake up with. And no bottle for breakfast. He groaned to himself: there was no end to his troubles.

“Those Japanese tattooists,” said Flaherty. “Bloody clever. By God they are. I seen one fellow in Jerusalem, wait, I’m telling a lie, it was in Alex, when I went there for a bit of leave, one fellow with a complete foxhunt on his back. Bloody marvellous. Horses and hounds and huntsmen, and the bloody bugle blowing tally-ho and you could just see the tail of the fox, the bloody brush you know, disappearing up his. What’s the bloody matter with you?” He writhed in petulance, his lined frowning face stern and beetled. “In God’s name what’s the matter? I bring you home food and drink and expect a bit of gratitude and a bit of cheerful company and what do I get? The bloody miseries.” He loped round the room, hands clasped behind, head bent, shoulders hunched, in a mime of lively dejection. “Here,” he said, straightening, “this won’t do. Do you know what the bloody time is? If you can sit up all night I can’t. We do a bit of work in Operations. We help to kill the bloody bandits. Bang bang bang.” He sprayed the room with a sub-machine-gun of air. “Takka takka takka takka takka.” Stiff-legged he moved over to Nabby Adams and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Never you mind, Nabby my boy, it’ll all be the same in a hundred bloody years. As Shakespeare says. Listen.” Eagerly he sat down, leaning forward with crackling eageness. “Shakespeare. You’ve never read any, being bloody ignorant. Or Robbie Burns. Drunk as a fiddler’s bitch.” He leaned back comfortably with closed eyes, singing with wide gestures:

“And what if I do,” said Flaherty. “What have they ever done for me? That bloody Jock Keir with the money rattling in his pocket. Tack wallah’s joy-bells. Saving it up, bloody boat-happy, but he’ll down another man’s pint as soon as look and with never a word out of him. Have you seen his book at the Club, man? Virgin soil. Three bucks’ worth of orange squash in six bloody months. Where is he till I get at him?” Flaherty sent the chair flying and tore raggedly out of the room. On the landing he forgot his mission and could be heard bumping and slithering down the stairs. Nabby Adams listened for the flush of the lavatory, but there was no sound more to be heard. Nothing except the dog truffling for fleas, the tick of the rusty alarm-clock. Nabby Adams went back to bed, the dog rattled her way under it, then he realised he hadn’t put out the light. Never mind.

He dozed. Soon the bilal could be heard, calling over the dark. The bilal, old and crotchety, had climbed the worm-gnawed stairs to the minaret, had paused a while at the top, panting, and then intoned his first summons to prayer, the first waktu of the long indifferent day.

There is no God but God, but what did anybody care? Below and about him was dark, and the dark shrouded the bungalow of the District Officer, the two gaudy cinemas, the drinking-shops where the towkays snored on their pallets, the Istana—empty now, for the Sultan was in Bangkok with his latest Chinese dance-hostess, the Raja Perempuan at Singapore for the race-meetings—and the dirty, drying river.

Like a lonely Rhine-daughter he sang the thin liquids, remembering again the trip to Mecca he had made, out of his own money too, savings helped by judicious bets on tipped horses and a very good piece of advice about rubber given by a Chinese business-man. Gambling indeed was forbidden, haram, but he had wanted to go to Mecca and become a haji. By Allah, he had become a haji, Tuan Haji Mohammed Nasir bin Abdul Talib, and, by Allah, all would be forgiven. Now, having seen the glory of the great mosque at Mecca, the Masjid-ul-Haram, he despised a little his superstitious fellow-countrymen who, ostensibly Muslim, yet clung to their animistic beliefs and left bananas on graves to feed the spirits of the dead. He had it on good authority that Inche Idris bin Zainal, teacher in the school and a big man in the Nationalist Movement, had once ordered eggs and bacon in a restaurant in Tahi Panas. He knew that Inche Jamaluddin drank brandy and that Inche Abu Zakaria sneaked off to small villages during the fasting month so that he might eat and drink without interference from the prowling police.

God knoweth best. Allahu alam. The nether fires awaited such, a hot house in naraka. Not for them the Garden with the river flowing beneath. He looked down on the blackness, trying to pierce it with his thin voice, seeking to irradiate with the Word the opacity of Kuala Hantu. But the town slept on. The white men turned in their sleep uneasily, dreaming of pints of draught bitter in wintry English hotels. The mems slept in adjoining beds, their dreams oppressed by servants who remained impassive in the face of hard words and feigned not to understand kitchen-Malay made up of Midland vowels. Only in a planter’s bungalow was there a dim show of light, but this was out of the town, some miles along the Timah road. The fair-haired young man in the Drainage and Irrigation Department was leaving, sibilating a sweet good-morning to the paunched planter who was his friend. He stole to his little car, turning to wave in the dark at the lighted porch.

But soon the dawn came up, heaving over the eastern edge like a huge flower in a nature-film. The stage electrician, under notice, slammed his flat hands on the dimmers and there was a swift suffusion of light. The sky was vast over the mountains with their crowns of jungle, over the river and the attap huts. The Malayan dawn, unseen of all save the bilal and the Tamil gardeners, grew and grew and mounted with an obscene tropical swiftness, and morning announced itself as a state, not a process.

At seven o’clock Nabby Adams awoke and reached for the remaining bottle. The dog came from under the bed and stretched with a long groan. Nabby Adams put on yesterday’s shirt and slacks and thrust his huge feet into old slippers. Then he went softly down the stairs, followed closely by the clank clank clank of the dog. The Chinese boy, their only servant, was laying the table—a grey-white cloth, plates, cups, two bottles of sauce. Nabby Adams approached him ingratiatingly. Though he had been in the Federation for six years he spoke neither Malay nor Chinese: his languages were Hindustani, Urdu, a little Punjabi, Northamptonshire English. He said:

The squat, ugly, slant-eyed boy hesitated, then pulled from his pocket a five-dollar note.

Nabby Adams went through the dirty stucco portico of the little police mess, out into the tiny kampong. The police mess had formerly been a maternity home for the wives of the Sultans of the state. Faded and tatty, peeling, floorboards eaten and unpolished, its philoprogenitive glory was a memory only. Now the spider had many homes, the chichaks, scuttling up the walls, throve on the many insects, and tattered calendars showed long-dead months. The cook-boy was not very efficient. His sole qualification for looking after four police-lieutenants was the fact that he had himself been a police-constable, discharged because of bad feet. Now he fed his masters expensively on tinned soups, tinned sausages, tinned milk, tinned cheese, tinned steak-and-kidney pudding, tinned ham. Anything untinned was suspect to him, and bread was rarely served with a meal. The porch was littered with flattened cigarette-ends, and the bath had a coating of immemorial grime. When plaster fell from the ceiling it lay to be trampled by heavy jungle-boots. But nobody cared, for nobody wanted to think of the place as a home. Nabby Adams thirsted for Bombay, Flaherty yearned for Palestine, Keir would soon be back in Glasgow and Vorpal had a Chinese widow in Malacca.

Where, in the old days of many royal confinements, there had been a field and a lane, now straggled a village. Villages were appearing now in the oddest places; the Communist terrorists had forced the Government to move long-established kampong populations to new sites, places where there was no danger of ideological infection, of help given to the terrorists freely or under duress. This newish village, on the hem of the town’s skirt, already looked age-old. As Nabby Adams moved like a broken Coriolanus through the heavy morning heat, he saw the signatures of the old Malaya—warm, slummy comfort as permanent as the surrounding mountain-jungle. Naked brown children were sluicing themselves at the pump, an old mottled Chinese nonya champed her gums at the open door, a young Malay father of magnificent physique nursed a new child. His wife, her sarong wound under her armpits, proffered to Nabby Adams a smile of black and gold. Neither he nor his dog responded. They both made straight for the kedai of Guan Moh Chan, where he owed a mere hundred dollars or so. Would this tribute of five soften the hard heart of the towkay? He could feel already the sweat of anxiety more than heat stirring beneath his shirt. He needed at least two large bottles.

The shutters were being taken down by the youngest son of the large family—huge planks that fitted into the shop-front like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. The towkay, in working costume of vest and underpants, grinned, nodded, sucked a black cigar. His head was that of an old idol, shrunken, yellow, painted with a false benignity. Nabby Adams addressed his prayers to it.

The towkay, happy, chirping laughter, produced a book and pointed to a total with a bone of a finger. “Salatus tujoh puloh linggit lima puloh sen.”

“How much?” He read for himself: $170.50. Christ, as much as that. “Here. Give us a couple of bottles, big ones. Dua. You’ll get some more wang to-morrow.”

Clucking happily, the old man took the five-dollar note and handed Nabby Adams a single dusty small bottle of Tiger beer. “You mean old bastard,” he said. “Come on, be a sport.”

It was no good. Nabby Adams went back with the one bottle hidden in his vast hand. He felt, irrationally, cheated. Five dollars. One dollar seventy a big bottle. The bloody old thief. Man and dog entered the mess to find Keir and Vorpal already at breakfast. Keir, in jungle green, sneered up at Nabby Adams, and Nabby felt a sweat of hatred for the Glasgow whine and the smug meanness. Vorpal, eupeptically bubbling greetings, bathed a sausage in a swimming plate of sauce. The cook-boy stood by, anxious, and said:

“Yes,” said Nabby Adams, “he’s sending them round.” He prepared to mount the stairs with his bottle. Keir said:

“I hope you made enough row in the night. I couldn’t get a wink of sleep with your banging around and your drunken singing.”

Nabby Adams felt his neck-muscles tighten. Something in the mere quality of the impure vowels smote at his nerves. He said nothing.

Vorpal had the trick of adding a Malay enclitic to his utterances. This also had power to irritate, especially in the mornings. It irritated Nabby Adams that this should irritate him, but somewhere at the back of his brain was the contempt of the man learned in languages for the silly show-off, jingling the small change of ‘wallah’ and charpoy. The irritation was exacerbated by Nabby Adams’s realisation that Vorpal was not a bad type.

“Let the boy have his fun-lah. If you took a wee drappie yourself you’d sleep through it like I do.” He crammed a dripping forkful in his mouth, chewing with appetite. “Old Nabby’s quiet enough during the day-lah.”

“Paddy’s ill, too,” said Keir. “He can’t get up this morning. You might have a bit of consideration for a sick man.”

Nabby Adams turned to reply and saw at that moment a sight that brought a fearful thirst to his throat. His beating blood had dulled his ears to the sound of the approaching car, the car that now slid into the porch and stopped. Next to the Malay police-driver was the Contingent Transport Officer, Hood, who now, tubby and important, slammed the car door and prepared to enter the mess. Nabby fled up the stairs, the dog panting and clanking after him.

With the dry rázor on his chin, Nabby Adams listened to salutations below, condescending, servile. The bottle stood on the dressing-table and grinned mockingly at him.

Adams. Usually it was Nabby. Things must be bad. Nabby Adams called down, “Yes, sir, shan’t be a minute, sir,” in the big confident voice, manly but not unrefined, he had learnt as a regimental sergeant-major. He tore into uniform shirt and slacks, cursing the dog as she lovingly got under his feet. He clumped down the stairs, composing his features to calm and welcome, putting on the mask of a man eager for the new day. The unopened bottle sneered at his descending back.

“There you are, Adams.” Hood was standing waiting, a high-polished cap shading his flabby clean face. “We’re going to Sawan Lenja.”

“Sir.” Keir and Vorpal were out on the porch, waiting for transport to the police station. “Anything wrong there, sir?”

“Too many vehicles off the road. What’s these stories I’ve been hearing about you?”

“Don’t act daft. You know what I mean. You’ve been hitting it again. I thought that was all over. Anyway, I’m getting all sorts of tales up at Timah, and Timah’s a bloody long way from here. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, sir. I have given it up, sir. It’s a mug’s game. A man in my position can’t afford it, sir.”

“I should bloody well think not. Anyway, they tell me they couldn’t find you anywhere last week and then they picked you up half-slewed in a shop in Sungai Kajar. Where did that come from?”

“Enemies, sir. There’s a lot of Chinese on to me, sir. They want me to fiddle the accident reports and I won’t, sir.”

“I should bloody well think not.” His face creased suddenly in a tight pain. “Christ, I’ll have to use your lavatory.”

When Hood was safely closeted, Nabby Adams wildly hovered between two immediate courses of action—the telephone or the bottle? The bottle would have to wait. He picked up the dusty receiver. Fook Onn was at the other end, and Fook Onn spoke English.

Lim Kean Swee	$395
Chee Sin Hye	$120
Tan Meng Kwang	$250

The Happy Coffee Shop	$67
Chop Fatt	$35

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Burgess

The Malayan Trilogy

Time for a Tiger
The Enemy in the Blanket
Beds in the East

ABOUT THE BOOK

ALSO BY ANTHONY BURGESS

GLOSSARY

INTRODUCTION

Time for a Tiger

DEDICATION

The Enemy in the Blanket

Beds in the East

1

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Burgess

The Malayan Trilogy

Time for a TigerThe Enemy in the BlanketBeds in the East

ABOUT THE BOOK

ALSO BY ANTHONY BURGESS

GLOSSARY

INTRODUCTION

Time for a Tiger

DEDICATION

The Enemy in the Blanket

Beds in the East

1

Time for a Tiger
The Enemy in the Blanket
Beds in the East